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The Diplomat
03-07-2025
- Politics
- The Diplomat
Exclusive Interview With Detained Activist Dr Mahrang Baloch
The Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC) has been advocating for Baloch rights since it was founded in 2020. Since its early days, when the movement was known as the Bramsh Yakjehti Committee, the BYC has organized peaceful protests against the excessive use of force by the Pakistani state in Balochistan – including forced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, and other forms of repression. Also since its beginning, the BYC has been led by women – including Dr. Mahrang Baloch. The 32-year-old became an activist after her father was 'disappeared' in 2009. He was released – only to be abducted again in 2011, and this time killed. Ever since, Mahrang had been a central figure in the movement for human rights and justice in Balochistan, including being honored by Time magazine as of the 100 most influential leaders of 2024. Led prominently by women, including Dr. Mahrang Baloch herself, the BYC represents a new generation of progressive political activism in a region long marred by conflict and marginalization. The Pakistani state has responded to this peaceful mobilization with a sweeping crackdown and arrests, disinformation campaigns, and detentions without due process. In March 2025, Mahrang – along with several other BYC leaders – was arrested, and she has been held in detention ever since, where they report 'continuous mistreatment and harassment.' This exclusive interview with Mahrang, conducted via an intermediary who was able to visit her in prison, offers a rare and urgent insight into the thinking of a movement that, in recent months, has mobilized tens of thousands across Balochistan in protests against enforced disappearances and state repression. Mahrang offers her perspective on the current state of the BYC and its leadership while under state custody, as well as the broader challenge of extremism and the future of political activism and human rights advocacy under increased state repression and now threats from the Islamic State's local branch. In recent months, Balochistan has witnessed a troubling surge in religious extremism, most notably with the emergence of Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP), a group that appears to operate at both regional and international levels. This group has singled you out, publishing your photo in a booklet and labeling you as 'evil' and a 'Western puppet.' How do you respond to these personal attacks? And more broadly, what does the rise of such groups signal for the future of progressive politics in Balochistan? Balochistan has a peculiar and complex history with religious extremism. However, the roots of this extremism are not embedded in Baloch society itself. Based on clear evidence, we assert that religious extremism was imposed upon Baloch society – it was, in a sense, installed from the outside. The influence of religious radicalism in Balochistan began to emerge prominently during the Afghan War and became more pronounced after 9/11. If we study Baloch society from a historical perspective, it is inherently secular, a society that has traditionally embraced religious, ethnic, and regional tolerance and coexistence. The emergence of Islamic State in Balochistan and the threats made against me or declaring me an apostate are not something new. For the past two decades, we have witnessed how religious extremists have been used as a tool against the progressive Baloch political movement and against progressive educators, writers, intellectuals, and journalists. For example, Professor Saba Dashtiari, a Baloch intellectual and teacher at the University of Balochistan, openly criticized the state for human rights violations in Balochistan. In 2011, he was murdered in broad daylight in front of the university. A religious extremist group claimed responsibility for his assassination through the media. Similarly, Professor Razzaq Zehri in Khuzdar was killed merely for promoting co-education and free education for all deserving students. Likewise, in Gwadar, Sir Zahid Askani was also murdered for the same reason. And just last year in Turbat, another educator, Sir Rauf Baloch, met a similar fate. Progressive political activists in Balochistan, those who criticize the policies of the Pakistani state and advocate for human rights, face a dual threat. On one hand, they are subjected to enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings by the state of Pakistan. On the other hand, they receive death threats from religious extremist armed groups. Last month, Islamic State released my photo, branded me a European agent and an apostate, and warned the public not to attend our events. This rhetoric mirrors the language used against me by ISPR [Inter-Services Public Relations, the media wing of the Pakistani military] in their press conferences. I had long anticipated that a group like Islamic State would eventually be activated and deployed against us, because we have been observing this pattern in Balochistan for the past 20 years, as exemplified by the cases I mentioned above. I believe that threats from Islamic State or their activation against us will not significantly impact progressive politics in Balochistan. The Baloch political society has matured considerably, and the people of Balochistan are well aware of the truth, specifically, who is backing these religious extremists and why. The public fully understands this reality. Our greatest success is that the majority of the Baloch people stand with us. And as long as that remains true, the use of extremist groups like Islamic State against us will not put an end to our struggle. The progressive political circles in Balochistan are deeply rooted. Tactics like these will not silence the progressive political movement in Balochistan, nor will threats from Islamic State silence us. You have now been imprisoned for over three months. During this period, Pakistan's military spokesperson, in multiple ISPR press briefings, has described you as a 'proxy of