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Tag: Opinions

  • Defacing Dahl

    Defacing Dahl

    Here is a not-so-secret trade secret: before each of my weekly missives is posted, Al Jazeera editors return the edited copy to me so I can review any changes they have made.

    By now, the opinion page editors understand that I tend to be picayune about every word in every sentence of each and every column I write.

    I sense that, on occasion, this grating habit tests their patience. Still, they tolerate my neurotic bent because the basis of any relationship between a writer and editor is mutual respect.

    I respect that the role of the editor is to be, in large measure, a surrogate for the audience and that editors, in turn, respect the choices I make about what I want to say and how I want to say it.

    Sometimes, we quibble. Happily, we never quarrel. Sometimes, my copy is left intact. Sometimes, it isn’t.

    So, when I was asked to devote a column to the brewing brouhaha over a slew of word changes introduced to the new editions of some of late British writer Roald Dahl’s most famous children’s stories, my initial visceral reaction was that this was an irresponsible and disrespectful act.

    There have, of course, been a flurry of tweets and columns from prominent novelists and freedom of expression advocates decrying the “shameful” “censorship” of Dahl’s stories by misguided puritans moved to “modernise” his popular works by draining them of their signature prickly and nasty bits.

    My older and wiser sister, Kimete Mitrovica-Basha, agrees. She knows the rainbow of authors who populate the ingenious orbit of children’s books, having been the executive director of the Basel-based non-profit group, the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY) from 2002 to 2004.

    A former teacher and librarian, Kimete remains dedicated to bringing children together through books. She calls the supposed “fixes” to Dahl’s work “shocking and wrong”.

    Her overarching concern, which tilts into a palpable fear, is that the “policing of thought and language” that Dahl has posthumously and involuntarily endured is bound to happen to other writers – dead or alive.

    “It’s dangerous,” she told me on Monday from Brussels. “The questions that writers and readers are obliged to confront are profound: Where will this end and who will be the next targets of the sensitivity police?”

    It is a worry shared by Suzanne Nossel, the Chief Executive Officer of PEN America.

    “The problem with taking license to re-edit classic works is that there is no limiting principle. You start out wanting to replace a word here and a word there, and end up inserting entirely new ideas (as has been done to Dahl’s work),” she wrote.

    “Literature is meant to be surprising and provocative. That’s part of its potency. By setting out to remove any reference that might cause offense you dilute the power of storytelling,” Nossel added.

    While I side – wholeheartedly – with the thrust of these complaints that art should not be rewritten by anyone other than the artist who produced it, my rebuke of the publisher’s cockeyed actions has a more personal tint.

    In unilaterally tweaking his stories, Dahl’s publisher, Puffin Books, and estate have insulted their patron and questioned his provenance over the places and characters that sprang like a gusher from his pen and imagination.

    Once published, Dahl, alone, should own those words. And he, alone, has the right and privilege to change them.

    To tinker with Dahl’s words is as sacrilegious as tinkering with an image by Francis Bacon or correcting a score by Benjamin Britten. It is also as outrageous as it is unfathomable. Dahl’s words are as sacrosanct as Bacon’s dab of colour on a canvas or Britten’s reach for a note in a tablature.

    It is no surprise that Dahl was notorious for being oh-so-particular about the sweet and sour words and phrases he weaved together to tell the tales that countless children across the globe have devoured and enjoyed, including Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda and James and the Giant Peach.

    That editors he did not know or trust have chosen to switch the words that Dahl chose for others would, I suspect, have infuriated him.

    Before any changes were contemplated or fashioned, Dahl, the conjurer of these unforgettable worlds with their fantastical characters, was the ultimate authority to reject or consent to any alteration made on his behalf.

    Since Dhal died in 1990, he could not do either. It should have been apparent to anyone involved in this debacle that swapping one word for another without the author’s explicit approval is an affront to the integrity of his text.

    Reportedly, editors have disfigured hundreds of Dahl’s words. The number, like the editors’ motivations – which I will address in a moment – is irrelevant. To have tampered with even one of Dahl’s printed words is tantamount to tampering with art and history.

    That is not hyperbole. Dahl’s books reflect time and place – with all the beliefs and myths, rights and wrongs, strengths and weaknesses, beauty and ugliness inherent to them.

    It would be akin to sanitising Dahl’s long, repellant expressions of anti-Semitism to paint a more agreeable or palatable version of him for readers – young and old.

    Being well-meaning is the antithesis of art and history.

    Dahl’s publisher and the author’s estate have defended their decision to deface the descriptions of characters’ appearances, races and genders, in at least 10 of the author’s 19 children’s books by insisting that their clumsy surgery is “small and carefully considered”.

    This is condescending tripe. Every small or big word Dahl wrote took considerable consideration on his part. If he had wanted to alter so much as a syllable, Dahl would have done so of his own volition.

    The story and spikey, inventive language are what mattered to him – not the fragile sensibilities of anonymous editors who will not be read or remembered as the writer they deign to “edit”.

    Apparently, those editors thought it necessary, for example, to “update” references to “mothers” and “fathers” to “parents” or “family”.

    Their reasoning? Some readers might find Dahl’s word choice offensive because it perpetuates anachronistic stereotypes.

    Dahl was familiar with his touchy critics and their pedantic criticism. Inevitably, they were adults, not children.

    “I never get any protests from children,” Dahl once said. “All you get are giggles of mirth and squirms of delight. I know what children like.”

    Finally, there is also the practical matter of what is to be done with the millions of Dahl’s original works taking up, I gather, disagreeable space among bookshelves in libraries, classrooms and homes.

    “What are you going to do about them? All those words are still there. [Are] you going to round up all the books and cross them out with a big black pen?” author Phillip Pullman told the BBC.

    The other option, Pullman suggested, was to let Dahl’s at times jarring and uncomfortable work fade into irrelevancy and go out of print.

    That would be a shame, too.

    The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance. 

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  • After their ‘racial reckoning’, a Black anti-colonial rousing

    After their ‘racial reckoning’, a Black anti-colonial rousing

    It bears repeating. There is a direct line between the murder of Tyre Nichols and the banning of African American Studies courses in Florida. Between the spectacle of our public execution and the claim that the study of Black life lacks educational value.

    It is the same line that could be drawn from the klan throwing Black people off bridges and Black people being brutalised in the art, ads and scholarship of previous generations. A line, a thread of manufactured Black disposability that if pulled out, would unspool this marathon of a colonial event that terms itself American society.

    It bears repeating. Black people are being disposed of on dark streets and in curricula, as it is not enough to banish the emancipated population from white streets and hurry them off into jails and prisons and lifelong surveillance.

    They are deprived of electoral power and “redistricted”, entangled in new and improved Jim Crow regulations, put into rhetorical stocks, derided as “criminals” who do not deserve reparations in speeches intended to excite more than half of the country.

    Asking for mercy on the street is responded to with blows. A century of Black writing memorialising the pain, thinking of ways forward is met with book burnings.

    Only the most plaintive, racist-forgiving “representatives” are invited onto news programmes to speak for us, only to be spoken over by Black conservative hustlers who produce articles that massage the shoulders of negrophobes. Negrophobes who then rush to wave the same few recycled Black conservative names around, praising their pieces as “groundbreaking” and “interesting new perspectives”. These perspectives are always as original as racism.

    But what if a new perspective is indeed timely? Or if not new, but one dusted off from traditions older than the waiting for the American Enlightenment and its promised land of Civil Rights and equality – one drawn for the more thoughtfully pessimistic slave revolt?

    What if a hope that is not tangled in the beards of slave owners moonlighting as presidents and merchants of children – held up, to this day, as the founders of liberty – has arrived at its moment? A hope in the tradition of that section of the people not operating on slave-master’s time and not waiting for those who are addicted to horse-whipping people to see that “it wudn’t right”?

    Anti-colonial hope is the hope of those who have not accepted “their place”. It is the philosophy of impatience, of a boundary setting borne out of the radical disagreement with colonial society’s position that Black life and Black thought is meaningless.

    That is, with the white supremacist position.

    It is not only the position of those with burner social media accounts or with nothing to lose who replied to the Black Lives Matter movement with Black Lives Do Not Matter. Or those who mocked the killing of George Floyd, acting out kneeling on his neck in an attempt to prolong the pleasure of the killing just as those of previous generations removed bones from the charred remains of lynching victims to keep as souvenirs.

    It is the position of those who speak about African American Studies having no value and out of the other side of their cheek say that Western civilisation should be praised and must be a required course.

    It is the position of those who say of the killed – Eric, Trayvon, Sandra, Michael, Ahmaud and the thousands unnamed – that they were criminals and not martyrs. And of their killers – who used the complaints filed against them as coasters and falsified incident reports – that they are innocents, heroes, and to be excused for human error. The chasers are the frightened; the chased are the aggressors. The murdered “were no angels”.

    It bears repeating, those who say this would lynch angels.

    To excise Black voices like a back-talking tongue and remove the record of Black pain is a more sophisticated, more expertly crafted Holocaust denial. Never the crude Holocaust denial of neo-Nazis, but a glossing over corpses to produce the revisionist story of America, the Good.

    To ban Black Studies is to deny Black lives the right to speak without the use of too heavy, too obvious a muzzle. To declare that the slave cannot testify. To disappear the historical record of white supremacy and put in its stead Nazi-sanctioned history, the only history the state’s racist base will accept. Settler-colonialism produces a population incapable of doing otherwise.

    It is the position, also, of the Democrats. Those who state openly and uncontroversially that the congresspeople who give speeches at white nationalist conventions are their friends. Who are forever frozen in the gesture of reaching a hand over to the “other side of the aisle” to those desperate to keep the flame of Jim Crow alive. Who order our submission through “unity” with a side that still executes our innocent and gleefully ignores exculpatory evidence.

    And it is the position of the liberals calling for “police reform” in a voice growing increasingly tired and meek and indistinct from the conservative’s obligatory “thoughts and prayers” after a mass shooting. Not that police reform is to be taken seriously. The state has beaten Black and Indigenous people to a pulp on behalf of settler society, and in concert with it, for centuries, everywhere.

    The call for anti-bias training and bodycams is not a call for change. On the contrary, it is evidence that the society intends to protect the status quo. It is the act of covering up the pattern in the prisons and streets of the settler-colonial world from Australia to Alaska with a tarp of false hope. “Perhaps if we tinker with recruitment and representation or add a Civilian Review Board justice will roll down like the waters.” Meanwhile the ex-president, the darling of lynch mob society, is reportedly winning hearts once again with promises of hangings, guillotines and televised “group executions” if re-elected in 2024.

    But something is failing. The media spokespeople, the academics and esteemed cable news panel guests are no longer being believed when they speak of shocking breaks in trust, failures in training, disappointments in those who are “supposed to protect” or whatever answer they pull out of the raffle basket to suppress the Black proletarian anger at the latest killing.

    Racists and liberals come together in the belief that Black people are cursed to carry some generational cross of always suffering at their hand. And we have been force-fed this since birth, trained to see our brutalisation as unfortunate “tragedies” and the anti-Black pogrom as “just the way things are”.

    But things are faltering. People are waking up. Yes, they are woke.

    Woke. A stolen term with which both racists and liberals lampoon Black radical ideas and a Black temperament no longer accepting the way things are. The people are rejecting the old “democracy is slow” calm-down trick in the time of fast fascism. They are no longer tolerating the servile position, proving humility to be deserving of the deliberately ambiguous “change”.

    Woke. This generation’s term to replace the “rebellious Negroes” and “dirty rotten abolitionist” and “uppity” and “radicalised Blacks” slurs we forced out of date. A term no one doubts would have been spat at students jailed for sitting in segregated cafes. And by the same sorts of people. Flung with the same vitriol and with the same purpose as the N-word at the schoolchildren integrating apartheid schools.

    A term used as a licence to scrub this history from the textbooks and, like a vase of flowers placed over a crime scene, a patriotic history placed atop it. One describing those enslaved in the torture chambers of the colony’s industrial cotton fields as “happy farmers”. Lying. The best colonist’s history can do.

    Wokeness, tarred and feathered. Students are warned away from it. Academics rush to deny it. Woke ideology – laughable and ineffectual – and yet, it must be made illegal. Black thought must be conspired against by the government and its client educational institutions, mocked on air and at colonist kitchen tables, in a desperate attempt to hang on, by tooth and claw, to the society gutting the Black poor. It is the last attempt to shoo away the anti-colonial rousing and kneecap the Black radical imagination.

