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      Will America Survive the Republican Zombie Apocalypse?

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      The 2017 film “Bushwick“ begins like a lot of zombie flicks. An unsuspecting couple is walking through a subway station in the working-class neighborhood of Bushwick in Brooklyn. The station is eerily empty. They hear gunfire outside. The boyfriend goes out to investigate, and you know from the conventions of a zombie film that this is a very bad idea. No need for a spoiler alert: He dies.

      The girlfriend ventures out to find the residents of Bushwick fighting an invading horde. But it’s not a horde of zombies, even though they are committed to the same relentless violence. The invasion force turns out to be a right-wing paramilitary bent on securing the secession of Texas and most of the South from the United States.

      Welcome to Joe Biden’s Socialist States of America

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      Why are they in Brooklyn? That’s not entirely clear. The grunts, all dressed in identical black riot gear, are just following orders. They didn’t expect resistance, but the diverse community has banded together — African Americans, Orthodox Jews, bearded craft beer connoisseurs. So, like zombies, the militia members are killing every resident they encounter.

      Worst-Case Scenario

      Militia violence. Rejection of the federal government. Right-wing crazies promoting a civil war. Bushwick was made at a time when Hillary Clinton looked like she’d be the next president and right-wing resistance inevitable. Instead, the Electoral College tilted toward Donald Trump. As the new head of the federal government, Trump preempted the worst-case scenario. His more extreme followers wouldn’t weaponize their grievances as long as one of their own was “running” the country.

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      At the same time, Trump implicitly promised to maintain this tenuous status quo as long as he won reelection. In the first presidential debate, Trump told the Proud Boys, a neo-fascist group, to “stand back and stand by.” The extremists waited, locked and loaded. A landslide — against Trump and against his Republican Party enablers — might have put this worst-case scenario to rest. Instead, with Trump refusing to concede the election and the Republican Party celebrating its congressional and state house victories, the country is now inching ever closer to the “Bushwick” plotline.

      Accelerationists like the Boogaloo Bois, who want to bring down the existing system through a violent race war, are chomping at the bit. A raging pandemic has separated Americans into the cautiously masked and the defiantly maskless, further undermining what remains of the country’s cohesion.

      As for zombies, they have rampaged across American popular culture at least since “Night of the Living Dead” hit movie theaters in 1968. They have now lurched off the page and out of the multiplex into real life. For how else would you describe the millions of Americans who deny the effects of a disease that has killed nearly 250,000 people and the results of a free and fair election that repudiated Donald Trump? Jeez, something must have eaten their brains.

      The Disease Spreads

      In 2016, the virtual equivalent of zombies — bots operating through social media and the comment sections of websites — intervened in the US presidential election. In 2020, those bots were less influential. But who needs virtual zombies when Americans themselves have become so willing to spread disinformation? The Russian intention back in 2016 wasn’t so much to get Trump elected. No one, including Donald Trump himself, thought there was much chance of that. Rather, the disinformation campaign sowed doubt about the political system more generally.

      What started out as marginal hobbyhorses became widespread delusions. Don’t trust the candidates, the media, the NGOs. A conspiracy lurks behind the façade of normalcy. The Democrats are actually pedophiles (the Pizzagate conspiracy), the financiers are actually Nazis (the Soros conspiracy), and government officials are part of a deep-state resistance to Trump’s agenda (the Fauci conspiracy, among others).

      And then there’s the one conspiracy that rules them all. The QAnon notion that all the world’s a Satanic child-trafficking ring — Pizzagate raised to the nth degree — is so absurd on the face of it, that no reasonable person could possibly entertain it. But plenty of people have embraced equally wacky theories. L. Ron Hubbard’s “Dianetics” has been a bestseller for decades, and all too many Americans were willing to believe that Barack Obama was a foreign-born Muslim despite mountains of evidence to the contrary.

      Of course, it’s a lot easier to deny the existence of something if it remains far away in time or space. Those who live far from the ocean can blithely refute the evidence of the rising waters. That’s not so easy when those waters have reclaimed your land and your house tumbles into the sea.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Misinformation about COVID-19 — that masks are not necessary, that vaccines should be avoided or that herd immunity is a viable strategy — has been lethal. That denialism should have disappeared as COVID-19 infection rates began to spread to every corner of the United States before the election. The increasing proximity of the threat should have motivated Americans to come together as one to fight the virus. At the very least, fear should have kept people at home instead of venturing out to the potential superspreader events that President Trump was sponsoring as campaign rallies before the election. But no. Thousands still showed up to what Democrats should have called Trump’s “death rallies.” Even more unbelievably, Trump went on to defeat Joe Biden in those parts of the country hardest hit by the virus. According to the Associated Press, “in 376 counties with the highest number of new cases per capita, the overwhelming majority — 93 percent of those counties — went for Trump, a rate above other less severely hit areas.” Even in hard-hit areas that ultimately voted for Biden, Trump often improved his showing from 2016, NPR reports.

      Well, zombies don’t know that they’re zombies. One day they’re ordering BLTs, and the next they’re eating their next-door neighbor. They’re completely unaware of how the abnormal has become normal.

      The “Stolen” Election

      A coup requires at least some public support. The Thai military could count on the “yellow shirts.” The Egyptian military relied on those fearful of the religious leanings of the Muslim Brotherhood. Pinochet courted the rich and the middle class. Where public support is lacking, coups often wither. That’s what happened in the Soviet Union in 1991. This week in Peru, the would-be president who forced the resignation of anti-corruption campaigner Martín Vizcarra stepped down after only a week in office, as protests continued to roil the country and the police killed two demonstrators.

