Philippa Kaur

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    America’s Moment of Reckoning on the Path to Justice

    “Justice” and “accountability” are often used interchangeably in public discourse these days, whether in the immediate context of the trial of Derek Chauvin, a former Minneapolis police officer, or in the broader context of racial justice and social justice. It would advance both discussions to distinguish between the two concepts.

    Using the Chauvin murder case as an illustration, a just result for the deceased George Floyd would be if, somehow, he was restored to life. Justice would be served and society could go on to the issue of accountability for those who caused harm to Floyd in the first place. Justice for other people of color who remain alive would be a new world that does not put so many of them in constant peril.

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    Yet the word “justice” is often substituted for “accountability,” perhaps to give some grander notion to the fundamental concept of holding others accountable for their harmful actions. Justice also seems to imply a certain freedom from the retribution that is often a component of the demands of those seeking accountability.

    The Derek Chauvin Murder Trial

    In the Chauvin case, whether “justice” is served or “accountability” is achieved rests within a singular legal proceeding. We now know that some measure of accountability has been achieved with the guilty verdict just rendered. And we know that George Floyd is still dead. So, in this context, there will be no justice for Floyd or his family and friends.

    Not only did the trial itself fail to achieve justice for any of them, but the larger “system” also failed all of them and has not been significantly altered to ensure justice for others. On these broader issues, the distinction between justice and accountability may have a profound impact on the outcome of America’s racial and social conflict.

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    The “justice” at the heart of this discussion contemplates that which is equitable and fair and impartial. “Accountability” refers to being held responsible for one’s actions. It has nothing to do with equity or fairness, except to the extent that holding someone accountable for his/her actions may seem fairer than not doing so.

    Seeking justice seems to be aspirational, a goal. The point at which justice is actually achieved never seems to arrive. Some among us think of the search as a lifelong struggle. That struggle is for me — a lawyer and a progressive — very personal but not personal in the usual sense of that word. Like almost everyone, I want to be treated fairly. Generally, I have been. And that makes me and my view of justice very different from those who believe that generally they have been treated unfairly or that they live in an inequitable or partial world.

    The challenge in finding common ground rests at the juncture where my privilege meets the disadvantage and misfortune of others. My world looks pretty fair to me if I am only focused on myself. Not perfect but pretty fair. A black father living in inner-city poverty in today’s America probably doesn’t see his life in the same terms that I do mine and almost certainly questions whether society values his child’s life to the same extent that my child’s life is valued.

    Now, take a look at accountability. If someone walks up to me and hits me in the face or walks up to the black guy and hits him in the face, both of us will want some measure of the same thing to happen — that the person who hit us be held accountable.

    If justice is aspirational, that leaves it for accountability to act as a deterrent to reckless or harmful conduct. It is pretty clear that “justice” isn’t what America has. We have a justice system that too often administers justice unjustly and is way more suited for determining accountability if that can be done in a just manner.

    By any reasoning, accountability is an indispensable component of a system of justice. If America can just start there, those who most often suffer will begin to look at the justice system as a part of government that meets a most fundamental need. Meanwhile, those who are held accountable for their actions will provide a template for the likely outcome of similar misconduct and a deterrent to that misconduct.

    Are You Paying Attention?

    To highlight how critical the distinction is, it is surely hard to understand how any experienced white police officer, never mind one a scant 10 miles away from where George Floyd lost his life at the hands of a white police officer, could kill an unarmed 20-year-old black man after stopping him for an expired auto registration tag. This occurred while Chauvin was facing decades in prison for the unconscionable escalation of a small-time police intervention to what a jury has now determined to be the culpable disregard for the life of another human being.

    Officer Kim Potter, the white veteran police officer 10 miles away, had to be aware of what was going on in the Chauvin trial when she escalated a minor infraction to a deadly encounter. Did she not care? Did she think that she was a much smarter and better cop than Chauvin, or that her moral compass was somehow fixed somewhere differently than Chauvin’s? She shot a 20-year-old black kid at point-blank range after a traffic stop. I expect that she wishes that she had kept her weapon where it belonged and that, maybe even in memory of George Floyd, had told that young black man to go home and make sure to update his auto registration. And, oh, by the way, you missed a court date and you need to get that taken care of as well.

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    I don’t know if she will be held accountable, but she probably wishes she didn’t have to find out. While this was festering, the public learned that cops had killed a 13-year-old boy in Chicago and a 16-year-old boy in Maryland. Then, minutes before the announcement of the Chauvin verdict, a 16-year-old black girl in Columbus, Ohio, was shot dead by a cop. If you can’t see something terribly wrong here, you aren’t paying attention.

    The core of the problem is the justice part of the equation. Unfortunately, the justice system is working exactly as it was designed to work. Way too many police officers seem to believe that America’s justice system will protect them from accountability because that is how it is designed and how it has generally operated. It seems that the only accountability they fear is rejection by fellow officers operating within the same entitled system. Rarely do cops believe that another cop has gone too far.

    Is Justice Possible?

    In Chauvin’s case, fellow officers testified against him, some apparently believing that his actions were beyond what they could countenance. But what Chauvin’s trial did not include was any evidence about the seemingly lengthy record of official misconduct allegations against him. If he is a “bad apple” now, why did it take the agonizing video of George Floyd begging for his life for the supposed “good apples” to finally step forward?

    And more importantly, where are the good apples now that the Chauvin trial is over? Will we see them in other trials? Will we see them stand up publicly against the bad apples in their midst? Will they become vocal and visible advocates for serious gun control so that every cop on the street isn’t running around so fearful in the moment that whatever judgment and compassion they may have fails to engage?

    I know what the answers to these questions have been. I know there can be no justice if the justice system remains unjust. And I know that accountability is the only path to a systemic transformation that will begin to look like equal justice for all.

