“He Was a Disaster”: Andrew Bacevich on Rumsfeld’s Legacy as Architect of Iraq War

Guests: Ret. Col. Andrew Bacevich, president and co-founder of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

Donald Rumsfeld, considered the chief architect of the Iraq War, has died at the age of 88. As defense secretary for both Presidents George W. Bush and Gerald Ford, Rumsfeld presided, his critics say, over systemic torture, massacres of civilians and illegal wars. We look at Rumsfeld’s legacy with retired Colonel Andrew Bacevich, whose son was killed in Iraq. Bacevich is the president of the antiwar think tank the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He says the Iraq War should be the most important item inscribed on Rumsfeld’s headstone. “He was a disaster,” Bacevich says. “He was a catastrophically bad and failed defense secretary who radically misinterpreted the necessary response to 9/11, and therefore caused almost immeasurable damage to our country, to Iraq, to the Persian Gulf, more broadly.”

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Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: Donald Rumsfeld, chief architect of the Iraq War, died Wednesday at the age of 88. Rumsfeld served under four presidents and was secretary of defense under both Presidents George W. Bush and Gerald Ford. His critics say he presided over systemic torture, massacres of civilians and illegal wars.

As defense secretary, Rumsfeld was quick to advise President Bush to target Iraq after the 9/11 terror attacks, even though al-Qaeda had been sheltered by the Taliban in Afghanistan and Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with the attack.

This is Rumsfeld speaking at a press briefing in 2002 about whether Iraq gave weapons of mass destruction to terrorists.

DEFENSE SECRETARY DONALD RUMSFELD: The message is that there are known knowns. There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don’t know. So, when we do the best we can and we pull all this information together, and we then say, “Well, that’s basically what we see as the situation,” that is really only the known knowns and the known unknowns.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Donald Rumsfeld in 2002. As the War in Iraq dragged on, he faced intense questioning from troops. In 2004, a soldier asked Rumsfeld why vehicle armor was still in short supply three years in. This was his response.

DEFENSE SECRETARY DONALD RUMSFELD: As you know, you go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have.

AMY GOODMAN: Many critics, including human rights groups and a bipartisan Senate committee, have said Rumsfeld should have faced criminal charges for decisions that led to the abuse of detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison, near Baghdad, and at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp.

Jameel Jaffer, director at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and former ACLU deputy director, tweeted, quote, “Rumsfeld gave the orders that resulted in the abuse and torture of hundreds of prisoners in U.S. custody in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay. This should be at the top of every obituary. … More than a hundred prisoners died in the course of interrogations. Investigations were haphazard at best. But the military itself concluded that some of the prisoners were tortured to death.”

For more, we’re joined by Andrew Bacevich, president and co-founder of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He’s a retired colonel and Vietnam War veteran. Bacevich is professor emeritus of international relations and history at Boston University and author of several books. His most recent book, just out, is titled After the Apocalypse: America’s Role in a World Transformed. In May, he wrote a piece for The Boston Globe headlined “My son was killed in Iraq 14 years ago — who’s responsible?”

We welcome you back to Democracy Now!, Professor Bacevich. Why don’t you start off by talking about the legacy of Donald Rumsfeld?

ANDREW BACEVICH: Well, the newspapers are referring to him as the most influential defense secretary since Robert McNamara back in the 1960s. I think that’s appropriate, accurate. He was like McNamara in a specific sense, I think, that he brought to office — Rumsfeld brought to office certain convictions about how the Pentagon needed to change. And from day one, he set out to implement that vision.

What Rumsfeld didn’t anticipate was 9/11 and its aftermath, specifically the Iraq War. And you’re right, I think, to describe him as the principal architect of that war. He attempted to fight it, consistent with his reform vision — that is to say, the expectation that superior American technology would bring about a quick and decisive victory. He got that wrong. He got that wrong because of his misunderstanding of war and his inability to appreciate the historical, cultural, sociological, religious elements of war. And therefore, what was supposed to be a quick and decisive victory ended up being a protracted, ugly disaster. And that’s why Iraq needs to be, you know, the most important item inscribed on his headstone. He was a disaster.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Andrew Bacevich, as you’ve said, he was considered the most powerful defense secretary since McNamara, but even once it became clear that the Iraq War was waged under false pretenses — in other words, there were no weapons of mass destruction — unlike McNamara, who issued an apology in the documentary Fog of War, Donald Rumsfeld, on the contrary, was the least apologetic and affirmed the fact that the U.S. should have gone into Iraq and that any premature withdrawal would be a mistake.

ANDREW BACEVICH: Well, you know, I can’t pretend to peer into his soul. He clearly was a stubborn man, a proud man, and, I think, you know, unwilling to confront his own failings, which became manifest. When we come to 2006, the end of 2006, when President George W. Bush decided to fire him, his failure by then had become evident to just about everybody, other than Rumsfeld or perhaps his friend Vice President Cheney.

You know, many historical figures, with the passage of time, find their reputations revised — perhaps improved, perhaps subjected to greater criticism. I don’t expect that there’s going to be any revision of Donald Rumsfeld’s reputation in the future. He was a catastrophically bad and failed defense secretary who radically misinterpreted the necessary response to 9/11, and therefore, caused almost immeasurable damage to our country, to Iraq, to the Persian Gulf, more broadly. And I don’t think there’s any way to disguise that.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go to that first clip that we played, which is, “You go to war with the army you have.” If you could comment on that, and also the fact that you, like so many in the United States and in Iraq, lost a loved one in Iraq, and what that means, what role Donald Rumsfeld played in that, but not just Rumsfeld — if you could talk, with this focus on Rumsfeld, about the responsibility of the man he worked for, President George W. Bush?

