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Ed Webb

Why Saudi Arabia is all in on sports - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...saudi-arabia-wwe-sports

KSA Saudi sport sports sportswashing MBS

shared by Ed Webb on 06 Jan 24 - No Cached
  • Saudi Arabia’s history with WWE, like much of its frenetic investment in sports and entertainment over the past few years, is a study in how little diplomacy is needed when you control one of the largest sovereign wealth funds in history. Using their Public Investment Fund, valued at more than $776 billion, the Saudis have effectively bought some of the world’s most loyal fan bases, bent opponents to their will and wildly shifted the economics of international sports.
  • In the sports world, overcoming a reputation as a global pariah — condemned by human rights organizations for alleged war atrocities and its links to the 9/11 hijackers, the imprisonment of activists and the Khashoggi assassination — has been as simple for Saudi Arabia as advancing claims of innocence or autonomy.
  • The Saudi Pro League has become the default destination for aging soccer legends seeking unprecedented paydays, including Cristiano Ronaldo, who reportedly is paid roughly $220 million per year to play for Al Nassr. Lionel Messi turned down a similar bounty in favor of playing in the United States. But he still agreed to promote Saudi Arabia for a reported $25 million under a contract that mandates he is not permitted to make any remarks that “tarnish” the kingdom.
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  • The Saudis have used their financial clout to ground down enemies in ways big and small, from Iranian American wrestlers facing scripted humiliation in WWE shows to American golf executives being forced to swallow previous bitter condemnations of the kingdom. Saudi Arabia’s golf takeover this year, in which the kingdom coerced the PGA Tour into a planned alliance after effectively winning a game of high-stakes chicken over the fate of one of the world’s most popular sports, struck some analysts as the final dam to break in the sports world’s resistance to Saudi involvement.
  • Sheikh celebrated by buying a $4.8 million Bugatti before landing on a larger vanity purchase. After a stint as honorary president of an Egyptian soccer club ended with him warring with management, Sheikh poured millions into buying a rival team and moving it to Cairo. Months later, he abandoned Egyptian soccer while lamenting the “headache.”
  • Sheikh’s management style has embodied Saudi Arabia’s foray into global sports: free-spending, rancorous and hyper-political. He commandeered the lectern at an international chess tournament in Riyadh to rail against “ministate” Qatar, and he ranted that the Saudi soccer team had put in “less than 5 percent effort” during a World Cup loss to Russia. With his penchant for showmanship, it was perhaps inevitable that one of the PIF’s first massive investments would be bringing WWE to Saudi Arabia — and, with it, hired wrestlers acting out the humiliation of what was then a Saudi enemy nation.AdvertisementStory continues below advertisementAt the Greatest Royal Rumble in Riyadh in April 2018, two Iranian American wrestlers, waving the Iranian flag, confronted four young Saudi wrestlers. The scripted comeuppance was swift: The Saudis pummeled the Iranians, brothers Ariya and Shawn Daivari, threw them out of the ring and sent them limping away as the crowd jeered.
  • Many Westerners ascribe a singular motive to Saudi Arabia, if not the entire Middle East, for its interest in sports: sportswashing. And Saudi Arabia has used sports to market its supposed makeover to the outside world — and to guard its image.
  • Another key currency in sports (and adjacent Spandex-clad theater) was embedded in that brief anti-Iranian WWE storyline, a forgettable footnote for American viewers. Saudi leaders have attempted to move the country away from religious fundamentalism, or Islamism, to replace it with something more palatable to global commerce: nationalism, partly ginned up by crushing Middle Eastern rivals at a game it came late to.AdvertisementStory continues below advertisementSaudi Arabia, with its geriatric leadership until six years ago, had inadvertently given the United Arab Emirates and Qatar a decades-long head start at investing in sports — but the much larger country has been a bully ever since.
  • by dissuading potential religious extremism, “The idea is to get the country to look quote-unquote ‘normal.’ ”
  • “one of those key moments of reputation laundering and propaganda that Mohammed bin Salman needed at that time: an American organization with a billionaire as famous as Vince McMahon appearing in Saudi Arabia and things going on as normal.”
  • In the years since Khashoggi’s murder, financial leaders returned to doing business with Saudi Arabia, partly revealed when the kingdom released a list of partners in venture capital, including some of the highest-profile firms in the world. (That includes Amazon, founded by Jeff Bezos, who owns The Washington Post. In 2022, the PIF invested roughly $430 million in Amazon.) In sports, reticent executives became increasingly easy marks for a kingdom practiced at bending opponents to its will.
  • The PIF’s effort to purchase Newcastle United was stalled by Saudi Arabia’s alleged role in one of the world’s largest piracy operations, which for years brazenly stole Qatari content, including that of Premier League games, and beamed it to set-top boxes in Saudi homes.Saudi Arabia denied having a role in the piracy. Investigations by several organizations, from the World Trade Organization to FIFA, found otherwise. The piracy halted just before the PIF was set to complete its purchase of Newcastle.
  • “The majority of fans don’t care.”
  • The Saudis — with a diversified portfolio full of other sports — were willing to blow up golf. Pro golf executives, it turns out, were not.
  • Endeavor, helmed by Ari Emanuel, announced in April a $21 billion deal to merge UFC, its mixed martial arts company, with WWE. Less than five years earlier, Emanuel had returned $400 million to the Saudis so as not to have to partner with them in the wake of Khashoggi’s murder. But Endeavor and its related companies had recently done business with the kingdom again — including Endeavor’s IMG negotiating media rights for the Saudi Pro League. Under TKO, the company created in the merger with Emanuel as CEO, WWE plans to continue its Saudi shows. And UFC recently announced it would hold its first event in Saudi Arabia next year.
Ed Webb

