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      Three Years On, Still No Accountability for Our Son’s Death

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      Three years ago today, we suffered the most painful experience a family can endure. Our son Christopher Allen was murdered on the other side of the world, reporting on the civil conflict in South Sudan. A freelance journalist and dual US-UK citizen, Chris was only 26 years old and had a bright future ahead of him — a future that was taken from him, from us and from those whose stories he was so intent on telling the world.

      On August 26, 2017, our lives changed irrevocably. Now, the pursuit of justice for Chris would become a central part of our existence. Our hearts were broken and, in addition to experiencing insurmountable grief, we found our family facing an uphill battle not only with the South Sudanese but also with Chris’ own governments in Washington and London, as well as with the United Nations.

      No Justice

      These are the very democratic institutions that are meant to protect journalists and press freedom, that are meant to fight injustice and ensure accountability for unspeakable crimes. Yet they have failed to act meaningfully to support us or help secure justice for Chris’ killing. Everything that is meant to be set into motion when a tragedy like this occurs simply did not happen — at least not without a fight from our side. Now, three years on, there has still been no investigation and no justice. We still lack even basic answers about what happened to Chris.

      Chris developed his craft as a journalist in Ukraine, where he lived and worked from April 2014 and from there embarked on a new challenge. In August 2017, he traveled to South Sudan to cover the country’s under-reported civil war, embedding with the SPLA-IO, a rebel faction attempting to overthrow the established government in Juba.

      Chris had embedded with the soldiers for more than three weeks, listening to the stories of their lives, their losses, motivations and fears before being targeted by government forces during a battle in Kaya, near South Sudan’s border with Uganda. We spoke with Chris the night before he was killed. The company was moving out that evening to walk through miles of bush to capture munition supplies.

      We urged Chris not to go, to write a piece that covered the embed to date, to share with his readers the pain the families of these men suffered at the hand of those in power. But he insisted that the story of preparing for battle was incomplete. Chris’ dedication to his journalism was absolute — he felt he must bear witness to the battle. He said to us that he “had to see it through.” Our son looked for the truth at all costs.

      As his parents, it is daunting and painful to recount this. Just as Chris sought the truth of the tragedies and difficulties of others, we have been working to establish the truth of the circumstances of his killing every day for three full years. Yet the very governments and institutions whose duty it is to help us find the truth have failed to support us at every key juncture over the past three years.

      Based on evidence uncovered through journalistic investigations in the absence of any official inquiry, we know that Chris was killed by a member of the South Sudanese armed forces and that his killing and the treatment of his body post-mortem are likely to constitute war crimes. With support from a legal team as well as campaigners at Reporters Without Borders, we have tenaciously sought an independent criminal investigation from the South Sudanese and US authorities.

      We Must See This Through

      In our deep desire to secure justice and accountability for the wrongful killing of our son, a civilian and journalist armed only with a camera, and to remind states that they cannot suppress press freedom by killing journalists with impunity, we will continue to demand a meaningful investigation and justice. Like Chris, we must see this through.  

      Despite our intense efforts, the US and UK governments and the United Nations have still failed to act meaningfully to help us find answers or justice, and in some cases have not responded at all. This is in sharp contrast to their publicly stated commitments to freedom of expression. The lesson we have learned over these past three painful years is that too often, these bodies cannot be taken at their word, and must very actively be held to account.

      We persevere in our fight for justice not only for our son, but for all journalists taking tremendous risks to get out the truth from dangerous places around the world. Every case of impunity leaves the door open for further attacks on journalists and emboldens those who wish to use violence to silence public interest reporting. In contrast, every case in which justice is achieved sends a powerful signal that violence against journalists will not be tolerated anywhere and that those who commit such atrocious acts will pay the price. This, in turn, serves to deter violence and protect journalists everywhere.

      We ask that a bright light be shed on the circumstance of Christopher’s killing. We call on governments and institutions to hold the South Sudanese military accountable for the wrongful death of our son. A transparent investigation is the first step. Accountability and justice for Chris must follow. By demanding accountability for our son’s killing, we hope to create a safer world for journalists and bolster press freedom everywhere.

      We must see this through. 

      *[Joyce Krajian and John Allen are the parents of Christopher Allen.]

      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

      Donald Trump and the “Kung Flu”

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      Over the course of his 2016 campaign and his subsequent presidential term, Donald Trump has sought to exploit popular fears of foreigners and certain American ethnicities to his political advantage. His verbal attacks have been selective. Irish, Italian and Polish Americans, for example, have proved immune to his insults (at least in his public utterances). Trump’s favorite targets for public abuse have been Hispanics, especially individuals seeking to enter the country clandestinely along the border with Mexico. He has also complained bitterly and profanely, in a semi-public setting, about immigrants from Haiti and sub-Saharan African countries.

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      This is hardly the end of things. Early on in his administration, Trump imposed a ban, which was overturned by courts, on all Muslims seeking to enter the United States based on popular fears of terrorism. Very much unlike his two predecessors, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, who were careful to distinguish between terrorists and the followers of Islam, Trump sought to equate Muslims in general with terrorism, thereby inflaming existing popular fears.

      Classic Demagoguery

      Then came COVID-19, a disease that has taken the lives of nearly 168,000 of Americans to date. After some initial hesitation, Trump labeled it “kung flu.” To cheers and wild laughter at mass rallies and other public events, the president has sought to deflect widespread criticism of his handling of the pandemic by blaming the Chinese — not merely the government but the people in general — conflating the Chinese martial art of kung fu with influenza to the delight of his followers.

      All this, of course, is classic demagoguery intended to mobilize Trump’s base of whites with less than a college education and win him their renewed support at the polls in November. The fact that he actually appears to believe what he is saying adds to the appeal of his message. 