    But their strength is flailing and the social order built by slave masters is burning up. The anti-colonial future is bursting forth. A future that escaped from the clutches of white racism. An anti-colonialism not only to be read in police stations burning like slave-master homes but in the Palestinians resisting ethnic cleansing, in the voices of the Indigenous people ordering #landback, in the patriarchs being shut up, in the sanctioned peoples defying extortion, in the workers unionising everywhere. Even the seas and the sun are in revolt.

    At the front line of anti-colonialism, as always, is a militant unapologetic Pan-Africanism. A borderless solidarity among those whom the colonial world branded the lesser. Not only refusing to sit in but tearing out the back of the bus. Taking the wheel of a new, swarthy-skinned future as unexpected as it is inevitable.

    After the colonial society’s “racial reckoning” that led, predictably, to nowhere, their staged conversations solving nothing, achieving nothing but ratings and profits for the class that aid and abet lynch mob society, Black anti-colonial recognition is spreading. Racism is not, as is often sworn, a tragic legacy impinging on the enlightened “better” present. It is a choice.

    Having an anti-Black world is a choice. Society has chosen to remain the same. And now fewer and fewer of us are satisfied to stay on the porch, knocking at the door, peeping through the blinds, hoping to catch a glimpse of freedom.

    It was too much to knock once. Knocking for the whole day is absurd, much less knocking for – how many years has it been?

    Anti-colonialism says those who remain pleading at the door are at best irresponsible. In any case, they should stay there.

    There is no building a home with those still draped in the hides of slavery. No racial reckoning for the world’s Rhodesias. The masters have chosen to remain masters. And those racist forgivers shrieking about reform and training and reckonings have lost their audience.

    Welcome to the era of no more.

    The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

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  • US foreign policy reduced to an afterthought

    US foreign policy reduced to an afterthought

    US President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address on Tuesday night was quite upbeat. It was long on domestic affairs and short on foreign policy. It skimmed through the challenges posed by Russia and China and skipped the rest of the world altogether.

    It is a first for a US president to reduce the United States’ global role to an afterthought, no less a president who considers himself an authority on foreign policy, or for a commander-in-chief, who has spent so much time, effort and political capital confronting Russia in Ukraine and containing China in Asia. This, therefore, begs the question: Why has Biden chosen to ignore entire continents and countless hot spots where America is directly involved?

    According to one theory, Americans are not terribly interested in the rest of the world and foreign policy is an unaffordable luxury at a time of economic hardships and culture wars. Even the elites with greater overseas interests realise that costly investment in foreign policy is becoming a hard sell for the public in the absence of direct national security threats.

    Biden understands that, which is why when he first took office, he vowed to end the “forever wars” and promised a “foreign policy for the middle class” – one that serves Americans at large.

    But that has proven easier said than done, as Washington has channelled billions of dollars to Ukraine to fight a war that may last years amid warnings from populist Republicans about high inflation, the high cost of living, and high national debt.

    Hence the president, who seems keen on pursuing a second term, dialled down the costly global bravado in his speech and instead focused on “made in America” growth and prosperity. His call on Congress to tax billionaires and big corporations and lower the costs of drugs – aligning him with the “progressive left” led by Senator Bernie Sanders – may prove more popular among working and middle-class families than, say, restoring Ukraine’s territorial integrity.

    According to another theory, however, there is not much to celebrate in US foreign policy, which is why the president decided to skip the subject altogether. The two theories are not mutually exclusive.

    Biden may have embraced Senator Sanders’ prescriptions on the economic malaise, but do not expect him to take his approach on foreign policy, no less in the Middle East, where the US has failed miserably. And disgracefully.

    The president rejects Sanders’s stance on the Israeli occupation and the racism of its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Worse, he embraces the populist right-wing premier as his best friend, and continues to support his government of fascists and fanatics.

    But Israel is only one of several failures.

    There has not been a single foreign policy accomplishment anywhere in the greater Middle East, unless one considers the humiliating and disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan in favour of the Taliban a success, after 20 years of horrific war.

    Truth be told, the Biden administration has helped reach ceasefires or maintain stalemates and status quos from Sudan to Syria, through Iraq, Libya, Palestine and Yemen. But that’s hardly a good thing; in fact, it’s a terrible normalisation of a dreadful situation.

    Biden, who promised to put human rights at the centre of his foreign policy, has ignored US clients’ human rights violations and has been supporting strongmen who rule with an iron fist, while the region teeters under violent sectarian and authoritarian regimes.

    Washington cannot in good conscience claim to confront Russia and China in the name of democracy, human rights and the preservation of sovereignty, while appeasing colonialism and dictatorship in the Middle East or elsewhere.

    It is hypocritical and it is counterproductive.

    Half a century after young Senator Biden first visited the Middle East in 1973, the older President Biden seems to view the region through the same prisms he did back then: Israel, oil, and the Cold War with Moscow. But as one exhausted 19th-century saying goes: history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.

    It is indeed laughable that despite 50 years of costly strategic, diplomatic and military interventions, the US is back to square one, appeasing misbehaving regional clients in the name of a global democracy crusade and getting rejected and humiliated in the process.

    Biden began and ended his State of the Union speech with the lofty idea that America is the land of possibilities. It is a nice and catchy slogan, one that allowed the country to dream big and to reach the moon, literally.

    America is indeed a mighty nation, but it is not almighty. It must stop its evangelical approach to world affairs as if it is ordained to shape it, police it, and lead it. It is not.

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  • Mass shootings are just one part of the US’s gun problem

    Mass shootings are just one part of the US’s gun problem

    Mass shootings were once again top news last week in the United States. Monterey Park, Half Moon Bay, Oakland, Beverly Crest – one after the other, communities across California experienced mass shootings, joining what survivors of these tragedies often refer to as the club that no one wants to belong to.

    In their coverage of California’s recent tragedies, media organisations were quick to draw attention to the increasing prevalence of mass shootings in the country. Using data from the Gun Violence Archive, they reported that the US has already experienced nearly 50 mass shootings in the first month of the year. However, these reports, alarming as they have been, fail to capture the full extent of gun violence in the country.

    Some – though not all – mass shootings garner considerable media attention, making many people believe they are the most prominent and the deadliest symptom of America’s gun violence problem. However, mass shootings, defined by the Gun Violence Archive as an incident in which at least four people are hit by gunfire, are actually rare. In fact, mass shootings are one of the rarest forms of gun violence and crime in general in the country. Homicides make up less than one percent of all crimes known to law enforcement, and mass shootings account for less than one percent of all homicides and all firearm-related fatalities.

    The loss of even one life to gun violence is one too many, and every mass shooting is undoubtedly a tragedy. But if we are to truly understand and address America’s gun problem, we need to be able to look beyond mass shootings that make headlines and recognise the many more lives that are being lost to gun violence in contexts outside of these tragedies.

    According to data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, firearm-related deaths in the US are increasing at alarming rates. In 2020, the most recent year data has been compiled, there were 45,222 firearm-related deaths in the US. This was an increase of nearly 14 percent over 2019. Perhaps even more alarming was that firearm-related deaths among children and adolescents (defined as individuals aged one to 19) increased nearly 30 percent from 2019 to 2020, becoming the leading cause of death for the age group, ahead of car accidents.

    In 2020, firearm homicides accounted for 79 percent of all homicides in the US. This meant 19,384 people fell victim to a firearm homicide in the country in the span of a single year. Yet most deaths by firearms were not homicides – they were suicides. In 2020, more than half the nearly 46,000 people who died by suicide in the US used a firearm. In fact, firearm suicide was more common than suicide by suffocation, poisoning or any other means combined.

    Beyond the disproportionate emphasis on deadly mass shootings, the media’s coverage of gun violence in America also fails to communicate to the public who actually suffers the most from this problem. Despite what media reports underlining the prevalence of mass shootings and gun deaths may make you believe, firearm violence does not impact all Americans equally.

    Like most societal ills, gun violence impacts America’s marginalised and underprivileged communities the most. While the mass shootings in middle or working class neighbourhoods that are expected to be “safe” grab the most media attention, in many of America’s lowest income communities, firearm violence is an almost daily occurrence. Compared to counties with the lowest poverty levels, high-poverty counties have firearm homicide and suicide rates that are 4.5 and 1.3 times as high, respectively.

    Communities of colour, which suffer from systemic discrimination and racism as well as higher poverty rates, also experience more harm from guns – in all its forms – than the general population. In 2020, the number of Black males aged 10 to 24 who fell victim to firearm homicides was 21 times higher than that of their white counterparts. That same year, American Indian and Alaska Native people accounted for the largest proportion of firearm suicides.

    When it comes to gun violence, the US is an outlier among high-income nations. Its firearm homicide rate has long been the highest among its developed peers. In 2019, it was 22 times greater than that of the European Union. It also has the second highest firearm suicide rate in the world after Greenland.

    The tragic events that unfolded this month in California underlined yet again the urgency of addressing gun violence in America. As argued in countless think pieces since last week, it is indeed time that we work to understand what paves the way for so many mass shootings in the country. It is time we figure out what exactly causes so many perpetrators to pick up firearms and take the lives of others in large numbers, and it is time to take meaningful action to prevent such tragedies in the future.

    As we mourn those we have lost and chart a path forward, however, we should not lose sight of the forest for the trees. Mass shootings are just one aspect of pervasive gun violence in our country. If we are to stop American lives being needlessly lost to gun violence, we should try to understand all the nuances and context of this complex issue and take action to prevent all harms from guns, not just those that grab news headlines.

    The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

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  • How Putin made himself Maidan-proof by waging war on Ukraine

    How Putin made himself Maidan-proof by waging war on Ukraine

    It has been two years since a major wave of street protests provoked by the arrest of opposition leader Alexey Navalny hit Russia. To many, the events of January and February 2021 may seem unrelated to the war in Ukraine, but they are, in fact, closely linked.

    Let us remember how this story unfolded. In August 2020, Navalny suffered a near-lethal poisoning, which landed him in a German hospital. An investigation by Bellingcat and Der Spiegel established with a high level of certainty that he was poisoned by Russian secret service operatives.

    Having barely recovered from the poisoning, Navalny surprised many by returning to Russia five months later. He was apprehended at the airport and has been in jail ever since.

    In the following weeks, hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated in 185 cities across the country, calling for the opposition leader’s release. According to OVD-Info, a group monitoring political repression in Russia, more than 11,000 people were arrested, dozens were injured and about 90 people faced criminal charges.

    President Vladimir Putin’s main dark art, which has helped him stay in power for so long, is that of shifting public attention away from domestic troubles. Less than two months after the Navalny protests were suppressed, he ordered the deployment of a massive force at the Russian border with Ukraine in what became a prelude to the full-scale invasion of this country a year later.

    These two themes – Russia’s internal instability and the war in Ukraine – are fundamentally interlinked. By waging a war in Ukraine, Putin is avoiding confrontation with his own population and keeping the opposition at bay. He has essentially outsourced his domestic conflict to Russia’s neighbour Ukraine.

    Domestic unrest was certainly not the only reason why Putin started preparing for the invasion. That same fateful month, which saw Joe Biden enter the White House, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made a drastic change of tack in his Russia policy.

    He launched an attack on Putin’s chief ally in Ukraine, Viktor Medvedchuk, whose party climbed to the top of opinion polls in December 2020. Simultaneously, he initiated much-publicised campaigns for joining NATO and doing away with the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project.

    With Medvedchuk still in the game, Putin could have safely counted on the political environment in Ukraine gradually changing in the way that was conducive to his political goals of ending the conflict in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas on his terms. But the forceful removal of his ally from the political scene and the destruction of his increasingly influential media empire made this impossible, prompting the Russian president to resort to a more drastic line of action.

    Yet it is on the domestic front where Putin has achieved the most by triggering an escalation in Ukraine. Rising tensions served as a smokescreen for the ultimate destruction of Navalny’s movement and the Russian opposition.

    There is a perverse logic to the Kremlin’s actions if you look at the events from its vantage point. Putin and his entourage genuinely believe that Navalny and his supporters are paid agents of the West intent on staging a Russian version of the Maidan protests.

    Russia’s initial attack on Ukraine in 2014 was a way of punishing it for its Maidan revolution but, even more importantly, of showing the Russian public what they would face if they followed the Ukrainian example.

    The 2014 invasion allowed Putin to quash what remained of the Bolotnaya protest movement, which rocked Moscow in 2011 and 2012. But the relatively calm years following the hot phase of the war in Ukraine in 2014 and 2015 saw public attention in Russia shift again to domestic grievances.

    In 2017 and 2018, opinion pollsters started picking up a dramatic shift in public sentiment: The demand for stability was diminishing in favour of political change. In 2018, a Levada Centre poll showed 57 percent of respondents believed “full-scale changes” were needed in the country. This figure rose to 59 percent the following year.