Lessons from the destruction of Iraq's marshes - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...e-destruction-of-iraqs-marshes

Iraq ecology environment empire develpment sectarianism marshes saddam

shared by Ed Webb on 26 Aug 15 - No Cached
  • officials were constantly disappointed by the ingratitude of the ma’dan for the gift of state-initiated modernization
  • The marsh ecology itself was identified as an enemy to be overcome
  • the actual conduct of counterinsurgency remained anchored in developmental discourse. Iraqi officials justified the construction of new diversionary canals as necessary for agricultural expansion
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  • The destruction of the marshes did not begin in 1991, or even in 1980, but a century earlier. For millennia, the marshes had stood out as a stateless zone, comparable to what James Scott describes of upland southeast Asia. Hydrologically incorrigible and physically impenetrable, the area was a natural haven for escaped slaves, dissenters and brigands. At the turn of the 20th century though, the Ottomans and British began using advanced cartographic technologies and steamship navigation to assert mastery over the marshes and encourage the transition from peripatetic tribalism into modern citizenship based on settled agriculture. “Reclaiming” the marshes for agriculture was a cornerstone of development policies in Iraq.
  • Similar stories could be told about British and German uses of concentrations camps and “hunger wars” in southern Africa, Soviet eradication of the herds of Kazakh nomads, American defoliation of Vietnamese rice paddies and Portuguese attempts to defeat insurgency by building a dam in Mozambique. Third World states have since adopted similar tactics, as in Guatemala’s genocidal 1982 “beans and bullets” campaign in the central highlands. The logic of ecological intervention continues to influence counterinsurgency today.
  • Development and counterinsurgency are thus often linked, both tactically and doctrinally.
Ed Webb

