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      Language Paranoia and the Binary Exclusion Syndrome

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      In the olden days, which some of us remember as the 20th century, news stories and commentary tended to focus on people and their actions. The news would sometimes highlight and even debate current ideas circulating about society and politics. New stories quite often sought to weigh the arguments surrounding serious projects intended to improve things. The general tendency was to prefer substance over form.

      Things have radically changed since the turn of the century. It may be related to a growing sentiment of fatalism that defines our Zeitgeist. Outside of the billionaire class, people feel powerless, a feeling that is already wreaking havoc in the world of politics. After banks that were “too big to fail,” we have inherited problems that appear too big to solve. Climate change and COVID-19 have contributed powerfully to the trend, but a series of chaotic elections in several of our most stable democracies, accompanied by newer wars or prospects of war called upon to replace the old ones all serve to comfort the trend.

      Language and the News

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      In the United States, this feeling of helplessness has had the unfortunate effect of turning people’s attention away from the issues and the facts that matter to focus on the language individuals use to describe them. Words that inspire aggressive emotional reactions now dominate the news cycle, eclipsing the people, events and ideas that should be at the core of the news cycle.

      One reason we have launched Fair Observer’s new feature, Language and the News, and are continuing with a weekly dictionary of what was formerly The Daily Devil’s Dictionary is that, increasingly, the meaning of the words people use has been obscured and replaced by the emotions different groups of combative people attach to words.

      What explains this drift into a state of permanent combat over words? Addressing the issues — any issues — apparently demands too much effort, too much wrestling with nuance and perspective. It is much easier to reduce complex political and moral problems to a single word and load that word with an emotional charge that disperses even the possibility of nuance. This was already the case when political correctness emerged decades ago. But the binary logic that underlies such oppositional thinking has now taken root in the culture and goes well beyond the simple identification of words to use or not use in polite society.

      The Problem of Celebrities Who Say Things Out Loud

      Last week, US podcast host Joe Rogan and actress Whoopi Goldberg submitted to concerted public ostracism (now graced with the trendy word “canceled”) over the words and thoughts they happened to express in contexts that used to be perceived as informal, exploratory conversations. Neither was attempting to make a formal pronouncement about the state of the world. They were guilty of thinking out loud, sharing thoughts that emerged spontaneously.

      It wasn’t James Joyce (who was at one time canceled by the courts), but it was still a stream of consciousness. Human beings have been interacting in that way ever since the dawn of language, at least 50,000 years. The exchange of random and sometimes focused thoughts about the world has been an essential part of building and regulating every human institution we know, from family life to nation-states.

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      During these centuries of exchanges, many of the thoughts uttered were poorly or only partially reasoned. Dialogue with others helped them to evolve and become the constructs of culture. Some were mistaken and bad. Others permitted moments of self-enlightenment. Only popes have ever had the privilege of making ex cathedra pronouncement deemed infallible, at least to the faithful. The rest of us have the messy obligation of debating among ourselves what we want to understand as the truth.

      Dialogue never establishes the truth. It permits us to approach it. That doesn’t preclude the fact that multiple groups have acquired the habit of thinking themselves endowed with papal certainty allowing them to close the debate before it even begins. Everyone has noticed the severe loss of trust in the institutions once counted upon to guide the mass of humanity: governments, churches and the media.

      That general loss of trust means that many groups with like-minded tastes, interests or factors of identity have been tempted to impose on the rest of society the levels of certainty they feel they have attained. Paradoxically, internationally established churches, once dominant across vast swaths of the globe, have come to adopt an attitude of humble dialogue just as governments, the media and various interest groups have become ensconced in promulgating the certainty of their truth while displaying an intolerance of dialogue.

      Dialogue permits us to refine our perceptions, insights and intuitions and put them into some kind of perspective. That perspective is always likely to shift as new insights (good) and social pressures (not always so good) emerge. The sane attitude consists of accepting that no linguistically formulated belief — even the idea that the sun rises in the east — should be deemed to be a statement of absolute truth. (After all, despite everyone’s daily experience, the sun doesn’t rise — the Earth turns.) Perspective implies that, however stable any of our ideas may appear to us at a particular time, we can never be absolutely sure they are right and even less sure that the words we have chosen to frame such truths sum up their meaning.

      Truth and the US State Department

      A quick glance at the media over the past week demonstrates the complexity of the problem. Theoretically, a democratic society will always encourage dialogue, since voting itself, though highly imperfect, is presented as a means for the people to express their intentions concerning real world issues. In a democracy, a plurality of perspectives is not only desirable, but inevitable and should be viewed as an asset. But those who are convinced of their truth and have the power to impose their truth see it as a liability.

      On February 3, State Department spokesman Ned Price spent nearly four minutes trying to affirm, in response to a journalist’s persistent objections, that his announced warning about a Russian false flag operation wasn’t, as the journalist suspected, itself a false flag. The journalist, Matt Lee of the Associated Press, asked for the slightest glimpse of the substance of the operation before accepting to report that there actually was something to report on. What he got were words.

