There are so many reasons to love this film. Ridley Scott spent the GDP of a small Pacific Island country to make a pointed swords and sandals allegory of the Iraq War. It was released in 2005, during the height of the Global War on Terror, when Hollywood was fully mobilized to act as a propaganda arm of the Pentagon. Despite being set in the Middle East during the Crusades, however, Scott refused to engage in the Clash of Civilizations narrative that permeated Western mass culture at that time. Instead, the Muslims are presented as rational political actors if not as unambiguous Good Guys.

Perhaps the best case of this is the film’s depiction of Saladin. Played magnificently by Ghassan Massoud, the movie’s Saladin is wise, prudent, and cosmopolitan. In contrast, the film’s antagonists, Guy de Lusignan (Marton Csokas) and Raynald du Chatillon (Brendan Gleeson), are cruel, venal, contemptible villains. In fact, they are not so much historical figures as stand-ins for Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, respectively. Csokas in particular is superb, chewing the scenery every time he is on screen.

Christendom’s moral salvation is the Leper King Baldwin IV, played by Edward Norton under the iconic silver mask. Norton famously insisted on remaining uncredited and unbilled in the lead-up to the theatrical release to preserve the character’s mystique. Baldwin acts as a counterweight to Saladin. Both Saladin and Baldwin are portrayed as shrewd rulers trying to maintain the peace even as internal dynamics in their respective polities drive them towards conflict. And ultimately, it is Baldwin’s death and the rise of the Crusader-neocons that sets the Kingdom of Jerusalem towards an irreversible path to catastrophic war.

Amidst all of this intrigue, Orlando Bloom turns in one of the most wooden performances of all time as Balian of Ibelin, our ostensible protagonist. Bloom’s delivery covers the spectrum from the dull to the baffling. Strangely, the film benefits slightly insofar as Bloom unintentionally acts as a sounding board, emphasizing how great this cast is. In addition to the aforementioned characters, we see Liam Neeson as Godfrey of Ibelin, David Thewlis as the Hospitaller, Jeremy Irons as Tiberias, Eva Green as Sibylla, and Alexander Siddig as Imad Al Din Al-Isfahani. Even the bit-part roles are impressive. Kevin McKidd plays an English Sergeant, Michael Sheen is a priest who happens to be Balian’s brother, and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau is Godfrey’s nephew. Scott managed to draft a roster that rivalled the 90s Bulls in their star power.

The film itself has been accused of historical inaccuracies, and some criticisms are fair. As a historical epic, Kingdom of Heaven fails to treat historical societies as fundamentally alien the way all good historical dramas should (ex: HBO’s Rome). Rather, Scott infuses the characters with liberal sensibilities. Scott’s treatment of religion is the perfect example. Sibylla and Baldwin treat Christianity and its attendant institutions with an entirely ahistorical detachment that reflects a simplistic r/atheism worldview while Guy and Raynald are depicted as vulgar opportunists. At one point, Balian gives a pre-battle speech to the defenders in Jerusalem that can best be described as “all religions matter”, which would have ironically united the city insofar as every denomination would have been mortified by his heresy and killed him. Even the Patriarch of Jerusalem seems to lack any conviction in the Church as an institution, as in one scene where he advises the besieged Balian to “convert to Islam, repent later.” In one way, Scott’s projection of his secular liberal atheism back through time comes off as anachronistic, but it also makes the film somewhat interesting as a meditation on power and corruption.

Beyond the criticisms of historical veracity, there are also some valid accusations of Orientalism. Certainly, Scott makes some baffling choices. Ibelin is explicitly described in dialogue as a poor dusty land until Balian’s arrival and his introduction of well-digging to his peasant residents. It is hard to believe that the Levant, an agriculturally productive region for millenia, needed the intervention of a French engineer to discover irrigation, and yet here we are. In another scene, a gaggle of young women servants wait on Balian with towels as he bathes, which would surely prompt discussion by postcolonial studies grad students on tropes regarding the colonized woman and so forth. The film is not immune to these legitimate concerns. Edward Said certainly would not have been amused.

All that said, it is important to remember that this is not a movie about the Crusades. Or at least it is at face value, but Scott uses the Crusades as a vehicle to deliver a commentary on US imperial aggression in the Middle East. The film’s politics are best shown in a scene in the film where the Hospitaller, who is heavily implied to be an angel and acts as Scott’s moral avatar, meets Balian in the desert. Balian throws stones at a bush until it catches fire and says, “There’s your religion. One spark, a creosote bush. There’s your Moses. I did not hear it speak.” The Hospitaller tells Balian he is going to go pray, and when Balian asks for what, the Hospitaller responds, “For the strength to endure what is to come…The reckoning is to come for what was done one hundred years before. The Muslims will never forget.” And after a slight pause, he adds, “Nor should they.”

Of course, the film also shows the limits of Ridley Scott’s liberalism. The movie concludes with an epilogue that states that “nearly a thousand years later, peace in the Kingdom of Heaven still remains elusive.” Here, Scott reveals his typical liberal belief that the current conflicts in the Middle East are a direct legacy of the Crusades, and more broadly understood as “war due to religion” as opposed to very modern wars instigated by Zionist-imperialism. Sadly, that appears to be a leap too far for an otherwise excellent film.

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In the 21 years since the release of Kingdom of Heaven, the movie has taken on a life of its own. Partly, it has lent itself well to funny meme formats, such as Baldwin Raising Hand or spoof reels of the iconic Saladin/Baldwin meeting in front of Kerak. More nefariously, however, it has been adopted by a subset of the far right as a cultural signifier in the current moment. Baldwin’s mask has become a popular profile picture among tradcaths. Moreover, as the US and Israel wage war on Iran and Lebanon and engage in genocide in Palestine, none other than the US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has proudly shown off his tattoo of the phrase “Deus Veult” meaning God Wills It, the Crusader rallying cry incidentally shouted in this movie by Guy. Hegseth also revealed a quadrant cross tattoo of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. It is easy to mock these freaks for either not getting the film or not watching it at all but the efficacy of mockery requires shame, and these people have none. Much like Starship Troopers or Taxi Driver, for the chuds, the satire is overlooked in favor of crude edginess. That they hijacked this film’s superficial aesthetic should not detract from its contents.

Beyond the themes, the film’s production value is remarkable. Filming was done locally in Ouzarzette, Morocco, and parts of Spain. In the set pieces, more than 1000 extras were hired, and the realism really bleeds through the screen. The set and costume designs are truly magnificent. Credit goes to Harry Gregson-Williams for adding the cherry on top with a majestic soundtrack. Even the typical Oriental Lute Theme that signifies to the viewer we are in the Land of the Mahometan hit the mark. The theatrical cut was widely panned at the time, and I would agree with that assessment. However, the director’s cut has emerged as a work of sublime art that I must admit remains one of my favorite films.

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Key to these events is the relationship between Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. The latter, along with Bahrain and Morocco, officially recognized Israel in the much-publicized Abraham Accords in August 2020. On the other hand, Saudi Arabia continues to conduct business with Israel without formally recognizing it. The ailing King Salman, when he is not talking to plants or counting jellybeans, refuses to countenance normalization with Israel. His son and heir apparent, Mohamed bin Salman, does not share the same hesitation. For a new generation of Gulf royals like bin Zayed and bin Salman, there is no longer a need to even conduct the theatrics of solidarity with Palestine (not that the Gulf royals ever actually cared about Palestine, mind you, but it was long seen as necessary to say the right things and make the right show). Regional security concerns overrule such trivial optics as the rights of the Palestinian people.

 In the meantime, bin Salman can use the UAE and Bahrain in particular as middlemen to conduct business with Israel. He has already hosted former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu aboard his yacht in the Red Sea. Israel, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain all share the same overarching regional concern: Iran. The Islamic Republic has fueled an impressive level of paranoia among Gulf autocrats and the Israeli security state.

In addition, the Houthi rebels have – with some Iranian help – developed more sophisticated missiles and drones to launch at Saudi in the course of the brutal war the Saudis are waging in Yemen. The Houthis have already struck oil facilities in Jeddah, Riyadh, Najran, Jizan and as far east as Abqaiq and Khurais on the coast of the Gulf. Saudi claims that the Houthis are backed by Iran are wildly exaggerated but remain a driving force in shaping Saudi regional policy.

On the other hand, Israel sees Iran as its most dangerous enemy. Iran openly supports the Lebanese paramilitary and political organization Hezbollah right on Israel’s northern border with Lebanon. Moreover, Iranian forces have been deeply enmeshed in shoring up Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria against Islamist rebels. Iran has made little effort to hide its animosity towards Israel. In Saudi Arabia and the UAE, Israel has found the perfect partners to contain Iran.

The US is no longer the driving force in the region. Whereas US imperialism once dominated its client states, now the Saudis, Emiratis, and Israelis tell the US political elite what to do and how to do it. Of course, this is a gross oversimplification of the relationship between the US and its clients in the Middle East, but the US no longer commands the authority over such clients as it used to. US President Joe Biden promised during the 2020 election to return the US to the JCPOA, the nuclear deal signed with Iran in 2015 and annulled in 2018 by the Trump administration. Two years into the Biden presidency have yielded little results to that effect. Biden’s team continues to stall, haggle, and stonewall Iran’s (editor note: very reasonable) demands to remove Trump-era sanctions on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC) and senior political figures in the country. Given that it was the US that withdrew from the deal unilaterally, it makes sense for Iran to demand guarantees and some actions as a sign of goodwill. Nevertheless, there is no deal yet.

At the same time, US legislators are strongly backing the nascent Gulf-Israel alliance. For Israel, it gets two partners flush with cash and closer geographically to Iran: half ATM and half shield against closer Iranian meddling. The Emiratis and Saudis for their part get preferred customer status with Israel’s notorious security/cyber industry. Both countries have already shown a willingness to engage with Israel by purchasing Israeli company NSO’s Pegasus software, a phone hacking system that allows users to track intimate details in a target’s phone.

The Saudis in particular have also signalled a desperate willingness to purchase Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system. Currently, Saudi uses THAAD and Patriot missiles to shoot down incoming rockets but Biden’s previously icy relationship with Bin Salman and hints of limiting military support to the Saudis have pushed the latter to look elsewhere for security guarantees. Unfortunately for the Saudis, Israel has so far remained defiant in refusing to sell the much-vaunted Iron Dome to Saudi Arabia, especially given the lack of official recognition between them. It remains to be seen whether the Iron Dome would even be effective against a barrage of Iranian or Houthi missiles or low flying drones, but Bin Salman is adamant that Israeli technology will solve Saudi security issues.

Finally, it will be interesting to see how these developments along with Biden’s willingness to travel to Saudi Arabia and beg Bin Salman for more oil will affect previous Saudi-Iranian dialogue in Baghdad. Biden’s explicit denunciations of Saudi Arabia during the 2020 election and subsequent victory had driven the Saudis to hedge their bets and conduct diplomatic talks with Iranian representatives in Iraq in 2021. Saudi Arabia and Iran have cut off diplomatic ties since 2016, and the most recent round of talks in April of this year have shown some optimistic signs of a thaw in regional tensions. If Biden has completely debased himself of any political courage and intends to bend the knee to Bin Salman and if Israel’s relationship with the Saudis continues to develop to the point of weapon sales, it will be difficult to see such talks continue, and that is rather disappointing.

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When he is not trying his best to start World War 3, US President Joe Biden demonstrates a remarkable level of humility. It is for this reason that Biden is planning to visit Riyadh later this month to meet with the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman (MBS). On Thursday, reports surfaced that the White House is arranging a trip for Biden to meet various Arab leaders, and the itinerary allegedly includes a stop in Riyadh. That these reports emerged two days after Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov met with MBS is a happy coincidence.

