"Constructed Views: Stone Cut"

A captivating short documentary on Etsuro Sotoo, the Japanese immigrant stone cutter who ended up being a chief supervisor at the Sagrada Familia cathedral (still under construction) in Barcelona.

https://www.nowness.com/series/constructed-views/stone-cut-la-sagrada-familia

"Spain Welcomes Springtime With ‘Maya’ Girls"

"The festivity of the Maya comes from pagan rites and dates from the medieval age, appearing in ancient documents. It takes place every year in the beginning of May and celebrates the beginning of the spring. 

Girls between 7 and 11 years old are chosen as “Maya” and should sit still, serious and quiet for a couple of hours in altars on the street decorated with flowers and plants and afterwards they walk to the church with their family where they attend a ceremony. 

(All photos by Daniel Ochoa de Olza/AP Photo)" Source here.

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Safia El Aaddam’s “Immigrants’ daughter” (2022)

 

"Lunja is brave. A warrior. Born in a small Catalan village, of Amazigh origin, an indigenous [group] of North Africa, from childhood she confronts racism, poverty,...sometimes even her own culture." 

With this YA novel, the author puts mental health on the table and how it gets worse due to being an immigrants’ daughter and racialized as of African origin."

First found at Literary Rambles.

“There is only one race: the human race.” -- Rita Levi Montalcini

     

I

Marking her 100th birthday, my 2009 translation of a manifesto by eleven Italian anti-racist scientists that begins with the words:

“There is only one race: the human race.”

These were the words of scientist Rita Levi-Montalcini (also attributed to Gandhi and Satyendranath).

My English translation (from a Spanish version) can be read below:

I.  Human races do not exist. The existence of human races is an abstraction that has come about from a false interpretation of the small physical differences that we feel we perceive. It comes from mistaken “psychological” associations: differences interpreted from a basis of secular prejudice. These abstract subdivisions are founded on an idea that humans are made up of groups that are, biologically and hereditarily, greatly varied.

This is pure invention that has always used arbitrary classification between men and women as better and worse and in this way discriminates against those at the extreme (always the weakest) after having blamed them for being the key to all evil in every moment of crisis.

  

II.  Humanity is not made up of large and small breeds. It is above all a network of connected persons. Certainly, human beings come together in groups of individuals, communities, ethnic groups, nations and civilizations. But this does not happen because we have the same genes but because we share life stories, ideas and religions, customs and behaviour, lifestyles and cultures.

These groupings are never established from the same DNA; in fact they are subject to profound historical changes. They are formed, changed, mixed, fragmented and dissolved with a speed that is incompatible with the lengths of times required by the processes of genetic selection.

 

III.  The concept of race has no biological meaning for the human species. Analysis of DNA has shown that genetic variation in our species – less than that of our ‘cousins’ the chimpanzees, gorillas and orang-utans – is represented above all by differences between people from the same population, whereas they are less than the differences between populations and different continents.

The genes of two individuals of the same population are, on average, slightly more similar than those of people who live in different continents. Precisely because of these small differences between populations even racist scientists never defined how many races make up the human species. They made estimates ranging between two and two hundred races.

 

IV.  There is a fake and deadly myth that has already been forged: the identification of the “Aryan race” with the image of a warlike people, the winners, ‘pure’ and ‘noble.’ Along with this, there is the theory that much of Europe, India and central Asia is the homeland of the basis of Ind-European languages.

History makes it apparent that it is extremely difficult to identify Aryans as a people in addition to the notion of an Indo-European language that stems from conventional classification. But on the other hand, modern archaeological data indicates that Europe was inhabited in the Palaeolithic era by a population of African origin and in Neolithic times other immigrants came over from the Middle East.

The foundation of present-day Italians is from the same southern African immigrants who today constitute the enduring fabric of life in Europe. Despite the dramatic originality of fascist racism the Italians allied themselves with the Nazi’s due to their identification with “Aryans.”

 

 V.  It is a legend that sixty million of today’s Italians are descended from families that lived in Italy a millennium ago. These same Romans built their empire by welcoming people from diverse backgrounds, giving them the status of Roman cives.