U.S. Needs to Look Beyond Russia for Disinformation Culprits | Time - 0 views

time.com/...tion-middle-east-allies-russia

US USA media journalists socialmedia KSA Saudi UAE Qatar hacking propaganda twitter

shared by Ed Webb on 02 Dec 22 - No Cached
  • Russian disinformation may come first to mind for interfering in U.S. politics, but some of the most damning evidence of efforts to influence the American public leads to Washington’s allies in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are at the forefront of undermining democratic deliberation–from manipulating the impact of Donald Trump’s tweets, to tricking editors across the world into publishing propaganda.
  • The FBI in 2019 found evidence that employees at Twitter’s San Fransciso headquarters, groomed with bribes such as luxury watches, were co-ordinating with members of the Saudi royal family to obtain private information from Twitter users. In August 2022, a jury found one of these men guilty. Two others couldn’t be tried because they were in Saudi Arabia.
  • One of the most audacious deception operations appeared to be connected to the UAE. Between 2019 and 2021, op-eds that supported the foreign policy position of the UAE, Saudi, and the U.S. administration under Trump began appearing in numerous well-known U.S. outlets, such as Newsmax, The National Interest, The Post Millennial and the Washington Examiner. The catch: The journalists writing them did not actually exist.
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  • Cambridge Analytica’s parent company, SCL Social Limited, worked with the UAE to create a social media advertising campaign attacking Qatar, a Gulf rival that’s home of the largest U.S. military base in the region. Though better known its use of “soft power” through projects like Al Jazeera, Qatar has also been reported to use disinformation, as well as allegedly hacking the email of the Emirates’ powerful ambassador to Washington.
  • the Emiratis worked with ex-NSA spies to hack the devices of U.S. citizens. And both Saudi Arabia and the UAE are among the biggest customers of NSO, the Israeli firm that sells the spyware Pegasus, which they have used to target dozens of activists, journalists and academics
  • In 2011, during the heady days of the Arab Spring, social media and digital technology was touted as the force that would help liberate the region from authoritarian rule and bring democracy. Now, authoritarian regimes in the Gulf, along with Western companies and expertise, are using digital technology and social media to try and hack democracy wherever they find it, including in the U.S. The effect is clearest, however, in the Middle East. With critics silenced through incarceration, surveillance, torture, or death, opposition voices are increasingly fearful of self-expression, meaning that the digital public sphere is simply a space to praise the regime or engage in banal platitudes.
Ed Webb

An ancient pyramid is getting a glow up. Archaeologists are down on it. - The Washingto... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...-archaeology-egypt-controversy

Egypt antiquities history heritage tourism

shared by Ed Webb on 02 Feb 24 - No Cached
  • Although the Menkaure pyramid is a part of a UNESCO World Heritage site, UNESCO said in an email that it was unaware of the project and had “written to the Egyptian authorities to ask them for more information.”
  • a group of archaeologists called the project “entirely unscientific” and accused those behind it of chasing publicity over legitimate archaeological inquiry. They stressed that documentation cannot occur at the same time as the excavation shown in the video.AdvertisementStory continues below advertisementProceeding with the project “is tantamount to tampering with Egyptian antiquities and undermining its antiquity and history,”
Ed Webb

Tunisia - between instability and renewal | European Council on Foreign Relations - 0 views

