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    The Media Embrace the Martyrdom of Afghan Women

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    How long will it take to understand what “politics as usual” means in Afghanistan? Following the Taliban’s near-complete takeover of the country, there are no answers, much speculation and more questions emerging every day that goes by. A government has now been officially announced, but what it will actually do is unknown. The Taliban have claimed victory in the battle over the Panjshir Valley, but that may only be the first phase of a prolonged struggle.

    It may require more patience than the legacy media is capable of to understand what direction the Taliban’s policies will take. In the meantime, multiple interests, both inside and outside Afghanistan, will be seeking to influence its future orientations. In the short term, the media will continue to speculate on two levels. The first consists of seizing upon specific incidents deemed to demonstrate what the “real” intentions of the government will be. The second is to assume that the Taliban will simply repeat their policies that preceded the US-NATO invasion 20 years ago.

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    The safest prediction today consists of affirming that there will be a significant period of confusion. At its extreme, it could evolve, as General Milley seems to believe, into civil war. In all cases, the persistence of instability will lead to further uncertainty among the experts themselves about what might finally emerge over the next three to five years.

    The easiest solution for the media in the West is to highlight the issue of women’s rights or simply the Taliban’s treatment of women. It has consistently provided the issue at the core in the West’s propaganda campaign in favor of a permanent military campaign against the Taliban. Once US President Joe Biden made the decision to act definitively on putting an end to the US military presence in Afghanistan, it has emerged once again to encourage those who want the US to return to the battlefield.

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    Some non-mainstream commentators have pointed to the fact that, back in 1979, President Jimmy Carter’s administration initiated the CIA’s campaign to mobilize Muslim fundamentalism in opposition to Afghanistan’s elected socialist government. That government had enshrined women’s rights in its constitution, but due to its socialist leanings, it appeared too dangerously close to Russia’s influence for the comfort of the Beltway’s strategists.

    The clandestine operations were designed to destabilize that government. This had the effect of drawing the Soviets in to restabilize it. That prompted the CIA to accelerate its support for a mujahadeen revolt against the regime. This in turn laid the groundwork for the Taliban takeover in 1996. In the meantime, the Soviet Union had collapsed, which meant that the US could stop worrying about both Afghanistan and its women. This allowed the Clinton administration to concentrate instead on reestablishing order in Yugoslavia and keeping Saddam Hussein under control via devastating sanctions.

    Amidst the near absolute uncertainty that reigns today in Kabul, a small number of activist women, knowing how responsive Western media is likely to be, have dared to challenge the government. They are certainly right to make their voice heard in an effort to remind the new government of its promise to respect women’s rights. But does it really make sense to present it as a protest movement before there are any practices to protest against? Protesting against policies of the past could backfire on the women in the present. The Taliban may feel that “the lady doth protest too much.” What better way for the Taliban to brand them as hysterical and unworthy of playing a partnership role in governing?

    Western media is predictably tuned into this drama and reports every small detail. “Recent weeks have seen the Taliban send mixed signals about the place of women in Afghan society,” writes Al Jazeera’s Ali M. Latifi. After vowing a commitment “to the rights of women within the framework of Sharia [Islamic law],” the tune seemed to change. Later in the same month “the group’s spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, said women who work with the government should stay at home until they can ensure their safety on the streets and in offices.”

    Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

    Mixed signals:

    A synonym for political discourse by every type of political regime

    Contextual Note

    How contradictory are the two positions that appear to be “mixed signals”? To justify the request that women return to their homes, the spokesman explained their concern that “our forces who are new and have not been yet trained very well may mistreat women … We don’t want our forces, God forbid, to harm or harass women.” 

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    Is this hypocrisy or brutal honesty? Until a government is formed and its policies put into practice, no one can tell. On the face of it, it should be taken seriously rather than dismissed as a dodge or a lie. Today, there is no stable authority that can effectively contain the fanatical and vengeful individuals within the Taliban movement, which has existed for the past 20 years as an insurgency thriving on resentment toward the foreign invaders.

    In a revealing article with the title, “The Taliban invited The Telegraph to tea,” Jennifer Aldrich quotes a young Taliban fighter who claims that the protesting “women are Westernised and they want a Western government and they are against Islamic law. In Islam there’s great respect for women. I wonder why they are protesting.”

    Was Kipling right when he proclaimed that “East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet”? Afghanistan is the latest illustration of another principle: that when the West actively seeks to meet the East — as it has been doing for centuries — it is generally armed with sophisticated technology and an exasperating lack of empathy or even curiosity about Eastern cultures. This is uniformly followed by a defeat or a humiliating retreat, with little learned along the way.

    Historical Note

    Why have the themes of Western feminism come to dominate the debate over Afghanistan’s future? Wars in the past were never fought over such narrow cultural goals. In retrospect, the Second World War has been framed around the idea that Western democracies were committed to rescuing the Jews from Hitler’s persecution. In reality, that motive played no significant role in the Allied decision to go to war with Germany.

    The case of the Civil War in the US is similar. The abolition of slavery was a consequence of the war. Slavery itself was not directly the issue that sparked the conflict. Had the South not sought to expand a slave-based economy westward, Abraham Lincoln, even though he may have personally disapproved of slavery, would have been happy to continue a peaceful co-existence with the South.

    The West is focusing on the plight of Afghan women for two reasons. First, it is a story that plays well in Western media. It sounds moral and virtuous. It flatters Westerners by highlighting the superiority of their civilization. But it also correlates with the need felt in the highest levels of government and business to keep the economy focused on defense and national security. It highlights stark cultural contrasts that can be presented as a threat to “our way of life.” What better justification for excessive military preparedness, including the capacity to conduct preemptive strikes and invade backward nations?

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    French President Emmanuel Macron has criticized the US withdrawal, committing to “standing with those who fight for freedom and women’s rights.” In one curious twist of logic, the argument has come back to bite him. As Libyan psychiatrist Ahmed Sewehli tweeted, “This place where women are ordered what to wear and if they don’t conform they can’t study or work and can even be arrested…is called France.”

    Of course, the last time women had Western-style rights in Afghanistan, written into the 1964 constitution, was under a government that the US worked to overthrow by stoking fundamentalism. British journalist Matt Kennard has published a confidential memo of the UK Embassy in Kabul in 1980 that reveals the true strategy of the Western powers. It encourages clandestine military support for the mujahadeen and even seeks to glamorize them in this observation: “The picture of Islamic freedom fighters is much more acceptable to world public opinion than that of stubborn reactionaries determined to maintain a system of feudal antiquity.”

    It has always been about optics, not about rights.

    *[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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      After Afghanistan, How Probable Is Peace?

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      As the world speculates about the future of Afghanistan, some key figures in the West — with a vested interest in how things evolve militarily — are today claiming to show the clairvoyance that has consistently failed them in the past. Many have criticized President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw from the battlefield. Even more have complained about how it was managed.

      Republicans feel duty-bound to denounce a policy that only Lynn Cheney objected to when the Republican President Donald Trump promoted it. One “highly decorated British Army officer” complained that “6,500 people died, including 3,000 deaths at Twin Towers, and we didn’t achieve a single thing.” Special Operations Staff Sergeant Trevor Coult went further, claiming that Biden “is a danger while he is president.”

      Numerous Democrats attached to the military-industrial funding machine have objected to the very idea of abandoning the costly struggle. Representative Jim Langevin, of Rhode Island, penned an op-ed in Foreign Policy portraying the decision as a betrayal of a moral commitment to “our Afghan allies of 20 years” and “to our military service members and their families … who gave the ultimate sacrifice.” And, of course, he couldn’t forget “the women and girls of Afghanistan who are now experiencing a devastating new reality.”

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      He seemed less concerned when for 20 years the majority of Afghan women and girls experienced another form of devastating reality: receiving bombs delivered by surgical drones, seeing their doors kicked in by well-armed soldiers, listening to drones buzzing overhead and wondering where they might strike, failing to understand which local warlord in the pay of the CIA might protect them or aggress them, or simply watching unutterable chaos unfold day after day.

      AFP reports on the opinion General Mark Milley expressed in an interview with Fox News: Now that the US troops are no longer there to enforce the law and maintain order, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff predicts further chaos, worse than ever before. After questioning the ability of the Taliban, even before they have formed a government, “to consolidate power and establish effective governance,” Milley offers his assessment of what’s to come. “I think there’s at least a very good probability of a broader civil war,” he asserts.

      Making certain his audience will understand the degree of fear his warnings should inspire, he adds that it “will then in turn lead to conditions that could, in fact, lead to a reconstitution of Al-Qaeda or a growth of ISIS or other … terrorist groups.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Good probability:

      A dire likelihood to be ardently wished for by anyone associated with the military-industrial complex or dependent on it for current or future employment

      Contextual note

      Military officers, including generals, may hide the truth about reality on the ground. As the Afghanistan Papers revealed, that happened consistently for over two decades. But even when painting a rosy picture of success or an assessment of troop performance, a soldier’s choice of language leaves some room for the truth. That is why most governments usually prefer that the military not engage too directly with the media.

