Philippa Kaur

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    Is Ethiopia on the Brink of Civil War?

    Two years ago, scenes of jubilation broke out across northern Ethiopia. The border between Ethiopia and its former adversary Eritrea was open again after 18 years. Siblings were reunited, grandparents saw grandchildren for the first time, phone links were suddenly restored. A new era appeared to have dawned in the Horn of Africa after decades characterized by bitter civil wars, famine and ideological rigidity. The youth, who represent more than half the population, placed especially high expectations in the young new prime minister, Abiy Ahmed.

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    A better life with work and dignity appeared possible. Ahmed had been a surprise candidate from the party of the largest ethnic group, the Oromo, which had never headed the government. He wanted to break with the rigid developmental state concept of the previous government, which had been dominated by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). Abiy’s guiding principles of democracy, privatization and love appeared outlandish. His peace settlement with neighboring Eritrea was a breakthrough that won him the Nobel Peace Prize.

    Escalating Power Struggle

    Today the borders between Eritrea and Ethiopia are firmly closed again. Hundreds of Ethiopians have died in ethnic pogroms in recent months. The killing of a prominent Oromo singer, Hachalu Hundessa, sparked weeks of protests, leading the government to block the internet for months and detain thousands of opposition supporters. The youth, whose protests propelled Abiy to power, have turned against him, their hopes dashed.

    The tinder ignited in early November, when fighting broke out between the TPLF and the federal armed forces in the northern state of Tigray. Internet and telephone connections were cut and flights suspended. The federal government imposed a state of emergency on the region, declared the TPLF a terrorist organization and appointed a parallel government for the TPLF-run state. Federal armed forces were deployed to the state border from other parts of the country and from neighboring Somalia. Both sides now claim to have the situation under control: Prime Minister Abiy reports successful strikes on TPLF air defenses while the TPLF claims to be militarily unscathed.

    The escalation began after Abiy indefinitely postponed the first free national elections, which had been scheduled for August, citing the COVID-19 pandemic. A few months earlier, he had dissolved the previous ruling party and founded the Prosperity Party. One effect of these moves was to reduce the political influence of the TPLF and enhance the position of previously neglected states like Somali and Afar.

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    The TPLF responded by questioning the government’s legitimacy — it regards Abiy as an opponent of ethnic federalism. In early September, the TPLF gained an absolute majority in elections to Tigray’s state parliament, which were deemed illegal by the federal government. After the TPLF’s long and harsh rule, many Ethiopians still bear resentment against it, and mass support for the group is therefore unlikely.

    This hardening of fronts reflects the weakness of Abiy’s government, which has failed to rein in ethnonationalist divisions and prevent ethnic pogroms. The prime minister had assumed that the completion of the gigantic Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile would generate enthusiasm and support across the entire population and function as a national unification project. That hope appears to have been dashed.

    A situation where conflict continues to escalate in Tigray and the country spirals into civil war could spell the end for Abiy’s transition. He risks losing the army’s loyalty and his control over parts of the country. A defeated TPLF could turn into an armed opposition, within or outside the country’s borders. There is also a risk that Eritrea’s president, Isayas Afewerki, will sense an opportunity to expand his country’s regional role again by intervening on Ethiopia’s side. This would weaken Ethiopia and render it more dependent.

    A Ceasefire Will Not Be Enough

    Internal collapse would have repercussions for Ethiopia itself — as the region’s most populous country – and for the entire Horn of Africa. A regional war would endanger the fragile transition in Sudan, while national fragmentation would directly impact the talks on a Nile dam agreement and the African Union Mission in Somalia, in which Ethiopia plays a decisive role.

    The first step toward conflict resolution would be for the TPLF and the federal government to recognize each other as legitimate actors. Talks could then be conducted by the region’s Intergovernmental Authority on Development under Sudanese leadership. The African Union, Europe, the UN and other partners should agree on a shared line on de-escalation. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as the mediators of the Ethiopian-Eritrean peace agreement, could also play an important role as guarantors.

    But a ceasefire can only be the start. Dissatisfaction is growing in all of Ethiopia’s regions, separatist tendencies are proliferating, and the system of ethnic federalism is on the verge of violent collapse. If these dangers are to be avoided, it is vital that the security forces prevent ethnic pogroms. And if he is to retain popular backing, Prime Minister Abiy must guarantee due process for political detainees. Finally, if any hope of a new start, democratic change and devolution of power is to survive, a comprehensive national dialogue will be vital.

    *[This article was originally published by the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), which advises the German government and Bundestag on all questions related to foreign and security policy.]

    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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    India’s New Education Policy: Not Paying Attention

    It was instructive that probably the most consequential event in the life of the Indian Republic merited nothing more than three pro-forma single-sentence references to “epidemics and pandemics” in the recently-adopted National Education Policy 2020. The policy must have been discussed and agreed by the Union Cabinet wearing masks, a clear and present reminder of how much has changed. Yet the document approved acknowledges COVID-19 only to exhort higher education institutions to undertake epidemiological research and advocate greater use of technology in delivery mechanisms.

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    That is a pity. COVID-19 has brought lessons in its wake that we will ignore at our peril. In a societal sense, the pandemic has laid bare the fragile and counterproductive assumptions that underpin the way we have organized ourselves. Education, as the primary mechanism that drives long-term change in a society, must respond in a way that protects and strengthens children today and the nation tomorrow.

    What We Value

    Three important mechanisms of social organization that have been taken for granted in education during recent decades are institutionalization, urbanization and globalization. If COVID-19 is not a one-off event — and there is no reason to assume that it is given how exploitative our engagement with our environment continues to be — each one of them must be reassessed for worth, especially for how they affect the future of our children.