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      Price, a former CIA officer, believed that the term was self-explanatory. He clearly expected members of the press to be grateful for receiving “information that is present in the US government.” Price sees Lee’s doubt as a case of a reporter seeking “solace in information that the Russians are putting out.” In other words, either a traitor or a useful idiot. Maggie Haberman of The New York Times reacted by tweeting, “ This is really something as an answer. Questioning the US government does not = supporting what Russia is saying.”

      Haberman is right, though she might want to instruct some of her fellow journalists at The Times, who have acquired the habit of unquestioningly echoing anything the State Department, the Defense Department or the intelligence community shares with them. Especially when for more than five years, The Times’ specialized in promoting alarmism about Russia’s agency in the “Havana syndrome” saga. Because the CIA suspected, all the cases were the result of “hostile acts.” Acts, by the way, for which the only physically identified perpetrator was a species of Cuban crickets.

      The back and forth concerning Russia’s false flag operation, like the Havana syndrome itself, illustrates a deeper trend that has seriously eroded the quality of basic communication in the United States. It takes the form of an increasingly binary, even Manichean type of reasoning. For Price, it’s the certainty of the existence of evil acts by Russians before needing any proof and even before those acts take place. But it also appears in the war of obstinate aggression waged by those who seek to silence anyone who suggests that the government’s vaccine mandates and other COVID-19 restrictions may not be justified.

      This binary syndrome now permeates all levels of US culture, and not only the political sphere. The constraining force of the law is one thing, which people can accept. The refusal of dialogue is literally anti-human, especially in a democracy. But it also takes the form of moral rage when someone expresses an idea calling into question some aspect of authority or, worse, pronounces a word whose sound alone provokes a violent reaction. There is a residual vigilante culture that still infects US individualism. The willingness, or rather the need people feel, to apply summary justice helps to explain the horrendous homicide rate in the United States. Vigilantism has gradually contaminated the world of politics, entertainment and even education, where parents and school boards go to battle over words and ideas.

      George W. Bush’s contribution

      US culture has always privileged binary oppositions and shied away from nuance because nuance is seen as an obstacle to efficiency in a world where “time is money.” But a major shift began to take place at the outset of the 21st century that seriously amplified the phenomenon. The 1990s were a decade in which Americans believed their liberal values had triumphed globally following the collapse of the Soviet Union. For many people, it turned out to be boring. The spice of having an enemy was missing.

      In 2001, the Manichean thinking that dominated the Cold War period was thus programmed for a remake. Although the American people tend to prefer both comfort and variety (at least tolerance of variety in their lifestyles), politicians find it useful to identify with an abstract mission consisting of defending the incontestable good against the threat posed by inveterate evil. The updated Cold War was inaugurated by George W. Bush in September 2001 when the US president famously proclaimed, “Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make: either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.”

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      The cultural attitude underlying this statement is now applied to multiple contexts, not just military ones. I like to call it the standard American binary exclusionist worldview. It starts from the conviction that one belongs to a camp and that camp represents either what is right or a group that has been unjustly wronged. Other camps may exist. Some may even be well-intentioned. But they are all guilty of entertaining false beliefs, like Price’s characterization of journalists who he imagines promote Russian talking points. That has long been standard fare in politics, but the same pattern applies in conflicts concerning what are called “culture issues,” from abortion to gender issues, religion or teaching Critical Race Theory.

      In the political realm, the exclusionist worldview describes the dark side of what many people like to celebrate as “American exceptionalism,” the famous “shining city on a hill.” The idea it promotes supposes that others — those who don’t agree, accept and obey the stated rules and principles — are allied with evil, either because they haven’t yet understood the force of truth, justice and democracy and the American way, or because they have committed to undermining it. That is why Bush claimed they had “a decision to make.” Ned Price seems to be saying something similar to Matt Lee.

      A General Cultural Phenomenon

      But the exclusionist mentality is not just political. It now plays out in less straightforward ways across the entire culture. Nuance is suspected of being a form of either cowardice or hypocrisy. Whatever the question, debate will be cut short by one side or the other because they have taken the position that, if you are not for what I say, you are against it. This is dangerous, especially in a democracy. It implies an assumption of moral authority that is increasingly perceived by others to be unfounded, whether it is expressed by government officials or random interest groups.

      The example of Price’s false flag and Lee’s request for substance — at least something to debate — reveals how risky the exclusionist mentality can be. Anyone familiar with the way intelligence has worked over the past century knows that false flags are a very real item in any intelligence network’s toolbox. The CIA’s Operation Northwoods spelled out clearly what the agency intended to carry out. “We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba,” a Pentagon official wrote, adding that “casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation.”

      There is strong evidence that the 2001 anthrax attacks in the US, designed to incriminate Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and justify a war in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, was an attempted false flag operation that failed miserably when it was quickly discovered that the strain of anthrax could only have been produced in America. Lacking this proof, which also would have had the merit of linking Hussein to the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration had to struggle for another 18 months to build (i.e., fabricate) the evidence of Iraq’s (non-existent) weapons of mass destruction.

