zenpundit.com

[ by Charles Cameron — juggling far too many balls, here’s white supremacist and Islamist extremism, closing with an Aaron Zelin tweet and a happy — I hope — note on the Taliban & Kashmir ]
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Extremism in general:

CBS, Extremists are using the coronavirus to radicalize and spread conspiracies online

As cities and countries around the world take drastic steps to mitigate the impact of the coronavirus, extremist groups are trying to use the pandemic to radicalize people online.

According to a report released by the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness, “Supporters of domestic and international extremist groups have encouraged followers to conduct attacks during the COVID-19 pandemic to incite panic, target minorities and immigrants, and celebrate the deaths of their enemies.”

Note that: “domestic and international extremist groups” — we need to be on the watch for both domestic and foreign extremist groups.

Likewise:

CTP, Tech & Terrorism: Extremist Groups Leverage Coronavirus Pandemic Online

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White Supremacism, Militias, and Alt-Right, &c:

NYT, The Coronavirus Becomes a Battle Cry for U.S. Extremists

April is typically a busy month for white supremacists. There is Hitler’s birthday, which they contort into a celebration. There is the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, the domestic attack 25 years ago that killed 168 people and still serves as a rallying call for new extremist recruits.

But this April, something else overshadowed those chilling milestones. It was the coronavirus, and the disruption it wreaked on society, that became the extremists’ battle cry.

Embellishing Covid-19 developments to fit their usual agenda, extremists spread disinformation on the transmission of the virus and disparage stay-at-home orders as “medical martial law” — the long-anticipated advent of a totalitarian state.

Politico, DHS warns of increase in violent extremism amid coronavirus lockdowns

Those arrested in the last month include an “anti-government extremist” who threatened to kill New Mexico’s governor over the coronavirus restrictions, and another individual who was arrested late last month for allegedly threatening to blow up the Orlando Police Department’s headquarters — hours after a countywide stay-at-home order was put into effect — because people are being “put … out of work” because of the pandemic.

Charles Bethea, A Coronavirus Turf War in Klickitat County

Betty Barnes, the mayor of Bingen, just to the east of White Salmon, agreed. “I haven’t been lynched yet, but I know some of the guidelines we’re supporting aren’t popular with some people, especially in Goldendale,” she said. “And they’re the ones with the biggest outbreak in our county, so that’s not really understandable to me.”

Sara Burnett, Michigan militia puts armed protest in the spotlight

The “American Patriot Rally” started on the statehouse steps, where members of the Michigan Liberty Militia stood guard with weapons and tactical gear, their faces partially covered. They later moved inside the Capitol along with several hundred protesters, who demanded to be let onto the House floor, which is prohibited. Some protesters with guns — which are allowed in the statehouse — went to the Senate gallery, where a senator said some armed men shouted at her, and some senators wore bulletproof vests.

Craig Mauger, Senator: Threats are ‘about spreading blood’ on Michigan Capitol lawn

Heated speeches at the end of the Michigan Senate session Tuesday featured Democratic lawmakers demanding action to limit guns in the Capitol and the Republican leader denouncing threats against the Democratic governor.

The speeches came less than two weeks after dozens of protesters openly carried firearms inside the Capitol building as they demonstrated against Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s stay-at-home order, which is meant to stem the spread of COVID-19.

CEP, Extremist Content Online: White Supremacists Urge Followers On Telegram To Exploit COVID-19

This week, white supremacist and neo-Nazi accelerationist Telegram channels continued calling for the exploitation of the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, British neo-Nazi group Sonnenkrieg Division (SKD) launched a Telegram channel challenging a membership ban that the British government implemented last month. Also, chan imageboard and Telegram chat users praise Christchurch shooter Brenton Tarrant following his guilty plea.

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Jihadists, AQ and ISIS &c:

The clearest religious rhetoric is found in this piece:

Brad Hunter, ISIS, al-Qaida commandeer COVID-19 as a ‘soldier of Allah’

ISIS and al-Qaida claim that the virus and ensuing global pandemic are retribution on the wicked West courtesy of God.

In typical, flowery al-Qaida style, the death cult released a statement.

“Allah, the Creator, has revealed the brittleness and vulnerability of your material strength,” reads the maniacal missive. “It is now clear for all to see that it was but a deception that could not stand the test of the smallest soldier of God on the face of the Earth.”