      General Milley made clear what he means when he described the chaos to come as “at least a very good probability.” Both of his chosen expressions — “at least” and “very good” — reveal less about reality on the ground and more about how he hopes to see the situation evolve, calling for preparedness and possibly new operations. He wants Fox’s audience to understand that this is only a pause in the mission of the US to help other nations achieve the serenity of the global superpower that will always be a model for the rest of the world and lead by its example.

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      A totally neutral and objective observer who happened to be equally convinced of the likelihood of a civil war in Afghanistan would have formulated it differently, most likely asserting something along the lines that “a strong possibility of a broader civil war cannot be discounted.” Proverbial wisdom tells us that “where there’s a will, there’s a way,” but the authorities of a nation defined by its military clout tend to improve on that by suggesting that “where there’s a will, there’s a way of framing it in such a manner as to convince people of the way we have decided must be followed.”

      General Milley is no warmonger. No reasonable person would compare him to the legendary Curtis Lemay who summed up his philosophy about conflict — in this case with Russia during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis — with these words: “We should go in and wipe ’em out today.”

      Fortunately, no senior officer in the military would be tempted to think or act that way now. In contrast with the Cold War mentality, one of the lessons of all recent wars is that the US military is less motivated by the idea of winning wars than simply instilling the idea in the average American taxpayer’s mind that the nation needs a powerful, well-funded, technologically advanced military establishment to comfort the belief in American exceptionalism.

      In his interview with Fox News, General Milley shows no inclination to criticize Biden’s decision. He defends the way the withdrawal was conducted, laying all the blame on the Afghan government and its troops while claiming that everything was conducted according to plan. He cites the “corruption in the government” and its lack of legitimacy, “a fundamental issue that stretches back 20 years.”

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      Concerning the collapse of the army and the police force, he makes a truly interesting remark: “We created and developed forces that looked like Western forces,” adding significantly that “maybe those forces were not designed appropriately for the type mission.” 

      General Milley follows up that last observation with what almost sounds like a resolution for action in the future: “That was something that needs to be looked at.” Many commentators have remarked that at the core of the 20-year fiasco lay a persistent form of cultural ignorance. By referring to this question as “something that needs to be looked at,” Milley appears to be placing it on some unequivocally remote back burner. In military parlance, “what needs to be looked at” is what will never be looked at unless someone at the highest level of authority suddenly wakes up to acknowledge the necessity.

      Historical Note 

      In short, an episode of history has just come to an end. In the coming weeks and months, reflection on it will be mired in wild speculation about what might have been done differently, accompanied by accusations of irresponsibility and failure of accountability. And if recent history is any guide, accountability will be successfully evaded, if only because holding one identifiable person accountable opens the floodgate to calling into question the entire system of which they were a part.

      In 2009, voters for Barack Obama expected to see some form of accountability for nearly everyone in the Bush administration, guilty of multiple sins that included war crimes, the criminal transfer of wealth to the 1% and the gutting of the middle-class economy. There were zero prosecutions and instead a message about looking forward rather than backward and letting bygones be bygones.   

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      There are many lessons to be learned from the debacle in Afghanistan and a need for accountability that extends backward to the Bush administration. But none of the lessons can compete with the only essential idea the leaders and actors of the military-industrial complex will continue to put forward in the months to come: that we must be ready to repeat the patterns of the past and respond to the inevitable emergence of the equivalent of al-Qaeda again. We must be afraid of the next wave of terrorism, and we must be ready to respond. The logic of 2021 is the same as the logic of 2001 — and will undoubtedly lead to similar scenarios.

      And why should the logic be different? Military budgets have never been higher, and every new Congress is ready to raise the stakes. Many of us who grew up during the Vietnam War assumed that, once it was over, nothing like that 10-year nightmare could ever occur again. Instead, we have just sat through the equivalent of a Hollywood remake that lasted twice as long.

      *[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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      Right Think: Jane Austen Against Terrorism

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      A creative British judge has demonstrated how judgments in criminal cases need not be about meting out humiliating, painful punishment to the guilty. In the case of 21-year-old Ben John, accused of acts identifying him as a “terror risk,” the punishment prescribed by Judge Timothy Spencer QC consists essentially of reading works by Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, William Shakespeare, Anthony Trollope and Thomas Hardy. John will return to court three times a year “to be tested on his reading.”

      Ben John’s crime consisted of downloading exactly 67,788 documents that appeal to right-wing terrorists. Call it downloading with intent to read. According to the BBC, “He was arrested in January 2020 and later charged with offenses under the Terrorism Act, including possessing documents on combat, homemade weapons and explosives.” To be clear, he didn’t actually possess weapons and explosives, merely documents about them. According to John’s attorney, even the prosecution didn’t believe he was planning a terrorist attack. 

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      Understanding the diminished nature of the threat, alongside the fact that he technically did violate a modern law that some complain encourages abuse by law enforcement, the judge gave this account of John’s taste in downloading: “It is repellent, this content, to any right-thinking person. This material is largely relating to Nazi, fascist and Adolf Hitler-inspired ideology.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Right-thinking person:

      Someone who understands the importance of limiting their thinking not only to approved topics but also to approved takes on those topics while accepting to make a concerted effort not to let their thinking wander into unsavory areas

      Contextual Note

      Britain is a nation and a culture that lives and breathes through its awareness of its centuries-old traditions. The idea of “right-thinking” cannot be defined by any law, but instead of being discarded, as it would be in the US, thanks to the British perception of the weight of its inherited culture, the concept can be credibly invoked in a courtroom and even figure in a verdict. Judge Spencer apparently believes the key to becoming a right-thinking citizen is to practice being a right-reading citizen. A clear-headed judge in the US applying the same logic would impose reading the law, not works of fiction.

      Judge Spencer understands that knowing the law isn’t enough. Thinking like a good Englishman requires familiarity with great English writers of the past. And it must be the past. In his list there is no Martin Amis, Ali Smith, Ian MacEwan or even 20th modernists such as Virginia Woolf, Joyce Cary or D.H. Lawrence. Right-thinking English society reached its pinnacle more than a century ago.

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      It stopped evolving at the beginning of the 20th century, by which time all British citizens were expected to understand at least that part of a dying empire’s heritage. This judgment reveals that the nostalgia for a society of the queen’s right-thinking subjects remains a powerful cultural force in British society.

      John’s lawyer described his client’s character as “a young man who struggled with emotions; however, he is plainly an intelligent young man and now has a greater insight.” Perhaps the judge expects that John’s reading of great works from the past will inspire him to become a writer himself, making him not only right-thinking but even an active contributor to the perpetuation of the literary tradition that defines the nation’s greatness. John may even be inspired to take up writing his own dramatic story. Instead of engaging in the crime of downloading with intent, he may start uploading with creative ambition. 

      This legal episode may leave the reader of the article with the impression that the judge regrets not having pursued a vocation in academia and is using the opportunity to hone his skills as a literature teacher. On that score, Judge Spencer may risk falling into the trap of the great British tradition of imitating a cast of despotic, if not sadistic headmasters and superintendents, on the model of Dickens’ Thomas Gradgrind in “Hard Times.”

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      There is a hint of Dickensian severity in Spencer’s formulation of the young man’s sentence: “On 4 January you will tell me what you have read and I will test you on it. I will test you and if I think you are [lying to] me you will suffer.” But unlike Gradgrind — who condemned “fancy” (“You are never to fancy”) and promoted “fact, fact, fact” — by imposing fiction, Spencer may even be encouraging the development of John’s fancy, so long as it stays close to what right-thinking people fancy.

      John’s barrister, Harry Bentley, reassured the judge: “He is by no means a lost cause and is capable of living a normal, pro-social life.” The term “pro-social” should be taken as a synonym of “right-thinking,” which means not “Nazi, fascist and Adolf Hitler-inspired.”

      Historical Note

      The judge mentioned some specific titles of works that John will be expected to read, all of them works that belong to the prestigious history of English literature. Judge Spencer gave this specific instruction: “Start with Pride and Prejudice and Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. Think about Hardy. Think about Trollope.” Apart from Shakespeare, these are all 19th-century writers. In their works, they describe the material, social and economic conflicts that concerned people living in a world that has little in common with today’s reality.

      These novels reflect in different ways the impact of the momentous change as a formerly rural society was overturned by industrialization. Is it reasonable to think a young extremist of the 21st century will be able to learn from such examples?