    *[A version of this article was co-published on the author’s blog, Hard Left Turn.]

    The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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    Shaping the Future of Energy Collaboration

    The cancelation of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s much-awaited visit to India is disappointing but unsurprising. India, a country with nearly 1.4 billion people, is currently confronting a second wave of COVID-19 infections. Though all is not lost as bilateral talks are expected to take place virtually on April 26. High on the agenda remains the launch of Roadmap 2030, which will foreseeably set the tone for India-UK relations in a post-COVID era and pave the way for a free trade agreement.

    The Missing Pieces to Avoid a Climate Disaster

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    This shared vision, forming a critical piece of the “global Britain” agenda and the UK’s post-Brexit foreign policy, is expected to lay out a framework for enhanced cooperation across a much broader set of policy pillars. One such area is climate action, which is a key part of economic growth strategies and the global green energy agenda for both countries.

    As signatories to the 2015 Paris Agreement — the international treaty on climate change — India and the UK have sizable ambitions to invest in creating cleaner and sustainable energy systems. This time last year, the United Kingdom experienced its longest coal-free run to date, a significant milestone for an economy that generated about 40% of its electricity from coal just a decade ago. While India’s green energy transition is comparatively nascent, it has made significant strides toward expanding its renewable energy capacity, especially in solar power, where it is emerging as a global leader.

    Energy Sources

    Although the two countries have vastly different energy sources and consumption patterns, this creates a unique opportunity for each economy to capitalize on its individual strengths. In offshore wind power, the UK is the largest global player, while India has only begun to scratch the surface of its wind potential. The United Kingdom’s technical prowess will play a crucial role in supporting the growth of India’s offshore wind energy — from the meteorological expertise required to evaluate wind patterns and energy production potential to joint research and development opportunities.

    The growth of electric vehicles (EVs) is another area where each market has distinct strengths. India, for example, can rely on the UK’s experience as it undertakes the massive infrastructure exercise of deploying smart charging EV stations. The UK can draw on India’s success with battery-powered three-wheelers to develop sustainable last-mile connectivity solutions. Strengthened bilateral cooperation on these fronts will not only accelerate the EV revolution globally but can also serve to contain China’s dominance in this market.

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    The Indian and British governments are closely collaborating around climate action. This is evident from recent trips to India by the UK’s Alok Sharma, the president of this year’s UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) that will take place in Glasgow, and Lord Tariq Ahmad, the minister for South Asia and the Commonwealth.

    It is, however, important to expand the scope of these engagements to include small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which constitute a powerhouse of skill and experience. SMEs based in the UK can play a significant role in supporting India’s energy transition. British companies could adapt their innovations for the local market, while in turn benefiting from India’s strong manufacturing base and engineering skills. To tap into this market opportunity, governments could facilitate SME-focused trade delegations as well as joint-venture opportunities for cleantech startups.

    Green financing would play an equally important role in truly unlocking the value of such partnerships. This would be through existing bilateral instruments like the Sustainable Finance Forum and Green Growth Equity Fund or the UK’s soon-to-be-launched revenue mechanism that will mobilize private investment into carbon capture and hydrogen projects. This is especially important for India, which is looking at green hydrogen in a big way and is set to launch its first national hydrogen roadmap this year. As the UK’s carbon capture market grows, this could support India’s plans to produce hydrogen from natural gas, creating new avenues for technology sharing.

    If one thing is clear, it is that the opportunities are immense and the existing foundation is strong. With the stage set and the actors in place, Roadmap 2030 could certainly stand to benefit not just India and the UK, but the world at large in delivering a cleaner, more affordable and resilient energy future.

    The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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    Seeking Truth and Reconciliation in America

    After over 50 years in the US as an immigrant from the UK, of which 40 have been spent in Washington, DC, I thought I had seen it all. Clearly, I was wrong. The mob invasion of the Capitol on January 6 was a historic first. Thankfully, it was followed by President Joe Biden’s peaceful inauguration on January 20. Democrats went on to achieve a majority in both houses of the US Congress. With the change in the political wind, America has a unique opportunity to borrow from three previous truth and reconciliation commissions (TRCs) to bring harmony where there is discord.

    Will American Democracy Perish Like Rome’s?

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    The most famous TRC was instituted by South Africa’s 1995 Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act. The goal of the new TRC was to uncover the truth about human rights violations during decades of apartheid. The emphasis was on finding the truth from both victims and perpetrators, not on prosecuting individuals for past crimes. In this regard, it differed from the Nuremberg trials that prosecuted Nazis for their crimes.

    Societal Schism

    The events of January 6 have exposed societal schism to the world. Now, the US needs actions, not words, to form a fully representative, multi-party equivalent of the South African TRC to deal with enduring injustices across the nation. The current American social problem is complex, multi-generational and multi-dimensional. As such, it is not likely to be easily or speedily ameliorated. However, admitting the problem in the style of alcoholics anonymous is a necessary first step to avoiding a looming cultural and economic civil war.

    The fundamental problem in America is its broken education system. According to Pew Research Center, a large percentage of Americans still reject the theory of evolution. As per the National Center for Educational Statistics, 21% (43 million) of American adults are functionally illiterate — e.g., lacking the basic ability to use reading, writing and calculation skills for their own and the community’s development. The US may be the world superpower, but its poorly educated citizens often lack critical thinking and judgment. Seduced by demagogues, they have drifted into warring camps.

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    Many thoughtful Americans are worried about divisions in society. The December 2019 issue of The Atlantic was a special report titled “How to Stop a Civil War.” It examined “a nation coming apart.” The magazine brought together the nation’s best writers to confront questions of American unity and fracture. That issue has proved to be prescient.

