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      Tekashi 6ix9ine and the American Way

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      A New York Times interview with controversial rapper and ex-convict Tekashi 6ix9ine offers a rich catalog of the curious values that characterize contemporary US culture. What emerges from the feature is a series of reflections by both the interviewer and the interviewee on some of the driving forces in today’s society, including ambition, fame, money, commercial media, tools of influence, law and social rules, and freedom of expression.

      Some may wonder why the Gray Lady — aka The New York Times — should take such a serious interest in a scandal-ridden rapper. The answer to that question tells us quite a lot about the values that now dominate, even in what are deemed the most serious media. Scandal, crime and celebrity have moved up several notches in the priority list of “all the news that’s fit to print.”

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      What appears to make the interview worthy of coverage by The Times is a spectacular scoop. The interviewer, Joe Coscarelli, gets 6ix9ine to admit that, if allowed to vote, he would go for US President Donald Trump. This meets an essential criterion for New York Times stories in this election cycle. An article that associates the extreme, manifestly irrational personalities of marginal celebrities with a taste for Trump’s politics is a strong argument for voting Joe Biden in November. It has the twofold advantage of confirming that Trump’s fans are marginal freaks and suggesting that the president himself implicitly shares the criminal instincts of those freaks.

      This approach to the news could be called “divisive,” though not in the sense that the word is used by The Times itself and the intelligence community to characterize Russian interference in US elections. It implicitly divides Americans into those who think and make serious decisions — a category that would include all readers of the New York Times — and those whose sole interest is to express their irrational impulses.

      To Coscarelli’s question, “You feel like the art you’re making is adding to the world?” the rapper answers, “Of course.” The interviewer then offers this critique of 6ix9ine’s music: “Maybe it’s fun, it’s turn-up music, but it’s not introspective.”

      Here is today’s 3D definition:

      Introspective:

      An attitude attributable to people who deserve to be taken seriously not just because of their success, but because they sometimes stop to think things through and weight their own responsibilities

      Contextual Note

      US social and political debate has become so divisive in recent years that society can now be separated into two groups: those who, like Barack Obama, pronounce the second syllable of “divisive” with a short “i” sound (as in “it”) and those who pronounce it as a full diphthong (as in “eye”). Alas, this distinction cuts across all boundaries of political and cultural orientation.

      The question of introspection highlights a more telling distinction in US culture. Over the past two centuries, self-reliance and atomistic individualism have risen to the level of a philosophical ideal. This became a central message of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s influential philosophy. This ideology initiated a tug of war between assertive action and introspection.

      Embed from Getty Images

      P.T. Barnum, the 19th-century founder of the Barnum and Bailey circus and the man who said, “Never give a sucker an even break,” set the tone for Emerson when he proclaimed, “Fortune always favors the brave, and never helps a man who does not help himself.” Initiating the great American tradition of giving to those who need it least — as exemplified in recent government bailouts as a response to the economic crisis — Barnum added this thought: “The best kind of charity is to help those who are willing to help themselves.”

      Ever since Barnum established the principle that success belongs to the assertive, the very idea of assertiveness flipped from being seen as a moral weakness — or moral traditionally, as the capital sin of pride — to becoming the supreme personal virtue that separates the rich from the poor.

      In the hierarchy of values that regulates US culture, being assertive does not necessarily exclude introspection. For Emerson it even required it. Introspection allows the ambitious individual to assess and correct any of the weaknesses that may undermine a veneer of assertiveness. But for at least half of the population, if introspection exists, it should be hidden because the average person (the suckers) will perceive it as a weakness. For the other half of the population, it still stands as a moral virtue.

      Effective assertiveness thus implies the skill of hiding the reality of introspection to create the appearance of certitude based on the person’s unwavering convictions and self-confidence. It is only when the assertive person is caught out for being too assertive and must apologize after a glaring mistake that it becomes necessary to invoke the virtue of introspection. This typically translates as the standard cliché of confused denial: “That is not who I am.”

      The half of the population that dismisses or hides introspection from view correlates roughly with the Republican Party. Trump stands at one extreme, thanks to his apparent total absence of introspection. As president between 2001 and 2009, George W. Bush may have been capable of introspection, but he carefully hid it from view. He projected an image of resoluteness and unwavering conviction even when faced with facts that contradicted his stated beliefs. He won the 2004 election by accusing his Democratic opponent, John Kerry, of flip-flopping.

      Democrats prefer to maintain their faith in introspection as an intellectual and moral virtue, setting themselves apart from the rabble. Their defense of introspection enabled Republicans in the 1950s to term them “eggheads,” people who prefer thinking to acting. When Hillary Clinton called Trump voters a “basket of deplorables” in 2016, she was implicitly accusing them of being incapable of introspection.

      Historical Note

      After two centuries that have seen the growing dominance of the idea of assertiveness in the US, what is the status of introspection in today’s culture? The interview with Tekashi 6ix9ine confirms the division highlighted above between the Democrat-aligned Times and its belief in the virtue of introspection vs. the rapper who identifies with the Republicans and Donald Trump and dismisses introspection as irrelevant.

      In the interview, Coscarelli affirms his belief in the value of introspection. He appreciates that the late rapper Tupac Shakur “grappled with his demons” and said, “I’ve done good, I’ve done bad, I want to be better.” Coscarelli implicitly condemns 6ix9ine for not including self-criticism to his repertoire of artistic sentiments.

      But rap thrives on extreme, borderline criminal assertiveness, unlike traditional forms of black American music: blues, jazz, soul, and rhythm and blues. Traditional black music focused on sophisticated musical form and ironic expression in a complex cultural context. It contained at its core a pair of emotions: humility and love. The player was always less important than the music, even in the case of dominant figures admired for the power they built into their performances, such as John Coltrane or James Brown.

      In the 1980s, the rise of rap and hip-hop as the dominant if not unique form of black music consecrated the triumph of assertiveness over introspection. The music industry — run essentially by white executives — saw this revolution as a godsend. Rock and roll — which took root in the 1950s — had already lowered the bar of musical complexity and introspection for the white community, making it easier to produce highly profitable hits. But it maintained the link to humility and love.

