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      in US Politics

      Trump allies herald Biden investigation of Covid origins in China

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      Allies of Donald Trump took the unusual step of speaking out on Sunday in support of Joe Biden, regarding efforts to pinpoint the source of Covid-19 and find out if China knows more about the origins of the pandemic than it is letting on.Biden said on Thursday he was expanding an investigation into the outbreak, following a departure from previous thinking by at least one US intelligence agency now leaning towards the theory that the virus escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan.Michael McCaul, a Republican congressman from Texas, and Matthew Pottinger, Trump’s former deputy national security adviser who persuaded him to start using the controversial term “Wuhan virus”, both welcomed the development.“It’s absolutely essential to find out what the origin of this thing is, it’s essential for us to head off the next pandemic, it’s essential for us to better understand the variants of the current pandemic that are emerging,” Pottinger told NBC’s Meet the Press.“Both of these hypotheses that President Biden spoke of are valid, it could have emerged from a laboratory, it could have emerged from nature. Neither is supported by concrete evidence but there’s a growing amount of circumstantial evidence supporting the idea that this may have leaked from a laboratory.”The Wuhan lab theory was dismissed by many scientists and the official position of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Trump’s advisers was that the weight of evidence supported natural origins. The World Health Organization said in February it was “extremely unlikely” Covid-19 began in a laboratory.But the theory has gained traction. On Thursday, the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence said: “The US intelligence community does not know exactly where, when or how the Covid-19 virus was transmitted initially but has coalesced around two likely scenarios: either it emerged naturally from human contact with infected animals or it was a laboratory accident.“While two elements of the IC lean toward the former scenario and one leans more toward the latter – each with low or moderate confidence – the majority of elements within the IC do not believe there is sufficient information to assess one to be more likely than the other.“The IC continues to examine all available evidence, consider different perspectives, and aggressively collect and analyze new information to identify the virus’s origins.”On Sunday, a WHO-affiliated health expert speaking to the BBC said the lab theory was “not off the table” and called on the US to share any intelligence.Pottinger said he believed researchers in China had more to say. “If this thing came out of a lab, there are people in China who probably know that,” he said. “China has incredible and ethical scientists, many of whom in the early stages of the pandemic suspected that this was a lab leak. [A researcher at] the Wuhan Institute of Virology said her first thought was, ‘Was this a leak from my lab?’“These people have been systematically silenced by their government. Now that the world knows how important this is, that might also provide moral courage to many of these ethical scientists for whom I think this is weighing on their consciences. I think that we’re going to see more information come out as a result of this inquiry.”The Wall Street Journal reported last week that three members of staff at a laboratory in Wuhan became sick with Covid-like symptoms before the first Covid patient was recorded in December 2019.McCaul, a former chair of the House homeland security committee, told CNN’s State of the Union he believed Biden’s 90-day intelligence review would likely be inconclusive because Chinese authorities “have destroyed everything in the lab”. But he said he welcomed the new investigation.“It more likely than not emerged out of the lab, most likely accidentally,” said McCaul, who has long argued that China and the WHO are culpable. More

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      South Korea’s balancing act will test Biden’s plan to get tough with China

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      When the South Korean president goes to Washington DC on Friday, his discussions with Joe Biden about China will test the limits of the US president’s rhetoric to “work with [its] allies to hold China accountable”. It will also exhibit the dilemma faced by middle-sized powers such as South Korea.The White House spokesperson, Jen Psaki, said last month that Moon Jae-in’s visit “will highlight the ironclad alliance between the United States and [South Korea], and the broad and deep ties between our governments, people and economies”.But observers of the relationship think that, despite the talk of a strong alliance, it is unlikely South Korea will even go as far as its neighbouring Japan in showing a united front with Washington on the approach to China.Shortly after the Japanese prime minister, Yoshihide Suga, visited Biden in the US capital last month, a joint statement issued by the two leaders underscored “the importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan strait” and encouraged “the peaceful resolution of cross-strait issues”.It was the first time since 1969 that Washington and Tokyo had referred to Taiwan in a written statement, a move that some saw as a manifestation of the US’s unity with one of its most significant allies in the region.Analysts said such a public position on an extremely sensitive subject was unlikely to be found in Moon’s discussion with Biden this week, even though a recent Pew poll showed that 75% of South Koreans feel “somewhat” or “very unfavourable” towards China.Japan and South Korea confront a common dilemma when it comes to China. They are both key US allies, but both trade heavily with China, said Haruko Satoh of the Osaka School of International Public Policy in Japan, who studies Korea and Japan in the evolving China-US relations.“[But] if the US-China competition is a given, Japan is more of a balancing power in these new dynamics because of its size of population and economy. By contrast, Korea is a much more vulnerable player, especially considering how dependent South Korea is on China’s vast market,” she said.For South Korea and Japan, China and then the US are the top two export markets. But Seoul’s economy is even more heavily dependent on Beijing, accounting for nearly 26% of South Korea’s exports last year, followed by the US at 14.5%. Japan exported 22% of its goods to China last year, with 18.5% to the US.“When it comes to China, South Korea takes a two-pronged approach that pleases both Beijing and Washington,” said Ramon Pacheco Pardo, the KF-VUB Korea chair at the Brussels School of Governance.“But the bottom line of Moon’s approach is that he is not going to criticise China so publicly as other US allies have done,” said Pacheco Pardo. “In some ways it shows Biden the limits to how much his allies are willing to be openly critical of China on things such as human rights.”Ahead of Moon’s visit, his government announced that South Korea would “partially” join the US-led quadrilateral security dialogue (Quad) by cooperating with the forum on coronavirus vaccines, climate change and new technologies. It is noticeable that the security aspect of this involvement is missing.Beijing has repeatedly accused Quad of a US-led clique that reflects Washington’s “cold war mentality”. It has also urged Seoul to clarify its position on it. A ruling party official told Korean press that the US had been asking Seoul to join, “but we think we can cooperate with the Quad countries on a case-by-case basis in fields where we have a contribution to make”.This half-in, half-out approach has so far proved less direct and confrontational to China – and to some extent more effective, according to Pacheco Pardo. It also reflects old lessons from the past that still cast a shadow over South Korea’s China policy.Five years ago, when Seoul agreed to host the US anti-missile system Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (Thaad), China came up with a host of measures in what analysts believed was economic retaliation. Beijing saw the ultimate target of Thaad as China itself.One of South Korea’s biggest companies, Lotte, had several of its stores in China shut down overnight for agreeing a land swap deal with the South Korean government for the deployment of Thaad. Online and offline boycotts ensued by Chinese consumers. Chinese tourists – who once flooded the streets of Seoul and Jeju Island – disappeared.Tellingly, Washington provided little support to Seoul on this matter. “South Korean policymakers felt abandoned at the time. They will now think that if previous US administrations didn’t support South Korea under such circumstances, why would the current Biden administration do so when it happens again?” said Pacheco Pardo.John Nilsson-Wright, a Korea Foundation Korea fellow at the London-based thinktank Chatham House, said: “That is precisely why it’s harder for Seoul to push a security line against China if Beijing holds the bigger sway in market access.”Shortly after the Thaad saga, South Korea’s then foreign minister, Kang Kyung-wha, laid out three “noes” in parliament. Two of them were no additional deployment of Thaad, and no forming a military alliance with the US and Japan.Of course, the issue of North Korea and China’s role in it also sways Moon’s thinking. But there is another reason that could explain his approach to the US and China, according to Nilsson-Wright.“Like many countries, South Korea has also been asking itself: what if a ‘Trump 2.0’ turns up in the next few years? This would then put South Korea in an even more awkward position having been caught in the middle.” More

