Bloodied, Soiled

Bloodied, Soiled Read about the election of Gustavo Petro and Francia Márquez in Colombia. Received this from a friend? [SUBSCRIBE]( CRITICAL STATE Your weekly foreign policy fix. [The World]( [INKSTICK]( If you read just one thing … … read about the election of Gustavo Petro and Francia Márquez in Colombia. In the wake of years of violence and under the threat of reactionary armed paramilitaries, Colombia elected its first left-leaning government ever on June 19. In a runoff vote that saw the right establishment back a construction mogul with an outsized social media platform, a pro-democracy coalition headed by Gustavo Petro and Francia Márquez clinched the vote for president and vice president, respectively, thanks largely to increased turnout from Afro-Colombian and Indigenous areas along the Pacific and Caribbean coasts of the country. “Unlike other progressive governments that assumed that the movements they represented would no longer be necessary after taking power,” reports Laura Carlsen for [The Nation](, “Petro seems to be counting on continued active participation and cooperation as he moves to make the reforms announced in his campaign.” It’s a testament to the notion that politics is much more than elections, with mobilization needed both to get the leaders into office and to ensure they can carry out their promises in the face of resistance. Preventing hunger, adapting to climate change, and tackling poverty will all have to proceed in the wake of decades of internal war. This rebuilding will take place against the still-durable paramilitaries and a powerful right, but it will give the country a shot at something other than rule by capital alone. Nuclear Spongeworthy In the northern plains of the United States, the Air Force maintains silos containing Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles, designed to draw fire in the worst war the world will ever know. Not content to let the weapons endure as-is, the Pentagon is looking to replace the aging missiles with a new design. Emma Claire Foley, writing for [Global Zero](, makes the case that canceling the upgrade and dismantling the existing ICBM stockpile can be done without a negative impact on national security or, if done well, jobs in the communities built around the silos. “The destructive impact of such a strike on the US would by no means be localized to the areas where the weapons had been based,” writes Foley, “But the area around the missile fields, said to benefit so fundamentally from their presence, would be completely destroyed, blanketed with deadly radiation, and rendered unsuitable for agriculture for years.” [FORWARD TO A FRIEND]( Hate Replacement Among the many grotesque lines of thought that animate modern mass shooters, there’s a durable strain of projected environmental concern, one that sees mass death as in keeping with a vision of how to reorder the world. This eco-fascism, emphasizing equal parts an imagined fixed natural order of the world and the threat posed to it by people deemed “out of place,” poses a threat to the lives of all and to the greater viability of environmental movements. Leigh Phillips, [writing in Noema](, calls for the left to disavow reactionary concerns over Malthusian limits or overpopulation, concerns that lead to xenophobic violence and harsh border regimes. “In place of eco-Thatcherism and doom-mongering,” Phillips writes, “green stimulus offers hope to the nihilist, disenchanted and forgotten. It also undermines the very economic conditions that help to give rise to hard-right violence in the first place.” [FORWARD TO A FRIEND]( [ ] DEEP DIVE Absurd lines: Part II On June 27, a city worker in San Antonio heard a plea for help from inside a parked truck. Upon opening the truck, the rescuer found a grisly scene: bodies, packed in tight, cooked in the heat. It would take a day to get the total death toll: 51 migrants had died inside that vehicle or from their injuries shortly after. Some people survived, though their fates remain uncertain, with difficult medical recovery ahead for some and the specter of likely deportation looming over all. On the 27th, before the full death toll was known, Texas Governor [Greg Abbott tweeted](, “At Least 42 People Found Dead Inside Truck Carrying Migrants In Texas. These deaths are on Biden. They are a result of his deadly open border policies. They show the deadly consequences of his refusal to enforce the law.” Abbott has the cause of death wrong on its face: If borders were open, people would not pay to be smuggled into the United States and endure the conditions from which these dozens died. But Abbott was not making a statement of fact. Instead, he reinforced a core ideology of the xenophobic right: people against immigration will prioritize it over those in favor. “[Do