      Rap provided another advantage for white record producers, who defined it as the culture of the ‘hood. Music took a back seat to extremely individualistic aggressive intent. In the Ronald Reagan era, this helped to consolidate the white community’s perception of black culture as essentially criminal and antagonistic to traditional white values, even though white youths enthusiastically purchased the records. Rap made money for its star performers, producing a new generation of rags-to-riches heroes. For the first time, they were black males who embodied, in their way, the Reaganian ideal of the self-made man recognizable by his financial success.

      6ix9ine is right when he contradicts Coscarelli’s apparent belief that simply because he wants “to do better,” Tupac Shakur was introspective. Coscarelli’s take reflects the political orientation of The New York Times and its minimally introspective Democratic Party ethos. The neoliberals have done bad but want to do better. Which means doing the same thing but fixing it on the edges. “Vote Biden” is the message.

      *[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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      Will Morocco Normalize Relations With Israel?

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      Commentators from major news outlets have commented that Morocco will be among the first Arab countries to normalize relations with Israel and exchange ambassadors following the Israeli–Emirati agreement. As the former US ambassador to Morocco and having closely followed the policies and opinions of King Mohammed VI for the past 20 years, I am not so sure that Morocco will be next.

      There are two overriding issues to consider in this regard. King Mohammed VI has consistently and strongly supported a peace agreement between Israel and Palestine, and he may see a Moroccan agreement with Israel as damaging to such prospects. Also, the timing to act now, during an election year in the US, may be a deterrent for Morocco to move too hastily.

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      The king has made his viewpoint clear over the past two decades with regard to Palestine and used his position as chairman of the Al-Quds (Jerusalem) Committee of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) to assert strong support for a Palestinian state. At the same time, he has expressed his support for warm and full relations with Israel and seems perfectly situated as the next peace partner with Israel, given the fact that Moroccans are the second largest ethnic group in Israel, after Russians.

      Such a move, however, will have to be balanced with the statements that King Mohammed VI has constantly committed to over the years in his support for Palestine. In November 2019, he warned that “the continuing Israeli practices in violation of international legitimacy and international humanitarian law in the occupied Palestinian territories fuel tension, violence, instability and sow the seeds of religious conflict and hatred,” The North Africa Post reports. Following the king’s comments, Moroccan diplomats reaffirmed Morocco’s steadfast and unwavering support for Palestine.

      In February of this year, a message from King Mohammed VI conveyed to the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, by Moroccan Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita reaffirmed Morocco’s unwavering support to the Palestinian cause. The number of times the king has reiterated his support for Palestine during the past is too numerous to repeat here.

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      Since the days of King Hassan II — the reigning monarch’s father — Moroccans have been encouraged to give to the poor in Palestine and have inspired a Moroccan population deeply supportive of a Palestinian homeland. King Mohammed VI would have a hefty price to pay if he went back on his word and didn’t first extract meaningful concessions for the Palestinians before signing any agreement with Israel.

      Remember also that the king opposed Gulf countries’ pressure on Morocco to support their sanction of Qatar in 2017 and he suspended Morocco’s participation in the war in Yemen in 2019. Such stands took courage for a country so dependent on economic development from the Gulf. Analysts who predict that Morocco will be next to sign a peace accord with Israel may not understand the strength of King Mohammed’s moral compass.

      Partisanship

      The other consideration of Morocco to normalize relations with Israel is timing. There’s a joke in Morocco that says, “I’m not sure who the next US president will be, but I do know who the king’s best friend will be.” Morocco has always avoided partisan gestures during US election cycles dating back to the time when, in 1777, Sultan Mohammed III recognized the independence of the US. Morocco was the first country in the world to officially recognize the United States and was among the first countries to sign a treaty of peace and friendship between the two nations. Every monarch since has been careful to avoid the appearance of taking sides in US politics.

      Morocco understands that if it is not early to the peace party, the country will have less to gain from it. The king will have to balance that notion with his moral authority and long-held beliefs — and those of his citizens — to remain steadfast in support of a Palestinian state, as well as considering US election year timing.

      There are obvious reasons for Morocco to move quickly toward normalization given cultural and family ties with Israelis of Moroccan descent. For these and other reasons, many Morocco watchers believe that when the right concessions are made that include a serious negotiation between the parties that include a contiguous state of Palestine, based upon the 1967 borders, with Jerusalem as a capital of both Israel and Palestine — and when Morocco is not playing into election-year politics — the king will move swiftly to normalize relations.

      Many Moroccan and Israeli citizens already know through their cultural and family ties that when that day arrives, their new relationship will be a peaceful, warm and genuine one.

      *[This article was originally published by Morocco on the Move.]

      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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      Can Lebanon Overcome Its Sectarian Political Order?

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      Either the global COVID-19 pandemic or the catastrophic blast at the port of Beirut on August 4 could not have hit Lebanon at a worse time. The explosion killed nearly 200 people and displaced 300,000 residents, resulting in damage worth an estimated $15 billion. Prior to the tragedy, Lebanon was already experiencing daily blackouts. Given the strained infrastructure following the explosion, there is a real risk that the pandemic could spiral out of control.

      Mired in a severe crisis that shook the country and the instability stemming from last year’s “WhatsApp Revolution,” both developments unfolded as Lebanon’s volatile political order has been falling apart. According to the country’s 1926 constitution, the state is non-denominational, but it has the obligation to protect and guarantee the free exercise of all recognized faiths.

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      In practice, the system, commonly called muhasasa taifiya, means that political posts are proportionally allocated along confessional criteria. The presidency of the republic goes to a Maronite Christian since Maronites represented the majority confession at the time of the system’s conception; the prime minister is a Sunni, and the president of the chamber a Shia. Over time, expanding Muslim communities demanded a revision to reflect the demographic changes.