terror' and used terms like 'evil face' in reference to your activism. How do you respond to these characterizations by the state's military apparatus? For the past three months, I have been detained unlawfully. During this time, according to the information available to me, ISPR has mentioned me in three to four press conferences or media briefings. In each instance, the same baseless accusations were repeated, such as: 'Mahrang is a proxy of terrorists,' or 'Mahrang is a foreign agent,' and so on. Despite being a powerful state with a 600,000-strong army, numerous intelligence agencies, and various civil institutions, ISPR has not presented even one piece of actual evidence against me. Instead, they have relied solely on false accusations and a media trial aimed at character assassination. The military spokesperson has repeatedly misrepresented the press conference I held on March 19 at the Quetta Press Club. That press conference was not about the armed attack on the Jaffar Express or the return of the bodies of armed individuals. In reality, it was held to highlight the harassment faced by our fellow human rights defenders at the hands of Pakistani security forces. We had also submitted related cases to the United Nations Human Rights bodies. The video and written transcript of that press conference are still publicly available in the media. At the end of the press conference, a journalist asked a question regarding the return of bodies lying in the Civil Hospital Quetta to their families. In response, I merely said that the bodies should be identified and handed over to the families, as this is their constitutional right. That is the only comment I made on the matter. The full recording of the press conference exists, and any institution can verify that I made no unlawful or unconstitutional remarks during it. The second allegation that the Pakistani military repeatedly makes against me and my colleagues is that we broke into the gates of the Civil Hospital Quetta to retrieve the bodies of armed individuals. I challenge the Pakistani military to provide evidence to support this claim. If they can, I will declare myself guilty. On that evening, I was at the Quetta Press Club, and afterward, I went straight to my home. Any independent investigative body is welcome to review CCTV footage from the Quetta Press Club and the city of Quetta, or to interview individuals present on that day. My colleagues, our organization, the Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC), and I have consistently spoken out against violence and injustice. Wherever I've had the opportunity to speak or write, whether in Pakistan or internationally, I have clearly and unequivocally opposed violence. This is our well-established policy. I believe the real issue ISPR and the Pakistani military have with us is that we raise our voices against the state's violent policies and human rights violations in Balochistan. We question them, we hold different views, and our position has gained international recognition. Our peaceful struggle has been acknowledged globally, and our voice is being heard. This is what troubles the Pakistani military most. That is why ISPR, in its repeated press conferences, is branding me and our organization, the BYC, as terrorists without providing a shred of evidence. The purpose of these statements is clearly to create a false international narrative that Mahrang and the BYC are proxies of terrorists, in an attempt to silence international discourse on human rights violations in Balochistan and to delegitimize our voice. However, it seems the Pakistani military wrongly assumes that international human rights organizations operate like domestic Pakistani media – that they will believe anything, no matter how baseless. But no credible person or institution accepts accusations without evidence. They demand proof or valid evidence. In response to ISPR's false allegations, I have issued a legal notice demanding that either ISPR prove these allegations in court or issue a formal apology. Now we will see how the Pakistani judiciary fulfills its responsibility and whether it will hold the military spokesperson accountable. Reports have emerged through social media, open letters, and messages from your colleagues that you and other detained members of the Baloch Yakjehti Committee have faced harassment, mistreatment, and denial of basic rights in prison. There are accounts of torture, a hunger strike, and the severe case of Beebow Baloch. Can you describe the conditions of your imprisonment and your other colleagues and the nature of the treatment you and other BYC detained leaders have received? Yes, in prison, we have been subjected to continuous mistreatment, harassment, and denial of our basic rights. On the night of April 24 at 8:00 p.m., personnel from the Quetta Police and Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) unlawfully entered the prison and brutally assaulted me and my colleagues, Beebow Baloch and Gulzadi Baloch. During this incident, Beebow Baloch was transferred from Hudda Jail Quetta to Pishin Jail, where she was severely tortured during the transfer. Surveillance cameras were even installed inside her barracks and restroom, violating her privacy. In protest against her transfer and the inhumane treatment she faced, we went on a five-day hunger strike. Ten days later, Beebow Baloch was brought back to Hudda Jail, and she continued her hunger strike for ten consecutive days. Inside the prison, we are continuously harassed and threatened. Our family has been denied access to basic facilities and necessities on multiple occasions, and we have had to suspend visits and meetings with legal counsel. Following the Jaffar Express attack, the Pakistani state – through its media apparatus, official channels, and social media team – directly accused you and the Baloch Yakjehti Committee of supporting terrorism. Yet the BYC is widely known, both locally and internationally, as a peaceful human rights movement. Why do you believe the state is attempting to criminalize your activism? What political calculations or anxieties do you think lie behind this