Diplomacy of Grains: Approaching Solution or Fighting Timeout?

Russian Center in Homs Aims to Ease Return of Displaced

Second Anniversary of the Crime of the Age

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Editorial A grain agreement was signed on July 22 in the Turkish capital of Ankara, under the auspices of the United Nations, between the two parties to the crisis Russia and Ukraine.

Two agreements were reached, not one, even though these two agreements regulate a single object. The explanation lies in the hardline positions of the two parties at the center of the crisis, and their refusal to sign a joint document.

In the cover story, Ahmed Taher reviews the agreement signed between the parties, its role and future.

Taher said that the Grain Agreement, or what some call the “Southern Corridor,” gained wide international, regional and local attention. After itas signing, extensive discussions took place, many articles were published about it, and several analysis pieces discussed it, although its clauses are not that many.

In the politics section, Lara El Sayed writes an in-depth report about the second anniversary of the Beirut port explosion.

She said that Lebanon marks the second anniversary of the semi-nuclear explosion, which killed over 200 people, injured over 6,500 others, and destroyed a number of the capital›s neighborhoods and residents, who, rather than seeking justice for the Crime of the Age, fear a possible disaster due to officials› failure.

In another politics story, Jiwan Soz writes about an incident that took place earlier this week when the Russian police opened a reconciliation center in the countryside of Homs, Syria.

The purpose of this center is to facilitate the return of people living in opposition-held areas to their original places of residence that are under the control of the Syrian regime.

This comes after the regime’s security services arrested people returning to their home areas. However, in view of these arrests, can this strategy increase the number of displaced returning to their areas?, Soz exclaimed.

In the society section, Maryam Raafat writes about how Egyptians are resorting to low-cost clothing amid soaring inflation rates.

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Through narrow corridors under the 15th of May Bridge in Cairo, stands are stacked with clothes that suit different age groups. Shop owners are scrambling to attract passersby to look at their “brand” merchandise and buy the clothes they need.

Wekalet El-Balah is a very old district that used to be a market for old spare parts of cars and used clothes as well. It was previously the place where poor people shopped.

But as time went by, and with the continuous increase of lifestyle commodities, this market started to attract more segments of Egyptians.

Read these articles and more on our website eng.majalla.com. As always, we welcome and value our readers’ feedback and we invite you to take the opportunity to leave your comments on our website.

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A Weekly Political News Magazine

36 The Next Epidemic: Suicide Among the Young

Issue 1915- July- 29/07/2022

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China Is Not Russia; Taiwan Is Not Ukraine

44 Brain Fog

Tough Competition

38 and Hidden War

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50 Walk like an Egyptian 5

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How JWST Images Were Brought to Life for Visually Impaired

58 Spotting Memory

Loss in a Loved One

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Tunisia Referendum Tunisians celebrate the exit polls indicating a vote in favor of the new Constitution, in Tunis, late Monday, July 25, 2022. Hundreds of supporters of Tunisian President Kais Saied took to the streets to celebrate after the end of voting on a controversial new constitution that critics say could reverse hard-won democratic gains and entrench a presidential power grab. AP

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Prince Charles and Camilla attend The Sandringham Flower Show 2022 Britain’s Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall attend The Sandringham Flower Show 2022 at Sandringham, in King’s Lynn, Britain July 27, 2022. /REUTERS

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SAU

LEBANON

EGYPT Egypt has canceled contracts for a total of 240,000 tons of Ukrainian wheat that were booked by its state grains buyer for February and March delivery but never loaded due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, two people with knowledge of the matter said.

Reuters reported in May that about 300,000 tons of Ukrainian wheat bought by Egypt were stranded in Ukraine, with one cargo stuck in port and four others still to be loaded.

Egypt's General Authority For Supply Commodities (GASC) has released the trading companies supplying the four unloaded cargoes, Nibulon and Inerco, from their contractual obligations, the two sources said, despite there not being a force majeure clause in GASC's contracts.

Lebanese lawmakers on Tuesday voted to use a $150 million World Bank loan to pay for wheat imports into the cash-strapped country.

Already in the throes of a crippling economic crisis, Lebanon is also struggling to cope with a food security crisis that has left half its roughly 6 million people without adequate food.

The war in Ukraine and global inflation have worsened the situation faced by the tiny Mediterranean nation.

Three-quarters of Lebanon’s population live in poverty and are struggling to cope with rampant power cuts, medicine shortages, and soaring food and fuel prices.

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French Pres welcome S Salman to h dinner Thu Saudi leade Macron’s offi Thursday e cap a long Guinea-Biss Africa, on T The Saudi p to the Euro before Fran France and to secure so dependenc Russia. Fran defense sup

UDI ARABIA

sident Emmanuel Macron plans to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin his presidential palace and offer him ursday, marking another step in the er’s diplomatic rehabilitation. ffice described the meeting on evening as “a working dinner.” It will day for the French leader: He was in sau, wrapping up a three-day visit to Thursday morning. prince is making his first official visit opean Union — he stopped in Greece nce. d other European nations are seeking ources of energy to lessen their ce on oil and gas supplies from nce is also a major weapons and pplier to Gulf nations.

IRAQ Iraq marked its longest post-election deadlock on Wednesday as infighting among Shi'ite and Kurdish groups in particular prevents the formation of a government, hampering reforms needed as the country struggles to recover from decades of conflict.

More than nine months since an October election, lawmakers tasked with choosing a president and prime minister looked no closer to an agreement, bringing the country to a record 290 days without a head of state or cabinet.

UAE The Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates said on Wednesday it was hiking its base rate by three quarters of a percentage point to 2.4% effective from Thursday, moving in parallel with the U.S. Federal Reserve's hike as its currency is pegged to the dollar.

IRAN Iran will keep the UN nuclear watchdog's cameras turned off until a 2015 nuclear deal is restored, the head of the country's Atomic Energy Organization said on Monday, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported.

Iran informed the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) it had removed IAEA equipment, including 27 cameras installed under the 2015 pact with world powers, after the agency passed a resolution criticizing Tehran in June.

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A WEEK ACROS BRAZIL.

U.S. An unrelenting heat wave on Thursday was expected to scorch the U.S. East Coast and South for the third day as dangerously high temperatures had forecasters warning about dehydration and exposure.

Heat warnings and advisories were in effect from South Carolina up into parts of New England as heat index values were expected to reach 110 degrees Fahrenheit (41 C) in Washington D.C. and near 100 degrees in New York City on Thursday, National Weather Service (NWS) said.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is set to officially become a candidate for re-election at a party convention in Rio de Janeiro on Sunday, as he seeks to claw back the commanding lead established by his main rival, former leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

The right-wing Liberal Party (PL) is expected to tap Bolsonaro as their nominee for the Oct. 2 vote before an audience of roughly 10,000 in Rio's Maracanazinho stadium, a move considered the official beginning of Bolsonaro's candidacy under Brazilian law.

In the coming weeks, the already-tense battle between the top two candidates should heat up even further. In mid-August, Lula and Bolsonaro will be freed up by authorities to engage in most forms of political advertising.

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TUNISIA.

A new Tunisian constitution giving far more power to President Kais Saied passed in a referendum with a 30.5% turnout, the electoral commission said on Tuesday, tightening his grip in what critics fear is a march to a new era of autocracy.

The commission said 95% of voters approved the constitution in Monday's referendum boycotted by opposition groups, which accuse Saied of staging a coup against the young democracy that emerged from Tunisia's Arab Spring uprising of 2011.

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UKRAINE A tongue-in-cheek petition to give outgoing British Prime Minister Boris Johnson Ukrainian citizenship and make him the country's prime minister has garnered over 2,500 signatures hours after being put up on Ukraine's official petitions site on Tuesday.

Despite losing domestic popularity and eventually having been forced to announce his resignation after dozens of ministerial departures in early July, Johnson remains a cult figure in Kyiv for his vocal support of Ukraine as it fights off Russia's invasion.

Paintings, murals, and even cakes in Ukraine's capital bear the likeness of the man some Ukrainians affectionately call "Johnsoniuk."

CHINA.

INDIA.

India's first president from a marginalized tribal community, Droupadi Murmu, said after being sworn in that her election was an "achievement of every poor person in the country".

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China must focus on addressing the problem of "unbalanced and inadequate development" in the next five years, Chinese President Xi Jinping told senior leaders this week.

State broadcaster CCTV on Wednesday cited him making the comments in a special two-day meeting in Beijing on Tuesday, in which he laid out his vision for the next five years after the ruling Communist Party holds a Congress later this year.

Xi had first mentioned the need to address "unbalanced and inadequate development" as a policy priority in 2017 when he presented a major political document at the ruling Communist Party's 19th Congress.

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Diplomacy of Grains: Approaching Solution or Fighting Timeout ?

By Ahmed Taher Diplomacy as a tool for managing international relations in times of peace and in the process of searching for solutions to a state of war has garnered several adjectives. Each one of these descriptions derives its name from the nature of the process in which diplomatic work is conducted. This applies to the grain agreement signed on July 22 in

the Turkish capital, Ankara, under the auspices of the United Nations, between the two parties to the crisis (Russia and Ukraine). Two agreements were reached, not one, even though these two agreements regulate a single object. The explanation lies in the hardline positions of the two parties at the center of the crisis, and their refusal to sign a joint document.

Therefore, each party signed an independent document with the parties sponsoring the negotiations,

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that limited the export of grains and oils in order to save the global economy, which has begun to enter into a new crisis and is gaining complex dimensions with multiple repercussions and aftereffects.

The crisis this time follows its global predecessors associated with the outbreak of COVID-19.

Amidst this diplomatic step, which is a compromise between hardline stances on the part of the crisis parties and the attempt to save the world from a rapidly worsening food crisis, this report reviews the agreement signed between the parties, its role and future through two themes as follows:

I- The grain agreement: Specific clauses and limited reactions: The Grain Agreement, or what some call the “Southern Corridor,” gained wide international, regional and local attention. After its signing, extensive discussions took place, many articles were published about it, and several analysis pieces discussed it, although its clauses are not that many, as the agreement included five main clauses, namely: - Enable Ukraine to export 25 million tons of grain and other agricultural goods within 120 days from the date of signing the grain agreement.

Russia and Ukraine are signing an agreement with Turkey and the United Nations on shipping Ukrainian grain, foodstuff, and fertilizer to international markets via the Black Sea in Istanbul, on July 22, 2022. (Xinhua/Shadati)

- The Ukrainians lead the ships loaded with grain through safe channels in the middle of the waters full of mines to three ports: Odessa, Chernomorsk and Yuzhny on the condition that the ships leave the Ukrainian territorial waters in the Black Sea and cross the Bosphorus Strait to a Turkish port for inspection and then head to their destinations.

- All sea corridors from the three Ukrainian ports to the Bosphorus Strait will be completely safe, not because of the complete removal of sea mines, but rather that there would be no military operations there.

- Allow Russia to export grain and fertilizers, as in exchange for allowing Ukraine to export. Sanctions on Russia’s exports of wheat and fertilizers will be halted, as the volume of its exports, according to Russian estimates, is approximately 50 million tons, which means that all Russian regions around the Sea of Azov, Kerch Strait and the port of Sevastopol will be safe areas.

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The international reactions were not at the level of the importance of this agreed, but were overwhelmed by caution and called on the two parties to abide by the agreement’s terms, starting with the United Nations.

- Establish a control center in Istanbul, staffed by officials from the United Nations, Turkey, Russia and Ukraine, and tasked with coordinating and managing grain exports. The ships will be inspected to ensure that they carry grain and fertilizer and not weapons.

Also, the international reactions were not at the level of the importance of this agreed, but were overwhelmed by caution and called on the two parties to abide by the agreement’s terms, starting with the United Nations, the sponsor of the agreement. According to the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres: “The Russian-Ukrainian grain agreement opens a path for significant commercial food exports from Kyiv through the Black Sea, and the agreement between the two countries will help avoid the catastrophe of food shortages for millions around the world.” In the same context, the European Union, according to Josep Borrell, the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, the EU believes that the signing of the agreement on Ukrainian grain exports is a step in the right direction in order to overcome the severe crises that swept the global food markets for several months. The United States has also demanded Moscow to implement the agreement. State Department spokesman Ned Price said his country welcomed “the announcement of this agreement in principle, but what concerns us now is to hold Russia responsible for implementing this agreement and allowing Ukrainian grain to reach global markets.”