    Institutionalization has promoted the idea that the only learning worth our children’s time and our money is the one that is provided in schools, colleges and universities. Across most of the world, this has made learning information-centric and uncritical. It has packed children into rows and columns in classrooms and made them unfamiliar with their surroundings. It has taken them away from the productive use of their hands and bodies, and valorized “brain work,” creating an artificial crisis of periodic unemployment even before the unimaginable destruction of employment caused by COVID-19.

    Embed from Getty Images

    It has snapped children’s’ connections with their land, their environment, their culture and their communities, replacing them with words in ink on paper or typeface on a computer screen. In India, a mindless pedagogy has further ensured that institutionalization fails even in its own objectives as student achievement in “learning metrics,” mainly focused on literacy, numeracy and data, has kept falling.

    With pre-school centers closed, COVID-19 has brought attention squarely to the role of parents in the holistic development of their young children. (We started Sajag, a program for coaching caregivers in nurturing care in April 2020. It now reaches over 1.5 million families and is set to expand further. Many others have started similar programs.) By forcing the closure of schools and colleges, COVID-19 presents us with the opportunity to explore what exactly is being lost when schools close. It also creates the possibility that we will discover how much there is to learn in communities, on land, in relationships and in discovery and invention, outside the school. It has the promise of suggesting a radical overhaul of what we value in education.

    Organized for Economic Efficiency

    Urbanization has caused us to believe that ghettoization of people in cities is inevitable as we “develop.” With economic and social policies in most countries oriented toward this shibboleth, we have seen unhygienic conditions grow exponentially in cities, even as rural communities have been devastated by the loss of populations. Mental health challenges in urban communities have become alarming, accentuated simply by the inhuman stresses that accompany urban living. For our young, it has meant few physical spaces for wholesome growth and play, little opportunity for meaningful community engagement, and a social landscape tragically barren of nurturing experiences.

    By attacking densely-packed urban communities disproportionately, COVID-19 has laid bare the fallacy of organizing ourselves solely for economic efficiency. It asks us to reconsider how physical communities should be laid out, how large they should be, how they should harmonize into the surrounding landscape and how their cultural, economic and political sinews should function. We have also been fed the inevitability of globalization, almost as a primal force. It is true that it promises economic efficiency, but we have, in the process, lost much.

    Diversity is the essence of risk reduction and long-term survival and thriving, whether at the level of an organization, a community, a nation or, indeed, evolution of life itself. In a few short decades, blinded by the promise of economic efficiency, we have traded diversity away for massive inequality and loss of local skills, trades, crafts, self-reliance, agency and autonomy. Our textbooks, the only source of information promoted by our policies, have consistently failed to ignite an examination of the underlying assumptions and the all too visible outcomes among our children.

    COVID-19 has alerted us to the downsides of these Faustian bargains. Its dramatic spread is certainly a result of our way of life, with air travel being the primary vector. The heart-breaking spectacle of tens of millions of migrant workers walking hundreds of kilometers and sleeping on asphalt roads in India’s scorching summer heat is another. They discovered that they had no means of support, no community, no fallback when their employment ceased. COVID-19 has also awakened us rudely to the reality that having the world’s fastest GDP growth rate is no protection against ending up with the world’s steepest fall in GDP and widespread misery.

    Globalizing Impulse

    The globalizing impulse has led to entire education systems being unmoored from authentic experience and unresponsive to local needs. As a result, it has fostered and valorized the creation of an alienating and alienated elite. The reaction to that is a distressing level of anti-intellectualism throughout the world. That, of course, creates the fodder for the assembly line that is perhaps the holy grail of the globalizing philosophy in the first place, but it also creates a dangerous level of instability and irrationality in society that can eventually only tear everything apart.

    To the extent that we continue to regard globalization as self-evidently good, we create the potential for damaging our children, inhibiting their learning and creating a world that is less fit for them. Time has come to drop the fiction that local wisdom is somehow inferior and to engage in a meaningful dialogue that hasn’t foreclosed on the alternatives.

    To disregard such fundamental questions in an education policy adopted in the middle of the pandemic makes little sense. These should be the subject of widespread dialogue, including in our schools and colleges, before and after the adoption of the policy. The sensibilities that arise from such deliberations must inform our liberal education as well as the conduct of professions such as engineering, town planning, medicine, economics, sociology and, indeed, education. An education policy that doesn’t even consider the questions relevant to how our education system should be structured has surely not paid attention.

    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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    Third Countries Are Invited to Join European Military Projects

    As the European Union comes to terms with a changing strategic environment, it needs to do more to provide for its own defense and security. This includes better and more comprehensive EU-NATO coordination but also the participation of non-EU members in projects and processes initiated within EU structures. This discussion is especially important now, when the EU, while coping with COVID-19, is simultaneously seeking to build its open strategic autonomy.

    Current gloomy economic projections indicate that the impact of the pandemic will neither spare the defense sector nor alleviate geopolitical tensions. Therefore, the EU, under certain conditions, should be open to cooperation with like-minded states, especially those with which member states already have a track record of cooperation. It is worth noting that discussions concerning third-country participation distinguish between various structures and pillars of European defense integration.

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    Specifically, the European Defence Fund (EDF), the European Defence Agency (EDA) and Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) have different rules and are at varying stages of adopting them. While rules on third-country participation were established for the EDF and EDA in 2019, EU member states have only just agreed to a regime covering the politically more sensitive area of PESCO projects.

    Why Cooperate With Non-EU Countries?

    According to the latest agreement of the European Council, third parties will be allowed to participate if their inclusion were deemed to add substantial added value to respective projects being carried out and when such participation will not lead to dependencies on third states. Any third country participant need also to share “the values on which the EU is founded” and “respect the principle of good neighbourly relations with Member States.”

