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      Press Freedom in the Philippines: Death by a Thousand Cuts

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      In less than two years, the editor-in-chief and CEO of the independent news site Rappler, Maria Ressa, has been issued 10 arrest warrants. The latest accusations against her involve tax evasion and failure to file accurate tax returns, which she testified against on March 4, 2021, before the Court of Tax Appeals. In addition, Ressa faces numerous other charges, including illegal foreign ownership of Rappler Holdings Corporation — the Philippine Constitution restricts foreign ownership of mass media in the country, subject to congressional regulation. The charges amount to 100 years of prison time if she is found guilty. This latest flurry of persecution is a continuum of the country’s troubling history of suppressing press freedom.

      The most high-profile case against Ressa, who is Filipino-American, concluded last year when she was found guilty of cyber libel. After an eight-month trial, Ressa, alongside Rappler journalist Reynaldo Santos Jr., was handed the verdict by the Manila Regional Trial Court on June 15. Ressa denied the charges, and both were released on bail pending appeal. However, they face up to six years in prison unless all appeals are rejected. The case against Ressa and Santos involves the latter’s article published in 2012 by Rappler, which made allegations of businessman Wilfredo Keng’s ties to then-Philippine Chief Justice Renato Corona. Santos’ article also alleged Keng’s involvement in illicit activities that include drug and human trafficking.

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      Based on information published locally by the Philippine Star in 2002 and an intelligence report by the National Security Council, Santos’s piece was published approximately four months before the Cybercrime Prevention Law came into effect in 2012. Its republication in 2014 due to a correction of a typo allowed for the court to give its guilty verdict to Ressa and Santos Jr. retroactively. The case has garnered attention and criticism from local and international media communities. Ressa herself claims the verdict and the numerous charges against her and Rappler are politically motivated. In her statement to the BBC, Ressa lamented, “I think what you’re seeing is death by a thousand cuts — not just of press freedom but of democracy.”

      A Dangerous Place

      Since his election in 2016, President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs has drawn criticism both nationally and abroad. According to The Guardian, tens of thousands of deaths in the Philippines are estimated to be the result of extrajudicial killings prompted by the president’s anti-drug crackdown. Rappler has been at the forefront of extensive coverage and criticism of the campaign. The correlation between Rappler’s reporting and the number of charges against Ressa has fueled the narrative of intimidation tactics by the Philippine government against the free press.   

      The Philippines has a long history of suppressing various forms of free speech and political activism. The current wave of persecution carries echoes of the martial law years during the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos in the 1970s 1980s, when journalists and activists were arrested and interrogated by the military and a media lockdown was implemented as newspapers and radio stations were ordered shut.

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      In more recent years, hundreds of farmers, trade union leaders, activists and environmentalists have been targeted by the Philippine government. According to a report by the UN Human Rights Office, at least 248 activists have been killed in the Philippines between 2015 and 2019. While Maria Ressa’s high-profile case has regenerated national and global outrage, it is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how treacherous an environment not only the media, but human and democratic rights defenders have to navigate in the country.

      The Philippines ranks 136 out of 180 countries on the Reporters Without Borders (RSF) World Press Freedom Index. After the 2009 massacre of 32 journalists in Maguindanao province ordered by a local warlord, RSF has regularly deemed the country as one of the most dangerous places in Asia for journalists. Adding insight to Maria Ressa’s criminal libel case, the organization noted that “Private militias, often hired by local politicians, silence journalists with complete impunity.” Freedom of the press is guaranteed under the country’s constitution, yet in 2018, the Philippine Centre for Media Freedom and Responsibility tallied 85 attacks on the media by the Duterte administration, including death threats, killings and attempted murder.

      President Duterte’s public remarks against the media also contribute to the grim state of press freedom in the country. In 2016, the president stated: “Just because you’re a journalist you are not exempted from assassination, if you’re a son of a bitch. Freedom of expression cannot help you if you have done something wrong.” In 2018, responding to a Rappler reporter, Duterte was captured saying, “you have been throwing trash… If you are trying to throw garbage at us, then the least that we can do is explain how about you? Are you also clean?”

      The Cybercrime Prevention Law, which was used to convict Ressa, has itself been criticized by the public as having the potential to further threaten freedom of speech and expression. Signed into law by then-President Benigno Aquino III on September 12, 2012, the legislation was primarily established to address crimes such as hacking, identity theft, child pornography and cybersex. Its additional provisions caused worry amongst the public for expanding its legal parameters to include any libelous speech or statements made by citizens on their private social media accounts. Senator Tito Sotto, who at the time was being attacked on social media for alleged plagiarism, is noted for suggesting the inclusion of the libel provision in the law. According to GMA News Online, “There were fears that even retweeting an offensive comment could land one in jail.”

      Since the implementation, the law has been cited to charge journalists other than Ressa for cyber libel, including Ramon Tulfo and RJ Nieto. Prior to Ressa’s verdict, Councilor Archie Yongco, from the province of Zamboanga del Sur, was found guilty of cyber libel in March 2020 based on a scathing Facebook post against a rival politician. Although he deleted his post just minutes after its publication, screenshots of his comments were used as evidence in the case. Yongco faces up to eight years of imprisonment and is the first individual to be given a guilty verdict under the Cybercrime Prevention Law. 

      A Series of Threats

      The guilty verdict against Maria Ressa and Reynaldo Santos Jr. was compounded by a series of legislative threats against the media in 2020. On July 10, the House Committee on Legislative Franchises voted against renewing the franchise license for the broadcasting network ABS-CBN. Ressa, commenting on the closure of the broadcaster, stated: “what happened to ABS-CBN can happen to all of us. Journalists, we have to hold power to account.… We need to continue to demand accountability.” 

