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      Biden’s Pirates of the Caribbean

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      On July 12, following an outburst of protest by Cubans responding to a raft of ills that plague the island, the White House issued US President Joe Biden’s message of apparent solidarity. “We stand with the Cuban people and their clarion call for freedom and relief from the tragic grip of the pandemic and from the decades of repression and economic suffering to which they have been subjected by Cuba’s authoritarian regime.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Clarion call:

      The sound of a high-pitched trumpet calling troops to battle in the 14th century or, when evoked by a politician in the 21st century, the sound of a high-pitched ideologue pretending (but not necessarily intending) to go to battle in the name of a claimed ideal

      Contextual Note

      Whenever an American politician evokes the question of Cuba, one can be sure that clichés will abound. The Oxford Dictionary defines “clarion” as “A shrill-sounding trumpet with a narrow tube, formerly much used as a signal in war.” This sounds like an apt description of today’s US politicians. They know that to win elections they must always sound shrill and ready for war, in their intentions if not in their tone.

      Biden uses the cliché of promising to “stand with the Cuban people.” He then invokes “the tragic grip of the pandemic,” but somehow forgets to mention the far more serious and tragic grip of a 60-year US blockade of Cuba that cut off the nation and its people from the global economy, forcing the regime to improvise a form of near autarchy in an increasingly interconnected world. For much of that time, Cubans depended for their survival on a lifeline from the Soviet Union (later Russia) and various assorted US enemies, such as Venezuela.

      Like Lewis Carrol’s Walrus about to eat the oysters he has befriended, Biden explains how he “deeply sympathizes” with the Cuban people. He offers Cuba’s leaders this advice: “The United States calls on the Cuban regime to hear their people and serve their needs at this vital moment rather than enriching themselves.” Does he seriously expect them to take on board his wise counsel? Can the president of a nation that made 638 attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro pretend to be someone who can be trusted to “hear their people and serve their needs?”

      Embed from Getty Images

      The statement’s litany of clichés continues with the claim that this is a “vital moment.” Biden optimistically envisions a counterrevolution provoked by the intense suffering imposed on the Cuban people as a result of the combined force of a pandemic, an endless embargo and US sanctions. These have created a situation beyond any government’s control. Biden’s irony then intensifies with the implicit reproach, “rather than enriching themselves.” Spoken by the president of a recognized plutocracy and the father of Hunter Biden, this remark merits some serious laughs.

      Biden clearly knows something about politicians enriching themselves and their families. A growing trove of evidence reveals that, during the years of Joe Biden’s vice presidency, his son Hunter demonstrated exceptional skill trading on his father’s name, apparently with dad’s complicity. Hunter Biden’s lifestyle alone bears witness to the moral vision of a family and a class culture with few scruples about pushing ethical and legal limits in the interest of “enriching themselves.”

      Forbes states that Joe Biden’s net worth is “only an estimated $8 million.” That puts him above the poverty line but, in the eyes of most of the billionaire elite, classifies him as a loser. To maintain his image of “middle-class Joe,” Biden may have been motivated to seek ways of enriching his son, perhaps as a ploy to dodge inheritance tax. He even apparently relied on his son’s generosity to cover some of the domestic costs his $8 million fortune didn’t permit him to cover. Hunter’s net worth is unknown, but Newsweek says it “could be millions.” Such a paltry fortune for someone with his surname and admittedly illustrious career (drug addiction and adultery apart) may help to explain Hunter’s sudden need to sell his artwork at exorbitant prices.

      CNN reports that “the White House has been forced to deal with ethics questions about people buying the artwork for huge sums as a way to curry favor with President Joe Biden.” That is not only a fair description of the context but fits with the whole pattern of Hunter Biden’s career. Wondering whether his art had value, CNN interviewed art critic Sebastian Smee, who judged that Biden’s “work has the feeling of an afterthought.” It didn’t need “to be made, except perhaps as a therapeutic exercise.” His work is now expected to command “prices ranging from $75,000 to $500,000.”

      So how does this compare with Cuban politicians’ enriching themselves? The website Celebsblurb weighed in on the question of current president Miguel Diaz Canel’s fortune without providing a figure. “Being active in the political field since 1993, Miguel has earned a handsome amount of salary” the site claims. He enjoys “a lavish lifestyle with the aid of his enormous net worth.” Fidel Castro’s fortune was evaluated at under “about $900 million,” which is impressive, but he fell short of becoming a billionaire. According to the website Wealthy Persons, Fidel’s brother, Raul, who reigned for several years, reached $150 million, nearly 20 times that of Joe Biden.

      Could Biden be expressing his jealousy when talking about Cuban leaders enriching themselves? They have certainly outpaced the American president. Running a communist country pays, especially if you’re good at preserving a precarious stability in the face of a permanent assault by a neighboring superpower. If you think of the Cuban people as the board of directors of Cuba Inc., their compensation scheme reflects their CEO’s performance. Another way of calculating Fidel’s claim to such a fortune could be by putting a price of $1.4 million on each foiled CIA assassination attempt. As ransoms of national leaders go, that is a very modest figure.

      “Working-class Joe” seems to have secured a comfortable situation for his family, even if he can’t compete with “revolutionary Fidel.” But Castro’s fortune may have had less to do with personal greed than with a trend that affects all fragile developing nations — the need their leaders feel to secure the degree of financial autonomy that allows them to counter the inevitable initiatives of hostile superpowers to unseat them. In contrast with Cuba, US plutocracy has refined the art of spreading wealth around the entire oligarchic class. Politicians merit the millions they receive from the billionaires. That’s enough to ensure their loyal obedience. On the US political chessboard, the politicians are the pawns.

      Historical Note

      In the past week, US media outlets have expressed their hope that Cuba’s economic disaster may provoke the always desired outcome known as regime change. The current crisis in Cuba is attributable to the combined effects of a decades-long embargo, supplementary punitive sanctions imposed by Donald Trump and maintained by Biden, and a government with limited influence on the international stage and insufficient management skills. The overthrow of the current government thanks to pressure and assistance from the US would simply produce chaos and possibly a civil war on a scale similar to what Libya has experienced for the past 10 years.

      Therein lies the biggest mystery concerning Biden’s Cuba policy: With all his experience dating back to the Vietnam War, including decades of sanctions, invasions and assassinations, Biden has seen enough history to understand that US wars and sanctions have produced mountains of tragedy and absolutely nothing to rejoice about other than pleasuring the military-industrial complex. The much younger Barack Obama seemed at least to have partially learned the lesson of history when he sought to open the dialogue with Cuba.

