The Real Constitutional Crisis: The Constitution

Paul Street

It has been amusing to hear liberal commentators say over and over that the malignant racist rogue president Donald “I am the World’s Greatest Person” Trump is precisely the sort of terrible tyrant the United States Founding Fathers had in mind when they devised their “genius” Constitutional system of “checks and balances.” The Tiny-fingered, Tangerine-Tinted, Twitter-Tantruming Tyrant Trump (hereafter “T7”) owes his ascendancy to the White House and his continued presence there largely to the U.S. Constitution.

Ballot-marked by roughly a quarter of eligible U.S. voters in 2016, the venal aspiring fascist strongman T7 remains too transparently terrible a human being to win support from most U.S.-American voters. But so what? The hallowed 1787 parchment’s Electoral College system permits someone to ascend to the White House without winning a majority in the national popular presidential vote. Majority support is not required under the constitutionally prescribed U.S. electoral system. A President Elect does not have to win most of the votes from the very modest majority (just 55% in 2016) of the U.S. electorate that bothers to participate in the nation’s money- marinated presidential elections. The Constitution’s absurd, democracy-flunking Electoral College significantly inflates the “democratic” electoral voice of the nation’s most reactionary, white, racist, rural, and “red” (Republican) states by rendering popular vote totals irrelevant in more urban, racially diverse, high population, and reliably “blue” (Democratic) states. It grants slightly populated “red” states a disproportionately high number of collegiate Electors.

It is openly ridiculous, from a democratic, one-person-one vote perspective.

(Incidentally, Puerto Rico is a preponderantly Latinx U.S. territory that is home to more than three million people who pay U.S. [payroll, business, and estate] taxes but have no Electoral College votes even as they help fund the U.S. government [The same is true for other U.S. territories]. It has a bigger population than do seventeen U.S. states, all of whom have at least three presidential Electors and four of which [Arkansas, Kansas, Mississippi, and Nevada] have six Electors. The combined total population of the nation’s four least populous states [Wyoming, Vermont, Alaska, and North Dakota] is less than that of Puerto Rico alone. Those very predominantly white four states together have twelve presidential Electors.)

A different way in which T7 (the tiny-fingered, tangerine-tinted, Twitter-tantruming tyrant Trump) owes his 2016 victory to the Constitution is less obvious. As has been documented at length, T7 was elected largely because the neoliberal-corporate-globalist Obama-Clinton Democrats demobilized the nation’s all-too silent progressive majority. The dismal-dollar-drenched Democratic Party – the nation’s perennial Inauthentic Opposition and Fake Resistance – is vote-depressingly awful thanks in great part to the distorting role big-money campaign contributions play in determining the outcomes of the nation’s ever more preposterously expensive elections. And that role is attributable in no small measure to the holy Constitution. The Founders created the Supreme Court as a critical, presidentially appointed-for-life check on the popular will. And in two landmark decisions, Buckley v. Valeo (1976) and Citizens United (2010), the high court has ruled (in total violation of majority public opinion) that private campaign contributions are “free speech” and that there are no limits to be legally set on how much the rich and powerful can invest in the giant organized bribery project that is U.S. campaign finance. With full Supreme Court approval, the American money-politics system subjects U.S. candidates to what current US Congressman Jamin Raskin (D-MD) once accurately described as “the wealth primary” – the requirement that one either possess vast personal wealth or access to others’ vast personal wealth in order to make viable runs for elective office. T7 rode the money-politics “wealth primary” to power indirectly, through election investors’ demobilizing impact on the Democratic vote, and directly, through Trump’s self-financing (decisive in the primaries along with massive free media promotion) and campaign backing from right-wing moguls like Robert Mercer and Sheldon Adelson (critical to T7’s success in the general election).

Equally if not more horrendous is the Constitution’s role in preventing T7’s properly rapid removal. T7 announced its wretched unsuitability for the office to which it had arisen on its very first day in power. That’s when it gave a mind-bogglingly moronic, delusional, and disjointed “speech” at the CIA’s headquarters. It blustered that “we should have kept [Iraq’s] oil” and that “maybe you’ll have another chance” (to get “the oil”).   The dementia-addled low-lights included passages like these:

“I know a lot about West Point…Every time I say I had an uncle who was a great math professor at MIT…who did a fantastic job …and then they say, Is Donald Trump an intellectual? Trust me, I’m like a smart person…You know, when I was young. Of course I feel young – I feel like I was 30, 35….39…Somebody said are you young? I said I think I’m young…I remember hearing from one of my instructors, the United States has never lost a war. And then, after that, it’s like we haven’t won anything. You know the old expression, to the victory belongs the spoils? You remember I always say keep the oil….we should have kept the oil….But okay, maybe you’ll have another chance ….as you know I have a running war with the media, they are among the most dishonest human beings on earth…”

“In the seconds after [T7’s CIA monologue] finished,” Michael Wolff has recounted, “you could hear a pin drop.” The rest, as the saying goes, is history: think Charlottesville, “shithole nations,” concentration camps, the fake national emergency, the Nativist Wall, the criminal diversion of taxpayer funds, “go back to the crime-ridden countries you came from,” Kavanaugh, reckless environmental deregulation, the abrogation of asylum rights, record-setting drone war, “fire and fury,” “I might end birthright citizenship,” threats of “tough guy” violence if Congress or voters try to remove him from office, disfigured weather maps, the torture of Puerto Rico, covering for Saudi Arabia’s dismemberment of a dissident journalist, the torture of Yemen, 10,000 false statements, Alabama Hurricane threat, “no obstruction,” “the Blacks love me,” “my perfect phone call,” “the Kurds are very happy,” “this phony emoluments clause”….the maddening list of T7’s offenses goes on and on and on. An activist Website gives the following daunting list of offenses for which the aspiring fascist strongman deserves impeachment: Violation of Constitution on Domestic Emoluments; Violation of Constitution on Foreign Emoluments; Incitement of Violence; Interference With Voting Rights; Discrimination Based On Religion; Illegal War; Illegal Threat of Nuclear War; Abuse of Pardon Power; Obstruction of Justice; Politicizing Prosecutions; Failure to Reasonably Prepare for or Respond to Hurricanes Harvey and Maria; Separating Children and Infants from Families; Illegally Attempting to Influence an Election Tax Fraud and Public Misrepresentation; Assaulting Freedom of the Press; Supporting a Coup in Venezuela; Unconstitutional Declaration of Emergency; Instructing Border Patrol to Violate the Law; Refusal to Comply With Subpoenas; Declaration of Emergency Without Basis In Order to Violate the Will of Congress; Illegal Proliferation of Nuclear Technology; Illegally Removing the United States from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. I would add one: the criminal acceleration of Ecocide, the biggest issue of our or any time. Trump has brazenly violated his oath to serve the General Welfare by doing everything he can to turn the world into a giant Greenhouse Gas Chamber as soon as possible. (Where Burisma-Biden-Gate ranks on this list is a matter of ideologically mediated interpretation.) Meanwhile, T7’s dreadful and Huxwellian womanchild adviser Kellyanne Conway tells us that it “needs to tweet like the rest of us need to eat.”