      Trump has the backing of millions of Americans who have bought into his allegations of a “stolen” election. As importantly, only a minority of Republican Party grandees has bowed to the inevitable by acknowledging Biden’s victory. That includes a mere four Republican senators —Lisa Murkowski, Ben Sasse, Mitt Romney and Susan Collins. A number of Republican candidates in this month’s election, including those who were beaten by large margins, are also refusing to concede. Errol Webber, who lost his bid to unseat Karen Bass in a California congressional seat by an astounding 72%, now claims election fraud and won’t back down. He’s not alone in his delusions.

      The question is, how far will Trump and the Republican leadership go? It’s not likely that the Pentagon would support a coup, even after the removal of Mark Esper. The militia movement is armed and dangerous, but it’s not even close to being as organized as in the “Bushwick” scenario. The “Million MAGA March” fell short of its goal by 980,000 people or so. Trump just doesn’t have the numbers — not the votes to reverse the election results in a recount, not the judges to overturn the decision through a legal strategy, not the support in state legislatures to replace the Electoral College delegates and not the people on the street for a popular uprising.

      That doesn’t mean he can’t still do damage. Just this week, he announced that the administration would sell new leases to oil and gas companies to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. He fired the Homeland Security official who declared the election secure, then narrowly failed to install wacko Judy Shelton on the Federal Reserve board. And he came close to starting a war with Iran just to destroy any last chance of salvaging the Obama-era nuclear deal. His advisers reportedly persuaded him that it would be unwise to bomb the country’s nuclear facilities.

      Meanwhile, as I explain in a new article at TomDispatch, not only is Trump throwing sand in the wheels of transition, the Republicans are gearing up to block just about everything the Biden administration will try to do from January on. The Republicans have transformed themselves into a zombie party that relies on a narrow base of zombie support. The party effectively died as a viable political force — absent gerrymandering and voter suppression — before Trump brought it back from the dead. In films, zombification is a one-way street. Once you start twitching and slavering, there’s no going back. Let’s hope that the analogy doesn’t hold in American politics.

      De-Trumpification

      In 1956, three years after Stalin’s death, Nikita Khrushchev gave a secret speech to the Twentieth Party Congress entitled “On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences.” Today, the speech seems rather boring, full of jargon and acrobatic attempts to separate Stalin’s crimes from the Soviet system. But at the time, it shocked the Communist Party zombies who’d hitherto been unaware (or pretended not to know) of Stalin’s crimes.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Most of those who were well acquainted with Stalin’s crimes were already dead from famine, war or murderous purges. That’s the thing about plagues: By the time you’re finally convinced of their lethality, you’re on your deathbed. For some, even death is not enough. Compare the Stalinists who proclaimed love for their leader as they were being executed with the COVID-19 patients who continued to deny the disease with their dying breaths.

      The party speech was the first major step in the de-Stalinization campaign that Khrushchev waged into the 1960s. The campaign produced some liberalization of Soviet society, but the Thaw came to an end in a Brezhnev backlash that lasted effectively until Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in 1985 (and finally published Khrushchev’s 1956 speech for all to read). Unfortunately, the de-Stalinization that Khrushchev started in 1956 didn’t completely discredit the Soviet dictator. Indeed, according to recent polls, an astounding 70% of Russians approve of Stalin’s role in Soviet history.

      Trump’s personality cult exerts a similar effect. His adherents are incapable of seeing that the man’s evil extends far beyond his intemperate tweets. No speech by Joe Biden is going to make any difference. Not even denunciations by former Trumpers — Michael Cohen, John Bolton, John Kelly — have done much of anything. Trump’s support only grew from 2016 to 2020. So, what will it take to avoid the Stalin scenario?

      In an article about three historical parallels —  Reconstruction, de-Nazification and de-Baathification — I conclude that a mere speech won’t do the trick: “Because Trumpism is a cancer on the body politic, the treatment will require radical interventions, including the transformation of the Republican Party, a purge of Trumpists from government, and the indictment of the president and his top cronies as a criminal enterprise. To avoid a second Civil War, however, a second American Revolution would need to address the root causes of Trumpism, especially political corruption, deep-seated racism, and extreme economic inequality.”

      In this way, the leader can be properly stigmatized while the followers can be progressively de-zombified. One thing is for certain: If the Biden administration doesn’t take firm and decisive action against the illegalities of the Trump team, and if Biden doesn’t address the root causes of the zombification of half the electorate, the new president will be eaten alive.

      *[This article was originally published by Foreign Policy in Focus.]

      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 Police: An Instrument of Injustice

      by

      When Alexander the Great marched into Phrygian, the capital of Gordinium, in 333 BC, he was told that an oracle had declared that any man who could unravel the Gordian knot — deemed impossible to untangle — would rule over Asia. After wrestling with the knot for a time with no success, Alexander drew his sword and cut the knot into half with a single stroke. To paraphrase the Bard of Avon, police reforms in India await a similar creative solution to a seemingly insurmountable problem.

      360˚ Context: The State of the Indian Republic

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      It is ironic that, more than seven decades after independence, the police in India are still governed by the Indian Police Act of 1861. The British introduced this act immediately after what they called the 1857 Sepoy Mutiny. As per the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, the 1861 legislation was enacted with “the purpose of crushing dissent and any movement for self government.” After the 1857 uprising, the British monarchy took over from the East India Company, creating a colonial administrative architecture that would become the jewel in its crown. Along with the 1861 act, the 1860 Indian Penal Code was a major pillar of the new criminal justice system that served London well until India’s independence in 1947.