    The general conditions, consequently, of a fairly restrictive approach toward participation, undoubtedly satisfy only the closest partners of choice like the United States, Norway and the United Kingdom. In other words, the doors will remain closed to, for example, Turkey and China. Leaving open the possibility for Turkish participation was a sticking point, and some countries, including Greece and Cyprus, are wary. Some view a prior Finnish proposal as not sufficiently exclusionary on the matter. It is notable that neither PESCO nor the EDF alter the EU’s existing rules on defense procurement.

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    Third countries can contribute relevant capacities for military operations, technological know-how as well as research and development. Their participation also facilitates closer EU working relationships with neighbors and non-EU NATO allies, helping safeguard NATO unity. Take the example of Norway — an EU-oriented country with a third of its exports going to the bloc. As the only member of the European Free Trade Association that is both part of the European Economic Area and host to a notable defense industry, Norway would be a substantial contributor to PESCO projects, from research programs to the joint development and acquisition of defense capabilities initiatives.

    Norway indeed maintains a diversified and high-tech defense industry, spanning communication technology to air defense, from undersea systems to state-of-the-art missiles like the renowned Norwegian Advanced Surface to Air Missile System (NASAMS). Moreover, Norway is home to numerous EU defense contractor subsidiaries and production plants like the multinational Airbus, Spain’s Indra, Sweden’s Saab and France’s Thales. At a time when the EDF and PESCO provide a vehicle for fostering EU partnerships and consortia in the defense sector, Norway would be a particularly pertinent addition. Norway could, for example, contribute to the Modular Unmanned Ground Systems (MUGS), a PESCO initiative already supported by seven EU member states.

    Cooperation in Times of COVID-19

    But the benefits of joining PESCO initiatives are not limited to the positive economic impact that occurs from defense cooperation. Projects can also serve as platforms for nurturing resilience and improving preparedness for future pandemics. In this regard, military mobility, one of PESCO’s core projects, can aid, for example, in facilitating the movement of troops and military equipment, including sanitary and medical materials, across borders. Progress on the simplification and standardization of cross-border military transport, a key PESCO priority, would further enable a speedy and swift deployment of military personnel and equipment like food, doctors and field hospitals, for instance, from one country to the other, thereby strengthening EU solidarity.

    While the impetus for European defense integration is undeniable, we should not take for granted that it will translate into enhanced capabilities for Europe to provide security for the continent. To move closer toward achieving this goal, the EU needs to intensify efforts to develop politically sound, organizationally efficient and industrially complementary relations with like-minded countries. 

    *[This op-ed is part of the project, Enhanced European Opportunity Partners in the EU’s Defence and Security Initiatives: Study Case of Norway. The support of the Royal Norwegian Ministry of Defense for the production of this publication does not constitute endorsement of its content, which reflects the views only of the authors, and the Norwegian Ministry of Defense cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.]

    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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    Joe Biden’s Less Than “Triumphant” Victory

    A team of three New York Times reporters provided its verdict on the surreal election in which, after days of tabulation, the Democrat Joe Biden eventually emerged as the official winner. Alexander Burns, Jonathan Martin and Katie Glueck described the outcome in these terms: “Mr. Biden stands triumphant in a campaign he waged on just those terms: as a patriotic crusade to reclaim the American government from a president he considered a poisonous figure.”

    Here is today’s 3D definition:

    Triumphant:

    An adjective usually reserved for the authors of exceptional, definitive victories that have a lasting impact on history, but which, in contemporary US culture, can be applied by a winner’s supporters to any candidate they approve of who ekes out any kind of victory by hook or by crook or by sheer luck.

    Contextual Note

    Given its well-known allegiance to the Democratic Party establishment, The New York Times has every reason to invent the mythology they want their public to subscribe to. If people believe that Biden has triumphed, there is a good chance the enemies of The New York Times and the Democratic Party will accept defeat. Those enemies basically consist of Donald Trump and the progressive left.

    The article’s subtitle reads: “Joseph R. Biden Jr. campaigned as a sober and conventional presence, concerned about the ‘soul of the country.’” That is a fair enough description of his colorless campaign. It insidiously suggests that sticking to the middle, not making waves and avoiding radical programs is the recipe for triumph. But it is followed by a further, more dubious claim: “He correctly judged the character of the country, and benefited from President Trump’s missteps.”

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    The second half of that sentence is unquestionably true. Trump effectively shot himself in both feet during the campaign, paving the way for a Biden victory. Most people were surprised that Biden didn’t win by a landslide. Had he done so, there might have been grounds for asserting that he “correctly judged the character of the country.” Whatever Biden did, it had the not very triumphal effect of motivating nearly 72 million people to vote against him and in favor of the incumbent. The authors’ belief in Biden’s insight into the mood of the nation looks like a case of wish fulfillment rather than serious political reporting. But The Times has heavily invested in wish fulfillment over the past four years.

    A more accurate account would note that Biden judged nothing at all, correctly or incorrectly. After former President Barack Obama ordered all the other prominent moderate candidates to back Biden, the former vice president mechanically followed a program that had already been laid out for him in the 2016 election. At that time, after some hesitation, due probably to his judgment that Hillary Clinton had a prior claim, he deferred to the Clinton machine and let the former first lady lead the party to the forecast glorious victory that never was.

    This time around, with Clinton relegated to an embarrassing footnote in future US history books, Biden stumbled into the Democratic nomination only after the primary voters rejected the party’s hoped for “moderate” savior, billionaire Michael Bloomberg, an outrageous oligarch who, during his short and expensive run, demonstrated how easy it was to buy the party’s — but not the voters’ —loyalty.

    At no point in that process did Biden demonstrate an ability to judge the character of the country. What better proof of that than the ambiguous finish to the election itself that required days of laborious counting of absentee ballots in six states for him to get past the finish line and cap off his suspense-ridden contest against a pathologically flawed opponent?