      In 1989, the Taif Accords, which ended the Lebanese Civil War, rebalanced the distribution of powers, but only partially. The system has influenced all areas of public life while exacerbating tensions among various communities. More significantly, many Lebanese blame the taifiya for clientelism, which breeds corruption. The thousands of protesters who descended on the streets of Lebanon through much of 2019 demanded radical amendments to the constitution to overturn its confessional nature.

      Sectarian Health Care

      The pandemic, in its most intense phase, managed to bring the anti-government demonstrations, which led to Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s resignation, to a halt. But now the Lebanese people will have to deal with the aftermath of the explosion, a deepening economic crisis and a potential second wave of coronavirus infections.

      Lebanon’s physical and institutional structures are in a state of decay. The World Health Organization (WHO) has launched an international campaign to raise some $15 million for the country’s hospitals to help confront the shortage of medicines, exacerbated by the eroding purchasing power of the Lebanese lira. This might prove insufficient given that a large part of Lebanon’s population lives in refugee camps. Syrian refugees alone account for 30% of the country’s total population, and many could be excluded from securing help.

      Embed from Getty Images

      The situation could have been worse. Fortunately, only 20% of Lebanon’s available hospital beds are filled by COVID-19 patients. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs monitored 55 Beirut area hospitals, concluding that only 47% of these facilities are able to work at full capacity, guaranteeing all services. This has increased pressure on remaining facilities, which happen to be privately owned — as are 85% of all hospitals and clinics in the country — by the various confessional parties.

      The complex network of taifiya clientelism has reached far beyond the political into the social sphere. This heightens the very sectarian frictions that have weakened Lebanon’s socio-political fabric, hampering the provision of adequate care. Public spending on health, as well as education and other social services, has been geographically distributed according to confessional criteria on the basis of the political or confessional affiliation of the minister in charge of the relevant portfolio. Thus, it is the minister’s position that plays a decisive role in resource allocation instead of the actual needs of the population in a given area or region.

      The combination of deeply-rooted clientelist mechanisms and the wild privatization drive of the 1990s and early 2000s under Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri have resulted in many, mostly poor, Lebanese being effectively denied access to adequate medical care. The pandemic and the financial crisis have worsened an already intolerable situation. The American University Medical Center, one of the finest hospitals in Lebanon, was forced to dismiss hundreds of staff last July.

      Economic Collapse

      Already struggling with inflation and unemployment, Lebanon lacks the resources to compensate workers who have lost their jobs or offer free medicines to those most in need, who are destined to increase in number. In other words, Lebanon faces the unenviable choice of either enforcing a lockdown to control the spread of the coronavirus or losing total control of the contagion by allowing businesses to stay open in order to keep its struggling economy afloat.

      The pandemic — and the lockdown it mandated — came during the worst financial crisis in Lebanon’s history. Just days before the WHO declared the coronavirus a pandemic on March 11, Prime Minister Hassan Diab announced a default on Lebanon’s €1.2-billion eurobond. The default triggered a massive devaluation of the lira. The resulting hyperinflation hit both the most vulnerable sections of the population as well as the middle class. Prices for most food and consumer products doubled.

      Estimates suggest that one in three Lebanese is either unemployed or has received half, or sometimes just a quarter, of their salary due to the lockdown restrictions. And the official statistics fail to consider Palestinian and Syrian refugees, who face economic hardships in the best of times, let alone during a pandemic.

      The Lebanese people blame their country’s banking sector, specifically the central bank, Banque du Liban, and its governor, Riad Salameh, for their plight. Hezbollah, the largest party in parliament, demanded Salameh be fired, describing the banker as a stooge for American efforts to bankrupt the armed group, which Washington has designated as a terrorist organization since 1997. But the speaker of parliament, Nabih Berri, has refused to sack Salameh, who has played a key role in negotiating with foreign shareholders to cut Lebanon’s massive $87-billion debt, which stands at 170% of the country’s GDP.

      Most Lebanese people face economic challenges worse than those of the 1975-1990 civil war, and there’s some truth to the assumption that the chances of dying from COVID-19 or starvation are roughly the same today. The lockdown and a nationwide curfew, coupled with the country’s chronic economic vulnerabilities, have dealt a deadly blow even against the types of businesses that had managed to survive wars. Restaurants and bars have closed under the pressure of surging prices for basic goods and low demand due to financial collapse.

      Perpetuating the System

      Despite the debilitating effects of the pandemic, these appear as a mere footnote to the longstanding problems that have led some to label Lebanon as a failed state long before 2020. But for Hezbollah, which enjoys a parliamentary majority, and for the other political actors as well, a radical shift away from Lebanon’s confessional underpinnings implies political suicide. It will be difficult, if not impossible, for Lebanon’s political class to regain the people’s trust.

      Embed from Getty Images

      The Special Tribunal for Lebanon, which is tasked with investigating the 2005 assassination of Rafiq Hariri, has convicted just one of the four Hezbollah-affiliated defendants. The verdict, which many Lebanese believed would find all four guilty, was widely expected to trigger riots and potentially plunge Lebanon into a political death spiral, pitting Sunni supporters of Saad Hariri’s Mustaqbal Party against Shia supporters of Hezbollah.

      That death spiral could still occur, but for the time being, the Lebanese people appear to have little energy for protesting, let alone for violent riots or another civil war, considering the current and seemingly intractable socio-economic crisis. Indeed, the lenient verdict in the Hariri case opens a narrow path, but a path nonetheless, toward unblocking loans and donations that have been hindered by sanctions against Hezbollah.

      It is, therefore, not entirely futile to maintain hope that Lebanon might find the fortitude to survive the complex combination of calamities hanging over the country. In the medium and longer terms, there are few economic solutions to effect substantial changes. Lebanon’s neoliberal economic order has few outlets for manufacturing or other production-based activities. Only heavy cash injections into the banking system from allies can fill the gap.