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      This enabled the operation “shock and awe” that brought down Hussein’s regime in 2003. It took the FBI nearly seven years to complete the coverup of the anthrax attacks designed to be attributed to Iraq. They did so by pushing the scientist Bruce Ivins to commit suicide and bury any evidence that may have elucidated a false flag operation that, by the way, killed five Americans.

      But false flags have become a kind of sick joke. In a 2018 article on false flags, Vox invokes the conventional take that false flag reports tend to be the elements of the tawdry conspiracy theories that have made it possible for people like Alex Jones to earn a living.  “So ‘false flag’ attacks have happened,” Vox admits, “but not often. In the world of conspiracy theorists, though, ‘false flags’ are seemingly everywhere.” If this is true, Lee would have been on the right track if he were to suspect the intelligence community and the State Department of fabricating a conspiracy theory.

      Although democracy is theoretically open to a diversity of competing viewpoints, the trend in the political realm has always pointed toward a binary contrast rather than the development of multiple perspectives. The founding fathers of the republic warned against parties, which they called factions. But it didn’t take long to realize that the growing cultural diversity of the young nation, already divided into states that were theoretically autonomous, risked creating a hopelessly fragmented political system. The nation needed to construct some standard ideological poles to attract and crystallize the population’s political energies. In the course of the 19th century, a two-party system emerged, following the pattern of the Whigs and Tories in England, something the founders initially hoped to avoid.

      It took some time for the two political parties to settle into a stable binary system with the labels: Democrat and Republican. Their names reflected the two pillars of the nation’s founding ideology. Everyone accepted the idea that the United States was a democratic republic, if only because it wasn’t a monarchy. It was democratic because people could vote on who would represent them.

      It took nearly 200 years to realize that because the two fundamental ideas that constituted an ideology had become monopolized by two parties, there was no room for a third, fourth or fifth party to challenge them. The two parties owned the playing field. At some point in the late 20th century, the parties became competitors only in name. They morphed into an ideological duopoly that had little to do with the idea of being either a democracy or a republic. As James Carville insisted in his advice to candidate Bill Clinton in the 1992 presidential campaign, “It’s the economy, stupid.” He was right. As it had evolved, the political system represented the economy and no longer the people.

      Nevertheless, the culture created by a two-century-long rivalry contributed mightily to the triumph of the binary exclusionist worldview. In the 20th century, the standard distinction between Democrats and Republicans turned around the belief that the former believed in an active, interventionist government stimulating collective behavior on behalf of the people, and the latter in a minimalist barebones government committed to reinforcing private enterprise and protecting individualism.

      Where, as a duopoly, the two parties ended up agreeing is that interventionism was good when directed elsewhere, in the form of a military presence across the globe intended to demonstrate aggressive potential. Not because either party believed in the domination of foreign lands, but because they realized that the defense industry was the one thing that Republicans could accept as a legitimate highly constraining collective, national enterprise and that the Democrats, following Carville’s dictum, realized underpinned a thriving economy in which ordinary people could find employment.

      The Crimes of Joe Rogan and Whoopi Goldberg

      Politics, therefore, set in place a more general phenomenon: the binary exclusionist worldview that would soon spread to the rest of the culture. Exclusionism is a common way of thinking about what people consider to be issues that matter. It has fueled the deep animosity between opposing sides around the so-called cultural issues that, in reality, have nothing to do with culture but increasingly dominate the news cycle.

      Until the launch of the culture wars around issues such as abortion, gay marriage, identity and gender, many Americans had felt comfortable as members of two distinct camps. As Democrats and Republicans, they functioned like two rival teams in sport. Presidential elections were always Super Bowls of a sort at which the people would come for the spectacle. The purpose of the politicians that composed the parties was not to govern, but to win elections. But, for most of the 20th century, the acrimony they felt and generated focused on issues of public policy, which once implemented the people would accept, albeit grudgingly if the other party was victorious. After the storm, the calm. In contrast, cultural issues generate bitterness, resentment and ultimately enmity. After the storm, the tempest.

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      The force of the raging cultural winds became apparent last week in two entirely different celebrity incidents, concerning Joe Rogan and Whoopi Goldberg. Both were treated to the new style of excommunication that the various churches of correct thinking and exclusionary practices now mete out on a regular basis. In an oddly symmetrical twist, the incriminating words were what is now referred to as “the N-word” spoken by a white person and the word “race” spoken by a black person. Later in the week, a debate arose about yet another word with racial implications — apartheid — when Amnesty International formally accused the state of Israel of practicing it against Palestinians.

      The N-word has become the locus classicus of isolating an item of language that — while muddled historically and linguistically — is so definitively framed that, even while trying to come to grips with it informally as an admittedly strange and fascinating phenomenon in US culture, any white person who utters the reprehensible term will be considered as having delivered a direct insult to a real person or an entire population. Years ago, Joe Rogan made a very real mistake that he now publicly regrets. While examining the intricate rules surrounding the word and its interdiction, he allowed himself the freedom to actually pronounce the word.