      Shortly after the closure of ABS-CBN, there were public concerns over the introduction of the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020 that came into effect on July 18. The act allows the state to arrest and imprison suspects without a warrant. The alarm among citizens came from the act’s expanded definition of terrorism that broadly includes “engaging in acts intended to endanger a person’s life” and causing damage to public property. Similar to the provisions of the Cybercrime Prevention Law, the new legislation poses threats to users on social media who express political sentiments or dissent. In this case, however, fears are not related to being accused of libel but of so-called red-tagging — the practice of targeting or blacklisting suspected members of the Communist Party of the Philippines and the New People’s Army, both of which have been declared as terrorist organizations by the government.

      The legislation, compounded by the Duterte administration’s worrisome human rights record, incited widespread fears of the decline of freedom of speech and expression. Social media users who criticize the government also voiced concern over the act, especially since the head of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, Lieutenant General Gilbert Gapay, expressed interest in including social media in the ambit of the law. Local and international press freedom advocates have filed petitions with the Supreme Court in Manila to reject the legislation, calling it unconstitutional.

      After nearly a year of grappling with the COVID-19 pandemic and an economic downturn caused by lockdown measures, the Philippines continues to navigate numerous challenges. Maria Ressa’s and Rappler’s legal battles, as well as the continuous frictions between the Duterte administration and the media, exacerbate fears over the erosion of democratic rights and press freedom during these uncertain times. 

      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

      Can Chinawood Win Soft Power for Beijing?

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      With movie theaters closed all over the world due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Hollywood studios had little reason for celebration over the past year. In business for over a century, Universal Pictures (founded in 1912), Paramount (1912), Warner Bros. (1923), Walt Disney (1923) and Columbia Pictures (1924) now have an extra reason to be concerned. In 2020, China took over Hollywood’s crown as the world’s biggest movie market, with a revenue of $3.2 billion, 84% of which came from domestic sales.

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      Is this new status enough for China? Probably not. New blockbusters will soon rebalance these numbers, but soft power — the ability to seduce people from all over the world through culture — takes time to build up. Soft power also brings lasting income to its country of origin in terms of products and services, like tourism for example. When in 1934, Walt Disney began work on “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” other film studio chiefs derided the project as “Disney’s Folly,” since adults, not children, were considered to be primary consumers. These executives forgot that children watch films over and over again and want all the related merchandise. “Snow White” went on to become the first film in history to gross $100 million, selling 400 million tickets from 1937 to 1948.

      Welcome to Chinawood

      These are just numbers. Disney’s greatest achievement was making his creations into lucrative vehicles of US culture for decades to come. That is what China wants to achieve. It has been taking similar steps ever since farmer-turned-entrepreneur Xu Wenrong began building Hengdian World Studios in the 1990s. Known as Chinawood, it became the largest outdoor film studio in the world and one of China’s biggest domestic tourist attractions, offering historic film sets, a resort hotel and live performances. Marketing itself “China’s tourism and performing arts capital,” Chinawood attracts thousands of TV shows and film productions every year.

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      Also, since fewer than 40 foreign films are allowed to take a bite of this massive market due to a strict quota system, Chinawood also houses foreign productions like “The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor,” a Hollywood-Chinawood co-production (these escape quota restrictions), starring the likes of Brendan Fraser and Jet Li, grossed over $400 million worldwide in the first 21 weeks of its release.

      Is this enough to make Chinawood a new soft power? The answer is, probably not. Because Chinawood productions face a similar challenge as all the other blockbusters shot in the country, these films often lack creativity, self-criticism, audacity and freedom. Take the recent historical war drama, Guan Hu’s “The Eight Hundred,” for example. The film — at $470 million, 2020’s top-grossing production — pushed China to the number one spot in global box office revenues. However, most of this profit comes from China itself and not international markets. While European and US theaters still struggle to open because of COVID-19, even without the pandemic, it’s hard to say that such productions could help the Chinese film industry overseas.

      “The Eight Hundred” was abruptly pulled from a scheduled premiere at the Shanghai Film Festival in 2019 without an explanation. A version shorter by 11 minutes later opened in theaters, with much fewer scenes involving Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang forces. Besides likely censorship, what may explain the little impact the film had internationally, as the film critic Tony Rayns suggests, is that while avoiding the “rabid China-is-top-dog quality of the Wolf Warrior movies,” its “spirit is resolutely neo-nationalist,” with “all the bombast and jingoism of the current moment.”

      Hollywood became an effective soft powerhouse not only because of million-dollar budgets and top-quality products, but also thanks to creative freedom. For instance, Oliver Stone’s “Born on the Fourth of July” (1989) and Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now” (1979), both masterpieces, were expressly critical of US military intervention in Vietnam. The films are also on the patriotic side, with American values overemphasized. However, by criticizing America’s own culture and politics, the films are far from being hard-power propaganda.

      Hard Power Interference

      The Communist Party of China (CPP), on the other hand, interferes directly in cultural productions. According to a report by James Tager, PEN America’s deputy director of Free Expression Research and Policy, since 2011, the CCP’s Central Committee issued a statement declaring the “urgency for China to strengthen its cultural soft power and global cultural influence.” As Louisa Lim and Julia Bergin write in The Guardian, the party is trying to “reshape the global information environment with massive infusions of money” with the aim being to “influence public opinion overseas in order to nudge foreign governments into making policies favorable toward China’s Communist Party.”

      The official People’s Daily once declared, “we cannot be soft on soft power,” calling for culture must be exported in order to strengthen China’s international stance. Chinawood is part of this effort, which includes $10 billion spent annually on public diplomacy, in contrast with $2 billion allocated by the US Department of State in 2018. Soft power works well when China opens hundreds of Confucius Institutes to spread its language and culture around the world. What doesn’t work is when the same party severely punishes Chinese ethnical minorities, like the Muslim Uighurs facing persecution in Xinjiang.