      Trump’s demagogic appeals have consequences for those targeted by his abuse. Using data from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report and the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ National Crime Victimization Survey, researchers have reported a substantial decline in hate crimes committed against Asian Americans over the periods 2003-07 and 2014-18.  Asian Americans appeared to be well on their way to acceptance by their fellow citizens. The arrival of COVID-19 arrested this development and turned it around. So that, for example, in the three months ending on July 1, another source reported over 800 discrimination and harassment incidents, including 81 assaults, aimed at Asian Americans in California alone. 

      The situation of American Muslims is somewhat different. For members of this religious minority, there was no reversal of the trend toward greater acceptance, simply a continuation of widespread animus. Illustratively, as reported in The Daily Beast, in the two months following the murder of 51 Muslim worshippers at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, on March 15, 2019, by Brenton Tarrant, a young Australian man who reported being a “fan” of Trump, mosques in San Diego, California, New Haven, Connecticut, and Queens, New York, became the targets of arson attacks.

      These crimes were simply the most menacing of some hundreds of anti-Muslim hate crimes in the United States that followed upon the Christchurch killings. Abbas Barzegar, the director of a national watchdog organization that tracks anti-Muslim bias incidents, told The Daily Beast in 2019, “We’ve already reported over 500 incidences of anti-Muslim bias or harassment just this year so far.” Barzegar went on to say that the uptick in anti-Muslim events began in 2015 and continued unabated thereafter.

      Poisonous Atmosphere

      For how much of this is Trump responsible? The answer is not easily quantifiable, but at a minimum, we can say Trump has done little to qualm the poisonous atmosphere in the country. At a maximum, we can claim he has sought to promote a politics of inter-group hatred to advance his career and improve his chances of reelection.

      There is a striking contradiction in this situation. As Trump and his base insult or, in some cases, physically assault Chinese Americans and Muslims, holding the Chinese responsible for COVID-19, individual members of such now stigmatized groups have been busy trying to save Americans from the disease. A long list of Chinese American epidemiologists, emergency room physicians and virologists, led perhaps by Dr. David Ho (director of the Aaron Diamond Research Center at Columbia University) and Dr. Thomas Tsai (Brigham and Women’s Hospital), have been playing vital roles in fighting the disease, often at the risk of their own lives.

      About the same applies to America Muslims from both the Middle East and South Asia. The list here would have to include Dr. Ashish Jha (director of Harvard Global Health Institute), Mahrokh Irani (Harvard Global Health Institute), Dr. Najy Masai and Dr. Imran Siddiqui. Of course, the list could be extended.

      Will these performances by Chinese American and American Muslim physicians and scientists have any impact on Trump’s campaign rhetoric and the bigoted perceptions of his base? Probably not. To do so would require Trump voters to link the physicians’ backgrounds to the groups to which they belong and modify their attitudes accordingly — not an easy feat. Further, the president and his campaign operatives have too much invested in his crowd-pleasing rhetoric to change at this late date.

      *[Fair Observer is a media partner of the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right.]

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

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      Joe Biden and the Fragile Realm of Possibilities

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      Almost every commentator in the media commended Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden on his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention.

      At the core of his speech, Biden offered this thought, as if he was composing a humorless Devil’s Dictionary: “I have always believed you can define America in one word: Possibilities. That in America, everyone, and I mean everyone, should be given the opportunity to go as far as their dreams and God-given ability will take them.”

      Here is today’s 3D definition:

      Possibilities:

      1) In a non-deterministic world, the element of chance that keeps hopes alive even when all the evidence points to a fundamentally hopeless situation
      2) The opposite of probabilities, meaning there is a low likelihood of success

      Contextual Note

      The New York Times accurately describes the feeling the Democrats had at the end of their week of a virtual convention as a sense of relief more than accomplishment: “Democrats breathed a collective sigh of relief this week after the party pulled off an all-virtual convention, half political music video and half Joe Biden infomercial, largely without a hitch.” Neither hitch nor major glitch. This sums up the performance of the Democratic Party’s team of practicing high jumpers. They have honed their ability to sail over low bars.

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      The media identified the real reason for deeming Biden’s acceptance speech successful: low expectations. This may be emblematic not only of this entire election cycle, but also of how Americans have come to conceive of their democracy itself. The phenomenon was already visible in the 2016 presidential contest. The two dominant parties appear to have settled on a strategy designed principally to allow them to propose candidates with little appeal, possibly because neither party really wants to govern. In 2016, the parties opposed the two least popular candidates in history. And 2020 doesn’t look that different.

      The Hill reports, with a tone of mild surprise, the assessment of Fox News host Chris Wallace, who “said that the former vice president’s speech ‘blew a hole’ in President [Donald] Trump’s characterization of him as mentally unsound for the presidency.” Astead W. Herndon and Annie Karni, the authors of The Times article, interpret this as the result of a strategic error on the part of Trump. “The Joe Biden many Americans saw this week,” they wrote, “was cleareyed and capable of commanding an audience, albeit reading from a teleprompter in a room that was largely empty.” 

      On the other hand, they have no illusions about what this means. “If that is a low bar, it is because Mr. Trump and some of his most prominent allies have helped to lower it,” the authors add. It sounds something like Muhammad Ali’s famous “rope-a-dope” strategy to win back the heavyweight championship.

      When Biden insisted that America could be defined by a single word, “possibilities,” he set the bar as low as it might go. Throughout most of the 20th century, the phenomenon he is referring to as “possibilities” was called the “American dream.” It was the idea that anyone could become rich and anyone could become president. It was just a question of self-motivation. If you didn’t attain it, it was because you didn’t want it enough.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Even before the coronavirus pandemic, most Americans had lost confidence in the American dream. Biden either hasn’t kept up with the trend or sees nostalgia as a last-ditch marketing tool. With tens of millions of newly-unemployed Americans wondering whether they may not need to become an Uber driver just to ensure their short-term future, the American dream has achieved the status of an opiate-induced hallucination. 