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      We are left wondering at what the chosen titles mean for the judge himself and what impact he expects them to have on the man accused of terrorist tendencies. Will the preoccupations of a destitute gentry in the early 19th century in “Pride and Prejudice” provoke some epiphany for the young man? Will the absurdly melodramatic pseudo-political events Dickens situates during the French Revolution in “The Tale of Two Cities” clarify his ideas about radical politics?

      Does the judge expect that the subtle confusion about a twin playing at reversing her gender role in Shakespeare’s sublime comedy will effectively educate John on the subtleties of sexual identity and help him to nuance his opinions on homosexuality?

      Depending on how he conducts the discussion sessions around the convicted man’s readings, the magistrate may be creating a precedent that is worth imitating in other cases of individuals with terrorist inclinations. Calling great writers of the past as witnesses of what right-thinking people believe will at least rob such individuals of the time they would dedicate to reading downloaded extremist literature. It’s a question not of fighting fire with fire, but with comforting warmth. 

      There is a problem, however. Understanding what Shakespeare, Austen, Dickens and others had to say requires delving into the history of their times and the modes of thought that accompanied those times. We might even wonder how right-thinking these authors were. Shakespeare in particular left hints that he wasn’t very fond of the oppressive order he was living under. His form of protest was not to download instructions provided by Guy Fawkes (who did attempt to blow up Parliament), but the texts of his tragedies that indirectly express his doubts about the existing political order.

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      For Shakespeare, something was rotten in England as well as Denmark, and the time was clearly out of joint. He carefully avoided appearing too subversive from fear of the temporal power that would inevitably accuse him under the Elizabethan version of the Terror Act.

      Judge Spencer has nevertheless defined a noble course of action in this particular case. Let us hope that he is up to the task as a teacher. If he does succeed, we should recommend his example for handling future cases of intelligent individuals so disturbed by the reigning hypocrisy that they become ready to embrace ideas pointing in the direction of terrorism. Given the constant degradation of our political culture and of the trust people are willing to put in our political leaders and the justice system itself, such examples in the near future are likely to be legion. 

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

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

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      The State Versus the People: Who Controls the Internet?

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      India’s government and Twitter have been fighting a legal battle over compliance with domestic laws. In June 2020, the tech giant failed to make key local appointments required under India’s new information technology rules. Twitter has more than 22 million users in India and was recently categorized as a “significant intermediary” alongside Facebook and WhatsApp.

      Soon after, the companies were required to appoint three Indian officers to a mandatory compliance and grievance redress mechanism. The government’s aim is to make social media companies more accountable to local law enforcement agencies. These officers would help local authorities access data from servers. While WhatsApp and Facebook complied, Twitter did not.

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      In retaliation, the Indian government petitioned and then stripped Twitter of its “safe harbor” immunity that protects them against liability for the content posted by users. Non-compliance has made Twitter vulnerable. Ever since, it has faced four major lawsuits from some of India‘s top statutory bodies, including the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights.

      During an appearance in the Delhi High Court, Twitter denied having any intent to contravene government regulations. In response, one official characterized Twitter’s position as a “prevarication” that “cocks a snook at the digital sovereignty of this country.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Sovereignty:

      A term used to foreignize a rival while claiming moral supremacy and projecting oneself as an insider

      Contextual Note

      India is not alone in expecting tech giants like Twitter and Facebook to be subject to local laws. States across the world use various data localization legislation to assert their sovereignty. Over the years, companies have been asked to place their servers within national jurisdictions. Alternatively, governments have claimed copies of all data and unhindered access to servers located abroad. According to data collected by the European Centre for International Politics Economy, the number of such laws existing in 2010 more than doubled by 2015, from 40 to over 80. That number has been steadily increasing.

      Data localization trends reflect a certain sense of insecurity among states about diluting their digital sovereignty. In an article on digital sovereignty and international conflicts, James A. Lewis defines it as “the right of a state to govern its network to serve its national interests, the most important of which are security, privacy and commerce.”

      Nevertheless, the irony in this scenario is hard to miss. Little prevents information from being circulated on the largest technology markets due to companies and their vulnerability to being influenced. Government access to servers located in India or elsewhere cannot potentially exclude these enterprises themselves. At the very least, host countries pose a constant security threat concerning the data stored on servers in their jurisdiction. These states hold significant leverage.

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      Making matters worse, most global servers are concentrated in a select few powerful countries. Four of the world’s five largest server facilities are located in the US. Although seemingly borderless, the internet extensively depends on a physical infrastructure, which makes it vulnerable to interference. This makes data localization ineffective and hard to implement. For instance, since 2016, Forbes has identified multiple instances in which WhatsApp shared data with the US government. It may be that there are no laws that can provide states with the supremacy they seek. 

      These issues are not new. Experts have been dealing with the redundancy of data localization laws for some time. Lewis warns of an impending Balkanization of the internet because of such laws. He posits that each state seeking its own internet may lead to no internet at all.

      However, the struggle between omnipotent states and omnipresent corporations could have deeper impacts on where global power lies. Apart from the practical problem of granting each state supremacy, the fundamental question relates to our current idea of sovereignty and its bearing on our times.  

      Historical Note

      The modern idea of sovereignty was arguably formulated in Europe with the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. The treaty brought an end to more than a century of continuous religious violence in the Holy Roman Empire. It was the culmination of various failed attempts that built up to the idea of recognizing a supreme authority within a territory that took on the character of a nation-state. However, sovereignty is a much wider concept with many variants.

      Modern sovereignty is envisaged as the political power held by one authority. Historically, that has not always been the case. Overlapping power was distributed between the monarchs and the Catholic Church throughout most of the Middle Ages. Monarchs dealt with the temporal prerogatives of society. Here too, authority was highly distributed among nobles and vassals responsible for maintaining the monarch’s troops. The church dealt with spiritual considerations. It stood as the conscience keeper of both monarchy and society, which permitted the church to play an active role in the secular authorities’ decisions. The church held large tracts of land and actively participated in wars.

      Thus, the Westphalian notion of “supreme authority over a territory” was established by overriding powerful historical forces in the process, including some that were even more powerful than the monarchs.

      The Treaty of Westphalia stripped the churches of their decision-making power. Pope Innocent X immediately expressed his reasoned disagreement along with his taste for provocative adjectives, calling the treaty “null, void, invalid, iniquitous, unjust, damnable, reprobate, inane, and empty of meaning and effect for all time.” 

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      Present-day corporations share some of the features of the mighty nobles and ecclesiastics of the past. At $2.1 trillion, Apple has a market capitalization greater than the GDP of 96% of the world’s countries, while Amazon surpasses 92% of country GDPs at $1.7 trillion. Undoubtedly, they command the digital realm with no real challenge to their authority and would be unlikely to accept a challenge by believers in modern sovereignty.

      Modern sovereignty was established on the basis of a territorial element, against large trans-border forces like religion. Unsurprisingly, it failed in its motives beyond curbing immediate violence. Today, the forces that states face are similar in their reach. The current scenario concerning data localization laws bears an uncanny resemblance to the Peace of Augsburg of 1555.

      At Augsburg, political forces sought to curb conflict by nationalizing religion. States agreed on the principle of cuius regio, eius religio, meaning that the prince’s religion would be their realm’s religion. This created power blocs consisting of countries practicing similar religions. This provided the historical logic behind the devastating Thirty Years’ War. Today, the Balkanization of the internet may result in blocs of states with similar laws, leading to potentially disastrous outcomes for internet freedom.

      The idea of sovereignty originated from morality and not mere capability. It may be legitimate to ask whether states, rather than people, are the correct party to claim rights to privacy and data protection. States have been equally guilty of exploiting access to private information. Recently, numbers of prominent political figures, journalists, human rights activists and business executives in more than 50 countries appear to have been targeted using the Pegasus spyware supplied by the Israeli cybersecurity NSO Group. Adding data privacy to the laundry list of state prerogatives, only because they concern supposedly foreign elements, may be an act of overreach. 

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      Instead, it may be up to individuals across the world to decide who they sign a contract with to secure a connection to the gods — the satellites in the sky. Just as monarchs, who unlike the church lacked the power to legislate the terms of salvation, today the state may be incapable of regulating what doesn’t belong to its realm: the internet. At best, it could play the role of facilitating a contract between the people and the tech giants.

      Hence, adapting to the changing times may require revising our concept of sovereignty. It will not be easy. The French philosopher Jacques Maritain, in his book “Man and the State,” traced the significant circumscription of sovereignty in the wake of World War II. States have at least theoretically united and often consensually given up on their supreme authority on subjects such as human rights and climate change. Supranational arrangements like the EU are testaments to the changing times and ideas.

      The rise of a new digital realm may provide us with a chance to forge this change. It could help us question whether issues like data privacy and protection should be subject to a state’s consent or whether they concern the people, who might want to define their own personal sovereignty. 