ANDREW BACEVICH: Well, I tend to want to resist judgments about responsibility, that I think can be too simple, and therefore let others off the hook. So, if somebody asked me straight out, do I feel that — do I think Donald Rumsfeld was responsible for the death of my son, I would say no. Do I think George W. Bush is responsible? No, at least not specifically.

Where does responsibility lie? Well, I’ve come to believe that there is a collective responsibility, that we the people — not we the people, every one of us, but we the people — are implicated in the Iraq War. You know, we the people embraced a conception of America’s role in the world that really amounted to support for militarized global hegemony, and that in response to 9/11, we collectively concurred with the tragically misguided response of the George W. Bush administration that said we should embark upon a global war on terrorism. That was a strategic mistake, it was a moral mistake, but it’s one that the majority of the American people, shocked by the events of 9/11, signed up to.

So, I don’t think there really is an easy answer when we look to something like the Iraq War and we want to finger a particular individual for responsibility or guilt. I think that responsibility for these mistakes, huge mistakes, tends to be rather widely shared. And we need to always circle back to the realization that we are a democracy. And these people in Washington who are making decisions on our behalf, even when they are radically ill-advised decisions, to some degree, are doing so with our collective concurrence. And I would say that in particularly with regard to the Bush administration in Iraq, when you realize that in 2004 we reelected George W. Bush to a second term, and, in doing that, of course, agreed to have Donald Rumsfeld continue for a couple more years as defense secretary. So, I think that it’s important to avoid the simple judgments of pointing to a particular individual to say, “Guilt lies there.” That’s too easy.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, Andrew Bacevich, I mean, you’ve just said that — and that’s a crucial point — that Bush was reelected despite all the manifest failures of his administration. One of the most staggering, of course, was the invasion of Iraq, which, as you say, Rumsfeld alone is not to be held responsible, but it’s a far greater responsibility, especially since, of course, he was appointed by an administration that was reelected. And now, to turn to present wars and the legacy of that initial decision, Biden has now become the sixth consecutive president in the U.S. to bomb Iraq. So, could you talk about that and the enduring legacy of Rumsfeld’s position as defense secretary and also the continuities that you see in Biden’s Middle East policy?

ANDREW BACEVICH: Well, I think you’re right in reminding us that he’s — that Biden is the sixth consecutive president to use violence against Iraq — in other words, going all the way back to George Herbert Walker Bush, six presidents, both Republicans and Democrats. It’s not as if that one party or the other owns the forever wars, as we have chosen to call them. I think what we see in this — you know, militarily, the most recent airstrike ordered by President Biden is a trivial event, but it reminds us that the forever wars continue.

Biden’s decision, which I fully support, to withdraw U.S. military forces from Afghanistan, our longest war ever, led some observers to say, “Well, I guess the forever wars are coming to an end. We’re ringing down the curtain.” That’s not the case. This administration’s military inclinations are not terribly different from the previous five administrations that bombed Iraq. This administration shows no inclination to back away from the notion that the United States must remain militarily preeminent in the world. This administration shows no signs of backing away from the inclination to use force, which really is one of the central themes of U.S. policy since the end of the Cold War. During the Cold War, there was some reluctance to use force because of concerns that we’d start World War III. Since the end of the Cold War, starting with George Herbert Walker Bush, there’s been this promiscuous tendency to use force.

And I think when we examine the record of American wars over now the past — what? Thirty? — over 30 years, it’s hard to see that the country has benefited in any serious way. It’s relatively easy to tote up the costs that we have paid, and, of course, the costs inflicted on others, like the people of Iraq and the people of Afghanistan.

I have to say that, from my own point of view, there is an enormous need for serious reflection. The Democrats want to see us create some kind of a commission to investigate the events of January 6th, the assault on the Capitol. I fully support that. But I think there is a far greater need to evaluate the origins and the conduct of our post-9/11 wars, which, as I say, have done such enormous damage. Sadly — and this is one of the things I talk a little bit about in my book — sadly, I think that the inclination to move on and to forget is very much in evidence in our politics today.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Andrew, let’s talk — there’s a two-part question that I’d like to ask you about what you call the promiscuous tendency on the part of the U.S. to use force. Democratic critics in Congress have warned that these recent repeated retaliatory attacks against Iranian proxies in the Middle East should come under the War Powers Act. So, your response to that? Could you explain what the War Powers Act is and what the impact of that would be?

And then, second, earlier this week, the House voted massively in favor of repealing two separate authorizations of military force: the 1991 Gulf War AUMF and a little-known 1957 AUMF passed during the Cold War. But the broader Authorization for the Use of Military Force, the one that’s been most frequently invoked, is the one passed following 9/11. What prospect do you see for that being repealed? And what would that mean?

ANDREW BACEVICH: As far as I can tell, virtually no prospects whatsoever, which I would say is another demonstration of the — frankly, the moral cowardice of the Congress, the unwillingness of the Congress, as a body, to take responsibility, to live up to its constitutional duties, the duty to declare war. We have fallen into the habit — really dating probably from the time of the Korean War, we have fallen into the habit of deferring to the president as commander-in-chief to pretty much decide when and where the nation is going to fight. And the fact that this blanket authorization, passed in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, continues in force today and is used by a succession of presidents to attack whoever they want to attack, I think, is a good example of how the Congress has failed us, has failed the nation.