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      China labels Nancy Pelosi ‘full of lies’ after call for Winter Olympics boycott

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      China has labelled the US House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, “full of lies and disinformation” after her calls for a diplomatic boycott of next year’s Beijing Winter Olympics and Paralympics on human rights grounds.“Some US individuals’ remarks are full of lies and disinformation,” a foreign ministry spokesperson, Zhao Lijian, said on Wednesday. “US politicians should stop using the Olympic movement to play despicable political games” or using “the so-called human rights issue as a pretext to smear and slander China”, he added.Zhao hit out at the US’s human rights record, citing “the continuing spread of xenophobia, white supremacy and discrimination against people of African and Asian descent and Islamophobia”.On Tuesday Pelosi criticised China’s human rights record and urged global leaders not to attend the Winter Olympics scheduled to be held in Beijing in February.“What I propose – and join those who are proposing – is a diplomatic boycott,” Pelosi said at a bipartisan congressional hearing, adding that leading countries should “withhold their attendance at the Olympics”.“Let’s not honour the Chinese government by having heads of state go to China,” she added. “For heads of state to go to China in light of a genocide that is ongoing – while you’re sitting there in your seat – really begs the question: what moral authority do you have to speak again about human rights any place in the world?”Joe Biden’s administration has called China’s treatment of its Uyghur minority “genocide”, a charge Beijing has vehemently denied. The US president has said his administration hopes to develop a joint approach with allies on participation in Beijing’s Olympics.US legislators have been increasingly critical of China’s human rights record of late, and talk of shunning the Beijing Winter Olympics has been growing among some US allies and human rights activists since last year.The Massachusetts Democratic representative Jim McGovern has proposed relocating the Winter Olympics. “If we can postpone an Olympics by a year for a pandemic, we can surely postpone the Olympics for a year for a genocide … This would give the IOC time to relocate to a country whose government is not committing atrocities.”The Republican congressman Chris Smith of New Jersey said corporate sponsors should be called to testify before Congress and be “held to account … big business wants to make lots of money, and it doesn’t seem to matter what cruelty – even genocide – that the host nation commits.”In Britain, several MPs have joined the calls for a boycott. However, a separate online petition in February calling for the UK parliament to debate a motion that would lead to a boycott from Team GB was rejected.Washington led a boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In retaliation, the Soviet bloc snubbed the 1984 Los Angeles summer Games.The recent calls for a boycott are reminiscent of the international response to the 2008 Beijing Olympics. But Sarah Hirshland, the chief executive of the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee, said past Olympic boycotts had failed to achieve their political ends.She said her organisation was concerned about the “oppression of the Uyghur population” but barring US athletes from the Games was “certainly not the answer”. More

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      in World Politics

      The New York Times Has Feelings for China

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      A significant event took place this week at the annual Boao conference, China’s version of the Davos World Economic Forum. It offered clues about the state of a changing world. Obsessed by the Chauvin trial, US media paid little attention to it. The Washington Post lazily printed a 400-word glibly superficial AP article emphasizing China’s military buildup and protectionist policies. The usually prolix New York Times featured fewer than 350 words on the event, just to make sure its readers wouldn’t waste too much time thinking about its possible significance. In contrast, a Times article a day earlier on China’s predictable, extravagant propaganda campaign to celebrate the centenary of the Chinese Communist Party ran to over 1,200 words. 

      The New York Times Predicts Our Future

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      Bloomberg’s report on the conference reached nearly 3,000 words, claiming to have “captured the pulse of the event throughout the forum.” There is still plenty of matter to unpack even after 3,000 words, but Bloomberg has treated its readers far more respectfully than The Times or The Post. One of the explanations of this contrast is evident in a quote from the Bloomberg article: “Chinese and U.S. companies agreed both nations should prevent politicization or making troubles in dealing with trade relations, and decoupling is not good for anyone.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Politicization:

      The process by which any truth is deformed by a simplistic electoral strategy into the equivalent of a precept of an ideologically structured moral system.

