Lebanon's Iran-Sponsored Crisis Deepens

Calling for Lebanon’s Third Battle for Freedom

Biden Positions to Confront China

A Weekly Political News Magazine

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Issue 1845- March- 26/03/2021

Haim Saban: Media Mogul with Political Influence A Weekly Political News Magazine

Issue 1845- March- 26/03/2021

www.majalla.com

Lebanon’s Iran-Sponsored Crisis Deepens

www.majalla.com

Editorial

A Weekly Political News Magazine

www.majalla.com/eng Lebanon’s predicament is getting worse, as a confrontation is taking place with the designated Prime Minister Saad Hariri and President Michel Aoun who is acting on behalf of Hezbollah. Efforts to form a cabinet have been halted due to what appears to be Iranian willingness to use Lebanon as a bargaining chip in negotiations with the United States. As economic, financial and health conditions deteriorate, Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah hinted at a few threatening scenarios. In this week’s cover story, Hanin Ghaddar presents the difficult choices Lebanon is facing, and the country’s need for an international plan.

Also this week, Omar El-Natour interviews the former Lebanese Minister Nohad El-Machnouk who talks about a national front initiative underway, and his call for a third battle to free Lebanon. He advocates the Patriarch’s proposal and explained how the Christian street in Lebanon is alienated from the President. ElMachnouk, also expects that the new investigation into Beirut explosion would not come to any notable conclusion.

The Biden administration has main concerns regarding China’s economic practices and human rights record particularly in Hong Kong and Xinjiang. However, an immediate confrontation was not expected, as the new administration is reviewing all national security measures taken by former President Trump. In his weekly article, Joseph Braude explores the signs shown in the recent meeting held between American and Chinese diplomats, and reasons some Washington insiders believe that President Biden will wait before making decisions.

Read these articles and more on our website eng. majalla.com. As always, we welcome and value our readers’ feedback and we invite you to take the opportunity to leave your comments on our website.

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Editor-in-Chief

Ghassan Charbel Editorial secretary Mostafa El-Dessouki HH Saudi Research and Marketing (UK) Ltd 10th Floor Building 7 Chiswick Business Park 566 Chiswick High Road London W4 5YG Tel : +44 207 831 8181 Fax: +44 207 831 2310

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A Weekly Political News Magazine

A Weekly Political News Magazine

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The Delusions of Global Britain

Issue 1845- March- 26/03/2021

22 Calls for Syria’s Return to Arab

League to Solve Crisis

36 A Big Wave of Pandemic Bank-

ruptcies Never Happened

China Must Stop Hiding Its

32 Vaccine Data

52 ”Quo Vadis, Aida“ ?

48 The Egyptian Rap Scene 4

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56 It Is The Allergy Season

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Iraqi celebrate Nowruz festival Iraqi Kurdish people holding Kurdish flags celebrate Nowruz Day, a festival marking the first day of spring and the new year, amid the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in the town of Akra near Duhok, .in Iraqi Kurdistan, Iraq March 20, 2021 )Reuters Photos(

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Britain Art Auction Gallery workers pose with the artwork entitled ‘Femme assise dans un fauteuil’ by Spanish artist Pablo Picasso during a photocall for the Modern Renaissance sale at Sotheby’s auction house in central London on March 22, 2021. - Sotheby’s Modern Renaissance: A Cross-Category Sale on March 25 includes work from key artists spanning 500 years. (Photo by Tolga Akmen London, , United Kingdom )AFP Photos(

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A WEEK IN THE MIDDLE EAST

PALESTINIANS The Chinese government plans to invite Israelis and Palestinians to hold talks in China, Al-Arabiya TV channel quoted Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi this week as saying in an interview, according to Reuters.

Wang, who started a Middle East tour this week, also voiced support for a Saudi initiative announced on Monday to end the war in Yemen, according to the Saudi-owned, Dubai-based channel.

China has offered itself several times in the past as an alternative to the United States when it comes to mediating between Israelis and Palestinians, coming up with proposals to end their decades-old conflict.

“We will invite Palestinian and Israeli public figures to have talks in China,” al-Arabiya quoted Wang as saying. He did not elaborate, and it was not immediately clear whether he had government representatives in mind.

SAUDI ARABIA Saudi Arabia presented a new peace initiative to end the war in Yemen, including a nationwide ceasefire and the reopening of air and sea links, according to a Reuters report.

The initiative, announced by Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, would include reopening Sanaa airport, and allow fuel and food imports through Hodeidah port, both of which are controlled by the Iran-aligned Houthis.

Political negotiations between the Saudi-backed governmentand the Houthis would be restarted, he told a news conference, It would take effect when the Yemeni sides accepted.

UAE Sheikh Hamdan bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Dubai’s deputy ruler and for decades one of the most influential figures in international horseracing, has died, Dubai’s ruler said this week.

Sheikh Hamdan, 75, was the brother of Dubai’s current ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum. He had been unwell for months and had surgery abroad in October.

Sheikh Hamdan established his first racing stable, Shadwell Racing, in the United Kingdom in the 1980s and built it into a racing empire with his horses in blue and white silks winning major international races. He owned eight stud farms worldwide, according to local media.

Last June, jockey Jim Crowley completed a treble on the opening day of Royal Ascot with Sheikh Hamdan’s Battaash, Motakhayyel and Nazeer.

IRAQ The United States and Iraq will hold a strategic dialogue in April and the meetings will clarify that coalition forces are in Iraq for training and advising Iraqi forces so Islamic State militants cannot reconstitute, the White House said this week, according to Reuters.

“This will be an important opportunity to discuss our mutual interests across a range of fields from security to culture, trade, and climate,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement.

“The meetings will further clarify that coalition forces are in Iraq solely for the purpose of training and advising Iraqi forces to ensure that ISIS cannot reconstitute,” she added.

OMAN Oman will impose a curfew beginning Sunday until April 8 between the hours of 8 p.m. and 5 a.m., as the Gulf Arab state tightens restrictions to curb a rise in coronavirus cases, state media reported this week, according to Reuters.

No movement of people outdoors will be allowed during those times and an evening ban on all commercial activities imposed on March 1 will be extended, the reports said, citing a statement by the coronavirus committee.

The sultanate recorded 733 new COVID-19 infections on Thursday. The daily number of cases had fallen below 100 in December from a peak of more than 1,800 in July.

EGYPT The shortest shipping route from Europe to Asia remained blocked this week as 10 tug boats struggled to free one of the world’s largest container ships after it ran aground in the Suez Canal, Reuters reported.

The 400-metre, 224,000-tonne Ever Given ran aground on Tuesday morning after losing the ability to steer amid high winds and a dust storm, the Suez Canal Authority (SCA) said in a statement.

About 30% of global container shipping volumes pass through the canal each day, carrying everything from fuel to consumer goods. The main alternative route for ships travelling between Asia and Europe, around the African cape, takes a week longer to navigate.

GAC, a Dubai-based marine services company, said authorities were still working to free the ship mid-afternoon on Wednesday, and that information it had received earlier claiming the vessel was partially refloated was inaccurate.

YEMEN The Saudi-led coalition has cleared four fuel ships to dock at Yemen’s Red Sea port of Hodeidah, two sources familiar with the matter said, after Yemen’s internationally recognised government said this week it had approved entry of some vessels, according to a Reuters report.

The move came after the Iran-aligned Houthi group, which has been battling the coalition for six years and controls most large urban centres in Yemen, said it would only agree to a Saudi ceasefire proposal if an air and sea blockade were lifted.

Four vessels, including two carrying a total of 45,000 tonnes of gas oil, a ship loaded with 5,000 tonnes of liquefied petroleum gas and a fourth tanker with 22,700 tonnes of fuel oil have received clearance from the coalition, the sources said.

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ISRAEL

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s prospects for another term looked uncertain this week after partial results from a national election projected no clear path to victory, according to a Reuters report.

Not even his stewardship of Israel’s world-beating COVID-19 vaccination rollout - a central pillar of his campaign - proved enough for Netanyahu to break through the political deadlock that has seen four elections in two years.

With about 88% of votes counted it appeared that Netanyahu, 71, would have to cobble together a coalition from a combination of right-wing allies, ultra-Orthodox parties, ultra-nationalists, Arabs and defectors to secure another term.

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EUROPE

A WEEK ACROSS THE WORLD

RUSSIA

Hungary’s hospitals are under “extraordinary” pressure from rising coronavirus infections, its surgeon general said this week, as the country became a hotspot in the third wave of a pandemic that has hit Central Europe especially hard, according to Reuters.

Like much of the region, Hungary managed to curb infections during the initial phase of the pandemic in March-April last year with fast and strict lockdown measures.

However, a new wave of infections that has swept through the region in 2021 has seen Hungary this week overtake the Czech Republic as the country with the world’s highest daily COVID-19 deaths per capita, according to figures from Our World in Data.

INDIA India reported a new variant of the coronavirus this week as it struggled with the highest single-day tally of new infections and deaths this year. according to a Reuters report.

The variant, described by officials as a “double mutant”, has been found in more than 200 samples in the hardest-hit western state of Maharashtra, which is home to India’s financial capital of Mumbai.

Health officials said the new variant had not been detected in large enough numbers to link it to the surge in cases in Maharashtra and other states including Kerala and Punjab.

Epidemiologists said the term “double mutant” refers to an entirely new variant that has the characteristics of two already identified variants.

“Double mutant is not a scientific term. It is just another mutant which seems to be unique to India,” said Ramanan Laxminarayan, founder of the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics & Policy in New Delhi.

“Is there a reason to be worried about this particular variant? Not as yet, because we have no evidence that these variants are more transmissible or more lethal than what we already have,” he added.

Canada’s foreign ministry said this week that it is imposing new sanctions on nine Russian officials over “gross and systematic violations of human rights in Russia,” prompting the Kremlin to vow a response against Canada, according to Reuters.

Global Affairs Canada said the sanctions were part of a diplomatic effort to pressure senior Russian officials over “the attempted murder” and detention of prominent critic Alexey Navalny, and the treatment of citizen protesters.

“Canada will continue to increase pressure on the Russian government to unconditionally release Mr. Navalny and his supporters who have been unlawfully detained,” said Marc Garneau, minister of foreign affairs, in a statement.

NORTH KOREA North Korea launched two suspected ballistic missiles into the sea near Japan this week, underscoring steady progess in its weapons programme and ramping up pressure on the new U.S. administration as it reviews North Korea policy, according to Reuters.

The apparent tests were reported by authorities in the United States, South Korea, and Japan, and coincided with the start of the Olympic torch relay in Japan.

They would be the first ballistic missile tests by North Korea in nearly a year and the first reported since U.S. President Joe Biden took office in January.

Analysts said the latest missile tests did not mean denuclearisation diplomacy was dead, but they highlight an inconvenient truth for the U.S. administration: Pyongyang’s arsenal is advancing, posing new threats and increasing its potential bargaining power should talks resume.

U.S. AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine performed better than expected in a major late-stage trial, paving the way for its potential emergency authorization in the United States and boosting confidence in the shot after setbacks in Europe, Reuters reported.

The drugmaker said last Monday that interim data from trials in Chile, Peru and the United States found the vaccine was 79% effective in preventing symptomatic COVID-19 and, crucially, posed no increased risk of blood clots.

AstraZeneca intends to request U.S. emergency authorization for the vaccine, which was developed in conjunction with Oxford University, in the coming weeks, reported Reuters.

MYANMAR Myanmar’s ruling junta this week freed hundreds of people arrested in its crackdown on protests against the overthrow of the elected government, while businesses in Yangon were shut and streets deserted in a strike called by anti-coup activists.

Several buses full of prisoners drove out of Yangon’s Insein Prison in the morning, lawyers and other witnesses said. There was no word from authorities on how many prisoners were freed. A spokesman for the military did not answer calls.

“All the released are the ones arrested due to the protests, as well as night arrests or those who were out to buy something,” said a member of a legal advisory group who said he saw about 15 buses leaving.

AFGHANISTAN Renewed efforts by the United States and Russia to end the conflict in Afghanistan should be “focused and coherent” and complement peace talks between the Afghan government and insurgent Taliban in Qatar’s capital Doha, the U.N. special envoy on Afghanistan warned the Security Council this week, according to Reuters.

“None of this can be resolved in the work of a moment, nor in a few meetings, no matter the location or format. Addressing these issues will require patience and commitment on all sides,” Deborah Lyons said.

With a May 1 deadline looming for the last 2,500 U.S. troops to leave Afghanistan - as agreed last year by the former Trump administration and the Taliban - Washington is seeking regional backing for a proposed interim government with power shared by the current Kabul authorities and insurgents.