      Yet this economic model serves to perpetuate the sectarian political system that encourages foreign meddling. Notably, the rise of a Shia political consciousness in the 1960s and 1970s, which led to the formation of parties such as Amal and later Hezbollah, has invited considerable Iranian interest and support. Iranian interference contrasted with the Christian links to France or Sunni connections to Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, rather than helping to end the cycle of foreign meddling, the COVID-19 emergency and the port explosion appear to have reinvited France to the messy Lebanese chessboard.

      France is ready to take advantage of this weakness. President Emmanuel Macron, during his recent visits to Beirut, has shown that he clearly wants Lebanon back in France’s sphere of interest, tying economic aid for reconstruction to political reform — in the sense of weakening Hezbollah, which has benefited from the taifiya, and links to Iran. But Turkey appears ready to challenge Macron’s ambitions. Turkish vice president, Fuat Oktay, also received a warm welcome in Beirut. He was keen to express solidarity and even happier to condemn French neo-colonialism.

      Of course, history suggests that Turkey’s aims might not be too different than those of France, namely to play a major hand in reshaping Lebanese politics in order to advance its own neo-Ottoman projection. Lebanon, before becoming a French protectorate, was an integral part of the Ottoman Empire, and the link between Turkey and Lebanon’s Turkmen population is still strong. It is to this minority that the Turkish foreign minister has promised citizenship after proposing to the Lebanese government the use of the port of Mersin until the port of Beirut is operational again.

      Failure to Reform

      As for the kind of radical political reform calling for a complete overhaul of the sectarian division of power, there are few opportunities for any significant change. The pandemic, along with the limited financial resources, may, in fact, serve to perpetuate the taifiya system as people become forced to rely on their traditional sources of solidarity and support, all of which are competing over a smaller pie of resources.

      The appointment of Mustapha Adib as Lebanon’s new prime minister suggests that the system will continue for the time being. Adib takes over from Hassan Diab, who resigned on August 10, and is a relative unknown. His career has been largely in academia and diplomacy, and he most recently served as ambassador to Berlin. It appears that former leaders Saad Hariri, Fouad Siniora and Najib Mikati backed Adib’s appointment. Adib is a Sunni Muslim, as the taifiya demands, and he has a good relationship with Hezbollah. But it is unlikely that the new head of government will have the ability to engage in anything more than a cosmetic change.

      In Lebanese politics, it has always been a case of “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” — The more it changes, the more it remains the same. It is clear that while the population at large has demanded radical changes and the de facto dissolution of the taifiya, such a change will not be forthcoming without considerable struggle, both social and political. On September 1, demonstrators poured into the streets of Beirut to demand the resignation of the government in toto. Before Adib could even settle in his role, he is faced with the kind of popular mobilization that forced the resignation of his predecessor.

      Fixing Lebanon now and reforming, let alone scrapping the taifiya — after a string of failed governments, in the midst of an unprecedented global pandemic compounded by one of the worst non-nuclear explosions in history, as competing foreign interests create further tensions — would require nothing short of a biblical effort.

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

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

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      Alternate Reality Is All the Rage in Election Time America

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      It should be obvious by now that “reality” has Americans very confused. This is nothing new. This happened when the word “reality” somehow became a synonym for fantasy, delusion, illusion and fake. I am not sure when this happened in the American lexicon, but I am sure that there is next to nothing real about any “reality” show. This observation becomes more worthy of note each day as “reality” is manipulated to feed fantasy narratives.

      First, there were “alternative facts.” Now, the oxymoronic notion of “alternate reality” is exploding its way into the vernacular. There used to be something called “parallel universe” that seemed to sum up the world inhabited by delusional people, particularly during delusional episodes. “Alternate reality” somehow seems more dangerous.

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      What we are witnessing in America at the moment is nothing short of the normalization of fantasy, delusion, illusion and fakery as a substitute for facts, truth and content in public discourse. Once this happens to a society, the negative impact on public policy cannot be overstated. Historic examples are everywhere, but just take a moment to reflect on the rise of Nazism in Germany and the destructive pathology of McCarthyism in mid-20th-century America. Those examples and the toxins they injected into the body politic still resonate.

      The persistence of white supremacy in America and ethnic purity in Europe is the spawn of one earlier “alternate reality.” The highly charged message that leftists and Marxists and socialists are burrowing into every corner of American life is the grotesque spawn from the other earlier “alternate reality.”

      A Critical Time

      So, at this critical juncture in America’s political journey, there should be no tolerance for any normalization of any “alternate reality.” Yet everywhere one looks, words are being reworked to create the space in which fantasy and delusion can reign supreme. Just two examples should be enough to make this point.

      First, when did an assault rifle become a “long gun”? Just within the last few weeks, a 17-year-old in Wisconsin murdered two protesters with an assault rifle — not a long gun or a short gun, an assault rifle. Second, when did “walked back” enter the vocabulary to describe someone trying to correct blatant falsehoods purposefully uttered?

      Within the same few weeks, and even more of a threat to public safety, the current commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration “walked back” a blatant public lie about the efficacy of a therapeutic treatment for COVID-19 offered originally to please Trump while knowingly posing a threat to the rest of us.  “Walked back” sounds like the first step on a road to redemption for some minor miscue, not an effort to excuse a purposeful falsehood that never should have been uttered in the first place.

      With a presidential election looming, what passes for the responsible media in America now features more “fact checks” than facts. Now, with “alternate reality” apparently all the rage, the media have cleverly added “reality checks” to their arsenal.

      It is long past the time when anyone should believe that the nation can be saved by tortured linguistics. It is time for a new and long overdue reverence for facts to simply overwhelm the untrue and delusional that pollute our public discourse. It is time for direct and specific language that may make some people uncomfortable. And it is surely time to stop trying to save the sensibilities of those who wallow in their own “reality.”

      Trump is a venal and pathological liar, and those who lie for him are at best dangerous collaborators. So, enough pretending it might be something else, hoping that if enough apologists get airtime, fiction will morph into truth. For those who are made uncomfortable by these uncomfortable truths, it is time to suck it up, admit that you have been conned and make those who took advantage of your ignorance pay a price for the harm that they and you have caused the nation.