During the 2020 presidential elections, Biden made a point of declaring his disdain towards Saudi Arabia and MBS in particular. As president, Biden promised he would make the Saudis “pay the price, and make them in fact the pariah that they are.” Biden also added that there is “very little social redeeming value in the present government in Saudi Arabia”.

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At that time, Biden’s position found a receptive audience in the Acela corridor and the halls of American imperial power. In 2018, MBS had sent a hit squad to Istanbul to murder a Saudi journalist by the name of Jamal Khashoggi. Khashoggi – critical of MBS and living in the US as a resident - had gone into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to obtain some papers where he was ambushed, drugged, and dismembered. Of course, unlike the hundreds of thousands of Yemenis starving as a result of MBS’s military campaign against the Houthis, Jamal Khashoggi mattered to the journalist class. He wrote for the Washington Post and presumably cavorted with other luminaries of the DC press as Thomas Freidman, David Brooks, John Brennan, et al. He was a made man, and as Goodfellas made it abundantly clear, you do not kill made men.

MBS, long touted as a daring reformer in the ultraconservative kingdom, became a pariah. Nobody wanted to associate with him. In this milieu, Biden scored easy points criticizing the Saudis and promising to disentangle the US from the Gulf monarchy, but two years of pandemic and a Russian invasion of Ukraine later, Biden finds himself in a tricky situation.

At the core of Biden’s headaches is oil. In June of 2021, Brent crude was $73.16/barrel. Americans paid on average $3.05/gallon at the pump. A year later, Americans are paying $4.84/gallon to fill their tanks and drive in one of the most anti-public transit countries in the world. The price of Brent is hovering at $120/barrel. With a US midterm election coming up and his poll numbers plummeting, Biden has decided to swallow his pride and meet with MBS.

Of course, Biden’s show of humility has a price. On the same day as the reports of his visit to Riyadh surfaced, OPEC+ confirmed a massive increase in oil production starting in July. Starting in July, OPEC+ will increase oil output by 648,000 barrels per day (bpd) every month. The cartel has been hesitant to increase output even as the US and other major consumers have been begging for a jump in production to cool prices down, but months of pressure appear to have paid off even if it means Biden has to sit down with MBS and regale him with Corn Pop stories.

Ironically, the US-Saudi relationship began in 1945 with a simple promise of the US providing security in exchange for access to cheap oil. Since then, many things have changed, but it seems that the cornerstone of this relationship remains as strong as ever. Not that the US political elite mind either. MBS may have stepped out of line by whacking a made man, but the political ruling class and the journalists have had no issue with the Saudi-led war in Yemen since 2015. Everyone will accept a rapprochement with a war criminal psychopath if it means cheaper oil. After all, 500,000 Yemenis is a small price to pay for cheaper treats on Uber Eats and cheaper Amazon deliveries in the DC suburbs.

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Publicly, the Turkish state has made it clear that it will refuse to accept Finland and Sweden into NATO over the Nordic states’ position on the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG). Turkey accuses the YPG of being a Syrian branch of the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK), a left-wing political party that has waged a guerilla war against the Turkish state since 1984 in a struggle to achieve Kurdish autonomy in the southeastern Kurdish majority region of Turkey bordering Syria. It is important to note that despite these allegations, the YPG has continued to maintain independence from the PKK and that its operations are confined to Syrian Kurdistan fighting against Islamist jihadist groups.

Nevertheless, Turkey views Kurdish autonomy as an existential threat to the Turkish state. In addition to the aforementioned guerilla war with the PKK, Turkey has conducted several military operations against Kurdish groups in northern Syria. In 2019, Turkey launched a major offensive into Syria in what was dubbed Operation Peace Spring. According to Turkish officials, the operation aimed to create a 30 km deep buffer zone from the Turkish-Syrian border and expel the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a YPG-affiliated group, from northern Syria. Despite the SDF’s key role in the US coalition that defeated the Islamic State, Turkey designated it a terrorist organization and moved to defeat it. As part of the operation, the Turkish military and their Islamist proxies, the Syrian National Army (SNA) conducted what can credibly be described as a campaign of ethnic cleansing, expelling Kurdish communities from their historic homes to clear the land for the forcible resettlement of Syrian refugees that Turkey claimed were voluntary returns.

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Turkey has a long history of meddling in Syria. Since independence in 1921, the Turkish state claimed the Syrian province Alexandretta as part of Turkey, despite the population being majority Arabs. At the time, Alexandretta was absorbed into the French mandate of Syria, but in 1938, the French ceded Alexandretta to Turkey as part of a diplomatic effort to prevent a Nazi Germany-Turkey alliance. Alexandretta was renamed Hatay province, street signs were replaced with Turkish counterparts, and the province remains part of Turkey.

Still, as a result of Turkey’s offensive in 2019, western countries including Sweden and Finland issued an arms embargo and condemned Turkish aggression against the YPG. Sweden in particular was a popular destination for Turkish dissidents fleeing persecution abroad. The country is home to a significant Kurdish diaspora and refuses to extradite those deemed criminal by the Turkish security apparatus. It was this response – both rhetorical and political – that remains a point of contention between Turkey and NATO.

Turkey’s refusal to allow Sweden and Finland into NATO rests on these sore spots. For one, the Turks demand the repatriation of some 30 individuals living in Sweden that they deem PKK affiliated terrorists. Turkey has also requested the processing of a sale of US F-16 airplanes to the Turkish Air Force, a sale that has been suspended following Turkey’s purchase of Russian S-300 air defense systems. In other words, Turkey is using its veto within NATO as a bargaining chip to extract as many concessions from Sweden, Finland, and the US/NATO as it can.

Following Monday’s announcement by Erdogan, Turkey’s National Security Council said on Thursday May 26th that while existing and future military operations in its southern border did not target the sovereignty of other countries, they are deemed necessary for the country’s security.

So, what does this all mean? Well, with the world distracted by the war in Ukraine, Turkey believes this is the ideal time to move on the YPG in Syrian Kurdistan. Turkey has also recently conducted military operations on Kurds in Iraq. Russia’s incursion into Ukraine has also given Turkey an unexpected advantage. The 2019 Turkish offensive ended with a ceasefire organized by both the US and Russia, the latter playing a considerable role in Syria as the backers of Bashar al-Assad’s government in Damascus. I suspect that not only is Russia distracted by the fighting in Ukraine, but it may perhaps want to limit Turkey’s support of Ukraine, which until now has included sales of the formidable Bayraktar TB2 armed drone to the Ukrainian armed forces. As such, Turkey can use that leverage to get Russia to disregard the ceasefire and give the Turkish army a freer hand in moving against Kurdish groups in Syria and Iraq.   

The 2019 operation carved out two pockets of Turkish and SNA control in northern Syria. The first pocket lies on the western banks of the Euphrates River, around the town of Jarablus. The second zone of Turkish control lies further east, a strip of land south of the border extending from the towns of Tell Abyad and Ras Al-Ayn. The two zones are separated by the Kurdish controlled areas of Manbij and Kobane. Following the 2019 ceasefire, Russian forces and the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) of Assad’s government were deployed to both Kobani and Manbij to act as a buffer between the Turks and the Kurds. Despite some minor clashes, the post-2019 ceasefire stood until now.

Now, with Russia’s (and the world at large) attention elsewhere in Ukraine, Turkey may consider it the right time to seize Manbij and Kobani, thereby connecting its currently separate zones into one large band of territory stretching south from the Turkish-Syrian border deep into Syria. Turkey can then relocate Syrian refugees to this area alongside its Islamist clients, the SNA. It is hard to ascertain the size of the Russian forces stationed in those cities as of now, but Turkish intransigence towards NATO suggests that the Turkish government may find common ground with Russia and strike a deal that involves pulling the latter’s forces in northern Syria out and clearing the way for Turkish attack.

For Erdogan, there is an even an added bonus of the rallying effect of a military offensive against Kurdish groups on Turkish nationalism. The Turkish economy has been devastated by Erdogan’s insistence on keeping interest rates low, and the Turkish lira has plummeted in value. An escalation against what the Turkish state media refer to as Kurdish separatist terrorists would be a welcome distraction from headlines on the economy.

Personally, I am hesitant to accept this argument. While I am sure a war would be a boon for Erdogan among Turkish nationalists, I don’t think talks of incursion into Syria are necessarily a self-serving plot for Erdogan’s ambitions. There are many in the Turkish state and military who have been baying for just a move for years. Turkish nationalism is not to be scoffed at. It may be difficult for Western liberals to understand, but if there is one place where the concept of a nation-state as a polity belonging to a single nation with a single language, ethnicity, and culture was taken to its logical conclusion, it would be Turkey. Kurdish autonomy thus presents a constant threat to Turkey’s ideas of the nation, and any experiment in Kurdish autonomy just across the border in Syria would be an intolerable notion for the Turkish state. Therefore, as long as an autonomous Rojava exists, the danger of a Turkish offensive will also remain ever-present.

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The newsletter will focus on the Arab world, my area of expertise. The goal – if all goes well – is for this newsletter to have a weekly column for all subscribers, and then more in-depth essays for paid subscribers. Weekly columns will round up major news points from the Middle East, and essays will take a deeper dive into Arab politics, economy, history, and culture. From time to time, I hope to also write tangential pieces on movies, TV shows, and video games that are set in or are related to the Arab world.

If you are not interested in following the newsletter and would like to unsubscribe or to revert to a free subscription, I completely understand. I thank you all for your patience and support this past year, and I am really looking forward to writing regularly again.

It is an unassailable fact of the human condition that we believe that we are immune to the disasters that afflict others. Bad things happen to other people, you see, not us. In the midst of a world-historical pandemic, you’ll find otherwise perfectly rational people go about their daily business without a mask assuming that COVID-19 will not happen to them. Unfortunately, we are all “other people” to other people.

I learned this lesson last week. On Monday November 2nd, I was told by doctors that I have a seminoma - a cancer. Seminomas are a highly curable and not uncommon type of cancer among young males, of which I am one. Seminomal tumours form in the testes, or in rare instances like mine, in the retroperitoneum - the lower back. Such tumours are highly responsive to chemotherapy with a ~ 95% cure rate. Tomorrow, I start chemotherapy. Today is the deep breath before the plunge.

In many ways I am extremely fortunate. I was lucky enough to detect the tumour early, before any significant metastases developed. My luck does not stop there however. I am lucky because I come from a comfortable middle class family that put me through K-12 private school back home. Consequently, I was able to apply to and be accepted to the University of Toronto, and my family’s socioeconomic status allowed me to emigrate to Toronto and embark on a rather expensive post-secondary education.

I am lucky because I am a relatively healthy 25 year old male, who arrived here at 17 with minimal obstacles. I am lucky because - after graduating from U of T - I managed to gain Canadian permanent residency. That meant I was covered by Canadian healthcare. I am lucky because I can now receive some of the best healthcare in the world, free at the point of service. I am lucky because I have a unionized job that allows paid medical leaves to focus on treatment. And finally, I am lucky because despite moving to Toronto alone I now have an incredible circle of friends that are a family to me - not by something as accidental as blood, but by something much stronger, by choice. Their support over the past weeks has been immense, and I am grateful beyond words.

Thus, I write this not to extract personal pity but to show how random the world is. People may try to rationalize it via religion, karma, moral punishment, but sooner or later we all must gaze into the abyss that life is a sequence of coin tosses. Sometimes we lose a particular coin toss. Sometimes that loss causes a really bad outcome. Either way, there is no rhyme and reason to our life.

