The Real Life Exorcist: Good vs Evil, Or A Search for Meaning?

The other night I made the mistake of watching The Devil and Father Amorth alone and just before going to bed. The documentary, made by The Exorcist director William Friedkin, follows a real-life exorcism that took place just outside of Rome in the summer of 2016. The film itself, whilst interesting, leaned towards embellishment and shock tactics and should certainly be taken with a pinch of salt. However, Friedkin’s interviews with neuroscientists and psychiatric professionals regarding the tape of the real exorcism warrant discussion, particularly in the light of the recent increasing demand for exorcisms across the western world.

At the beginning of the documentary, Friedkin makes the claim that 500,000 exorcisms are carried out every year in Italy. This is supported by reports that the Vatican is now training exorcists at a greater rate than ever before. In the last decade, the number of trained exorcists in the US has quadrupled from 12 to 50 in an attempt to keep up with demand. In the UK, claims of enforced exorcisms have left people traumatised. This all sounds like Middle Ages witchcraft, but these incidents have all occurred since 2015. The devil is getting busier.

A fascinating book by Jennifer Percy, Demon Camp: A Soldier’s Exorcism details a Christian camp in Georgia that ‘rehabilitates’ US veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through exorcising their demons from them. Many claim that the priests worked miracles. The subject of the book, Caleb, was suicidal and suffering with severe PTSD upon his return from Afghanistan, but it was a dark presence that he felt following his every move that eventually led him to an exorcism. In a bid to rid himself of the ‘Black Thing’, he turned to the priests, and from them he received some respite.

The parallels between demonic possession and mental illness are numerous (consider Caleb’s ‘Black Thing’ and it’s similarity to Winston Churchill’s description of his depression as the ‘Black Dog’ that followed him). Many of the symptoms of demonic possession are also associated with PTSD; watching Cristina’s (the subject of Father Amorth’s exorcism attempt) violent reactions to her exorcism could be compared to the panicked responses to trigger events in sufferers of PTSD – the soldier who hits the ground when a firework explodes behind them – and her claim to not remember the ritual also shares similarities with the experience of PTSD episodes. In Friedkin’s film, a psychiatrist compares Cristina’s reactions to those of patients suffering with delirium and hallucinations.

As someone with an interest in psychology it is easy to reduce stories of demonic possession to something I better understand; mental illness. However, as Friedkin’s interviews with neuroscientists and psychiatrists highlight, it is not always possible for science to explain an individual’s behaviour. There are things in the mind that we simply do not understand. The problem with people, though, is that we do not like what we cannot explain.  Humans are hardwired to find meaning in everything, regardless of whether it is there or not. That is why we might lay awake at night overthinking a single sentence that someone said to us in passing that day – what did they mean, why would they say it like that? It is why we find patterns and pictures in the clouds that pass overhead. Everything has a reason. That much we believe.

But sometimes we cannot find that reason, and that scares the hell out of us. Friedkin introduces Father Amorth by stating that his first fight against evil came as a young man, when he joined the resistance against Mussolini’s fascist regime. As soldiers, revolutionaries, and Hollywood movies will tell you, having something to fight for, or against, will give life meaning. It makes what you are doing worthwhile. Where we stumble is where we do not know what it is that we are fighting. As poor, possessed Cristina put it when describing her desire to take part in her ninth exorcism (as the previous eight had been unsuccessful): “Father Amorth was funny and ironic. He didn’t scare me. He helped me to understand what was happening to me.” Her ‘spiritual illness’ that had resulted in her being unable to keep a job and struggling to maintain relationships now had a diagnosis, and the exorcisms were her treatment. So far they had not worked, but now she had a potential cure she could try.

In the room where the exorcism took place, surrounded by her family and friends, listening to the authoritative words of Father Amorth and feeling the effects of the Rite on the demon inside her, Cristina was fighting her affliction. Her family were fighting it with her. As one psychiatrist interviewed after watching the video put it, together they created a ‘shared meaning’ of the events that unfolded. It gave both Cristina and her family hope that she would be cured. They believed in its effectiveness. Even in psychiatric therapy, before treatment can work the patient must want help, and then they must believe that it will be effective. The patient must be open to the suggestions of the therapist and willing to engage with the process in order for progress to be made. If you believe in it, it will work.