II - The Grain Agreement and Possible Future Paths: If it is true that the grain agreement represents a step

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towards easing the hardline stances between the two parties by seeking to ensure that they adhere to its articles, then it is also true that signing it at this particular time raises a question no less important than the question of its potential tracks considering its nutritional and humanitarian dimensions. Will it be a political motive to encourage the parties to start engaging in a political solution acceptable for them? The answer to this question bears two possible paths, namely:

concluding more agreements that would mitigate the economic repercussions of the crisis globally in general and the one related to the oil, gas and grain sectors in particular, evidenced by some indicators, including:

1- The pledge made by Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu on the sidelines of the signing of the agreement that “Moscow will not take advantage of demining and opening Ukrainian ports within the framework of an agreement brokered by the United The first track considers the agreement a step to- Nations to resume vital grain exports ... Russia has wards mitigating the intensity of the conflict, mean- taken upon itself the obligations clearly stipulated ing that the agreement may be the beginning of a in this agreement. We will not take advantage of the broader settlement that includes a cease-fire and the fact that the ports will be cleared and opened. We start of serious negotiations between the two par- have made a commitment.” ties. There is also the possibility of expanding and 2- The inability of all Russian, Ukrainian and Western parties to continue the war, and bear its economic effects on all parties. For Russia, which has achieved some gains, whether on the ground or on the economic level, it has incurred great losses at the human and artillery levels since the start of the war. It has also been unable to resolve the situation more quickly on the ground. Likewise, Ukraine, whose economy is deteriorating at a rate so fast that even Western aid, no matter how generous it is, will not be able to compensate for the damage caused to the country’s infrastructure. The Western side, especially the European one, has become unable to

As soon as the agreement was signed, there was a %3 decline in world wheat prices on the Chicago Stock Exchange, and corn and soybean prices also fell to their lowest levels in about 8 months.

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Russia’s Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Turkish Defence Minister Hulusi Akar attend a signing ceremony in Istanbul, Turkey July 22, 2022.

Murat Cetinmuhurdar/ Handout via REUTERS

Turkish Defence Minister Hulusi Akar (R) and military delegations of Russia and Ukraine, United nations (UN) sit at the opening of the coordination centre for Ukrainian grain exports in Istanbul on july /27, 2022./ AFP

A farmer collects harvest on his field ten kilometres from the front line in the Dnipropetrovsk region, Ukraine, on July 4, 2022. (AP Photo/ Efrem Lukatsky, File)

bear the burdens of a long war that drains many of its resources to support Ukraine with weapons and money. The this is done at the expense of Western economies and their growth. Moreover, a harsh winter is awaiting European countries due to the low volumes of gas flowing from Russian pipelines, and the difficulty of securing alternatives to Russian energy supplies. This has affected basic industries and caused a wave of economic stagnation, whose features have begun taking shape as the euro fell to parity with the dollar for the first time since 2002. Moreover, the instructions issued by various European countries to regulate energy consumption

“The Russian-Ukrainian grain agreement opens a path for significant commercial food exports from Kyiv through the Black Sea.” are the clearest evidence of the difficulties awaiting these countries in the coming months.

As for the second track, the agreement will not lead to a regression or cessation of the military operation. Rather, it is likely that the agreement will not undergo a renewal should it remain effective till the period specified in it. Indicators of this are: 1- The persistence of the battles between the two parties (Russian - Ukrainian), evidenced in the Russian bombing that targeted the main port of Odessa on July 23, 2022, one day after the signing of the agreement. Serhiy Prachuk, a spokesman for the Odessa military administration, announced that “two missiles hit the port’s infrastructure, while the Ukrainian air defenses succeeded in shooting down two others.” This is an indicator of the escalation on the battlefields despite the signing of the agreement, which was confirmed by the Russian Defense Min-

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ister Sergei Shoigu when he said, “This strike was targeting the military infrastructure in the port, and no article in the grain agreement prevents Russia from continuing to attack the military infrastructure in Ukraine.” Russia’s stance has pushed the Ukrainian side to be tougher on the issue of removing mines from Ukrainian waters, fearing that Russia will take advantage of this. The spokesman for the city’s military administration addressed that: “Ukraine will not completely remove mines from the port area despite an export agreement for grain with Russia, which was signed last Friday ... because opening the port for the export of Ukrainian grain despite the recent Russian bombing of the port’s infrastructure does not involve a complete demining.” It is worth noting that what happened was expected by some Ukrainian politicians like Hryhoriy Nemyria, the former deputy prime minister who is now the chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Verkhovna

A harsh winter is awaiting European countries due to the low volumes of gas flowing from Russian pipelines, and the difficulty of securing alternatives to Russian energy supplies.

Rada. According to Nemyria, the Ukrainians fear “the possibility of Russia using these talks not only for procrastination (and regrouping its armies), but also for example, to launch an attack on Odessa.

The UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and the European Union Foreign Minister Josep Borrell condemned the bombing, and a statement issued by the UN stated: “The Secretary-General Antonio Guterres unequivocally condemns the strikes on the Ukrainian port of Odessa.”

2- The aggravation of the dispute and the conflicting international agendas in Ukraine, indicated by the process of signing the agreement itself, as the Russian and Ukrainian ministers avoided sitting at the same table or shaking hands during the signing ceremony of the agreement. The agreement was signed by the Russian Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu separately with his Turkish counterpart Hulusi Akar, after which the Ukrainian Minister of Infrastructure Oleksandr Kubrakov signed the agreement with the Turkish Minister under the supervision of the UN Secretary-General. This is in addition to the multiplicity of files and other complex issues that are still pending between them, for example those related to energy and minerals, and others related to the Western sanctions imposed on Russia.

Regardless of the effects of this agreement on the course of the military operation, it carried an important humanitarian dimension in limiting the aggravation of the global food crisis. As Ukraine

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Farmers harvest a wheat field in the Ukrainian Kharkiv region on July 19, 2022, amid Russian invasion of Ukraine.

(Photo by SERGEY BOBOK / AFP)

Majdi Fathi/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Harvested wheat grain is loaded into a truck in Tersky village, near Stavropol, Russia, in July. | BLOOMBERG

restored its role in the global grain and oil market, this would mitigate the price hikes that had economic and social impact on many countries. As soon as the agreement was signed, there was a 3% decline in world wheat prices on the Chicago Stock Exchange, and corn and soybean prices also fell to their lowest levels in about 8 months.

In light of the aforementioned discussion, we conclude that it is difficult to disregard the importance of signing such an agreement, which is the first of its kind between the two countries since the start of the military operation last February, in reducing global food prices. The agreement, however, is not expected to put an end to

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Ukraine restored its role in the global grain and oil market, this would mitigate the price hikes that had economic and social impact on many countries. that war unless the parties involved in it realize its high cost, which is paid for by the whole world and not only the citizens of the two warring countries. This is what these parties have begun to realize, which raises the hope for setting the beginnings for the end of this war during the coming autumn at least, provided that the agreement is agreed upon. The parties should restructure the paths of their relations on the one hand and draw a roadmap capable of taking into consideration the new developments and the dimensions of the upcoming threats on the other hand. Without this realization, the crisis will remain open to various scenarios that would not bring the region and the world at large stability and peace and may even drag everyone into a war whose high price and increasing costs are paid, not only by its direct parties but also by the rest of the world. Is such a tragic end awaiting everyone? Or will they wake up before it is too late?

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China Is Not Russia; Taiwan Is Not Ukraine

Differences Between Each are Stark Enough that we can Draw Useful Parallels from the Ukraine War for Taiwan

By Tiejun Zhang Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has sparked an avalanche of discussion about the implications for Taiwan. One of the most commonly discussed lessons from the Ukraine War has been that China would need to think more seriously before waging a reunification war against Taiwan, given the setbacks suffered by the Russian invading forces. In my understanding, however, the risk of Beijing launching a cross-strait war was never high to begin with, so the

“lesson” has little use.

History might repeat itself but not always. To illustrate the differences, we need to draw two parallels: China vs.

Russia and Taiwan vs. Ukraine.

CHINA IS NOT RUSSIA Comparing China and Russia, the two countries have very different strategic priorities. First, there is a great difference in their respective economic and military capabilities and

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Chinese President Xi Jinping, right, and Russian President Vladimir Putin talk to each other during their meeting in Beijing, China on February 2022 ,4. (Alexei Druzhinin, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)

potentials.

Economically, China has the second largest GDP in the world. As of 2021, China’s GDP was 76 percent of the United States’. In contrast, Russia’s GDP was less than 10 percent of that of the United States. What is more, China’s economic growth is more sustainable than Russia’s. The reasons are simple. China’s decades-long economic growth is based on comprehensive development in a variety of sectors: agriculture, labor-intensive manufacturing, high-tech industry, etc. Besides, largely due to the fact that China is the “world’s factory” and the related large demand for raw material imports, China is much better connected to the world economy than Russia. In contrast, Russia’s economic development is largely based on the energy sector.

Militarily, Russia maintains the world’s largest nuclear arsenal, in terms of the number of nuclear warheads, and a formidable conventional force, especially its land force.

Ukraine is primarily a theater for land force, where Russia would be more capable of showing its strength than in a maritime theater. In comparison, China’s military, though experiencing fast modernization, is still decades behind that of the United States. China started modernizing its navy and air force only in the late 1990s, after the 1996 Taiwan Straits crisis, and like Russia, China’s land forces were traditionally stronger than its naval and air forces.

Added to that, Taiwan is a more complicated target for an invasion. It is true that the Taiwan Strait is narrow, with a width of less than 100 miles at its narrowest part, and China has deployed a large number of missiles along its coast pointing to Taiwan. But even absent direct military intervention by the United States, which we cannot be sure of, it would still not be easy for China to take over Taiwan, given the large numbers of advanced weapon systems that Taiwan imports from the U.S. In the context of a potential Taiwan Strait war, the aforementioned interconnection with the world economy is a double-edged sword for China. On the one hand, it has been one of the most crucial factors promoting China’s economic growth for decades. On the other, deep economic interdependence brings a vulnerability to China’s economic growth in times of crisis. China is now the largest trading country in the world, based on imports and exports combined. This is largely because China trades with the U.S. and its key allies. The U.S. and its allies account for eight of China’s top ten trading partners. In a scenario where China uses force to achieve reunification with Taiwan, harsh sanctions would be imposed on China by the U.S. and American allies. It would be too costly for the Chinese economy if that happens. China would undergo a serious economic downturn, which would have profound social and political implications domestically.

In this respect, Russia has less to fear economically from a downturn in relations with the U.S. and the European Union. The latter is particular highly dependent on the

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China and Russia also differ in their strategic priorities. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is President Vladimir Putin’s attempt to secure the country’s “near abroad,” when confronting the eastward expansion of NATO. Russian natural gas supply, though the recent European sanctions on Russia sharply decreased that dependence.

China and Russia also differ in their strategic priorities.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is President Vladimir Putin’s attempt to secure the country’s “near abroad,” when confronting the eastward expansion of NATO. Russia felt a sense of urgency facing the possibility of Ukraine and others joining NATO; in that case, Russia’s strategic environment would deteriorate rapidly. Moscow felt it had no time to wait.

By contrast, China’s strategic priority is still maintaining a peaceful environment conducive to China’s economic growth. The rationale for that is simple. President Xi Jinping’s “China’s dream” is essentially the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, which implicitly means making China once again the center of East Asia. As a result, China’s rise does not lead to a rush for territorial expansion but infers a longer-term historical mission to become a fullyfledged superpower. The logic here is: If China can wait for hundreds of years to reclaim its rightful place (citing the narrative of the “century of humiliation”), why can’t it wait for a decade or more?

TAIWAN IS NOT UKRAINE The second parallel is a comparison between Taiwan and Ukraine. Demographically, Ukraine has 48 million people and Taiwan’s population is roughly half of that (almost 24 million). In terms of ethnicity, Ukraine’s population is about 77 percent Ukrainians and 20 percent Russians in Ukraine. In Taiwan, over 90 percent of the population are Han Chinese and less than 10 percent are Indigenous.

Based solely upon ethnic make-up, one might assume it would to be easier for China to unify with Taiwan than for Russia to acquire Ukrainian territory. But it is not so simple.

Since the late 1980s, the Chinese government has been eagerly promoting cultural, social, and kinship ties with Taiwanese people. The initial purpose of this move was the understanding (or misunderstanding) that with more

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cultural and social communications, Taiwanese people would grow more like mainland Chinese people and feel increasingly their belongingness to the “motherland.”

Identity politics, however, shows reversed effects.

With more communications and contact, the Taiwanese people instead increasingly saw their differences from mainlanders.

This tendency is reinforced by the Taiwanese government’s deliberate promotion of Taiwanese identity ever since the late 1990s, during Lee Teng-hui’s term. With an increasing number of Taiwanese people identifying themselves as Taiwanese only, not even as both Taiwanese and Chinese, Chinese efforts to promote Chinese identity in Taiwan have largely failed. This is one of the biggest headaches for China in its pursuit of reunification.

Economically, Taiwan’s GDP is over three times Ukraine’s, and Taiwan is far more important than Ukraine technologically in the region and the world as an IT center, especially as a major chip producer. In fact, the U.S. recently called on Taiwan to contribute more to resolve a global shortage of semiconductors.

Geopolitically, as Robert Ross wrote on the cusp of the 21st century, East Asia is bipolar, with the U.S. as the dominant maritime power and China as the dominant continental power, with Taiwan located right between the two spheres.

In that respect, whoever controls Taiwan would gain an advantage over the other. Arguably, for the United States, Taiwan is more important than Ukraine both economically Credit: (Depositphotos)

Taiwan is more important to U.S. interests than Ukraine, and more likely to spark a direct military response. At the very least, economic sanctions would be a strong possibility in the event of a Taiwan Strait war.