So why am I writing this? Consider the stranger. What separates me from the many people that may be suffering from a variety of conditions right now is a sequence of sheer dumb luck. Many cancer patients live in societies where healthcare is not free, and rack up six-figure debts pursuing treatment. Many cancer patients have to work through their illness to afford rent and bills. Many cancer patients have to contend with a myriad of other disabilities or health issues that amplify their difficulties. Many cancer patients lack a loving support network of friends and family.

This week has forced me to reflect on my socialism. Those of you who know me know I have been an unapologetic socialist for some time now. However, my politics have been thrown into a new light given my diagnosis. I am a socialist because I believe that strangers deserve to live with the same level of comfort I am blessed to have. Cancer patients should not be forced to pay for treatment, or work through their treatment, or face any form of material need living in the wealthiest period of human history. Moreover, it is an indictment of our society that 8,715 people live homeless in Toronto while 66,000+ homes remain vacant. I am a socialist because I believe that every human being, by virtue of their humanity alone, deserves a life of dignity and respect regardless of whether I will meet them or not.

We are staring down the barrel of ecological collapse even as fascism is spreading across the world. Still, it does not have to be this way. It can be better than this. I thus ask you, the reader, to consider the sympathy and support you might want to extend to me, and to let what personal affection you may have for me to bleed into your politics. Let your politics reflect a sympathy, support, and love for strangers you may never meet as strongly as you would for me. Together, we can forge a better future for every single human being.

Tomorrow, as I embark on my first step in a long and arduous journey of chemotherapy, I think of Ernest Hemingway who wrote in For Whom the Bells Toll, “The world is a fine place and worth fighting for and I hate very much to leave it.” I, too, will fight.

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Bahrain has had an interesting relationship with the Palestinian cause. Many Palestinians exiled from Jordan following the events of Black September in 1970 found themselves in Bahrain, where they helped found the military of the newly independent nation. The Sunni royal House of Khalifa, governing a Shi’a majority country, found in the Palestinian exiles a reliable Sunni bloc that can staff sensitive positions in the Ministries of Defence and Interior. In return, those exiles received good jobs in the state security apparatus with well-paying jobs and a cavalcade of benefits. Now this is what some would call the art of the deal.

What’s interesting about the recent push by Bahrain to normalize ties with Israel is a hidden bonus for the ruling Khalifas. As Israel makes life for the Palestinians more and more unbearable, some will inevitably be forced to leave. Bahrain may then offer a chance for refuge, while also giving the Khalifa family an opportunity to alter the country’s demographics in favor of the Sunni minority and a dependable community of loyalists to the regime.

That is not to say that the Bahraini people are themselves against Palestinians. Bahrainis by and large support the Palestinian cause. I personally welcome any refugee to take asylum in Bahrain, and have no qualms with an open immigration policy. What makes this particular situation different is the Bahraini monarchy’s intent to manipulate sectarian sentiment to shore up support. The regime invites Sunnis from Syria, Palestine, Yemen, and Pakistan to staff the army and police while at the same time locking indigenous Shi’a Bahrainis out of so-called “sensitive” sectors of work. In other words, this mass naturalization program for Sunni immigrants is a cynical ploy by the Khalifas to play with Bahrain’s ethnosectarian make-up, not a benevolent act of kindness to refugees of war.

Consider this: if the Bahrain regime truly cared about those Palestinian, Syrian, and Yemeni refugees, why is it involved in wars in all the aforementioned countries? Bahraini aircraft participated in the Saudi-led coalition’s air strikes in Yemen. The Bahraini government joined Saudi Arabia to fund Syrian Salafist rebels against the Assad government. And now, Bahrain normalizes ties with Israel even as the Zionist entity expands its illegal settlements and brutalizes the Palestinian population beyond recourse. For Bahrain’s autocratic monarchy, the foreign policy acts in perfect synchronization with their domestic priorities.

On that happy note, I hope everyone enjoys the Easter weekend and/or Passover. This has been another edition of my new “Old Man Yells at Cloud” series that I think will supplant the Friday Sermons. With the Old Man series, I will try to take a more casual tone as Fridays are for chill vibes. I hope you enjoy this weekly newsletter, let me know what you think. See you next week, folks.

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One particularly egregious example of this rule was seen this week, when Republican congressman Joe Wilson of South Carolina introduced a bill titled the Iran Human Rights and Accountability Act to the House of Representatives. According to Al Monitor, the bill aims to empower the US government to “investigate alleged human rights abuses committed by the Islamic Republic.” The bill further requires that a report be issued on “wealth obtained via corruption by Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei”, among other alleged concerns. To add the cherry on top of this irony cake, Wilson had deliberately timed it such that the bill was introduced on the eve of Iranian New Year, or Nowruz.

Wilson, the ostensible author of this bill, represents the 2nd congressional district of South Carolina, an area that includes around 722,000 people. You wouldn’t be blamed for assuming that Wilson is responsible for writing policies to alleviate the immediate problems of his constituency. Of course, there is no shortage of such problems. South Carolina has one of the highest rates of poverty in the country. Over 16% of the state’s population live below poverty, compared to a national average of 14%, and 80% of South Carolina’s counties are at or above the national average for evictions. Barnwell, one of three counties in Wilson’s district, has an astounding poverty rate of 26.2%.

In addition to these chronic problems, South Carolina has been ranked as one of the worst states in the country with respect to COVID-19 vaccine administration. According to the CDC, South Carolina has administered 36,698 doses per 100,000 residents. Over 10% of the population have no medical insurance. By all metrics, South Carolina is facing an abundance of acute and chronic problems that require immediate political attention.

So, what is Representative Joe Wilson of South Carolina doing? He wants to punish Iran for perceived human rights abuses. In fact, I say Wilson is the ostensible author of this bill only because it appears that he has strong links to the Iranian opposition group and alleged psychotic cult the People’s Mujahedin Organization of Iran, or Mujaheddin-e-Khalq. 

The MeK are Washington DC’s favorite anti-Islamic Republic group. Based in DC, the group has ample amounts of cash and no qualms about making it rain, so to speak. As a result, they hold bipartisan support among the Acela corridor, including Wilson. In 2018, Wilson delivered a speech during a Nowruz event hosted by MeK. Also at the event was then Democrat minority leader Nancy Pelosi. I would not be entirely shocked if the bill itself was written by the MeK and placed on Wilson’s desk to sign.

Beyond the immediate amusement, this entire episode reflects the complete dysfunction of the US state. In a country where the vast majority of people live in crippling debt amidst crumbling infrastructure and worse jobs paying less and less while a rapacious elite are looting every last crumb of wealth dry, the only remaining function of government is to manage the empire. Put simply, your political representatives can’t feed, shelter, clothe, medically treat, or educate you, but they sure as hell can investigate and sanction human rights abusers halfway across the globe. “Ask not what your country can do for you,” someone once said, because if you are an American, your country can do fuck all for you, but hey, those F-35s sure are cool aren’t they?

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It is now ten years ago to the day - March 19, 2011 - that NATO began actively intervening in Libya. The year 2011 is perhaps mostly known for what is now called the Arab Spring, a collection of anti-government uprisings by people in various countries in the Middle East. In Libya, the rebellion began on February 15, 2011, with the anti-government protestors buoyed having witnessed the fall of sclerotic autocrats in Tunisia and Egypt just days prior. Protestors clashed with police, and what began as a disorganized protest movement soon evolved into a full scale civil war. 

To understand the opposition to Gaddafi, I think it is important to delve into Libya’s modern history. For several hundred years, Libya was a province of the Ottoman Empire and was known as the vilayet (Ottoman term for province) of Tripolitania. With the Ottomans defeated in WW1, Libya was colonized and eventually fully annexed by Italy. Benito Mussolini, the interwar leader of Italy, had long viewed Libya as part of the resurrected Roman Empire, and so turned it into an Italian colony with fascist ally Italo Balbo as governor. Libyans, however, resisted colonization, and an organized resistance movement coalesced around a Sufic religious-political order known as the Senusiyya. Led at the time by Idris as-Senussi, the Senusiyya launched a guerrilla war against the Italians and during WW2 fought alongside the British and French Allies against the Italians and Germans. For his contribution to the Allied cause, Idris was rewarded by being crowned king of the newly independent Kingdom of Libya as Idris I. 

All good and not good things come to an end eventually. On September 1st, 1969, King Idris I was overthrown by a secret cadre of officers in the military known as the Free Unionist Officers Movement. Led by a charming young Colonel Muammar al Gaddafi, the officers established the Libyan Arab Republic. Within a few years, however, Gaddafi consolidated power and launched a radical and expansive project to reform and modernize Libya. To reflect this change, Libya was renamed the Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya and adopted the plain green banner as its flag. Gaddafi used the ample wealth of Libya’s oil resources to establish a robust welfare state with universal healthcare, free education, housing assistance, and subsidized essential goods. Gaddafi also secularized the country, banning child marriages and polygamy and implementing strong women’s rights laws like equal pay for equal work, equal rights in divorce, and freedom to pursue higher education. 

As Gaddafi pushed forward with his vision of a secular socialist Libyan republic, not everyone was pleased. Opposition rallied around Islamist factions like the Muslim Brotherhood and the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group. It is important to note here that Gaddafi never identified himself as a secularist. In fact, he embraced an idiosyncratic version of Islam that encouraged gender equality while also holding on to elements of tradition. In that sense, Gaddafi openly decried communism and Marxism as being godless and atheistic, and must be opposed on those grounds. Despite his promulgations of Islamic credentials, opposition to Gaddafi revolved around what his detractors saw as increasing secularization and a lack of Islamic values in Libyan society. To that end, Libyan Islamist groups launched several small insurgencies in the 90’s that were swiftly crushed but caught the attention of the ever-creative US intelligence apparatus.

Gaddafi has been persona non-grata to the US government since Ronald Reagan called him the “mad dog of the Middle East”. Attempts to soothe relations following 9/11 did not last long, and Gaddafi became a favourite target of both mockery and paranoia of the US imperial establishment and their mouthpieces in the press. In 2011, as protests bled into Libya, the US saw its chance at eliminating a geopolitical rival of its empire.

Within days of the initial protests, the Libyan uprising became a full blown Civil War. Opposition factions seized control of major eastern cities like Benghazi and Misrata at the end of February. By early March 2011, the Libyan Armed Forces rallied and launched a counterattack, taking back Misrata and reaching the outskirts of the rebel stronghold of Benghazi. At this point, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton succeeded in pushing US President Barack Obama to implement a no-fly zone over Libyan airspace. With Gaddafi’s government on the offensive, Obama relented on the 18th of March 2011 and authorized military intervention. On March 19th, 2011, the US launches air strikes against LAF targets and begins implementing a no-fly zone. Like any good playground bully, the US does not act alone. Instead, it brings its friends in the form of NATO, and soon Canada, the UK, and France were all undertaking sorties against Libyan targets. At the same time, the coalition grew to include countries like Italy, Norway, Qatar, and Spain who all provided logistical support and maintained a naval blockade of Libya’s coast. Thus, with Gaddafi’s forces no longer able to rely on their aerial superiority, the tide of the war turned as the rebels now pushed them back towards Tripoli, and on August 20th the city fell to the rebel National Liberation Army and its political overseer, the National Transition Council.

