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For centuries, the idea prevailed in our competitive civilization that when someone fails a fundamental qualifying test, it means they should return to their studies and keep a low profile until they felt ready to prove their capacity to pass the test. Someone who fails a driving test will be given a chance to come back a second or even third time. But most people who fail three or four times will simply give up trying to swallow their pride and accept their permanent dependence on public transport, family and friends. The same holds true for law school graduates seeking to pass the bar or indeed students in any school who repeatedly fails an examination.

In the world of Silicon Valley, an entrepreneur whose first startup fails gets up, dusts off and returns to the race. The venture capitalists will often look at a second effort after the first one fails as proof of courage and resilience. Three- or four-time losers, however, will usually get the message that it may not be worth trying again. In the meantime, the venture capitalist will have removed them from their files.

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Some privileged people and institutions exist who appear to be spared the indignity of having to retreat after a pattern of failure. The Afghanistan Papers revealed how the repeated mistakes of US military leaders over decades not only did not require them to return to their studies, but duly rewarded them for their service.

Then there is the US Department of Defense itself. In November 2021, Reuters offered this startling headline: “U.S. Pentagon fails fourth audit but sees steady progress.” Since 1990, Congress has obliged all government institutions to conduct a thorough audit. The Pentagon got a late start but they are already at their fourth audit. And they have consistently failed. But like a backward pupil in an elementary school class, the authorities note that despite consistent failure, they should be encouraged for making progress. Will they prove to be better at failing the next time?

The Reuters article reveals the source of the government’s hope. It isn’t about performance. Like everything else in our society of spectacle, it’s all about favorability ratings. Our civilization has elevated the notion of ratings to the ultimate measure of virtue. Mike McCord, the Pentagon’s CFO, explains why, despite the failure, there is no need to worry. “The department continues to make steady progress toward achieving a favorable audit opinion.”

Our Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Audit opinion:

The rigorous standard by which the most sacred part of the US government, the only one that has achieved the status of an object of worship, will be judged by

Contextual Note

Opinion is famously fickle, never more so than in the hyperreal world of politics. Like the wind, it can change direction at a moment’s notice. Political professionals have become adept at forcing it to change. That is what political marketers are paid to do. And they measure their success by shifts in the largely unstable numbers that appear in the ratings. Everything becomes focused on the numbers produced by surveys of opinion.

Concerning the Pentagon’s audit, McCord did mention some impressive numbers that went beyond registering opinion alone. The results of the failed audit revealed “more than $3.2 trillion in assets and $3 trillion in liabilities.” Learning that the Pentagon’s balance sheet is $200 billion in the black can only be encouraging. Any entrepreneur knows what that means. In case of forced liquidation, there would be a valuable stockpile of usable weapons to be sold to the highest bidder and still money left over to pay off all the debts. Or, more likely, the whole operation could be profitably sold to a competitor, say, Canada, Mexico, France or Israel at an even higher valuation. China would be excluded from consideration because of the feat, perhaps at the UN, that such a merger would produce a global monopoly.

Reuters reassures us that optimism is in the air: “As the audits mature and testing expands, Department of Defense leaders expect findings to increase in number and complexity.” They underline the encouraging thought that “successive sweeps could expose more profound problems.” Even the idea of exposing “more profound problems” is promising. It means we may one day understand what’s behind the discovery that the DoD — according to a previous audit — left $21 trillion of expenditure unaccounted for over the past two decades.

The commentator Jonathan Cohn highlighted an obvious fact that should resonate with the public in light of recent haggling in Congress over President Joe Biden’s agenda. “None of the ‘centrist’ Democrats or Republicans who complained about the cost of the Build Back Better Act,” Cohn notes, “have said a peep about the ever-growing Pentagon budget — and the fact that it is somehow still growing even despite the Afghanistan pullout. It has grown about 25% in size over the past five years, even though the Pentagon just failed its fourth audit last month.”

In his book, “War is a Racket,”, the most decorated senior military officer of his time, Smedley Butler, explained the underlying logic that still holds true nearly a century later. “The normal profits of a business concern in the United States,” Butler wrote, “are six, eight, ten, and sometimes twelve percent. But war-time profits — ah! that is another matter — twenty, sixty, one hundred, three hundred, and even eighteen hundred per cent — the sky is the limit. All that traffic will bear. Uncle Sam has the money. Let’s get it.”

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A lot of corporations — with names like, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Halliburton and Northrup — have managed to “get it.” Those corporations are very careful with their own audits because they know that failing an audit, even once, let alone four times, would cancel their ability to keep milking the Pentagon’s cash cow. Luckily, the Pentagon doesn’t have to worry about losing its relationship with those corporations simply on the grounds that it failed yet another audit.

Historical Note

Ratings, and more particularly favorability ratings, are numbers with no stable meaning. Instead of reflecting reality, they merely register the state of shifting opinions about reality. And yet, ratings have become a dominant force in 21^st-century US culture. This is perhaps the most significant sign of a fatal decline of democracy itself.

The idea of democracy first launched in Athens nearly three millennia ago aimed at spreading the responsibility for government among the population at large. Inspired by the Athenian example, the founders of the United States and drafters of the US Constitution realized that what worked reasonably well for the governance of a city-state could not be directly applied to a nation composed of 13 disparate British colonies. Drawing on England’s parliamentary tradition, the founders substituted representative democracy for Athenian direct democracy.

Instead of sharing the responsibility of governance with the general population, the new republic offered the people a simple tool: the vote. It was accompanied by the idea that any (male) citizen could seek to stand for election. The founders hadn’t fully appreciated the fact that this might lead to the constitution of a separate ruling class, an elite group of people who could compete amongst themselves to use the tools of governance to their partisan ends.

Nor did they anticipate the consequences of industrialization of the Western world that was about to unfold over the next two centuries. It would not only consolidate the notion of political organization focused on partisan ends, it would ultimately spawn the “science” of electoral marketing. With the birth of technology-based mass media in the 20^th century, that science would focus exclusively on opinion, branding and ratings, leaving governance as an afterthought.

By the 21^st century, politics became totally dominated by the race for popularity and the cultivation of strategies to that end. The emergence of television in the second half of the 20^th century, coupled with the presence of telephones in every home, sealed the deal. The science of polling was born. Once that occurred, everything in public life became subject to ratings. In the world of politics, the needs of “we the people” were fatally subordinated to a focus on the shifting and increasingly manipulable opinions of those same people. The science of electoral marketing definitively replaced the idea of public service and the quality of governance as the dominant force in political culture.

The only trace of uncertainty left is the famous “margin of error” attributed to polls, usually estimated at around 3%. In contrast, the Pentagon’s margin of error is measured in multiple trillions of dollars.

*[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 Weekly 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.

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In the 1990s, the Taliban closed the women’s university in Afghanistan, forced nearly all women to quit their jobs and restricted their access to medical care. They also brutally enforced a restrictive dress code on women and limited their freedom of movement.

The post FO° Live: Women Under the Taliban appeared first on Fair Observer.

In early January, protests erupted in western Kazakhstan over increased gas prices, quickly spreading to other parts of the country. The demonstrations increasingly took on a political thrust and were directed in particular against former President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who had become a symbol of stagnation.

Although Nazarbayev had stepped down in 2019, he retained the chairmanship of the National Security Council, continuing to play a major role in shaping political events in the country. When protests turned violent, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev finally dismissed Nazarbayev from his post and called in troops from the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), whose membership Kazakhstan shares with Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, for support.

A Momentous Decision

In the course of the escalating street violence that originated from unknown actors, stores were looted and government buildings set on fire. Rumors spread that members of the security forces had abandoned their posts or even switched sides. President Tokayev, who had initially tried to contain the protests by offering dialogue, had obviously lost control and felt compelled to ask the CSTO for help, citing a supposed threat from “bandits and terrorists,” both local and foreign.

This decision has far-reaching consequences for Kazakhstan’s relations with Russia, with Moscow now likely to see its role as an ally and guarantor of security strengthened. This increase in importance comes at a critical time. Tensions between Russia and the West have already made it difficult to maintain the foreign policy balance that the government has always advocated, and the equilibrium is now likely to shift further. It cannot be ruled out that Russia will demand something in return for its military support, such as a reduction in Kazakhstan’s military cooperation with the United States or recognition of the annexation of Crimea.

Closer ties to Russia are particularly problematic in terms of domestic politics. During the 30 years of Kazakhstan’s independence, a generation has grown up that no longer has any biographical connections to the Soviet empire and is increasingly questioning Russian influence on identity politics in Kazakhstan. Against this backdrop, Tokayev’s request for support also signals a political positioning in favor of Russia that is unlikely to benefit his popularity in Kazakhstan and could lead to a more authoritarian political style.

Beyond the bilateral relationship with Kazakhstan, the CSTO’s military intervention represents an opportunity for Moscow to position itself as the most important security actor in Central Asia. Following its economic expansion, China has also broadened its security cooperation with the Central Asian states in recent years, thus undermining one of the most important pillars of Russia’s great power policy. The deployment in Kazakhstan could now rebalance Russia’s weight in the region vis-à-vis China.

A secondary effect is that Moscow can also demonstrate to the United States and NATO that it is determined — and has the necessary capabilities — to assert its interests militarily if necessary. This increases the pressure of Russia’s coercive diplomacy vis-à-vis the West.

New role for the CSTO

The deployment of the Russian-led CSTO military alliance continues the trend toward the militarization of Russia’s foreign policy. What is new is the set of instruments that Moscow is now using. For the first time, the Collective Peacekeeping Forces, which are part of the CSTO’s military structure, are being deployed. Moscow is not concerned with burden-sharing; the alliance relies heavily on Russian personnel, equipment and command structures. This was demonstrated during the deployment in Kazakhstan, where other member states supplied smaller contingents. The CSTO mandate primarily serves to provide Moscow with multilateral legitimacy for the de facto Russian military mission.

The fact that the CSTO’s first deployment has taken place in connection with anti-government protests in Kazakhstan shows that there is only one common threat perception within the alliance that is shared by the leaderships of all member states: the concern about a threat to authoritarian stability, which is always portrayed as being fomented from abroad. The security concept underlying the military alliance is thus one that equates national security with regime security.

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The mission in Kazakhstan could thus serve as a model for further CSTO interventions. Russian President Vladimir Putin has already stated at the extraordinary CSTO Council meeting on January 10 that the unrest in the Central Asian country is not the first — and will not be the last — external attempt to intervene in the internal affairs of allies. Against this background, it is to be expected that CSTO members will in the future cooperate even more closely with regard to the elaboration and coordination of repressive measures against the opposition and civil society and their possible links with foreign actors. For authoritarian rulers who find themselves under pressure from large protests, appealing to the alliance may also be an attractive option.

However, since the deployment of the CSTO also gives Russia the opportunity to exert influence, it is now important for Moscow to present itself as a reliable security partner for the authoritarian rulers in the post-Soviet space and to dispel concerns about the use of the CSTO as a hegemonic instrument. It is therefore only logical that the alliance has now completed its withdrawal from Kazakhstan: The impression that the deployment of CSTO troops would be accompanied by a longer-term Russian troop presence unwanted by Kazakhstan would be counterproductive for Moscow in the long term.

In the medium term, Russia made gains by establishing a model for military intervention in alliance states — and possibly also in other former Soviet republics — with the multilateral legitimization of the CSTO.

*[This article was originally published by the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), which advises the German government and Bundestag on all questions related to foreign and security policy.]

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

The post After Kazakhstan, What’s Next for the CSTO? appeared first on Fair Observer.

The final chapter of Don DeLillo’s epic 1997 novel “Underworld” has proven a prescient warning of the dangers of the digitized life and culture into which we’ve communally plunged headfirst. Yet no sentiment, no open question posed in his 800-page opus rings as ominously, or remains as unsettling today, as this: “Is cyberspace a thing within the world or is it the other way around? Which contains the other, and how can you tell for sure?”

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Regrettably, people’s opinions on the metaverse currently depend on whether they view owning and operating a “digital self” through the lens of dystopia (“The Matrix”) or harmless fun (“Fortnite”). It is additionally unfortunate that an innovative space as dynamic and potentially revolutionary as the metaverse has become, in the public’s imagination, the intellectual property of one company.

But the fact that future users so readily associate the metaverse with Facebook is a temporary result of PR and a wave of talent migration, and will be replaced by firsthand experiences gained through our exposure to the metaverse itself, and not a single firm’s vision for it.

Meta Power

So, what does this all mean? How will the metaverse shape the way we do business, the way we live our lives, the way we govern ourselves? Who owns the metaverse? Why do we need it? Who will be in charge?

Taking a lead from this stellar primer, if we simply replace the word “metaverse” with the word “internet” wherever we see it, all of a sudden, its application and significance become easier to grasp. It also becomes clear that Facebook’s rebranding as Meta is not as much a reference to the creation of the metaverse but more in line with the company’s desire to become this new territory’s most enthusiastic homesteaders. Facebook is not so much creating the metaverse as it is hoping — like every other firm and government should hope — that it won’t be left behind in this new world.

As far as the metaverse’s impact, its political implications might end up being its least transformative. In the United States, for instance, the digitization of political campaigning has carved a meandering path to the present that is too simplistically summed up thus: Howard Dean crawled so that Barack Obama could walk so that Donald Trump could run so that Joe Biden could drop us all off at No Malarkey Station.

Where this train goes next, both in the United States and globally, will be a function of individual candidates’ goals, and the all-seeing eye of algorithm-driven voter outreach. But the bottom line is that there will be campaign advertisements in the metaverse because, well, there are campaign advertisements everywhere, all the time.

More interesting to consider is how leaders will engage the metaverse once in power. Encouragingly, from the governmental side, capabilities and opportunities abound to redefine the manner in which citizens reach their representatives and participate in their own governance. Early public sector adopters of metaversal development have but scratched the surface of these possibilities.

For starters, the tiny island nation of Barbados has staked out the first metaversal embassy. This openness to embracing technology and a renewed focus on citizen interaction evidenced in this move are laudable and demonstrate the metaverse’s democratic value as a means for increased transparency in government and truly borderless global engagement. Though novel, Barbados’ digital embassy is no gimmick. You can be sure that additional diplomatic missions will soon follow suit in establishing their presence in the metaverse and will perhaps wish they had thought to do so earlier.

Another happy marriage of innovation and democracy is underway in South Korea. Its capital city has taken the mission of digitizing democracy a step further by setting the ambitious goal of creating a Metaverse Seoul by 2023 for the express purpose of transforming its citizenry’s access to municipal government. Things like virtual public hearings, a virtually accessible mayor’s office, virtual tourism, virtual conventions, markets and events will all be on the table as one of the world’s most economically and culturally rich metropolises opens its digital doors to all who wish to step inside.

