Technology will soon be able to do everything we do – only better. How should we respond?
Right now, most big AI labs have a team figuring out ways that rogue AIs might escape supervision, or secretly collude with each other against humans. But there’s a more mundane way we could lose control of civilisation: we might simply become obsolete. This wouldn’t require any hidden plots – if AI and robotics keep improving, it’s what happens by default.
How so? Well, AI developers are firmly on track to build better replacements for humans in almost every role we play: not just economically as workers and decision-makers, but culturally as artists and creators, and even socially as friends and romantic companions. What place will humans have when AI can do everything we do, only better?
A European project of the Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies, presents a round-up of the latest and most innovative research on the European Union’s role in an evolving global context in a quarterly newsletter, featuring summaries of key findings and access to more in-depth discussions through EU-RENEW webinars, blogs and podcasts.
The eighth issue focuses on human rights defenders.
Human Rights Defenders (HRDs) often stand on the frontlines of global struggles—exposing injustice, seeking accountability, and working to prevent further rights violations. While the European Union has long been committed to the protection of HRDs, shrinking civic space and democratic backsliding within its own borders have exposed troubling gaps: from limited pathways for HRDs to enter or remain in the EU, to the criminalization of HRDs’ work and the rise of strategic lawsuits designed to silence them.
In its latest blog, Anna Puigderrajols Triadó examines the EU’s evolving approach to HRDs and the urgent need for stronger, more consistent protections.
Some recommendations:
Human Rights Violations Committed Against Human Rights Defenders Through the Use of Legal System: A Trend in Europe and Beyond Aikaterini-Christina Koula. Human Rights Review, 25, 2024This article explores the growing weaponization of legal systems to silence human rights defenders, particularly in Europe, developing a taxonomy of legal tactics used against HRDs
Just Pathways to Sustainability: From Environmental Human Rights Defenders to Biosphere Defenders, Claudia Ituarte-Lima et al. Environmental Policy and Law, 53(5-6), 2023
Building on the concept of Environmental Human Rights Defenders, the authors advance a new concept of ‘Biosphere Defenders’ and a ‘Defend-Biosphere Framework’ to analyse the role of these actors as agents of change in pathways towards just sustainability.
The environmental rule of law and the protection of human rights defenders: law, society, technology, and markets Elif OralInternational Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics, 24, 2024, This article considers the importance of legal regulation and state intervention for creating a safe and just space for the activities of the Environmental Human Rights Defenders.
Gender-Transformative Remedies for Women Human Rights Defenders. Aleydis Nissen Business and Human Rights Journal, 8(3), 2023. This article explores gender-transformative remediation – which should bring change to patriarchal norms and unequal power relations – for women human rights defenders who fight against corporate human rights abuses.
I have drafted a Preamble I believe our Founding Fathers should have adopted as the opening statement of the Australian Constitution in 1901. We should vote on it (or a better version) at a Referendum to be held on the same day as Federal Election 2028 so that future Parliaments are required to uphold the …
The Gaza-born, UK-based journalist, who has lost more than 20 family members in Israeli airstrikes, has taken pieces from an online platform he co-created for young Palestinians and collated them in a new book
On 22 October 2023, an Israeli airstrike hit Ahmed Alnaouq’s home in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza, killing 21 members of his family, including his 75-year-old father, two brothers, three sisters and all of their children.
At the time, Alnaouq was living in London, where he works as a journalist and human rights activist. “It crushed me,” he says of the attack. Unable to return home, he could only watch helplessly from afar and grieve alone. Later, he tells me that it’s not anger or hate that consumes him now, but survivor’s guilt. “All the time I think: ‘Why? Why am I alive? Why wasn’t I killed with my family?’”
A political prisoner lifts the lid on the hardships and fantasies of life in Iran’s most notorious jail
The Iranian political prisoner Sepideh Gholian’s account of life on the women’s wards in Bushehr and Evin prisons is a blindsiding blend of horrifying concrete detail, dizzying surrealism and wild optimism. In every line and in every moment it attempts to recreate, it is entirely and unconditionally defiant. For the reader, discombobulation comes from (at least) two directions. At one moment, you are presented with, for example, the story of a woman attempting to abort her foetus under permanent camera and human surveillance, because the consequences for her unborn child, herself and other family members if the pregnancy continues are unimaginably violent. At another you are instructed how to make elephant ears pastries, designed for large gatherings of visitors, in the cheery tones of the encouraging expert (“It’s not at all messy and impossible to get wrong. You don’t even need an oven. The sweetness is up to you.”)
Gholian was detained and tortured in 2018 after helping to organise a strike by sugarcane workers. Released on bail at the beginning of 2019, she was quickly rearrested after Iranian state television broadcasted her “confession”, evidently obtained under duress, and returned to prison. On her release four years later, she recorded a video message in which she removed her hijab, denounced the regime and called for the downfall of supreme leader Ali Khamenei. Unsurprisingly, the video went viral, and even less surprisingly she was immediately returned to Evin prison, where she remains (the introduction by journalist Maziar Bahari tells us that, for “security reasons”, he can’t tell us exactly how her writing has been smuggled out).
Each and very one of us has an inner personal power and our way of using it determines the quality of our lives. Some of us decide also to add a power to our lives that is beyond our own until we take steps to welcome it. In my case, during the 93 years since …
Christine Wong, author of plant-based cookbook The Vibrant Hong Kong Table, talks about our meat-eating culture, vegan alternatives, and marrying tradition with future-forward cooking.
With roots in one of the world’s most meat-eating cities and a home in one of the US’s most-eating cities, being a plant-based chef must be hard work.
Or so you’d think, but for Christine Wong, it comes easy. The chef’s new plant-based cookbook, The Vibrant Hong Kong Table, is an homage to the city she grew up in, written from her home in New York City.
Over 88 recipes – ranging from pineapple buns and curry puffs to milk tea and steamed eggs – Wong showcases how local classics from Hong Kong can be futureproofed with animal-free ingredients. The book, in her words, is a “love letter to the city’s culinary heritage”, and an “opportunity to create longevity for these nostalgic dishes”.
We spoke to Wong about the ideas behind her recipes, what vegan food means to a meat-loving culture, why meat alternatives took a backseat in her cookbook, and the things her pantry will never run out of.
This interview has been edited for clarity and concision.
Green Queen: Having lived in New York for the last two decades, what sparked the idea for the book, and how long did it take you to write it?
Courtesy: Chronicle Books
Christine Wong: Ever since I left Hong Kong, whenever I was homesick, I would head over to Pearl River Mart (where I now work part-time as their creative manager), an iconic Asian emporium in Manhattan that has been around for over 50 years.
I would eat dim sum or some of my favourite dishes, like bitter melon and rice, and go to the Asian markets to load up on Chinese groceries, observing the Chinatown aunties scrutinising produce before making their selections – from these daily life moments to festive Lunar New Year celebrations, Chinatown has become my home away from Hong Kong.
During the pandemic, not only was the Asian American community suffering from xenophobia and Asian hate, I watched from afar as Hong Kong was also changing… with unrest and strict lockdown, and iconic restaurants and landmarks disappearing. There was a point when I thought I might never be able to return home.