But right on Day One, with T7’s insane, rambling CIA oration, it should have been clear as day that Malignant Orange was mentally (as well as morally) unfit for the demanding position to which it had been so absurdly yet constitutionally elevated. The “Stable Genius” is, among other terrible things, an abject dotard. An immediate Vote of No Confidence should have been immediately held in Congress, mandating the calling of a new national presidential election as soon as possible.

But, of course, no such commonsensical parliamentary procedure is permitted under the U.S. Constitution, which mandates absurdly time-staggered and strictly scheduled presidential elections just once every four years. That’s the ridiculously brief and spaced-out window when the corporate-managed citizenry gets it absurdly filtered (Electorally Collegialized) “input” on who sits in the nation’s most powerful job (the world’s most powerful job after 1945): two minutes once every 1460 days.

There is, it is true, a Constitutional procedure for the removal of a president on the grounds of incapacity – the 25th Amendment. But nobody takes this remedy seriously, short of a finally crippling presidential stroke or some other White House calamity/Godsend that renders T7 unable to tweet. Even if T7 could be Twenty-Fifthed out of the Oval Office, the process would only give the White House (under our “genius” Constitution) to demented evangelical fascist, Mike Pence. Who wants his apocalyptic fingers on the nuclear codes even for one day?

There is of course the impeachment path. Impeachment is now very likely thanks to the Democrats’ electoral takeover of the House of Representatives and to T7 getting its venal little red hands caught in the “deep state” Ukraine-Biden-Burisma cookie jar (Burisma-Biden Gate). But actual removal is unlikely under the nation’s sacred parchment because the U.S. Senate is majority Republican and therefore likely to hand T7 an “exoneration” he could use as an electoral asset next November. It requires just a simple majority in the U.S. House of Representatives to impeach but two-thirds of the U.S. Senate to remove a president under “our” beloved Constitution. We’ve had two presidential impeachments (Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton) in U.S. history but no removals, though the evil nut-job Richard Nixon (who Trump thinks was “framed”) would have been both impeached and removed had he not resigned first

It might seem absurd that the U.S. Senate is majority-Republican given the fact the Trumpified Republican Party is widely hated and deeply unpopular in the United States. But this irrationality (from a democratic perspective, at least) is fully constitutional, for the nation’s unjustly hallowed charter grossly exaggerates the Senate voice of the nation’s whitest, most reactionary, Republican, gun-addicted, racist, and proto-fascistic regions. The Constitution assigns two Senators to each U.S. state regardless of (steep) differences in state population.

Like the Electoral College, it’s totally ludicrous from a democratic standpoint. “Red” (Republican) Wyoming, home to 573,720 Americans, holds U.S. Senatorial parity with “blue” (Democratic) California, where more than 39 million Americans reside. That’s one U.S. Senator for every 19.5 million Californians versus one U.S. Senator for every 287,000 Wyoming residents.

Just one of New York City’s 5 boroughs, bright-blue Brooklyn, has 2.6 million people. If Brooklyn were a state and US Senators were apportioned there with the same populace-to-Senator ratio as red Wyoming, Brooklyn would have 9 U.S. Senators, al Democrats.

The following 13 states together have a combined population of roughly 34. 4 million: Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming.  Together these 13 “red states” send 26 Republicans to the U.S. Senate. The single “blue state” of California, with a population more than 5 million higher than these 13 states combined, sends 2 Democrats to the upper chamber of Congress.

Due to “a growing population shift from the agricultural interior to crowded corridors along the coast,” Daniel Lazare noted two years ago, it is mathematically possible now to “cobble together a Senate majority with states that account for just 17.6 percent of the popular vote.”

(And by the way, the bright blue District of Columbia is home to 693,972 people, more than all of Wyoming and just roughly 46,000 less than that of Alaska.  It is absurdly denied voting representation in either the House or the Senate.)

This preposterous (from a pro-democracy perspective) apportionment system means that the Republican Senate majority answers to a very disproportionately white, rural, and reactionary section of the electorate.

How idiotic (from a democracy standpoint) is that?

And what, by the way, would the impeachment and removal of Herr Donald give the nation under the “genius” Constitution but the presidency of the arch-right-wing Christian Fascist Mike Pence? There’s a case to be made for impeaching and removing Trump anyway, but Pence’s constitutionally ordained ascendancy is no small negative incentive.

Look at the following passage from Nancy Pelosi’s recent House floor speech in support of open impeachment hearings on the orange malignancy’s abuse of power in the Biden-Burisma Gate case:

“And, what is at stake?  What is at stake, in all of this, is nothing less than our democracy…I proudly stand next to the flag…which stands for our democracy. When Benjamin Franklin came out of Independence Hall –  you heard this over and over – on September 17, 1787, the day our Constitution was adopted, he came out of Independence Hall, people said to him, ‘Dr. Franklin, what do we have a monarchy or a republic?’  And, he said, as you know, he said, ‘A republic, if we can keep it.’  If we can keep it.”

“And this Constitution is the blueprint for our republic and not a monarchy.  But, when we have a President who says, ‘Article II says I can do whatever I want,’ that is in defiance of the separation of powers.  That’s not what our Constitution says. So, what is at stake is our democracy.  What are we fighting for?  Defending our democracy for the people.”

You know in the early days of our revolution, Thomas Paine said, ‘The times have found us.’  The times found our Founders to declare independence from a monarchy, to fight a war of independence, write our founding documents and thank God they made them amendable so we can always be expanding freedom.  And, the genius, again that genius of that Constitution was the separation of power.  Any usurping of that power is a violation of our oath of office.  So, proudly, you all, we all raised our hands to protect and defend and support the Constitution of the United States.  That’s what this vote is about.”

“Today – we think the time found our Founders, the times found others in the course of our history to protect our democracy, to keep our country united.  The times have found each and every one of us in this room and in our country to pay attention to how we protect and defend the Constitution of the United States – honoring the vision of our Founders who declared independence from a monarch and established a country contrary to that principle, honoring men and women in uniform who fight for our freedom and for our democracy and honoring the aspirations of our children so that no President, whoever he or she may be in the future, could decide that Article II says they can do whatever they want… let us honor our oath of office.  Let us defend our democracy” (emphasis added).

Notice anything wrong here? Pelosi accurately described the nature of the government blueprinted by the ruling-class Founders just one time: a republic. She got it wrong six times when she called it “our democracy.” As I have shown (with no special claim of originality) here and elsewhere on numerous occasions, democracy – the rule of the popular majority – was the last thing the Founding Fathers of the United States ever wanted to see break out in their newly created white male property-holders’ republic, which later developed into a corporate state-capitalist oligarchy. Their charter was brilliantly crafted precisely to keep democracy at bay in numerous ways that cripple our efforts to practice serious popular sovereignty 232 years later.