      Contextual Note

      The problem with geopolitical truth is that it is always much too complex to reduce to any kind of simple message. There are always multiple actors, varied interests and competing intentions buzzing around in different directions. The problem with politics in modern democracies is that because its fate turns around elections, it strives to reduce all truth to “something voters can understand.” 

      For the average media consumer, the geopolitical realm is made up of allies and rivals. Nation-states sharing similar objectives of security and influence are deemed allies. Allies buy weapons and critical commodities from allies. Our rivals attempt to sell weapons and commodities to their allies and sometimes to their rivals, our allies. Doing so permits populist demagogues to brand them as adversaries and cite anecdotes about not respecting the rule of law. This instills a level of fear that justifies tariffs and sanctions. Without that excuse, these “defensive actions” would be denounced as protectionism. The more systematic the hostility becomes, the more it opens the door to potential conflict.

      The explanation in the preceding paragraph is an example of a simplistic description. But it points to two parallel pockets of complexity whose combined force represents an exponentially higher degree of complexity. The first is properly geopolitical and concerns the way any two nations or groups of nations interact economically, politically and ideologically within a highly fluid geopolitical space. Analyzing it becomes feasible once enough facts are known about borders, demography, economic principles, institutional stability, and cultural and historical evolution, among other discernible factors.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Internal politics is more variable. It isn’t about knowledge, but perception. Politicizing an issue means packaging and branding it as a consumable commodity for the consumer society. In the US, the world’s premier consumer society, politicization responds to open questions with closed answers. How do you feel about being constantly reminded of racial injustice? How do you feel about Russians influencing our impeccably democratic elections? How do you feel about low-paying manufacturing jobs expanding in countries with much lower pay scales and living standards? How do you feel about nations that challenge our successful monopolies by violating intellectual property rights? How do you feel about stifling what we brand as democratic revolts? 

      Politicians never ask how and why these issues appear on the horizon. That enables them to ignore or hide from sight the complex explanations required to decipher their meaning. The Bloomberg article provides a number of clues that The Times and The Post, beholden to their political masters, do not want people to trouble over. Among them is the very real convergence of interest between American free market business interests and the Chinese version of state capitalism.

      For example, the article brings up some of the unintended consequences of the type of protectionism associated with Trump’s “America First” policy, which the Biden administration has largely maintained. Biden understands that, for electoral reasons, he must not appear to be soft on China, a nation that the media insists is an adversary because it challenges US “exceptionalism” (i.e., hegemony). The irony is that, for decades, it is American businesses that have traditionally defined what the State Department refers to by “American interests,” whose defense has in the past led to invasions and wars. Instead of sharing the public’s hatred of China, they see it as the world’s most dynamic consumer market with a population four times that of the US.

      The Bloomberg article cites many critical issues, including Chinese observations on the Western policy of printing money to confront its various crises. These remarks occur alongside mention of the current Chinese focus on the digital yuan. The People’s Bank of China’s Deputy Governor Li Bo claimed it was not meant to threaten the dollar. But clearly, these two parallel phenomena, in conjunction with the continuing development of the Belt and Road Initiative, indicate a weakening of the dollar’s status in the offing. Ray Dalio, the founder of Bridgewater Associates, drove the point home when he said, “The world is overweight in U.S. bonds and underweight in Chinese assets.”

      Larry Summers, the Biden adviser whose career Robert Kuttner described at The American Prospect as “marked by a carnival of policy debacles,” spoke at the forum to defend the idea that the US and China must find ways of working closely together: “It doesn’t really matter what their feelings are about each other’s attitudes,” so long as they cooperate on building global business. It isn’t clear whether Summers is aware that politics at home is all about “feelings,” not the reasoning of the global business crowd.

      Historical Note

      In contrast with Summers, The Times and The Post follow the lead of the Democratic administration that needs to stoke the feelings of the population for electoral reasons. At the same time, they must serve the interests of the multinational corporations that finance their campaigns. This central paradox has, over the past several decades, polluted the reporting of the once reasonably serious media. Which master must they obey?

      Reading a New York Times article about global politics is an excellent guide to understanding the political pressures that exist inside the Gray Lady’s editorial department. It is far less valuable for a reader seeking to understand the issues it discusses. The articles seek to validate feelings while carefully avoiding troubling nuance. The key is to reduce it to a game of heroes and villains. The Trump administration was beyond redemption. The Biden administration remains beyond criticism, though we have seen a possible exception concerning the “reckless” idea of ending a glorious war in Afghanistan after a mere 20 years. The paper’s relationship with the military and security state is too deep to deprive them of their voice.

      The Times’ diminutive piece conveys a unique and largely incoherent message suggesting China’s hypocrisy when talking about cooperation and free trade while in reality challenging US economic hegemony. The AP article republished by The Post drives in a different direction. After a few random quotes from the event, it focuses on inspiring fear of China’s military build-up. With four times the population, China spends about a third as much on the military annually as the US. Given that auditors found a hole of $21 trillion over two decades’ worth of Pentagon’s accounts, the difference is probably far greater.

      And yet the impression the writer, Joe McDonald, leaves is that Xi Jinping cannot be telling the truth when he claims that “No matter how far it develops, China will never seek hegemony, expand, seek spheres of influence or engage in an arms race.”

      The rhetorical game that played out at Hainan provides some real clues about what is clearly a moment of hegemonic transition is already having a seismic impact on history. The serious media continues to believe the average American has more important things to think about. The politicians agree.