My book, The Vibrant Hong Kong Table, was inspired by my desire to encapsulate and honour the history and culture of the city that has been home to my family for four generations, and to celebrate all of our iconic foods. The dishes are nostalgic, yet future-forward with a sustainable plant-based twist.
Having embraced a plant-predominant diet since 2014, it’s hard to find vegan versions of these dishes, so it’s also for selfish reasons to have written this book. It took me two years to thoroughly research and create all the recipes.
GQ: What was the inspiration behind the recipes in your book?
CW: Hong Kong is known for so many incredible dishes, but I went back in time to focus mainly on the culmination of the city’s unique West-Meets-East cuisine, or Soy Sauce Western, that sprung out of bing sutts and cha chaan tengs, which met the demand for affordable Western-style dishes using inexpensive shelf-stable ingredients and Chinese techniques.
The recipes in The Vibrant Hong Kong Table use plant-based ingredients with traditional techniques, and are structured on a timeline of eating throughout the day in Hong Kong, from a dim sum or congee breakfast to siu yeh (late-night snacks).
GQ: In the book, you grapple with the idea of using meat alternatives – can you give us an insight into your thinking, and why you chose to spotlight vegetables for the most part?
Courtesy: Chronicle Books
CW: I prefer to use whole ingredients and vegetables as meat replacements, as mock meats tend to be overly processed. There’s so much that the plant world has to offer like cabbage, cauliflower, sweet potatoes, and young jackfruit. I made sure to include these, rather than only subbing meat with tofu and mushrooms.
GQ: Many local restaurants in Hong Kong tend to use traditional soy- or wheat-based meat analogues (which, to many, taste better than their western counterparts). What’s your view on them, and do you think there’s a place for these centuries-old alternatives in helping people cut back on meat?
CW: The key to cutting back on meat is to keep an open mind and not to scrutinise and compare plant-based dishes with the original. It will never quite be the same, though most modern meat replacements try to – some western plant-based meat brands even bleed!
Traditional soy- and wheat gluten-based alternatives are tasty, and less processed – however, even as a kid, seeing the Buddhist vegetarian foods my Maa Maa (paternal grandmother) would eat, I never understood why all the dishes were brown, and not colorufully vibrant. The focus should be on integrating more vegetables into your diet rather than only replacing the meat.
GQ: Do you think Hong Kongers – who love their meat – would be receptive to a vegan cookbook and its non-traditional recipes?
Courtesy: Chronicle Books
CW: Whenever I tell people about my book and mention that The Vibrant Hong Kong Table is plant-based, I can see/hear “approval” and know that I’ve captured interest in the book.
I think Hong Kongers are more open to vegan cookbooks these days, especially this one, since many of the recipes are iconic Hong Kongese dishes. People glancing through my book often don’t realise that the dishes are vegan.
GQ; What do you think people get most wrong about vegan cooking?
CW: Vegan food does not always equate to rabbit food and isn’t limited to salads and smoothies. It can be culturally nostalgic and satisfyingly flavourful, with the added benefit of being nutritiously good for you – and good for the planet.
When prepared with the same attention and care as other dishes, one would not even miss the meat. Protein can be found in plant foods with the benefit of a plethora of nutrients and fibre, which lends to being satiated.
GQ: What are some of your favourite recipes from the book?
CW: My Steamed ‘Egg’, Black-Pink Pepper Cabbage Steak, Jackfruit ‘Brisket’ Noodles and Grandma’s Hong Kong Curry bring me comfort, satisfying some of my most poignant food memories.
GQ: What was the most difficult dish to veganise in the book, and why?
Courtesy: Chronicle Books
CW: Fishballs! I really wanted to capture that distinct bouncy texture, and played around with countless variations of flours and combinations. It was the first and last recipe I tested, with multiple iterations in between.
GQ: What are three things that you recommend people always have in their pantry, and why?
CW: Rice is a pantry staple that complements any dish, especially saucy and soupy ones. Whether it’s freshly steamed, fried with chopped ingredients, boiled into a congee, or even soaked, blended and steamed to make cheung fun (rice noodle rolls), rice is a versatile grain – especially if you include glutinous rice too.
Dried mushrooms are full of umami and a perfect substitute for meat both in terms of flavour and texture. They are one of the most convenient pantry items, only requiring water to soak and rehydrate them.
Soybeans are not only a great source of protein – these dried legumes are so versatile that making soy milk and tofu is easy. And if you have the time and patience, tofu skin.
GQ: Your book is an ode to Hong Kong – what do you hope readers take away from your book?
Courtesy: Benjamin Von Wong
CW: I would like The Vibrant Hong Kong Table to preserve and celebrate Hong Kong’s culture and identity. It is a culinary exploration for the vegan community who want to “travel the world” through food while opening up the mindset of meat-eaters that vegan recipes can be culturally appropriate, satisfyingly delicious, and equally nostalgic.
The Vibrant Hong Kong Table by Christine Wong (Chronicle Books) is available online and at bookstores worldwide for $32.50.
From George Orwell to Hannah Arendt and John le Carré, thousands of blacklisted books flooded into Poland during the cold war, as publishers and printers risked their lives for literature
The volume’s glossy dust jacket shows a 1970s computer room, where high priests of the information age, dressed in kipper ties and flares, tap instructions into the terminals of some ancient mainframe. The only words on the front read “Master Operating Station”, “Subsidiary Operating Station” and “Free Standing Display”. Is any publication less appetising than an out-of-date technical manual?
Turn inside, however, and the book reveals a secret. It isn’t a computer manual at all, but a Polish language edition of Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell’s famous anti-totalitarian novel, which was banned for decades by communist censors in the eastern bloc.
Bridget Shirvell, author of Parenting in A Climate Crisis – which grew out of her eponymous newsletter – talks raising eco-conscious children, making the food-climate connection, and the importance of going outside.
SF: How did you end up on the climate beat?
BS: From a young age, I was always really aware of it. My parents had rental properties down in the outer banks of North Carolina when I was a kid, and so from a young age, I was very aware of the impact. We would see the beach eroding. We would pay very close attention to hurricanes because that was important to know what was happening to the house. So I was very aware of the earth-human connection from a young age.
And then as I got older, I initially got into food systems reporting, and that expanded into overall climate. I would talk to different farmers and they would mention things that were happening with the weather, that they were having to harvest their food earlier; or chefs would be worried that they couldn’t get certain ingredients. And so that really made me think about everything else. And after I had my child, it expanded to: how are we living?
SF: Who did you have in mind when you wrote the book?
BS: I think I started writing this book really for me because I was like: how do I do this? There’s a lot of information right on how we talk to our kids about the climate crisis. And I think, because I’m somebody whose job is to communicate, that wasn’t my concern.
My concern was more the day-to-day of: What do I do? What is she [my daughter] going to need? And so I really wrote this book for me. And then for people who have asked me questions over the years. Should the kids go outside in this temperature? What type of laundry detergent do you use? Not that the book gets into those specific, nitty-gritty details, but I think it gives people the ability to figure out how to make those decisions for themselves and to think more broadly about the types of skills that people are going to need.
SF: A lot of the book feels very much geared towards an American audience. Is that intended?