At the same time, even the explicitly non-democratic “small-r” republican promise of intra-elite checks and balances is undermined today by hyper-partisan politics so extreme that 9 in 10 Republicans oppose the House impeachment inquiry while 9 in 10 Democrats support it. The Founders’ “genius” scheme was always flawed by the possibility, indeed likelihood, of party politics overriding the Constitution’s heralded checks and balances. What does Congress’ and/or the Supreme Court’s supposedly grand institutional power to check the tyranny of the imperial presidency really mean when Congress’s powerful upper body (the Senate) and the high court (whose presidential for-life appointees are approved only by the Senate) is controlled by the same party that controls the White House?

Candidate Trump was not that far off when he said that his Red State party base would still back him even if he “st[ood] in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shot somebody.” None of T7’s long list of sickening outrages (of which the Ukraine-Biden scandal is just one example and arguably not the worst one) have shaken the dedicated support T7’s white-Amerikaner “heartland” fans give their Dear “Make America Hate Again” Leader. At this point, one has to wonder if real-time video of the orange malignancy dismembering and eating live children could dent their faith in the Great God Trump. T7 taps his neofascist base’s lust for an authoritarian master who smites liberal and left elites and puts brown-skinned people back in “their place.” The herrenvolk are sticking by their Manimal president come Hell or high water. Many among the nation’s heavily armed white male militia cohort are ready to go “full animal” themselves, proclaiming their readiness to act on the Great God’s not-so veiled call for “Civil War” if Congress acts seriously on its constitutional duty to check the current tyrannical POTUS. Even Major League Baseball umpire Rob Blake has tweeted that he will buy an assault rifle to use in “CIVAL WAR” if Trump is impeached.

It’s depressing that a third or so of the electorate clings so tenaciously to the noxious neofascist sociopath in the White House. But it is equally demoralizing that T7’s “deplorable” (something horrible Hillary got right) base enjoys such absurdly outsized political voice in the fake-democracy granted to us by our slave-owning “founders,” for whom popular sovereignty (democracy) was a dreadful specter much to be checkmated in advance.

To no small degree, “our” (their) archaic Constitution is the constitutional crisis. It helped hatched the Trumpenstein and it is helping keep it in office perhaps for five or, God help us, more years. The way to get rid of this terrible tyrant is through a mass and prolonged popular rebellion that includes among its demands the call for a new national charter, one that includes among its provisions (just for starters) the abolition of anti-democratic absurdities like the Electoral College, the disenfranchisements of Puerto Rico and Washington DC, the provision of two Senators to each state regardless of its population size, the lifetime appointment of Supreme Court Justices, and the eviction of private money from public elections. The whole damn system that spat up/shat out Malignant Orange is guilty as Hell. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote not long before his death, “the real issue to be faced” beyond superficial matters is “the radical reconstruction of society itself.”

Is there a place for ethics in Smart Cities?

Jaspal Kaur Sadhu Singh

It is difficult to win a debate on ethics when you are pitted against a crowd of tech-acolytes. I was taking the position that a more vital consideration in developing cities are ethical ones rather than the smartness of the technology utilised in the infrastructure and running of facilities or services in cities. The organisers of the Maxis Innovation Dialogue invited me to debate the motion that building Ethical Cities is far more important than Smart Cities (held on 30 September 2019 at Found8, KL Sentral).

The ethicists were pitted against the techists at polarized ends. External to the debate setting, the most prudent position to take is the middle ground which suggests that we can build Smart Cities that have altruistic outcomes and serve the communities that reside in them. The concern here lies in the question as to whether we are being too hasty in turning to technology to resolve all the problems that plague city-dwellers. Phrases such as “Smart Cities” seem to appeal to the modern sensibilities of progressiveness, especially in raising our quality of life, but are we saying that urban problems can only be resolved with technology and therefore the responsibility to develop Smart Cities to a certain extent is to be placed on the shoulders of tech companies?

Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad alerted us to the stumbling blocks in developing Smart Cities which lies in involved parties working in silos. At the launch of the Malaysia Smart City Framework on 23 September, Tun alluded to the need for cooperation between various tiers of government and the private sector as well as reminding us that whilst developing Smart Cities may integrate our cities with technological solutions, the prosperity and well-being of the rakyat was the ultimate goal (The Star, Smart city players working in silos hindering development as a whole, says Dr M, 23 September 2019). Hence, it cannot be a case of using technology for technology sake.

In re-calibrating our debate of Smart Cities vs Ethical Cities, I referenced the contents of an astute opinion written by Badrul Hisham Ismail (The Star, Smart city dumb people?, 29 September 2019) in making my case. The author raises a multitude of concerns that perambulate the building of Smart Cities. One of these concerns is that vulnerable sections of communities may be further marginalised where technological solutions may be inaccessible, such as in the case of adopting cashless payment systems. When adopting such systems, one has to bear in mind sections of our society who have no information or access to connectivity, devices or base knowledge and skills to handle the technology.

Ethical Cities can incorporate “smart” initiatives where use of technology is absolutely essential such as waste management through artificial sensors, reusing grey water, alleviating traffic congestion, and efficient use of resources such as electricity to illuminate community spaces. However, in most cities that require attention, poverty is the greatest concern. Cities are not effectively dealing with rising property prices, the lack of public transportation that is affordable and intelligently connected, congestion, pollution, lack of accessible healthcare, quality education, and most importantly, safe spaces for our children to grow and become well-developed adults.

With everything else, we tend to be convinced with the use of gimmickry and gadgetry pandered to us by tech companies without real qualification or substantial justification. One example that has faced much resistance is the development of the waterfront in Toronto, Canada – a disused part of the Quayside area – by Sidewalk Labs, which is owned by Alphabet (the company that owns Google). The project has just obtained its initial approval in October, subject to conditions and restrictions, for instance, data collected will be treated as a public asset. It faced a barrage of criticisms and questions, in particular the motives of big tech giants becoming involved in urban development. One expert critique called the initiative as “surveillance capitalism”. Other questioned the experience of the tech giant’s experience in urban planning. Are residents within these Smart Cities to end up being subjects of a larger experiment controlled by algorithms and AI tools cloaked as magic potions which are miraculously able to resolve the ailments of our cities?

There exists a need to ensure that our Smart Cities are indeed Ethical Cities. We have to ask the right questions to elicit the answers that will allow us to make well informed decisions. There must be public consultation where details of the development which is open to scrutiny in town hall meetings with residents. At every phase of the development, there must be continued monitoring by city council officials as they are accountable to the residents who pay their assessment taxes. There must be an altruistic end to any integration of innovation, clearly researched and rationalised as a vital need or resolution to the problems that blights a city. Planning experts, environmentalists, social scientists, educators, and experts from any sector for that matter who deliver services to the community, must be engaged. There must be clear compliance of procurement laws. There must be a clear framework of how any use of AI which harvest’s rich data from residents and users of the city’s facilities is managed. Finally, there must be an independent panel of experts representing all parties, but mostly the community, must be established as part of the monitoring system.

