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      in World Politics

      Only Losers Pay Taxes: Apple and the Ingenuity of Tax Avoidance

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      July 15 was a very good day for Apple. Not so much for the European Commission, nor for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). What happened? In 2016, the European Commission (EC), following a lengthy investigation, ruled that Ireland had granted Apple “illegal tax benefits” that “substantially and artificially lowered the tax paid by Apple in Ireland since 1991.” The taxes “saved” Apple some €13 billion ($15 billion). The Irish government set up and escrow account at the cost of €3.9 million in consultancy and other fees as Apple appealed to courts in Luxembourg.

      On July 15, the EU General Court rendered its landmark verdict. In a stinging rebuke of the European Commission, the court charged that the EC had failed to demonstrate “’to the requisite legal standard’ that Ireland’s tax deal broke state-aid law by giving Apple an unfair advantage.” The Apple case was supposed to be a hallmark for the EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager’s “crackdown on preferential fiscal deals for companies” by member states. In the words of a tax lawyer quoted in the Irish Times, the decision marked a “comprehensive defeat for the Commission.”

      Apple Tax Case and Investment in Europe

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      At the same time, it was a significant setback for the OECD’s initiative on “base erosion and profit shifting” or, put in less arcane terms, tax avoidance. Engaging top law firms, the new tech giants such as Apple, Amazon and Google have mastered the fine art of avoiding as much of the tax burden as possible. There are numerous reasons for this development, greed probably topping the list. On a more structural level, however, it is to a large extent the result of the process of financialization, which has been the dominant game worldwide over the past several decades.

      Part of the Package

      Financialization fundamentally changed corporate rationale, with shareholder value becoming the new doctrine. Shareholder value holds that the primary metric of success lies in the ability of managers to increase shareholder return. Forget about corporate responsibility, forget about corporate outreach to the community: The only thing that counts is raising a company’s stock value no matter what.

      Tax avoidance is part of the package. Over the past few decades, Fortune 500 companies have devised a range of ingenious strategies that allow them to legitimately avoid paying taxes. Many are so opaque that even specialists have a hard time figuring out what is happening, how and where. One of the more exotic strategies is the “double Irish with a Dutch sandwich.” Investopedia defines it as a tax avoidance scheme that “involves sending profits first through one Irish company, then to a Dutch company and finally to a second Irish company headquartered in a tax haven.”

      A second scheme that was popular in the United States a few years ago is corporate inversion. This “occurs when a U.S.-based multinational corporation restructures itself so that the U.S. parent is replaced by a foreign parent and the original U.S. company becomes a subsidiary of the foreign parent.” Ireland, Bermuda, England and the Netherlands were among the popular destinations.

      The case of Apple provides a perfect illustration of the ingenuity behind tax avoidance. The scheme hinges on Ireland’s sweetheart deal with Apple, which allowed the US-based company to avoid Ireland’s corporate tax of 12.5%. Instead, Apple paid as little as 0.005% in taxes. The profits Apple made in Europe were transferred to Apple subsidiaries located in Ireland — perfectly legally —  and the taxes were paid on the basis of Ireland’s rate instead of the country where Apple products were actually purchased. This saved Apple billions of euros.

      It needs mentioning that Ireland joined the Apple lawsuit. After the verdict, the Irish government hailed the outcome as a victory for Ireland, which, in the process, lost €13 billion in tax revenue — a rather perverse sense of accomplishment, given the dramatic impact COVID-19 has had on the country’s economy and public life. Like elsewhere in Europe, the measures introduced by the Irish government caused a dramatic surge in unemployment and drove the economy into a recession. It is likely to take years to recover from the pandemic. Under the circumstances, the money would have been quite welcome.

      The Curious Case of the Netherlands

      Over the past several decades, avoiding taxes has become big business. Estimates from 2017 suggest that tax avoidance and profit shifting by multinational corporations amounted to a global loss of somewhere around $500 billion. Not surprisingly, tax havens have multiplied throughout the world. To be sure, there are exotic offshore locations that have specialized in sheltering money, such as the Cayman Islands, Samoa, Mauritius or the British Virgin Islands.

      This, however, is only half of the story. The case of Ireland shows that advanced capitalist countries are hardly innocent. In fact, Europe — and even the European Union — abounds in tax havens, from the British island of Jersey to Luxembourg, Liechtenstein and Malta to the Netherlands.