campaign? In March 2025, following an armed attack on the Jaffar Express in Balochistan, the state used the incident as a pretext to target our peaceful political organization, the BYC. A severe crackdown was launched against us, despite the fact that we had no any type of connection to the attack or any act of violence. The entire episode appeared orchestrated, with one clear objective: to silence or dismantle the Baloch Yakjehti Committee, as we have been a strong and consistent voice against human rights violations in Balochistan. We have always raised our voices against all forms of injustice and abuse, and it is this peaceful dissent that the state finds intolerable. Consequently, efforts were made to associate our non-violent struggle with an act of armed violence. However, the BYC is a peaceful political organization. We have never engaged in nor endorsed violent politics. Since our inception, our position and method of struggle have been clear: we resist the state's oppression and brutality in Balochistan through non-violent means. To date, not a single stone has been broken at any of our gatherings or protests – yet we have faced violent crackdowns from the state from day one. After the Jaffer Express attack, the state launched an aggressive media campaign against the BYC, attempting to malign our peaceful political efforts by falsely linking us to the incident. We were repeatedly pressured to issue condemnations that served the state's narrative. But our stance has always been unequivocal: we do not support armed struggle or violence in any form, and this position has been documented in the media multiple times. Nevertheless, our organization has faced an intense crackdown. Following the attack, the Balochistan government suspiciously buried several unidentified bodies in the Kaasi Graveyard in Quetta. Some bodies were stored in the morgue at Civil Hospital Quetta, with no access granted to anyone. This sparked panic and fear among the families of Baloch victims of enforced disappearances, as they feared their missing loved ones might be among the dead. For years, the state has used armed attacks as a cover to execute extrajudicial killings. Victims of enforced disappearances are taken from secret detention centers, killed, and then falsely portrayed as militants killed in combat. Sometimes, the bodies of actual militants are accompanied by those of forcibly disappeared persons to suggest they died together. These incidents are not isolated; as an organization, we have documented evidence of many such cases. The same fear gripped families once again. Every day, relatives of missing persons visited Civil Hospital Quetta, demanding a basic and constitutionally protected right: access to the bodies or disclosure of their identities, so they could determine whether their loved ones were among them. In retaliation for these lawful and peaceful demands, the state brutally targeted these families, subjecting them to violence and further enforced disappearances. The Baloch Yakjehti Committee stood with these families, raised their voices, and supported them through this painful ordeal. As a consequence, our leadership and members have faced the harshest state repression. The recent crackdown against our organization began on March 20, when, at 5 a.m., our colleague Bibagar Baloch was arrested at his home. When we launched a peaceful protest against his arrest, the state responded with violent repression and opened direct fire on the protesters. This resulted in the deaths of three people, including a young child, and left dozens injured. We then held a peaceful sit-in alongside the bodies of those killed. It was during this protest that Beebow Baloch and I were arrested, followed by the arrest of several of our other members. The real reason behind the state crackdown on the BYC is our non-violent resistance to Pakistan's human rights violations, violence, and injustice in Balochistan. Instead of acknowledging our peaceful movement or addressing our demands for justice, the Pakistani state continues to delegitimize our struggle by leveling baseless accusations and using force against our activists. I believe that my arrest and the arrest of my colleagues, the crackdown on the BYC, the state-led media campaign to malign us, and ongoing efforts to damage our reputation are all part of a deliberate attempt to psychologically pressure us into abandoning our political principles and programs. The aim is to silence our voice against human rights abuses in Balochistan, so that the Pakistani military can continue its exploitation of the region's resources and oppression of its people without resistance or accountability. With the emergence of ISKP in Balochistan, and given its explicit threats toward you and other BYC members, how does the Baloch Yakjehti Committee plan to respond? What strategies do you envision for navigating this increasingly volatile political and security environment? As I have already mentioned above, both Islamic State and the spokespersons of the Pakistan military are using the same language against us. Their tone is identical. Both are troubled by our struggle, both speak of eliminating us, both label us as foreign agents, and both feel threatened by our progressive stance. They view our political and human rights struggle as a danger, and in response, ISPR's press conferences and Islamic State's threatening audio-visual content and pamphlets have used hateful and violent language against us. I believe their sole aim is to silence me and my colleague, or to coerce us into abandoning our struggle. We are being subjected to relentless psychological pressure through various means. First, I was arrested. Then, ISPR held repeated press conferences against me, launching character assassination campaigns. A false and misleading media narrative was spread to manipulate international public opinion. The families of my colleagues, Dr. Sabiha Baloch and Beebow Baloch, were collectively punished. Over 300 of our members were detained. An undeclared ban was imposed on the political activities of our organization. The law was weaponized against me and my colleagues. Every