      US democracy fatally and repeatedly produces the same consistent effect. In 2008, Americans elected Obama in the hope (his word) of ending the Bush administration’s wars. Obama maintained those wars and expanded them to at least three other nations. In 2020, the electorate voted to overturn Trump’s radical reengineering of US foreign policy (supposedly dictated by Russia). Americans voted in Biden to overturn Trump’s legacy. What has their champion done so far? He has prolonged it and, in some cases, intensified it. This is bad news for Cuba, but possibly even worse news for the US.

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

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

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      The Politics of American Protest: A North Korean Twist

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      Gwen Berry recently protested the playing of the US national anthem by turning away from the flag and holding up a shirt that read “activist athlete.” The protest took place at the Olympic trials in Oregon where Berry had placed third in the hammer throw competition. Her action immediately drew angry responses from the right-wing side of the political spectrum.

      A number of right-wing politicians and commentators called her unpatriotic and demanded that she be kicked off the Olympic team. As Tom Cotton, the Republican senator from Arkansas, put it: “If Gwen Berry is so embarrassed by America, then there’s no reason she needs to compete for our country at the Olympics.”

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      Conservative outrage at protests against the American flag and the national anthem is not unusual. When NFL player Colin Kaepernick knelt during the national anthem in the 2016 season to protest racial injustice in the United States, he was roundly criticized in conservative circles. When he became a free agent the next year, no football team would sign him, despite his obvious talents as a quarterback.

      Taking a Stand

      Gwen Berry and Colin Kaepernick are both African Americans. At one level, they are protesting the history of racial injustice in the United States, represented by the national anthem. “The Star-Spangled Banner” was written by Francis Scott Key, who once declared that black people were “a distinct and inferior race.” His composition includes a verse, rarely sung, that criticizes black Americans who fought on the British side in the War of 1812 in order to gain their freedom from slavery. “The Star-Spangled Banner” became the national anthem only through the efforts of groups that supported the losing Confederate side of the Civil War.

      Embed from Getty Images

      At another level, Berry and Kaepernick are protesting the current racial injustices in the United States, particularly the police violence against African Americans. The murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May 2020 is only the most famous example of the brutality that African Americans have experienced at the hands of police forces throughout the country.

      Berry and Kaepernick are not alone in their outrage. The demonstrations in the wake of Floyd’s murder, which involved between 15 and 26 million people, were the largest in American history. Protests also spread to over 60 countries around the world. So right-wing critics are not just responding to the symbolism of these athletes taking a stand. They are deeply uncomfortable with the popularity of those sentiments. Most of these critics are the white men and women who dominate the Republican Party and the right-wing media. But one voice raised against Gwen Berry’s action was truly unexpected. It came from a North Korean defector.

      Yeonmi Park is a human rights activist who was born in North Korea and left the country as a teenager with her mother. She has acquired an international reputation on the basis of several speeches and a book that details her harrowing experiences leaving North Korea and making her way, eventually, to the United States. Her story has also generated considerable controversy for its numerous inconsistencies.

      Park has become something of a celebrity in right-wing circles in America. After Berry’s protest, Park appeared on the Fox News show “Fox & Friends” to denounce the American athlete. “If she did the exact same thing at this very moment, if she was North Korean, not only herself will be executed, [also] eight generations of her family can be sent to political prison camp and execution,” Park declared. “And the fact that she’s complaining about this country, the most tolerant country, she doesn’t really understand history.”

      Park’s comments are exceptionally strange. By her reasoning, no one should protest anything in the United States because the conditions here are better than in North Korea. And American protesters shouldn’t exercise their freedom to protest … because no such freedom exists in North Korea.

      A Better Place

      Of course, the opposite is true. The ability to protest peacefully is what makes the United States a great country, and Gwen Berry and fellow protestors are proving that point, over and over again. Indeed, the country has made great strides because of peaceful protests, not despite them. The civil rights movement, the women’s movement, the peace movement, the LGBTQ movement: All of these protests have made America an infinitely better place. America is not a particularly tolerant country, as the response to Gwen Berry’s protest demonstrates. But it has become a more tolerant country over time because of this history of protest. That is the history that Yeonmi Park so obviously doesn’t understand.

      There is another implication in Park’s words: that the suffering of African Americans is somehow less painful or legitimate than the suffering of North Koreans. “I was a slave,” Park told the Fox program. “I was sold in China in 2007 as a child at 13 years old … There is actual injustice.”

      Suffering is not a competitive sport. What many North Koreans experience in their country and North Korean defectors suffer in China is truly awful. And what many African Americans experience in the United States is also truly awful. They are not comparable, however. They have to be understood in their own contexts. And activists must fight against these injustices here, there and everywhere — preferably together rather than at cross-purposes.

      The sad truth is that Yeonmi Park has become a mouthpiece for the American right wing. Fox News delights in showcasing her views. On one program, for instance, she compares her studies at Columbia University to the brainwashing that she experienced in North Korea, leading her to conclude that the US future “is as bleak as North Korea.”

      On another occasion, she combined both her own knowledge of North Korean rhetoric with the similar-sounding nationalist slogans of Trump supporters when she told Fox Business that the American ”education system is brainwashing our children to make them think that this country is racist and make them believe that they are victims. It’s time for us to fight back. Otherwise, it might be too late for us to bring the glory of this country back.”

      Since she knows a thing or two about brainwashing, Yeonmi Park might want to take a more critical look at the propaganda of the American right wing. If she does, she might just see that Gwen Berry’s protest is what makes America great. And she might understand how the nationalism and intolerance of Fox News and the Republican Party are pushing the United States ever closer to the North Korean reality that she so despises.

      *[This article was originally published by Hankyoreh.]

      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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      How Dubai and Abu Dhabi See the World Cup

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      With the Euros over, attention outside the UK is turning to the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar. The focus in Britain, quite rightly, remains on the racist abuse directed at black members of the English football team and the extent to which the prime minister and the home secretary contribute to enabling a culture in which such abuse can flourish.