      The Legacy of the Raj

      Independent India adopted a new constitution that gave states jurisdiction over the police. Henceforth, it was not New Delhi but state capitals that controlled policing. However, those who drafted the constitution failed to craft legislation to create a new police force in tune with the new demands of democracy. The police force retained its colonial character, carrying the will of its new political masters. Order ordained by these masters had to be maintained. The rule of law and due process were to play second fiddle.

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      Like many former colonies, India became a democracy in form while its police force remained colonial in spirit. In the first few decades after independence, the combination of enlightened leaders, ignorant public opinion, some outstanding officers and the broad hegemony of one political party papered over the incongruity of the arrangement. That could not, and did not, last.

      From the 1960s, Indian politics became increasingly fractious. By the mid-1970s, the pulls and pressures on police departments, thanks to political interference, increased dramatically. Inadequate organizational structure, exploitative ethos and brutal behavior came to typify the police force. In 1975, then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, the daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru, used the police to impose a state of emergency on the country. As in colonial times, the police suppressed civil liberties, foisted false cases on the ruling party’s political opponents and even enforced sterilization on unwilling young men under a draconian family planning plan.

      In 1977, the opposition won a historic victory. Immediately after taking power, the new government instituted the National Police Commission (NPC) to review India’s system of policing and suggest reforms. It produced eight reports, including a Model Police Act, between 1979 and 1981. It also appointed a commission of inquiry under a retired chief justice of India, J.C. Shah. Its 1978 report chronicled the excesses, malpractices and misdeeds of the government during the emergency. It found that the police had obediently and brutally carried out instructions of its political masters, cowing the country into submission.

      To date, these reports have been gathering dust. Governments have come and gone since 1981. They have implemented peripheral recommendations but ignored substantive ones that relate to accountability and autonomy.

      Echoes Across the Country

      In 2020, the police are still bound by diktats of the political bosses. The Delhi riots earlier this year prompted allegations of political interference, a repeat of what happened in the 1984 unrest. It moved Julio Ribeiro, one of the country’s most respected police officers, to write a letter to the police chief of Delhi. He asked for a fair probe into the riots and questioned why the police did not investigate members of the ruling party for delivering hate speeches.

      Ribeiro’s question can be echoed across the country. The chief ministers of India’s 28 states control the police just as British governors once did. Politicians pay lip service to police reforms but are unable to let go of the power they wield. At its essence, there is a fundamental asymmetry of power between the police and the citizens: The former are not accountable to the latter. The police answer only to their political and bureaucratic bosses.

      The failure of politicians to reform the police has led to citizens and retired senior police officers appealing to the judiciary for change. In 2006, the Supreme Court of India passed a landmark judgment and gave seven clear directives. The government of India and its federal counterparts in state capitals were supposed to implement these directives. Instead, most have been ignored or implemented half-heartedly. As a result, many a chief justice had lamented that not a single state government is willing to cooperate: What’s to be done?

      Embed from Getty Images

      The power politicians wield in various state capitals comes from Section 3 of the 1861 Police Act, which states: “The superintendence of the police throughout a general police-district shall vest in and shall be exercised by the State Government to which such district is subordinate, and except as authorized under the provisions of this Act, no person, officer of Court shall be empowered by the State Government to supersede or control any police functionary.”

      Simply put, chief ministers and their consiglieres, the senior officers of the elite Indian Administrative Service and Indian Police Service (IPS), control every district in their states. The Model Police Act drafted by the NPC more than four decades ago recommended a tempering of this unfettered power of state governments. Its Section 39 provides for the state government to “exercise its superintendence … in such manner … as to promote the professional efficiency of the police.”

      The Second Administrative Reforms Commission (ARC) set up by the Indian government concluded that the proposed Section 39 was insufficient to provide police autonomy. Informal and often illegal instructions to the police are pervasive. It recommended that an amendment to the Model Police Act that expressly forbade illegal or mala fide demands from the police. It also recommended that obstruction of justice be categorized as an offense. Needless to say, the government of India is yet to accept the ARC’s recommendations, let aside implement them.

      Crime Pays

      This politics-police equation is completely lopsided, with India’s law enforcement the handmaiden of the politicians in power. This has been supported by numerous committees such as the one headed by Justice K.T. Thomas and scholars like Milan Vaishav. In fact, Indian voters have been increasingly electing politicians who face criminal proceedings against them. Money and muscle play a growing role in Indian politics. The result is decline, if not collapse, of the policing and criminal justice system.

      After 73 years of independence, the formal institutions left behind by the British Raj are weakening. For ambitious politicians, controlling the police is an important way to secure benefits for themselves, consolidate electoral gains and distribute benefits to their supporters. If politicians control the police, they can avoid criminal investigations into their activities. They can hobble opponents with false or frivolous charges. They can also dispense patronage to their core supporters who are often members of their community. This partisan use of the police furthers identity politics in an increasingly divided land. As a result, the rule of law suffers and the Indian state weakens.

      The police force itself has become politicized in many if not all states. Caste, community or religious affinity is often more important than professionalism, diligence or excellence. Many politicians try to recruit members of their own group into the police. Since police officers have job security, this social engineering of the police can institutionalize the coercive power of a group long after their politician is voted out. 

      The Indian police have been weighed, measured and found wanting on numerous occasions. In 1992, the police stood by as a mob demolished the Babri Masjid mosque and, 10 years later, they did the same during the 2002 Gujarat riots. The rise in extrajudicial killings demonstrates the failure of due process of law. In 2005, the BBC reported that India’s “fake encounters” — staged confrontations between criminals and the police, where the criminals mostly end up dead — were shockingly common. During the emergency in the 1970s and in recent years, the police have stifled dissent by slapping colonial-era sedition charges.