    That was also the time when Navalny launched his presidential campaign and set up the largest opposition network in recent history, opening offices in most regions of the country. Fearful of his movement and its Maidan potential, the Kremlin first knocked Navalny out of the presidential race on a made-up pretext and then tried to poison him.

    The escalation and eventual full-scale invasion of Ukraine, allowed Putin to do away with the Russian opposition and remove the threat to his regime. This was reflected in opinion polls as well. The share of Russians hoping for change fell to 47 percent in 2022 in Levada’s poll.

    Today, Navalny is lingering in jail where he is being treated in a way that borders on outright torture. Every other major opposition politician is either jailed, under house arrest or in exile. Hundreds of thousands of anti-Putin Russians have fled the country, including pretty much all independent journalists and most civil society activists.

    As a result, Putin’s political regime appears to be more stable than ever – even if it loses the war in Ukraine at the end of the day. There is nothing more stable than an isolated authoritarian regime under Western sanctions. Iran, Cuba and North Korea are a testament to that.

    A hostile, isolated Russia is also good for the war hawks in the West and in Eastern Europe promoting hardline policies and militarisation. Meanwhile, pro-Ukrainian infowar groups and hawkish commentators in the West are bashing the Russian opposition with even greater fervour than Putin’s regime while also calling for the breakup of Russia.

    There is a steep learning curve ahead for Russian leaders and activists before they formulate their (as well as Russia’s) genuine interests and learn to tell friends from foes in the political terrarium of the visionless and disoriented West of the Trump and Brexit epoch. Western ambiguity on Russia’s future does not help when it comes to promoting anti-Putin sentiments in Russia.

    That explains why the main figures in Navalny’s movement are keeping a fairly low profile in Western media while focusing on developing a propaganda machine to reach out to audiences in Russia, mostly via YouTube. They are also attempting to relaunch the movement’s regional network, but we won’t hear much about the progress for some time, given that these days activist can only operate in clandestine mode.

    In the meantime, with the war raging, Putin can consider himself fairly Maidan-proof.

    The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance. 

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  • ChatGPT and the sweatshops powering the digital age

    ChatGPT and the sweatshops powering the digital age

    On January 18, Time magazine published revelations that alarmed if not necessarily surprised many who work in Artificial Intelligence. The news concerned ChatGPT, an advanced AI chatbot that is both hailed as one of the most intelligent AI systems built to date and feared as a new frontier in potential plagiarism and the erosion of craft in writing.

    Many had wondered how ChatGPT, which stands for Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer, had improved upon earlier versions of this technology that would quickly descend into hate speech. The answer came in the Time magazine piece: dozens of Kenyan workers were paid less than $2 per hour to process an endless amount of violent and hateful content in order to make a system primarily marketed to Western users safer.

    It should be clear to anyone paying attention that our current paradigm of digitalisation has a labour problem. We have and are pivoting away from the ideal of an open internet built around communities of shared interests to one that is dominated by the commercial prerogatives of a handful of companies located in specific geographies.

    In this model, large companies maximise extraction and accumulation for their owners at the expense not just of their workers but also of the users. Users are sold the lie that they are participating in a community, but the more dominant these corporations become, the more egregious the unequal power between the owners and the users is.

    “Community” increasingly means that ordinary people absorb the moral and the social costs of the unchecked growth of these companies, while their owners absorb the profit and the acclaim. And a critical mass of underpaid labour is contracted under the most tenuous conditions that are legally possible to sustain the illusion of a better internet.

    ChatGPT is only the latest innovation to embody this.

    Much has been written about Facebook, YouTube and the model of content moderation that actually provided the blueprint for the ChatGPT outsourcing. Content moderators are tasked with consuming a constant stream of the worst things that people put on these platforms and flagging it for takedown or further actions. Very often these are posts about sexual and other kinds of violence.

    Nationals of the countries where the companies are located have sued for the psychological toll that the work has taken on them. In 2020, Facebook, for example, was forced to pay $52m to US employees for the post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) they experienced after working as content moderators.

    While there is increasing general awareness of secondary trauma and the toll that witnessing violence causes people, we still don’t fully understand what being exposed to this kind of content for a full workweek does to the human body.

    We know that journalists and aid workers, for example, often return from conflict zones with serious symptoms of PTSD, and that even reading reports emerging from these conflict zones can have a psychological effect. Similar studies on the impact of content moderation work on people are harder to complete because of the non-disclosure agreements that these moderators are often asked to sign before they take the job.

    We also know, through the testimony provided by Facebook whistle-blower Frances Haugen, that its decision to underinvest in proper content moderation was an economic one. Twitter, under Elon Musk, has also moved to slash costs by firing a large number of content moderators.

    The failure to provide proper content moderation has resulted in social networking platforms carrying a growing amount of toxicity. The harms that arise from that have had major implications in the analogue world.

    In Myanmar, Facebook has been accused of enabling genocide; in Ethiopia and the United States, of allowing incitement to violence.

    Indeed, the field of content moderation and the problems it is fraught with are a good illustration of what is wrong with the current digitalisation model.

    The decision to use a Kenyan company to teach a US chatbot not to be hateful must be understood in the context of a deliberate decision to accelerate the accumulation of profit at the expense of meaningful guardrails for users.

    These companies promise that the human element is only a stopgap response before the AI system is advanced enough to do the work alone. But this claim does nothing for the employees who are being exploited today. Nor does it address the fact that people – the languages they speak and the meaning they ascribe to contexts or situations – are highly malleable and dynamic, which means content moderation will not die out.

    So what will be done for the moderators who are being harmed today, and how will the business practice change fundamentally to protect the moderators who will definitely be needed tomorrow?

    If this is all starting to sound like sweatshops are making the digital age work, it should – because they are. A model of digitalisation led by an instinct to protect the interests of those who profit the most from the system instead of those who actually make it work leaves billions of people vulnerable to myriad forms of social and economic exploitation, the impact of which we still do not fully understand.

    It’s time to lay to rest the myth that digitalisation led by corporate interests is somehow going to eschew all the past excesses of mercantilism and greed simply because the people who own these companies wear T-shirts and promise to do no evil.

    History is replete with examples of how, left to their own devices, those who have interest and opportunity to accumulate will do so and lay waste to the rights that we need to protect the most vulnerable amongst us.

    We have to return to the basics of why we needed to fight for and articulate labour rights in the last century. Labour rights are human rights, and this latest scandal is a timely reminder that we stand to lose a great deal when we stop paying attention to them because we are distracted by the latest shiny new thing.

    The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

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  • The scramble to help Ukraine shows the need for more, better aid

    The scramble to help Ukraine shows the need for more, better aid

    The war in Ukraine has seen governments dig deep into their pockets. Pledges have grown to about $85bn (or more, as it is hard to keep track). The United States has pledged more than $43bn, far more than any other country, and the European Union and its member states more than $26bn. Although a relatively small percentage of this funding is humanitarian-focused, it is equivalent to 7 percent of global humanitarian aid budgets.

    It is commendable that rich donors have put humanitarian funding forward for Ukraine. It is refreshing to see such solidarity.

    However, not all of this is new funding. We are also highly concerned that some donor countries might be redirecting money allocated for Yemen, Syria and to deal with the hunger crisis in East Africa and the Sahel. We have seen before how rich countries can end up effectively spending their aid budgets at home on refugees. In 2015, when not even half as many refugees made their way to Europe from Syria and beyond, about 11 percent ($15.4bn) was used in this way. This was not compensated with an increase in aid budgets later that year or afterwards.

    The OECD recently echoed Oxfam’s calls for aid to Ukraine to be a top-up. This came after several donor countries started pulling funds from their aid budgets to free up money for Ukraine.

    Sweden was one. In March, it announced the redirection of nearly one-fifth of its aid budget to fund the reception of refugees from Ukraine. The government has since backtracked (though about $430m is still being redirected to refugee reception) because of strong public pressure from civil society and the fact it overestimated the number of refugees.

    In the United Kingdom, we saw similar reports that billions in foreign aid will not leave the island. The UK now plans to spend more of its international development budget at home to house refugees, mainly from Ukraine, than it will abroad. This comes after its development budget had already been slashed.

    Inflating aid budgets is a worry, too. Countries counted excess COVID-19 vaccine doses as aid, even though they were not bought or intended for poorer countries. They were unwanted leftovers, available only because rich countries had bought more than they needed, leaving poorer countries short of supplies. Aid reached a historic high of $179bn in 2021 but 80 percent of this increase came from surplus COVID-19 vaccine donations.

    By mid-January, OECD donor countries will decide if they will again count donations of excess COVID-19 vaccines and support to refugees as aid. They should not be allowed to rewrite the rulebook.

    Since 2014, money for humanitarian emergencies has stagnated at 10 percent of the total aid budget. Yet, humanitarian needs have reached record highs, with the pandemic, climate breakdown and the cost-of-living crisis continuing to wreak havoc. Despite this, pledges remain underfunded. In 2022, donor countries funded just 34 percent of the United Nations’ Global Appeal – leaving a funding shortfall of $37bn. This is less than half of the amount they pledged for Ukraine.

    The poorest are being hit the hardest by the cost-of-living crisis. The reason is simple: they spend a larger share of their income on food. People in drought-ravaged East Africa, for example, spend as much as 60 percent of their income on food. So, when food inflation reaches a staggering 44 percent in a country like Ethiopia – nearly five times the global average – food becomes unaffordable. People do not eat.

    In Lebanon, food is now 15 times more expensive than in October 2019. More than 80 percent of the population is struggling to afford food and medicine. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has warned that increased costs of wheat and fuel mean that the same money buys much less assistance.

    Aid donors must adjust for this inflation. According to the OECD, donors should increase their aid budgets by 5 percent (about $9bn) to make up for inflation. And, more generally, governments must dramatically ramp up funding – in the 52 years since rich countries promised to meet the 0.7 percent target, they have failed to deliver more than $5.7 trillion in aid (only about a handful have ever met the target). Just imagine how transformational that might have been.

    There is no shortage of money. We saw that when governments released $16 trillion to respond to the pandemic. There is only a shortage of political will to create a fairer world where prosperity is better shared. We have the means to claw back the huge and unfair gains at the top and use that to save lives and reduce inequality. There is huge scope for taxing wealth and capital gains more efficiently; even the IMF has made the case. We need windfall taxes on excess corporate profits – across all sectors. This should not be a one-off, but a permanent mechanism activated during times of crisis.

    A 90 percent windfall tax on excess profits made by the world’s 1,000 largest corporations during the pandemic could generate more than $1 trillion. This could fully fund the shortfalls on all existing humanitarian appeals, and deliver a 10-year plan to end global hunger  – and that is just for starters.

    The real choice we need to put to governments is not whether to choose between helping people fleeing war in Ukraine or hunger in Somalia, but whether to hold accountable the wealthiest people, corporations and private creditors who are taking advantage of the pandemic and other crises while much of the world faces devastating hunger.

    The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

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  • It is not true that Pelé did not fight racism

    It is not true that Pelé did not fight racism

    In the days after the death of football star Pelé, there was a global outpouring of grief and much reflection on his legacy. I, like millions of other fans across the world, was mourning. Although I had never met Pelé in person, it felt like I had lost an elder, who I was close to and deeply admired.

    There was a lot of international media attention, a lot of obituaries, articles, interviews, reports acknowledging his iconic status and his sporting achievements. But there was one persistent line of commentary that irked me.

    Sports observers and media outlets kept insisting that Pelé did not speak out against racism. Some would mention it in passing, others would dedicate whole segments to it, still others would bring up the inevitable comparison with American boxing star Muhammad Ali. This criticism was often levelled at Pelé while he was still alive, and he was not spared even in his death.

    As an Afro-Brazilian, I feel this persistent scrutiny of what Pelé said or did not say is unfair, to say the least. The fact that he did not make certain statements does not mean he did not participate in the fight against racism.

    Throughout his life and career, Pelé experienced racism and discrimination. He was keenly aware of racial inequalities and injustices, and he confronted them in a different way than some other Black sports stars who were his contemporaries.

    Pelé was born just 52 years after Brazil abolished slavery in 1888, the last country in the Western hemisphere to do so. But growing up, he faced neither apartheid nor Jim Crow laws. Brazil at that time had made racism illegal and considered itself a “racial democracy”.

    The idea that the country enjoyed racial harmony was put forward in the 1930s by Brazilian sociologist Gilberto Freyre. Himself a white wealthy man and a descendant of European colonisers, he claimed that Portuguese colonisation was somehow benign and that slavery was not as gruesome as in the United States and therefore, Brazil did not suffer from the same type of brutal structural racism.