      Discomfort Is Everywhere

      These are harsh words, and they are not written with kindness at their core. They are written at a time when fear and anxiety are being peddled by Trump, the Republican Party and all those smarmy people in their orbit. The rest of us are the losers, big time. The list is long but should not need to go any further than the almost 200,000 dead souls sacrificed in the American coronavirus pandemic at an altar of incompetence, narcissism and mendacity.

      Americans have reached a point where discomfort is everywhere, but is it enough discomfort to act individually and collectively to confront the unfolding threat of another four years of the Trump scourge and Republican Party complicity? Anyone who thinks that some cathartic unity will emerge from all of this isn’t paying much attention. Rather, all the roads of our discontent must merge at this time to meet the singular threat.

      It is for sure that if the effort is successful, some of those same roads will diverge again. But then, if our institutions hold, there will be new paths to progress and a much clearer picture of the reality of today’s America and the factual foundation that must inform this place and time. In that reality, some of us will again be able to dream of transformational change.

      But make no mistake. If the nation does not collectively act now to rid itself of the rot at its core, the road to the national discomfort required for transformational change will get even darker.

      *[This article was cross-posted 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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      Deconstructing the Powerful and Persistent Russiagate Meme

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      The frontier between legitimate political analysis and fake news in the US has never been easy to draw. Politicians and polemicists have attempted to impose the idea that only established corporate networks can be trusted to steer clear of fake news. Content on topics they consciously neglect to cover is written off as fake news.  

      Conversely, any idea, incident or minor fact — whether real or not — that appears to comfort officially approved talking points will easily be “confirmed” and employed as evidence to support the spoken or unspoken agenda of “respectable” media. Last week, American journalist Glenn Greenwald provided recent examples of the flagrant abuse of the notion of confirmation.

      As storytellers, politicians and media presenters prefer to suggest simple links between real (and sometimes imaginary) effects and their probable causes. They believe that readers and listeners prefer simple narratives that confirm existing beliefs. This is a founding principle of the culture of hyperreality that pervades political news in the US.

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      The public has begun to react. Increasingly, Americans realize that their news has become profoundly unreliable. A Pew survey published on August 31 revealed that 80% of Americans feel that the news is influenced by corporate and financial interests. Unfortunately, they lack the means and possibly also the curiosity to understand how that influence works.

      Russiagate, a prime example of news pushed by the Democrats and “designed” by the corporate media four years ago, is still in the headlines. Reduced to its simplest form — a correspondence of cause and effect — the message is patently absurd. It requires maintaining the belief that so long as the Russian government has access to the internet, elections in the US will never be able to produce reliable results. Because both the Russian government and the internet will continue to exist for decades to come, democracy in the US is officially dead.

      Some politicians, mainly Democrats, and their allied media outlets have an interest in promoting this belief. The New York Times has doggedly maintained a strategy of regularly presenting new evidence of activity by Russians with the aim of demonizing Russia as the unique source of content designed to undermine US democracy while conveniently ignoring all the others, including pervasive domestic tampering.

      The most recent example appears in an article with the title, “Russians Again Targeting Americans With Disinformation, Facebook and Twitter Say.” Its authors, Sheera Frenkel and Julian E. Barnes, have found new evidence that “in April, Facebook removed a Russian-backed operation in Ghana and Nigeria that was targeting Americans with divisive content.” Like Satan himself, Russia is everywhere.

      Here is today’s 3D definition:

      Divisive content:

      Any news item that calls into question the unparalleled goodness of the US political and economic system promoted by its two major political parties and suggests that it may be legitimate to contest the status quo

      Contextual Note

      No rational being would doubt any of the following isolated facts:

      The internet is a global platform for communication and exchange
      People all over the world use internet tools called social media, especially Facebook and Twitter
      These two dominant platforms are US corporations
      Social media platforms thrive on participation from every corner of the globe
      The dominant platforms work within the tradition that sees freedom of expression as a political right derived from the US Constitution
      Freedom of expression opens the door to conspiracy theories, propaganda, fake news stories, deepfakes, doxing, stalking, cyberbullying, revenge porn, identity theft and other antisocial or criminal activities in the land of opportunity known as cyberspace
      None of the facts cited above is controversial or even debatable. But there are subtler ones that are often hidden from observers’ attention. For example, this one never mentioned by the media: The people of all other nations, including Russians, are interested in US politics not just because they are curious about how another population manages its affairs, but also because those affairs have a dramatic impact on their own lives.

      Embed from Getty Images

      American media and Democratic politicians appear to consider foreign interest in US politics a violation of America’s political space. They are right to condemn any action that interferes directly with electoral processes. But using the communication tools available to all is not interference. Americans should be the first to recognize these forms of expression as examples of a modern skillset created and promoted by their own culture: marketing. It’s a science in which anything that falls short of breaking specific laws is legitimate.

      Russian political leaders can express themselves in a variety of ways. So can the British, the Israelis, the Saudis or indeed any nation that cultivates explicit or subliminal marketing. Those leaders can use official government communication channels to proclaim policy and vision. They can pay for lobbyists in Washington. They can (and definitely do) use their intelligence networks to spread messages using legitimate and devious means. They can also simply encourage enterprising private citizens to further their explicit or implicit aims.

      Random citizens of all nationalities — moved either by curiosity, personal concern, financial interest or loyalty to a government they identify with — can do the same thing. Individual Americans have done so in Hong Kong without necessarily being piloted by the CIA. This inevitably happens so long as freedom is not totally suppressed.

      Those who represent established interests may deem this “divisive.” But it cannot reasonably be called manipulation of democracy or interference in electoral processes. The current global system of the internet is dominated by impressively wealthy private interests whose strategy is to encourage and reward any form of successful influence. The worm is at the core of the apple, not on its surface.

      The Times article demonstrates the absurdity of its Russiagate campaign. Frenkel and Barnes write: “Researchers are also concerned about homegrown disinformation campaigns, and the latest Russian effort went to some lengths to appear like it was made in the United States. In addition to hiring American journalists and encouraging them to write in their own voices, the Peace Data website mixed pop culture, politics and activism to appeal to a young audience.”