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

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

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      in World Politics

      The Matter of Xi’s Succession

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      At the all-important two sessions (lianghui) meetings last month, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials adopted a new and surprisingly unambitious Five-Year Plan, reoriented the country’s technology strategy and redoubled the crackdown on democracy in Hong Kong. All of this was documented in the English-language media. But another crucial CCP announcement flew below the media’s radar. An innocuous-sounding procedural change gave President Xi Jinping the authority to dismiss vice premiers of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China, one of the last potential bastions of elite opposition to his rule. Premier Li Keqiang, nominally the second-most powerful man in China, has now been effectively sidelined. Furthermore, Hu Chunhua, Xi’s charismatic potential successor, can now be fired at will.

      Forecasting the US-China Relationship

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      Xi was already on track for a third term. First, he was “reelected” to a second term at the 19th Party Congress in September 2017. A few months later, the pliant National People’s Congress (NPC) lifted the two-term limit for the presidency. Despite acquiring total control, Xi remains wary of potential rivals, particularly Li Keqiang, his second-in-command. At the 19th Party Congress, Xi kept Li on largely as a figurehead, calculating that elevating anyone else to the number-two job would have anointed them as a potential successor. Since 2017, Xi repeatedly sought opportunities to undermine Li, cannily dispatching him to Wuhan in January 2020 to associate the premier with the botched response to COVID-19.

      Neutralizing Potential Challengers

      Xi is now looking beyond Li with the goal of neutralizing all potential challengers. Li has little practical influence in the CCP’s top echelons, but he wields formidable power on paper. Formally speaking, the CCP and the Chinese state are separate institutions. Xi Jinping is both general secretary of the CCP and president of the People’s Republic of China. Li is ostensibly the second-ranked official in the CCP, but his position as the head of the State Council, the executive branch of the Chinese state, is more important. Until the recent rule change, Xi had no formal authority to order direct personnel changes in the State Council. That meant Li’s four main subordinates, known as vice premiers, had some level of job security and could potentially use their position as a springboard to challenge Xi.

      Embed from Getty Images

      All of that has changed at this year’s lianghui with a legislative amendment. The law in question is Article 32 of the Organic Law of the National People’s Congress of the People’s Republic of China. The NPC meets only once per year, at the spring lianghui. Under the new rules, the Standing Committee of the NPC, which answers to Xi, can remove any official on the State Council, except the prime minister, at any time. This means that Xi does not have to wait for the next lianghui to get rid of Li’s subordinates.

      In strict formal terms, if Xi wanted to fire a vice premier, Li would still have to consent. In practice, Li’s hand would be forced by Xi. The NPC is China’s top legislative body, a rubber-stamp parliament that exists to legitimize the CCP’s actions. If the NPC recommends personnel changes on the State Council, the premier of the State Council cannot resist. If Li were to do so, that would be tantamount to overriding the “democratic will” of the people of China.

      Why is Xi bothering to amend the law if his third term is not in doubt? We do not know for sure, but we can speculate. Perhaps Xi is just generally wary of Li. But there might be another reason. There was widespread grumbling among the top brass of the CCP when Xi eliminated term limits three years ago. Rumors tell us that there is still some level of semi-organized resistance, with Li potentially involved. It might also be the case that Xi tried to replace one or more vice premiers, but Li resisted. Vice premiers of the State Council are all members of the CCP Politburo, the 20-member body that is the second-highest organ in the party bureaucracy.

      Xi probably wants total control of the Politburo. Of course, Xi has other ways to take out such senior officials. In the past, “anti-corruption” crackdowns have cut many down to size. However, this anti-corruption process is disruptive and could send a signal that Xi’s control is shaky. Therefore, a sneaky legal change might be a better alternative.

      Succession Matters

      We suspect that Xi is targeting a particular leader. China has four vice premiers: Han Zheng, Liu He, Sun Chunlan and Hu Chunhua. Han is a member of the Politburo Standing Committee, the CCP’s top body. This legal amendment would not be enough to get rid of Han. So, he is not the target of Xi’s ire. Neither is Liu, Xi’s personal friend who won the economic policy argument in the 14th Five-Year Plan. In the shady world of CCP politics, Liu’s job seems safe as of now. Sun, the highest-ranking woman in the modern history of Chinese politics, is past the mandatory retirement age and poses no threat to Xi. This leaves Hu as the only possible target for the amendment. The fact that he is the most charismatic and popular of the vice premiers makes him a potential threat to Xi.

      From 2012 to 2017, Hu was the party secretary of Guangdong, China’s most prosperous province. For decades, this position has been a stepping stone for national leadership. Ironically, Xi’s father served as party secretary of Guangdong, as did other CCP luminaries such as Zhao Ziyang, Li Changchun, Zhang Dejiang and Wang Yang. Hu is the youngest official at his level of seniority in the CCP. He is also connected, though not related, to Xi’s predecessor, Hu Jintao. Before the 2017 NPC, there was widespread speculation that Hu Chunhua would leapfrog straight into the Politburo Standing Committee and be groomed as a putative future leader. Xi prevented this, giving Hu the position of vice premier instead. Now, Xi has gone further and hung a sword over Hu’s head.Xi is determined to ensure an orderly confirmation of his third term at the next NPC in 2022. For three years, the Chinese media have humored Xi by resolutely avoiding the topic of his succession. Xi knows that it cannot be avoided indefinitely. According to longstanding CCP custom, anyone featuring in the succession sequence needs experience in the positions of vice premier, national vice chairman and vice chairman of the Central Military Commission. Those who currently occupy these positions are either too old or not close enough to Xi to be considered successor material. The only exception is Hu who now holds office at the pleasure of Xi.

      The study of Chinese elite politics is as much an art as a science. Like Kremlinologists at the height of the Cold War, China analysts make educated inferences from a small number of highly choreographed public events and documents. As a result, the line between speculation and analysis is often blurry. Nevertheless, as US-China relations deteriorate, the CCP’s succession plans are more important now than at any point since the death of Mao Zedong in 1976.