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CHINA The United States, the European Union, Britain and Canada imposed sanctions on Chinese officials this week for human rights abuses in Xinjiang, the first such coordinated Western action against Beijing under new U.S. President Joe Biden, according to Reuters.

Beijing hit back immediately with punitive measures against the EU that appeared broader, including European lawmakers, diplomats, institutes and families, and banning their businesses from trading with China.

Western governments are seeking to hold Beijing accountable for mass detentions of Muslim Uighurs in northwestern China, where the United States says China is committing genocide. China denies all accusations of abuse.

GERMANY German Chancellor Angela Merkel this week rejected demands for a vote of confidence in her government over a U-turn on a circuit-breaker lockdown over Easter that compounded discontent with her handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

Merkel’s decision to ditch plans for an extended Easter holiday to try to break a third wave of COVID-19 agreed two days earlier during talks with governors of Germany’s 16 states raised concerns that she has lost her grip on the crisis.

“No, I will not do that,” said Merkel, when asked about calls by all three opposition parties that she submit a vote of confidence. “I asked people today to forgive me for a mistake. This was the right thing to do, I believe. I also have the support of the whole federal government and parliament.”

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over story Hezbollah – and why now – after more than a dozen meetings of the same?

Two issues need to be highlighted. One, Hariri has been trying on behalf of French President Emmanuel Macron, based on the ‘French Initiative,” so his frustrations echoes Macron’s frustration with Lebanon’s political class, who are very good at buying time and doing nothing. Two, Lebanon’s crisis has reached unprecedented levels that another government failure would lead to a worse financial and security deterioration. Hence, Lebanon no longer enjoys the luxury of time.

HEZBOLLAH AS A RULER Hezbollah and Iran do not want to resolve the crisis in Lebanon no matter how bad the situation.

For Iran, Lebanon is nothing but a bargaining chip that they will use and abuse until they reach a deal with the US over the nuclear program.

They are in no rush to make compromises that would jeopardize their power and hegemony over Lebanon, no matter how long the negotiations with the US take. Therefore, Iran – via Hezbollah – has decided to manage the crisis in Lebanon rather than resolve it, even if the whole country, its state institutions, and society, collapse.

Lebanon's Iran-Sponsored Crisis Deepens

International Plan Needed to Stop Decline Hanin Ghaddar After the last meeting with the president to form a new cabinet, PM designate Saad Hariri called Aoun’s demands “unacceptable”. He insisted that

it is not the job of the President to form cabinets and that the constitution clearly states that the PM-designate would form a government. Hariri is right, but what prompted him to confront the President – knowing that he acting on behalf of

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Lebanese President, Michel Aoun (L) receives Lebanese Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri (R) at Baabda Presidential Palace in Beirut, Lebanon on February 12, 2021. (Getty)

Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah made a significant speech last week, where he brought everyone – including the French Initiative – to square zero. He made it clear that no government would be formed without their blessing and acceptance, and threatened the street and protestors with violence. He made it clear that Iran and Hezbollah are the actual rulers of Lebanon and that no institution or constitution could change that. They have enough arms to take the country’s institutions by force, and they will if they need to. But they’d rather not because they prefer to avoid any blatant action in Lebanon, that would reflect badly on the US-Iran negotiations.

However, this absolute power does not come without consequences. Every country Iran rules suffers from a severe economic crisis, a horrible security situation, and has reached or is close

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From Lebanon to Yemen, through Syria and Iraq, all the way to Iran itself, people are starving, have no sense of personal or collective security, and lack basic needs.

The consequences on Iran are harsh in the sense that these same people realize today that Iran is the problem, not the solution. to a serious social explosion. From Lebanon to Yemen, through Syria and Iraq, all the way to Iran itself, people are starving, have no sense of personal or collective security, and lack basic needs. The consequences on Iran are harsh in the sense that these same people realize today that Iran is the problem, not the solution.

Therefore, the perception of Iran and its regional proxies have shifted from that of resistance movements, to one that resembles a dictatorship.

Instead of seeking the love and loyalty of the people, Iran today will have to use the fear factor, the threats, and force. In Lebanon too, Hezbollah realizes that the majority of the Shia community no longer trust the Party of God or its Iranian sponsors.

Back to the government formation and the Aoun-Hariri outburst, it will cause shockwaves throughout the vulnerable economy, but nothing more serious than the Beirut Port blast.

Basically, it will pass, and the country will continue its collapse. The US Dollar will jump up exponentially, an inflation will again reach unprecedented levels. Meanwhile, Hezbollah will only watch, wait for new orders from Tehran, and continue to link any resolution in Lebanon to gains for Iran in the US-Iran negotiations.

The problem in Lebanon is political, not economic, and as long as Hezbollah and Iran continue to block a political solution, economy

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will never recover. But the main question remains, if the US-Iran deal doesn’t happen in the next year – that is before the parliamentary elections in Lebanon, which are due in May 2022 – what is Hezbollah’s plan for Lebanon?

WILL HEZBOLLAH’S TAKE-OVER BECOME OFFICIAL In less than a year, Lebanon will no longer be able to maintain subsidies. So far, the Central Bank is still subsidizing essential items such as fuel, wheat, medicine, and some food items. But most of these subsidized items are being smuggled by Hezbollah via Syria to support the Assad regime, and also make money for the group. Today, the Central Bank has started to use the reserves and people’s bank savings to continue subsidizing these items, and Hezbollah is making sure it does not stop, so they could continue their smuggling operations. But eventually, even the reserves are going to dry out, and the social explosion will be clearly pointed at Hezbollah, as the real authority and the reason for the collapse.

During Nasrallah’s latest speech, he hinted at a few scenarios and how Hezbollah will deal with them. Most of them embody threats and violence, but in general, he clearly linked Lebanon to Iran’s regional agenda and American reactions

Hezbollah and Iran do not want to resolve the crisis in Lebanon no matter how bad the situation.

For Iran, Lebanon is nothing but a bargaining chip that they will use and abuse until they reach a deal with the US over the nuclear program.

to Iran’s conditions. He didn’t clearly state what exactly Hezbollah would do if they cannot get the government they want or the elections results they prefer, but he hinted at the use of violence to move things in the direction of his interests, like they did before in 2008 and 2010.

Hezbollah and Iran want to change Lebanon as we know it. As Nasrallah suggested, “Hezbollah insists that the crisis must be dealt with within the legal and legitimate frameworks, but if a time comes in which that is no longer the case, we reserve the right to use our own critical options.

However, implementing them through the law will not be possible, and we will have to resort to different means.”

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Lebanese women gather at Bishara El Huri street during a demonstration to protest against the living conditions brought about by the economic crisis in the country and the forced migration of young people for working, in Beirut, Lebanon on March 20, 2021 )Getty(

This is a clear threat of violence and brutal take-over, and it is a very dangerous cross-road for Lebanon. Nasrallah is basically saying that if Hariri does not form the government they want, Hezbollah will do it by force. But more than that, they will no longer feel the urge to resolve any crisis in Lebanon through the legal and institutional frameworks. In short, Hezbollah will decide that Lebanon no longer exist, and they will create their own Lebanon, by means of arms and violence.

Hezbollah, not only economic the situation will get worse, Hezbollah will use force to draw more power, enforce its own vision, and change Lebanon for good. The 2022 parliamentary elections are very important and the international community should focus on making sure they take place in time and with international supervision, but until then, Lebanon should not be used as a bargaining chip by Iran in its negotiations with the US. The international community could also make that clear.

Accordingly, Lebanon today is at a very dangerous junction: The choices are very limited and the options are difficult. Without a serious international plan to save Lebanon and contain

Hanin Ghaddar is the Friedmann Fellow at The Washington Institute’s Geduld Program on Arab Politics, where she focuses on Shia politics throughout the Levant.

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Calling for Lebanon’s Third Battle for Freedom El Machnouk: National Front to Back Patriarch’s Initiative Omar El-Natour – Beirut

Saad Hariri.

“Iran believes Lebanon’s government formation Nohad El Machnouk, the Lebanese member of is a card to play with against the United States,” parliament and former minister of interior and he remarked. municipalities, spoke to Majalla about Lebanon’s “Aoun and Bassil are just a façade; they are government formation deadlock and its causes. not the main reason for the freeze, because if He explained why he doesn’t believe the new Hezbollah wanted to form a government, it judge assigned to investigate Beirut’s explosion would have been able to do so anyway.” could finalize the probe, and suggested that an He also added that another point of debate is the international investigation should be conducted independent ministers to be named by Hezbollah.

The party is the only side that has not submitted without the U.S. He revealed that a national front will see the light their list yet. within a month, where he called for the Lebanese El Machnouk pointed out that third obstacle is people to shoulder their country’s responsibility related to the Russian Foreign minister, who met in what he described as a third battle to free with Jawad Zarif few weeks ago. They disagree Lebanon from Iran’s political occupation on the blocked third, as the Russians disapprove represented in Hezbollah. He confirmed his of giving it to Gebran Bassil. support of the Patriarch al-Rahi’s initiative for “All these events confirm that there is no an international conference on Lebanon, which government in Iran until Iranian presidential elections are held in June,” he concluded, “The he considered the only available solution.

“I told Saad Hariri that his appointment is a trap, first serious negotiations between the U.S. and but unfortunately he didn’t ask me why,” said El Iran will only take place after the elections, maybe between July and August.”

Machnouk in an interview with Majalla.

He explained that Iran has not decided yet to He believed that Biden’s administration approve a cabinet formation in Lebanon. We encouraged Tehran’s extremism, as he said, “If are familiar with this, having seen the fate of Trump was there, he would have taken a different Najib Mikati’s government as well as Tammam and tougher note with Iran, despite being accused Salam and the second government formed by of causing chaos.”

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MP Nohad El Machnouk (Supplied)

Recalling the Democratic administrations’ legacy with Iran in 8 years of Bill Clinton and another 8 of Barack Obama, he said, “It was only a nuclear deal that led to nothing, but emboldened Iran’s aggression against the region, and caused repeated attacks on Saudi Arabia by Iranian-backed militias of Houthis.”

Asked about the Lebanese president’s insistence on keeping the interior ministry, he answered, “Because it is one of the most important institutions in Lebanon. Practically speaking from my five-year experience as Interior Minister, every single citizen is in one way or another linked to the ministries of interior and finance. The President’s team thinks that the ministry of interior will enable him to keep a firm grip on all security services, and strengthen his position.”

President Aoun spoke repeatedly to the media about fighting corruption, but he keeps refusing to endorse the judicial formations approved by the Higher Judicial Council. Nohad El Machnouk viewed this as disrespect of the judiciary.

“This is evidence that the post of the president is vacant,” the MP remarked, “because Aoun is representing a side in the Lebanese conflict.

The main issue is that Lebanon is under Iranian political occupation. We need free decision.”

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“Now is the time for a national front to call for our freedom and third independence. We should not wait for an outside help; nobody wants to help us.”

Do you believe the new judge investigating Beirut Explosion would be able to finalize the probe, we asked.

He replied, “I doubt it would happen due to many reasons: First, what took place in the port was under a protected system. There were 2750 tons of ammonium nitrate, only 500 tons exploded.

Where did the remaining 2250 tons go? It is either by sea or land. By sea, it would go to countries that uncovered Hezbollah’s networks as in Kuwait, Britain, Germany, Hungary, and Lagos in 2020.”

“Secondly, anything can be transported on land.

We should know how come a truck is allowed in and out of the port without any documents. Thus, it can be said that those who control the port and

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the country oversaw the operation.”

The ammonium nitrate is a seven-year old story, he explained, so its network inside and outside the port facilitated transportation of the nitrates between 2015 and 2016 after the Syrian regime ran out of ammunition to crush its opponents and revolutionaries.

Another reason he provided was his belief that it is not internationally allowed to seriously investigate into the assumption that it was an Israeli strike. He recounts, “An Israeli newspaper was the first to break the news, then Trump spoke about it. An hour later both reports were removed. Also, where are the satellite images that can help to know what happened?”

He also wondered where the report of the FBI team which participated in initial investigations was.

“What will the judge’s investigation be based on?

Even if he has serious and detailed information about Hezbollah or the security system, would he dare to announce it? That’s why since day one I I called to hold international investigation into the explosion, without the United States.”

BATTLE FOR INDEPENDENCE The former minister recently talked about a third battle of independence to free Lebanon from Iran’s political occupation.

Does this come in line with the Patriarch’s initiative?

Iran has not decided yet to approve a cabinet formation in Lebanon. “Iran believes Lebanon’s government formation is a card to play with against the United States,” he remarked.

El Machnouk believed that the Patriarch demanded a peaceful solution without inciting or calling for military action. “His approach maintains the constitution and Taif agreement through a strategy to lift the siege on legitimacy,” he said.