Having fled Tripoli, Gaddafi was captured in the city of Sirte on October 20, 2011. Rebels tortured him, sodomizing him with weapons before executing him and his son and bodyguards. In other words, March 19th, 2011 marked the turn of the war and the beginning of the end for the Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya. In its place, the NTC took control and established a General National Congress to govern Libya. Unsurprisingly, this GNC collapsed in 2014 into a Second Civil War between the internationally recognized Government of National Accord in Tripoli and the Tobruk-based House of Representatives with their ally the Libyan National Army led by General Khalifa Haftar.

And so Libya went from having the highest Human Development Index in Africa to a country ravaged by war and anarchy. Sub-Saharan Africans attempting to cross Libya to immigrate to Europe are often kidnapped by Libyan militias for ransom. Some refugees are sold in open-air slave markets for as little as $200. For American readers, the Joe Biden stimulus checks of $1400 could afford you seven slaves at a Libyan slave market. 

When Hillary Clinton laughed off the interviewer’s question about Gaddafi with the aforementioned quote, she knew exactly what that meant for Libya. She just didn’t care. It was not benign ignorance or an honest error in judgement that drove Clinton to push for military intervention to topple the longtime leader of Libya. Rather, it was cold, calculating imperialist logic. For Clinton, as for the rest of the US Empire, a destabilized Libya with roving Islamist jihadi militias is a far better alternative to a Gaddafi-led Libya with its oil nationalized and the income used to support a welfare state. In any just world, Clinton would be in a dock at the Hague for Libya alone. Every child murdered, every human enslaved, the blood of all of Libya is on her hands.

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According to Pentagon press secretary John F. Kirby, Biden okayed the strikes in retaliation to attacks by militias on US personnel in Iraq. Naturally, when you are attacked in one country, the correct response is to strike a completely unrelated target in an entirely different country. Sun Tzu probably said something like that too in The Art of War. The air strikes “specifically destroyed multiple facilities located at a border control point used by a number of Iranian-backed militia troops, including Kataib Hezbollah and Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada,” Mr. Kirby says. Alright then. 

Housekeeping: If you enjoy my writing, please consider subscribing to the premium level. You’ll get subscriber-only pieces on the Middle East’s history and present politics, along with a variety of other posts. You’d also get access to the full archive of posts. In honor of my upcoming birthday - Feb 28 - premium subscriptions will be 30% off. The offer expires on March 12, 2021. Thanks folks.

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In semi-related news, Biden also approved the release of the US intelligence report on the assassination of reporter Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi operatives in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. The report merely confirms what everyone and their mother already knows: that Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman personally sanctioned the assassination. Fortunately for the Think Tank ghouls whose salaries are also paid by the aforementioned MBS, “the Biden administration took no direct action against Prince Mohammed, the de facto ruler of the kingdom, instead announcing travel and financial sanctions on other Saudis involved in the killing”. Americans must be so happy to have such fearless leadership during these trying times.

On the surface, these two stories may have little in common, but in my opinion they shed light on some fundamental tenets of the US foreign policy establishment blob. Mainly, the Blob operates under the assumption that there is some existential struggle between Sunnism and Shi’ism in the Middle East, and that it is in the US’s best interests to support its Sunni allies against their enemies. 

Of course, such crude assumptions could never be said out loud. Instead, they have to be filtered through the Blob’s infrastructure in the Acela Corridor. Various think tanks funded alternatively by Qatar, the UAE, or Saudi Arabia are responsible for dressing the sectarianism in more palatable terms. The Pentagon can then take the reports published by those think tanks, like the Council on Foreign Relations, and regurgitate them to justify military action. 

That is not to say that some transcendental Manichean conflict exists between Sunnism and Shi’ism. Nor is it a denial of the existence of sectarianism in the Middle East. Rather, the systematic sectarianism is largely unilateral - Sunnis targeting Shi’as for their beliefs - and a result of the rise of Saudi Arabia as a regional power centre. Such sectarianism is fuelled by the Saudis using oil money to propagate a hardline sectarian Sunni ideology - Wahabism - from the Caucasus down to Indonesia through the construction of mosques and madrassas. Ironically, it is this Wahabist ideology that then encourages Sunni violence towards Shi’a communities and makes the Sunni-Shi’a conflict look both real and eternal.

Which brings us back to the US airstrikes in Syria. The whole horde of the Blob has come out to justify these attacks by claiming that they are defensive and proportionate. If anything can unify the partisan politics of DC, it is imperialist aggression in the Middle East. Similarly, the declassification of the Khashoggi report has done little to dampen the material relationship between the US and Saudi Arabia. Despite the report confirming MBS’s role in the murder, Saudi Arabia is seen as a vital cog in the US Empire’s goals of containing and fighting Iran.

Few question the claims that the Iraqi militias attacking US personnel are backed by Iran. That is a given. Somehow, nobody has chosen to ask why Iraqi militias would be attacking US personnel. If Iran is backing those particular militias, nobody in the Blob wants to ask why Iran doesn’t mind such attacks. Sure, the US assassinated Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani during a visit to Iraq in January of 2020. That strike also killed Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. The notion that Iraqi militias are rational actors that are responding to the military moves of those around them seems to completely escape the Blob’s mind. On the other hand, the US bombing a Syrian border facility and killing 22 pro-government Syrian fighters is defensive and an appropriate response. 

Ultimately, what these strikes show is a foreign policy consensus built around the belief that animosity towards Shi’a entities is strategic. In other words, the DC think tanks take the raw Sunni sectarianism that their Gulf monarchy funders provide, process and filter it, and vomit out a more acceptable politics of hostility with Iran. Of course, the Pentagon and State Departments may not think in such crude ways, but their policies reflect the beliefs of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf monarchies, and those monarchies are at their core sectarian Sunnis. It is this pipeline of sectarianism, filtered and cleaned up, that feeds the Blob the wholesale assumptions that Iran is an Enemy that cannot be reasoned with or talked to. 

And the result? The Biden administration insists that Iran return to compliance with the JCPOA nuclear deal before the US removes sanctions, despite the fact that it was the US that withdrew from the deal in the first place. Consequently, the window for the resurrection of the JCPOA is closing fast. If Iran was treated like a rational actor with concrete political and economic interests, the US would understand the need to return to JCPOA first in good faith. Unfortunately, such politics would require a fundamental challenge to the role of the Blob in DC, and we can’t have that, so on we go with the charade.

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Yemen, devastated by a civil war for the past six years, stands on the brink of a catastrophic famine. In addition to the near daily airstrikes by the Saudi air force, Yemen is besieged, with the Saudi-led coalition preventing essential food and medicine from entering Yemen through the port of Hodeida. According to the UN’s Office of Coordinated Humanitarian Affairs (OCHO), the war has caused “an estimated 233,000 deaths, including 131,000 from indirect causes such as lack of food, health services and infrastructure”. A further 10 million Yemenis are currently at risk of a horrific but preventable famine. By all accounts, what is happening in Yemen is a crime against humanity. In any just world, Saudi crown prince Mohamed bin Salman, or MBS as he is called, should be sitting in a dock at the Hague next to Obama and Clinton, who tacitly condoned his brutal campaign. 

Yemen and the nomadic Arabs of the interior of the peninsula have a long history together, a history that precedes even the founding of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. In pre-Islamic times Yemen was populated by sedentary peoples that formed small kingdoms like the biblical Sheba. With Rome often at war with Persia, overland trade was risky. Maritime trade, on the other hand, was safer, and those kingdoms in Yemen like Marib, Himyar, and the Hadramawt acted as ports through which goods from east Africa and south and east Asia would enter to be transported by caravan up through Arabia to ports on the Mediterranean to be shipped to Europe. Under this paradigm, the Yemeni cities grew wealthy alongside middle merchants like the Arabs of Mecca, whose city was situated in the middle of the land route between Yemen and the Levant. 

In fact, it would be difficult to call these peoples that lived in Yemen at the time Arab, as they spoke four closely related but now extinct languages collectively called Yemenite, or Old South Arabian. Thus, Yemen was seen by contemporaries as a distinct political and cultural entity, separate from “the Arabs”. It would not be until the arrival of Islam that all of Arabia became a single community of Arabs. 

In contrast to the Yemenis, the Arabs of the peninsula were broadly divided into small sedentary communities and pastoral tribes called the Badaw, or Bedouins. The former lived in oases, where the availability of water allowed the limited cultivation of crops like the date palm, or in market-shrine towns like Mecca that acted as both sacred ground and an interface through which Bedouins and merchants can trade goods. Conversely, the Bedouin tribes roamed the arid interior of the peninsula, raising camels and sheep and pursuing pasture and water. In times of difficulty, some tribes would move south, accepting work as mercenaries and guards in the Yemeni kingdoms. Between trade with the merchants of Mecca and those mercenaries, the Arabic language slowly diffused into the kingdoms of Yemen, eventually supplanting the Yemenite tongue. This was all about to change with the birth of a single individual, Muhammad of Mecca.

Given that this week’s sermon is about Yemen, I will not go into the particulars of the history of Islam. If you are interested in a detailed look at the rise of Muhammad and the ummah, the nation-state of Muslims, I was invited as a guest by the Radio War Nerd podcast to do a series on the topic. Episodes 246, 249, 251, and 255 encompass the early history of Islam. Suffice to say that the peoples of Yemen became Muslim under the rule of Muhammad. As the Islamic caliphate expanded, however, the need for more soldiers overrode the desire for Arab exclusivity and Yemen was absorbed into the Arab polity. In other words, Yemenis were now Arab for the purposes of serving in the nascent Muslim nation’s army. 

Fast forward to the end of World War 1, and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire has left a vacuum in the region. Northwestern Yemen emerged independent as the Mutawakilite Kingdom of Yemen whereas the south of the country around the port of Aden was seized by the British Empire and became a protectorate. The treatment of the Middle East as spoils of war to be divided between Britain and France led to widespread resentment and anti-colonial sentiments. In the early and mid 20th century, these sentiments coalesced around a secular pan-Arabist ideology. In the 1950’s and 60’s, tensions exploded. Military officers, embracing pan-Arabism and disenchanted with sclerotic Arab monarchies, overthrew the kings across the region. 

The Kingdom of Yemen was no exception, and in 1962 a cadre of revolutionary officers overthrew King Muhammad al-Badr and plunged North Yemen into a civil war. On the one hand, revolutionary officers established the Yemen Arab Republic (YAR), also known as North Yemen, and espoused a pan-Arabist ideology that gained them the support of Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Egypt and the Soviet Union. On the other hand, royalists backing the deposed king fought to restore the monarchy with support from Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Britain. The royalists were ultimately defeated, resulting in the perseverance of the YAR. 

Meanwhile, the British protectorate of South Yemen achieved independence in 1967 as the People’s Republic of Yemen following a guerrilla campaign by the National Liberation Front. In 1969, factional conflicts within the NLF led to the establishment of the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen, colloquially known as South Yemen, a one party Marxist-Leninist state supported by the Soviet Union and Eastern bloc. 

Relations between North and South Yemen veered between friendly and hostile, including two civil wars in 1972 and 1979. In both cases, North Yemen was supported by Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the US and UK against the communist South Yemen and its Soviet allies. This division remained until reunification into the Yemen we see today in 1990. In other words, Saudi Arabian intervention in Yemen today follows a very deep historical precedent.

It is also important to note that Saudi Arabia has been a fulcrum of US geopolitical strategy. During the Cold War, Saudi Arabia acted as the locus of Islamism through which the US hoped to counter secular pan-Arabism and socialism that emerged in the Middle East. The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, but the alliance with the Sauds remains. It is this alliance that has enabled the Sauds to conduct a war of extermination against Yemen since the fall of 2014. 