      *[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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      Questions on Which No One Agrees: Infrastructure, Cuba and Jobs

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      In August, the Daily Devil’s Dictionary appears in a single weekly edition containing multiple items taken from a variety of contexts.

      Obama Hosts the Jet Set While Biden Plays the Propeller

      As Barack Obama held a lavish do at his Martha’s Vineyard manor, US President Joe Biden tweeted his satisfaction with what appears to be a major accomplishment, getting an infrastructure bill halfway home through a vote in the Senate. “As we did with the transcontinental railroad and the interstate highway,” he proudly proclaimed, “we will once again transform America and propel us into the future.”

      Propel:

      Provide a force that establishes new momentum, with or without the means to control the direction of the resulting motion

      The Context

      In the first part of his tweet, Biden explained that his “Infrastructure Deal signals to the world that our democracy can function, deliver, and do big things.” Some may read this as meaning that Biden’s pride in this partial accomplishment proves that in exceptional circumstances — by definition extremely rare — US democracy is capable of functioning.

      The corollary is that most of the time that must not be the case, an idea most people tend to agree with. But the politicians in Congress, on both sides of the aisle, appear ready to play a game of chicken. In the barnyard of the Beltway, Biden should know how perilous it can be to count your chickens before they hatch, especially when expecting one of the hatched chickens not only to cross the road (to work on repairing its potholes), but even to be propelled across it.

      Christopher Wilson at Yahoo observes that nine “moderate House Democrats on Friday threatened to blow up infrastructure negotiations, highlighting the delicate line that party leadership is trying to walk as it pushes two bills totaling over $4 trillion.” At the same time, the progressive wing has threatened to withdraw its support if the $1-trillion bill passed by the Senate is not coupled with a bill for $3.5 billion that covers some of the most urgent needs.

      In China, Cuba and Ohio, Reform and Inertia Go to Battle

      READ MORE

      Biden’s idea that the nation is being “propelled” into the future contains the odd suggestion that the future will not happen without this exceptional force. We might ask ourselves how 78-year-old Joe Biden envisions his own future, let alone the nation’s and the world’s. In the complete statement put out by the White House, a familiar Biden theme concerning the future reappears. It states that the “agreement will help ensure that America can compete in the global economy just when we are in a race with China and the rest of the world for the 21st Century.”

      Speculating about whether the US “can compete” reveals how skewed the notion of competition has become in US culture. Of course, the US can compete. Even if China does eventually overtake the US as the world’s biggest economy, the US will still be in the competition. In a fair game — even a game of chicken — everyone is expected to compete. That is the principle at the core of capitalism. What Biden literally means is that it’s all about winning, or rather dominating, and not about competing. For nearly a century, the US has seen its role, not as that of a competitor, but of a dictator. Competing means exercising the power to deprive other nations of even being allowed to compete. That’s what wars, invasions and sanctions are all about.

      The other complementary oddity in this statement is Biden’s idea that the 21st century is a prize to be won by a single nation. This is an idea he has repeatedly insisted on. It leaves the impression, confirmed by recent history, that as humanity prepares for a multipolar world, the US will resist to the death any challenge to its will to dominate. This bodes ill for the future of both Americans and everyone else at a time when it has become increasingly apparent that global problems can only be solved if all the nations and peoples of the world are involved.

      The New York Times Is Suffering From a Cold War Syndrome

      The New York Times continues to be hot on the trail of the tragic tale of the “Havana syndrome.” In its latest installment in the ongoing series of articles intended to demonstrate the paper’s failure to notice that tragedy has definitively morphed into comedy, The Times’ White House and National Security correspondent, David Sanger, offers this summary: “While the leading theory in the ‘Havana syndrome’ cases is directed microwave attacks, a classified session for senior government officials said months of investigation were inconclusive.”

      Leading theory:

      For government-led investigations, any theory, however improbable or utterly unlikely that points toward a hypothesis consistent with the requirements of the perpetrator’s agenda of political marketing

      The Context

      The New York Times appears to believe that “inconclusive” means worth writing about as if it was true until the whole thing ends up in the waste bin of history. For some historical perspective, the Warren Commission’s hasty and highly motivated conclusion in 1964 that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in the killing of President John F. Kennedy became the “leading theory” of the time. It has remained officially the “leading theory” ever since and has even profited from the trend created in the early history of the CIA of dubbing a “conspiracy theory” any theory that differs or deviated from the “leading theory.”

      This is in spite of a mountain of forensic evidence as well as willfully ignored testimony that has emerged over time pointing to the involvement or complicity of the CIA, or at least some members of the CIA, most likely with the discreet assistance from the Mafia. Film director Oliver Stone is still bravely working on the case. Despite his new documentary on the JFK assassination that was featured last month at the Cannes film festival, The New York Times didn’t bother to review or even mention it. If it wasn’t financed by Hollywood, no movie is worth reviewing.

      The Havana syndrome story has turned into high and, as usual, expensive comedy because of the monumental efforts required to ensure that the “leading theory” continues to hold its lead even after multiple contradictory hypotheses emerge. In Sanger’s article, one quote by CIA Director William J. Burns gives the game away. Explaining his hesitation to charge Russian President Vladimir Putin with the crime, Burns responded: “Could be, but I honestly cannot — I don’t want to suggest until we can draw some more definitive conclusions who it might be. But there are a number of possibilities.” The Times has not just been suggesting it, but claiming it for at least the past year.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Sanger seems unaware of the comic effect of what he reports in the paragraph following Burns’ admission: “This spring, for example, American military personnel operating in Syria suspected that a sudden illness may have been caused by a Russian aircraft that could have directed microwaves at them; it was later determined they had food poisoning.” Those who have followed the story over the past five years know that the initial cases in Cuba that gave the official title to the syndrome produced the first comic trope when, after the victims submitted recordings of the sounds identified as the source of their woes, a study by a team of biologists “said it matched the mating song of the Indies short-tailed cricket found around the Caribbean.”

      Could the Russians have been genetically engineering the crickets to produce the kind of microwave suspected (but never identified) of causing the damage? The idea that it is a sonic attack in the form of aggressive microwaves is still nothing but that: an idea or, as Burns would admit, one of “a number of possibilities” — alongside food poisoning.

      Can The New York Times be suffering from what should be called the “Havana syndrome syndrome”? It appears so, as it continues to feature the latest “inconclusive” official moves as a breaking news story that is literally devoid of content. Sanger obviously has a direct line to the State Department and the CIA, and probably knows that if he has nothing else to report about how frightening the Russians or the Chinese have become, he can always come back to the Havana syndrome. 

      As with the narrative around UFOs, explaining the state of play of the unexplained, especially if fear is involved, will always attract readers, even when the explanation amounts to affirming that there is no explanation. Meanwhile, the investment of taxpayer money continues. The National Security Council, according to a senior administration official, is “leveraging a broad array of scientific and medical expertise from within the government and outside of it to explore multiple hypotheses and generate new insights.” Their aim is of course to “protect our personnel and identify who or what is responsible.” If they aren’t even sure if they’re looking for a “who” or a “what,” there will indeed be a lot of expensive work to do.

      Whose Reason Will Prevail in the Cuba Debate?

      Following recent protests in Cuba, people find themselves struggling with what politicians and the media want to frame as a simple binary problem. To the question of what has caused the misery in Cuba, Jorge Salazar-Carrillo, writing in The Conversation, notes that  “many analysts and activists — and the Cuban government — argue that this is due to American sanctions on Cuban goods” and counters that “the embargo is not the main reason Cubans are in dire straits now.”

      Main reason:

      One of many probable causes of a particular disaster, cited by a person who seeks to reduce the problem to a single cause so as to put all the blame on an adverse party and deny any responsibility from the speaker’s own side

      The Context

      Claiming to offer “perspective,” Salazar-Carrillo writes: “consider that Cuba’s income per capita back in the 1950s was one of the highest in the Western Hemisphere. Today it has one of the lowest.” He chooses to forget another critical historical fact reported by Marianne Ward and John Devereux in an academic article with the title “The Road Not Taken: Pre-Revolutionary Cuban Living Standards in Comparative Perspective.” The authors describe a Cuba dominated by US business and Mafia interests. They explain that “between 1920 and the 1950s per capita income was declining while the revenues of the richest Cubans were increasing exponentially.”

      Unique Insights from 2,500+ Contributors in 90+ Countries

      Castillo conveniently fails to observe that, despite the decline in income per capita since the revolution, income equality is much greater than it was under Batista’s rule. Ward and Devereux explain that in pre-revolutionary Cuba, “U.S. financial interests included 90 percent of Cuban mines, 80 percent of its public utilities, 50 percent of its railways, 40 percent of its sugar production and 25 percent of its bank deposits. In return, Cuba got hedonistic tourists, organized crime and General Fulgencio Batista” who “appointed himself president by way of a military coup in 1952.”