      China already has an important cultural soft power: its art, poetry, painting, sculpture and pottery, from the early imperial dynasties to the 20th century, coveted by museums and collectors around the world. It succeeds because the state hard power doesn’t interfere significantly with it. But when it comes to contemporary culture — films, games, TV shows and apps like Tik Tok — Chinese hard power seems to impose harmful control. That’s not how soft power works. It needs freedom and self-criticism to produce genuine and seductive art.

      George Orwell once said that “Journalism is printing what someone does not want printed; everything else is public relations.” The phrase also pertains to the arts and the entertainment industry. When President Xi Jinping says that “the stories of China should be well told, voices of China well spread and characteristics of China well explained,” by “well” he probably means “positive.” That is definitely not how one wins soft power for the long term.

      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

      Fault Lines in Biden’s Approach to China

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      So far, the White House has undertaken a flurry of activity designated to back up President Joe Biden’s pledge to be tough-minded on China. He has warned that Beijing will face “extreme competition” from the United States. Taiwan’s top representative was invited to the presidential inauguration on January 20 and the Biden team has promised to continue US arms sales to Taipei.

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      Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said he agrees, conceptually at least, that former President Donald Trump “was right in taking a tougher approach to China” and that he supports the prior administration’s finding that Beijing’s treatment of Uighur minorities in Xinjiang constitutes “genocide.” In early February, the new administration conducted naval maneuvers to contest Chinese dominance in the South China Sea and reaffirmed the US security commitment to defending the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, which are controlled by Tokyo but claimed by Beijing.

      Veterans of the Obama Administration

      Yet all of this cannot conceal the two major fault lines threatening to undermine President Biden’s promise. The first centers on the heavy presence of Obama-era veterans on his national security team, particularly those associated with that administration’s “strategic pivot” toward the region. Two of President Biden’s top staffers were key architects of the much-touted initiative: Kurt M. Campbell, who was in charge of East Asian affairs in the State Department under President Barack Obama and is now the White House’s Asia policy czar, and Jake Sullivan, who was deputy chief of staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and is now Biden’s national security adviser.

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      The rhetoric of Obama’s pivot to Asia simultaneously antagonized Beijing while its actual track record largely failed to impress other Asian governments. According to one assessment, the pivot’s hype caused a marked increase in Chinese military spending at the same time that sharp cuts in the Pentagon budget were hampering US military operations in Asia. During a visit to Japan in 2013, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff admitted that “We are going to have to think about how to remain a global power with fewer resources. I think we are going to have to find ways to accomplish almost the same things but with smaller force structures.” In early 2014, the Pentagon’s acquisitions chief publicly stated that budget constraints were forcing a reconsideration of the initiative.

      As Obama’s coordinator for North Korea policy has acknowledged, the effort “was ill conceived and bungled in its implementation.” In late 2013, the Asahi Shimbun, one of Japan’s largest newspapers, noted an “increasingly widely shared view in Japan and the region that the Obama administration may not have enough political capital or the financial assets to implement” the pivot. It added that some have even come to see it as no more than a “bumper sticker.” Similarly, a leading Australian analyst observed, “There is a growing perception in Asia that the Obama administration’s much-ballyhooed ‘pivot to Asia’ has run out of puff.” By late 2014, a foreign affairs columnist for The New York Times argued that most of Asia had concluded the pivot was nothing more than hot air.

      Memories of this track record persist. A commentator focused on Asian affairs observed last year that “Officials in Tokyo, Taipei, New Delhi, Singapore and other capitals have grown relatively comfortable with Trump and his tough approach on China. The prospect of a Biden presidency, by contrast, brings back uncomfortable memories of an Obama era that many Asian movers and shakers recall as unfocused and soft toward Beijing.”

      Just before the 2020 election, The Washington Post noted that current and former officials of the Taiwanese government and ruling party had “privately expressed concern that a return of Obama-era foreign policy advisers in a potential Biden administration could mean a U.S. approach that is more conciliatory toward China compared with the Trump administration’s — and less supportive of Taiwan.” The Financial Times also reported along similar lines.

      The personnel problem extends to Biden himself, as he is a late convert to the tough-on-China crowd. Prior to his becoming the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee, he had regularly dismissed the notion that China mounted much of a geopolitical challenge. His campaign staffers were reportedly troubled by his naivete, and one adviser later admitted that for the rest of the campaign, Biden had to be “deprogrammed” on China. While this was going on, Robert M. Gates, Obama’s first defense secretary, reaffirmed to CBS News his earlier judgment that Biden has “been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.” 

      Standing Strong vs. Climate Change

      The second fault line running through Biden’s approach to China is the irreconcilability between maintaining a hard line and his administration’s insistence on the pressing urgency of securing Beijing’s cooperation on climate change. Biden officials claim they can somehow manage this tension and will not have to make significant concessions in other policy areas in order to fulfill its global climate ambitions.

      John Kerry, President Obama’s secretary of state when the 2015 Paris climate agreement was signed, is now Biden’s special climate envoy with a spot on the National Security Council. He insists, for example, that climate is a critical stand-alone issue that can be compartmentalized on the US–China bilateral agenda. Administration officials believe that collaboration is so self-evidently in Beijing’s interest that it will naturally sign on to Washington’s new push for significant climate action.

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      The Chinese government so far is not much impressed with this logic, with its foreign ministry stating that climate could not be separated from other issues “unlike flowers that can bloom in a greenhouse despite winter chill.” A Chinese government Twitter account also declared that “China is willing to work with the US on climate change. But such cooperation cannot stand unaffected by the overall China–US relations. It is impossible to ask for China’s support in global affairs while interfering in its domestic affairs and undermining its interests.” 