    Since the 2020 elections, the rhetoric in the US became increasingly toxic. Disinformation was rife, calls for insurrection came right from the top and the pot of anger boiled over on January 6. It may not be 1861, but disunity reigns in the United States. A TRC that digs out the truth might be exactly what America needs in a post-truth world.

    Truth and Reconciliation Commissions

    There have been three significant TRCs since 1990 in South Africa, Chile and Canada. The results of these appear to be mixed. In balance, they seem to have had a positive impact on the arc of the history of their respective societies.

    The story of South Africa’s TRC is too well known to be told in full here. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984, investigated crimes during apartheid to record the truth. The TRC offered amnesty to perpetrators of many crimes and rehabilitation as well as reparations to the victims. It might be fair to say that the work of the TRC allowed South Africa to make a peaceful transition from a horrendously unjust apartheid regime to a plural, democratic society.

    Chile’s TRC predates the South African one. It operated from May 1990 to February 1991. The mandate of the Rettig Commission, as Chile’s TRC has come to be known, was to document human rights abuses that resulted in death or disappearance during the years of military rule from September 11, 1973, to March 11, 1990. Notably, investigating torture and abuses that did not result in death did not form part of the mandate of the Rettig Commission. Nevertheless, there is a strong argument to be made why Chile’s TRC was the first step that led to last year’s referendum in which Chileans voted to rewrite the military-era constitution.

    Canada’s TRC emulated the Chilean and South African ones. Between 2007 and 2015, it provided those directly or indirectly affected by the legacy of the Indian residential school system with an opportunity to share their stories and experiences. The TRC spent six years traveling to all parts of Canada and recorded experiences of 6,500 witnesses. It recorded the history and legacy of the numerous injustices perpetrated by the residential school system to the indigenous peoples. Its six-volume report with 94 “calls to action” has been accepted by the Canadian government and marks a watershed in the country’s history.

    An American Truth and Reconciliation Commission

    Unlike South Africa, Chile and Canada, America’s injustices and even its divisions are messier. There is no equivalent of an apartheid or military regime to investigate. Investigating only the injustices against the indigenous Native Americans or formerly enslaved African Americans would be too narrow a remit to renew the American social fabric.

    America’s schisms include, but are not limited to, those in education, culture, geography, politics, religious beliefs, skin color and immigration. Just as Catholics and different Protestant sects interpret the Bible in various ways, Americans have radically different interpretations of the Constitution and its amendments. Like many reports, articles and documentaries have now recorded, social media has exacerbated the fractures in American society. Truth itself is in question and distrust in institutions is dangerously high.

    The purpose of establishing an American TRC is to slow down, and potentially reverse, the steady rupturing of a fundamentally decent society espousing equal opportunity for all. To avoid the growing risk of a dystopian cultural war, the US needs to identify the problems it faces. If social media is exacerbating divisions, how exactly is it doing so? Is polarization in America based on resentment of the white working class against metropolitan elites, or is it the rural versus urban divide? If so many Americans are functionally illiterate, what exactly is going wrong in the education system? If social mobility is now below that in my home country of the UK, why is that so?

    For a truth and reconciliation commission to be credible, it must not only identify problems but also provide solutions. Like its Canadian counterpart, it could come up with “calls to action.” Members of an American TRC must come from all walks of life, different political, cultural and religious philosophies, and have a reputation for integrity. In a partisan democracy with tribal political loyalties, they must not belong to any political party. Their core task must be to diagnose what ails America and what can heal it. Only then can this nation, which I have made my home, can be restored to its much-haloed promise.

    The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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    The Matter of Xi’s Succession

    At the all-important two sessions (lianghui) meetings last month, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials adopted a new and surprisingly unambitious Five-Year Plan, reoriented the country’s technology strategy and redoubled the crackdown on democracy in Hong Kong. All of this was documented in the English-language media. But another crucial CCP announcement flew below the media’s radar. An innocuous-sounding procedural change gave President Xi Jinping the authority to dismiss vice premiers of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China, one of the last potential bastions of elite opposition to his rule. Premier Li Keqiang, nominally the second-most powerful man in China, has now been effectively sidelined. Furthermore, Hu Chunhua, Xi’s charismatic potential successor, can now be fired at will.

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    Xi was already on track for a third term. First, he was “reelected” to a second term at the 19th Party Congress in September 2017. A few months later, the pliant National People’s Congress (NPC) lifted the two-term limit for the presidency. Despite acquiring total control, Xi remains wary of potential rivals, particularly Li Keqiang, his second-in-command. At the 19th Party Congress, Xi kept Li on largely as a figurehead, calculating that elevating anyone else to the number-two job would have anointed them as a potential successor. Since 2017, Xi repeatedly sought opportunities to undermine Li, cannily dispatching him to Wuhan in January 2020 to associate the premier with the botched response to COVID-19.

    Neutralizing Potential Challengers

    Xi is now looking beyond Li with the goal of neutralizing all potential challengers. Li has little practical influence in the CCP’s top echelons, but he wields formidable power on paper. Formally speaking, the CCP and the Chinese state are separate institutions. Xi Jinping is both general secretary of the CCP and president of the People’s Republic of China. Li is ostensibly the second-ranked official in the CCP, but his position as the head of the State Council, the executive branch of the Chinese state, is more important. Until the recent rule change, Xi had no formal authority to order direct personnel changes in the State Council. That meant Li’s four main subordinates, known as vice premiers, had some level of job security and could potentially use their position as a springboard to challenge Xi.

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    All of that has changed at this year’s lianghui with a legislative amendment. The law in question is Article 32 of the Organic Law of the National People’s Congress of the People’s Republic of China. The NPC meets only once per year, at the spring lianghui. Under the new rules, the Standing Committee of the NPC, which answers to Xi, can remove any official on the State Council, except the prime minister, at any time. This means that Xi does not have to wait for the next lianghui to get rid of Li’s subordinates.