What does Biden’s announcement mean? It is hard to say. We know that the Saudi-led campaign in Yemen today is wholly dependent on US support. Not only are the planes and bombs used by the Sauds US-made, but US Air Force mechanics maintain and refuel the planes, and US officers sit alongside their Saudi counterparts in flight operations rooms and provide intelligence and logistical support for the bombing campaign. Biden has rightly called the “humanitarian and strategic catastrophe”, but he also left wiggle room by claiming that the US is “going to continue to support and help Saudi Arabia defend its sovereignty and its territorial integrity and its people”. Considering Saudi’s claims of daily incursions by Houthi-operated drones into its airspace, this casts a wide net on what the US will permit as self-defence. 

(Sidenote: Western media constantly refer to the Houthis (officially Ansar Allah) as Iranian-backed. This is remarkably simplistic and not entirely accurate. I assume that this line is fed through Saudi-funded think tanks to the press and the Acela corridor Natsec goons. This “Iranian-backed” label serves two purposes in my opinion: easily identify a faction as an enemy of the US, and tacitly propagate the asinine notion that all Shi’a communities are a hive mind controlled by a an Ayatollah on a computer in Tehran. The Houthis are Shi’a, but they are Zaidis, a sect very much separate from the Twelver Shi’ism practiced in Iran. Moreover, the Houthis may be working with Iran in an alliance of convenience, but such an alliance does not mean total Iranian control like the Saudis claim. The Houthis are a distinct polity with their own independent interests and goals, and any self-respecting journalist should treat them as such. Then again, I’m not sure any such journalists exist in the Western press.)

It is clear to all observers that the war in Yemen is not only a humanitarian disaster but a total and complete strategic failure for MBS and the Saudi government. Not only has the Saudi-led coalition failed to dislodge the Houthis, but it inadvertently empowered its rival Iran by creating a climate where Iran is seen as a desirable ally to protect against Saudi incursions. It also revealed the complete hollowness of the Saudi military, who had to immediately resort to Colombian and Sudanese mercenaries to conduct any ground operation, and whose air strikes may as well be considered wholly US organized.

The Biden administration has recognized the total failure that is the Yemen War, and has pledged to withdraw support. If this is a starting point for a total re-evaluation of the US relationship with Saudi Arabia, then there is ample cause for optimism. If only as a pipe dream, I sincerely hope MBS is sent to the Hague for his complete destruction of a country. On the other hand, the aforementioned caveats stated by Biden may lead to a continuation of the status quo. It is very difficult to have faith in the US foreign policy, and I don’t see any big change forthcoming but I hope I am wrong.

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For those of you who are unaware, some hedge funds decided in late 2020 to short GameStop stock in order to make a lot of money. Shorting is a financial method in which someone bets against a company’s stocks. Suppose, for example, that company X currently has stock at $20/share. For whatever reason, you believe this company is on the verge of collapse. You go to a stockbroker and ask to borrow some shares, and end up with five shares worth a total of $100. You immediately sell those shares, gambling on the assumption that the stock will collapse soon. Next week, the stock collapses and company X is now valued at $2/share. You buy back five shares at a total of $10 and return them to the broker you borrowed the shares from. You also pocket $90 in the difference.

Shorting carries with it great risk. Suppose that company X does not collapse. Somehow, the company discovers faster than light travel, and the company value multiplies. Stocks are now worth $300/share. You still owe the broker the five shares you borrowed, and the deadline is up. Therefore, you have to go back into the marketplace and buy five shares for a total of $1500, resulting in a $1400 loss for you. 

The subreddit r/wallstreetbets had noticed the attempts by hedge funds to short the GameStop stock. Consequently, redditors encouraged each other to buy up GameStop shares en masse. The idea here is that if redditors buy up the stock and hoard it, the price will skyrocket and hedge funds will be forced to close their position, which is to say the funds will have to buy the shares at a loss to return the shares to the brokers they borrowed them from. This is a rather strong oversimplification but ultimately this process has led GameStop shares to skyrocket from $20/share at the beginning of 2021 to closing at $347/share as of last night January 27. 

There are several lessons to be learned from this developing situation. Firstly, the stock market has no relation to the real health of an economy nor does it reflect any real use value. GameStop has not invented some groundbreaking new gaming technology. As the analysts chiming in on CNBC and Fox Business keep reminding us, the fundamentals at GameStop remain the same. The stock market relies largely on perceptions of value. In other words, shares increase in value when buyers exhibit confidence in them and vice versa. Therefore, it is entirely unreliable to use the stock market as a reflection of an economy.

Secondly, shareholding is proof of alternative ownership models to the capitalist-worker relationship. While stocks today completely alienate the owners of a company, the stockholders, from the company’s work and labour, it also acts as an example of collective ownership that can translate to worker ownership. Imagine if workers at a given workplace collectively owned their company much in the same way that shareholders currently do. Instead of a board of directors acting as representatives of those shareholders, workers can democratically elect a board and make major decisions communally. All it takes is a cursory look at shareholding to see that this can work if only the political will is there.

Finally, as Marx says in the Communist Manifesto, the “executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.” As GameStop share value continues to rise, the political class in the United States has raised the alarm about market volatility and is now acting quickly to prevent a similar situation from happening. Why? Well, Melvin Capital, one of the hedge funds that bet on GameStop to fail, has had to close their shorting position with a $2.4 billion loss. They also needed two other hedge funds to inject billions of dollars into Melvin to keep them solvent. The hedge fund managers and owners of capital are mortified that a bunch of day traders on an online forum brought a big hedge fund to its knees. That cannot happen again. The free market is only free to the capitalist class. That freedom cannot and will not be extended to the rest of us. 

Does that mean that we should ignore the great Battle of GameStop circa 2021? I won’t. Day trading stocks via r/wallstreetbets advice may not bring about The Revolution™️, but it sure is hilarious. Personally, I will continue to root for the reddit freaks, and the more I watch Wall St. suits have collective aneurysms live on CNBC, the more the reddit traders win me over. Keep it up nerds.

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Yet despite the name, the class does little to teach students about the actual history of Bahrain. Rather, we learned a medley of basic geographic facts and numbers combined with the ancient history of the region. Curiously, history as taught to Bahraini students pauses with the arrival of Islam to the island in the 8th century AD. Skimming past several centuries worth of events with the most cursory of glances, Bahraini history resumes at the turn of the millennium, with the death of Emir Isa bin Salman al Khalifa and the succession of his son Emir Hamad bin Isa al Khalifa.

Ignoring the more controversial period at the end of the 20th century, the focus lay with the National Action Charter of 2001, whereby Emir Hamad reconstituted the country into a constitutional monarchy with himself as king, and implemented some reforms including the re-writing of a constitution in anticipation of parliamentary elections in 2002. King Hamad also issued a mass pardon of political prisoners, allowing many exiles to return home after years abroad. If the Ministry issued textbook is to be believed, the Charter passed a referendum in 2001 with 98% of the vote, and Bahrainis live happily ever after. However, as today December 16th is National Day in Bahrain, I want to re-examine some presumptions regarding this sterile propaganda we were taught and delve into the missing decades between the fight for independence from Britain in the mid-20th century and the death of the first Emir of an independent Bahrain, Isa bin Salman of the House of Khalifa.

Following the end of World War 2, the British Empire finally admitted its own decline, and began preparing to withdraw from what was left of its myriad colonies, protectorates, and mandates. Despite what some believe, however, this was not done out of the goodness of British hearts. Rather, independence movements across the world found renewed momentum amidst a war weary British public. In Bahrain, the leftist National Union Committee was formed with deep ties to organized labour. Strikes, labour stoppages, and riots were a frequent hallmark of this period as the NUC demanded an end to British colonial presence.

The NUC’s resistance to Britain climaxed with the March Intifada of 1965. A mass layoff of workers at the Bahrain Petroleum Company (BAPCO) triggered protests and demonstrations. The British, through their Khalifa clients, responded with force, escalating the violence. Over the next month, mass strikes and riots happened almost daily under the slogan “down down with colonialism”. Though the uprising was crushed, British colonialism in Bahrain has been shown to be untenable, and as with many other colonies, the British decided to cut their losses and leave.

As a result, in 1968, Britain announced its intentions to end its treaty relationships with its protectorates in the Persian Gulf. These included Qatar, Bahrain, and the Trucial States - a set of tribal confederations which would later form the United Arab Emirates. Iran, then under the Pahlavi dynasty, immediately laid claim to Bahrain as its territory.

Negotiations between Iran and Britain led to a United Nations-sponsored referendum in 1970 in which the Bahraini people were asked if they preferred independence or merging with Iran. According to the UN Special Representative sent to the island, Bahrainis overwhelmingly desired independence. Thus, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 278 on 11 May 1970 stipulating that Bahrain be granted independence according to the wishes of her people. Bahrain was then offered a chance to join with Qatar and the Trucial States to form a confederation of sheikhdoms, but by early 1971, the terms of such a union were still disputed, and both Qatar and Bahrain chose to withdraw from what would then become the United Arab Emirates.

On August 14, 1971, Britain formally departed and Bahrain achieved full independence. Four months later, on December 16, 1971, Isa bin Salman al Khalifa formally ascended to the throne as Emir of the State of Bahrain. On the same day, Emir Isa announced that Bahrain will be organized as a constitutional state, with a constitution to be written by a Constituent Assembly. The assembly would be split between 22 elected delegates and 20 delegates appointed by the Emir. Elections for the 22 delegates were held in December 1972, and a constitution was drafted accordingly.

The 1973 Constitution of Bahrain proposed a single chamber National Assembly consisting of 30 elected representatives alongside 14 royally appointed members. The Assembly would act strictly as a consultative legislative organ, with little political power of its own. The Emir retained the power to appoint the Prime Minister and Cabinet, which he duly did by giving the former position to his brother, Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa. The key cabinet positions - the Interior, Defence, Foreign Affairs, and Justice - all went to members of the House of Khalifa too. Meanwhile, suffrage was restricted to male citizens over the age of 20.Isa ratified the Constitution by decree in December 1973, allowing for an election that same month for the National Assembly. Thus, 1973 closed with what seemed to be a relatively optimistic note for Bahrainis dreaming of political freedom.

Sadly, it was not to last. Bahrain’s National Assembly convened for only two sessions before it was dissolved by decree from the Emir. Isa had drafted a State Security Law in 1974, which among other things contained measures stipulating that individuals can be arrested and detained without trial for a renewable period of three years if deemed a threat to Bahrain’s state security. The Assembly predictably refused to ratify this law. Consequently, Isa ratified the law by decree and on August 25, 1975, he dissolved the Assembly. Bahrain’s experiment with nominal democracy lasted just about two years.

Emir Isa went on to rule Bahrain until his death on March 11, 1999. The SSL was used extensively to suppress all dissent. The State Security Court was established with a special mandate from the Emir to try individuals under the SSL, with no chances of appeal. Notable opposition figures either went into exile or were arrested. Bahrain was effectively an absolute monarchy.

Though Emir Isa ruled as monarch, a special mention must go to Ian Henderson. Known in some circles as the Butcher of Bahrain, Henderson was the chief architect of the State Security Law. Henderson gained fame as a colonial police officer in Kenya during the Mau Mau Uprising, whereby he played a crucial role in capturing leader Dedan Kimathi and thus ending the uprising in favour of the British. Following Kenya’s independence in 1957, Henderson moved to Bahrain, where he took up the position of head of the Security and Intelligence Services in 1966. When Bahrain gained independence in 1971, Henderson stayed as SIS chief. For the next three decades, Henderson oversaw a vast and cruel regime of torture, disappearances, and murders in the service of Emir Isa al Khalifa. Any political opposition or dissent was thoroughly crushed. Henderson retired in 1998, a year before Emir Isa’s death, and died in 2013. He left as his legacy the brutal security apparatus of the Bahraini state, which continues to repress dissent to this day.