For individuals like Cristina who are suffering and have no diagnosis an exorcism provides context for their affliction. For soldiers like Caleb, who have experienced the most horrific things and are struggling to deal with the psychological consequences of that, a demon makes a good scapegoat. If you know what the problem is you can fight against it, even if that problem is the devil. In an uncertain and unstable world, at a time where we are only just beginning to understand the myriad reasons why we think, act, and feel the way we do, exorcism, as scary as it might be, can be a comfort to some people who need answers. Or maybe that is just what I’m telling myself so I can sleep at night...

The Future of Climate Conflict

The current UK heat wave has left many of us hot, bothered, and ready for the weather to return to business as usual. The Brits are not known for their capacity to deal with prolonged hot weather, but it looks like it might be something we need to start getting used to. According to a recent report by the Met Office and Environmental Audit Committee, UK summer temperatures could regularly reach 38.5°C by the 2040s. Grimly, they warn that this could result in 7,000 heat-related deaths every year by 2050 if the government does not act on improving climate resilience.

Unusual weather patterns such as the current heat wave that has been affecting much of Europe this summer unfortunately have a much wider impact than simply raising ice cream sales. In the UK, just the last few weeks of hot weather have limited crop yields, with fruit and vegetable prices rising across the country due to limited supply. Farmers are often the worst-affected by droughts and heat waves, and whilst life may be a bit more difficult for those in the UK, in other parts of the world the effects of climate change and environmental degradation are having much more serious consequences.

A recent International Crisis Group report highlights the rapidly accelerating violence breaking out between herders and farmers in northern Nigeria. What began as a series of spontaneous attacks and land-grabs between the two groups, who compete for increasingly limited areas of fertile, arable land in the country, has now developed into systematic planned violence that has resulted in 1,300 deaths this year alone. This worsening conflict has already claimed six times more lives than the campaign against terrorist group Boko Haram, who made global headlines by kidnapping over 270 schoolgirls in 2014, and continue to engage in similar acts of violence across Nigeria. The fact that Boko Haram continues to steal headlines whilst this unchecked climate-related violence deteriorates across the country demonstrates the major issue that now faces us globally.

The Overseas Development Institute recently held an event that discussed the issue of disaster risk reduction (DRR) in fragile and conflict-affected states. One of the key issues raised by this discussion was the fact that currently the Sendai Framework, the UN framework for DRR makes no mention of conflict or violence. Natural disasters are considered to be non-political because they are not directly caused by people, and yet it has become clear that resilience to events such as droughts, floods, earthquakes, tsunamis and hurricanes is in fact heavily influenced by politics. No event takes place in a vacuum, and we must consider the way that people will respond when they are forced to compete for increasingly limited resources. The violence in Nigeria paints a picture of what might be to come.

Droughts across Africa have cost millions of lives for decades now, but with global temperatures steadily rising the threat of them becoming longer and more severe is very real. This is already having huge geopolitical consequences across the continent. For example, although the River Nile is so often associated with Egypt, it actually runs through nine countries. The Blue Nile, the larger of its two tributaries, runs from Ethiopia through Sudan where it joins the White Nile to continue on into Egypt. However, Ethiopia, racked by drought and in need of hydroelectric power for its 102 million inhabitants, has begun construction of what will be Africa’s largest hydroelectric dam, the Ethiopia Renaissance Dam. The project has been met with stiff resistance in Egypt, who fear it will cut their supply to the Nile and make their already precarious situation more dire. The fear of a “water war” between the countries is beginning to seem less and less like the plot of a dystopian sci-fi novel and more like something that should be seriously considered. On July 26^th 2018, two days prior to the writing of this blog, the project manager of the dam project, Semegnew Bekele, was found dead with a bullet wound to the head. Although there is no evidence of Egyptian involvement (and such an act would be extremely unlikely), the immediate reaction has prompted conspiracy theories from anti-Egyptian movements in Ethiopia, and will likely further strain the already-tense relationship between governments.

Whilst we rarely think of wars in the form of being about control of resources – they are usually discussed in terms of ethnic or religious differences, or ideological power struggles – the fact remains that often this is a leading cause of conflict. The European colonial campaigns of the 18^th and 19^th centuries were not about “civilising local peoples” or “spreading Western values” but about plundering resources from other parts of the world. Hitler’s advancement through Europe, though heavily couched in the terminology of race, was at-least in part focused on securing economic prosperity for Germany through the “Lebensraum” policy. Even the Cold War – that most ideological of ideological battles – largely concerned securing spheres of economic and political influence for the rival superpowers.