The phenomena of social and cultural mixing, which marked the history of the entire peninsula - also including Greeks, Jews, Africans, Hispanics and those seen as "barbarians" - produced the hybrid we call Italian culture. Even though they were dispersed throughout the world and living in small Italian states, Italians continued to be identified with this culture that was global, varied, humanistic and scientific.

 

VI.  There is no Italian race; there is only one Italian people. Italy was only unified as a nation in 1860. Many millions of Italian emigrants in the past often concentrated in foreigner areas. They were considered as, and are, Italian. One of our greatest assets is being mixed with so many people and our exchanges that "cross" physically and culturally.

"Purity of blood" and the "nobility" of the "Nation" have been ascribed to a country that has never existed. It has meant reducing the homogeneity of an alleged biological element in addition to the current populace of Italy’s thousand years of heritage and spreading of cultures.

 

VII.  Racism is at the same time both homicidal and suicidal. Empires became empires due to the coexistence of diverse peoples and cultures, and collapsed when fragmented. That has happened and is still happening in nations with civil wars. To cope with this crisis, they used minorities as scapegoats.

Racism is suicidal not only because it hits those belonging to different peoples but because it also strikes the same people who practice it. The trend of indiscriminate hatred that fuels racism is spreading infectious ideas about any “foreignness” or strange “otherness.” This comes from an increasingly narrow definition of "normalcy".

There are those that do not match up to standard human types. They are "out of line", the "mad", the "weak spirited," gays and lesbians, poets, artists, and alternative writers. All of them are attacked, though it is they who are actually allowed to live and incessantly transform mankind. Every living system is capable of continuing only if it is capable of change, and we, human beings, change with fewer genes and always more with the inventions of our generously disordered brains.

 

VIII.  Racism discriminates, denies relationships, and it introduces fear into various thoughts and behaviours. To defenders of the Italian race, Africa appears as a terrifying threat. The Mediterranean Sea simultaneously separates and unites. From this, the racists claim that there is no "common Mediterranean race."

To reject Africa even further, racist scientists put up a barrier against "Semitic" and "camitas". Science indicated that there is a clear distinction between the genetics of Mediterranean Europe (occidentals) and on the other side, Oriental and African. From the paleontological and genetic point of view the theory that earth’s people originate from Africa is absolutely proven: we are all together in a single race.

 

IX.  Italian Jews are both Jews and Italians. Like all migrant peoples (nobody migrates from free choice, but many do so from necessity) Jews have been spread across the World and have been part of diverse cultures. At the same time they have still retained their people’s identity and religion.

So as in the cases of the Armenians, or the same Italian immigrants: the same thing is happening with migrants from now: African, Filipino, Chinese, Arabs from various countries, peoples belonging to Eastern Europe or South America, and so on. All these people had the painful need to emigrate, but also the luck in the best cases, of enriching themselves by combining their culture with those who gave them hospitality. All were equally enhanced, and where possible, neither one nor the other cancelled out each other.

 

X.  The ideology of the racist bigot is based on fear of "disruption" of their own race. This is totally blind to the fact that many societies recognize that getting married outside their community, even with their own enemies, is fine because they know that partnerships are more valuable than barriers. In addition, human physical characteristics are altered a great deal by the particular living conditions, just as the psychological characteristics of peoples and individuals are not written in their genes.

Cultural mixing is the foundation and basis of hope for progress stemming from the European Union constitution. A racist Italy fragmented into "ethnic" separation, as has happened in the former Yugoslavia, would be devastating now and in the future.

The consequences of racism are the loss of culture and self-expression, homicide and suicide, fragmentation and implosion. These end results are uncontrollable because they are caused by an indiscriminate revulsion towards those who are considered the "other" and not "us".

 

Signatories:

Enrico Allevi, Professor of Ethics, Istituto Superiore di Sanita, Rome
Guido Barbujani, Professor of Genetics of Populations, University Ferrara
Marcello Buiatti, Professor of Genetics, University of Florence
Lauradalle Ragione, Psychiatrist and Psychotherapist, Perugia
Elena Gagliasso, Professor of Philosophy and Science of Living, University La Sapienza, Rome
Massimo Livi Bacci, Professor of Demography, University of Florence
Alberto Piazza, Professor of Human Genetics, University of Torino
Augustine Pirella, Psychiatrist, Co-founder of Democratic Psychiatry, Torino
Francesco Remotti, Professor of Cultural Anthropology, University of Torino
Philip Temple, Professor of Physiology, University of Torino
Flavia Zucco, Director of Research, Association President of Women in Science, Institute of Molecular Medicine, CNR, Rome

 

Original version of the Manifesto in Italian.