BS: I think so. Some of it was also geared towards a British audience. When you read the book, you’ll realise I actually did a lot of the writing when I was spending a summer in England. And my literary agent is based in England, so she kind of pushed me to make it a little broader.
But I would say because the politics of climate change are so different in the US compared to a lot of Western countries, I do think it trends a little more American.
SF: Do you feel that in Europe, people are more climate-literate?
BS: I think they are more climate literate. I also think there’s more of an acceptance that we should just be doing these things because they’re the right thing to do.
SF: The book’s subtitle is ‘a handbook for turning fear into action’. Why the term handbook?
BS: All the chapters build on each other, but I think the book is designed so that if you’re really into food, if that’s what you think is most accessible to you, you could just read that chapter on food, and then you could focus on that and maybe pick up the book again when you’re ready to tackle a different subject. Or if you’re getting a new dog, there’s a whole chapter on pets and animals – you could pick up that chapter and then go on to something else.
SF: So this is a book that people might pick up and put down. It’s not necessarily a ‘read it from beginning to end’? Almost like a cookbook?
BS: I wanted it to be something that people could refer back to, especially as their children grow. Different things are geared towards different ages. Or, you might end up having a kid who’s interested in food or really wants to become to join a youth protest so you might think: “I’m gonna go back and read that chapter and see if there’s anything else I should be thinking about or doing.”
I really wanted the book to be designed so that people can refer back to it, write in it, like, highlight whatever stands out to them and hopefully share it with other people. That’s a big focus of the book, talking to other people about why you’re taking these climate actions, and that’s kind of how we move everything forward, especially here in the US.
SF: A lot of the book features quotes from many parents who work in climate, especially mothers. Whose responsibility is it to educate kids about the climate? Is it the mom’s responsibility?
BS: I think that’s a good point because there’s so many things going on, and then it’s kind of like, oh, but the world’s also on fire. Is anybody doing anything about that? And what should I be doing about that? And so this is kind of coming from a place of, it’s not necessarily your responsibility, but a lot of parents, especially moms, have this worry about what is happening, even if it’s something they don’t always voice out loud to others.
So I hope that what people take away is that there are a lot of things that they’re already doing in their everyday life, that it’s just changing slightly the way you talk about things, or changing one little thing at a time that will help you raise kids who are more climate literate than most of the current adult population.
Courtesy: Workman Publishing
SF: Is there a worry that we will depress kids with these conversations? A pushback I get a lot is that climate is not fun.
BS: Maybe this isn’t the right way to think about it, because I think there’s this trend to be very protective of childhood, for it to be this magical world and in some ways, I am protective of that. But I also see my job as a parent is to raise a child who’s going to be able to face things that come her way, whatever they are, and so in that sense, I don’t really worry about depressing her, because this is the reality, and I think when I’m presenting it in a way that hopefully isn’t scary – not that I always get it right – she sees that this is just something that’s happening. And these are the tools that I have to get through whatever this is. I’m teaching them how to live in the world, and bad things are occasionally going to happen, and they need to see us handle that.
SF: It’s very embarrassing to admit but I sometimes feel that my older child is not that interested in the climate cause despite everything I have tried to do, from raising him plant-based to exposing him to nature as much as possible to talking to him about all the things. What can you do if your kid isn’t interested?
BS: I think for some people, it just probably takes a little longer. And I also think you have to pick your battles with kids. My [six-year-old] daughter doesn’t eat any meat, and that actually was her choice. But she does love dairy, and I struggled a lot with cow’s milk, as she calls it, versus oat milk. And she just will not drink the oat milk if we only have oat milk at home – she refuses, and she understands why, she understands the environmental differences. We’ve talked about that, but for her, it’s like: “You know what? I just don’t like the way alternative milks taste, and I do a lot of other things that are good for the planet.”
I think part of it is letting kids gravitate towards their own interests. At a certain point, your son will find other things that light him up and that you can connect to the environment. Maybe it hasn’t happened yet for him. I think you keep going back to: “These are our values, and this is why we’re doing these things, even if other people don’t do them.” And as they grow up, they learn what their own values are, too, and they might be slightly different from yours, but I think, in the long run, they will end up there.
SF: Do you ever feel hopeless? And if so, how do you deal with it?
BS: I feel hopeless lots of times. Just being in the supermarket and seeing all that plastic gives me a lot of anxiety. When my daughter comes home from school on Valentine’s Day with bags of plastic toys, I will also feel a little hopeless. I think I just try to take it one moment at a time, but also, the more I talk to other people, the better I feel.
Sonalie Figueiras: What was the hardest part of writing this book?
Bree Shirvell: I think the hardest part was really kind of narrowing down the experiences of the people working in climate that I spoke to because while I really wanted this book to be obviously from my perspective, I wanted somebody picking it up to see themselves and the other parents that I spoke to in the book. And so I think it was hard for me to curate that group, there are so many people doing this work, and I think they all should be celebrated and applauded that that was kind of hard to like winnow down the information.
SF: What’s the most powerful lever for getting people to act on climate change, and is it different for kids and adults?
BS: Oh, that’s a good question. I don’t know if I would say it’s the most powerful, but I think the most accessible one is really thinking about food and where your food is coming from, just because we all have to eat. I think it’s very easy for both kids and adults to make that food-climate connection in a way, even if you think just like thinking about something simple, such as food waste. That’s something that you can see every day. So once you understand those emissions, I think that’s a good first step to thinking about how I’m going to reduce my food waste.
The food system is a third of all climate emissions. There is a lot of movement we can make there. Thinking about it from a food perspective just kind of builds on other things because it’s also an easy way to talk to other adults. Everybody has to make dinner for their kids or make school lunches, right? There are so many things you can talk about like trying to reduce the single-use plastic in my kid’s lunch or thinking about snack ideas… it’s such an easy way to talk about these issues.
SF: One of the topics that come up again and again in the book is the link between spending time outdoors in nature and developing climate awareness – or what I call climate literacy. What do we do for kids who have very limited access to nature?
BS: I think it’s a very different type of nature, but I still think getting them outside, there are still lessons you can learn. You can talk about the temperature at different times of the year or the urban heat island effect, so they can start to understand: “Oh, it’s hotter here. It’s a little cooler here, because there are some trees.” You can look into growing some plants on your windowsill, some herbs or some flowers – anything that gets you in some way connected to all your senses so you can touch it and can feel it, or taste it.
I wish more schools would make that a priority. I think that’s slowly starting to shift. I know here [in the US] at least, more schools are thinking about: “Oh, we’re going to take a long hike on a Wednesday as part of our curriculum.” And that’s been really cool to see that shift starting to happen, and people realising that outdoor time is important.
SF: It feels like we are in a new reality where you’ve got a new US administration that is scrubbing climate from the rhetoric and from government websites. Whose responsibility is it to create change and to keep people informed about the climate crisis?
BS: In terms of whose responsibility is, I would love to say it’s our institutions, right? It’s schools, it’s government, it’s news media. But even before this new administration started, mainstream media so often doesn’t make that connection between climate and natural disasters, or with air travel.