    In strict formal terms, if Xi wanted to fire a vice premier, Li would still have to consent. In practice, Li’s hand would be forced by Xi. The NPC is China’s top legislative body, a rubber-stamp parliament that exists to legitimize the CCP’s actions. If the NPC recommends personnel changes on the State Council, the premier of the State Council cannot resist. If Li were to do so, that would be tantamount to overriding the “democratic will” of the people of China.

    Why is Xi bothering to amend the law if his third term is not in doubt? We do not know for sure, but we can speculate. Perhaps Xi is just generally wary of Li. But there might be another reason. There was widespread grumbling among the top brass of the CCP when Xi eliminated term limits three years ago. Rumors tell us that there is still some level of semi-organized resistance, with Li potentially involved. It might also be the case that Xi tried to replace one or more vice premiers, but Li resisted. Vice premiers of the State Council are all members of the CCP Politburo, the 20-member body that is the second-highest organ in the party bureaucracy.

    Xi probably wants total control of the Politburo. Of course, Xi has other ways to take out such senior officials. In the past, “anti-corruption” crackdowns have cut many down to size. However, this anti-corruption process is disruptive and could send a signal that Xi’s control is shaky. Therefore, a sneaky legal change might be a better alternative.

    Succession Matters

    We suspect that Xi is targeting a particular leader. China has four vice premiers: Han Zheng, Liu He, Sun Chunlan and Hu Chunhua. Han is a member of the Politburo Standing Committee, the CCP’s top body. This legal amendment would not be enough to get rid of Han. So, he is not the target of Xi’s ire. Neither is Liu, Xi’s personal friend who won the economic policy argument in the 14th Five-Year Plan. In the shady world of CCP politics, Liu’s job seems safe as of now. Sun, the highest-ranking woman in the modern history of Chinese politics, is past the mandatory retirement age and poses no threat to Xi. This leaves Hu as the only possible target for the amendment. The fact that he is the most charismatic and popular of the vice premiers makes him a potential threat to Xi.

    From 2012 to 2017, Hu was the party secretary of Guangdong, China’s most prosperous province. For decades, this position has been a stepping stone for national leadership. Ironically, Xi’s father served as party secretary of Guangdong, as did other CCP luminaries such as Zhao Ziyang, Li Changchun, Zhang Dejiang and Wang Yang. Hu is the youngest official at his level of seniority in the CCP. He is also connected, though not related, to Xi’s predecessor, Hu Jintao. Before the 2017 NPC, there was widespread speculation that Hu Chunhua would leapfrog straight into the Politburo Standing Committee and be groomed as a putative future leader. Xi prevented this, giving Hu the position of vice premier instead. Now, Xi has gone further and hung a sword over Hu’s head.Xi is determined to ensure an orderly confirmation of his third term at the next NPC in 2022. For three years, the Chinese media have humored Xi by resolutely avoiding the topic of his succession. Xi knows that it cannot be avoided indefinitely. According to longstanding CCP custom, anyone featuring in the succession sequence needs experience in the positions of vice premier, national vice chairman and vice chairman of the Central Military Commission. Those who currently occupy these positions are either too old or not close enough to Xi to be considered successor material. The only exception is Hu who now holds office at the pleasure of Xi.

    The study of Chinese elite politics is as much an art as a science. Like Kremlinologists at the height of the Cold War, China analysts make educated inferences from a small number of highly choreographed public events and documents. As a result, the line between speculation and analysis is often blurry. Nevertheless, as US-China relations deteriorate, the CCP’s succession plans are more important now than at any point since the death of Mao Zedong in 1976.

    Coming out of the lianghui, all signs indicate that Xi remains at the height of his power at home. Furthermore, he is likely to enter his third term in 2022 with a new suite of tools to deter — and, if necessary, eliminate — potential elite rivals. In this context, pushing for Xi’s ouster, as one anonymous senior US official recently recommended, would be reckless as it is likely to backfire.

    The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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    Biden’s Policy Shift on Yemen Rings Alarm Bells in Riyadh

    At the beginning of February, the Biden administration made two relevant decisions on Yemen with far-reaching consequences for the country and US policy in the Arabian Peninsula. The first announcement concerned the end of US support for “offensive operations” conducted by the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen, a campaign promise President Joe Biden followed through. The US will suspend all pending arms deals with the countries intervening in the Yemeni Civil War. These notably include the sale of $500 million worth of precision-guided missiles to Saudi Arabia and the purchase of 50 F-35 fighter jets by the United Arab Emirates agreed under the Trump administration. In addition, the US Department of Defense announced a cessation of intelligence sharing related to military targets inside Yemen.

    The Battle Lines of Yemen’s Endgame

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    The second step concerns the revocation of the designation of Ansar Allah (the Houthis) as a terrorist organization. The designation was an 11th-hour move by the previous administration that had sparked an international outcry as it would have hindered the capacity of international NGOs to deliver much-needed humanitarian aid to Houthi-controlled areas, where 80% of the Yemeni population currently lives. The two decisions were accompanied by a renewed commitment to the UN-led peace process that saw the appointment of Timothy Lenderking, a career diplomat with extensive experience in the Arabian Peninsula, as the US envoy to Yemen. These policy shifts rang alarm bells in Saudi Arabia.

    Endless Odds in Yemen

    Although largely predicted, Biden’s move complicates the already shaky position of Saudi Arabia in the conflict. Riyadh faces multiple hurdles in Yemen while seeking an exit strategy. Over five years, a bombing campaign, a maritime blockade and military support to proxies on the ground, alongside the UAE, have not been sufficient to defeat the Houthi insurgency, while the human cost of this attempt has left indelible scars on Yemen and its people.