Cities need to be sustainable, resilient, economically vibrant, inclusive and democratic. Keeping in mind that technology is the mere scaffolding that lifts the structures of our society, cities cannot be built from technology up; they are built from the needs of the humans who reside within them.

Curfew Panda

Binoy Kampmark

It seems a tall, ambitious and very authoritarian order: imposing bans on persons under the age of 18 from playing online games between 22:00 and 08:00; rationing gaming on weekdays to 90 minutes and three hours on holidays and weekends.  This is the response of the People’s Republic of China to fears that video game addiction must be combated, less with modest treatment regimes than the curfew method.  Perhaps more importantly, the aim here, as with other systems of state surveillance, is to create a system of verification matching a user’s identity with government data.

The guidelines also seek to restrict the money minors can spend on online games – those between 8 and 16 are permitted additions of $29 in digital gaming outlay each month.  Those between 16 and 18 can add $57.  Teachers, parents and the good authorities are also encouraged to influence the gaming habits of the young.  Onward principled instructors.

Video gaming, with its virtual communities, has created worlds of isolation.  As John Lanchester would observe in 2009, “There is no other medium that produces so pure a cultural segregation as video games, so clean-cut a division between the audience and the non-audience.”  When the video-gamer has made an appearance in cultural discourses, it has usually been as a spectacular horror story, violence on screen begetting violence off screen. This nexus remains forced but no less convincing for the morally concerned.

The concern now is less that minors will rush off and gun down their peers than dissipate themselves in cerebral sludge and apathy.  In November 1982, the US Surgeon General C. Everett Koop declared his personal war on video games, which offered “nothing constructive” and consumed the “body and soul” of their users.  While having no evidence at the time about the effect of such games on children, he, according to the New York Times, “predicted statistical evidence would be forthcoming soon from the health care fields.”

The current literature is peppered with warnings that the Internet has ceased being the rosy frontier of freedom and very much the hostage taker of controls and desires.  Freedom has become vegetate and dulled; users have become narcotised.  In 2012, Daria J. Kuss and Mark D. Griffiths in Brain Sciences observed that, over “the past decade, research has accumulated suggesting that excessive Internet use can lead to the development of a behavioural addiction.”  Such an addiction “had been considered a serious threat to mental health and the excessive use of the Internet has been linked to a variety of negative psychosocial consequences.”

The review of 18 studies by Kuss and Griffiths makes for despairing reading.  Neural circuitry is adjusted via internet and gaming addiction (“neuroadaptation and structural changes”); behaviourally, gaming addicts suggest constriction “with regards to their cognitive functioning in various domains.”  But as with everything else such studies on claimed influence and corruption face the usual sceptical rebukes; research is criticised, if not ignored altogether, for being heavy with biases and distortions.

We are left with such non-committal observations as those of Pete Etchells, who makes the rather dull point in Lost in a Good Game that, “There are as yet no universal or conclusive truths about what researches do or do not know about the effects that video games have on us.”  Etchells certainly does his best in underscoring the good effects, claiming that “video game play is one of the most fundamentally important activities we can take part in”.  Consider, for instance, escapism when facing the death of a parent.

Such views have not impressed the World Health Organisation, which has come down firmly on the side of the anti-gaming puritans. The body has added its voice to the debate, describing such addiction rather discouragingly as “gaming disorder”.  It is “defined in the 11th Revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) as a pattern of gaming behaviour (‘digital-gaming’ or ‘video-gaming’) characterised by impaired control over gaming, increasing priority given to gaming over other activities to the extent that gaming takes precedence over other interests and daily activities, and continuation or escalation of gaming despite the occurrence of negative consequences.”

Such a view was bound to cause a flutter of irritation in the gaming industry.  As Ferris Jabr noted last month in The New York Times Magazine, the word addiction is an uncomfortable combine involving religious scolding, scientific disapproval, and colloquial use describing “almost any fixation.”

With such opinions circulating, state regulators have decided to come out swinging.  In 2018, a game-obsessed China, with the then world’s largest market, unearthed a new gaming regulator: the State Administration of Press and Publications, operating under the auspices of the publicity department of the Chinese Communist Party.  The GAPP, as outlined in a document published on the website of the education ministry, would “implement controls on the total number of online video games, control the number of new video games operated online, explore an age-appropriate reminder system in line with China’s national conditions, and take measures to limit the amount of time minors [spend on games].”

But the rationale for having such a body is not exactly one of enlightenment.  Fine to wean the young off their addictive devices and platforms, encouraging healthier living, but supplanting it with the guidance of the all-powerful President Xi Jinping?  Much equivalent is this to the idea of replacing a symptom with a cult, a questionable solution at best.

Video game companies have made modest efforts to rein in times of use for those of certain age.  The world’s largest gaming company, Tencent, took the plunge by limiting game time to one hour a day for those under the age of 12, and two for those between 12 and 18.  Such moves seem ineffectual given the sheer variety of games users can expect to sample.

Having such regulators, whatever the noble purpose, is an incitement to capriciousness.  Times of use can be adjusted in accordance with whim. The genres of games can be pulled from the market at any given moment for stretched political and social reasons.  The Chinese case is rich with examples, including the designation that mah-jong and poker be removed the approval list over concerns regarding illegal gambling.

The effort to restrict those of a certain age from immersing themselves in virtual reality for fear of contaminating the world of flesh and feeling remains current and, in many circles, popular.  The Chinese experiment is bound to be catching, but going behind the regulations, weaknesses are evident.  The PRC gaming restrictions do not, for instance, cover offline experiences or single-player forms.  The addict need merely modify the habit.  The true purpose of such moves remain conventional and oppressive: the assertion of state power and surveillance over individual choice.

Neoliberalism’s children rise up to demand justice in Chile and the world

Medea Benjamin & Nicolas J S Davies

Uprisings against the corrupt, generation-long dominance of neoliberal “center-right” and “center-left” governments that benefit the wealthy and multinational corporations at the expense of working people are sweeping country after country all over the world.

In this Autumn of Discontent, people from Chile, Haiti and Honduras to Iraq, Egypt and Lebanon are rising up against neoliberalism, which has in many cases been imposed on them by U.S. invasions, coups and other brutal uses of force. The repression against activists has been savage, with more than 250 protesters killed in Iraq in October alone, but the protests have continued and grown. Some movements, such as in Algeria and Sudan, have already forced the downfall of long-entrenched, corrupt governments.