Upon the death of Emir Isa, his son and heir Emir Hamad bin Isa al Khalifa ascended to the throne. As part of a wide swathe of reforms, Hamad pardoned political prisoners and invited exiles to return with guarantees of safety and freedom. This was part of Hamad’s strategy of diffusing the tension resulting from a particularly violent period of dissent in the 90’s known as the 1990’s Intifada or the 90’s Uprising. Over 40 people died and hundreds were injured due to either bomb attacks from anti-government blocs or police brutality. Thus, Hamad saw his ascension as a chance to turn a new page and engage in modest reforms to quell the militant opposition.

The cornerstone of Hamad’s reforms lay in the National Action Charter. Put forth by Hamad in 2001, it was a political document that proposed restoring the 1973 Constitution, extending suffrage to women, instituting an independent judiciary overseen by a Supreme Court, and establishing a legislative assembly comprised of 40 members to be selected in elections. A national referendum was held for the NAC on 14 February 2001, resulting in 98.4% votes in favour from a turnout of 90.2% of eligible voters.

Consequently, a year to the day on 14th February 2002, Bahrain formally transitioned from a state (Dawla) into a Kingdom (Mamlaka), with Hamad now titled King Hamad bin Isa al Khalifa, and his son became the Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad al Khalifa. Local municipal elections were held in May of 2002. Parliamentary elections for the National Assembly - known now as the Council of Deputies - were held in October of that year, yielding the expected 40 MPs despite boycotts from the major opposition political parties who saw the reforms as not adequate enough and parliament as not having sufficient political power. The crux of the boycott revolved around the Council’s inability to appoint a Prime Minister or Cabinet. The largest opposition party - the Shi’a Islamist Wefaq Party - as well as the leftist Wa’ad Party were those who boycotted the 2002 elections, among others. As a result of the boycott, turnout was an underwhelming 53.48%, in stark contrast to the turnout for the NAC referendum.

Fast forward to 2011, and the cautious optimism of the Bahrani people that accompanied the NAC has long dissipated into dust. The Council of Deputies remained politically impotent, lacking any real political power. The King retained the sole authority to appoint and dismiss the Prime Minister, and he retained his uncle Prince Khalifa bin Salman al Khalifa. At this point, Prime Minister Khalifa had become the longest-serving Prime Minister in the world, having been at the post for 38 years by 2011. Sectarian discrimination towards the Shi’a majority had been rife over the the past decade, with notable exclusions from jobs, housing, and education opportunities. As the Arab Spring exploded in Tunisia and spread eastward, Bahrainis took to the streets demanding a true representative government with an elected parliament and cabinet, along with calls to respect human rights and freedoms of speech and assembly. Without going too much into the weeds of Bahrain’s Arab Spring (that will be a topic for another piece altogether, and perhaps an episode on Radio War Nerd or Das Criminal podcasts should time and chance allow it), the government responded with brutal force.

Moreover, Prince Khalifa called his counterparts in Saudi Arabia, requesting aid, and the Saudis answered. Two thousand troops from the GCC’s Peninsula Shield force, ostensibly a cooperative effort but realistically driven by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, crossed the border into Bahrain to secure key government locations and free the Bahraini police to fan out and besiege Shi’a towns and mass arrest political dissidents. The result was a total eradication of any organized political opposition. Political leaders fled into exile (again) or were arrested and tried in kangaroo courts. Many were given long sentences, some were given life sentences. Thousands were injured in clashes with the police, and 93 protestors died. As I write this today, in December of 2020, the House of Khalifa remains in firm control of the government and security organs. Prince Khalifa died on 11 November of this year, but King Hamad quickly moved to appoint his son, the Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad as the next Prime Minister. The notable opposition parties - Wefaq and Wa’ad - are banned, as is the only anti-government news publication in Wasat. The Council of Deputies remains, but boycotts to elections means that the assembly is stacked with loyalists to the government, effectively acting as a rubber stamp to the cabinet.

All of this is to say that Bahrain’s National Day, observed on the 16th of December annually, is in fact a commemoration of an autocratic monarchy led by a small handful of individuals of the House of Khalifa. Dates and days are symbolically important. They represent the social and political priorities of those in power, and reflect the underlying relations of power. The House of Khalifa would be loath to celebrate Independence Day on August 14. That would give too much credit to the labour movement that organized against British colonial rule, and undermine the legitimacy of the monarchy. Conversely, celebrating National Day on December 16 every year reaffirms the total political hegemony of the House of Khalifa on the island. It is an effective reminder that power lies with King Hamad and Crown Prince Salman and their coterie of sibling, cousins. and uncles, along with a select few allied families. Perhaps one day we will celebrate a revolutionary Bahrain Day, glorifying the people and their sacrifices, but until then we must contend with a feudalistic royal family and a corrupt elite looting Bahrain dry. So, happy Bahrain Feudal Monarchy Day, readers!

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I learned this lesson last week. On Monday November 2nd, I was told by doctors that I have a seminoma - a cancer. Seminomas are a highly curable and not uncommon type of cancer among young males, of which I am one. Seminomal tumours form in the testes, or in rare instances like mine, in the retroperitoneum - the lower back. Such tumours are highly responsive to chemotherapy with a ~ 95% cure rate. Tomorrow, I start chemotherapy. Today is the deep breath before the plunge.

Pictured: The author, Saturday November 7th.

In many ways I am extremely fortunate. I was lucky enough to detect the tumour early, before any significant metastases developed. My luck does not stop there however. I am lucky because I come from a comfortable middle class family that put me through K-12 private school back home. Consequently, I was able to apply to and be accepted to the University of Toronto, and my family’s socioeconomic status allowed me to emigrate to Toronto and embark on a rather expensive post-secondary education.

I am lucky because I am a relatively healthy 25 year old male, who arrived here at 17 with minimal obstacles. I am lucky because - after graduating from U of T - I managed to gain Canadian permanent residency. That meant I was covered by Canadian healthcare. I am lucky because I can now receive some of the best healthcare in the world, free at the point of service. I am lucky because I have a unionized job that allows paid medical leaves to focus on treatment. And finally, I am lucky because despite moving to Toronto alone I now have an incredible circle of friends that are a family to me - not by something as accidental as blood, but by something much stronger, by choice. Their support over the past weeks has been immense, and I am grateful beyond words.

Thus, I write this not to extract personal pity but to show how random the world is. People may try to rationalize it via religion, karma, moral punishment, but sooner or later we all must gaze into the abyss that life is a sequence of coin tosses. Sometimes we lose a particular coin toss. Sometimes that loss causes a really bad outcome. Either ways, there is no rhyme and reason to our life.

So why am I writing this? Consider the stranger. What separates me from the many people that may be suffering from a variety of conditions right now is a sequence of sheer dumb luck. Many cancer patients live in societies where healthcare is not free, and rack up six-figure debts pursuing treatment. Many cancer patients have to work through their illness to afford rent and bills. Many cancer patients have to contend with a myriad of other disabilities or health issues that amplify their difficulties. Many cancer patients lack a loving support network of friends and family.

This week has forced me to reflect on my socialism. Those of you who know me know I have been an unapologetic socialist for some time now. However, my politics have been thrown into a new light given my diagnosis. I am a socialist because I believe that strangers deserve to live with the same level of comfort I am blessed to have. Cancer patients should not be forced to pay for treatment, or work through their treatment, or face any form of material need living in the most wealthy period of human history. Moreover, it is an indictment of our society that 8,715 people live homeless in Toronto while 66,000+ homes remain vacant. I am a socialist because I believe that every human being, by virtue of their humanity alone, deserves a life of dignity and respect regardless of whether I will meet them or not.

We are staring down the barrel of ecological collapse even as fascism is spreading across the world. Still, it does not have to be this way. It can be better than this. I thus ask you, the reader, to consider the sympathy and support you might want to extend to me, and to let what personal affection you may have for me to bleed into your politics. Let your politics reflect a sympathy, support, and love for strangers you may never meet as strongly as you would for me. Together, we can forge a better future for every single human being.

Tomorrow, as I embark on my first step in a long and arduous journey of chemotherapy, I think of Ernest Hemingway who wrote in For Whom the Bells Toll, “The world is a fine place and worth fighting for and I hate very much to leave it.” I, too, will fight.

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If you’ve brought out the champagne to celebrate yet another Azerbaijan/Armenia ceasefire, keep that cork firmly in the bottle. Hours after US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced a new ceasefire on Friday the 23rd of October, both sides resumed accusing the other of shelling military and civilian targets. Backed by Turkish air support, the Azerbaijani army seems to have made significant gains on the southern front of the conflict. Their reticence to follow through on ceasefires thus makes sense in the context of the momentum.

Turkey’s involvement in the latest round of the Nagorno-Karabakh war is itself an interesting signs of things to come in the Middle East. Under President Recep Teyyip Erdogan, Turkey has sought to assert itself as a regional power. In this, Erdogan is contending with both Iran as well as the Saudi-UAE Gulf axis, each with their own - and sometimes concurrent and sometimes mutually exclusive - interests.

It wouldn’t be a surprise if Erdogan has this map hanging above his bed so he can look at it before bedtime every night. (Source)

This triple threat cold war and love triangle has played out on several fronts. In Libya, Turkey currently supports the UN recognized government in Tripoli against the UAE’s client, the renegade general Khalifa Haftar and his Tobruk based army. And when the UAE and Saudi Arabia led a regional boycott of Qatar in 2017, Turkey accelerated its deployment of troops to its bases in Doha as per a defence treaty signed by the two nations. Turkey also sent its tentative ally supplies by air, flouting the Saudi-UAE attempts to isolate Qatar by air, sea, and land.

Perhaps nothing can elucidate the rivalry between Turkey and the Saudi-UAE axis than Egypt. During the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011, Egyptians toppled longtime dictator Hosni Mubarak. In the following elections, the Muslim Brotherhood achieved a sweeping victory, with Mohamed Morsi emerging as the democratically elected new president of Egypt. Turkey saw this as an opportunity, enthusiastically backing Morsi with both political rhetoric and material support.

Meanwhile, the Saudis and Emiratis were watching all of this unfold with chagrin. They have long viewed political Islamism of the kind espoused by the Muslim Brotherhood as a threat to their monopoly on power. In the Saudis’ case, the Brotherhood acted as an opposing pole to its own version of Islam, Wahhabism, that it seeks to export globally. Therefore, the rise of Morsi in Egypt would have challenged Saudi Arabia’s perceived role as the global exclusive patron of political Islam. On the other hand, the UAE encourages a strongly apolitical Islam, and sees the Brotherhood as a vehicle for dissent to its autocratic rule.

Fast forward to 2013, and General Abdelfatah Al-Sisi launches a coup overthrowing President Morsi and seizing power. Al-Sisi was swiftly recognized by the UAE and Saudi Arabia, and began cracking down hard on the Muslim Brotherhood. This purge culminated in the brutal Raba’a Massacre of Morsi supporters on August 13-14, 2013. And while Al-Sisi got to work crushing the Brotherhood, billions of dollars of capital flooded into Egypt from Saudi Arabia and the UAE. On the other hand, Qatar and Turkey released public expressions of disapproval and anger at the coup. Today, Al-Sisi’s Egypt sits firmly under the UAE-Saudi Arabia umbrella, and in fact participated in the regional embargo of Qatar in 2017.