      In its heyday, the American dream posited that the improbable is always possible. But now, given the failure of all systems — starting with government — to guarantee any form of economic and social stability, it requires accepting the idea that what everyone now is resigned to seeing as utterly impossible may somehow still be possible. The strain may be too great to justify holding that belief.

      But Biden may not be wrong. After all, Trump is a real president and Biden is still a possible president. If, in the midst of all the current crises, the real is now perceived as the source and explanation of the impossibility of survival, the remote hope that a change could happen has unquestionable appeal. That may be true even if Biden — unlike Trump in 2016 — represents not something new and different, but all that is only too familiar as a pillar of the traditional political establishment.

      In the runup to the 2016 election, Barack Obama, understanding that voters preferred his image to that of Hillary Clinton, invented the trope of his values being “on the ballot.” He famously intoned, “I am not on the ballot, but I tell you what. Fairness is on the ballot. Decency is on the ballot. Justice is on the ballot. Progress is on the ballot. Our democracy is on the ballot.”

      Recycling the trope, undoubtedly with Obama’s blessing, Biden offered a new variant: “Character is on the ballot. Compassion is on the ballot. Decency, science, democracy. They are all on the ballot. Who we are as a nation. What we stand for. And, most importantly, who we want to be. That’s all on the ballot.”

      In other words, he is saying: You all remember Obama. Let’s take two steps back and try to relive that experience characterized by the promise of hope and change. But the Democrats should be asking themselves this question: Are US voters motivated enough by Biden’s campaign to take two steps back? More fundamentally, is retreating into the past really what they want?

      Historical Note

      During the Democratic primary campaign, especially during the debates, Joe Biden repeated the same message over and over again. His latest formulation, in his acceptance speech, took the form of this truism every young American is taught at school: “[T]here’s never been anything we’ve been unable to accomplish when we’ve done it together.”

      Some may question the historical verity of such a statement. Since 1945, for example, the US has tried to win multiple wars (most of which it started) and, although doing it not only “together” but also equipped with the most sophisticated expensive technology, the nation has consistently proved literally unable to accomplish that feat. It is nevertheless true that sending men to the moon (but no women) was an example of accomplishing something extraordinary and doing it together. But the next time it happens, it will more likely be a private venture than a collective effort.

      The moon landings may have been the last authentic symbol of the shared American dream. One of the reasons people no longer evoke the American dream stems from their realization that it does exist, but only applies for a tiny group of people. And even their cases are fraught with ambiguity. What America accomplished when Neil Armstrong took “one giant leap for mankind” was a collective triumph. The next time it is more likely not to be in the name of the United States or mankind but of Elon Musk.

      Yes, Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Musk — but also the more diverse examples of Kanye West, Michael Jordan and any number of Hollywood celebrities — have demonstrated the possibility of mobilizing their talent and other people’s money or fandom to realize the American dream.

      But many of the most recent achievements turn out to be flawed. Donald Trump himself is a prime example. He represents more a parody of the American dream than a realization of it. And he still has possibly 35% to 40% of Americans who continue to accept him as a role model. But there are too many Bernie Madoffs, Jeffrey Epsteins and Harvey Weinsteins alongside Trump and other fabulously successful but fundamentally unscrupulous characters not to call into question the morality of the quest for riches.

      By definition, the future is always a world of “possibilities.” But so is a poker game. Poker is — historically and symbolically — one way of realizing the American dream. But for each big winner, there are thousands if not millions of losers.

      *[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 Trump Tsunami: An End of American Conservatism?

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      American conservatism is not dead. It just smells funny. Actually, it exudes a putrid, nauseating odor. The bon mot, slightly altered, is not mine. The credit goes to Frank Zappa (which he made with respect to jazz), the iconic iconoclast, musical genius and self-proclaimed conservative (I’m not making this up) whose life was tragically cut short by cancer. Undoubtedly, Zappa would have been delighted these days with the likes of Tucker Carlson, Jerry Falwell Jr. and Lindsey Graham. Those who have never heard of Frank Zappa might listen to his “Jesus Thinks You’re A Jerk” while watching the video of Trump in front of St. John’s Church in Washington, DC, holding a Bible.

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      America’s pussy-grabber-in-chief hanging on to a Bible is a patent mise-en-scène designed to kowtow to his evangelical base, one of the two vote banks left intact amidst the debris of what by now is generally seen as the most disastrous presidency in recent memory. The other, of course, is the white supremacist constituency. Both groups are driven by the same moral panic that propelled them to vote for the probably “most perfect person” alive in America today.

      The Bully on Your Side

      Elizabeth Dias’s recent article in The New York Times provides an astute explanation for why evangelicals would vote for someone who represents the opposite of everything they claim to hold dear, starting with “family values.” As Dias quite rightly points out, evangelicals supported Trump in 2016 — and are likely to support him later on this year — not despite what he stands for (aka holding their noses), but “because of who he is, and because of who they are. He is their protector, the bully who is on their side, the one who offered safety amid their fears that their country as they know it, and their place in it, is changing, and changing quickly.”   

      Dias’s analysis reminded me of a point Raghuram Rajan, the University of Chicago economist, one of the few to anticipate the financial crisis of 2008, makes in his recent book “The Third Pillar.” Rajan seeks to explain why lower-class voters would support Republicans, the seeming paradox made famous by Thomas Frank’s “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” The answer is culture. The disadvantaged, Rajan argues, “had reason to hold on to religion and cultural traditions in the hope that these would help reverse their deteriorating present. Conversely, they rejected the modern values of the upper middle-class elite transmitted through mainstream media, not because their own social life was exemplary, but because they believed that religion and traditions were perhaps their last protection against total social breakdown.”