    If Biden had been capable of judging the character of the country, he would have realized that 2020 may prove to be the last election built around the binary logic of a “liberal” Democratic Party opposed to a “conservative” Republican Party. His party stopped being liberal long ago, as he himself clearly realized when he recruited Republicans John Kasich, Colin Powell and Meg Whitman to be headliners at the convention that would nominate him.

    Joe Biden was little more than the name the Democrats put on the ballot to get past a failing and flailing Trump. His defeat of Donald Trump was great news for the nation and the world, but it clearly wasn’t a triumph and reflected nothing significant about the character of the country other than the fact that it remains radically polarized.

    It could have been a triumph, but two things were missing. The first was enthusiasm for Biden’s candidacy. He represented nothing voters could get excited about. Also lacking was even a vague sense of mission in the face of multiple monumental challenges. The only visible enthusiasm for his candidacy came from big donors on Wall Street who felt more comfortable with a traditional Democrat than a non-traditional Republican, even though they spontaneously endorse Republicans. They expressed their enthusiasm for Biden by generously financing his campaign.

    Historical Note

    Later in the article, the authors appear to admit that Biden’s campaign was not the triumph they initially hinted at: “It was not the most inspirational campaign in recent times, nor the most daring, nor the most agile.” They concede that he was not “an uplifting herald of change.” Instead, they give him credit for “discipline and restraint.” Shakespeare’s John Falstaff called that “discretion” when he played dead on the battlefield to avoid being assaulted by the enemy: “The better part of valor is discretion.”

    The authors claim that Biden’s electoral success could be attributed to “how fully Mr. Biden’s campaign flowed from his own worldview and political intuition.” They even cite some of the features of his worldview: “the antiquated vocabulary and penchant for embellishment, his nostalgic yarns about segregationist senators and a defensiveness that led him, in one case, to challenge a voter to a push-up contest.” 

    Embed from Getty Images

    The Biden they present is a mid-20th-century macho white man whose personal culture paradoxically embodies the very idea Trump promoted with his slogan “Make America Great Again.” Biden is a relic of the good ol’ days, the fulfillment of Trump’s ideological mission. If this were a Hollywood screenplay, Biden would be the good cop partnered with Trump, the bad cop.

    The authors dodge the question of the historical origins of Biden’s worldview, inherited from another epoch and clearly ill-adapted to a world of pandemics, planetary destruction, a financialized economy, rudderless nationalism and endless military quagmires created and sustained by Biden’s generation. One might think addressing these dire issues could be the prelude to a triumph. Instead, the authors applaud Biden for focusing on maligning Trump’s character while “shunning countless other issues as needless distractions.” The health of the people, the planet and the economy are written off as “needless distractions.”

    Biden is likely to be the most isolated president in US history. By definition, he has the entire Republican Party opposed to him and, more particularly, the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell — despite Biden’s touted ability to reach across the aisle and his personal friendship with McConnell. The populist Trump movement, which will most likely persist and possibly grow in force, will continue maligning him for stealing The Donald’s reelection. He will have the entire progressive wing of his own party — which possibly represents a majority of Democrats and certainly the majority of young voters — ready to strike back at him as soon they discover his likely refusal to take on board their agenda.

    Even if he does open up toward the progressive left under the pressure of uncontrollable events, he will have not just his anti-Trump Republican friends revolting against him but also the far more significant Wall Street donors. In other words, after a few months in office, Biden may well lose the trust of 80% of the voting population across the political spectrum. The party stalwarts will remain with him, but the credibility of people like Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and Adam Schiff has taken a serious hit after four years of Russiagate and Trump’s bungled impeachment.

    Biden will most likely also fail to merit the attention of the late-night comedians who for four years have thrived on the comic material Donald Trump dropped in their lap on a daily basis. That’s what inevitably comes of preferring discretion over valor.

    *[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 Bolsonaro Family’s Downward Spiral of Corruption

    The Bolsonaro family suffered a severe blow in the first week of November. It was not Donald Trump’s loss in the US election, given that the businessman is the benchmark by which Jair Bolsonaro tries to model his presidency in Brazil. On November 3, the public prosecutor of Rio de Janeiro has named the president’s eldest son, Flavio Bolsonaro, as the head of a criminal organization, formally accusing him of embezzlement, money laundering and misappropriation of public funds to the tune of 2.3 million reais ($554.000).

    Jair Bolsonaro’s Image Crisis

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    The accusations against Flavio Bolsonaro pertain to the period between 2007 and 2018, when he served four terms as state deputy. The chronology of the facts and the characters involved expose the shadowy political trajectory of his father’s path to the presidency of Brazil.

    Splitting the Salary

    Jair Bolsonaro has five children. His three eldest sons — 01, 02 and 03, as he refers to them — followed their father into politics. Flavio was born in 1981; Carlos, in 1982, and Eduardo in 1984. At the time, Bolsonaro Sr. was a paratrooper in the army, where he met Fabricio Queiroz, who became a military police officer in 1987, serving in the rank of lieutenant until 2018. Jair Bolsonaro’s military career ended after he threatened to plant bombs in army barracks in retaliation for low wages. He was tried, acquitted and sent to the reserves in 1987, entering public life the following year.

    Upon winning his first term as state deputy in Rio de Janeiro, in 2003, Flavio Bolsonaro hired Mariana Mota, a friend of his mother (to whom Jair Bolsonaro was no longer married) as an adviser. The public prosecutor designated her as the first operator of the so-called rachadinha (salary split), a scheme where employees are “hired” only to return most of their income to the employer. These “salary splits” constitute the main charges against the president’s eldest son.