      In his apology, Rogan claimed that he hasn’t said the word in years, which in itself is an interesting historical point. He recognizes that the social space for even talking about the word has become exaggeratedly restricted. Branding Rogan as a racist just on that basis may represent a legitimate suspicion about the man’s character, worth examining, but it is simply an erroneous procedure. Using random examples from nearly 10 years ago may raise some questions about the man’s culture, but it makes no valid case for proving Rogan is or even was at the time a racist.

      The Whoopi Goldberg case is less straightforward because it wasn’t about a word but an idea. She said the Holocaust “was not about race.” Proposing the hypothesis that Nazi persecution of Jews may be a case of something other than simple racism is the kind of thought any legitimate historian might entertain and seek to examine. It raises some serious questions not only about what motivated the Nazis, but about what our civilization means by the words “race” and “racism.” There is considerable ambiguity to deal with in such a discussion, but any statement seeking to clarify the nature of what is recognized as evil behavior should be seen as potentially constructive.

      Once some kind of perspective can be established about the terms and formulations that legitimately apply to the historical case, it could be possible to conclude, as many think, that either Goldberg’s particular formulation is legitimate, inaccurate or inappropriate. Clearly, Goldberg’s critics found her formulation inappropriate, but, objectively speaking, they were in no position to prove it inaccurate without engaging in the meaning of “race.”

      The problem is complex because history is complex, both the history of the time and the historical moment today. One of the factors of complexity appeared in another controversy created by Amnesty International’s publication of a study that accuses Israel of being an apartheid state, which considered in international law is to be a crime against humanity.

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      Interestingly, The Times of Israel gives a fair and very complete hearing to Amnesty International’s spokespersons, whereas American media largely ignored the report. When they did cover it, US media focused on the dismissive Israeli reaction. PBS News Hour quoted Ned Price, who in another exchange with Matt Lee stated that the department rejects “the view that Israel‘s actions constitute apartheid.”

      Once again, the debate is over a word, the difference in this case being that the word is specifically defined in international law. The debate predictably sparked, among some commentators, another word, whose definition has often been stretched in extreme directions in the interest of provoking strong emotions: anti-Semitism. Goldberg’s incriminating sentence itself was branded by some as anti-Semitism.

      At the end of the day, the words used in any language can be understood in a variety of ways. Within a culture that has adopted the worldview of binary exclusionism, the recourse to constructive dialogue is rapidly disappearing. Instead, we are all saddled with the task of trying to memorize the lists of words one can and cannot say and the ideas it will be dangerous to express.

      What this means is that addressing and solving real problems is likely to become more and more difficult. It also means that the media will become increasingly less trustworthy than it already is today. For one person, a “false flag” corresponds to a fact, and for another, it can only be the component of a conspiracy theory. The N-word is a sound white people must never utter, even if reading Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn aloud. And the word “race” — a concept that has no biological reality — now may apply to any group of people who have been oppressed by another group and who choose to be thought of as a race.

      The topics these words refer to are all serious. For differing reasons, they are all uncomfortable to talk about. But so are issues spawned by the COVID-19 pandemic, related to health and prevention, especially when death and oppressive administrative constraints happen to be involved. The real problem is that as soon as the dialogue begins to stumble over a specific word or ill-defined concept or the feeling of injustice, reasoning is no longer possible. Obedient acceptance of what becomes imposed itself as the “norm” is the only possible survival strategy, especially for anyone visible to the public. But that kind of obedience may not be the best way to practice democracy.

      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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      African migrants deported in Trump era suffered abuse on return, report finds