      What is true for American evangelicals is even more true for American white supremacists, that large number of Americans of European descent who have seen their centuries-old privileged position slowly but inexorably being eroded and slipping away, leaving them panicked. Ever since the foundation of the republic, Americans considered their country a “Protestant nation,” its values grounded in its Anglo-Saxon heritage. Newcomers to the republic, such as the Irish in the 1830s and 1840s, were met with intense suspicion. After all, they were Catholics, which for most American Protestants represented an essential threat to the liberties of the United States. It took decades until the Irish would be accepted as “white” after being depicted for decades as riotous drunkards and potential terrorists with ape-like features.

      American-style conservatism has been many things, not least an intellectual enterprise aimed at preserving a system that promotes and defends the rights of the privileged, white and propertied males while advancing ever-new justifications for social and economic inequality, social and cultural subordination, and outright exclusion. At the same time, as George Will recently noted, American conservativism has consistently embraced “the restless individualism, perpetual churning and creative destruction of a market society” and its myth that everyone gets what they deserve. This is the tradition leading exponents of American conservatism have stood for, together with a profound skepticism with regard to America’s role in the world — “a skepticism about the ability to project power abroad in order to impose benevolent designs on the recalcitrant realities of different cultures.”

      The Stupid Party

      One of its most cogent expressions was the 1999 book “A Republic, Not an Empire: Reclaiming America’s Destiny,” by the doyen of US paleoconservatism, the by now largely sidelined Pat Buchanan. At the height of his influence, Buchanan famously referred to the Republicans as the “stupid party.” Today, stupidity is far outdistanced by the party’s blatant cravenness, ridiculous and risible. With Trump, intellectual conservatives have been put in a pickle and they have found it difficult (sorry for the mixed metaphor) to paint themselves out of the corner.

      In fact, as George Will has charged, many an intellectual conservative has been “struggling to infuse intellectual content into the simmering stew of economic nationalism, resentment of globalization’s disruptions and nostalgia for the economy and communities of the 1950s.” Others, including Will, finally had enough and bolted from a political party they regarded as their political home for decades, not without expressing their disenchantment in a very loud and public way before slamming the door.

      A recent example is David Brooks, who for ages made a good living as a pundit berating anything that smacked of “liberalism.” In a recent op-ed in The New York Times, Brooks outs himself as a “conservative revolutionary,” an intellectual movement in Weimar Germany which paved the way for the Nazis. As he writes, “Today, we’re in the middle of another historic transition when dramatic change is necessary if we are to preserve what we love about America.” Among the things that constitute “what we love about America” are “the liberal fundamentals of our democracy — the belief that democracy is a search for truth from a wide variety of perspectives; the belief that America is a noble experiment worth defending.”

      I am not particularly sure what he means by “we.” After all, the liberal foundations of American democracy have been less than kind to Native Americans and enslaved Africans. The notion that democracy is “a search for truth from a variety of perspectives” flies in the face of the notion, held among a significant number of Trump’s American evangelicals, that the Earth was created some 10,000 years ago, that human-induced climate change is a hoax and that COVID-19 is an invention of the media and the Democrats. But given the fact that Brooks is an affluent white male with a column in The New York Times, I have my suspicions.

      This, however, is hardly the point. What is far more interesting is Brooks’ coming out in favor of radical change — within certain limits. This might have something to do with the fact that in today’s crazy world, it is not only left-wing protesters in Portland and elsewhere advancing radical demands such as defunding the police. Take, for instance, a recent intervention by Andrew Bacevich (disclosure: he was a colleague of mine at John’s Hopkins SAIS), a military officer-turned-professor of impeccable conservative credentials. He advocates defunding not only the police, but also the military.  

      Spirit of Conservatism

      Confronted with Trump and his Republican coterie, intellectual conservatives cannot but promote an agenda that is diametrically opposed to the spirit of conservatism. In the age of Trump, everything is up for grabs, from economic, social and racial equality to women’s rights and the question of gender. In the case of Brooks, by the way, rethinking does not go very far. As he put it, “I find I have moved ‘left’ on race, left on economics and a bit ‘right’ on community, family and social issues.” In other words, when online media no longer allow conservatives to ignore the brutal reality of racism, when social inequality stares them in their face, they turn radical, at least a bit.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Decades ago, the adage was that neoconservatives are liberals mugged by reality. In today’s world, anything-but-Trump conservatives such as George Will, Elliot Cohen (dean at SAIS and another former colleague of mine), and Andrew Bacevich are conservatives terrified by what the United States — and the Republican Party — have become over the past four years. Aware of the fact that there is a world outside the US they are terrified by the horrendous disaster Trump and the Republican Party have visited and continue to visit upon the American people.

      This is a disaster that to a considerable part is the responsibility of America’s intellectual conservatives. For decades, they have provided the intellectual fodder that infused the GOP’s destructive agenda — an agenda that has proven instrumental in undermining the very foundations of a system American conservatives have claimed to uphold and defend. The likes of David Brooks and George Will have to accept responsibility for paving the way for the likes of Donald Trump. In the process, they have shown that conservatism is a spent force, wiped out by the Trump tsunami.

      In the face of a horrifying daily reality, conservatism is nothing but a cop-out, a nostalgic yearning for Eisenhower’s 1950s when the world was “still in order,” when women submitted to men, and nuclear power was the bright hope for the future. In this world, the Pat Buchanans, George Wills and David Brookses are nothing but the dinosaurs of a bygone era, wiped out by cataclysmic events, fossilized traces in the desert. In this brave new world of global warming, global pandemics and global financial disasters, conservativism is dead if only (as Frank Zappa put it albeit in a quite different context) because it has turned out to be “an ill-conceived piece of nonsense.”