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    In 2007, Flavio Bolsonaro began his second term and hired his father’s army friend, Fabricio Queiroz — as well as Queiroz’s wife and daughter. He also hired the wife and mother of the leader of one of Brazil’s largest militias, Office of Crime, Adriano da Nobrega, who ran an extortion racket in ​​Rio. Flavio Bolsonaro had already awarded Nobrega the Tiradentes medal, the highest honor of the legislative assembly of Rio de Janeiro, in 2005, when the former policeman captain was serving jail time for murder. In 2007, Nobrega was released after Jair Bolsonaro, then a federal deputy with the right-wing Progressive Party, appealed to the chamber of deputies in his favor.

    Nobrega was killed in a police ambush earlier this year, when he was on the run after being accused of the murder of Councilwoman Marielle Franco. The case caused widespread national commotion. Nobrega and Fabricio Queiroz were friends. 

    Debt and Real Estate

    The list of suspected criminal activity in connection with Flavio Bolsonaro is lengthy. Mainly, it entails cash payments for real estate and debts, in a country where cash is notoriously linked to illegal activities such as drug trafficking and extortion. In 2008, Flavio Bolsonaro paid 86,779.43 reais (around $40,000 at the time) in cash for the purchase of 12 commercial offices in a high-end shopping mall in Rio, which he resold less than a month later at a healthy profit. The following year, he spent 31,000 reais in cash to pay off his losses on the stock exchange.

    In 2012, 638,000 reais in cash went toward the purchase of two properties in Copacabana, on which Bolosnaro Jr. declared a profit of nearly 300% when they were sold in 2014. In 2016, he acquired a franchise branch of luxury chocolate stores. An investigation by the public prosecutor’s office concluded that the establishment was used for money laundering since it sold products below the list price while filling invoices with integral values.

    Fabricio Queiroz, meanwhile, was investigated until 2018, when the public prosecutor’s office pointed out suspicious movements on his accounts in the order of 5.3 million reais between 2014 and 2015, and a further 1.2 million in 2016 and 2017. A businessman in charge of Jair Bolsonaro’s presidential campaign, Paulo Marinho, said that the Bolsonaros were warned of the federal police operation to detain Queiroz on the eve of the election. Queiroz fled, remaining at large until June this year, when he was found and arrested at the country home of Flavio Bolsonaro’s lawyer, Frederick Wassef. 

    Another explosive testimony by Flavio’s former adviser, Luiza Souza Paes, revealed that between 2011 and 2017, she passed on more than 90% of her salary back to Queiroz, providing bank statements as evidence. Between December 2014 and November 2017, she was at her designated workplace at Rio de Janeiro’s assembly just three times.

    The investigation into Flavio Bolsonaro has continued in parallel over the past two years, tracking the suspicious hiring of advisers by the family. In 2018, Flavio was elected senator, Carlos councilman, Eduardo deputy, and Jair Bolsonaro president. An investigation by O Globo revealed last year that since 1991, the Bolsonaros — nicknamed “familicia” in Brazil — had hired 102 people with family ties to work in their four respective offices. In total, 15 of Flavio Bolsonaro’s aides were denounced. If the court accepts the motion against the president’s eldest son, he will become a defendant in a criminal case. Fabricio Queiroz has served a month in jail and currently remains under house arrest.

    Downward Spiral

    With these revelations, the downward spiral of Jair Bolsonaro’s government seems to be increasing. Bolsonaro was elected on the promise of ending corruption in the country, distancing himself from “old politics” that distributed high posts to politicians with a questionable past in exchange for support, as well as ending benefits and privileges for those in public office.

    In the first month of the COVID-19 pandemic, after trying to interfere in the federal police investigation into his children, his main asset in the fight against corruption, Judge Sergio Moro, who was responsible for the arrest of former President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, resigned his post as minister of justice, accusing the president of political interference for personal reasons.

    Bolsonaro sought help from party politicians he said he disliked, who are known for shifting positions and accepting money for support, and recently faced public embarrassment when his deputy in the senate, Chico Rodrigues, was caught by the federal police with 33,000 reais in his underwear, some of which was stashed between his buttocks. In addition to the detention of Fabricio Queiroz, Flavio Bolsonaro faces possible arrest; the public prosecutor has demanded that the senator give up his mandate at the end of the investigation if he is convicted.

    Embed from Getty Images

    All of these events betray Jair Bolsonaro as a politician trying to balance himself in a tightrope of popularity. He was elected on the right-wing wave that has swept many parts of the globe in recent years, spurred on, to a degree, by the election of Donald Trump in the United States. The Bolsonaro family even hired Trump’s controversial campaign strategist, Steve Bannon. Adopting strategies seen in the 2016 US election, Bolsonaro’s campaign employed bots to influence social media narratives at an opportune time when Brazil’s leftist government opened the black box of corruption, which started by exploding the then-ruling Workers’ Party from within. Bolsonaro assumed the position of his middle name, Messias — the savior — who would rid the country of corruption, with guns if necessary; his campaign gimmick was to make a weapon gesture with both hands.

    Tightrope of Popularity

    Bolsonaro took office with a 50% approval rating. When the first signs of family corruption began to appear, the index dropped to around 40%. Much of this falling popularity was sustained on creating smoke screens, making fiery speeches against imaginary opponents and trying to divert attention. At the end of 2019, when the rachadinha case made headlines, ratings dropped further, to around 30%. As Bolsonaro fumbled with the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, following Trump in denial of the seriousness of the threat and disdain for preventative measures against the virus, Sergio Moro’s resignation brought the president’s popularity down to the 20% range.

    During this nadir of his government, the national congress demanded emergency aid for the population unable to work and who could not survive without financial assistance. Approximately $100 in monthly allowance was approved and, as a consequence, Bolsonaro realized that he could buy back his popularity since most of those who received it believed they have the president to thank for it.