He noted, “Yes, I call for supporting the Patriarch. It is the only available opportunity for the Lebanese. We don’t have another initiative.

In particular, he’s calling for a defensive strategy, that I have been speaking about for years.”

El Machnouk believed that the Patriarch demanded a peaceful solution without inciting or calling for military action. “His approach maintains the constitution and Taif agreement through a strategy to lift the siege on legitimacy,” he said.

He described the Patriarch’s approach as accumulative, noting that time was in his favor.

“The Beirut explosion turned the Christians against Hezbollah, which is no more considered their protector or safeguard from ISIS Sunni extremism as Aoun and Bassil used to say,” he remarked, adding that, “When the port exploded, it was a destruction of Christian economy and one-third of the city.”

He advocated that it is the Patriarch’s chance to take the initiative.

In a clear support of the move, he confirmed,

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Protesters gather at Martyrs’ Square and march towards Beirut Port where a massive explosion took place on the 4th of August, on the first anniversary of the Oct. 17 Lebanese protests over the deterioration of the country’s economic situation in Beirut, Lebanon on October ,17 2020. (Getty)

“Anyone who is free and keen about Lebanon’s interests will of course support this initiative. A serious diligent Lebanese team should be formed, that’s why I called for a national front.”

He proclaimed, “I consulted with some people, but won’t reveal names. I expect it will be announced within a month.”

Knot of Rights Coinciding with every crisis, Gebran Bassil calls for restoring Christian rights, apparently to challenge the Taif Agreement which ended the war and assigned presidency to the Maronite sect, Majalla asked El Machnouk about the truth of these rights, given that the President belongs to the Maronite sect.

He explained, “The Taif Agreement has enabled equal shares. His proposal is going nowhere, because no sect has rights outside the constitution. Bassil is using this card due to his loss in the Christian street. He’s trying to restore his popularity, but I doubt he could.”

Some politicians and experts with partisan alignments repeat that the country’s crisis is

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attributed to thirty-year-old policies. However, El Machnouk, conceding that Lebanon’s current problem is not the first, stressed that it is the first time that none is helping the country.

He explained, “In 2002, there was not enough treasury cover for public wages, so Rafic Hariri got a loan from Indonesia’s Mahathir Mohamad.

Now we are under siege, and neither international nor Arab communities want to help us, because they believe we are occupied. If Lebanon wants liberation, we should resist. Lebanon is part of a siege that starts from Iran and ends in Syria.”

“Now is the time for a national front to call for our freedom and third independence. We should not wait for an outside help; nobody wants to help us.”

Asked if this is an outcome of Bassil Foreign policies, he noted that he severely criticised Bassil’s statements against Arab unanimity.

He added, “Saudi Arabia has always helped and supported Lebanon, but how can it help now while Hezbollah’s officials criticize it and other Gulf countries, and back Houthi attacks against the kingdom.”

He acknowledged that Saudi Arabia helped Lebanon from 1992 to 2017, in addition to the help provided by Kuwait and UAE. The current problem as he explained is much bigger.

“Beside economic and financial issues, our health and social systems collapsed. How could they help us while none in the government denounces or rejects Hezbollah’s rhetoric?

Throughout five years, the president didn’t address the government’s stance on the rhetoric against countries that were supportive of Lebanon.”

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Zayed Al-Nahayan called for restoring ties between Syria and the Arab League, faulting the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act of 2019.

The Act is United States legislation that sanctions the Syrian government, including Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, for war crimes against the Syrian population. It was signed into law by President Trump in December 2019 and came into force on June 17, 2020.

In a joint news conference with Lavrov, Sheikh Abdullah said “Syria’s return to the Arab League is a must. Therefore, the Syrian side and our colleagues in the Arab League are required to cooperate as well to make that happen.”

He added that the matter is related to the interest of Syria and the interest of the region, stressing the importance of working to restore ties between Syria and the Arab League.

Calls for Syria’s Return to Arab League to Solve Crisis No Consensus Among Arabs On Restoring Ties with Syria

By Hatem Khedr Over the last several days, there have been some Arab and foreign calls for Syria’s return to the Arab League after a decade-long suspension following the revolution that erupted in Syria in 2011.

A couple of weeks ago, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov paid a visit to the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar where he held talks with his counterparts in the three Gulf States on several matters including Syria’s return to the pan-Arab group.

UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin

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Representatives of the League of Arab states attend an emergency meeting at the Arab League headquarters in Cairo on October 2019 ,12, to discuss Turkey’s offensive on Syria. (Getty)

However, Qatari Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani highlighted that the reasons behind the 2011 suspension of Syria’s membership in the Arab League remain in place.

He stressed the unity of Syria and the rejection of a military solution to the crisis, noting that there is no need for a military presence in that country.

The Russian minister said that the return of Syria to the League would have a positive impact on Middle East conditions.

In the same context, the Saudi foreign minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan said that solving the Syrian crisis should be done politically, calling for the return of that country to its Arab embrace.

Last January, Russia and Saudi Arabia agreed on the importance of Syria’s returning to the Arab League as soon as possible.

Egypt’s Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukri said Syria’s return to the Arab organization is a factor vital to maintain Arab national security and resolve the 10-year suffering of Syrians.

However, Shoukri called on the Syrian regime to show a practical will towards a political solution and reach an understanding with the national political opposition as well as halt the conflict in

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Stability in Syria and reaching a political solution through the Arab League would lead to the whole region’s stability and also to Arab countries’ contribution to reconstructing Syria and helping it eradicate terrorism and regional ambitions. order to achieve national security.

Assistant Secretary-General of the Arab League Ambassador Hossam Zaki said that reinstating Syria’s seat in the organization would undoubtedly contribute to normalizing Syrian-Arab relations, and gradually ending the Syrian people’s suffering through reaching a consensual political solution to this crisis.

In an exclusive statement to “Sky News Arabia,” Zaki said “before talking about Syria’s return, we should refer to the reasons that led to the suspension of its membership, and then adopt a new approach to find an arrangement that opens the way for unfreezing the Syrian seat.”

At the same time, Zaki revealed that there are still difficulties impeding Syria’s return to its seat, as there is no full Arab consensus on this issue.

Some Arab countries still see that the reasons for suspending the Syrian membership continue to exist as long as there is no tangible progress on the political path, he elaborated.

“After 10 years of the conflict, we still hope for a political solution to the crisis, especially after it became clear that there is no way for a military solution. Political settlement, consensus and mutual political concessions are the only solutions to the conflict,” he noted.

Meanwhile, former Assistant Foreign Minister of

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Egypt Ambassador Hussein Haridi said Syria’s return to the Arab League, even if it were late, is a step necessary to restore the Arab role in the Syrian civil conflict and confront the foreign intervention which has greatly contributed to complicating the situation inside Syria.

Dr. Reem Abouhossein, a specialist in African countries, told Majalla that there was foreign interference following the revolutions which erupted in the Arab countries.

“In the wake of the revolutions of the Arab countries, Iran has extended its reach into Syria, which is implemented by Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard in support of Bashar Al-Assad, the Houthi in Yemen, in addition to their presence in Iraq and Lebanon,” Abouhossein told Majalla.

“The recent Gulf proposal sponsored by Saudi Arabia and the UAE during the meeting, with the Russian Foreign Minister as a key player in Syria, for Syria’s return to the League was on the right track as it backed the political solution of sitting down at the negotiating table to support the Syrian government’s re-imposition of its authority on all Syrian territory and reaching solutions with the Syrian opposition,” she added.

She noted that Syria’s return to the League

Egypt FM called on the Syrian regime to show a practical will towards a political solution and reach an understanding with the national political opposition as well as halt the conflict in order to achieve national security.

should be with Gulf support but in exchange for Syria’s commitment to downsizing Iran’s presence in the Syrian territories.

Stability in Syria and reaching a political solution through the Arab League would lead to the whole region’s stability and also to Arab countries’ contribution to reconstructing Syria and helping it eradicate terrorism and regional ambitions, she made clear.

This also would facilitate the return of refugees after political and economic disorder is stabilized

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Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov (L) and Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan (R) hold a joint press conference in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates on March 09, 2021.

(Getty)

and public security is restored, Abouhossein confirmed to Majalla.

6.6 million others in several countries across the globe, according to the UNHCR.

The 10-year civil war in Syria has left more than 389,000 people dead, including over 117,000 civilians, 22,000 children and 14,000 women, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has a network of sources across the country.

Turkey is hosting more than 3.6 million Syrian refugees, the largest number of registered Syrian refugees.

The war also led to the internal displacement of 6.7 million Syrians, most of whom live in camps inside Syria, and the forcible migration of about

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According to the UNHCR, over 660,000 men, women and children are trapped in exile in Jordan. Nearly 80 per cent of them live outside camps, while 128,000 others have found sanctuary in refugee camps such as Za’atari and Azraq.

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for new horizons—crafting grand trade deals, reengaging with allies on London’s terms, and reasserting the United Kingdom’s vocation as a “force for good in the world.” A recently released government report—“Global Britain in a Competitive Age”—reflects this optimism.

The United Kingdom, it notes, will emerge as a “Science and Tech Superpower” and will “continue to be renowned for our leadership in security, diplomacy and development, conflict resolution and poverty reduction.”

Such bullishness, however, sits poorly with the damage the country sustained during the COVID19- pandemic. The United Kingdom suffered the worst economic hit among G7states, and its death rate has been one of the steepest in Europe. The government has since stood up a remarkably successful national vaccination effort, but it doesn’t change the fact that the country’s two-trillion-pound public debt is at a -70year high and rising fast.

The Delusions of Global Britain

Will London Capitalize on a Middle Power Role or Recede to Irrelevance?

By Jeremy Shapiro, Nick Witney At midnight on December 2020 ,31, the United Kingdom completed its withdrawal from the European Union. Having finally signed a trade deal governing the relationship between the two sides, London was “unshackled from the corpse

that is the EU,” as Brexiteers dramatically put it.

The United Kingdom was now free to seek its destiny as “Global Britain.”

But where does this destiny lie? British Prime Minister Boris Johnson sold Brexit on the expansive promise of a “new Elizabethan age”—a British resurgence around the globe. Britons, like their buccaneering forebears, could now set sail

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Brexit supporters wearing Union Jack flags celebrate on Parliament Street in London, England, on January ,31 2020. (Getty)

The United Kingdom would therefore do better to approach its next chapter with a little more humility. The country can still play a central part in international politics if it reconciles itself to the role of middle power. Instead of indulging in Commonwealth or Indo-Pacific fantasies, London should seek its strengths closer to home—where it can use its new status as the EU’s main external partner to magnify its global influence.

DECLINE IS NOT INEVITABLE Britons had little appetite, and no time, to debate the implications of their new position in the world before December’s trade agreement came into force. After five years of rancor, most simply wanted to “get Brexit done.” Thus, although the Brexiteer press rallied around Johnson’s negotiating triumph, the public mood was one of relief rather than triumphalism. The deal also coincided with the emergence of a new and more contagious COVID19- variant in the United Kingdom. France, in response, briefly blockaded British goods and travelers. The ensuing chaos demonstrated the importance of trade across the English Channel and reinforced what failure to

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London can best navigate the post-Brexit era by playing to its strengths and guarding against unnecessary commitments that stem more from nostalgia than from hardheaded national interests. clinch a deal might have meant.

The British news media were quick to point out the deal’s very real flaws—among them, that Johnson had subordinated economic interests to the perceived demands of British sovereignty.

Researchers forecast a six percent blow to per capita GDP over the coming decade, and the United Kingdom’s ability to export services to the EU remains largely subject to Brussels’s future decisions. Indeed, far from being “done,” Brexit will only now begin to visit its limitations on London’s economic, political, and human interactions with Europe. January saw a 40 percent drop in British goods exports to the EU, and continuing trade disputes over Northern Ireland reveal that the separation was no clean and amicable divorce.

Europhile Britons often view these developments as confirmation of their nation’s decline. But this gloom is overstated. The United Kingdom remains, for now, the world’s fifth-largest economy, a nuclear power, and a permanent member of the UN Security Council. It has a powerful military and formidable signals intelligence and cyber-capacities—the real heart of the “special relationship” with the United States. London’s global networks are almost uniquely extensive. In 2021, the United Kingdom will chair the G7- and the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow. The nation belongs to the increasingly important Five Eyes intelligence partnership and will likely feature prominently in U.S. President Joe Biden’s plan to rally the world’s democracies. The British are further endowed with a native command of the

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olitics Arguably, British leaders now have an even greater opportunity to influence EU policy from the outside, with more flexibility than they had as a member and more avenues for impact than other, more distant outside powers.

world’s most versatile language, whose status as international lingua franca has made the BBC an unrivaled global voice and helped British universities, courts, and diplomacy retain their preeminent reputations.