We had stories about turbulence, and people weren’t talking about how this is also an effect of climate change – the world heating up makes turbulence worse.
I just think that for so long, nobody’s been doing it. So it really is up to everybody, especially those who are more concerned and more focused on climate education to talk about it in their day-to-day lives with their neighbours and their kids. And I think that does eventually trickle down and make it more mainstream.
SF: Do you buy this idea that we need to ‘rebrand’ climate? For example, a lot of people in climate tech now calling it the transition economy instead.
BS: You know, that’s a hard question. I am kind of against this whole idea of transition. To me, it feels a little bit like giving up. But at the same time, I’m also kind of at the point where, whatever works. If that gets more people on board that we’re calling it a transition economy, then, let’s do it. As long as it doesn’t turn into greenwashing, I think I’m okay with that.
Parenting In A Climate Crisis: A Handbook for Turning Fear Into Action by Bridget Shirvell (Workman Publishing/Hachette Book Group) is available now at bookstores across the US and Canada for $17.99.
On Friday evenings Helen and I enjoy a couple of relaxing hours watching a television movie. Two days ago we chose ANNE OF GREEN GABLES on ABC iview. It has recently been released by Canada Television. Our choice was made as the book played a significant role in the life of Vivienne, my elder and …
Israeli police have confiscated hundreds of books with Palestinian titles or flags without understanding their contents in a draconian raid on a Palestinian educational bookshop in occupied East Jerusalem, say eyewitnesses.
More details have emerged on the Israeli police raid on a popular bookstore in occupied East Jerusalem.
The owners were arrested but police reportedly dropped charges of incitement while still detaining them for “disturbing the public order”.
The bookstore’s owners, Ahmed and Mahmoud Muna, were detained, and hundreds of titles related to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict confiscated, before police ordered the store’s closure, according to May Muna, Mahmoud’s wife, reports Al Jazeera.
She said the soldiers picked out books with Palestinian titles or flags, “without knowing what any of them meant”.
She said they used Google Translate on some of the Arabic titles to see what they meant before carting them away in plastic bags.
Another police bookshop raid
Police raided another Palestinian-owned bookstore in the Old City in East Jerusalem last week. In a statement, the police said the two owners were arrested on suspicion of “selling books containing incitement and support for terrorism”.
As an example, the police referred to an English-language children’s colouring book titled From the River to the Sea — a reference to the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea that today includes Israel, the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
The bookshop raids have been widely condemned as a “war on knowledge and literature”.
The Educational Bookshop in East Jerusalem is full with shoppers in solidarity a day after the Israel Police raided the Palestinian store, arrested its owners and confiscated books. They dropped the charges of incitement but still detain them for ‘disturbing the public order’ pic.twitter.com/ZfnkBttfY3
On the day I celebrated my 80th birthday I decided to become an author who would write best sellers. I had written a few books about fund raising in my earlier life, as well as a biography for my family, but no serious novels that could find a place on shelves of book shops. So, …
Libraries in democratic Taiwan are stocking books removed from the shelves by authorities in Hong Kong, who are waging a war on politically “sensitive” content amid an ongoing crackdown on public dissent, a recent investigation by RFA Cantonese revealed.
Hong Kong’s bookstores once drew Chinese-language bibliophiles from far and wide in pursuit of some of the city’s most off-beat, salacious and politically radical writings, coupled with cute or alternative takes on art and culture.
As the political crackdown gathered momentum, libraries also made lists of books likely to run afoul of the new law, and pulled them from the shelves.
But Taiwan’s libraries now stock tens of thousands of banned books, possibly driven in part by demand from Hong Kongers living in exile there.
A recent search of the library catalog by RFA Cantonese, and interviews with experts, suggest that democratic Taiwan continues to act as a protective outlet for Hong Kong’s Cantonese culture, despite the ongoing crackdown.
A catalog search of the National Taiwan Library, Taipei City Library and Academia Sinica Library for 144 books that have been removed from libraries in Hong Kong, according to local media reports, found that 107 of the titles is now available in one of these libraries.
Among the banned titles on offer are We Were Chosen by the Times and Every Umbrella, compilations of interviews with non-prominent participants in the 2014 Umbrella Movement for fully democratic elections, now removed from the Hong Kong Central Library.
Farewell to Cynicism: the Crisis of Liberalism in Hong Kong, Parallel Space and Time I : An International Perspective Based on Locality, and Hong Kong, a Restless Homeland, a history of the city from a local perspective, once-lauded titles freely available in Hong Kong, have also found new homes in Taiwan, the catalog showed.
Readers can also choose among 17 business-related titles penned by jailed pro-democracy media mogul Jimmy Lai, now stocked at the National Taiwan Library, Taipei City Library and Academia Sinica Library.
The Taipei City Library also houses the most extensive collection of books about the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, the 2019 Hong Kong protests and the Umbrella Movement.
Public demand
Hong Kong historian Eric Tsui told RFA Cantonese he was surprised to see some of his banned books on the shelves of libraries in Taiwan.
“The fact that you can find these books in public libraries in Taiwan, suggests that the Taiwanese public cares about Hong Kong, and that public libraries are stocking these books due to public demand,” Tsui said.
Taipei City Library Director Hung Shih-chang said the library has added an average of 1,500 to 2,000 Hong Kong publications a year in recent years.
Taiwanese sociologist Jieh-min Wu in an undated photo.(RFA)
“Hong Kong books are mainly obtained through exchange and donations, particularly donations,” Hung told RFA Cantonese in a recent interview.
Public demand and purchases are definitely also a factor.
“If the public requests Hong Kong publications that aren’t available in Taiwan, we will purchase them,” Hung said. “There may be people who have moved from Hong Kong to Taipei in recent years who want to read some books published in Hong Kong, so they may make some recommendations, and then the numbers go up a bit.”
“One of the most important purposes of a public library is to provide information to our readers freely and to ensure fair access to all kinds of information,” he said, adding that censorship in democratic Taiwan is “very unlikely” to happen.
“We will try our best to meet the needs of diverse interests in the collection and provision of library materials.”
In this case, a service that was once provided to Hong Kongers in their own city has effectively moved offshore.
Promoting national thought
“The mission of every national public library should be to collect all the works of local citizens and become a resource for national thought, so that citizens of a place can share [ideas] with each other,” Tsui said.
“Now, because of the China factor, you are afraid of offending China and deprive Hong Kongers of their public property,” he said.
Taiwanese sociologist Jieh-min Wu said Taiwan still has memories of its recent, authoritarian past.
“A lot of books were banned during the authoritarian period [here], just as they are in Hong Kong today,” Wu said.
“Libraries removed books from the shelves, but they didn’t have a list of banned books. They just quietly removed them.”
“From my research perspective, Hong Kong is going through a similar period to martial law [in Taiwan, which ended in July 1987]; a time where there are very strict controls on political topics,” Wu told RFA Cantonese in a recent interview.
He said pro-democracy organizations in exile played an important role in “preserving information and then transmitting it back” home during the authoritarian rule of the Kuomintang under Chiang Kai-shek and his son Chiang Ching-kuo.
Taiwan began a transition to democracy following the death of President Chiang Ching-kuo, in January 1988, starting with direct elections to the legislature in the early 1990s and culminating in the first direct election of the island’s president, Lee Teng-hui, in 1996.