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      African migrants deported in Trump era suffered abuse on return, report findsA Human Rights Watch report found Cameroonian asylum-seekers forcibly flown back home suffered imprisonment, torture and rape Cameroonian asylum-seekers deported by the Trump administration suffered imprisonment, torture and rape on their return, and many were forced in to hiding or fleeing the country once more, according to a new report.In the last months of the Trump administration, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agency stepped up its deportations of African migrants, especially Cameroonians. Over 80 of them were flown to Cameroon in October and November 2020 alone, amid allegations of abuse, in which Ice detainees said they had been forced to sign or fingerprint documents believed to be waivers agreeing to their deportation.US Ice officers ‘used torture to make Africans sign own deportation orders’Read moreThe deportations took place despite warnings from lawyers and human rights groups that those being sent back would be in danger. A Human Rights Watch (HRW) report published on Thursday found that almost all of those deported in 2019 and 2020 faced reprisals of some sort on their return to Cameroon, from rape and beatings to detention and extortion or simply having their identity cards confiscated.West Cameroon is still in the grip of a conflict between the government and armed anglophone separatists, with frequent reports of arbitrary killings and military patrols in the streets. Anyone without an identity card faces the risk of detention.The 149-page HRW report, “‘How Can You Throw Us Back?’: Asylum Seekers Abused in the US and Deported to Harm in Cameroon,” says that between 2019 and 2021, Cameroonian security forces detained or imprisoned at least 39 people who had been sent back by the Trump administration. Many of those were held without due process and in inhumane conditions, some in solitary confinement.HRW found 14 cases of physical abuse, 13 by Cameroonian security forces and one by armed separatists. Three women were raped in custody by “state agents”, and other detainees were severely beaten during interrogation.The deportees had all fled Cameroon to escape the conflict, in particular the government’s brutal treatment of those suspected of involvement in the separatist movement. On being forcibly returned to Cameroon, they were additionally accused of having harmed the country’s reputation by seeking asylum.The HRW report found that Ice had failed “to protect confidential asylum documents during deportations, leading to document confiscation and apparent retribution by Cameroonian authorities”.One woman who was deported in October 2020 said she was tortured and raped by government soldiers over six weeks in detention in Bamenda, northwestern Cameroon.“Every two days … they were using ropes, [rubber] tubes, their boots, military belts … They hit me all over my body,” she told HRW. “They said that I’ve destroyed the image of Cameroon … so I had to pay for it.”After initially being allowed home, another returnee was summoned to a police station two weeks later, supposedly to pick up his documents, but he was detained instead.“They said ‘you are the guys who go out there spoiling the name of the country’. That is when my second nightmare began,” he told the Guardian. He was held for five months until his family paid a CFA franc 2m ($3500) fine for his release. He has since fled the country and is hiding elsewhere in West Africa.Many of the returnees went into hiding to avoid arrest. In the case of seven of them, according to the report, the police or army targeted family members to try to force them to reveal their whereabouts. One returnee’s sister is alleged to have been shot and killed, another’s mother was severely beaten, and the 11-year-old son of another returnee was abducted and questioned by security agents.One of the deportees, known by the pseudonym Cornelius in the report, said he and others were interrogated on arrival in 2020.“Army officers were asking us why we had sought asylum, what we had told American immigration,” Cornelius told the Guardian. Some of the returnees on the same plane were arrested and taken away and Cornelius did not see them again (HRW has not been able to trace some of the deported Cameroonians). Cornelius and others were held in a detention facility for a few days and then released, but without their personal papers.Reuse this content More

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      National Archives reportedly asks DoJ to investigate Trump document handling

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      National Archives reportedly asks DoJ to investigate Trump document handlingRequest follows reports of Trump tearing up documents and sending boxes of files to Mar-a-Lago property The National Archives and Records Administration (Nara) has asked the justice department to investigate whether the former US president Donald Trump violated federal law in the handling of documents, the Washington Post has reported. The Associated Press was unable to independently confirm the report.The referral followed several Washington Post stories chronicling how Trump dealt with documents, including tearing them up. In one report, confirmed by the archives, the agency arranged the transport of 15 boxes of documents from the Mar-a-Lago property in Florida after Trump’s representatives discovered them and notified the archives.The Washington Post says the referral is asking the justice department to investigate whether Trump violated the Presidential Records Act, which requires that all presidential records of an administration be turned over to the National Archives when a president leaves office.The archives did not return multiple messages seeking comment. The justice department declined to comment. In a statement, Trump said: “Following collaborative and respectful discussions, the National Archives and Records Administration (Nara) arranged for the transport of boxes that contained presidential records in compliance with the Presidential Records Act” from Mar-a-Lago that will one day become part of the Donald J Trump presidential library.The media’s “characterisation of my relationship with Nara is fake news. It was exactly the opposite. It was a great honour to work with Nara to help formally preserve the Trump legacy,” said Trump.The archive acknowledged this week that Trump representatives had been cooperating with Nara and had located records “that had not been transferred to the National Archives at the end of the Trump administration”. Nara arranged for them to be transported to Washington. “Nara officials did not visit or raid the Mar-a-Lago property,” the agency said.Nara said the former president’s representatives are continuing to search for additional records that belong to the archives.In a separate statement, David S Ferriero, the archivist of the United States, said: “Whether through the creation of adequate and proper documentation, sound records management practices, the preservation of records, or the timely transfer of them to the National Archives at the end of an administration, there should be no question as to need for both diligence and vigilance. Records matter.”Supreme court rejects Trump bid to shield documents from January 6 panelRead moreThe issue of presidential records, the Trump administration and the archives has been central to the investigation by the House committee investigating the insurrection on 6 January that sought to stop the certification of the 2020 presidential election. Trump tried to withhold White House documents in a dispute that rose to the supreme court.In an 8-1 ruling last month, the court let stand a lower court ruling that said the archives could turn over documents, which include presidential diaries, visitor logs, speech drafts and handwritten notes dealing with 6 January from the files of the former chief of staff Mark Meadows. At the time, the House committee agreed to defer its attempt to retrieve some documents, at the request of the Biden administration.A referral for potential criminal prosecution from a federal agency or from Congress does not mean the justice department is likely to bring charges or that it will even investigate the matter.Questions about Trump’s handling of records date back to 2018, when Politico reported that Trump aides, fearing he might violate the law, routinely pieced together documents with tape because of his habit of tearing them up.TopicsDonald TrumpUS supreme courtUS justice systemNational ArchivesLaw (US)US politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      ‘You’re treated like a spy’: US accused of racial profiling over China Initiative