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      In the Gulf, the lucrative rights to World Cup packages are now being awarded. In Kuwait, ITL World has been appointed the sales agent. The company’s CEO, Siddeek Ahmed, could hardly contain his delight at being able to offer “fans a unique opportunity to purchase ticket-inclusive hospitality packages” for the World Cup. In addition to game tickets, the packages include flights, accommodation, transport and “leisure” programs. According to Arabian Business, the deals for the main venue, the 80,000-seat Lusail Stadium, will run from $14,350 to $74,200. That buys you all 10 matches hosted there, including the quarter-final, semi-final and final. If you are not short on cash, you can pick up a 40-seat suite at the stadium for just $2.6 million.

      In Dubai, Expat Sport Tourism DMCC won the rights, with its website urging football fans to be a part of history to see the first World Cup held in the Arab world. “From the pinnacle in high end corporate experiences to individual hospitality solutions for football fans, we can cater for all those wishing to be part of FIFA World Cup 2022” is how the firm put it.

      Not Everyone Is Happy

      With an estimated 1.5 million fans heading to Qatar next year, Dubai, with its well-established tourism and entertainment sectors, sees itself as ideally placed to cash in on the World Cup bonanza. Yet others in the United Arab Emirates are less welcoming.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Mohammed al-Hammadi is the president of the Emirates Journalists Association and editor-in-chief of the newspaper Alroeya, based in Abu Dhabi. Among the core values listed on the paper’s website are “apply best practice in line with the journalism codes” and “be an objective and trustworthy information tool.”

      Hammadi is a strong proponent of normalization. He spoke at a webinar in October 2020, after the UAE and Bahrain had announced their plan to normalize relations with Israel. The event was organized by a pro-Israeli think tank, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP). Hammadi said he believed in both peace and advancing the rights of Palestinians, but people like him who “speak in favor of peace are stigmatized … and find themselves falling under attack.” He added that the word normalizing “has a very negative connotation in our region.”

      In June, he drew the ire of African journalists with a ham-fisted attempt to have them join a coordinated media attack on the World Cup in Qatar. They adopted a resolution denouncing efforts to “use Africa and its institutions as political football in order to settle scores in a political dispute.” The statement said:

      “While journalists in the East African region struggle to preserve their independence and freedom from rogue government and commercial interests that threaten the integrity of journalists, an outside actor is behind attempts to manipulate, divert and involve journalists in an issue completely outside the scope and powers of journalists and their unions.
      In the same way that journalists and their unions in East Africa are calling, confronting and protesting against governments for their interference in the work of journalists and the curtailment of their freedoms, all foreign powers that have a negative and false agenda must be condemned and publicly challenged as a matter of principle and consistency.”

      Twelve days later, the website Emirates Leaks, citing what it called “reliable sources,” alleged that Hammadi had attempted to pressure the heads of the journalism unions of Norway and Finland. According to the site, he wanted them to influence journalism unions in Asia and Africa to “coordinate attacks against Qatar and tarnish its image before hosting the World Cup.”

      His efforts occasioned a written question on June 23 in the European Parliament from Fulvio Martusciello. The Italian MEP accused the head of the Emirates Journalists Association of leading a smear campaign against Qatar: “Al Hammadi asked the Finnish and Norwegian Journalists Federations to exercise influence on journalists unions that he supports financially to engage in the Abu Dhabi campaign and offend Qatar. He also tried to offer them financial bribes and expensive gifts in return for achieving Abu Dhabi’s inflammatory goals.”

      So, while Dubai can barely contain its World Cup excitement, Abu Dhabi appears set to continue its anti-Qatar campaign. Imagine for a moment that the UAE was a football side and its two big stars had separate agendas and were playing only for themselves. That is not a winning formula and it’s something a good manager, like England’s Gareth Southgate, would quickly sort out.

      *[This article was originally published by Arab Digest, a partner organization of 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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      Personality and Ambition Fuel Saudi-UAE Divide

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      Personality and the conflation of national interests with personal ambition are contributing to the widening gap between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. It was only a matter of time before Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) would want to go out on his own and no longer be seen as the protégé of his erstwhile mentor and Emirati counterpart, Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed (MBZ). By the same token, there was little doubt that the Saudi prince and future king would want to put to rest any suggestion that the UAE, rather than Saudi Arabia, called the shots in the Gulf and the Middle East.

      No doubt, MBS will not have forgotten revelations about Emirati attitudes toward Saudi Arabia and the UAE’s strategic vision of the relationship between the two countries. This was spelled out in emails by Yusuf al-Otaiba, the UAE ambassador in Washington and a close associate of MBZ, which were leaked in 2017. The emails made clear that UAE leaders believed they could use Saudi Arabia — the Gulf’s behemoth — and Mohammed bin Salman as a vehicle to promote Emirati interests.

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      “Our relationship with them is based on strategic depth, shared interests, and most importantly the hope that we could influence them. Not the other way around,” Otaiba wrote. In a separate email, the ambassador told a former US official that “I think in the long term we might be a good influence on KSA [Kingdom of Saudi Arabia], at least with certain people there.”

      A participant in a more recent meeting with Otaiba quoted the ambassador as referring to the Middle East as “the UAE region,” suggesting an enhanced Emirati regional influence. In a similar vein, former Dubai police chief Dhahi Khalfan, blowing his ultra-nationalist horn, tweeted in Arabic, “It’s not humanity’s survival of the strongest, it’s the survival of the smartest.”

      To be sure, Mohammed bin Zayed has been plotting the UAE’s positioning as a regional economic and geopolitical powerhouse for far longer than his Saudi counterpart. It is not for nothing that it earned the UAE the epitaph of “Little Sparta,” in the words of former US Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis.

      Windows of Opportunity

      No doubt, smarts count for a lot. But, in the ultimate analysis, the two crown princes appear to be exploiting windows of opportunity that exist as long as their most powerful rivals, Turkey and Iran, fail to get their act together. The Saudis and Emiratis see the Turks and Iranians as threats to their regional power. Both Turkey and Iran have far larger, highly educated populations, huge domestic markets, battle-hardened militaries, significant natural resources and industrial bases.

      Embed from Getty Images

      In the meantime, separating the wheat from the chaff in the Gulf spat may be easier said than done. Bader al-Saif, a Gulf analyst, notes that differences among Arab states have emerged as a result of regime survival strategies that are driven by the need to gear up for a post-oil era. The emergence of a more competitive landscape need not be all negative. Saif warns, however, that “left unchecked … differences could snowball and negatively impact the neighborhood.