      To make matters worse, “Not only was the economy weakening as a result of U.S. influence, but Cubans were also offended by what their country was becoming: a haven for prostitution, brothels and gambling.” Is this the situation Castillo and other Cuban exiles wish to return to? Does this explain why a six-decade-long embargo that deprives an entire nation of interacting economically with the dominant economies of the world is not the “main reason” for its economic woes?

      The Hyperreality of a Liberal Identity in the US

      New York Times columnist Ross Duthout used the example of Tucker Carlson’s fawning interview with Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban to make an important point about “the ever-lengthening list of people who have had careers derailed for offenses against progressive norms.” He adds that frequently, “they are heterodox liberals rather than conservatives, because conservatives are rare in elite institutions and less interesting to ideological enforcers.” 

      Heterodox liberals:

      Either a real subcategory of a totally imaginary category of Americans or an imaginary subcategory of a real category of Americans. Let the reader decide.

      The Context

      In the US, everyone is taught from birth that society can be divided into two opposing camps: liberals and conservatives. Growing up, most young people feel pressure to decide which side they are on. Typically, they accept their chosen label for the rest of their lives, though converts do exist, some of whom make a point of broadcasting to the world how they were “born again” politically as living examples of a “great awakening.”

      Criticizing the tyranny of thought exercised by what he calls “intolerant progressivism,” Douthat somehow misses the real and obvious vice in the system. The intolerant progressives he despises have adopted a behavior perfectly consistent with one of the core values in US culture. We could call it “the culture of aggressive community enforcement or negative branding.”

      The idea of law and order resonates strongly in US culture. People can believe and think anything they like, but there are laws that define the limits on their actions. On the other hand, the belief in the abstract notion of “freedom” as something divinely ordained tells them that there should be no limit on what they can do. This has led the culture to adopt a compromise position formulated in the traditional idea that you can wave your arms around as much as you like, but your freedom to do so stops when it enters another person’s space. There is even a consecrated expression: Your personal liberty to swing your arm ends where my nose begins.

      Embed from Getty Images

      In other words, Americans think of themselves as free swingers, but they acknowledge that there are instances in which it may be necessary to restrain the movement. That produces a psychological dilemma that can be resolved either by disciplining one’s own movements (respecting other people’s space) or simply by avoiding other people altogether and retreating into one’s own private reality. This implicit choice has a major impact on how people choose to live their lives. The bold take risks and cultivate a carefully managed discipline of assertiveness. The shy crawl back into their shell.

      Douthat asks an interesting question: “But where can you go to vote for a different ruling ideology in the interlocking American establishment, all its schools and professional guilds, its consolidated media and tech powers?” The answer is nowhere, but not for the reason he expects. The “ruling ideology” isn’t the regime of political correctness he excoriates. There is a superior, universal ruling ideology shared by all but a few lucid and utterly marginalized critics. It bears the name “American exceptionalism.”

      Douthat has no problem with that imposed ideology that indeed interlocks everything in the political economy. Its effects may lead to the destruction of humanity. But what Douthat thinks we really need to worry about is political correctness.

      Forget Climate: Rick Scott Wants to Protect Jobs, Mainly His Own

      In an interview with NPR’s Ari Shapiro, Republican Senator Rick Scott of Florida weighed in on the question of climate change. In the past, Republican politicians have preferred to dismiss the topic as fake news. Not Rick Scott, who tells us: “I think we clearly want to, and need to, address the impacts of climate change, and we’ve got to protect our environment, but we’ve got to do it in a fiscally responsible manner. We can’t put jobs at risk.”

      Fiscally responsible:

      Possessing the theological virtue in the capitalist religion of being socially irresponsible, thanks to a divine decree that places the health and prosperity of investments above the health and prosperity of the people

      The Context

      Scott added, “We’ve got to focus on the impacts of climate change, but you’ve got to do it in a manner that you don’t kill our economy.” Many economists agree with the Biden administration’s stated belief that aggressively countering climate change will not only save the planet but also produce jobs and permanently improve the economy. If that is true, what is the basis of Scott’s fear of killing the economy?

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      The short answer that Republican lawmakers are well aware of is that stimulating a new direction for the economy will deprive some in the rentier class of monopolists their flock of geese that have so consistently laid golden eggs. The economists counter that promoting economic transformation may create new wealth. But the problem for someone like Scott is that new wealth takes years to build the reserves required for it to engage in serious Beltway lobbying and the active funding of political campaigns for incumbent senators.

      *[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 China, Cuba and Ohio, Reform and Inertia Go to Battle

      by

      In August, the Daily Devil’s Dictionary appears in a single weekly edition containing multiple items taken from a variety of contexts.

      This week, before glancing at political division in the US, we look at what is shaping up to be a game-changing development in China. Bloomberg’s reporters refer to it as a “policy bombshell,” but mainstream media in the West have largely ignored it. This neglect may have something to do with the conviction in the West that, though there are monumentally important problems to deal with, the inertia of the political and economic system we have today is such that no one believes that anything we decide to do will ever change anything. Could China be on course to become the century’s new “exceptional nation”?

      Xi’s Promise of a New Great Leap Forward

      In his successful 2008 campaign, Barack Obama railed against George W. Bush’s tax cuts and wars, only to maintain both during his two terms in office. In his campaign last year, Joe Biden lamented Donald Trump’s provocative policies regarding Cuba and Iran as well as Trump’s tax cuts. But after six months at the helm, he has shown no serious intent to reverse those policies. 

      Both Democratic presidents claimed they would effect change (Obama) and be transformative (Biden), hiding they would be acting to reduce the inequality between makers and takers that Republicans promoted as an illustration of capitalist virtue. Both Democrats have shown themselves ready to accommodate and defend the interests of the 1% who supported their campaigns while expressing a sentimental commitment to improving everyone’s lives. The structure of US democracy seems to make challenging the status quo an impossible task. Sentiments consistently fail to influence reality.

      Thought Suppression Flourishes in France and Washington

      READ MORE

      China is governed by an exclusive elite, the Communist Party. Its monopoly on power spares its leaders the trouble of having to invent campaign promises to seduce ignorant voters. Many have noticed the comfortable complicity of China’s communist leaders with an economy that has become a decidedly capitalist power structure. If the US has cultivated an efficient, legally validated system of structured private capitalist corruption that offers the wealthy class the privilege of controlling politics, the Chinese have perfected a system of state corruption that offers the politically powerful direct control of wealth itself.

      All recent US regimes have had no choice but to capitulate to the private interests that literally own the economy. The Democratic Party’s public war against the progressive reformers within its midst provides a good demonstration of the phenomenon. The democratic processes laid out in the US Constitution have been successfully manipulated over time to comfort oligarchy. This makes it particularly remarkable today that China’s authoritarian regime under President Xi Jinping, a true and largely unassailable oligarchy, appears to be providing the rare example of a government intent on taking action against the powerful interests that control the global economy. Xi appears to be taking steps to move China’s political economy in a more egalitarian direction. It may not be Karl Marx, but it clearly isn’t Milton Friedman.

      According to Bloomberg journalists, Tom Hancock and Tom Orlick, “Xi is engaging in a “capitalist smackdown” that will change the way the Chinese economy works in the coming years. Xi’s new agenda “puts three priorities ahead of unfettered growth.” The first, which should surprise no one, is national security. It “includes control of data and greater self-reliance in technology. All nations in our dangerous world are enamored of security. The second is far more radical: “Common prosperity, which aims to curb inequalities that have soared in recent decades.” The third is consistent with traditional Chinese culture: “Stability, which means tamping down discontent among China’s middle class.” In Chinese culture, this is the effect of the virtue of harmony.

      In other words, Xi is attempting to do what Joe Biden has ominously warned he might do: use his authoritarian power to achieve pragmatic goals in the name of the people that are difficult to achieve in the kind of democracy practiced in the US.

      Common prosperity:

      The opposite of the now current regime of private prosperity that works by undermining what was once idealized in the notion of the commonwealth, implying a fraternal sharing of national wealth

      The Context

      Xi appears to be announcing a quiet but stern revolution that has already provoked panic among many of the vested interests in the world of finance, both foreign and Chinese. Forty years ago, Deng Xiaoping’s departure from Mao Zedong’s radical communist egalitarianism and his encouragement of Western-style economic freedom led to China becoming a fixture of the global capitalist system. It achieved this goal by exciting the appetites of both Western and Chinese economic opportunists, leading to a record-breaking expansion of the Chinese economy.

      Unique Insights from 2,500+ Contributors in 90+ Countries

      The new policy aims at relieving the suffering of “stretched workers, stressed parents, and squeezed start-ups.” The article’s authors designate the losers: “tech billionaires and their backers in the stock market, highly leveraged property companies including China Evergrande Group, and foreign venture capital firms that had hoped to take Chinese companies public in the U.S.” The Economist describes the intended outcome in these terms: “Alibaba in e-commerce or Tencent in payments and entertainment will be around but less overweening — and less lucrative. Policies to curb their market power will redistribute some of their profits to smaller merchants and app developers, and to their workers.”