www.ecfr.eu/...etween_instability_and_renewal

Tunisia politics parties Ennahdha ennahda corruption UGTT

shared by Ed Webb on 17 Jul 19 - Cached
  • Even though the 2011 revolution was motivated in large part by socio-economic concerns, the governments that have held office since then have been unable to improve the situation. Growth has remained low, and unemployment is high: 15 percent of the population is without work, and the rate for those with a university degree is over 30 percent. Inequality between the more prosperous coastal region and the deprived interior of the country remains striking. Around half of all workers are employed in the informal economy. Many young Tunisians lack any prospect of being able to afford a home or a car, or of being secure enough to start a family.
  • Faced with increasing debt and deficit levels and shrinking foreign currency reserves, Tunisia agreed a loan of $2.9 billion with the International Monetary Fund in 2016. The IMF called on Tunisia to cut public spending, overhaul its collection of taxes to raise government revenue, and allow the currency to depreciate. The IMF argues that it has been fairly flexible so far in enforcing public spending cuts, but it is now stepping up its pressure on the Tunisian authorities.
  • Wages in the public sector account for 15 percent of GDP (up from 10 percent in 2010), so it is hardly surprising that the government is now trying to limit spending in this area. Yet it is doing this at a time when inflation (worsened by the deflation of the Tunisian dinar that the IMF has promoted) and subsidy cuts have already had a severe impact on people’s purchasing power.
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  • It is an anomaly of the Tunisian political scene that the UGTT’s anti-austerity position has little representation among elected politicians: the largest political groups (the Islamist Ennahda party and various offshoots of the secular-modernist Nidaa Tounes party) have backed the IMF agreement
  • unemployment and the proliferation of grey-sector jobs are linked to structural biases in the economy that systematically favour a small group of politically connected businesses. Measures that might address this problem include increasing access to credit for would-be entrepreneurs, changing regulations and practices within the public and banking sectors that are tilted to a narrow elite, and reducing corruption. According to Tunisians, corruption has not been reduced but only “democratised” since the revolution. Investment in infrastructure serving disadvantaged parts of the country could also help spur more inclusive growth
  • Since the revolution, the overarching priority of political life in Tunisia has been to seek enough stability to preserve and complete the political transition. Much has been achieved, though a few important steps (notably the establishment of a Constitutional Court) remain unfulfilled. But Tunisia has now reached a point where the greatest threat to stability is no longer political rivalries around religious identity but unmet social and economic aspirations. Until now, the country’s political parties have not organised themselves to offer distinctive and coherent visions of how Tunisia’s socio-economic development can be improved, and they are paying the price in public alienation from the entire political system
Ed Webb

Is Oman's model of governance about to shift? - 0 views

www.al-monitor.com/...ft-oil-prices-coronavirus.html

Oman economy GCC rentierism reform pandemics oil energy policy

shared by Ed Webb on 10 Apr 20 - Cached
  • Like other Gulf states, Oman does not grant citizens freedom of expression or the right to choose their leader, but it does provide citizens a range of material advantages: public sector jobs, subsidies, free health care and education, a free plot of land, a pension and no income tax.
  • Oman’s public debt has skyrocketed since oil prices declined in 2014, going from less than 5% of Oman's gross domestic product to nearly 60% last year. Until 2023, annual budgets were already expected to be in the red. But the 2020 fiscal deficit is expected to be four times higher than previously forecasted because of the double shock of the COVID-19 pandemic and plunging oil prices, credit rating agency Fitch estimated.
  • the cash-strapped Omani government is expected to cut down on public expenditures and impose austerity measures. But such a move would revamp the model of governance that has prevailed since the late Qaboos bin Said ascended to the throne in 1970
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  • Public taxation is also increasing. A sin tax was implemented in June 2019 on products like sugary carbonated drinks and tobacco, and a serially delayed 5% value-added tax is expected in 2021. According to Salmi, electricity and water subsidies could soon be slashed and, in the long term, Omanis could see an income tax.
  • Above all, reforming the labor market — an unpopular move — would be the cornerstone of a post-Qaboos welfare state. About 43% of Omanis work for public entities. Abousleiman recommended economic diversification to foster private sector job creation and to further "relieve the expectations on the government to provide employment."
  • Following a field visit to Oman in 2019, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) suggested that the wages and benefits of the private sector need to align more closely with the public sector to make employment in the former more appealing.
  • Omanis who talked to Al-Monitor, as well as Mukhaini, believe any upcoming austerity measures "should not make the poor poorer and the rich richer," Mukhaini said.
  • According to rating firm S&P, the new ruler will face “a difficult trade-off” in the coming months to address high unemployment among youths, weak growth, and fiscal and funding pressures
  • Defense and security expenses account for over a quarter of Oman's annual budge
  • Oman — rated junk by the three major rating agencies — has several other options to fund its short-term ballooning deficit: Go further into debt; deplete its sovereign wealth fund; sell state assets; devalue its currency; and seek assistance from neighboring countries or international organizations.
  • Analysts believe Oman should build a model of governance tailored to the post-oil era. Along with a more stringent budget environment, the new leadership pledged to implement structural reforms to diversify the rentier economy and foster private sector-led growth.
  • To ensure political and social stability, Sultan Qaboos avoided controversial measures that could have triggered short-term political unrest
  • In 2011, at the height of the Arab uprisings, Sultan Qaboos promised to create 50,000 jobs and institute unemployment benefits in an attempt to defuse unprecedented nationwide protests.
  • the lack of economic reforms did not stop Omanis from loving the monarch, who built a modern state out of a medieval-like society he inherited in the early 1970s
  • Sultan Haitham bin Tariq "is already planting the seeds by cutting the royal expenditures tremendously,"
  • The relationship between state and society that Omanis have known for decades will likely never be the same
Ed Webb