      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 the US Ready to Back Real Change in Riyadh?

      by

      Less than two weeks after his hit team murdered and dismembered Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, as the world was still trying to make sense of that heinous crime, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) was busy sending another, almost identical hit team to assassinate Saad al-Jabri, once foremost court adviser, longtime intelligence kingpin and secret keeper to the Saudi despots.

      Does MBS think he can get away with murder? His Western allies’ answer has so far been yes — until now, when al-Jabri, fearing for his life, threatened to expose everything and everyone in a way that could bring down palaces on both sides of the Atlantic, sending Riyadh, and Trump’s White House in particular, running for cover. The man holds Pandora’s Box and has made clear he is ready to open it. But for now, he is willing to heckle. Clearly, al-Jabri is not driven by conscience but by predicament. As far as his ethics go, he had plenty of time to expose the crimes in high places. He didn’t.

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      Instead, he served successive despots, then stole their secrets and is now using these as a bargaining chip to save himself and get the best deal. Once he gets his deal, al-Jabri will be very happy to keep the lid closed and let the ruthlessness he served for so long continue under a different despot. That’s not a man driven by conscience but by cynicism.

      Father of the Bullet

      Al-Jabri and others before him are not really the cause of our sorrow. Rather, we celebrate that the brutal Saudi mafia is coming apart at the seams for all to see and that many of us will be vindicated in the process. Al-Jabri and others among all the regime’s men were part of the system and knew the rules of the game. Like any mafia, the Saudi omertà is a sacred code of conduct at the price of death: You break it, you die. Al-Jabri also knew how to protect himself. Jamal Khashoggi didn’t — and paid the price. This is not a court case between a ruthless despot and a frustrated human rights advocate. It is a lawsuit against a current despot by a former subordinate trying to position himself favorably under a future despot in a palace power struggle, racing against time.

      And therein lies the opportunity. The summons for MBS and 12 others by a Washington court has put more pressure on that time frame and created a dangerous urgency in Riyadh for the crown prince, who must hurry to ascend to the throne and guarantee himself immunity as king, and also in Washington, where the Trump administration seeks to replace MBS with an acceptable alternative. Suddenly, Mohammed bin Salman and the White House are at once allies trying to keep closed al-Jabri’s Pandora’s Box but also opponents in the race for the Saudi throne. You couldn’t dream up this saga if you had the world’s best imagination.

      Embed from Getty Images

      At the time of writing, I am told there’s already a highly-placed Washington “team” in Riyadh trying to figure out an acceptable solution, one that will clearly result in a change on the throne. And that is what we must fear most. Changing the face, not the substance, then carrying on with business as usual. The most dangerous thing — and this is what Washington is currently trying to do — is substituting the liability that is MBS with a new smiling face it can present to the world as the vanguard of reform.

      This is something akin to how MBS was originally presented, despite strong indications to the contrary. The crown prince’s nickname among Saudis is, after all, “Abu Rasasa” — father of the bullet. But Mohammed bin Salman is not the only culprit for the crimes committed against so many for so long — not even close. That reality should be the guiding principle for Washington as it looks for a replacement. Failing to change a system is not only a disservice to the region, but also to the United States and to the rest of the world. It is time the US took a long-term view of its relations with our region. Despite our repeated past disappointments, if Washington demonstrated a serious willingness to engage with the forces of change, there is enough wisdom in this part of the world to promote a revised view of the United States.

      Imperialist Opportunism

      So far, Washington’s political dogma espoused by successive administrations has inherently conflicted with our regional interests, in the short as well as the long term. Essentially, the US and its Western allies have been unwilling to level the playing field. Consequently, they opted for a relationship with the ruling despots instead of supporting democratic forces. Blindsided by short-term opportunism, the US and the West chose to identify themselves with the worst forms of despotism across the Middle East. We have become relegated to bystanders as we watched destructive policies being carried out in our region, including the protection and arming of the most ruthless, tyrannical and corrupt regimes that serve to legitimize extremism — views that are intrinsically abhorrent to everything we stand for.

      This imperialist view has not served the US well in the past, and it will certainly not do so in the future. When it comes to the Saudi regime, Washington has an almost unique opportunity not only to cause positive change but to be seen doing it. For far too long it has done the opposite. At the beginning of the Arab Spring, when the US appeared to take a positive position toward the changes demanded by the Arab peoples, we were willing to move on from our past bitter experiences. Tragically, Washington did not allow that honeymoon to last. Instead, it chose short-term benefits derived from its relations with the regimes leading the counterrevolution.

      With the events currently unfolding within the Saudi regime, an opportunity is opening up for the US and the rest of us to mend ourselves. Will the United States be led by prudence and long-term, albeit lesser gains of a stable relationship with the forces of change or revert to its shortsightedness? If the US lets this opportunity slip, the future will be unforgiving. In Arabic we say, A little that is stable and consistent is better than a lot that is short and inconsistent.

      If all that happens is a US drive to change the face of Saudi tyranny and not its substance, then we will be better served by keeping MBS at the helm of a regime that the world is too embarrassed to do business with. Going forward, boycotted as an outcast, the Saudi regime under Mohammed bin Salman will be less destructive than a new smiling face presented as yet another “reformer” but who will only maintain the same ruthless policies of all his predecessors. You don’t just cut the branches off a decaying tree — you dig it up with its roots.

      This is something our American friends must consider come November: Will they uproot the system in Washington or just change the style and approach? What applies to the Saudis and MBS also applies to Americans and Donald Trump. Those who first blundered by putting both men on the thrones they don’t deserve must either remove them and all they represent or otherwise suffer the consequences of isolation.