    This idea – or rather myth – was quite durable and even I was taught at school and university many decades later that Brazil somehow had exceptionally positive relations between the races thanks to supposed high rates of miscegenation.

    That, of course, was and still is not the case. Brazil of the 1940s and 50s, when Pelé was growing up, was heavily racially divided. The elites were almost exclusively white, while the majority of the poor were Black, Indigenous, and mixed-race. Meanwhile, the government continued to encourage European immigration in order to boost the number of (the more “desirable”) whites in the country.

    Brazilian football also suffered from racism. The sport had been brought into Brazil at the turn of the century by wealthy white men – like Oscar Cox and Charles Miller – who had studied in Europe. In the early days of Brazilian football, there were attempts to forbid Black people from playing in official matches and later, in the 1910s and 20s, some Afro-Brazilian players felt compelled to straighten their hair and put rice powder on their skin to hide their African features.

    Despite this reality, the myth of “racial democracy” persisted and ended up weakening anti-racist activism. Although at that time, Brazil had a Black emancipation movement, it was not as strong as the civil rights movement in the US or the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa.

    The idea of “racial democracy” also instilled a culture of denial – that racism did not exist. This was reinforced by the media and the military dictatorship which came to power in Brazil in a 1964 coup.

    Pelé was aware of these dynamics. He was playing a sport dominated by whites, faced media controlled by whites and a merciless dictatorship run by whites; he knew that being confrontational would not take him far. In fact, speaking out against those in power resulted in torture and death at that time.

    As Brazilian historian Ynaê Lopes dos Santos has pointed out: “This stance that he took was very calculated, coming from a Black man who knew how to play the game of racism in Brazil. In this sense and many others, he is a winner. A Black man that became a Brazilian symbol, a country that in many moments projected itself as white. This is based on a very sophisticated assessment that he made on how Brazil works.”

    Throughout his career, Pelé persistently experienced racism. He had a number of racist nicknames that football fans and the media would use and often heard monkey chants during matches.

    But as he said in 2014 – in response to questions about racism in Brazilian football: “If I had to stop or shout every time I was racially abused since I started to play in Latin America, here in Brazil, in its interior, every game would have had to be stopped.”

    And not being vocal did not mean he was not fighting or resisting. When he decided to end his career in the national team in 1971, he was punished for it, with two events meant to celebrate his successful career cancelled. When the Brazilian authorities tried to force him to come back and compete in the 1974 World Cup, he refused, despite the persistent pressure and threats.

    So, Pelé fought racism and oppression through achievement, opening the door for other Black boys and girls to follow and inspiring Black Brazilians to dream big and defy discrimination.

    It is not an easy choice to stay silent when you are racially abused. I know that all too well.

    When I was in journalism school, a few professors picked me for an internship programme. They kept calling me “our project” as if I was a test subject and the reason they had picked me was to show that in our elite school, even young Black people could make it.

    Later as an intern at a São Paulo public TV station, I had to endure in silence a supervisor making racist jokes, an anchor telling me that without my braids I looked like a “real human being” and a producer making monkey noises on my last day there.

    I knew that if I had openly confronted all these racist individuals, my career would be jeopardised and the efforts of my family to support my education would be wasted.

    Later in life, I would also be criticised for not being more vocal by white liberals who never experienced racism. But I knew that their demands for me to take a more activist position were really a way to weaponise my pain and tokenise me.

    Still, my experiences of racism are probably just a fraction of what Pelé had to overcome in his life and career.

    The fact that he did served as a major inspiration for my grandparents’ generation. His achievements also transcended the field of sports. After he retired from football, he became a successful businessman, acted in a Hollywood movie, was appointed a UNESCO goodwill ambassador, took the post of a minister of sport and was even knighted by British Queen Elizabeth II.

    He demonstrated that anything was possible for a Black Brazilian man and that is why people called him “Rei Pelé” – King Pelé. I remember how when my grandparents would talk about him, the tone of their voices would change as if they were talking about their royalty, their Black king.

    By the time I was growing up in the late 1980s and early 90s, more Black people had made it to positions of prominence, including people in my extended family. But racism, of course, persisted. Afro-Brazilians were still a rare sight in Brazilian media, most often appearing in slavery-themed soap operas or as minor characters, often mocked, in TV shows. So I would regularly switch to American shows and films, where Black actors like Philip Michael Thomas and Danny Glover had become my idols.

    Pelé, nevertheless, remained a permanent fixture on Brazilian TV. He was one of the few Afro-Brazilians that I saw being respected when appearing or being mentioned. He motivated me to fight for my place in the media, a sphere which continues to be heavily dominated by white people.

    Now after his death, the global mourning has made me realise how much Pelé also meant to other Black people across the world. “Africa has lost a great son,” Ivory Coast Consul Tibe bi Gole Blaise said while attending Pelé’s wake at Santos stadium.

    Thus, I think the criticism thrown at Pelé and comparisons between him and Muhammad Ali are unfair. They degrade his contribution to the anti-racism struggle in Brazil and the world while presenting him as someone who neglected his race.

    That is really not the case. Pelé fought racism and carried the weight of the struggle so the generations of Black people that came after him would find more doors open. His way of fighting racism should be respected, just as Muhammad Ali’s has been.

    I am grateful to Pelé for what he did: donning the Brazilian football jersey and leading Brazil to the status of world power in football, breaking the glass ceiling, ripping the whitewashed image of Brazilian identity and paving the way for Afro-Brazilians to claim equality and respect in Brazilian sport and society at large. He truly played his “beautiful game” on and off the pitch.

    The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

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  • Koblenz trial one year on: ‘It should have been in Damascus’

    Koblenz trial one year on: ‘It should have been in Damascus’

    Exactly one year ago on January 13, 2022, a court in the picturesque German town of Koblenz concluded the first ever criminal trial against officials of the Syrian regime and sentenced the main defendant, former colonel Anwar Raslan, to life in prison for crimes against humanity.

    The trial saw a national court take on the gruelling task of administering international justice and applying German law and procedure in a foreign and complicated context. While fully bridging the vast gap between Koblenz and Damascus was understandably not possible, the court delivered what was expected of it: a competent and fair criminal trial.

    As a human rights lawyer who has been working on crimes involving atrocities committed in Syria for several years, the monumental importance of the case at hand became clear to me as soon as Raslan and his co-defendant, Eyad Al-Gharib, were arrested in Germany in February 2019. So when the trial finally commenced more than a year later in April 2020 in the thick of the COVID-19 lockdown when much of the world was focused on the pandemic, my eyes were on Koblenz.

    On the first morning of the proceedings, my friend and colleague, Syrian human rights lawyer Mazen Darwish, remarked on how jarring it was to see a trial of such historic importance for the Syrian people take place not at the International Criminal Court or a special tribunal for Syria but at a regional court in a small town in Germany. “It should have been in Damascus,” he said.

    His words stuck with me because they were true. This trial should have taken place in Damascus in front of Syrian judges and victims with Syrian lawyers defending the accused and Syrian prosecutors presenting the evidence that Syrian investigators collected.

    But we were where we were. The trial was taking place in Germany, in German, miles away from the Syrian context, and holding a similar trial in Syria was still a distant dream.

    Recognising how seminal the case would be, I decided to make a podcast about it.

    From the very beginning with the Branch 251 podcast, my team and I aimed at bridging that distance between Koblenz and the world and between the legal quirkiness dominating such complex international legal procedures and reality. After releasing the first few episodes only in English, however, we realised our podcast could only achieve this goal if we made it fully accessible to the people this case belongs to: Syrians. So, a few months into the trial, in collaboration with Syrian colleagues, we also started releasing episodes in Arabic.

    Episode after episode, the Branch 251 podcast chronicled and analysed the many difficulties the Koblenz judges faced in delivering justice for crimes committed in a context completely alien to their own. The most obvious example of this disconnect that I can remember was explored in episode four of the English series’ second season, What’s Choice?

    While trying to ascertain whether Al-Gharib had any choice in committing the crimes he was accused of, the presiding judge listed a number of actions, in the court’s assessment, that the defendant might have taken to avoid ever facing such allegations. One of the actions she listed, much to the disbelief of Syrians following the trial and anyone else familiar with the Syrian context, was “calling in sick” on the day that the crimes were committed.

    In the podcast, we also explored several other issues that made it difficult for Syrians and other interested parties to follow and engage with this trial, such as courtroom access restrictions, difficulties with obtaining translations and a lack of trial recordings. As we explained in episode 13 of the English series’ first season, Death in Detention, similar issues are known to have affected other national trials dealing with international crimes in Germany in the past. This begs the question of whether, or more hopefully, to what extent, lessons will be learned from Koblenz for current and future international trials in Germany and elsewhere. The ones that are currently under way against Syrian regime affiliates in Frankfurt and Berlin are not boding well in this regard.

    It is important that all necessary action is taken to make trials like the one in Koblenz more accessible, transparent and efficient because they will likely be our primary tool for achieving international criminal justice in the future. Indeed, specialised tribunals are aimed at complementing rather than replacing national trials of international crimes. And this principle of complementarity was also a core element the negotiators agreed on when setting up the International Criminal Court in the late 1990s. I believe the move towards trying international crimes in national courts is a positive one given the overcomplicated international legal and political framework we are currently operating in.

    We still need to accept, however, that these national trials, just like those conducted by the International Criminal Court in the past 20 years, will not be perfect. Achieving international justice is difficult, and we should not let our search for perfection prevent us from celebrating rare victories.

    And this is exactly what the Koblenz trial was: a victory.

    Overall, despite all the challenges faced, the trial conducted in Koblenz and the judgements it handed down were of high quality, clean and fair. So many of my Syrian colleagues said they appreciated the fairness of the procedure. The trial appeared to give them hope that punishing those guilty of inflicting immense pain on their people may still be possible.

    It has been said on our podcast and elsewhere that this trial was a small but significant step in the right direction. It is my conviction that it was much more than that.

    The Koblenz court with its five judges patiently managed 20 months of meticulous presentation and discussion of evidence on every single element of the allegations. It respected the rights of the defendants and gave them sufficient space and time to make their case. And most importantly, it allowed victims to meaningfully participate in the trial.

    In the end, this gruelling exercise of justice produced the first judgement by a criminal court in the matter of the brutal repression of Syria’s revolution by Bashar al-Assad’s regime. The court found both defendants guilty of participating in crimes against humanity orchestrated and executed by the al-Assad regime.

    Nothing can take this achievement away.

    And this is an achievement of which everyone involved in the Koblenz trial can be proud – first and foremost, survivors and members of Syrian civil society who worked tirelessly on this case and on many others.

    We do not say this often as Germans, but in this instance, I am proud of my mother country. The German justice system with its police, prosecutors, lawyers and judges deserves praise and respect for this achievement. What is more and often forgotten is the political will that made the investigations and eventual trial possible in the first place. There are no trials without adequate political support.

    These judgements sent a strong political message, and this message will be supported by many other trials and judgements in the coming months and years. There are many similar trials already under way in several different jurisdictions that my team and I are covering in our new podcast, The Syria Trials.

    These trials will produce a large number of strong court decisions that prove beyond any doubt the immense guilt of the Syrian regime. This dossier of court decisions will be brought to the table and be part of any political discussion and negotiation regarding the future of Syria’s regime.

    The war in Syria is over, some say. Al-Assad has survived and is returning to the world stage, they say. There indeed are some signs that the Syrian dictator is no longer the pariah he once was and is slowly making his return to the international arena. After spending years working on the brutal, senseless crimes committed by his regime against the Syrian people, it is deeply painful to see him start being treated as Syria’s legitimate leader once again.

    But the fortunes of war criminals can change surprisingly quickly – just look at Slobodan Milošević, Ratko Mladić or Radovan Karadžić, who were treated as legitimate politicians and allowed to participate in negotiations for years, even after the Srebrenica massacre, but were eventually made to stand trial and were punished for their crimes.

    Even if he is allowed to return to the international arena, the time will also come for al-Assad to face justice. Not today, not tomorrow, but eventually. When exactly? Nobody knows. Where? In Damascus, inshallah.

    The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

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  • A long march offers a glimpse of a post-Modi India

    A long march offers a glimpse of a post-Modi India

    In a deliberate emulation of India’s revered independence hero Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, the country’s main opposition leader at present is on the final leg of a mammoth public walk across the length of the subcontinent.

    Defying critics and sceptics, the 3,500km (2,175 miles) walk by Rahul Gandhi — no relation to the freedom fighter — has succeeded as both political protest and mobilisation. Over the last three months, the Bharat Jodo Yatra or the March for the Unity of India has been met with widespread enthusiasm.