      Recently, the Dutch have provoked much resentment among the EU’s southern members. At the height of the pandemic in Italy and Spain, both countries called on the member states to show solidarity with its southern neighbors. One of the ideas was to issue so-called corona bonds, which would have combined securities from different countries and “mutualized” debt. The idea was vigorously promoted by Italy but equally vigorously rejected by Germany and the Netherlands, alongside Finland and Austria, collectively known as the “Frugal Four.”

      The connotation was obvious. The fiscally responsible members were loath to subsidize countries they considered frivolous spenders — even in a situation that brought Italy to its knees. The Germans are accustomed to suspicion and hostility from other EU members. But the Dutch? After all, the Netherlands is a small country, known for their openness and liberal attitudes on sex and drugs. COVID-19, however, has changed these perceptions, at least in the southern parts of the EU.

      Embed from Getty Images

      And for good reasons. Not for nothing, one of the most egregious tax avoidance schemes has “Dutch” in its title. It turns out that the Netherlands is an important tax haven right in the heart of the EU — a tax haven that has done considerable harm to other member states. Earlier this year, the Tax Justice Network claimed that the Netherlands “cost EU countries $10bn in lost corporate tax a year.” Analysis revealed that US firms in Europe, instead of declaring profits in the EU countries where they were generated, “shifted billions in profits into the Dutch tax haven each year ($44 billion in 2017) where corporate tax rates in practice can be under 5 per cent.” In fact, “the Netherlands’ low effective tax rate and its frequent use as a conduit for profit shifting to other corporate tax havens like Bermuda, results in a huge transfer of wealth out of Europe and into the offshore bank accounts of the world’s richest corporations and individuals.”

      Estimates for Italy alone were that the country had lost €1.5 billion in revenue a year, “equivalent to more than twice the annual cost of running San Raffaele Hospital, one of the largest hospitals in Italy with approximately 1350 beds.” Under the circumstances, Italian ire and disenchantment with the EU at the height of the pandemic, which cost the lives of thousands of Italians and paralyzed life in the country, are more than understandable. In this sense, the Apple verdict is nothing more than a Pyrrhic victory for Ireland and like-minded members of the European Union.

      The pandemic has drastically illustrated the importance of solidarity. Strategies that cater to the narrow interests of shareholders systematically subvert solidarity. Under “normal” circumstances, that might be fine. These days, it is disastrous, not least because the notion of shareholder value (aka individual egoism) has penetrated every aspect of social life. Margaret Thatcher once remarked that society did not exist — there were only individuals and families. The disastrous current state of the US and Britain is a blatant indictment of this kind of thinking.

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

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in World Politics

      Are We Ready to Drop the Term “Islamist” in Reference to Terrorism?

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      On July 20, The Times released a report indicating that UK police held a forum to explore a request to change the terminology surrounding terror attacks now commonly defined as “Islamist.” The discussion, which included the head of Counter Terrorism Policing, Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu, and some 70 individuals with personal or professional experiences with terrorism, came as a result of the National Association of Muslim Police’s (NAMP) initial request for the abandonment of terms such as “Islamist” and “jihadi” on the grounds that they adversely impact public perceptions of the Muslim community.

      Far-Right Terrorism Is Now Britain’s Fastest Growing Problem

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      Proposed alternatives to present terminology include “faith-claimed terrorism,” “adherents of Osama bin Laden’s ideology,” “terrorists abusing religious motivations” and “irhabi” — an Arabic term common in the Middle East to reference terrorists. The mere suggestion of a change has since sparked passionate debates online, which reveal a great deal about public perceptions of terrorism and how it is policed in the UK.

      Finding the Right Words

      As the initial report stated, according to the NAMP, the existing lexicon has contributed to Islamophobia, itself on the rise in recent years. Among the reported comments was one that noted how far-right terrorist Anders Breivik, whose 2011 attacks in Norway killed nearly 80 people, mostly children, and others have invoked Christian imagery relating to the Crusades, yet their attacks are not identified as “Christianist.” Presently, counterterrorism experts employ the terms “Islamist extremism,” “extreme right-wing” and “Northern Ireland-related” when discussing terrorist ideology.

      News reports included lines such as “The police emphasized to The Times that the reform was not certain to go ahead,” and Chief Superintendent Nik Adams also stated that “We have no plans to change the terminology we use at present but welcomed the debate and contributions.” Yet within hours of the article going to print, news outlets around the world have covered the story, opinion pieces have been printed, and thousands of comments have been posted online arguing about the implications of a name change. Notably, many of the reasons against any alterations evidence troubling narratives circulating in society.