      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 Great Game of the 21st Century

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      From 1830 to 1895, the British and Russian Empires schemed and plotted over control of Central and South Asia. At the heart of the “Great Game” was the United Kingdom’s certainty that the Russians had designs on India. So, wars were fought, borders drawn and generations of young met death in desolate passes and lonely outposts.

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      In the end, it was all illusion. Russia never planned to challenge British rule in India and the bloody wars settled nothing, although the arbitrary borders and ethnic tensions stoked by colonialism’s strategy of divide and conquer live on today. Thus China, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nepal battle over lines drawn long ago in London, while Beijing, Tokyo and Seoul vie for tiny uninhabited islands, remnants of Imperial Japan.

      That history is important to keep in mind when one begins to unpack the rationales behind the increasingly dangerous standoff between China and the United States in the South China Sea.

      A New Cold War

      To the Americans, China is a fast-rising competitor that doesn’t play by the rules and threatens one of the most important trade routes on the globe in a region long dominated by Washington. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has essentially called for regime change.

      According to Ryan Hass, former China director on the National Security Council, the Trump administration is trying to “reorient the U.S.-China relationship toward an all-encompassing systemic rivalry that cannot be reversed” by administrations that follow. In short, a cold war not unlike that between the US and the Soviet Union.

      To the Chinese, the last 200 years — and China’s leaders do tend to think in centuries, not decades — has been an anomaly in their long history. Once the richest country on the globe who introduced the world to everything from silk to gunpowder, 19th-century China became a dumping ground for British opium, incapable of even controlling its own coastlines.

      Embed from Getty Images

      China has never forgotten those years of humiliation or the damage colonialism helped inflict on its people. Those memories are an ingredient in the current crisis.

      But China is not the only country with memories. The US has dominated the Pacific Ocean — sometimes called an “American lake” — since the end of World War II. Suddenly Americans have a competitor, although it is a rivalry that routinely gets overblown.

      An example is conservative New York Times columnist Bret Stephens, who recently warned that China’s navy has more ships than the US Navy, ignoring the fact that most of China’s ships are small coast guard frigates and corvettes. China’s major strategic concern is the defense of its coasts, where several invasions landed in the 19th and 20th centuries.

      The Chinese strategy is “area denial”: keeping American aircraft carriers at arm’s length. To this end, Beijing has illegally seized numerous small islands and reefs in the South China Sea to create a barrier to the US Navy.

      In the World Bank’s Wake

      But China’s major thrust is economic, through its massive Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), not military, and is currently targeting South Asia as an area for development. South Asia is enormously complex, comprising Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Tibet, the Maldives and Sri Lanka. Its 1.6 billion people constitute almost a quarter of the world’s population, but it only accounts for 2% of the global GDP and 1.3% of world trade.

      Those figures translate into a poverty level of 44%, just 2% higher than the world’s most impoverished region, sub-Saharan Africa. Close to 85% of South Asia’s population makes less than $2 a day.

      Much of this is a result of colonialism, which derailed local economies, suppressed manufacturing and forced countries to adopt mono-crop cultures focused on export. The globalization of capital in the 1980s accelerated the economic inequality that colonialism had bequeathed the region.

      Development in South Asia has been beholden to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, which require borrowers to open their markets to western capital and reduce debts through severe austerity measures, throttling everything from health care to transportation. This economic strategy — sometimes called the “Washington Consensus” — generates “debt traps”: countries cut back on public spending, which depresses their economies and increases debt, which leads to yet more rounds of borrowing and austerity.

      The World Bank and the IMF have been particularly stingy about lending for infrastructure development, an essential part of building a modern economy. It is “the inadequacy and rigidness of the various western monetary institutions that have driven South Asia into the arms of China,” says economist Anthony Howell in the South Asia Journal.

      The BRI takes a different tack. Through a combination of infrastructure development, trade and financial aid, countries in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Europe are linked into what is essentially a new “Silk Road.” Some 138 countries have signed up.

      Using a variety of institutions — the China Development Bank, the Silk Road Fund, the Export-Import Bank of China and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank — Beijing has been building roads, rail systems and ports throughout South Asia.

      For decades, Western lenders have either ignored South Asia — with the exception of India — or put so many restrictions on development funds that the region has stagnated economically. The Chinese initiative has the potential to reverse this, alarming the West and India, the only nation in the region not to join the BRI.

      The European Union has also been resistant to the initiative, although Italy has signed on. A number of Middle East countries have also joined the BRI and the China-Arab Cooperation Forum. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt have signed on to China’s Digital Silk Road, a network of navigation satellites that compete with America’s GPS, Russia’s GLONASS and the EU’s Galileo. China also recently signed a $400 billion, 25-year trade and military partnership with Iran.

      Needless to say, Washington is hardly happy about China elbowing its way into a US-dominated region that contains a significant portion of the world’s energy supplies. In a worldwide competition for markets and influence, China is demonstrating considerable strengths.

      That, of course, creates friction. The United States and, to a certain extent, the EU have launched a campaign to freeze China out of markets and restrict its access to advanced technology. The White House successfully lobbied Britain and Australia to bar the Chinese company Huawei from installing a 5G digital network, and it is pressuring Israel and Brazil to do the same.

      An October Surprise?

      Not all of the current tensions are economic. The Trump administration needs a diversion from its massive failure to control the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Republican Party has made China-bashing a centerpiece of its election strategy. There is even the possibility that the White House might pull off an “October surprise” and initiate some kind of military clash with China.

      It is unlikely that Trump wants a full-scale war, but an incident in the South China Sea might rally Americans behind the White House. The danger is real, especially since polls in China and the US show there is growing hostility between both groups of people.