      Coming out of the lianghui, all signs indicate that Xi remains at the height of his power at home. Furthermore, he is likely to enter his third term in 2022 with a new suite of tools to deter — and, if necessary, eliminate — potential elite rivals. In this context, pushing for Xi’s ouster, as one anonymous senior US official recently recommended, would be reckless as it is likely to backfire.

      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 Spread of Global Hate

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      One insidious way to torture the detainees at Guantanamo Bay was to blast music at them at all hours. The mixtape, which included everything from Metallica to the Meow Mix jingle, was intended to disorient the captives and impress upon them the futility of resistance. It worked: This soundtrack from hell did indeed break several inmates.

      For four years, Americans had to deal with a similar sonic blast, namely the “music” of President Donald Trump. His voice was everywhere: on TV and radio, screaming from the headlines of newspapers, pumped out nonstop on social media. MAGAmen and women danced to the repetitive beat of his lies and distortions. Everyone else experienced the nonstop assault of Trump’s instantly recognizable accent and intonations as nails on a blackboard. After the 2016 presidential election, psychologists observed a significant uptick in the fears Americans had about the future. One clinician even dubbed the phenomenon “Trump anxiety disorder.”

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      The volume of Trump’s assault on the senses has decreased considerably since January. Obviously, he no longer has the bully pulpit of the Oval Office to broadcast his views. The mainstream media no longer covers his every utterance. Most importantly, the major social media platforms have banned him. In the wake of the January 6 insurrection on Capitol Hill, Twitter suspended Trump permanently under its glorification of violence policy. Facebook made the same decision, though its oversight board is now revisiting the former president’s deplatforming.

      It’s not only Trump. The Proud Boys, QAnon, the militia movements: The social media footprint of the far right has decreased a great deal in 2021, with a parallel decline in the amount of misinformation available on the Web.

      And it’s not just a problem of misinformation and hate speech. According to a new report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) on domestic terrorism, right-wing extremists have been involved in 267 plots and 91 fatalities since 2015, with the number of incidents rising in 2020 to a height unseen in a quarter of a century. A large number of the perpetrators are loners who have formed their beliefs from social media. As one counterterrorism official put it, “Social media has afforded absolutely everything that’s bad out there in the world the ability to come inside your home.”

      So, why did the tech giants provide Trump, his extremist followers and their global counterparts unlimited access to a growing audience over those four long years?

      Facebook Helps Trump

      In a new report from the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE), Heidi Beirich and Wendy Via write: “For years, Trump violated the community standards of several platforms with relative impunity. Tech leaders had made the affirmative decision to allow exceptions for the politically powerful, usually with the excuse of ‘newsworthiness’ or under the guise of ‘political commentary’ that the public supposedly needed to see.”

      Even before Trump became president, Facebook was cutting him a break. In 2015, he was using the social media platform to promote a Muslim travel ban, which generated considerable controversy, particularly within Facebook itself. The Washington Post reports:

      “Outrage over the video led to a companywide town hall, in which employees decried the video as hate speech, in violation of the company’s policies. And in meetings about the issue, senior leaders and policy experts overwhelmingly said they felt that the video was hate speech, according to three former employees, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. [Facebook CEO Mark] Zuckerberg expressed in meetings that he was personally disgusted by it and wanted it removed, the people said.”

      But the company’s most prominent Republican, Vice-President of Global Policy Joel Kaplan, persuaded Zuckerberg to change his position. In spring 2016, when Zuckerberg wanted to condemn Trump’s plan to build a wall on the border with Mexico, he was again persuaded to step back for fear of seeming too partisan.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Facebook went on to play a critical role in getting Trump elected. It wasn’t simply the Russian campaign to create fake accounts, fake messaging and even fake events using Facebook, or the theft of Facebook user data by Cambridge Analytica. More important was the role played by Facebook staff in helping Trump’s digital outreach team maximize its use of social media. The Trump campaign spent $70 million on Facebook ads and raised much of its $250 million in online fundraising through Facebook as well.

      Trump established a new paradigm through brute force and money. As he turned himself into clickbait, the social media giants applied the same “exceptionalism” to other rancid politicians. More ominously, the protection accorded politicians extended to extremists. According to an account of a discussion at a Twitter staff meeting, one employee explained that “on a technical level, content from Republican politicians could get swept up by algorithms aggressively removing white supremacist material. Banning politicians wouldn’t be accepted by society as a trade-off for flagging all of the white supremacist propaganda.”

      Of course, in the wake of the January 6 insurrection, social media organizations decided that society could indeed accept the banning of politicians, at least when it came to some politicians in the United States.

      The Real Fake News

      In the Philippines, an extraordinary 97% of internet users had accounts with Facebookas of 2019, up from 40% in 2018 (by comparison, about 67% of Americans have Facebook accounts). Increasingly, Filipinos get their news from social media. That’s bad news for the mainstream media in the Philippines. And that’s particularly bad news for journalists like Maria Ressa, who runs an online news site called Rappler.

      At a press conference for the GPAHE report, Ressa described how the government of Rodrigo Duterte, with an assist from Facebook, has made her life a living hell. Like Trump, President Duterte came to power on a populist platform spread through Facebook. Because of her critical reporting on government affairs, Ressa felt the ire of the Duterte fan club, which generated half a million hate posts that, according to one study, consisted of 60% attacks on her credibility and 40% sexist and misogynist slurs. This onslaught created a bandwagon effect that equated journalists like her with criminals.

      This noxious equation on social media turned into a real case when the Philippine authorities arrested Ressa in 2019 and convicted her of the dubious charge of “cyberlibel.” She faces a sentence of as much as 100 years in prison.