You asked about the War Powers Act. So, this is a piece of legislation passed right at the end of the Vietnam War, when there was serious interest within the Congress to try to reclaim a role in deciding when and where force was going to be used. But it’s been a dead letter. No president — no president — has been willing to acknowledge that the War Powers Act is a legitimate source of restraint on presidential authority. So it’s a nice piece of paper, but it’s one that gets roundly ignored. And the fact of the matter is that presidents have come to expect that they can do they want to when it comes to dropping bombs or attacking people. President Biden has now demonstrated that he, too, buys into that claim. It’s a big problem. July 01, 2021

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*American Award-winning investigative journalist and syndicated columnist, author and host/executive producer of Democracy Now!, broadcast daily across the United States and Canada as well as in countries around the world. Our program is on Pacifica, NPR, community, college and satellite radio stations; on PBS, public, community and satellite TV  www.democracynow.org

 

 By Amy Goodman* –  Democracy Now!

Other News.

 

Of washing powder, Afrophobia and racism in China

 Is Afrophobia really on the rise in China?

Roughly two months have passed since the Qiaobi detergent advertisement went viral. The advert, in which a Chinese woman shoves a black man into a washing machine only for him to emerge as a shiny, clean, Asian man, prompted Western media to call it “the most racist ad ever”. At the height of the controversy, commentators from all over the world quarrelled endlessly over whether or not the advert was evidence of China being a racist society. Eventually, the Chinese government intervened and the company behind the offensive advert issued an apology.

Across my social and academic networks, the ad caused a major storm. Everyone from traders to academics and advertisers weighed in. With tensions running high, African traders in Guangzhou were quick to point out that Chinese ignorance in race-related matters was probably behind the advert.

Academics debated the need to “contextualise” racism and racial prejudice in China. They also highlighted how international media tend to portray China and the Chinese in a negative light (especially in the context of Sino-African relations). At the same time, advertisers pointed out that adverts like the Qiaobi one are influenced by the long history of racist advertising in the West. They also explained that the advert showed how Chinese advertisers were unaware that their adverts could have a global reach.

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Racialism and a rising China

Despite the fact that “race” as a biological category was discredited long ago, racial thinking or “racialism” is still common in China. Racialism is the belief that humans are naturally divided into biological categories called “races”. Sometimes, the term racialism is used interchangeably with “racism” to mean a race-based way of thinking through human differences.

Contemporary racial thinking in China is informed by historical ways of imagining “otherness”. These ways centre around differences such as skin colour, class and “ethnicity”. Contact with 19th-century European colonialism and racial theories was also influential. More recently, the “rise of China” within the context of global consumerist societies has stirred up ethno-nationalist sentiments that affect how Chinese people think about “race”.

In China, like other places, racial thinking is often accompanied by stereotypes and prejudices. Dark skin, for instance, is often seen negatively. This is something many of us foreigners have to live with in China.

Within this context, the Qiaobi advert was seen by some as proof that there’s racism in China, and as evidence that “Afrophobia” was on the rise. Those who “see” Afrophobia are quick to point to Chinese hiring practices, which prefer white foreigners to black ones.

Any non-white foreigner living in China knows that these practices do not only discriminate against black people. They extend to other dark-skinned people. So, while deplorable, it’s not exactly Afrophobia.

Despite little concrete evidence supporting claims of Afrophobia or “Anti-African” campaigns, these claims are often picked up by Western media. Some journalists seem all too ready to cast China and the Chinese as “racist” and Africans as the poor victims with no agency. This pattern is replicated in coverage of China as a “neo-colonial” power in Africa.

To equate Chinese rac(ial)ism with racism in the West is intellectually and historically dishonest. Rac(ial)ism and racial prejudice in China are still far from producing the exploitation, oppression, discrimination and murder that racist worldviews continue to produce in the West.

In short, while there are deep-seated forms of rac(ial)ism in China, the rise of “Afrophobia” is difficult to prove. The issue is much more complex than that.

‘Race’ and racism in global media

In most of the articles and comments following the offensive Chinese advert, people from all over the world used the terms racism, stereotypes and racial prejudice interchangeably. It quickly became clear to me that we haven’t figured out how to talk about “race” and racism in globally inclusive ways.

The conversation is usually dominated by the American ways of talking about “race” and racism. Needless to say, using the black/white binary paradigm of race as a measuring stick for racial issues in global and non-Western settings is problematic. If the many “racist” comments I’ve heard from African men about their Chinese counterparts is any guide, the problems highlighted by the Qiaobi advert are far more complex than what the American binary suggests.

Figuring out who’s the racist, or if this or that is racist, or if the Chinese are racist, is a waste of time. Rather than being black or white, it’s a complex matrix of practices that reproduce global systems of exploitation and oppression. Despite our skin colour, gender, sexual orientation, “race”, nationality or faith, we are all, to different degrees, participants in these systems.

White supremacy the Chinese way?

As pointed out early on during the Qiaobi controversy, the advert is a revamped iteration of old Western racist tropes. To understand why such iterations emerge in China – and elsewhere in Asia – it’s important to look at how contemporary global media imaginations are influenced by long-standing racial theories and ideas. Enter white supremacy.

As I write this piece, a tram covered in advertising stops in front of me on Shipyard Lane in Quarry Bay, Hong Kong. In the advert, a young, handsome, white guy in a suit is levitating in front of a building. The Chinese words next to him are about leadership and success.

On the next tram a blonde woman wearing a Swarovski ring is being admired by a young white man. Any survey of street advertising in this, or any other big Asian city, will show that white bodies are pervasively used as the markers of success, power, beauty and romance.

It is hardly news that global media are deeply shaped by a racial hierarchy that frames whiteness as a superior state of being. What I find fascinating is how these racially informed imaginations are negotiated by people in China when they imagine themselves and the world they live in.

These negotiations have to be factored in against the backdrop of the “rise of China” – a rise that has led many to believe that the country will take up the reins of the global capitalist system.