Moroccan-Catalan writer Najat El Hachmi talks to Mona Eltahawy about freedom

 

"The daughters of Muslim families in Europe must face different challenges to defend their individual freedoms and their emancipation as women.

On the one hand, the patriarchal traditions that come from their country of origin, intimately linked with religion.

On the other, the onslaughts of racism from the far right, which discriminates against them whilst calling for them to be relegated to second place as foreigners.

Finally, there are two revived phenomena that make the process more difficult: Islamic fundamentalism and a certain relativism. In the face of all this, what they want is a genuine freedom, unconditioned by origin, class or identity."

See more from original source here.

"Australia’s burning questions" -- My latest opinion column for Catalonia Today magazine

[EFE]

The great tragedy of the Australian bushfires -- that even after several months are still consuming huge parts of the country -- is that so much of the destruction is entirely avoidable.

How can this be? Why have more than 1 billion animals perished? Why have over 2,000 thousand homes been destroyed? Why have 23 people died and how is it possible that a total area of land bigger than Portugal or Hungary has already been burnt out?

The simplest correct answer is that Australia has always suffered from these kinds of wild blazes but that this time around the ‘fire season’ started much earlier and the spread of the fires was much wider than usual, with hundreds of them burning out of control at any one time.

Firefighters (most of whom are unpaid volunteers) have been almost completely powerless to stop the hydra-headed infernos because of continued fierce winds and the extreme high temperatures that the fires themselves have partly made worse.

Another major cause of the devastation can be accurately put down to state and federal governments underfunding emergency services for year after year.

ln an attempt to push any responsibility away from his own ultra-conservative party, Prime Minister Scott Morrison has used all kinds of political trickery and lies across the mainstream media (which fully supports him). He has also been widely condemned for choosing to go on holiday to Hawaii during the crisis, as did the relevant state minister from his party.

As well as that, Morrison has repeatedly argued that the global climate crisis is not a factor in this disaster, despite overwhelming scientific evidence showing it undoubtedly is.

As a fundamentalist Pentecostal Christian, he has instead maintained it is all the fault of arsonists or “greenies” who oppose targeted ‘back-burning’ to stop fires spreading. (The Green Party has always supported it, in fact.)

Accusations of climate denial against Morrison have come as thick and fast as the air that has choked the populations of Australia’s big cities of Canberra, Melbourne and Sydney over periods of weeks and months.

Even several former leaders of the PM’s own party have called for rapid action against carbon emissions and emergency policies to combat the years-long drought across the nation.

In many Australians’ experience, these fires have come on top of continuing and severe tap water shortages in many of Australia’s rural towns. Some, such as the small rural village of Murrurundi (located in a once relatively fertile area) have already run out of water and are having to buy in supplies privately. An increasing number of towns are expected to follow this disturbing practice soon.

Of course, water running low in Australian drought periods is nothing new.

What is causing outrage though amongst groups as diverse as farmers and environmentalists, is the massive (and often unmeasured) amounts of natural water from rivers, lakes and underground sources that are being sold off to private companies.

The Indian (multi-national) mining company Adani (which has the absurd, double-speak slogan of “Growth with Goodness”) extracts coal from the earth, among other things. It runs a business that is a major cause of global warming through carbon emissions and it requires large amounts of water in the coal cleaning process.

Adani -- which has paid not one cent of company tax in Australia -- will be allowed to siphon off 12.5 billion litres of local river water up until the year 2077. Another of its mines is being given $4.4 billion in public subsidies from the government. An open secret muddies the waters here: mining industries have been major financial donors to the conservative political parties in Australia for many years.

Corruption? You bet it is. For the governing parties, it’s raining money. This at a time when both rain and money are what’s really needed across a land that is dying of thirst and from fires on a biblical scale that Morrison had only ever read about.

[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, Feb. 2020.]