      One of the most frequent points employed by critics of the proposal resides in the belief that “Islamist terrorism” and “jihadism” are the most fitting terms because they recognize the centrality of Islam to these group’s ideologies and motivations. A significant portion of comments agreed with the assessment that the current vocabulary may prove harmful to their Muslim neighbors and colleagues. Nevertheless, they claimed that, as terrorists justified their actions in relation to Islam, the description of their actions should be identified as such. Also, worryingly, in many instances, such arguments spiraled out to present Islam as an inherently or even uniquely violent religion. Some writers posted snippets of Islamic texts that appear to reference the use of terror or how to treat non-Muslims. Others responded to the news by arguing that Islam and democracy or its values are mutually exclusive.

      Emblematic of others, one advised that the UK should establish “an enquiry into why so many Muslims become radical; terrorists; grooming gangs etc. The scriptures/teachings must be challenged, not terminology watered down.” Meanwhile, comments such as “As far as I’m aware, the Jews don’t have a section that advocates genocide of unbelievers. Neither do Christians, or Sikhs or the Hindus. Neither do the atheists. This is a uniquely Islamic problem” and “What other religion does this? Genuinely…which?” can be found repeated across the internet.

      In particular, many commenters took issue with the National Association of Muslim Police’s observation about the double standard at play in failures to identify certain far-right terror attacks as linked to Christianity. Exemplifying arguments found repeatedly across various platforms, one widely-liked tweet argued that “We don’t talk about ‘Christianist’ terror because there’s no such Christian movement.” This narrative defies reality. As noted by some online, the Troubles in Northern Ireland had a clear sectarian Christian element, Catholic identity played a fundamental role in the Spanish Falangist movement, and the attacks on abortion clinics and providers by groups such as the Army of God were motivated by a particular view of Christianity. These are just the tip of the iceberg.

      Christian Identity

      The Christian identity movement has been in operation for upward of a century in the United Kingdom and around the world. Its vitriolic anti-Semitism and racism are rooted in an alternative interpretation of Biblical stories. In the United States, the iconic cross-burning of the Ku Klux Klan has served merely as a symbol of the organization’s long history of a particular racist Protestant theology, and the knights of the Ku Klux Klan’s party envisions the establishment of a “White Christian government.” Other groups known to have engaged or encouraged violence in relation to a hybrid Christian, racist ideology include White Aryan Resistance, Aryan Nations, The Order and the National Alliance.

      Bible passages were cited as justification by the suspected perpetrators of both the Tree of Life and Poway synagogue shootings. Meanwhile, Anders Breivik’s manifesto shows his ideology to have been anchored in his interpretation of Christian beliefs. He viewed himself as part of a crusade against the multiculturalism he viewed to be destroying Christian European culture. Brenton Tarrant, whose two attacks in Christchurch killed more than 50 people last year, likewise published a manifesto with references to his as a crusade and citing quotations from Pope Urban II, who is widely considered to have orchestrated the First Crusade. One of the most famous neo-Nazi authors, James Mason — who has been of significant influence to extremist organization Atomwaffen Division — wrote a book linking Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” to the Bible.

      The reality is that each of these groups uses or has used Christian symbols and religious writings to justify their violence and racist aspirations. They have also done so while claiming to be the true expression of Christianity. Literally hundreds of people have died, and many others been injured, at the hands of those claiming that they were acting in the name of Christian values.

      While debates may and can be had about the fact that certain terrorist organizations do identify with terms such as “jihad” or self-identify as “jihadis,” and that, thereby, counterterrorism’s use of the term is merely mirroring terms on the ground, it is important not to claim that Christianity has no links to extremism and terrorism. This leaves aside arguments about the lack of violence perpetrated in the name of other religions, of which there are also ample examples.

      PC Culture

      The other potential worrying element to the critical narratives surrounding the proposal are those about why such a discussion happened. Hundreds of users have cited it as evidence that the UK has fallen victim to politically correct, or PC, culture. Charles Moore’s Telegraph opinion piece, for instance, implies this, linking Basu’s participation in this terminology discussion with his previous comments about media’s role in radicalization or about Boris Johnson’s comments likening women in niqabs to letterboxes. “You might think Mr Basu would eschew political or media disputations,” Moore observes. “Not so,” he goes on, before concluding that the name should not change and that “AC Basu should forget this elderly argument and get back to proper work.”