      Given the White House’s fervor on the issue, one suspects the Biden administration will be making the concessions in the end. During the presidential campaign, Biden asserted that climate change is an “existential threat” and the “number one issue facing humanity.” Now that he is in the Oval Office, Biden believes “we can’t wait any longer.” He signed a directive making the issue the “center of our national security and foreign policy” and ordered government agencies to factor “climate considerations” into their assessment of international priorities. Kerry uses similar language, declaring that “the stakes on climate change just simply couldn’t be any higher than they are right now. It is existential.” He added that Biden “is deeply committed — totally seized by this issue.”

      In shutting down construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline, as well as freezing new oil and natural gas leases on federal lands and waters, the administration has also shown it is willing to subordinate important domestic goals, such as energy security and employment stability in the middle of a job-killing pandemic, to climate priorities. It has written off large job losses as inevitable and is accepting of a backlash from important labor unions that aided its electoral victory just a few months ago.

      Susan Rice Returns

      It is also telling that Susan Rice, the national security adviser during Obama’s second term, has returned to the White House as President Biden’s top domestic affairs coordinator. Bilahari Kausikan, the former senior Singaporean diplomat widely regarded in East Asia, recently exclaimed that Rice “was among those who thought that the US should deemphasise competition to get China’s cooperation on climate change, which is a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of international relations.” Another observer has made the same point, noting that “Obama and Rice wanted to work with China on issues such as climate change, but they did so at the cost of treating Beijing with kid gloves.” 

      Influential members of the Democratic foreign policy establishment have advocated the same thing. Anne-Marie Slaughter, the head of an influential think tank in Washington and a former director of policy planning in the Obama-era State Department, recently argued that “Biden should prioritize global issues over geopolitical competition” and that the president’s focus on climate “should guide his foreign policy as well.”

      Rank-and-file party members also share this view. In a recent public opinion survey, Democrats by a wide margin believe climate change to be a more critical threat than the rise of China as a peer competitor to the US. Indeed, according to Democratic respondents, China did not even rank among the top seven challenges facing the country.

      Something will have to give in the new administration’s approach toward China. There is already an early indication of how things will play out. Notwithstanding the protestations about Beijing’s egregious human rights abuses, the Biden team continues to support holding the 2022 Winter Olympics in that city.

      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 US Politics

      The Good American review: Bob Gersony and a better foreign policy

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      What adjective should describe “the American” active in foreign policy? Graham Greene chose “quiet”, as his character harmed a country he did not understand. Eugene Burdick and William Lederer used “ugly”.
      Robert D Kaplan, one of America’s most thoughtful chroniclers of foreign affairs, proposes “good” to describe Bob Gersony, who in “a frugal monastic existence that has been both obscure and extraordinary” has devoted his life to using the power and treasure of the US to serve others through humanitarian action.
      A son of Holocaust refugees, he never held a formal government position. He was instead a contractor for the state department, USAid or the United Nations. Yet his work improved the lives of millions, saving many, and corrected policies that might otherwise have been implemented by “ugly” or “quiet” figures who did not understand the countries in which they operated.
      Gersony’s method was simple: to conduct interviews through a trusted translator with individuals fleeing conflict, to stay “in continuous, tactile contact with the evidence”. It was exhausting work in extraordinarily difficult circumstances but his information, transmitted to senior policymakers in highly detailed “Gersony reports”, was both essential and frequently (as in Mozambique and Bosnia) the opposite of what the policy community believed or wished to believe.
      The truth about a place “emerges from the bottom up”, he said, and thus “you must always believe refugees”.
      Accountability, absolute integrity, objectivity and boldness in speaking to authority were his watchwords. His independence meant personal insecurity. He often shared a simple shack with a translator and slept with his notes under his pillow. Personal danger and hardship were part of the job, yet in no other way could the truth emerge and successful policy be formulated.
      “When you listen to ordinary people,” Gersony believed, “there is so much wisdom.”
      Kaplan calls Gersony “a business-oriented math brain with a non-ideological conservative streak … think of him as an emotionally tortured character straight out of a Saul Bellow novel, engrossed throughout his life in the brooding and dangerous tropical settings defined by Joseph Conrad.”
      This is also the story of another era of US foreign policy, one in which realism and humanitarianism combined to include human rights in the national interest, against the backdrop of the cold war, so often hot in the developing world. Human rights and grand strategy complemented each other. Gersony had bosses who were “authentic, heartland Americans … the ultimate selfless public servants … deeply moral without being ideological, while operating at the top of the power structure”.
      Gersony started in Guatemala, where he began a language school and after the 1976 earthquake worked with relief organizations. He took charge of hurricane relief in Dominica, standing up to the prime minister, asserting, “If you empower people, they won’t be corrupt.” Moving on to El Salvador in the civil war, he recommended massive employment programs for displaced persons, building sewage canals and cobblestone streets – practical improvements that also discouraged guerrillas from attacking the people.
      His solutions were often elegantly simple because they provided the dignity of work and reflected what people actually wanted. And yet, as Kaplan writes, “He still had no credentials … in the ordinary careerist sense, he had risen as far as he ever would.” For Kaplan, as for Gersony, “a meaningful life is about truth, not success.”
      The assignments kept coming: Vietnamese boat people in Thailand; Sudan and Chad; Honduras, where his counterintuitive but accurate recommendation showed once again that “ground-level fieldwork … triumphs over the discussion of big abstract ideas”. In Uganda’s Lowero Triangle, he uncovered genocide with the unexpected help of a British officer advising President Obote. The secretary of state, George Shultz, cut off aid.
      As Kaplan writes, “History pivoted in southern Africa thanks to Bob Gersony.” After an unusual meeting with Shultz and Maureen Reagan, daughter of the president, the US did not aid Renamo guerrillas in Mozambique. Gersony tackled a highly complex situation in Somalia and in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide worked with UNHCR on the repatriation of Hutus. As one official said, his unwelcome truth-telling “stopped the killing machine”. He worked in northern Uganda with World Vision long before Joseph Kony became a hashtag. Knowing the dangers of travel in that region, “he treated the motor pool chief like a high official”.
      Gersony worked tirelessly. “If we skipped lunch,” he said, “we could interview one more refugee, and each refugee was precious – you never knew which one would yield a breakthrough in understanding.”
      By Kaplan’s own admission, his book is also something of his own story, a lament for a time when internationalist moderates dominated both parties and the foreign service enjoyed “the last golden age of American diplomacy … when the bureaucracy at all levels had sufficient money and rewarded talent” in furthering “that sturdy, moderate national security consensus that no longer exists”.
      Embed
      Kaplan does not quite regret the end of the cold war but he does note the resulting separation between idealism and power.
      Indeed, Gersony’s career ended in a very different world. Kaplan sees Plan Colombia, an early 2000s push against leftwing guerrillas and drug cartels, as “a precursor for the fiascos in Afghanistan and Iraq”, where gigantic projects and a “dysfunctional interagency process” often failed for lack of perspective. Gersony’s later tasks included tracking food assistance for North Korea, examining the Maoist insurgency in Nepal (and wishing USAid had continued road-building there), and disaster planning in Micronesia, where “in this emerging naval century … Oceania was indeed at the heart of geopolitics” and control of shipping lanes.
      Can realism and idealism combine again? Only through what the French academic Gérard Prunier wrote about Gersony’s “great respect for the factual truth. The world is not just an interpretation or a place for competing narratives.” In the end, Kaplan’s life of Gersony recalls the advice of another quintessential American, Mark Twain: “Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.”
      The Good American is published in the US by Random House More