"Who are The English?" --- My latest article for Catalonia Today magazine

This summer while we on the continent of Europe are enjoying doing whatever we can afford to do under the Mediterranean sun, we should all spare a thought for the English and their other Brit cousins.

They will be living through the continuing economic and social disaster created by Brexit and other agonies that are certain to multiply and crowd around like flies at a July barbecue.

A large slice of the pain of modern England comes from its identity and Brexit is only one symptom of this disease. 

I recently read an exceptional book titled ‘God is an Englishman’ published exactly 50 years ago, and all the way through it the Australian author Donald Horne, (who also wrote the well-known book ‘The Lucky Country’ about his own homeland) shows as much penetrating insight into who exactly the English are as anyone else I know of.

Using his book as a measuring stick against the past, it’s remarkable how little England seems to have changed (especially for the better) in that half a century that I have now lived through.

Facing up to the coming instability of the 1970s, Horne found that Britain’s history meant that it too deserved to be called a fortunate country. As he saw it though, “what gets on British people’s nerves is that they no longer know who they are.” (Loud echoes of today’s Brexit confusion?)

He saw a culture where people “find reality in excitements of..fashion and the entertainment businesses.” This led to an emptiness and general dissatisfaction with their lot. For him, it meant too that almost half of young British people alive then were fantasizing about emigrating. Of course, many did or already had (including my father.)

Some of Horne’s other best observations come from his clear understanding of the social class system that still operates deeply all through life there. He recognised that all Brits essentially operate to serve the comfort and ease of the “Upper English” but that a visitor who stayed for years might not notice that England is genuinely one of the world’s most working class nations.

Here, the author, who did in fact marry an Englishwoman and live for five years on a farm in Cornwall, west England, relates a truth that few Brits would have liked to admit, even in the unlikely event that they knew it. Twice as many manual workers as white-collar workers went out to their jobs in this “antique economy”; one that directly made it possible for the queen to stay happy in her castle.

The average Brit was in fact a relative of a peasant who had been tossed by need into the provincial towns or London, just like so many ’internal immigrants’ who arrived in Catalonia from (other) parts of rural Spain in the 1950s and ‘60s.

Soon after the time that Horne was writing though, it was estimated that at least half of England’s land was entirely unregistered: a hotchpotch of inherited wealth. Today we now know that this half a nation is owned by just 1% of its population: 25,000 landowners – typically members of the aristocracy and corporations.

These crucial numbers of course ignore the ironic title of the book. It refers to the 16th century monarch Elizabeth’s bishop of London who specifically claimed that “God is English” and “His nation was to be the New Jerusalem” of the British Isles.

The very English genius George Orwell warned against the “habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects” but if we think about today’s English people I’d compare them to that little desert lizard who hops from foot to foot to avoid getting its feet burnt on the hot sand. 

Here I mean the political and social temperature, not that from the sun.

(This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, July 2019.)

"The author's mouthpiece" -- My latest review for Catalonia Today magazine

Elizabeth Costello is that very rare thing: a commercially successful writer of fiction from Australia – the far end of the world that has typically given very little attention (or much else) to people who use words for their living and plenty of attention to those who are professionals in sports or make big bucks some other way.

It’d be an exaggeration to say that someone like this author would have to be invented in fiction because she simply couldn’t exist in real Australian life, but this is almost a forgivable exaggeration, given the interests of the populace there in mainly competitive activities.

Being in the creative fields in Australia is often a bit like being labelled as a poser. In that wide, brown land the word “intellectual” is sometimes used as a type of insult.

At one point in JM Coetzee’s novel, Costello apologises to her audience: “I usually take care to conceal the extravagances of the imagination.”

Costello though, as the author sets her out at least, is as good as a polemicist in the public lectures where she is invited to speak.

Within a few paragraphs of her first long monologue about the philosophy of vegetarianism, I wondered whether I was actually listening to Coetzee’s real opinions because the arguments the character makes are so heartfelt. (A glimpse at the Acknowledgments section placed on the final page confirms that several of the chapters called “Lessons” were in fact published as non-fiction previously).

Later in the book, after Costello publicly compares abattoirs with the Nazi’s murder camps, we read variations on the first meat-free-living theme. “A sparrow knocked off a branch by a slingshot [or] a city annihilated from the air: who dare say which is worse?” a narrator asks on Costello’s behalf. 