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      ‘You’re treated like a spy’: US accused of racial profiling over China InitiativeTrump programme to ‘counter Chinese national security threats’ continues to spread fear among academics with links to China It was sometime before 7am on 21 May 2015 when Xiaoxing Xi, a physics professor at Temple University in Philadelphia, was woken by people pounding on his front door. Still not fully dressed, he opened the door to be confronted by about 12 armed FBI agents.The agents burst into Xi’s house, running about, shouting “FBI, FBI”. They pointed their guns at his wife and two daughters and ordered them to walk out of their bedrooms with their hands raised. Xi was handcuffed and arrested in front of his family. His alleged crime? Four counts of wire fraud for passing sensitive US technology to China, the country of his birth. “Overnight, I was painted as a Chinese spy all over the news and internet and faced the possibility of up to 80 years in prison and a $1m fine,” he wrote in a statement to the US House of Representatives last year.Four months after his arrest, the case collapsed before reaching trial. Xi, who came to the US from China in 1989 at the age of 32, was told through his lawyer that the US justice department (DoJ) had dismissed the case after “new information came to the attention of the government”.On Monday, nearly seven years after that raid, Xi, 64, asked a federal appeals court in Philadelphia to reinstate his claims for damages against the US government and the FBI. He and his family claim that they had been “wrongly” investigated and prosecuted in 2015.The Xi family also wants a declaration that the FBI violated their fourth and fifth amendment rights. They say they have “clear evidence” the FBI violated their constitutional rights, and that years later they are still dealing with the trauma of the ordeal.“If we can’t hold the government accountable now, there will be little to stop the government from profiling other Asian American scientists and ruining more innocent people’s lives in the future,” Xi said. “The government is not entitled to do what they have done to me and my family.”This is not Xi’s first attempt to take on the US government. Last April, a lower court dismissed nine of his 10 claims, which included allegations the FBI knowingly made false statement. The court also rejected his claim that the FBI’s action was “discriminatory”.But the lower court has yet to rule on Xi’s 10th claim, which challenges the US government’s surveillance of Xi and his family. The DOJ declined to comment on the lawsuit. The FBI has been contacted by the Guardian for comment on the Xi case.Xi’s ordeal occurred under the Obama administration, but his latest attempt to secure compensation comes amid a wide-ranging debate in Washington about how the US should compete with China. Stories like Xi’s have also been emerging as more American scientists – in particular those of Chinese origin – are being caught up in the geopolitical tensions. In 2018, the Trump administration launched a China Initiative to “[reflect] the strategic priority of countering Chinese national security threats and reinforce the president’s overall national security strategy”. The DoJ website boasts a series of examples – the latest, from 5 November, detailing an alleged attempt by a Chinese intelligence officer to steal trade secrets.Last week, the FBI’s director, Christopher Wray, alleged “there is just no country that presents a broader threat to our ideas, our innovation, and our economic security than China”. He claimed his bureau opens a counterintelligence case against China “about twice a day”.Opponents of the China Initiative argue it creates a pervasive atmosphere of fear among American academics who used to, or still have, links to China. Until recently, they were seen by many as a bridge between the two nations.Judy Chu, a California Democrat and the first Chinese American woman in US Congress, said the China Initiative is an instrument for “racial profiling”. “[The government] has turned it into a means to terrorise Chinese scientists and engineers. Something has gone dramatically wrong,” she told US media in December.Responding to concerns, the attorney general, Merrick Garland, said to Congress in October that the DoJ would review the programme. Opposition to the initiative has grown louder in recent months. In December one former DoJ official said it had “drifted and, in some significant ways, lost its focus”.In a statement to the Guardian, a DOJ spokesperson said: “Consistent with the Attorney General’s direction, the Department is reviewing our approach to countering threats posed by the PRC government. We anticipate completing the review and providing additional information in the coming weeks.”Zhigang Suo, a Chinese-born Harvard academic who, like Xi, is also a naturalised US citizen, said the heated atmosphere was having an adverse affect. “Of course people are upset about China, but I can see it takes two people to bicker. And I’m not a fan of the juvenile behaviour on either side,” he said. “In the past, very few fellow Chinese Americans would even think of leaving the US. But now, I can tell you some of the top Chinese American scientists have either left or are thinking about leaving.”For most of the three decades since settling in the US, Suo was not interested in politics. “My wife is a political junkie, but I wasn’t interested in it at all,” he said. But on 14 January 2021, the arrest of his best friend, Gang Chen, a fellow Chinese American scientist, changed that. Chen, a Chinese-born mechanical engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was charged with hiding his links to China. The charges were later dismissed, but the incident turned Suo from an apolitical science nerd into a political activist. “Before [the China Initiative], you were innocent until proven guilty. Now, you are guilty until you prove you are innocent,” Suo said. “I fear this is the start of a slow process of brain drain for America. Historically, brain drain precedes the decline of great nations.”In a recent interview with the New York Times, Chen, who has now been released, said: “You work hard, you have good output, you build a reputation … The government gets what they want, right? But in the end, you’re treated like a spy. That just breaks your heart. It breaks your confidence.”Supporters of the China Initiative argue that this China-focused programme is not completely without merit. They point to the recent case of a Harvard chemistry professor, Charles Lieber, who, in December,was found guilty of six felony counts, including failure to disclose his associations and funding from a China-based university and the country’s controversial talent programme.But that same month, a Bloomberg analysis showed that among 50 indictments announced or unsealed since the programme’s inception, “only 20% of the cases allege economic espionage, and most of those are unresolved. Just three claim that secrets were handed over to Chinese agents.”Xi said the nightmare experience seven years ago interrupted his “American dream”. Although the charges were quickly dropped and his university position reinstated, his career has been damaged nevertheless, he said. “My research programme is now much smaller… I’m scared of applying for funding because as long as I do anything imperfectly, it could one day come back to haunt me.”Yet, despite the ordeal, Xi said he had also learned an important lesson. “If we – Americans of Chinese descent – want our environment improved, we need to speak out and fight for our rights. This is how democracy operates.”TopicsUS newsChinaUS politicsUS foreign policyRaceAsia PacificfeaturesReuse this content More

