Weekly Grounding #66
Weekly Groundings are published every Friday to highlight the most interesting news, links, and writing I investigated during the past week. They are designed to ground your thinking in the midst of media overload and contribute to Handful of Earth’s broader framework. Please subscribe if you’d like to receive these posts directly in your inbox.
“Lebanon Pager Attacks: The Weaponisation of Everything Has Begun”
Mark Lacy reflects on the implications of Israel’s pager and walkie-talkie attacks in Lebanon for The Conversation. He observes that “any organisation in the 21st century has to be paranoid about the threats of digital disruption and the different ways information and communication can be stolen, monitored and corrupted or manipulated. But turning the everyday tools of communication and information into actual weapons creates a new type of paranoia and fear.”
Lacy writes that the “attacks on pagers and walkie talkies (and possibly even solar panels) in Lebanon is one of those events that many have speculated was on the horizon: the weaponisation of everyday objects in 21st-century conflicts. But there were probably those who thought this ‘weaponisation of everything’ – as security analyst Mark Galeotti puts it – was the stuff of Hollywood movies or cyberpunk crime thrillers. Transforming pagers or phones into explosive devices, in their view, was probably not possible both in technological or logistical terms. It was the type of scenario that only the most paranoid would think could actually become a reality. Yet it has now happened.”
“Israeli Bulldozers Flatten Mile After Mile in the West Bank”
While attention has justifiably shifted to Israel’s wider war in the Middle East over the past week, we should not lose track of the Jewish state’s genocide in Palestine, which continues apace in Gaza and increasingly in the West Bank. This report notes that “Visual evidence analyzed by The New York Times supports accounts from residents about the damage from Israel’s latest raids. Videos filmed in Tulkarm and Jenin show bulldozers destroying infrastructure and businesses, and soldiers impeding local emergency responders [my emphasis].”
The report continues: “Residents in Jenin and Tulkarm, towns with a history of rebellion against Israeli occupation, had long been accustomed to targeted, nighttime raids. But many of them who spoke to The Times said the raids that lasted for nine days in Jenin and even longer in Tulkarm went far beyond, noting that the extent of the damaged roads and infrastructure surpassed any previous assaults.”
“100% Drop In Afghan Opium: How CIA Propped Up Drug Trade For Years”
With Israel gunning for U.S.-backed regime change in Iran, it is essential to consider how previous regime-change operations played out. In this interview on Breaking Points, Seth Harp discusses how the United States turned Afghanistan into the center of the global heroin trade after deposing the Taliban in 2001.
Harp notes that one of the first actions of the U.S.-backed Hamid Karzai government was to legalize poppy cultivation (just five months after the Taliban had completely eradicated it in 2001). Only with the Taliban takeover in 2021 did opium production come to a halt again, finally putting an end to what Harp calls the “the Fort Bragg cartel.”
This Financial Times graph illustrates just how drastic this change has been:
“The Neoliberal Battle for Ukraine’s Reconstruction”
discusses the role of technology in Ukraine’s reconstruction for The New Statesman: “The current war has introduced an innovation on the old formula: the fusion of neoliberal economic policies with cowboy advances in technology, particularly artificial intelligence (AI) and digitalisation. Wartime Ukraine has already seen a dramatic influx of Western donor funds, consultants, experts, engineers and Silicon Valley venture capital. The result has been radical experiments in the introduction of AI-enhanced platforms for mine clearance and the rapid collation of commercial satellite data (both supplied by Peter Thiel’s Palantir); and economic strategies like the ‘fast state,’ a Ukrainian government proposal that envisions a state so streamlined that it ‘disappears in one’s own efficiency.’”Lynch continues: “The government’s ‘fast state’ scheme marries liberalisation with technology. The wildly popular app Diia, which was funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), places ‘the state in a smartphone.’ It allows citizens to access a digital passport (the first in the world), birth certificate, register the birth of a child, and even report Russian collaborators. The app will also be critical to Ukraine’s war reconstruction efforts, as users can use the app to log war damage to property. With typical bombast, Ukraine’s Western partners are touting Diia as a revolutionary tool that will transform the globe. At an event showcasing the app in Washington last year, USAID administrator Samantha Power said that where Ukraine was known as the bread basket of Europe, the country would now also be renowned for the app, ‘an open source, digital public good,’ a gift to the world. That objective would be fulfilled with Washington’s help.”