Even the smell of a boiled egg “nauseates her” and this extreme Buddhist-like respect for the sacredness of all life swings between wholly convincing and repetitive ranting. It takes up large parts of the book, as does a dry examination of Greek myths.

In one of the most moving sections though, Costello talks about what she ultimately believes in when she has to justify herself. In lovely images she explains where frogs live during Australia’s long dry spells. 

Oddly, it is here that she seems to be speaking for the writer in general, saying this “is a story I present transparently, without disguise.”

The book is lifted and somewhat lightened by the contents of a letter that Costello writes to her sister, who is a nun. In a surprisingly erotic scene, she tells of her lack of inhibition and displays of “humanity” one afternoon in her younger years.

Religion plays a key part in the book and a clever analysis of “The Virgin” Mary is a highlight. Costello ultimately has a strange belief in the devil but not in god and this forms a counterbalance with her sister and another author she battles with.

I also speculated about the possibility of Costello having been modelled on the great writer, VS Naipaul, clearly also a real arrogant doo-dah and a highly selective eater but undoubtedly deserving of his Nobel Prize for titles such as “A House for Mr Biswas”. Costello is best known for her novel “The House on Eccles Street”.

JM Coetzee’s semi-autobiographical “Boyhood” is a tighter, more consistent book than “Elizabeth Costello” but this book about a strong-minded woman is still certainly worth a read.

(This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, January 2019.)

"In western democracies, is reading a political act?"

[Azar Nafisi. Photo: SJ Staniski]

 Azar Nafisi is an academic and writer, who left her native Iran for the US in 1997. 

Her memoir, Reading Lolita in Tehran, was an international bestseller. Her new book, The Republic of Imagination, looks at the importance of fiction to democracy. It is published by Heinemann.

What made you write your new book?

Saul Bellow posed the question of how those who survived the ordeal of the Holocaust would survive the ordeal of freedom. When I came to America, I felt there was an evasion of this ordeal of freedom. The idea I had of America was replaced by an efficient and ideologically polarised attitude. I had to fight it here as I did in Iran.

The book argues that fiction can be a solution to the loss of freedom. How? 

A democratic society is supposed to be based on plurality of voices. What is happening here – and I’m sure in Britain – is that this is being replaced by greed and utilitarianism, where we educate our children not to have a meaningful life, but to become efficient worker-bees. The philosophy that education exists to orient you towards careers was horrifying to me. American fiction is a reminder of American morality – that aspect of the American dream which brings with it the question of individual responsibility. It is always written from the point of view of the outsider. I wanted to recall this voice of conscience. The denigration of ideas and imagination is also a denigration of reality.

Is arts education too easily dismissed in the US?

This utilitarian attitude has always been part of American thinking. It has now gained dominance. Right now, people talk as if being a teacher, a museum curator, a librarian – things essential to any vital society – are barely jobs, because they make less money. I relate it to the reality we live in, to poverty. There is monopoly of both money and ideas. It is very dangerous.

Why do you feel so strongly about this?

I came from a society where an absolutist religious ideology took away all our rights as human beings. It wasn’t just about torture and political repression; it was about robbing individuals of their humanity. So I am very sensitive to the same thing happening in the US, through the seductions of money and the encouragement of greed. In a democratic society, individuals can only survive if they make choices freely. To make free choices in a society where everything from your toothpaste to your candidates is packaged, you must be able to reflect, to be critical and self-critical.

How does technology affect personal freedom?

The access to information and the fact that if something happens in Iran or China, people can tell the world – that is a good aspect. But we have turned technology into a god, and developed intellectual laziness and sclerosis. We are using technology not to think harder, but to evade obstacles and questions. The owners of technology can manage our private lives and live with us in our homes. How can you talk about democracy without privacy?

Reading Lolita in Tehran portrayed reading as a deeply political act in a repressive society. Is it the same in western democracies?

It is a political act [but] not in the obvious manner. It questions the basic tenets of authoritarian thinking. That is why this plurality of ideas and voices which fiction represents becomes dangerous to tyrants. In fiction, there is no status. In the realm of ideas and imagination, the only thing that is sacred is to allow the profanities to come in. Every great revolution starts with an idea. America is based on an idea – Enlightenment. Once you take that away, all that is left is a different kind of tyrannical mind-set. Great 
fiction always questions us and brings to the foreground the essential human questions.