Moreover, for all of Brexit’s enduring animosity (the European Union gets no more than a couple of perfunctory nods in Johnson’s recent government review), the United Kingdom remains indisputably close to its erstwhile continental partners—geographically, culturally, and economically. During its time in the bloc, British bureaucrats often proved highly effective at securing their country’s interests in Brussels on issues including EU enlargement and sanctions policy, even as they played their role as representatives of the body’s most recalcitrant member. Arguably, British leaders now have an even greater opportunity to influence EU policy from the outside, with more flexibility than they had as a member and more avenues for impact than other, more distant outside powers.

As a nonmember with an intimate understanding of the complex bureaucratic organism that is the EU, the United Kingdom will retain a special ability to influence the rules that matter to British citizens and ignore the ones that chafe too harshly. To use this latent capacity, however, the Johnson government must be ideologically flexible.

Indeed, far from being “done,” Brexit will only now begin to visit its limitations on London’s economic, political, and human interactions with Europe.

of loyalty test is not an effective use of the United Kingdom’s diminishing yet still substantial postBrexit assets.

STRENGTHS NEAR AT HAND London can best navigate the post-Brexit era by playing to its strengths and guarding against unnecessary commitments that stem more from nostalgia than from hardheaded national interests.

Whether the country’s leaders are capable of such modesty can perhaps be measured through their approach to the “tilt to the Indo-Pacific” they have recently proposed.

Since the Cold War, power and wealth have drifted from West to East, such that the United Kingdom now looks eastward in search of new markets, and China has grown more geopolitically assertive. But those consequential shifts do not imply that sending the Royal Navy to patrol the Chinese littoral is London’s best or only option—especially as the government continues to “pursue a positive trade and investment relationship with China,” to quote

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Conservative MP Steve Baker speaks with proEU supporters during protest outside Houses of Parliament against no-deal Brexit on 24 June, 2020 in London, England. (Getty)

its recent report. The very term “Indo-Pacific” betrays the fact that the United Kingdom learned its enthusiasm from Atlanticist think tanks.

Concerns over East Asian maritime security and Chinese military capabilities reflect American anxieties, not problems for a medium-sized island power perched off the west coast of Eurasia. Such attention to distant objectives reflects the evergreen British urge to ingratiate itself in Washington and play on whatever issue most preoccupies the United States.

London must instead stake out its own role.

Doing so means occupying the space between Brussels and Washington—nudging both toward its positions on issues that matter to British citizens, including trade, digital services, and European security. Just as Washington often uses its close relationship with specific EU member states (and its formidable lobbying power in Brussels) to force concessions on issues such as privacy, London can now play a similar selective and flexible game. In the coming years, for example, the United Kingdom could use its market position and political influence to shape EU regulations on green technology. In other areas, such as COVID19- vaccine distribution, it can choose to forge its own path.

Transitioning into this new role will require a willingness to accept the EU’s importance—and a degree of humility that does not come naturally to contemporary British leaders. Johnson has based his government’s identity on a nostalgic appeal to British greatness—one that necessarily entails separating from the European Union.

Worse, the bitter experience of endless Brexit negotiations has not left policymakers on either side of the channel scrambling to find new areas of cooperation. But the United Kingdom will either profit from its proximity to the EU’s oddly vibrant corpse or fade into nostalgic irrelevance.

The United Kingdom knows whose side it is on in the geopolitical conflict between China and the United States, but the hard lessons of Afghanistan and Iraq have surely taught London that “What’s in it for us?” should be the first question its leaders ask. Trailing Washington into the dangerous waters of East Asia simply This article was originally published on because the United States insists it is some sort ForeignAffairs.com.

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olitics picking the data rather than publishing the results in full.

Holding back clinical data is a scientific and political mistake. Much of the developing world has only limited access to Western-made vaccines and will depend heavily on those produced in China. The country’s vaccine makers must not undermine confidence in their products at a time when so much of the world desperately needs them.

SMOKE AND MIRRORS

China Must Stop Hiding Its Vaccine Data Can Chinese Vaccines Save Developing Countries and Combat Variants?

By Eyck Freymann, Justin Stebbing

off his toes rather than admit that the shoes don’t fit.

China is doing a similar thing with its COVID19In a parable in the Han dynasty philosophical text vaccines, which reportedly did not perform as well The Huainanzi, a fool goes to the market to buy a in clinical trials as their Western competitors. Fearing pair of shoes. Finding the shoes too small, he cuts embarrassment, Chinese vaccine makers are cherry-

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People wait in line outside a Covid19vaccination center in Beijing, China, on Wednesday, March ,17 2021. (Getty)

Chinese vaccine makers are hiding their clinical data from the world. They published their Phase 1 and Phase 2 data in reputable, peer-reviewed journals such as JAMA and The Lancet and their preclinical data in Science. But they have not published data on their crucial large-cohort Phase 3 trials. In contrast, Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, AstraZeneca, and Russia’s Gamaleya Institute have all published their Phase 3 data in respected, peer-reviewed journals.

China’s Sinovac has been the worst offender. The company has reported only bits and pieces of efficacy data from its various overseas trials to suggest that its CoronaVac vaccine is highly effective.

Based on these reports, Chinese state-linked media claimed that CoronaVac was 100 percent effective at preventing severe COVID19-. But subsequent reports suggested 91 percent efficacy in Turkey, 78 percent in Brazil, and 65 percent in Indonesia. The company’s Brazilian research partners reported just 50.4 percent efficacy—barely above the World Health Organization’s minimum threshold of 50.0 percent for recommending a vaccine at all. Even now, Sinovac’s Brazilian partners are withholding their full data “at the company’s request.” Sinopharm, the other leading Chinese vaccine maker, is also holding back its full results. The company has not yet published any results from its Phase 3 efficacy trials.

Despite all the opacity, countries are lining up for Chinese vaccines. Sinopharm and Sinovac are delivering millions of doses per month to governments around the world. Chile has made Chinese vaccines central to its national vaccination strategy, ordering over ten million doses from Sinovac. In Indonesia, President Joko Widodo received his first CoronaVac injection on live television. Regulators in these countries need much more than inconsistent efficacy figures. They need to know what antibody responses the Chinese vaccines generate, how these responses

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“Beijing is poised to dominate the distribution of vaccines to the developing world—and to reap the strategic benefits of doing so.” We predicted that if wealthy countries kept hoarding Western vaccines, poor countries would eventually be forced to buy Chinese alternatives. vary across demographic groups, how they change over time, and what adverse reactions people have had to the vaccine. Otherwise, they cannot make informed public health decisions, such as whether or not to approve Chinese vaccines for vulnerable groups, such as HIV-positive and elderly populations.

PRIVATE DATA KILLS PUBLIC TRUST Sinovac’s obfuscation is not just bad science— it is also bad politics for Beijing. By becoming a leading vaccine supplier, China hoped to show off its high-tech capabilities and burnish its international reputation after a damaging 2020. But its approach to vaccine data has hardly helped Beijing put the past behind. If China learned nothing else in Wuhan last January, the obvious lesson would seem to be that evading uncomfortable truths can do more damage than confronting them. And yet Chinese vaccine companies have taken an approach to data that is at best sloppy and at worst misleading.

It is not an accident that public trust in China’s vaccines has plummeted. Media coverage in many countries has seized on the inconsistent Sinovac data to cast doubt on the entire Chinese vaccine effort.

One recent survey found that just 37 percent of Hong Kongers were willing to take any Chinese vaccine.

Another found that residents of 13 out of the 15 countries studied were less likely to take a vaccine if they learned it was Chinese made.

This distrust spells trouble for countries around the world, not just for China. In densely populated parts of the world, roughly 70 to 80 percent of the population

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olitics Chinese vaccine makers are hiding their clinical data from the world.

They published their Phase 1 and Phase 2 data in reputable, peerreviewed journals such as JAMA and The Lancet and their preclinical data in Science. But they have not published data on their crucial largecohort Phase 3 trials.

must be immunized, either by natural infection or vaccination, to curb the spread of the virus. This figure is inching higher as the virus evolves to become more transmissible and gains the ability to reinfect recovered patients. The less effective a vaccine is, the larger the share of the population that must be vaccinated to reach herd immunity. Developing countries relying on Chinese vaccines therefore have little room for public distrust. Unless nearly all their citizens take the vaccine, the virus will continue to spread and evolve.

COVID19- will become endemic like the flu, causing new deaths and economic dislocation every year.

AN IMPOSSIBLE CHOICE In early November, we argued in Foreign Affairs that “Beijing is poised to dominate the distribution of vaccines to the developing world—and to reap the strategic benefits of doing so.” We predicted that if wealthy countries kept hoarding Western vaccines, poor countries would eventually be forced to buy Chinese alternatives.

The inequities we foresaw are growing starker. Rich countries are hoarding doses as an insurance policy against dangerous new strains. European Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides recently tried to stop AstraZeneca from exporting doses from its European factories, even to fulfill preexisting orders.

“We reject the logic of first come, first served,” she said, suggesting that Europe will make sure its own population is vaccinated before others. The Biden administration has made an important gesture by

Despite all the opacity, countries are lining up for Chinese vaccines. Sinopharm and Sinovac are delivering millions of doses per month to governments around the world.

joining COVAX, the World Health Organization’s program to pool vaccine doses for the world’s poorest countries. U.S. leadership is a positive development and may influence other wealthy countries to follow suit. But for the moment, Biden’s move is only symbolic, since his administration is prioritizing doses for Americans. Many poor countries will not achieve full vaccination until the fall of 2021, and some will have to wait until 2022.

Poor countries are therefore more dependent on Chinese vaccines than ever. Public officials and regulators across Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia don’t really have a choice: a mediocre vaccine that works even 50 percent of the time could save lives and reduce pressure on hospitals.

And it is better than no vaccine at all.

DEMAND WON’T DIE China is not the only non-Western producer making viable COVID19- vaccines. The Russian vaccine

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Chinese officials inspect the shipment of the Sinovac and Sinopharm vaccines at Harare International Airport on March 16, 2021 in Harare, Zimbabwe.

(Getty)

Because so much of the world is dependent on Chinese vaccines, transparency is of the essence. Particularly if, as seems to be the case, vaccines such as that produced by Sinovac have lower efficacy than some of their Western counterparts, Chinese vaccine makers will need to make up for that shortfall in public trust, as widespread adoption will be essential.

Publishing full clinical data and replicating the Chinese trials abroad would help build public confidence. Journalists and public officials should push for disclosure, but they should not sow doubt unnecessarily or publicly root for the Chinese vaccines to fail.

Some shoes don’t fit. Some vaccines don’t work as well as others. But like it or not, the world needs Chinese vaccines. If the vaccines developed by Sinopharm, Sinovac, and other Chinese vaccine makers are even moderately safe and effective, they could save lives in the world’s poorest countries and reduce the risk of dangerous new variants in the developed world. Their success would contribute to public health and boost China’s image. Their failure would prolong the pandemic and further blacken China’s reputation in the whole affair. For these reasons, among others, Chinese vaccine makers must embrace transparency and publish their data, warts and all.

seems extremely effective, and Russia has signed deals to export hundreds of millions of doses this year.

India also has its own vaccine diplomacy initiative, exporting doses produced by the Serum Institute of India, a partner of AstraZeneca.

For the foreseeable future, however, the demand for vaccines in the developing world will vastly exceed supply, so China will have no trouble finding buyers.

Most of India’s vaccine exports are going to neighbors, such as Bangladesh, Myanmar, and Nepal, and island nations in the Indian Ocean, such as Mauritius, Seychelles, and Sri Lanka. This scheme is part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “neighborhood first” strategy to keep India’s periphery free of Chinese influence. Russia has export deals with a longer list of countries than India, but it faces formidable manufacturing hurdles that will make it hard for it to meet its production targets. With Moscow unable to keep pace with demand, Brazil, Egypt, Indonesia, Turkey, and others have ordered about 380 million This article was originally published on ForeignAffairs.com. doses from Sinovac alone.

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“the[ir] shared challenges of global health security, climate change and preventing weapons proliferation.” (For its part, Beijing released a more ominous readout of the call that noted how “confrontation between China and the U.S. would certainly be a disaster for both countries and the world.”)

From a strictly economic vantage point, the latter view is justifiable. The Chinese and American economies have reached an advanced degree of interdependence such that any sustained commercial hostilities would exact a steep cost. According to one analysis, if 25 percent tariffs were expanded to cover all two-way trade, the U.S. would forgo nearly $200 billion in GDP growth per year by 2025. The study goes on to note that “the stakes are even higher when accounting for how lost U.S. market access in China today creates revenue and job losses, lost economies of scale, smaller research and development (R&D) budgets, and diminished competitiveness.”