A country that is emblematic of the uprisings against neoliberalism is Chile. On October 25, 2019, a million Chileans–out of a population of about 18 million–took to the streets across the country, unbowed by government repression that has killed at least 20 of them and injured hundreds more. Two days later, Chile’s billionaire president Sebastian Piñera fired his entire cabinet and declared, “We are in a new reality. Chile is different from what it was a week ago.”

The people of Chile appear to have validated Erica Chenoweth’s research on non-violent protest movements, in which she found that once over 3.5% of a population rise up to non-violently demand political and economic change, no government can resist their demands. It remains to be seen whether Piñera’s response will be enough to save his own job, or whether he will be the next casualty of the 3.5% rule.

It is entirely fitting that Chile should be in the vanguard of the protests sweeping the world in this Autumn of Discontent, since Chile served as the laboratory for the neoliberal transformation of economics and politics that has swept the world since the 1970s.

When Chile’s socialist leader Salvador Allende was elected in 1970, after a 6-year-long covert CIA operation to prevent his election, President Nixon ordered U.S. sanctions to “make the economy scream.”

In his first year in office, Allende’s progressive economic policies led to a 22% increase in real wages, as work began on 120,000 new housing units and he started to nationalize copper mines and other major industries. But growth slowed in 1972 and 1973 under the pressure of brutal U.S. sanctions, as in Venezuela and Iran today. U.S. sabotage of the new government intensified, and on September 11th, 1973, Allende was overthrown in a CIA-backed coup. The new leader, General Augusto Pinochet, executed or disappeared at least 3,200 people, held 80,000 political prisoners in his jails and ruled Chile as a brutal dictator until 1990, with the full support of the U.S. and other Western governments.

Under Pinochet, Chile’s economy was submitted to radical “free market” restructuring by the “Chicago Boys,” a team of Chilean economics students trained at the University of Chicago under the supervision of Milton Friedman for the express purpose of conducting this brutal experiment on their country. U.S. sanctions were lifted and Pinochet sold off Chile’s public assets to U.S. corporations and wealthy investors. Their program of tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, together with privatization and cuts in pensions, healthcare, education and other public services, has since been duplicated across the world.

The Chicago Boys pointed to rising economic growth rates in Chile as evidence of the success of their neoliberal program, but by 1988, 48% of Chileans were living below the poverty line. Chile was and still is the wealthiest country in Latin America, but it is also the country with the largest gulf between rich and poor.

The governments elected after Pinochet stepped down in 1990 have followed the neoliberal model of alternating pro-corporate “center-right” and “center-left” governments, as in the U.S. and other developed countries. Neither respond to the needs of the poor or working class, who pay higher taxes than their tax-evading bosses, on top of ever-rising living costs, stagnant wages and limited access to voucherized education and a stratified public-private healthcare system. Indigenous communities are at the very bottom of this corrupt social and economic order. Voter turnout has predictably declined from 95% in 1989 to 47% in the most recent presidential election in 2017.

If Chenoweth is right and the million Chileans in the street have breached the tipping point for successful non-violent popular democracy, Chile may be leading the way to a global political and economic revolution.

Did Iran Conduct the Abqaiq Attack with Russia’s Blessings?

Nauman Sadiq

Although the Houthi rebels based in Yemen claimed the responsibility for the September 14 complex attack involving drones and cruise missiles on the Abqaiq petroleum facility and the Khurais oil field in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, and they have UAV-X drones having a range of 1,500 kilometers, Washington dismissed the possibility.

Instead, it accused Tehran of mounting the attack from Iran’s territory which is unlikely because Tehran would never leave behind smoking gun evidence because the Persian Gulf is monitored round the clock by American satellites and surveillance aircraft. The most likely suspects were Iran-backed militias in Iraq because 18 drones and 7 cruise missiles were launched from the north.

Quoting Iraqi intelligence officials, David Hearst reported for the Middle East Eye a day after the September 14 attack that the attack was mounted by the Hashed al-Shabi militias from its bases in southern Iraq. What lends credence to the report is the fact that in the weeks preceding the attack, Washington had accused the Hashed al-Shabi militias of mounting another attack in eastern Saudi Arabia claimed by the Houthi rebels because the oil-rich Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia is nearer the Iraq border than to the Houthi stronghold in Saada, Yemen.

Moreover, weeks before the attack, the Iran-backed militias blamed the US and Israel in August for airstrikes on their bases in Iraq targeting the missile storage facilities. The missiles were recently provided to the militias by Iran. It’s worth noting that 5,000 American troops and numerous aircraft are still deployed in Iraq, therefore the likely culprit targeting the Iran-backed militias in Iraq was Washington.

Besides planting limpet mines on the UAE’s oil tankers and shooting down an American Global Hawk surveillance drone, the September 14 attack on the Abqaiq petroleum facility was the third major attack against the US interests in the Persian Gulf. That the UAE had forewarning about imminent attacks is proved by the fact that weeks before the attacks, it had recalled forces from Yemen battling the Houthi rebels and redeployed them to man the UAE’s borders.

Nevertheless, a puerile prank like planting limpet mines on oil tankers can be overlooked but major provocations like downing a $200-million surveillance aircraft and mounting a drone and missile attack on the Abqaiq petroleum facility that crippled its oil-processing functions for weeks can have serious repercussions. Unless Iran got the green light to go ahead with the attacks from a major power that equals Washington’s military might, such confrontation would amount to a suicidal approach.

Therefore, the recent acts of subversion in the Persian Gulf should be assessed in the broader backdrop of the New Cold War that has begun after the Ukrainian crisis in 2014 when Russia occupied the Crimean peninsula and Washington imposed sanctions on Russian entities.

The Kremlin’s immediate response to the escalation by Washington was that it jumped into the fray in Syria in September 2015 when the militant proxies of Washington and its regional clients were on the verge of drawing a wedge between Damascus and the Alawite heartland of coastal Latakia, which could have led to the imminent downfall of the Assad government.

With the help of the Russian air power, the Shia-led government has since liberated most of Syria’s territory from the Sunni insurgents, excluding Idlib in the northwest occupied by the Turkish-backed jihadists and Deir al-Zor and the Kurdish-held areas in the east, thus inflicting a humiliating defeat on Washington and its militant proxies.

Several momentous events have taken place in the Syrian theater of proxy wars and on the global stage that have further exacerbated the New Cold War between Moscow and Washington:

On February 7, 2018, the US B-52 bombers and Apache helicopters struck a contingent of Syrian government troops and allied forces in Deir al-Zor province of eastern Syria that reportedly killed and wounded scores of Russian military contractors working for the Russian private security firm, the Wagner Group.

The survivors described the bombing as an absolute massacre, and Moscow lost more Russian nationals in one day than it had lost throughout its more than two-year-long military campaign in support of the Syrian government since September 2015.