      “Our dystopian present is your dystopian future,” she observed. What happened in the Philippines in that first year of Duterte became the reality in the United States under Trump. It was the same life cycle of hate in which misinformation is introduced in social media, then imported into the mainstream media and supported from the top down by opportunistic politicians.

      The Philippines faces another presidential election next year, and Duterte is barred from running again by term limits. Duterte’s daughter, who is currently the mayor of Davao City just like her father had been, tops the early polls, though she hasn’t thrown her hat in the ring and her father has declared that women shouldn’t run for president. This time around, however, Facebook disrupted the misinformation campaign tied to the Dutertes when it took down fake accounts coming from China that supported the daughter’s potential bid for the presidency.

      President Duterte was furious. “Facebook, listen to me,” he said. “We allow you to operate here hoping that you could help us. Now, if government cannot espouse or advocate something which is for the good of the people, then what is your purpose here in my country? What would be the point of allowing you to continue if you can’t help us?”

      Duterte had been led to believe, based on his previous experience, that Facebook was his lapdog. Other authoritarian regimes had come to expect the same treatment. In India, according to the GPAHE report, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party:

      “… was Facebook India’s biggest advertising spender in 2020. Ties between the company and the Indian government run even deeper, as the company has multiple commercial ties, including partnerships with the Ministry of Tribal Affairs, the Ministry of Women and the Board of Education. Both CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg have met personally with Modi, who is the most popular world leader on Facebook. Before Modi became prime minister, Zuckerberg even introduced his parents to him.”

      Facebook has also cozied up to the right-wing government in Poland, misinformation helped get Jair Bolsonaro elected in Brazil, and the platform served as a vehicle for the Islamophobic content that contributed to the rise of the far right in the Netherlands. But the decision to ban Trump has set in motion a backlash. In Poland, for instance, the Law and Justice Party has proposed a law to fine Facebook and others for removing content if it doesn’t break Polish law, and a journalist has attempted to establish a pro-government alternative to Facebook called Albicla.

      Back in the USA

      Similarly, in the United States, the far right have suddenly become a big booster of free speech now that social media platforms have begun to deplatform high-profile users like Trump and take down posts for their questionable veracity and hate content. In the second quarter of 2020 alone, Facebook removed 22.5 million posts.

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      Facebook has tried to get ahead of this story by establishing an oversight board that includes members like Jamal Greene, a law professor at Columbia University; Julie Owono, executive director at Internet Sans Frontiere; and Nighat Dad, founder of the Digital Rights Foundation. Now, Facebook users can also petition the board to remove content.

      With Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and others now removing a lot of extremist content, the far right have migrated to other platforms, such as Gab, Telegram, and MeWe. They continue to spread conspiracy theories, anti-COVID vaccine misinformation and pro-Trump propaganda on these alternative platforms. Meanwhile, the MAGA crowd awaits the second coming of Trump in the form of a new social media platform that he plans to launch in a couple of months to remobilize his followers.

      Even without such an alternative alt-right platform — Trumpbook? TrumpSpace? Trumper? — the life cycle of hate is still alive and well in the United States. Consider the “great replacement theory,” according to which immigrants and denizens of the non-white world are determined to “replace” white populations in Europe, America and elsewhere. Since its inception in France in 2010, this extremist conspiracy theory has spread far and wide on social media. It has been picked up by white nationalists and mass shooters. Now, in the second stage of the life cycle, it has landed in the mainstream media thanks to right-wing pundits like Tucker Carlson, who recently opined, “The Democratic Party is trying to replace the current electorate of the voters now casting ballots with new people, more obedient voters from the Third World.”

      Pressure is mounting on Fox to fire Carlson, though the network is resisting. Carlson and his supporters decry the campaign as yet another example of “cancel culture.” They insist on their First Amendment right to express unpopular opinions. But a privately-owned media company is under no obligation to air all views, and the definition of acceptability is constantly evolving.

      Also, a deplatformed Carlson would still be able to air his crank views on the street corner or in emails to his followers. No doubt when Trumpbook debuts at some point in the future, Carlson’s biggest fan will also give him a digital megaphone to spread lies and hate all around the world. These talking heads will continue talking no matter what. The challenge is to progressively shrink the size of their global platform.

      *[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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      Why Joe Biden Must Act on Myanmar

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      Burma, as Myanmar was known then, won its independence from the British in 1948. Since then, bilateral relations between the US and Myanmar can at best be described as lackluster. They have lacked what experts would call “strategic compulsions.” Western allies of the US lack strategic calculus in dealing with Myanmar. They have viewed it from the narrow prism of moralistic Western standards of democracy, human rights, rule of law, corruption and the trafficking of humans, drugs and weapons.

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      To be fair, the US has not always or entirely been sanctimonious. The historic Kissinger Doctrine integrated China into the liberal postwar order. It facilitated investments into, transferred technology to and trained manpower in China. Under Deng Xiaoping and his successors, China continued its peaceful rise. Xi Jinping, the current Chinese president, has ended that peaceful rise and destabilized the world order.

      Missing Out on Myanmar

      The US approach to Myanmar has been muddled and inconsistent. During the Cold War, Washington was happy to deal with allies in Asia that were military dictatorships. Under President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the US was happy to deal with a communist regime.

      In contrast, Burma was a parliamentary democracy from 1948 to 1962 when Ne Win led a military coup. For the next 26 years, the country was ruled by the Tatmadaw, the official name of the country’s armed forces. In 1988, nationwide protests broke out. Aung San Suu Kyi, the Oxford-educated daughter of Burmese independence leader Aung San, emerged as the leader of a pro-democracy movement. The National League of Democracy (NLD) went on to win the 1990, 2015 and 2020 parliamentary elections.