Digital Twinning

Any time technology is employed in the service of empowering people and holding governments more accountable, such advancements should be celebrated. The metaverse can and must become a vehicle for freedom. It need not provide a tired, easy analog to Don DeLillo’s ominous underworld.

But then there’s China. While some of its cities and state-run firms are making plans to embrace what functionality is afforded via metaversal innovation, there can be no question that the government in Beijing will have a tremendous say in what development, access and behavior is and isn’t permitted in any Chinese iterations of the metaverse. It is hard to imagine, for instance, certain digital assets, products or symbols making their way past the same level of censorship beneath which China already blankets its corner of cyberspace.

Yet China’s most intriguing metaverse-related trend involves the spike in interest in digital property ownership occurring while its real-world real estate market continues to sputter. Such a considerable reallocation of resources away from physical assets into digital ones mirrors the increasing popularity of cryptocurrency as a safe haven from the risk of inflation. Call it a technological inevitability or a societal symptom of COVID-fueled pessimism, but the digital world now appears (to some) to present fewer risks and more forward-looking stability than the physical.   

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China may be an extreme example, but the need to balance transparency, openness and prosperity with safety and control will exist for all governments in the metaverse just as it does in non-virtual reality. Real-world governmental issues will not find easy answers in the metaverse, but they might find useful twins. And as is the case in the industry, the digital twinning of democracy will give its willing practitioners the chance to experiment, to struggle, to build and rebuild, and to fail fast and often enough to eventually get some things right.

Championing commendable applications of this new technology in government and business will position the metaverse as a useful thing within the real world, something that enriches real lives, that serves real people — not the other way around.

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

The post Welcome to the Metaverse: The Peril and Potential of Governance appeared first on Fair Observer.

Released just before Christmas on Netflix, Adam McKay’s “Don’t Look Up” instantly became the most talked about movie of 2021. The professional film critics immediately weighed in, mostly with unfavorable reviews. By the following week, the reviews were being reviewed. “Don’t Look Up” had taken on the status of an event rather than a piece of entertainment or a work of art. 

The reason for this curious phenomenon, similar to what occurred for the movie “Bonnie and Clyde” 55 years ago, lies in the fact that, while capturing the mood of an epoch focused on the very real possibility of the collapse of civilization, as a work of art, the movie is visibly flawed in a number of ways that no professional critic could ignore. Given McKay’s track record and the star power he brought together in the case, the critics felt that the film failed to live up to its advertised promise. 

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When the viewership statistics began appearing, the disconnect between critical assessment and the public’s appreciation became flagrant. “Don’t Look Up” broke the record for Netflix viewership for a new release. The gap in judgment between the critics and the public itself became a topic for discussion in the media. 

Some may see this as a demonstration of the inexorable loss of prestige of movie reviewers in the era of social media. Once respected pillars of popular journalism, most consumers now see cinema critics as irrelevant. This has something to do with the ambiguity of cinema itself. Traditionally consumed in a dark movie theater as a collective experience amid a responsive audience, most people now watch their movies at home on television. The distinction between movies and TV has become increasingly blurred. 

Getting Talked About

No one doubts that audiences were drawn to the film principally through the appeal of the star-studded cast featuring, among others, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl Streep, Ariana Grande and Cate Blanchett. But there may be another cultural factor that complements the roster of stars: the power of the traditional and non-traditional news media. That includes the uncountable bevy of pundits on social media. Commentary on the news has become another form of entertainment, thanks in part to its much lower production costs than Hollywood movies. 

Once the critics had done their job, most outlets in the US treated the film’s release and reception as a news story in and of itself. The media began talking about the movie, no longer in terms of its artistic success or failure, but as a kind of psy-op designed to sensitize the public to the urgency of combating climate change. Anyone with access to Netflix felt obliged to watch it. 

By becoming not only a much-viewed work of entertainment but more significantly an object of endless discussion in the media, the movie achieved the director’s real goal: getting talked about. The attention the media is still giving “Don’t Look Up,” weeks after its Netflix release, reveals more about the state of US culture than it does about the movie itself. It highlights the paradox, specifically targeted in the movie’s satire, of the public’s addiction to the media’s blather and its growing distrust of all institutions, including the very media to which the public is addicted.

Were the Critics Right?

In the case of “Bonnie and Clyde,” released in 1967, Newsweek’s Joe Morgenstern “initially panned [the movie], only to come back and proclaim it (wisely) a great movie,” according to David Ansen (a later Newsweek critic and a friend of mine). He penned a second review celebrating Penn’s accomplishment. I’m not sure I agree with David about it being a great movie, but “Bonnie and Clyde” became such a popular success that Morgenstern had to sit down and rethink the cultural conditions that made it, if not a great movie, then at least a movie for its time. And what a time it was! 1967 is remembered as the year of the “summer of love,” a propitious moment for any cultural artifact that could be perceived as being “for its time.” More significantly, “Bonnie and Clyde” became a trend-setter for the next generation of filmmakers.

Can we compare our era with the ebullition of the sixties? Can “Don’t Look Up” pretend to be the “Bonnie and Clyde” of the 21^st century? Because of COVID-19 and Donald Trump, 2020 and 2021 may be remembered by future generations as two years as significant 1967, 1968 (assassinations of MLK and RFK, “mai 68”) or 1969 (Woodstock). Then again, future generations may simply remember these two years as a period of gradual but certain decline marked by a debilitating indifference to the impending crisis that “Don’t Look Up” wants us to respond to.

McKay intended “Don’t Look Up” to be a satire. The mood of the movie is clearly satirical, but some critics noticed that the plot and characterization easily broke the mood, slipping dangerously at times into parody. True satire treats a serious subject seriously before introducing the elements of ironic perspective that subtly or unsubtly undermine the characters’ pretention of seriousness. For a director, this means controlling both the timing and the gap between the sober and the comic.

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Hollywood satire, which always employs humor, has traditionally fallen into two broad categories: dramatic and comic. The Marx Brothers were specialized in comic satire. It achieved its effects through immediate exaggeration of recognizable social behaviors, almost always including the relationship between a woman from the American upper class (Margaret Dumont) and an upstart male gold digger (Groucho) and a penniless southern European immigrant trying to make it in WASP (White Anglo Saxon Protestant) America (Chico). 

In this Marxian (rather than Marxist) world, the three brothers in real life represented three different types of cultural marginality. Chico’s character comprised both Italians and Jews; the mute Harpo represented an extreme form of marginality, combining the handicapped and the poet (and natural musician). He even had his place in the poor black community (Harpo’s “Who dat man?” in “A Day at the Races”). All three of the Marx Brothers embodied, in contrasting ways, characters bent on destabilizing a self-satisfied majority that could neither understand them nor integrate them into their putative order. The very existence of the three non-conformists challenged the legitimacy of the institutions they interacted with. 

Comic vs. Dramatic Satire 

The Marx Brothers’ may have produced raucous comedy intended to provoke non-stop laughter, but their humor was built on a foundation of social satire. Audiences didn’t necessarily think about it in that way. They didn’t exit the movie theater reflecting deeply on the presumption, injustice and cluelessness of the ruling class. But the worlds and situations the Marx Brothers interacted with skewered a range of institutional targets: political and military (“Duck Soup”), academic (“Horsefeathers”), the arts (“A Night at the Opera”) or even medical (“A Day at the Races”). In so doing, they subtly altered the audience’s perception of the class system in the US and some of its most prestigious institutions. All of these movies appeared during the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Like Jonathan Swift in “Gulliver’s Travels,” the Marx Brothers created parallel worlds, clearly differentiated from our own, in which recognizable social and transactional behavior became exaggerated to the point of producing immediate comic effects that highlighted the illogic and even injustice of the real world. Like the Marx Brothers, Charlie Chaplin, W.C. Fields and Laurel and Hardy produced variants on the same principle of comic satire. Each created and gave life to distinctive marginal personalities, at odds with respectable society and usually defeated by it. 

Dramatic satire has in common with comic satire the aim of making its points by producing laughter. But it follows a radically different set of rules. Instead of throwing absurdity straight in the face of the audience by staging wildly exaggerated behavior designed to challenge and upset the veneer of seriousness attributed to what is presented as “normal society,” dramatic satire first takes the time to create the audience’s belief in a realistic situation that will later be challenged by an unexpected event or external force. It turns around the eruption of an anomaly erupts that will inevitably provoke reactions from a range of characters unprepared for the surprise. 

In other words, dramatic satire gives deadpan seriousness a head start. It is the gap between the nature of the anomalous event and the quality of the characters’ reaction that produces what comes across not as the pretext for a joke, but as unintentional humor. In the history of cinema, the most perfect example of dramatic satire — and the most appropriate to compare with “Don’t Look Up” — is Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 film, “Dr. Strangelove” or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb,” the archetypal doomsday satire. McKay was acutely aware of that when he made “Don’t Look Up.” 

Kubrick’s drama literally turns around the plot device of a Soviet “doomsday machine” that, if triggered, will destroy human life on the surface of the earth. The plot begins in total seriousness, like any dramatic movie. The key to its brilliance as satire is the gradual pace at which the exaggerated behavior of some of the characters unfolds. Playing their designated roles to the hilt, the politicians and generals become overtly comic when they go one step (and sometimes two or three) beyond what is reasonable. 

There are several points in the first third of the movie where it becomes apparent to the viewer that they are watching a comedy. But this happens gradually and only through significant, but credible details in the dialogue, such as Brigadier General Ripper’s obsession with “purity of essence.” As the plot develops, at key moments, the comedy can erupt at the highest level of absurdity, as when President Muffley interjects: “Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here, this is the war room.” Such absurdly comic moments emerge logically, without ever undermining the fundamentally dramatic plot structure as it builds toward a final crescendo that will be followed by an instantaneous release.

Adam McKay’s Compromise

McKay’s script attempts to respect the same principle of dramatic satire as “Dr. Strangelove.” The initial scenes reveal the introverted scientist (DiCaprio) and his research student (Lawrence) making the disquieting discovery of a comet certain to strike the earth within half a year. The impending catastrophe is fully confirmed before the audience can get a reasonable feeling for the characters. That is the movie’s first glaring flaw. The apparent tension seems unjustified. The audience doesn’t yet care enough about the characters to start seriously worrying about whether they or the earth they (and we) stand on will survive the comet’s assault. 

A quick transition leads us to the corridors of the White House in Washington, DC. We spend some time with the troubled scientists who are kept waiting before meeting President Orlean (Meryl Streep). She turns out to be a clever composite of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. There’s even a gratuitous hint of a link to Barack Obama, the secret smoker.

The characters in “Dr. Strangelove” are each given the time to appear as reasonable, conscientious, professionally competent human beings. Their irrationality and moral failure only appear as they attempt to deal with the impending threat. In contrast, “Don’t Look Up’s” president and colleagues are simply the embodiments of the algorithm that now dominates US politics, aimed at winning elections. This is where the mood of the movie moves from satire to parody.

We then move to New York where a serious news bureau modeled after The New York Times and a daytime TV interview show demonstrate the same algorithmic principle predicated this time essentially on optimizing ratings. At this point, the spectacle of increasingly trivial behavior by all the establishment parties definitively takes over.

What follows is a dynamically edited series of acts and scenes that riff on the gap between the serious intentions of the scientists and the endless venality and psychological triviality of politicians, entertainers and techno-capitalists. The specific critique of institutions and the media is usually on target. But it too often appears to be an exercise of making fun of what is visible every day in our media simply by duplicating its most consistent behaviors.

The Difficulty of Satirizing Hyperreality

In other words, McKay’s parody suffers from the already hyperreal nature of what it seeks to critique. The culture it puts on display, already accessible in today’s media, is too recognizable and predictable, in a certain sense, too true to (hyperreal) life. It may be a thankless task to try for comic effect by further exaggerating anything in the real world that is already so exaggerated in its triviality and cynical efficiency that on its own it tends to be laughable. McKay ends up faithfully reproducing a world that, through its media, endlessly parodies itself.

That may be what made the critics feel uncomfortable. The actors do their best to parody what it already a parody. The movie rarely achieves the sense of queasy discomfort satire normally seeks to inspire. “Dr. Strangelove” does so by slowly building that discomfort to a fever pitch. Kubrick shows his characters thinking, strategizing, trying to adapt to an unusual situation. McKay’s characters too often appear to be reading from a script. We never get the impression that they are grappling with anything. Instead, they are playing out their algorithmically determined roles.

Perhaps the real lesson, worth being talked about, from “Don’t Look Up” is that in a world so dominated by the hyperreality projected not just by our media but also by our politicians, technology gurus and even academics, true satire is no longer possible. When the media reaches the level of superficiality and sheer venality that it has achieved today, as revealed in every scene of “Don’t Look Up,” the link to reality in today’s culture is too tenuous for effective political satire to be produced.

Hollywood Satire and Contemporary History

Over the past century, Hollywood has produced many successful and indeed unforgettable satires. They fall into a variety of styles and with a wide range of comic techniques. “Duck Soup” (Marx Brothers), “Blazing Saddles” (Mel Brooks), “M*A*S*H”(Robert Altman), “Mulholland Drive” (David Lynch) and many others stand as great Hollywood satires that achieved their effect by creating largely unbelievable frameworks that become believable by virtue of the director’s control of exaggeration, coupled with the capacity to build a coherent intricacy of contrasts and conflicts in the plotting.

“Don’t Look Up” never quite makes up its mind about whether it wishes to embrace “Dr. Strangelove’s” focused drama or the liberated wackiness of Mel Brooks. That may be why the critics found it to be an unsatisfying hybrid. In its defense, however, we should recognize — and future generations should note — that it does stand as an effective parody of the most predictable behavior of public figures incapable of responding to an existential crisis because they have been programmed according to a different set of algorithmic rules. For that reason, the film should be considered a resounding success. It has raised in the public forum the most serious facet of the climate crisis: that even our awareness of it cannot serve to find a solution. The system we are trying to save is built to resist anyone’s saving it.

For all its cinematic quality, brilliant humor and critical success, “Dr. Strangelove” had no immediate impact on the arms race. Still, it is worth noting that when Ronald Reagan was elected president, sixteen years after the movie’s release, as he was making the rounds of the federal government’s installations, upon visiting the Pentagon he “asked the chief of staff to show him the war room of Dr. Strangelove.” The Hollywood actor, who had spent plenty of time in his earlier career in sound studios, believed Kubrick’s set was real. 

Reagan’s public anti-communist philosophy was not radically different from Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper’s as detailed in “Dr. Strangelove.” The man who, before his election, “had argued that the United States was falling behind the Soviets in the nuclear competition” personally initiated the negotiations that led to the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), “the first treaty that required U.S. and Soviet/Russian reductions of strategic nuclear weapons.” Could it have been Reagan’s memory of the lessons of “Dr. Strangelove” that ultimately guided him towards that decision?