      The police continue to wield repression on the streets. Beating people arbitrarily is common. In recent years, marginalized groups such as Dalits, minorities, tribesmen and women who protest peacefully have faced increased police brutality. Paul Brass has found that governments have used “curfews as means of control, victimization, and outright violence against targeted groups rather than as devices to bring peace during violent times for the benefit of all.”

      Embed from Getty Images

      Instrument of Injustice

      In India, the police no longer have a reputation for probity or for being an instrument of justice. In fact, the insensitive, illegal, inhuman and indefensible handling of the September murder and gang rape of a Dalit girl in Hathras, a district in India’s most populous state of Uttar Pradesh, laid bare the utterly unprofessional work culture of the Indian police. Such conduct occurs with numbing regularity because the political elite is deeply invested in the status quo.

      Prospects for reform seem dim. In 2003, R.K. Raghavan, a former director of the Central Bureau of Investigation, observed that the police would continue to do the politicians’ bidding unless certain basic reforms were enacted. The judiciary cannot enact these reforms — it is the politicians’ duty. Until “they look upon the police as a tool to settle political scores with their adversaries, nothing will improve.” Raghavan went on to argue that prospects for police reform were bleak “because the corruption that cuts across party lines, brings with it unanimity that the status quo should remain.”

      In September 2020, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave a speech to graduating IPS officers and called for a trust-based policing system. He argued that those who believe that instilling fear among the populace is the most effective policing strategy are out of sync with the march of the nation and its vibrant democracy. Modi’s actions have not matched his rhetoric.

      India does not need another report or judgment. It awaits a statesman who can rise above the temptations of short-term electoral gains and work for long-term national benefits and who will not hesitate to wield the sword to cut the Gordian knot that keeps the politician and the police bound together. Only then will India have rule of law, not mere order, and justice for all instead of for a privileged few.

      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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      Alex Acosta and the Guidelines of the Elite

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      Two fundamentally ambiguous events concerning the Jeffrey Epstein affair have left many people wondering how far the web of influence around the convicted sex offender extended. The first was the trial that ended with a sweetheart deal allowing Epstein, an American financier, to be virtually free while serving prison time. The second event was his apparent suicide in prison as he was awaiting trial on separate charges. 

      The conditions surrounding his suicide are so spectacularly equivocal that any rational person can only be dumbfounded by the uncritical acceptance by the media of New York City’s medical examiner’s declaration of suicide as definitive. CNN, for example, reporting on the most recent news concerning the 2005 trial and the sweetheart deal writes drily: “Epstein died by suicide in a federal jail in August 2019.”

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      In the article, CNN cites a review by the Department of Justice finding “that Alex Acosta, President Donald Trump’s former Labor secretary, exercised poor judgment when, as a US attorney in Florida, he gave sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein a non-prosecution agreement.” It adds that “the review did not find that Acosta or other prosecutors engaged in professional misconduct.”

      The article mentions that Acosta was guilty of a second count of poor judgment “when he failed to notify the girls and young women who alleged they were sexually abused by Epstein about the decision to not prosecute the multi-millionaire on federal charges.

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Poor judgment:

      The commonly attributed failing that explains why a crime committed by any member of the elite (defined as those empowered to judge the acts of others and exempt from being judged by others than their own) cannot be considered a crime since the mistake of showing poor judgment eclipses in gravity the crime itself

      Contextual Note

      As a federal prosecutor and then President Trump’s secretary of labor, Acosta belongs to the middle ranks of the judicial and political elite just as Epstein belonged to the middle ranks of the financial and social elite. Epstein appears also to have been associated with the international intelligence elite. That offered him supplementary security because intelligence can never be accused of crimes since its duty is to be engaged in serious criminal activity. By virtue of their belonging to the elite, both Epstein and Acosta knew they were at least theoretically protected from ever being convicted of serious crimes. But so were people like Harvey Weinstein, who belonged to the entertainment elite, or Bernie Madoff, who worked his way into the financial elite.

      Epstein, Weinstein and Madoff demonstrate that it’s possible to go too far in exercising poor judgment. All three had, at some point, probably lost any notion of there being such a thing as “too far.” They thus learned they weren’t quite as elite as they imagined themselves to be.

      Embed from Getty Images

      The Epstein case helps us to understand one important principle: that in the circles of the elite, there are always two levels of logic that protect them. The first is the phenomenon of the first offense, or the first occasion in which the subject crosses a line that could expose the nature of the game. The less timid or cautious actually push their luck to discover where that line may be before pulling back to their safety zone.

      The second is the security deriving from the self-interested solidarity of the elite. They will never betray the secrets of their peers, whom they learn to protect passively. Passive protection translates as the rhetorical skill of denying even awareness of actions deemed compromising. It is important to avoid recourse to active protection, such as rising to the defense of a peer. This is frowned upon because it may raise suspicions of complicity. Individual sins can be brushed away. Collective sins require more effort.

      Sexual crimes (Epstein, Weinstein) — typically individual sins, but not crimes — if found out and verified, are paradoxically the least forgivable, especially today, after the Weinstein scandal and #MeToo. Judicial crimes and crimes of political influence, such as Acosta is accused of, are easily dismissed because they are generally viewed as part of the job of balancing interests out among the elite.

      Then there are serious political crimes, including war crimes. In some sense, they are the easiest to gloss over because they are motivated by “noble” (i.e., nationalistic) intentions. But because they concern public policies, they become highly visible and can draw the attention of political opponents. Protecting them becomes more complicated, requires working closely with the media and takes time.

      Take the example of Elliot Abrams, President Trump’s special envoy, first for Venezuela and then for Iran. He was convicted of lying to Congress in the context of the Iran-Contra scandal during the Reagan administration. He even admitted in an interview to being seriously involved in the micro-management of the Contra death squads in El Salvador. President George H.W. Bush pardoned Abrams in 1992, who continued to provide his services to George W. Bush and now Trump.