The next two headlines speak for themselves:

HS Today, ISIS: Cities Distracted by Coronavirus Should be Hit with Attacks Like Paris, London, Brussels

HS Today, ISIS Magazine Calls for Attacks on ‘Easy Target’ Military, Police During Coronavirus Chaos

Then there’s this, from the esteemed Aaron Zelin:

This past Friday, in al-Shabab’s mosques, it provided guidelines on how to deal with coronavirus in the territory it controls pic.twitter.com/LEyXNOFg5x

— Aaron Y. Zelin (@azelin) May 10, 2020

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I’d like to close on what is, or might be, a positive note:

Taliban & Kashmir:

Taliban acknowledges Kashmir internal matter of India after fake tweets

The Taliban reaffirm their interests extending only to the boundaries of the present state of Afghanistan, and their acceptance of India’s claim to Kashmir –with a detail I explore in Religion meets the coronavirus #13.

[ by Charles Cameron — as some of you may know, my nephew Daniel Harding is a celebrated orchestral conductor — but did you know he was also a qualified commercial pilot? — he’s been planning on taking a year’s vacation to pilot for Air France ]
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I’m very fond of ‘air conducting” music I’m listening to — but that’s just my mode of “dancing while sitting down” as one of my teachers called it. Much more wonderful, IMO, is the work of my nephew, the conductor Daniel Harding. Today I ran across his performance, some years ago, of three Beethoven symphonies with the orchestra he loved and worked with for years, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra.

I’ll share them — Beethoven, Symphonies ## 5, 6, and 7— such bodily enthusiasm, so fresh the well-worn music:

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Here, more recently, is Daniel‘s Beethoven #3, the Eroica, with the London Symphony Orchestra:

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And how could I not offer you Daniel conducting Beethoven #9:

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Daniel, who holds a commercial pilot’s license, was going to take a year’s sabbatical from music to work as an Air France pilot, but .. coronavirus. If I get any news, I’ll pass it along.

[ by Charles Cameron — I wish to acknowledge the impact Prem Rawat has had on my thinking during the course of this lockdown ]
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A sequence of headlines says it all:

The Question:

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Ouch:

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To be Specific:

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The Opportunity:

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The Answer:

Science gives a patina of the factual, the tested, the proven, the real, and fiction allows both the extrapolation of strict science to future possibilities (Larry Niven, Ringworld, if I remember correctly), but also the intrusion of the magical (RA Lafferty, Narrow Valley).

The question is both obvious and pressing, but of all those writing about it, and the essays above are a decent sample, Kim Stanley Robinson is the one with heart and mind most attuned to possible futures — so of all the above essays, hers is the one I’d trust, and would offer you for your consideration. Her thesis, in the small italic print above:

What felt impossible has become thinkable. The spring of 2020 is suggestive of how much, and how quickly, we can change as a civilization.

Chew on that for a while.

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I suspect this is likely to become a series: I’ve accordingly labelled it #1. This is just setting the scene.

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A hint from Maa Ganga, the goddess of India’s most sacred river Ganges:

Deccan Chronicle, Coronavirus caused lockdown is healing the holy Ganga

 
The ganga, which flows through five states and is most polluted in Varanasi — Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s constituency — is now regaining all its lost glory, slowly. Pollution in the sacred river has come down by over 40 per cent and is likely to increase as the lock down continues across the country. Though successive governments including the present Modi government spent thousands of crores in cleaning the ganga and still failed miserably, looks like nature always finds its own way of healing.

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Sources:

Offered here so you can read in detail according to your interests and time
availability:

Adam Gopnik, Will the Coronavirus Pandemic Really Change the Way We Think?

John Cassidy, Will the Coronavirus Create a More Progressive Society or a More Dystopian One?

Rama Mohana R. Turaga, Will COVID-19 Lockdowns Generate Public Support for Climate Change Mitigation?

Siddharth Goel, Public Awareness of the Pandemic Is Our Chance to Enforce Better Climate Plans

Kim Stanley RobinsonThe Coronavirus Is Rewriting Our Imaginations

[Mark Safranski / zen ]

Exit From Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order

I had the pleasure of joining Break it Down Show host Pete Turner in interviewing Dr. Alexander Cooley and Dr. Daniel Nexon, authors of Exit From Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order. Cooley is Claire Tow Professor of Political Science at Barnard College and Director of Columbia University’s Harriman Institute of Russian, Eurasian and East European Studies while Nexon Associate Professor Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University (Dan also blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money and was the founder of the well respected group blog, Duck of Minerva). The two IR scholars have written a tightly argued, scholarly book regarding the potentially seismic shifts underway in the American-led liberal order and the potential directions a “post-hegemonic” world may take.