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U.S. President Joe Biden speaks virtually with Chinese leader Xi Jinping from the White House in Washington, U.S. November 2021 ,15. REUTERS/ Jonathan Ernst

Taiwan considers itself an independent nation, but Beijing claims it as its sacred territory (GETTY)

and strategically. Japan is even more reluctant to see Taiwan being united with mainland China, as it considers the Taiwan Straits as part of its lifeline, particularly when it comes to energy transport security.

One of the most crucial factors for both the Ukraine War and a Taiwan Straits war is the probability of U.S. direct military intervention. For Ukraine, the U.S government has made it clear that it will not directly join the fight.

There is a very different picture on the Taiwan issue.

Since the establishment of diplomatic relations between the United States and the People’s Republic of China in 1979, in line with the Taiwan Relations Act, the U.S. government has deliberately maintained a vague stance in terms of direct military intervention. This vagueness has been effective in deterring both China from using force for unification and Taiwan from declaring formal independence.

CONCLUSION To summarize the difference above, Taiwan is more important to U.S. interests than Ukraine, and more likely to spark a direct military response. At the very least, economic sanctions would be a strong possibility in the event of a Taiwan Strait war. Meanwhile, China has more to lose economically than Russia from alienating the U.S. and its allies.

Under these circumstances, using force to bring Taiwan back to the “motherland” is not an option for China now, and will not be in the foreseeable future, as long as there

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China is the “world’s factory” and the related large demand for raw material imports, China is much better connected to the world economy than Russia. is a big gap between the Chinese and the U.S. militaries.

The understanding in Beijing is that China will continue to grow even stronger both economically and militarily, and time is on China’s side. And quoting from the “Art of War,” with the continuous rise of China, eventually, China can “win without fighting.”

As mentioned at the beginning of the article, some have argued that one of the lessons that China would learn from the Ukraine War is that China needs to think seriously before waging a reunification war against Taiwan. That lesson, however, is one for the remote future. China is not in a rush for reunification, either by peaceful means or by force. China’s best hope is to continue its continuous rise. When direct military intervention would be too costly for the U.S., Taiwan would come to China’s terms and “winning without fighting” would be achieved.

This article was originally published by The Diplomat.

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Russian Center in Homs Aims to Ease Return of Displaced The Displaced Do Not Trust Russian Guarantees

By Jiwan Soz - Qamishli Earlier this week, the Russian police opened a reconciliation center in the countryside of Homs, Syria. The purpose of this center is to facilitate the return of people living in oppositionheld areas to their original places of residence that are under the control of the Syrian regime. This comes after the regime’s security services arrested people returning to their home areas.

However, in view of these arrests, can this strategy increase the number of displaced returning to their areas?

The Amman-based Syrian writer and journalist, Mohammed Abdul Sattar Ibrahim, ruled out the success of the Russian

center in attracting displaced Syrians to reconcile with the regime and return to areas under its control, citing several reasons. At the same time, he suggested the return of a small number of people from a particular camp whose residents suffer from difficult living conditions.

Ibrahim told Majalla, “The Russian center cannot succeed in returning people from the opposition areas to their original areas. They have already lost confidence in the regime after it controlled, along with the Russians, the majority of the areas that were held by the opposition. This is what happened in Daraa Governorate in 2018. Therefore, the presence of the Russians in these areas today raises their fears even more,

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which prevents them from returning to their original areas under any pretext, whether it might be reconciliation or settlement, etc.”

RECONCILIATION IS POSSIBLE IS RUKBAN CAMP

Syrian refugees carry belongings as they return to Syria after crossing the Jordanian border near the town of Nasib, in the southern province of Daraa, Syria, Aug. 2017 ,29. (Mohamad Abazeed/AFP via Getty Images)

He added to Majalla: “In the Rukban camp, the situation is somehow different. Many of its residents have returned to the regime’s areas and were subjected to violations by the regime after their return. However, despite the bad and difficult conditions inside the camp, where aid is not allowed to enter, water is not available nor are medical centers, yet some people return. I think it is possible that the elderly residents of the camp will agree to return to their villages, unlike the young men who fear of death under torture after their arrest.”

Rukban camp is located in a desert area on the Syrian-Jordanian-Iraqi borders. It is an irregular camp where thousands of Syrian families have lived for years. Most of its residents refuse to return to the regime-held areas for fear of arrest or conscription by the army. However, the Russian reconciliation center is located in Homs countryside, which is the area from which most of the camp residents come, and this may contribute to the return of some of them from the camp to their villages and towns. Then why do most of them refuse to return?

Ibrahim stressed that, “people no longer trust Russia. The reconciliations that took place in all areas of Damascus countryside, Daraa governorate, and the northern countryside of Homs have proven that the Russians were not reliable guarantors. Many of those who made reconciliation or settlement with the regime in Daraa governorate, for example, did not face any problem in the first six months. After that, however, there were those who were arrested, others who were forced to join the army, and others who were assassinated. Therefore, those experiences proved to be a failure and Syrians were not encouraged to repeat them in the countryside of Homs.”

MOSCOW FAILED TO CONTROL SECURITY SERVICES, IRANIAN-BACKED MILITIAS Ibrahim also revealed the reasons for the failure of this reconciliation and settlement. He said they are related to the failure of the Russians “to compel the regime and the Iranian-backed militias not to harm people and to prevent violations of their rights upon their return.”

In this regard, he also said that, “in 2018, Moscow tried to open reconciliation centers in Jordan for the return of refugees, but it failed to do so, considering that it is a participant

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“In the Rukban camp, the situation is somehow different.

Many of its residents have returned to the regime’s areas and were subjected to violations by the regime after their return.” in the conflict and is not a neutral party, which prevents the refugees from trusting it.”

Although the reconciliations and settlements made by Russia in the past did not contribute to the return of the displaced and refugees to their home areas, Moscow seems to see this initiative as the only solution for the return of internally displaced persons and refugees to their original locations.

MOSCOW COMMITTED TO RECONCILIATION AND RETURN OF SYRIA TO PRE-2011 ERA Russian political analyst Andrey Ontikov said, “Russia is still open to everyone who wants reconciliation. It is no secret that many of the Syrian population have not yet returned to their normal lives, as is the case in the countryside of Homs province, amidst tensions over Al-Tanf US military base there. Washington encourages some armed groups to launch military attacks, but Moscow nevertheless opens the doors to reconciliation.”

He added to Majalla, “Moscow does not in any way whatsoever discard the idea of returning Syria and its people to their normal life at it was before the current crisis. For this reason, repatriation is open to the residents of the Rukban camp, so that there will be reconciliations in which Moscow plays the role of mediator. The question is, will the US allow the camp residents to go to the new Russian center for reconciliation?”

He also noted, “Russia is ready to provide assistance to those who want reconciliation, as it plays the role of mediator for the return of the refugees to their normal lives.

The problem, however, lies in the intervention of Washington, which does not want the Syrian crisis to end. It benefits from it and plays a role in sabotaging any attempts at peace. Moscow nevertheless succeeded in the past in conducting several reconciliations between the government, its armed opposition and civilians alike, and

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it is doing the same today.”

LOCAL PERSONNEL COOPERATE WITH THE RUSSIAN CENTER Local sources told Majalla that, “the reconciliation center has already started operating, as the committees affiliated with the center are registering the names of those wishing to return to the regime’s areas. The turnout, however, has so far been low.” According to the sources, “the reasons why people are not returning to regime areas primarily revolve around the fact that security services have been recently deliberately arresting those who return to regime areas.”

According to the previous sources, the Fourth Division of the Syrian regime army led by Maher al-Assad, the brother of the regime’s president, undertakes the task of arresting those returning to their areas, whether from the Rukban camp or from other areas under opposition control.

They confirmed that members of the security checkpoints in the countryside of Homs are from the Fourth Division.

Local personnel have been cooperating with the Russian center to convince the people of Homs countryside residing in opposition areas to return to their homelands.

According to local sources, in addition to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the new reconciliation center provides those wishing to return to regime areas with a card bearing Russian seals, containing a warning not to harm its holders for any reason.

A number of residents of the towns of Al-Sukhnah and AlQaryatayn who are residing in Rukban camp said that, “the Russian center was opened after a number of returnees from the camp were arrested. The Russians therefore opened this center as a guarantee that those who return from the camp to their original areas would not be arrested.”

Local personnel have been cooperating with the Russian center to convince the people of Homs countryside residing in opposition areas to return to their homelands.

Despite the media promotion of the new center in July, only 13 families collectively left the Rukban camp, in addition to the departure of five young men and two children, as reported by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

MOSCOW AIMS TO SHUT DOWN RUKBAN CAMP According to sources close to the office of the UN Special Envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen, Moscow’s goal in opening the new reconciliation center is to turn the page on the Rukban camp. The committees affiliated with the new center are working to register the names of those wishing to return to their villages and then to return the largest number of Rukban residents in an attempt by Moscow to shut the camp down.

About 10,000 displaced people are currently living in this camp, which was established in 2014 in the middle of the Syrian desert on the borders with Jordan and Iraq. However, years ago, the number of its residents was more than 40,000. They were living in the camp after fleeing the ongoing battles inside Syria, but they were unable to enter Jordan and found themselves stranded near the border.

PROTECTING RETURNEES IS THE REGIME’S RESPONSIBILITY During the past years, tens of thousands of people left the camp to escape the difficult living situation. Most of them headed to areas under the control of regime forces after the defectors or former opposition fighters signed settlement agreements that were supposed to protect them from persecution by security forces. Still, many returnees were arrested according to human rights organizations, most notably, Amnesty International.

A source from the UN office in Damascus told Majalla that, “the responsibility of protecting the returnees from the camp to the regime’s areas is the responsibility of security services.”

At the beginning of this month, the Jordanian authorities expelled five young Syrians from Jordanian territories to the Rukban camp.

The residents of the camp, which Moscow is seeking to empty, depend on smuggled food and medical supplies.

Rukban stretches within a 55-kilometer radius of security zone set up by the international coalition led by Washington. The coalition established there Al-Tanf military base, and anti-Assad fighters backed by Wash-

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Displaced people in al-Rukban camp gather to receive vaccinations, 2018/11/5. (AFP)

Russian troops in the Syrian district of Daraa al-Balad in Syria’s southern province of Daraa, on September 2021 ,1.

(Sam HARIRI / AFP)

ington are deployed in the area.

CAMP IS BESIEGED Patients residing in the camp face death due to the lack of medicines. On June 5, a pregnant woman in her eighth month lost her baby due to both a lack of medicines as well as a medical center that could monitor her condition.

Earlier this month, official observers of the war accused the regime forces as well as the Iranian and Russian militias of imposing a heavy siege on the residents of Rukban camp since May, in order to force its residents to return to regimecontrolled areas.

This ongoing siege has led to a hike in prices of food

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“Washington encourages some armed groups to launch military attacks, but Moscow nevertheless opens the doors to reconciliation.” and medicine, since they enter the camp illegally through local traders, most of whom are associated with the regime.

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Second Anniversary of the Crime of the Age

Justice Is “Off” And Families Demand Int’l Fact-Finding Commission

By Lara El Sayed The «smoke of pain» that has been rising for days as a result of the continuous fire in the wheat barns pulsates in Beirut’s port, amid warnings of the collapse of the «silent witness» as flames rage in a «suspicious» scene that recreates the image of the earthquake explosion in Beirut, to coincide with Lebanon’s commemoration of the tragedy’s second anniversary.

On August 4, 2020, a few minutes were enough to shake the Lebanese capital and the island of Cyprus, 200 kilometers away, with «horrific» scenes that only happen in movies after an explosion in «Hangar 12» in the port. It held approximately 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate for years without any safeguards. It was later revealed that the officials were aware of the dangers of storing the material but did nothing about it.

Lebanon marks the second anniversary of the seminuclear explosion, which killed over 200 people, injured over 6,500 others, and destroyed a number of the capital’s neighborhoods and residents, who, rather than seeking justice for the Crime of the Age, fear a possible disaster due to officials’ failure. In the case of the barn fire, for example, direct intervention to extract the remaining quantity of wheat is extremely difficult due to unstable infrastructure, and the «thinness» of the state’s measures to mitigate the dangers and dire consequences of the fire’s spread, which is likely to continue. According to experts, the combination of so much grain in an area of high humidity adjacent to the sea and with high

temperatures, accelerates grain fermentation and leads to methane emissions.

In conjunction with the preparations for the «ominous day,» several civil authorities have launched a solidarity campaign this month to protect the dump sites of the earlier explosion, with the goal of standing up to any decision aimed at demolishing the dumps and changing the identity of the site after the crime, and demanded that the dumps be recognized as part of Beirut’s cultural heritage by protecting and preserving it in honor of the victims and the affected as a «silent wiping out.» Meanwhile, debates raged among deputies during the first session of the new parliament, which was held against the backdrop of the nonsense clause and the vote to demolish or strengthen it, amid accusations and responsibilities but no concrete solutions.