      All this is public knowledge, which means mildly embarrassing but not compromising. It explains why a prominent member of President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team, Kelly Magsamen, can even today justify her active collaboration with Abrams in a now-deleted 2019 tweet visible here. Defending her work with Abrams on the Trump administration’s shambolic effort to provoke regime change in Venezuela, Magsamen explains: “I worked for Elliot Abrams as a civil servant. He is a fierce advocate for human rights and democracy. Yes, he made serious professional mistakes and was held accountable. I’m a liberal but I’m also fair. We have a lot of work to do in Venezuela. We share goals.”

      Goals justify everything. But mistakes happen, leading to accusations of “poor judgment.” Convictions also happen, sometimes followed by presidential pardons. That is what is called “being held accountable.” Most significantly, bygones become bygones.

      The elite has a job to do and solidarity is an essential part of that job.

      Historical note

      The capacity of elite networks to protect their members, especially when it involves national security (i.e., the intelligence community), has always been impressive. Not only can they accomplish enormous tasks that may or may not involve serious criminal activity — from massacres of civilian populations to assassinations of political leaders and even scientists — they are particularly skillful at covering them up, delaying and distorting the perception of truth and influencing the commercial media to disseminate their version of the “truth” while characterizing all other accounts as conspiracy theories.

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      Alex Acosta’s public explanations of his sweetheart deal for Jeffrey Epstein was anything but convincing, as any spectator should be able to notice. In response to the question raised by his own explanation that Epstein was an “intelligence asset,” he responded: “There’s been reporting to that effect, and let me say, there’s been reporting to a lot of effects … and I would hesitate to take this reporting as fact.” He then added: “I can’t address it directly because of our guidelines but I can tell you a lot of reporting is just going down rabbit holes.”

      The strategy is impeccable. Call the issue “reporting,” meaning it could just be hearsay. Then mention that other hearsay exists, suggesting that it is all equally incredible. Then invoke “guidelines” that no one understands but everyone accepts as being crucial to our common security. The final touch consists of asking for questions from another reporter to avoid follow-up questions to one’s evasive answers.

      History provides us with many examples of how the work of the elite to cover up its most public crimes produces effects that last decades and disqualify the truth, even when it finally emerges to the light of day.   

      Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated 52 years ago. The evidence that the bullet that killed the senator was fired by a second gunman is overwhelming. A lengthy interview half a century later with one of the forensic pathologists consulted for the autopsy (but not for the trial) not only presents that evidence but reveals how and why it was covered up at the time.

      This is just one startling example of how the media continue to create enough doubt about decades-old affairs to protect the elite of the past. It appears to be part of their job protecting today’s elite. Acosta has nothing to worry about.

      *[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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      What the Democrats Need to Understand About America

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      The most-watched election in the world is over, and the United States will have a new president. Democrats succeeded in removing Donald Trump from office — the first one-term president in nearly 30 years and the fourth in the last century — but the Republican Party won this election. Joe Biden will begin his presidency …
      Continue Reading “What the Democrats Need to Understand About America”
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      Welcome to Joe Biden’s Socialist States of America

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      One of the sillier notions advanced during this US presidential election campaign was that if Joe Biden were to win, he and his party would transform the United States into the promised land of socialism. I guess not even the Republican strategists who promoted this canard seriously believed it to be true. Unfortunately, the message …
      Continue Reading “Welcome to Joe Biden’s Socialist States of America”
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      What Is Russia’s Stake in the Nagorno-Karabakh War?

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      As the world discusses the sudden cessation of fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh and the deployment of Russian “peacekeepers” to the region to monitor the truce, one critically important question is overlooked: Why did Russia not discourage Azerbaijan’s military offensive? A powerful security rationale implies a strong Russian interest in deterring a war that might change the regional status quo. Preserving a favorable status quo, by strategic logic, is the central security interest of a regional hegemon like Russia.

      Armenia and Azerbaijan Clash Again

      READ MORE

      The six-week-long war has instead weakened Armenian control over Nagorno-Karabakh, which had endured for over two decades only because it served Russia’s interests. The risk of spillover across the volatile Caucasus presents another security threat to Russia. The war has altered the balance of interests in the region — unfavorably for Moscow — creating openings for regional interventions by Turkey, the United States and others. So what objectives are worth the Kremlin taking such risks?

      Controlled Chaos

      Russia’s ultimate goal in the post-Soviet space is to politically reintegrate its former satellites into an interstate union. Yet its attempts to achieve this over the past three decades have produced only failures. The most recent experience with Belarus suggests it might be possible in a case where an authoritarian leadership feels extremely threatened. Heightening insecurity in the population has historically been another favorable condition for political integration. Moscow’s ability to put pressure on Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has been limited.

      Embed from Getty Images

      A recent report reveals that the Kremlin views Pashinyan as a “Soros appointee” and accuses him of “promoting pro-American politicians.” The Kremlin’s Armenia desk apparently receives its information from agents representing actors Pashinyan excluded from power. They discreetly sold to the Kremlin the idea that Pashinyan needs to be replaced by a more loyal politician.

      The war and the Azeri territorial gains in and around Nagorno-Karabakh create a context favorable to Russia. First, it allows blame for defeats to be projected onto Armenia’s leadership. Russian media have broadcast statements from Russian political and security experts asserting that Pashinyan is responsible for both the war losses and Russia’s restrained reaction in the conflict on account of his unfriendly attitude toward Moscow and his favoritism towards the West. They also promoted claims concerning mounting domestic opposition. These signals suggest that Russia’s first goal is to bring to power a more loyal Armenian prime minister.