There has been much discussion about whether Syria is, or at least started as, a climate conflict. The argument was that heavy droughts in the years running up to 2011 led to a mass migration of people from rural areas, where they could no longer live off the land, into the cities. This migration exacerbated the difficult living conditions of the cities and led to the 2011 uprising. Whilst this linear, causal explanation is being challenged (and rightly so – there are many factors contributing to the development and severity of the Syrian conflict, as with all wars), it starts to demonstrate the complex interaction between people and the environment. As our environment changes, so will our behaviour.

The Global Footprint Network has named August 1^st as Earth Overshoot Day for 2018, the earliest the date has ever been set. This marks the point of the year where we have used up more natural resources globally than the planet can replace. In effect, as of this date we are working at a net loss to our global biocapacity. We are using resources that will not be replaced. As our pool of means for food, water, fuel, and other necessities dwindles, competition for those essentials will increase. If we want to prevent further violence like we are now seeing in Nigeria, we must reduce our environmental footprint, globally.

Acting sustainably and educating ourselves about our own environmental impact is more important now than ever. Combating climate change is an act of peacebuilding.

Remembering the Past in Sarajevo: Why Remember?

One of the images in Pierre Courtin’s excellent Sarajevo Storage exhibition depicts a packet of king-size Drina cigarettes with a unique warning label: “To forget kills.” Amongst many other powerful images, this stood out. The 2018 WARM Festival, held in Sarajevo and part-organised by the Post-Conflict Research Center, dedicated much of its time to tackling the issue of remembrance in a post-conflict society. Whilst interning with PCRC this was a topic that I also attempted to grapple with.

History weighs heavy on the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina. 20 years after the Dayton Agreement bought an end to the most brutal fighting seen in Europe since the end of the Second World War the ramifications of that conflict continue to influence daily life in Sarajevo and beyond. The young people of BiH are the first generation that do not remember the fighting, but still they live with the burden. As Srđan Šarenac’s film Two Schools Under One Roof demonstrates, today’s youth continue to live in a society divided by ethnicity and religion. The 1995 Dayton Peace Accords are often criticised for reinforcing the ethnic division that led to war in the first place, and the fact that in many parts of BiH students still largely attend different schools based on their ethnicity, studying entirely separate curriculums, shows that not much has changed since the fighting officially stopped on the 14^th December 1995. Even the children of the war generation are not immune to the repercussions of violence.

As artist Aida Šehović puts it, the young people of BiH are the generation that inherited the trauma of the 1990s. Though they do not remember living through the conflict, the memory of violence continues to haunt them. People of my age, 2-3 at the time at the time of the Dayton ceasefire, continue to experience the violence through shared memory. Their parents are often still scarred by the barbarity. Some were victims, some were perpetrators, many were both. Inevitably, they pass that tension on to the next generation. In that circumstance it is surely better to put the past behind us and to forget the horrors of war in a bid to make a go at peace. If remembrance leaves us with the bitter aftertaste of post-conflict divisions, why do we continue to dwell on the past?

Why should we remember conflict?

Aida Šehović’s Što Te Nema art project is a global roving monument to the victims of the Srebrenica genocide. As Šehović explained at the insightful panel discussion on “The Role of Visual Art and Aesthetics in (Re)building Post-Conflict Societies” at WARM, the idea behind Što Te Nema was to provide a safe space for people to talk about Srebrenica and its effect on their own lives, no matter how big or small. The project is taken to cities around the globe, where 8,373 cups of Bosnian coffee are prepared and laid out on the street, one for each victim of Mladić’s soldiers on 11/7/1995. The concept for the project was developed through conversations with the wives and mothers of the Srebrenica victims, who said that they missed their husbands and sons the most when they made coffee and had nobody to drink it with. Što Te Nema allows those affected by the massacre to talk about their feelings (and as Aida explained, once they start talking about it they often cannot stop) and lets those with no direct connection learn about what happened.

Art alone cannot change the past or affect the future. But, when done well, it can provoke a response and hopefully it can inspire others to make change. The incredibly powerful film that closed the festival – Silent War, directed by Manon Loizeau and detailing the systematic use of rape by the Syrian regime to destroy the morale of the resistance following the 2011 revolution – features a particularly moving scene near to the end where one of the courageous victims of torture and rape addresses the director, and the audience, directly. She states that people will watch the film, be shocked and saddened by what they have seen, and then leave the theatre and get on with their lives. In the discussion that followed an audience member asked exactly what it was that we, as individuals who are not directly affected or involved in the horrors we had just witnessed, could in fact do. Short of picking up arms and taking on Bashar al-Assad’s forces ourselves, it seemed like a hopeless situation.