      The evil Russians are simply paying talented Americans banished from the mainstream by corporate money to speak in total sincerity. What could be more American? The Supreme Court established that “money is speech.” Russiagate is a predictable consequence of a system designed to reward anyone with cash to pay for content.

      Historical Note

      The media have begun constructing their preferred history of the latest Russian felon, a website called Peace Data. Defending the corporate monopoly on the news, The New York Times describes Peace Data as an example of “a more covert and potentially dangerous effort by Moscow” that uses “allies and operatives to place articles, including disinformation, into various fringe websites.”

      The Times cites the testimony of one of Peace Data’s American authors, who explains that the website simply asked him to express his views as someone who “had frequently challenged whether Mr. [Joe] Biden represented the progressive values of the Democratic Party.” Can allowing Americans to express themselves be called manipulating electoral processes?

      The funding of the website has been traced to Russia. But if the Russians didn’t create or even significantly edit the content, the fact that it is “divisive” simply reflects real divisions within US society. The source of division is none other than Biden’s policies, which many Americans banned from the corporate media happen to disagree with.

      It should be noted that any publication is likely to run some form of disinformation. The Times itself does so consistently, never more egregiously than in its push to invade Iraq in 2003. Its Russiagate coverage for the past four years has simply maintained a longstanding tradition.

      The seasoned journalist Joe Lauria deconstructs the Peace Data story in an article for Consortium News. Describing a website that “failed to gain significant traction,” he scoffs at “what the FBI calls a threat to American democracy.” In contrast, The Daily Beast decided to play the Russiagate game. Its article with the title, “She Was Tricked by Russian Trolls—and It Derailed Her Life” tells the story of a Peace Data author, Jacinda Chan. Only at the end of the piece do we learn that the supposed victim, a talented disabled woman, not only bears no grudge but rejects the Russiagate paranoia The Daily Beast is promoting: “To this day, Chan says she still doesn’t believe Facebook and the FBI’s investigations that show Peace Data was a front for Russia’s troll factory.”

      *[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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      in World Politics

      Chadwick Boseman: Remember the King

      by

      Speaking at the funeral of Malcolm X, on February 27, 1965, Ossie Davis, an American actor and civil rights activist, said: “Consigning these mortal remains to earth, the common mother of all, secure in the knowledge that what we place in the ground is no more now a man — but a seed — which, after the winter of our discontent, will come forth again to meet us.”

      Someplace between sadness, disbelief and shock is where many of us find ourselves still grieving the loss of actor Chadwick Boseman. The emotional and psychological toll of 2020, from COVID-19, inept political leadership and the seemingly endless list of victims of police violence across the United States will take years of therapy to grapple with much less overcome. At the time of this writing, Breonna Taylor’s killers remain at large.

      How Black Panther Sees the World

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      The death of Chadwick Boseman at age 43 only compounds the feeling of loss and emptiness. Boseman was much more than a famous actor who died too soon. He was a generational talent. Critics were already praising him as the next Denzel Washington. This is fitting, not only because of the on-screen charisma and leading-man persona they share, but also because Denzel Washington paid for acting opportunities for young Boseman.

      Although Boseman had a relatively short career, black Twitter named him the “blackest man in Hollywood” for his portrayal of the lives of significant black men. Jackie Robinson, the first African American to play in Major League Baseball since 1889, in “42” (2013), James Brown, the “hardest working man in showbiz,” in “Get on Up” (2014), and Thurgood Marshall, the first Black Supreme Court justice in “Marshall” (2017). His work in other films like “Message from the King” (2016) and the forthcoming “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” reveals a true artist that could bring depth, nuance and sophistication to any character he portrayed.

      However, perhaps no other film captures his presence and embodiment of royalty than the record-setting Marvel’s “Black Panther” (2018). The film revolutionized expectations of black representation for audiences worldwide. Although studio executives were not necessarily in full agreement, Chadwick Boseman insisted that his character maintain an African accent based on legitimate African languages. The attention to detail and the story brought Afrofuturism and Pan-African philosophy to the forefront — both firsts for a mainstream Hollywood film.

      The success of “Black Panther” affirmed many black comic book fans’ belief in what could happen if this story were ever a film and in the right creative hands. It also meant that traveling to multi-media, popular culture and comic conventions like Dragon Con would feel more welcoming with the validation of a successful black superhero film — not a sidekick or buddy. Dragon Con hosts about 85,000 people during Labor Day weekend and would have been happening live shortly after Boseman’s passing, if not for the closures related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

      He meant so much to so many, with some fans seeing “Black Panther” multiple times and still buying copies on the Blu-ray and DVD. His appeal was both in his portrayals on-screen and in his behavior off-camera. His filmography is part of a more extensive collection of black films that disprove the myth that black movies with black-focused narratives do not travel well or appeal to a global audience.

      Aware of the cultural impact films have on popular culture and his power and platform as an actor, Boseman embraced the opportunity to be a catalyst for hope. He returned to his HBCU (historically black college and university) roots, Howard University, to challenge students to remain committed to their standards. He encouraged others to find and live their purpose. He took the time to speak with children, particularly those struggling with illnesses, as seen in an interview where Boseman talked about two black children that died of cancer before being able to see his movie. Such interviews, as well as tributes from actors, friends and family, offer evidence that his sense of giving and deep spiritual commitment to humanity was not limited to the characters he played.

      Learning that he was doing much of this while he battled colon cancer privately was, as Ernest Hemingway put it, grace under pressure — courage. Boseman could have quickly taken on roles that did not challenge assumptions or stereotypes about black life and his mortality. Still, he dared to live fearlessly and push the boundaries of what was possible in his art. In doing this, he has elevated what is possible and leaves a legacy that will not soon be forgotten.

      Chadwick Boseman has joined the ancestors now, much like his character T’Challa. This time he will not return. So, until we come forth again to meet, we wish him to rest in eternal peace and power. Wakanda Forever.