A Tale of Two Cold Wars

The original Cold War nuclear arms race Kubrick denounced in his movie is still going on to this day. Perhaps more than ever it can be triggered in a heartbeat. In contrast, climate change promises a slow agony, whose groans may already be discernible. America’s current president, Joe Biden, says he wants to rein it in but seems incapable of exercising any real leadership to achieve that goal. 

At the time Kubrick was shooting “Dr. Strangelove,” John F. Kennedy was still president. In his first year of office, JFK called for the abolition of nuclear weapons “before they abolish us.” In the summer of 1963, he initiated the first nuclear test ban treaty. Four months later, he was successfully “abolished” himself in the streets of Dallas.

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It appears clear now that, willingly or unwillingly, President Biden will accomplish little to limit the effects of climate change. Seeking to raise the stakes of the US rivalry with China and increasing the pressure on Russia over Ukraine in a spirit that sometimes resembles a new cold war, he has also made it abundantly clear that he has no intention of banishing nuclear weapons. In the first week of 2022, the White House affirmed the principle that “nuclear weapons—for as long as they continue to exist—should serve defensive purposes, deter aggression, and prevent war.”

The first cold war ended in 1991 with the fall of the Soviet Union. The lesson of “Dr. Strangelove” no longer lives in any president’s memory. But can we suppose or perhaps even hope that a future president who happened to watch “Don’t Look Up” at the end of 2021 will, like Reagan, remember its message and dare, even decades later, to take some kind of serious action to address it? That seems unlikely. As President Orlean pointed out, unless the end of the world is scheduled to take place before the next presidential or midterm election, there are more important things to attend to.

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

The post The Real Message of Adam McKay’s “Don’t Look Up” appeared first on Fair Observer.

In the aftermath of terrorist attacks in Madrid (2004) and London (2005), many Western governments developed countering violent extremism (CVE) strategies, with the UK’s PREVENT scheme, launched in 2007, being considered the world’s first of this kind. What these CVE programs (more recently “prevention” was added turning the initialism into P/CVE) had in common is their focus on jihadist-inspired extremism and their claimed focus on preventing violence rather than policing “extreme” religious or political beliefs.

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CVE measures have been criticized for many reasons, but the declared emphasis on preventing political violence has been crucial and justified: The only significant threat that “Islamist” extremism can pose to Western societies has been violence. However, this article is not about jihadist-inspired violent extremism. Instead, as national policymakers subsequently sought to apply their CVE strategies to the rising threat of right-wing extremism, multifaceted threats of far-right movements and challenges have emerged.  

No Thought Police

When in the mid-2010s the far-right threat could no longer be ignored, Western governments expanded their CVE programs to respond to the new threat environment. This response was guided by the conviction of convergences between different forms of extremism and governments’ intentions to avoid accusations of double standards.

However, applying such an ideologically neutral lens has hampered a holistic threat assessment and the development of effective prevention and intervention measures. In particular, the adoption of preexisting CVE terminologies, principles and programs to counter the far right has created blind spots by focusing mainly on violent extremism.

The unprecedented risk of far-right terrorism and political violence cannot be overstated, but how can we move toward a broader threat assessment beyond the focus on violence, which characterizes current P/CVE strategies in several countries, including Australia? Australia’s national CVE program, Living Safe Together, for example, was set up to prevent and counter violent extremism, defined as a person’s or group’s willingness “to use violence” or “advocate the use of violence by others to achieve a political, ideological or religious goal.” Similarly, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation recently emphasized that it “does not investigate people solely because of their political views.”

From a law enforcement perspective, focusing on violent (or otherwise criminal) acts appears appropriate in a democratic society where dissenting, even radical, political ideas should not be unduly curtailed or criminalized. However, the line between political views and advocating violence is often difficult to draw. This poses a challenge for combating (violent) extremism of any kind, not only but especially on the far-right of the political spectrum where violence against the “enemy” is often an integral element of the political ideologies.

Research on far-right online spaces, from Facebook and Twitter to alt-tech sites such as Gab, consistently finds not only occasional calls for violence, but also high levels of What Pete Simi and Steven Windisch refer to as “violent talk” — messaging that cultivates, normalizes and reinforce hatred, dehumanization and aggressive hostility toward minority groups and the “political enemy.”

While stressing the “important distinction between talking and doing,” Simi and Windisch argue that “Violent talk helps enculturate individuals through socialization processes by communicating values and norms. In turn, these values and norms are part of a process where in-group and out-group boundaries are established, potential targets for violence are identified and dehumanized, violent tactics are shared, and violent individuals and groups are designated as sacred…. In short, violent talk clearly plays an important role in terms of fomenting actual violence.”

Identifying calls for violence linked to real-life plans to commit violent acts and violent talk that advocates violence is both challenging and crucial. However, the focus on violence in countering the far right tends to overlook other threats that are specific to radical or extreme right-wing movements.                   

Community Safety

The 2019 terror attacks in Christchurch, New Zealand, by an Australian far-right extremist sent shock waves around the world, but it has had particularly severe and lasting effects on the sense of physical safety among Muslim communities, especially in New Zealand and Australia. For many, it has been a painful reminder that anti-Muslim hatred can lead to violence.

When asked about far-right activities in Australia, Adel Salman, president of the Islamic Council of Victoria, stated: “Muslims feel threatened. We don’t have to look back to the very tragic events in Christchurch to see what the results of that hatred can be.” A recent large-scale survey among Australian Muslims confirms these community fears, with 93% of respondents expressing concerns about right-wing terrorism.

While Australia has seen incidents of far-right violence in the past, none of these acts have ever been classified as terrorism. However, the reemergence of radical and extreme right-wing groups and their actions in the 2020s, while mostly non-violent, has nevertheless given rise to significant safety concerns among communities targeted by the far right. This has had tangible effects on these communities.

Our research found, for example, that far-right mobilization against a mosque in a regional town of Victoria fueled fear of personal safety among the Muslim communities. Many felt so intimidated that they would no longer leave the house alone or after dark; some even questioned their future in Australia.

Similar public safety concerns exist among many targeted communities. For example, after a series of anti-Semitic incidents, including verbal abuse and swastika symbols displayed near a synagogue, a representative of the Jewish community in Canberra stated in a 2017 New York Times interview that “For the first time in my life, I don’t feel safe in Australia. I have little children who don’t feel safe playing outside.”  

Such community concerns around public safety are not caused by violence or advocating violence by far-right networks but by public expressions — such as online, graffiti or postering — of exclusivist views of white supremacy, racism, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism or homo- and transphobia. These community perspectives have hardly been taken into account in the current violence-centered threat assessment of right-wing extremism and radicalism.

Mainstreaming Hatred

When representatives of communities targeted by far-right mobilization speak about these threats, they often do not clearly differentiate between manifestations of hatred such as racism, anti-Semitism or homophobia and deliberate political actions of far-right groups or individuals. For their lived experience, it seems to make little difference as to whether the abuse or threat is perpetrated by someone who is affiliated with a far-right network or not.  

When I interviewed an LGBTIQ+ community representative for a study on far-right local dynamics, for example, she noted experiences of transphobic abuse in the streets and that many in her community would avoid certain public places for fear of being subjected to such aggression. Although the locally active white nationalist group was described as holding particularly aggressive homophobic and transphobic views, the problem was portrayed as a societal one — it was not about the political ideology but the public climate of exclusion and intimidation.

This points to a second underappreciated factor in the current far-right threat assessment: its potential to mainstream exclusivist, hateful and dehumanizing sentiments. A literature review on extremism and community resilience concluded that far-right movements “exert disproportioned levels of agenda-setting power as they manage to attract high media attention through their message of fear and anger.” Christopher Bail referred to this as the “fringe effect” in his study of anti-Muslim fringe organizations in the US that, he suggests, “not only permeated the mainstream but also forged vast social networks that consolidated their capacity to create cultural change.”

The potential to spread exclusivist, hateful messages from the fringes into the societal mainstream needs to be considered when assessing far-right threats, even when there is no use or advocacy of violence. The risk of promoting exclusivist sentiments toward minority communities and fueling social division poses a significant threat to a pluralistic society, especially given that significant segments of the population already hold negative views on certain groups and may, under certain conditions, be receptive to some of these narratives pushed by the far right.

Undermining Democratic Norms

Strengthening commitment to democratic values has been a central piece in some national governments’ strategies to combat right-wing extremism. However, such an emphasis tends to be absent or underdeveloped in national contexts where countering extremism focuses on political violence. Here, the problem of far-right mobilization undermining democratic norms and processes is not a common feature in the public debate.

If it is mentioned at all, it is presented as a process of advocating ideologies that contradict liberal democratic principles of equality. Researchers have argued, for example, that far-right discourses tend to “challenge the fundamentals of pluralist liberal democracy through exclusivist appeals to race, ethnicity, nation, and gender.”

But far-right actions may also be able to influence democratic decision-making processes. When far-right groups held a series of disruptive street protests against a local mosque application in an Australian suburb, our fieldwork suggests that these protests may have influenced the local council’s decision on the mosque planning permit. The council deferred the case to avoid making a “contentious” decision, as one study participant maintained, adding that a small group of far-right protesters sought to “intimidate” councilors to vote against the mosque.

Another community representative interviewed for our study explained the council’s deferral with a reference to the previous far-right street protests: “You wouldn’t want to say yes [to the mosque application], because that’s when the trouble would start again.” The far-right protesters did not engage in a legitimate form of democratic deliberation about the local mosque; instead, their actions seemed to undermine the democratic process by creating a climate of intimidation.

Beyond Political Violence

The threats that far-right movements can pose to liberal democratic societies are complex and manifold, and they certainly include the risk of political violence and hate crimes. But the potential of the far right to cause serious harm to communities and the democratic order goes beyond the use or advocacy of violence.

Strategies to prevent and combat right-wing extremism need to acknowledge this complexity. A focus on terrorist acts and violence makes sense in the context of combating jihadist-inspired violent extremism, which has never had the capacity to threaten the stability of democratic principles and institutions, to spread its ideologies into the societal mainstream or to create widespread concerns around safety so that people were too scared to leave their homes.

Without downplaying the threats of any form of violent extremism, there is a need for more nuanced and holistic approaches to assess, prevent and counter right-wing extremism. This would require us to take into account the capacity of far-right mobilization to create fear in many parts of our communities, spread divisive and socially harmful ideologies, and undermine the legitimacy of democratic norms and institutions. There are no quick fixes, and this article is not the place to propose a comprehensive strategy.

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What is clear, though, is that the answer does not lie in the repression or criminalization of dissenting, radical political views. Instead, preventing and countering the far right should pay more attention to the concerns of targeted communities and take action to support and empower these communities. This is also related to the need for effective anti-racism and anti-homo/transphobia programs, which have been central components of government strategies to prevent the proliferation of right-wing extremism in several Western countries.

Our efforts against far-right ideologies is also a struggle for democracy — a struggle US President Joe Biden recently called “the defining challenge of our time.” Given the prevalence of far-right assaults on democratic principles and institutions, strengthening citizens’ commitment to democracy and human rights should be considered a key element in a holistic strategy to counter the far right. This would require a much stronger role of civil society actors in this commitment for a democratic culture as well as a more place-based focus on supporting local pro-democracy community initiatives.

None of these considerations are new. They have all been tried and tested in other countries, such as Germany, where the comprehensive federal program Live Democracy! forms a crucial element in the government’s commitment to combating right-wing extremism. Every national context is different, of course, but far-right threats go beyond political violence in all societies.   

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

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

The post A Focus on Violence Creates Blind Spots in Assessing the Far-Right Threat appeared first on Fair Observer.

In October 2021, a vote by the UN Human Rights Council recognized that we all have a right to a safe, healthy and sustainable environment. Our most fundamental human rights are inextricable from the health of the natural world, including the right to adequate food and even the right to life.

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The question now is whether governments will respond adequately to the urgent threats to these rights.

Climate Justice

Despite grand rhetoric at the COP26 summit, the updated climate pledges, if met, still put the world on track to hit 2.4° Celsius of warming this century. The difference between the 1.5° target of the 2015 Paris Agreement and 2.4° Celsius would be measured in millions of lives — taken by natural disasters, food and water insecurity, displacement and climate-induced conflict.

To prevent this human rights catastrophe, global leaders must keep 1.5° alive with urgent action, not warm words. Wealthy countries with historic climate debt must immediately end fossil fuel subsidies, cut emissions every year to 2030, rapidly phase out fossil fuels and use public finance for ambitious transitions to renewable energy. This transition would be the greatest investment in human history.

However, leaders must also recognize that the climate crisis is already here now. Support must be provided for those most badly affected, who are often those doing the least to cause this crisis. In particular, climate refugees urgently need an international legal framework to allow them to move safely and with dignity. Despite more people being displaced by the changing climate than by war, they are falling through the gaps, with no binding legal protections.

This year features the inaugural International Migration Review Forum at the United Nations. It’s time for action over climate refugees.

Ocean Emergency

Another essential resolution for world leaders in 2022 is to protect the blue beating heart of our planet. The ocean is our greatest carbon sink, home to extraordinary wildlife and directly depended upon by millions of people for livelihoods and food. However, we need to start supporting the ocean in return.

This means ending harmful fisheries subsidies at the World Trade Organization. These subsidies drive carbon emissions and ecosystem collapse and imperil human rights. This year must also see an end to bottom trawling in protected areas, greater transparency in global fisheries — our most essential tool in the fight against illegal fishing and human rights abuses at sea ­— and a true recognition of the vital role played by ocean wildlife in keeping our climate stable.

The 15^th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP15) is one moment where the world’s eyes will be on wildlife and biodiversity. After all, the flagship Aichi targets on biodiversity were missed and world leaders must resolve this year to truly step up to protect and restore nature. We are in an age of mass extinction with wildlife in precipitous decline.

This destruction of the complex web of life on Earth is inherently wrong, but it also directly threatens us. All our most basic human rights depend on a thriving natural world, and as we erode it, we also expose ourselves to more climate disasters, food insecurity, pandemics and devastating environmental injustice.

Taking Responsibility

As well as action, establishing accountability is going to be a key test of world leaders this year. Just 100 companies have been responsible for 71% of greenhouse gas emissions since 1988. The biggest polluters have had plenty of opportunities to voluntarily cut their emissions and protect human rights and have failed to do so. Strong laws, alongside rigorous and consistent enforcement, are now needed to prevent environmental and human rights abuses from occurring in their supply chains.

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EU legislation on sustainable corporate governance was due to advance last year, in order to increase corporate accountability and promote environmental standards and human rights around the world. This has again been delayed. This legislation must now be pushed through quickly and not be watered down.

The planetary emergency is here, but there is still hope. We can still make 2022 the year we finally take serious action to protect people and the planet — the solutions already exist. The New Year’s resolutions of our leaders should be to speed up the transition to zero carbon emissions, protect and restore nature, establish accountability for those destroying it, and put human rights and environmental justice at the heart of their decision-making. If they can finally do this, we can have a world where people and nature thrive, supported by one another.