      In comparison with China, Myanmar’s regime has been far less oppressive. There is no counterpart to the Great Leap Forward or the Cultural Revolution. The Tatmadaw has yielded to public pressure and held largely free and fair elections. In elections, even members of the Tatmadaw have voted for Suu Kyi’s NLD. Yet the US and its Western allies have ignored the strategic importance of Myanmar in the Indian Ocean region in general and the Bay of Bengal in particular.

      Chinese Influence Wanes and Waxes

      In the past, the US and its allies put pressure on the Tatmadaw by imposing sanctions on Myanmar. Instead of weakening the Tatmadaw, sanctions hurt the people and pushed the country into the arms of China. Between 2004 and 2007, a generational change in the Tatmadaw caused a rethink in Myanmar’s relationship with China.

      The younger officers of the Tatmadaw decided to decrease dependence on Beijing. They tried to reduce Chinese influence in political and military governance. They attempted to transition to some form of democracy and improve relations with the West and neighbors like India. In 2011, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton swung by Myanmar. President Barack Obama visited twice in 2012 and 2014. By 2016-17, the persecution of Rohingya Muslims, an ethnic minority in the country’s Rakhine state, was in the news and relations between the US and Myanmar were already souring.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Yet this was a relatively good time for the country. Even financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank opened their purse strings. During this brief honeymoon period with the West, China found itself on the back foot for the first time since 1988.

      In 2011, Myanmar suspended the construction of the Myitsone dam, a controversial hydroelectric project financed and led by a state-owned Chinese company. In 2015, Myanmar’s general elections led to yet another victory for Suu Kyi’s NLD. This was an opportune moment for the West to build relations with Myanmar and counter China. The Tatmadaw had ceded ground to elected officials. Washington could have cultivated both of Myanmar’s centers of power: the NLD and the Tatmadaw.

      But the US missed this opportunity. From 2017, the Rohingya issue clouded Myanmar’s relationship with the West and allowed China to regain its clout in the country. The military coup in February this year strengthens China’s hand further.

      China has already been strengthening its hand by following its tried and tested policy of investing in infrastructure. The China–Myanmar Transport Corridor is connecting the Chinese province of Yunnan to the Bay of Bengal. Roads, railways, river navigation, oil and gas pipelines are deepening economic ties between Myanmar and China. It is part of the Middle Kingdom’s “Look South” policy that seeks to draw Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Pakistan into the Chinese arc of influence.

      The military coup in Myanmar presents a great opportunity to China and represents the first major foreign policy challenge to President Joe Biden’s administration as well as the Quadrilateral Security Alliance, the informal strategic dialogue between the US, Japan, Australia and India known as the Quad.

      The US Still Has Some Cards

      China may be in the ascendant right now, but the West still has clout in Myanmar. Suu Kyi studied at Oxford, lived in the UK for decades and married an Englishman. People from Myanmar have immigrated to Australia, New Zealand, the UK and the US. So, the West commands what Joseph Nye has calls “soft power” in the country. Burmese people want to immigrate not to China but to the US.

      Yet American foreign policy to Myanmar has squandered this soft power prodigally. Obama is the only American president who gave Myanmar the attention it deserved. His foreign policy pivot to Asia was a strategic masterstroke, but Donald Trump abandoned Obama’s outreach not only to Myanmar but the rest of Asia.

      The military coup is a wake-up call for the US to act. China is now firmly in the saddle in Myanmar. The Tatmadaw is finding ferocious resistance on the streets. There is another overlooked problem. Like many postcolonial states, Myanmar is a bewildering patchwork of cultural, ethnic and linguistic groups. Many of them have been fighting for independence or autonomy for years.

      Few in the West realize that a savage conflict might be about to break out. About 20 rebel groups, including the United Wa State Army, Karen National Union, Kachin Independence Army and Arakan Army, control 33% of Myanmar’s territory. Many of them have condemned the coup. In response, the Tatmadaw has launched airstrikes in Karen state. With drugs and arms flush in rebel areas, Myanmar might be about to become the new Afghanistan.

      The Quad leaders’ joint statement on the White House website emphasizes “the urgent need to restore democracy and the priority of strengthening democratic resilience” in Myanmar. This mention is heartening, but the Quad and the US need to do more. Opening dialogue with the Tatmadaw would be a good start. Intelligence sources report that most young officers favor multi-party democracy and are wary of Myanmar turning into a Chinese tributary.

      A carrot-and-stick approach by Washington could still work. The World Bank has halted payments to projects after the military coup. International condemnation has rattled the Tatmadaw. Pressure to reach a political reconciliation might bear fruit. Carrots in the form of infrastructure funding and development assistance could prove attractive. Involving Asian nations such as India, Japan, South Korea and Bangladesh, as well as member states of ASEAN, could pave the path to Myanmar’s transition away from military rule.

      Despite foreign policy blunders, economic woes and internal division, the US is still the undisputed top dog in the world. With the help of its Asian and European allies, Washington can counter China, prevent civil war and restore democracy in Myanmar. The time has come for Biden to act.

      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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      Japan’s Art of Forgetfulness

      by

      What choices are available to a nation that, in its quest for modernization, foolishly built a nuclear reactor in a seismically active tsunami zone? The Royal Society reported in 2015 that the disastrous fate of Fukushima in 2011 resulted from a “cascade of engineering and regulatory failures.” This included not only multiple design errors and miscalculations of the geological risks, but also “methodological mistakes that nobody experienced in tsunami engineering should have made.” The report concluded that the “Fukushima accident was preventable, if international best practices and standards had been followed.”

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      A full 10 years later, after dealing with the aftermath in a reasonably efficient manner, Japan has one major task left. It must find a way of disposing of more than a million tons of contaminated water from the powerplant’s three decommissioned reactors. To the chagrin not only of neighboring countries including China and South Korea but also environmental groups and even Japan’s own fishing industry, the Japanese government has made the controversial decision to close the book on Fukushima by dumping the water into the ocean.

