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… read about India’s descent to fascism from one of its foremost authors.

Author Arundhati Roy, who received the 45th European Essay Prize on Sept. 12, 2023, used her remarks to state plainly how she understands the present and ongoing crisis in India. She explains [[link removed]] that her essays over the last 25 years “have mapped, step by step, India’s descent (although some see it as an ascent) into first majoritarianism and then full-blown fascism. Yes, we continue to have elections, and for that reason, in order to secure a reliable constituency, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s message of Hindu supremacism has relentlessly been disseminated to a population of 1.4 billion people. Consequently, elections are a season of murder, lynching and dog-whistling — the most dangerous time for India’s minorities, Muslims and Christians in particular.” Roy’s full speech walks through, in great detail, the fusion of business interests with reactionary violence, the long history of pogroms overseen by Narendra Modi, first as regional governor and then as prime minister, and the way such ethnic cleansing persists with the tacit endorsement from Western leaders. Roy writes, “Soon, if Modi wins in 2024, all avenues of dissent will be shut down. None of you in this hall must pretend you didn’t know what was going on.”

State, Less

Nation-states built around linguistic and ethnic identity have never really reconciled well with the diverse and varied patterns of human settlement. The existence of other ethnic and linguistic communities within a nation have often, in the process of national consolidation, been addressed by violence, pogroms, purges, and cleansings. So appears to be the likely fate of Nagorno-Karabakh, a region inhabited by Armenians but now, following a long blockade and a rapid capitulation under threat from the military of Azerbaijan, the site of a growing exodus [[link removed]]. Writing for CrimethInc. [[link removed]], several anarchists from the region offered their perspectives on recent wars and capitulations.

A Russian anarchist living in Yerevan, Armenia, writes that this “is indisputable that any victory for Azerbaijani militarism or Turkish imperialism will represent a setback for anarchists and other social movements, because it will establish a military regime in the conquered territories that will intensify and expand both outward and inward. All of this will become scorched earth for anti-authoritarians.”

Sona, an Armenian anarcha-feminist, witnessed two different protests against the government of Armenia, one from a nationalist right, the other attempting to shame Russia for failing in its role as peacekeepers. With likely states of further capitulation, a reactionary coup, or becoming an enclave dependent upon the Kremlin, Sona sees the work of the future not in forcing a present change of government but in people directly taking care of the influx of refugees.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] Choo choo choose resilience

Life in cities persists during wartime. While Kyiv is no longer a front line in the Russian invasion of Ukraine, an outside observer could be forgiven for thinking that, as part of the wartime effort, the city has cut back on transit service. And indeed, it has: to 6-7 minute off-peak headways, a frequency rare under the best circumstances in many North American transit systems. How, exactly, did Ukraine pull that off? S.Y. Lee, writing at S(ubstack)-Bahn [[link removed]], explores how the characteristics of Soviet metro design, combined with Ukraine’s large transit workforce, make it all possible.

One design choice is trains built so deeply underground it is hard for events above ground to disrupt them. Writes Lee, “Both Kyiv and Moscow sport stations very deep underground. Kyiv’s Arsenalna Station is the second deepest station in the world at 105 meters underground; it takes 5 minutes via escalator from the entrance to platform. Both Kyiv and Moscow were tunneled deep underground with the dual purpose of stations serving as bomb shelters from a foreign enemy. Its builders could have never fathomed Arsenalna and other Kyiv Metro stations would be used to shelter residents from Russian bombs.”

Other design choices matter a lot, like prioritizing train throughput and the short lengths of the lines, but making it all work is the size of the workforce. Before the war, Kyiv Metro had 8,000 employees, all maintaining a metro with just 52 stations. (By contrast, Madrid in Spain has 7,000 employees for a 300-station metro, while BART in the Bay Area has 50 stations and 3,000 employees).

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] DEEP DIVE Tilting at Windmills: Part I

As the northern hemisphere lurches into fall, cool breezes become crisp winds, and the lurch of climate adaptation switches from powering air conditioning to powering heat. The respite from staggeringly hot summers, increasingly common in our warming 21st century, should allow cooler heads to prevail as countries and communities find ways to adapt to the needs and realities of a warming future. One of the best tools on hand are wind turbines, especially in places like the plains of North America or the windswept northeast of New England in the United States and Quebec in Canada.

Yet, despite this seemingly obvious marriage between the winds that mark the season and the changes needed to preserve the climate, opposition to wind power in North America is growing.