While China insists on eventual “unification” with Taiwan — by armed invasion if necessary — the majority of Taiwan’s 23 million people have no wish to give up their democratic way of life to submit to Communist Party rule.
China has threatened the death penalty for supporters of Taiwan independence, while Taipei says Beijing has no jurisdiction over the actions of its citizens.
A recent public opinion poll from the Institute for National Defense and Security Research showed that 67.8% of respondents were willing to fight to defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion.
Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Eugene Whong
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Alice Yam for RFA Cantonese.
How many graduates of Buena Vista Elementary and Lowell High School have become labor book authors? Probably not many–other than Eric Blanc, whose mother taught in the San Francisco school system (and served as union president) and whose father was long active in the central labor council. Blanc became a teacher himself and drew on that experience when writing his first book, Red State Revolt: The Teachers Strike Wave and Working-Class Politics. Now an assistant professor at Rutgers University, Blanc has just published a more wide-ranging study. It grapples with a perennial question facing the labor left—namely, what kind of break with business as usual, within established unions, would help more private sector workers win union recognition, first contracts, and strikes?
Many of my friends and followers don’t read books, they listen to them. They do so for many reasons, but mainly its because they just don’t have time to sit down and read. So they enjoy listening to books while they ride on buses trains ferries planes or while driving cars trucks taxis ubers tractors …
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For 30 years, Filipino journalist Manny “Bok” Mogato covered the police and defence rounds, and everything from politics to foreign relations, sports, and entertainment, eventually bagging one of journalism’s top prizes — the Pulitzer in 2018, for his reporting on Duterte’s drug war along with two other Reuters correspondents, Andrew Marshall and Clare Baldwin.
For Mogato it was time for him to “write it all down,” and so he did, launching the autobiography It’s Me, Bok! Journeys in Journalism in October 2024.
Mogato told Rappler, he wanted to “write it all down before I forget and impart my knowledge to the youth, young journalists, so they won’t make the same mistakes that I did”.
His career has spanned many organisations, including the Journal group, The Manila Chronicle, The Manila Times, Japan’s Asahi Shimbun, and Rappler. Outside of journalism, he also serves as a consultant for Cignal TV.
Recently, we sat down with Mogato to talk about his career — a preview of what you might be able to read in his book — and pick out a few lessons for today’s journalists, as well as his views on the country today.
You’ve covered so many beats. Which beat did you enjoy covering most?
Manny Mogato: The military. Technically, I was assigned to the military defence beat for only a few years, from 1987 to 1992. In early 1990, FVR (Fidel V. Ramos) was running for president, and I was made to cover his campaign.
When he won, I was assigned to cover the military, and I went back to the defence beat because I had so many friends there.
‘We faced several coups’
I really enjoyed it and still enjoy it because you go to places, to military camps. And then I also covered the defence beat at the most crucial and turbulent period in our history — when we faced several coups.
Rappler: You have mellowed through the years as a reporter. You chronicled in your book that when you were younger, you were learning the first two years about the police beat and then transferred to another publication.
How did your reporting style mellow, or did it grow? Did you become more curious or did you become less curious? Over the years as a reporter, did you become more or less interested in what was happening around you?
MM: Curiosity is the word I would use. So, from the start until now, I am still curious about things happening around me. Exciting things, interesting things.
But if you read the book, you’ll see I’ve mellowed a lot because I was very reckless during my younger days.
I would go on assignments without asking permission from my office. For instance, there was this hostage-taking incident in Zamboanga, where a policeman held hostages of several officers, including a general and a colonel.
So when I learned that, I volunteered to go without asking permission from my office. I only had 100 pesos (NZ$3) in my pocket. And so what I did, I saw the soldiers loading bullets into the boxes and I picked up one box and carried it.
Hostage crisis with one tee
So when the aircraft was already airborne, they found out I was there, and so I just sat somewhere, and I covered the hostage crisis for three to four days with only one T-shirt.
Reporters in Zamboanga were kind enough to lend me T-shirts. They also bought me underpants. I slept in the headquarters crisis. And then later, restaurants. Alavar is a very popular seafood restaurant in Zamboanga. I slept there. So when the crisis was over, I came back. At that time, the Chronicle and ABS-CBN were sister companies.
When I returned to Manila, my editor gave me a commendation — but looking back . . . I just had to get a story.
Rappler: So that is what drives you?
MM: Yes, I have to get the story. I will do this on my own. I have to be ahead of the others. In 1987, when a PAL flight to Baguio City crashed, killing all 50 people on board, including the crew and the passengers, I was sent by my office to Baguio to cover the incident.
But the crash site was in Benguet, in the mountains. So I went there to the mountains. And then the Igorots were in that area, living in that area.
I was with other reporters and mountaineering clubs. We decided to go back because we were surrounded by the Igorots [who made it difficult for us to do our jobs]. Luckily, the Lopezes had a helicopter and [we] were the first to take photos.
‘I saw the bad side of police’
Rappler: Why are military and defense your favourite beats to cover?
MM: I started my career in 1983/1984, as a police reporter. So I know my way around the police. And I have many good friends in the police. I saw the bad side of the police, the dark side, corruption, and everything.
I also saw the military in the most turbulent period of our history when I was assigned to the military. So I saw good guys, I saw terrible guys. I saw everything in the military, and I made friends with them. It’s exciting to cover the military, the insurgency, the NPAs (New People’s Army rebels), and the secessionist movement.
You have to gain the trust of the soldiers of your sources. And if you don’t have trust, writing a story is impossible; it becomes a motherhood statement. But if you go deeper, dig deeper, you make friends, they trust you, you get more stories, you get the inside story, you get the background story, you get the top secret stories.
Because I made good friends with senior officers during my time, they can show me confidential memorandums and confidential reports, and I write about them.
I have made friends with so many of these police and military men. It started when they were lieutenants, then majors, and then generals. We’d go out together, have dinner or some drinks somewhere, and discuss everything, and they will tell you some secrets.
Before, you’d get paid 50 pesos (NZ$1.50) as a journalist every week by the police. Eventually, I had to say no and avoid groups of people engaging in this corruption. Reuters wouldn’t have hired me if I’d continued.
Rappler: With everything that you have seen in your career, what do you think is the actual state of humanity? Because you’ve seen hideous things, I’m sure. And very corrupt things. What do you think of people?
‘The Filipinos are selfish’
MM: Well, I can speak of the Filipino people. The Filipinos are selfish. They are only after their own welfare. There is no humanity in the Filipino mentality. They’re pulling each other down all the time.
I went on a trip with my family to Japan in 2018. My son left his sling bag on the Shinkansen. So we returned to the train station and said my son had left his bag there. The people at the train station told us that we could get the bag in Tokyo.
So we went to Tokyo and recovered the bag. Everything was intact, including my money, the password, everything.
So, there are crises, disasters, and ayuda (aid) in other places. And the people only get what they need, no? In the Philippines, that isn’t the case. So that’s humanity [here]. It isn’t very pleasant for us Filipinos.
Rappler: Is there anything good?