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      in World Politics

      How Tough Is Biden Prepared to Look?

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      A week after taking office, US President Joe Biden made a point of breaking with the position of his predecessor, Donald Trump, who famously blamed China for deliberately spreading the coronavirus. Trump insisted on calling it the Wuhan flu, Kung flu or any other xenophobic alternative. Coming to the defense of the entire Asian community in the United States, Biden issued a memorandum stating the following: “Inflammatory and xenophobic rhetoric has put Asian-American and Pacific Islander persons, families, communities and businesses at risk.”

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      The World Health Organization (WHO) team conducting an investigation in Wuhan released its preliminary findings this week on the origins of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. It maintained, as Reuters reports, “that the virus likely came from bats and not a laboratory in the Chinese city of Wuhan.” On February 10, an official of the US State Department announced what appeared to be a retreat to the Trump administration’s position: “The United States will not accept World Health Organization … findings coming out of its coronavirus investigation in Wuhan, China without independently verifying the findings using its own intelligence and conferring with allies.”

      One of the WHO inspectors, British zoologist and expert on disease ecology Peter Daszak, reacting to the State Department’s note, addressed this advice to Biden in a tweet: “Well now this👇. @JoeBiden has to look tough on China. Please don’t rely too much on US intel: increasingly disengaged under Trump & frankly wrong on many aspects. Happy to help.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Look tough:

      1. The principal action required to maintain the status of a bully, a person whose demeanor counts more than their substance
      2. The principal action required to maintain the image of the leader of a hegemon, called upon to make a show of being hyper-aggressive toward nations elected by politicians and the media as an existential threat  

      Contextual Note

      While the WHO team offered no definitive explanation of the origin, it focused on different possibilities of animal transmission requiring further investigation. When asked at a press conference on February 10 whether he had “any interest in punishing China for not being truthful about COVID last year,” President Biden cagily replied, “I’m interested in getting all the facts.” That answer leaves him free to look tough on China or, alternatively, to look tough at the intelligence that for the past four years has done what intelligence always does, responded obsequiously to the political solicitations of the administration in place.

      One American who, for the past four years, has made a point of looking tough and has been regularly featured in the media is Mike Pompeo, the final secretary of state under the Trump administration. In a desperate effort to keep the Trump mystique going to maintain its flagging ratings, Fox News brought Pompeo back to defend the Wuhan flu theme Trump consistently exploited for electoral advantage during last year’s presidential election campaign. In the interview, “Pompeo said ‘significant evidence’ remained that the coronavirus originated in a Chinese laboratory, casting doubt Tuesday on the World Health Organization‘s assessment that it likely spread from animals to humans.”

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      Pompeo, a former CIA director, admitted in 2019 that his job at the Central Intelligence Agency consisted of lying, cheating and stealing. He implied that he was now telling the truth, a fact ironically borne out by his honest admission of duplicity while at the CIA. And yet, there may be reason even today to believe that Pompeo has retained something of his talent for lying, which he will be willing to use for what he deems virtuous purposes. 

      The language people like Pompeo use often reveals how they manage to bend the truth when they aren’t simply betraying it. In the Fox interview, Pompeo explains, “I continue to know that there was significant evidence that this may well have come from that laboratory.” What can Pompeo possibly mean when he says, “I continue to know”? Is knowledge for Pompeo something that can appear and disappear? Knowledge is a state of awareness of truth, not an act of will, something one can decide according to the circumstances. 

      And because what someone knows must be a fact, what is the solid fact he says he continues to know? He tells us that it is the idea that the coronavirus “may have come from” the Wuhan laboratory. But something that “may” be true is at best a reasonable hypothesis and at worst a fabricated lie. Something that “may” be true cannot be called knowledge. Any honest speaker would use the verb “suspect.” But, in this age of conspiracy theories, people tend to suspect anything that is merely suspected. And Fox News has always preferred assertions to suspicions.