peaceful protest was met with violence against our members. Despite all this, our colleagues have remained committed to their peaceful political and human rights activism. Even in the face of imprisonment, torture, arrest, media trials, and false accusations, neither I nor my colleagues have chosen silence. We have remained resolute in continuing our peaceful struggle against human rights violations in Balochistan. When our unwavering commitment became evident, Daesh ultimately became active against us, issuing death threats and calling for our elimination. Yet, we are fully determined that we will not remain silent about the human rights abuses in Balochistan. No matter the cost, we will continue our peaceful struggle, because our demands are simple and lawful: an immediate end to all forms of oppression and violence in Balochistan, and the constitutional and legal right of the Baloch people to make their own decisions regarding their future. Crackdowns on political dissent in Pakistan have intensified in recent years, affecting movements across the ideological spectrum, from the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM) to the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI). Given this broader climate of repression, how do you see the future of the Baloch Yakjehti Committee? What role do you believe it can continue to play, both within Balochistan and nationally? From day one, the BYC has strived to unite all oppressed and state-affected people within Pakistan, to foster harmony among them, and to lead a collective struggle against human rights violations and for the attainment of public rights. This effort stems from the reality that every community and nation in Pakistan today is suffering under state oppression and injustice. A majority of political leaders have been imprisoned, peaceful political activism has been criminalized, dissenting voices are being silenced, the media is fully controlled, and even the judiciary is being manipulated through controversial measures like the 26th Constitutional Amendment. In essence, a full-fledged authoritarian regime is in place in Pakistan. In the face of this, it is imperative that all oppressed nations and communities come together in a united struggle against this dictatorship.
The Irish Sun
09-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Irish Sun
Future of Vicky McClure's Trigger Point revealed by ITV ahead of series three launch this autumn
THE future of ITV drama Trigger Point has been revealed ahead of series three's launch this autumn. Trigger Point stars Washington , a bomb disposal operative. 3 The future of ITV thriller Trigger Point has been revealed Credit: ITV 3 Vicky McClure stars in the leading role Credit: ITV 3 The show launched in 2022 and has aired two series to date Credit: ITV ITV have now recommissioned the high-stakes show for a fourth series. Earlier this year, Vicky Polly Hill, ITV 's Director of Drama, shared her excitement about the show being confirmed to return. She said: " Trigger Point is one of ITV 's most-watched dramas of last year after Mr Bates vs The Post Office so I'm delighted that this thrilling series is returning for a fourth series." Read more on Trigger Point Polly added: "I know audiences will be once again on the edge of their seat as Lana and the team take us on another thrilling ride to keep the capital safe." While star Vicky commented: "We're all buzzing ITV have such faith in this series to commission a fourth before the third has even aired." She continued: "I love working with the team, we have a great time making the show and I cannot wait to continue Lana's journey on Trigger Point ." The premise follows a bomb squad in London and the difficult situations they handle on a daily basis. Most read in News TV Vicky's character, Lana, leads a Metropolitan Police bomb squad - but has a background as an Afghan War veteran. In particular, the show's second series was a huge hit with viewers and gained 8.1 million viewers when it aired. Future of huge ITV drama confirmed after explosive cliffhanger ending to latest series It became the second most watched drama for ITV , with taking the spot of number one. The Sun Trigger Point would be receiving a third series. A source revealed: 'Someone is targeting individuals, and demanding revenge. 'Working alongside the police counterterrorism unit, the bomb disposal squad race against time to find the bomber before they claim their next victim.' Eric Shango, Nabil Elouahabi, Natalie Simpson and Maanuv Thiara were also revealed to be returning. Earlier this year, Channel 5 Trigger Point " show following Britain's bomb disposal squads. Trigger Point airs on ITV1 and STV - and is available to stream on ITVX. Crime dramas on ITVX Crime drama buffs have a wide selection of choices on ITVX - here is a selection of some of the programmes available to binge. Professor T: Based on a Belgian TV series of the same name, former Death in Paradise lead Ben Miller plays the title character. Professor Jasper Tempest is a criminologist with OCD who helps the police solve crimes. The cast also includes Emma Naomi, Barney White and Andy Gathergood. This series follows a mother's grief for her son, who was killed in an accident. Nicholas Blake's novel of the same name has been adapted for the programme. Stars include Cush Jumbo, Jared Harris, Billy Howle and Geraldine James. Red Eye: Starring Richard Armitage, Jing Lusi and Lesley Sharp star in this six-part thriller, which mostly takes place during an all-night flight between London and Beijing. With dead bodies piling up and a mystery to unravel, the heroes must work fast to get to the truth. This Australian drama originally aired as a miniseries in 2022, with the episodes dropping in the UK in February 2023. Four months later, the show was renewed for a second season. Jurassic Park star Sam Neill stars in the leading role of barrister Brett Colby. Martin Clunes stars in this drama based on true murder investigations. Series one focused on the death of Amélie Delagrange, which took place in 2004, while the second depicted the search for serial rapist Delroy Grant.