MM: Everyone was sharing during the EDSA Revolution, sharing stories, and sharing everything. They forgot themselves. And they acted as a community known against Marcos in 1986. That is very telling and redeeming. But after that… [I can’t think of anything else that is good.]
Rappler: What is the one story you are particularly fond of that you did or something you like or are proud of?
War on drugs, and typhoon Yolanda
MM: On drugs, my contribution to the Reuters series, and my police stories. Also, typhoon Yolanda in 2013. We left Manila on November 9, a day after the typhoon. We brought much equipment — generator sets, big cameras, food supply, everything.
But the thing is, you have to travel light. There are relief goods for the victims and other needs. When we arrived at the airport, we were shocked. Everything was destroyed. So we had to stay in the airport for the night and sleep.
We slept under the rain the entire time for the next three days. Upon arrival at the airport, we interviewed the police regional commander. Our report, I think, moved the international community to respond to the extended damage and casualties. My report that 10,000 people had died was nominated for the Society Publishers in Asia in Hong Kong.
Every day, we had to walk from the airport eight to 10 kilometers away, and along the way, we saw the people who were living outside their homes. And there was looting all over.
Rappler: There is a part in your book where you mentioned the corruption of journalists, right? And reporters. What do you mean by corruption?
MM: Simple tokens are okay to accept. When I was with Reuters, its gift policy was that you could only accept gifts as much as $50. Anything more than $50 is already a bribe. There are things that you can buy on your own, things you can afford. Other publications, like The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Associated Press [nes agency], have a $0 gift policy. We have this gift-giving culture in our culture. It’s Oriental.
If you can pay your own way, you should do it.
Rappler: Tell us more about winning the Pulitzer Prize.
Most winners are American, American issues
MM: I did not expect to win this American-centric award. Most of the winners are Americans and American stories, American issues. But it so happened this was international reporting. There were so many other stories that were worth the win.
The story is about the Philippines and the drug war. And we didn’t expect a lot of interest in that kind of story. So perhaps we were just lucky that we were awarded the Pulitzer Prize. In the Society of Publishers in Asia, in Hong Kong, the same stories were also nominated for investigative journalism. So we were not expecting that Pulitzer would pay attention.
The idea of the drug war was not the work of only three people: Andrew Marshal, Clare Baldwin and me. No, it was a team effort.
Rappler: What was your specific contribution?
MM: Andrew and Clare were immersed in different communities in Manila, Tondo, and Navotas City, interviewing victims and families and everybody, everyone else. On the other hand, my role was on the police.
I got the police comments and official police comments and also talked to police sources who would give us the inside story — the inside story of the drug war. So I have a good friend, a retired police general who was from the intelligence service, and he knew all about this drug war — mechanics, plan, reward system, and everything that they were doing. So, he reported about the drug war.
The actual drug war was what the late General Rodolfo Mendoza said was a ruse because Duterte was protecting his own drug cartel.
Bishops wanted to find out
He had a report made for Catholic bishops. There was a plenary in January 2017, and the bishops wanted to find out. So he made the report. His report was based on 17 active police officers who are still in active service. So when he gave me this report, I showed it to my editors.
My editor said: “Oh, this is good. This is a good guide for our story.” He got this information from the police sources — subordinates, those who were formerly working for him, gave him the information.
So it was hearsay, you know. So my editor said: “Why can’t you convince him to introduce us to the real people involved in the drug war?”
So, the general and I had several interviews. Usually, our interviews lasted until early morning. Father [Romeo] Intengan facilitated the interview. He was there to help us. At the same time, he was the one serving us coffee and biscuits all throughout the night.
So finally, after, I think, two or three meetings, he agreed that he would introduce us to police officers. So we interviewed the police captain who was really involved in the killings, and in the operation, and in the drug war.
So we got a lot of information from him. The info went not only to one story but several other stories.
He was saying it was also the police who were doing it.
Rappler: Wrapping up — what do you think of the Philippines?
‘Duterte was the worst’
MM: The Philippines under former President Duterte was the worst I’ve seen. Worse than under former President Ferdinand Marcos. People were saying Marcos was the worst president because of martial law. He closed down the media, abolished Congress, and ruled by decree.
I think more than 3000 people died, and 10,000 were tortured and jailed.
But in three to six years under Duterte, more than 30,000 people died. No, he didn’t impose martial law, but there was a de facto martial law. The anti-terrorism law was very harsh, and he closed down ABS-CBN television.
It had a chilling effect on all media organisations. So, the effect was the same as what Marcos did in 1972.
We thought that Marcos Jr would become another Duterte because they were allies. And we felt that he would follow the policies of President Duterte, but it turned out he’s much better.
Well, everything after Duterte is good. Because he set the bar so low.
Everything is rosy — even if Marcos is not doing enough because the economy is terrible. Inflation is high, unemployment is high, foreign direct investments are down, and the peso is almost 60 to a dollar.
Praised over West Philippine Sea
However, the people still praise Marcos for his actions in the West Philippine Sea. I think the people love him for that. And the number of killings in the drug war has gone down.
There are still killings, but the number has really gone so low, I would say about 300 in the first two years.
Rappler: Why did you write your book, It’s Me, Bok! Journeys in Journalism?
MM: I have been writing snippets of my experiences on Facebook. Many friends were saying, ‘Why don’t you write a book?’ including Secretary [of National Defense] Gilberto Teodoro, who was fond of reading my snippets.
In my early days, I was reckless as a reporter. I don’t want the younger reporters to do that. And no story is worth writing if you are risking your life.
I want to leave behind a legacy, and I know that my memory will fail me sooner rather than later. It took me only three months to write the book.
It’s very raw. There will be a second printing. I want to polish the book and expand some of the events.
Myanmar has banned seven books because of their LGBTQ+ content and will take legal action against their publishers, the military government announced, adding that the books were “obscene” and socially unacceptable.
The banned domestically published books are “A Butterfly Rests on My Heart” by Aung Khant, “1500 Miles to You” and “Love Planted by Hate” by Mahura, Myint Mo’s “Tie the Knot of Love”, “Match Made in Clouds” by DiDi Zaw, “DISO+Extra” by Red in Peace and “Concerned Person U Wai” by Vivian, the Ministry of Information said.
“These books are not accepted by Myanmar society, they are shameless and the content that can mislead the thinking and feelings of young people,” the Ministry of Information said in a statement published in state-run media on Thursday.
LGBTQ+ people face widespread prejudice in socially conservative Myanmar, where British colonial-era legislation criminalises gay sex with up to 10 years in jail.
The LGBTQ+ community made some advances during nearly a decade of tentative reforms, when the military partially stepped back from power to let a civilian government led by Aung San Suu Kyi rule, establishing some rights groups and holding festivals.
But the democratic experiment ended in February 2021 when the military ousted Suu Kyi’s government and cracked down on dissent, with LBGTQ+ people among those who have been particularly hard hit, U.N. rights investigators have said.
The ministry said the publishers of the seven books by Myanmar authors had broken the law by putting out obscene literature without permission and prosecutions would take place.
Radio Free Asia tried to contact some of the publishers and authors of the banned books but was not able to.