*[Steve Trent is the executive director and co-founder of the Environmental Justice Foundation.]

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

The post The Year to Protect People and the Planet appeared first on Fair Observer.

Austria is known as a stable Central European country that is the capital of classical music. It is also the home of prominent figures in the world of science and philosophy, including Sigmund Freud and Ludwig Wittgenstein.

In 2014, Austria had the lowest unemployment rate in the European Union. That trend declined in the years that followed, but the economy remained largely competitive. Austria is also one of the top 10 countries with the fewest number of unemployed young people among member states of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

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Austrians will head to the polls later this year for elections. The incumbent president, Alexander Van der Bellen, remains undecided over running again, but he is eligible for a second term in office. In the 2016 election, he defeated Norbert Hofer of the Freedom Party of Austria, thwarting his rival’s attempt to become the first far-right head of state in the EU.

Recently identified as the world’s fifth-most peaceful country in the 2021 Global Peace Index, Austria has seen substantial economic fallout due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The government’s decision to introduce mandatory vaccination and hefty penalties for those who do not comply has stirred controversy.

Heinz Fischer, the president of Austria between 2004 and 2016, is a seasoned lawyer who had a long career in politics. He took his first step toward becoming a national leader in early 1963, when he served as a legal assistant to the vice president of the Austrian parliament. He later became a member of parliament himself and then served as the minister of science, before leading the national council, the lower house of parliament, from 1990 to 2002. He is currently the co-chairman of the Ban Ki-moon Centre for Global Citizens in Vienna.

I spoke to Dr. Fischer about the COVID-19 pandemic, the refugee crisis in Europe, the Iran nuclear talks in the Austrian capital and more.

The transcript has been edited for clarity.

Kourosh Ziabari: Mr. President; according to Statistics Austria and the Austrian Institute for Economic Research approximations, the total fiscal costs of the COVID-19 pandemic for Austria amount to roughly €70 billion [$79 billion] in the 2020-22 period. As of May 2021, the government had earmarked €37 billion for relief measures. Do you think this is a liability for the Austrian economy that may result in a short- or mid-term recession, or is it a deficit that can be made up for soon? Has the government been able to handle the economic burden of the pandemic efficiently?

Heinz Fischer: When COVID-19 reached Austria and the first lockdown became mandatory, I was surprised to hear the finance minister from the conservative party announcing that he would compensate the economic burden with “whatever it costs.” This was unusual language for a conservative minister of finance.

All in all, the government’s relief measures were crucial for reducing Austria’s economic damage of the pandemic. The Institute for Economic Research as well as our National Bank claim that Austria will be able to go back to the path of economic growth; this will reduce unemployment and keep recession lower than a traditional conservative finance policy of strict zero deficit would have done. But the performance of the government fighting against COVID-19 was less successful.

Ziabari: It was reported that the government is planning to introduce mandatory inoculation starting in early 2022 and that those holding out will face fines of up to $4,000. Of course, vaccination is the most effective way of combating the effects of the coronavirus. But does a vaccine mandate and handing out substantial penalties not go against democratic practice in a country known for its democratic credentials? You are no longer in office, but as an observer, do you support the decision?

Fischer: This is one of the hottest or even the hottest topic of current political debates in Austria. To answer your question promptly and directly: Yes, I believe it is necessary and legitimate to introduce mandatory inoculation — with justified exemptions — for a limited period of time in order to protect our population and our country in the best possible way. Other European countries start thinking in a similar way.

It is not a one-issue question. You have, on the one hand, the obligation of the government to protect basic rights and individual freedom and, on the other hand, the obligation of the government to protect the health and life of its population. And it is obvious that there are different, even antagonistic basic rights, namely individual freedom on the one side and health insurance and fighting a pandemic on the other. It is not an either/or but an as-well-as situation. The government must take care of two responsibilities simultaneously, meaning that the democratically-elected parliament has to seek and find the balance between two values and two responsibilities.

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If I remember correctly, a similar situation existed already two generations ago, when the danger of a smallpox pandemic justified an obligatory smallpox vaccination until the World Health Organization proclaimed the global eradication of the disease in 1980.

Ziabari: Moving on from the pandemic, Austria was one of the countries hugely affected by the 2015-16 refugee crisis in Europe. When the government of former Chancellor Sebastian Kurz came to power, it took a hard line on migration and made major electoral gains as a result. Now, with the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan, a new wave of westward migration appears to be in the making. Does Austria have a moral and human responsibility to protect asylum-seekers fleeing war and persecution, or should the responsibility be outsourced to other nations for certain reasons?

Fischer: My clear answer is, yes, Austria has a moral and human responsibility to protect asylum-seekers on the basis of international law and the international sharing of responsibilities.

Of course, we must discuss the numbers, the conditions, the possibilities, etc. of the respective country. But immediately saying no, we will not take women from Afghanistan, or we will not participate in burden-sharing of the European Union with the excuse that earlier governments many years ago already accepted a substantial share of refugees, is not acceptable. One cannot outsource humanity and moral duties.

Ziabari: How is Austria coping with the effects of climate change and its human rights implications? While the average global surface temperature rise from 1880 to 2012 has been 0.85° Celsius, it has been 2° Celsius for Austria. Austria’s target for 2030 is to cut greenhouse gas emissions not covered by the EU Emissions Trading System by 36%, but the International Energy Agency has forecast it may only achieve a 27% benchmark. Will Austria need external help to overcome the challenge? Are you positive it can fulfill the EU expectations?

Fischer: I do not think that Austria needs external help to fulfill its climate commitments. I do, however, think it is urgently necessary for the Austrian government to find a way forward in combating the climate crisis, a way that does not only cut greenhouse gas emissions, but which will also help to achieve societal consensus on the measures that are to be taken. This means the government must also be supporting social coherence.

Combating climate change is a multi-stakeholder effort and includes a just transition to clean energy, rapid phase-out of coal and end to international fossil fuel finance. In Austria in 2018, already 77% of electricity came from renewable energy sources and the number is constantly rising. While building a sustainable and climate-friendly future, we must, however, not forget to create green jobs, uphold human rights around the world and leave no one behind. I am positive that Austria will fulfill its EU expectations because it has to. There is only one planet, and we have to protect it with all means.

Ziabari: Let’s also touch upon some foreign policy issues. The former US president, Donald Trump, was rebuked by European politicians for alienating allies and spoiling partnerships with friendly, democratic nations and embracing repressive leaders instead. But Austria-US relations remained largely steady, and despite Trump’s protectionist trade policies, the United States imported a whopping $11.7 billion in goods and services from Austria. Do the elements that undergirded robust Austria-US connections still exist with a transition of power in the White House and a change of government in Austria?

Fischer: Yes, the relations between Austria and the United States have a long history and stable basis. Austria has not forgotten the prominent role of the US in the fight against Hitler. It has not forgotten the Marshall Plan — 75 years ago — and other ways of American support after World War II. The United States was a lighthouse of democracy in the 20^th century, including the time of Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Franco, Horthy, etc. in Europe.

Of course, the Vietnam War, the political and economic pressure on countries in Latin America, the false arguments as the basis for a military invasion in Iraq and the heritage of racism have cast shadows on US policy. But having said all this, it is also true that the US has strengths in many fields of foreign policy and good relations between the US and Europe are a stabilizing factor in the world.

I would like to add that Donald Trump was and still is a great challenge for democracy in the US and a danger for the positive image of the United States in Europe and elsewhere.

Ziabari: Are you concerned about the tensions simmering between Russia and the West over Ukraine? Should it be assumed that Russia’s threats of deploying intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Europe are serious, or are the Russians bluffing to test the West’s resolve, particularly now that one of Europe’s influential leaders, Angela Merkel, has departed? Are Russia’s complaints about NATO’s exploitation of Ukraine to expand eastwards and the ongoing discrimination against Ukraine’s Russian-speaking populace valid?

Fischer: Yes, I am concerned about the growing conflict between Russia and the West, and this conflict has a long history. World War II was not started by Russia, the Soviet Union, but brutally against them.

After World War II, there was a bipolar world developing between the East and the West, between Moscow and Washington, between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. After the fall of the Iron Curtain and the collapse of the Soviet Union, a new situation emerged. Gorbachev was honestly interested in a more peaceful world. He was accepting over the reunification of Germany and accepted the former Warsaw Pact member East Germany to become a member of NATO.

But the deal was that Russia’s security should not be reduced, and other parts of the former Soviet Union should not become part of NATO. And, in this respect, Ukraine is an extremely sensitive issue. It is already a while ago, but let’s remember how sensitive the United States reacted to the so-called Cuban Missile Crisis — the stationing of Russian weapons near the US. NATO weapons at the border of Russia are not supportive of peace and stability.

Ziabari: German Chancellor Angela Merkel stepped down after 16 years in power. Aside from being referred to as the de facto leader of the EU, she was praised for her leadership during the eurozone debt crisis and her role in mustering global solidarity to fight COVID. What do you think about the legacy she has left behind? In terms of relations with Austria, do you think her differences with the government of Sebastian Kurz on immigration, Operation Sophia and the EU budget blighted the perception that Austrians had of her?

Fischer: Angela Merkel was a great leader, crucial for Germany, crucial for Europe, crucial for human rights, crucial for peace. I admired and liked her. When former Austrian Chancellor Kurz and former German Chancellor Merkel shared different views, Merkel was, in my opinion, mostly on the right and Kurz on the wrong side. She was “Mrs. Stability and Reliability” in a positive sense.

And her legacy? She belongs with Konrad Adenauer, Willy Brandt and Helmut Schmidt to the four great German leaders after World War II. Under her leadership, Germany was the most stable nation in the European Union and her relationship with Austria was a mirror to her character, namely balanced, friendly and correct.

Ziabari: In the past couple of decades, Europe has been the scene of multiple terror attacks with hundreds of casualties, including the November 2020 shooting in Vienna, which European officials and media unanimously blamed on Islamist terrorism and political Islam. What are the stumbling blocks to the normalization of relations between secular Europe and its Muslim community? Is this civilizational, generational clash destined to last perennially, or are you optimistic that the two discourses can come to a co-existence?

Fischer: The melting of different nationalities, cultures and religions is always a difficult task. The Austro-Hungarian monarchy finally collapsed because of unsolved conflicts between European nationalities.

Conflicts become even more difficult when they include different religions and ethnicities. We can say that the conflict between our German-speaking, Czech-speaking, Hungarian- or Polish-speaking grandparents is more or less overcome, but the conflict between Christians and Muslims will last longer. We can study this in the United States. But it is my personal hope that multi-religious integration is possible in the long run in a fair and democratic society.

Ziabari: Talks to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, are underway in the Austrian capital. Are you hopeful that the moribund agreement can be brought back to life? Do you see the determination to save the accord in the Iranian side and the other parties, for the benefit of international peace and security?

Fischer: I was very happy when the 2015 JCPOA was signed between Iran, the United States, China and several European countries. And I believe it was one of the very wrong and unwise decisions of Donald Trump to withdraw from that agreement. To revitalize this agreement is, as we can observe these days, very difficult.

As you asked me about my opinion, I am inclined to a more pessimistic outlook, because the present Iranian leaders are more hardliners than the last government and President Biden is under heavy pressure and has not much room for compromises. On the other hand, I recently met a member of the Iranian negotiation team in Vienna and, to my surprise, he was rather optimistic.

One of my wishes for 2022 is a reasonable and fair solution for the JCPOA negotiations and a détente between Iran and the Western world. But the chances for a positive outcome seem to be limited at the moment.

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

The post Former Austrian President Heinz Fischer Talks to Fair Observer appeared first on Fair Observer.

Besides the Eiffel Tower and foie gras, France is known for having produced an intellectual class that, over the centuries, from Diderot’s Encylopédie to Derrida’s critical theory, has successfully exported its products to the rest of the world.

France’s intellectual history demonstrates that alongside traditional social classes, a nation may cultivate something called the intellectual class, a loose network of people who collectively produce ideas about society that are no longer restricted to the traditional categories of philosophy, science and literature. Prominent intellectuals merge all three in their quest to interpret the complexity of the world and human history.

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French intellectuals are perceived as floating freely in the media landscape. American intellectuals, in contrast, tend to be tethered to universities or think tanks. They publish and sometimes appear in the media, but with a serious disadvantage, having to compete in shaping public discourse with far more influential media personalities such as Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson or even Tucker Carlson.

A stale historical cliché compares Europe with ancient Greece and the US with the Roman Empire. Rome and the US both produced a vibrant and distinct popular culture, with a taste for gaudy spectacle and superficial entertainment. But in Roman times, plebeian culture co-existed with a patrician culture cultivated by Rome’s ruling class. Modern democracy roundly rejects the very idea of a ruling class. Commercialism has turned out to be the great equalizer. Everyone in America is expected to share the same culture of movies, TV and popular music. The same applies to popular ideas, whether political, scientific or economic.

Amy Wax is a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania who is not shy about expressing her ideas, notably her updated version of class differences. She is convinced that what she calls “bourgeois culture” replaced Rome’s patrician culture in the US but is in danger of extinction. Wax believes everyone in the US, including recent immigrants, should share that culture. Anyone who resists should be excluded. She also thinks that race and ethnicity are reliable indicators of the capacity of immigrants to conform.

As a young woman, Wax paced the halls and absorbed the wisdom spouted in lectures at Yale, Oxford, Harvard and Columbia University. Along the way, she amassed the kind of elite educational experience that identifies her as a distinguished exemplar of the modern intellectual class. With such impeccable credentials, it is fair to assume that she is not only well-informed but has learned the fine art of responsible thinking, a quality the media attributes to such luminaries.

So could it have come about that such a distinguished thinker and ranking member of the intellectual class should now be accused of sharing the kind of white supremacist attitude Hillary Clinton (Wellesley, Yale) famously attributed to the “basket of deplorables”? The intellectual class in the US uniformly and loudly rejects all forms of racism. If Wax expresses ideas that echo racist theses, it would indicate that she is betraying her own intellectual class. Appropriately, her university acknowledged her betrayal when it condemned her “xenophobic and white supremacist” discourse.

In a podcast in late December, Wax went beyond her previously expressed belief that the US would “be better off with more whites and fewer nonwhites.” On that earlier occasion, she specifically targeted blacks, whom she categorizes as intellectually inferior. This time, she took aim at Asians, whose reputation for academic excellence and scientific achievement most people admire. She justified her attack in these terms: “As long as most Asians support Democrats and help to advance their positions, I think the United States is better off with fewer Asians and less Asian immigration.”

When the host of the podcast, Professor Glenn Loury, questioned her logic, she evoked “the danger of the dominance of an Asian elite in this country” who may “change the culture.” Wax’s fear of domination by a foreign race and her defense of white civilization could hardly convince Loury, who is black. Loury countered that the Asians Wax wants to exclude are “creating value” and “enlivening the society.”