      But the tensions go beyond US President Donald Trump’s desperate need to be reelected in November. China is reasserting itself as a regional power and a force to be reckoned with worldwide.

      That the US and its allies view that with enmity is hardly a surprise. Britain did its best to block the rise of Germany before World War I, and the US did much the same with Japan in the lead up to the Pacific War.

      Germany and Japan were great military powers with a willingness to use violence to get their way. China is not a great military power and is more interested in creating profits than empires. In any case, a war between nuclear-armed powers is almost unimaginable (which is not to say it can’t happen).

      China recently softened its language toward the US, stressing peaceful coexistence. “We should not let nationalism and hotheadedness somehow kidnap our foreign policy,” says Xu Quinduo of the state-run China Radio. “Tough rhetoric should not replace rational diplomacy.”

      The new tone suggests that China has no enthusiasm for competing with the US military, but it would rather take the long view and let initiatives like the Belt and Road work for it. Unlike the Russians, the Chinese don’t want to see Trump reelected, and they clearly have decided not to give him any excuse to ratchet up the tensions as an election-year ploy.

      China’s recent clash with India, and its bullying of countries in the South China Sea, including Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines and Brunei, have isolated Beijing, and the Chinese leadership may be waking to the fact that they need allies, not adversaries. And patience.

      *[This article was originally published by FPIF.]

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

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      Trump’s Failure in the Middle East

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      A stunning and humiliating sign of America’s loss of leadership was the UN Security Council’s rejection on August 14 of the US attempt to extend the arms embargo on Iran. None of its traditional allies, including Britain, France and Germany, supported the US. Washington was only backed by one country: the Dominican Republic. 

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      The Trump administration is now scrambling to force a “snapback” in order to reinstate UN sanctions on Iran. As per the 2015 nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), if the Iranians violate the terms of the agreement, sanctions can be reintroduced. Yet Donald Trump, the US president, unilaterally withdrew from the JCPOA in May 2018 and has no standing to try to enforce its provisions. This latest attempt will also founder, further underlining the failure of Trump’s Middle Eastern adventure.

      “Maximum Pressure“

      Since 2017, Trump has set out to destroy the regime in Iran and, for this, he has had the support — indeed the encouragement — of Gulf Arab states and Israel but no one else. The rest of the world wants to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons in the Gulf by binding Iran to a permanent agreement to put its nuclear activities under an intrusive inspection regime of the International Atomic Energy Agency. The purpose of the JCPOA was to make this happen. 

      Trump’s policy of putting “maximum pressure” on Iran has caused unemployment, inflation, shortages of medicines and a near-collapse of the Iranian rial, but it has not toppled the regime, nor brought about its surrender. US pressure has united Iranians against America’s bullying, encouraged a resumption of some nuclear activity and pushed Iran further into the arms of Russia and China.

      It has also led to the Iranians firing missiles at Saudi and Emirati oil refineries and tankers in 2019 as a demonstration of the potential costs of an all-out assault on Iran. The Gulf states and the US blinked and didn’t respond to these strikes. The US has stepped back from threats of a full-scale attack — a further sign of the Trump administration’s muddled thinking.

      Embed from Getty Images

      The JCPOA is on life support, but it is not yet dead. If Joe Biden is elected as president in November, rejoins the nuclear pact — which was negotiated under the Obama administration that Biden served as vice president in — and lifts unilateral US sanctions, then Iran will cooperate. This is the strongest signal Iran has been sending and which all the other members of the UN Security Council have heard. Iran has also been sending this message through a multitude of back channels to the Gulf Arab states and even the US. But Trump refuses to listen.

      So, who does Trump listen to? Not his NATO allies, whom he prefers to insult and threaten. And not the strong bench of Middle Eastern scholars, diplomats and businessman who have spent the last 75 years building US influence and prestige in the region. Trump dismisses this group as the “deep state.”

      Instead, the president listens to the Gulf despots who fear Iran will undermine their power and to whom he can sell arms. He also listens to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli hawks who paint Iran as the antichrist that is bent on the destruction of Israel. 

      Lack of Strategy

      Trump, the narcissist, believes that he is right and the rest of the thinking world is wrong. His announcement of the UAE’s diplomatic pact with Israel — a public acknowledgment of a comprehensive relationship that already existed — was a public relations stunt to try show that his Gulf policies are working. National Security Adviser Richard O’Brien’s call for a Nobel Peace Prize for Trump was an added embarrassment.  

      The net result of Trump’s multiple Middle Eastern failures is that Syria has been partitioned between Turkish, Iranian and Russian interests, Iraq is firmly in the Iranian camp, Yemen is a humanitarian disaster, Libya is in the midst of a civil war where the US has no say whatsoever, Egypt is run by an unpopular military dictator whose grip is threatened by economic disaster, Lebanon is a failed state, and Saudi Arabia is ruled by a man who assassinates his enemies.

      Trump’s lack of strategy, absence of moral compass and failure of leadership have damaged America’s prestige and influence enormously. US dominance in the region may never recover.

      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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      A Tale of Two Democratic Women

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      Michelle Obama’s husband, Barack, was president of the United States for eight years. In the eyes of many Americans and certainly the media, Michelle has aspired to and achieved a status of moralist-in-chief of the nation. Having focused on issues such as healthy eating habits to combat obesity during her husband’s two terms in the White House, the former first lady created a public persona that clearly promotes not power or influence, but what philosophers have, since Socrates, called the “good life.” In other words, ethics.

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      Speaking at the virtual 2020 Democratic National Convention, Michelle has assumed the mantle of moralist. Like the rest of the Democratic Party, she regrets what the United States has become during President Donald Trump’s tenure. She laments the degraded image of the nation offered for contemplation by today’s youth. She lists the visible scars that nearly four years of Trump’s leadership have left and that the younger generation must ponder.

