2020
February
18
Tuesday

Monitor Daily Podcast

February 18, 2020
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Peter Ford
International News editor

Today’s stories include the first in the Monitor’s “Navigating Uncertainty” series, waning confidence in the caucus system, a clarifying look at fears surrounding coronavirus, a search for justice for Flint, Michigan, and a selection of podcasts that promote compassion

Surveying the world in 1930 – from the prison cell where Italian dictator Benito Mussolini had put him – the Communist thinker Antonio Gramsci came up with a pithy observation. 

“The old is dying and the new cannot be born,” he wrote in his diary. “In this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.”

Today, nearly 100 years later, a similar sense of uncertainty besets the world, and in today’s Christian Science Monitor we launch an ambitious series of articles exploring the reasons for that. Even more ambitiously, we suggest a few possible paths forward.

Our reporters have been searching for solutions in all sorts of places – from a boardroom in France where the bosses are rethinking capitalism to an underground bar in Brazil offering political refuge for activist opponents of the country’s strongman president.

For me, as a journalist covering international affairs, it is hard to miss the alarm felt in many capitals about the shape-shifting nature of geopolitics at the moment. 

But citizens far from the corridors of power have other worries: What will artificial intelligence do to jobs? Could a strongman leader win votes by offering answers to problems that less decisive democratic politicians don’t seem able to find? How are the immigrants who just moved into the neighborhood going to change its identity?

At the heart of all the problems that beset us – and many of them are interconnected – is the issue of trust. Increasingly, governments don’t trust each other, citizens don’t believe their governments or experts, and often people don’t even have faith in their neighbors.

We hope the series that starts today will give you pointers to places where people are pushing back on that, building a sense of common purpose, trust and direction. Because we all have to start with ourselves.


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Today's stories

And why we wrote them

Navigating uncertainty

The search for global bearings
Francois Mori/AP
Teachers, doctors, lawyers, and workers watch as flares illuminate the darkness at the Eiffel Tower on Dec. 17, 2019. They were protesting potentially dramatic changes to the French welfare system and retirement age.

We hear the worried question frequently: Where is the world headed? Many doubt the holding power of the democratic values, broader rights, and economic growth that have shaped the post-World War II world. Yet even amid deep uncertainty, many groups are trying to shape a path toward progress. This series, which starts today, travels the globe to see what they’re doing.

SOURCE:

Edelman Trust Barometer

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Jacob Turcotte/Staff

Nervous party officials acknowledge that Saturday’s caucuses could be the last hurrah for a complex system that favors party activists. Still, a successful event, combined with early voting, could preserve the system.  

The Explainer

Outbreaks create fear – not just of disease, but sometimes of the places they originate and the people who live there. Taking a step back gives some perspective on China’s crisis.

Jake May/MLive.com/The Flint Journal/AP
Flint, Michigan, shown here on Nov. 26, 2019, calls itself Vehicle City in reference to its former prominence in automobile manufacturing. In 2014, a state-appointed emergency financial manager switched the city’s water supply to the Flint River, a move with grave repercussions.

Addressing an issue as big as a compromised water supply takes a number of forms. There’s the legal front, as well as work on infrastructure. Perhaps most critical: the rebuilding of public trust.

In a world often riven by hate, three podcasts take distinct approaches to understanding and instilling compassion and empathy.


The Monitor's View

Women in Afghanistan now attend university in record numbers. In the capital, Kabul, a fast-food restaurant just introduced the country’s first robotic waiter. On Tuesday, officials announced the results of a presidential election – the fourth since the ouster of the Taliban. And in the latest survey, 64% of Afghans say they believe reconciliation with the Taliban is possible, a jump of 11 percentage points in only one year.

Since the United States-led invasion 18 years ago, Afghanistan has experienced slow and uneven progress toward a free and democratic society. Attacks by the rural-based Taliban remain high. Yet progress is palpable enough that it partly explains why the U.S. and Taliban are ready to ink an agreement on a pathway for peace.

For now, the details of the proposed agreement are less important than its initial requirement: a seven-day “reduction of violence” between U.S. and Taliban forces. The limited truce, which could start in coming days, will be a test of credibility for Taliban leaders. Can they control their lower ranks? Will they eventually keep a total cease-fire?

Over 18 years, Afghan society has changed enough that perhaps the Taliban know they must earn people’s trust rather than impose their harsh Islamist ways. Or as Afghan President Ashraf Ghani challenged the militant group: “If people elect you dogcatcher, then I would say you really have a power base. Guns are not the basis of power.”

If the short “reduction in violence” period succeeds, it might inspire confidence for a sequence of other trust-building steps, such as the start of a partial withdrawal of U.S. troops and an exchange of prisoners by the Taliban and Afghan government. The most significant step would be the Taliban starting direct talks with Mr. Ghani’s elected government.

These “intra-Afghan” talks would imply a tacit approval by the Taliban of a willingness to work within a democracy and its acknowledgment of how much Afghans support – 87% according to the survey – the rights and liberties of their constitution.

The Taliban may finally be accepting the limits of fighting to achieve their aims. In the U.S., both President Donald Trump and his Democratic rivals for the White House seek to end America’s longest war. Yet it is the Afghans themselves, in how they have been able to improve their lives and how much they cherish their civic rights, who are setting the table for the difficult and complex talks ahead. Afghans may be divided by ethnic feuding and divided politics. Yet their preference for reconciliation and for the protection of their democratic achievements is clear. It will be difficult to ignore their preferences during the negotiations.


A Christian Science Perspective

About this feature

Each weekday, the Monitor includes one clearly labeled religious article offering spiritual insight on contemporary issues, including the news. The publication – in its various forms – is produced for anyone who cares about the progress of the human endeavor around the world and seeks news reported with compassion, intelligence, and an essentially constructive lens. For many, that caring has religious roots. For many, it does not. The Monitor has always embraced both audiences. The Monitor is owned by a church – The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston – whose founder was concerned with both the state of the world and the quality of available news.

Sometimes a perception of uncertainty in today’s world can make a desire to better it feel futile; yet many people are finding ways to make a difference. For all of us, a heartfelt desire to live the Love that is God brings the healing, saving light of God to our activities in tangible ways, as a woman experienced during a threatening situation.


A message of love

Steve Parsons/PA/AP
Flood water surrounds Upton upon Severn, England, Feb. 18, 2020. Britain’s Environment Agency issued severe flood warnings, advising of life-threatening danger after Storm Dennis dumped weeks' worth of rain in some places.
( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Karen Norris. )

A look ahead

Thanks for joining us today. Come back tomorrow when we’ll introduce you to a priest who helps young people find alternatives to gang life.

More issues

2020
February
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