I believe that there are few indications that China would be willing (or able) to transform the (old imperial, capitalist, white supremacist and patriarchal) structures and practices that inform contemporary capitalism and that are, ultimately, behind the Qiaobi detergent advert.

For me, these reflections were the main takeaways amid the uproar that followed the advert controversy.

 

 Roberto Castillo

Lecturer in China Africa Relations, University of Hong Kong 

The Conversation

No Matter How Powerful Israel’s Military Becomes, It Still Can’t Win

Israel is the most powerful state in the Middle East. Its military forces may not match the likes of Egypt or Turkey in numbers, but the might of its training, equipment, technologies and nuclear weapons make it unassailable. Given its long-developed capabilities in public order control, such a position should also apply to its control of radical dissent within its own borders, as well as in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Gaza may not be occupied in the conventional sense but it is a small territory with two million people living behind borders controlled by Israel. It lacks a port, its sole airport was destroyed many years ago and its Mediterranean coastline is patrolled by Israelis at all times. It is essentially an open prison.

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has persistently claimed that his country is indeed safe, that it has nothing to fear from the Palestinians and that the settlements can and should expand as Israel has established good relations with key Gulf states.

More importantly, President Joe Biden’s administration has done little to repeal Donald Trump’s pro-Israel changes. There is no sign of moving the US embassy back from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv, the US consulate in East Jerusalem that gave Palestinians a direct link to Washington has remained closed since 2019, as has the Palestinian office in Washington since 2018. There has been little pressure over the settlement expansion, and even the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNWRA) has only had $230m of its previous $380m US financial support restored.

Taking all these elements into account, Israel should feel safe and secure – but in practice it doesn’t. Instead, an apt summary is of a state that is impregnable in its insecurity. It is impregnable in the sense that it cannot be defeated but insecure in that the underlying threats will not go away, as evident in the current violent confrontations.

Underlying Anger

The threats stem from the underlying anger in Palestinian circles, especially in the occupied territories, as Netanyahu’s government moves ahead to get more settlers into East Jerusalem. This is seen in Palestine as straightforward ethnic cleansing, further encouraged by the far-Right Jewish parties that Netanyahu depends on for power.

The extremist Jewish ideology behind the Kahanist movement in Israel that seeks something approaching full ethnic cleansing of the land west of the Jordan, is still very much in the minority. Nevertheless, it is there in the background, aided by the growth in numbers of some of the more rigorous religious elements.

As the social unrest came to a head this week, many hundreds of young Palestinians were injured but their demonstrations continued and the Israeli police took the extraordinary step of entering al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam’s third holy place. This provoked outrage in the territories, in Gaza, and among Israeli Arabs who make up a fifth of the population of Israel, as well as across the wider Islamic world.

Widespread violence has broken out, leaving many people injured. Much of it has been instigated by Jewish youth, while Islamic paramilitaries in Gaza have fired numerous unguided rockets towards towns in southern and central Israel, including the port of Ashdod and the city of Tel Aviv.

The Israelis, in turn, have carried out hundreds of airstrikes and drone attacks on Gaza, already killing well over a hundred people, many of them children. Israeli casualties are tiny in comparison but the psychological threat of missile attacks is affecting millions of Israelis as they head for shelters, night and day. That should not be underestimated and Netanyahu’s claim of victory seems increasingly hollow.

Unless the violence dies down very soon, Netanyahu will look to take firm action to regain control of Israeli towns, including multiple arrests to deter rioters. Such domestic action will do little to reassure people that all is well, and the situation in Gaza and East Jerusalem only adds to the instability that such action induces.

Israel’s problem in Gaza is that it cannot prevent the rockets being fired without a military ground force intervention. However, the last time it sent in troops, during ‘Operation Protective Edge’ in July 2014, they came up against determined paramilitaries who knew the urban areas intimately and had long trained in urban guerrilla warfare.

As my column explained at the time, 12 days into the seven-week war, Israeli troops moved into Gaza to destroy cross-border tunnels and rocket launch sites. On the first day of that operation, 20 July, “…the elite Golani brigade lost 13 men killed and well over 50 injured. The dead included a battalion deputy commander and the wounded the brigade’s commanding officer, Colonel Ghassan Alian. The overall level of resistance, and especially the abilities of the Hamas paramilitaries, came as a shock to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), even as it was coming to realise that the tunnels constituted a far more serious problem than expected.”

Eight days later, when hundreds of Israeli troops were operating within Gaza, a Hamas paramilitary unit used an undetected tunnel to cross the border and kill five young IDF sergeants on a leadership training course, losing one of their own men in the operation. Rockets continued to be fired from Gaza throughout the war, killing six people, including a child.

In Gaza, the Palestinian losses were vastly greater. Amnesty International later reported that more than 2,000 Palestinians had been killed during the seven weeks, including more than 500 children, and more than 10,000 people had been injured.

Shift to the Right

Over the course of that 2014 conflict, the Israelis lost 68 troops, while several hundreds were left wounded, some maimed for life. Yet, when a ceasefire was eventually agreed, IDF sources accepted that Hamas still had 3,000 rockets available, an arsenal that will have increased massively in the past seven years.

IDF leaders may believe that they have since prepared their forces much more effectively for ground operations. However, that same belief after the 2008 ‘Operation Cast Lead’ conflict didn’t stop them failing six years later. Netanyahu, though, has little option but to take action now, not least because of the changes in Israeli politics over the last ten years.

Prior to the events of the past month, Netanyahu had worked hard to convince Israelis that the Palestinians had been defeated and Israeli Jews could feel secure. This narrative was supported by a 40-year shift to the Right in Israel, propped up by the influx of close to a million migrants from Russia and Ukraine in the 1990s, who were understandably determined to be secure in their new country. It was also aided by the near-wholesale privatisation of the Kibbutz and Moshav cooperatives across Israel that had often provided a more liberal outlook.