You ask the same serious questions of the US as of Iran. Is there a comparison?

In the west we say, “It is their culture” and think we are being supportive. But this is condescending, because the worst aspects of culture – like the treatment of women – should be rejected, in the same manner that women in the west fought for their rights even though society said women should stay at home because it’s in the Bible. While I see the complete differences between Iran and America, and appreciate the freedoms I have in America, having lived in Iran I realised that I have to use those freedoms to fight for freedom. Freedom is not something static that you gain and have for ever. People who come from repressive societies are blessed with alternative eyes. We become sensitive to the signs of tyranny, even if they are sugar-coated.

Were you surprised by the success of Reading Lolita in Tehran?

I was absolutely flabbergasted. I didn’t expect it, especially because I was so discouraged by so many people. But I had no choice. It is like falling in love – everybody tells you this man is not good for you, but there you go, you follow him. So I followed it, with utter despair.

You left Iran many years ago. What’s your view of the political situation there?

Living in the Islamic Republic is like living in the month of April – there are a lot of thunderstorms with periods of sunshine in between. I’m both pessimistic and hopeful. My hope is in Iran’s civil society. The way minorities, journalists, women and various strata have been putting up a fight. I hope that change comes from within, through open democratic means.

In the West, debate on Iran is often polarised.

I had hoped to continue the discussions we were having underground in Iran among the Iranian diaspora in the US. But I discovered that inside Iran, this debate around who we are, what we want, what we used to be, was far more vital. Despite the dangers, we talked. Unfortunately, over here I discovered a soulless, partisan debate that is very disgusting.

Does this matter?

Iran was the first country in the 20th century to overthrow a secular regime and create a theocracy. With 1979, everything changed. Iran formulated this theory about Islam invading the rest of the world, the internationalism. The defeat of that ideology is so important – but nobody is paying attention. Everybody wants me to tell them whether the US should talk to Iran. In a democracy, diplomacy is the first thing. But you have to know who you are talking to, and you should not compromise on the principles."

Read at source, New Humanist here.

"These Turks would rather leave their country than continue living under Erdoğan"

[People walk past an election poster for Turkey's President Erdogan in Istanbul, June 14, 2018.  Credit: 

Huseyin Aldemir/Reuters]

'Bilal Dündarlioğlu, a 34-year-old information technology engineer from Niğde, in Turkey’s Central Anatolia region, says he loves his country.

And in the next breath, he explains why he wants to leave.

“Human and political conditions are not good," he said. "I am not quite happy with the [situation] here — there is no justice."

"I am not happy with the economy either," he added. "Taxes are too high and salaries too low.”

Dündarlioğlu is not alone. In Istanbul, most young people interviewed by PRI say they either know someone who has left Turkey or wants to. Many say they’re thinking about it themselves. In cities from Barcelona and Madrid to Stockholm, Berlin and Athens, researchers say Turkish diaspora communities are growing. And for the first time in modern Turkey's history, it seems the exodus isn’t mainly due to a search for economic opportunity.

There are no official figures on emigration compiled by the Turkish government that break down the motives behind people's departure. But recent emigres and would-be emigres told PRI their decision was about safety from persecution, having a voice in society and, even more crucially, an uncertain future in the so-called “new” Turkey under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. They say that Turkey went from being a haven of a stability and economic growth in the region to a country with increasing societal divisions, rising violence and a government that continues to become increasingly authoritarian.

Many people — particularly young, secular and educated Turks — say they have had enough.

"Here, unfortunately, a human being has no value and cannot express oneself," said Dündarlioğlu, adding that his final decision to leave will depend on what happens in the June 24 election, which could give Erdoğan even more power. "If you support the government, maybe you will be valued."

Over the 15 years Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party have been in power, they have eroded freedom of the press, free speech, expanded the role of conservative Islam in the officially secular republic and presided over an increasingly fragile economy, analysts and emigres say.

Related: Turkey jails more journalists than any other nation. Those in detention are all terrorists, Erdogan says.