    After acknowledging the impossibility of victory, Riyadh underwent painful negotiations with the leadership of Ansar Allah in 2019. A mediated solution would allow the Saudis to scale down their costly intervention and spare the Al Saud royal family an outright display of weakness in a region where military prowess is a determinant of political weight. However, last November, Ansar Allah began to intensify its attacks against Saudi targets utilizing Iran-supplied military hardware.

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    The Houthi campaign exposed the vulnerability of the Saudi strategic infrastructure to asymmetric attacks launched through drones, missiles and explosives-laden boats targeting oil facilities, airports, commercial vessels and ports. As a result, the mediation went awry, and Saudi Arabia scaled up its bombing campaign against Ansar Allah once again.

    Moreover, the Saudi intervention in Yemen was confronted with another issue: southern separatism. After Abu Dhabi decided to partially pull out from Yemen in July 2019, the Southern Transitional Council (STC) — the UAE’s main political ally — cut ties with the internationally recognized government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi and began to push for the independence of southern Yemen. Since then, STC separatism has forced the Saudis to commit to the maintenance of the anti-Ansar Allah coalition through the Riyadh Agreement between Hadi and the STC, which collapsed in April 2020 and came back into force last December.

    Yet all evidence indicates that a power-sharing solution in Aden is far from secured as party-affiliated militias remain outside government control, some STC factions oppose the Riyadh Agreement, and tensions persist inside the coalition between the STC and the Islah party, the Yemeni offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. This indicates that Riyadh cannot disengage from southern Yemen without causing the collapse of the anti-Ansar Allah front.

    Anxiety in Riyadh

    In this situation, President Biden’s announcement poses two problems to Saudi Arabia. The end of US support is not enough to stop the intervention overnight as Saudi Arabia already possesses large reserves of American military supplies. The military cooperation between Washington and Riyadh is deep and multidimensional, including logistical, technical and training support to the Saudi army, especially the air force, and President Biden’s pledge to “help Saudi Arabia defend itself, its sovereignty, territorial integrity and its people” signals that these forms of assistance will likely continue unabated.

    Nonetheless, this decision makes the intervention unsustainable in the long term since the Saudi military apparatus is deeply reliant on US military hardware, which cannot be replaced quickly. Thus, the US is setting a deadline on the Saudi intervention without pulling the rug from under Riyadh’s feet.

    In parallel, the unconditional removal of Ansar Allah from the list of terrorist organizations seems to have empowered the Houthis. The designation was supposed to force the rebel group to halt its attacks and negotiate a solution with Saudi Arabia. After acknowledging the revocation and the de facto deadline on the Saudi intervention, Ansar Allah launched a new offensive in Yemen’s Marib and Taiz governorates alongside a series of cross-border attacks against Saudi targets. The Ansar Allah leadership wants to show that it is driving the Saudis out of Yemen and is losing interest in the peace negotiations. Consequently, Saudi Arabia now finds itself in a weaker position as pressure mounts against its intervention but fades when it comes to the Houthis.

    What Are the Paths Toward Peace in Yemen?

    READ MORE

    Against this backdrop, Riyadh responded to Biden’s announcement on February 6 by praising the US commitment to reinforce defense cooperation but without mentioning the end of support for the war in Yemen. Even in official communications, Saudi Arabia pursues an appeasement strategy that has led its leadership to end the Qatar blockade in January, shorten the sentence of women’s rights activist Loujain al-Hathloul, and release two US-Saudi dissidents detained since April 2019. The Saudis seem confident that once electoral promises are carried out and Riyadh exits the international spotlight, US-Saudi relations can return to business as usual.

    But the appeasement strategy has not brought substantial dividends, and Washington is even testing the water — so far unsuccessfully — regarding reentering the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Tehran. If US commitment will prove serious, Biden will have to follow through before the next midterm elections in 2022, when the Democrats might lose the Senate and, along with it, the chance to ratify the Iran nuclear deal.

    In the meantime, Saudi Arabia continues to diversify its international alliances in line with the perceived withdrawal of the United States from the Middle East. Riyadh can already rely on strong economic ties with China, energy cooperation with Russia at OPEC+ level and security cooperation with these and other middle powers, such as India. As pressure mounts from Washington, Riyadh might be further incentivized to deepen relations with other partners and use them to balance out US demands on human rights.

    Crown Prince Under Pressure

    When it comes to Saudi leadership, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s three most important decisions have all been challenged in one way or another. The Qatar blockade did not bring any tangible results and was eventually revoked. The intervention in Yemen has been counterproductive on many grounds and will become increasingly unsustainable in light of a change of direction in Washington. Lastly, the economic transition planned in Vision 2030 has no end in sight, while the COVID-19 crisis has further slowed down progress.

    Embed from Getty Images

    On top of that, the crown prince was reportedly open to finding an agreement with Israel, as indicated by his secret meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in NEOM at the end of November last year. Yet the opposition of his father, King Salman, was sufficient to stop the recognition of Israel for the time being. Most notably, the message came through Prince Turki bin Faisal, who harshly criticized Israel at an international conference in the aftermath of the bin Salman-Netanyahu meeting.

    Thus, the new scenario of US-Saudi relations is not favorable to the leadership of Muhammad bin Salman. The Biden administration seems committed to reining in the crown prince’s adventurism in the Middle East and at home, complicating any future operation of domestic repression against the high ranks of the Al Saud family. President Biden’s criticism against bin Salman has culminated in the release of the CIA report on his role in the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The report sparked a new wave of criticism against the crown prince at the international level but not domestically. According to Dr. Cinzia Bianco, a senior analyst at Gulf State Analytics, “The Saudi youth perceived the report as a confirmation that the US has no definitive evidence of MBS’ responsibility in the assassination.”