      In the same interview, Pompeo describes his recommendations for the US policy on China. He says the nation must “continue to make sure that the next century remains one dominated by rule of law, sovereignty and the things that the America first foreign policy put in place.” 

      Besides the fact that Pompeo offers another example of his favorite verb, “continue,” his odd assertion that “the next century” (the 22nd?) must be “dominated by rule of law” offers a curious yoking of two theoretically antinomic ideas: dominance and rule of law. The very idea of “rule of law” posits a relationship of equality between all concerned parties. It opposes the effect of domination. Rule of law is about level playing fields and fair play. Pompeo’s formulation reveals that he thinks of the rule of law as a specific tool of American domination. This is of course consistent with the facts, whatever the administration. The US still steadfastly refuses the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court and Trump’s “America First” policy refused any law other than its own.

      For those wondering why Fox News has taken the trouble to interview the former secretary of state of a president now being tried for sedition, the journalists reveal the interest at the end of the interview. Fox sees Pompeo as a worthy contender for the 2024 presidential campaign. He’s a cleaner version of Trump, but one who will always talk and look tough.

      Historical Note

      After the most contentious presidential election in its history, the US has been preparing to experience the transition from one radical style of hyperreality to another — from Donald Trump’s outlandish display of petulant rhetoric committed to reshaping the world in his image to Joe Biden’s reserved and fundamentally uncommitted avuncular manner. Just as in 2008, when they voted in Barack Obama after eight years of George W. Bush’s chaotic wars and a Wall Street crash, Americans are expecting a change of style and focus from the never-ending drama of the Trump years. 

      But just as the self-proclaimed change candidate Obama, once in office, showed more respect for continuity than commitment to renewal, on the theme of foreign policy, President Biden appears to be following Trump’s lead while simply reducing the tone. This phenomenon reflects a more fundamental reality at the core of today’s pseudo-democratic oligarchy. It is regularly masked by the transition from Republican to Democrat and vice versa. The reigning political hyperreality, despite the contrasting personal styles of successive presidents, will always prevail. Continuity trumps change.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Biden’s future policy on both China and Iran provides two cases in point. The clock is ticking on the need to recalibrate both of these relationships, more particularly on Iran, which has an election coming in just a few months. As the world anxiously awaits the new orientations of the Biden administration, the kind of continuity Pompeo appreciates may prove more dominant than the reversal people have come to expect. After all, Trump set about reversing everything Obama did, so why shouldn’t Biden do the same? The answer may simply be that that’s not what Democrats do.

      The average American has never been seriously interested in foreign policy. That very fact has consistently led to the kind of Manichaean thinking that dominated during the Cold War. In his 2000 election campaign, the inimitable George W. Bush summed up how that Manichaean system works: “When I was coming up, it was a dangerous world, and you knew exactly who they were. It was us versus them, and it was clear who them was. Today, we are not so sure who the they are, but we know they’re there.” As John Keats once wrote, “That is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” 

      *[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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      Is China the New Champion of Globalization?

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      On January 25, addressing a virtual World Economic Forum, China’s President Xi Jinping not only strongly advocated for a multilateral approach to the COVID-19 pandemic but insisted on the virtues and systemic benefits of free trade and globalization. Jeopardizing those elements may introduce conflict into the international system, Xi warned, clearly referring to, although not mentioning, the United States. This is not the first time Xi has credited himself as the “champion of globalization,” in particular when attending meetings in Davos. In 2017, in the early days of Donald Trump’s presidency, with the long shadow of barriers to trade and isolationist policies just starting to appear on the horizon, China’s president made important remarks encouraging free trade and opening up the markets.

      However, with Trump out and Joe Biden now in the Oval Office, there seems little to suggest any substantial change in US policy, at least in the foreseeable future. If the US isn’t particularly eager to work with China toward free trade and multilateral cooperation, the European Union, and Germany in particular, quickly opted for a completely different approach, signing a key investment deal with Beijing at the end of last year. The Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI) will grant a greater level of market access for investors than ever before, including new important market openings.

      Forecasting the US-China Relationship

      READ MORE

      Washington did not miss the opportunity to express its concerns about a deal that suddenly and unexpectedly sidelined the United States at a moment when, after four years of relative anarchy and opportunism, restarting transatlantic relations should be a priority. Writing in the Financial Times, Gideon Rachman recently pointed out how little sense it makes to rely on a US security guarantee in Europe while undermining its security policy in the Pacific, considering how much Europe has benefitted from the fact that for the past 70 years, the world’s most powerful nation has been a liberal democracy. Germany, in fact, was able over the last decades to exercise a sui generis role of Zivilmacht (civilian power) by framing its national interest in geoeconomic terms, encouraging German exports worldwide while outsourcing its defense to the reassuring presence of US troops.

      To better understand Xi’s quasi-imperial stance at the World Economic Forum, it has to be placed not only against the backdrop of the recent investment deals with the European Union or with the 15 countries of the Asia-Pacific region, but on the big news that China is on course to overtake the US as the world’s biggest economy by 2028, five years ahead of earlier predictions, mainly due to the asymmetric impact of COVID-19. While it is clear that China has successfully contained the Sars-Cov-2 outbreak and the Chinese economy is now recovering at a higher speed than other countries, it is also true that a lack of transparency and delays in sharing information with the international community about the virus have contributed to an acceleration of the pandemic at a global level.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Nonetheless, in the current debate over shaping more efficient emergency policies, China is still emerging as the model to follow and imitate, despite being unpopular. There is little doubt that in the “social imaginary” of liberal societies, as reports from Europe and the US suggest, authoritarian regimes are seen by many as more efficient and better prepared to deal with crises than democracies. Yet we must not forget that this efficiency comes at the inevitable cost of political and civil rights.