      A second goal is to create insecurity among the population, propagating the idea that Armenia cannot survive as a state without Russia. To produce the necessary feeling of threat, Russia allowed Azerbaijan to recover all its territories around Nagorno-Karabakh, making defending the enclave extremely difficult in the future. Azerbaijan’s victory also underlines the military vulnerability of Armenia itself. Russia will exploit this sense of vulnerability to persuade Armenia’s population and leadership to agree to closer integration with Russia, likely similar to the Union State of Russia and Belarus.

      On the other hand, Russia delivered an immense favor to Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev by choosing not to employ its electronic warfare capabilities against Azeri drones. This was key to Baku’s military success and clearly communicates to the Azeri audience that preserving their war gains is conditional on good relations with Moscow. This will not create the level of vulnerability found in Armenia, but it will start building a dependency.

      Ankara’s open involvement in the war offers Russia opportunities to curtail Turkey’s growing regional ambitions or raise their costs. Armenia and the West view Turkey as a party to the conflict and will resist Turkish participation in internationally accepted peace negotiations and peacekeeping mechanisms. This could create an opportunity for Russia to later push for a UN Security Council authorization for its Collective Security Treaty Organization “peacekeeping forces.” That would be a historic first for Russia and another strategic gain.

      Not an Accidental Escalation

      It is legitimate to ask whether Russia acted opportunistically in response to the war or actively contributed to the escalation of the simmering conflict. It is highly unlikely that Russia was unaware of Azerbaijan’s intentions. Russia has extensive intelligence-gathering capacities in the South Caucasus. Its ability to monitor military and civilian communications, movements of troops and materiel, as well as preparations for offensive operations in the region is pretty much unquestioned.

      Moreover, the Azeri offensive started on 27 September, one day after Russia’s Kavkaz-2020 strategic exercise ended. The Armenian military participated in various phases of the exercise both in Russia and in Armenia. This suggests great confidence on the Azeri side, in starting the offensive when considerable Russian forces were still deployed in the region. It is highly unlikely that Baku failed to consult Moscow beforehand, given the scale, intensity and far-reaching objectives of its military operation.

      Any attempt to change the status quo in the post-Soviet space undermines Russia’s credibility and reputation. Moscow has been quick to punish threats to the status quo, witness Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014. It also threatened Moldova after 2014 by increasing its military exercises in Transnistria from a few dozen to a few hundred per year. Russia reacted unexpectedly calmly to Baku’s invasion. Most surprisingly, it repeatedly rejected Yerevan’s request for military assistance on procedural grounds.

      Moscow’s ability to stop the Azeri offensive immediately after the fall of Shushi, the second-largest city in Nagorno-Karabakh, revealed the extent of its control. Russia would only have allowed the change of the status quo if its expected gains exceeded the related risks and costs. This is what appears to have happened, with the Kremlin using Baku to pull its chestnuts out of the fire.

      *[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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      Macron’s Problem With the News in English

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      At some moment in the recent past, French President Emmanuel Macron assigned himself the mission to single-handedly reform Islam and imbue it with the Enlightenment values that made it possible for a lowly Rothschild banker to rise up to become the democratically elected pseudo-monarch of France’s faltering Fifth Republic. He thus became understandably upset when he discovered how English-speaking media have been failing to align behind his global leadership on the issue of defending French exceptionalism, which Macron defines as his nation’s divine right to promote half-assed, unfunny, gratuitously insulting pseudo-satirical cartoons.

      As one of the rare French leaders to be reasonably fluent in English, Macron was able to track what he sees as the half-assed, unfunny, gratuitously insulting reporting of the English-speaking press concerning his noble mission. After reading comments made in the Financial Times and Politico, his growing ire impelled him to pick up his phone and call Ben Smith, a highly regarded journalist at The New York Times, to make sure that his imperious voice would be heard on the other side of the Atlantic.

      Emmanuel Macron Defends His Crusade

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      Ben Smith doesn’t hide his surprise at receiving an unsolicited phone call from a man who has no small opinion of the importance of his office. He dutifully reports the president’s concern: “So when I see, in that context, several newspapers which I believe are from countries that share our values — journalists who write in a country that is the heir to the Enlightenment and the French Revolution — when I see them legitimizing this violence, and saying that the heart of the problem is that France is racist and Islamophobic, then I say the founding principles have been lost.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Share our values:

      Follow the dogmas of our secular religion.

      Contextual Note

      The complaint that the anglophone media has been unjust to him is not something that Macron discovered on his own. On October 29, Princeton professor Bernard Haykel published an article in Le Monde taking to task the reporting of both The New York Times and The Washington Post for treating the recent beheading of Samuel Paty — a French teacher who showed his students the controversial Charlie Hebdo cartoons of Prophet Muhammad as part of a class on freedom of speech —  as a crime rather than as a significant political event reflecting the actions of a global conspiracy. Haykel achieved some notoriety in the US in 2015 when he publicly complained, as did many Republicans, that “President Obama refused to use the word ‘Islamic’ to describe the brutal group calling itself the ‘Islamic State.’”

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      Oddly, Haykel himself, in a CNN interview, called the Islamic State the result of “an expression of this humiliation, this rage, this sense of disenfranchisement that hundreds of millions of Muslims feel.” In other words, the problem is essentially political and not religious.