      Xi’s gambit doesn’t appear to be merely rhetorical. Whether he can accomplish his goals remains an open question. He has undoubtedly set the scene for a major drama that, as it plays out, will most likely dominate the decade to come. Both the world of global capital and the declining US empire will react. It could lead to war. It could also lead to radical restructuring of the current geopolitical order in what may become a more multipolar world. For the moment, we the spectators are simply discovering the dialogue of Act I, Scene 1.

      Can Xi Really Corral Such Ferocious Animals?

      The same Bloomberg article explains Xi’s political motivation for his “capitalist smackdown.”  To ensure the population’s acceptance of his hold on the reins of power, Xi wants to reassure the middle class that he is defending their interests. There may be more complex geopolitical causes, but that motivation clearly explains the urgency of the shift. The authors go on to evoke the possible downside of Xi’s new agenda: “The bigger risk for Beijing: Heavy state intervention might dampen the animal spirits that drive private investment and reverse an integration with the global economy that has helped drive growth in the last four decades.”

      Animal spirits:

      The spontaneous exuberance attributed to unthinking creatures with energy to expend, an unbridled appetite and scorn for anything that stands in their way

      The Context

      Xi is undoubtedly a clever geopolitical strategist. He can see clearly the issues Western empires have struggled with in past centuries. China had a privileged vantage point for observing the British Empire’s strengths and weaknesses after experiencing a pair of Opium Wars in the 19th century. The incoherence of nationalistic rivalries in Europe ultimately undermined the British Empire that had reduced much of Asia, and particularly India and China, to a state of economic submission, if not slavery. 

      Two world wars that included an emerging Japanese Empire eventually cleared the space for the USA’s consumer society-led neo-colonial, officially apolitical but heavily militaristic empire that eventually crafted a productive role for China’s post-Marxist economy. The Chinese “workshop of the world” became a vital feature of a system focused on permanent growth and obsessively stoked consumerism. Following World War II, American consumers became literally addicted to falling prices on consumer goods. China, with help from US capitalists, could step in to provide an ever-expanding cornucopia of goods at lower prices.

      Xi is aware that the entire Western world, struggling with various imperfect models of democracy, has reached a tipping point regarding two existential problems: health and wealth. Both are clearly out of control. Governments in the West have demonstrably failed to address both the health of the planet, increasingly subjected to climate chaos, and the health of their people. None more so than the US, a nation that continues to resist even the idea of universal health care and persists in spectacularly bungling most of its initiatives with regard to the COVID-19 drama. 

      Embed from Getty Images

      With its retrograde approach to the distribution of vaccines, the intellectual ownership-obsessed West, guided by the wisdom of Bill Gates, has failed to live up to its image as the putative provider of global solutions. As it focuses on protecting and exploiting its supposed intellectual property in competition with the rest of the world, the West has, embarrassingly for itself, allowed spectacular chaos to continue and amplify. As for wealth, the effects of the pandemic have aggravated the growing and insurmountable gap between the hyper-rich and the rest of humanity. The idea that everyone can someday become a millionaire has been replaced by the clear perception that the super-wealthy will do everything in their power to ensure that only a select few will ever be admitted into their club.

      China’s authoritarian system has made it easier to enact and implement policy. Powerless to solve problems, Western governments, captured by binary logic, prefer to explore hypothetical consequences and debate what emerge as two contradictory positions. With his Belt and Road Initiative, Xi has already expertly used the contrast between the image of constructive cooperation and the American addiction to war, military operations and sanctions as the solution to all problems. Xi’s gambit may translate more as image-building than economic realism, and it may rely as much on corruption as the will to collaborate, but it stands as an effective example of soft power.

      Now Xi can remake his image as a populist hero at home. His announced policies even correspond to the fantasies of populists on the right and left who would love to see the financial operators ushered out the door, replaced by laws and practices that at least appear to be transferring power to the people under the protection of the government. Xi promises to put a leash on the over-exuberant animals who alone make the law in the capitalist West.

      Antony Blinken Worries About China’s Ambitions

      The Biden administration has apparently decided that the key to consolidating its image with voters lies in a foreign policy that consists of getting tough on the nations that refuse to get in line behind US leadership. The first among them and the one most likely to inspire the kind of fear that galvanizes American voters is, of course, China. With nearly four times the population of the United States, the quantity of fear it can generate will be spectacular. And in politics, it’s the spectacle that counts.

      Bloomberg has published an article by Peter Martin with the headline, “Blinken Warns Asian Nations of China’s Growing Nuclear Ambitions,” in which he cites the US secretary of state’s “‘deep concern’ over China’s growing nuclear arsenal.” 

      Deep concern

      The emotion politicians claim to have, thanks to their privileged knowledge of geopolitical realities, which, when communicated to the people, generates the degree of fear that justifies risky and aggressive policies, including war

      The Context

      Reuters reports Secretary Blinken’s complaint that “Beijing has sharply deviated from its decades-old nuclear strategy based on minimum deterrence.” China is expected to understand that only the US is authorized to practice maximum deterrence. The following two paragraphs in the Reuters article give an idea of why Blinken’s concern is so “deep”:

      “A 2020 Pentagon report estimated China’s nuclear warhead stockpile in ‘the low 200s’ and said it was projected to at least double in size as Beijing expands and modernizes its forces.

      Analysts say the United States has around 3,800 warheads, and according to a State Department factsheet, 1,357 of those were deployed as of March 1.”

      Who wouldn’t be concerned with only 3,800 warheads to ensure peace in the world? Bloomberg quotes Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who disapproves of “countries interfering in each other’s internal affairs.” Wang added a casual historical observation “that Asian nations had been bullied by others in the past and didn’t require ‘teachers’ or ‘saviors.’” The Opium Wars apparently left an indelible smoky taste in the Chinese collective unconscious.

      The Latest Skirmish Inside the Increasingly Divided US Democratic Party

      As the Republican Party continues its existential anguish surrounding the role of Donald Trump, the Democratic Party struggles to define whether its loyalty is to the people or the lobbies that fund its campaigns. The drama played out this past week in a special election pitting two African American women against each other.

      The Los Angeles Times provides its explanation of the come-from-behind victory of mainstream Shontel Brown over progressive Nina Turner in a high profile Democratic primary election for a congressional seat in Ohio: “Brown’s primary win is a boost for moderate Democrats who have been in increasingly testy tussles with progressive activists and gives a new voice in Congress for voters who are more hungry for calm pragmatism than for the passionate populism that animates Sanders’ followers.”

      Calm pragmatism:

      The fear of calling into question the visible cause of one’s suffering because the status quo has proved so destructive that people think any change will make things even worse

      The Context

      One Democratic political consultant in Cleveland explained what he thought “calm pragmatism” amounts to: “People are tired and worn out after the last four or five years.” They have stopped thinking about the implications of political choices and simply hope there will be a new status quo. The loser, Nina Turner, claimed that her campaign “didn’t lose this race. Evil money manipulated and maligned this election.” She has a point, since the effect on politics of money — once deemed in the Christian West to be “the root of all evil” — now dominates the rhetoric deployed in campaigns to the point of definitively crippling and even excluding serious political debate. Populist passion is real, but so is the passion of fear-mongering that incites voters to retreat into the illusion of calm pragmatism.

      On an unrelated topic, Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst, Marwan Bishara, has expressed his surprise at the African Union’s acceptance of Israel as an observer despite its consistent criticism of what it qualifies as Tel Aviv’s apartheid policies. Bishara explains that African nations may “reckon that Israel has major sway in Washington and may be of help to influence the decisions of the world’s superpower in their favour.” He then adds, “Indeed, such pragmatism — read opportunism — may have worked for the likes of Sudan in getting US sanctions lifted after it began normalising relations with Israel.”

      Embed from Getty Images

      Bishara thus equates “calm pragmatism” with “cynical opportunism.” Can the Ohio voters who chose Brown over Turner be accused of opportunism? Undoubtedly no, if only because they have nothing specific to gain from Brown’s election. The true explanation is the “evil money” Turner complains about paid for yet another media campaign based on stoking voters’ fear of the unknown. Democratic Party stalwarts — which included Hillary Clinton, Jim Clyburn and their sources of corporate money — effectively countered the successful grassroots funding of Turner’s campaign and turned the tide in Brown’s favor. Those stalwarts and their backers are the opportunists. The voters persuaded by their fear of the unknown were their dupes.