    Bolsonaro then began to fight for the maintenance of emergency aid, which diverted attention from the problems of corruption in the family. But Brazil is not a rich country, and financial assistance is being reduced gradually; it is now at $50.

    Without the purchase of popularity, with nothing to conceal the tenebrious connections that marked his entire political trajectory and that of his children, and without his idol in power — Bolsonaro even said “I love you” to Trump during the UN General Assembly last year — the clouds appear to be gathering above the heads of the Bolsonaro familicia.

    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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    America’s Moment of National Reckoning

    America has just concluded a cataclysmic Election Day and its immediate aftermath. What was supposed to be our quadrennial celebration of democratic institutions is instead a reflection of what happens when unprincipled and corrupt leaders are given access to the national stage to promote disorder, distrust and chaos. It seems likely that the outcome of the vote will be finalized in the days ahead and that Joe Biden will have won the election. But until Trump is chained in his White House bunker without public access, the peaceful transfer of power remains at risk.

    Add to the equation that there is a deep sense among progressive activists, people of color, the underprivileged and the under-represented that over 71.5 million votes for Trump was a direct repudiation of their demands for a dynamic push forward for social, economic and racial justice in America. And this doesn’t even get to the immediacy of confronting a rampaging pandemic at home and an abundance of global challenges.

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    Amid the chaos, let me be clear that I hope an armed confrontation can be avoided and that there will be enough leadership and institutional integrity to force an orderly transfer of power. However, the election results make clear that many more people voted for Trump this time than last time. Targeted right-wing messaging works, and there is no apparent antidote. Those 71.5 million votes for Trump are a terrible outcome for a nation at war with itself and in which only the right-wingers have the guns.

    As Biden’s victory sets in, there will be those who cheered on Trump and his toxic message who will not rest until they try to blow something up along with the country itself. As that unfolds, there is likely to be the first foundational test of America’s political and military institutions since the Civil War. I am not sure those institutions will hold. It is certainly not clear that those institutions can ensure a peaceful transfer of power.

    Healing the Nation

    At some point, something will have to give. At that point, a crippled America will harvest the rancid fruit of decades of delusion about how “exceptional” the nation was as it grew intellectually lazy, willed its future to greedy and corrupt capitalists, and utterly failed to invest in a sustainable system of governance that could meet the challenges of an evolving world. Picking up the pieces will not be easy.

    The 50-state solution so beloved by those wallowing in the 19th century simply must be discarded, and some new foundation for national governance must be designed and implemented. Unfortunately, with the coronavirus pandemic ripping its way through the populace and a court system packed with those 19th-century wannabes, the time for wishful thinking will have to wait. The 50-state solution will have to be urgently junked to address the pandemic with a national plan and national mandates. Maybe afterward, America can study the results of the coordinated national response and find the way to a new, vibrant, 21st-century federal system.

    Embed from Getty Images

    Meanwhile, there will be an enormous amount of focus on how America got to this point, but I want to get out front that years of “false equivalency” disguised as “balance” or “fairness” has poisoned the nation’s well of fact-based knowledge from which any democratic nation would hope that its citizens could draw. Much has been said about willful ignorance, but not enough about the fountains of falsehoods that feed those unwilling to learn much of anything that requires factual focus. Repetition of belief is no substitute for acquisition of knowledge.

    The impending national convulsion has just begun. A reckoning with collective ignorance and the arrogance of ignorance is essential as the starting point for a meaningful national dialog about how America so completely lost its way. The responsible mainstream media and social media outlets have to stop honoring falsehood with repetition and that most ludicrous of questions — “What’s your response?” And to try to rebuild lost credibility, real and transparent sourcing of news reporting has to again become the rule.

    Then, if government institutions are to be resurrected and strengthened, there must be some measure of accountability for those who worked so diligently to undermine governance, often to enhance their own wealth and power. Today’s list of the corrupt is really long. Trump is a sick symptom, a tool used by so many others to achieve corrupt ends. But he is also symbolic of so much of what is so wrong that his accountability is an essential component of any national reckoning.

    It is important that Trump be charged with the crimes he has committed both in office and in his corrupt life that led to his election in the first place in 2016. It is equally important that those in his inner circle, including his family, his enabling aides, his attorney general and his secretary of state, all find themselves under criminal investigative scrutiny.

    This will surely further divide the nation. But it will be impossible to begin the healing if there is no accountability for the intentional wrongdoing that has led to so much suffering and dysfunction. Those who corruptly profited from the past should have to pay in the present if there is to be a future with the rule of law restored to its proper place in the national pantheon of virtues.

    Joe Biden’s Inauguration

    However, the critical first task ahead is to ensure Biden’s inauguration on January 20, 2021. Unfortunately, that date is over 10 weeks away. Ten weeks of an angry and “victimized” Trump still empowered to “govern” will bleed so much more blood from the nation. He will have to be thwarted at every turn each and every day, so the hard work of restoration can begin now.

    This must start with a national plan to confront the coronavirus pandemic that is raging across America and much of the globe. This cannot wait 10 more weeks. There is no need for a “balanced” discussion because we have no choice. We have seen how a venal leader can lead so many to their demise and so many more to a participatory march to more death and disease.

    Biden must try hard to convince those participatory marchers to turn around, look at those they care about and start protecting themselves and others. This will be a hard sell, and those of us who have already seen this light will have to step up our game as well. It is no longer fine for corporate sloths and all those endangered small businesses to wink at their “no mask, no entry” signs. It is time for local governments to publicly out those businesses that do not enforce mask mandates and social distancing in their community and publicly support those that do.