      Embed from Getty Images

      Others take this to a greater extreme, viewing the news as a sign that the UK is now in the hands, or at the mercy, of dangerous ethnic and religious minorities, or that those in charge of counterterrorism policing are weak-willed, apathetic or even side with the terrorists. References to George Orwell’s “1984” abound.

      “The police are now part of the Islamist problem,” one user wrote. “They have been extensively ‘Common Purposed’ and are riddled with fifth columnists.” Another asked: “Who is representing the majority white population of the UK? The majority is the least needy; the country revolves around minorities.” Frequently, Basu and other senior law enforcement officers, as well as politicians, are urged to quit or are called out by name as being unfit for service based on accusations that this discussion signals their pandering to the Muslim population.

      At times, these accusations amount to declarations that a change to the terminology would make the UK less safe. Many claim that this discussion could be linked to the UK’s “grooming gangs.” As one user posited, this mentality was “the same sort of PC mindset that let child abuse rings thrive in this country.” While not often fleshed out, the apparent logic relies on the idea that a police force, unwilling to specifically name the nature of a terrorist’s ideology for fear of perceived discrimination, would also be less capable of policing and preventing crime.

      Debates about the use of terms such as “jihad,” “Islamic” and “Islamist” are not new. Since at least the inception of the war on terror, law enforcement officers, scholars, media and community advocates have clashed over the best terminology to employ when discussing terrorism. As only one more moment in this ongoing dialogue, UK law enforcement’s discussion this summer is not yet set to change anything, and even if law enforcement changed its classification, this would by no means ensure a change in media reporting or popular vernacular.

      Yet thousands of people took to the internet to express their opinions, and that fact must be viewed as significant. In particular, the rush to criticize the police for even entertaining such an idea, as well as the commonality in the rhetoric used to defend existing terms, is illuminating. They point to implicit (or potentially willful) blindness about who perpetrates terrorism in the name of religion, outright racism and Islamophobia, and genuine distrust of major government institutions. These reactions, in fact, implicitly reinforce the argument made by the National Association of Muslim Police that vocabulary does make a difference.

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

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

    • 213 Shares149 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump is unleashing authoritarianism on US cities – just in time for the election | Andrew Gawthorpe

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      The essence of fascism, and authoritarianism more generally, is violent spectacle. This is why uniformed security forces and the violence they unleash are venerated in authoritarian regimes. They represent the unity, strength and virility of the nation – not least when they are suppressing dissenters and undesirables who they believe threaten these attributes.Perhaps luckily – it might give him ideas – Donald Trump knows precious little history. But he understands this dynamic on a gut level. He saw through all of modern conservatism’s cant about rights and liberties and saw that its beating heart is authoritarian. Rights and liberties exist for people like them, not outsiders and dissenters. The slightest hint that the state might come for their liberties and they’ll cry bloody murder. But provide them with the spectacle of uniformed officers purging the nation of undesirables, and they’ll cheer along. They might even help out.Only the thirst for violent spectacle can explain the president’s decision in recent days to send federal security forces – including paramilitary teams from Customs and Border Protection (CBP) – to Portland and elsewhere. Clad in the same woodland camouflage that American troops wear into combat, this is precisely how they are supposed to be understood: as soldiers suppressing America’s enemies.This theater is not being staged for the benefit of people who live in the affected areas. Democratic-run, minority-populated cities which can be portrayed as plagued by anarchy and lawlessness are a much more useful political foil for Trump than peaceful, prosperous metropolises. And predictably enough, the appearance of paramilitary federal security forces – who have reportedly violated the rights of protesters and shot one in the head with a riot munition – has inflamed rather than calmed the situation.The real audience is to be found on one of the few things Donald Trump truly understands: television. As other authoritarian leaders have understood, television is the perfect medium both for knitting a country together and for tearing it apart. Simplistic in its framing and visceral in its impact, it recreates far-away events right in our living room.This can be positive, such as during the civil rights movement, when images of bloody beatings and fire hoses made plain to those outside the south just how far America had strayed from its promise. But it can also be used to blow out of proportion, to try to convince Americans who couldn’t find Portland on a map that events there pose an existential threat to their country. Replayed endlessly on screen, protests and violence which are mostly limited to a few blocks of a city far away become a symptom of a country “under siege” from “far-left fascism”.This is simply the latest example of Trump’s attempt to benefit from authoritarian spectacle. In the run-up to the 2018 midterm elections, he ordered a surge of US military forces to the southern border in order to protect it from “invasion” by “caravans” of asylum seekers traveling from Central America. Prohibited by law from making arrests, the soldiers busied themselves ferrying CBP agents around in helicopters and laying barbed wire. Trump got the television images he craved, creating the sense among sections of the electorate that they were under existential threat from hordes of brown outsiders, and that Trump was their brave protector. Once the election was over, he scarcely ever uttered the word “caravan” again.Watching the same pattern unfold in American cities themselves is deeply concerning. It also demonstrates the links that exist between the treatment of outsiders and the treatment of those deemed internal enemies. Just as the military support CBP at the southern border, now the border patrol itself appears in the heartland to suppress dissent and unrest, while its officials condemn fellow Americans as “anarchists” and “terrorists”. What this drives home is not just the interchangeability of America’s security forces, but also of their targets.For the purposes of the spectacle, this interchangeability is central. Heroic soldiers are a staple of authoritarian imagery because they seem to embody the nation, united under a strong leader. To oppose either the soldier or the leader is hence to oppose the nation itself. Trump – who spent years trying to organize a military parade in Washington DC in order to encourage just such an association – understands this. Sending the same camouflage-clad forces to battle both America’s external enemies and its internal dissenters is supposed to send the message that ultimately, the latter are just as dangerous to the nation as the former.As Trump has already revealed, this message is central to his case for re-election. Between now and November, he can be expected to use and abuse his power over America’s paramilitary security forces to try to bolster this case. It is clear that many conservative politicians and voters who claim to believe in individual rights and to fear abuses of federal power are now too deeply invested in authoritarianism, too convinced of the depravity of their opponents, to restrain him. Once their power is taken away peacefully at the ballot box, reforms to the behemoth which America’s security apparatus has become will be vital. Without them, there is no telling how far a future president might take the spectacle of violence. More