      “They see an entitlement that says only certain people belong here, that greed is good, and winning is everything because as long as you come out on top, it doesn’t matter what happens to everyone else,” she said in a speech broadcast on August 17.

      Here is today’s 3D definition:

      Winning is everything:

      The basic principle that guides the action of the entire political class in the United States and many other democracies, in which the goal of exercising power and having control of public resources trumps all other ethical or even pragmatic considerations

      Contextual Note

      No one more than Trump has emphasized the deeply-held American belief that life is all about competition. According to its dominant Protestant theology that innovated half a millennium ago by banishing purgatory, humanity falls into two categories: winners and losers. Michelle argues that this is too simplistic. She appears to reject this staple of US culture that clearly defines attitudes relating to war, sports and TV talent contests. 

      There is, after all, another dominant feature of US culture that in some ways mirrors and in other ways complements the logic of competition: public moralism. It implies boasting of one’s virtues and explicitly or implicitly condemning those who lack them. It has spawned cultural phenomena as diverse as the Salem witch trials, revivalist preachers, McCarthyism and today’s political correctness.

      Since the New England Puritans, the nation has always had a taste for a form of moralizing leadership often coupled with the triumphalism of representing a “shining city on a hill.” From its inception, the nation has insisted on believing in its moral superiority. The man who wanted to replace British rule with something better because he believed that “all men are created equal” and “that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” was, after all, an impenitent slave owner. But compared to the English crown, the new nation thrived on proclaimed ideals rather than inherited privilege.

      Which brings us to the ritual taking place this week that is repeated every four years in the US, the closest thing to a British coronation: the convention of one of the two reigning political parties. This year, the first truly unconventional convention takes place in an ambiance of technological hyperreality, a perfectly appropriate medium for its political hyperreality. What most of the speakers appear to be offering as they unanimously condemn Trump’s sins could be called  a version of “hypermorality.”

      As a moralist, Michelle knows what she is talking about. As a black woman, she understands the feeling of entitlement that successful white people may have, who understand that the system that supports them requires the deprivation and dependence of her own race. As a close friend of billionaires and someone who has become very wealthy herself, she is well placed to understand the ethos of those Americans who believe “greed is good.”

      Michelle has certainly seen Oliver Stone’s movie, “Wall Street.” She knows that people like Gordon Gekko who proclaim “greed is good” are fundamentally evil and capable of destabilizing the American system whose moral arc, like that of the universe itself, “bends towards justice.” In contrast to Park Avenue Trump and his ilk, she and her Democratic billionaire friends know that only some greed is good. In other words, greed is a product that should be consumed in moderation.

      Her critique of “winning is everything” is a bit harder to reconcile with her own family’s political ethos and that of the party she was addressing in her speech. Anyone who has experienced a political campaign knows that campaigns are about one thing only: winning. (Disclosure: This author was, in a remote past, on the campaign staff of a prominent Democratic personality known for his commitment to ideals, but even more so to winning.)

      Michelle may nevertheless have a point. In recent times, Democrats have excelled more at losing than winning. And yet they still manage to keep going. Her husband was a champion at winning, but he hasn’t been quite as successful in his quest to promote candidates capable of winning. Barack Obama pushed Hillary Clinton to run for office in 2016. It was thanks to his initiative that all the moderate candidates dropped out of the Democratic presidential primaries this year to back Joe Biden, effectively eliminating Bernie Sanders from what had begun to look like a potential dark horse victory. Despite his current lead in the polls, in November, Biden may face a humiliation similar to that of the “sure winner” Clinton in 2016.

      Historical Note

      When Michelle Obama condemns entitlement, she is denouncing the culture of inequality that exists in the US, an inequality that Donald Trump has frequently apologized for and sometimes actively promoted. She avoids mentioning another form of entitlement practiced by all US presidents, including her husband, that applies to the rest of the world. 

      This other form of entitlement contains the notion that certain people (Americans) know what values should regulate the lives of other less advanced people. America’s financial and military capacity helps those people to understand the value of that entitlement and sometimes punishes them for refusing to understand.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Like many Americans, Joe Biden believes that equality means the nation has the mission of imposing equality wherever it may be convenient to do so. This reasoning has been used to justify invasions, wars and imperial conquest. It even provided the pretext for the genocide of native tribes whose cultures, if permitted to persist, would not have been compatible with the notion of equality entertained by enlightened Europeans.

      The media agrees that Michelle made a powerful case against President Trump, whose guilt in the eyes of all Democrats is patent. Like most Americans, she has little idea of what Biden might do to cancel and replace Trump’s sins, turpitudes and errors. Treating the Democratic Party as her parishioners, she struck the fear of hellfire into their hearts when, prefaced by “trust me,” she boldly predicted that things would get even worse unless they elect Biden. Not too much about how things might get better.

      That job was left to Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez — who endorsed Bernie Sanders for the presidency — to accomplish the following day in the 60 seconds the party generously allotted to her to speak her mind. AOC, as she is known, arrogantly took a full 90 seconds to speak about repairing rather than denouncing wounds, addressing “the unsustainable brutality of an economy that rewards explosive inequalities of wealth for the few” and listing the issues, such as health, education and the environment that affect people’s daily lives. 

      Rather than bemoan President Trump, she recognized that “millions of people in the United States are looking for deep systemic solutions to our crises.” If granted 60 more seconds, she might even have given a few details about the programs she had in mind that effectively imply a systemic approach.

      Michelle and Alexandria have been the two stars of the first two days of the Democratic National Convention. An outsider may feel that their messages complement each other. Democratic insiders, including the Obamas, probably regret that they allowed AOC the 90 seconds that defined what the most dynamic elements of the party stand for.

      *[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