    I am hardly certain where any of this will end. But I am certain that the false narrative of a caring, giving and committed people has now finally been ripped from our delusional midst. America is not now, nor has it often been, much of anything to be proud 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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    What a Biden presidency means for Europe

    Hopes are high in the European Union that Joe Biden will rapidly get to work on a substantive global “to-do” list when he takes over as US president in January. This includes a renewed commitment to multilateralism and specific assurances on NATO and the UN – plus re-entry to the Paris Climate Agreement and the Iranian nuclear accord.
    EU officials were quick to congratulate Biden, confident of being able to work more positively with him than with Trump. From the EU’s perspective, Trump has proved contentious at best and obstructive at worst. He has made life difficult in virtually every policy area, from security to climate change.
    Anti-establishment politicians in Hungary, Poland, Italy will miss the master of “megaphone diplomacy” – and populist trends on either side of the Atlantic are not likely to disappear overnight – but the majority of EU leaders are likely to work fruitfully with the Biden administration.
    Biden, too, appears keen to repair America’s reputation globally. But in doing so, he may use the opportunity to renegotiate some key terms. He may want to discuss NATO’s budget and have terms for re-engaging with the Paris Climate Agreement, the World Trade Organization and the World Health Organization. These are all matters of great important to Europe.
    In his own words, Biden is determined to “elevate diplomacy as the United States’ principal tool of foreign policy”. Some of his suggestions to “place the United States back at the head of the table”, working with allies, are likely to go down well. The EU in particular will be supportive of Biden’s determination to host a global democracy summit, and to push back against authoritarianism and corruption, while advancing human rights.
    Other goals may find fewer fans, including a “foreign policy for the middle class”. This concept is based on restoring the US’ lead in the global economy, itself predicated on talking tough on tariffs with China and possibly the EU.
    In terms of an EU reset, however, the tone is positive. European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has already spoken of a “renewed partnership” between the two sides when congratulating Biden on his result.

    German chancellor Angela Merkel and French president Emmanuel Macron are also poised to enjoy warmer bilateral relations as well as improved attitudes regarding NATO’s development. For Macron and Merkel in particular, a Biden presidency promises not only renewed support for multilateralism in general but specific attention to precisely how the EU-US partnership can make headway on key global goals, including climate change.
    It is the Republic of Ireland, however, that may benefit the most from the change in administration. Biden has spoken frequently and proudly of his Irish roots and publicly lamented Brexit’s various impacts, from concerns over the Good Friday Agreement to broader European relations with the UK. Ireland may therefore find itself in a unique position as Brexit interlocutor between the White House, the UK and the EU, replacing the bridge-building role that the UK has traditionally held.
    Johnson’s ‘special’ relationship
    Biden’s election is also a welcome development for EU officials in Brussels. They hope he will put real pressure on the UK government to strike a deal swiftly with the EU, and then reset UK-EU relations. Both demands will be a challenge for the UK.
    A series of personal tensions and political antipathies could undermine initial attempts to jump start the US-UK “special relationship” under Biden. Missteps by UK prime minister Boris Johnson, including rudeness about former president Barack Obama and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, will not endear him to the new president.
    A relationship that may take some getting over. PA
    More importantly, Trump was a vocal supporter of Johnson and an enthusiast for both Brexit and pro-Brexit parties. Johnson routinely and publicly returned the favour, remaining largely supportive of Trump, albeit not of all of his policies. In the closing stages of the election campaign, Biden made clear that US attitudes to the UK rely almost entirely on two things.
    First, the UK’s ability to build bridges with the EU, both diplomatically and through trade. While Trump and Johnson shared a deep-seated aversion to the EU, Biden “deeply regrets the UK’s exit from the EU”.
    Second, a more judicious handling of the Irish border question. While recent and highly contentious changes by the British government to the agreed EU-UK withdrawal agreement went largely unnoticed by the Trump administration, the potential impact on the Good Friday Agreement was a matter of real concern for Biden and the Democrats alike. A UK deal with the EU – albeit a thin one – is ultimately on the cards. But to win Biden’s trust, Johnson will need to overcome deep-seated distrust with the new US administration.
    For 2021, talk of US trade deals – itself possibly premature – will likely be tilted towards the EU rather than the UK. Common ground will have to be found elsewhere. Happily, the UK has three prime opportunities in 2021 to provide serious leadership on the world stage alongside the US. These include the the rotating presidency of the UN Security Council in February, hosting the delayed COP26 UN climate summit in November, and the rotating G7 presidency for all of 2021.
    All three are excellent forums in which the UK can relaunch its own post-Brexit foreign policy goals while simultaneously supporting Biden’s objectives “of renewing alliances between democracies, strengthening international institutions within the UN and taking action on climate change”.
    International relations are overdue a period of stability. It’s up to Johnson to establish his post-Brexit diplomatic credentials and to build a new set of relations with the US – and it’s up to all his European counterparts to work alongside Biden in getting to work on the global to-do list. More

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    For Biden, Anything’s Possible

    In speech after speech, US President-elect Joe Biden has affirmed the basis of his future agenda in no uncertain terms. It consists of a single word and amounts to the kind of religious dogma that requires an effort of belief on the part of the faithful — his voters. The word is “possibilities.” 

    In his victory speech on Saturday, Biden confessed once again: “I’ve always believed we can define America in one word: possibilities.” Does it matter that equating an existing nation with the open-ended concept of “possibilities” makes no sense, logically, linguistically or even rhetorically? His audience is best advised to treat this as a feeble attempt at political poetry.

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    Biden never tires of explaining “possibilities” as the nation’s ability to achieve whatever it sets out to achieve, his interpretation of the American dream applied not to individuals, but to the nation as a whole. In his closing remarks he returned to his favorite, endlessly repeated cliché about the nation, the idea that “there has never been anything we have not been able to do when we’ve done it together.”