Tanya Domi, Professor at Columbia University and President of the Board at PCRC, went some way to answering this question in a debate that occurred earlier in the festival. The closing of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) last year sparked debate over whether or not justice had in fact been served to the perpetrators of so much human suffering over the course of the conflicts that tore the Western Balkans apart. As Tanya put it, even when the judgement laid down by the courts on perpetrators of crimes against humanity is seen as sufficient (and in many cases it is not) then even that is only the beginning of real justice and reconciliation. The victims of conflict live with the trauma forever, and even when the law and politics fail to bring them the justice they deserve, seeing people around the world remembering their suffering and acknowledging their humanity can be extremely cathartic.

I started my trip back to Sarajevo in the Jewish Museum, where I learned about the individual stories of those targeted by the Nazi regime on Kristallnacht and later throughout the Western Balkans as the occupiers spread their brutality around Europe. After WARM, I found myself returning to the quote that stuck with me on that first day, “’Never Again?’ Hardly. The world has stood by and done nothing countless times since 1938, and will doubtless do so again.” It is very easy to say that there is nothing that we, as ordinary people, can do to tackle those who are willing to commit genocide. But accepting that is equal to standing by and doing nothing. What we can do, whoever we are, is challenge the rhetoric of hate and violence when we come across it. What we can do is listen to the stories of survivors and learn from them. What we can do is recognise the warning signs that people are being targeted in everyday life, long before it gets to the point of violence experienced in Srebrenica and being seen today in Syria, and speak out against them. What we can do is acknowledge others’ suffering and stand beside them. What we can do is recognise the basic humanity in those who others do not.

I am extremely grateful for the opportunity to return to Sarajevo and I am inspired by the amazing people who put together the WARM festival and continue to work in such difficult situations around the world in order to shed light on the stories of those we might otherwise forget. Whether those stories inspire us to act right now on a particular issue, or whether they just encourage us to think differently about the news as it continues to unravel from warzones around the world, what matters is that we pay attention, and we remember them. To forget kills.

Remembering the Past in Sarajevo: The Jewish Museum

The Jewish Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina is located in a beautiful cobbled courtyard not far from the attention-grabbing Gazi Huzrev-beg Mosque in Sarajevo’s Old Town. Small in size and modestly sign-posted as it is, it nevertheless manages to squeeze several fascinating exhibitions into the old synagogue in which it resides. The history of the Jewish population in BiH is as varied, and at times tortured, as the country itself, and the museum provides an insight into the story of a unique people as they carved out their place in Balkan history.

Although there is evidence of some small and often transient Jewish settlements in the Balkans during the Greek and Roman times, the modern Jewish population largely came to the region following the expulsion of the Sephardim from Spain in 1492 (resulting in another unique quirk in Bosnian history, with these early Jewish settlers being Spanish-speakers). After this first influx, Sephardim and Ashkenazi Jews then began to settle in the Balkans. Although under Ottoman rule they had no political rights and were forced to pay higher rates of taxes than the Muslim population (as all non-Muslim groups were), inter-group relations were generally good and the Jewish community began to thrive (as briefly discussed in my last Sarajevo blog, Rise of a Titan). By 1840 Sultan Abdul-Medzid would grant the Jewish population with the rights to open their own schools and enable free use of synagogues, in addition to appointing a hahambasha, or chief priest, for all of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

The museum paints a colourful picture of the Jewish community and their mutually beneficial relationships with other peoples in the region. Unfortunately, as history demonstrates, this was not to last forever. Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, took place over the 9^th and 10^th of November 1938 across Germany and Austria and left 91 Jews dead, 7,500 businesses destroyed, and 267 synagogues burned. It was only the start of what was to come as the Nazis began their campaign of annihilation and began to transport their hatred across Europe. The Nazis would succeed in occupying Yugoslavia on 17^th April 1941, and removal of the Jewish people would begin in earnest.

As has been the case with so many of my experiences in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the stories that remain with me from this exhibition are the ones of the people that stood up for what was right in times of such unimaginable desperation. The Righteous Among the Nations are a selection of individuals honoured by Yad Vashem, a Holocaust memorial museum in Jerusalem, who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust. In the Jewish Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina 54 of these heroic individuals are remembered. Their stories are inspirational and should stand as an example of people’s capacity to do good to other people, even in the darkest of times.