      Several factors complicate the management of these differences. For one, the Vision 2030 plan for weening Saudi Arabia off its dependence on the export of fossil fuel differs little from the perspective put forward by the UAE and Qatar, two countries that have a substantial head start.

      Saudi Arabia sought to declare an initial success in the expanded rivalry by revealing last week that the International Air Transport Association (IATA), the airline industry body, had opened its regional headquarters in Riyadh. IATA denied that the Saudi office would have regional responsibility. The announcement came on the heels of the disclosure of Saudi plans to create a new airline to compete with Emirates and Qatar Airways.

      Further complicating the management of differences is the fact that Saudi Arabia and the UAE are likely to compete for market share as they seek to maximize their oil export revenues in the short and medium term. This is particularly before oil demand potentially plateaus and then declines in the 2030s.

      Finally, and perhaps most importantly, economic diversification and social liberalization are tied up with the competing geopolitical ambitions of the two princes in positioning their countries as the regional leader. Otaiba signaled MBZ’s ambition in 2017 in an email exchange with Elliot Abram, a neoconservative former US official. “Jeez, the new hegemon! Emirati imperialism! Well, if the US won’t do it, someone has to hold things together for a while,” Abrams wrote to the ambassador, referring to the UAE’s growing regional role. “Yes, how dare we! In all honesty, there was not much of a choice. We stepped up only after your country chose to step down,” Otaiba replied.

      The Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas

      Differences in the ideological and geopolitical thinking of the princes when it comes to political Islam and the Muslim Brotherhood reemerged recently. Differing Saudi and Emirati approaches were initially evident in 2015 when King Salman and his son began their reign in Saudi Arabia. This was a period when Mohammed bin Zayed, who views political Islam and the Brotherhood as an existential threat, had yet to forge close ties to the new Saudi leadership. At the time, Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal, barely a month after King Salman’s ascendancy, told an interviewer that “there is no problem between the kingdom” and the Brotherhood.

      Just a month later, the Muslim World League, a body established by Saudi Arabia in the 1960s to propagate religious ultra-conservatism and long dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, organized a conference in a building in Mecca that had not been used since the banning of the brothers. The Qataris, who have a history of close ties to the Brotherhood, were invited.

      After King Salman and his son came to power, Saudi Arabia adopted a harder approach toward Brotherhood-related groups as Mohammed bin Zayed gained influence in Saudi affairs. The Muslim League has since become Mohammed bin Salman’s main vehicle for promoting his call for religious tolerance and inter-faith dialogue. Saudi Arabia and the UAE are portraying themselves as icons of a socially moderate form of Islam that, nonetheless, endorses autocratic rule.

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      Last week, the kingdom signaled a potential change in its attitude toward Brotherhood-related groups with the broadcast of an interview with Khaled Meshaal, the Qatar-based head of the political arm of Hamas. The interview was aired on Al Arabiya, the Saudi state-controlled news channel. Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group that controls Gaza, maintains relations with Iran and is viewed as being part of a Brotherhood network. Meshaal called for a resumption of relations between Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian movement.

      In 2014, Saudi Arabia designated Hamas as a terrorist organization. This was part of a dispute between Qatar, a supporter of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, and Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain, which had all withdrawn their ambassadors from Doha. The Saudis were particularly upset by the close relations that Hamas had forged with Iran and Turkey, Riyadh’s main rivals for regional hegemony.

      A litmus test of the degree of change in Saudi Arabia’s attitude will be whether it releases scores of Hamas members. These members were arrested in 2019 as part of Saudi efforts to garner Palestinian support for then-US President Donald Trump’s controversial peace plan for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Quoting the Arabic service of Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency, Al-Monitor reported that Al Arabiya had refrained from broadcasting a segment of the interview in which Meshaal called for the release of the detainees.

      Despite Differences

      The Saudi–UAE rivalry and the ambitions of their leaders make it unlikely that Mohammed bin Salman and Mohammed bin Zayed will look at structural ways of managing differences. This includes areas like greater regional economic integration through arrangements for trade and investment and an expanded customs union. The latter would make the region more attractive to foreign investors and improve the Gulf states’ bargaining power.

      In the absence of strengthening institutions, the bets are on the crown princes recognizing that, despite their differences, “it doesn’t make sense for either one of them to let go of the other.”

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

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      The Role Turkey Can Play in Afghanistan

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      Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan caused waves at the NATO summit in June, announcing that Turkey would continue to protect Kabul airport following the complete NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan. Kabul airport is Afghanistan’s principal air connection to the outside world, and it is vital for the security of diplomats and aid workers in the country.

      The proposal needs to be seen in the context of the broad militarization of Turkish foreign policy. In recent years, Ankara has deployed armed forces for geopolitical leverage in Syria, Somalia, Libya, the Eastern Mediterranean and Azerbaijan. The associated costs have remained very low, further emboldening Turkish policymakers. In Somalia and Syria, the Turkish military also gained experience operating in theaters where armed militants pose significant security challenges.

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      The main factor behind the airport proposal, however, is Turkish-American relations. Ankara hopes to regain favor with Washington after a string of diplomatic crises. The Turkish side knows its hand is weakened by issues such as its acquisition of the Russian S400 air defense system and Washington’s responses, including CAATSA sanctions and removing Turkish manufacturers from the supply chain for the new F35 warplane. The Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, known as CAATSA, is a law passed by the US Congress in 2017 that intended to penalize Russia. In December 2020, Turkey was added to the sanctions list for its purchase of the S400. The proposal to help out in Afghanistan emerged as an obvious way to improve bilateral relations with the US.

      A Good Reputation

      As the only Muslim-majority member of NATO, Turkey played important roles in Afghanistan. Former Turkish Foreign Minister Hikmet Cetin served as NATO’s first senior civilian representative in Afghanistan and Turkish officers twice commanded the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). There are currently 500 Turkish soldiers serving with the NATO mission. Turkey never deployed a combat force, however. The Taliban, in turn, avoided targeting Turkish forces; there has only been one attack on a Turkish unit.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Additionally, Turkish state institutions and NGOs conduct a broad range of cultural and educational activities and supply extensive humanitarian aid. Reports confirm the ability of Turkish officials and volunteers to engage with Afghan society on equal terms. Shared religious and cultural elements certainly help. Although the Taliban accuses of Ankara being too pro-Uzbek, Turkey is viewed very positively across Afghan society. This, together with its ability to talk with all sides and its non-combat role in ISAF, places Turkey in a unique position.