    Now in its last phase, the yatra entered the northern state of Punjab on Tuesday night as it makes its way to its conclusion on the high peaks of Indian-administered Kashmir. In walking so long, Gandhi — the face of the Indian National Congress — is offering the world’s largest democracy a new political vision and script pitched against the shrill political Hinduism or Hindutva of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

    The aim of the yatra, a term usually associated with a Hindu pilgrimage, is political redemption. It has reignited the Congress party that had been immobilised for a decade with serial electoral defeats. Mocked mercilessly by the BJP as an amateur politician, Gandhi has emerged today as a leader with mass appeal.

    With a simple message of interreligious harmony and prosperity for all, the epic walk has focussed on common human interactions. At each stop every day, Gandhi’s aides document and disseminate on social media the conversations their leader has with farmers and workers, young and old, men and women and children too about their shattered dreams under the Modi government. These capture a snapshot of the lived realities of the Indian economy, where unemployment and inflation are high, with a government that has been high on promises and low on their delivery.

    Gandhi’s message is that Modi’s strident Hindutva is what is weakening the economic and social potential of India. All this and the accompanying clamour for hugs and selfies with the bearded opposition leader have charged a political and media landscape that has otherwise been monopolised by Modi. For the first time since his ascent, Modi has been rendered silent.

    The political message is indeed that of a clash between a multicultural or secular polity on the one hand and Hindu supremacist policies on the other. But it is clear that the march is framing that battle as also being led by two very different kinds of men who now animate and divide Indians.

    Modi and the BJP have long railed against India’s secular politics typified by Gandhi’s family as embodying corruption and decay that they claim have denied India its rightful place in the world order. Gandhi’s great-grandfather Jawaharlal Nehru, grandmother Indira Gandhi and father Rajiv Gandhi all served as prime ministers.

    Two massive majority mandates for Modi, in 2014 and 2019, have helped to cloak violent Hindutva in the guise of popular anger against entrenched political elites. Modi has fashioned himself as a strong but populist everyman who has risen against this so-called ancien regime.

    Today, from laws to political rhetoric, Modi embodies an aggressive “Hindu first” agenda for India. From proposed legislation that introduces religious discrimination in citizenship to the routine violence against minorities, Modi’s agenda for cultural uniformity is seeking to drastically recast India.

    At 52, Gandhi has long been vilified as a fourth-generation dynast. Yet precisely because of his family history, he has long and intimate knowledge of power and violence. Both his grandmother and father were assassinated. Shunning political office and the trappings of power, Gandhi has immersed himself in pursuing a direct relationship with the people. He appears to have understood that Modi’s strongman tactics can be countered only with the power of shared vulnerability that brings together everyone who is less than fully committed to Hindutva and has — as a consequence — felt the sharp wedge of authority that stalks India’s public life.

    If Modi has expressed his political power through authority and populism, then Gandhi has sought a compassionate connection. In seeking a horizontal coalition of different sections of India, the yatra’s message is to empower a politics of fearlessness. In so doing, it seeks to rediscover the principles of diversity and equity that have been foundational to independent India. Strikingly, the yatra has emphasised a simple political script of emotions such as love, fellowship and sacrifice to blunt and counter the dominant narratives of violence and identity.

    About a century ago, the famous salt march of Gandhi – the Father of the Nation – thwarted the British empire and Indian political elites alike as he shunned political office and power but lit up common Indians with audacious hope. He was searching for a transformation of politics and a redefinition of political relationships. He succeeded.

    It would be ridiculous and foolhardy to compare the two Gandhis. The contest today is not about the overthrowing of a foreign imperial power. It is an entirely internal and intimate choice about the future identity of India.

    But in offering a political paradigm different from that projected by Modi and the BJP, the Bharat Jodo Yatra has helped demarcate the battle lines for 2024, when the next national elections are scheduled to take place. After being overwhelmed by Modi and Hindutva for nearly a decade, Indian democracy might finally be ready for a real contest of ideologies, emotions and personalities.

    The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

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  • Searching for Oman: Towards a disconnected 2023

    Searching for Oman: Towards a disconnected 2023

    Back in 2013, I went camping for three nights in a remote area of Oman at the invitation of some Arab friends living in Dubai. They had overestimated my hiking abilities, but made sure I did not fall off of any precipices.

    We slept by a stream five hours away from where we had left my friends’ cars. There was no mobile phone reception, and a lone Omani shepherd was the only other human we encountered over the course of our stay. I spent the days watching the stream, wandering around some boulders and small caves, and eating a lot of nuts and canned tuna.

    With no digital stimuli keeping me unnaturally alert at night, I slept an unprecedented 10-plus hours under the stars. My seemingly eternal state of agitation dissipated, and life became magically surreal in its simplicity. Then the nuts and tuna ran out, and it was time to drive back to Dubai, the internet, and everything else that is wrong with the world.

    In the decade that has elapsed since then, the Oman camping excursion has attained an almost mythical status in my mind, with the stream symbolising a sort of pre-technological Eden where it is possible to clock 10 glorious hours of slumber on three consecutive nights – a feat that, post-Oman, I never managed to replicate.

    While it is forever my dream to get a good night’s sleep, such dreams are difficult to reconcile with capitalism’s insistence on continuous productivity. Of course, capitalism does endorse such “leisure” activities as frittering half one’s life away on Facebook and other social media platforms that are toxic for mental health but good for corporate profit.

    In September of this year, it occurred to me that I could simply disconnect from the internet in an attempt to recreate the Omani shuteye scenario. It was not until December, however, that I found the time. And so it was that, from December 20 to 23, my phone remained in airplane mode as I reacquainted myself with the off-screen world.

    After spending much of the night of December 19 wide awake and fighting the impulse to squeeze in one last asinine Facebook post publicising my imminent internet hiatus, I officially disconnected at 5.45 in the morning on December 20. I promptly fell asleep, and dreamed a profound dream about trying to open a website that did not work.

    I had timed my offline experiment to coincide with a Christmas rendezvous in Mexico City with my parents, such that they would not worry about me and vice versa. And while the Mexican capital and its more than 20 million inhabitants certainly offered a landscape quite different from remote Oman, the whole experience was still pretty sweet.

    Almost immediately, I felt my shoulders start to descend from their normal position bunched up around my ears, where they waited in perennial anticipation of the next ding or buzz to indicate the arrival of a new email or Facebook comment. Over the coming internet-free days, my breathing would become less shallow and hyperventilation-prone, as I sensed personhood gradually seep back into my being: a former, pre-internet version of myself that I hardly recognised any more.

    Offline, I was notably less irritable, and my blood pressure no doubt benefitted from the absence of annoying unsolicited messages from men, which had been known to provoke disproportionate rage in online me. By disengaging, I had resumed control over my own boundaries, and was no longer just a digital presence scattered across virtual spaces. I had liberated myself from digital dependence – if only for three days.

    I started reading two books and was able to focus on the books themselves rather than the question of whether I needed to post a selfie reading them. I talked to my parents and fed the squirrels in the park. I remembered what it was like to do things and think things without the distracting compulsion to advertise every thought and action to one’s social media audience. I remembered when excitement did not have to be converted into a series of partying face emojis.

    And when I did make one single, old-fashioned, non-WhatsApp phone call, it actually felt special.

    On only one out of three nights did I achieve the 10-hour goal, but the other two nights were not bad, either. In the morning, instead of reaching for my phone, I would lie in bed and stare blissfully at the ceiling.

    Obviously, three days is scarcely sufficient to recover from a lifetime online – and there were plenty of moments when I felt the urge to Google something completely unnecessary. At one point, I was nearly forced to sabotage my experiment when the Mexico City cab driver whose mobile phone had spontaneously gone on strike asked me if I could look up the driving directions to our destination. When his phone mercifully resumed cooperating, I was saved.

    At 5.45am on December 23, I emerged from airplane mode and reconnected to dystopia in order to send my editors an article I had written offline. Out of the approximately 150 new emails in my inbox, exactly one was relevant to my existence. Twitter was convinced I was anti-white, and Facebook was Facebook.

    I do not make New Year’s resolutions, but I am definitely dreaming of a much more disconnected 2023 – and a lot more staring at the ceiling.

    The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

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  • Pelé meant the world to us Africans

    Pelé meant the world to us Africans

    The death of football legend Pelé has saddened millions of football fans. Born Edson Arantes do Nascimento, the Brazilian star has touched hearts and captivated minds across the world. In Africa, he has been celebrated not only for his football mastery but also as a symbol of Black excellence and representation.

    For me, Pelé has been a source of indescribable joy and inspiration.

    I was born into a world cruelly short of memorable Black stories and universally acclaimed Black heroes, a planet decimated by the violent political and economic power of white supremacy.

    Whether it was politics, science, business or sport, whiteness had permeated every conceivable aspect of society and systematically shunted Black people to the fringes of human existence.

    White people – we were told – were the best scientists, the best business managers, the best athletes. They were the models to emulate and look up to.

    But we knew this was wrong. And we admired Black superstars like Pelé and Muhammad Ali and Black revolutionaries leading the African and Black liberation movements that were sweeping through the African continent and North America.

    Growing up in what then was known as Salisbury, Rhodesia (today’s Harare), a bastion of settler colonialism, I was keenly aware of the “racial segregation” of heroes.

    My heroes – freedom fighters – were described as “terrorists”. African nationalists like Joshua Nkomo and Robert Mugabe were imprisoned by the white settler regime, after agitating for democracy, civil rights and equality for all races.

    My own uncle, Moses, had joined the liberation movement as a teenager and underwent military training in Mozambique and Yugoslavia. After he left, for years, we didn’t even know if he was alive. He only came back after we were finally liberated and Rhodesia became Zimbabwe in 1980.

    Black people in sports who I looked up to were also disparaged and insulted. Pelé had a string of derogatory nicknames that he was called, while Muhammad Ali was once referred to as a “disgrace to his country” and a “fool”.

    So my heroes weren’t celebrated in the spacious and well-developed areas of Salisbury that were occupied by largely wealthy and privileged white people, or for that matter, in mostly densely populated and impoverished Black communities.

    For fear of deadly reprisals from government soldiers, sympathisers and spies, people only ever spoke about their unsung heroes at home and mostly in hushed tones. Rhodesian security forces regularly murdered Black people for supposedly collaborating with freedom fighters or breaching nighttime curfews.

    Elsewhere, the Sharpeville massacre in South Africa and the violent crackdown on the 1967 uprising in the US city of Detroit also demonstrated how the white world brutally resisted Black struggles for socioeconomic parity and political independence.

    Amid this violence and fear, Black superstars like Pelé were giving us a flicker of hope. They defied the condescending stereotypes and stifling challenges that white supremacists foisted on us – on Black people everywhere.

    Granted, Pelé wasn’t the first Black athlete to achieve tremendous success in a global sport or competition, he was the first Black man to make it to the pinnacle of football, a sport that the mostly poor people in Africa and the African diaspora loved to bits.

    My hometown, a sprawling high-density suburb named Kambuzuma, remained far removed from the exploits of outstanding Black athletes like American basketball star Bill Russell, the 11-time NBA champion.

    When I was young, I didn’t know about baseball legend Jackie Robinson or tennis star Althea Gibson, the first African American woman to compete in a professional tennis tour and win a Grand Slam title.

    I adored Pelé, partly because football, unlike tennis, basketball and baseball, was an incredibly accessible sport.

    Equipped with a “chikweshe”, a homemade plastic ball, my friends and I would often play football on bumpy makeshift pitches demarcated by sticks and stones.

    Still, my admiration for Pelé wasn’t just about football.

    Long before I was old enough to appreciate his countless achievements and confidently place him atop the pantheon of all-time football greats, the Brazilian football star was firmly embedded in Africa’s socio-political and cultural awakening. Alongside Muhammad Ali, he existed as a towering and indelible symbol of Black pride.

    Pelé’s story helped to inspire devotion to Black identity at a critical time in African and my country’s history. For a people severely traumatised by oppression and economic dispossession, his unequalled success lent us the freedom to take delight in endless possibilities for our future.

    Later, pundits and fans alike would intermittently debate whether he was the greatest footballer in history, ahead of Argentinian maestros Diego Maradona and Lionel Messi – or Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo.

    Others would question whether he really scored over 1000 goals, making it into the Guinness World Records.

    Johan Cruyff, the Dutch star who won the prestigious Ballon d’Or football award three times, would disagree with such superfluous arguments about my hero.

    “Pelé was the only footballer who surpassed the boundaries of logic,” he said.

    One day, I believe, somebody may well top Pelé’s accomplishments. But no footballer can ever claim to have exemplified the hopes and dreams of Africans in colonial times – the long, difficult and bloody years when we desperately wanted to see and appreciate a supreme manifestation of Black identity.