One reader in the main city of Yangon said he could not understand why the books were banned. While most were about LGBTQ+ people, they were not obscene, he told RFA.
“These books can be read for entertainment. I don’t think they’re dirty,” said the reader, who highlighted strong characters in DiDi Zaw’s “Match Made in Clouds.”
One Myanmar author, not among those whose books were banned, told RFA that while the expression of sexuality might be considered obscene, there was also the issue of free expression.
“It doesn’t mean that obscenity should be allowed but banning books violates freedom of expression,” said the author who declined to be identified for security reasons.
One member of the LGBTQ+ community said the military represented oppressive chauvinism.
“The army is dominated by chauvinism. So women, children and LGBT people will always be oppressed,” the community member who also declined to be identified told RFA.
“Taking action against books published about LGBT people but considered obscene is oppressing us … It makes me think we have to work harder in the revolution against the junta.”
The U.N. Human Rights Council said in a report last year that Myanmar’s 2021 coup had precipitated an unprecedented human rights crisis.
“Women, girls, and LGBT people are severely and uniquely impacted by this crisis, yet these impacts are all too often obscured and ignored by the international community,” it said.
Edited by Mike Firn
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Burmese.
Gather around dear readers, for it is time to deliver our most popular column of the year. Yes, the InnovationAus.com Ultimate Guide to Summer Reading has landed for 2024. We are traditionalists here. We follow a process. Which is to say that we have reached out to the leaders of our sometimes weird but always…
In this excerpt taken from Chapter 5 of the new book Hungry Beautiful Animals, author and philosopher Matthew Halteman argues that choosing not to eat animals can usher us into a higher state of consciousness.
On the day that a crestfallen bulldog and a carrot-desecrated yard conspired with the universe to convince me of the moral equivalence of dogs and pigs, I would still have been deeply skeptical of the idea that orcas enjoy personal experiences in complex family cultures within a shared dolphin world.
As impressive as dolphins are, I might have argued back then, their accomplishments are still modest compared to skyscrapers and symphony orchestras. And when you’re out there trying to be taken seriously as a vegan, you’re not going to lead with animal biographies, especially those of apex predators allegedly so brutal in their ascendance that they deserve the epithet “killer.”
The only quicker way to achieve Annoying Vegan status is to mount a campaign for termite liberation at a pest control trade show. A better strategy, or so it seemed to me in the early years of going vegan, was to keep the focus tight on shame-inducing comparisons between the two classes of animals that most depend on our mercy: the companions whose bodies we hug, and the “food animals” whose bodies we eat.
As my inner ecology has become more unified and my vegan practice has gained confidence, it’s slowly dawned on me that the stories of free-living creatures striving to flourish in a wider world that provokes their desires and challenges their efforts can powerfully unveil the beauty of a new vegan normal in ways that appealing to the suffering of domesticated animals often cannot. This is certainly not to say that free-living animals are more beautiful or morally important than their domesticated fellow creatures. To render any such comparative judgment absurd, simply feast your eyes on the beauty and dignity radiating from every page of Isa Leshko’s magnificent Allowed to Grow Old: Portraits of Elderly Animals from Farm Sanctuaries. The point is to interrupt our regularly scheduled program of seeing animals primarily in contrast to assumed human ascendence as dependent, oppressed, and suffering, so that exposure to their flourishing might invite us to imagine who they are beyond the human/animal binary that renders them lesser-than before we even know the first thing about them.
Courtesy: Basic Books
By retraining our consciousness of the lives of animals on narratives of free-living creatures doing well, we can transform our default vision of them as underlings, even and especially the domesticated animals we thought we already knew. By these lights, astonishing capabilities for living well on their own terms come brilliantly into focus that must hide in plain sight when we experience animals primarily within the overwhelmingly negative valences of our most common inherited conceptions of them. Instead of seeing animals merely as docile pets, expendable tools, brutal predators, cringing prey, or destructive pests—beings who, in all cases, are either servile underlings we feel entitled to dominate or encroaching aggressors we feel entitled to destroy—we can envision them as potentially flourishing creatures free to pursue ends uniquely their own.
We must achieve heightened awareness of the complex worlds and awe-inspiring capabilities that dignify other creatures and explode our comparative, inaccurate, and ultimately oppressive conceptions of them as subhuman. Because of our collective history of oppressing animals—and indeed, weaponizing the very idea of “the animal” to facilitate the oppression of fellow human beings—it is unsurprising and even fitting that our aspirations to go vegan often begin in lament over the cruel treatment of victims of this oppression. But going vegan can progressively lift us into heightened consciousness of members of other species as creatures whose lives are their own to cherish, beautiful in themselves and alive to possibilities we can never experience even as they provoke our deepest awe and respect.
“Animal consciousness” may sound a little spooky, but I think most of us have ample experience with what I have in mind. Just think of it as the felt human awareness that other animals have personal lives— that they are creatures who, like us, must make their own way in a world that pushes back. To have animal consciousness is to understand at some level, even if only occasionally in inklings, that other animals have lives that matter to them, lives that could be better or could be worse from their own perspective. Such creatures have experiences, desires, abilities to seek things they want and avoid things they dislike, and their desires are often personally inflected. Some dogs eat six pounds of carrots a week while others never touch the stuff.
Courtesy: Basic Books/Green Queen
But all dogs are cognitively, emotionally, socially, and physically invested in doing well for themselves, as their gorgeously shameless trash-rummaging, pre-vacation pouting, backyard showboating, and massage-begging ways attest. Animal consciousness comes in degrees and waxes and wanes situationally in keeping with how presently threatening or invigorating one finds the prospect that human beings are not the only creatures on the planet who cherish doing well. As children, many of us enjoy such high levels of animal consciousness that our fierce caring for the feathered and furry extends even to our stuffed animals (as any unlucky parent who accidentally smothers a plush sloth at bedtime is abruptly reminded). As we age, sustaining such high levels of animal consciousness becomes increasingly inconvenient, as our perceived interests in doing well come increasingly into conflict with those of other animals.
To the extent that our well-being seems to depend on steaks, chops, milk, and eggs, our animal consciousness contracts to the point of seeing animals, if we see them at all, as instinct-driven ambulatory objects ready to serve as tools for human use. But when a squirrel darts in front of the car or a tufted titmouse careens into the house, our consciousness intuitively if temporarily expands to receive these creatures as having interests in striving and surviving that soccer balls and paper planes clearly lack. And every now and then, when a mother mallard emerges from the brush with ducklings in tow, or a family of raccoons crests the garage roof on a moonlit quest for ripening grapes, our animal consciousness can instantaneously dilate into capacious curiosity, wonder, or even awe at their strivings. Most of us have it in us to be dazzled by other animals, at least when their flourishing demands nothing of us. In thrall to this bedazzlement, we can’t help but wish our fellow creatures well.
Aristocracies have always existed at the pleasure of the king and loyally served his interests. Western popular support for our monstrous wars arises from the fact that our material prosperity is inextricably tied to the super profits of colonial and neo-colonial exploitation of the nations of what is now called the Global South. Imperialist super […]
This post was originally published on Estuary Press.
I first came across Karen Armstrong way back in 2007. I read her masterful A History of God and found sweeping account of how mankind has perceived God over the centuries and cultures.