Anti-immigration Voters Care More? Documenting the Issue Importance Asymmetry of Immigration Attitudes](” is a forthcoming paper in the British Journal of Political Science by Alexander Kustov. It makes the case that the opposed voters are more motivated even in moments when there appears to be greater support for immigration, like the 2020 US presidential election. A year before the Brexit referendum in the UK, writes Kustov, “73% of the British public wanted to decrease immigration while only 6% wanted to increase it.” Of those voters, 26% thought restricting immigration was the most important issue; a year later, that number would be 35%. Writes Kustov, “compared to pro-immigration voters, anti-immigration voters care more about immigration in particular — not politics in general.” This trend is observed in detail across both the United States and the United Kingdom, and over time, and it shows up in data on voter preferences in other countries. While this difference feels obvious in elections like the 2016 presidential and the Brexit referendum, the same asymmetry repeats in contests like the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections, where it was less salient for all voters. Kustov notes that there are many anti-immigrant coalitions, but “there is no known political context in which a plurality of voters wanted to increase immigration and thought it was more important than other issues.” One possible avenue for future study would be Canada, where a deliberate “third force” policy of attracting immigrants outside the French and Anglo-settler traditions was seen as a way to moderate and sustain the country’s multicultural identity. A political coalition that includes pro-immigrant factions should know that extreme, high-profile action on the border only mobilizes their reactionary opposition. Moreover, harsh border policies give the Abbotts of the world grim spectacles to campaign against. [Benign neglect]( removes the spectacle and eases the burden on immigrants, too. [LEARN MORE]( [FORWARD TO A FRIEND]( [• • •] SHOW US THE RECEIPTS Maggie Seymour [raged]( over the crushing and misogynistic harm the Supreme Court did in repealing Roe v. Wade. By removing a constitutional right to abortion, one the Court found and upheld for 49 years, the Court is reigniting a battle that had seemed for many to be won and settled law. In the coming fight against court rule and “maneuver warfare,” Seymour says, “We’re mobilizing our networks, our systems, long developed over years of necessity because when we needed support, we built it ourselves.” To secure abortion care, new victories must be won, on fronts both old and new. Rebecca Kanthor [reported]( that China is reducing abortion access in the country. The country, which for decades used reproductive coercion to reduce the number of children families could have, is now responding to lower birth rates and demographic imbalance by encouraging women to give birth, partly by putting up obstacles to abortion. At both extremes, from the fines and sterilizations of the One-Child policy of the past to the present removal of abortion care services, the state is writing policy through the wombs of women, overriding bodily autonomy. The mechanism of control, and the aim of that control, can change, but the fact of control persists through different policies. Ridwan Karim Dini-Osman [waded]( into the flooded neighborhoods that replaced wetlands in Ghana’s capital of Accra. Flooding like that which hit Accra in the spring of 2022 is anthropogenic in two ways. First, worsening climate change, from greenhouse gasses that Africa has minimally contributed to, has led to more weather extremes, including greater flooding. Rapid urban development into wetlands has put housing directly into the natural environment best at absorbing and mitigating floods. Managing both will take foreign investment, but, Dini-Osman writes, “there’s a gap of $20 billion to reach the $100 billion target for climate finance as pledged by Western countries in the Paris Agreement.” [FORWARD TO A FRIEND]( [ ] WELL PLAYED Take [off your suit and planet](. Every knock [sounds the same](, so you can’t afford to not open the door with a [retaliatory salvo](. Ever [heard]( of the [greenhouse gas alien](? Les [scabberables](. No one [escapes]( the [state of the exception](. Precedent? Common law? Court granted-and-retracted rights? IDK what you’re talking about. We have completed the revolution and will bring it to London once [Villeneuve reports of his victory](. No [justices know peace](. [FORWARD TO A FRIEND]( Follow The World: [fb]( [tw]( [ig]( [www]( [DONATE TO THE WORLD]( Follow Inkstick: [fb]( [tw]( [ig]( [www]( [DONATE TO INKSTICK]( 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. [Preferences]( | [Web Version]( [Unsubscribe](