“How do we lose from that?” he asks. In response, Wax offered her own rhetorical question: “Does the spirit of liberty beat in their breast?”

This week’s Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Spirit of liberty:

America’s supreme civic virtue that consists of pursuing self-interested goals and conducting aggressive assaults against whatever one finds annoying

Contextual Note

Wax offered her own definition of the spirit of liberty, which she identified as the virtue associated with “people who are mistrustful of centralized concentrations of authority who have a kind of ‘don’t tread on me’ attitude, who are focused … on our freedoms, on our liberties, on sort of small- scale personal responsibility who are non-conformist in good ways.”

Apart from the fact that Wax is attributing a cultural attitude to “Asians” (more than half of humanity), her idea of liberty reflects feelings associated with aggressive, nationalistic historical memes (for example, “don’t tread on me”) rather than the kind of political concept we might expect from a serious intellectual. In his 1859 essay “On Liberty,” John Stuart Mill defined it as the “protection against the tyranny of political rulers,” analyzing it in terms of the individual’s relationship with authority, not as a “spirit” or attitude. But Mill was English and, unlike Americans, the English are disinclined to celebrate attitude.

Wax, who is Jewish, paradoxically complained that Jews “have a lot to answer for … numerically through their predominance.” She derides their “susceptibility to the idealistic, pie-in-the-sky socialist ideas.” When Loury accuses her of appealing to a stereotype, she objects that there’s nothing wrong with stereotyping when it is used correctly.” Just as Wax approves of non-conformity “in good ways” she condones “correct” stereotyping. She believes herself to be the arbiter of what’s good and correct.

Historical Note

Wax shares with Fox News host Tucker Carlson a sense of legitimate domination of what she calls “the tradition of the legacy population,” identified as the traditional white Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) majority. Wax aligns with cultural nationalists like Samuel Huntington, whose book “Who Are We: America’s Great Debate?” — following his famous “The Clash of Civilizations: And the Remaking of the World Order” — preached for the reaffirmation of the political and moral values transmitted by the WASP founders of American culture 400 years ago.

The Weatherhead Center for International Affairs of Harvard University sums up the components of the Puritans’ culture: “the English language, Protestant values, individualism, religious commitment, and respect for law.” The culture’s admirers routinely forget that their respect for law might mean disrespecting the law of the indigenous populations of the land they chose to occupy. Enforcing that respect sometimes translated as genocidal campaigns conducted in the name of that law. It also embraced slavery based on racial criteria.

Wax’s up-to-date WASP culture, which she prefers to call “bourgeois culture,” no longer requires genocide or slavery to prevail. Her defense of a largely imaginary legacy culture has nevertheless led her to embrace a racist view of humanity. While decrying the multicultural “wokism” that she believes now dominates academic culture, she appears to believe 19^th-century France rather than the Yankee Revolution sets the standard to live up to.

Wax is right to lament the very real breakdown in America’s intellectual culture. The trendy woke moralizing so prevalent in American academia deserves the criticism she levels at it. Both her attitude and that of woke scholars derive from the same puritanical tradition that insists on imposing its understanding of morality on everyone else.

Wax’s choice of “bourgeois culture” as the desirable alternative to wokism seems curious. Bourgeois culture is identified with the mores of a dominating urban upper-middle class that emerged in 19^th century France that projected the image of a vulgar version of the aristocracy. It produced a culture specific to France, very different from the democratic culture of the United States at the time.

This highlights another difference. Whereas the French intellectual class, even when indulging in its traditional disputes, tends to agree on the meaning of the terms it fabricates, American intellectuals routinely bandy about terms they never seek to define or understand and use them to punish their enemies. That is what Wax has done with bourgeois culture and, in so doing, she has declared multiple races and ethnicities her enemies. 

*[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. After four years of daily appearances, Fair Observer’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary moves to a weekly format.]

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

The post Amy Wax and the Breakdown of America’s Intellectual Culture appeared first on Fair Observer.

After the shambolic US withdrawal, Afghanistan faces an existential problem: Its very existence as a state is now in question. Most people forget that Afghanistan is a patchwork of disparate ethnic groups and remote villages. Unlike Germany or Japan, it is not and has never been a nation-state. Since the 1880s, Afghanistan has been a state based on a loose coalition of poorly governed provinces, forgotten villages and marginalized ethnic groups. 

A Chequered Past

For more than a century, different power centers in Afghanistan have had some sort of representation in the central government, even if they often got leftovers from the dominant Pashtun ruling class. This class was repressive and often bloody. Abdur Rahman Khan, the Iron Amir, conducted genocide against the Hazaras in the 1890s, erased a substantial part of the cultural heritage of Nuristanis by forcing them to convert to Islam, and confiscated fertile lands of Tajiks and Uzbeks in the north only to redistribute them to Pashtun tribes. Even a modernist king like Amanulla pursued the Iron Amir’s policies. Yet, at the helm of power, there was generally a servant’s seat at the table for other ethnic groups such as the Tajiks, the Uzbeks and even the Hazaras. This seat at the table along with the backing of superpowers, first the British and then the Soviets, kept the state and the political order intact.

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When the Soviets invaded in 1979, the Pashtun-dominated order of Afghanistan gradually crumbled. Ideology trumped ethnicity, and groups like the Tajiks, the Uzbeks and the Hazaras rose in prominence. Much credit for this goes to Babrak Karmal, the president of Afghanistan from December 1979 to November 1986. When the Soviets withdrew in February 1989, this order collapsed. The battle-hardened mujahideen groups fought a brutal civil war in which Tajik leader Ahmad Shah Massoud, known as the “Lion of Panjshir,” held the upper hand.

The Pashtuns struck back through the Taliban and took over Kabul in 1996. They exercised power over most of the country while Massoud was leading the resistance to the Taliban government from the Panjshir Valley. He was killed in Afghanistan two days before the 9/11 attacks in 2001 by an al-Qaeda suicide squad masquerading as journalists on the pretext of filming an interview. Even after his death, the resistance to the Taliban continued and Massoud’s fighters contributed heavily to the ground fighting that drove out the Taliban from much of the country, including Kabul.

In the five years of Taliban rule from 1996 to 2001, the Pashtuns returned as the dominant military and political group. They ran an autocratic regime, marginalizing other ethnic groups and suppressing opponents. Hence, resistance to the Taliban was persistent and ferocious in many parts of the country.

The Post 9/11 Experience

The 9/11 attacks led to the American intervention and the creation of a new democratic state. Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazaras, Turkmens and other marginalized communities became active participants in the political process. Despite its fragility and flaws, the post-2001 political order and its democratic components offered a unique opportunity for Afghanistan to transform into a functioning polity and society.

The governing Pashtun ethnonationalist elites, their non-Pashtun partners, including conservative warlords, and the reemergence of a Pashtun-led insurgency squandered the resources and opportunities that otherwise might have consolidated a civil and democratic political order.  

The Taliban’s forceful return to Kabul last August ended the post-2001 American-backed constitutional order. Today, chaos prevails and a fanatical Pashtun clergy has a vice-like grip on every aspect of Afghanistan’s social, political and economic life. Furthermore, the Taliban are fanatical Muslims with ethnofascist tendencies and a profound apathy for Afghanistan’s ethnic, cultural and political diversity.

In recent months, many analysts have been very charitable to the Taliban. In an interview with Fair Observer, political analyst Anas Altikriti said, “The reality is the Taliban have won and in today’s world, they have the right, the absolute right to govern.” If the right to govern comes from conquest, then Altikriti is right. Lest we forget, the Taliban have yet to win an election or demonstrate that they are actually capable of governing. Moreover, they are rigid, dictatorial and revanchist. An inclusive political formula that represents Afghanistan’s mosaic-like diversity is impossible so long as the Taliban remain exclusively in charge.

The legitimate aspirations of non-Pashtun ethnic groups such as the Tajiks, the Uzbeks, the Hazaras, the Turkmens and others are now dissolving in the acid of Sunni fundamentalism. The Taliban have marginalized them completely. These groups have no seat at the table, no representation in the decision-making process and have to live under the barrel of the Taliban gun.

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In 2022, this situation is untenable. Non-Pashtun ethnic groups are fed up and want control over their destiny. Many Pashtun technocrats, including the former president, Hamid Karzai, have switched sides and are part of the ruling dispensation. They claim the Taliban are the source of stability and have formed the only organization capable of ruling the country. However, they forget an important point. Marginalized groups in Afghanistan are chafing under Pashtun hegemony. If the Taliban-led Pashtuns cling to their unilateral rule and convert Afghanistan into a centralized state, the country will indubitably and inevitably break apart.

Federalism Is the Way Forward

To avoid a bloody partition along ethnic lines or a 1990s style civil war, Afghanistan needs a federal political system. Afghanistan is not France or the United Kingdom. It cannot be run out of a grand capital no matter how powerful the ruling class is. Like Switzerland and the United States, Afghanistan is an extremely diverse country with a history of local autonomy and a glorious tradition of bloody rebellion as the British, the Soviets and the Americans discovered at their cost.

Therefore, the balance of power in any political system that can work must lie with local, not national government. Such a system could turn Afghanistan’s disparate ethnic groups into building blocks of a new federal state and avoid the looming bloodbath due to the Taliban’s autocratic rule.

With China and Russia taking center stage, Afghanistan is increasingly forgotten. That is as risky as it is unfortunate. Conflict in Afghanistan could spill over into South and Central Asia, threatening global peace and security. Afghanistan needs dialogue between different groups ready to hammer out a territorial, judicial, and administrative settlement that leads to a functional union. Only then can we expect the fragile state of Afghanistan to survive.

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

The post Is Afghanistan Going to Break Apart? appeared first on Fair Observer.

The UK economy is beginning 2022 on a somewhat shaky footing. Signs of an economic slowdown were cropping up even before the Omicron variant threw fresh uncertainty into the mix and raised fears that “Britain’s nightmare economy of the 1970s,” characterized by a noxious mixture of high inflation and stagnant economic growth, is set for a comeback. One particular industry, however, is doing brisk business: The so-called Big Four professional services firms are experiencing a remarkable boom.

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How sustainable this period of prosperity will prove, however, is another question. Indeed, while the four major auditors — Deloitte, KPMG, PwC and Ernst & Young — are registering their strongest collective financial performance since the Enron scandal 20 years ago, the industry has yet to undergo the systemic overhaul necessary to ward off another Enron-scale incident. As high-profile scandals and legal battles have multiplied, it’s ever clearer that the UK must implement more robust and meaningful regulation of the auditing industry.

Still Mired in Scandals 

As recently reported, the auditing giants have all posted their strongest financial results since the 2002 Enron scandal led to the collapse of one-time competitor Arthur Andersen, shrinking the Big Five to today’s Big Four. Indeed, the auditing industry has been a standout performer amidst the pandemic, steadily outpacing the broader economy with the Big Four’s advisory arms reaping a particular windfall as businesses seek expertise on how to recover from the pandemic and protect themselves from future economic downturns.

The wave of mergers and acquisitions deals and increased spending on services such as environmental social and governance (ESG) consulting have given an impressive bump to auditors’ bottom lines. The Big Four generated a total of $167.3 billion in revenue this financial year, up 7% on 2019-20. Of the four, KPMG experienced the greatest increase, with its global revenue jumping 10% to reach $32.1 billion. EY, meanwhile, reported a 7.3% rise in overall turnover, including 19.6% growth in its strategy consulting arm. Deloitte rose 5.5% to $50.2 billion, while PwC increased sales by 2% to the overall revenue of $45 billion, with its advisory sector growing by 3.1%.

Unfortunately, this impressive financial performance hasn’t been matched by a corresponding uptick in standards. While auditors have tried to deflect blame — the UK boss of PwC recently complained that criticism of the audit industry from politicians and regulators is damaging the sector’s reputation — there’s little doubt that the industry continues to be embroiled in scandals, with all four firms associated with high-profile cases.

In one of the latest instances, KPMG is being sued for $600 million over its allegedly sloppy auditing of collapsed private equity firm Abraaj. In its heyday, the Dubai-based fund managed some $14 billion in assets, with Abraaj founder Arif Naqvi selling himself as an ESG trailblazer to the global political and financial elite. Abraaj turned out to be a massive Ponzi scheme, and the firm collapsed in 2018 amid allegations of mass fraud and misuse of funds. 

KPMG played a particular role in the debacle, with the firm’s Lower Gulf affiliate accused of failing to identify the irregularities at Abraaj and not maintaining sufficient independence from the troubled fund. In particular, red flags were raised by executives bouncing between posts at Abraaj and KPMG, as well as the fact that KPMG also audited companies in which Abraaj invested.

KPMG is also facing other investigations, including scrutiny from UK financial regulators over apparently providing misleading information and failing to spot discrepancies in its auditing of collapsed construction firm Carillion. Meanwhile, EY faces accusations of “actively concealing” a six-year fraud from investors during its auditing of Gulf-based NMC Health, which comes as the auditor deals with high-profile auditing failures with Wirecard and Stagecoach.

Deloitte was fined a record £15 million ($20.3 million) in 2020 for failing to “act with integrity and objectivity” in its audit of software firm Autonomy. PwC, meanwhile, has faced fines and lawsuits for audits of firms including JP Morgan and racing car dealer JD Classics, and its Frankfurt offices were recently raided over a suspected tax evasion scheme.

In total, the Big Four have been fined £42 million in the UK in the past three years for flawed audits — a startling sum that underscores the need to more effectively regulate the sector.

Regulation Needed

The trouble is that, two decades on from Enron, regulation hasn’t been beefed up sufficiently to curb abuses in the auditing sector. An independent review found that the current UK regulator, the Financial Reporting Council (FRC), is “rather ramshackle” and should be urgently replaced with a strengthened body with more accountability to Parliament. 

Plans for such a replacement have yet to materialize concretely, and the government’s appetite for audit reform is worryingly meager. Recent reports that ministers are planning to water down suggested reforms — including replacing planned legislation to make company directors more accountable over financial reporting with a weaker, more narrowly applicable UK corporate code — are alarming given the deeply rooted problems in the auditing sector.

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Indeed, it is long past time to carry out a thorough overhaul of financial services regulation in the UK and install robust corporate governance to prevent another crisis on par with Enron. As American investigative journalist David Hilzenrath has argued, there are critical lessons to be learned from Enron, such as the imperative to end the multiple conflicts of interest that exist within the auditing sector, including close relationships and even “revolving doors” that develop between companies, auditors and regulators.

These can be tackled with measures such as ensuring that auditors are independently assigned rather than company-appointed, frequently rotating auditors, and instituting a politically accountable regulator with the power to implement penalties at an earlier stage before the damage has been done.

The UK government should heed the warnings that countless scandals have provided and implement suggested regulatory changes before it’s too late. There’s little point in championing the successes of the professional services sector if this is just paving the way for a headline-grabbing crisis that brings it all crashing down.  