      What links these two stories together is what a significant factor in Brown’s primary victory. As the Times of Israel explains, a lobbying group, “Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI) threw its support behind Brown.” The DMFI reportedly contributed nearly $2 million to Brown’s campaign. Why? Because they know that Turner is one of the rare American politicians who has the independence of thought to criticize Israel, something no US politician is permitted to do on pain of being branded anti-Semitic. The idea that Turner might challenge the unconditional commitment of the US to supporting Israel galvanized the white suburban voters who ended up giving Brown the majority.

      The lockstep alignment of the US with Israel has been as important a factor as access to oil in determining US Middle East policy in recent decades. That policy has been disastrous for the region, the US and the world in a variety of ways. Is that the result people still expect from following a policy of calm pragmatism?

      A Washington Post Columnist’s Shameful Feinting With Damned Praise

      Conservative Washington Post columnist Marc A. Thiessen quite logically makes it clear that he is ready to come to the defense of black Cubans as the most effective way of undermining pretentions of the most vocal black US Americans: “As the Cuban people — up to 75 percent of whom have Afro-Cuban ancestry — rose up to demand their freedom, the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation issued a statement praising the brutal regime that oppresses them and calling on the Biden administration to lift the U.S. embargo on Cuba.”

      Praise:

      Make an objectively true statement describing a complex situation that includes a reference to a regime that has been labeled for ideological reasons as a diabolical enemy of every moral (i.e., economic) principle the United States is believed to stand for

      The Context

      In July, protests spread in Cuba provoked by a variety of ills for which many Cubans, succumbing to conditions of severe deprivation, wish to hold their government to account. US media predictably seized upon the occasion to nourish the dream of various interested parties in the US — mostly located in the quintessential swing state, Florida — to restore the situation of effective neo-colonial rule that the US enjoyed over the island from 1915 to 1959.

      The first thing to notice in Thiessen’s piece, as in most of the media treatment in the US, is the facile use of the term “the Cuban people.” When a crowd of protesters appears, they become “the Cuban people.” Many of the same pundits in 2003 claimed that an overwhelming majority of Iraqis were ready to toss flowers at US soldiers invading their country. Honest reporters might write “a significant number of discontented Cubans” or some variation on that idea, but the dishonest ones simply declare that the protesters, some waving US flags, are synonymous with “the Cuban people.”

      Thiessen reveals his utter dishonesty when he complains that Black Lives Matters was “praising the brutal regime” in its statement. Thiessen links to a BLM statement on Instagram that begins by condemning “the U.S. government’s inhumane treatment of Cubans.” At no point does it praise the Cuban government other than citing an objective fact of “the country’s strong medical care and history of lending doctors and nurses to disasters around the world.” The BLM statement notes one other objective fact concerning a government’s policies, that “the United States has forced pain and suffering on the people of Cuba” through its embargo.

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      Anyone inclined to doubt that fact need simply refer to the State Department memorandum of April 6, 1960, that describes a policy that has been in place for the last 60 years: “The only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship.” It recommends “every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba … to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.”

      Although the sanctions regime was loosened in 2015 by Barack Obama, Donald Trump scaled back and imposed new crippling measures. During his campaign last year, candidate Joe Biden proclaimed: “I’d try to reverse the failed Trump policies that inflicted harm on Cubans and their families.” Instead, he has maintained Trump’s sanctions and last week added new ones, while promising even “more to come.”

       *[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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      When Technology Cancels Anonymity

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      Only days after The Washington Post’s startling revelations of abuse by various governments using Israeli firm NSO’s Pegasus spyware, Axios reports on the case of a Catholic Church official in the US, Monsignor Jeffrey Burrill, who resigned after being shamed as apparently gay by the Catholic news outlet The Pillar. The publication claims to have conducted an investigation that involved considerable expense. It required purchasing a trove of data that had been analyzed by a technically qualified consulting firm to charge its victim.

      Concerning the collection of personal data, technology providers are required to protect the identity of users by formatting the data in such a way that, even when all the details of a person’s behavior are analyzed to produce a consumer profile, the user’s identity remains hidden. To solve this problem, The Pillar’s team worked in two stages. 

      The first stage consisted of purchasing data from a firm that exercises the new profession that Tech Crunch refers to as “data brokers.” The data in question is the result of tracking the user’s behavior while using apps or consulting internet sites. Data brokers collect and store the result of that permanent tracking before selling it to advertisers who can then “profile you, understand your tastes, your hobbies and interests, and use that information to target you with ads.”

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      The data thus serves to create consumer profiles. The brokers may not legally associate the data they sell with named individuals. They must anonymize the data before selling it to a third party. But inevitably, among the mass of behavioral information collected, clues will be present enabling anyone with the requisite time, patience, analytical skills and sheer animus to make the attribution.

      Once the data was in its hands, The Pillar hired consultants to set about deciphering it to identify a culprit. The consultants narrowed down all the connections, including geographical data, that eventually led with near-absolute precision to the individual The Pillar suspected, Msgr. Burrill. Not only did The Pillar carry out the investigation in what it deemed to be the public interest, it immediately reported it, thereby shaming the victim and forcing him to resign.

      Axios points out that awareness of the ethical issues linked to this system of recording and marketing the behavior of individuals is not new. “Privacy experts have long raised concerns about ‘anonymized’ data collected by apps and sold to or shared with aggregators and marketing companies.” This may, however, be the first time those concerns have proven justified. “Some privacy experts,” according to The Washington Post, “said that they couldn’t recall other instances of phone data being de-anonymized and reported publicly.” The experts add “that it’s not illegal and will likely happen more as people come to understand what data is available about others.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      De-anonymize:

      Undertake a complex process of data manipulation for the noble purpose of publicly shaming (or blackmailing) someone whose behavior one doesn’t condone

      Contextual Note

      Axios explains why this affair is significant: “The small Catholic outlet, The Pillar, was able to achieve this by obtaining ‘anonymized’ data from a broker, and having a consulting firm analyze it and link it to the church official — showing how easy and legally this can now be done.” In the age of cancel culture, we finally have the ideal toolset to get the job done.

      What was the monsignor’s crime that justified The Pillar’s “investigation”? As it reports, “Burrill’s mobile device shows the priest … visited gay bars and private residences while using a location-based hookup app in numerous cities from 2018 to 2020.” That is something the public definitely needs to know.

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      “No federal laws prohibit buying this data,” The Post reminds its readers. One expert cited by The Post explains that users “have no idea where this data actually lives. But it’s out there, and it’s for sale.” That may sound shocking, but it corresponds to a deeper logic at the core of today’s economic culture. The syllogism goes like this. Premise one: Data has value. After all, it is the key to Google’s and Facebook’s prosperity. Premise two: Anything that has value can be sold. In any commercial setting, it is likely to be sold. Conclusion: Data, however damaging its dissemination may be, will be sold and then either exploited for another purpose or disseminated. This correlates with another law of modern economics: If you don’t sell what has value, you are a loser.

      Making money out of data has become the first principle and the central axiom of what we call “the information society.” Data is a valuable commodity. Human dignity and social integrity may be worthy ideals, but they will always be deemed secondary because they cannot be transformed into a commodity. The Pillar understands that principle and calls that choice “investigative reporting.”

      Historical Note

      In 1974, the distinguished 69-year-old French theologian, Jesuit cardinal and elected member of the French Académie, Jean Danielou, died in the apartment of a young female “friend.” The 24-year-old blonde was known to have financial problems. In particular, she hoped to pay for a lawyer for her Corsican husband in prison for pimping. Gilberte worked in a bar frequented by underworld figures, where she went by the name of Mimi or Gaby. Some suspected she had different ways of supplementing her income.

      Monsignor Danielou was said to have been a frequent visitor to her apartment. At the time of his death, he had 3,000 francs on his person. (New York governor and Republican presidential contender Nelson Rockefeller appears to have died in a manner similar five years later.) The French media, often with a touch of irony, noted these facts and assumed that the truth may have been slightly different than the official explanation, that the theologian was paying a pastoral visit to his friend in need, Gilberte.

      Embed from Getty Images

      In its account, the French newspaper Le Parisien noted that five years before his death, Danielou had proclaimed that “sexuality is a gift of God,” adding: “I understand personally that certain priests may be sensitive to the beauty and charms of a woman.” He insisted that “we expect too much from a priest since he is only a man.”

      In an article in the National Catholic Reporter, theologian Steven P. Millies explains the ethical principle The Pillar seems to ignore: “I am a sinner. So are you. So is Msgr. Jeffrey Burrill. Not one of us has a personal life that would withstand the sort of scrutiny The Pillar has applied to Burrill.” Millies identifies a problem that goes beyond the question of the ethics of the Catholic clergy and is of particular concern in American society today. The mission to shame and cancel other people has become perversely elevated to the status of an act of virtue.

      Millies cites Canon Law: “No one is permitted to harm illegitimately the good reputation which a person possesses nor to injure the right of any person to protect his or her own privacy.” While exposing other people’s sins harkens back to the Puritanical roots of the Anglo-Saxon American experiment, the role of technology has turned this nasty trait into an authentic social plague.