Victims’ Families’ Actions: There Will Be No Compromise On Justice The families of the victims reject what they see as a step toward erasing the last traces of the crime, while the demand for justice and truth remains mired in premeditated «procrastination» and determination to protect «known» perpetrators, according to the families who are continuing the struggle with the killers’ vengeance, and they are planning a series of moves. According to William Noun (brother of Joe Noun, one of the fire brigade martyrs), on behalf of the families of the martyrs and victims of the harbor explosion, in memory of the tragedy; «The

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A general view shows the damage at the site of Tuesday›s blast in Beirut›s port area, Lebanon August 5, 2020. REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir

Beirut Fire Brigade, will pause in respect and there will also be a gathering in front of the port and marches in the destroyed neighborhoods, as well as a mass with the participation of the families of the victims and the wounded,» he said to Majalla, calling on the Lebanese to participate heavily with them “in order to support them in their demands.»

Concerning the investigation into the crime, Noun stated that “The people are doing everything they can to pressure the investigation to continue and to punish those involved. The people’s demand is for an international factfinding commission, rather than an international court, in order to achieve justice.” He explained that on the first of August, he will present himself by adding his personal name against the perpetrators and negligent persons.

Concerning the port dump fire, Noun stated that: “There are those who ignite the wheat in order to carry it out, and what the people are asking for is the survival of these wheat sheds so that the explosion remains firmly in people’s memory, and its demolition means that nothing happened, and this is rejected.”

Noun also emphasized that; “People are in favour of the port being rebuilt, but with the remains of the rubbish area belonging to the fire brigade specifically to remain a witness to the crime so that it does not reoccur, without forgetting that the state’s continuation of its current approach will lead to a repetition of an explosion similar

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“Things are moving along legally, but the slowness is in preventing the formation of the general body of the Court of Cassation and failing to make the necessary legal amendment.” to what happened.”

Obstruction in Legal Course of Investigation Lebanon continues to fall short of its human rights obligations by failing to hold the perpetrators of the Beirut Port explosion accountable, despite months of procrastination, a lack of political will, and several complaints that resulted in the removal of former judge Fadi Sawan and further delays in the work of the current judge, Tariq Bitar, while the obstruction chapters continue in the file, which has reached the number of plaintiffs. They have 46 members, including former Prime Minister Hassan

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Diab and current deputies Ali Hassan Khalil and Ghazi Zuaiter (who were charged with criminal negligence and refused to cooperate with the investigation and now enjoy parliamentary immunity), as well as former ministers Youssef Finianos and Nohad Al-Machnouk. In addition to security leaders, judges, and former general managers at the port and customs, 17 of them are still detained, and the lawsuits against Judge Al-Bitar and the transfer of the case before him are still pending before the courts due to the failure of the General Authority of the Court of Cassation to decide on them – the reason for this stems from Finance Minister Youssef Khalil’s failure to sign a decree appointing the heads of the Courts of Cassation, which comprises the court’s general body.

Lawyer Youssef Lahoud, a member of the Bar Association’s Prosecution Office, stated in response to the ex-

In conjunction with the preparations for the «ominous day,» several civil authorities have launched a solidarity campaign this month to protect the dump sites of the earlier explosion

plosion in Beirut’s port, that “The legal path is going in the right direction, but there is obstruction by some of those who were suspected, especially ministers and prime ministers who, when the names of some of them were mentioned in this file, began obstructing (the progress of the case).”

He also stressed that; “Time will remove these obstacles, and justice will be achieved against every person, because before justice there are no ranks or attributes, and people are equal.”

“Whoever obstructs justice harms both sides, whether the plaintiffs or the detainees. There are two possibilities for dissolution, the first is the signing of a decree forming the public body that is able to consider cases filed against the state for the work of judicial judges, and the second requirement is that the law be amended in the Parliament to prevent any party from requesting the removal of any of the judges’ hands in any lawsuit, not just the current Judicial Council case involving the port, Lahoud explained.

Lahoud told his agency about the explosion’s victims, saying; “Lawsuits were submitted to respond to Judge Bitar and transfer the case from his hands, and before the judicial authorities were able to consider the requests submitted before them, the obstructionists submitted requests for response and transfer against the judicial authorities that are looking into the lawsuit of Bitar’s response, so this is a deliberate obstruction is to delay the dismissal under the pretext of investigating the port.”

“Things are moving along legally, but the slowness is in preventing the formation of the general body of the Court

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Men ride a motorcycle past a damaged building near the site of the blast in Beirut›s port area, Lebanon August 5, 2020. REUTERS

A general view of the area damaged by a massive explosion and a blast wave, in Beirut, Lebanon August 5, 2020. Instagram/ @Rabzthecopter/via REUTERS

of Cassation and failing to make the necessary legal amendment,” Lahoud said.

“The first refers to the formation of the General Authority of the Court of Cassation, which is the procedural authority, specifically the Minister of Finance, who did not sign the amendment decree related to the formation of the General Authority after it was signed by the Minister of Justice and the Supreme Judicial Council. The second is about amending a law that is still being debated in Parliament”, he continued.

“These two references are political in nature. The first legal reference; the Supreme Judicial Council, agreed, as did the second legal reference, the Minister of Justice, who has legal status but is also political, implying that the obstructing references are political rather than judicial,” Lahoud pointed out.

Regarding their legal strategy as port victims’ agents, Lahoud stated: “There are lawsuits in which we will provide answers, and there are lawsuits in which we will blame the obstructionists for holidays and damages, etc., but the main door to moving the lawsuit is to complete the formation of the public body by virtue of a decree that must be signed by the Minister of Finance, then the Prime Minister, and finally the President of the Republic, and it is published in the Official Gazette, as it should be. The Parliament must change the law to allow one of the parties to halt the judge’s work and limit the arrest to a second judicial reference.”

According to Lahoud; “The unprecedented crime exceeded the First World War and the famine that afflict-

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On August 2020 ,4, a few minutes were enough to shake the Lebanese capital and the island of Cyprus, 200 kilometers away, with «horrific» scenes that only happen in movies after an explosion in «Hangar 12» in the port. ed Lebanon, which destroyed the Lebanese economy, and its hesitations will continue in the future, and the goal of the families of the port victims is to achieve the rule of law, which can only be achieved through a fair trial that requires everyone to be tried before the judiciary.”

“All defendants are not to obstruct the investigation and appear before the judiciary, proving their innocence through legal means rather than arbitrary means to obstruct the proper course of justice, because history will not be merciful. The Lebanese citizen is currently busy with his daily life under these harsh conditions, but all of this will be documented in the future, and anyone who obstructs the course of justice in the crime of the age will have a black mark on their record.” Lahoud concluded.

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pinion

The Soulless Institution

By Saif Al-Abri

In recent times the formation of global trade institutes has further given rights to multinational corporations, such as deregulated market access .

Although normalized, upon closer inspection, the corporation concept seems to be a strange development. Over the years, they have been given legislative rights of individuals, without a need to be accountable to stakeholders. The corporation is a faceless entity that owns a significant amount of global wealth, decides where a large chunk of national GDP goes in and does it in a totalitarian fashion. The main aim of this entity is to maximize the value of share prices and satisfy shareholders— enormous power, with no requirement to disclose information. To further understand this entity, we have to trace its development briefly.

The earliest form of corporation in Europe can be traced to a date before the 17th century when a corporation meant a group of individuals who incorporate to build public goods such as bridges and roads and building institutions such as hospitals and universities. The state oversaw their duties. Glossing over the details, during the 17th century and onward, due to European colonial expansion, corporations came to play a more significant role. At that time, they maintained control of the colonial trades of enslaved people and goods. During this stage, the famous East India Company came to be the first commercialized corporation.

The most significant development here is that corporations didn’t require a single defined purpose as they did before, and profit became a considerable motivation. Later on, during the 19th century, corporations started gaining the rights of individuals or what is called “personhood.” The most obvious development was the 1886 case of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, wherein the US Supreme Court recognised

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the corporation as a natural person and, according to the US constitution, “‹no state shall deprive any person of life, liberty or property.” The power structure of later corporations developed to revolve around shareholders, whereby management’s sole aim and responsibility was to maximize shareholders’ wealth. In recent times the formation of global trade institutes has further given rights to multinational corporations, such as deregulated market access.

As can be seen, the corporation›s formation is a modern development that has gained its power through social and legislative action. During a time when corporations hold a large amount of the world›s wealth (%36 in the USA) and dictate where a large amount of GDP is distributed, it is time to question whether they should be treated as individuals with liberty or should be treated as a new entity in which it must account to the public. Furthermore, when the motive of profit maximization has been rapidly destroying the environment, the primacy of shareholders over all else should be questioned.

Having soulless social institutes with no moral obligation seems extremely dangerous. To create more ethical institutions, corporate social responsibility shouldn’t be a voluntary action but instead embodied in the law to the same extent as the primacy of shareholders. Furthermore, corporations shouldn’t only have an obligation to society and the environment, but they also have a role to play in developing society by distributing an amount of their wealth to socially dictated areas.

A Weekly Political News Magazine

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Fathi Bashagha: The Libyan West’s Most Powerful and Influential Prime Minister www.majalla.com

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The Next Epidemic: Suicide Among the Young The Age of Those Choosing to Take Their Life Is Falling

By Luisa Markides

UNICEF, which has raised the alarm about mental ill health in adolescents, says that every year 46,000 children and young adults aged 10-19 years choose suicide .

If desperation is a spectrum, suicide is at its gutwrenching extreme. Thankfully, as with most extremes, it is rare. Yet a raft of official statistics emerging from health authorities in different countries tell us that suicide is sadly not staying rare.

It is becoming considerably more common, and the increased prevalence is in fact speeding up, not dropping off.

Furthermore, this most extreme form of desperation is now claiming younger and younger lives, particularly teenagers, with the latest data showing how girls are at risk. In short, what has long been considered an instance of exceptional personal tragedy – the taking of one’s own life - is fast becoming an urgent public health issue for policy teams around the world.

UNICEF, which has raised the alarm about mental ill health in adolescents, says that every year 46,000 children and young adults aged 10-19 years choose suicide. That is one every 11 minutes. Tracking the change, figures show suicides increasing by 57 percent among those aged 10-24 from 2007-2018. According to the Centre of Disease Control and Prevention, in the Spring of 2021, suicide attempts among girls aged 12-17 were 50 percent higher than at the same time two years earlier. And according to the American Foundation of Suicide Prevention, suicide is now the third most common cause of death among young people, and the second most common cause of death among college students.

Suicide is not something that can be ‘understood’ through articles. States of mind are difficult to describe at the best of times; to describe the state of

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mind of someone about to kill themselves is almost impossible. When someone sees death as their best option, what must their other options look like?

Some commentators have used the example of people jumping from burning buildings. It is not that they are no longer scared of falling to their death; it is that being burned alive appears worse.

It can take very little time for someone to shoot up that desperation spectrum, to believe that killing themself is their least-worst option. By way of an example, in the United States this summer, a busy father was supposed to drop his sleeping baby off at nursery before he went to work on a fiercely hot day. He forgot and instead drove straight to the office, did a day’s work, and only then realised that he had left his baby in the back of the car the whole time. Within four hours of discovering that his baby had died in the heat, the father killed himself. To reach the extreme of desperation need not take months, or weeks, or even days.

The mental processes underpinning suicide are complex and varied, but can include feelings of hopelessness, frustration, loneliness, a lack of purpose, a feeling of being a burden, of being trapped, of having no longer control, of being in unbearable emotional or physical pain, or some toxic maelstrom combination.

Increasingly, suicide is ‘attempted’ or ‘completed’. The phrase ‘committed’ stems from it being deemed not only immoral but illegal and this language does nothing to help grieving families. The unbearable pain experienced by the person can quickly transfer to the family of the deceased, who can typically and immediately be filled with ques-

Credit: Unsplash

tions, and who may never find the answers that they need to find peace. The loved ones of those who kill themselves often ask: could I have prevented it? Often, they blame themselves in full or in part. ‘Closure’ can be hard to come by.

Health practitioners believe that suicide is often the result of undiagnosed mental ill health. UNICEF reckons that one in seven adolescents live with a mental disorder, including behavioural abnormalities, anxiety disorders, and/or depression, but diagnoses can be difficult, especially given the ‘normal’ growing pains and mood swings common in this age group for reasons of hormone changes. When is a moaning, morbid, or moody teenager issuing a cry for help, and when are they simply being a teenager? It can be hugely difficult to know. Likewise, a feeling of inadequacy compared to one’s peers may be both normal and deeply problematic, depending on how the person deals with those feelings and that pressure.

There are - and have ever been - myriad causes of angst in young people, who feel they need to perform amongst their peers, perhaps a pressure to achieve (whether in grades or desired social status), to deal with questions about sexual orientation, to overcome loneliness, or bullying, or a more fundamental lack of support in the home, or countless other potential sources of mental ill health. Sometimes, nature does not help. Depression can run in families. Likewise, a global pandemic was never

going to be good for the soul. Teens, in particular, need to socialise face-to-face, but repeated lockdowns shifted interaction online, where teens can easily fall down dangerous digital rabbit holes.