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

The post Auditing Firms’ Strong Performance Masks Unsolved Issues appeared first on Fair Observer.

The first euro banknotes and coins came into circulation 20 years ago. Although the exchange rates of almost all participating countries had already been fixed two years earlier, only the introduction of the euro marked Europe’s irreversible economic integration. For after the creation of the single monetary policy and the introduction of hundreds of tons of euro cash, a return to national currencies would have ended in disaster for the European Union and its member states.

The global financial crisis and the euro crisis have shown that the single market would not function without the common currency, the euro — one reason being exchange rate differences. Even though the euro has not displaced the dollar from first place in the global monetary system, it protects the European economies from external shocks, that is, negative impacts from the global economy.

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Moreover, monetary integration has shown its advantages during the COVID-19 pandemic. Without the euro, some member states would not only face a demand and supply crisis, but also a sharp weakening of their currency, which could even lead to a currency crisis. This would make it extremely difficult to fight the pandemic and support jobs with public money.

The citizens of the EU seem to appreciate the stabilizing effect of the common currency. According to the May 2021 Eurobarometer survey, 80% of respondents believe that the euro is good for the EU; 70% believe that the euro is good for their own country.

Moreover, joining the euro area is seen as attractive: Croatia will most likely join the euro area in 2023. Bulgaria also aspires to join. Due to dwindling confidence in the currencies of Poland and Hungary, the introduction of the euro could become a realistic scenario in the event of a change of governments in these countries.

A Long List of Reforms

Despite these developments, many of the euro area’s problems remain unresolved 20 years after the currency changeover. The fundamental dilemma is between risk-sharing versus risk elimination. It is a question of how many more structural reforms individual member states need to undertake before deeper integration of the euro area, which implies greater risk-sharing among member states, can take place. In the banking sector, for example, the issue is to improve the financial health of banks — that is, among other measures to increase their capitalization and reduce the level of non-performing loans before a common deposit insurance scheme can be created.

A second problem is the relationship between monetary and fiscal policy. Currently, the European Central Bank is the main stabilizer of the euro area public debt, which increased significantly as a result of the pandemic, and it will remain so by reinvesting its holdings of government bonds at least until 2024. However, an alternative solution is needed to stabilize the euro area debt market.

Joint debt guarantees, as recently proposed by France and Italy, must be combined with incentives to modernize the economies, especially of the southern euro are countries. In this context, it is important to keep in mind the limits of fiscal policy, which is currently too often seen as the magic cure for all economic policy problems. Linked to fiscal policy are the questions of how many rules and how much flexibility are needed in the euro area.

Heated discussions are to be expected this year on the corresponding changes to the fiscal rules. This is because there is a great deal of mistrust between the countries in the north and south of the euro area, which is mainly due to the different performance levels of the economies and the different views on economic policy. The persistent inflation and the problems with the implementation of the NextGenerationEU stimulus package, which is supposed to cushion coronavirus-related damage to the economy and society, could exacerbate the disparities in economic performance and thus also the disagreements within the euro area.

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The euro crisis has shown that turbulence in one member state can have fatal consequences for the entire currency area. In the coming years, however, the biggest challenge for the euro area will not be the situation in small member states such as Greece, but in the largest of them. The economies of Italy, France, and Germany, which account for almost 65% of the eurozone’s gross domestic product, are difficult to reform with their complex territorial structures and increasing political fragmentation. At the same time, these economies lack real convergence.

A decisive factor for the further development of the euro currency project will be whether the transformation of their economic models succeeds under the influence of the digital revolution, the climate crisis, and demographic change.

*[This article was originally published by the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), which advises the German government and Bundestag on all questions relating to foreign and security policy.]

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

The post What Does the Future Success of the Euro Depend On? appeared first on Fair Observer.

In 2025, the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh is hit by a killer heatwave. The astronomical temperatures resulting from solar radiation kill 20 million people.

In the wake of this climate disaster, a new movement arises in India: an eco-terrorist network called the Children of Kali. The Hindu deity Kali, “She Who Is Death,” is the goddess of doomsday, and her “children” seek, through extremist measures, to avenge the deaths of their countrymen and to halt the march of climate change.  

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Such is the premise of Kim Stanley Robinson’s “The Ministry for the Future,” a climate fiction novel that plays out how humanity will handle the climate crisis over the next decades. The scenario is far from science fiction, however. With the right ingredients — environmental disaster, government inaction and public support, combined with non-lethal and well-publicized tactics — eco-terrorism could prove a fiery cocktail.

Special Interest Extremism

Both premises, the killer heatwave and the eco-terrorist network, are based in reality. Last year’s Intergovernmental Governmental Panel on Climate Change report predicted more intense heat waves of longer durations, occurring at a higher frequency globally. Within the next decades, mean temperatures could be at least 1.5˚C above pre-industrial levels, leading to intense heat waves and driving higher mortality and poverty rates.

The second premise, the growth of eco-terrorism, sprung up in the late 1970s. At the turn of the century, the FBI identified the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) and the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) — radical environmentalists and animal rights activists, or what the bureau calls “special interest extremism” — as “the most active criminal extremist elements in the United States.”

ELF attacks included arson, sabotage and vandalism; other environmental extremists have been linked to what is known as tree-spiking to prevent deforestation and the sabotage of whaling and sealing vessels. The era of nuclear expansion was accompanied by attacks on nuclear installations: Between 1966 and 1977, 10 terrorist attacks took place across Europe, while between 1969 and 1975, US nuclear facilities faced 14 actual and attempted bombings and 240 bomb threats.

These acts of eco-sabotage certainly feel a far cry from today’s conception of terrorism as violence, often lethal, targeted at civilians. Yet it does qualify: In 2002, following 9/11, the FBI defined terrorism as “the unlawful use, or threatened use, of … committed against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population … in furtherance of political or social objectives.”

Despair Rising

It is difficult to be precise about the number of eco-terrorism incidents because so little research within the field of terrorism is conducted on this particular type. The 2020 Global Terrorism Index merely notes that it falls outside its main categorizations. However, it appears to be on the rise. Last year, The Hill reported that the FBI was investigating 41 incidences of eco-terrorism in Washington state alone, including the derailing of a train that resulted in 29,000 gallons of crude oil being spilled. In September 2021, 53 activists from Insulate Britain were arrested while attempting to block the London Orbital Motorway.

As deadly natural shocks become increasingly common worldwide, the specter of future eco-terrorism looms much more prominently now than it did two decades ago. In the wake of the UN Conference of the Parties climate summit (COP26) that took place in Glasgow, Scotland, in November, it is more evident than ever.

The conclusion of COP26 has widely been received as more of a whimper than a bang. A sense of disappointment, if not failure, greeted the final agreement despite what many have called historic achievements. Thousands of youth activists on the streets of Glasgow channeled the sense of fury felt by the leaders of countries most vulnerable to climate change. Such frustration may have its own consequences.

According to a 2021 global survey on the impact of climate fears, despair is rising. The youth is scared and angered by governmental paralysis when it comes to the climate emergency. The division between the global south and the global north in the wake of COP26 is ever more acute, with rising resentment that the developed world is failing to fund the now urgently needed adaptation and mitigation measures. With escalating numbers of desperate people, extremist ideologies can find fertile ground.

Sabotage, Ecotage

As climate disasters worsen and public sentiments shift, radicalization may well follow. So, if eco-terrorism were to arise, what might it look like? A 2020 paper published in the Journal of Strategic Security explored exactly this thought experiment. Much like the now-inactive ELF, 21^st century’s eco-terrorists would likely start with industrial sabotage, or “ecotage.” They might expand to fossil fuel plants, airports and container ships.

Targeting humans, not infrastructure, as happens in Robinson’s novel, seems comparatively unlikely. In general, climate activism is associated with high regard for the sanctity of life. Even ELF guidelines emphasized the need to protect life during group actions, and that the goal of attacks on property is to cause targeted economic harm to industries that degrade the environment.

Lethal action would be left to fringe elements, which is a possibility we can’t rule out. But the saboteurs of Robinson’s fiction, who carry out targeted assassinations of major investors in fossil fuels and take down planes to reduce air travel, are likely to remain the bogeymen of ecological activism.

How effective might such a non-lethal strategy of eco-terrorism be? A well-targeted campaign of attrition, wearing down governments and greenhouse gas-emitting corporations, would be costly and challenging to guard against. With maximum costs imposed on fossil fuel economies, they might simply choose to concede to the terrorists’ demands.

Already technologies abound that are environmentally friendlier and less costly. The International Renewable Energy Agency’s 2021 report found that 62% of renewable energies are cheaper than fossil fuel alternatives. With viable alternatives in reach, governments and private companies might concede to a policy change as the least costly strategy. Although governments might not admit to it, research has suggested that they often do yield to terrorist demands. Between 1980 and 2003, half of all suicide terrorism campaigns were closely followed by substantial concessions from the target government.

Oxygen of Publicity

Terrorism survives on “the oxygen of publicity,” to quote former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Research on eco-terrorist tactics has emphasized how well-designed and well-publicized acts of ecotage might galvanize public support if the public endorses the group’s goals and isn’t repulsed by its tactics.

Public endorsement is certainly on the table. A majority of US voters now strongly believe in the need for climate action. An estimated 6 million people joined the climate protests around the world in September 2019, including peaceful occupations and roadblocks. According to a 2021 global survey on climate change conducted by the United Nations Development Program, one in three people said that climate change is an emergency and that the world should urgently do everything necessary in response.

Every action necessary to respond to the climate crisis has instead included government crackdowns on non-violent ecological activism. Research from 2013 emphasized that there has been no documented evidence of harm to humans resulting from actions by radical environmentalists nor of violence being deployed to cause injuries or death. Yet in 2004, a senior FBI official described animal-rights extremism and eco-terrorism as “our highest domestic terrorism investigative priority.” As recently as 2020, the UK included organizations like Greenpeace and Extinction Rebellion in its police counterterrorism guide alongside violent right-wing extremists.

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These tactics are misguided. Although eco-terrorism does meet the definition of terrorist strategies, the consequences are, as yet, largely non-lethal and governments should respond appropriately. For one, it is more challenging to negotiate with, and concede to, terrorist organizations. Labeling climate-action groups as eco-terrorists runs the risk of undermining their stated objectives, stifling legitimate political dissent and preventing progress toward much-needed climate goals.

Moreover, some groups have argued, the eco-terrorism designation has been used as an intentional tactic by corporations and governments to quash lawful campaigning. Research published by the Journal of Strategic Security suggests that this disproportionate response might fuel the radicalization of the groups and individuals most likely to turn to extremism.

Siberia is burning, Shanxi is sinking, Alabama is rocked by tornadoes. Climate disasters will continue. Governments might stand by and watch or, worse, employ counterterrorism tactics against climate activists. In turn, the outraged might answer the call to arms.

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

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Proscription, the listing of some groups or organizations as terrorists, has become a crucial counterterrorism initiative adopted by liberal democratic governments. Despite the criticism proscription has caused due to it occurring at the discretion of individual states, it has proved to be an effective preventative strategy.

Since the banning of the far-right National Action in the United Kingdom in 2016, other countries have followed suit. In Germany, groups like Combat 18 and Citizens of the Reich have been proscribed as terrorists. Canada has done the same with Combat 18, Blood and Honor, Three Percenters, Aryan Strikeforce and the Proud Boys.

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Spain has also designated particular organizations as terrorists. Their legal prosecution has affected the nature and activity of the far right at the national level.

Hate and Radicalization in Spain

In 2017, the educational SM foundation launched a study on the behaviors and attitude of Spanish millennials. The study unveiled the increasing ideological radicalization of that generation, as one in five young individuals (out of a total sample of 1,250) supported either the extreme left or right.

Four years later, Spain witnessed an anti-Semitic speech delivered in front of 300 attendees at an event held at the Almudena cemetery in Madrid to commemorate the Division Azul (Blue Division), a group of 14,000 young men who fought for Adolf Hitler in World War II. Torn between bewilderment and outrage, Spaniards wondered about the speaker but also about the speech.

The inflammatory speech was given by Isabel Medina Peralta, an 18-year old history student, member of the Francoist party La Falange (The Phalanx) and a self-described fascist and national-socialist. Her comments are currently being investigated by the prosecution office in Madrid as a hate crime.

Medina’s case is just the tip of the iceberg of a much larger problem: the increasing presence and relevance of extremist groups in Spain. That increase has been partly driven by a growing sense of dissatisfaction toward the political elites and rising immigration, with the subsequent perception of economic and cultural threat this may represent.

It is such factors that, in turn, facilitated the relative success of far-right parties like Vox, which was founded in 2013 and holds 52 seats at Spain’s Congress of Deputies, the lower house of parliament. Spain has ceased to be an “exception” among European countries that have witnessed the steady growth of right-wing radicalism since the mid-2010s.

Legislation

Spanish law does not condemn any display of Nazi and fascist symbology unless it is related to criminal behavior. In other words, it does not punish the display of extremist symbols unless they are accompanied by active conduct. It is criminal actions and messages that allow for law enforcement to get involved, rather than the use of symbols. The mere display does not make the act a crime. The only exception to this is Law 19/2007 of July 11 against violence, xenophobia, racism and intolerance at sporting events. The law states that the display of Nazi symbology could lead to a fine of up to €3,001 ($3,400) and a six-month ban from attending any sporting event.

However, there are some existing laws in Spain that could be used to enable the proscription of extremist groups. For example, the Spanish penal code, specifically Article 510, states that those who publicly encourage, promote or incite hatred, hostility, discrimination or violence against a group because of their ethnicity, religious beliefs or sexual identity will be “punished with a prison sentence of one to four years and a fine of six to twelve months.” This also applies to those who produce or disseminate material that encourages, promotes or incites violence against groups.

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Article 510 also allows the prosecution of those who publicly deny, trivialize or extol genocide and other crimes against humanity. Article 515 of the Spanish penal code could also be applied in prosecution and proscription processes. Section 4 of this article, in particular, states that associations or groups are punishable if they promote discrimination, hatred or violence against people, groups or associations by reason of their ideology, religion or beliefs, ethnicity or gender.

Where the Spanish penal code would not be enough to proscribe an extremist group, the  Rome Statute of International Criminal Court may be employed. Article 7 on crimes against humanity specifically indicates that a group may be prosecuted under international law if it is responsible for the persecution of a community or collective based on political, racial, national, ethnic, culture, religious, gender or other grounds. When inciting, promoting or motivating such persecution, international law should be applied as a preventative measure.

Organized Extremism in Spain

Proscription in Spain began with the dissolution of the neo-Nazi organization Sangre y Honor (Blood and Honor) by Spanish judges, who condemned 15 of the 18 defendants to prison terms of up to three and a half years. Several extremist groups remain active in Spain today.