Zora Sebek-Krajina, a woman in the Italian zone of Mostar who housed the German-Jewish refugee Fritz Cahn and then helped him to make contact with Tito’s Partisans to fight back against the Nazi occupiers, and who also helped other Jews to escape by providing them with Muslim clothes and identification so that they could leave Yugoslavia untroubled.

Vid and Mato Milosevic, carpenters in Sarajevo who hired their main competitor, Leon Altaraz, after he was compelled to close his shop by the Nazis, and then began to hide even more Jews in their shop when the Nazi police became death squads. They would eventually be found out and sent to Jasenovac concentration camp in 1941.

Ratko Jankovic, a railway authority employee who smuggled a family out of Sarajevo by getting them to pose as a doctor and sick patient, and guarding their carriage by informing the officers that the disease was extremely contagious and they should not enter. He also provided Muslim clothing and identity papers to Hagara Kajon, who was smuggled out of Sarajevo and would later join the Partisans.

These are just some of the names that should be remembered for outstanding acts of bravery when their own lives were not on the line. The Kristallnacht exhibition ends with a photo of the smashed windows of a Jewish store and the quote: “’Never Again?’ Hardly. The world has stood by and done nothing countless times since 1938, and will doubtless do so again.” Bosnia-Herzegovina knows all-too-well that this seemingly cynical message in fact holds true – the 11-07-95 Srebrenica exhibition just down the road can attest to that – but the Righteous Among the Nations exhibition that closes out the Jewish Museum demonstrates that there are many people out there who do not stand by and do nothing. Unfortunately, these people are often lost in the violence that they stand up against and their actions are forgotten in the face of the evil they rejected.

I have come back to Sarajevo to attend the WARM Festival 2018, which aims to answer the question “Why remember?” after conflict. It seems that we often tend to remember the worst in humanity. But even in those worst of times there are ordinary people doing extraordinary good.  Perhaps it is time to focus on them, and remember those that risked everything for basic humanity.

Sergei Skripal: Facts, Counter-Facts, and a New Type of War

The immediate aftermath of the Skripal poisoning produced some unlikely, Bondesque assassination theories. Many came from the British tabloids; the poisoned beer, the Russian in the rafters of the Zizzi restaurant where Sergei and Yulia had lunch that day or the poison wafted through the air vents of Skripal’s car, and yet even more came from the Russian media, who blamed everyone from terrorists to Theresa May and the CIA. The panellists of the recent Guardian Live event The Skripal Case: A New Cold War? were under no illusion that this attack could have been orchestrated in any way other than through the Kremlin and viewed the Russian response as little more than direct obfuscation and an attempt to muddy the waters as the investigation developed. But then, can we ever really be sure?

Many of the facts that emerged in the aftermath of the poisoning seemed to raise more questions than they answered. Why Sergei Skripal, a retired GRU agent who was surely a nuisance to the Kremlin but had been out of the loop for many years and whose days of selling state secrets were far behind him? And, if they wanted him dead, why use Novichok, an untested nerve agent that caused considerable collateral damage but ultimately failed to kill the target? Surely, the trained killers of Russian military intelligence would not have bungled an assassination attempt so catastrophically? Does that mean Skripal was in fact not the target at all? Why now, at a time of heightened tension between Russia and the West, and during a particularly tempestuous time in British politics (and just two weeks before Russia’s Presidential elections)?

As panellist Steven Morris pointed out, in many cases the point of chemical warfare is to destabilise the target population, as people do not necessarily know what is happening at first, whether there is a continued risk of exposure, or what the effects may be. This can lead to disorientation, false flags for further danger, and sometimes panic. The Skripal attack certainly destabilised not just Salisbury but the British establishment. The calls to hold Moscow to account for the attack were met with rebuttals in Parliament from Jeremy Corbyn, who argued that more evidence was needed before the finger was pointed eastwards. The foreign secretary Boris Johnson fumbled his way through a press conference in which he asserted that the British defence science laboratory at Porton Down (coincidentally located only five miles from Salisbury) had told him “unequivocally” that the Novichok agent had come from Russia, a claim that Porton Down later denied. Theresa May, who was commended for her level-headed handling of the crisis, nevertheless was forced to share high-level intelligence with her French and German counterparts in Brussels to provide evidence of Russia’s involvement at a time where relations between these allies are particularly strained (leaving panellist Anne Applebaum to pose the interesting question of how events may have unfolded had Britain already left the EU and May had been unable to meet with Merkel and Macron in Brussels so soon after the event).