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      in US Politics

      Capitol attack inquiry narrows on Trump as panel subpoenas top aide

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      Capitol attack inquiry narrows on Trump as panel subpoenas top aideMove to pursue Peter Navarro suggests the select committee is edging ever closer to examining potential culpability for Trump The House select committee investigating the Capitol attack on Wednesday subpoenaed Donald Trump’s former White House senior adviser Peter Navarro, escalating its inquiry into the former president’s efforts to return himself to office and the January 6 insurrection.The move to pursue Navarro, who helped finalize the scheme to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election win with political operatives at the Willard hotel in Washington DC, suggests the panel is edging ever closer to examining potential culpability for Trump.Trump’s election advisers were like ‘snake oil salesmen’, ex-Pence aide saysRead moreCongressman Bennie Thompson, the chairman of the select committee, said in the subpoena letter to Navarro that House investigators wanted to depose him since he could potentially speak to what Trump knew in advance of plans to stop the certification on January 6.“Navarro appears to have information directly relevant to the select committee’s investigation,” Thompson said. “He hasn’t been shy about his role in efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and has even discussed the former president’s support for those plans.”Thompson suggested in the letter that Navarro should be free to speak to the panel without concerns about executive privilege or other legal impediments, since he discussed the events of 6 January in his book In Trump Time, on his podcast and with reporters.The former White House adviser is of special interest to the panel, according to a source close to the investigation, as Navarro had the ear of the former president and, simultaneously, was in regular contact with the Willard operatives that formulated the plot.Navarro had been briefed by the Willard operatives – led by former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani and former Trump aide Steve Bannon – about their plan to have Mike Pence declare Trump the winner, or have the majority GOP delegation House vote for Trump in a contingent election.The Guardian first reported that after Trump was briefed on the scheme – which Navarro named the “Green Bay Sweep” – he told the Willard operatives just hours before the Capitol attack to find ways to stop Biden’s certification from happening.The former White House adviser also reported back to the Willard operatives on the morning of January 6 about the size of the pro-Trump crowds that would storm the Capitol later that afternoon, according to a former Trump official familiar with Navarro’s actions.As the select committee investigates whether Trump knew in advance of plans to violently stop Biden’s certification from taking place on January 6, Navarro could shed light on how much of the information he received from the operatives made it to Trump, the source said.The panel gave Navarro until 23 February to produce documents detailed in the subpoena, and ordered him to appear for a deposition on 2 March. It was not clear whether Navarro would cooperate; he did not immediately respond to a request for comment.TopicsUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpTrump administrationHouse of RepresentativesUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      The Art of Prince Andrew’s Lawyers

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      With everything that has been going on as the world seeks to weigh the chances of a nuclear war and a realignment of nations across the globe, fans of the media may have failed to tune into the real news that broke in recent weeks. Forget Ukraine, there is another drama whose suspense is building. It obviously concerns the fate of the battered Prince Andrew because of his role in the Jeffrey Epstein/Ghislaine Maxwell saga that has already produced an officially (and conveniently) declared “suicide” (Epstein’s) and a celebrity criminal trial (Maxwell’s). 

      Since a US judge has now agreed to bring Virginia Giuffre’s civil lawsuit to trial, it means that for the first time, a prince of England, a member of the royal family, will be officially put on the hot seat in an American courtroom. The rebelling colonists couldn’t get King George III to answer for his crimes, but they now appear to have a son of Elizabeth II in their grasp.