Furthermore, the idea that the Palestinians had lost and had to get used to it was promoted vigorously by sectors of the Israeli lobby in the United States, most notably the Middle East Forum. And the many millions of Christian Zionists in the US are an ever-present influence on aspiring politicians, both Republican and Democrat.

On the surface, Israel still appears secure but for all its military power, this is far from true. It may seem impregnable but remains fundamentally insecure. Perhaps the current conflict will ease, possibly due to late pressure from Biden, but whether or not it does, the one key event of recent weeks is the incursion of the Israeli forces into al-Aqsa Mosque. That will have a far deeper and more longer-lasting effect than associates of Netanyahu realise.

by Paul Rogers* – OpenDemocracy

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Comics and cartoons are a powerful way to teach kids about COVID-19

The global COVID-19 pandemic has turned children’s lives upside down. Stay-at-home orders mean that they cannot go to school, visit a playground or spend time with friends. Just like adults, they may be scared and frustrated.

But given the right information, children can be powerful agents of change in their families and communities. That’s according to a UNICEF guide for communicating with children. This guide highlights the need to communicate with children in an age-appropriate, culturally sensitive, inclusive and positive way. It emphasises that to be effective, the communication must be interesting and engaging.

In response to the current pandemic, leading health scientists and child psychologists have joined forces with writers, educators and artists to produce innovative communication materials. These range from children’s books and videos to infographics and comics. It’s a powerful collaboration: scientists provide the credibility and accuracy, while artists ensure this is communicated with creative flair and appealing design.

And there’s science to back up their efforts. An academic overview of research looking at educational comics has concluded that comics have great potential to make complex topics more meaningful to diverse audiences. This is achieved by combining visuals with powerful metaphors, character-driven narratives and emotionally charged storylines. Scholars confirm that science-themed comics can both entertain and educate, thereby stimulating interest in science topics.

Comic books have been shown to be more effective than textbooks in increasing interest in and enjoyment of science topics. The medium is particularly effective at engaging low literacy audiences and young people with a low interest in science.

Cartoons and comics may, research suggests, be particularly effective when trying to explain viruses and how they affect our health.

Here are some of the best examples I have come across in the past few weeks. All were created especially for communicating about the novel coronavirus and COVID-19. Importantly, these resources are shared freely online, and some are translated into several languages.

A variety of resources

A fantasy creature called Ario is the lead character in My Hero is You. The book resulted from collaboration between several agencies of the United Nations and several dozen organisations working in the humanitarian sector. Ario helps children to understand why the coronavirus is changing their lives and how to cope when they are feeling worried, angry or sad.

Script writer Helen Patuck drew on input from more than 1,700 children, parents, caregivers and teachers from around the world who shared their ways of coping with the COVID-19 pandemic. This online book is also available in audio format. Translation has been finalised or is in progress in more than 100 languages.

Vaayu is the superhero who’s been called upon to help Indian children cope with the pandemic in a comic book issued by the Indian ministry of health and family welfare.

From Singapore comes a series of comic strips for young children featuring Baffled Bunny and Curious Cat. They’re seeking advice and clarification from Doctor Duck. This series was created by award-winning graphic novelist Sonny Liew, who worked with Associate Professor Hsu Li Yang, the programme leader for infectious diseases at the National University of Singapore.

Nosy Crow, a UK publisher, has created a digital book for primary school age children, with the help of Professor Graham Medley of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, an expert in the modelling of infectious diseases. The book is also available as a free e-book in Afrikaans, with text by South African author Jaco Jacobs.

After asking experts in mental health what kids may want to know about the coronavirus, Cory Turner, an educational reporter on National Public Radio, created an online comic that is also available in a printable “zine” version. It’s available in Chinese and Spanish too.

A comic strip promoted by the South African health department features Wazi, who asks questions about the coronavirus and then shares advice provided by his parents and teachers.

Oaky and the Virus was written by South African author, poet and academic Athol Williams. It’s available in English, isiZulu, Siswati, Sepedi and Tshivenda, and helps children understand why they have to stay at home and wash their hands regularly.

Jive Media Africa, a science communication agency in South Africa, created a series of cartoon-based infographics with “Hay’khona Corona” as a theme. “Hay’khona” is a South African expression meaning “no, definitely not!”. These infographics are based on the World Health Organisation’s guidelines around COVID-19. They’re available in several of South Africa’s official languages, as well as languages spoken in other parts of the continent like Yoruba, KiSwahili, French and Portuguese.

Instagrammers are also creating and sharing graphics about coping with COVID-19, with good examples at “comicallysane”, “callouscomics” and “comicsforgood”.

Evidence-based communication

Of course, comic strips aren’t just for kids. Some have been created specifically for adults, tackling questions about the coronavirus with a mixture of education and humour. One example is a collection curated by Graphic Medicine, a health communication platform created by a team of researchers, information specialists and artists.

All of this work and the many other comics and cartoons available to help explain COVID-19 show that these media are far from frivolous. Scientists and communicators are becoming more aware of the special appeal and communication potential of science comics, and are starting to use them as part of an evidence-based portfolio of communication tools.

by Marina Joubert - Science Communication Researcher, Stellenbosch University

(https://theconversation.com

What the latest coronavirus tells us about emerging new infections

Viruses are quick studies. They’re prolific at adapting to new environments and infecting new hosts. As a result they are able to jump the species divide from animals to humans – as the new coronavirus in China is showing.