The European and American response to the poisoning did in the end represent a relatively united front against the Russian attack, and yet Moscow continued to deny, deflect, and counter-accuse. It does not appear that they have been successful in convincing anybody in the West that they are innocent of this crime, and yet, as audience member and former GCHQ Director Sir David Omand pointed out, perhaps again the point is not to convince, but to pollute the media and the discourse. This “implausible deniability” has been cultivated by the Putin administration for some time now and is paying dividends in terms of how the president is viewed both at home and abroad.

Much attention has been paid to Putin’s close advisor Vladislav Surkov, who is rumoured to have written a short story under the pseudonym of Natan Dubovitsky, Without Sky, that details “the world’s first non-linear war”, where truth and fiction are blended to confuse and disorient the public, and where the goal of war is not victory but to reach a point where it is hard to know if there is even a war at all. The story, which appeared just one month before Russia’s annexation of the Crimea and subsequent backing down from the brink of full-scale conflict in eastern Ukraine, has been credited as a road-map for Putin’s new “hybrid warfare”, which merges traditionally militaristic posturing with new technologies and covert operations to create disorientation and alarm in the West. The fact that nobody really knows if Surkov is the author of the story or not encapsulates exactly what this new information war is trying to achieve. Historically, propaganda aimed to create a narrative. Today, Putin’s propaganda machine wants to obscure that narrative and leave his audience in a state of unease and instability.

A similar campaign of disinformation to that viewed after the Skripal poisoning emerged following the shooting down of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 by Russian-backed rebels in Eastern Ukraine in 2014, with the Kremlin denouncing investigations identifying a Russian-made missile as a cause of the crash, suggesting that the satellite imagery showed the missile did not come from a rebel-held area, then blaming a Ukrainian fighter pilot for shooting down the passenger flight and even hinting at tacit EU/US involvement. Meanwhile, the rebels themselves first claimed responsibility for the attack through Twitter, then denied it.

The rabbit hole goes deeper as Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 US election uncovers growing evidence to suggest that collusion between Trump staff and Russian officials was ongoing throughout the election cycle. Trump himself has denounced the investigation as ‘fake news’, but fake news, it seems, is what Putin excels at. Several of the Guardian Live panellists discussed their personal interactions with social media “trolls” who spread misinformation about them that quickly dissipated from social media to news outlets and influential figures such as Julian Assange, who posted inaccurate information about journalist Anne Applebaum that had originated from a “troll”. As the panellists acknowledged, some of these methods are relatively crude, with fake social media bots and individuals posting obviously fake stories or claims about their target, but the US-election meddling claims suggest a far more sophisticated disinformation campaign that may be headed by the Kremlin.

The world of spies and assassination is one that is rife for embellishment and provides a situation where conspiracy theories can run rampant, but with suggestions of interference in foreign elections and the Twitter account of the Russian embassy in the UK posting jokes at Britain’s expense on their feed, this information war is making its way into the mainstream. Journalists and citizens who are careless with their sources can perpetuate these lies, and when enough people believe them they can quickly become truths. Whether it’s a sophisticated propaganda machine orchestrated by the Kremlin, the White House, Downing Street, or a single troll on a computer in their living room, the information age has made deception ever simpler, and it would appear we are teetering on the edge of the abyss of post-truth. It has never been more important to check your sources, question what you are told, and verify information before passing it on. The technological advances of the internet and the instantaneousness of knowledge from around the world has been misused not just by unscrupulous individuals in their basements, but increasingly by the leaders of the world. And this has led us to the brink of the disinformation age.

A big thank you to Guardian Live for chairing an enlightening discussion at their recent event, and to the panellists who gave some unique insight into what the case means for Russia, the West, journalists, and all of us.

Find out more about Vladislav Surkov here https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/26/kremlin-puppet-masters-leaked-emails-vladislav-surkov-east-ukraine

To learn more about the phenomenon of Russian bots you can read this

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/19/russia-fake-news-salisbury-poisoning-twitter-bots-uk

The Imperial War Museum - War, Peace, and Human Nature

The Holocaust exhibition at the Imperial War Museum details the slow-burn rise of the Nazis that would culminate in one of the most heinous acts of human history. It demonstrates in often harrowing and graphic detail the acts and the actors that would turn the world’s stomach. Within those walls are images of normal people, helpless families torn apart by industrialised death camps; fathers, mothers, and children would never see each other again. Ordinary soldiers, hardened by years of battle who became violently sick upon discovering the camps. Simple-minded, average bureaucrats who would stoop to the depths of depravity in order orchestrate Hitler’s final solution. One is left to wonder how something like this could ever have happened.