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      For weeks, the media have been running updates specifically on speculation about the legal strategy Andrew’s attorneys are likely to adopt. Though for the moment it remains mere speculation, it does have the power for attentive observers to provoke a few comic effects. The latest hypothesis has the lawyers seeking to turn the tables on Giuffre by accusing her of sex trafficking. They aren’t claiming Andrew is innocent, but they want her to appear guilty. Business Insider considers that ploy “risky” because the tactic consists of getting a witness — another of Epstein’s victims — to make that claim about Giuffre. It risks backfiring because the witness could actually contradict Andrew’s adamant claim that he never had sex with Giuffre.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Actually, the legal team appears already to have prepared a strategy for that eventuality. On January 26, NPR reported that Andrew’s lawyers addressed a message to the court saying, “that if any sexual activity did occur between the prince and Virginia Giuffre, it was consensual.” This may sound odd because the accused’s lawyers should know if he did or didn’t, but the law is never about knowledge, only the impression a good attorney can make on a judge or a jury.

      NPR continues its description of the lawyers’ position: “The court filing made clear that Andrew wasn’t admitting sexual contact with Giuffre. But it said if the case wasn’t dismissed, the defense wants a trial in which it would argue that her abuse claims ‘are barred by the doctrine of consent.’”

      Today’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Consent:

      Agreement on something perceived as illicit between two or more people, including, in some extreme cases, a member of the British royal family and a 17-year-old American girl turned into a sex slave by the royal’s best American friend

      Contextual Note

      Since lawyers live in a world of hypotheticals, evoking the idea that “if” a judge and jury were to decide sexual contact between the two was real, it should enable the legal team to make a claim they expect the court to understand as: She was asking for it. In civil cases, all lawyers know that attack is the best defense.

      Thus, Andrew’s legal team is now being paid, not to prove the prince’s innocence, but to establish the guilt of the victim. They are seeking to create the impression that the Virginia Roberts of two decades ago was already a wolf in sheep’s clothing when she consented to consorting with a prince. And, of course, continues to be one as she seeks to profit from the civil trial today.

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      Most commentators doubt that Andrew has a case. This has permitted the media to revel in the humiliation of a man who has always been perceived as supercilious and deserving of no one’s attention apart from being the queen’s “favourite son.” That is why this has been nothing but bad news for Buckingham Palace. 

      And it looks to get worse. So stay tuned.

      Historical Note

      Legal experts tell us that what the prince’s lawyers refer to as the “doctrine of consent” is officially described as the “doctrine of informed consent.” More pertinently, the consent referred to focuses entirely on cases in the realm of medical treatment. It is all about a patient’s agreement to a medical procedure that may be risky. It defines the physician’s duty to inform the patient of all the risks associated with a recommended procedure. If consent is obtained, the physician will be clear of responsibility should any of the risks be realized.

      It may seem odd that Prince Andrew’s lawyers are appealing to a doctrine established specifically for medical practice. But while many will not think of lawyers themselves as appealing, whenever they lose a case, you can be sure that they will be appealing it. But that isn’t the only kind of appealing they do. When preparing a case, they will appeal to any random principle or odd fact that appears to serve their purpose. This should surprise no one because, just like politicians who focus on winning elections rather than governing, lawyers focus on winning cases for their clients rather than on justice.

      The sad truth, however, for those who believe that justice is a fine thing to have as a feature of an advanced civilization is that the lawyers are not only right to follow that logic; the best of their lot are also very skillful in making it work. Which is why what we call the justice system will always be more “just” for those who can afford to pay for the most skillful lawyers.

      The final irony of this story lies in the fact that, in their diligence, the lawyers have borrowed the idea behind the doctrine of consent, not from the world of sexual predation, but from the realm of therapy and medical practice. They need to be careful at this point. Even Andrew and his lawyers should know that if you insert a space in the word “therapist,” it points to the image Prince Andrew has in some people’s minds: “the rapist.” The mountains of testimony from Jeffrey Epstein’s countless victims reveal that, though they were undoubtedly consenting in some sense to the masterful manipulation of the deceased billionaire and friend to the famous and wealthy (as well as possibly a spy), all of them have been to some degree traumatized for life by the experience.

      Embed from Getty Images

      As Bill Gates explained when questioned about the problem of his own (he claims ill-informed) consent to whatever he was up to with Epstein, for him there could be no serious regrets. The problem no longer exists because, well, “he’s dead” (referring to his pal, Jeffrey). Prince Andrew is still alive, though this whole business has deprived him of all his royal privileges, making him something of a dead branch on the royal family tree. Virginia Giuffre is also still alive, though undoubtedly disturbed by her experience as a tool in the hands of Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell and Prince Andrew.

      So, unless a nuclear war intervenes in the coming weeks between the US and Russia making everything else redundant (including the collapse of Meta’s stock), the interesting news will turn around the legal fate in the US of two prominent Brits. The first is a socialite (and possibly also a spy) as well as a high-profile heiress, Ghislaine Maxwell. She is expected to have a retrial sometime in the future. The second is none other than the queen’s favorite son.

      *[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 Fair Observer Devil’s Dictionary.]

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