In “ Prevalence and predictors of wind energy opposition in North America [[link removed]],” authors Leah C. Stokes, Emma Franzblau, Jessica R. Lovering, and Chris Miljanich examine the specific nature of resistance to abundant green energy across the United States and Canada.

“Across North America and Europe wind projects have faced local opposition. Resistance to wind energy development presents a significant challenge for the energy transition, as the rate of wind energy deployment needs to accelerate rapidly to meet decarbonization targets,” the authors write.

That opposition is quantifiable. The authors created a comprehensive dataset of wind projects across the United States and Canada from 2000 to 2016, an important range that includes the pre-Trump administration and pre-pandemic eras. The authors tracked both successful and unsuccessful opposition to the wind projects, noting that even unsuccessful opposition can still slow the development and deployment of turbines. Types of opposition recorded were physical protests, legal actions, legislation, and/or letters to the editor.

“In the United States, wind projects experiencing opposition were located in areas with larger percentages of White people, and lower percentages of Hispanic people. These race and ethnicity variables are by far the strongest predictors of opposition,” the authors write. In Canada, race was not a useful variable of difference, because “places where wind projects were developed were on average 97% White, leaving little room for variation.”

Partisanship was shown to be a meaningful variable in Canada, as the Liberal Party was instrumental in crafting policy that streamlined and sped up authorization for wind projects. In both countries, wealth was an indicator of a group’s opposition to wind power. When it came to protests, the numbers of protesters required for a write-up in the press were small: a median of 23 people in the United States and 34 in Canada. Opposition increased around both large projects, with numerous turbines, and against projects with taller turbines.

The authors conclude, “Building on this work, we find that Whiter and wealthier communities are slowing down and blocking wind projects across North America. Opposition to clean energy is a privilege. It imposes pollution burdens on poorer communities and communities of color, as it slows down the transition away from fossil fuel electricity sources overwhelmingly placed in their backyards.”

LEARN MORE [[link removed]]

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] RECEIPTS

Gerry Hadden spoke [[link removed]] with Moroccans in Spain, trying desperately to collect and send supplies to the country to help people in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake on Sept. 8, 2023. With a magnitude of 6.8, the earthquake and subsequent destruction have killed nearly 3,000 [[link removed]] while leaving thousands more without shelter. “I’m trying to organize the chaos,” Mohammed Alamí told Hadden. Alamí runs Friends of the Moroccan People, known by its Spanish acronym ITRAN, and has been collecting material donations in Spain to send to local mosques for redistribution. Done through secondary channels, it is hard to ensure it will all arrive.

Kristina Jovanovski interrogated [[link removed]] the bureaucratic obstacles in Germany that hinder the employment of asylum seekers, even as Germany experiences a labor crisis. One acute way this is felt is the influx of migrants from Ukraine, who arrived fleeing the war in that country, and under a guarantee by the European Union granting such asylum seekers the right to work. “Many refugees deal with the mental health impacts of having to flee a crisis and do not have time to prepare themselves for moving to another country, such as by learning the language or collecting documents to verify their qualifications,” wrote Jovanovski.

Ari Daniel waded [[link removed]] into the black-sand beaches of American Samoa, home to a curious phenomenon: coral that is thriving even as the oceans warm. Across the globe, coral ecosystems have often been leading indicators of crisis, as warm waters bleach colonies and cause death. In Samoa, the coral is resilient. “It’s a good feeling that we have something of great value here,” Valentine Vaeoso told Daniel. Vaeoso, the former national coral reef management fellow on the island, continued, “That it’s possible that we have the answer that can help our brothers and sisters from other parts of the world to protect these amazing marine ecosystems.”

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] WELL-PLAYED

The wake of the quake, visible from space [[link removed]].

DC stands for Dictator Comics [[link removed]].

This wake for Irish Twitter [[link removed]] is full of gems. Here’s one: “And while “X” may continue to exist for some time like hair and fingernails growing on a corpse, the recent exodus feels like an ending.”

Maybe the Senate would be open to a new dress code once they find out how easier it is to hide cash and gold bars [[link removed]] in hoodies than suits.

Assassins screened [[link removed]].

All Wikipedia rabbit holes eventually lead to Roman roads [[link removed]].

How the US could lose a stealth jet is only a mystery for people who have never interacted with the US military [[link removed]].

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Critical State is written by Kelsey D. Atherton with Inkstick Media.

The World is a weekday public radio show and podcast on global issues, news and insights from PRX and GBH.

With an online magazine and podcast featuring a diversity of expert voices, Inkstick Media is “foreign policy for the rest of us.”

Critical State is made possible in part by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

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