The Holocaust exhibition is just the most extreme example of the exhibits on display at IWM that can lead you to question how inherently ‘good’ people may actually be. From the First World War through Cold War history to the Falklands, Northern Ireland and the current War on Terror, IWM attempts to show how conflicts develop and evolve through their lifespan, as well as focusing on their devastating consequences. You can view the heavily armoured ‘pig’ vehicle that British soldiers used on British soil as Northern Irish families were torn apart by decades-long violence, art depicting the futility and horrors of the most recent War on Terror, First World War gas masks that look like horror film props, and an area dedicated to that most terrifying weapon of all; the nuclear bomb. It is hard not to be shocked by the brutality of conflict.

And yet next to these vehemently anti-war exhibits are others that seem to romanticise warfare, like the Family at War exhibition that details the lives of an ordinary British family surviving the Blitz. I found myself fascinated by their stories, and perhaps spent longer in this section of the museum than any other. At the top floor of IWM is the final exhibit, coming directly after the Holocaust display, entitled ‘Extraordinary Heroes’ and dedicated to telling the stories of Victoria and George Cross medal winners. Again, here I was fascinated by the tales of people who pushed themselves beyond their limits to become role models for bravery and sacrifice.

The IWM captured the dissonance between my disgust at the horrors of war and the deep interest in individual war stories that I continue to have. It begs the question that if I, and so many of us, have a deep aversion to conflict and do not wish to see people harmed or killed, why do we still have such a deep fascination with war? There is something about warfare that seems to be deeply linked to humanity, despite the fact that we often refer to acts committed in conflict as inhuman. Wars have occurred for as long as humans have existed, and there is no denying the political benefits of waging a “good war”. Margaret Thatcher revitalised her support from the UK public by winning a war half a world away in the Falklands, and George Bush surged to a landslide victory in 2004 after launching disastrous campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. A quote that always sticks with me from the documentary that accompanied the incredible TV show Band of Brothers is from the daughter of one of the men of Easy Company, who died in his 90s well over half a century after the war ended, and asked to be buried next to his comrades who had died back in 1944/45. He had come home from war, had a family, an entire new career, made new friends and lived a dozen different lives, and at the end he felt closest to people he had known for no more than a few years a lifetime ago. A quote on the wall of IWM from Harry Patch, the last surviving First World War veteran tells the same story: “I tried for 80 years to forget it, but I can’t.” He died in 2009 and was buried with full military honours nearly a century after his service. Hundreds of people lined the streets to view his funeral procession, waving Union Flags.

People are fascinated by war stories, and there is more to our flirtation with conflict than just the action-movie excitement. As Thatcher’s and Bush’s election victories and the stories of brothers-in-arms demonstrate, war unites people in a way that nothing else does. We are never more together than when we are against someone else. This tribalism has run through the human experience for as long back as you care to look. Petty differences within groups are forgotten when you have to unite against another enemy, and this “us-vs-them” mentality gives life meaning. Humans are a social species, and the need for a strong, positive in-group image is key to our mental health. Our family, friendship groups, and those we associate with make up a huge part of who we are. This is not always a bad thing, but unfortunately the intense comradeship nurtured by warfare demonstrates that all too often our similarities are defined by our opposition to something, or, more specifically, someone else.

Looking at social identity through the lens of conflict highlights the darker side of humanity, the very human phenomenon that we often refer to as inhumane. When we consider someone to be like us we feel a strong connection to them. We want to protect them and that relationship, and when pushed that can lead us down a very dark path. The most extreme form of this is demonstrated by a quote in IWM from an SS colonel on his reasoning behind supplying the Nazi Einsatzgruppen with gas vans to enable their murder of “subhuman” Nazi enemies: “What was uppermost in my mind at the time was that the shootings were a great strain on the men involved and that this strain would be removed by the use of gas vans”. A Nazi commander, directly responsible for one of the most heinous atrocities ever committed, was concerned about the strain that mass extermination was putting on the health of his men. That is why it is wrong to call war and atrocity crimes inhumane. Unfortunately, they are not just a human phenomenon, but a uniquely human phenomenon, caused in part by our desire to protect our own group regardless of the cost to others who we view as different to ourselves.