Yahoo
04-06-2025
- General
- Yahoo
‘No One Can Offer Any Hope'
Every month or so I get a desperate message from a 25-year-old Afghan refugee in Pakistan. Another came just last week. I've written about Saman in the past. Because my intent today is to write about her place in the moral universe of Elon Musk and Vice President J. D. Vance, I'll compress her story to its basic details: During the Afghan War, Saman and her husband, Farhad (they requested pseudonyms for their own safety), served in the Afghan special forces alongside American troops. When Kabul fell in 2021, they were left behind and had to go into hiding from the Taliban before fleeing to Pakistan. There the couple and their two small children have languished for three years, burning through their limited cash, avoiding the Pakistani police and Taliban agents, seldom leaving their rented rooms—doomed if they're forced to return to Afghanistan—and all the while waiting for their applications to be processed by the United States' refugee program. No other country will provide a harbor to these loyal allies of America, who risked everything for the war effort. Our country has a unique obligation to do so. They had reached the last stage of a very long road and were on the verge of receiving U.S. visas when Donald Trump came back into office and made ending the refugee program one of his first orders of business. Now Saman and her family have no prospect of escaping the trap they're in. 'The stress and anxiety have become overwhelming,' Saman wrote to me last week. 'Every day I worry about the future of my children—what will become of them? Recently, I've developed a new health issue as well. At times, my fingers suddenly become tight and stiff—almost paralyzed—and I can't move them at all. My husband massages them with great effort until they gradually return to normal. This is a frightening and painful experience … Please, in this difficult time, I humbly ask for your help and guidance. What can I do to find a way out of these hardships?' I've brought the plight of Saman and her family to members of Congress, American activist groups, foreign diplomats, and readers of this magazine. No one can offer any hope. The family's fate is in the hands of Trump and his administration. [George Packer: 'What about six years of friendship and fighting together?' ] And, after all, their story is just one small part of the suffering caused by this regime. A full accounting would be impossible to compile, but it already includes an estimated several hundred thousand people dead or dying of AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria because of the elimination of the U.S. Agency for International Development, as well as the starvation of refugee children in Sudan, migrants deported to a Salvadoran Gulag, and victims of domestic violence who have lost their shelter in Maine. In the wide world of the regime's staggering and gratuitous cruelty, the pain in Saman's fingers might seem too trivial to mention. But hers is the suffering that keeps arriving in my phone, the ongoing story that seems to be my unavoidable job to hear and tell. And sometimes one small drama can illuminate a large evil. Since reading Saman's latest text, I can't stop thinking about the people who are doing this to her and her family—especially about Musk and Vance. As for Trump, I find it difficult to hold him morally responsible for anything. He's a creature of appetite and instinct who hunts and feeds in a dark sub-ethical realm. You don't hold a shark morally responsible for mauling a swimmer. You just try to keep the shark at bay—which the American people failed to do. Musk and Vance function at a higher evolutionary level than Trump. They have ideas to justify the human suffering they cause. They even have moral ideas. Musk's moral idea goes by the name longtermism, which he has called 'a close match to my philosophy.' This reductio ad absurdum of utilitarianism seeks to do the greatest good for the greatest number of human beings who will ever live. By this reasoning, the fate of the hundreds of billions of as-yet-unborn people who will inhabit the planet before the sun burns it up several billion years from now is more urgent than whether a few million people die of preventable diseases this year. If killing the American aid programs that helped keep those people alive allows the U.S. government to become lean and efficient enough to fund Musk's grand project of interplanetary travel, thereby enabling human beings to live on Mars when Earth becomes uninhabitable in some distant era, then the good of humanity requires feeding those aid programs, including ones that support refugee resettlement, into the woodchipper. Refugees—except for white South Africans—aren't important enough to matter to longtermism. Its view of humanity is far too large to notice Saman, Farhad, and their children, or to understand why America might have a moral obligation to give this family a safe home. Longtermism is a philosophy with a special appeal for smart and extremely rich sociopaths. It can justify almost any amount of hubris, spending, and suffering. Sam Bankman-Fried, the cryptocurrency mogul who is serving a 25-year sentence for fraud, conspiracy, and money laundering, was a longtermist. It isn't clear that Musk, during his manic and possibly drug-addled months of power in the Trump administration, applied moral reasoning when hacking at the federal government. His erratic behavior and that of his troops in the Department of Government Efficiency seemed driven more by destructive euphoria than by philosophy. But in February, on Joe Rogan's show, Musk used the loftiest terms to explain why the cries of pain caused by his cuts should be