      However, protecting Kabul airport would change the nature of Turkey’s involvement. While the Afghan government welcomed the idea, the Taliban have repeatedly declared that they will not tolerate even a residual foreign force. That implies that the Taliban would target Turkish troops, risking drastic consequences for Turkey. To avoid this, Turkey’s extended stay requires prior agreement with all Afghan parties, and Ankara will use its diplomatic capacity to seek such an agreement. Moreover, rather than focusing solely on leaving a residual force, Turkey could use its diplomatic and humanitarian leverage to pursue a more comprehensive approach to the Afghan problem.

      Intra-Afghan Agreement Needed

      The current peace agreement involves only the United States and the Taliban. There is as yet no peace agreement between the Afghan government and the Taliban. As the withdrawal of NATO forces accelerates, the conflict is now between the Taliban and Afghan government forces. Despite NATO’s decades of investment, the Afghan army is no match for the Taliban. In fact, a major Taliban offensive is already underway. Kabul may not fall immediately, but time is on the side of the insurgents. But if the Taliban overplays its hand and tries to dominate the entire country, there will be a backlash, particularly from the non-Pashtun ethnic communities.

      In that case, Afghanistan is likely to descend back into civil war. Under such circumstances, a Turkish military presence would be too risky and unsustainable, even with agreements with the government and the Taliban. Rather than focusing only on protecting Kabul airport, Turkey should place its diplomatic weight behind a peaceful settlement between the Taliban and the government before violence spirals out of control. The first step toward a broader agreement between the Afghan parties themselves would be for Ankara to reach an agreement with each of them. This road is arguably a stony one, but it offers much greater rewards. Turkey would certainly need the support of other countries to overcome the obstacles involved.

      The first challenge is to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table with the Afghan government, which Turkey and the international community have so far failed to achieve. Here, Turkey can benefit from its exceptionally good relations with Pakistan and Qatar. Qatar is home to the Taliban’s only external office and relations are cordial. Pakistan, where many senior Taliban leaders reside, has the greatest leverage. Even though large segments of Afghan society frown on Pakistan’s involvement in their country, its influence over the Taliban would be crucial for reaching a negotiated settlement.

      Europe should be more active and support Turkey’s efforts diplomatically and economically. As well as that being the morally right thing to do, Europe has a tangible interest too. A resurgence of fighting in Afghanistan would trigger a wave of migration. Afghans are already the second-largest migrant community in Turkey after the 3.6 million Syrian refugees. They also formed the second-largest group of new asylum applications in Germany in 2020. Given Iran’s open-door policy, it would be realistic to expect waves of Afghan migration to Turkey and on to Europe. The specter of a new refugee crisis looms.

      *[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 relating 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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      in World Politics

      America’s Afghan War Is Over. But What About Iraq and Iran?

      by

      At Bagram air base, Afghan scrap merchants are already picking through the graveyard of US military equipment that was until recently the headquarters of America’s 20-year occupation of their country. Afghan officials say the last US forces slipped away from Bagram in the dead of night, without notice or coordination. 

      The Taliban are rapidly expanding their control over hundreds of districts in Afghanistan, usually through negotiations between local elders, but also by force when troops loyal to the Kabul government refuse to give up their outposts and weapons. A few weeks ago, the Taliban controlled a quarter of the country. Now it’s a third. They are taking control of border posts and large swathes of territory in the north of the country. These include areas that were once strongholds of the Northern Alliance, a militia that prevented the Taliban from unifying the country under their rule in the late 1990s. 

      Syrian Women Find a New Life in Germany

      READ MORE

      People of goodwill all over the world hope for a peaceful future for the people of Afghanistan, but the only legitimate role the United States can play there now is to pay reparations, in whatever form, for the damage it has done and the pain and deaths it has caused. Speculation in the US political class and corporate media about how the US can keep bombing and killing Afghans from “over the horizon” should cease. The US and its corrupt puppet government lost this war. Now it’s up to the Afghans to forge their future. 

      Iraq

      So, what about America’s other endless crime scene: Iraq? The US corporate media only mention Iraq when our leaders suddenly decide that the over 150,000 bombs and missiles they have dropped on Iraq and Syria since 2001 were not enough, and dropping a few more on Iranian allies there will appease some hawks in Washington without starting a full-scale war with Iran.

      But for 40 million Iraqis, as for 40 million Afghans, America’s most stupidly chosen battlefield is their country, not just an occasional news story. They are living their entire lives under the enduring impacts of the neocons’ war of mass destruction.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Young Iraqis took to the streets in 2019 to protest 16 years of corrupt government by the former exiles to whom the United States handed over their country and its oil revenues. The protests were directed at the Iraqi government’s corruption and failure to provide jobs and basic services to its people, but also at the underlying, self-serving foreign influences of the US and Iran over every Iraqi government since the 2003 invasion.

      A new government was formed in May 2020, headed by Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, previously the head of Iraq’s intelligence service and, before that, a journalist and editor for the Al-Monitor website. Kadhimi has initiated investigations into the embezzlement of $150 billion in Iraqi oil revenues by officials of previous governments, who were mostly former Western-based exiles like himself. He is now walking a fine line to try to save his country, after all it has been through, from becoming the front line in a new US war on Iran.

      Recent US airstrikes have targeted the Hashd al-Shaabi, known in English as the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF). The PMF, which is made up of mostly Iraqi Shia armed groups, was formed in 2014 to fight the Islamic State (IS). At the time, IS had seized territory spanning both Iraq and Syria, breaking the border between the two countries and declaring a caliphate. The PMF comprises about 130,000 troops in 40 or more different units. Most of them were recruited by pro-Iranian Iraqi political parties and groups. Now, the PMF is an integral part of Iraq’s armed forces and is credited with playing a critical role in the war against IS.

      Western media represent the PMF as militias that Iran can turn on and off as a weapon against the United States. But the PMF has its own interests and decision-making structures. When Iran has tried to calm tensions with the US, it has not always been able to control the PMF. General Haider al-Afghani, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard officer in charge of coordinating with the PMF, recently requested a transfer out of Iraq. He complained that the PMF paid no attention to him.