Biden Positions to Confront China A Question of Timing

by Joseph Braude Last week, American and Chinese diplomats met for a long-anticipated bilateral summit in Anchorage, Alaska. While few observers were expecting a cordial affair, the degree of animosity freely expressed by the Chinese delegation — what one veteran China analyst described as a “rhetorical snowball fight” — underscored what is sure to be one of the U.S.’s defining foreign policy challenges for the foreseeable future.

Mounting signs from the Biden administration indicate that Washington is gearing up to respond.

After President Biden’s first call to Xi last month, the White House noted the president “fundamental concerns” about certain Chinese economic practices as well as violations of human rights in Hong Kong and Xinjiang. But it sought to temper these confrontational notes by highlighting how both leaders discussed

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The US and China flags stand behind a micro)phone. (Getty

For these reasons, several Washington insiders believe that the administration will bide its time for the moment. As Clete Willems, a former trade negotiator with the Trump administration, has astutely highlighted, the administration has implemented a comprehensive review of all national security measures imposed by former President Trump, including the U.S.-China “phase one” trade deal that paused an incipient trade war. “I think they probably want to get through the G-7 summit in the summer, and then I think in the fall is [when] they’re really going to have to make some decisions on how to move forward.”

TECTONIC SHIFTS Beneath these diplomatic concerns over timing, American public views of China have dramatically soured. According to a survey conducted by Gallup and released this week, the segment of Americans who hold an unfavorable view of China has reached 79 percent, by far the worst reading since its polling began in 1979. Only Iran and North Korea scored worse. Indeed, from a polling standpoint, “The Biden administration is going to be on a very short leash with respect to doing anything that is perceived as giving China a break,” according to Wendy Cutler, a vice president at the Asia

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Beneath these diplomatic concerns over timing, American public views of China have dramatically soured.

According to a survey conducted

by Gallup and released this week, the segment of Americans who hold an unfavorable view of China has reached 79 percent.

Society Policy Institute and a former U.S. trade negotiator.

As if in response to this sea change in public opinion, the Biden administration’s foreign policy blueprint, laid out in the National Security Strategic Guidance released earlier this month, lays heavy emphasis on containing Chinese encroachment. Peppered with language describing the need to “hold countries like China to account” and “allow us to prevail in strategic competition with China,” the document lays out a cohesive strategy to “confront unfair and illegal trade practices, cyber theft, and coercive economic practices that hurt American workers, undercut our advanced and emerging technologies, and seek to erode our strategic advantage and national competitiveness.” In short, to wage a long-term economic cold war with Beijing.

And indeed, cabinet-level officials have inaugurated their terms in office with rhetorical notes that, only a few years ago would have been striking for their directness. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, widely anticipated to play a crucial role in relations with Beijing, vowed at her confirmation hearing last month to use the “full array” of America’s tools to combat “illegal, unfair and abusive” practices. Ms. Raimondo, Biden’s nominee for commerce secretary, used the occasion of her confirmation hearings to call out China’s actions “anti-competitive, hurtful to American workers and businesses” and say that the country was “culpable for atrocious human rights abuses.”

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A Big Wave of Pandemic Bankruptcies Never Happened Was Covid- 19 Economic Damage Overstated?

Laurence Darmiento The pandemic produced the kind of fallout that gives economists nightmares. An initial drop in economic output that exceeded the Great Depression. Sudden job losses that outpaced modern records.

But there›s one economic bellwether that has seemingly painted an even rosy picture: bankruptcies, which have so far lagged behind their total in the year before the pandemic.

Yes, the number of personal and business bankruptcies filed last year in the country fell by nearly %30 from

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A person walks by a vacant building in Union Square amid the coronavirus pandemic on March 10, 2021 in New York City.

(Getty)

2019 despite Covid19-. The decline was largely driven by a roughly %31 fall in personal bankruptcies but also a nearly %5 slide in filings due to business debts, according to U.S. Bankruptcy Court statistics.

The court›s Central District of California — which includes Los Angeles, Orange and five other counties — has been no exception, experiencing a %27 decline in all cases, including a %15 decline in business-related filings.

Filings are still down so far this year, and to get an understanding of how that might be possible consider two restaurants that closed after the pandemic hit: the popular Souplantation buffet chain and Olive Tree Restaurant, a stand-alone Middle Eastern eatery in Anaheim, Calif.

With more than 4,000 employees and 97 restaurants operating under two names in 10 states, Souplantation›s parent, Garden Fresh Restaurant Corp., decided to file for federal bankruptcy protection, selling off its assets and handling its creditors in court.

The owner of Olive Tree, however, simply worked out a deal with his landlord to get out of his lease and shut the doors of the restaurant. He figures he could›ve sold the eatery for 500,000$ in normal times.

«I left that on the table. I don›t have any debt, but I have nothing,» former owner Alan Abdo said. «This coronavirus thing changed the world.»

The different outcomes are hardly atypical: Big companies that died have tended to go to Bankruptcy Court, while an unknown number of smaller businesses simply shut down.

Business filings would have been even lower if not for a rise in Chapter 11 cases, which allow companies to reorganize. And many of those cases were filed in a handful of courts favored by large corporations with complicated businesses that required separate filings for individual subsidiaries. Two-thirds of U.S. Bankruptcy Court districts saw no increase in Chapter 11 filings.

The biggest bankruptcy last year was Hertz, which had amassed some 23$ billion in debt after business and personal travel screeched to a halt early on in the pandemic. Other notable bankruptcies included retailers J.C. Penney and Neiman Marcus — two retailers already struggling because of online rivals — and Chesapeake Energy, a victim of depressed demand for oil and gas.

There was one record set last year, which was by the 62 public and private companies that had assets of 1$ billion or more before filing for bankruptcy. That topped the 58 in 2009, according to New Generation Research, a Boston firm that operates the BankruptcyData website.

However, a broader measure of corporate distress was less dire: There were only 110 publicly traded companies — including smaller ones not traded on major exchanges — that filed for bankruptcy. That was

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The different outcomes are hardly atypical: Big companies that died have tended to go to Bankruptcy Court, while an unknown number of smaller businesses simply shut down. more than the 64 in 2019 but well under the 211 in 2009 amid the Great Recession or the 263 in 2001 after the tech bust, the BankruptcyData numbers show.

«For a while, I was very convinced that (filings) were going to pop down the line, but 12 months into this they haven›t,» said Ed Flynn, a consultant with the American Bankruptcy Institute, who notes national filings were still down in the middle of March by some %45 compared with the same period last year when the pandemic-related shutdowns started.

«They are down to levels we haven›t seen since the mid1980s,» he said.

There are some obvious reasons that help explain the counterintuitive trend, especially the deluge of cash the U.S. government has pumped into the economy to help keep entire industries and businesses afloat — and put money directly into consumers› pockets through higher unemployment benefits, as well as stimulus checks showered on even middle-class families, including the 1,400$ that landed this month.

Other measures to protect individuals from the pandemic turmoil also have probably lowered the rate of personal bankruptcies, including eviction bans, foreclosure moratoriums and federal student-loan payment freezes — which were extended by the Biden administration but are still set to expire this year.

«Clearly people, mainly through government actions, have not yet felt the pain, and have not had the type of event that would precipitate a bankruptcy. They may not be paying their rent or their mortgage, but they are not being foreclosed on yet,» Flynn said.

And for those debts not subject to any governmental restraint on collections there have been practical considerations, including a pandemic-related backlog in California state courts that have made it challenging for creditors to get judgments, L.A.-area bankruptcy attorneys say.

Unless debtors are facing an immediate threat — such as a seizure of assets or garnishment of a wage — they will often avoid bankruptcy, which is costly and timeconsuming in itself.

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conomy

«It›s a trustee looking into every transaction in your economic sock drawer. It›s just not a pleasant or good thing,» said L.A. bankruptcy attorney J. Scott Bovitz.

«Individuals don›t tend to file bankruptcy unless they really, really need to. As long as there are a couple of dollars coming in the door from somewhere they tend to put it off.»

Still, that doesn›t mean there hasn›t been economic pain that has stretched for months.

Weekly jobless claims rose nationwide in midMarch, and a recent report by the state Employment Development Department found that California shed more than 145,000 payroll jobs in December and January, recovering just %39 of the 2.7 million jobs lost to the pandemic. The national recovery is further along with %56 of jobs recovered by January, but that still meant millions of lost jobs.

However, the damage was mostly felt at the lower end of the labor market, as %80 of 9.6 million net jobs lost were occupied by workers in the bottom quartile of wage earners, according to a report by the Economic Policy Institute.

Those are the kinds of jobs offered by the hard-hit hospitality and restaurant industries, where workers typically don›t file for bankruptcy. Flynn notes that personal bankruptcy filings are often made by middleclass people seeking to protect homes and other assets, as opposed to those with less wealth, who may have few assets to protect and less ability to cover the costs of the process.

The National Restaurant Association estimated in December that more than 110,000 restaurants had closed either temporarily or permanently. Coresight Research reports there were 8,736 announced store

The damage was mostly felt at the lower end of the labor market, as %80 of 9.6 million net jobs lost were occupied by workers in the bottom quartile of wage earners, according to a report by the Economic Policy Institute.

«Clearly people, mainly through government actions, have not yet felt the pain, and have not had the type of event that would precipitate a bankruptcy. They may not be paying their rent or their mortgage, but they are not being foreclosed on yet.”

closures last year and only 3,300 announced openings — with about 1,500 of the new stores in the dollar store category.

Yet, there has been a well-documented boom in online sales, and new business formation dropped only %14 during the first year of the pandemic, according to Yelp, with about 487,500 new business openings from March 2020 ,11, through March 1 of this year. About 76,000 were restaurant and food businesses, while nearly 287,000 were professional, local, home and auto businesses, down only %1.

Comprehensive numbers on total business closures, either permanent or temporary, are hard to come by for some of the same reasons that Bankruptcy Court filings may not reflect the true extent of the damage suffered by business owners.

Similar to Olive Tree owner Abdo, Kay Osario, owner of Awesome Playground, a Los Angeles indoor playground and party space for young children, simply shut the business› doors when the pandemic arrived.

«My husband and I were pretty conservative investors,

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Small business closing sign due to Covid-19.

(Getty)

so we were never in a situation where we were in a lot of debt that would put us in a position even with Covid where we would have to declare bankruptcy,» she said.

Even Garden Fresh Restaurants flirted with the idea of liquidating its assets before settling on a Chapter 7 filing in court as the best way to handle its situation, including for its employees who may have claims, said John Haywood, the San Diego company›s chief executive at the time.

«It just brought it to a very firm conclusion and an organized one,» he said. «Some of these other forms you literally just liquidate the company. There›s not an organized venue for people to work with.»

Economist Chris Thornberg, founder of Beacon Economics in L.A., thinks a key reason there has been no bankruptcy tsunami is simply that the extent of the economic damage has been overstated.

Unlike the lead-up to the Great Recession, when the housing market collapsed amid unsustainable debt loads, he notes that personal debt loads were at historic lows early last year, even for low-income workers.

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He estimates that perhaps 7 million people have been absorbing the brunt of the economic pain during the pandemic, while the huge stimulus has thrown off so much cash that better-off Americans have paid down debts or dumped it into the stock and housing markets, which have taken off.

«The vast majority of people who are screaming ‹End of the world,› ‹Sky is falling› were using the lens of the Great Recession,» he said, noting that slowdown dragged on for years.

By contrast, 12 months after the pandemic started, the forecast this year is for strong economic growth, with the Federal Reserve this month boosting its estimate to %6.5, up from its %4.2 forecast in December.

In December, Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody›s Analytics, figured that the government›s support to the economy was simply kicking the problem down the road. He went so far as to say it was like «morphine that will wear off at some point» and that «there will be pain.»

He changed his outlook once Democrats won the two Georgia Senate seats and the party was able to jam through its latest -1.9$trillion stimulus measure, which brought the government›s total support to the economy to 5.3$ trillion since the pandemic began — a huge inflow of money that amounts to about a quarter of GDP. He expects bankruptcies will rise and credit problems will emerge once the moratoriums are lifted and the government support is depleted, but strong economic growth should return bankruptcies to normal levels.

«It will be very modest in the grand scheme of things,» Zandi said.

This was originally published in Los Angeles Times.

A Weekly Political News Magazine

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Issue 1845- March- 26/03/2021

Haim Saban: Media Mogul with Political Influence

www.majalla.com

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ulture

Signature Egyptian items for Contemporary Usage Meet Al-Bazar – Egypt’s Annual Handicraft Exhibition

By Amira El-Noshokaty Under the auspices of Egyptian President Abdel El-Fattah Al-Sisi, the Al-Bazar Handicraft Exhibition opened its doors this year in Cairo earlier this month.