Constitutional or Unconstitutional: Is That the Question? - Arab Reform Initiative - 0 views

www.arab-reform.net/...itutional-is-that-the-question

Tunisia authoritarianism politics analysis constitution emergencylaw exception

shared by Ed Webb on 04 Aug 21 - Cached
  • This piece aims to contribute to the ongoing debate on the constitutionality of the measures taken by the President of the Republic Kais Saied, by examining both the text of the Constitution and the context. This piece argues for a contextual interpretation approach in order to adjust to the dynamic nature of societies.
  • Article 80 is conditioned on the existence of an “imminent danger threatening the nation’s institutions or the security or independence of the country and hampering the normal functioning of the state.” It is worth noting that, during the Constitutive Assembly’s (NCA) voting on the above-mentioned article, concerns over the broad wording of the article were voiced, due to the absence of definition of what constitutes an ‘imminent danger’ and ‘exceptional circumstances’, those concerns were dismissed by the Rapporteur-General to the NCA, who maintained that the formulation of the article was “clear”.
  • the intent and real desire did not seem to be there from the beginning to endow the country with a constitutional court formed of competences and working to guarantee the supremacy of the Constitution. Its formation was hindered by the failure of the Assembly to elect its 4 appointees,11The President of the Republic, the Assembly of the Representatives of the People, and the Supreme Judicial Council shall each appoint four members. motivated by disagreements between parliamentary blocs. In April 2021, to unblock the situation, an amendment was proposed to the Article 10 of the Constitutional Court’s Law to cancel the order of the parties that have the authority to appoint members of the Court12The Article lists “successively the Assembly of the Representatives of the People, the Supreme Council of the Judiciary, and the President of the Republic.” . The bill was rejected by the President Kais Saed and sent back to the parliament for a second reading.13Parliament has preserved the same amendments that were proposed, allowing the Supreme Judicial Council and the Presidency of the Republic to choose 8 members of the Constitutional Court without waiting for Parliament to complete the election of 3 out of 4 members of its appointees.  His decision was motivated by the fact that the passing of the law exceeded the constitutional deadlines provided for in Paragraph 05 of Article 148 of the 2014 constitution
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  • In the midst of the current crisis, the long-delayed Constitutional Court is the missing key that could have averted the political crisis culminating in the turmoil Tunisia is currently going through.
  • Paragraph 2 of the Article 80 of the Constitution provides that “The Assembly of the Representatives of the People shall be deemed to be in a state of continuous session throughout such a period. In this situation, the President of the Republic cannot dissolve the Assembly of the Representatives of the People.” Legal experts, notably the Tunisian Association of Constitutional Law,[17] disagreed with this decision to freeze the Assembly of the Representatives of the People, explaining that the article meant that the Assembly takes part of the actual management of the state of exceptionality, and is not excluded from it.
  • other legal experts and jurists17Including Pr. Amine Mahfoudh, Me. Hedi Kerrou. have agreed with Saied’s interpretation, considering that he acted within his prerogatives under a state of exception since he simply “froze” the Parliament’s activity, rather than dissolving it
  • a study has shown that only 19% of respondents19On methodology: “these findings are based on nationally representative public opinion surveys that included approximately 1,800 respondents. Respondents were chosen randomly, meaning the results can be generalized to the broader population. The surveys were weighted to account for any random variations that may exist by gender, age, level of education, or geographic area. The margin of error for each country is less than ±3 percent.” have confidence in the legislature.  Popular demands for its dissolution have been mounting over the last few months as  violence broke out more regularly in the parliament, “despite the fact that the country’s parliament was freely elected, the institution inspires very little trust among the public. The failure of parliament to address the country’s economic challenges, combined with relatively weak attachment to political parties are major factors driving this low level of confidence.”