    Here is today’s 3D definition:

    Never:

    The negation of “ever” that serves to deny the existence or even possible existence of an event within a given period of time, a concept essential to the rhetoric of politicians who, in their commitment to an idealized hyperreality, use it to exclude obvious aspects of reality from the public’s consideration.

    Contextual Note

    Logicians may find it paradoxical that Joe Biden’s thought processes allow him to juxtapose two apparently contradictory concepts. He insists on unrestricted “possibilities” but simultaneously reduces the range of possibility by proposing a litany of things that can “never” happen in America. He has, in other words, excluded those events from the realm of possibility, including the idea that the US may not achieve any of its goals. That is how hyperreality works: It excludes visible reality while supporting the illusion of inclusion.

    Biden was born into a world where reality still had a strong claim on people’s lives. In 1942, a war was raging in Europe and the Pacific. Soldiers on the ground were killing other soldiers, unlike the reality of today’s wars, all of which Biden has consistently promoted and supported. Today our drones rather than actual soldiers do the killing, turning death itself into a mere forgotten feature of the hyperreality’s elaborate decor.

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    We can thus forgive Biden for committing the mistake that no true proponent of hyperreality is permitted to make: the sin of hinting that reality might be a “possible” alternative to hyperreality. That explains why Biden feels the need to appeal to the absurd idea of “never.” He must assert through denial what people in a hyperreal world are expected to take for granted.

    A close reading of Biden’s language can prove useful in situating the borderline in his mind between the real and the hyperreal. At one point, Biden says, “You see, I believe in the possibility of this country.” This implies that some people do not believe in it. But what can “the possibility of this country” possibly mean? Has he been reading Michel Houellebecq’s “The Possibility of an Island”? Unlike the French author, who poetically and philosophically imagined that “in the realm of time, there exists the possibility of an island,” Biden more prosaically seems to be saying,” Give me a chance to try some things out, because anything is possible,” without even hinting at what it is he would like to try out.

    He then attempts to add some precision: “We’re always looking ahead. Ahead to an America that’s freer and more just. Ahead to an America that creates jobs with dignity and respect. Ahead to an America that cures disease … Ahead to an America that never leaves anyone behind.” He fails to mention the logical corollary of this, that if America is always looking ahead, it is because, contrary to his claim, it has never managed to accomplish any of these goals it set out to achieve in the past.

    Another interpretation is possible. He could mean that “looking ahead” is a good enough solution, a proof of virtue. No result is required. In reality, his message is that because none of these goals have been satisfactorily accomplished, it’s now time to act. A cynic might say, “Joe, you’ve been in politics for 45 years and at the highest level for 8 years, why are there no results?” Another cynic might answer that accomplishing these things would impede politicians from having any serious promises to make to get elected.

    Biden then offers a trio of clichés that Americans of Biden’s generation never tire of hearing: “an America that never gives up, never gives in,” “a great nation” and, finally, “we are a good people.” This serves as a setup for the patented line he used over and over again in the debates and his stump speeches. The transcript reads: “This is the United States of America. And there has never been anything, never been anything we’ve been able, not able to do when we’ve done it together.” In this version, before catching himself, he nearly repeated his embarrassing Freudian slip when he said at this year’s Democratic National Convention that “there’s never been anything we’ve been able to accomplish when we’ve done it together.” Had Freud heard this repeat performance, it would have jolted the Viennese psychoanalyst to attention.

    True to his time-honored vocation of a plagiarist, Biden even quotes Warren Buffett without citing him: “It’s always been a bad bet to bet against America.” This was probably just a sop for his Wall Street donors to reassure them that he won’t try too hard to ensure that America “never leaves anyone behind.”

    The majority of Americans deservedly find themselves in a joyful mood after Biden’s defeat of the inveterate liar, cheater and thief who has occupied the White House for the past four years and still managed to get nearly 71 million people to vote for him. With Trump’s lies out of the way, Biden’s electors need to begin listening closely to the new president’s words as well as to examine his deeds.

    Historical Note

    Joe Biden’s belief in “possibilities” is fraught with deeper levels of ambiguity than mere wishful thinking about doing things better in the future. It implies a vision or philosophy of history that he expects Americans to share with him, a philosophy that most young people are no longer ready to adhere to. It’s the Panglossian idea that US history is the story of one long progress toward greater and greater perfection.

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    A linguist or philosopher might point out that Biden’s statement, “we can define America in one word: possibilities,” is a truism. It also signifies that the nation has no definition. But the events of history provide a definition, reducing the extent of possibilities. In 1861, it was still possible that the South could end up winning the Civil War, sundering the American nation in two. In 1933, the so-called Business Plot could have overthrown Franklin D. Roosevelt and effectively installed a fascist pro-Nazi government. History decided otherwise.

    Most Americans today, and certainly Joe Biden, are happy that those two events never occurred, though we may suspect that many of Donald Trump’s supporters disagree. A separate Confederacy and a fascist US were real historical “possibilities.” And that should tell us that Biden’s celebration of possibilities may have its dark side, one requiring everyone’s vigilance.

    Another possible reading of US history points to the systematic closing, rather than the opening of, possibilities. The South lost the Civil War and slavery was abolished. But, with Jim Crow, the US immediately put into place an alternate system that perpetuated racism and the continued marginalization of black Americans. Even after the civil rights movement, new tactics have permitted racism to perdure. The possibility of equality and justice has been effectively countered.

    The Business Plot was foiled, but what it aimed at fell into place after World War II with the establishment of a militarized economy controlled by dominant financial and industrial interests and protected by a political class that, with one exception in 1961, has consistently refused to pronounce the dreaded phrase, military-industrial complex. Biden is right. When Americans set their mind to it, they can make any possibility real. But not all possibilities are equal.

    *[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