      Xi Jinping is well aware that the Biden administration can finally change course for the US and its allies, forging a united and progressive front after years of populist, nativist and authoritarian politics. Perhaps this element can help understand Xi’s assertiveness at the World Economic Forum better than the recent economic successes. After all, political and civil rights are China’s Achilles’ heel. Criticism of the Communist Party, let alone advocating for basic human rights such as freedom of speech or the rule of law, inexorably leads to repression that falls with equal severity on the rich metropolis of Hong Kong and the poor areas of Xinjiang, sweeping up ordinary citizens and billionaires alike, from Joshua Wong to Jack Ma.

      Can China credibly profess the virtues of globalization to achieve harmony and balance in an international system if it doesn’t adhere to international law? Can Beijing speak of cooperation to solve global problems when it has withheld vital information about the threat of the COVID-19 pandemic? As Xi Jinping continues to steer the Middle Kingdom out of its historical isolation, avoiding challenging the United States for the position of world leader will be difficult, given China’s demographics and economic status. Will these two Weltanschauungen, two comprehensively different conceptions of the world, sooner or later present the international community with a choice?

      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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      Myanmar: What Comes Next for Minority Groups?

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      The military coup in Myanmar has been widely denounced as a lethal blow to a fledgling democracy. But it also increases the likelihood of further atrocities and mass displacement. The world cannot forget that the Myanmar military is the same institution that led the campaign of genocide against the Rohingya people.

      The coup will negatively affect much of the population in Myanmar, rolling back tentative democratic reforms and freedoms and leading to further mass arrests. But ethnic minority groups, which have long been a target of military abuses, have particular reason to be concerned.

      Is There New Hope for Human Rights in Bahrain?

      READ MORE

      Even with the veil of a quasi-civilian government in recent years, the military has continued to commit atrocities against the Kachin, Karen, Rakhine and other states inside Myanmar. For the 600,000 Rohingya still living in Myanmar, the threat is even clearer. They survived the military’s genocidal campaign in August 2017. Indeed, the head of the military and now of the country, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, has referred to the Rohingya as a long-standing problem and an “unfinished job.”

      The coup will also affect refugees outside of the country. The more than 1 million Rohingya living in Bangladesh now face even greater odds against a safe return to their homeland in Myanmar. In a way, the coup only underscores the reality that conditions for return have been far from safe and sustainable all along.

      Rohingya in Bangladesh have told Refugees International that they are alarmed by the coup and worried about the fate of loved ones still in Myanmar. At least with the quasi-civilian government, there was some hope that international pressure could eventually inspire a change. But as long as the military — the entity responsible for the genocide — remains in charge, the idea of a safe return seems inconceivable.

      International Pressure on Myanmar

      If there is a silver lining, it is that the newly galvanized international outrage about the coup might break the inertia in addressing the military’s abuses. In a report released in January 2021, Refugees International laid out critical policy advice for the Biden administration to address the Rohingya crisis. The report recommendations also provide a playbook for responding to the coup.

      As a first move, the Biden administration must recognize the crimes committed by Myanmar’s military for what they are: crimes against humanity and genocide. Given the ample evidence available, it is perplexing that the United States and many other countries have not yet made this determination. A genocide declaration would not only speak truth to power about what the Myanmar military has done to the Rohingya, but it would also galvanize more urgent global action. It would signal how serious the US and other allies take the threat of the Myanmar military.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Second, the Biden administration should use the urgency of the coup and a genocide determination to engage allies and lead a global response marked by diplomatic pressure and coordinated targeted sanctions. The Biden administration has already said it is considering new sanctions and is reaching out to other countries to coordinate. Those sanctions should be placed both on Myanmar’s military leaders and military-owned enterprises, including, but not limited to, the two large conglomerates, the Myanmar Economic Corporation (MEC) and Myanmar Economic Holdings Limited (MEHL). Future lifting of sanctions should be phased and tied not only to a return to the quasi-civilian government elected in 2020, but also progress on creating conditions conducive to the return of Rohingya refugees.

      Third, the US and other allies must push for a multilateral arms embargo. Ideally, this would be done through the action of the UN Security Council. But as long as China and Russia are likely to block such actions, countries like the United States and European Union members that have already ended arms sales to Myanmar should use diplomatic pressure to urge others — including India, Israel and Ukraine — to do the same.

      Fourth, countries must revitalize support for international accountability efforts, including at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Court. The Gambia’s genocide case against Myanmar at the ICJ has the support of the 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation, and Canada and the Netherlands have expressed their intent to intervene in the case. The US and other allies should add their support.

      Finally, the United States and other allies must push for coordinated high-level diplomatic pressure at the UN Security Council, even with Chinese and Russian reluctance to allow stronger measures. As an important first step, the Security Council did issue a statement that expressed concern about the coup and called for the release of detainees; however, it fell short of outright condemnation of the coup and did not commit to any concrete action. Nonetheless, a discussion at this highest level still adds pressure on Myanmar’s military by keeping the possibility of stronger action alive. The fact that there had been no UN Security Council session on the Rohingya for the past two years is ludicrous and only fueled the Myanmar military’s impunity.

      Ethnic minority groups in Myanmar know all too well that the military is capable of — and willing to execute — mass atrocities. The US and all states that stand for democracy, and against mass atrocities, must act now while the eyes of the world are on Myanmar.

      *[Daniel Sullivan is the senior advocate for human rights at Refugees International.]