    Today, first and foremost, Pelé must be remembered as an extraordinary human being, a Black man who exceeded all expectations in a world shaped and devastated by the legacies of slavery and white supremacy.

    He may be gone, but the spirit of Black excellence he embodied will persevere forever.

    The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

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  • France, football, colonialism: Take the best, leave the rest

    France, football, colonialism: Take the best, leave the rest

    As the Qatar 2022 World Cup saw formerly colonised peoples take on former colonial powers on the football field, conversations about “scars of the present’s past” inevitably erupted both online and offline. France, in particular, which played against both Tunisia and Morocco, found itself in the middle of them.

    Amid this noise and general World Cup excitement, a relevant piece of news seemingly passed under the global media radar. On December 12, the European Union announced it was establishing “a military partnership mission” in Niger to support “its fight against terrorism”.

    The mission, under the command of French Vice Admiral Hervé Bléjean, will last three years and cost some 27.3 million euros. But why is the EU spending millions in Niger amid a crushing cost of living crisis at home? And why is it pouring millions into a military mission given that the target country is one of the poorest in the world and its population would benefit much more from socioeconomic assistance?

    The answer lies in France, a leading EU member, which has shown an intense interest in deepening its relations with the Nigerien government over the past few years. Some of it likely has to do with the fact that Nigerien uranium powers up French nuclear power plants – a major source of energy for the country amid the energy crunch. And some of it may also have to do with Niger’s key position as a transit country for thousands of migrants and refugees trying to pass the Mediterranean – which is the deadliest border in the world – to seek safety and decent livelihoods in Europe.

    But what does Niger – a country that did not qualify for the World Cup – have to do with French football?

    More than it might seem. France has pursued success in football in much the same way it has pursued economic might – through extraction.

    The French team which brought the country to the World Cup final was dominated by players with diverse backgrounds, many tracing their roots to former French colonies in Africa. For example, Kylian Mbappé, who won the World Cup’s Golden Boot award, was born in France to an Algerian mother and a Cameroonian father.

    Faced with comments about the origins of French football players, French officials have adamantly insisted on their “Frenchness”. They have rejected references to their origins as racist.

    But that is not really the case. As Trevor Noah pointed out back in 2018 during a similar debate on inclusiveness and overlapping identities, “When I’m saying [French players are] African, I’m not trying to exclude them from their Frenchness but include them in my Africanness.”

    But to go further than that – France has embraced a markedly selective assimilationist approach towards people of African origins; it is very particular about who can be French. Just some among the many immigrants and refugees who want to come to France and live there are deemed worthy of French citizenship and many people of African descent who were born in the country face structural discrimination and are not seen as fully French.

    Every year, France deports more than 10,000 people who make it into the country, seeking safety and a better life. Others are relegated to a life of misery and violence under the country’s stringent anti-immigration laws and enforcement, which often come under criticism from human rights organisations. The pathway to Frenchness for immigrants and refugees seems reserved only for a select few.

    There are also those who are French citizens on paper but do not seem to enjoy the “status” of being French. Take France’s Muslim community. It makes up about 8 percent of the French population and yet, between 40 percent and 70 percent of those incarcerated in French prisons are Muslims, mainly from former French colonies in Africa.

    The community suffers from high impoverishment and school dropout rates and is isolated in city peripheries. It is also systematically othered by mainstream politicians who openly embrace Islamophobia and accuse the Muslim population of being “extremist” and threatening French values.

    In other words, France engages in cherry-picking inclusiveness, which tends to exclude much more than include. Mbappé is French because he is a talented football player; a French-born youth of North African origin imprisoned for a certain crime, or simply unemployed and relegated to the peripheries of inequity known as “banlieues”, on the other hand, is often just an “Arab”.

    This cherry-picking inclusiveness is also a manifestation of neo-colonialism, through which France extracts human talent from its former colonies and rejects the rest – the unworthy. Indeed, colonialism was precisely that: it took and absorbed the best out of other lands, while rejecting everything else, and giving very little, if anything, in exchange.

    And this takes us back to Niger, from where France has been extracting uranium for decades, giving very little in return to the Nigerien people and worse, polluting their soil and water. While reaping the benefits of energy generated by cheap uranium, France has done little to help the Nigerien population, only 13 percent of which has access to electricity.

    Niger also uses the CFA franc as its currency, a colonial relic that economically binds former French colonies to Paris. Some 50 percent of the monetary reserves of 14 African countries, Niger included, are still today under full French control; as a result, none of them has any control over its macroeconomic and monetary policy. France makes billions of euros from Africa annually in the form of “reserves”, and lends part of the same money to its owners at market rates.

    It is not coincidental that Niger’s main highway, on which many extracted resources are transported to Niamey and other strategic areas, follows today the exact route of the mass atrocities carried out by the troops of Paul Voulet, the French army captain who in 1899 sought to take control of Lake Chad for France before the United Kingdom got there.

    Much has changed since colonial times, but Africa’s exploitation is continuing with corrupted governments in many African countries guaranteeing the “stability” needed to carry out these processes – among much else, they receive for this end weapons worth billions of euros which they also use to crush internal dissent.

    How to counter all this? There are no easy recipes. Yet, rejecting “cherry-picked inclusivity”, which is particularly visible in the French case, would be a step in the right direction.

    Another step could be looking into the legacy of Senegalese film director and writer Ousmane Sembène, who produced a number of works with the aim of fostering the reconstruction of an African space rooted in largely lost African cultural values and traditions. Sembène did not oppose the influence of non-African cultures, including the cultures of (neo)colonists, but rather suggested Africans embrace them in a more lucid and informed way. This, perhaps, is the way forward.

    The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

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  • Opinion: No, an indictment wouldn’t end Trump’s run for the presidency – he could even campaign or serve from a jail cell

    Opinion: No, an indictment wouldn’t end Trump’s run for the presidency – he could even campaign or serve from a jail cell

    Donald Trump announced his 2024 run for the presidency on Nov. 15. In his address he railed against what he perceived as the “persecution” of himself and his family, but made scant mention of his legal woes.

    There is also the not-so-small matter of a Justice Department investigation into the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol.

    The announcement has led some to speculate that Trump may be hoping that becoming a presidential candidate will in some way shield him from prosecution.

    Donald Trump has announced his bid to run in the 2024 presidential race. WSJ’s Alex Leary breaks down the challenges the former president will face on the campaign trail, including new political rivals and a waning influence among voters. Photo Composite: Adele Morgan

    So, does an indictment—or even a felony conviction—prevent a presidential candidate from running or serving in office?

    The short answer is no. Here’s why:

    The U.S. Constitution specifies in clear language the qualifications required to hold the office of the presidency. In Section 1, Clause 5 of Article II, it states: “No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.”

    These three requirements—natural-born citizenship, age, and residency—are the only specifications set forth in the United States’ founding document.

    Congress has ‘no power to alter’

    Furthermore, the Supreme Court has made clear that constitutionally prescribed qualifications to hold federal office may not be altered or supplemented by either the U.S. Congress or any of the states.

    Justices clarified the court’s position in their 1969 Powell v. McCormack ruling. The case followed the adoption of a resolution by the House of Representatives barring pastor and New York politician Adam Clayton Powell Jr. from taking his seat in the 90th Congress.

    The resolution was not based on Powell’s failure to meet the age, citizenship and residency requirements for House members set forth in the Constitution. Rather, the House found that Powell had diverted Congressional funds and made false reports about certain currency transactions.

    When Powell sued to take his seat, the Supreme Court invalidated the House’s resolution on grounds that it added to the constitutionally specified qualifications for Powell to hold office. In the majority opinion, the court held that: “Congress has no power to alter the qualifications in the text of the Constitution.”

    For the same reason, no limitation could now be placed on Trump’s candidacy. Nor could he be barred from taking office if he were to be indicted or even convicted.

    But in case of insurrection…

    The Constitution includes no qualification regarding those conditions—with one significant exception. Section 3 of the 14th Amendment disqualifies any person from holding federal office “who, having previously taken an oath…to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”

    The reason why this matters is the Justice Department is currently investigating Trump for his activities related to the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol.

    Under the provisions of the 14th Amendment, Congress is authorized to pass laws to enforce its provisions. And in February 2021, one Democratic congressman proposed House Bill 1405, providing for a “cause of action to remove and bar from holding office certain individuals who engage in insurrection or rebellion against the United States.”

    Even in the event of Trump being found to have participated “in insurrection or rebellion,” he might conceivably argue that he is exempt from Section 3 for a number of reasons. The 14th Amendment does not specifically refer to the presidency and it is not “self-executing”—that is, it needs subsequent legislation to enforce it. Trump could also point to the fact that Congress enacted an Amnesty Act in 1872 that lifted the ban on office holding for officials from many former Confederate states.

    He might also argue that his activities on and before Jan. 6 did not constitute an “insurrection” as it is understood by the wording of the amendment. There are few judicial precedents that interpret Section 3, and as such its application in modern times remains unclear. So even if House Bill 1405 were adopted, it is not clear whether it would be enough to disqualify Trump from serving as president again.

    Running from behind bars

    Even in the case of conviction and incarceration, a presidential candidate would not be prevented from continuing their campaign—even if, as a felon, they might not be able to vote for themselves.

    History is dotted with instances of candidates for federal office running—and even being elected—while in prison. As early as 1798—some 79 years before the 14th Amendment — House member Matthew Lyon was elected to Congress from a prison cell, where he was serving a sentence for sedition for speaking out against the Federalist Adams administration.

    Eugene Debs, founder of the Socialist Party of America, ran for president in 1920 while serving a prison sentence for sedition. Although he lost the election, he nevertheless won 913,693 votes. Debs promised to pardon himself if he were elected.

    And controversial politician and conspiracy theorist Lyndon LaRouche also ran for president from a jail cell in 1992.

    A prison cell as the Oval Office?

    Several provisions within the Constitution offer alternatives that could be used to disqualify a president under indictment or in prison.

    The 25th Amendment allows the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet to suspend the president from office if they conclude that the president is incapable of fulfilling his duties.

    The amendment states that the removal process may be invoked “if the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.”

    It was proposed and ratified to address what would happen should a president be incapacitated due to health issues. But the language is broad and some legal scholars believe it could be invoked if someone is deemed incapacitated or incapable for other reasons, such as incarceration.

    To be sure, a president behind bars could challenge the conclusion that he or she was incapable from discharging the duties simply because they were in prison. But ultimately the amendment leaves any such dispute to Congress to decide, and it may suspend the president from office by a two-thirds vote.

    Indeed, it is not clear that a president could not effectively execute the duties of office from prison, since the Constitution imposes no requirements that the executive appear in any specific location. The jail cell could, theoretically, serve as the new Oval Office.

    Finally, if Trump were convicted and yet prevail in his quest for the presidency in 2024, Congress might choose to impeach him and remove him from office. Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution allows impeachment for “treason, bribery, and high crimes and misdemeanors.”

    Whether that language would apply to Trump for indictments or convictions arising from his previous term or business dealings outside of office would be a question for Congress to decide. The precise meaning of “high crimes and misdemeanors” is unclear, and the courts are unlikely to second-guess the House in bringing an impeachment proceeding.

    For sure, impeachment would remain an option—but it might be an unlikely one if Republicans maintained their majority in the House in 2024 and 2026.

    Stefanie Lindquist is Foundation Professor of Law and Political Science at Arizona State University. She previously taught at Vanderbilt University, the University of Georgia and the University of Texas.

    This commentary was originally published by The Conversation—No, an indictment wouldn’t end Trump’s run for the presidency—he could even campaign or serve from a jail cell

    More on Trump’s legal problems

    Trump Organization executive says he helped colleagues dodge taxes

    Judge says he’ll appoint monitor to oversee Donald Trump’s company

    Justice Department weighs appointing special counsel if Trump runs in 2024, report says

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  • Fossil fuels are the world’s worst deals to insure — here’s why

    Fossil fuels are the world’s worst deals to insure — here’s why

    Since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015, it has only become less likely that the world will meet that pact’s goals. Emissions must now be halved by the end of this decade to avoid the worst effects of the climate crisis.

    Making finance flows and services consistent with this pathway is essential not only for the planet, but for the financial sector itself. Munich Re, the world’s largest reinsurance company, adopted a new policy last month excluding oil insurance and reinsurance.

    It is not a single actor: As of October, 41 insurers  — including industry heavyweights such as Allianz, Munich Re and Swiss Re — representing 39 percent of the market for primary insurance and 62 percent for reinsurance had withdrawn or reduced cover for coal. For oil and gas, those figures now stand at 38 percent of reinsurance and 15 percent of primary insurance markets. Coal companies now face soaring premiums of up to 40 percent, reduced coverage and longer searches to access insurance.