    • 75 Shares129 Views

      in World Politics

      The Real Scandal of Chinese Hacking

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      The image most people have of the world of espionage spans an intriguingly varied cast of contrasting personalities. It includes the colorful, the creepy, the beautiful but also the deceptively ordinary. It features a sexy Mata Hari and Christine Keeler. It stretches across history from Christopher Marlowe to the Cambridge Five, from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. And most people retain the image of the world-weary Cold War spies that have populated the novels of Graham Greene and John le Carré and the movies inspired by them.

      The advent of the internet has significantly transformed the landscape of spy-duggery. To be a spy used to require a solid education followed by intensive behavioral training and cross-cultural awareness. But in contrast with the past, the people identified as spies these days tend to be nerds: hackers, digital pirates and cyber-spies. Just as drone operators sitting in a remote location operating what resembles a video game console have increasingly replaced the soldier on the battlefield, the spies in today’s news are faceless operators. Their personalities are unknown and biographies singularly devoid of color and drama.

      Steven Pinker and the Debate Over “Cancel Culture”

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      The picture becomes even more complex when we consider how the stories told about the cyber-spies emerge in the media. The source tends to be a government exposing them. But with so little substance to expose other than designating hidden lines of code, the public can’t even be sure that a newly-identified spy is real. And given that any clever coder motivated enough to rise to the challenge can hack the most secure target, the act that is identified as espionage may just be a feat of coding prowess by a teenager seeking to impress a few cyber-friends.

      We must not forget the need of some politicians in democratic nations to raise the alarm from time to time either to justify exceptional security measures they wish to impose, possibly for other reasons, or simply to prove to the electorate how vigilant they are in defending their vulnerable nation. In such circumstances, decoding the political intent behind incidents caused by coding becomes a major challenge. It is in such a context that, over the past week, the governments of the US and the UK have signaled at least two cases of spying by everyone’s favorite enemies in treachery: Russia and China.

      In the harvest of spy alerts from the past week, there was also what has become the obligatory mention of Russian meddling in Western elections (the Scottish independence referendum of 2014). But in the two contemporary cases that made the headlines, the goal turned out not to be the usual military, electoral or cultural goal (“sowing doubt” and “creating confusion”) but medical. The spies in question were seeking to hack research into the responses to COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.

      According to The Guardian, the US Justice Department has indicted two Chinese hackers “for seeking to steal Covid-19 vaccine research” and other acts of industrial espionage. “Justice Department officials said Li [Xiaoyu] and Dong [Jiazhi] targeted biotech companies in California, Maryland, Massachusetts and elsewhere but did not appear to have actually compromised any Covid-19 research.”