Suicide prevention is becoming a huge area of study, with the focus understandably on earlier and better diagnosis of conditions that may lead people to feel that life is no longer worth living. Any solution must also aim to increase awareness of early warning signs, including what these are and what to do about it. Progress is being made in some schools, who invest in trained counsellors who help children who struggle, and who help teachers with early-stage intervention. But good practice is sporadic.

Across the board, not enough is being done. Clinicians working with mental ill health in children are already overwhelmed with unmanageable caseloads. Delays in getting help can therefore be dangerously drawn out.

Governments increasingly understand that this is an area in which they can positively influence outcomes. The number of ministers with mental health in their portfolios is one outward sign of this. Increasing budgets are another. However, experts worry that money is going only towards the extremes of desperation, when they know that people don’t start off there. Prevention may lie earlier along the spectrum, while the person still sees that there are other viable options. Because to talk someone off a bridge is to talk to them far too late.

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Suicide prevention is becoming a huge area of study, with the focus understandably on earlier and better diagnosis of conditions that may lead people to feel that life is no longer worth living .

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rt

Tough Competition and Hidden War First Three Film Festivals Are Vying for Leadership

By Mohammed Rouda According to researcher Stephen Fellowes, there are approximately 3,000 active (meaning not suspended) film festivals around the world. The word “approximately” reflects the difficulty of actually determining the number.

It could be a little over 3000 or a little bit less - it doesn’t matter.

The important thing is that there are 365 days in a year and on each day, there are 8 festivals and a third fall in one time period.

Many festivals have stopped during the past fifteen years, otherwise the number would have risen from 3000 to more than 6000, according to estimates.

A total of 75% of the currently active festivals started in the last 12 years. From the same source, 39 percent of the inactive (or suspended) festivals were satisfied with one round.

If we count what was held and stopped during the past two decades, since the beginning of this century, the number would have exceeded the 9000 festivals.

In fact, IMDb’s list includes 9,547 festivals of different genres, sizes, and interests. Most of them are too small to be stimulated by any actual activity, but this number, in fact, is many times higher than other types of activities and events (such as physical sports of all kinds, art fairs, book fairs, etc...).

ber, only three festivals have the first place and are at the top.

These festivals, in order of their arrival each year, are Berlin (February), Cannes (May) and Venice (September).

There are two and a half months between Berlin and Cannes and three months and a few days between Cannes and Venice.

Then, there are four and a half months between Venice and Berlin. During the intervening months, these festivals vie for the best films of all the world’s productions.

The number of films produced around the

world ranges between 4000 and 4200 films of various lengths and formats (animation, live fiction and documentary).

These can be divided into the majority of films shown in cinemas, before they are transformed into other shows (DVD, Online, etc...) and a third of them go directly to home shows on the Internet or are released as CDs. But don’t expect each of these first festivals to feature all these films for selection. These festivals have screen-time only for 40% of the world’s films and the selection for the best films is competitive as the festivals are vying

Other numbers It is quite strange, then, that out of all this num-

The Shape of Water

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for the best of them.

This means that the major festivals account for about 18 percent of these films and leave the rest to the second row (10 festivals) and the third row (25 festivals). The rest often showcase what the first and second grade festivals have to offer.

This being the case, the competition between the first three festivals is intense and continuous. The fact that the months between each festival and another may exceed four months does not mean that a single festival does not work hard except during these periods.

The secret of the festival’s continuous brilliance and level is the diligent work 11 months a year. This includes following up on cinematic activities in general and examining the works of major directors that have either entered the filming stage or are on the sure path to that.

This competition is always evident from attracting outstanding talent. Who would miss the opportunity to screen a film by Terence Malek, Martin Scorsese, Paolo Sorrentino, Pedro Almodovar, Hayao Miyazaki, Takeshi Kitano, Maurice Biala or Wim Wenders?

If one of these or other directing professors or celebrities works today on a film, every festival will seek to attract it and enter an unannounced competition for that.

It’s easy sometimes. There are filmmakers who are fond of a particular festival to return to, such as the Belgian brothers Luc and JeanPierre Dardenne who keep choosing Cannes for their new shows.

The Japanese at Cannes are Hirokazu Kore-

Birdman

A total of 75% of the currently active festivals started in the last 12 years eda, the Russian Kirill Serebrennikov, the French Jacques Audiard, the Italian Nanni Moretti and dozens of others.

Thus, the French festival created clients from some of today’s most important artists, who

flock to it whenever they finish a new film.

But there are those who go where their hearts go. Sometimes in Cannes once, in Venice once, or in Berlin again.

And since we, critics and media people, know little about the secrets and metaphysics, it is difficult to know whether a festival’s selection of films for its competition was made specifically according to the vision of its selection committee and its artistic director, or with some concession due to the fact that the director’s name is so heavy that it must be possessed by the festival.

It is also possible to speculate on the details of accepting or rejecting films from less wellknown directors. Yes, there is a large crowd of new filmmakers seeing their big opportunities at these festivals, and a real interest in showing their work, but why does it always seem that among the films submitted for side events there are better ones than the films screened in the official competition?

Oscars as a goal There is much that can be added to the above in the search for how to work on the selection of films that each festival, among these three main festivals, wants to show in each session. This is because the issue does not take place apart from a fierce competition between each festival and another.

In practice, there is more than one way to measure the leading festival among the three mentioned.

Parasite

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The Insult

What usually happens is that a festival enjoys a golden period and then delays keeping pace for administrative reasons or because the rival festival has grown stronger.

This is what happened with the Berlin Festival, whose decline in the last ten years can be seen from first place to second and then to third among its other competitors.

The first element of success is polarization and this depends on the value of the prize that the film is competing to acquire as well as the value of the festival as a wide cinematic celebration, and therefore its size at the levels of media, art, and the entire production environment. Clearly, this influences its success in mobilizing films that attract stars and media and present what satisfies critics who will write for their newspapers around the world with what has been offered to them positively or negatively.

It also depends on the opening film and its prestige, and in recent years on the success of the films participating in the competition, especially those winning first prizes, to make their way towards what is considered the final exam: the Oscars.

In the last ten years, we find that the relationship between the one who wins an award at any of these three festivals and the one who wins the Oscar for Best Film,

The first element of success is polarization and this depends on the value of the prize that the film is competing to acquire as well as the value of the festival as a wide cinematic celebration Best Foreign Film or Best Director has increased. If we go into the details, we will find the following: • Number of films shown at the Venice Film Festival that won the Oscar for Best Film, Best Foreign Film or Best Director: 9 • The number of films that were shown at the Cannes Festival and won the Oscar for Best Film, Best Foreign Film or Best Director: 5 • Number of films shown at the Berlin Film Festival that won the Oscar for Best Film, Best Foreign Film or Best Director: 2 • Number of films shown at the Venice Film Festival that were nominated - but did

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not win - Best Picture, Best Foreign Film or Best Director: 17 • Number of films that were shown at Cannes and were nominated - but did not win - for the Oscar for Best Film, Best Foreign Film or Best Director: 18 • Number of films shown at the Berlin Festival that were nominated - but did not win - the Oscar for Best Film, Best Foreign Film or Best Director: 2 The most notable films that have moved from Venice to the Oscars are The Shape of Water by Guillermo del Toro, Birdman by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, and Roma by Alfonso Cuaron, all of which won Oscars.

Those presented by Cannes and then moved to the Oscars include The Great Beauty by Italian Paolo Sorrentino, Son of Shaw by Hungarian Nimesh Laszlo, and Parasite by Korean Bong Joon Ho, which also picked up Oscars.

The two films that were shown in Berlin and won Oscars are The Grand Budapest Hotel by the American W.S. Anderson and Fantastic Woman by Chilean Sebastian Lillo.

Classic Context It would take several days for me to go through these lists from the thirties of the last century until today, but what is pub-

Omar

lished here indicates the intense competition between the Venice and Cannes festivals, which has increased in frequency in recent years.

What makes the Venice Festival, which will launch its 79th session on the 31st of next August an attractive one is the high number of prizes, and almost an equal number of nominations since the festival takes place close to the start of the awards season, which leads at the beginning of the year to races The Oscars, the Golden Globes, and the BAFTAs, among others.

This is why the number of nominations for the Berlin Awards is negligible since it takes place at the beginning of the year, after the curtain came down on most of the official nominations for the Seasonal Awards.

For another reason, filmmakers view the Venice Film Festival as a true art festival, in the classical style in which most other festivals were held.

As confirmation of this, it distances itself from “business” in the cinema, as it refrains from establishing a market for buying, selling and promoting films, as is the case in Berlin and - especially - in Cannes.

This year it will set up a kind of limited market on an island not far from Lido, in the province of Venice, with the aim of revitalizing this sector.

The size of the parallel market for the

These can be divided into the majority of films shown in cinemas, before they are transformed into other shows (DVD, Online, etc...) and a third of them go directly to home shows on the Internet or are released as CDs Cannes Festival is greater in terms of the number of participants in it and in terms of the large area distributed in front and behind the Palais des Festivals and inside it.

It is noteworthy that a number of films that went from the Venice Film Festival to the Oscars, such as Gravity by Alfonso Cuaron, Birdman by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, and “La La Land” by Damien Chazelle, officially opened the Italian festival in the years of its presentations.

On the other hand, the openings of the Cannes Festival often do not go beyond the French celebration for an important reason that has affected and continues to negatively

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affect the French festival, which is that the vast majority of the films shown (whether as opening films or officially competing films) are French films, either fully funded or partly what made the French festival look French, not only in its homeland, but also in its selection of films.

It should be noted that the Arab films that broke the cordon and entered the Venice Film Festival and Cannes also benefited from some Oscar glory. Most of the Arab films that reached the official nominations in the Oscar section for Best International Film (Foreign) were through one of these two festivals.

This is the case of the Jordanian film “Deb”

by Naji Abu Nowar (Venice Shows), the Lebanese film “The Insult” by Ziad Douiri (Venice), “Omar” by the Palestinian Hani Abu Asaad (Cannes), and “Capernaum” by the Lebanese Nadine Labaki (Cannes), then - the last of which is “The One Who Sold His Skin” by Tunisian Kawthar Ben Hania (Venice).

When it comes to Berlin, it is still solidly behind in third place. This is not easy to achieve (among the thousands of other festivals) and the reason is that year after year it has succeeded in attracting the same level of big films as Cannes or Venice. Sometimes, as was the case between 2010 and 2018, it showed better films than many that were shown at the French festival.

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NEW MOVIES

By Mohammed Rouda

“A Weekly Roundup of Screenings at Movie Theatres Around the World” A DAY TO DIE ★★

◆ Directed by Wes Miller ◆ Genre: Action ◆ Gulf screenings

sion that she can’t proceed with. Morgan Freeman is a veteran detect aided by Cameron Monaghan.

A new Bruce Willis movie is released every week. After Deadlock and Collective Measures, more recent movies in which the actor starred before his announced retirement last spring keep outpouring. The problem is not that the movies abuse his name based on his Die-Hard character, it is rather in the fact that the new movies are so similar that if you watch them sequentially you will mix up their events and scenes.

In this one, there is this vicious mob led by a black man (can’t say it’s racist because the director is African-American himself). Kevin Dillon’s wife is kidnapped and he was asked to pay a ransom of million dollars. He can only go to his white friends to rescue her and a clichébound scenario ensues. The movie’s published photo features an Arab actor named Mohamed Karim and Bruce Willis, while the later seems half-impressed, half-wondering.

• Final judgement: for someone looking for a different thriller.

ALI AND AVA ★★★★

◆ Directed by Clio Bernard ◆ Drama/Romance ◆ International screenings

• Final judgement: Suitable for genre fans.

PARADISE HIGHWAY ★★★ • Directed by Anna Gutto •Genre: Thriller • Gulf screenings

What does the French actress Juliette Binoche do in this American movie that won’t get any close to a blockbuster? Maybe she wanted to work with Morgan Freeman in the first place. Or she might have loved the script and the crew behind the camera (all of whom are women), or she may have missed featuring in any American film. Regardless of the movie and its success, it is a good choice of an untold story of a truck driver (hard-looking Binoche) who smuggles illicit cargo to the prison in which her brother (Frank Grillo) is held. Then she is assigned a mis-

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The story of this British movie can be summed up as: Ava (Claire Rushbrook) has much suffering in her failed relationships. Ali (Adeel Akhtar) has much suffering in his failed marriage. Both of them meet.

They like each other, have a relationship, are tested, and then reunite.

However, the treatment is warm and is often impressive for their relationship and the events both characters go through as they search for 29/07/22

the same thing which are about to lose quickly. Both leading actors performed well, and the director’s focus on the British working class reminds us of Ken Loach and Mike Leigh.

• Final judgement: best romance drama currently.