    Yet insurance and reinsurance companies need to move faster. Lloyd’s of London, for instance, announced in 2020 that it would stop insuring fossil fuel projects by 2030. But last year, it issued guidance suggesting this policy was optional for agents. According to the global campaign group Insure Our Future, many other insurers continue to insure new oil and gas projects in defiance of climate science and evidence.

    As Russia’s war on Ukraine continues, the fossil fuel industry sees an opportunity to set up new infrastructure around the world. Governments that are desperate for revenue are falling for the promise of quick returns and opening their doors to these companies.

    But insurance companies must stay wary — backing investments in oil and gas will only become more perilous.

    One of the riskiest investments on offer today is in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). In July, it auctioned the exploration rights for 30 oil and gas blocks in an area of about 277,000sq km (106,950sq miles) – larger than the size of the United Kingdom.

    Some of the blocks overlap with protected areas, including Virunga National Park, a World Heritage Site that is threatened by armed conflicts and now by the prospects of drilling. It is home to the Batwa and other local communities facing violence and discrimination, as well as 3,000 species of animals, including the critically endangered eastern gorilla.

    Other blocks are in the peatlands of the Cuvette Centrale, which serve as a sink that stores about 30 gigatons of carbon, equivalent to three years of global emissions from fossil fuels.

    Simon Lewis, a professor at Leeds University and head of a British-Congolese research group called CongoPeat, has called the DRC blocks “the worst place in the world to drill for oil”. Lewis has warned there may not be substantial oil deposits beneath the Congo forests, and if there are, getting them from extremely remote areas to global markets may not be economically viable. Yet even if exploration reveals no commercial-scale oilfields, it will seriously damage the rainforest’s biodiversity.

    Beyond the DRC too, Russia’s war in Ukraine and rising energy prices have been one of the triggers of a new scramble for fossil fuels across Africa — from Senegal through Namibia to Uganda.

    The International Energy Agency (IEA) has said the world needs a complete bar on all new fossil fuel investments to get to net-zero emissions by 2050, a minimum goal laid out by the IPCC, the United Nations panel of experts on climate change.

    That prescription is particularly important for Africa, where oil production often has higher carbon intensity than elsewhere — the equivalent of about 40 percent more carbon dioxide per barrel.

    Africa and the broader Global South are also often the worst sufferers of the effects of climate change. In October, Nigeria reported almost 800,000 displaced and 500 dead from floods, while Pakistan is still dealing with the aftermath of devastating floods that drowned a third of the country. In Somalia, one million people have been displaced due to a drought following a two-year historic dry spell. And the list goes on.

    The new scramble for fossil fuels has devastating implications for human rights as well. Exploration and drilling rights are being granted in ways that sacrifice natural ecosystems that have been serving local and Indigenous communities for centuries. In the DRC, communities were not even informed before their land was auctioned.

    Insurance companies have enormous power to force change. Without insurance, most new fossil fuel projects cannot proceed and existing ones must close. As the Insure Our Future coalition — which ranks the world’s top insurers on the basis of their fossil fuel exclusion policies — has demanded, it is vital to end insurance for new oil, gas and coal projects. It is also critical to phase out support for existing projects and for insurers to divest all assets from coal, oil and gas companies that are not aligned with a pathway that limits the planet’s temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).

    Finally, insurers must maintain robust due diligence and verification mechanisms to ensure clients fully respect and observe all human rights.

    That is essential for the world but also a sensible business strategy for insurers: Projects in the DRC and other such vulnerable ecosystems likely represent the worst deals in the world to insure. They are best avoided — for everyone.

    The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

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  • The murder of Somalia’s brave journalists must stop

    The murder of Somalia’s brave journalists must stop

    Somalia can lay claim – through no choice of its own people – to being the most dangerous country for journalists in Africa. Data collected by the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and the testimonies of local journalists demonstrate that media rights are flagrantly violated on a daily basis. Threats and violent actions intended to terrorise media practitioners are routine. The idea is simple: to silence them.

    On November 2, the world celebrates the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists, a United Nations-recognised event. There are few other countries where this issue has the same chilling significance as it does in Somalia.

    According to data collated by the National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ), 54 journalists have been murdered over the past decade. The most recent victim, TV journalist Mohamed Isse Hassan was killed on October 29 in a car bombing while he and others were covering another explosion in the capital Mogadishu. The twin bombings killed more than 100 people in total.

    Yet, barring one conviction earlier this year, those responsible for these killings have never been brought to justice. Nor have those who ordered the assassinations. An end to this campaign of terror is still nowhere in sight.

    Some Somali journalists have died in a hail of bullets, others have lost their lives in suicide bomb attacks, and some others have been killed in the line of duty – as happened on October 29. Some were sent death threats and lived in fear until their killers finally tracked them down. Others were attacked without warning.

    In addition to the appalling death toll, 50 journalists have been seriously injured since 2012. That includes two journalists who were wounded on October 29.

    Many others – both men and women – have faced arrests, threats and harassment. There is no expectation that, once arrested, a journalist will receive a fair trial. In most cases, the notorious words “convicted as charged” are pronounced.

    Amid the conflict between different armed groups and the government that continues to rage in the country, there is a lack of political will from any major actor to end this deadly violence against journalists. Each political side wants to control and manipulate news and information, and independent and critical journalism draws retaliation. There is an unstated compact between political forces that there need be no fear of any accountability for such crimes.

    Despite these risks, journalists – who are mostly young adults – are joining both government-controlled and private media. News organisations are mushrooming and there is a growing independent media landscape. They represent hope for a better future and their optimism must not be extinguished.

    Female reporters in particular additionally face the threat of gender-based violence and harassment. On social media, female journalists routinely receive messages warning them that they will be killed or raped if they pursue a particular line of reporting.

    The psychological wellbeing of journalists is another critical safety issue. In addition to covering stories in high-risk, hostile environments, many Somali journalists are traumatised by constant threats and harassment. The fear that they may be deliberately targeted at any time adds to their sense of unease.

    The widespread acceptance of impunity for those who attack journalists in Somalia is a major cause for concern. Meanwhile, the government uses obsolete, oppressive laws – like the country’s archaic 1964 penal code that UN experts have also criticised (PDF) – to legally prosecute journalists rather than those who hound them.

    This, in turn, encourages individuals within the judicial system – including in the provinces away from Mogadishu – and non-state actors to believe that they can harass and attack journalists without any adverse consequences.

    Without firm political will, it is unlikely that this violence will abate.

    In September, Somali journalists adopted a National Action Plan on the Safety of Journalists, backed by the African Union, UNESCO, the International Labour Organization and NUSOJ. The plan – a Somali-led, Somali-owned, journalist-centred blueprint – addresses pressing occupational safety and security issues. It encompasses everything from safety skills for journalists and partnerships for the legal and physical defence of media professionals, to strategies to take on gender-based violence against women journalists and the broader culture of impunity within which attacks continue.

    What is now required is the vigorous implementation of that plan by all sectors of society, not just journalists. The federal government, state governments and judiciary too must embrace the plan. The time for grief and condolences alone is over. It’s time to act.

    The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

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  • What NASA knows about soft landings that the Federal Reserve doesn’t

    What NASA knows about soft landings that the Federal Reserve doesn’t

    The Federal Reserve still has a chance to meet both of its main goals — strong economic growth and stable prices — but time is running out to achieve a soft landing.

    The problem is that Fed officials are fixated on raising interest rates
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    several more times, including another supersize increase at their meeting Tuesday and Wednesday. They don’t seem to notice that inflation is already retreating significantly, while growth is dangerously close to stalling out.

    They have a blind spot because they are looking at the past.

    Greg Robb: Another jumbo Fed rate hike is expected this week — and then life gets difficult for Chairman Powell

    Fed officials ought to reach out to another government agency that has had remarkable success in achieving soft landings: The National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

    NASA’s scientists know something the Fed has forgotten: It takes a long time to send and receive messages from space, so they need to account for those delays when sending instructions to their spacecraft so they can land safely on Mars, or orbit Saturn or the moons of Jupiter.

    Compounding errors

    It’s the same way with the economy. The signals that the Fed receives from the economy are often delayed, sometimes by months. Unfortunately, one of the main signals the Fed is relying upon right now to decide how much to raise interest rates is delayed by a year or more.

    I’m talking about inflation in the price of putting a roof over our heads. Shelter prices are now the leading contributor to increases in the consumer price index (CPI) and the personal consumption expenditure (PCE) price index. But because of the way the CPI for shelter is constructed — for very good reasons — the inflation reported today reflects conditions as they were 12 to 18 months ago.

    The error is compounded because shelter prices are by far the largest component of the CPI, at more than 30%.

    The Fed is disappointed that inflation hasn’t declined more since it began raising interest rates in March, but how could it when the signals about shelter prices were sent last summer and fall, long before the housing market began to cool in response to higher interest rates
    TMUBMUSD10Y,
    4.049%
    and the reductions in the Fed’s holdings of mortgage-backed securities?

    According to real-time data, shelter prices are no longer rising at a near-10% annual rate as the CPI and PCE price index claim. Growth in rents and house prices has slowed since the first rate hikes in March. House prices are actually falling in most regions of the country, and private-sector measures of rents show that landlords are now dropping rents in many cities.

    Just like a radio signal from Jupiter, it takes time for that message to be received by the CPI. It will be received and incorporated into the CPI eventually, but by then it may be too late for the Fed to react. The Fed might crash the spacecraft because it mistakenly believes the messages it gets are in real time.

    Growth is slowing

    The Fed’s blind spot puts the economy in peril. Recent data show that growth is naturally slowing from the breakneck pace following the pandemic shutdowns but also from the Fed’s relentless squeeze on financial conditions.

    It’s very hard to argue that the economy is still overheating. Domestic demand has stalled out since the spring. Final sales to domestic purchasers — which covers consumer spending and business investment — has grown at a 0.3% annual pace over the past two quarters.

    Real disposable incomes are growing at less than 1% annualized. Household wealth has fallen off a cliff, with the stock market
    SPX,
    -0.41%

    DJIA,
    -0.24%
    in a bear market and home equity beginning to fall. Wage growth is beginning to slow. Supply chains are improving.

    And the CPI excluding shelter has gone from rising at a 14% annual pace in the spring when the tightening began, to falling at a 1% annual pace over the past three months. Rate hikes are working!

    This benign picture on inflation may not persist. Inflation is still worrisome, particularly for essentials such as food, health care, new vehicles and utilities.

    But the Fed should adopt a more balanced view of the economy, no matter what the signals from the past say. No one wants a hard landing.

    Just ask NASA.

    More reported analysis from Rex Nutting

    Everybody is looking at the CPI through the wrong lens. Inflation fell to the Fed’s target in the past three months, according to the best measure.

    The Federal Reserve risks driving the economy into a ditch because it’s not looking at where inflation is heading

    Americans are feeling poorer for good reason: Household wealth was shredded by inflation and soaring interest rates

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  • Josep Borrell as Europe’s racist ‘gardener’

    Josep Borrell as Europe’s racist ‘gardener’

    Listening to Europe’s seniormost diplomat Josep Borrell at the inauguration of the new European Diplomatic Academy in Bruges, Belgium, last Thursday, I could only shake my head in wonder and outrage, as he compared Europe to a garden and the world to a jungle – a beastly and scary jungle.

    As far as bad speeches go, his rant wouldn’t have merited much commentary if it weren’t for its undiplomatic insensitivity and racism. It was short on wisdom and long on clichés and contradictions. It was badly structured and poorly delivered.

    And yet, for a high representative of the European Union for foreign affairs and security policy, this was a new low. Just when one thought European politics couldn’t get any worse, Borrell spoke his “truth”. In his paternalistic smugness, he effectively poisoned the young minds of Europe’s future diplomats with utter vainness, conceit and supremacism.

    But first, the casual sexism. He started by complimenting “Federica” – his predecessor and the academy’s director Federica Mogherini – for her youthful looks with the gallantry of a Catalan bull. No pun intended of course, since the Catalans prefer donkeys to bulls.

    In Trumpian fashion, the diplomat then swiftly gauged the world as if it were a red rag that must be confronted head-on, asking the young souls in his audience to beware of the imminent dangers facing Europe from all sides. He pontificated that “Europe is a garden” but “most of the rest of the world is a jungle, and the jungle could invade the garden”.

    The little garden, he educated them, cannot defend itself by building a wall. Why? “Because the jungle has a strong growth capacity, and the wall will never be high enough in order to protect the garden.”

    So, what’s the solution? Then came the punch line: “The gardeners have to go to the jungle. Europeans have to be much more engaged with the rest of the world. Otherwise, the rest of the world will invade us, by different ways and means.”