    Therefore, it is safe to say that Mohammed bin Salman’s position inside the kingdom is robust. All his direct adversaries within the royal family have been sidelined or jailed over the past four years. In Bianco’s opinion, “If Washington really wanted to topple MBS, it could have applied sanctions against him.” Nevertheless, the latest events have weakened his leadership and possibly emboldened the princes who are discontent with his rule. Much will depend of the future of external relations with the United States and the results of economic reforms.

    Regardless of internal dynamics, President Biden’s move has complicated the Saudi position in Yemen, and a diplomatic solution to the war still seems out of reach. The dialogue between Washington and Tehran might further marginalize the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. As a result, the US policy shift on Yemen is placing a heavy burden on Saudi foreign policy.

    *[Fair Observer is a media partner of Gulf State Analytics.]

    The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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    Bill Gates and the Zero-Sum Vaccination Game

    The debate is raging once again about the true origin of COVID-19. Was it zoonotic, originating in a bat cave and then infecting exotic meat in Wuhan’s wet market as the majority of scientists claimed throughout 2020? At the approach of the November election, US President Donald Trump preferred to believe the pandemic was a plot to destroy his presidency conducted by a man he previously called an intimate “friend,” China’s President Xi Jinping. The virus was already spreading when Trump explained to World Economic Forum in Davos the nature of his relationship with Xi: “He’s for China, I’m for the US, but other than that, we love each other.”

    Four months later, Trump began contradicting scientists and blaming Xi’s China by claiming “that the virus originated in a laboratory and was accidentally released.” In September, he preferred to suggest to his voters that COVID-19 was the result of an Asian conspiracy designed to undermine his presidency. This sparked a wave of anti-Asian attacks in the US that have continued to this day.

    Prominent scientists today recognize that Trump’s initial assessment may have been right. Their colleagues who dismissed the idea of an accidental release of the virus from a Wuhan laboratory were either misled or disingenuously defensive of an equally unproven thesis. The scientists may have been impelled to reject the suspicion of a laboratory accident not only out of a lack of direct evidence, but also out of fear of the political blame game the president was beginning to exploit to distract attention from his own failure to respond appropriately to the crisis.

    Trump obviously preferred to see the war against a virus as a PR opportunity to bolster his image as a fearless leader. Allowing politicians to place blame on China, even for an accident, might have become as dangerous for the world as the virus itself, adding to the reigning misery rather than resolving the mystery of the origin of the disease.

    Wealth Inequality Breeds Health Inequality

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    Science itself and its public image have taken a hit from this ongoing catastrophe. The honored, if not revered Dr. Anthony Fauci admitted to prioritizing the distribution of masks among the medical community above the general public at a time when little was still known about how contagious COVID-19 was and how it spread. Political leaders across the globe, including Trump, all found themselves in a thankless position as they were required to demonstrate their leadership with insufficient knowledge of the nature of the challenge and a penury of material means to confront it.

    Many deserve to share the blame for a situation that, despite progress with vaccines, is still in many ways worsening. But, as Alexander Zaitchik exposes in an important article in The New Republic, the person perhaps most to blame for our global failure to respond effectively is neither a scientist nor a politician. His name is Bill Gates.

    Most rational people would reason that a global crisis requires a global response. Most realists recognize that in a civilization dominated by sovereign nation-states, summoning a unified response to any global crisis will never be easy. Humanity’s quasi-universal awareness of the problem of global warming over the decades demonstrates the difficulty of mobilizing humankind to implement even a minimalist response.

    In his article, “How Bill Gates Impeded Global Access to Covid Vaccines,” Zaitchik narrates a depressing story that began in February 2020, when the nature of the COVID-19 threat had become clear. In conformity with its mission, the World Health Organization (WHO) coordinated a “research and innovation forum to mobilize international action” aimed at combating the spreading epidemic. It sought to “maintain broad and open channels of communication, since collaboration and information-sharing minimize duplication and accelerate discovery.”

    Collaboration and sharing of science would be critical to any effective response. With most research publicly funded — a point Mariana Mazzucato made this week — it specifically recommended patent pooling. Zaitchik notes that optimism was still possible: “Battle-scarred veterans of the medicines-access and open-science movements hoped the immensity of the pandemic would override a global drug system based on proprietary science and market monopolies.”

    Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

    Proprietary science:

    An oxymoron to the extent that “science” simply means human knowledge and cannot be owned or commodified.

    Contextual Note

    The WHO was thus prepared to play the role assigned to its mission as stated in its constitution: “The health of all peoples is fundamental to the attainment of peace and security and is dependent upon the fullest co-operation of individuals and States.” Aware of the challenge lying ahead of them, the team began to prepare its campaign. Alas, it hadn’t counted on the intervention of the globe’s self-appointed Mr. World Health, Bill Gates, whose title derives from his contributing billions of dollars to the causes he believes in (the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has invested $1.75 billion in the development and distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine). Among them is the most sacred of all causes: intellectual property. 

    Embed from Getty Images

    Zaitchik describes in detail how Gates — a man with no skills in science, security or politics — has positioned himself to dictate to the world how contemporary science will affect every human being’s security. The key, following the logic of all capitalistic projects, is the management of scarcity. Without scarcity, industry cannot survive and prosper. Little does it matter that because of scarcity many humans simply will not survive.

    Before Gates’s intervention, the group sought “to create a voluntary intellectual property pool inside the WHO.” In so doing, they demonstrated their naivety: “That pharmaceutical companies and their allied governments would allow intellectual property concerns to slow things down — from research and development to manufacturing scale-up — does not seem to have occurred to them.” But that is exactly what happened, thanks to Gates’s overpowering voice (measured by billions of dollars rather than decibels) and his “reputation as a wise, beneficent, and prophetic leader.” When the dust cleared, what emerged was “a zero-sum vaccination battle that has left much of the world on the losing side.”