      Here is today’s 3D definition:

      Compromise:

      Allow an idea, concept, process or object to escape from the hands of a person or institution that has been jealously hoarding the idea, concept, process or object with a view to reaping the maximum profit from it

      Contextual Note

      The message that nothing was compromised will reassure the public. But, as often in these cases, the motivation and the supposed agency of the Chinese government are implied rather than proven. With its typical lack of clarity, CNN clarifies: “While the indictment does not specify if the hackers had been working at the behest of the Chinese government as they targeted the coronavirus projects, senior national security officials have been warning of Chinese government attempts to steal coronavirus research from US institutions for months.”

      In other words, much like Russiagate, if “national security figures” warned that something might be initiated by an identified agent (the Chinese government) and then something (but not exactly the thing they feared) does seem to happen, the conclusion requires no further investigation. That is exactly how conspiracy theories are built and justified, but it is also how the best scoops in the media are constructed.

      Historical Note

      In the world of geo-diplomatic intelligence spawned by the Cold War and continued by all nations who can afford it ever since, spying, hacking and spreading disinformation have become a kind of operational norm. This means that whenever a political leader needs to create a scare, there will always be one available for immediate exploitation. Over the past 70 years, alarms about spying and foreign meddling only burst into the media at moments in which leaders judge it expedient to draw such incidents to the public’s attention. In the midst of an intractable pandemic that has caused severe political grief to the leaders of the US and the UK, this is one of those moments.

      Most of these cases produce mild diplomatic incidents that may have immediate pragmatic consequences but rarely alter the balance of power or degenerate into forms of durable conflict. In today’s case, pitting China against the US, after the closure of the Chinese Consulate in Houston, the consequences appear to be far from negligible. It is, after all, an election year in the US and Donald Trump’s chances of getting a new four-year lease on the White House are rapidly dwindling. This may be just the first act of a four-month drama or an alternative scenario — alongside the Israel-Iran conflict — for Trump to have the tail towag the dog.

      Embed from Getty Images

      With the ultimate prospect of an intercontinental war, no one in the media seems to notice what is special and different about the idea of hacking research on COVID-19 treatments, cures and vaccines. That is because both the media and politicians have failed to ask the basic question: Why would anyone want access to urgent medical research?

      In a rational world in which nearly 8 billion people find themselves assailed by fear of contamination, accompanied by the gutting of their economies and the violent transformation of their way of life, research on treatments and cures should logically take the form of a universal collaborative project spontaneously shared among all competent experts and researchers across the globe. Instead, we are passively witnessing a competition driven solely by the profit-motive of a few.

      The real question is: Why isn’t this research already being shared? Why must it be hacked? Everyone knows the answer to that question. It is too obvious, too much a part of the landscape to mention. That is why they dare not even ask the question or assess the consequences. The winner of the race expects to be handsomely rewarded, benefiting from a monopolistic position. And the nation that harbors the winner will be the first to exploit it, with the option of hoarding.

      That is how today’s world order works and everyone seems to accept it as normal, even in these far from normal times. It’s a unified ideological system that governs both geopolitics and the economy. Competition, profit and what Thomas Piketty has called the “sacralization of property,” including industrial property, are the pillars of our historical heritage from the industrial age. 

      Secrets permit monopolies. Monopolies guarantee excessive profit. The rule of the game is that researchers on one side of the world must be unaware of the progress of their colleagues elsewhere. May the best researcher win. Yet this not only slows down progress toward a satisfactory solution, but it also increases the risk that the winning solution may be flawed or incomplete.

      In today’s world, sharing means compromise. But that is deemed unacceptable for a simple reason: Compromise means being compromised. Totally unacceptable.

      *[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. Click here to 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

    • 113 Shares169 Views

      in World Politics

      London’s “Mega Mosque:” Islamophobia in the COVID-19 “New Normal”

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      During the lockdown, the US-based news service, Breitbart, ran a story about plans for a new “mega-mosque” in central London. Proposed for the historic Trocadero building near Piccadilly Circus in the heart of London’s entertainment and theater districts, Breitbart claimed that plans had been submitted to Westminster’s local authority to convert parts of the building into a mosque with a capacity to host around 1,000 worshippers.