      Ever since the US assassination of Iran’s General Qasem Soleimani and PMF commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis in January 2020, the PMF has been determined to force the last remaining US occupation forces out of Iraq. After the killing, the Iraqi national assembly passed a resolution calling for US forces to leave Iraq. Following US airstrikes against PMF units in February 2021, Iraq and the US agreed in early April that American combat troops would soon depart. 

      But no date has been set, no detailed agreement has been signed, many Iraqis do not believe US forces will leave, nor do they trust the Kadhimi government to ensure their departure. As time has gone by without a formal agreement, some PMF forces have resisted calls for calm from their own government and Iran and stepped up attacks on US forces. 

      At the same time, the Vienna talks over the Iran nuclear agreement have raised fear among PMF commanders that Iran may sacrifice them as a bargaining chip in a renegotiated nuclear agreement with the United States. So, in the interest of survival, the commanders have become more independent of Iran and cultivated a closer relationship with Kadhimi. This was evidenced in Kadhimi’s attendance at a huge military parade in June to celebrate the seventh anniversary of the PMF’s founding. 

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      The next day, the US bombed PMF forces in Iraq and Syria, drawing public condemnation from Kadhimi and his cabinet as a violation of Iraqi sovereignty. After conducting retaliatory strikes, the PMF declared a new ceasefire on June 29, apparently to give Kadhimi more time to finalize a withdrawal agreement. But six days later, some of them resumed rocket and drone attacks on US targets.

      Whereas Donald Trump only retaliated when rocket attacks in Iraq killed Americans, a senior US official has revealed that President Joe Biden has lowered the bar, threatening to respond with airstrikes even when Iraqi militia attacks do not cause US casualties. But US air strikes have only led to rising tensions and further escalations by Iraqi militia forces. If American forces respond with more or heavier airstrikes, the PMF and Iran’s allies throughout the region can respond with more widespread attacks on US bases. The further this escalates and the longer it takes to negotiate a genuine withdrawal agreement, the more pressure Kadhimi will get from the PMF and other sectors of Iraqi society to show US forces the door.

      The official rationale for the US presence and that of NATO training forces in Iraqi Kurdistan is that the Islamic State is still active. In January, a suicide bomber killed 32 people in Baghdad. The group still has a strong appeal to oppressed young people across the Arab and Muslim world. The failures, corruption and repression of successive post-2003 governments in Iraq have provided fertile soil.

      Iran

      But the United States clearly has another reason for keeping forces in Iraq, as a forward base in its simmering war on Iran. That is exactly what Kadhimi is trying to avoid by replacing US forces with the Danish-led NATO training mission in Iraqi Kurdistan. This mission is being expanded from 500 to at least 4,000 forces, made up of Danish, British and Turkish troops. 

      If Biden had quickly rejoined the nuclear agreement with Iran after taking office in January, tensions would be lower by now and the US troops in Iraq might well be home already. Instead, Biden obliviously swallowed the poison pill of Trump’s Iran policy by using “maximum pressure” as a form of “leverage,” escalating an endless game of chicken the United States cannot win — a tactic that Barack Obama began to wind down six years ago by signing the JCPOA.

      The US withdrawal from Iraq and the Iran nuclear deal are interconnected, two essential parts of a policy to improve US–Iranian relations and end Washington’s antagonistic and destabilizing interventionist role in the Middle East. The third element for a more stable and peaceful region is the diplomatic engagement between Iran and Saudi Arabia, in which Kadhimi’s Iraq is playing a critical role as the principal mediator.    

      The fate of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), as the Iran deal is formally known, is still uncertain. The sixth round of shuttle diplomacy in Vienna ended on June 20 and no date has been set for a seventh round yet. Biden’s commitment to rejoining the JCPOA seems shakier than ever. Ebrahim Raisi, the president-elect of Iran, has declared he will not let the Americans keep drawing out the negotiations. 

      Embed from Getty Images

      In an interview in June, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken upped the ante by threatening to pull out of the talks altogether. He said that if Iran continued to spin more sophisticated centrifuges at higher and higher levels, it will become very difficult for the United States to return to the original deal, which was signed in 2015 under Obama. Asked whether or when the US might walk away from negotiations, he said, “I can’t put a date on it, [but] it’s getting closer.”

      What should really be “getting closer” is the US withdrawal of troops from Iraq. While Afghanistan is portrayed as the “longest war” the United States has fought, the US military has been bombing Iraq for most of the last 30 years. The fact that the US military is still conducting “defensive airstrikes” 18 years after the 2003 invasion and nearly 10 years since the official end of the war proves just how ineffective and disastrous this US intervention has been.

      Biden certainly seems to have learned the lesson in Afghanistan that the US can neither bomb its way to peace nor install puppet governments at will. When pilloried by the press about the Taliban gaining control as US troops withdraw, Biden said: “For those who have argued that we should stay just six more months or just one more year, I ask them to consider the lessons of recent history.” He added: “Nearly 20 years of experience has shown us, and the current security situation only confirms, that ‘just one more year’ of fighting in Afghanistan is not a solution but a recipe for being there indefinitely. It’s the right and the responsibility of the Afghan people alone to decide their future and how they want to run their country.”  

      The same lessons of history apply to Iraq. The US has already inflicted so much death and misery on the Iraqi people, destroyed so many of its beautiful cities and unleashed so much sectarian violence and IS fanaticism. Just like the shuttering of the massive Bagram base in Afghanistan, Biden should dismantle the remaining imperial bases in Iraq and bring the troops home.

      The Iraqi people have the same right to decide their own future as the people of Afghanistan. All the countries of the Middle East have the right and the responsibility to live in peace, without the threat of American bombs and missiles always hanging over their heads. 

      Let’s hope Biden has learned another history lesson: that the United States should stop invading and attacking other countries.

      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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      Syrian Women Find a New Life in Germany

      by

      In the years before the civil war broke out in 2011, Syrian families where women were the main income providers and oversaw family affairs remained the exception. At the time, about 15% of women were in the labor force, a large proportion of them in agriculture. Women occupying jobs in technical and administrative sectors as part of the urban elites in cities like Damascus and Aleppo only made up a small proportion of the workforce. Although women became more publicly visible and enjoyed a more independent lifestyle in the cities, the primary task of most Syrian women was and still is to run the household and raise children.