      According to Al Jazeera, the Japanese government claims to have taken this decision on the basis of its newfound concern with the “international best practices and standards” the Royal Society referred to in its report. The government released this statement on April 13: “On the premise of strict compliance with regulatory standards that have been established, we select oceanic release.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Oceanic release:

      An act stirred by the temptation to believe that whatever you can discreetly dump into the ocean will be so diluted by the mass of moving water that within weeks or months, even if it is public knowledge, no one will actually remember that the deed was done or blame those who did it

      Contextual Note

      In his explanation of the government’s decision, Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga appealed to the fabled capacity of the Japanese to accept the inevitable. “Releasing the … treated water,” he said, “is an unavoidable task to decommission the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant and reconstruct the Fukushima area.” As a politician, not only does he feel it is his humble duty to put the errors of the past behind him, but he knows it is always effective to focus on potential positive outcomes — in this case, the reconstruction of the non-nuclear reconstruction of the affected area. Averted readers should know that when a politician from any nation calls something “unavoidable,” the most sensible reaction is to suppose that what they really mean by “unavoidable” is what we judge to be the most convenient and economic way for us to dismiss such an annoying issue.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Polls in Japan show little support for the government. Le Monde reports that a poll conducted by NHK, the Japanese broadcaster, found that 51% of those polled opposed the plan, with only 18% supporting it. The Chinese called the plan “extremely irresponsible.” South Korea seconded the Chinese, deeming it “totally unacceptable.” Protesters in Seoul accused Japan of engaging in “nuclear terrorism,” echoing the Iranian government’s complaint this week following Israel’s brazen sabotage of the nuclear facility at Natanz in Iran. Even Taiwan — more fearful of China than of contaminated waters — expressed its concern, though much more timidly. 

      These reactions contrast with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s tweet in which he thanks “Japan for its transparent efforts in its decision to dispose of the treated water from the Fukushima Daiichi site.” Transparent? China complained that the Japanese made their decision “without fully consulting with neighboring countries and the international community.” Is that what Blinken sees as a “transparent” effort? Or does he mean that because the operation will only be carried out in two years’ time, announcing it today is an example of transparency? After all, the US tends to act first and explain later and rarely worries about transparency.

      Then there is another consideration the Japanese government would be wise to ponder. Dumping the still polluted water into the Pacific means that sooner rather than later the West Coast of the US will be affected. At some point in the future, could this have dire consequences for Japanese Americans who risk being assaulted for spreading “Fukushima cancer” just as Chinese Americans have been attacked for releasing the “Wuhan flu”?

      Historical Note

      The Japanese language has a common expression: Shouganai. One specialist of Japanese offers this explanation of the expression: “The best way I can translate ‘Shouganai’ is ‘It can’t be helped,’” comparing it with the well-known French expression, “C’est la vie.” The author confesses to using the Japanese “phrase almost daily.” Italian Americans from New York might prefer to compare it with their favorite all-purpose phrase for dismissing any subject they don’t want to discuss: “Forget about it.” Every culture has its own way of accepting what is written off as a fatality that cannot be constructively addressed.

      Pushing the explanation of the Japanese phrase further, the author insists that despite always being used in reference to negative events, Shouganai is “actually a pretty positive way to look at the world.” It signifies a basic feeling at the core of Japanese culture, that it’s “better to not get hung up on things outside of your control.” In contrast, US culture encourages making every effort — including at times extreme violence — to demonstrate one is in control.

      Since the end of the Second World War, the Japanese government has developed the art of not getting hung up on disagreeable past events from the past, such as the fate of the Chinese and Korean sex slaves they euphemized with the name “comfort women” at a time in their history when they believed they could dominate all of Asia. After their six-week-long massacre known as the Rape of Nanking, sensing the risk of bad PR the knowledge of the brutal campaign of massacre and violent rape might produce, the emperor decided to step in. The answer was less murder and more rape, but better organized and subject to the kind of discipline and social rituals with which Japanese culture feels comfortable. The treatment of the comfort women was unspeakably cruel and inhuman, but the Japanese military had the good sense to manage it as a stable institution rather than allowing rape to play out according to the random whims of marauding soldiers.

      The website History explains the pattern of denial associated with this episode: “For decades, the history of the ‘comfort women’ went undocumented and unnoticed. When the issue was discussed in Japan, it was denied by officials who insisted that ‘comfort stations’ had never existed.” Whether those same officials were saying Shouganai in private while they systematically refused to admit anything in public will never be known. Even today, the Japanese government continues to deny some of the most obvious facts about the “comfort women.”

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      The Fukushima catastrophe lacks the deeply human moral dimension associated with the crimes perpetrated by Japanese imperialism in the early 20th century. The scandal relating to the fact that the nuclear catastrophe was preventable had more to do with professional negligence and government incompetence than moral failings, cruel personal behavior and abusive policies, though the frontier between conscious and neglectful abuses will always be difficult to define. The tendency to deny and then forget is common to both.

      On the purely moral plane, were either of these human disasters in any way comparable with US President Harry Truman’s decision to drop — without warning — not one but two atomic bombs on urban civilian targets at the end of World War II? The immediate difference between the attitudes of the two nations is that the Japanese showed some sense of shame, however hypocritical, following the Rape of Nanking. Their consistent denial of the true history of comfort women also indicates a degree of implicit shame. It’s as much a question of not losing face as it is of aggressive denial.

      In contrast, the American government never attempted to disguise its fulsome pride in an achievement that — following its cultural logic summed up in the expression, “a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do” — put an end to a world war. Could it have been done differently? Of course. But for most Americans, the positive result canceled all the useless scruples one might have concerning the gravity of the damage done.

      *[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