War can bring out the absolute worst in humanity, but it also brings us together in a way that nothing else does. Why it takes something as extreme as conflict to make us feel united is something to be reflected on. This phenomenon of uniting against a common enemy flows through our culture as well, with any number of films, books, TV series building on that theme of coming together to defeat an evil ‘other’. Even in science fiction, if the Earth is united it is against an alien foe. Are our relationships defined by what we are opposed to? Do we have to have an enemy in order to be united? Could we ever see ourselves as one group, one human race, with no need for an enemy to fight against to give ourselves a sense of meaning? Why am I, as someone who would consider myself to be anti-war in most circumstances, so fascinated by the stories of comradeship, bravery and heroism that warfare produces? Is it in human nature to fight, or is the centuries-long history of global conflict something that we can eventually turn our back on?

The Imperial War Museum cannot answer these questions, but it certainly makes you think about them.

St Anthony’s Eco Project – Education as a Force for Change in Rural India

2016 saw the lowest level of rainfall in 140 years in Tamil Nadu, India. For the rural population of this southern Indian state, the resulting impact on their capacity to meet their basic water needs has been catastrophic. With reports surfacing that the knock-on impact of this drought has been an 80% water deficit for the region and a 42% decline in suitable cropping area, local people are naturally concerned about their future. Attempting to raise awareness around this impending crisis, local environmental campaigners have asserted that this drought is “predominantly man-made”, which has prompted further fears. If this extreme drought is not simply a once in a 140-year occurrence, but rather a result of man-made climate change and regional environmental degradation, then similar events can be expected with increasing frequency and severity. The 2017 monsoon season, while more fruitful than the previous year, still saw below average rainfall.

As unfortunately seems to often be the case, it is the rural populations in Tamil Nadu, who contribute the least to global climate change, that must endure the brunt of its effects. The small village of Kanji, around 5 hours drive from the state capital of Chennai, is no exception. For many of the local families the wells are running dry and the sustainability of their water supply is a long-term concern. Steps must be taken to ensure that local people know how to protect themselves against the drought and how to make the most of their limited resources.

This is a concern that St Anthony’s Matriculation School, an independent school that provides education for many of the poorest residents in Kanji, is taking very seriously. In an effort to educate their students about the importance of being environmentally conscious, the school has founded an Eco Club consisting of a group of 120 students and 10 staff members to lead the way in sustainability initiatives. Despite only being created this year, the club has already run successful campaigns to limit the use of plastic bags and bottles within the school, and to encourage healthy eating practices through a vegetable patch grown on the school grounds. In addition to this, the club arranged a trip to visit a recycling plant to learn more about how to tackle the issue of excess waste.

Perhaps most impressive is the tree-planting efforts of the club, who have designated the first Saturday of every month as “Tree Planting Day” and have succeeded so far in planting over 1,000 trees on school grounds and 600 in the surrounding villages. Trees provide a strong defence against drought and monsoon flooding by absorbing and storing water that may otherwise be lost as run-off, and improve local air quality. Students are encouraged to take ownership of the trees, and tree planting in the villages was suggested as a way to encourage the students to teach their families and friends what they have been learning through the Eco Club.

The club’s future plans are to attend a two-day long eco camp to learn more about environmental conservation, and to organise regular speakers to visit and inspire the students. St Anthony’s School has already achieved so much with its limited resources, and now they are looking ahead to not just educating their students, but to improving the lives of people in their local community through leading the way in environmental conservation under particularly challenging conditions. We could all stand to take notice of their efforts and think about how we can change our habits to protect the only planet that we have. These remarkable individuals, and this remarkable institution, are demonstrating the amazing difference that small, community-led efforts can have on the lives of people facing great uncertainty.

I am very fortunate to be able to hear about the fantastic work of St Anthony’s staff and students through my involvement with The Kanji Project, a UK-based charity that provides support to the school, as well as other community-based institutions in Kanji. We are hoping to help raise the funds required to send these passionate Eco Club members to the eco camp mentioned above. If you would like to find out more, or to help us to achieve this goal, please visit our website (https://thekanjiproject.org.uk/) where you can find ways to get involved and to contact us.

Further reading:

http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/chennai/drought-in-tamil-nadu-mostly-man-made/article19181865.ece

https://scroll.in/article/840515/not-everyone-gets-a-monsoon-tamil-nadu-is-still-reeling-from-the-worst-drought-in-140-years