It’s estimated that 89% of one particular family of viruses, known as RNA viruses, are zoonotic in origin. This means that they started in animals and have since become established among humans. RNA viruses are notorious for being able to mutate in a range of environments. This family of viruses includes everything from Ebola and West Nile Fever to measles and the common cold.

The Severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus (or SARS-CoV) that broke out in Asia in 2003 is also an RNA virus; so too is the significantly more virulent and fatal Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS‐CoV), first identified in Saudi Arabia in 2012. Both are zoonotic. SARS-CoV is believed – although it’s never been confirmed – to have originated in bats. Infected dromedary camels are thought to have been the source for MERS-CoV.

Overall around 10% of those infected with SARS died. The mortality rate for MERS is estimated to be around 35%.

Seven human coronaviruses (HCoVs) have been identified to date: two in the 1960s, and five since SARS in 2003. It is the seventh that is now making headlines.

Latest virus on the block

In December 2019, a number of people fell ill with what was soon confirmed to be a newly identified coronavirus, provisionally dubbed 2019-nCoV. At this stage, it’s suspected but not confirmed that the outbreak originated in one seafood market in Wuhan, a city some 700 miles south of Beijing. The market has been closed since January 1.

As of 26 January 2020, 2,014 laboratory-confirmed cases of 2019-nCoV have been reported by the World Health Organisation, with 56 fatalities. The virus has, thanks to modern international travel, reportedly spread to five other countries: Thailand, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and the US. On the African continent, authorities in Ivory Coast were on 27 January testing a suspected case of the virus in a student who returned to the country from China over the weekend.

As with other coronaviruses, 2019-nCoV is zoonotic in origin. While it’s too early to confirm, it appears that 2019-CoV is what’s known as a recombinant virus. This means it bears the genetic material of both bats and snakes, suggesting that the virus jumped from bats to snakes in the wild – and then, of course, to humans.

Coronaviruses were originally associated with a wide spectrum of respiratory, intestinal, liver and neurological diseases in animals. In the 1960s, with the advancement of laboratory techniques, the first two HCoVs (HCoV-229E and HCoV-OC43) were isolated from patients. These were associated with upper respiratory tract infections, causing mild cold-like symptoms. For this reason, the circulation of HCoVs in the human population was not monitored and no vaccines or drugs were developed to treat CoV infections.

Then, since the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome in China in 2003, five additional human coronaviruses were identified – SARS-CoV (2003), HCoV-NL63 (2004), HCoV-HKU1 (2004), MERS-CoV (2012), and now 2019-nCoV.

As with SARS, the elderly, especially those with existing health conditions, are the most vulnerable with 2019-nCoV.

The outbreak is not entirely unexpected. Coronaviruses are among the emerging pathogens that the World Health Organisation in 2015 identified as likely to cause severe outbreaksin the near future.

For a long time is was difficult to identify the causative agent of infectious diseases. The rapid development of various molecular detection tools has enabled researchers to identify several new respiratory viruses. It has also helped with the characterisation of novel emergent strains.

This was what scientists were able to do within weeks of the first case of the Wuhan coronavirus.

An emerging infection

Coronavirus infections also fall within the crop of diseases known as emerging infectious diseases or newly emerging infectious diseases. These are infections that:

• have recently appeared within a population, or
• whose incidence or geographic range is rapidly increasing, or
• at the very least threaten to increase in the near future.

As with SARS and MERS, many emerging diseases arise when infectious agents in animals known as zoonoses are passed to humans. As the human population expands and populates new geographical regions – often at the expense of wildlife – the possibility that humans will come into close contact with animal species that are potential hosts of an infectious agent increases.

Combined with increases in human density and mobility, it is easy to see that this combination poses a serious threat to human health.

Each of these diseases has come with societal and economic repercussions. Apart from illnesses and deaths, travel, business and daily life are affected. There’s also always the risk of public fear and economic losses.

High risk

There’s an ever-increasing diversity of animal coronavirus species, especially in bats. So the likelihood of viral genetic recombination leading to future outbreaks is high. The threat of future pandemics is real as highly pathogenic coronaviruses continue to spill over from animal sources into the human population.

Misdiagnosis of future outbreaks poses an additional threat to healthcare workers, with hospital-based spread to other patients putting further pressure on already strained healthcare systems.

Morgan Morris of the University of the Western Cape’s Institutional Advancement Division co-authored this article

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Yes, homeless people have rights. Even in Venice

This week, the U.S. Supreme Court showed that, among its many talents, it’s pretty damn good at simple calculations: If cities don’t have enough beds to shelter homeless people, then police may not force the homeless off public sidewalks or out of public parks.

Sleeping in parks, in sidewalk tents or on the sand out of desperation is not OK in any moral or ethical sense, but at least for now, it’s legal.

And there was another piece of good news on the humanitarian front last week, this one from the Los Angeles City Council. The council voted 13-0 to approve the opening of a homeless shelter in Venice, a few blocks from the beach. The space, an unused bus yard, will put a roof over the heads of about 154 people. This is part of Mayor Eric Garcetti’s plan to open at least one shelter in all 15 council districts.

I have listened to arguments against the Venice shelter for years: Homeless people should not be allowed to live at the beach, where homes cost millions of dollars. Homeless people should not occupy a prime piece of real estate that could otherwise generate millions of dollars in revenue for some developer.

But homeless people already live at the beach.

And the Venice shelter will be a temporary use of the land. The hope is it will provide a bridge to permanent housing. The bus yard is owned by the MTA, which plans to build affordable housing on the site in three years. (Will some neighbors in their multi-million-dollar homes then argue that affordable housing has no business being next to the beach?) L.A. Councilman Mike Bonin has taken a tremendous amount of heat from his constituents for pushing this plan. L.A. County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl is also a strong backer.