I became a convert and hoovered up numerous of her works, including The Great Transformation, The Battle for God, Buddha, and many more.
However, until opening up Through the Narrow Gate, I had never read anything about Armstrong herself and her own, intense, spiritual journey.
Unlike her other works, Through the Narrow Gate charts seven years of her early life, from 1962 when she decided to become a nun aged interfaith seventeen, to 1969 when she left the convent.
It follows her entering the nunnery as a postulate, her two years as a novice and then her time as a fully-ordained nun including the period when she studied at Oxford for her degree.
That, though, is merely the outline. Within the pages – excellently-written as one comes to expect from Armstrong – are harrowing accounts of physical and mental abuse, anorexia, a mental breakdown, and intense spiritual searching.
I was gripped from beginning to end.
The world that Armstrong describes, immediately prior to Vatican II, was one of a fossilised Victorian spirituality set in amidst the Swinging Sixties.
It is gone now – and from what one reads in the book, that is no bad thing – but her message is still relevant today.
The book pulls on the heart-strings because we can all identify with Armstrong.
Yes, she is young and naïve, but her intentions are pure. She finds normal, materialistic society unsatisfying and yearns for an alternative.
She yearns for God and tries her utmost to find Him through the structure of the Order she has entered.
Yet so much of that Order seems to us, the modern reader, as fundamentally opposed to all that God is. God is Love we are told, yet within the convent, friendship is not difficult but actively discouraged.
As one sister puts it: “[Seek the] Blessing of Loneliness… it gives you a chance to realise your dependence on God, to rely on Him alone”.
Armstrong starves herself of compassion and company and suffers for it. Nor is she the only one.
The episode that touched me most of all was the devastation Mother Imelda felt when her cat, Ming, was hurt. Deprived of human warmth, she looked elsewhere to animals for what her soul needed.
Other types of love are twisted out of all recognition too. The priest, as lonely and frustrated as the nuns, sexually assaults Armstrong, whilst the nuns themselves are shockingly ignorant of their own bodies, kept in a pre-pubescent state by the regime.
Armstrong herself puts it best:
“I’m a better nun now than I ever was in the Cloister. You can be so fearful of loving other people more than God that you can be downright uncharitable.
Surely it is better to love others, however messy and imperfect the involvement, than to allow one’s capacity for love to harden.”
The repression of love is not the only battle she has to fight. The Order aims to kill the individual so that a new, “godlier” being may emerge:
“Only when her old worldly self has been smashed to pieces can God build up from the rubble a new, Christ-centred individual”.
Yet all that this process seems to achieve is a suppression of critical thinking and the institution of blind obedience.
Tellingly, it is when Armstrong begins studying at university, where critical thinking is encouraged, that the whole edifice crumbles.
Today, the number of nuns in religious orders has shrunk dramatically over the decades since Armstrong’s experience. And the nunneries themselves are much more liberal and open. Yet the message remains pertinent.
Whilst the Catholic Church may have done a lot to purge itself of its demons, other conservative, closed faith settings exist where egos are demolished, and women are forced into a straitjacket of domesticated obedience enforced by mental, physical, financial, and spiritual abuse.
They might not be in nunneries, but there are stark parallels between the tales of Armstrong and individuals like Yasmine Mohammed and Deborah Feldman.
Crucially, the antidote to the misogyny and abuse is always the same: contact with the wider world, friendship and love, connections with those who are not in the bubble.
No matter how much she suffered physically or mentally, Armstrong endured within the convent. When put in contact with the world and critical thinking, it only took two years before she left.
Yet even after leaving, like the soldier who has been to war, she carries her trauma with her.
The books ends when she meets up with a lady who used to be Sister Rebecca, another nun who got out. The rendezvous is vital for them both as “no one else understands”.
For those involved in faith-based work (be it interfaith or intrafaith), the message is clear.
Connecting across religious boundaries can make a real difference to people’s lives, but the work does not stop when someone has left the environment of their spiritual abuse.
Indeed, one might say it is only just beginning. Or in Armstrong’s words:
“You couldn’t exchange one life for another simply by a change of clothing. Clothes were only a symbol of something far deeper”.
Which is why I am excited about reading the sequel to this volume, The Spiral Staircase. To be continued!
A Uyghur man named Jappar Ablimit was sentenced to seven years in prison in China’s far western Xinjiang region for possessing ‘illegal’ books, a police officer and a Uyghur living in Turkey told Radio Free Asia.
Ablimit, a resident of Yopurga county in Kashgar, in western Xinjiang, was detained in 2017 during a massive crackdown on Uyghurs by Chinese authorities, said the Uyghur in Turkey, who had heard the news from other Uyghurs. It wasn’t clear when he was sentenced.
In 2014, Chinese authorities ordered Xinjiang’s 12 million mostly Muslim Uyghurs to turn over all books and audio-visual materials deemed “illegal” — mostly religious texts, including the Quran, Islam’s holy book, as well as items like prayer rugs, in the name of stamping out religious extremism.
However, some people did not surrender all such books, or simply forgot where they had put them, the Uyghur in Turkey said.
In 2017, when China conducted the mass detentions on Uyghurs, a few ‘illegal’ books that survived were found when the authorities were searching residents’ houses, he said.
Ablimit appears to have been caught up in that dragnet.
A police officer in Yopurga county contacted by RFA confirmed Ablimit’s arrest and sentence for defying the call to turn over “illegal” books.
The book confiscation is but one of many ways that China has oppressed the Uyghurs.
Since 2017, Chinese authorities have rounded up an estimated 1.8 million Uyghurs in concentration camps, where many have been subjected to forced labor.
Concentration camp survivor Zumrat Dawut, who now lives in the United States, said that when the 2017 crackdown began, some residents threw their ‘illegal’ books in garbage cans or cesspools in her community.
Because of this, the canal in her community in Urumqi was blocked. When it was repaired, a large number of books, including Qurans, were found in the blocked channels, she said.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Shohret Hoshur for RFA Uyghur.
Come to the Royal on the Park in Alice Street Brisbane on Friday, 22 November, for lunch with me (and lots of friends) at 12.30pm. You will receive a signed copy of WALKING WITH THE MAN. As well as enjoying a drink, an Everald Burger and coffee. Plus some excellent speakers. Rebecca Levingston will launch …
Hodee Edwards’ Autobiography 1988 takes you on a journey across vast social, political and geographical spaces, starting with her privileged origins in a wealthy Jewish family in Boston, where she was taught to make up her own mind and never be afraid to tell it like it is. She went to Radcliffe before it was officially part […]
This post was originally published on Estuary Press.
Alaa Abd el-Fattah, who is still in jail in Egypt despite completing his five-year sentence, was selected by PEN Pinter winner Arundhati Roy
British-Egyptian writer, software developer and activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah has been named this year’s PEN writer of courage. The 42-year-old is still in prison in Egypt, despite having completed his five-year sentence for allegedly “spreading false news”.
“Let’s remember that this is an innocent man who has committed no crime, but even so, he will have served his time on 29 September,” Abd el-Fattah’s sister, Sanaa Seif, said last month.