ignored: 'We've got civilizational suicidal empathy going on. And it's like, I believe in empathy. Like, I think you should care about other people, but you need to have empathy for civilization as a whole and not commit to a civilizational suicide. The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.' Here is another category of the long view, with an entire civilization in place of the planet's future inhabitants. Musk's sphere of empathy is galactic. In its cold immensity, the ordinary human impulse to want to relieve the pain of a living person with a name and a face disappears. Vance once called himself 'a proud member of both tribes' of the MAGA coalition—techno-futurists like Musk and right-wing populists like Steve Bannon. But when Vance invokes a moral code, it's the opposite of Musk's. The scope of its commitment is as narrow and specific as an Appalachian graveyard—the cemetery in eastern Kentucky where five generations of Vances are buried and where, he told the Republican National Convention last summer, he hopes that he, his wife, and their children will eventually lie. Such a place is 'the source of America's greatness,' Vance said, because 'people will not fight for abstractions, but they will fight for their home.' Politically, this is called blood-and-soil nationalism. Religiously, Vance traces his moral code to the Catholic doctrine of ordo amoris, the proper order of love: first your family, he told Sean Hannity of Fox News, then your neighbor, your community, your nation, and finally—a distant last—the rest of humanity. But Vance's theology is as bad as his political theory. Generations of Americans fought and died for the idea of freedom in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, World War II, and other conflicts. And Christian doctrine does not say to keep out refugees because they're not your kin. Jesus said the opposite: To refuse the stranger was to refuse him. Vance likes to cite Augustine and Aquinas, but the latter was clear about what ordo amoris does not mean: 'In certain cases, one ought, for instance, to succor a stranger, in extreme necessity, rather than one's own father, if he is not in such urgent need.' [From the March 2022 issue: The betrayal] It's a monstrous perversion of both patriotism and faith to justify hurting a young family who, after all they've suffered, still show courage and loyalty to Vance's country. Starting from opposite moral positions, Musk and Vance are equally indifferent to the ordeal of Saman and her family. When empathy is stretched to the cosmic vanishing point or else compressed to the width of a grave, it ceases to be empathy. Perhaps these two elites even take pleasure in the squeals of bleeding-heart humanitarians on behalf of refugees, starving children, international students, poor Americans in ill health, and other unfortunates. And that may be a core value of these philosophies: They require so much inventing of perverse principles to reach a cruel end that the pain of others begins to seem like the first priority rather than the inadvertent result. Think of the range of people who have been drawn to MAGA. It's hard to see what political ideology Elon Musk, J. D. Vance, Glenn Greenwald, Glenn Loury, Nick Fuentes, Bari Weiss, Lil Wayne, Joe Rogan, Bill Ackman, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and Kanye West have in common. The magnetic pull is essentially negative. They all fear and loathe something more than Trump—whether it's wokeness, Palestinians, Jews, Harvard, trans people, The New York Times, or the Democratic Party—and manage to overlook everything else, including the fate of American democracy, and Saman and her family. But overlooking everything else is nihilism. Even if most Americans haven't abandoned their private sense of empathy, many don't seem terribly bothered by the rancidness of their leaders. I confess that this indifference astonishes me. It might be the ugliest effect of Trump's return—the rapid normalization of spectacular corruption, the desensitization to lawless power, the acceptance of moral collapse. Eventually it will coarsen us all. Article originally published at The Atlantic
Atlantic
04-06-2025
- General
- Atlantic
‘No One Can Offer Any Hope'
Every month or so I get a desperate message from a 25-year-old Afghan refugee in Pakistan. Another came just last week. I've written about Saman in the past. Because my intent today is to write about her place in the moral universe of Elon Musk and Vice President J. D. Vance, I'll compress her story to its basic details: During the Afghan War, Saman and her husband, Farhad (they requested pseudonyms for their own safety), served in the Afghan special forces alongside American troops. When Kabul fell in 2021, they were left behind and had to go into hiding from the Taliban before fleeing to Pakistan. There the couple and their two small children have languished for three years, burning through their limited cash, avoiding the Pakistani police and Taliban agents, seldom leaving their rented rooms—doomed if they're forced to return to Afghanistan—and all the while waiting for their applications to be processed by the United States' refugee program. No other country will provide a harbor to these loyal allies of America, who risked everything for the war effort. Our country has a unique obligation to do so. They had reached the last stage of a very long road and were on the verge of receiving U.S. visas when Donald Trump came back into office and made ending the refugee program one of his first orders of business. Now Saman and her family have no prospect of escaping the trap they're in. 'The stress and anxiety have become overwhelming,' Saman wrote to me last week. 