      Having been widely shared on social media, the Breitbart story not only claimed that local residents were shocked by the size of the mega mosque, but so too was it alleged that some had voiced concerns about the increased risk of terrorism, that worshippers would try and enforce an alcohol ban in the surrounding area, and that there would be a conflict with those frequenting Soho, London’s gay quarter.

      How the Radical Right Co-Opted Religion

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      While some of those lodging complaints about the mosque will no doubt have had legitimate claims, the Breitbart article clearly acted as a catalyst for the radical right in Britain to jump on the opposition bandwagon. By using the term “mega-mosque,’ Breitbart reverted a tried and tested trope that has been successfully deployed in other parts of the country by various radical-right groups to derail plans for other new mosques. While this affords an opportunity to consider how the radical right have focused on size when it comes to opposing mosques, so too does it give us a timely insight into how the radical right’s campaigns of Islamophobia might change in the “new normal” of a post-COVID-19 world.

      The “Old Normal”

      Standing on the corner of Shaftesbury Avenue and Piccadilly Circus, the Trocadero was built in 1896. Home to a restaurant until 1965, the building remained largely redundant until the early 1980s, when it was renovated and relaunched as an indoor entertainment complex, housing the UK’s first IMAX cinema and various other attractions, including the gaming arcade Segaworld. With every new initiative, however, came failure, and the building eventually became derelict in 2006. A year beforehand, Criterion Capital had purchased it along with another nearby building. Since then, the Trocadero has undergone significant changes: Today, for example, it houses a 740-bedroom hotel with a rooftop bar.

      Embed from Getty Images

      The man behind Criterion Capital is Asif Aziz. He also established the Aziz Foundation, an education charity for British Muslims that has its headquarters near Piccadilly Circus. The foundation was behind the plans submitted to the local authority to request permission to convert the basement and part of the ground floor into a prayer space and community center. With the intention of serving Muslims who live and work in the area, the plans state that it was likely that the prayer space would only attract near-capacity attendance for Friday prayers; on all other days, the plans claimed that no more than 100 worshippers would be in attendance. When the public consultation closed, nearly 9,000 comments had been filed about the plans. While the majority were supportive, a flood of comments opposing the mosque appeared once the mega mosque story was “broken” by Breitbart.

      Among these were a number of tropes that the radical right have been deploying about Muslims and the religion of Islam for some time: from changing the “character” of the area to the mosque being a potential “Islamist hotspot,” from Islam not being welcome in a “secular” society to the mosque being evidence of the further “Islamification” of Britain. Of course, the size of the mosque was also routinely cited as a problem.

      Under the “old normal,” the radical right have been scaremongering about the size of mosques for almost two decades. As the simple yet effective narrative goes, the bigger the mosque the bigger the threat posed. This was used to good effect in Dudley, a town on the outskirts of Birmingham in the West Midlands. While much was made of the size of the prayer hall, it was the height of the proposed minaret adjoining the “super-mosque” that garnered the most opposition.

      Alleged to be taller than the steeple of the town’s oldest church, opponents claimed Muslims were doing so in order to claim the supremacy of Islam over Christianity. Prompting more than a decade of radical-right protests, including some of the largest by the anti-Islam street protest movement, English Defence League, the plans for the mosque were withdrawn in 2018.

      Three years prior, a similar outcome met plans to build a 9,000-capacity “mega mosque” in Stratford, East London. There, more than a quarter of a million people signed a petition opposing the mosque following radical-right groups campaigns alleging that those behind the mosque had links with the 7/7 suicide bombers.

      The “New Normal”

      In the “new normal,” while various radical-right groups have jumped on the anti-mosque bandwagon, it has been by former anti-Islam political party and vigilante group, Britain First, that has led the way, at the time of writing acquiring near 125,002 signatures on its online petition to block the plans. Most interesting, however, are the reasons Britain First cites for opposing the new mosque.

      Alongside all of the old-normal reasons for doing so, it is the new attribution to the size of the mosque that is most insightful. As it states: “Local people have strongly objected to the application on the basis that the area was already heavily overcrowded even before the coronavirus pandemic introduced the need for social distancing – and that adding another 1,000 people, congregating in and around the mega mosque during prayer times would cause serious [problems].” As such, the new mosque should be opposed because it will increase the risk of spreading COVID-19 and thereby poses a threat to the health of local residents.

      While much has been made about the new normal that will ensue in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, what the Trocadero mosque shows is that some elements of the old normal will not only survive but will continue to thrive. As was the case in the old normal, mosques are problematic, the size even more so. Irrespective of any pandemic, little would appear to have changed.