    I could go on and on, citing more from this childish and utterly dreadful metaphor, but I suppose you get the picture. The bottom line: Wonderful prosperous and free Europe is an exception in our otherwise vicious world, and it won’t survive for long unless its “gardeners” go out there to the jungle and help civilise the world.

    All his humbug about gardeners reminded me of The Constant Gardener, a John le Carre book and movie inspired by real-life events about a pharmaceutical firm that tested a new drug on poor locals in Africa, killing or maiming many of them.

    In real life, European engagement with Africa and the world has gone far beyond pharmaceutical testing to a whole plethora of pillages from colonialism, slavery and genocide to shadow wars and the theft of natural resources.

    But European memories can be at times short and selective – even when it comes to their own history. If indeed Europe is a garden, it is one that’s been tilled over a continent-wide cemetery. Lest Borrell forgot about the centuries of religious, nationalist and imperial wars, including the two world wars and many civil wars – like the Spanish civil war and its bloody 36-year dictatorship that only ended in 1975 and that the Catalan diplomat should be particularly familiar with.

    That’s not to say there isn’t much to celebrate. Europe has done very well since the second world war in terms of unity, security and prosperity, but only after defeating racism and fascism. But the rise and spread of neo-fascist and far-right politics throughout the continent, and its electoral victories in important countries like Italy, are reasons for caution, not conceit. But then again, if the racist tone of Borrell – supposedly a socialist – is anything to go by, what difference does it make whether Europe is led by the Left or the Right? Tomato, tomahto.

    Borrell was also wrong when he claimed, in the same speech, that Europe has become stronger and more independent of the United States since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Rather the contrary. A weaker, colder, more vulnerable EU has become more subservient to Washington.

    Yet the smug diplomat sounded particularly delusional about the implications of the war as it grinds on. While Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned of a greater war and at the same time expressed readiness for diplomacy, Borrell chose to dismiss any diplomatic solution for the time being. Instead, he threatened that the Russian army would be “annihilated” if Moscow were to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, without any thought as to what that may mean to the survival of Europe.

    Like his racist rant, this reckless escalation was utterly appropriate language for Europe’s top diplomat to use while speaking to those aspiring to join his profession, or to anyone else for that matter.

    And to end his inspirational, motivational big talk with a final wisdom, Borrell told the prospective envoys to raise their heads high and be good gardeners not only of Europe but of the “jungle”, wishing them happy diplomatic safaris.

    All joking aside, Borrell’s racist discourse is terribly dangerous in the current state of international affairs. It must be condemned in Europe first and foremost. Europe deserves better representatives. The world deserves better from Europe.

    We all harvest what we sow.

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  • Brazil, it is time to wake up from your Bolsonaro nightmare

    Brazil, it is time to wake up from your Bolsonaro nightmare

    In the aftermath of Brazil’s last general election in 2018, the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page celebrated the victory of Jair Bolsonaro – a former low-ranking army officer, far-right fringe politician, and fan of Brazil’s sadistic military dictatorship from 1964 to 1985.

    According to one bizarre article by the right-wing writer Mary Anastasia O’Grady, there was a simple explanation for the electoral triumph of the man that many analysts had compared with the then-president of the United States, Donald Trump. Despite the fact that Bolsonaro had been “labeled a racist, a misogynist, a homophobe, a fascist, an advocate of torture and an aspiring dictator”, he had prevailed, the piece argued, because Brazilians were “in the midst of a national awakening in which socialism – the alternative to a Bolsonaro presidency – has been put on trial”.

    While a socialist presidency certainly beats fascist torture any day, “socialism” was in truth not even in the running in 2018. The Brazilian Workers’ Party (PT) – whose candidate Bolsonaro defeated – is not socialist but rather centre-left, and has furthermore done its fair share to advance neoliberal capitalist interests over the years. Granted, the PT has also committed such flagrantly leftist crimes as helping to extricate millions of Brazilians from poverty and hunger, as transpired during the first decade of this century under President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

    Now, it’s election time again in South America’s largest country – and folks may be in for another “awakening”. As Brazil votes tomorrow, Lula is back in the race, and is leading Bolsonaro in the polls (although, as Bloomberg reports, Goldman Sachs and concerned hedge funds have assured clients the election will be “tighter” than surveys suggest).

    Of course, Bolsonaro’s disdain for democracy means that he won’t necessarily accept a Lula win on October 2 – or, in an October 30 run-off, which would be required if no candidate secures half of the votes cast. Nor must one underestimate the power of social media disinformation – a veritable scourge in Brazil – in rallying Bolsonaro voters.

    It bears recalling that, in 2018, the election of Bolsonaro – who would go on to suggest that coronavirus vaccines could turn people into crocodiles and make women grow beards – was significantly facilitated by an obsessive right-wing campaign to demonise and criminalise the PT under the guise of “anti-corruption”. Before Lula himself was imprisoned in April 2018 – on trumped-up charges produced by that same campaign – he had been the favourite to win that year’s presidential race.

    Benjamin Fogel, an historian who researches Brazilian anti-corruption politics, recently explained to me some of the additional factors driving the “general right-wing shift in Brazilian society” that enabled Bolsonaro’s emergence as head of state. They include a growing middle class with a “meritocratic” societal view that essentially blames poor people for their poverty. Social welfare programmes and other government efforts to address structural inequality have thus been frequently seen as unmerited – or as a form of corruption in themselves.

    Also tied up in the right-wing shift are, of course, ever-charitable financial machinations by big business, as well as the normalisation of once-taboo topics such as those pertaining to the military dictatorship. The swift spread of Christian evangelicalism, too, has proved politically compatible with Bolsonaro’s brand of conservative zealotry.

    However, as Fogel emphasised, Bolsonaro’s approach to the presidency “didn’t really translate into any sort of practical terms for governance beyond dismantling the basic institutions of government”. Public health, public education and other concepts that are anathema to the right wing came under fire. Bolsonaro packed the cabinet and public administration with more military officers than even during the dictatorship.

    Thanks to Bolsonaro’s stewardship of the pandemic – during which he wrote off the coronavirus as a “little flu” – Brazil has racked up nearly 700,000 official deaths, putting the country in second place after the United States for most COVID-19 fatalities. When a female Brazilian journalist questioned the president about the domestic vaccination rate, Bolsonaro responded with typical maturity: “You think about me in your sleep, you must have a crush on me or something.”

    He has also been a plague on the environment, enthusiastically championing the destruction of the Amazon rainforest. After all, it’s not like the Amazon is crucial to life on Earth.

    Add to this severe economic mismanagement, soaring inflation, rising poverty rates and a surge in membership of neo-Nazi groups in Brazil, and it starts to seem like the old “awakening” wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Still, hey, at least Bolsonaro rescued Brazil’s presidential palace from the “demons” that had formerly “overtaken” it, according to his wife, Michelle Bolsonaro. The president has also strived to inculcate his citizenry with a deep and God-fearing piety, and in August encouraged supporters: “Buy your guns! It’s in the Bible!”

    Meanwhile, Lula, whose corruption convictions have been annulled, has rightly disillusioned many leftists by being overly accommodating in his efforts to court elite voters unhappy with Bolsonaro. He has chosen a right-wing running mate with a history of antagonising the PT. Yet, as things currently stand, Lula is the only ticket out of the Bolsonarist nightmare.

    As the historian Fogel remarked to me, “what Lula stands for in this election, rather than radicalism, is a memory of a better time where you could provide for you and your family”. He stressed the importance of questioning whether the Brazilian right “has any actual interest in governing” or if the aim is simply to “remove all protections” in the pursuit of a sort of “war against all”.

    Perhaps nothing better encapsulates the apocalyptic nature of that war than the fires that have been raging in the Brazilian Amazon ahead of Bolsonaro’s expected defeat in the election, as deforesters race to deforest while the deforesting is still good.

    As Brazilians head to voting booths, here’s hoping the country is about to awaken from a bad dream.

    The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

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  • Trump’s the butt of a joke, but might still have the last laugh

    Trump’s the butt of a joke, but might still have the last laugh

    Last week, American talk show hosts had a field day with Donald Trump, ridiculing his claim to FOX News that he had the right to keep classified government records found in his Florida residence — because as president at the time, he could declassify documents by merely thinking it.

    Truly hilarious. However, while liberal mainstream media outlets are so focused on Trump’s comical wonders, his influence at home and abroad is no laughing matter.

    Despite the former US president’s personal failings and the ongoing legal investigations against him, Trump’s populist brand is making headway, both nationally and internationally. From Europe to Latin America and from North Africa to southeast Asia, more and more leaders are following in Trump’s footsteps.

    Some are winning elections, as Giorgia Meloni did in Italy last Sunday. Some are threatening hell on earth if they lose elections, as Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro has warned. And others are waging successful political campaigns and gaining ground fast, as Marine Le Pen has done in France. Even Tunisia’s populist president, Kais Saied, has taken a few pages from Trump’s playbook, attacking the system that propelled him to power, dissolving parliament, and demonising and repressing the opposition, all in the name of “the people”.

    America, of course, is the big jackpot. And thus far, Trump has defied the odds and all the political obituaries by maintaining his control over the Republican Party. Last spring, the United States editor of the Financial Times claimed that Trump was “losing his stranglehold on Republicans”. Yet by the end of the summer, the usually sober newspaper’s editorial warned that “Donald Trump now owns the Republicans” — only weeks ahead of the midterm elections.

    Indeed, according to recent polls, almost three-quarters of US Republican voters deny that Joe Biden is the country’s legitimately elected president. Many of the party’s candidates believe — or at least claim — that the 2020 presidential elections were stolen. If as predicted, they win either or both the Senate and House of Representatives come November, the Republicans are sure to derail or defund Biden’s ambitious social, economic and environmental programmes, and help pave the way for a potential Trump comeback in 2024.

    Despite his impeachment, not once but twice, and despite him losing the 2020 incumbency, Trump’s brand has remained strong around the world. Many have proudly followed in his footsteps, earning the titles of “Brazil’s Trump” (Bolsonaro), “Britain’s Trump” (Boris Johnson), the “Philippine Trump” (Rodrigo Duterte), “Israel’s Trump” (Benjamin Netanyahu) and so on.

    Yet unlike, say, Barack Obama, who inspired young leaders around the world, Trump has influence that stems mainly from the power of his office, as the former and potentially future leader of the world’s sole superpower.

    This is important, because what we call Trumpism today has long preceded Trump and will long outlast him. Europe’s nationalist right-wing groups had jeered the liberal establishment, immigration and globalisation and cheered traditional Christian family and social values decades before populist Trump entered the political scene with bluster and bravado.

    In fact, Russian President Vladimir Putin championed these causes and supported far-right parties across Europe well before Trump entered politics – lest we forget that it was Putin who supported Trump’s candidacy in the 2016 elections, leading to his first impeachment.

    At the time, Trump’s ideologue, Steve Bannon, was influenced by “Putin’s Rasputin”, Alexander Dugin, whose ideas on nationalism and traditionalism he admired and embraced. Ideas that are rooted in the thinking of the likes of the 20th-century Italian philosopher Julius Evola. Ideas that metastasised into Italian fascism and into today’s European far-right ideologies, including that of the Brothers of Italy, the party that won Sunday’s parliamentary elections.

    Of course, if you believe that Trump read Evola or any thinker of the 20th — or any other — century, I have a bridge in Washington to sell you. Obviously, Bannon did the reading and Trump did the leading. But does Trump believe what he preaches?

    In a tell-all conversation with Bob Woodward for the book, Fear, Bannon portrays Trump as a lying cynic, who is more concerned with power than principle, preoccupied with victory not values, ready to change positions to suit his interests. Bannon, who thinks of himself as a true believer, is also a charlatan.

    And make no mistake, it was his killer instinct and his unabashed unapologetic demeanour that has earned Trump the support of the Christian right and other conservatives like Bannon. He may not be a “stable genius”, but he continues to provide momentum, drive and prestige to conservative and far-right movements in America, Europe and beyond.

    Today, the US — indeed the world — “stands at an inflection point”, to use Biden’s overused term. It could swing towards harsher conservative authoritarianism or towards gentler liberal social democracy. That’s a cause for hope but also for alarm.

    A Republican victory in 2022 followed by a Trump victory in 2024 would be no less than cataclysmic for the liberal order. A triumphant and vengeful Trump would consider such a victory as vindication to do what he pleases, turning ever more reckless at home and ever more influential abroad. And even if he does not run, a younger, smarter and possibly more capable heir like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is impatiently waiting in the wings.

    Smug American liberals busy ridiculing Trump must remember: They who laugh last laugh loudest.

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