'Every day I worry about the future of my children—what will become of them? Recently, I've developed a new health issue as well. At times, my fingers suddenly become tight and stiff—almost paralyzed—and I can't move them at all. My husband massages them with great effort until they gradually return to normal. This is a frightening and painful experience … Please, in this difficult time, I humbly ask for your help and guidance. What can I do to find a way out of these hardships?' I've brought the plight of Saman and her family to members of Congress, American activist groups, foreign diplomats, and readers of this magazine. No one can offer any hope. The family's fate is in the hands of Trump and his administration. George Packer: 'What about six years of friendship and fighting together?' And, after all, their story is just one small part of the suffering caused by this regime. A full accounting would be impossible to compile, but it already includes an estimated several hundred thousand people dead or dying of AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria because of the elimination of the U.S. Agency for International Development, as well as the starvation of refugee children in Sudan, migrants deported to a Salvadoran Gulag, and victims of domestic violence who have lost their shelter in Maine. In the wide world of the regime's staggering and gratuitous cruelty, the pain in Saman's fingers might seem too trivial to mention. But hers is the suffering that keeps arriving in my phone, the ongoing story that seems to be my unavoidable job to hear and tell. And sometimes one small drama can illuminate a large evil. Since reading Saman's latest text, I can't stop thinking about the people who are doing this to her and her family—especially about Musk and Vance. As for Trump, I find it difficult to hold him morally responsible for anything. He's a creature of appetite and instinct who hunts and feeds in a dark sub-ethical realm. You don't hold a shark morally responsible for mauling a swimmer. You just try to keep the shark at bay—which the American people failed to do. Musk and Vance function at a higher evolutionary level than Trump. They have ideas to justify the human suffering they cause. They even have moral ideas. Musk's moral idea goes by the name longtermism, which he has called 'a close match to my philosophy.' This reductio ad absurdum of utilitarianism seeks to do the greatest good for the greatest number of human beings who will ever live. By this reasoning, the fate of the hundreds of billions of as-yet-unborn people who will inhabit the planet before the sun burns it up several billion years from now is more urgent than whether a few million people die of preventable diseases this year. If killing the American aid programs that helped keep those people alive allows the U.S. government to become lean and efficient enough to fund Musk's grand project of interplanetary travel, thereby enabling human beings to live on Mars when Earth becomes uninhabitable in some distant era, then the good of humanity requires feeding those aid programs, including ones that support refugee resettlement, into the woodchipper. Refugees—except for white South Africans —aren't important enough to matter to longtermism. Its view of humanity is far too large to notice Saman, Farhad, and their children, or to understand why America might have a moral obligation to give this family a safe home. Longtermism is a philosophy with a special appeal for smart and extremely rich sociopaths. It can justify almost any amount of hubris, spending, and suffering. Sam Bankman-Fried, the cryptocurrency mogul who is serving a 25-year sentence for fraud, conspiracy, and money laundering, was a longtermist. It isn't clear that Musk, during his manic and possibly drug-addled months of power in the Trump administration, applied moral reasoning when hacking at the federal government. His erratic behavior and that of his troops in the Department of Government Efficiency seemed driven more by destructive euphoria than by philosophy. But in February, on Joe Rogan's show, Musk used the loftiest terms to explain why the cries of pain caused by his cuts should be ignored: 'We've got civilizational suicidal empathy going on. And it's like, I believe in empathy. Like, I think you should care about other people, but you need to have empathy for civilization as a whole and not commit to a civilizational suicide. The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.' Here is another category of the long view, with an entire civilization in place of the planet's future inhabitants. Musk's sphere of empathy is galactic. In its cold immensity, the ordinary human impulse to want to relieve the pain of a living person with a name and a face disappears. Vance once called himself 'a proud member of both tribes' of the MAGA coalition—techno-futurists like Musk and right-wing populists like Steve Bannon. But when Vance invokes a moral code, it's the opposite of Musk's. The scope of its commitment is as narrow and specific as an Appalachian graveyard—the cemetery in eastern Kentucky where five generations of Vances are buried and where, he told the Republican National Convention last summer, he hopes that he, his wife, and their children will eventually lie. Such a place is 'the source of America's greatness,' Vance said, because 'people will not fight for abstractions, but they will fight for their home.' Politically, this is called blood-and-soil nationalism. Religiously, Vance traces his moral code to the Catholic doctrine of ordo amoris, the proper order of love: first your family, he told Sean Hannity of Fox News, then your neighbor, your community, your nation, and finally—a distant last—the rest of