THREE THOUSAND YEARS OF LONGING ★★★ ◆ Directed by George Miller ◆Genre: Fantasy ◆ Commercial screenings

It is a good story of two girls who climb a 600-meter radio tower and get stuck like a cat which easily climb a tree but doesn’t know how to get down. Scott Mann bets on his well-managed shorter thrillers, but this movie’s idea is unprecedented. Since the girls climb the tower (for unconvincing reasons), the director uses every moment to thrill the audience. Despite some lengthening, the thrilling effect prevails.

• Final judgement: Good for its idea and implementation.

ALONE TOGETHER ★★

◆ Directed by Katie Holmes ◆ Genre: Drama ◆ International screenings

Australian director George Miller has been famous for his 1979 Mad Max action series, the first three of which were starred by Mel Gibson. He directed more films, including the excellent animation Happy Feet, but is still influenced by Max adventures. This time he is trying to emphasize his willingness to offer something different. It is a story of a woman (Tilda Swinton) who arrives alone to Istanbul in a visit.

She finds a Djinn (Idris Elba) who offers her three wishes to fulfill in exchange for his freedom. It is inspired by the story of Aladdin and the Magic Lamp, just in the part of the genie who wants to be freed. But the rest is about a lonely woman who discovers the unimaginable world provided for her by the Djinn.

• Final judgement: For fans of Elba, Swinton and fantasy genre.

FALL ★★★

◆ Directed by Scott Mann ◆ Genre: Thriller ◆ International screenings

One expected to see a cascade of movies about the pandemic that entered its third year. However, film industry doesn’t want us to escape COVID to theatres to watch a movie about COVID. No thanks! Together Alone is probably the best movie on the topic.

The movie is starred by Holmes as a food critic who escapes New York, which is completely stricken by the pandemic in 2020, as she wants to take off her mask and get rid of her fears in the upstate. When her friend in the city (Derek Luke) couldn’t catch up with her, she embarks on a love affair with another man (Jim Stugress). Warm moments are not enough.

• Final Judgment: Inconsistent but still interesting

Ratings: ★ Weak or average | ★★: Mediocre with merits| ★★★: Good | ★★★★: Excellent | ★★★★★: A masterpiece 43

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Brain Fog

My Brain Has Been Uploaded Into The Cloud of Unknowing Bryn Haworth I spend far too long on Instagram nowadays. So long, in fact, that I have favourites, one of whom I am not afraid to confess to (the rest are mostly women golfers): Scott Evan Davis. He describes himself as a composer and lyricist. He’s also a piano coach. But for me, none of these talents matter compared with the moments he spends sitting in a large wicker chair, holding a huge mug of coffee, urbanely eviscerating the stupid people of this world.

He destroys them, employing nothing more lethal than passive aggression and a killer eyebrow:

I could happily fill the rest of this article with quotes from this arch enemy of what Aldous Huxley first called The Stupid, but for now I want to draw your attention to this one: “Does anybody else remember before the internet, when everybody thought that collective stupidity was caused by a lack of access to information? [shakes head in fond recollection] Well, that wasn’t it.”

I shall come to the thorny issue of the internet in a moment. For

Instance: ‘Stupidity comes in all shapes and sizes. And a lot of them look like people.’

Instance: ‘Do you ever have a conversation with someone and think to yourself, I neither have the time nor the crayons to explain this to you?’

Instance: ‘Do you ever listen to someone talk and just think to yourself… Oh, you’re the reason why they put directions on shampoo?’

As I said, lethal.

If the simple act of quoting him on the subject of stupidity entices you at all – and let’s face it, you were enticed enough by the idea of ‘brain fog’ to read this article – then I suggest you go and binge on his sarcasm for yourself. He’s like Liz Truss, it’s all in the delivery.

The worldview of Scott Evan Davis hasn’t always been this bleak.

Even in the short history of his Instagram reels, or his iterations on TikTok, he has been on quite a journey. Spiritually speaking, it would remind any Italian schoolchild of Dante Alighieri’s, only in reverse. I have traced his evolution from a blithe spirit with a taste for wry comic dialogues, to a totally jaded example of a man demoralised by the omnipresent, omnipotent, omni-shambolic stupidity of the present age. My theory, far-fetched as this may sound, is that the rot set in for Scott around the time that Donald Trump first set foot in the Oval Office.

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Exhibit A

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For now, I have a solemn confession to make: with every passing year, I feel myself becoming more stupid.

Scott Evan Davis

now, I have a solemn confession to make: with every passing year, I feel myself becoming more stupid. Or should I say, stupider? Oddly enough, I’m not even sure which is the correct form of the word, though I notice my computer hasn’t corrected me; for reasons that will become obvious, I take no particular comfort from that. But there, I said it: I am more stupid than I ever realised, either as a result of actually becoming more so, or simply because I now acknowledge that I am. And I like nothing more, apparently, than witticisms at my own expense, qua stupid person. I mean, how stupid is that? Maybe not really, as it takes a Socrates to know one is stupid, but I refuse to make that false comparison. Not this time. I’m just not prepared to take refuge, as I have so often done thus far, in Socratic paradox. I’ve given this a lot of earnest thought, as we stupid people do, and concluded that I haven’t become this stupid, whether by dint of old age or even a recent bout of Covid. No, it’s just that heretofore I remained unaware how stupid I am. I was blissfully ignorant of my own ignorance.

A brief anecdote will illustrate how this could have happened.

Decades ago – I remember it vividly for some reason – I found myself in a university town, having recently graduated from a university somewhere else. I had no steady job, which was a fashionable state of affairs at that time, and a very severe reading habit. Whenever I was not interrupting my idleness with some menial job or other, I would hang around in libraries, and at the time I’m describing it was the university library I preferred. It had things they called ‘carrels’ – tiny cubicles, nicely cooled in the summer months, almost entirely sealed off from the outside world, where you could sit and read for hours in total monkish

solitude. I’m thinking of reviving the habit.

So, here’s what I would do: after a breakfast that, however large, never made any impact on my waistline, I would cycle off to the university and find a vacant carrel to take me through to lunch.

It was a simple, studious lifestyle, and entirely celibate. The only thing lacking was a tonsured head – which, sadly, it never occurred to me to ask my barber for – and a zealous faith in God. The fact is that if full-time monk had ever come up on the boards at the employment office, I would have given it my best shot.

Into this idyll of aimless ratiocination very little ever intruded.

That is why it came as such a shock when, having been reported for hanging around the campus, two policemen turned up in my living room to investigate. Rather gratifyingly, one played good cop and the other played bad cop: until that day I had always assumed this was a fanciful image of policing invented by the acting profession. The first one had a kindly, almost oleaginous demeanour, not unlike a vicar, and said things like “So, Mr Haworth, you say you are fond of books,” exactly as if he would have liked nothing better than to have sat there all afternoon discussing the plot devices of Jane Austen. But then, just as I was about to expatiate on my fondness for books, his colleague would interject very abruptly with “But that’s not why you were seen in the grounds of the university with a bicycle, is it?” I seem to recall he was partial to question tags. His tone always managed to insinuate that I was up to no good.

I don’t recall how the episode ended. Suffice to say, it did not end in a conviction. But it wasn’t even the first time I had inadvertently found myself on the wrong side of the law. At the tender age of nineteen, I had been taken into custody on suspicion of stealing my own bicycle. The policeman on that occasion played good cop and bad cop by turns, owing to recent cuts in the local police force, and at the end of our encounter he gently, but firmly – thus, goodly, but badly – issued a warning that I had ‘a dishonest face’.

Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind.

This and other similar incidents, all of which I can confidently attribute to my physiognomy, had prepared me for the interrogation over my wanderings around the grounds of the university, though that didn’t stop me feeling guilty for most of it, just as I had previously felt guilty over the incident involving my own mode of transport. Maybe it was the presence of a bike, though not the same actual bicycle, that sealed my fate. God knows, had there been a third policeman involved – not the third policeman, though the bike precedent is clear, but one able to oscillate menacingly between good cop and bad cop, or between public figure and ‘private person’, Flann O’Brien’s euphemism for idiot – I reckon no statute of limitations could have saved me

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Unlike the Temeraire, the Iron Lady has never been scrapped

from finally confessing my guilt over both incidents, on the basis that I had perpetrated multiple infringements where a bicycle was involved.

Given that I was born and raised in a country that upholds the principle of innocence until proven guilty, I have an odd way of assuming myself guilty until proved innocent. Even when I am innocent, to all intents and purposes, I find ways of feeling guilty.

It’s my very own variation on original sin, a sort of existential guilt. I am easily persuaded in these situations that I’m in the wrong. The words “it’s a fair cop” seem to hover forever on my lips. I suppose this is why I would make such a bad Catholic, confessing to everything the whole time and never getting round to any actual sinning. The obverse is true of Boris Johnson, who will make a good Catholic, bless him, and never bother a priest by confessing even the weeniest peccadillo.

But I really must stop on about Tory politicians. It would help, of course, if they ever stopped. Instead, we get ‘hasta la vista’ from Johnson and his latest gift to the British nation, wrapped in a dead woman’s wardrobe and tied with a pussycat bow.

But I was talking about two cops, back in the reign of the original pussycat. Following the appearance of the double act in my living room, I not unnaturally abandoned my favoured carrel and

retreated ever further into monkish solitude. I withdrew from all contact with the outside world and its inhabitants, which was quite a feat in the days before social media came along. Now, with the assistance of technology, it is generally available.

And that brings me to the real nub of my anecdote, because, before the cops came, when I used to make my way unmolested up through a concrete landscape to the university library, I would pass an ugly building to my right that contained what I saw as a parallel universe. (I shall come to the thorny issue of the universe presently). There, in a cavernous room, under strip lights, behind large windows, sitting at orderly ranks of desks, staring at computer screens and tapping keyboards, were… the harbingers.

Of course, I paid them little heed. I was not aware at the time they were harbingers of anything, and besides, I had my own, superior reasons for passing there. I was on my way to the place where, like a scene from The Wings of Desire, people earnestly absorbed the words from books as the angels sat by their hunched shoulders, eavesdropping on their thoughts.

The library was where you could find the sum total of human knowledge. Those sad individuals, on the other hand – we hadn’t yet begun calling them ‘geeks’ – were the ultimate philistines, wrapped up in computer programs and speaking a language of their own, so clunky and jargon-ridden that within minutes it would deprive anyone with the faintest claim to intelligence of the will to live. I glanced at them on my way to the library. I would see them, still there, on the way back. I viewed them with the kind of contempt that Shakespeare’s wanton boys reserved for flies. But worse than contempt, I had this certainty that they didn’t matter. Such was the thought crime for which the succeeding years have been a long, slow punishment.

Because, let’s be brutally honest, I was the stupid one. While I was persuading myself of my radiant intelligence in the company

Given that I was born and raised in a country that upholds the principle of innocence until proven guilty, I have an odd way of assuming myself guilty until proved innocent.

Angelic eavesdropping

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The internet was like postmodernism, it was full of paradoxes. It was everywhere and nowhere.

Marilyn reading Molly’s monologue

of eavesdropping angels, they were the ones preparing for world domination. A few years later, I still didn’t twig as the computers began to burst out of the labs with the strip lights and into the everyday. I remember reading a kind of idiot’s guide to the internet, yet never thinking of myself as the idiot. I was reading a book, after all. The internet was like postmodernism, it was full of paradoxes. It was everywhere and nowhere. Big deal. I could easily get my head around that ‘centre everywhere, circumference nowhere’ routine. I’d read my mystics. Meister Eckhart, Nicholas of Cusa… you name ‘em, I’d skimmed ‘em.

Ah, the innocence of it all. Never such stupidity again, as they say. Or rather, never such pre-Socratic obliviousness to my own stupidity. But now, as I partake of our collective brain fog after the bat virus, I begin to encounter fresh evidence of my stupidity with every passing hour. To adapt the cliché, I learn something I can’t get my head around every day. There were examples of this before, of course. I am a man who attempted the Critique of Pure Reason at the age of twenty-five while seated on a deckchair in the sun, naked to the waist and in the grip of a fixation with tanning my upper body. I have wrestled with the categorical imperative and lost, and my memory of it now has faded as completely as the tan I got reading about it. I have attempted to read Ulysses, and made far less sense of it than Marilyn Monroe.

I have grappled with the theory of relativity, and made far less sense of it than ‘Marilyn Monroe’ in Insignificance.

I have even attempted to understand Marilyn Monroe herself, and concluded with Jack Lemmon that she was ‘a whole different sex’. But these were minor defeats. Like the grammar of foreign languages, I could always blame their inherent difficulty and move onto something I could get my head around. None of these defeats seriously challenged my conviction that I was perfectly – well, not perfectly, but you know what I mean – intelligent.

So let me be clear: I am not, and never was, intelligent. I am entirely of the stupid persuasion. The truth hit me this week, and it was communicated to me by two unrelated things: the contest for a successor to Boris Johnson as leader of the Conservative party (see above) and a telescope named after James Webb.