Washington’s objective in striking Russian contractors was that the US-backed and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) – which is mainly comprised of Kurdish YPG militias – had reportedly handed over the control of some areas east of the Euphrates River to Deir al-Zor Military Council (DMC), which is the Arab-led component of SDF, and had relocated several battalions of Kurdish YPG militias to Afrin and along Syria’s northern border with Turkey in order to defend the Kurdish-held areas against the onslaught of the Turkish armed forces and allied Syrian militant proxies during Ankara’s “Operation Olive Branch” in Syria’s northwest that lasted from January to March 2018.

Syrian forces with the backing of Russian contractors took advantage of the opportunity and crossed the Euphrates River to capture an oil refinery located to the east of the Euphrates River in the Kurdish-held area of Deir al-Zor.

The US Air Force responded with full force, knowing well the ragtag Arab component of SDF – mainly comprised of local Arab tribesmen and mercenaries to make the Kurdish-led SDF appear more representative and inclusive in outlook – was simply not a match for the superior training and arms of the Syrian troops and Russian military contractors, consequently causing a carnage in which scores of Russian nationals lost their lives.

A month after the massacre of Russian military contractors in Syria, on March 4, 2018, Sergei Skripal, a Russian double agent working for the British foreign intelligence service, and his daughter Yulia were found unconscious on a public bench outside a shopping center in Salisbury. A few months later, in July last year, a British woman, Dawn Sturgess, died after touching the container of the nerve agent that allegedly poisoned the Skripals.

In the case of the Skripals, Theresa May, then the prime minister of the United Kingdom, promptly accused Russia of attempted assassination and the British government concluded that Skripal and his daughter were poisoned with a Moscow-made, military-grade nerve agent, Novichok.

Sergei Skripal was recruited by the British MI6 in 1995, and before his arrest in Russia in December 2004, he was alleged to have blown the cover of scores of Russian secret agents. He was released in a spy swap deal in 2010 and was allowed to settle in Salisbury. Both Sergei Skripal and his daughter have since recovered and were discharged from hospital in May last year.

Nevertheless, besides the killings of Russian contractors in Syria, another factor that might have prompted the Vladimir Putin government to escalate the conflict with the Western powers was that the Russian presidential elections were slated for March 18, 2018, which Putin was poised to win anyway but he won a resounding electoral victory with 77% vote by whipping up chauvinism of the Russian electorate in the aftermath of the war of words with the Western powers.

After the Salisbury poisonings in March last year, the US, UK and several European nations expelled scores of Russian diplomats and the Trump administration ordered the closure of the Russian consulate in Seattle. In a retaliatory move, Russia also expelled a similar number of American, British and European diplomats, and ordered the closure of American consulate in Saint Petersburg. The relations between Moscow and Western powers reached their lowest ebb since the break-up of the former Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War in December 1991.

Then, an alleged chemical weapons attack took place in Douma, Syria, on April 7, 2018, and Donald Trump ordered a cruise missile strike in Syria on April 14 last year in collaboration with the Theresa May government in the UK and the Emmanuel Macron administration in France. The strike took place little over a year after a similar cruise missile strike on al-Shayrat airfield on April 6, 2017, after an alleged chemical weapons attack in Khan Sheikhoun, though both cruise missile strikes were nothing more than a show of force.

It bears mentioning that the American air and missile strikes in Syria are not only illegal under the international law but are also unlawful according to the American laws. While striking the Islamic State targets in Iraq and Syria, Washington availed itself of the war on terror provisions in the US laws, known as the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), but those laws do not give the president the power to order strikes against the Syrian government targets without the approval of the US Congress which has the sole authority to declare war.

The Intercept reported last year that the Trump administration derived the authority to strike the Syrian government targets based on a “top secret” memorandum of the Office of Legal Counsel that even the US Congress couldn’t see. Complying with the norms of transparency and the rule of law were never the strong points of the American democracy but the Trump administration has done away even with the pretense of accountability and checks and balances.

The fact that out of 105 total cruise missiles deployed in the April 14, 2018, strikes against a military research facility in the Barzeh district of Damascus and two alleged chemical weapons storage facilities in Homs, 85 were launched by the US, 12 by the French and 8 by the UK aircrafts demonstrated the unified resolve of the Western powers against Russia in the aftermath of the Salisbury poisonings in the UK a month earlier.

Finally, over the years, Israel has not only provided medical aid and material support to the militant groups battling Damascus – particularly to various factions of the Free Syria Army (FSA) and al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate al-Nusra Front in Daraa and Quneitra bordering the Israel-occupied Golan Heights – but Israel’s air force has virtually played the role of the air force of Syrian militants and conducted hundreds of airstrikes in Syria during the eight-year conflict.

In an interview to New York Times in January, Israel’s outgoing Chief of Staff Lt. General Gadi Eisenkot confessed that the Netanyahu government approved his shift in strategy in January 2017 to step up airstrikes in Syria. Consequently, more than 200 Israeli airstrikes were launched against the Syrian targets in 2017 and 2018, as revealed by the Israeli Intelligence Minister Israel Katz in September last year.

In 2018 alone, Israel’s air force dropped 2,000 bombs in Syria. The purpose of Israeli airstrikes in Syria has been to degrade Iran’s guided missile technology provided to Damascus and its Lebanon-based proxy, Hezbollah, which poses an existential threat to Israel’s regional security.

Taking cover of the Israeli airstrikes, however, Washington has conducted several of its own airstrikes on targets in Syria and Iraq and blamed them on Israel. Besides the airstrikes on the missile storage facilities of Iran-backed militias in Iraq, it is suspected that the US could be behind a recent airstrike at the newly built Imam Ali military base in eastern Syria at al-Bukamal-Qaim border crossing alleged to be hosting the Iranian Quds Force operatives.

Though after Russia provided S-300 missile system to the Syrian military after a Russian surveillance aircraft was shot down during an Israeli incursion into the Syrian airspace, on September 18 last year, killing 15 Russians onboard, and then after the recent subversive events in the Persian Gulf threatening the global oil supply, the Israeli and American airstrikes in Syria have been significantly scaled down. In fact, the main objective of the attack on the Abqaiq petroleum facility was to send a clear signal to Washington and its regional clients that any further confrontation in the region will be met with befitting reprisals.

Lurking Fears of Tamils After Presidential Election on November 16, 2019

Thambu Kanagasabai

The Presidential election on November 16, 2019 will usher in a new President, either Gotabaya Rajapaksha or Sajith Premadasa. Intensive campaign with promises suiting the locations and people are pouring from candidates to woo the voters, particularly Tamils by Sajith Premadasa. The promises thrown before Tamils will have a short life span as their deaths will be a certainty once a President is sworn in for the office, as the implementation of promises lies in the hands of MAHA SANGA and other radicals.