In partnership with Cairo Bank, United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the International Labor Organization (ILO), and other partners, this year’s exhibition showcased many authentic handicrafts that adopted a modern flair as well as a green perspective.

BANLASTIC At the front and center of the exhibition lies the BGreen initiative by Cairo Bank. Among the most interesting items exhibited are those belonging to the Banlastic Egypt initiative which offers alternatives to plastic. “We started our initiative in 2018 in Alexandria, where we held numerous events to raise awareness about the dangers of using plastic. You see, at this rate, by 2050 there will be more plastic bags in the sea than fish,” explained Yasmine Mostafa, a representative for the initiative.

The initiative showcased compressed wooden forks, spoons and knives for personal use as well as bags and purses made of recycled banners. However, their latest sub-project is Re-fabric. “We aim to revive the ancient tradition of kelim, a recycled hand-woven tapestry technique that was very famous in Egypt. We shall start with the handicrafts artists of Fowa, a village in Kafr El-Sheikh, Delta governorate of Egypt,” explained Abdel Qader AlKhaligi, co-founder of Banlastic.

Egyptian handicrafts. The Creative Egypt project was started by the Egyptian Ministry of Industry and trade to promote authentic Egyptian handicrafts. In collaboration with the Industrial Modernization Center, “Creative Egypt” is the first trademark for Egyptian traditional handcrafts, which preserve Egypt’s cultural heritage but add a modern contemporary touch.

Internationally awarded products such as hand-made glasses, copper ornaments and many other signature Egyptian items for contemporary usage, are displayed in the Creative Egypt section.

For the past six years, Creative Egypt had their own permanent outlet for Egyptian handicrafts. “Representing a group of almost 260 Egyptian artisans, we were first located in Omar Efaandi store in Mohandessen, but last year

A young woman participating in the section of BGreen initiative to present products of Banlastic youth initiative

Partition displaying items from Creative Egypt project. Photos by Amira El-Noshokaty

Sameh Seliman, a Khayameya craftsman showing his products at the Bazar.

we relocated to Cairo Festival City which gave us much better exposure,” explained Tarek Essam, a spokesman for Creative Egypt.

KHAYAMEYA The ancient art of Khayameya patchwork has been part and parcel of Islamic Cairo. There is a whole district dedicated to this fine art of handmade stitches that dates back to Fatimid Cairo, perhaps even earlier than that. This art’s real essence is in the way various motifs from different patchworks are hand-woven together to make masterpieces of fabric that are never out of style.

“The motifs on demand throughout the ages are the Islamic ones and that of the Lotus flower, a symbol of the ancient Egyptian era,” explained Sameh Seliman who has been working in Khayameya for over 40 years. Having inherited the trade from his father, Seliman remembers how the usage of Khayameya has varied throughout the years.

“This art of patchwork was originally used to form Shader which is the movable partition popular in Egyptian tradition and usually used on local side streets to celebrate weddings or funerals. Nowadays, table sheets, runners, ar-

CREATIVE EGYPT Not so far from BGreen, lies another gem of authentic

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The ancient art of Khayameya patchwork has been part and parcel of Islamic Cairo. This art’s real essence is in the way various motifs from different patchworks are hand-woven together to make masterpieces of fabric that are never out of style. tistic tableaus and even cloths, are made of Khayameya,” he boasted, adding that he is now working on his latest Khayameya creation. “Currently I am experimenting with mixing various textures and special designs that would create an optical illusion and give a two dimensional effect,” he concluded.

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ifetyle

For the Love of Java Specialty Coffee Builds on Growing Saudi Demand for Caffeine Kick Jeddah: Motasem Al Felou “The coffee shop industry is booming. Despite the pandemic, 2 or 3 new coffee shops or restaurants are opened every week. We, Saudis, are coffee lovers by nature. And ‘specialty coffee’ is the newest trend in the Kingdom”, said Mohammed, a young Saudi coffee lover, who works at a marketing company in Jeddah, a Saudi Arabian city to the West of the Kingdom, known for its Red Sea coastal vibe.

From picking up the best coffee grains to brewing, roasting and preparation, specialty coffee is known for high quality, great aroma unique taste. This coffee is gaining more popularity among Saudi coffee drinkers, who have turned drinking coffee from just a daily habit into an immersive social experience.

This does not mean all coffee drinkers love specialty coffee. Some criticize the high price and believe the taste is no different from other regular coffees. However, pro-specialty coffee people think it is worth every single penny – or should we say Saudi riyal?

Let us get into the world of specialty coffee and explore how it is made and perceived by coffee lovers in Jeddah.

Specialty coffee beans are imported primarily from Ethiopia (more that two-thirds of the coffee consumed in the Kingdom come from there), Brazil, Kenya, Yemen and Colombia. Salvadoran, Rwandan, and other Latin America varieties are also present in the Saudi coffee shops.

COMPLICATED PREPARATION PROCESS The preparation process of specialty coffee is very interesting. This process is standard. Baristas who prepare specialty coffee need to pass an educational program and get certified. Some baristas learn by observation and practice.

“Unlike other coffees, specialty coffee beans undergo a careful process of roasting and brewing. We prepare the specialty coffee according to strict standards of the process”, the Saudi barista explains, “After customers decide on the variety they prefer - whether strong, a bit sour or lighter - the beans are first weighed on a scale and ground.

HOW IS SPECIALTY COFFEE DIFFERENT ?

Specialty coffee is the one that is graded 80 points or above on a 100-scale by the UK and USA-based Specialty Coffee Association (SCA).

But how is the coffee graded?

“The grading is made for the green coffee beans via visual inspection by experts. This means it happens before brewing and roasting”, explained Hani, a Saudi barista in his mid-twenties, when speaking to Majalla English.

“Specialty coffee has the best harvested beans ever. They are defect-free. Defects include black, immature or sour beans. Experts are so accurate that they consider broken beans a defect. All beans are the same to ensure highest quality beans are processed and poured into cups!”, he added.

Having traditional Arabian coffee with friends. (Getty)

Gentleman sitting in café.

(Getty)

We set the perfect water temperature and prepare using a special coffee-making equipment and filter. Water is gradually added in specific amounts. The perfect water temperature is 90-95 degrees Celsius, i.e. below the boiling point of 100 degrees Celsius”, he explained.

The average time for preparationfor specialty coffee is 1012 minutes, which is a bit longer that other coffee varieties preparation.

COST AND TASTE The cost of a cup of specialty coffee in the Kingdom ranges between USD 5 to USD 9. It is double the price of Arabic or Turkish coffee.

The barista told me the cost for each cup does not exceed USD 1-1.5, meaning the profit margin is good. Some coffee lovers believe the price is reasonable.

“We pay more for the highest quality coffee. It takes more time to prepare at the hands of an experienced barista. Not every barista can prepare specialty coffee”, said Najwa, a Saudi interior designer and a big fan of specialty coffee.

However, other coffee lovers disagree with Najwa. One of them is Khalid, a government employee in his forties, who said:” Specialty coffee is both overrated and overpriced. I find the taste average or below average”.

KICK OF CAFFEINE According to 2019’s stats, the total value of coffee imported to the Kingdom is around USD 302 million with more than 22,000 licenses for coffee shops and restaurants. Coffee ki-

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From picking up the best coffee grains to brewing, roasting and preparation, specialty coffee is known for high quality, great aroma unique taste. This coffee is gaining more popularity among Saudi coffee drinkers, who have turned drinking coffee from just a daily habit into an immersive social experience. osks have grown exponentially after the pandemic.

Saudis are proud of their own Arabic coffee (Qahawa Arabiya), a light roast variety. However, younger generations are more open to trying other varieties like specialty coffee.

“I badly need a kick of caffeine to wake up and get in the mood for work. Specialty coffee satisfies my passion; I love to watch the barista preparing my cup. It looks like an enjoyable chemical experiment. I enjoy the smell before drinking.

It is a drinking experience beyond description!”, exclaimed Sawsan, a Saudi salesperson in her thirties.

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ociety Your Home.”

“I saw the child whom I settled on adopting with my husband, four days after his birth, but the adoption process took almost a year until it became official,” Rasha said in her story on the website of the initiative (www.adoptioninegypt.org).

Islam does not allow adoption with children taking all the legal rights of the biological offspring.

Instead, there is another care system which is Kafalla. Under Kafalla, adults can become guardians of orphans.

Historically, Egyptians have stopped short of adopting children and including them as part of their families. Moreover, some have stigmatized this practice as some of those children were born out of a wedlock or they were abandoned by their parents.

CHANGING ATTITUDES

Government Action, Individual Moves Encourage Families to Embrace Adoption

Now, things are changing. Mekky along with many others, is pushing for raising awareness about Kafalla through sharing their stories on social media, inspiring many to follow suit.

In January 2020, new legislation in Egypt helped to make adoption more accessible, widespread and socially acceptable by making it possible for single women over the age of thirty and divorced women to adopt and also lowering the minimum required educational qualifications.

Encouraged by moves of other women, Hala Ibrahim, a -43year-old woman who did not get married, adopted a 6 year-old boy.

“I have always wanted to adopt a child. But I was hesitant because of social stereotypes and misconceptions about the idea,” Ibrahim told Majalla.

“But when I saw other women adopting, I was really inspired and encouraged. I am sure that many other women want to do the same but they are held back by society or their families,” she added. However, she expected that such social initiatives will make a huge difference.

Menna A. Farouk

GOVERNMENT ACTION

Egyptian Families Adopt Orphans to Fight Stigma Rasha Mekky adopted Moustafa when he was only four days old and she was 45 years old. At the time, she was hearing negative comments about adoption.

«People used to stigmatize the adopted child but I never had that opinion.»

Seeing the lack of awareness in the society about adoption, Mekky was motivated to launch her initiative and website “Adopt An Orphan in

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Rasha Mekki poses for a photo with her adopted child Moustafa and her husband. (Supplied)

According to official figures, legislative amendments and community initiatives have led to an increase in the number of families that are adopting children.

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In January 2020, new legislation in Egypt helped to make adoption more accessible, widespread and socially acceptable by including single women over the age of thirty and divorced women also besides lowering the minimum required educational qualifications.

The Ministry of Social Solidarity received 100 adoption requests from these families during the second half of last year, according to press statements by the ministry’s legal advisor Mohamed Omar. However, this is barely makes a dent in figures because Omar says there are 11,000 other orphans who need adoptive families. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Social Solidarity said that it aspires to eliminate the need for orphanages by the year 2025.

The Egyptian Ministry of Social Solidarity has about 450 care homes or orphanages, which host about 10,000 children, more than 80 percent of whom are of unknown parentage, and there are hundreds of other care homes affiliated with NGOs. As of today, a total of 658 ,11 orphans have been placed with 421 ,11 surrogate families, some of whom have ‹adopted› more than one child.

The case of the children is monitored through monthly visits to the home of the surrogate family by a social worker, if the child is less than a year old, and a quarterly visit until the orphan reaches the age of 21 years.

Samia Nasr, a sociologist, said that the changing attitudes towards adoption will greatly affect society both socially and economically.

“Orphans will get the required care from the surrogate families which is going to be far better than the orphanage,” she told Majalla.

She added that such moves will also save the government millions of Egyptian pounds that are spent on orphanages.

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and productions, let’s know first how the scene started.

RAP ART AND ITS HISTORY IN EGYPT

The Egyptian Rap Scene A New Phase in the Egyptian Music Culture By: Salma Adham In the last few years, Egypt has witnessed a great change in music production and style. We have seen new types of songs like rap songs and mahraganat in the scene, each of them with a big audience and fan base. Though the art of rap did not meet great popularity in its beginning, the situation now is different and rap is now one of the most popular trends in Egypt. Let’s explore together the world of rap in Egypt and why is it called the rap scene.

The Egyptian rap scene refers to all rap songs produced in Egypt. The hits made by many singers in this field make this category of singing flourish and compete significantly with existing styles. It also gives the Egyptian art scene a vitality and energy that did not exist for a long time.

Abyusif, Wegz, Marwan Pablo, Marwan Moussa, Shaheen “the Genius,” the Joker, Afroto, and others…all these names have become repeated recently in Egypt especially among a large number of Egyptian youth who love the art of rap. Before we know more about this art, its famous singers

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Three rapper on stage )Getty(

Rap is a genre of singing and one of the main branches of hip-hop culture. It is about speaking and repeating a song with a certain rhyme, and it is also the delivery of rhymes and wordplay to match the rhyme without committing to a specific melody. Rap was spread in the United States of America at the beginning of the seventies by African-Americans from the Bronx, New York. It expanded globally since the early nineties, and its fame increased in Egypt in the last few years.