      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 the Left and the Right Radicalize Each Other

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      The year 2020 has seen a spate of activity that has fueled the growth of far-right activity globally. The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a spike in conspiracy theory communities that are intimately linked with the radical right, including the QAnon movement and anti-lockdown groups. Another such moment was the global protest movement against racial injustice under the banner of Black Lives Matter. Sparked in the United States by the death of George Floyd at the hands of police, these protests quickly spread internationally. In response to these protests, far-right activity saw an increase both online and offline, not only in the US but globally.

      These mobilizations should not be taken lightly. They have resulted in deaths on both sides, including the shooting dead of two activists in Kenosha, Wisconsin, by an individual affiliated with a far-right militia, and the shooting of an activist involved in a pro-Trump caravan in Portland, Oregon.

      Conspiracy Pushers: QAnon’s Radical Unreality

      READ MORE

      Such activity is, of course, not new. Violent clashes between the left and right have been observed globally for many decades and also in recent years, including clashes between far-right and far-left protesters at various rallies organized by radical-right groups in Australia in the second half of the 2010s. However, this activity does raise the need for careful research into the risks posed by groups on both the left and right fringes of the political spectrum. The risk of violence posed by the radical-right is becoming more recognized.

      However, the potential use of violent tactics within contemporary radical left movements is less well understood, despite frequent claims during public debates — and especially from conservative voices — that lump in radical-left activism with violent behaviors or even going so far as likening it to terrorism, like former US President Donald Trump did in his infamous tweet in early June, designating “ANTIFA as a Terrorist Organization.”   

      Potential Threats

      To better understand the potential threats posed by both far-left and far-right activists, as well as the interplay between these opposing political movements, a team of researchers at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue and Victoria University, Melbourne, are undertaking a research project mapping far-right and far-left activity online in Australia. Through this work, we hope that we will start to establish an evidence base around the potential risks posed by these groups, as well as the role reciprocal activity plays in online activism by such groups.

      Embed from Getty Images

      This work is focused on examining the activity of known far-left and far-right actors across Facebook and Twitter as well as far-right actors on Gab and Telegram. Using a mixed methodology drawing on natural language processing techniques and qualitative analysis, we are interrogating the output of these groups, identifying key topics of conversation as well as their attitude toward their political opponents.

      In November 2020, our teams published our first briefing paper, analyzing the activity of the far right and far left on Facebook. We analyzed the activity of 50 public pages and groups associated with the Australian far right and 33 public pages and groups associated with the Australian far left. Across both cohorts, we mapped activity throughout the first seven months of 2020, finding notable increases in the volume of conversation in the month of June, coinciding with worldwide Black Lives Matter protests.

      Amongst far-right entities, this conversation focused on both domestic issues, such as climate change activism during Australia’s bushfire crisis and state responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as international discussions, including on China’s role in the coronavirus outbreak and Black Lives Matter protests in the US and beyond. A qualitative analysis of this activity reveals in particular that the global protests against racial injustice were a central discursive element in attacking the left more broadly among the Australian far right. Public debate around violence within the Black Lives Matter movement in America and Trump’s repeated attacks on left-wing activists were used as opportunities to characterize domestic racial justice movements as being “anti-white” and “violent.”

      Reciprocal Radicalization

      This corresponds with trends documented through ongoing ISD analysis in Canada and New Zealand that demonstrate the importance of US politics and activity in shaping the agenda of far-right groups internationally, and a continued trend among domestic far-right movements toward internationalization. This points toward the need for global awareness when monitoring domestic activity, but also highlights how far-right activity is increasingly framed in the context of global struggles — either for the preservation of white identity and culture or against the progressive left that activists see as a destructive and insurrectional force against traditional values and forms of culture.

      It is within this context of a perceived transnational battle between progressive, pro-minority left-wing groups and their right-wing counterparts that we can begin to analyze and understand the risks of so-called cumulative extremism or reciprocal radicalization — potential escalation, both online-rhetorical and physically violent in the offline world, between far-left and far-right movements. So far, most academic and non-academic studies have focused on dynamics between the far right and Islamist extremists.

      In our data-set we examined the scale and nature of conversation mentioning far-left ideologies, groups or actions in far-right communities, and vice versa, to better understand how central political opponents are to the online mobilization and messaging on the political fringes in Australia. In total, mentions of the far right accounted for 17% of the output of far-left pages and groups, whilst mentions of the far left accounted for 7% of the output of far-right entities. This suggests that far-right ideologies and actions have a more central role in shaping far-left political agendas and inspiring reciprocal activity from the far-left than vice versa.

      However, qualitative analysis revealed that when discussing the left, the far right are more violent, including explicit calls for the execution and murder of left-wing activists. The far left, on the other hand, appear to frame their discussion more through the need to counter the far right with non-violent means, such as the mobilization of a broad — anti-fascist and anti-capitalist — grassroots movement.

      This analysis should not be used to comprehensively define the risk posed by far-left movements — some activists associated with these groups have traditionally and recently been involved in violent activity and many have expressed in-principle support for the option of defensive violence as part of a direct action toolkit in opposing the threats of fascism. However, it does suggest that policies focusing on tackling the far right should be a priority given their increased proclivity to violent rhetoric.

      Our analysis also indicates that such activity may have a knock-on effect of limiting the risks of far-left violence, often in response to a fascist or other far-right threats. By recognizing that these groups are interconnected by their reciprocal opposition, and analyzing the nature of this oppositional activity, we can start to evidence the collective risks posed by such activity and its spill-over into offline activity.

      *[This article draws on a larger research project currently conducted by ISD and Victoria University within the Centre for Resilient and Inclusive Societies (CRIS), a think tank consortium of eight Australian and international academic, community and industry partners.]

      *[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