      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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      in World Politics

      The Tangled Maps of Greece and Turkey

      by

      A person sitting at a café in the small town of Kaş, on Turkey’s southern coast, where the Taurus Mountains drop precipitously into the Mediterranean, would look out upon a blue bay and a small island. If they asked the waiter, he would tell them that the island — almost unbelievably — is in another country.

      That island is Kastellorizo. It is Greek. It is far from being the only Greek island that sits close to the Turkish mainland, but it’s perhaps the most striking, since it is 78 miles from its nearest Greek neighbor, the island of Rhodes, and fully 354 miles from the capital, Athens. Indeed, landlocked Ankara, the Turkish capital in the center of Anatolia, is nearer.

      Who Owns the Sea?

      Nation-states are the oddity of the modern age. To people in the era of empires, today’s borders would seem extraordinarily restrictive. For centuries, Kastellorizo interacted freely with the mainland, which lies one mile away. Now it exists as a surreal outpost adrift in the Mediterranean. This tiny, quiet island is central to the latest crisis between Greece and Turkey — an argument over gas exploration rights and who owns where on the seafloor in the eastern Mediterranean. It has led to collisions between Greek and Turkish vessels, and even a confrontation in Libyan waters between Turkish and French frigates in June.

      Discovery of Natural Gas Exposes Turkey’s Political Rifts

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      The clash with France is part of a wider confrontation in which France has become a vocal ally of forces in the eastern Mediterranean seen as broadly anti-Islamist. This includes European Union members Greece and Cyprus, as well as Israel, Egypt and the forces of renegade General Khalifa Haftar in Libya, a figure from the Gaddafi regime. All these alliances put France at odds with Turkey, which has emerged as the most vocal and perhaps the most powerful force for political Islam in the region. The alliance with Greece has helped to reignite much older hostilities between Greece and Turkey, feeding into dangerous older narratives.

      The argument surrounding territorial waters is as artificial as the nation states that have given rise to it. The intricacies of maritime law hang around the question of whether the far-flung isles of Greece can claim exclusive economic zones (EEZs) on the seabed around them — in effect, that they have a continental shelf that Greece can claim, a mile off the Turkish coast.

      Such claims create a collision course with Turkey, given the unusual situation of the two geographic territories. The result of the 1919-23 Turkish War of Independence was the establishment of a Turkish state on the landmass of Asia Minor, but to the exclusion of almost every island in the Aegean and Mediterranean seas lying off its shore. The peculiarity of this scenario is evident to anyone who has visited the popular tourist regions of the Turkish coast and the eastern Greek isles. The two are intimate neighbors, far more alike than they are to their respective hinterlands, let alone their distant national capitals.

      Arrival of Nationalism

      Nationalism — since its arrival from Western Europe — has been calamitous for the wider region in which Greece and Turkey lie. It has brought chaos to the Arab world, to the Balkans and to Cyprus. Even today, it still informs the aspirations of the Kurdish people to add yet another state to a region of instability and ethnic tension.

      On the face of it, Greece and Turkey appear to be two comparative success stories of the era of nation states in this region. They have been relatively stable, centralized states for much of the 20th century, despite the recurrence of military intervention in politics. Yet Greece and Turkey are also examples of the failure of the nation-state model in their very nature. Both espouse a virulent ethnic nationalism. Both are rooted in an ancient tribal exceptionalism, layered with later religious identities.

      Like the wider region, this nationalism has required that what was a patchwork of ethnicities, indeed a form of multiculturalism — or, at least, co-habitation — was systematically uprooted, most brutally in the state-sanctioned ethnic cleansing of the early 20th century. State-sanctioned ethnic violence is nothing new to the region. It happened to the Sephardic Jews of Greece in the 1940s (themselves previously cleansed from Christian Spain after the retreat of the Moors), it has happened in the Balkans in the past few decades, and it happened in Greece and Turkey in 1923.

      That was the year of the Treaty of Lausanne, which stipulated the transfer of populations between the two states based upon religious affiliation: Greek Orthodox to Greece, Muslims to Turkey. In many cases, this papered over cultural and ethnic complexities that were far from the clear-cut distinctions that Greek and Turkish nationalists believed inherent in their respective nation-state projects. This history, and the very human and very personal tragedy of it, has embedded an antipathy towards the “other” in the body politic of both states to the present day.

      It is this reality that makes questions surrounding continental shelves, exclusive economic zones and rights to resources that lie under the sea so intractable. It was hard enough and bloody enough to divide the land of this region between the warring parties, often leading to strange and unnatural results like the sad fate of the little isle of Kastellorizo — severed from the mainland it gazes upon with every sunrise. To attempt the division of the waters as well is likely to lead to yet another hard and bloody outcome.

      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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      Mohammed bin Salman’s Shaky Legacy in a Troubled Saudi Kingdom

      by

      Una Galani is the associate editor of Reuters’ Breakingviews division, which the news agency describes as “the world’s leading source of agenda-setting financial insight.” Last week, Breakingviews published her review of the book “Blood and Oil” by Wall Street Journal reporters Bradley Hope and Justin Scheck.

      The book tells the story of the rise to power of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. It focuses on his audacious game plan for remodeling the Saudi economy. While presenting MBS, as the crown prince is commonly known, as a reformer ready to break with tradition, the authors reveal the darker side of his character and weigh the significant risks this entails for his own future and that of Saudi Arabia. 

      What Iran Can Learn From Saudi Arabia

      READ MORE

      Galani seems to go one step beyond the authors’ critical judgment when, in the title of her article, she refers to Mohammed bin Salman as “Saudi Arabia’s sharpest prince.” The epithet appears justified at least in the comparative sense that previous Saudi leaders had a reputation for being seriously dull and plodding. By way of contrast, “sharp” may seem appropriate as a description of MBS. Or perhaps Galani was thinking of the well-sharpened cutting edge of the bone saw that MBS allegedly provided to the hit squad that was sent to Istanbul to dismember journalist Jamal Khashoggi in October 2018.