The early generations of rap in Egypt are Way Crow Family from 1998, Egy Rap School in 2000, and MTM in 2003 whose song “My Mother is Traveling” achieved a huge success.

Rap started to appear in Egypt in films, for example, in the 2008 movie Waraqat Shara, which is the first film of the trilogy “Chico, Hisham Majed, and Ahmed Fahmy” directed by Amir Ramses. Ahmed El-Fishawy participated in a rap song in the movie, which was later known as “The Song of Waraqa Shafara.”

Shortly afterwards, Ahmed Makki’s first film, “H Dabour,” included rap music as an official song for the work under the title “Jadaan Tayebeen.” Two years later, the independent film “Microphone” was produced, written, and directed by Ahmed Abdullah, starring a group of young singers, including part of the Y-Crew team, Omar Baflout and Shaheen. Later, cinematic and dramatic works included rap music, as in most of Ahmed Makki and Ahmed Al-Fishawy’s works.

Then, rappers continued to appear and increase until the appearance of “Mahraganat,” which also depends on music and words with a quick pace but differ in the way singers deal with topics. While rap songs were known for presenting political issues, mahraganat talks more about the problems of the lower-class as it talks about these issues in their own tongue.

Mahraganat is a mixture of rap and techno, or the electro-folk music which started in late 2007 and developed into a form very close to rap songs but with an Egyptian folk quality. The content of mahraganat songs often talk about the problems of poverty, marginalization, drugs, and friendship while

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Trap uses simple vocabulary close to street language instead of the depth of vocabulary on which rap depends. Sound is produced as the musical element of the melody by using the “Auto-Tune” program instead of sampling pre-existing beats as in the old school rap. This is considered the new school of rap started in Egypt by Marwan Pablo and Abyusif in 2015. its music relies on loudness and fast rhythm.

FROM RAP TO TRAP Rappers continued to develop the rap style until reaching the “trap,” which is considered a part of rap music. Originally, trap is an English word used to describe drug dens in America from which a musical genre emerged. It is a mix between rap and hip-hop and based on a dancing rhythm with words tending to sadness, darkness, and melancholy. Trap uses simple vocabulary close to street language instead of the depth of vocabulary on which rap depends. Sound is produced as the musical element of the melody by using the “Auto-Tune” program instead of sampling pre-existing beats as in the old school rap. This is considered the new school of rap started in Egypt by Marwan Pablo and Abyusif in 2015.

“I like rap songs because they are real and express reality. People like rap because it depends on the satire which existed in the Arab culture poetry many years ago,” Islam Mohsen, call center agent, told Majalla.

WHAT DISTINGUISHES RAP AND TRAP ART All rap performers write the lyrics by themselves and the rapper is interested in the following elements in the songs— flow, diction, idea and con-

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tent, and verbal complexity. What distinguishes rap tracks nowadays is the “battle.”

“I listen to all rap songs especially Wegz, Pablo, Marwan Moussa, Shahin, and Abo Al-Anwar.

Lyrics and words are the things I like the most.

Also, the songs’ vibes that express the person as compared to other types of music,” said Amina, 27, a political science major.

The “battle rap” is a duel song between two people or two teams of rappers, during which one of them tries to defeat the other and exploit the opponent’s weaknesses, the success of which depends on the skill in singing this genre with the audience judging the winner.

The “battle rap” is a duel song between two people or two teams of rappers, during which one of them tries to defeat the other and exploit the opponent’s weaknesses, the success of which depends on the skill in singing this genre with the audience judging the winner.

“When I first listened to rap songs, I did not like them. It was the old school rap using the same beats and conventionalized sequences of words with no variety. But after the listening to the new school I liked it a lot” Medhat Saleh, 28, a law major, told Majalla.

“I liked Abyusif the most because he expresses himself and his feelings honestly in his songs like his album in 2018 ‘One One.’ I found myself in his tracks,” Medhat added.

WHY DO SOME PEOPLE LIKE RAP SONGS AND OTHER DO NOT ?

Among people from different social and age levels, I found that the majority of rap fans are young, specifically the ages between adolescence and 30. But the surprise also is how many people, not only youth, listen to rap songs at weddings or so-

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Wegz singing in a concert.

(Wegz FB official page(

Marwan Pablo singing in a concert.

(Marwan Pablo FB official page(

cial gatherings. The majority mentioned that they mostly enjoy the lyrics, the mood, and the music.

They stated that the songs are from reality which confirms the honesty of the content. Others said that they do not like rap songs today because they include sexual words.

“I listen to Marwan Pablo, Wegz, and Abo AlAnwar, and I liked that the words are creative and unique, not repetitive like other songs. In addition to that, the music is very enthusiastic and the words are from the street so this art is close to people,” Mohamed El Shamy, 26, video editor, told Majalla.

“Regarding the ideas they presenting, there is an ongoing struggle between rappers in their music tracks such as who is better than the other which is reflected in the lyrics of challenge between them in their songs. For this reason, they are close to the youth and they understand their thinking,” Mohamed added.

Nagwa Reda, 25, a video-journalist, said to Majalla that what attracts her to this type of music is the music itself as it gives her the power!

The most famous rap singers in Egypt and the Arab world are Abyusif, Marwan Pablo, and Wegz and their songs became a trend during the last period

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on social media, which plays a great role in the spread of rap songs.

For example “DORAK GAI,” the famous track for Wegz, achieved 63 M views on YouTube.

“GHABA,” the latest for Marwan Pablo, was released last month and achieved 11 M views on YouTube, becoming a trend for weeks in the whole Arab world.

Rap art success among adolescents and youth may come to present a type of art based on words that include what this group experiences, and we do not deny that it provides a bold and honest expression of their lives, whether we agree with it or disagree.

Music is an art like other arts. Every time we witness a new and different style, it will have its fans. Whether you like this style is not the issue because we have different tastes, and that is what happens with music. But the sure thing is that music is an evolving endeavor to which each year brings changes and new techniques.

We cannot predict that the rap scene will continue as strong as it is today, but it is certain that it currently has a great popular base and ubiquitous presence.

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‘Quo Vadis, Aida?’

Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Oscar Entry, Grippingly Recounts A 1995 Tragedy Justin Chang In “Quo Vadis, Aida?,” Jasmila Zbanic’s swift and shattering movie about the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, a woman climbs onto a small structure and stares out over a barbed-wire fence into a sea of weary bodies and frightened faces. This

is Aida (Jasna Duricic), and she’s searching for some of her family members, but as the camera pans across the crowd, echoing her desperate gaze, the enormity of the tragedy at hand comes into focus.

It’s not the last time Aida will experience this elevated vantage, sometimes with a megaphone

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Jasna Đuričić in the movie “Quo Vadis, Aida?” (TNS)

in hand as she translates instructions and information for her fellow refugees. She knows her words are worthless, a mix of vague reassurances and outright lies; she also knows that, under the circumstances, hearing the truth might be just as futile.

Crowd shots in wartime movies, from “Gone With the Wind” to more recent digital-extra spectaculars, run the risk of numbing the viewer, of overwhelming us with so many heartrending details that they turn mass suffering into abstraction. But the details somehow never blur in “Quo Vadis, Aida?,” which manages to hold background and foreground in unsettling balance for 102 taut, terrifying minutes.

Zbanic, who wrote and directed the film (and just earned a British Film Academy nomination for best director), doesn’t take a panoramic approach. She keeps her focus on Aida, a Srebrenica schoolteacher turned United Nations interpreter working on behalf of a town she suspects is doomed and trying to spare her family the same fate. But the bigger picture never recedes into the smaller one. As Aida races the clock, it becomes clear that her family’s survival, if it comes to pass, will be a rare and privileged exception.

The story opens in July 1995 in the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica, declared a demilitarized safe zone by Dutch U.N. peacekeepers. Zbanic doesn’t waste time on preamble; the war has been raging for three years, and Aida is our lone guide to the horrors that have befallen and will befall her hometown. It’s through her eyes — and her words, as she facilitates anxious talks between the town’s mayor and its designated protectors — that we learn that the badly outnumbered U.N. forces will be hard-pressed to keep the Serbian army from overrunning Srebrenica.

Soon thousands of civilians have retreated to the nearby U.N. base, where some manage to take refuge inside while others are left standing behind that barbed-wire fence, waiting and begging to be let in before the Serbs arrive. Aida, for her part, darts around inside and outside and back again, translating on behalf of wounded patients one minute and pleading with U.N. officials the next, desperate to ensure the safety of her husband, Nihad (Izudin Bajrovic), and their sons, Hamdija (Boris Ler) and Sejo (Dino Bajrovic). From time

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Zbanic, who wrote and directed the film doesn’t take a panoramic approach. She keeps her focus on Aida, a Srebrenica schoolteacher turned United Nations interpreter working on behalf of a town she suspects is doomed and trying to spare her family the same fate. to time the tension breaks, mainly during a long night of waiting, as Aida tenderly swaps stories with a guard and also speaks to her family, with insistent optimism, about happier days to come.

But these are rare respites amid the tumult.

Aida’s moral imperative, her need to do as much as she can in an impossible situation, finds powerful expression in her relentless forward momentum and the corresponding speed and agility of Zbanic’s filmmaking. Duricic, in a performance of extraordinary physical and emotional endurance, emphasizes Aida’s sharp reflexes, her fierce intelligence and equally fierce maternal instinct. She’s initially reassured that the Serbian troops wouldn’t dare penetrate U.N. barriers, but we see the heightened urgency in her step and the mounting terror in her eyes as these and other illusions begin to crumble.

Christine A. Maier’s camera hurtles alongside her as she navigates this ostensible safe house, using her official badge to cut corners and cross boundaries. The title’s invocation of the Latin phrase “quo vadis?” (“Where are you going?”)

— a reference to the apostle Peter’s flight from crucifixion in Rome — here feels like a moral inquiry, both sympathetic and reproachful, directed at Aida’s conscience. Her concern for her family above all else is an entirely human reaction, to be expected from anyone in her shoes. But even as it acknowledges this, the movie, sharply edited by Jaroslaw Kaminski, keeps feeding us sidelong glimpses of those for whom Aida can do nothing. We see a woman she

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knows begging for help as she runs past; people squatting to relieve themselves in the corner; hungry hands grasping at loaves of bread and boxes of Toblerones being passed out by Serbian troops.

Those troops are under the command of the notorious general Ratko Mladic (Boris Isakovi’c), first shown striding through the abandoned streets of Srebrenica before later calling for a sham negotiation with town representatives. (Nihad, a school principal, is named one of those representatives, as part of Aida’s increasingly desperate tactics to save him.) The movie is, among other things, a coolly excoriating assessment of the U.N.’s failure to intervene and keep the Serbian army at bay — a failure born not just of insufficient firepower, but also of geopolitical pressures hovering beyond the scope of the frame. The extent of their capitulation becomes clear once Mladic’s troops, working at the direction of Joka (a terrifying Emir Hadzihafizbegovic), begin separating civilians by gender and herding them onto buses.

You’ve seen images like these in other movies drawn from real-life atrocities, a grim cinematic canon to which Zbanic, who spent the Bosnian war years under siege in Sarajevo, has been steadily contributing. Two of her earlier features, “Grbavica: The Land of My Dreams” (2006) and

The movie is, among other things, a coolly excoriating assessment of the U.N.’s failure to intervene and keep the Serbian army at bay — a failure born not just of insufficient firepower, but also of geopolitical pressures hovering beyond the scope of the frame.

“For Those Who Can Tell No Tales” (2013), were set in the years after the war, excavating brutal memories and bringing untold horrors to light.

But “Quo Vadis, Aida?” re-creates history in the present tense, with a gut-clutching immediacy that Zbanic makes bearable through sheer formal restraint: This is a movie about the murders of more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslims, mostly boys and men, in which graphic violence is never shown and yet the worst is never remotely in doubt. The withholding of that violence doesn’t feel like equivocation; it feels like an attempt to move beyond the bludgeoning conventions of cinematic realism, to acknowledge the unspeakable without relying on a spectacle of blood.

“Quo Vadis, Aida?” first screened last fall at the Venice International Film Festival alongside Andrei Konchalovsky’s “Dear Comrades!,” which was inspired by a very different tragedy — the 1962 shootings of protesters in

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Italian director of the festival Alberto Barbera with Serbian actress Jasna Djuricic, Bosnian director Jasmila Zbanic and actors Boris Isakovic, Johan Heldenbergh and Raymond Thiry at the 77 Venice International Film Festival 2020. Quo Vadis, Aida?