      In the European Catholic tradition, sexual excess (lust) has always been considered one of the seven deadly sins. It has also been the one easiest to forgive and the most prone to being charitably confused with the ultimate virtue in Christian ethics, love. If Don Giovanni (Molière’s Don Juan) — an ancient but less slimy version of Harvey Weinstein — deserves his final plunge into hell, Christian audiences can’t help secretly sharing Leporello’s admiration for his accomplishments (“mille et tre”). After all, unlike Weinstein or Jeffrey Epstein, the Don carried them out with style.

      Embed from Getty Images

      In the case of Cardinal Danielou, the French media and people took the case in stride, laughing about the embarrassing allegations. Charlie Hebdo and the Le Canard Enchainé stand as exceptions since both are always ready to mercilessly exploit any apparent hypocrisy for humor. But on the whole, the French avoided impugning the reputation of an authentic thinker who, though a conscientious priest, was also a man and, therefore, a sinner.

      Sam Sawyer S.J., the senior editor of the Jesuit publication “America,” pinpoints the outcome of The Pillar’s article by noting that “what the church is left with is the specter of effectively unlimited retroactive surveillance, deployed under private direction at The Pillar’s discretion for the purpose of policing failures in celibacy through the threat of public disclosure.” 

      More broadly, society is left with a similar specter of “unlimited retroactive surveillance” by anyone, public or private, with the financial means to carry it out and an undisclosed motive for doing so. In such circumstances, Monsignor Burrill’s real sins and other people’s crimes may be exposed, but the notion of trust within the community will be the ultimate victim. In an era in which social media is used for increasingly aggressive antisocial behavior, trust was already on the defensive. Thanks to our deteriorating social climate crisis that parallels in intensity the physical climate crisis, trust may be the first species to go extinct.

      *[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 Spying an Art or a Crime?

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      The New York Times on Monday reported that the US has accused China “of breaching Microsoft email systems used by many of the world’s largest companies.” On the same day, The Washington Post announced the findings of an investigation into “spyware licensed by an Israeli firm to governments for tracking terrorists and criminals.” The Pegasus spyware supplied by the Israeli firm NSO targeted “journalists, human rights activists, business executives and two women close to murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi,” as well as three sitting presidents and three current prime ministers, a king and a host of high-profile officials around the world.

      With American troops wending their way home from the 20-year-long hot war in Afghanistan, the new cold war that recently became a dominant theme in American electoral politics has taken a curious turn. The original Cold War had meaning because it appeared to be a largely equitable match between the United States and the Soviet Union. That changed with the implosion of the USSR in 1991. What didn’t change was the psychological dependence of American administrations on their ability to identify existential threats from abroad. What better way, after all, to distract from the growing disarray visible within its own society?

      Are Americans Waiting for a Cyber Apocalypse?

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      The decade that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union demonstrated the scope of the problem. In his 2000 presidential campaign, grammatically challenged George W. Bush lamented the fact that the nation had lost the reassuring feeling of living in “a dangerous world” in which “you knew exactly who they were. It was us versus them, and it was clear who them was.” Bush was nevertheless convinced that there was an enemy on whom the nation could concentrate its fears.

      Just eight months into his first term, after being elected by the Supreme Court, Bush got lucky. Islamic terrorism stepped in to play the role of archvillain, becoming the steed three presidents would ride for the next two decades, though its effect would wear with time. Despite the FBI’s persistent campaign to incite rudderless young Muslims to play the role of domestic terrorists — even funding plots that were subsequently “thwarted” by the FBI itself — homegrown Islamic terrorism has never lived up to its role as the existential threat the nation’s leaders wished for. That’s why Russia and China are back.

      The response to Islamic terrorism has been so chaotic and mismanaged that, instead of unifying the nation as it once did in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, it has had the effect of fragmenting society beyond recognition. Americans now live to hate and cancel other Americans. The most identifiable enemies are people’s own neighbors or fellow citizens with contrasting mindsets.

      After the debacle of Trump’s election in 2016, establishment Democrats seeking a scapegoat focused on Russia as the source of the nation’s deepest fears. Their marketing geniuses imagined what they termed “collusion” between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. Republicans preferred to focus on China, though the business wing of the Republican party continues to see China as a burgeoning marketplace for its goods. 

      Now that Russia and China practice the virtues of capitalism, it has become more difficult to frame the rivalry in purely military terms, though the pressure to launch a new arms race is as real as ever. But that has more to do with the fact that the military-industrial complex has become the core of the industrial economy. The new focus is on the notion of cyberthreat. The Cold War is morphing into the Code War.

      Embed from Getty Images

      In April, The Times reported that the Biden administration had “imposed extensive new sanctions on Russia” for the famous SolarWinds hack. It did so on the grounds that the Russian government may have been involved, though, as WhatIs.com reported, it is clearly a question of belief rather than established fact: “Federal investigators and cybersecurity agents believe a Russian espionage operation — most likely Russia‘s Foreign Intelligence Service — is behind the SolarWinds attack.” One of the curious features of the SolarWinds attack is that nobody seems to know if there were any consequences other than the gathering of economic information. “The purpose of the hack remains largely unknown,” WhatIs reports.

      If the complaint about Russian and Chinese industrial spying is little more than rebranded old news in the Russiagate tradition, the most substantial piece of new news is The Washington Post’s scoop about NSO’s software. The fact that it was used to spy on the widest diversity of targets by various governments not averse to exaggerated forms of despotism makes it distinctive and seriously troubling. This isn’t industrial espionage — it’s people espionage.

      What has been the reaction in Israel? While the Israeli government has remained silent, The Washington Post notes that the “NSO Group firmly denies false claims made in your report which many of them are uncorroborated theories that raise serious doubts about the reliability of your sources, as well as the basis of your story.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Uncorroborated theory:

      1. A common way of describing a boatload of unconnected facts that all point toward a person’s or an institution’s accountability
      2. Most of what appears in the news to justify the aggressive foreign policy Americans now believe is a feature of their nation’s identity

      Contextual Note 

      The New York Times described the latest scandal in these terms: “A major Israeli cyber-surveillance company, NSO Group, came under heightened scrutiny Sunday after an international alliance of news outlets reported that governments used its software to target journalists, dissidents and opposition politicians.” A person suspected of a major crime is arrested and eventually charged. In today’s neoliberal world, a company, even in the presence of massive evidence, is merely subjected to “heightened scrutiny.”

      The goal of those using the software is the theft of private information and includes setting up kidnaps and murders, allegedly including the gruesome killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. Reuters explains what the US Justice Department believes to be the goal of the Chinese hackers: “The campaign targeted trade secrets in industries including aviation, defense, education, government, health care, biopharmaceutical and maritime industries.” In other words, China’s crime is industrial spying rather than political espionage. It is about property rather than people, or what Deputy Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco condemned as an attempt “to steal what other countries make.”

      Historical Note

      It is an observable fact in the functioning of today’s legal systems that protecting private property is far more important than the security of the population. National interest has come to be synonymous with corporate interest. The nations whose corporations historically grew by stealing the resources of the rest of the world after subjecting their populations to colonial rule see no crime as heinous as the attempts of those exploited nations and regions to use modern technology, not to steal, but to learn how to exploit the same processes the advanced economies have built.

      Stealing ideas and processes — or industrial plagiarism — has always been a feature of dynamic economies. Defenders of the letter of the law complain that violating patents kills innovation. On the contrary, the prevention of the transfer of immaterial knowledge encourages monopoly. That not only stifles innovation but creates the conditions for various forms of oppression, including the ability to steal with impunity from weaker rivals. In October 2020, Business Insider reported the allegation against Amazon. An antitrust report by the House Judiciary Committee determined that “Amazon uses third-party seller data to copy the site’s most popular products.”

      The Times offers this historical reminder: “While there is nothing new about digital espionage from Russia and China — and efforts by Washington to block it — the Biden administration has been surprisingly aggressive in calling out both countries and organizing a coordinated response.” Biden seeks to be remembered not as the new FDR, but as the defender of the neoliberal order and the consolidation of the corporate oligarchy as the virtual government overseeing a form of democracy that has been reduced to a set of electoral rituals.

      Capitalists will always seek to steal what others have done. That is called getting an edge on the competition. Sometimes they can do it legally, but often they will do it illegally after taking a maximum number of precautions to avoid being caught. In today’s world of asymmetric economic warfare, the stronger corporations will get away with it, and the stronger nations will find effective ways of punishing those that are trying to catch up.

      *[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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      Biden’s Pirates of the Caribbean

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

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Clarion call:

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

      Contextual Note

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

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

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

      Embed from Getty Images

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

      Historical Note

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

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

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

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

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