Egyptian President Abdelfatah El-Sisi was invited by King Salman of Saudi Arabia in 2017 to touch the Orb. Warning: They are not all accounted for, the lost Seeing Stones. We do not know who else may be watching. (Source)

All of this is to say that Erdogan will most likely escalate Turkey’s involvement in the Middle East even more as opportunities present themselves. Erdogan sees Turkey as the successor to the Ottoman Empire, and will act accordingly. Conversely, the UAE and Saudi Arabia have billions of dollars of oil money to spend against Turkey. Moreover, both royal families have spent large amounts of money lobbying various Western powers and pulling them away from the Turkish sphere. Time will tell how this plays out, but it is clear that in a conflict between an Islamist Turkey and the brutal regimes of Saudi Arabia and the UAE, there are no winners among the people in the region.

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Unfortunately, such a result marks a considerable victory for the party establishment over an insurgent left wing, a left represented most strongly by Lascaris and fellow ecosocialist candidate Meryam Haddad in the leadership contest. Haddad in particular experienced the wrath of the party establishment, being expelled on September 22nd, a mere 11 days before the elections, before being reinstated on appeal. The party claimed that Haddad had violated internal party policy by endorsing the BC Ecosocialists in provincial elections over the provincial Greens. However, Haddad rightly pointed out that former leader May herself endorsed a Liberal candidate over a Green candidate in the federal elections of 2015. Haddad was reinstated, but not without much effort - effort that could have been directed towards campaigning in the leadership race. 

Outgoing Green Party leader Elizabeth May, left, seen campaigning with incoming leader Annamie Paul, right.

Similarly, Lascaris’s application for candidacy was initially rejected by the party, and only reinstated following an appeal as well. It is no coincidence that Lascaris offered a comprehensive socialist platform that recognizes the underlying links between climate change, neoliberal policy, and capitalism. Consequently, the lawyer and journalist from Montreal has advocated for nationalizing key sectors in Canada, including transportation, education, and internet service providers. Lascaris also promised to overhaul Canada’s healthcare system, which currently exists as a provincial single payer system where healthcare providers remain privatized. Instead, Lascaris proposed a People’s Healthcare System modeled after the UK’s NHS, where healthcare is both publicly funded and owned. Lascaris’s PHS would also expand public healthcare to include dentistry, mental health, eldercare, and pharmacare. If the COVID-19 pandemic has shown us anything, it is the untenable fragility of Canada’s healthcare system following years of austerity and limited funding by Liberals and Conservatives alike. Thus, Lascaris’s proposal was a bold and expansive attempt to bring Canada’s healthcare up to par for the modern world.

On the other hand, Annamie Paul represents the party’s “business as usual” line, and a continuation of Elizabeth May’s leadership. Paul promised to maintain the Green Party’s position on carbon taxation, banning fracking, and enacting mild regulations on the private sector. Beyond that, Paul gave vague nods to progressivism without offering much in concrete policy. On policing for example, Paul suggests defunding without offering a pathway, and advocates for civilian oversight. Paul’s website describes her approach to policing with the bold sentence that “there must be a profound change within the system”. On the other hand, Lascaris writes on his website, also in bold, that the aim is to “create a society in which the police are unnecessary and can be abolished” while also proposing specific policies including a 50% reduction of funding to the RCMP over the next 5 years and banning training exercises between Canadian police and police of other countries like Israel. 

Green Party leadership candidate and self-described ecosocialist Dimitri Lascaris.

However, nothing highlights the difference between the party establishment as seen in Paul and the insurgent left manifested in Lascaris and Haddad like foreign policy. During the foreign policy debate hosted by rabble.ca, Lascaris and Haddad were the only two candidates who answered no to the moderator’s questions on whether Canada should be a part of NATO or the Five Eyes network of intelligence organs. Both also rejected Canada’s participation in the Lima Group, designed to organize regime change in Venezuela. Both opposed Canada’s bid for the security council seat. Both agreed that Canada should sign the UN’s Prohibition on Nuclear Weapons treaty. Moreover, Lascaris was the sole candidate to call for the release of Meng Wanzhou, the Chinese businesswoman and Huawei executive currently held by Canadian federal police in BC following an extradition request by the US, who plan to charge her for fraud for violating sanctions in conducting business with Iran.

Meanwhile, Annamie Paul chose to abstain on all the above questions, remarking that those issues were “too important for that particular format” - a format where candidates were urged to show a thumbs up, thumbs down, or sideways thumbs indicating abstentions in response to the moderator’s yes/no questions. A cursory look into Paul’s website shows no platform on foreign policy, choosing to focus instead on “innovation in healthcare” among such empty banalities.

Nevertheless, Paul was announced on Saturday October 3rd as the victor and new Green Party leader, having raised the most funds during the campaign at $206,000 and garnered endorsements from key party figures including outgoing leader Elizabeth May. Moving forward, Paul will have to deal with a fractured party following a leadership contest rife with claims of missing ballots, party intervention (including May fundraising for Paul), and several attempts to expel the leftist candidates for flimsy reasons. How she chooses to do that is up to her team, but it is clear that the party as yet will maintain the establishment line.

Despite this setback, however, there are also reasons for optimism, both within the Green Party and without. Lascaris pushed Paul to the wire, accumulating 42.22% of the eighth and final vote tally and proving a real hunger for a radical new political project among Party members. Beyond the Greens, the NDP has also shown itself to be a party with room for left wing insurgencies as seen most recently in Nikki Ashton’s leadership bid. 

Green Party of Canada’s leadership results following a ranked ballot election lasting eight rounds. (Source)

Even more, party politics only scratch the surface of the left’s potential in Canada. In Toronto in 2018, Parkdale Organize has successfully orchestrated rent strikes to resist landlords attempting to increase rent above guidelines to price out tenants. Also in 2018, Canada Post’s union went on a nation-wide strike demanding better conditions. And earlier this year, Ontario’s teachers also went on strike, expressing rage at a lack of funding and increasing class sizes leading to a deterioration of public schools. That’s all without exploring the activities of BLM Toronto, Idle No More, and other grassroots organizations pushing for radical change amidst the abject degradations of the neoliberal consensus. 

It is thus clear that hope is not lost just yet. There is a lot of potential for success of the Left in Canada, and the pandemic offers unparalleled opportunities to expand and organize the people. Leftists must find optimism in the aforementioned victories, and organize with local tenant groups and workplace unions now more than ever to resist unsafe workplaces and eviction threats. At the same time, the NDP and the Green Party may have temporarily succeeded in stifling their left wings, but it behooves us to apply constant pressure on the parties and mobilize a base that can act as a sword of Damocles on the establishment incumbents. When the opportunities arise, we must be ready to seize the moment. Chairman Mao Tse-tung once said that “everything under heaven is in utter chaos. The situation is excellent.” It is up to the left to make the opportunities count.

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First, the good news. Exit polls in Bolivia are suggesting that the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS), the party of ousted president Evo Morales, are set to win in a staggering landslide. Bolivia’s electoral system requires that a candidate win with 40%+ in the first round with a 10% margin over the second placed candidate to ensure a victory without a run-off election. In that context, MAS candidate Luis “Lucho” Arce received 52% of the vote, an overwhelming victory over the second place centrist candidate Carlos Mesa who garnered about 33% of the vote.

Luis “Lucho” Arce, center, celebrating exit polls showing a massive victory for MAS in Bolivia.

The elections were held almost a year after a US-backed military coup overthrew former president Evo Morales following claims by the Organization of American States (OAS) that Morales’s electoral victory in 2019 was marred by fraud. Thus, Arce’s stunning win marks a clear rebuke to the US, OAS, and the Bolivian right and offers explicit legitimacy to the socialists. What this means going forward is a lot less clear. Official results may not be released for several days, which gives certain elements a good amount of time to, uhhh, “detect voting irregularities”. That being said, the election had been organized under the auspices of the interim right-wing government of Jeanine Añez, so any claims that MAS engaged in fraud would look particularly preposterous. Nevertheless, I for one will be holding my breath until Lucho is confirmed president.

Speaking of landslide victories, Jacinda Ardern’s Labour Party has won a historic victory in New Zealand’s elections, held on Saturday the 17th of October. For the first time since 1986, New Zealand will be governed by a single party holding an outright majority in parliament without the need to form a coalition. Although Ardern is no Maoist Third Worldist (no matter how hard the right try to portray her to be), Labour’s defeat of the National Party is an encouraging ray of bright news and another good showing by the broader left this week. Hopefully she can now march those odious conservative intellectuals into the countryside to be re-educated on farms into accepting Jacinda Ardern Thought.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern gives a victory speech to Labour Party supporters in New Zealand following a resounding re-election victory.

Unfortunately, that marks the end of the good news for today. A French schoolteacher was beheaded by a Chechen Muslim refugee in the town of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine after the former apparently showed his students cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in a lesson on free speech. French President Emmanuel Macron decried the terrorist attack and declared that “Islamists should not be able to sleep easy in our country”. Macron also announced plans to “ban radical organizations”. I’m sure such vague and opaque laws will never be used to curtail civil liberties or target leftist political dissidents. Such things have never happened before.

The assailant, named Abdoullakh Abouyezidovitch Anzorov, had come to France from Russia. There are much better sources than me covering the radicalization of Chechens and the role of Saudi Arabia in exporting Islamism abroad. However, I can say with reasonable certainty that Macron’s war on Islamism will not extend to France’s exports of military arms and equipment to Saudi Arabia, currently worth €11 billion. A smart political cartoonist could even depict Macron attempting to put out a fire with a bucket of water in one hand while handing a jug of kerosene to Mohammed bin Salman with his other hand, but such artistic endeavours are beyond my capabilities.

North Cyprus also held presidential elections this weekend, resulting in a victory to the avowed nationalist right-winger Ersin Tatar. Tatar, a close ally of Turkish President Recep Teyyip Erdogan, took 51.73% of the vote and defeated the more moderate and reconciliatory incumbent, Mustafa Akinci. The island of Cyprus has been de facto split into two since 1974, between the internationally recognized government of Cyprus in the south, and the Turkish backed separatist state of North Cyprus. Akinci had favoured compromise with the Cypriots in the south, whereas Tatar is a bellicose nationalist who has openly supported a two-state solution.

Map of Cyprus showing the separatist Turkish north from the internationally recognized Cypriot government in the south. (Source)

Such results may seem irrelevant at first glance, except for Erdogan’s seemingly unstoppable appetite for expansionism in the region. The Turkish President is increasingly behaving like a sultan of a revived Ottoman Empire, with fingers in multiple pies simultaneously. Over the past year alone, he has launched a full scale invasion of northern Syria, backed Azerbaijan in their war with Armenia, supported a faction in Libya’s fractal civil war, and now achieved a political victory in northern Cyprus. Any day now, we’ll see Turkish flags raised over Vienna.

Thanks for subscribing and following Saif and Qalam! If you like this weekly update format, please let me know in the comments below, and please share with your friends, allies, enemies, religious congregations, military coalition associates, etc.

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Canada has long maintained a well-constructed image of the world’s peacekeeper. Whereas the US is seen as a reckless oaf at best and malicious empire more accurately, Canada has managed to keep its international image spotless. In a way, Canada’s approach to foreign policy is best described by Nicholas Cage’s character Yuri Orlov in the movie Lord of War, “I don't put a gun to anybody's head and make them shoot. But shooting is better for business. But, I prefer people to fire my guns and miss. Just as long as they are firing.”