      What does seem to have changed in the new normal, however, is how size is problematized. While the simple yet effective narrative technique used to be “the bigger the mosque, the bigger the threat posed” could, in the wake of 9/11,  always be understood as being either cultural or violent. As regards the former, this typically focused on the “takeover” of Britain, its values, way of life and so on. For the latter, this typically focused on terrorism and radicalization. Post-COVID-19, if Britain First is anything to go by, a more insidious dimension to that threat might now emerge. As the petition infers, the threat now posed by the mosque is also a biological one.

      Irrespective of whether such claims are true, one can see how effective and immediate this kind of claim could be among local people who are already fearful of the effects and impact of an invisible virus. Reshaping the narrative to “the bigger the mosque, the bigger the biological threat posed” may have the potential to be an even more effective means of mobilizing and opposing in the new normal than it was before. If Britain First is successful, expect others within the radical right to rapidly follow this new narrative technique in anti-mosque campaigns and other forms of Islamophobic mobilization throughout the UK.

      *[The Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right is a partner institution of 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 US Politics

      US-China tensions escalate after closure of Houston consulate

      by

      Diplomatic tensions between the US and China has escalated sharply with the Trump administration’s closure of the Chinese consulate in Houston to protect “American intellectual property and private information”.A Republican senator claimed that the Texas consulate, which covered several southern states, was an “espionage hub”. China described the closure as “unprecedented” and an “outrageous” escalation, and threatened retaliation.“China strongly condemns such an outrageous and unjustified move, which will sabotage China-US relations,” the Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said at a regular news briefing on Wednesday. “We urge the US to immediately withdraw its erroneous decision, otherwise China will make legitimate and necessary reactions.”Fire services were called to the Houston consulate overnight after smoke was seen rising from the compound. US officials said staff, who were given 72 hours to leave the country, were burning documents in its grounds.It was unclear whether the closure of the consulate was triggered by a new development. During a visit to Denmark on Wednesday, the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, suggested the move reflected a US decision to be less tolerant of Chinese behaviour.“President Trump has said ‘enough’. We’re not going to allow this to continue to happen,” Pompeo said. “We are setting out clear expectations for how the Chinese Communist party is going to behave, and when they don’t, we’re going to take actions that protect the American people, protect our security, our national security, and also protect our economy and jobs.”The state department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said: “The United States will not tolerate the PRC’s [People’s Republic of China’s] violations of our sovereignty and intimidation of our people, just as we have not tolerated the PRC’s unfair trade practices, theft of American jobs and other egregious behaviour.”Marco Rubio, the acting chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, said: “It’s kind of the central node of a massive spy operation: commercial espionage, defence espionage, also influence agents to try to influence Congress. They use businessmen as fronts in many cases to try to influence members of Congress and other political leaders at the state and local level. And so it’s long overdue that it’d be closed.”The consulate closure came a day after the US accused two Chinese nationals of trying to steal Covid-19 vaccine research, claims that China described as “slander” on Wednesday.This month the FBI director, Christopher Wray, said China was the “greatest long-term threat to our nation’s information and intellectual property and to our economic vitality”. The Chinese foreign ministry accused US authorities of targeting its diplomats in the US, including opening their pouches without permission “multiple times” and confiscating items intended for official use.The ministry said its embassy in the US had received bomb and death threats, the result of the US “fanning hatred against China”. Beijing accused US diplomats in China of “infiltration and interference activities”.“If we compare the two, it is only too evident which is engaged in interference, infiltration and confrontation,” it said.Ties between the two countries have deteriorated further in recent weeks as the US has taken a harder position against China and lobbied its allies to do the same. The closure of the consulate follows a tightening of restrictions for Chinese nationals working in state media in the US, which Beijing claims as the reason for it expelling more than a dozen western journalists over the last few months.On Wednesday Chinese state media suggested the possibility of closing US consulates, posting a poll on Twitter asking users to choose between missions in Hong Kong, Chengdu, Guangzhou and others.China has blamed international criticism of its passage of a harsh and broadly applied national security law in Hong Kong on the US, making the closure of the Hong Kong consulate a possible but escalatory measure.Nick Marro, a China analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit, said: “In recent weeks we’ve seen some appetite on the Chinese side in trying to de-escalate tensions. Whether that agenda survives these recent developments will be a critical thing to watch.” More