      Galani writes that “it’s tempting to see [Mohammed bin Salman’s] ruthlessness as a broom to the kingdom’s problems, even as admirable,” but she avoids the temptation and entertains no illusions about his errors and failures. She lists the obvious ones: “a war in Yemen, the role of his close confidantes in the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the blockade of Qatar, and the effective kidnapping of Saad Hariri, who was Lebanon’s prime minister at the time.” Galani then highlights the fatal character flaw that explains those human disasters, explaining that “the prince’s inability to tolerate dissent and black-and-white view of the world may lie at the root of his multiple misadventures.”

      Here is today’s 3D definition:

      Misadventures:

      A serious and even dreadful crime committed by someone with money and power, just as the misadventure of a citizen with neither money nor power (especially if black) will be deemed a crime worthy of incarceration  

      Contextual Note

      Galani was undoubtedly being ironic when she characterized Mohammed bin Salman’s crimes and brazen assaults on people, nations, colleagues, family and journalists as “misadventures,” to say nothing of human rights advocates who have no place in Saudi society. At another point, she mentions his “adventures in power.” Her image of the crown prince is clearly that of a hyperreal antihero, not far from that of a cartoon character.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Galani rightly reserves her judgment of Mohammed bin Salman’s place in history, which she nevertheless predicts will be a “highly disruptive legacy.” At the same time, she points to his failure to achieve his primary non-controversial goal, when she observes that he “hasn’t secured the inward investment needed to underwrite his economic transformation plans.” The simple truth is that Saudi Arabia today finds itself in a deep crisis aggravated by the coronavirus pandemic.

      The image of MBS that emerges from Galani’s review and Hope and Schenck’s book contrasts singularly with the points made last week in an article on Fair Observer by award-winning Iranian journalist Kourosh Ziabari. Seeking to develop a contrast between Saudi successes and Iranian failures, Ziabari believes that “the future Saudi king has undoubtedly scored significant gains both domestically and internationally.”

      Ziabari doesn’t call MBS “sharp,” but he deems him “a strong social reformer.” He cites the “notable steps the crown prince has taken to socially liberalize a conservative country.” He mentions in passing but seriously minimizes the “misadventures” Galani ironically mentions. 

      To justify Mohammed bin Salman as a model to be emulated, Ziabari cites a statistic from May 2018, months before the assassination of Khashoggi. As he recounts it, “more than 90% of young people in Saudi Arabia between the ages of 18 and 24 endorse the crown prince’s leadership.” In terms of journalistic accuracy, Ziabari should have written “endorsed” in the past tense. He may be unaware that the level of “trust” in MBS has since seriously deteriorated throughout the region as a recent Pew poll shows (even if the poll did not sample Saudi Arabia, for the obvious reason that it would not have been allowed to conduct its survey in the kingdom). Recent events have undoubtedly shaken the confidence of a lot of young Saudis.

      Had Ziabari been interested in more recently observed trends, he might have noticed one expert’s assessment in May: “The erosion of the social contract between the rulers and the ruled will lead to serious problems, especially in a tribal society.” The expert in question, Colin Clarke of the Soufan Center think tank, described MBS in these terms: “He’s not the sophisticated operator that he portrays himself to be. He’s less like a businessman or politician and more like a gangster.”

      Historical Note

      Most people acknowledge that 2020 has become a watershed moment in history. The year 2019 now appears to represent an unrecoverable past and 2021 an utterly unpredictable future. This is true everywhere in the world, even in a despotic kingdom ruled with an iron hand by an authoritarian prince with the capacity to imprison or execute at will members of his own family. And yet, Kourosh Ziabari relies on testimony from what now appears to be the distant past to highlight the success of Mohammed bin Salman.

      He approvingly reports that “The New York Times has described the measures [MBS] introduced as ‘Saudi Arabia’s Arab Spring.’” He fails to point out two important facts: that the article was posted in November 2017 — nearly a year before the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi — and, more tellingly, that the author of that article was the comically unreliable, ever mistaken Thomas Friedman, a celebrity writer who still seems to believe the world is flat because US technology and the economic culture associated with it has become the universal parasite of state economies.

      To justify Mohammed bin Salman’s image as a reformist, Ziabari offers several quotes, all of which predate not just the current health and economic crisis, but also the Khashoggi affair. On the basis of those by now ancient remarks, he concludes that MBS has “introduced reforms that are meaningful and important in a troubled region riddled with conflict and the absence of democracy.”

      Skipping forward, he cites as proof of progress the recent decision of the supreme court to abolish flogging, as reported by the BBC. But he neglects to cite the damning conclusion in the same article: “But waves of arrests of every type of dissident under the king and the crown prince – including of women’s rights campaigners – undercut this claim, our reporter says.” 

      Ziabari’s real focus is on Iran, not Mohammed bin Salman. His wish for radical change in Iran makes perfect sense. But suggesting that the model MBS provides might be, as he claims, a “benchmark” would seem to be wishful thinking if not dangerous folly. As a point of comparison, it is historically accurate to call Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler modernizing reformers with ambitious programs, who were adored by a majority of their people. But no one today would treat them as role models.

      Concerning Iran, Ziabari is right to hope for a development that might “put an end to decades of hostility with the US and the West.” But, isn’t that exactly what had begun to take place when Barack Obama pushed through the Iran nuclear deal in 2015, which MBS opposed and US President Donald Trump canceled at the first opportunity?

      More realistically, Una Galani offers this assessment: “One positive for [MBS] is that it’s unclear how much of a difference the Khashoggi affair has really made. Investors were quick to mingle again with the prince, albeit somewhat more in private, but still with the hope of extracting funds.”

      Galani recognizes that it’s all about the decisions people with money make, not about the wise policies of political leaders. Ziabari seems to agree when he remarks that Mohammed bin Salman “has a favorable public image in the eyes of Western political and business elites.” Still, success with people who control piles of money should not turn him into a role model.

      *[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