Democracia Nacional, a far-right party founded in 1995, is one example. Its current leader, Alberto Bruguera, and 14 other members of the party have been accused by the special public prosecutor on hate crimes for attacking a mosque in Barcelona’s Nou Barris neighborhood in 2017. The prosecutor has requested a 10-year sentence for its leader. The party’s vice-president, Pedro Chaparro, has also been accused of threatening photojournalist Jordi Borras in 2015.

Alianza Nacional is another problematic group. In 2013, a judge in Vilanova i la Geltru, a city in Catalonia, sentenced three leaders of the organization to two and a half years in prison due to the dissemination of Nazi ideology online. Their message spread hatred against black and Latinx groups as well as immigrant communities and liberal multiculturalism. They blamed these groups for taking the jobs of Spaniards, along with fostering the use, abuse and trafficking of drugs, amongst other crimes.

Hogar Social is a neo-Nazi group that is well known for its campaigns to collect and share food “only for Spaniards” as well as to squat in buildings. Some of its members have been prosecuted and were due to be judged in December 2021 for inciting hatred and attacking a mosque in March 2016 after a terrorist attack in Brussels, Belgium. They face potential sentences that range from one to four years in prison. The leader of Hogar Social, Melisa Jimenez, was arrested in 2020 and later released for attacking the Socialist Party headquarters and displaying resistance to authorities.

Bastion Frontal is a neo-Nazi group related to the French organization Social Bastion. It was established during the COVID-19 pandemic in the working-class neighborhood of San Blas in Madrid. The group claims to have around 100 active members who are between the ages of 15 and 25. The creation of Bastion Frontal was mainly triggered by the decay of Hogar Social and the rise of VOX, but it does not identify with the latter due to it being a constitutionalist party. Instead, Bastion Frontal aims to abolish the Spanish Constitution. Although its members claim to have a physical headquarters, Bastion Frontal’s presence is mainly online. The prosecutor’s office in Madrid has filed a complaint against the group because of hate crimes due to its threats against unaccompanied minors from Africa, including Morocco.

Echo Chambers

Spanish society has been going through a process of polarization, which has been pointed out by academics and civil society actors. The situation, as scholars have mentioned, has remarkably worsened during the pandemic, mainly due to the amount of time people have spent in front of their screens. In particular, young adults are amongst the most vulnerable. In this context, isolationism and echo chambers have further contributed to the strengthening of an already growing extreme right.

Spain’s practice of prosecuting after crimes against human rights have been committed is only a relatively effective strategy, as it focuses on the individual rather than on the social, economic and ideological networks that the individual relied upon to carry out the violence.

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

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

The post Proscribing the Far Right: Is Spain Doing Enough? appeared first on Fair Observer.

On any given day, US media will offer an abundance of reports on the sometimes strange workings of its justice system. This first week of January has proved to be rich in examples, with the high-profile cases of Ghislaine Maxwell and Elizabeth Holmes complemented by a host of stories about smaller cases over the antics of local judges or the ambiguity of legislation in particular states.

The ultimate effect of these stories may appear to justify the remark made by Mr. Bumble, in Charles Dickens’ “Oliver Twist,” who cited the proverbial phrase, “the law is an ass.” Dickens painted Bumble as an appalling hypocrite and the hapless husband of a tyrannical wife. When told that “the law supposes that your wife acts under your direction,” Bumble correctly identifies the gap between the principles expressed in the law and reality. Reacting to the supposed “suppositions” of the law, Bumble wishes “that his eye may be opened by experience — by experience.”

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In this comic passage, Dickens identified one of the central problems of any system of law, the friction created when suppositions concerning human behavior meet the facts of actual human experience. In most people’s minds, the notion of equality before the law requires that the letter of the law be applied uniformly to everyone, regardless of circumstance. But justice requires two things not contained in the law. Application of the law should take into account variable circumstances. But it should also mobilize the human ability to treat language — the wording of the law — as the not quite reliable artifact all language tends to be. The latter seems to represent a formidable challenge.

A New York Times article with the title, “Language Mistake in Georgia Death Penalty Law Creates a Daunting Hurdle” exposes how the careless wording of a Georgia law has inverted its intended logic. At one point it quotes a pearl of wisdom from 2013 uttered by future Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. “It is essential,” Kavanaugh opined, “that we follow both the words and the music of Supreme Court opinions.”

Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Music:

1. A sublime art form practiced in all human cultures that derives from the ability to modulate the pitch, rhythm and sympathetic resonance of sounds produced by both the human voice and the skillful manipulation of a wide variety of physical objects

2. A useful metaphor that consists of using the art form’s absence of propositional content to make irresponsible assertions sound as if they reflect deep and serious reasoning

Contextual Note

Perhaps Kavanaugh imagines the US criminal justice system as something akin to the pre-Copernican universe in which the sun was believed to revolve around the Earth and where, at the summit of the heavens, one could hear the celestial music of the spheres. That is a far cry from the more accurate description of the law’s workings by Mr. Bumble, who wished the law might descend from its principled heights and open its eyes to deal with human experience.

The verdict in the trial of Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes confirmed the spectacular fall of a one-time darling of the techno-financial-political establishment and youthful billionaire. It also illustrates that while Kavanaugh’s imaginary legal music didn’t play much of a role in determining the verdict, a certain form of cultural mythology figured prominently.

Under the headline, “EXCLUSIVE: Juror speaks out after convicting Elizabeth Holmes,” ABC News reports on how the jury’s deliberation reached a verdict that ended up blaming Holmes for bilking the millionaires and billionaires who invested in her company but found her innocent of conning a gullible public into purchasing a fraudulent product.

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One of the jurors, Wayne Kaatz, described by ABC News as “a daytime Emmy-award-winning TV writer,” observed a phenomenon that any author of fiction and media professional would be expected to notice. “It’s tough,” Kaatz explained, “to convict somebody, especially somebody so likable, with such a positive dream.” He insisted that the jury “respected Elizabeth’s belief in her technology, in her dream.” He added that in their mind, Holmes “still believes in it, and we still believe she believes in it.” In US culture, believing in a “positive dream” is in itself an act of moral virtue. Believing in those whom you believe is nearly as good.

Historical Note

The idea of the American dream was first promoted by the businessman and historian James Truslow Adams. In his best-selling 1931 book “Epic of America,” he described it as the “dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.” Later commentators, according to music historian Nicholas Tawa, “would claim that the American Dream was mostly the quest for financial betterment and the accumulation of bigger and better material goods.” Truslow launched the phrase describing his “positive dream” just about the time Edward Bernays, the godfather of public relations, was consolidating the ideology that would underpin the growth of the consumer society in subsequent decades.

Martin Luther King cleverly exploited the idea of the American dream in his famous “I have a dream” speech. Instead of putting it in a consumerist framework, Reverend King framed the black American’s dream in terms of future justice. The justice-inspired dream has consistently challenged Truslow’s consumerist version aggressively promoted by Bernays and the powerful agencies of Madison Avenue.

In other words, even within the US justice system, it isn’t King’s dream of justice but Truslow’s consumerist model that dominates, unconsciously orientating the average American’s perception of the world. The vaunted personal belief in one’s money-making dream (and scheme) typically contains some wildly positive outcome for the world.

In the case of Elizabeth Holmes, what the jury called a “positive dream” was the promise of an instantaneous deciphering of every citizen’s state of health thanks to a drop of blood produced with a pinprick. For the incomparably successful Elon Musk, it’s the return of the planet to ecological health thanks to expensive electric cars. Or, alternatively, the colonization of Mars when the emerging truth about the failure of electric cars to save the Earth offers humanity no other choice than to escape to another planet.

These generously optimistic beliefs held by brave entrepreneurs (funded by equally brave billionaires) may be seen to justify lying and other forms of skulduggery. After all, if you have a great idea and don’t accept to play hardball by aggressively promoting the dream you are intent on turning into reality, you will fail and return to the dustheap from which you came: the cohort of anonymous losers. The jury admired Holmes for trying, even though the effort required some serious lying to a gullible public. 

In contrast, the jury had no trouble finding Holmes guilty of the much more serious crime of pulling the wool over the eyes of America’s nobility, the wealthy elite who agreed to back her dream with their cash. In a guest article for The New York Times, Vanity Fair’s Bethany McLean admits to hoping that justice would be served with the opposite verdict. She wanted Holmes “convicted on the charges of lying to patients but found not guilty of the charges that she defrauded investors.” McLean believes that they “should have done the homework that others who refused to give Theranos money did.”

The A-list investors and political celebrities who backed Holmes’ dream had the means to do due diligence but, charmed by the music of the dream, didn’t bother. Worse, the confidence projected by such prestigious investors — including former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, Henry Kissinger, Oracle’s Larry Ellison, James Mattis (Donald Trump’s future defense secretary), Rupert Murdoch and the Walton family — gave added credibility to the lies Theranos’ patients were subjected to.

Holmes is now awaiting sentencing. She will probably serve significant time in prison, though that may be attenuated and her time in prison reduced thanks to the kind of prevailing sympathy that exists for those who believe in their dream (especially young white females). That sympathy may have been a factor in the lenient sentence given to sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein in 2008, though no jury was involved. Perhaps that’s just one feature of the music of the law that Justice Kavanaugh believes to be real, always ready to produce its seductive strains, at least in those moments when it isn’t braying like an ass.

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

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

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In a recent piece, “Making Sense of Vladimir Putin’s Long Game” by Atul Singh and Glenn Carle, the authors make the case that Russia’s president has an overarching plan to bring back the tsarist empire. They contend that Putin has thought deeply about strategy and tactics and is influenced by Russian history, philosophy and the Orthodox Church in devising his actions. They assert that Putin’s dream is to restore modern-day Russia to its historic greatness and global power.

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The authors imply that the same impulses motivate the Russian people, and that the president is leading a popular movement. Nothing could be further from the truth. Putin is an opportunist, a kleptomaniac, a thug and a mafia boss. If he were leading a popular movement, he would allow free elections. But he does not, preferring killing, poisoning and imprisoning anyone who dares to stand against him. Vladimir Putin is motivated only by survival.

Restoring Greatness

The current crisis revolves around Ukraine, which Putin contends is not only an integral part of Russia but more resonantly the site of the original Kingdom of Rus and the wellspring of the Russian peoples. Incidentally, the word “Rus” is cognate with “rower” and most likely refers to the Vikings who came to the region from present-day Sweden in long boats. In 882, Kyiv was taken by Prince Oleg who established the first Rus dynasty.

This conquest is embedded in Russian consciousness, and many Russians consider Kyiv and the surrounding lands as an essential part of the motherland. However, over a long and complicated history, Ukraine has had many different rulers. For generations, Ukraine and Russia have had separate identities, and even Joseph Stalin, at the end of World War II, insisted that Ukraine was independent and should be granted separate membership with a vote at the UN. Most Ukrainians have always longed for independence from Moscow’s rule.

A stronger influence on Putin’s and many Russians’ thinking is the humiliation wrought by the Germans in 1917 with the enforcement of the Brest Litovsk Treaty. In 1917, Vladimir Lenin was determined to get Russia out of the Great War at any price. The Germans exacted crushing terms and took the Baltic states, Ukraine and Belarus from Russia. It was a disaster.

Fast forward to 2022, and the borders of that treaty are almost identical to the current borders of NATO, plus Ukraine and Belarus. If Ukraine were to join NATO (or the EU), then from Putin’s point of view, Moscow would be back at its lowest point of the past 200 years and, worse, Germany would have prevailed after all.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union still actively haunting the Kremlin’s collective consciousness — President Putin called it the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century” — many Russians have sympathy for the contention that the West has taken unfair advantage of Russia’s weakness and betrayed alleged promises made to Mikhail Gorbachev at the end of the Cold War regarding NATO’s eastward expansion. Putin is naturally determined that the final act — Ukraine’s absorption into the West — does not happen on his watch.

What is more, he thinks he has identified an emotional, nationalistic issue which he can use to divert the Russian population from his failures. But Russia is, in fact, on the back foot, trying to avoid another humiliation, not restoring its greatness.

Weakness and Decline

Looking south, Russia has lost many of the territories it gained during the wars with Turkey and Iran in the 19^th century. Armenia and Azerbaijan have not joined NATO, but Georgia would like to. Here too, Putin is trying to fend off more humiliation.

Moving east, the Taliban victory in Afghanistan is another disaster for the Kremlin. One of the main reasons, or the least bad option at the time, for the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 was to halt the rise of militant Islam that threatened to infect the Muslim states of the USSR, principally Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. You can bet Moscow is worried sick about the effect on its near abroad and the possibility of the Chechens, Dagestanis and Tartars rising up again with Taliban support. 

Even farther east, Putin is on dangerous ground. Just over 8 million live in the Far East Federal District, which, at nearly 7 million square kilometers, makes up over 40% of Russia’s territory. The regional capital Vladivostok sits on land taken from China in 1860 and is regarded by Beijing as one of the lost territories, along with Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. Migration from China into the region has been an issue for decades, prompting nationalist nightmares of a Chinese takeover.

Putin may be cozying up to China, but from a position of weakness. Russia cannot cope with a hostile Beijing that may eventually want to recover territory, or more. Putin may be pursuing friendship and alliances with China but he is dancing to Xi Jinping’s tune.

Vladimir Putin’s failures have led Russia into economic and national decline. The population is shrinking and is projected to drop to 135 million in 2050 from today’s 146 million. Russia’s GDP is about $1.7 trillion, lower than Italy’s and minuscule compared to the US at over $20 trillion. The economy is wholly dependent on oil and gas exports in a decarbonizing world. Moreover, it is laden with punitive sanctions. There is not one single Russian company that has any sort of global presence to rival the likes of Coca-Cola, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Volkswagen, Samsung or Rolls Royce.

Still Dangerous

Much is made of the bungled reform of the Russian economy after the fall of the USSR, but Putin has now been in power for over 20 years and has done nothing — in fact, worse than nothing — to rectify matters. Instead, he has enriched himself and his henchmen enormously. Putin is now one of the richest men in the world, with critics estimating a fortune of some $200 billion. Meanwhile, GDP per capita in Russia is a little over $10,000 per annum, ranked 81^st in the world by the World Bank, below China.

Putin has one overriding motivation — to stay in power. His crimes are so enormous that he fears terrible retribution should he ever lose his grip. Like all totalitarian dictators, he knows that he can only be replaced by whoever kills him.

Putin has to play a skillful hand. He is diverting attention to overseas adventures and playing on Russian emotions. Moscow cannot possibly hope to win a conventional war, being massively outgunned by the West. Even the UK outspends Russia on defense, and Russia’s $48 billion military budget is puny compared to the $768 billion allocated by Washington.

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But Putin is still dangerous; he plays dirty and asymmetrically, using cyberattacks, election interference, irregular forces and acts of terrorism. Even a dismembered and impoverished state can wreak havoc. Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait and Iran’s missile attacks on Saudi oil facilities are recent examples.