Presidential candidate Gotabaya Rajapakshe is waging a campaign solely relying on his role as Defence Secretary after conducting the genocidal war with success on May 2009, There is a bitter tug-of-war going between Gotabaya Rajapakshe and Field Marshal Sarath Fonseka as to the ownership of the victory in the war, with neither of them owning responsibility for the killings of more than 70,000 civilians as per UN’s investigation, and accused of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity etc.  The recent statements of Gotabaya Rajapakshe in his election meetings have confirmed his rejection and contempt for the basic universally recognized norms of accountability and justice, laid out in United Nations Charter and various Conventions.

In his first public meeting in Anuradapura, he stated that “Military was given the due respect only after 2005, when his brother Mahinda Rajapaksha became the President. This situation completely changed after 2015”.“Military Intelligence Officers have been arrested and locked up in jails accused of fabricated offences, once I became the President on November 16, 2019 my first action on November 17th is to release all these military officers from prisons”, apparently with no conditions or any charges or any prosecution. This purported release will include those convicted and serving jail terms, for committing murders, robberies, abductions, torture, drug smuggling, sexual violence etc. This sweeping and contemptuous statement of Gotabaya Rajapakshe has sent chills and shivers and have shattered the hopes of victims and causing concern of United Nations and the International Community. These statements of Gotabaya Rajapakshe undoubtedly are nothing but pure disrespect, insult and contempt hurled against the Sri Lankan judiciary, besides dealing  a deadly blow to the existence of a democratic system of government in Sri Lanka. The dreadful consequences that could follow from these deplorable and derogatory actions will be sending shivers and fears to the ordinary law abiding citizens even among Sinhalese people if and when Gotabaya Rajapakshe becomes President who could also kill the independent functioning of state institutions with one stroke.

Above all, Gotabaya Rajapakshe is not a politician who has held any political office. He is purely a military officer immersed with military mindset and thinking which makes him politically unfit to hold a political office and rule a nation which is mired with plethora of social, political and human rights problems for the last seventy years.

Gotabaya Rajapakshe has purely targeted the Sinhala/Buddhist voters taking up the evils of Sri Lankan politics, Buddhism, Sinhala chauvinism and communalism. He appears to be targeting to gain the votes of Security Forces and their family members to pursue the politics of militarization.

The possible scenario in the event of Gotabaya Rajapakshe becoming the President can be visualized as follows:

1. Being a military mindset person, one can expect rigorous enforcement of obedience and behaviour from everyone, disregarding rule of law and fundamental rights of a citizen.
2. Political foes and traitors will face correctional punishment even possible elimination depending on the severity of their roles and harms.
3. The purported release of all convicted military officials will usher in a reign of terror and fear among all citizens, as the security forces would be emboldened to commit crimes without any fear of prosecution, almost a free run being granted and licence to the security officials and government officials to break the laws of the land with impunity even resorting to personal vengeances and vendetta.
4. The military presence in the North and East will substantially increase accompanied with intimidation, threats and even extra-judicial killings for dissenters with white van abductions including enforced disappearances and sexual violence. A climate of fear and insecurity will prevail in the Tamil areas. Even dissents and political enemies among the Sinhalese will not be spared. It is to be recalled that present President Msaithiripala Sirisena was staying in an unknown location until the election results were out in January 2015 fearing Mahinda Rajapakshe return to power.

Gotabaya Rajapakse’s rejection of thirteen demands put forwarded by the five Tamil parties is not surprising as he being accused of war crimes by United Nations and UNHRC and to expect accountability and justice is like the dog barking at the moon for a bite as Sri Lanka has been dubbed as an island of impunity by civic groups and human rights activists like Madam Jasmin Sooka of International Truth and Justice Project – Sri Lanka. Under Gotabaya Rajapakshe’s Presidency, United Nations, UNHRC Resolutions and their Recommendations will remain worthless and in-fact gathering dust. It is to be noted that Sri Lankan Government has already rejected its own sponsored HRC Resolution 30/1 and its Recommendations.

Above all, Sri Lanka will hold the unique distinction and honour to have an accused war criminal as President of a democratic country paying scant respect to accountability and justice, while brushing aside all United Nations Conventions which call for observance by the signatory states including Sri Lanka.

It will be interesting to watch how the United Nations, International Community and particularly democratic countries and the co-sponsors of UNHRC Resolution 30/1 and 40/1 will react, and treat a United Nations accused war criminal holding the office of Presidency. Will they live up to enforce the observance of commitments and undertakings or Sri Lanka or lay a Red Carpet welcome giving priority to geo-political, economic and military considerations involving Sri Lanka.

One has to keep the fingers crossed whether United Nations, UNHRC, International Community and the co-sponsors of the UNHRC Resolutions 30/1 and 40/1 will adopt proper sanctions against the Government under Gotabaya Rajapaksha in pursuance of accountability under

COMMAND RESPONSIBILITY?

In conclusion, Gotabaya Rajapakshe as a President will most probably ignore and neglect the ethnic issues and political problems facing the  Tamils, not to mention any just political settlement as he has completely omitted in his election manifesto any mention of Tamil’s problem or any political proposals, not even any discussion or consultation with Tamil parties or their leaders. As such, one can surely start counting the date of state terrorism and strangle hold of military in the North and East while Tamil civilians can expect to continue their lives of surveillance and state terrorism.

However, Gotabaya Rajapakshe’s control of government may prove to be a double-edged sword and a blessing in disguise for the Tamils forcing the United Nations/UNHRC/The co-sponsors of the UNHRC Resolutions 30/1 and 40/1 to carve out separate state for them [as existed before 1816 before the British rule] to ensure their existence through the right of self-determination as stipulated in the United Nations Covenant on Civil and Political Rights – Article 01 of 1966.

Qatar: Education As A Weapon

Andre Vltchek

There seems to be no limit to Qataris tossing around their wealth. This tiny kingdom with 2.6 million inhabitantsis full of ridiculously lavish gold-plated palaces, most of them built with terrible taste. It is overflowing with Lamborghini racing cars and Rolls Royce limousines, and now, even with ludicrously wasteful air-conditioned sidewalks (cold air blows from below, into the 35C heat).

Ruled by the House of Thani, the State of Qatar is truly a strange place: according to the latest count conducted in early 2017, its total population was 2.6 million, of which 313,000 were Qatari citizens and 2.3 million ‘expatriates’, both the low-wage migrant workers, and the lavishly remunerated Western professionals.

Foreigners are doing everything; sweeping the floors, cleaning garbage, cooking, taking care of babies, flying Qatar Airways planes, performing medical surgeries and building office towers. Manual laborers are discriminated against; beaten, cheated, humiliated. Many migrant workers have been dying under “mysterious circumstances”. But they are still coming, mainly because Qatar, withits GDP per capita of $128,702, is the richest country on earth, and because there is huge demand for hundreds of different professions. Never mind that the perks are for the ‘natives’ only, while the minimum wage for foreigners is only around $200 per month.