      During the war, soon to enter its second decade, women were able to break into male-dominated professions — a development well known from other conflicts. However, this progress did not stem from social emancipation but rather due to the dwindling numbers of working-age men as a result of death, imprisonment, displacement and flight. Women’s new responsibilities came with multiple burdens of unequal pay coupled with housework, parenting and increased domestic violence as some men struggled to come to terms with their wives’ new roles.

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      A 2017 survey among women living in Syria and abroad identified that 81% thought that the social norms in Syria “truly impede women’s success.” Indeed, many Syrian women living in other countries experience new social conditions that allow them to break free from traditional gender roles. 

      Newfound Freedom

      Since 2014, Syrians have been the largest group of asylum seekers in Germany. As of December 2019, about 790,000 had fled to Germany, starting in 2010, and the proportion of women among Syrians seeking protection has increased over the years. Many refugee women from Muslim-majority countries have little or no work experience. In numerous cases, they take their first steps to pursue a career in the country where they settle, with nearly 80% of female refugees expressing a desire to be gainfully employed.

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      A similar picture applies to Syrian women in Germany. According to a survey, 60% of them “definitely” want to work, and 25% are tending toward doing so, yet only 40% have any work experience. Most Syrian female refugees in Germany belonged to the upper social classes back home. They are well educated and already harbored values closer to those of their new home country. Hence, many of them are more inclined to embrace new freedoms and opportunities.

      While the issues facing Syrian refugees may be underrepresented in German media, some have shared their experiences. Mai Zehna, who fled to Germany at the end of 2012 from Syria, where she already worked as an art teacher, told Deutschlandfunk Kultur: “I grew up in an open family and was raised the same way as my brother. … Where I was born and raised … women look European. Of course, there are women with headscarves, but many are also unveiled.” Yet according to Zehna, women’s rights in Syria were a far cry from what she is now experiencing in Germany: “The laws in Syria don’t support women. There are written laws, but in reality … society looks at men and women differently. There is more support and freedom here than in Syria.”

      Ghada, a 44-year-old from Aleppo, lived a very different life. She fled to Germany to escape her strictly religious family and husband, leaving two of her three children behind: “Women’s rights are suppressed in Syria. … I’ve had enough of it. … In Syria, I was forced to wear a headscarf and a long black coat. … Here in Germany, I have more freedom. I am far away from the oppression.”

      Relationships at Risk

      Unlike Ghada, who deliberately left her husband behind, many Syrian women have chosen to divorce their husbands in Germany, putting an end to their traditionally preordained roles as housewives. In Syria, women are legally allowed to file for divorce, albeit with more restrictions than men. But besides this discriminatory legal setup, they face pressure and intimidation from their families, neighbors and friends. Character assassination, social exclusion and slander are just some of the repercussions for divorced women who are still condemned by most segments of society.

      Najat Abokal, a family attorney in Berlin, noticed an above-average proportion of Syrian women coming to her office and filing for divorce within the first year after the peak of refugee arrivals in 2015. As Abokal told the Frankfurter Allgemeine, divorce was the only option for many women to escape domestic violence and begin an independent life. The divorces were often preceded by a period of separation before being reunited with their husbands who had stayed behind in Syria.

      During this period, women learned to make decisions that they would have previously left up to their husbands. The unforeseen, long separation has helped many women develop self-confidence and awareness of their new rights. Social psychologist Bita Behravan, from the University of Duisburg-Essen, notes that women’s respective socio-economic backgrounds are secondary in terms of how they take in their new life in Germany. Women who lived in both modern and traditional roles in their countries of origin cannot help but notice their higher status in Germany.

      Hence, the process of integration for Syrian women is an entirely different experience to that of men. Women can see the new values and norms as an opportunity. Men, on the other hand, might perceive it as a fall from grace. From the day they are born, they are used to being taken care of by women. Conversely, they traditionally play the role of providers. After arriving in Germany and reuniting with their wives, these men have to cope with the fact that they are not allowed to take up work instantly, that their salaries are not enough to support the family and that their wife’s second income is required to make ends meet.

      Besides, they often depend on their wives’ better German skills in daily life. This initial feeling of helplessness and discontent considering the intra-familial role reversal puts an immediate, and sometimes insurmountable, strain on marriages.

      Worth It

      Single Syrian women in Germany face similar fears of judgment as those trying to escape their marriages. In Syria, relationships outside of wedlock remain taboo — at least publicly. Underneath the surface of religious rules, premarital sexual relationships certainly exist, particularly in late adolescence and early adulthood. However, they remain an unspoken secret and are hushed up in the family and the public sphere. This spiral of silence does not vanish into thin air as soon as Syrian women cross the border into Germany. Even if they intend to leave behind the dominance of family and religious rules in favor of a liberal approach to love and sexuality, the fear of condemnation from their families or tainting the family honor looms large.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Speaking to Deutsche Welle, 24-year-old Syrian student Hana opened up about the different approach in her new home country: “Here in Germany … people don’t look into your personal life and they don’t require a certificate of marriage for a couple to live together. I feel more freedom and confidence to make my own decisions.” Nonetheless, she decided against telling her family that she now lives with her boyfriend.

      In addition to fearing condemnation at home, women who embrace a more Western lifestyle worry about the judgment of men who have sought refuge in Germany but have retained patriarchal social attitudes. “Many immigrants come from patriarchal cultural contexts in which male dominance and female subordination are considered normal,” says Susanne Schröter, director of the Global Islam Research Center in Frankfurt. Young refugee men often lose their former dominant role. Hence, some tend to revert to patriarchal practices of their homelands “to prevent these unruly women and girls from gaining freedom through violence.”

      Very few women manage to resist this pressure and the weight of religious traditions and expectations. Yet despite these obstacles, many Syrian women in Germany have caught the independence bug. Through prior experiences, they have learned that winning their freedom and shaping their own lives requires strength and effort. Having endured oppression in Syria and taken on the dangerous journey to their new homes, those remaining risks seem worth taking. 

      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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      Is Football Still a Bastion of White Supremacy?

      by

      On the morning preceding England’s narrow defeat in the European Championship final, The New York Times published an article containing a heart-warming lesson about the power of sport to overcome and eliminate the scourge of xenophobic racism. Rory Smith, The Times’ football specialist based in Manchester, England, wrote: “Euro 2020 has become, in other words, a moment of genuine national unity.”