Way back in Weekly Grounding #3, I discussed reporting on Ukraine’s efforts to become a fully “digital state.” Covid vaccine passports were (as in the twin techno-state of Israel) at the center of this project in Ukraine. Indeed, as The Financial Times reported in 2023: “The country’s prewar economy was dominated by agriculture and heavy industry. But government officials now see tech’s potential as a key pillar, and dream of modelling themselves on Israel.”
“In a First Among Christians, Young Men Are More Religious Than Young Women”
The New York Times offers a fascinating report on the shift in American Christian religiosity from women to men: “Church membership has been dropping in the United States for years. But within Gen Z, almost 40 percent of women now describe themselves as religiously unaffiliated, compared with 34 percent of men, according to a survey last year of more than 5,000 Americans by the Survey Center on American Life at the American Enterprise Institute. In every other age group, men were more likely to be unaffiliated. That tracks with research that has shown that women have been consistently more religious than men, a finding so reliable that some scholars have characterized it as something like a universal human truth.”
The article goes on to note that “The men and women of Gen Z are also on divergent trajectories in almost every facet of their lives, including education, sexuality and spirituality…This growing gender divide has the potential to reshape the landscape of not just religion, but also of family life and politics. In a Times/Siena poll of six swing states in August, young men favored former President Donald J. Trump by 13 points, while young women favored Vice President Kamala Harris by 38 points — a 51-point gap far larger than in other generational cohorts.”
“Young Women Are Starting to Leave Men Behind”
At The Financial Times, John Burn-Murdoch excavates the socioeconomic roots of these religious and political divides between Gen Z men and women: “Across the developed world, the portion of young men who are neither in education, in work nor looking for a job has been climbing steadily for decades. In countries including the UK, France, Spain and Canada there are now more young men than women in effect outside the economy for the first time in history. Unlike young women, these men are generally not occupied by caring for other family members either. They are adrift and likely to be the ones in need of care themselves. More than 80 per cent of this group in the UK report long-term health problems.”
The report continues: “Perhaps most striking of all, 2022 was the first time the average young woman in the UK had a higher income than her male counterpart. This is due in large part to women becoming so much more likely to have a degree and the graduate salary that comes with it, but also to the deteriorating fortunes of non-graduate men, who have gone from earning 57 per cent more than non-graduate women in 1991, to 10 per cent less in 2022.”
Burn-Murdoch concludes: “With socio-economic trajectories heading in different directions, a growing minority of young men and women do not see eye to eye. Young male support for populist rightwing parties is on the rise, particularly among those without jobs and degrees. Violent unrest is more likely with a growing pool of young men with little stake in society or their future. And relationship formation itself is being affected, as growing numbers of female graduates discover a shortage of male socio-economic counterparts, and simultaneously have less need than ever to pair up with a man for financial support. Reversing the slide among non-graduate men will not be easy, nor must it become a zero-sum game with young women, but it is an essential challenge for the decades ahead and will have positive spillovers well beyond those directly affected.”
What grounded your thinking this week? Feel free to share in the comments.
I had no idea about Afghanistan and the last story is not surprising.
The IDF (Israeli Destruction Force) is also destroying infrastructure in Lebanon. Numerous hospitals in south Lebanon and Beirut have been rendered non-functional, and the main crossing between Lebanon and Syria was heavily damaged last night, leaving hundreds of thousands of people trying to flee the fighting stranded.