Each time I write in favor of homeless shelters or transitional housing near the beach, I get an earful of indignance. Much of it can be boiled down to this question: Why don’t they all move to the desert, where land is cheap and abundant?

First of all, this is a free country (for now). People can live where they want. Who would choose to live in the high desert, with its unbearably hot summers and unbearably cold winters, when they could sleep on the sand in Venice and rummage through dumpsters in the back of upscale restaurants for food?

Also, why assume that desert cities are more welcoming to homeless people than other, more expensive places?

Last week, in fact, Lancaster showed why homelessness is every bit the divisive issue in the sparsely populated Antelope Valley as it is in urban centers. Of the estimated 59,000 homeless people in Los Angeles County, only about 3,300 live in the entire Antelope Valley.

On Dec. 10, the Lancaster City Council debated whether to pass an ordinance that would put restrictions on how and where homeless people could be fed.

If passed, the law would ban food giveaways on public sidewalks, streets and parking lots. Free food could be handed out in public parks, but only if charitable groups — or individuals — secure park rental and L.A. County health permits.

As you might imagine with such a preposterous proposal, passions ran high.

I watched a video of the meeting for as long as I could stomach it.

It was hard to watch Mayor R. Rex Parris, who ran the meeting like a benevolent despot, patronizing constituents, arbitrarily cutting their speaking time in half, briefly suspending the proceeding when someone booed him.

Parris has previously advised people to carry concealed weapons for protection against homeless people, 60% of whom, he said, are “criminals and thugs.” A few years ago he tried to shut down the Lancaster Metrolink station, accusing Los Angeles of shipping homeless people to the Antelope Valley.

Bringing food to people who shelter under bridges, or in doorways, said Parris, “is a crisis waiting to happen.”

“It already is!” yelled someone in the audience.

“When people defecate on the streets, when they defecate in doorways and especially when they do that in the parks and the children play in that it is unacceptable,” Parris said.

Who in the world would disagree with that?

Unauthorized pooping is a huge problem and a real public health issue, but the answer is not to force good Samaritans to jump through bureaucratic hoops to give a hungry person a peanut butter-and-jelly sandwich. The answer is to provide toilets where they are needed.

Fear of food-borne illness, speakers said, is overblown. Many were church and community volunteers who take food to people who are not mobile.

“I’ve got to go where the need is,” said Pastor David Cowan of Lancaster’s Love and Grace Christian Fellowship Church. “And the need might be up under a bridge, the need might be in a brook, the need may be anywhere. Don’t penalize my people for going to feed people.”

Regina Thomas told the council she spent Thanksgiving driving in the snow to feed homeless people. “I’m not going to stop doing it today,” she said. “Not next week, not next year. So lock me up today!”

City Council members, who seemed taken aback by the crowd’s intensity, tabled the issue for now.

Their pointless exercise has overshadowed some of the positive developments in the city, including the construction of a new, long-overdue complex that will provide permanent and temporary housing for about 300 people.

I hope Parris and his colleagues let this proposal die.

I mean, how does this sound: Welcome to Lancaster. You can sleep under a bridge. You just can’t eat under one?

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By  Robin Abcarian* –  Los Angeles Times

*Robin Abcarian is an opinion columnist at the Los Angeles Times. She writes about news, politics and culture. Her columns appear on Wednesday and Sunday. Twitter: @AbcarianLAT

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Ecuador: From the middle of the world to the end of the world

As its very name suggests, Ecuador is geographically located in the middle of the world. And now, from all appearances, neoliberalism has decided to carry out its end-ofthe-world maneuvers in this country. That is perhaps the reason it is coming to the realization that the Ecuadorean people is a tough, if not impossible obstacle to overcome. As everyone knows these days, neoliberalism’s deep interconnectedness with the interests of finance capital makes it the most antisocial version of global capitalism. It recognizes no other freedom than economic freedom, and so finds it easy to sacrifice all other freedoms. The specificity of economic freedom lies in the fact that it is exercised strictly on the basis of one’s economic power to exercise it. This, in turn, always entails a measure of asymmetrical imposition upon those social groups that are lacking in power and a measure of brutal violence upon those who have no power at all, which happens to be the vast majority of the world’s impoverished population. The imposition and the violence lead invariably to the transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich (via the state’s meager policies of social protection) and the plundering of natural resources as well as economic assets whenever available.

The International Monetary Fund is the agent in charge of legalizing this transfer, which is viewed by the people as sheer theft and makes itself felt in the violent austerity policies imposed by finance capitalism. The theft is so blatant that the amount of the loans is almost always as high as the publicly reported advantages granted to the international lenders and to the large multinationals connected to them. The most recent instances of this process include Greece and Portugal (2011-2015), Argentina, Brazil, and many African countries.

The current situation in Ecuador is the height of neoliberalism’s destructive will. In order to safeguard the right to legal theft on the part both of creditors and multinationals, the country was put to fire and sword, a state of emergency was declared and readily legitimized by the constitutional court, the Armed Forces – trained by the infamous US Army School of the Americas (whose current name erases history while pursuing the same goals) – were mobilized, so they could practice in the fight against the domestic enemies, i.e., the impoverished majorities, protesters were murdered and injured, and hundreds of children were caused to disappear. It was a maximalist, end-of-the-world strategy, only too ready to raze the country if that’s what it takes to enforce the will of the empire and of the local elites at its service.