Over the first of these I shall draw a discreet veil. The telescope,

‘Marilyn’ with ‘Einstein’

however, has convinced me of the same thing: that as individuals (I don’t want to sound accusatory, but I’m not alone in this) we are becoming more stupid in inverse proportion to the growing intelligence of the species. I know this for a fact. It is not some kind of moral insight derived from Alexander Pope when he said ‘A little learning is a dang’rous thing/ Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring’. I drank so deep I even had an inkling, once, what the Pierian spring was. This is not a matter of learning or a lack of it. Nor is this a matter of my personal stupidity, though I freely admit I have partaken of the vast reservoir of stupidity and so am the equal of any stupid person. How can I say this, I hear you ask, when there are such perfect idiots in the world whose utter stupidity beggars description? Why, only the other day… This is the everyday personal stupidity that depends on its opposite for the purposes of measurement. It’s a trivial form of stupid which elevates Leonardo, or Shakespeare, or Einstein at the expense of an ever-descending scale of dumb. The telescope has made all of that look, well, stupid.

In mid-July, I forget the precise date, I saw two programmes in quick succession, one on the Hubble telescope, the other on its successor, the most powerful ever launched into space. For a while the twenty-four-hour news channels were usurped by the scientists in the Goddard Space Flight Center based in Greenbelt, Maryland. It was a revelation of how well the professionals do TV. These scientists, for all their boundless enthusiasm, had a distractingly amateurish way of presenting the latest images from

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A photo of galaxies from the Nasa’s James Webb telescope

their pet project. Sometimes they looked off to the sides with a slightly anxious expression, as if one of the walls was about to collapse. Other times they were uncertain where to look, which made them seem shifty. At one point a man was describing one of the incredible images on a big screen while his two female colleagues, seeming to pay scant attention, gazed directly at the camera. They came across as the magician’s lovely assistants, but without the flouncy outfits and the “Da-dah!” gestures.

Meanwhile the man, who was sixty if he was a day, looked like their precocious child showing off his newest creation in Lego. I couldn’t stand it, I had to switch the telly off.

My aversion to low production values aside, appearances could not have been more misleading. What the magician and his lovely assistants were trying to show me was in fact truly da-dah! Soon the picture was in all the papers and was being shown again and again on the news bulletins. In this area of the night sky said to be equivalent to the amount covered by a grain of sand at the end of one’s finger – very Blakean, but I shall come back to him – were the occasional big star and, beyond, a huge congregation of specks. They looked like the bacteria on a petri dish, and every

My aversion to low production values aside, appearances could not have been more misleading.

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one of these specks was a galaxy, but not only that, a galaxy so far away that the light had taken up to thirteen billion light years to reach us. The galaxies had not yet had time to arrange themselves into a spiral like our own. Either that, or they had been subject to gravitational lensing, I wasn’t sure which. They appeared as a disorganised smear in some cases, or conglomerates either colliding or separating, and all this on an unimaginable scale, at an inconceivable distance across space and time. There was also a horizon, a limit beyond which the observable universe ceased to be visible to us, for the simple reason that light from that far away could not have had time to get here.

Now this, it seemed to me, was a thought quite unlike anything I’d attempted to get my head around before. The light beyond that point wouldn’t have time to reach us. No human perception could ever overcome that limit. And, if I understood correctly, some of these images had come from out there, from the verge of the absolute limit of our knowledge.

I am stupid, in my own unique way. The complexities of Kant or the mind-bending paradoxes of Einstein will always slip through my fingers, just at the moment I think I’ve grasped them. But the image of those distant galaxies revealed a different order of stupid, the kind described by Saint Paul in 1 Corinthians 13:12.

‘For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.’ Or William Blake, who was probably half-remembering Paul when he wrote: ‘If the doors of perception were cleansed then everything would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern.’

Perhaps, but the point at which things are too far away for their light to have time to reach us, sounds very like the walls of our cavern. Isn’t this strangely reminiscent of the ‘cloud of unknowing’ described by an anonymous mediaeval mystic? The cloud covers God and repels any attempts by the intellect to penetrate it: ‘For the first time you [lift your heart to God with stirrings of love], you will find only a darkness, and as it were a cloud of unknowing [...] Whatever you do, this darkness and the cloud are between you and your God, and hold you back from seeing him clearly by the light of understanding in your reason and from experiencing him in the sweetness of love in your feelings. [...]

And so prepare to remain in this darkness as long as you can, always begging for him you love; for if you are ever to feel or see him...it must always be in this cloud and this darkness.»

For that Christian mystic, the solution was to pierce God’s cloud of unknowing with a “dart of longing love” from the heart. This form of contemplation is not directed by the intellect, but involves spiritual union with God: ‘For He can well be loved, but he cannot be thought. By love he can be grasped and held, but by thought, neither grasped nor held. And therefore, though it may be good at times to think specifically of the kindness and excellence of God, and though 29/07/22

Doors of Perception

this may be a light and a part of contemplation, all the same, in the work of contemplation itself, it must be cast down and covered with a cloud of forgetting. And you must step above it stoutly but deftly, with a devout and delightful stirring of love, and struggle to pierce that darkness above you; and beat on that thick cloud of unknowing with a sharp dart of longing love, and do not give up, whatever happens.’

Now this is a profound feeling of stupidity. Not the kind that feels momentarily flummoxed, but a stupefaction that cannot be dispelled and which must yield to love. The telescope has given us a pictorial representation of our collective limit. It has shown us that, for all our braininess as a species, our stupidity is inescapable. If the anonymous mystic was around to respond to these photographs, he would surely feel vindicated. He’d point out the strange terminus our science had achieved and urge us to start loving instead. For those who find this a bit airy-fairy, perhaps the uncensored wisdom of Instagram will help. A standup comedian called Pete Holmes, who is really not the mystical kind, puts it more bluntly: ‘Nothing makes fucking sense. Life makes no sense. You’re on a planet right now. You think you’re in America. Zoom out [pause] You’re on a space rock floating in nothingness. Infinite nothingness. And the infinite nothingness is expanding. That means endlessness is getting bigger. That makes no fucking sense!

We all just act like it’s normal. Like, “Oh, everything’s made of molecules. Okay, got it, I’ll never think about that again.” I’m made of molecules, you’re made of molecules, the air between, it’s all made of molecules. That makes no fucking sense! These

Yet to try a love dart

I am a man who attempted the Critique of Pure Reason at the age of twenty-five while seated on a deckchair in the sun, naked to the waist and in the grip of a fixation with tanning my upper body. molecules know they’re molecules? These molecules are like “I’m Pete!” That doesn’t make any sense.’

When I was still in my teens, I went through the painful ritual of exams like everyone does. Well, not everyone; luckier souls are made to undeargo mutilation in the absence of anaesthetic.

On one particular evening, having spent the day revising for a subject I was especially weak in, I was walking down an avenue of trees. It must have been very late, as this was summer and the sun had only just set. I reached a pond, and in the patch of sky above it I saw the full swathe of the Milky Way. I should have felt Pascal’s terror, I suppose, even though I knew nothing of Pascal at the time. Instead, I felt elated. It was all so huge, so impassive and silent, and the confusion in my little brain seemed so insignificant. No one, I thought, could ever make me feel stupid again.

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C

ulture

Walk like an Egyptian

Egyptian Expats in US Reflect Egypt’s Enduring Popularity

By Maryam Raafat All the old paintings on the tombs They do the sand dance don’t you know?

If they move too quick They’re falling down like a domino.....

All the bazaar men by the Nile They got the money on a bet Gold crocodiles They snap their teeth on your cigarette....

Foreign types with the hookah pipes say Walk like an Egyptian....

The above lines are an extract from the 1986 song by the Bangles, “Walk like an Egyptian,” shedding light on how the Egyptians were taking life easy and yet achieving great things.

Taking the same title as the Bangles’ song, The Cultural Center of the American University in Cairo launched an event on Tuesday, 26th of July, entitled “Walk like an Egyptian: Media and Myth in Contemporary US Representations.”

As shown by this event, the representations of Egypt in the United States and elsewhere in the world reflected Egypt’s enduring popularity. The cultural producers explored opportunities and challenges for more nuanced and authentic visions of Egypt in the global imagination.

The event hosted the speakers Mai Abdelal aka Mai’s Vault, Amin El Gamal, Malaka Gharib, Denmo Ibrahim, Rhonda Ragab, Ramy Romany.

Speakers attended virtually and they told stories about their experiences of the way in which they represent their culture as Egyptians through their different kinds of works.

Egypt on Screen The event were organized into three panel discussions. The first

one was entitled “Egypt on Screen,” where Mai Abdelal aka Mai’s Vault represented Egypt onscreen in obvious and intentional ways that have become the new face of Egypt for millions of viewers.

Mai Abdelal aka Mai’s Vault is a first-generation EgyptianAmerican, who dreaded the routine of getting up in the morning for her 9-5 job.

As a millennial, Mai showed an overwhelming interest in social media and always enjoyed making others laugh at her day-to-day struggles. She feels her calling is to shed light on her struggles and reach out to others with similar experiences.

Aware of negative stereotypes associated with being Arab in America, she decided to set up a blog to counter such negative views and portray them in a positive manner through comedy.

In order to do so, she involves her mother who undoubtedly adds a fiery flair to the blog. By presenting this duo on social media streaming platforms (Tik Tok, Instagram, and YouTube), Mai hopes that humor will help enlighten others on her background and create content that will encourage women to follow their dreams and become influential for generations to come.

Writing New Media The second panel was entitled “Writing New Media” and hosted both Malaka Gharib and Denmo Ibrahim.

These young Egyptian-Americans are making waves in new media such as graphic novels, immersive theater and Audible series - representing Egypt in literally new and exciting ways.

Denmo Ibrahim is an American playwright, children’s book author, and actor of Egyptian descent. Her plays include “Kal & Dija Save the World” (Civilians’ R&D Group), the hybrid experience “Brilliant Mind” (Marin Theatre Company), “BABA” (Alter Theatre), “Ecstasy / a Waterfable” (Golden Thread), and “The Day Naguib Mahfouz Was Stabbed in the Neck and Almost Died a.k.a. The Selkie Play” (Finalist: Sundance Theatre Lab, Finalist: NNPN’s Showcase of New Plays).

Her work is currently under development with The Ground Floor

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As shown by this event, the representations of Egypt in the United States and elsewhere in the world reflected Egypt’s enduring popularity.

Nice That, Lucky Peach, The Washington City Paper, Nashville Scene, The Believer Magazine, The New York Times, The New York Times Style Magazine and The New Yorker.

Making Moon Knight

Photo shows part of the event which was held at the American University in Cairo this week.

Credit: Maryam Raafat

at Berkeley Repertory Theatre (“The Dream Fugue of May Ziyadeh”), and Audible for a new ten-part historical drama on the life of Hatshepsut. Her recently released audio-immersive book “Zaynab’s Night of Destiny” (Fons Vitae, Commonwealth Theatre Center) has engaged thousands of elementary and middle school students from 25 public schools in Louisville, KY in 2022.

Denmo holds an MFA in Lecoq-based Actor Created Physical Theater from Naropa University, and a BFA in Acting from Boston University.

Malaka Gharib is a journalist, cartoonist and graphic novelist.

She is the author of “I Was Their American Dream: A Graphic Memoir,” winner of the 2020 Arab American Book Award. Her new graphic memoir, “It Won’t Always Be like This,” is coming out in September 2022. By day, she works on the National Public Radio’s (NPR) science desk, reporting on global health and development topics such as humanitarian aid as well as gender and income inequality.

She also writes for NPR on her experience as the child of immigrants, from talking to her Filipino mom about mental health to hosting an Eid feast for her Muslim father.

Her comics, zines and writing have been published in Catapult, The Seventh Wave Magazine, The Nib, Saveur Magazine, It’s

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The third panel was entitled “Making Moon Knight” and hosted Rhonda Ragab and Ramy Romany.

These consultants have been at the forefront of work behind the scenes to ensure Moon Knight continues to break new ground by introducing audiences to more authentic Egypt - both ancient and contemporary.

Ramy Romany is a world-renowned Egyptologist, bestselling author and an Emmy Award winning DGA director. He was born into a family of documentarians in Egypt, in fact, before the age of twenty he filmed, produced, directed and was featured in over a hundred documentaries about ancient Egypt.

He has won nine Emmy Awards, hosted multiple archaeological based shows on the Discovery channel, travel and history channels, and directed commercials and major shows for a variety of networks such as ABC, FOX, HBO, Netflix and Amazon. Many fans remember him from serving as a knowledgeable guide to Scottish acting-great Ewan McGregor as they toured the great pyramids of Giza on the epic adventure series “Long Way Down” for National Geographic. He also appeared in Joanna Lumley’s “Dragoman” about her Nile Journey for BBC, and Destination Truth “Egypt’s Heart throb” for SyFy. Rhonda Ragab is the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of SILA Consulting, an entertainment cultural consulting firm that provides strategic thought partnership to help the best storytellers in the world tell authentic stories.

Through SILA, Rhonda acts as an in-house expert that helps production groups understand and navigate the nuances of cultural representation.