Map of the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict, as centered around the breakaway Republic of Artsakh in Nagorno-Karabakh. (source)

Like Orlov, Canada may not want a particular group of people dead, but if they were to be shot, it prefers they be shot by Canadian made armaments. One such group of people are the Kurds in southeast Turkey. As a fellow member of NATO, Canada has had no qualms exporting arms to Turkey. In fact, in 2018 alone, Turkey was the third largest buyer of Canadian arms, behind Saudi Arabia and Belgium. Turkey is especially interested in imaging and targeting sensor systems, and has been purchasing such gear from L3Harris WESCAM since 2017. A subsidiary of the US arms company L3Harris, L3Harris WESCAM operates in Burlington, Ontario and makes sensor systems with laser guided targeting, used primarily in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or drones. Though Canada claims its exports must abide by the Arms Trade Treaty to which it is a signatory, there is ample evidence that the L3Harris WESCAM sensors were used in Turkish drone strikes on Kurdish insurgents and civilians alike in the long running conflict in Turkey’s southeast regions. In October 2019, however, Turkey launched an invasion of northern Syria, ethnically cleansing the Syrian Kurds who live there. This proved to be a step too far for Canada, and it froze all arms export permits to Turkey.

Canada’s full arms embargo was extended in April of this year, though it allowed for certain exceptions under the auspices of NATO cooperation programs. Such an exception was made for WESCAM, who continue to export their sensor systems to Turkey to be installed on the Turkish air force’s Bayraktar TB-2 UAVs. According to a report by the Canadian disarmament group Project Ploughshares, the Turkish Bayraktar TB-2 UAV, which comes in both reconnaissance and armed variants, relies “exclusively on WESCAM targeting hardware.” Thus, despite the apparent embargo, the federal government is more than happy to allow secondary and tertiary equipment to be sold to facilitate ethnic cleansing, as long as the cleansing is done with Canadian sensors.

Turkish Air Force’s Bayraktar TB-2 Drone

In addition to their uses both within Turkey and in Syria, the Turkish military has also been providing its drones to the Libyan Government of National Accord, currently embroiled in a war with the Tobruk based Libyan National Army led by Khalifa Haftar. When confronted by CBC, the Turkish embassy did not even deny its involvement in Libya. "In Libya, Turkey is supporting the legitimate government against a warlord, [Khalifa] Haftar, and this is in line with the international law,” the embassy claims. On the other hand, the embassy’s statement further goes on to dismiss Project Ploughshares’ reports of civilian casualties as Kurdish PKK propaganda. 

It is no secret that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has bold imperial ambitions for Turkey in the region. Now, with the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict erupting into outright war, Turkey has thrown itself behind Azerbaijan. Turkish backing has included UAV support for the Azerbaijani forces, including both reconnaissance and drone strikes. Turkish airstrikes have unambiguously led to civilian casualties in the Nagorno-Karabakh pocket, and yet the WESCAM sensors continue to be exported. In fact, Azerbaijan is now interested in buying Turkish Bayraktar TB-2 drones for its own military. Thus, WESCAM sensors made in Burlington can be shipped to Turkey to install on its drones, and those drones can then massacre civilians in Turkey, Syria, Libya, and now Nagorno-Karabakh, and the money flows back to L3Harris and Canada. The spice, as always, must flow. 

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Ever since then, the TV was always on in the background while I was at home. Sometimes it was showing live football matches, or Cartoon Network. Other times, it would be on a premium movie channel. It was one such channel where I first watched the movie Taken. It was an enjoyable if not especially genre-defining film. I quickly moved on. 

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Last weekend, I was bored and stuck with quarantine and came across Taken on my Amazon Prime account. I decided to let it play. What resulted in the next hour and a half can only be described as pure ego death. I was taken into a journey delving into the very depths of a particular kind of American Dad psychopathology. I realized at that moment that I was never the intended audience for this movie. 

Movie poster for Taken (2008). I for one am waiting for Taken 4, a prequel where Bryan takes Kim to Disneyland.

Instead, this movie was created for the sort of American Dad that would post a photo of himself, hands wrapped around his daughter’s waist, with a caption indicating some kind of virginity pledge in which the daughter promises her dad to keep her virginity through Prom. Give this American Dad a few beers and he will inevitably regale you - for the hundredth time no doubt - with his sincere assurances that he could have become a Navy SEAL operator had he not injured his hamstring throwing the game-winning touchdown for his high school team. It goes without saying that this dad owns several rifles and pistols. During the day, the aforementioned Dad runs a hot tub dealership. Nevertheless, A.D. froths at the mouth thinking about the fantasy of walking by a nice lady being mugged by some youths, so he can unload his Smith & Wesson Model 5906 into the racially ambiguous teen. A.D. lives in an ugly McMansion in a suburb somewhere, and yet believes he is besieged by enemies be they Muslims, MS-13, Antifa, etc. To this intrepid hero, Taken is a modern art masterpiece.

Many of you may have come across the memes that the movie produced, not least of all the “particular set of skills monologue”. For those of you who have been fortunate enough to avoid the movie and associated references, a recap is in order. SPOILERS AHEAD. Taken concerns the life of retired CIA operator Bryan Mills (played by Liam Neeson), whose daughter Kim lives with his ex-wife Lenore and her wealthy husband Stuart. Kim convinces her protective dad to let her travel to Paris with her best friend Amanda. Upon their arrival, they meet a handsome youth by the name of Peter, and they share a cab together. Little do they know, Peter is a spotter for a human trafficking ring, and he notes their address down. Shortly thereafter, masked men enter the apartment Amanda and Kim are staying at and kidnap the pair. Before she is kidnapped, Kim is able to call her father and shout descriptions of the men to him. When they realize, a kidnapper picks up the dropped phone, at which point Bryan does his famous monologue:

“I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. If you're looking for ransom, I can tell you I don't have money but what I do have are a very particular set of skills. Skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now, that will be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you and I will kill you.”

After a tense pause, the kidnapper responds with a comically Balkan accent “good luck” and hangs up.

Liam Neeson as Bryan Mills about to launch into a Shakespearean monologue.

What follows is an hour long romp through Paris in which Bryan Mills dispatches hordes of bad guys via the above-mentioned skills as he seeks to find his daughter before it is too late. He rescues the damsel in distress, and everyone lives happily ever after. It is not the generic plot, however, that makes Taken such an astute study of that particular pathology affecting the American male. Rather, Taken’s ensemble of villains acts as a flawless time capsule encapsulating a very exact moment in American political history and collective psyche. 

Taken was filmed in late 2007, following the massive troop surge of the US military into Iraq as the war went from bad to worse for the Americans. Domestically, President George W. Bush was facing historically low popularity ratings going into the 2008 election, where the Republican Party ended up nominating John McCain against the Democrats’ Barack Obama. It is in this climate that the movie was released. Despite mixed reviews, the movie grossed significant money, raking in $145 million in North America alone (vs. a production budget of $25 million). It clearly found a hungry audience, but why?

Let’s start with the kidnappers mentioned above. Kim screams to her father that the man grabbing her was six feet, bearded, with a tattoo of a [crescent] moon and star on the hand. Bryan contacts a CIA friend who determines that these men are likely Albanian sex traffickers operating in France. According to the friend, they kidnap young female tourists, addict them to heroin, and sell them into sexual slavery. Bryan has 72 hours from the moment of kidnapping or he will never find Kim again. What immediately strikes me here is the deliberate choice of human traffickers. The Albanian gang is portrayed with thick Eastern European accents and greasy looks perhaps calling back to Cold War fears. However, the choice of Albanian among all the Balkan ethnicities is fascinating due to the fact that Albanians are majority Muslim. Thus, the creators of Taken managed to dialectically synthesize American fears of the Slav and fears of the Muslims into the ideal object of paranoia. 

Despite his best efforts killing every Albanian male in Paris (more or less), Bryan fails to find Kim in their brothel. Instead, he finds her friend Amanda, dead due to a heroin overdose. Bryan then captures an Albanian and liberally applies enhanced interrogation methods that would make John Yoo blush, and ultimately discovers that Kim was sold to a high-end French human trafficker named Patrice Saint-Clair. It turns out that Kim was immensely more valuable due to her virginity, unlike her harlot friend. Here, the film reveals its thesis. While a first glance shows a generic action flick, Taken in fact manifests the paranoia of American Dads and their fear of their daughters’ virginities being...well...taken by a myriad of racial caricatures and national enemies. Freud would have a field day exploring the psyches of these dads and their disturbing obsessions with their daughters’ sexualities. In effect, however, they perceive their daughters as property whose value is dependent on purity, and thus the movie contrasts the sexually promiscuous Amanda, who dies of an overdose, and Bryan’s daughter Kim, whose virginity enhances her value while buying her enough time for Bryan to come to the rescue. 

Bryan then locates the residence of Patrice Saint-Clair, but not before uncovering the corruption of Jean-Claude, a former friend of his. A French intelligence agent, it is implied that JC and Bryan were friends from the field, but JC traded his field job for a desk job, and through that extorted the Albanians for protection money. Keeping in mind that this movie was the product of the American psyche circa 2007-08, Jean-Claude’s character becomes a stand-in for France. Jean-Claude is thus indicted for France’s decision to denounce the US coalition’s invasion of Iraq and decline participating in the occupation. It is at this time when the US was trying to popularize the phrase “Freedom Fries” as a substitute for French fries and the memes of France being “surrender-monkeys” emerged that Taken was released to theatres. 

Predictably, Bryan finds his way to the mansion of Patrice Saint-Clair during what appears to be a very fancy gala. Underneath that, however, Saint-Clair is hosting an auction for highly-wanted virgin sex-slaves. Bryan infiltrates the auction and pressures a man into buying Kim before being captured by Saint-Clair’s guards. 

Again, the movie winks to its intended base. The effete French man, garbed in a tuxedo and whose home is a bastion of wealthy decadence and moral rot, does not stand a chance against the insurmountable masculinity of the CIA operator-father. He breaks free and kills Saint-Clair, but not before finding out where Kim’s buyer at the auction is located. 

He races to the docks, where it is revealed that the buyer is a Qatari sheikh staying on his private yacht. The sheikh is the piéce de rèsistance of the movie, the magnum opus. Morbidly obese, bald, wearing a robe that can only be described as a circus tent, the sheikh lays in bed as his muscular and well armed guards bring the sex-slaves to him. He utters one line in the entire movie, coming at the end after Bryan kills his troop of soldiers. The sheikh realizes Kim is his daughter and holds her hostage. He blurts out. “we can negoti-”, but Bryan shoots him in the head before he can finish the thought. This unnamed sheikh is depicted as an Arab Jabba the Hutt. Unlike Jabba, however, the sheikh is killed by the movie’s stand-in for Han Solo. Thus, Kim is reunited with her father and they head home.

Somehow I don’t think holding the angry CIA operator’s daughter hostage after he just cleared your entire boat of your bodyguards is a good idea, but what do I know?

Somehow, the Mills family’s peace does not last long. Taken’s financial success spawned two sequels and a TV series, none of which found similar success. The original remains an immortal work of art, however, despite the 58% rating on Rotten Tomatoes It is immortal only insofar as it exists as a time capsule, a relic of a very distinct period of collective American psychology, and of a study in the minds of a narrow subset of the US population. For many of us, we live hoping never to experience what Bryan goes through in Taken. For the American Dad, Bryan’s experience of killing, maiming, and otherwise dispatching a cocktail of racially ambiguous national enemies is simultaneously feared and desired. The American Dad is the unvarnished id of American society, and it is this id that will eventually give the United States President Donald Trump eight years later.

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