      Why did Macron wait till now to vent his spleen by calling Ben Smith? Perhaps he believes that the defeat of President Donald Trump has removed the influence of The Donald’s evangelical voters from the corridors of power in Washington. With Joe Biden’s election, Macron can now assume that the college-educated Americans who elected the Democrat are ready to align behind Macron’s brand of Enlightenment-inspired aggressive Eurocentrism that privileges the idea of a clash of civilizations. Macron is not asking The Times for more accurate reporting of events. He wants English-speakers in the US and the UK to adhere to his personal worldview. The French journal Le Point offered this summary of the French president’s conversation with Ben Smith: “For the President of the Republic, the journalists of these media organizations do not understand the French context in which these events occurred.”

      Is Macron ready to teach them the truth and help them understand? In his inimitable Jupiterian style, consistent with that of a 19th-century “laïc,” or schoolmaster, rather than with teaching, he prefers dictating. As Smith reports, “Mr. Macron argues that there are big questions at the heart of the matter.” It appears to be a clash of civilizations within Western civilization. “Our model is universalist, not multiculturalist.” This is Macron’s way of saying that we are right and you are wrong. “Universalist” means one culture possesses the rules that apply everywhere. “Multiculturalist” means anarchy, chaos, or what Charles de Gaulle once called the “chienlit.”

      As a journalist concerned with respecting the context, Smith insists on the importance of paying attention to the pragmatic as well as the abstract: “Such abstract ideological distinctions can seem distant from the everyday lives of France’s large ethnic minorities, who complain of police abuse, residential segregation and discrimination in the workplace.” Smith recounts how the conversation ended, with Macron’s concluding suggestion, “My message here is: If you have any question on France, call me.”

      Monsieur Macron, after all, is “le president,” the man with all the answers. When back in 2018 Fox News journalist Chris Wallace asked Macron the question, “So what is the best part of being the president of France?” Macron replied, “Deciding.” The universalist Macron especially likes to decide how others should live their lives and report their news. 

      Historical Note

      Throughout history, even the most powerful despots, skilled at stifling literary production at home, have rarely attempted to censor the foreign press. But when a 21st-century monarch claiming to represent universal values senses danger abroad, no choice remains but to inform The New York Times, after which order may be restored.

      Macron’s concern highlights a curious historical phenomenon that helps explain the persistence of institutional racism in both France and the United States. For a long time, Christian fundamentalism provided the core justification of racism in the US. Over time, it became secularized and merged with the political idea of Manifest Destiny, thanks to which a white Christian population was fated to conquer a continent and eventually lead the world.

      The rationalist tradition inaugurated by the French Enlightenment provides a different brand of racism, one based on admiration of the achievements of white civilization. The ideas circulating in France in the 18th century contributed to the founding of the US, a nation whose economy to a large extent depended on the maintenance of slavery. All men may have been created equal but only some acquire property, enabling them to become more equal than others. And since blacks cannot aspire to property, they are clearly not equal at all. When revolutionary France embraced “liberté, égalité, fraternité,” it abolished any religious rationale to justify slavery. At the same time, it began its mission civilisatrice, a concept invented to justify a century and a half of brutal colonialism, especially in Africa. 

      Embed from Getty Images

      The chaotic revolutionary and Napoleonic eras ended with the restoration of monarchy. Christian missionaries now had their role to play, civilizing the dark populations of the world. But the colonizers focused primarily on Enlightenment values that supported the idea of efficient, profitable economic exploitation of other peoples and their resources.

      The French were inviting others into the classroom of civilization, demonstrating their eagerness to dictate universalist values to peoples who, as Nicolas Sarkozy framed it in his notorious address in Dakar, never “fully entered into history … never really launched themselves into the future.” Racism was already a vibrant feature of the Enlightenment. In a recent article for Foreign Policy on Voltaire, generally revered as the paragon of tolerance, French-Algerian journalist Nabila Ramdani pointed to the philosopher’s portrayal of Africans in his 1769 work “Les Lettres d’Amabed” as “‘animals’ with a ‘flat black nose with little or no intelligence!’” She cites other luminaries of the period, pointing out that such judgments were “typical of Enlightenment philosophers, who provided disturbing justifications for the hatred of racial and religious groups.”

      Ben Smith notes that Macron’s “larger claim is that, after the attacks, English and American outlets immediately focused on failures in France’s policy toward Muslims rather than on the global terror threat.” How dare the foreign press choose its own approach to reporting the news? How dare it take into account the complete context of a dramatic event rather than focusing on what every politician knows the news media prefer to report on: gore, human suffering and the paranoia they inspire?

      Perhaps Macron hopes The New York Times will do for him what it did for Joe Biden out of fear of Trump’s being reelected. Marine Le Pen is France’s Trump. Promoting paranoid theories, as The Times did with Russiagate, is the best way to ensure the centrist will defeat the enemy on the right.

      *[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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      Israel’s Comeback in the Horn of Africa

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      In 2016, Benjamin Netanyahu was the first Israeli prime minister to visit Africa in 30 years. The visit was consistent with his announced intent to rebuild Israel’s ties with the continent, especially East Africa, where his tour took him through Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda. Narrowing down focus on the Horn of Africa, Israel has a long history of engagement in the region that dates back to the 1960s. The Red Sea has always been a vital waterway for Tel Aviv as it connects the country to East Africa, Asia and Oceania through the tiny outlet of Eilat.

      This strategic imperative has always been confronted with the hostility of nearly all the states of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden basin. Only Ethiopia and Eritrea have maintained relations with the Jewish state in the past decades, though with some setbacks.

      Not All Arab States Will Normalize Ties With Israel

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      Now, even relations with Israel might see a significant change in the Horn of Africa. The Abraham Accords, signed in September by Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates to normalize bilateral relations with Israel, have caused a diplomatic earthquake in the Middle East and beyond. On the one hand, the treaty turned Abu Dhabi into a broker facilitating dialogue between its regional partners and Israel. On the other, the accords showed the friends and foes of the United States that there is a file rouge between their ties with Washington and their relationship with Tel Aviv.