Red Carpet. Venice (Italy), September 3rd, 2020

Novocherkassk, Russia — but whose act of cinematic remembrance bears some pointed resemblance to Zbanic’s own. (Both films, which are available for streaming, have been shortlisted for the Oscar for best international feature.)

Each movie is about a woman whose job grants her access to the truth and whose determined intervention on her family’s behalf winds up stripping away layers of official deception and doublespeak. Like so many war crimes throughout history, the Srebrenica massacre has been denied, downplayed and even defiantly rationalized in some quarters, even as the arrests and convictions of its engineers (including Mladic) and the discoveries of mass graves have told a different story.

Zbanic’s movie traces that story to its horrific conclusion and beyond, jumping years ahead to a wintry coda that feels by turns damning, haunting and faintly consoling. Aida is no longer running; she’s not at peace, but she is at least at

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Duricic, in a performance of extraordinary physical and emotional endurance, emphasizes Aida’s sharp reflexes, her fierce intelligence and equally fierce maternal instinct. rest. The ghosts of the past still flicker into view in the faces of an old acquaintance and a new generation of children, most of them unaware of the secrets buried in the ground they call home.

But Aida knows and cannot forget them, any more than she herself can be forgotten.

This was originally published in Los Angeles Times.

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congestion, watery and itchy eyes, scratchy throat, coughing, and wheezing. Sometimes a very brisk immune response, too much pollen exposure, and individual sensitivity, can make symptoms more severe and last longer.

Change of the season

Whether you are a new or recurring allergy sufferer, it›s best to see an allergist for testing, suggests Dr. Castells.

«Skin and blood tests can confirm your specific pollen allergens and maybe find ones you didn›t know about, which can help make treatment more effective.» (Also, see your doctor if your allergy symptoms only affect one side, like one nostril, ear, or eye. This could be a red flag for something else not related to allergies.)

Your reaction to pollen also can vary from year to year.

Weather has much to do with it. «Pollen increases when it›s drier and goes down when there is more rain,» says Dr. Castells. Another variation is what›s known as the priming effect. This occurs at the start of allergy season when pollen first appears: small amounts can lead to inflammation in the body, but not enough to cause problems.

«Eventually, this inflammation builds up and triggers fullblown symptoms, which are often worse than usual and harder to treat with medication,» says Dr. Castells.

Her advice: begin treating symptoms at the first sign of a sniffle, scratchy throat, or itchy eyes. «This way, you can help manage inflammation before it rages out of control.»

It Is The Allergy Season

Here , s How to Prepare for Spring and Summer Pollen Allergies

Harvard Men, s Health Watch Ah, spring is in the air. But unfortunately, so are billions of pollen particles that make millions of stuffed-up Americans suffer through weeks and months of sneezing, coughing, and wheezing. Even if spring and summer allergies never bothered you before, it›s possible for symptoms to suddenly appear now in your 60s or 70s.

«Your immune system changes over time. Although most allergies begin early in life, it›s possible to develop seasonal allergies at any age,» says Dr. Mariana Castells, an allergist and immunologist in the department of Allergy, Rheumatology, and Immunology at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women›s Hospital.

Pollen policy

Pollen are tiny grains that fertilize plants. The primary culprits for spring and summer allergies are pollens from trees, grass, and ragweed.

When pollen is inhaled, your immune system turns on and recruits special cells to make a type of antibodies called IgE to «fight» it. These antibodies sit on top of mast cells in places the pollen reaches -- the nose, eyes, throat, and lungs -- and are commonly produced as part of an allergic reaction.

Upon encountering the pollen particles, IgE antibodies attach to them and trigger mast cells to release inflammation-fighting chemicals, such as histamine, leukotrienes, and prostaglandins.

These chemicals produce any combination of the traditional allergy symptoms like sneezing, runny and itchy nose, nasal

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Time for medication Cropped shot of a young man sneezing after smelling a flower )Getty(

Over-the-counter allergy-fighting drugs can help treat most symptoms. «If you›ve had success with certain brands, stick with them,» says Dr. Castells. «But it›s possible a certain medication or product will lose its effectiveness, in which case try something else.»

The most effective medications fall into three main categories.

(Always check with your doctor or pharmacist before taking any new medication, and always follow the label›s dosage recommendation.)

Non-drowsy antihistamines. These come in pills and nasal sprays and work to block the effects of the excess histamine that causes itchy and watery eyes, sneezing, and a runny nose.

Sprays also help with congestion and postnasal drip.

Decongestants. These are available as pills, liquids, and nasal sprays. They shrink tiny blood vessels, which decreases fluid secretion in the nasal passages, helping to relieve a stuffy nose. Check with your doctor if you have heart or blood pressure problems, as decongestants can raise heart rate and blood pressure.

Nasal steroid spays. Sprays lower inflammation that causes congestion, runny or itchy nose, and sneezing. People with glaucoma should take these with caution, as they can raise eye pressure which can lead to vision loss.

Protect yourself You should always take steps to lower your exposure to pollen. First, keep your windows closed whenever possible,

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When pollen is inhaled, your immune system turns on and recruits special cells to make a type of antibodies called IgE to «fight» it.

These antibodies sit on top of mast cells in places the pollen reaches -- the nose, eyes, throat, and lungs -and are commonly produced as part of an allergic reaction. and occasionally run the air conditioner to remove pollen from the indoor air. Try to restrict outside time to the afternoon or evening when the pollen count tends to be lower. (Pollen is usually highest from about 4 a.m. to noon; sign up for high pollen alerts at www.pollen.com.) If you have to be outside when pollen is high, wear a mask, as they can block about %70 to %80 of particles.

Take a shot at allergies

For severe allergies, or when over-the-counter remedies don›t work, another option is allergy shots. Here, you receive regular injections of small amounts of your allergens, with the dose gradually increasing over time. «Allergy shots do not eliminate your allergy, but they change your immune response to better tolerate it,» says Dr. Castells.

Shots are done in two phases: buildup and maintenance. The buildup phase involves increasing amounts of the allergen once or twice a week for three to six months. After this comes the maintenance phase, when you get monthly injections for as long as three to five years. «When you›re finished, the protective effect can last for several years,» says Dr. Castells.

Allergy shots don›t work for everyone, but one study found that they helped adults ages 65 to 75 reduce their symptoms by %55 and cut the amount of medication needed for symptom relief by %64. Also, some people are not good candidates for shots, such as those with cardiovascular disease, a heart arrhythmia, or severe asthma. Beta blockers that treat high blood pressure can sometimes block the shot›s effects.

If you are uneasy about injections, tablets that you place under the tongue are available for some types of allergies. (Check with your immunologist to find out if they are an option for you.) You take the tablets daily for a few weeks before and during pollen season.

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Apple and Facebook s Fight , Isn t About Privacy Transparency is a Much Bigger Threat to Facebook Jason Aten

quire developers to request permission from users before they can collect data or track It’s no secret that Facebook has feelings about them while they use their apps. That comes the upcoming changes Apple plans to intro- after Apple previously required developers to duce to iOS 14.5. Apple has said it will re- disclose what information they collect with

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(Getty)

the introduction of privacy nutrition labels in the iOS App Store.

Those changes apply to all developers, but Facebook seems to be taking it personally.

And, the company has been making those feelings known. Facebook took out fullpage ads back in December, claiming that Apple was a threat to both small businesses and the open internet as we know it. Then, Facebook›s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg targeted Apple during his statements during the company›s most recent earnings call in February, claiming that the iPhone maker was engaging in anti-competitive practices.

It would be easy to mistake the fight for one over privacy or tracking, but I don›t think that›s the real issue. Apple isn›t going to stop developers from tracking you. It›s also not against personalized ads, as Facebook refers to the targeted advertising it shows you based on your internet activity. If you want to share everything you do online with Facebook, Apple won›t stop you. In that case, a developer can still collect the IDFA for the purpose of targeting ads or tracking conversions.

Apple is just going to require developers to be transparent about what data they want to collect and how they want to use it. Then, they have to ask your permission. That›s what the real fight is over--transparency. And, it›s why Facebook is so worried. Facebook›s problem is that, if given a choice, many people will choose not to allow tracking. A recent survey from Apps Flyer, an attribution data platform, shows that almost half of all users (47 percent) are likely to opt-out of tracking.

That›s the dirty little secret it would rather not talk about. Facebook doesn›t want you to think about tracking, and certainly doesn›t want you to have a choice.

Except, and I›ve said this before, if your business model will break because people are given a choice over whether or not you can track them, your problem isn›t with Apple. Your problem is the business model.

But Facebook›s transparency problem isn›t just with users. Not only does tracking make it possible to show target ads based on your activity, it also allows advertisers to identify

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Apple changes apply to all developers, but Facebook seems to be taking it personally. And, the company has been making those feelings known.

Facebook took out full-page ads back in December, claiming that Apple was a threat to both small businesses and the open internet as we know it. which customers came to their site and made a purchase based on an ad. If you click on an ad for boots and then buy a pair, the seller can tell that you came to the site from the ad they paid for. That›s important because it allows advertisers to track conversions and justify the money they spent on ads.

If Facebook can›t track users, advertisers won›t be able to use the IDFA to match your purchase with the ad you clicked on. That makes Facebook›s advertising platform that much less valuable. If you›re an advertiser, you might choose to shift your dollars to another platform, say Google Ads. The only thing that would be worse than a lot of people opting out of tracking and Facebook›s advertising business suffering, would be a lot of people opting out, and nothing changed except that advertisers can no longer track conversions. I know that sounds counterintuitive, but if advertisers still get the same number of conversions, but can›t actually track them, it›s much more likely that they would switch to another platform where the cost per conversion is similar, but where they can better track how their efforts are working.

Facebook›s business model isn›t going to fall apart over privacy, or even tracking. Transparency, on the other hand, is the real reason Facebook is so worried.

This was originally published in the Inc. magazine.

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Haim Saban: Media Mogul with Political Influence

By Majalla Haim Saban is a US-Israeli media mogul and businessman who ranks #295 in the Forbes list of the richest people in the US with an estimated net worth of three billion dollars.

His wealth is attributed to his media and animation productions. He is well-known for his philanthropic donations for political causes. Saban is said to have paved the way for the Abraham Accords between UAE and Israel in 2020.

Saban’s donations in politics have been bipartisan. As a consistent donor to the US Democratic Party, he was one of the major individual donors in the 1998 elections. During the Clinton administration, he served in the President’s Export Council. He is still a close friend and supporter of the Clintons.

On the other side, Haim Saban also donated to the Republican Party, as he contributed to George W. Bush’s re-election in 2004.

However, he considered Trump “a danger to America” and said he disliked the Democratic candidate in the preliminary elections Bernie Sanders, whom he described as “.. a communist under the cover of being a socialist”.

Saban was born in Alexandria, Egypt, in

October 1944, to an Egyptian-Jewish family which immigrated to Israel in 1956 while he was a child. His father sold stationary door to door for a living. After high school, Haim started his career as a guitar and bass player in Israel. He relocated to France in early 1970s to work as a music producer, and became a major player.

Immigrating to the United States, he founded Saban Entertainment in 1988. With his partner Shuki Levi, Haim became famous for composing soundtracks for kids’ TV programs. In the 1990s, he brought the Japanese series “Super Sentai” to Western audiences and then came the hit “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers” whose franchise generated more than six billion dollars in toy sales. He owned and sold it twice, the second time in 2018 to Hasbro in a 522 million dollars deal, according to Forbes.

Following his Power Rangers success, he launched Fox Family Worldwide in a joint venture with News Corp. The venture which included Fox Family Channel, Fox Kids International and Saban Entertainment was sold to Walt Disney Corp. in 2001 for 5.3 billion dollars and was renamed ABC Family.

Afterwards, Saban established an investment company, Saban Capital Group. One of his

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most significant deals was the purchase of Spanish language TV Network Univision Communications for $13.7 billion in 2007.

In 1999, Saban and wife Cheryl Saban launched the Saban Family Foundation which worked with children’s hospitals, cancer institutes, and a motion picture foundation in addition to others. The family is said to have given more than 13% of their wealth to charity, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

In 2002, Saban provided initial grant to and pledged to fund the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, which is a Washington-based think tank, and part of the larger Brookings Institute think tank. The Center works to provide US policy makers with information and analysis on US foreign policy in the Middle East.

Talking about his devotion to political causes and charity, he always expresses his commitment to both the United States and Israel.

“The basic strategy is 50-50. Meaning for every dollar we give in America, we give a dollar in Israel,” he told Hollywood Reporter. “I was an immigrant twice, once from Egypt to Israel. Israel opened her arms and took me in. And (later) America opened her arms, and I’m an American citi-