Jet from al Udeid base

Locked in a bitter dispute with its neighbors, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, Qatar is moving closer and closer to its best allies – the United States and United Kingdom. The Al Udeid Air Base hosts over 100 aircraft of the United States Air Force, Royal Air Force, and other Gulf War Coalition partners. It accommodates the forward headquarters of United States Central Command, No. 83 Expeditionary Air Group RAF, and the 379th Air Expeditionary Wing of the USAF. Presently, at least 11,000 U.S. servicemen are permanently located here. Al Udeid Air Base is considered the most important military airport in the region, used for operations in countries such as Syria and Afghanistan.

Qatar has been playing an extremely important role in destabilizing Syria, and other countries in the Middle East. It has been spreading fundamentalist religious dogmas, as well as extreme capitalist creeds.

*

Qatar has plenty of money, and it uses some of its funds for various ‘educational programs’, which are closely linked to the Western, particularly US and British but also Wahhabi propaganda apparatus.International experts hired from the West have been promoting such extreme concepts as the privatization of schools, keeping the governments away from developing curricula, and spreading pro-Western and pro-market doctrines throughout the region and beyond.

Under the cover of ‘saving children’, Qatari foundations and programs are promoting Muslim fundamentalism, as well as the commercialization of education. And that is not just in Qatar itself, but also as far away as Somalia, South Sudan and Kenya.

While at Qatar University, I noticed that even the libraries are segregated (predictably, I was told by a UN staff member based in Qatar, that the so-called “Men’s Library” is incomparably better supplied than women’s), Qatar wants to present itself as a regional leader in higher education, by spreading around regressive philosophy and mindsets.

Naturally, the main goal is to maintain the status quo in the region.

In terms of quality education, things don’t work in Qatar itself, either. With all those huge budgets burnt, or more precisely wasted, Qatar has very little to be proud of. According to the OECD:

“In 2012, Qatar was ranked third from the bottom of the 65 OECD countries participating in the PISA test of math, reading and skills for 15- and 16-year-olds, comparable to Colombia or Albania, despite having the highest per capita income in the world.”

Since then, things have not improved much, although statistics on the subject are suddenly not too widely available.

*

At the c onference

At the end of October 2019, I found myself attending a conference, organized by the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies, hosted by the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies.

Except one highly qualified UN expert (who had been working, for years, on the ground, in Syria and other places destroyed by the West and its Gulf allies), the panel of speakers consisted of individuals based in and pampered by Qatar.

The line that was tugged here was predictable:

Professor Frank Hardman basically explained how the states in the region “became weak”, and how the private sector should be taking and pushing for the education reforms.

But the most astonishing discourse came from Prof. Maleiha Malik, Executive Director, of the Protection of Education in Insecurity and Conflict (PEIC), Education Above All Foundation. She spoke about the importance of protecting vulnerable schools as well as children, in conflict zones, and about the international legal mechanisms “which are now in place”, designed to bring those who are destroying schools and pupils to justice.

In brief, a typical mainstream “development” and NGO talk.

Qatar is far from being a place where one could be free to speak up his or her mind.

But I had no patience left. I have worked in countless war and conflict zones, all over the world. And what I was witnessing at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies was nothing short of an indoctrination process of both the participants of the conference, as well as the students.

I demanded they let me speak. When the microphone was passed on to me, I said that I needed an exact answer:

“Professor Malik, I have a question for you. I have been covering dozens, perhaps hundreds of conflicts and wars, all over the world. I saw hundreds of schools burning. I saw hundreds of children dead. Most of these atrocities were triggered by the United States, by Europe, or both. It all began long before I was born, of course, it is going on until now”.

I saw the horror on the faces of the organizers. They were devouring me with their eyes, they were begging me to stop. Most likely, this has never happened here, before. Everything was being filmed, recorded. But I was not ready to stop.

The students in aula did not react. They were clearly conditioned not to get excited by speeches delivered by ‘elements’ hostile to the regime.

I continued:

“Professor Malik, I am asking you, I demand to know, whether there was one single case when the United States, United Kingdom, France, Australia or any other Western country, was put on trial and condemned, by those international mechanisms that you mentioned earlier… Condemned for murdering millions of children, or for carpet-bombing thousands of schools in such places like Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and later in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria? For, right now, trying to starve children in Venezuela? For keeping people, including children, from having access to medicine…”

Then I turned to Frank Hardman:

“Professor Hardman, aren’t those states that you mention and defined as ‘weak’, in such a situation, because they are being antagonized, attacked and terrorized by the West; by historically imperialist countries?”

Total silence.

Then, I concluded:

“Wouldn’t it be the most effective way to protect schools and children, if we’d make sure that the West and its allies, would finally stop destroying dozens of countries all over the world?”

The Chair of the conference, Prof. Sultan Barakat, went to work, immediately, trying to contain the damage:

“Professor Malik, obviously, the question is about what is happening in Palestine…”

But Professor Malik was a tough warrior, like myself, only from the opposite side. She knew precisely that it was all beyond Israel and Palestine. Israel and Palestine were part of it, but they were not the only issue here. She brushed off Sultan Barakat and went straight after my throat:

“It is not about the West! It is not about one group of countries. All members of the UN Security Council are responsible! Look at Russia, committing atrocities in Syria…”

And the shouting match began. Our personal “Doha debate”.

“Which atrocities?” I shouted at her. “Prove it.”

“We have proof.”

“You?” I wondered. “You went to Syria? Or is it that you were given so-called proof by your handlers? You put Russia, a country which is saving Syria and Venezuela, on the same level as the countries that are murdering hundreds of millions of people in all corners of the world?”

I recalled, how many times during this ‘conference’, USAID was mentioned. All references were Western.Here, people from the Arab countries were speaking and thinking like the IMF, or The Economist.

I sat down. I had nothing else to add.

The controlled discussion somehow resumed. The faces of the students remained unmoved.

At night, I met for dinner a comrade with whom I used to work with in Afghanistan. Doha is a strange place. A place of unexpected encounters.

*

Qatar is doing to the arts what it is doing to education.

The next day I tried to visit several museums which the country is bragging about online and through its advertisements. All were closed, except the Museum of Islamic Art, which used to be free to the public, but is now charging a $15 entry fee.

The monstrously fragmented state and its individuals are now investing billions of dollars, purchasing art works from all over the world. Bragging about it. Manipulating content. As it is manipulating, what is being produced in its ‘international’ film studios.

Departing from Doha to Beirut on Qatar Airways, I realized that there was not one Qatari citizen working onboard. The pilots were from the UK and Australia, while the flight attendants were recruited in the Philippines, India and Africa.

A few minutes after take-off, an aggressive advertisement began promoting Educate a Child (EAC), which is a program of the Education Above All Foundation.

In Qatar, everything seems to be inter-connected. Deadly US military bases, ‘foreign policy’, the arts, and yes, even education and charity.