    Zaitchik documents the ensuing catastrophe due largely to “Gates’s dedication to monopoly medicine” and his “unwavering commitment to drug companies’ right to exclusive control over medical science and the markets for its products.” No one other than powerful governments can hope to compete with Gates’s cash reserves. But Gates’s own government, in Washington, DC, — whether under a Democrat or a Republican president — would never compete as a matter of principle. Competition is a private game. No other government in the world has the power to compete. The US government, like Gates himself, appears addicted to “politically constructed and politically imposed monopolies.”

    Historical Note

    The egregious oxymoron “proprietary science” would have seemed strange to the ears of anyone living before the industrial revolution. Were he alive today and imbued with modern economic culture, the 15th-century German printer, Johannes Gutenberg, would be claiming a percentage of every book, journal or magazine produced thanks to his invention of the printing press. Instead, Adolph II of Nassau, Archbishop of Maintz rewarded Gutenburg — the Bill Gates or Elon Musk of his day — for his innovation “with the title of ‘Gentleman of the Court’.” He also received “a court outfit, a stipend and two tonnes of grain and wine, tax-free.” The wine can be explained by the fact that Gutenberg’s inspiration for the printing press came from observing a wine press.

    Gates deserves to be similarly honored for his invention of MS-DOS. Rather than the billions extracted from the Earth’s entire population thanks to his skill at monopoly creation and predatory business practices, he should have received from the governor of the state of Washington an appropriate title (“Gentleman of the coding room”), a flashy suit of clothes with a matching raincoat (for Seattle weather), a generous stipend (a million of two per year would be appropriate) and maybe an unlimited supply of canned foods, since he is a believer in and expert practitioner of canned economic and scientific wisdom.

    As many of the rest of us queue up for one of the competing vaccines that promise to bail us all out — despite their disparities in performance adding to the confusion created by the incompetence of competitive governments — we should reflect on what all this tells us about an economic system whose vaunted efficiency Gates believes in and practices while using his money and clout to impose it on an unwilling world.

    *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

    The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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    The Spread of Global Hate

    One insidious way to torture the detainees at Guantanamo Bay was to blast music at them at all hours. The mixtape, which included everything from Metallica to the Meow Mix jingle, was intended to disorient the captives and impress upon them the futility of resistance. It worked: This soundtrack from hell did indeed break several inmates.

    For four years, Americans had to deal with a similar sonic blast, namely the “music” of President Donald Trump. His voice was everywhere: on TV and radio, screaming from the headlines of newspapers, pumped out nonstop on social media. MAGAmen and women danced to the repetitive beat of his lies and distortions. Everyone else experienced the nonstop assault of Trump’s instantly recognizable accent and intonations as nails on a blackboard. After the 2016 presidential election, psychologists observed a significant uptick in the fears Americans had about the future. One clinician even dubbed the phenomenon “Trump anxiety disorder.”

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    The volume of Trump’s assault on the senses has decreased considerably since January. Obviously, he no longer has the bully pulpit of the Oval Office to broadcast his views. The mainstream media no longer covers his every utterance. Most importantly, the major social media platforms have banned him. In the wake of the January 6 insurrection on Capitol Hill, Twitter suspended Trump permanently under its glorification of violence policy. Facebook made the same decision, though its oversight board is now revisiting the former president’s deplatforming.

    It’s not only Trump. The Proud Boys, QAnon, the militia movements: The social media footprint of the far right has decreased a great deal in 2021, with a parallel decline in the amount of misinformation available on the Web.

    And it’s not just a problem of misinformation and hate speech. According to a new report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) on domestic terrorism, right-wing extremists have been involved in 267 plots and 91 fatalities since 2015, with the number of incidents rising in 2020 to a height unseen in a quarter of a century. A large number of the perpetrators are loners who have formed their beliefs from social media. As one counterterrorism official put it, “Social media has afforded absolutely everything that’s bad out there in the world the ability to come inside your home.”

    So, why did the tech giants provide Trump, his extremist followers and their global counterparts unlimited access to a growing audience over those four long years?

    Facebook Helps Trump

    In a new report from the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE), Heidi Beirich and Wendy Via write: “For years, Trump violated the community standards of several platforms with relative impunity. Tech leaders had made the affirmative decision to allow exceptions for the politically powerful, usually with the excuse of ‘newsworthiness’ or under the guise of ‘political commentary’ that the public supposedly needed to see.”

    Even before Trump became president, Facebook was cutting him a break. In 2015, he was using the social media platform to promote a Muslim travel ban, which generated considerable controversy, particularly within Facebook itself. The Washington Post reports:

    “Outrage over the video led to a companywide town hall, in which employees decried the video as hate speech, in violation of the company’s policies. And in meetings about the issue, senior leaders and policy experts overwhelmingly said they felt that the video was hate speech, according to three former employees, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. [Facebook CEO Mark] Zuckerberg expressed in meetings that he was personally disgusted by it and wanted it removed, the people said.”

    But the company’s most prominent Republican, Vice-President of Global Policy Joel Kaplan, persuaded Zuckerberg to change his position. In spring 2016, when Zuckerberg wanted to condemn Trump’s plan to build a wall on the border with Mexico, he was again persuaded to step back for fear of seeming too partisan.

    Embed from Getty Images

    Facebook went on to play a critical role in getting Trump elected. It wasn’t simply the Russian campaign to create fake accounts, fake messaging and even fake events using Facebook, or the theft of Facebook user data by Cambridge Analytica. More important was the role played by Facebook staff in helping Trump’s digital outreach team maximize its use of social media. The Trump campaign spent $70 million on Facebook ads and raised much of its $250 million in online fundraising through Facebook as well.