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      Smith quotes the article by anti-racism activist Shaista Aziz in The Guardian. Ms. Aziz exulted in the humanizing effect England’s football team was having on a nation that has been “a tiptoe away from racism and bigotry.” She seemed convinced everyone in England believed “this team is playing for all of us.” That special “moment of genuine national unity” proved to be short-lived.

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      National unity:

      A fragile and often superficial sentiment of fraternity in modern nations provoked alternatively by the success of a team in a popular sport (e.g. winning a championship) or by the collective hatred of a real or imagined enemy following a destructive incident (e.g. 9/11)

      Contextual Note

      On Monday, The Guardian ran a story with the title, “Boris Johnson condemns ‘appalling’ racist abuse of England players.” Immediately following the England team’s defeat, social media provided proof of the illusory quality of the sense of national unity that the Three Lions’ success in reaching the final had provoked. It also highlighted the perverse link between political authority and the raw xenophobic emotion that some politicians feel they must encourage to establish and validate that authority.

      Modern democracies in our competitive, liberal civilization desperately want to believe in the gradual but inevitable triumph of virtue over vice. Thanks to the phenomenon of “progress,” which they define as their DNA, the superstitions and injustices of the past are condemned to fade away under the pressure of common sense and the respect of honest competition.

      The Times’ Rory Smith anticipated the thrill of knowing that “tens of millions of British fans would be watching avidly, glorying not just in the team’s success on the field but off it as well.” This would be a turning point in the nation’s history and its troubled relationship with its colonial past. In his mind, the spectacle offered by the gladiators in the arena heralded a new dawn for a people still in the throes of existential doubt after centuries of playing the role of a global empire that, seven decades after its dismantlement, was still seeking to understand its legitimate place in a diverse world.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Smith saw the fans “as a microcosm of a nation seemingly more enthusiastic about its evolving identity as a more tolerant, multiracial and multi-ethnic society than is often suggested.” On or off the field, inside or outside the stadium, Smith’s fervent wish appears to be just that, a vain wish. On social media, which exists in its own abstract space but reflects some of the deeper reality, a part of the nation insisted on reminding optimists like Smith of its competitive disunity.

      Ever since Pierre de Coubertin launched the modern Olympic Games in 1896, sport and nationalism have gravitated toward each other. This has created the hope in some sectors that the spirit of cooperative teamwork at the core of sport could triumph over the very human tendency to let petty rivalries lead to conflict, enmity and crime and even world war. But today’s liberal society is driven by two forces: winning — the proof of one’s superiority — and money. Because of that need for the most competitive talent, diversity has become a feature of all sports, including those like football, rugby and even tennis that were developed by Britain’s 19th-century white elite. Football emerged in the 20th century as the most universal and popular of British sports.

      The mingling of athletic performance, commercial interest, politics and nationalism was inevitable. The internationalization of sport’s economy that began obeying the super-competitive rules of economic globalization, based on optimizing the extraction of resources, led to an increasing focus on economic goals and the transformation of athletic performance into a form of hyperreal or superhuman spectacle.

      Until recently, politicians understood the advantage of defining sport as something entirely separate from politics. They showed a certain condescending respect for the performance of athletes, simply congratulating them for their competitive spirit. But the simultaneous effects of sport’s economic globalization, its financialization and the colonial heritage of Western nations led to a transformation of the traditionally perceived local and tepidly nationalistic character of teams. In Britain and the United States, for most of the 20th century, professional athletes were in their grand majority white. For a long time, non-whites were entirely excluded. Modern sport literally developed as a bastion of white supremacy.

      The pressures of economic competition combined with increasingly vocal frustration of excluded groups across Western societies led to the diversity now prevalent in all professional sports. A further trend, magnified by the media and the advertising dollars that support the media, has turned athletes into superheroes and hyperreal celebrities on a par with Hollywood actors. They belong to a stratosphere political leaders can no longer hope to rival.

      Historical Note

      Soon after his election in 2016, US President Donald Trump broke the entente cordiale that previously existed between sports and politics by intervening directly in the controversy that arose around Colin Kaepernick’s silent protest against police brutality toward black Americans. Trump deemed the act of kneeling during the national anthem an insult to the valiant troops that American presidents have the habit of sending abroad to be maimed and killed in the name of demonstrating the seriousness of the nation’s enduring mission, which consists of maiming and killing people elsewhere in the world who fail to pledge allegiance to the unimpeachable moral standards of the United States.

      After the protests sparked by George Floyd’s murder last year, Kaepernick’s gesture became a universal symbol of passive resistance to persistent racism. Out of electoral expediency, Trump and his followers turned the issue into a major component of the ongoing “culture wars” that have effectively shattered the last trace of the illusion of unity in the profoundly Disunited States, a nation where insult, shaming, calumny and canceling have become an art, if not a science.

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      Once Kaepernick’s gesture had gone universal, most politicians sought to distance themselves from the issue. But not Boris Johnson and his team. As the political profiteer who achieved his life’s ambition of becoming prime minister thanks to his xenophobic campaign for Brexit in 2016, Johnson may have felt obliged to appeal to his base and encourage suspicion of the “darkies’” intent. Johnson’s team branded it “gesture politics,” denying its stated purpose focused on social justice. Home Secretary Priti Patel and Johnson himself declined to condemn the booing some members of the public addressed to the kneeling players.

      The symbolism of sport in today’s culture reflects the evolution of the modern economy. Just as the economy, despite its noble claims, is not really about innovation, efficiency, abundance and meeting the needs of the people, sport isn’t about developing and celebrating the beauty of “the beautiful game” and other popular sports. The money factor trumps all the old associations with personal and collective achievement.

      Now it’s simply about winning and losing. Just as the driving force of the economy is the profit motive — maximizing one’s earnings and crushing the competition, which also means depriving those involved of their livelihood — the only thing the public retains from a sporting event is the celebration of the winner and witnessing the humiliation of the loser. At least in sports, the losers are still well paid and their livelihood rarely compromised.

      Pierre de Coubertin famously claimed for the revived Olympic Games that the aim “is not to win, but to take part; the important thing in Life is not triumph, but the struggle. To spread these principles is to build up a strong and more valiant and, above all, more scrupulous and more generous humanity.” De Coubertin recounted that he was inspired to promote the Olympic Games by the link he saw between the emphasis on sport in Britain’s elite educational culture and the global triumph of its empire in the 19th century. Although it was for the most part officially dismantled in the 1950s, could this be a case of Boris’ empire striking back?

      *[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