  • In this context, Saied and his supporters argue that the Assembly has become part of the problem.
  • Article 80 Paragraph 2 only addresses the case of removal of the Head of Government by the Assembly: “A motion of censure against the government cannot be presented”. There are no similar prerogatives granted to the President of the Republic during this state nor during normal times. Hence, to justify such a dismissal, it would have to be considered “measures necessitated by the exceptional circumstances.”
  • What happened would better fit what doctrine has termed to be a ‘constitutional dictatorship,’ legitimized by exceptional circumstances and limited in time. A ‘Constitutional Dictatorship’ is when “individuals or institutions have the right to make binding rules, directives, and decisions and apply them to concrete circumstances, unhindered by timely legal checks to their authority. Clothed with all of the authority of the state […] subject to various procedural and substantive limitations.”
  • Some of those who defend Saied’s actions have cited De Gaulle’s famous citation that " there is first France, then the State, and finally, as far as the major interests of both are safeguarded, the Law,"27Cited in Mohamed Kerrou. « Kais Saied ou la revanche légitime de l’État et de la société ». Leaders. 28/07/2021. to argue that in terms of its importance, the Constitution is superceded by national interests.
  • Tunisia has entered a period with almost no checks and balances, under ‘a constitutional dictatorship.’ In this context, a lot will depend on the person of Kais Saed and his commitment to “ethical standards or principles that are part of a political credo,” that are considered supra-constitutional principles
  • Close oversight of the situation by free media and strong watchdog organisations are the only guarantees against potential abuses
  • referrals of civilians (MPs) before the Military Court of First Instance in Tunis are causing great concern, especially with the dismissal of State Attorney General, Director of Military Justice and the Minister of National Defense without appointing replacements. These decisions are inconsistent with constitutional principles and international conventions
  • the presidential order ‘suspending the work of the Assembly and lifting of parliamentary immunity for deputies for the duration of the suspension’ was issued on the night of 30 July 2021, in the Official Gazette, stipulated for “the possibility of extending the mentioned period (ie the month) by virtue of a presidential decree,” without specifying the number of extensions, opening the door to unlimited extensions. National Organisations30The National Syndicate of Tunisian Journalists, Tunisian League for the Defense of Human Rights, The Tunisian General Labor Union, The National Bar Association of Tunisia, Tunisian Association of Democratic Women, Tunisian Judges Association, Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights. have warned against “any illegal and unjustified extension of the disruption of state institutions, stressing the need to adhere to the declared month period stipulated in the constitution.”
  • A real impasse is looming on the horizon, however, if, thirty days after the entry into force of these measures, the “Speaker of the Assembly of the Representatives of the People or thirty of the members thereof (want) to apply to the Constitutional Court with a view to verifying whether or not the circumstances remain exceptional.”  Presidential Decree N°80 has stipulated that the extension is made possible by virtue of a presidential order, in clear contradiction of Article 80 of the Constitution, conferring the right to decide on the extension to the Constitutional Court.
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