humanity. But Vance's theology is as bad as his political theory. Generations of Americans fought and died for the idea of freedom in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, World War II, and other conflicts. And Christian doctrine does not say to keep out refugees because they're not your kin. Jesus said the opposite: To refuse the stranger was to refuse him. Vance likes to cite Augustine and Aquinas, but the latter was clear about what ordo amoris does not mean: 'In certain cases, one ought, for instance, to succor a stranger, in extreme necessity, rather than one's own father, if he is not in such urgent need.' From the March 2022 issue: The betrayal It's a monstrous perversion of both patriotism and faith to justify hurting a young family who, after all they've suffered, still show courage and loyalty to Vance's country. Starting from opposite moral positions, Musk and Vance are equally indifferent to the ordeal of Saman and her family. When empathy is stretched to the cosmic vanishing point or else compressed to the width of a grave, it ceases to be empathy. Perhaps these two elites even take pleasure in the squeals of bleeding-heart humanitarians on behalf of refugees, starving children, international students, poor Americans in ill health, and other unfortunates. And that may be a core value of these philosophies: They require so much inventing of perverse principles to reach a cruel end that the pain of others begins to seem like the first priority rather than the inadvertent result. Think of the range of people who have been drawn to MAGA. It's hard to see what political ideology Elon Musk, J. D. Vance, Glenn Greenwald, Glenn Loury, Nick Fuentes, Bari Weiss, Lil Wayne, Joe Rogan, Bill Ackman, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and Kanye West have in common. The magnetic pull is essentially negative. They all fear and loathe something more than Trump—whether it's wokeness, Palestinians, Jews, Harvard, trans people, The New York Times, or the Democratic Party—and manage to overlook everything else, including the fate of American democracy, and Saman and her family. But overlooking everything else is nihilism. Even if most Americans haven't abandoned their private sense of empathy, many don't seem terribly bothered by the rancidness of their leaders. I confess that this indifference astonishes me. It might be the ugliest effect of Trump's return—the rapid normalization of spectacular corruption, the desensitization to lawless power, the acceptance of moral collapse. Eventually it will coarsen us all.
Daily Mail
22-04-2025
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE Army dentist in revenge porn plot against 'hero of Nairobi' secretly sacked over new stalking claims
An Army dentist who sent a stream of 'distressing' messages to her SAS ex-boyfriend's new partner has been secretly sacked by senior officers following allegations that she has again been stalking her victim. Major Jennifer Wilson had been allowed to continue serving in the Army after pleading guilty to harassment and malicious communications, including bombarding Tobi-Jayne Cadbury with aggressive messages. Wilson, an Afghan War veteran, also sent naked pictures of Christian Craighead - a former SAS soldier decorated for saving hundreds of lives in a terrorist attack in Kenya - to Ms Cadbury, who was in a relationship with the elite soldier at the time. Mr Craighead earned a Conspicuous Gallantry Cross after fighting terrorists from al-Shabaab - an Islamist group linked to al-Qaeda, who attacked the Dusit D2 hotel in Nairobi, Kenya, in 2019. Wilson, 43, was forced to resign by defence chiefs at the end of last year. They said her behaviour was incompatible with military service. A soldier of any rank may be ordered to resign if their conduct falls foul of military discipline. One defence source said: 'Maj Wilson had hoped to continue serving in the Army. I think she always realised it was going to be a long shot. She is now attempting to rebuild her life. 'Given the publicity surrounding the trial, and her relationship with a former member of the SAS, it was always going to be difficult to rejoin the Army. 'The bottom line is that her position had become untenable and in cases like this soldiers are told they must resign.' In December 2023, Wilson pleaded guilty at Aylesbury Crown Court to charges relating to social media messages. Her defence team said at the time that it was an 'internet spat which got out of hand'. In June 2024, Wilson, who suffers from depression and PTSD after serving in Afghanistan, escaped a custodial sentence. Instead she received a community order, including 30 sessions of an accredited programme requirement, 15 Rehabilitation Activity Requirement days and 100 hours of unpaid work. She also received a ten-year restraining order banning her from contacting her victims. Ms Cadbury, 38, said: 'I'm disappointed that the Army and the Ministry of Defence have tried to save face by quietly sacking Wilson in the hope no one will notice.' Back in the 2010s, Wilson had been in a relationship with Mr Craighead for about four years. But after finding out that he had a new partner, she began bombarding him with messages. She then turned her attention to Ms Cadbury. 'She bulldozed into my life under the disguise of 52 anonymous social media accounts,' Ms Cadbury told the MoS last year. 'It was relentless. Every time I blocked one, a new account would appear, sending me more disgusting messages.' An Army source said: 'We expect very high standards of behaviour of our personnel, whether they are on or off duty. 'Those who have fallen short of the Army's high standards are dealt with administratively and may face sanctions including dismissal.'