Rhonda has provided cultural and DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) expertise for numerous major productions and projects such as Disney’s Live-Action ALADDIN, Disney Junior’s “Mira, Royal Detective,” Marvel Studios’ Moon Knight & Ms. Marvel, Netflix’s “The Sea Beast,” EA’s “The Sims 4,” and Epic Games “Fortnite.”

The talks were moderated by visiting Fulbright US scholar Thomas Simsarian Dolan, PhD.

Po

rt

ra

it

Fathi Bashagha: The Libyan West’s Most Powerful and Influential Prime Minister

By Majalla Illustration by Jeannette Khouri In February, Libya’s parliament chose the former interior minister Fathi Bashagha to lead a government that will replace interim Prime Minister Abdulhamid al-Dbeibah.

Bashagha ran against al-Dbeibah in the Political Dialogue Forum elections in February 2021. They also announced their candidacy for the country’s presidential elections, which were set to take place at the end of last December.

Bashagha is a prominent and influential figure in Libya’s Western region, both militarily and politically. When he announced his presidential candidacy, his electoral rhetoric focused on his ability to achieve security and economic reform in Libya.

Bashagha, 59, is from Misrata, a city on Libya’s west coast that played a significant role in the overthrow of long-time ruler Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

Bashagha was a Libyan Air Force pilot until 1993, when he became a businessman, first importing construction supplies.

Following the outbreak of the uprising that toppled late Libyan leader Muam-

mar Gaddafi’s rule in 2011, a committee known as the Judicial Committee was formed and summoned serving and resigned officers to form a military committee, with Bashagha becoming a member of the Military Council in Misrata.

During his time in the military council, he oversaw the Information and Coordinates department before becoming the Misrata Military Council’s spokesman. In 2012, he was appointed to the National Reconciliation Commission’s advisory committee and elected to the Misrati Shura Council.

In 2014, Bashagha was elected to the House of Representatives for the city of Misrata. For political reasons, he and a group of city representatives decided to boycott the parliament.

He was nominated to head the Libyan Government of National Accord’s National Defense and Security Council, which was established under the chairmanship of Fayez al-Sarraj, based on the agreement signed between Libyan parties in the Moroccan city of Skhirat. In 2016, he served at the House of Representatives’ Political Dialogue Committee.

Al-Sarraj issued a decision in October 2018 appointing Bashagha as Minister of

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Interior in the Government of National Accord, succeeding Brigadier General Abdel Salam Ashour.

While still in office, Bashagha was targeted for assassination in February 2021. That attack came just two weeks after a successful UN-led effort to form a new transitional government in an attempt to unite the country’s political factions.

When he arrived in Benghazi at the end of last year, he spoke of the importance of “breaking the last barrier” for Libya’s future. He expressed his gratitude for the visit, saying that it confirms that “Libya must be unified, and security and safety must return,” which requires the participation of all Libyans.

Today, he is appointed as a transitional head of a Libyan government, which is supposed to lead the country to elections in accordance with the Libyan parliament’s road map. By accepting this appointment, he represents an authority comparable to that of the Tripoli government led by al-Dbeibah, who, in turn, stuck to his platform, which he stated he would not abandon except in the face of an elected government.

T

echnology

How JWST Images Were Brought to Life for Visually Impaired

A Team of Writers, Astronomers, and Curators are Writing Alt Text of the Images

By Nate Berg When the first batch of images from the James Webb Space Telescope were released to the public last week, people around the world were treated to a flurry of dazzling and colorful glimpses into deep space. They show sparkling swirls of galaxies, the emanating cosmic dust of the Southern Ring Nebula, and the painterly landscape view of so-called cosmic cliffs.

The images are a treat for the eyes. And through a unique and dedicated effort by a team of writers and scientists, they’re also a treat for those unable to see.

The images coming back from the Webb telescope are all being given detailed alternative-text descriptions—word versions of images that are processed into sound by the screen reader software used by people with

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visual impairments. Alt text is a keystone of inclusive and accessible design on the internet, allowing people to access online resources in multiple ways. The alt text for the new images from the Webb telescope are being heralded as exemplary.

The alt text is being written at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, which leads the science and mission operations for the Webb telescope and partners with NASA. A team of about 15 writers, editors, astronomers, and curators are now actively engaged in a detailed editorial process of analyzing the images coming back from the telescope. They’re now turning them into text that can then be interpreted by the visually impaired into their own visualizations.

Credit: (NASA/ESA/ CSA/STScI)

Margaret W. Carruthers, deputy branch manager for writing and design at STScI, says the process of turning these images into text is kind of a design endeavor. “I think of this writing as an engineering design problem,” she says. “In this case, we have these graphics that are really important and conveying a lot of information, but some people can’t access them.”

Take, for example, this view of Stephan’s Quintet, a composite of near- and mid-infrared images showing the distant cluster of five galaxies—four of which are so close to one

The images are a treat for the eyes. And through a unique and dedicated effort by a team of writers and scientists, they’re also a treat for those unable to see. another, they’re bending through space under each other’s pull.

The alt text puts it into words: “Image of a group of five galaxies that appear close to each other in the sky: two in the middle, one toward the top, one to the upper left, and one toward the bottom. Four of the five appear to be touching.

One is somewhat separated. In the image, the galaxies are large relative to the hundreds of much smaller (more distant) galaxies in the background. All five galaxies have bright white cores. Each has a slightly different size, shape, structure, and coloring. Scattered across the image, in front of the galaxies, are a number of foreground stars with diffraction spikes: bright white points, each with eight bright lines radiating out from the center.”

Carruthers notes that this text is only part of the package. Someone using a screen reader will also be read the title of the image, as well as the more explanatory caption that accompanies it, and sometimes even a full press release. The alt text, she says, is trying to fill the gaps between those other forms of text. That involves creating what she compares to a conceptual map of what’s in the image. “We try to give the big picture first, give them an orientation. Then we go into the details, but we constantly refer back to that conceptual map to keep people knowing where you’re talking about,” she says. Because screen readers are audio text, frequently calling back to this map helps keep everything in context.

The team has also found other tricks for making these alt text descriptions as useful as possible.

Directional words are helpful, especially when

Credit: (NASA/ )ESA/CSA/STScI

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explaining a variety of objects in relation to each other. Also important are geometric terms, such as circles, diamonds, or swirls.

And because the universe is in constant flux, Carruthers says, “you also need to convey the dynamics you see there, the sense of action.”

this sentence. A system upgrade extended that to 125 characters, which Carruthers compares to an old tweet. “It’s not enough,” she says.

That became very clear when the team started sharing some of these alt text descriptions with people who use screen readers. “When The alt text work is getting an increasing we started working more directly with people amount of attention at STScI and NASA, who are actually using these descriptions, we according to Tim Rhue II, principal informal realized that’s not actually the best practice,” education specialist at STScI. “We’ve really says Rhue. “So we decided, let’s bump this been diving into a bit more depth for the past up.” two years or so,” he says. Originally, the system was only set up to allow very brief descriptions Now the alt text can stretch up to 1,024 in the alt text of the images, limited to just 60 characters, or about 350 words. Writing a characters, equivalent to the last 10 words of description that short is one challenge. A bigger one is making the description accurately reflect what’s in the image—and creating what’s hopefully a similar image in the mind of the person who’s reading it.

The alt text is being written at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, which leads the science and mission operations for the Webb telescope and partners with NASA.

“I aim for a description that you could take— not having seen the image—and you could make a sketch that pretty much looks like what we have,” says Carruthers.

In fact, Carruthers did that exercise: reading her description to other team members without showing them the image and asking them to sketch what they visualized. “We could see,

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Credit: (TNS)

Credit: (NASA/ESA/ CSA/STScI)

oh that worked well; but hold on, they totally came up with something else when I used a particular word,” she says. “It really helped a lot for how to frame things.”

STScI had additional guidance from Prime Access Consulting, a firm that works with museums and other educational institutions on inclusive design and accessibility. Rhue says they helped create a specific style guide that STScI’s writers and editors can use to ensure future alt text descriptions are accessible and comprehensible. The alt text creation team also includes an audience reviewer who has a visual impairment, and Rhue hopes to expand the number of people with disabilities reviewing the text before publication.

Rhue says it’s also important to make them interesting, which helps bolster the case for more science, and perhaps even more people entering the sciences. “If we can generate descriptions that grab people’s attention and make them want more, then we’re doing our job,” he says.

As more images come back from the space telescope during its anticipated decadeslong mission, the team of writers, editors, and astronomers will continue this process of

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The alt text creation team also includes an audience reviewer who has a visual impairment, and Rhue hopes to expand the number of people with disabilities reviewing the text before publication. translation and interpretation for every image published on STScI’s websites. It’s a multistep process; the images collected by the Webb telescope are mostly in the infrared section of the electromagnetic spectrum, and therefore invisible to human eyes. These images have to be processed for the sighted to be able to see them, and then processed again for those with visual impairments.

Carruthers says this process is all in service of explaining the universe to people. “If nothing else, we need to be accurate,” she says. “I think we can also be evocative and beautiful.”

This article was originally published by Fast Company.

H

ealth

Spotting Memory Loss in a Loved One

Watch for Certain Behaviors, Especially if They are Consistent

By Heidi Godman You know a lot about the health of your loved ones. But would you recognize if a loved one had memory loss? It’s not always easy. “You’re less likely to notice cognitive changes if you’re with a family member every day. It’s more obvious when you see the person infrequently,” says Dana Kelly, a neuropsychologist who specializes in dementia disorders at Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital.

NORMAL VS. ABNORMAL MEMORY CHANGES Age does a number on the memory. Normal age-related changes make it harder to focus and recall details. “The complaints I hear often are that people sometimes forget why they walked into a room or can’t remember the name of an acquaintance. Those aren’t red flags for cognitive disorders,” Kelly says.

More concerning examples of memory loss, she says, are frequently forgetting - a close family member’s name - important conversations - words for everyday objects - bills that are due - medication times or doses - routes home from familiar destinations.

UNDER THE RADAR It can be hard to detect a potentially serious type of memory loss in a loved one. You might not be in a position to observe certain changes; for example, you may not realize that

a family member “is having trouble at work, making frequent financial mistakes, falling for financial scams, or taking medications incorrectly,” Kelly says. And no one wants to believe that a loved one has cognitive decline, so we might ignore certain signs.

To sharpen your ability to detect memory loss in a loved one, Kelly suggests noting incidents that happen consistently or those that seem uncharacteristic for your loved one. It may help to track the incidents on a calendar to find patterns.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN? Memory loss symptoms don’t automatically mean that your loved one has dementia. “Memory problems could come from other health-related issues, such as chronic stress, medication side effects, or an underlying health problem such as sleep apnea,” Kelly points out. Those conditions can be treated, potentially reversing memory loss.

But sometimes memory loss is a sign of either mild cognitive impairment (MCI) or full-blown dementia, such as Alzheimer’s disease or vascular dementia (caused by reduced blood flow to the brain from plaque in the arteries).

Beyond memory loss, dementia symptoms can include problems producing speech or understanding language, mood or personality changes, unusual behavior (such as wearing too many clothes), and difficulty with the type of mental abilities called executive function -- multitasking, organizing, decision making, problem solving, and planning.

WHEN YOU SUSPECT MEMORY LOSS Talking to loved ones about memory loss can be difficult.

Try to be gentle and respectful. “Tell them you’ve noticed

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Credit: (TNS)

they seem more forgetful than usual, less organized than they once were, or less able to get sentences out. Explain that you just want to know if they’re okay and that you want to help,” Kelly advises.If your loved one has also noticed those changes, you can talk about how to proceed.

But brace for the possibility that your loved one might feel angry that you’re pointing out mistakes, and that it may feel like an attack on intelligence or sanity. How do you respond? Kelly recommends making these points: - Not all memory loss is permanent.

- A doctor can help uncover other causes, which might be reversible.

- A brain check-up as we age is as normal as a heart or vision check-up.

BEING PROACTIVE The first step in evaluating a possible memory problem is a visit to your loved one’s primary care provider. It can help if you and other family members are present. “Share your observations from the last month, year, or years,” Kelly says. “If there seems to have been a change over time, the health care provider may administer a five-minute screening test.”

Based on the results, the clinician may recommend either keeping an eye on symptoms or getting more tests, such as blood work and brain scans (CT or MRI).

The provider may also refer your loved one to a neuropsychologist (who diagnoses cognitive disorders) or a neurologist (who treats brain disorders). Those experts may order cognition tests.

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“Memory problems could come from other healthrelated issues, such as chronic stress, medication side effects, or an underlying health problem such as sleep apnea.”

WHAT COMES NEXT? If there’s a diagnosis of MCI or dementia, your assistance will be crucial. “Give your loved one space to process the diagnosis, and ask how you can support them,” Kelly says.

She also recommends - making a plan for the future, especially financially, if the condition is progressive - evaluating if your loved one needs help managing medications, driving, cooking, cleaning, or running errands - seeking support from friends, family, or support groups.

“A diagnosis can feel isolating,” Kelly says. “Remind your loved one that this is the time to lean on family and friends, and that staying socially connected, not isolated, will help get you both through this.”

This article was originally published by Harvard Health.