Russia is in a weakened state and becoming ever weaker. There is no grand plan for the restoration of imperial greatness or even the USSR. The game is survival and Putin’s own skin — and fortune. The West can play this game too. We have long experience of dealing with bullies, megalomaniacs and totalitarians. China too is watching carefully, and President Xi knows where his advantage lies.

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

The post For Vladimir Putin, Survival Is All That Matters appeared first on Fair Observer.

Circulating on Telegram channels lately has been a 12-second video of a Chihuahua puppy snuggling up to a tiny, chirping chick, eventually resting its head upon the chick and falling asleep. The caption reads, “Love Animals, Hate Antifa.” If such a politicized caption to an innocuous video proves a surprise to readers, the purveyor of the content will come as a shock: WAP1488, an unabashed neo-Nazi community with more than 1,000 subscribers.

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This is just one of a score of videos with the “Love Animals, Hate Antifa” label circulating in recent months, and one small part of an even larger phenomenon of national socialists using animals to promote their message. Defying the more commonly-identified brutal aesthetic, certain national socialist circles have jumped on a bandwagon elsewhere used on dating profiles and in advertising: gain appeal by featuring animals.

From Telegram to Reddit

WAP1488 serves as one of the most unadulterated manifestations of this attempt to wed animal rights and national socialism. The name of the organization alone signals its ideological disposition — the numbers being a reference to the “14 Words,” a slogan of the white power movement, and to the Nazi salute “Heil Hitler” (“H” being the eighth letter in the Roman alphabet).

“There was widespread support for animal welfare in Nazi Germany among the country’s leadership,” the group’s pinned post reads. “Adolf Hitler and his top officials took a variety of measures to ensure animals were protected.” What follows is a list of the various conservationist and anti-hunting efforts by the likes of Heinrich Himmler, Joseph Goebbels and Hermann Goring, men more widely known for their role in orchestrating World War II and the Holocaust.

The post goes so far as to observe that “Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels described Hitler as a vegetarian whose hatred of the Jewish and Christian religions in large part stemmed from the ethical distinction these faiths drew between the value of humans and the value of other animals,” a statement followed by an observation that “Hitler planned to ban slaughterhouses in the German Reich following the conclusion of World War II.” This last comment is perhaps most jarring to mainstream audiences, given the morbid irony of Hitler’s use of slaughterhouses in the form of concentration and extermination camps that killed millions of Jewish people, individuals with disabilities, sexual minorities, Romani, intellectuals and political opponents.

Beyond these written arguments articulating Nazi care for animals are scores of photographs and videos of Nazis with animals. Not only is there an array of images of Nazi soldiers playing or relaxing with German Shepherds and cats, but also dozens of images of Hitler posing with dogs, rabbits and fawns. At times, the images do not feature humans at all, and yet they still publicize this line of reason, typically through tea-cup-sized animals perched among Nazi uniform.

This is not just a strategy of WAP1488, though. It is a tactic used by many supporters of national socialism. Telegram channels such as the NSDAP International (almost 10,000 subscribers), the NSDAP (more than 5,000 subscribers) and the nSDAP International (almost 2,500 subscribers) now all fairly prominently feature animal-centric images and rhetoric.

Meanwhile, on Reddit, several subreddits discussing national socialism post both official Nazi propaganda of animals and unofficial Nazi-animal content. Perhaps exemplary of this is one private subredding called r/awwschwitz, which describes itself as a subreddit “for pictures of adorable or cute things that one would not normally associated with positive emotions,” and which an observer characterized as a dispenser of “all your cutesy Hitler needs.”

More than just cute photos and references to Hitler’s alleged vegetarianism, a common refrain among neo-Nazis across various platforms is one claiming that the current German animal welfare legislation is the descendant of Nazi policy. In fact, contemporary national socialists depict Nazis as being trailblazers of animal rights and preservation of the natural world. The obscuring of these “facts” are then denounced as attempts by biased media to unjustly vilify Nazism and all its devotees.

The Nazi Regime

Universal cuteness of fuzzy baby animals aside, it appears that there exists a propagandistic through-line between the arguments of Nazis then and certain national socialists now. Current national socialists rely heavily upon the plethora of staged animal-Nazi propaganda produced and initially disseminated in and by the Third Reich itself. Scholars such as Norbert Bromberg and Verna Small, Arnold Arluke and Boria Sax and Jan Mohnhaupt have described high-ranking Nazis as demonstrating a public interest in animal welfare due to some mixture of personal affection for animals and political messaging.

To the latter point, it is clear that many of these images were staged rather than natural displays of affection, as signaled by the unnatural poses and contexts of the photographs — soldiers patrolling war-zones bending over to play with cats, Hitler staring off into the distance flanked by a dog standing on hind-legs in the same pose, and kittens curled up in Nazi helmets that dangle from fences. All of these images may simply exist because the regime felt that an articulated interest in animal welfare for the purposes of presenting a compassionate and trustworthy side to the public, but also to normalize their social Darwinist ideas and vilify racial, ethnic and religious others that they strove to paint as cruel toward animals.

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In the Third Reich, the “other,” and Jewish people in particular, were characterized as brutal toward animals. This was most frequently discussed in relation to alleged cruelty in the kosher butchering process, which Nazi propagandists noted as being evidence of Jews’ “other” status and depicted as ritualistic and sadistic. Meanwhile, Nazi attacks on intellectuals — particularly Jewish ones — also made use of animal welfare issues, claiming that Jewish scientists engaged in the practice of vivisection (operating on live animals for experimental purposes), tormenting their test subjects and fulfilling Jewish bloodlust.

Curiously, the Nazis also produced a plethora of propaganda that painted these “others,” their enemies, as animals in their own right, the only animals for which the Nazis did not show any care. The Nazis waged a relentless propaganda campaign dehumanizing their opponents, particularly Jewish people. Nazi propaganda depicted Jews as rats, snakes, spiders and other unpopular animals.

It is significant to note the animals most often chosen: those with multiple appendages, such as spiders and octopuses, to reflect the narrative of Jewish control over society; or dangerous, poisonous or diseased animals. The snake, for instance, harkens back to parallels of the creation story and Satan in the form of a snake, whilst rats carry diseases and spiders fatal venom.

Today’s National Socialists

National socialists today rely upon the exact same framing of these issues, though with an expanded pool of racial, ethnic and religious communities to vilify and with one additional purpose. Juxtaposed with other national socialist content, be it animal-Nazi propaganda or otherwise, are images of the “other” as subhuman or as animals, as well as animal cruelty perpetrated by non-white peoples.

In the latter case, the most commonly used scenarios are Jewish kosher slaughter practices and Kapparot (used by some communities in the lead up to Yom Kippur to cleanse the person of sin through the transference of sins to a chicken, which is then ritually killed in the street); halal slaughter practices by Muslim communities; the killing and consumption of dog meat in China and South Korea (taken as metonyms for all Asian cultures); detusking elephants and other killings of large animals; and vivisections by pharmaceutical companies.

The examples have been carefully selected, attempting to characterize non-white people as inherently violent, as Kapparot and the Yulin dog meat festival are annual, while the vivisections, religious slaughtering and big game hunting are relatively common practices. National socialists use these moments of violence against animals to make audiences wonder: Would these “others” attempt to mainstream such practices if given the opportunity?

Beyond this, though, is an implication of supremacism, with white people displaying the more advanced emotions of empathy and compassion absent in the “uncivilized” communities that commit animal cruelty. The videos and images are incredibly violent — blood spurting, animals squealing and resisting their victimization, and carcasses in disrepair. Aside from being graphic in their own right (as any slaughter video, kosher, halal or otherwise, is want to be), the cruelty in these videos may be said to also encourage audiences to extrapolate — if this is how these communities treat innocent animals, how might they treat white people?

Using a Different Brush

Finally, in addition to the obvious attempts to paint the Nazis as less brutal than these other groups through their contrasting approaches to animal welfare, the use of animal content is meant to chip away at mainstream anti-Nazi sentiment. These images clearly seek to generate an implicit connection between viewer and subject, resulting in the humanizing of individuals involved in a regime considered so brutal that it is widely denounced as unequivocally inhumane.

As social media commenters in these sections — even those professing not to be radicalized but mere observers of said content — have noted, seeing and hearing about Nazis’ care for animals has the effect of chipping away at the whole evil characterization of the Nazis as depicted in mainstream history. According to the logic of neo-Nazi propagandists, if Nazis were not always cruel and instead cared for innocent animals, then the stories about Nazism — and by extension national socialism — are exaggerated; if stories of their cruelty are exaggerated in this regard, then perhaps they are dramatized in other areas as well, such as in relation to the Holocaust. Meanwhile, if Nazis were caring for animals, i.e., the innocent, then it would stand to reason that they vilified communities that were not innocent and instead the bloodthirsty “others” living in Germany. Thus, neo-Nazis use animal welfare concerns to pull at a thread of the metaphorical tapestry of Nazi evil, a thread that they want to tug to the point where it entirely unravels.

It warrants reiterating that absent from this modern national socialists analysis is any acknowledgment of the unprecedented violence and cruelty of the Nazi regime. No matter how many kittens SS officers held or dogs that Adolf Hitler posed beside, the reality is that the most brutal butchers of life were the German National Socialists themselves. All of the torturous behaviors Nazis projected onto the “other” —  experimenting on and brutally slaughtering living beings — were acts that Nazis committed against other humans.

Advertisers and people on dating apps use animals in their content to grab attention, appear relatable and induce those positive thoughts that incline the viewer to further consider them. While for different goals, the same is true for national socialists today. Thus, a puppy falling asleep with a chick speaks less to national socialist interests in the cute and more with their hope that, in time, they can draw viewers near and make them dream of a national socialist world.

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

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

The post The Role of Animals in National Socialist Propaganda appeared first on Fair Observer.

War crimes, genocide, torture, forced disappearances, crimes against humanity and other serious violations of international law have been characteristic of conflicts in the Arab world since even before they were codified in law. These crimes still occur in many Arab countries, most notably in Syria and Yemen. Not only do perpetrators often go unpunished, but they also find themselves rewarded and promoted.

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So, when on November 30, 2021, a court in Frankfurt, Germany, handed down a life sentence to an Iraqi man who joined the Islamic State (IS) group for genocide against the Yazidi minority — the first time a former member of IS had been convicted of genocide and the first verdict for genocide against Yazidis — it was celebrated as a landmark case in the fight for justice and accountability. Taha al-Jumailly was found guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity resulting in death, war crimes, aiding and abetting war crimes, and bodily harm resulting in death.

“Today, ISIS member Taha AJ was convicted of genocide and sentenced to life in prison. This is the first genocide verdict against an ISIS member. This verdict is a win for survivors of genocide, survivors of sexual violence, & the Yazidi community,” tweeted Nadia Murad, a 2018 Nobel Peace Prize winner and a Yazidi survivor of IS enslavement.

Universal Jurisdiction

The trial was also the first in Germany based on the principle of universal jurisdiction addressing crimes under international law committed abroad by a perpetrator who is not a German citizen and was only extradited to on the basis of an international arrest warrant. Universal jurisdiction is the principle that some crimes are so serious that states should be allowed to claim jurisdiction over an accused person regardless of where they were committed or any other relation with the prosecuting entity. None of the crimes in the Jumailly case were committed in Germany, and neither the victims nor the suspect were German nationals.

Though universal jurisdiction has been practiced in just a few countries in recent years, it has become an increasingly important tool for achieving accountability and justice for the survivors and victims of international crimes. Hundreds of investigations are ongoing and dozens of convictions have been obtained.

The blossoming of universal jurisdiction is attributable to several factors, one of which is that the alternative route to prosecuting international crimes through the UN Security Council and the International Criminal Court (ICC) has effectively been closed by geopolitics. The Syrian conflict, for example, has never been appraised by the ICC because Russia backs President Bashar al-Assad.

The Pursuit of Cases

In recent years, there has been a greater capacity and willingness on the part of some domestic authorities to pursue cases involving international crimes, at least in certain circumstances. More and more countries have also passed laws allowing them to conduct the kind of landmark prosecution that took place in Frankfurt. More countries are following the Dutch example in setting up specialized units within the police, prosecution and even immigration services dedicated to identifying perpetrators of international crimes and bringing them to trial.

Another important factor in the power of universal jurisdiction is that victims and their advocates can contribute to investigations and prosecutions, and sometimes even influence the direction they take. In some countries, such as France and Belgium, victims and NGOs can initiate criminal proceedings. Even where this is not possible, victims and their advocates can still drive cases forward in other ways, such as by tracking perpetrators’ movements, sharing information with the authorities and exerting pressure on them to act.

Dutch authorities have even issued directions for Syrians in the Netherlands on how to file a criminal complaint against other Syrians relating to violations in Syria. In February, after Germany’s top court ruled that war crimes committed abroad can be tried in the country, a court in Koblenz became the first court outside of Syria to rule on state-sponsored torture by the Assad regime when it sentenced a former member of the secret police to four and a half years in prison for being an accomplice to crimes against humanity. Another former Syrian intelligence officer is currently on trial in Germany for overseeing 58 counts of murder and at least 4,000 cases of torture, rape or sexual abuse.

Many Challenges

Despite this recent progress, enormous legal, evidentiary and logistical challenges remain before international criminal cases can be brought to trial. Investigating and prosecuting international crimes in domestic courts is not straightforward, especially in a complex conflict such as the Yemen war where crimes have been committed over many years by different actors.

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Foreign investigators cannot easily gather evidence on the ground, so they have to rely on the cooperation of different parties to the conflict to build cases. UN bodies like the group of eminent experts, international organizations, local NGOs, and organizations such as Airwars assist with investigations.

Even if evidence linking an individual perpetrator to war crimes can be established, the suspect still has to be apprehended. In some countries practicing universal jurisdiction, those accused of committing war crimes do not need to be within reach of authorities for an investigation to be opened, but they need to be physically brought to court before any trial can take place.

Though international cooperation can be used to apprehend and extradite international pariahs like IS militants, pirates and slave traders, war criminals who are still serving members of Arab regimes are not about to be handed over. Only when they set foot in a country practicing universal jurisdiction — whether for work, vacation, claiming asylum or for any other reason — can they be arrested immediately, providing they do not benefit from immunity.

Jumailly’s conviction “sends a clear message,” said Natia Navrouzov, a lawyer and member of the NGO Yazda, which gathers evidence of crimes committed by IS against the Yazidis. “It doesn’t matter where the crimes were committed and it doesn’t matter where the perpetrators are, thanks to the universal jurisdiction, they can’t hide and will still be put on trial.”

*[This article was originally published by Arab Digest, a partner of Fair Observer.]

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

The post How the Legal Landscape Is Changing for War Crimes appeared first on Fair Observer.