After an unsuccessful coup attempt in July 2016, Erdoğan and his allies stepped up those efforts to clamp down, instituting a state of emergency that further grants them powers to detain and imprison alleged coup conspirators and sympathizers as well as anyone else who supposedly supports Fethullah Gülen, the Muslim cleric living in exile in the US whom Erdoğan has blamed for organizing the coup.

Hundreds of thousands of teachers, lawyers, intellectuals and artists as well as members of the civil service, the judiciary and the military have been jailed or have lost their jobs.

Then last year, voters approved changes to Turkey’s constitution to abolish the office of the prime minister and transform the country’s now-ceremonial presidency into a full-fledged chief executive. Supporters of the change said it would make the government run more efficiently. Opponents said it was move to give an increasingly authoritarian Erdoğan even more power.

If Erdoğan wins Sunday's election, he could wield near-absolute authority and cement his status as the most important Turkish leader since Kemal Ataturk founded the country in 1923.

Erdoğan is leading in most polls. But his power grab has also galvanized his opponents: He’s forecast to come close to or only slightly top the 50 percent threshold necessary to avoid a runoff election. 

Still, many of these Turks say nothing will change.

"I learned not to be hopeful about the elections because it's the same guys who always win," said a 26-year-old woman studying in Malmö, Sweden, who left Turkey in 2015, saying she couldn't take the oppressive environment any longer.

“I wasn't happy in Turkey as a woman, as a non-Muslim, single woman,” said the student, who asked not to be named out of fear of reprisal against her or her loved ones at home. “Harassment became a part of your everyday life. You just hoped that you'd be one of the lucky ones, so no psycho will kick you in the face in the bus because you were wearing shorts that day.” 

"Those who remain in Turkey face an uphill battle against the changes that have occurred in the country in recent years, especially if Erdoğan wins," she added, explain that she visited Turkey after the coup attempt and found it "scary." 

"I remember thinking, 'Where am I?'" she recalled, after seeing pro-government propaganda in the subways and experiencing the tense feeling. "I felt like the Turkey I knew, the Turkey I left, died on [July 15, 2016]." 

She says she knows at least six people who have left Turkey. "But every time I go back and see my friends, they are all talking about leaving," she said.'

Read more from source at PRI's GlobalPost here.

"God-bloggerer" -- My latest opinion column for Catalonia Today magazine

[Photo: DNA strand. Religion did not give us this.]

 I call myself an atheist because god has not been proven to any clear degree, but like other people I can enjoy certain things that are called “the spiritual”.

I think the biggest mystery is to do with what we call consciousness and this is one of the enticingly ’wonder-full’ areas that art and creativity can put to use so well.

One problem of atheism is that some atheists go too far by maintaining that religious-inspired work is automatically somehow wrong, regardless of its content.

I only have to listen to someone like the Pakistani singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan to feel the power of his voice as an expression of something right and good, even though I don’t share the love of Allah that fuels that voice.

We all need that sense of awe and humility that comes from, say, the extraordinariness of so much in the natural world: all that science cannot explain or come near to doing justice to. (There is after all, not even an adequate definition of what a thought is.)

Plenty of scientist-atheists have no problem with the unknown and the transient, in fact they embrace it and some even work at finding answers in it, though they often end up with more questions than they started with.

When religion asks questions, I applaud it. But when it simply quotes ancient texts or ‘interprets’ them I start to twitch.

I think it makes perfect sense to doubt what you know. The attitude of “I could be wrong, but...[insert opinion]” is the most sensible one to have because without it there is either blind faith or the conceit of absolute certainty.

I think this is the healthy basis of what we could call moral concerns. Organised religion often likes to claim that it has a monopoly on the ethically correct outlook but too often the people who are making the claims have not genuinely questioned their beliefs and have instead relied on their traditional leaders to set out a position first.

Equally, the celebrities that are so admired in today’s world are often ignorant about basic scientific truth but we still hold many of them up as role models and guiding lights. Even someone as cerebral as Barack Obama recently made comments linking vaccines to a supposed rise in autism.

It seems like this era’s obsession with the body, rather than the mind or the continuing inequality that exists across the globe, means that everything from karma to astrology to detox dieting is legitimate as something to believe in and use as a basis of living.

If our species can eliminate superstition we will have eliminated a major cause of our problems.

[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, January 2018.]