      The Abraham Accords were undoubtedly part of an effort of the US administration to garner a foreign policy success ahead of the November presidential elections. Yet this policy might stay in place longer, even with a Democrat at the White House. The Horn of Africa mirrors the Middle East in many aspects, and the recognition of Israel might be yet another one.

      Perspective Allies in the Horn

      On October 23, US President Donald Trump made a double announcement about Sudan. He first revealed Khartoum’s intention to normalize ties with Israel. Then he removed Sudan from the list of state sponsors of terrorism in exchange for the payment of compensation for two terrorist attacks against American embassies in which the regime of erstwhile Sudanese dictator Omar al-Bashir was involved. The recognition of Israel clearly came down as an additional request for the delisting of Sudan — an indispensable, long-awaited measure that will allow international aid to flow into the country and help Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok to address the deepest economic crisis in decades.

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      But the issue of normalization with Israel is a highly contentious one for Sudan. The two countries have a conflicting history. The Jewish state has financed and trained South Sudanese guerrilla groups in the past, while the Arab country has long served as an operational base to ship weapons and aid to Hamas in Gaza. Not surprisingly, the announcement of the normalization sparked protests in Khartoum and led the Islamist National Umma Party to declare its withdrawal from the government coalition. Against this backdrop, the agreement does not seem under immediate threat since the levers of power ultimately remain in the hands of General Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagolo and General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, who chair the Sovereign Council. The two generals benefitted from the UAE’s and Saudi Arabia’s military and financial support, with Abu Dhabi especially keen to see Sudan build stronger relations with its new ally, Israel.

      Eritrea is another country set to move closer to Tel Aviv. Eritreans received crucial military assistance from Israel during the liberation war against Ethiopia. After obtaining independence in 1991 after 30 years of conflict, Asmara went beyond establishing diplomatic relations and reportedly offered Israel a concession to open a military base on the island of Daklah, strategically located in the Red Sea. However, Eritrea’s growing isolation in the mid-2000s pushed President Isaias Afwerki more into Iran’s sphere of influence and, subsequently, on a collision course with Israel. The Asmara-Tehran alignment then became a key strategic concern for Saudi Arabia and the UAE since Iran allegedly used Eritrean soil as a logistics base to smuggle weapons to the Houthi rebels in Yemen.

      This concern prompted the Saudi and Emirati engagement in Eritrea, with Asmara ultimately realigning with the two Gulf states as signaled by the port concessions offered to the Emirati DP World and Eritrea’s membership in the Saudi-sponsored Council of the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. Now, with mediation by Abu Dhabi, even relations with Israel might be back on the table if President Afwerki decides to soften his country’s international isolation through a rapprochement with the United States.

      The third actor on the list might be Somaliland. The Somali breakaway republic, which emerged from the collapse of the state back in 1991, is probably holding talks with Tel Aviv, as the chief of Israel’s intelligence agency, the Mossad, Eli Cohen, suggested in a recent interview. Here again, the UAE seems to play a crucial role. Somaliland has become a strong Emirati partner in recent years because of its strategic location looking out to the Gulf of Aden and southern Yemen. The alliance between Abu Dhabi and Hargeisa took shape around the concession of the port of Berbera to DP World and the construction of an Emirati airbase nearby.

      Inching Closer

      The UAE is very well positioned to bring Somaliland and Israel closer. Besides gaining a useful security partner in the fight against al-Shabaab, Hargeisa might see a rapprochement with the Jewish state as valuable political capital to sell to Washington in exchange for advancement in the process of recognition of its independence from Mogadishu. But Somaliland is not the only Somali state to enjoy strong ties with the UAE. Puntland in the north and Jubaland in the south are ruled by state governments similarly aligned to Abu Dhabi that could also require Israeli assistance against terrorism or even the Somali federal government in the future.Last but not least, there is Ethiopia. Addis Ababa and Tel Aviv resumed bilateral diplomacy in 1989, when the Derg military regime was toppled in Ethiopia. After years of clement relations, in September 2019, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed took a successful visit to Israel. On that occasion, he signed a joint declaration with Benjamin Netanyahu that underlined their intention to foster cooperation, particularly in terms of bilateral trade, as well as military, economic and technological assistance. In this specific situation, it might be Israel that pulls the brakes on cooperation in order to avoid any steps that might antagonize Egypt, currently at loggerheads with Addis Ababa over the Ethiopian Renaissance Dam project on the Blue Nile.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Finally, the two remaining states in the Horn of Africa, Somalia and Djibouti, do not seem willing to reproach Israel. The reason for that can be found in the relations that these countries enjoy with Turkey and Qatar as well as in the lack of incentives from the United States to move in that direction.Given Israel’s new posture in the Middle East and Africa, more states might be willing to open to Israel — or be pressed to do so — in order to improve their relations with the US and the UAE. Yet the Palestinian issue is still a contentious topic in the vast majority of the Muslim and the post-colonial world. This makes bilateral relations with Israel a divisive issue, both in domestic and regional politics. At the domestic level, recognition of Israel is often perceived as a betrayal of the Palestinian people, especially in those countries where the Muslim Brotherhood or other Islamist movements are active, such as Sudan.

      At the regional level, the Turkey-Qatar axis firmly opposes any opening to Israel and has deep political, economic and security ties with many state and non-state actors across the Horn of Africa. Consequently, any agreement with Israel is likely to fuel internal dissent and entrench regional polarization at the same time. While new bilateral relations are always good news for the international system, normalization with Israel should be handled more carefully than other rapprochements.

      *[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