The real tragedy in all this is that, during the first decade of this century, Ecuador was the country of hope. It was my great pleasure to be a consultant in the drafting of Ecuador’s 2008 Constitution, one of the most progressive Constitutions in the world and the first ever to enshrine the rights of nature among its articles, thereby offering an alternative to capitalist development. Such alternative rested on the principles of harmony with nature and of reciprocity followed since times immemorial by the indigenous peoples, their approach to life so foreign to Western logic that it had to be conveyed in its language of origin, Quechua, as Sumak Kawsay, awkwardly translated as good living. The following years were marked by innovative experimentation and high expectations, especially for the indigenous peoples, who, mostly since 1990, had fought for the recognition of their rights, respect for their ways of life and for a dignified existence as survivors of the great colonial genocide of the modern age, perpetuated to this day by the new colonialism and racism that for decades has characterized the political parties on both the right and left. The president of the Republic at the time was Rafael Correa. A great communicator, albeit one not too deeply rooted in the social movements, he had an antiimperialist discourse, was always controversial in his positions, and had a low tolerance for dissent in his own political ranks. But he did a remarkable job of renegotiating the foreign debt and effecting social redistribution, even if these efforts were somewhat misguided and perhaps unsustainable, and that for two main reasons. On the one hand, it was difficult for him to see the indigenous peoples as more than poor people, their collective rights, culture and history being of little import; social redistribution meant control by the state and the destruction of indigenous self-government autonomy – a guarantee that dated at least as far back as the 1998 Constitution; and it didn’t take long for him to refine his demonizing of the indigenous leaders. On the other hand, he ran afoul of the Constitution and invoked financial difficulties to justify his embracing the neoextractivist, capitalist development model (based on the extraction of natural resources, especially oil), although he broke with tradition in showing a preference for Chinese rather than US investors. Because of his developmentalism and his fierce hostility to the indigenous leaders, over the last few years Correa has been abandoned by a large part of the Ecuadorean left. I myself have been a critic of Correa. But I never shared the excesses of those sectors of the left who, with the blessing of the European ecological left, went as far as calling him an authoritarian and ultra-rightist leader. These days they are faced with a reality check about the true meaning of the extreme right in Ecuador and across the subcontinent. Rafael Correa stayed in power from 2007 to 2017 and was succeeded by president Lenin Moreno, who had served as Correa’s vice-president for several years. At first it seemed that the only change would be one of style, not the substance of government. But those familiar with Moreno’s background should pay better attention. No one seemed to notice that the Moreno-backed legal persecution of Correa on charges of alleged corruption was just another version of the new US strategy aimed at neutralizing rulers that challenge the interests of US companies, especially as far as oil is concerned. Enter the alleged fight against corruption, as was also the case with Lula da Silva and Cristina Kirchner, among many others. Little by little, Moreno revealed his true goal, which was to realign Ecuador with US interests, in an alliance that culminated with the agreement signed with the IMF. The 1 October decree with austerity measures – the so-called paquetazo – spells profound brutality for low-income families, which constitute the vast majority of the Ecuadorian people.

The tragic trajectory of the IMF recipes is only too well known. They yield no good results except for the investors, while impoverishing the vast majorities. In spite of that, or perhaps because of it, they continue to be used, and each time they are heralded as the only alternative left to save the country. It is not surprising that the IMF is heedless of the ruinous social consequences of its recipes, because capitalism cannot be required to extend its philanthropy beyond its own interests (for which reason it does not qualify as real philanthropy). What is surprising is that, during the first twelve days of the crisis, Lenin Moreno seems to have forgotten how strong the resistance of the indigenous peoples can be, a resistance learned over the centuries and which has overthrown three presidents since 1990, with Moreno possibly the next in line. Most tragic of all, for the people of Ecuador, is the fact that the overthrowing of past presidents (in 1997, 2000 and 2005) was much less violent than what lay in store for the next one. The timid statement by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, whose inability to stand for human rights with total autonomy is well known, is a sign of the authoritarian times in which we live. Twelve days into the fight, Moreno finally gave in. He lifted Decree 883, which had established the austerity measures (first and foremost, the virtual doubling of the price of fuel). It is a backing down – and a poorly disguised one at that – for the sake of political survival. Decree 894 begins with a justification for repealing decree 883 – for technical reasons that basically consist in the impossibility of enforcing it due to resistance on the part of the people – and goes on to offer reasons having to do with the establishment of social peace and harmony and the desire to negotiate the new measures with the relevant social organizations. Article 2 of the new decree stipulates that the fuel subsidies will be restored and only made more rational and targeted, so that they do not end up benefiting those who do not need them or use them for contraband. Had that been the objective to begin with, the country would not have reacted the way it did.

With two years to go until the end of his term, Moreno is aware that his backing down is a personal defeat that will cost him dearly in the near future. Everyone will remember the arrogance of his professed purpose to go ahead with austerity at whatever cost. The rhetoric was directed at the IMF, not the people of Ecuador. With its pathetic and supposedly emotional undertones, the new rhetoric is directed at the Ecuadorian people and amounts to little more than a surrender speech. In fact, the main defeat is not Lenin Moreno’s, but rather a defeat of the IMF and its austerity policies. The final maneuvers were aborted, as military slang has it. As they were in Argentina, with other countries to follow. The IMF’s difficulties are a reflection of the decline of neoliberalism in the second decade of this century. Now that they have a better grasp of where Moreno is coming from, the Ecuadorian people are not expected to let up in the new phase of their struggle – a struggle, moreover, with which they are teaching the world a lesson: unjust power, no matter how strong, always comes with a vulnerable spot, a measure of injustice, and peaceful and organized resistance against it.

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*Boaventura de Sousa Santos is portuguese professor of Sociology at the School of Economics, University of Coimbra (Portugal), distinguished legal scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School, and global legal scholar at the University of Warwick. Co-founder and one of the main leaders of the World Social Forum. Article provided to Other News by the autor, 2019, 10-16