    Trump established a new paradigm through brute force and money. As he turned himself into clickbait, the social media giants applied the same “exceptionalism” to other rancid politicians. More ominously, the protection accorded politicians extended to extremists. According to an account of a discussion at a Twitter staff meeting, one employee explained that “on a technical level, content from Republican politicians could get swept up by algorithms aggressively removing white supremacist material. Banning politicians wouldn’t be accepted by society as a trade-off for flagging all of the white supremacist propaganda.”

    Of course, in the wake of the January 6 insurrection, social media organizations decided that society could indeed accept the banning of politicians, at least when it came to some politicians in the United States.

    The Real Fake News

    In the Philippines, an extraordinary 97% of internet users had accounts with Facebookas of 2019, up from 40% in 2018 (by comparison, about 67% of Americans have Facebook accounts). Increasingly, Filipinos get their news from social media. That’s bad news for the mainstream media in the Philippines. And that’s particularly bad news for journalists like Maria Ressa, who runs an online news site called Rappler.

    At a press conference for the GPAHE report, Ressa described how the government of Rodrigo Duterte, with an assist from Facebook, has made her life a living hell. Like Trump, President Duterte came to power on a populist platform spread through Facebook. Because of her critical reporting on government affairs, Ressa felt the ire of the Duterte fan club, which generated half a million hate posts that, according to one study, consisted of 60% attacks on her credibility and 40% sexist and misogynist slurs. This onslaught created a bandwagon effect that equated journalists like her with criminals.

    This noxious equation on social media turned into a real case when the Philippine authorities arrested Ressa in 2019 and convicted her of the dubious charge of “cyberlibel.” She faces a sentence of as much as 100 years in prison.

    “Our dystopian present is your dystopian future,” she observed. What happened in the Philippines in that first year of Duterte became the reality in the United States under Trump. It was the same life cycle of hate in which misinformation is introduced in social media, then imported into the mainstream media and supported from the top down by opportunistic politicians.

    The Philippines faces another presidential election next year, and Duterte is barred from running again by term limits. Duterte’s daughter, who is currently the mayor of Davao City just like her father had been, tops the early polls, though she hasn’t thrown her hat in the ring and her father has declared that women shouldn’t run for president. This time around, however, Facebook disrupted the misinformation campaign tied to the Dutertes when it took down fake accounts coming from China that supported the daughter’s potential bid for the presidency.

    President Duterte was furious. “Facebook, listen to me,” he said. “We allow you to operate here hoping that you could help us. Now, if government cannot espouse or advocate something which is for the good of the people, then what is your purpose here in my country? What would be the point of allowing you to continue if you can’t help us?”

    Duterte had been led to believe, based on his previous experience, that Facebook was his lapdog. Other authoritarian regimes had come to expect the same treatment. In India, according to the GPAHE report, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party:

    “… was Facebook India’s biggest advertising spender in 2020. Ties between the company and the Indian government run even deeper, as the company has multiple commercial ties, including partnerships with the Ministry of Tribal Affairs, the Ministry of Women and the Board of Education. Both CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg have met personally with Modi, who is the most popular world leader on Facebook. Before Modi became prime minister, Zuckerberg even introduced his parents to him.”

    Facebook has also cozied up to the right-wing government in Poland, misinformation helped get Jair Bolsonaro elected in Brazil, and the platform served as a vehicle for the Islamophobic content that contributed to the rise of the far right in the Netherlands. But the decision to ban Trump has set in motion a backlash. In Poland, for instance, the Law and Justice Party has proposed a law to fine Facebook and others for removing content if it doesn’t break Polish law, and a journalist has attempted to establish a pro-government alternative to Facebook called Albicla.

    Back in the USA

    Similarly, in the United States, the far right have suddenly become a big booster of free speech now that social media platforms have begun to deplatform high-profile users like Trump and take down posts for their questionable veracity and hate content. In the second quarter of 2020 alone, Facebook removed 22.5 million posts.

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    Facebook has tried to get ahead of this story by establishing an oversight board that includes members like Jamal Greene, a law professor at Columbia University; Julie Owono, executive director at Internet Sans Frontiere; and Nighat Dad, founder of the Digital Rights Foundation. Now, Facebook users can also petition the board to remove content.

    With Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and others now removing a lot of extremist content, the far right have migrated to other platforms, such as Gab, Telegram, and MeWe. They continue to spread conspiracy theories, anti-COVID vaccine misinformation and pro-Trump propaganda on these alternative platforms. Meanwhile, the MAGA crowd awaits the second coming of Trump in the form of a new social media platform that he plans to launch in a couple of months to remobilize his followers.

    Even without such an alternative alt-right platform — Trumpbook? TrumpSpace? Trumper? — the life cycle of hate is still alive and well in the United States. Consider the “great replacement theory,” according to which immigrants and denizens of the non-white world are determined to “replace” white populations in Europe, America and elsewhere. Since its inception in France in 2010, this extremist conspiracy theory has spread far and wide on social media. It has been picked up by white nationalists and mass shooters. Now, in the second stage of the life cycle, it has landed in the mainstream media thanks to right-wing pundits like Tucker Carlson, who recently opined, “The Democratic Party is trying to replace the current electorate of the voters now casting ballots with new people, more obedient voters from the Third World.”

    Pressure is mounting on Fox to fire Carlson, though the network is resisting. Carlson and his supporters decry the campaign as yet another example of “cancel culture.” They insist on their First Amendment right to express unpopular opinions. But a privately-owned media company is under no obligation to air all views, and the definition of acceptability is constantly evolving.

    Also, a deplatformed Carlson would still be able to air his crank views on the street corner or in emails to his followers. No doubt when Trumpbook debuts at some point in the future, Carlson’s biggest fan will also give him a digital megaphone to spread lies and hate all around the world. These talking heads will continue talking no matter what. The challenge is to progressively shrink the size of their global platform.

    *[This article was originally published by FPIF.]

    The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More