Without spoiling the show that I hope you will tune into below, Exit From Hegemony blends theory with contemporary geopolitical trends, strategic threats to “exit” the status quo posed by illiberal great powers of rising China and a waning Russia, transnational far-right (and far-left) populism and the role of America since the end of the Cold War up to and including the Trump administration. It’s a fascinating read an illuminating conversation.

[ by Charles Cameron — two book compilations on the virus — one about Christianity, one about world religions — and a handful of articles, plus one paper on cartel use of coronavirus, non-religious but still of interest ]
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I was introduced to two books on the coronavirus pandemic and its impact on religions via the New Religions Movement mailing list. The more interesting by far, from my own point of view, since it is more diverse and yet precise in pinpointing many of its topics, is:

Pierluigi Consorti, Law, Religion and Covid-19 Emergency

Freedom of religion is certainly one of the areas in which the coronavirus confronts religion, and in which on occasion religion may confront the coronavirus — as the breadth of papers here clearly illustrates:

Note in particular, of very specific Christian interests:

Enrica Martinelli, Orthodox Easter Covid-19: Israel allows the opening of the Holy Supulcher to receive the “Light of Resurrection

Pierluigi Consorti, Coronavirus emergency in the monastic autonomous republic of Mount Athos. Contagion without covid-19

Matteo Carni, Vatican City State and Covid-19 emergency

And addressing non-Christian religions:

Caterina Gagliardi, Saudi Arabia’s caution in times of health emergency

Chiara Lapi, The Saffron Wave Against Virus. The Hindu Nationalists and the Covid-19 Emergency

Vasco Fronzoni, In Pakistan the mosques will remain open for Ramadhan but with restrictions

Enrica Martinelli, The Talmud teaches: “When pestilence is in the city, stay inside”

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The second, and more restricted offering is:

Campbell, Heidi, The Distanced Church: Reflections on Doing Church Online

This, as you might imagine from its title, is exclusively concerned with Christianity, albeit globally and across denominational boundaries:

Contributors to this eBook come from ten different countries—within North America, Europe, and the Antipodes—and represent 12 different Christian denominations including Mainline, Catholic, and Nondenominational churches.

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It remains only for me to list a few articles from news sources detailing Saudi and Indian responses to COVID-19:

The Hajj — the major pilgrimage to and circumambulation of the Kaaba in Mecca’s Grand Mosque, obligatory on all Muslims with the means to support it — has been cancelled this year on account of the coronavirus. The most useful account I have run across is:

Ken Chitwood, Hajj cancellation wouldn’t be the first – plague, war and politics disrupted pilgrimages long before coronavirus

Perhaps the most significant disruption of the Hajj occurred in

One of the earliest significant interruptions of the hajj took place in A.D. 930, when a sect of Ismailis, a minority Shiite community, known as the Qarmatians raided Mecca because they believed the hajj to be a pagan ritual.

The Qarmatians were said to have killed scores of pilgrims and absconded with the black stone of the Kaaba – which Muslims believed was sent down from heaven. They took the stone to their stronghold in modern-day Bahrain.

Hajj was suspended until the Abbasids, a dynasty that ruled over a vast empire stretching across North Africa, the Middle East to modern-day India from A.D. 750-1258, paid a ransom for its return over 20 years later.

Also of note is the hadith quoted:

If you hear of an outbreak of plague in a land, do not enter it; but if the plague breaks out in a place while you are in it, do not leave that place.

Compare the title of Enrica Martinelli‘s piece above: The Talmud teaches: “When pestilence is in the city, stay inside” — DoubleQuote !! The hadith is “agreed as authentic” and found in two of the central collections of ahadith, S?ah?i?h? al-Bukha?ri? 5396, and S?ah?i?h? Muslim 2218.

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Varanasi:

I have sung aarti myself in Haridwar, one of the sacred cities beside the Ganges: “Twameva Mata” — “You are my Mother” — appropriate for Mother’s Day. Ah Well, Aarti in Varanasi, the ceremonial depicted above, has been shut down by reason of the coronavirus.

Also largely stopped in Varanasi is cremation at the burning ghats — taken to be a sure route to paradise, with bodies brought in from around India. The Ganges, which carried away

Deccan Herald, Eerie silence looms over Varanasi cremation ghats amid coronavirus pandemic

Hindustan Times, Corona times keep the dead away from Kashi’s holy cremation ghats

Deccan Chronicle, Coronavirus caused lockdown is healing the holy Ganga

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Not to do with religion, but still of interest, is blog-friend Doc Bunker‘s lasted piece:

Robert J. Bunker and John P. Sullivan, Mexican Cartel Strategic Note No. 29: An Overview of Cartel Activities Related to COVID-19 Humanitarian Response

See also this video: