Trump Impeachment Dominates American Discussion, Hardens Partisan Divides

China Pivots to Middle East as Trump Downsizes US Role

A Weekly Political News Magazine

Hezbollah-Backed Candidate Diab on Course to be Lebanese PM

A Weekly Political News Magazine

Issue 1779- December- 20/12/2019

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Barham Salih: Iraq’s Veteran Kurdish President

Issue 1779- December- 20/12/2019

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Trump Impeachment Dominates American Discussion, Hardens Partisan Divides www.majalla.com

Editorial

A Weekly Political News Magazine

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Donald Trump has become the third US president in history to be impeached by the House of Representatives, setting up a trial in the Senate that will decide whether he remains in office. The House voted on two charges - that the president had abused his power and that he had obstructed Congress. Nearly all Democrats voted for the charges and every Republican against. President Trump›s Republicans control the Senate so it is highly unlikely he will be removed from power.

In this week’s cover story, Joseph Braude and Yasmine El-Geressi write that after the initial surge of bipartisan support for impeachment in late September, subsequent polling indicated that public support for impeaching President Trump largely broke along party lines which they suggest may simply be a reflection of a firmly polarized electorate. The also discuss whether Trump’s impeachment will matter in the 2020 elections next November.

As President Donald Trump eyes the exit in the Middle East, his critics have excoriated him for abdicating a strong U.S. role in the region and clearing a path for Russia’s dominance. Yet in their scramble to find new allies, regional states have also turned to a quieter but no less powerful U.S. rival: China. With Beijing being the region’s largest investor, a status it expects to cement that with Belt and Road, Alice Su and Nabih Bulos argue that the country is set to become the region’s economic superpower.

We invite you to read these articles and more on our website eng.majalla.com. As always, we welcome and value our reader’s 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

26 Has Netanyahu’s End Finally Come?

Issue 1779- December- 20/12/2019

20 Beyond the Trade War

Africa’s Slums Aren’t Harbingers of Anarchy

16 -They’re Engines of Democracy

08 With a ‹Radical› Agenda, Johnson Sets Sights on Quick Brexit

32 How ‘Black Christmas’ Became a ‘Fiercely Feminist’

Slasher Movie for the #MeToo Era

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Get Fit to Function

44 Unmerited 3

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napshot

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A soldier from Pakistan›s Anti-Narcotics Force (ANF) stands beside a burning pile of seized drugs set on fire during a drug burning ceremony in Lahore on December 11, 2019. (Getty)

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56 year-old Hatun Baydar grazes a herd of sheep in the foothill of a mountain in Gevas district of Van, Turkey on December 2019 ,17. (Getty)

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eekly news Tripoli-based government signed a deal on maritime boundaries, infuriating neighbouring Greece, and another pact on military cooperation. Ankara says it may send troops to Libya if the Tripoli government requests it, but that no such request has been made yet.

Speaking to reporters in Geneva after a forum on migration, Erdogan said he had met the premier of the Tripoli-based government, Fayez al-Serraj, to discuss potential joint initiatives, adding Ankara was ready to help.

Hezbollah-Backed Candidate Diab on Course to be Lebanese PM

Former minister Hassan Diab looked set to be named Lebanon’s new prime minister on Thursday with backing from the Iran-backed group Hezbollah and its allies, a move that could complicate efforts to secure badly needed Western financial aid. The nomination, expected later in the day, sets the stage for the formation of a cabinet that excludes allies of the United States and Sunni Gulf Arab countries while underlining the influence of Iran’s friends in Lebanon. Diab, a little-known academic with a doctorate in computer engineering, has not commented publicly since his name surfaced

U.S. House Votes to Impeach Trump overnight. Lebanon, wrestling with the worst for Obstruction of Congress

economic crisis since the 90-1975 civil war, has been in dire need of a new government since outgoing Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri resigned on Oct. 29, prompted by protests against the ruling elite.

The U.S. House of Representatives passed the

Erdogan Says Turkey to Boost Cooperation with Libya

Turkey will improve cooperation with Libya by offering military support to its internationally recognised government and backing joint steps in the eastern Mediterranean, broadcaster NTV cited President Tayyip Erdogan as saying on Wednesday. Last month, Turkey and Libya’s

second of two articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump on Wednesday, voting that Trump obstructed Congress by refusing to cooperate with a Democratic-led impeachment investigation. The 229 to 198 vote fell almost entirely along party lines. All of Trump’s fellow Republicans opposed it, and all but three Democrats supported it. The House has already voted on the first article of impeachment, which charges Trump with abusing his power by pressuring Ukraine to investigate a political rival, Democratic former Vice President Joe Biden.

With a ‹Radical› Agenda, Johnson Sets Sights on Quick Brexit

Prime Minister Boris Johnson unveiled what he called a radical government agenda on

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Thursday, setting his sights on a quick Brexit, future trade deals and on transforming Britain to repay the trust of voters who handed him a landslide election victory. Just a week after he won the largest Conservative majority since Margaret Thatcher in 1987, the Queen’s Speech offers details of Johnson’s plans for Britain after more than three years of Brexit upheaval. Johnson showed he intended to try to satisfy the demands of voters in northern and central England who broke their tradition of backing the opposition Labour Party to support him. Among pledges to boost funding for the state health service, increase sentences for violent crime and enhance workers’ rights, Johnson made his campaign slogan to “get Brexit done” his number one priority, confirming he would lead Britain out of the European Union on Jan. 31.

Thousands Defy Ban on Protests Against Indian Citizenship Law

Hundreds of Indians held for defying a ban on demonstrating against a disputed new citizenship law continued protests in police detention on Thursday, and authorities shut down the

internet for hours to help enforce bans on public gatherings. Public anger and staunch opposition from political parties over the new legislation widely considered to be discriminatory towards Muslims has flared across the country. Marches and rallies organised by college students, academicians, minority Muslim groups and opposition parties against the law passed by the Hindu nationalist government persisted despite legal moves to stifle them.

out across the square and the surrounding area.

Russian special forces with automatic weapons rushed to the scene. Video showed them running along the pavement.

Pakistan Sentences Former Ruler to Death for High Treason

Deadly Shooting at Russian Intelligence Agency in Moscow

At least one person has reportedly been shot dead after an unidentified gunman opened fire on the office of the Federal Security Service, the FSB, Russia’s main intelligence agency, in the heart of Moscow. According to Russian media reports, the man attacked the reception of the Lubyanka building, home to the FSB and its communist-era predecessor the KGB. The victims were described as federal security guards. The assailant reportedly fled and barricaded himself in a neighbouring building.

Earlier, a major security operation was launched as heavy gunfire from automatic weapons rang

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Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s former military leader who seized power in a coup, has been sentenced to death for high treason and subverting the country’s constitution. The ex-president was on trial in absentia over charges relating to his suspension of the constitution in 2007 as he attempted to hold on to power. The trial was held in a closed anti-terrorism court in Islamabad and the full verdict was not made available. However, it was confirmed by the government law officer Salman Nadeem, who stated: “Pervez Musharraf has been found guilty of article 6 for violation of the constitution of Pakistan.”

A Pakistan special court issued a bizarre but apparently symbolic order for former military ruler Pervez Musharraf on Thursday, saying his corpse should be dragged to parliament and hang for three days if he dies before his execution

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Trump Impeachment Dominates American Discussion, Hardens Partisan Divides Democrat Hopes that the Impeachment Enquiry Would Significantly Turn Trump’s Base Against Him Have Been Dashed 10

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by Joseph Braude and Yasmine El-Geressi The American public discussion of foreign policy faded to a murmur as the focus in Washington turned to the historic December 18 vote by the Democraticmajority House of Representatives to impeach President Trump. After an initial surge of bipartisan support for impeachment in late September, subsequent polling indicated that public support for impeaching President Trump largely broke along party lines. This all but ensures that the President will be swiftly acquitted by the Republican-controlled Senate.

A HISTORIC VOTE ENDS THE STALEMATE OF CONGRESSIONAL HEARINGS In a dramatic string of speeches on Wednesday, Democrats overwhelmingly declared their support for impeaching the President while Republicans condemned the process as a “sham.”

In the run-up to the vote, three full Congressional committees — Intelligence, Oversight, and Foreign Affairs — had deposed several high profile witnesses in an attempt to prove that President Trump had committed impeachable offenses. Among the more prominent of these witnesses were Ukraine ambassador Bill Taylor, Pentagon official overseeing Ukraine policy Laura Cooper, and former White House official Fiona Hill.

‘It doesn’t really feel like we’re being impeached’, the president told a roaring crowd.

(Getty)

Many Democrats hailed the testimony on November 20 of Gordon Sondland, the U.S.’s ambassador to the European Union, as groundbreaking new evidence of presidential misconduct. Sondland told the committee that “everyone was in the loop” about President Trump’s demands for a Ukrainian investigation into the Biden family’s links to energy company Burisma, and that “it was no secret.” Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democratic chairman of the Intelligence Committee, called Mr. Sondland’s testimony “among the most significant evidence to date.”

A similar dynamic was at work the following day when Fiona Hill testified about the impact of Russian interference in the 2016 election. She accused sitting Republican congressmen of “appear[ing] to believe that Russia and its security services did not conduct a campaign against our country and that perhaps, somehow, for some reason, Ukraine did,” while denouncing that view as “a fictional narrative that is being perpetrated and

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In order to secure the 67 votes needed for removing President Trump from office, at least 20 Republican Senators would have to vote against their party, which few political observers deem likely. propagated by the Russian security services themselves.”

These remarks garnered substantial attention with Democratic Senator Kamala Harris, who called it “MUST WATCH.” MSNBC contributor Admiral James Stavridis added, «Fiona Hill is Donald Trump›s worst nightmare.»

THE SENATE LANDSCAPE Yet despite months of sensational headlines, public opinion about impeachment has remained closely divided on partisan lines. As of mid-December, roughly 45 percent of voters support impeaching and removing the president while around 47 percent oppose it. Crucially, polling in several key swing states vital to Democratic hopes of regaining the White House in 2020 has swung decisively against impeachment, with nearly 51 percent of voters opposing the measure in a dozen polls conducted in battleground states like Arizona, Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Wisconsin.

Perhaps the key signal in this trend was sent on December 15 when Democratic representative Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey’s second district announced his intention to formally leave the Democratic party and, presumably, to become a Republican. This came in response to widespread opposition to impeachment in his district, which would make it politically difficult for him to vote for impeachment, while voting against impeachment would likely ensure a primary challenge within the Democratic party.

Now that the House has formally impeached the President, responsibility for conducting a trial will fall upon the Senate, which is held by Republicans with a 47-53 majority. In order to secure the 67 votes needed for removing President Trump from office, at least 20

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Republican Senators would have to vote against their party, which few political observers deem likely.

?2020 WILL IMPEACHMENT MATTER IN Impeachment has taken on huge importance to the political class because it is constitutional, historical and dramatic. But in the end, US voters will decide Trump›s fate at the election next November and public opinion about Trump has been fairly stable since he was elected.

Therefore, impeachment may simply play into people’s already polarized and hardened attitudes.

There are indications that the public impeachment proceedings may have actually helped Trump politically.

A new Gallup poll released Wednesday morning, before the House vote, showed two things happening since House Democrats opened up a formal impeachment inquiry in October: Trump›s job approval rating has gone from %39 to %45 and support for Trump›s impeachment and removal has dipped from %52 to %46. A CNN poll this week found that %32 of Americans believe the impeachment inquiry will ultimately help Trump’s reelection bid, while %25 say it will hurt his chances and %37 think it will make no difference.

As Republicans kept reminding the House, there was no bipartisan support for Trump’s impeachment and it appears that Democrat hopes that the presentation of the case against Trump at public hearings would significantly turn his base against him have been dashed.

If, as appears to be the case, a trial in the Senate is wrapped up by early 2020, impeachment may be a distant memory by November.

Nevertheless, Trump’s overall political situation is much bleaker when it comes to 2020.

According to FiveThirtyEight›s weighted tracker of impeachment polling, Republicans have expressed consistent and unanimous opposition to impeachment since March of this year even as this fall›s impeachment inquiry unfolded, with just %9.7 of Republicans currently supporting Trump›s impeachment. The latest 2019 American Values Survey, conducted August 22 to September 15 by the Public Religion Research Institute, further found that forty-five percent of Republicans without a college degree and fifty-five percent of GOP respondents who named Fox as their primary news source — two demographics Trump relies on— say there is virtually nothing Trump could do to make them lose faith in him.

In addition, other things might end up being more important in 2020. “Demographic trends like the maturation of a generation of Latino voters, for instance,

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Inside the House of Representatives during the vote, which came after hours of contentious debate. (AP)

may start to have electoral consequences in 2020. There could be as many as six House seats in play in Texas next year. Or there may be other issues, more local in nature, that end up swaying voters. For instance, from October of 2018 to September of 2019 farm bankruptcies rose %24 and reached the highest level seen since 2011.

That may undercut Trump’s rural base,” wrote Elaine Kamarck of The Brookings Institute.

The fact American attitudes are about Trump, his presidency and impeachment appear to be absolutely locked in may simply be a reflection of a firmly polarized electorate. “It’s remarkable in the era of Trump that even a story of this magnitude is unable to shift the fulcrum of American politics,” said Republican pollster Bill McInturff, the GOP half of the NBC/WSJ poll, on the impeachment saga so far. If, as appears to be the case, a trial in the Senate is wrapped up by early 2020,

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There are indications that the public impeachment proceedings may have actually helped Trump politically. impeachment may be a distant memory by November.

Nevertheless, Trump’s overall political situation is much bleaker when it comes to 2020. A whopping 48 percent of the electorate says they’re certain to vote against him in 2020 — when just 37 percent said the same of Barack Obama in the Dec. 2011, according to a NBC/WSJ poll.

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Africa’s Slums Aren’t Harbingers of Anarchy -They’re Engines of Democracy The Upside of Rapid Urbanization

by Amaka Anku, Tochi Eni-Kalu The crowded streets of Ajegunle, one of the largest slums in Lagos, Nigeria, are unpaved and littered with garbage.

When it rains, they turn into little rivers because of the poor drainage systems. And although Ajegunle’s residents number anywhere from two million to five million, they have limited access to electricity, running water, and security.

Ajegunle is no outlier. For over half a century, sub-Saharan Africa has urbanized faster than any other region in the world. By 2040—a decade before Africa’s population is forecast to reach 2.1 billion, or double what it is today— the continent will become majority urban. That means over a billion people in poorly funded cities with crumbling or inadequate infrastructure.

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Projections like these have inspired warnings of impending calamity. In his 1994 essay “The Coming Anarchy,” the author Robert Kaplan famously foresaw a twenty-first-century Africa beset by lawlessness, joblessness, administrative dysfunction, ethnoreligious tension, and unchecked pollution.

More optimistic observers have seen opportunity in numbers, arguing that urban expansion can yield net benefits if associated risks, such as pollution and congestion, are mitigated. But even the optimists acknowledge that major challenges lie ahead.

As the Brexit debacle in the United Kingdom; the revolutions in Libya, and Syria; and the recent turmoil in many other Western countries have driven home, demands for accountability do not always deliver political stability or continuity.

Often overlooked in this debate is the role that electoral politics will play in shaping the future of African cities. As people move from the countryside to the cities, political power will move with them, transforming how the continent’s democracies are governed. Historically, urbanization has spurred demands for political accountability. The U.S. civil rights movement was made possible in part by the migration of black Americans to cities, where denser social networks made it easier to organize protests.

The Arab uprisings of 11–2010 coincided with North Africa’s attainment of majority urban status. SubSaharan Africa will soon cross the same threshold.

The transition will bring a host of social, political, and environmental problems—but it also has the potential to improve governance across the continent.

are more likely to identify corruption and economic management as core concerns, whereas people in rural areas are more likely to cite food and water shortages and inadequate infrastructure. Because Africa has long been majority rural (it remains 60 percent rural today despite rapid urbanization over the past 50 years), politicians have historically taken their cues from rural dwellers, promising to meet voters’ immediate, basic needs rather than articulating clear policy visions for the future. But as the share of rural voters across sub-Saharan Africa shrinks, demands for improved governance in the cities will become more and more difficult to ignore.

THE RURAL-URBAN DIVIDE Opposition candidate Raila Odinga speaks to the crowd gathered at a funeral service for three men killed by the police during a protest the week prior, on October 2017 ,20 in Bondo, Kenya. (Getty)

Urban residents are, on average, better educated than rural dwellers and more exposed to contrasting political views. They also have better access to infrastructure, such as roads, electricity, potable water, and Internet connectivity—even in poorly resourced slums such Ajegunle. (Many Nigerians, particularly in rural parts of the north, have no access to electricity at all.) In part because of these qualityof-life differences, urban voters tend to care more about structural economic and governance issues than their rural counterparts, who are typically more concerned with basic social welfare needs.

Afrobarometer survey data from South Africa, Nigeria, and Kenya—three of the most populous democracies in sub-Saharan Africa—bear out these trends. The three countries are at quite different stages of urbanization: South Africa (66 percent urban) has long been one of the continent’s most urbanized countries; Nigeria (50 percent urban) achieved ruralurban parity only last year; and Kenya (27 percent urban) is still about three decades away from ruralurban parity. But in all three countries, city dwellers

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The notion that urbanization is undesirable for developing countries, particularly in Africa, first took hold in the colonial era. European colonial administrators, fearing that dense urban areas would be difficult to control, often limited investment in city infrastructure to discourage migration from the countryside. This was particularly true in countries under indirect rule, such as Ghana, Kenya, and Nigeria, where colonial administrations focused on maximizing the extraction of raw materials.

Upon independence, the level of urbanization on the continent was extremely low: in 1960, only 15 percent of sub-Saharan Africans lived in urban areas, compared with 34 percent globally. The only countries with reasonably developed urban infrastructure, such as South Africa, tended to be places where greater numbers of European settlers had prompted colonial administrations to make the requisite investments.

Migration to urban areas accelerated after independence, but owing in part to this colonial legacy, cities were ill-equipped to take in the newcomers, and large slums sprang up across the continent.

Historically low levels of investment in education, health care, and physical infrastructure in most cities meant urbanization generally did not correlate with

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the same jumps in agricultural productivity or per capita income experienced in Asia, the Middle East, or North America and Latin America. Faced with this harsh reality, even postcolonial African governments began to view urbanization with skepticism. They demolished illegal urban settlements and focused youth employment programs on rural areas. In some cases, they continued the colonial tradition of failing to invest in urban infrastructure. In 1996, just over half of African governments had official policies designed to curb migration to urban areas, according to the United Nations. By 2013, the proportion had spiked to 85 percent.

The pessimistic view of African urbanization thus became a self-fulfilling prophecy. But the distortions that date back to the colonial period can be rectified with the right policy interventions. And as urban dwellers gain more political clout—and politicians are incentivized to prioritize their needs— governments will come under greater pressure to make those interventions. This is already happening in Lagos, where improved tax compliance and greater scrutiny of public coffers has resulted in better public services and infrastructure than elsewhere in Nigeria.

Lagos was one of the first Nigerian states to publish itemized budgets in an effort to show accountability, among other things (although it discontinued the practice). Lagos State maintains its own emergency services and chips in funding toward the local branch of the federal police. The result is a more effective security presence than in other parts of the country.

OUT WITH THE OLD, IN WITH THE URBAN By increasing political pressures for accountability, urbanization complements two other recent trends that augur well for African governance: rapid demographic change and growing political competition. Across the continent, governments have long been dominated

As people move from the countryside to the cities, political power will move with them, transforming how the continent’s democracies are governed.

by politicians who were either actively involved in their countries’ independence struggles or took the reins soon afterward. Those veterans are now well past retirement age and slowly losing their grip on local political structures—a trend accelerated by the generational shift underway among voters: 60 percent of sub-Saharan Africa’s population is under 25.

The combined effect of these changes has been to erode the old consensus among political elites, typically focused on uniting the political class against a common enemy such as colonialism, apartheid, or military rule. More than 60 years since the first African countries gained independence and over two decades since military regimes fell out of favor, the unifying power of such “us versus them” narratives has faded. As a result, previously dominant parties have lost their grip on power or succumbed to infighting, opening up space for new political entrants.

For example, incumbents in Senegal and Nigeria were voted out of office for the first time in 2012

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People navigate the the waterways of Makoko waterfront community in Lagos, Nigeri, on May 2018 ,15. (Getty)

and 2015, respectively—in both cases after internal disagreements led previously dominant political blocs to splinter. In South Africa, the ruling African National Congress has lost close to 50 parliamentary seats in the -400seat National Assembly since 2004 amid infighting between feuding factions of the party.

Altogether, over 20 sub-Saharan African nations, including those under long-standing authoritarian rule such as Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, and Sudan, have had a transfer of power, often as a result of a competitive election, in the past four years alone.

Greater competition and accountability are, of course, no panacea. As the Brexit debacle in the United Kingdom; the revolutions in Libya, and Syria; and the recent turmoil in many other Western countries have driven home, demands for accountability do not always deliver political stability or continuity.

The same will be true in sub-Saharan Africa, where more competitive election cycles will exert pressure on the public purse as administrations invest in

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tangible projects to sway voters and in building or strengthening political coalitions to ward off rivals.

At the same time, faster turnover in government could result in greater policy volatility.

In the long term, however, such risks are a small price to pay for the benefits of increased accountability.

Urban density will make it easier to mobilize popular support for or against policies, ideas, or regimes in democratic and nondemocratic countries alike, improving both the quality and the responsiveness of governance. In the Yoruba language, Ajegunle roughly translates to “the place where riches dwell.”

For most of the slum’s impoverished residents, the name remains an aspiration. But as Nigeria grows more urban, and the concerns of Ajegunle become the concerns of the country, it may well become a reality.

This article was originally published on ForeignAffairs.com.

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Beyond the Trade War A Competitive Approach to Countering China

by Ely Ratner, Elizabeth Rosenberg, Paul Scharre

countering Beijing’s malign activities directly.

The verdict is in on U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war with China. Regardless of whether U.S. negotiators soon reach a deal with Beijing, the administration’s initial gambit has run aground.

After wreaking havoc on portions of the U.S. economy with his trade policies, the president is now angling to freeze or roll back tariffs on Chinese products in exchange for almost nothing. Deal or no deal in the coming days, it is clear that the United States needs a fundamentally different approach to economic competition with China—one that bolsters U.S. technological and financial power while

Tariff hikes haven’t forced Beijing to capitulate. Chinese negotiators are reportedly making only vague commitments to assuage U.S. concerns about currency manipulation and intellectual property theft.

They have refused outright to accept a much-needed enforcement mechanism on international trade practices or to make structural reforms to promote economic competition at home and abroad. At best, Beijing will restore agricultural purchases to pre–trade war levels, offering as its biggest concession something it wants to do anyway: let in more U.S. capital to balance China’s checkbook and

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reenergize sluggish growth.

Part of the Trump administration’s problem is that it is divided over what exactly it is trying to achieve with the trade war.

One camp sees higher tariffs as leverage to compel Beijing to abandon industrial policies that harm the United States.

Such an approach might have worked better if the tariffs had been implemented by allies as well as the United States. But leaders in Beijing haven’t budged on unwinding their stateled economic model. To the contrary, the country’s chief negotiator, Vice Premier Liu He, announced recently that China aims to make its public sector “stronger, better and bigger.”

Another camp within the Trump administration champions tariffs as part of a comprehensive “decoupling” of the world’s two largest economies. Yet while the United States certainly needs to recalibrate its economic relationship with China, an abrupt separation would incur enormous and unnecessary costs. Decoupling—particularly if unilateral and without requisite investments at home—is more likely to isolate the United States than China, engendering a world in which Beijing has control over leading technologies, data, and standards and sets global trade and investment rules in its favor. Fortunately, such an outcome is readily avoidable, but only if Washington focuses on outpacing China with a more competitive strategy.

US and Chinese trade delegates, including US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin (7th L), US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer (8th L) and Chinese Vice Premier Liu He (7th Rat the Xijiao Conference Centre in Shanghai on July 2019 ,31. (Getty)

Such a strategy should begin with ambitious U.S. investments in scientific, technological, and financial innovation, supercharging research and development (R&D) in critical areas where China has gained or is gaining a competitive edge. But it must go beyond that, sustaining ties with China where commercial exchange benefits the U.S. economy while at the same time developing more powerful safeguards to protect and advance vital U.S. technological advantages.

This should include, among other things, building a coalition of allies to design and create new rules and institutions for trade, technology, and investment that level the playing field and erode Beijing’s ability to profit from anticompetitive practices.

MAKE AMERICA INNOVATE AGAIN An effective strategy for competing with China should start with innovation at home. The United States should boost U.S. R&D spending, nurture and recruit talent, and provide public goods to support U.S. research. China is on track to surpass the United States in total R&D spending as early as 2019. To sustain its technological advantage, the United States should increase federal R&D spending from 0.7 percent of GDP last year to 1.2 percent of GDP and strive to bring combined public and private spending to four percent of GDP by 2030.

In addition to investing in education, the United States

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Washington should move quickly to renew U.S. competitiveness by bolstering innovation, advancing technological and financial power, and countering China’s harmful activities with the aid of allies & partners. should take steps to attract the best and brightest from around the world, such as expanding high-skilled visa programs.

The federal government should further invest in leadingedge public goods, including data sets for researchers and better computing resources for universities, to help unlock innovation in critical areas such as artificial intelligence.

When it comes to other strategic technologies such as 5G wireless networks, the U.S. government can help American companies compete with China’s state-backed “national champions” by combining R&D spending, tax incentives, and government buying power to encourage markets toward more diverse and competitive ecosystems.

But investing in innovation isn’t enough. China continues to prey on American openness and to exploit U.S. technology for malign purposes. The United States should therefore adopt more powerful measures to counter systematic intellectual property theft and forced technology transfer. The U.S. government has already stepped up screening of foreign investments and increased counterespionage investigations.

But the State Department, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and intelligence community should work together to develop enhanced visa-screening criteria to identify espionage risks. The FBI should also increase its collaboration with universities in order to combat academic espionage, while seeking wherever possible to preserve academic and research exchanges that enable “brain gain” for the United States. To that end, the FBI should bring back the National Security Higher Education Advisory Board, which facilitated communication between universities and the national security community on counterintelligence threats, among other issues, until the FBI dissolved it in 2018.

The United States also needs stronger guardrails to prevent the transfer of U.S. technology to China for illicit or repressive purposes. In October, the Trump administration took an important initial step by placing eight Chinese tech firms responsible for human rights abuses on the Commerce

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Department’s Entity List, which generally bars companies in the United States from exporting to designated entities. The administration should add to the Entity List organizations linked to the People’s Liberation Army and prohibit work and study visas for individuals who are employed, funded, or sponsored by the PLA. The Commerce Department should also expand export controls based on end use, thereby requiring U.S. companies to conduct greater due diligence to ensure that their products don’t enable activities that run counter to U.S. values and interests, including human rights abuses, repressive surveillance, cyber-espionage, or use by China’s military and security services.

With these protections in place, U.S. companies could more securely engage with China on many dual-use emerging technologies. But stricter export controls are still necessary for certain critical technologies. To protect its competitive edge in artificial intelligence, Washington should coordinate with allies such as Japan and the Netherlands to prohibit the export to China of semiconductor manufacturing equipment and design tools. At the same time, the United States should diversify and secure its own sources of key technology inputs, including those related to semiconductor manufacturing and rare earth minerals, to mitigate the risk of disruption to U.S. supply chains.

Similar competitive measures are needed in the world of finance, where China is increasingly challenging the United States as well. Alongside technological advantages, financial power is among the United States’ greatest sources of international influence. It generates enormous U.S. wealth, provides the basis for sanctions authority, and allows the United States to set rules and norms on investment, state subsidies, market distortions, and trading practices. To sustain this power, the United States must ensure that its financial system remains a transparent, stable, and attractive market for the world to create and store wealth. China does its best to exploit what opacity exists in the system and to further muddy the waters when doing so serves its interests. Congress should therefore legislate an end to anonymous corporations and shed light on shell games and illicit operations by requiring those who control companies to declare themselves. Congress should also require foreign companies—including Chinese ones—that list securities on U.S. exchanges to comply with the same audit and disclosure requirements that apply to U.S. firms. This will help investors assess risk and support market stability.

At the same time, the United States should discourage the development of alternative, foreign payments or clearing mechanisms that seek to evade U.S. jurisdiction. China has

launched its own payments facility and seeks opportunities to internationalize its currency—both fiat and virtual—to erode the dominance of the U.S. dollar. The United States should work to beat out foreign cross-border payment mechanisms by promoting U.S.-based or U.S.-linked alternatives that improve efficiency, lower costs, offer privacy, and have full digital functionality. The United States should also encourage European payment mechanisms for humanitarian trade with Iran or other sanctioned countries so long as they do not violate U.S. sanctions. This will diminish growing sanctionsbusting sentiment abroad.

With China making aggressive investments in financial technology, the U.S. administration should support a regulatory posture that provides more active support, flexibility, and guidance to U.S. developers. Through such an approach, regulators can help U.S. firms better compete against foreign firms, including Chinese ones. In particular, the United States should look to support financial technology development for domestic and cross-border insurance, lending, payments, settlement, clearing, and tokenized assets applications, all of which will help make the U.S. financial sector more competitive, efficient, and reliable. Leading the field in these areas will also help U.S. firms beat out the competition to capture billions of new financial sector entrants

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A truck transports a container next to stacked containers at a port in Qingdao in China›s eastern Shandong province .2018 ,12 on October )Getty(

Deal or no deal in the coming days, it is clear that the U.S. needs a fundamentally different approach to economic competition with China— one that bolsters U.S. technological and financial power while countering Beijing’s malign activities directly.

States should work with advanced democratic allies to develop a new intergovernmental body to promote collaboration and coordination on R&D spending, supply chain security, standards setting, export controls, foreign investment screening, and norms for sensitive technology use. In some key areas, such as 5G and semiconductor manufacturing, the United States should work with allies to build consortia of trusted and secure vendors. U.S. officials should also engage more proactively in international technology standards setting, especially in 5G, where China has aggressively pursued international standards that would advantage its national champions. across Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

The U.S. government should also do more to promote the development of blockchain technology, which will be critical for increasing the efficiency, sophistication, automation, and cost-effectiveness of financial applications, supply chains, and contracting—all of which will make the U.S. economy stronger. U.S. policymakers should leverage federal research grants and procurement, as well as regulatory and licensing support, to encourage the development of blockchainbased financial and supply chain applications. This should include open-source software that can be used by multiple developers, elevates principles of privacy and reliability, and discourages illegitimate surveillance in service provision.

As U.S. blockchain developers become more sophisticated and competitive, they will put American firms in a stronger position to serve the U.S. market and compete for underbanked populations globally.

STRONGER TOGETHER When it comes to countering China, Washington’s approach to coordinating with allies has been ad hoc at best. A more structured framework for multilateral cooperation, particularly on technology policy, is needed. The United

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Additionally, the United States should pursue new multilateral agreements with Asia-Pacific and European nations that set high standards for trade and investment.

These agreements will grow the U.S. economy while also helping U.S. partners reduce their economic dependence on China. They will also expand the portion of the global economy committed to free and fair trade rules on labor, the environment, currency, and intellectual property.

For similar reasons, the U.S. trade representative should articulate conditions under which the United States would join the successor agreement to the Trans-Pacific Partnership and work toward a digital trade agreement with the European Union and other close security partners and advanced economies.

China is a formidable challenger, but the United States can still compete favorably against it. Doing so will require a fundamental rethink of U.S. strategy. Having observed the dramatic shortcomings of the tariff war, Washington should move quickly to renew American competitiveness by bolstering innovation, advancing technological and financial power, and countering China’s harmful activities with the help of allies and partners.

This article was originally published on ForeignAffairs.com.

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Has Netanyahu’s End Finally Come?

How Bibi Lost His Grip on Israeli Politics 24

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Given this complicated electoral map, and given that Netanyahu’s back is against the wall of indictment, the coming campaign stands to be the nastiest playing-for-keeps contest in Israel’s history. remarkable—and a testament to just how much he has transformed Israel’s democracy.

The vote in March will be the country’s third attempt in a row to form a stable government after two consecutive elections in April and September ended in deadlock. Netanyahu’s centrist challenger, Benny Gantz, came close to forming a majority last time around, and next time he may be in a stronger position still. Even so, Netanyahu is using his endless supply of spins and tricks to lead the news cycle, rally his right-wing base, and keep his opponents nervous.

If he does fall—by indictment, through a primary challenge, or at the hands of Gantz—Israel will need some time to recover from his divisive tenure.

WITCH HUNT

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gestures as he speaks during a meeting of the right-wing bloc at the Knesset (Israeli parliament) in Jerusalem on November 2019 ,20.

(Getty)

by Aluf Benn Next March, Israelis will head to the polls for the third time in less than a year, and, once again, the vote will amount to a referendum on the rule of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu may now be in the final act of his political career: the Magician, as Israelis used to call their longestserving prime minister, has lost his erstwhile grip on the political system, having failed twice to form a coalition following last year’s elections.

But that Netanyahu is holding on at all, even as he faces indictment on several corruption charges, is

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For now, Netanyahu remains in power as the head of a caretaker government supported by a rightwing bloc of conservative and religious parties. His indictment on several counts of bribery and breach of trust, formally unveiled in November after months of speculation, spells trouble, as Netanyahu currently lacks enough votes in parliament to secure immunity from prosecution. Still, any potential trial is still several months out and may turn into a protracted legal battle.

If Netanyahu looks weaker today than he did a year ago, it is also because he is facing, in Gantz, his first serious opponent in a decade. The former chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces lacks Bibi’s charisma, oratory, and political experience, but he has assembled a makeshift centrist party (Blue and White) and established himself as a credible candidate in under a year, all the while withstanding

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vicious character assassination attempts. The core of Gantz’s appeal, and his central campaign promise, is that he is not Netanyahu—he is running as a clean candidate who will get an accused white-collar criminal off the country’s back. Policy issues have mostly been a sideshow.

Another fly in Netanyahu’s ointment is Avigdor Lieberman, an old buddy and sometimes political ally who shares the prime minister’s hard-line views on the Palestinians and Israel’s Arab minority but hates his condescending demeanor and objects to his political alliance with several ultra-Orthodox parties.

It was Lieberman who got the current electoral roller coaster started when he withdrew his support for Netanyahu’s coalition government in November 2018. The defection was a lesson in modesty for the prime minister, who has found that he cannot govern without Lieberman, and for Israel’s class of pundits and political junkies, who initially predicted that Netanyahu would cruise to reelection atop an unstoppable right-wing bloc.

Netanyahu and his supporters deny all allegations of corruption, blaming a deep-state conspiracy by power-hungry prosecutors and vindictive journalists.

If this sounds familiar to Americans, it should: Netanyahu may have been campaigning against supposedly out-of-touch elites long before Donald Trump ran for office, but the U.S. president’s example has inspired him and his allies to double down on their populist rhetoric. And for most Israeli voters, once the psychological barrier of endless campaign and seasonal vote was broken, the public paid little attention to the politicians’ blame game

Likud’s main challenge in March will be to get its supporters to turn out rather than stay at home, fatigued by Netanyahu’s endless legal and political battles.

over preventing a new government. Israelis enjoy a day off from work and school on elections, the shops have sales, and the weather in March is great. If politicians cannot agree with each other, Israelis will vote again until a new majority is formed.

ALLIANCES OLD AND NEW Gantz and Netanyahu represent different parts of Israeli society—Blue and White leads the pack in the more affluent areas, whereas Netanyahu’s Likud is popular among middle-class voters. In theory, the two parties have enough seats in the Knesset to form a governing coalition, and theirs would be the first government in three decades not to depend on the support of multiple smaller parties. But as long as Netanyahu heads the Likud and his criminal cases make their slow but steady way to Jerusalem’s District Court, such a partnership will remain elusive.

Instead, each side is seeking alliances with smaller parties and minority groups. The religious and ultra-Orthodox right remains loyal to Netanyahu, who relies on its support and never reaches out to

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Israeli Kahol Lavan (Blue and White) political alliance leader and retired General Benny Gantz, arrives to give a statement ahead of a midnight deadline in the coastal city of Tel Aviv on November 2019 ,20.

(Getty)

was to galvanize the country’s Arab minority: Arab Israeli parties reunited to form a Joint List before the September election, and turnout among Arab voters rose from 49 percent in April to 59 percent in September. More important still, the leaders of the Joint List focused their campaign on questions of law enforcement and housing, choosing to downplay thornier issues such as the suffering of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, and offered to support a future government led by Gantz. Although even a tacit alliance would be controversial among both Arab politicians and Blue and White leaders, Gantz met the Joint List leadership publicly, shrugging off Netanyahu and Lieberman’s criticism of the Arab parties as a treacherous “fifth column”—and hinting at a potential future partnership.

AN UGLY FIGHT

the political center. Accordingly, Netanyahu has promised to deliver on the right’s core ideological demands, especially in his pledge to formally annex parts of the West Bank. Gideon Saar, Netanyahu’s sole primary challenger, walks the same path, vowing to be even truer to the annexation catechism and to “reform the legal system” (read: weaken the supreme court and curtail the independence of Israel’s attorney general)—another right-wing battle cry. Saar also argues that he could bring Lieberman back into the fold or form a unity government with Gantz. But his chances in the December 26 primary are slim, as Netanyahu controls the party machine.

Saar probably hopes to lose narrowly in order to improve his heir-apparent image for a future, postBibi race.

Given the polarization over the fate of Netanyahu, there is virtually no crossover between Likud’s and Blue and White’s electorates, and each side must draw on its separate pool of voters. Likud’s main challenge in March will be to get its supporters to turn out rather than stay at home, fatigued by Netanyahu’s endless legal and political battles.

Netanyahu will also need to win over at least some of Lieberman’s voters. For Gantz to win a majority in the Knesset, he needs high Arab voter turnout and unity among smaller left-wing parties, some of which must join forces to clear the 3.25 percent parliamentary threshold.

Given this complicated electoral map, and given that Netanyahu’s back is against the wall of indictment, the coming campaign stands to be the nastiest playingfor-keeps contest in Israel’s history. Netanyahu may well manage to muddle through once more, but even if he does not, his constant attempts to govern by dividing and conquering will have changed Israeli politics for the worse. It is somewhat ironic that beyond this record of political division, Netanyahu’s legacy is surprisingly thin, marked above all by an aversion to reform and risk in domestic and foreign For Gantz, the wild card will be the Arab vote. policy alike. His successor will have an opportunity The outgoing government’s most important to enact more meaningful change—but only after a legacy was the passing, in July 2018, of the so- process of national healing. called nation-state law, which declared Israel the “nation-state of the Jewish people” without any This article was originally published on reference to equality for non-Jewish citizens. The ForeignAffairs.com. unintended consequence of the controversial vote

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China Pivots to Middle East as Trump Downsizes US Role

Beijing is the Region’s Largest Investor and Expects to Cement that Status with Belt and Road

by Alice Su and Nabih Bulos

strong U.S. role in the region and clearing a path for Russia’s dominance. Yet in their scramble to find new As President Donald Trump eyes the exit in the Middle allies, regional states have also turned to a quieter but East, his critics have excoriated him for abdicating a no less powerful U.S. rival: China.

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Syrian President Bashar Assad signaled China’s rising influence in the region this week when he announced plans to join the Belt and Road initiative, President Xi Jinping’s signature foreign policy enterprise. But even before that, China had planted its flag in practically every country in the Mideast.

It now stands as the region’s largest investor and expects to cement that status with Belt and Road, a sprawling, 1$ trillion infrastructure project meant to revive the ancient trading routes of the Silk Road — including those linking China to Central Asia and the Middle East (or West Asia, as Beijing calls it).

Within the framework of that initiative, China has signed trade agreements with countries from Oman to Morocco, harnessing Arab capital for development projects to build up railroads, ports and electricity infrastructure across the region.

All this comes against the backdrop of a rising U.S.-China rivalry, exemplified by a yearlong trade war, saber-rattling in the western Pacific and a race for influence in Latin America and Africa. Flying largely under the radar, Beijing has had great success in drawing Middle Eastern nations into its orbit at a time when Trump is seen regionwide as a mercurial ally, if one at all.

Chinese President Xi Jinping. (Getty)

“The United States has become consistently inconsistent. … Regional players, including friends of the United States, increasingly view Washington as an unreliable partner,” said Anubhav Gupta, associate director of the Asia Society Policy Institute.

“They are forming stronger ties with other major powers because they sense both an uncertainty about U.S. commitment to the region as well as a lack of clarity as to what position the U.S. will take from one moment to the next.”

By contrast, there has been little question of Beijing’s commitment.

Chinese foreign direct investment has steadily increased over the last 10 years, with Beijing emerging as a major player in energy purchases,

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Syrian President Bashar Assad signaled China’s rising influence in the region this week when he announced plans to join the Belt and Road initiative, President Xi Jinping’s signature foreign policy enterprise. with the region meeting more than %40 of the Asian giant’s energy needs.

“Just buying oil, shifting the supplies of oil, would have huge impact on the economy of the gulf and the region,” said Andrea Ghiselli, coordinator of ChinaMed, an Italian-Chinese research project focusing on China’s role in the Mediterranean region.

China has also had success presenting itself as a pragmatic partner, one whose foreign policy is characterized by a self-avowed commitment to national sovereignty and noninterference in other countries’ domestic affairs. The attitude squares well with authoritarian governments in the region, which can do business with China without Beijing criticizing their human rights records or undemocratic systems.

That stance has also enabled Beijing to maintain relationships on all sides of long-standing Middle Eastern rifts, such as those between Iran and Saudi Arabia; Israel and the Palestinian territories; and one pitting Turkey and Qatar against a number of other Persian Gulf nations.

“Nobody can be more concerned about the status of Muslims anywhere in the world than Saudi Arabia,” Abdallah al-Mouallimi, the Saudi ambassador to the U.N., told reporters in New York in July. “We support the developmental policies of China that have lifted people out of poverty.”

Beijing’s willingness to make deals where

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Washington does not tread has been a draw for the United States’ regional adversaries, such as Assad.

With the help of Iran and Russia, Assad has emerged as the victor — at least militarily — of the eight-year civil war that began in 2011.

But with much of his country destroyed, and escalating economic U.S. sanctions crippling access to Western funds, he has courted Beijing to jump-start a prospective reconstruction bonanza.

“Today, we see that there is a superpower, China, trying to strengthen its influence in the world,” Assad said in an interview with China’s Phoenix Television on Monday. He added the government had proposed six projects that would fit in with the Belt and Road initiative.

“It is not the negative influence we have become accustomed to, but rather an influence in the sense of relying on friends and an influence based on mutual interests,” he said.

As part of its engagement, Beijing has made inroads in supplying weapons to the region. The area is awash with older, Chinese-made light weapons that have found their way across the Middle East, with Beijing supplying bullets and rockets to various governments.

China has signed trade agreements with countries from Oman to Morocco, harnessing Arab capital for development projects to build up railroads, ports and electricity infrastructure across the region.

China’s overall arms exports to the region are still minuscule in comparison with those of the United States and Russia, especially when it comes to heavier weapons and defense systems.

But China dominates in the export of unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs) or armed drones to Middle Eastern countries facing restrictions on drone sales from the United States.

Between 2014 and 2018, China exported 153 UCAVs to 13 countries, including Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, and they have made their way to

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Egypt›s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, left, shakes hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping during the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation held at the Great Hall of the People on September 2018 ,3 in Beijing, China. (Getty)

battlegrounds as far afield as Libya. The United States exported only five in the same period, all to the United Kingdom.

Fifty-two percent of U.S. arms exports, which are seven times larger than Chinese exports globally, go to the Middle East, according to the Stockholm institute. China mainly exports arms to Asia and Oceania, with the Middle East accounting for only %6.1 of Chinese weapons exports from 2014 to 2018.

Despite the shrinking U.S. presence in the region, it’s unclear how far Beijing will go to

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fill the vacuum, especially given the tenuous state of U.S.-China relations and the unrest in Hong Kong. It would also require astronomical financial and military costs at a time when China’s economy is slowing.

“China still lacks the willingness and capacity to play the U.S. role of regional cop,” Gupta said.

.Ghiselli agreed “Behind these win-win rhetoric and partnerships,” he said, “everyone knows there is a limit of what China can do and what China is willing to do.”

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How ‘Black Christmas’ Became a ‘Fiercely Feminist’ Slasher Movie for the #MeToo Era A Horror Movie About Being a Woman in 2019

by Sonaiya Kelley A few years after Donald Trump’s election coincided with the birth of the #MeToo movement and mere months after the appointment of Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court, director Sophia Takal set out to write a horror movie about being a woman in 2019.

“I just felt tapped into a lot of the rage that women felt and also a lot of the camaraderie that we felt with one another,” she said. “I wanted to make a movie that wasn’t about women being pitted against each other but finding strength through one another.”

The resultant film, Universal’s “Black Christmas” remake, turns the 1974 horror cult classic on its head by exploring the adversarial relationship between fraternity and sorority members at the fictional Hawthorne College. The updated movie, in theaters this weekend, stars Imogen Poots as Riley Stone, a sorority girl and sexual assault survivor who demands answers after several women go missing over the holiday break.

Where the original centered on a group of girls

terrorized by a killer hiding out inside their sorority house (it was the first film to use the “calls are coming from inside the house!” trope), Takal and screenwriter April Wolfe, who co-wrote the script for Blumhouse, wanted to imbue the traditional slasher story with a nuanced portrait of female solidarity and a timely examination of the entrenched nature of misogyny.

“When Blumhouse approached me about making this, one thing that was really important to me was making a movie that felt like it was moving the slasher subgenre forward,” said Takal. “We weren’t just making a movie about expendable women whose primary purpose was to be killed for entertainment.

“When we started to write this movie, we had just gone through this whole reckoning and a lot of men were being called out for their bad behavior,” she added. “Then all of a sudden Louis C.K.’s doing comedy again In response, the filmmaker resolved to make a PG13- horror movie that would frankly address tough issues like sexual assault and rape while remaining accessible to young women and girls.

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(L-R) April Wolfe, Jason Blum, Ben Black, Imogen Poots, Sophia Takal, Lilly Donoghue, Brittany O›Grady, Simon Mead, Adam Hendricks, Ben Cosgrove and Zac Locke attend a special screening of «Black Christmas» at Regal LA Live on December 2019 ,05 in Los Angeles, Calif. (Getty Images/TNS)

“At one point I just assumed the MPAA would automatically give it an R rating because we’re dealing with issues of sexual assault,” said Takal.

“But we shot it with the intention of a PG13rating. I was very vocal about the fact that if I had to pull back on any of the specificities of Riley’s experience or the sexual politics of the movie, that would be a problem for me. That was really the only sticking point.”

Ultimately, the subject matter was less of a concern to the MPAA than some of the film’s language.

“It’s so funny the things that are allowed and not allowed,” said Takal. “Like ‘The Dark Knight’ and ‘Taken’ are PG13- movies but ours would’ve been R-rated if we said ‘slipped me a roofie and

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then your dick.’”

“It’s really up to the discretion (of the MPAA),” said Wolfe. “And its discretion is not consistent across the board. But how cool is it that young girls get to see this … movie?”

To illustrate an intersectional portrait of feminism, Takal and Wolfe made sure to incorporate female experiences that differed from their own. For example, the character Kris (played by Aleyse Shannon) is a mixed race woman and a social justice crusader who frequently butts heads with her fellow sorority members.

“From the beginning it was a matter of having a cast that felt inclusive while being aware of

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our own biases,” said Wolfe. “We live in Los Angeles. My life is not (filled with) a lot of white people. Reflecting what most people feel or see in everyday life onscreen felt really important in the same way that we wanted the women to feel realistic.

“I mean, we are white women and we have lived in this world for a long time so I think there is a tendency to kind of just write that experience but I think that is maybe incorrect,” she added. “It’s not OK to do at this point. We want people to feel good and for these characters to be rounded.

And if we weren’t hitting that then we would do a quick rewrite or reassessment.”

For Takal, who calls the film “fiercely feminist,” seeing a nuanced portrait of women depicted onscreen in and of itself is revolutionary. “I think there’s something still subversive about making movies that are about real women who are complicated and flawed and don’t have to be perfect,” she said.

“I think a lot of times in this modern era people talk about strong women and sometimes people mistake flawless, badass women with feminist characters. I think part of being a woman and making movies about women is allowing us to be flawed.”

The filmmaker resolved to make a PG13- horror movie that would frankly address tough issues like sexual assault and rape while remaining accessible to young women and girls.

“We might all be on the ‘same side’ but there’s definitely different lived experiences,” said Wolfe. “You can’t just be like ‘All women are really great together all the time.’”

“Exactly,” Poots agreed. “I felt that certainly in the quartet of girls, all of their idiosyncrasies were there but they’re all fundamentally different women with different priorities.”

While Wolfe describes being a woman in 2019 as “ … terrible sometimes,” she says one of the biggest barriers to meaningful change is the inability for people on opposing sides to hear each other.

“The feeling of people talking past one another sometimes feels like an insurmountable problem,” Takal agreed. “Like, how can we open up to each other? I think one of the things we hope for with this movie is that it’s a fun holiday horror movie, but that it also is saying something about a particular experience. And maybe it will open up people to talk about their own experiences and have less defensive conversations.”

“Certain people have had the podium for a long time and it’s time for other people to take the opportunity to listen,” said Poots.

“Yeah, I think it’s about listening,” said Takal. “I think some people are hesitant to listen because it feels like something is being taken away. And it can feel like eating spinach if you’re watching a harrowing drama about men and women and rape, but if you’re able to give people an opportunity to laugh and scream, it kind of mitigates the dialogue that we’re trying to have.”

“Genre movies open up an incredible platform for female performance,” added Poots. “Often more than other films do. I think with the nature of horror movies in general, there’s a reason why Toni Collette’s performance in ‘Hereditary’ was

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so lauded And ultimately the opportunity to have female filmmakers shaping those performances is what most excited all three women about “Black Christmas.”

“Growing up, the place that you would see lead

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actors who were women was in horror or soap operas,” noted Wolfe. “I love a melodrama and I love horror and we have some aspects of both in our movie. It’s a great genre, it just sucks that women haven’t been able to tell those stories before. Now we get to be behind it and have more control over those dynamic female characters.”

A Weekly Political News Magazine

Issue 1779- December- 20/12/2019

Barham Salih: Iraq’s Veteran Kurdish President

www.majalla.com

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Get Fit to Function These Three Exercises Can Help Make Functional Fitness Part of Your Regular Routine 38

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The ability to do these ordinary activities and movements is called functional fitness, and it can determine how active, healthy, and independent you are as you get older. determine how active, healthy, and independent you are as you get older.

“We often take these movements for granted, but as we age, muscles naturally weaken and joints get stiffer, which makes everyday activities more difficult to do,” says Dr. Amy Lo, a research fellow at Harvard-affiliated Hebrew SeniorLife’s Hinda and Arthur Marcus Institute for Aging Research. “If you don’t give enough attention to your functional fitness, you can have trouble engaging in even the simplest joys of life.”

WORK IT OUT You can strengthen many muscles needed for functional fitness by meeting the recommended minimum guideline of 150 minutes of moderateintensity exercise per week, a regimen that includes both cardio and strength training.

Harvard Health As part of everyday living, you spend a lot of time bending, reaching, lifting, twisting, turning, and squatting, without even thinking about it.

These movements show up in everything from carrying groceries, to playing with your grandkids, to just checking if the coast is clear when you back out of the driveway.

The ability to do these ordinary activities and movements is called functional fitness, and it can

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However, it’s common for people to settle into routine exercises that work only superficial muscles, such as biceps, pecs, and quadriceps. While those muscles are essential, you may end up neglecting what you need for all-around functional fitness, like flexibility in the neck, back, and hamstrings; range of motion in the shoulders; and deeper muscle strength in the core and buttocks.

“These are the areas that get most activated whenever you lift, bend, stretch, and turn,” says Dr. Lo. “When these areas are weak, not only do you have trouble performing regular tasks, but you risk injury.” Poor functional fitness also can make you less agile. A study in the March 2016

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issue of Asian Nursing Research found that in adults ages 65 to 74, those who scored highest on tests to measure functional fitness had the lowest risk of falls.

Many senior centers and fitness clubs offer classes designed to improve functional fitness. You could also enlist a trainer who specializes in working with people your age to create an individual program.

In any case, you can work on functional fitness where you use it the most: at home. Here are three simple exercises that can improve the skills you need to function at your highest level. You can do them on their own, or add them to your regular exercise routine.

“Remember that it is never too late to improve your functional fitness and be as physically active as possible,” says Dr. Lo.

SIT TO STAND This exercise strengthens the core and leg muscles. Sit on the edge of a chair with your hands crossed over your chest. Keep your feet flat on the floor, hip-width apart, and bring your toes underneath your knees. Lean forward slightly

If you don’t give enough attention to your functional fitness, you can have trouble engaging in even the simplest joys of life.

and press your heels into the floor as you slowly stand. Pause and then sit in the same slow and controlled manner. Do this five to 10 times.

If you need assistance standing, place your hands on your thighs or the chair’s armrests for support.

For a challenge, hold a medicine ball in front of you as you sit and stand.

TANDEM WALKING This movement improves both balance and coordination. Stand with your legs together. Place one foot in front of the other, so the heel is just

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ahead of the toes. Then repeat with the other foot.

Continue this walking motion for 20 to 25 steps; then turn around and walk in the same manner back to the starting point. Repeat this back-andforth walking two or three times.

For more of a challenge, walk with your eyes closed or walk backward. You can also do this exercise with your arms outstretched or overhead to help with shoulder strength and flexibility.

CHAIR TWIST WITH BALL This exercise increases upper body, shoulder,

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and neck rotation. Sit tall in a chair with your feet on the floor. Hold a medicine ball or an object of similar weight in front of your body, with arms extended and slightly bent. Twist to the right until the ball is over your right hip, or as far as comfortable. Turn your head and neck as you follow the ball’s movement.

Make sure to rotate only your upper body and not your hips or legs. Pause, and then return to the starting point. Repeat the same twist-and-return motion to your left. Do this sequence five to 10 times. You also can perform this exercise while standing.

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Barham Salih: Iraq’s Veteran Kurdish President Majalla - London Barham Ahmed Salih Qassim was born on September 1960 ,8 in Sulaymaniyah in Iraqi Kurdistan. He joined the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) movement in late 1976 and later the PUK resistance in 1979, when he was arrested by the Ba›athist regime during Saddam’s reign twice on charges of involvement in the Kurdish national movement and spent 43 days in detention in a Special Investigation Commission prison in Kirkuk where he was tortured. Once released, he finished high school, and after continuous persecution, he left for the United Kingdom to flee Iraq.

He earned his Doctor of Engineering in Statistics and Computer Applications from the University of Liverpool in 1987, and his bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering and Construction from the University of Cardiff in 1983. He worked as a consultant to an engineering corporation in the UK. From 2001-1991, Salih served in Washington as the representative of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), and the PUK to North America. In that capacity, he was the organization’s top diplomat in the U.S. He was elected to the PUK leadership in 1991.

After the fall of the Baathist regime, he became Deputy Prime Minister in the Interim Iraqi Government (in mid2004-), Minister of Planning in the Transitional Government (in 2005), and Deputy Prime Minister in the elected Iraqi Government (Nouri al-Maliki›s Cabinet) in charge of the economic portfolio and Head of the Economic Committee. Representing the Iraqi Government, he launched the International Compact with Iraq – an initiative of mutual commitment between Iraq and the international community to help Iraq in meeting its obligations of «building a prosperous, democratic and federal country, in peace with itself and with the region and the world».

Salih was tasked by the Kurdish leadership to head the Kurdistani electoral slate and, was designated to form the sixth Kurdish government. Hence, he served as the Prime Minister of the Iraqi Kurdish Region from 2011 – 2009. His term was marked by a turbulence time with the rise of an opposition (Movement for Change) to challenge the government while his own party was scrambling to stay together after losing the stronghold city of Sulaymaniyah. He survived the first motion of no confidence in Iraqi Kurdistan

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following the 2011 Kurdish protests in Iraq. He relinquished the post of Prime Minister to Nechervan Idris Barzani on 5 April 2012 as part of a political agreement between the ruling KDP–PUK coalition.

In September 2017, Salih announced that he was leaving the PUK and forming a new opposition party, the Coalition for Democracy and Justice, to compete in the forthcoming Iraqi Kurdistan elections.

Following the death of PUK leader Jalal Talabani and the Kurdish opposition leader Nawshirwan Mustafa, the alliance was seen to have the potential to change the Kurdish political landscape. He said he hoped to gather all the other opposition parties, including Gorran and Komal, to challenge the governing KDP–PUK alliance.

In October 2018, the two parties sparred over who they should nominate for the Iraqi presidency, a position that has been reserved for a Kurd since 2005. Though the September 2018 elections placed the KDP in the lead in the Kurdish region, the PUK succeeded in pushing through Salih, over the KDP’s strong opposition.

He received 219 votes and defeated Fuad Hussein who secured 22 votes.

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Unmerited Inequality and the New Elite

by Nicholas Lemann About 25 years ago, I spent a memorable afternoon in London with Michael Young, the author of the strange 1958 dystopian novel in the form of a dissertation called The Rise of the Meritocracy, which introduced that term into the English language. In the United States, for years, people have liked to insist that wherever they work or go to school is a meritocracy, meaning, roughly, that they understand it as an open competition in which the most deserving succeed. Americans assume meritocracy to be an unalloyed good; the term implies a contrast to some past system or an era when success went instead to lazy inheritors, timeservers, or adept

players of office politics.

Young, however, wanted not to celebrate meritocracy but to warn the world against it. He had the detached air of someone who has quietly noticed everything, and a sense of humor so bone-dry that most people missed it. By the time I met him, he was Baron Young of Dartington— an oft-noted irony. But intellectually, he was a creature of the post–World War II British Labour Party, in which he served as an important adviser on education, and of the impoverished East End, where he did his sociological research. He had been involved in the great expansion of the staterun school system after the war, which was an aspect of the broader socialist project aimed at creating structured mass opportunity for

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Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut.

(Getty)

the first time in British history. It was in keeping with the tenor of the time that this effort relied on administering intelligence tests to masses of -11year-olds, who were then each directed into what was, essentially, a blue-collar or a white-collar educational track and who would, when they were a few years older, take another set of exams that would anoint a small cohort as bound for higher education.

Young assumed that this would be a fair system— that what the tests measured was “merit,” something crucial and immutable. But its results forced him to confront the question of whether there was any real moral difference between the new, deserving upper class and the older, undeserving one. He concluded that meritocracy functioned as a justification for a new and especially harsh class system and that therefore he preferred the old elite. As a socialist, his primary commitment was not to equal opportunity but to just plain equality, and he foresaw that what he had decided to call “meritocracy” would make equality harder to sell, since it would provide a supposedly scientific justification for inequality.

“To be good, a society must have a fault,” he told me. The United Kingdom’s fault was a class system based on inheritance, which made the country a propitious environment for midcentury Labour socialism; the new meritocracy that Labour was creating would be much less propitious. The Rise of the Meritocracy ends by telling us that its author, a scholar named Michael Young, has regrettably been killed in a bloody mass uprising against the meritocrats.

In the current moment of global populist, nationalist, and socialist revolts against elites, this scenario seems prescient. And yet in his new book, The Meritocracy Trap, the legal scholar Daniel Markovits rather ungenerously insists that “Young’s satire missed its mark by a mile.” By that, Markovits means two things: that Young failed to understand that meritocracy is itself actually based on the circumstances of birth rather than merit, and that his idea that meritocracy was something to be avoided, not embraced, never caught on. Quite the reverse happened: in Markovits’s maximally bleak view, meritocracy has ruined American life. By presenting itself as a means of providing equal opportunity, it has preemptively shut down opposition; it pushes inequality to ever-higher levels; it serves as an efficient mechanism for the

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Rising inequality and a stagnating middle class are the preoccupying problems of American society today, and most of the possible solutions don’t involve meritocracy at all inheritance, rather than the upending, of privilege; and it turns even its relatively small number of beneficiaries into miserable, relentlessly pressured workaholics who have to expend most of their large incomes on their children’s private schools and tutors. Markovits’s picture of American society is so lurid, so inexorably dark, that it invites skepticism more than it persuades.

CASTE OF CHARACTERS Young was sort of kidding about the threat meritocracy posed. Markovits most definitely is not. He attributes to meritocracy a very high level of social and economic damage—maybe not on a level with what Soviet communism wreaked in Russia, but not entirely out of that range. The charge can’t be evaluated without first defining “meritocracy” precisely, which isn’t so easy.

Like all social systems, the one that Markovits describes was made and not born. His righteous rage against it is powered by a sense of betrayal, or promises unkept: as he puts it, “Despite the motives that led to its adoption, meritocracy no longer promotes equality of social and economic opportunity, as it was intended and expected to do.” But historically, it was neither intended nor expected to do that. The founders of the system Markovits’s book examines did not have the word “meritocracy” available to them, because Young hadn’t yet written his book at the time when they were devising it. They also did not think they were addressing the problem of opportunity in the United States. The British Education Act of 1944 was aimed at expanding the state-run educational system. The American meritocracy, launched at roughly the same time, had a narrower purpose:

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to use IQ tests as an admission device for elite undergraduate institutions, as a way of changing the character of those schools and creating a new breed of high-level technocrats.

If the system had a father, it was James Bryant Conant, the president of Harvard University from 1933 to 1953, whom Markovits mentions only in passing. It was Conant who arranged for the SAT, an adapted IQ test, to become the dominant college admission device. While he was doing this, in stages during his reign at Harvard, he was also occasionally writing essays calling for the establishment of a new, classless America.

But it’s worth noting that during his peak period of influence, he was also a leading opponent of the GI Bill, the greatest expansion of educational opportunity the country had ever seen. Historical figures act according to the assumptions and exigencies of the moment; Conant was focused on promoting the research university model at Harvard and other elite academic institutions and on winning the Cold War. The prospect of wasted scientific and administrative talent haunted him, and he feared that class divisions would weaken American society.

His solution to these problems was to create large but strictly tracked public high schools whose male graduates would also have to go through a period of compulsory national service. If everybody went to high school and did their national service together, he believed, that would prevent class tensions from developing, so the project of strict elite selection could proceed unimpeded. Expanding access to college was not part of his plan; doing so would have diluted the focus on superachievers that Conant thought universities should maintain. He also expected that the new American elites would be overwhelmingly oriented toward public service, as were graduates of top universities in Europe, and that they would not try to rig the system that had produced them in order to advantage their children. Those qualities, too, would forestall any resentment the new elites might engender.

Like most social visionaries, Conant was substantially wrong in his expectations about the system he was helping create—especially about

how it would be perceived by the public. Today, many people assume that admission to Ivy League schools is a process that is highly susceptible to corruption by prosperous parents, and degrees from those institutions are widely perceived as tickets to gaudy status and material success, not to careers in public service. This is partly, but not entirely, accurate. Ivy League admissions now rely on a pastiche: remnants of the pre-Conant system—preferences for athletes and the children of alumni, for example—persist alongside a genuine commitment to racial and class diversity, as well as the strong emphasis on academic criteria that Conant wanted. And Ivy League students are inculcated into an elite culture defined less by crass ambition than by a peculiar mixture of soaring liberal idealism and an overwhelming preoccupation with success.

Markovits’s home institution, Yale Law School, is an exemplar. It was founded in 1824 but essentially refounded in the late 1920s, when a coterie of fiery young reformers led by the legal scholar and future Supreme Court justice William Douglas arrived after defecting from Columbia University and

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gave the school a decidedly more liberal cast than its competitors. Yale still overproduces law professors, judges, and government officials. It is also intensely conscious of being considered the country’s number one law school. Its students have run a brutally competitive academic gauntlet for two decades before they arrive, and when they leave, they are highly attractive to prominent commercial law firms. The Meritocracy Trap grew out of a speech Markovits gave at the Yale Law School graduation ceremony in 2015, which he began by assuring his listeners of their preeminence.

“You are sitting here today because you ranked among the top three-tenths of one percent of a massive, meritocratic competition,” he said, “in which all the competitors conspicuously agree about which is the biggest prize.” But the system that produced them, he added, had been “a catastrophe for our broader society.” This blending of status consciousness and stinging social critique is deeply woven into the fabric of the institution.

The story Markovits tells isn’t so different from the one that Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray laid out, controversially, in The Bell Curve in 1994, except that Markovits vigorously insists that the special qualities of meritocrats result from their upbringing and their own efforts rather than from inherited traits. But in both versions of this tale, there existed a baseline period, before SAT-based admissions, when Ivy League students were not especially bright and when, conversely, potential meritocrats were scattered randomly across the class system. Then came a dramatic change in admission policies at elite universities, which led to the displacement of the old American upper class by a new, more deserving one. The resulting meritocratic elite efficiently replicates itself through campus-based “assortative mating,” ruthless residential and social self-segregation, and high-pressure childrearing practices. Therefore, Markovits writes, “American meritocracy has become precisely what it was invented to combat: a mechanism for the concentration and dynastic transmission of wealth, privilege, and caste across generations.”

The consequences of these developments, in Markovits’s account, are even worse than the plain fact of an aristocracy-to-meritocracy-to-

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Today’s social and economic problems cannot all be traced back to the elite colleges at the heart of the meritocratic system, argues Nicholas Lemann, and reforming admissions processes would therefore do little to solve those problems. aristocracy dynamic would indicate. The old aristocracy presided over a “classless society,” he writes, a near paradise of middle-class prosperity and opportunity. The new meritocrats, who on graduation quickly become extravagantly paid “superordinate workers” in fields such as finance and law, have created “a stagnant, depleted, and shrinking world” for the middle class by redefining economic value in terms that reward the kinds of labor only they, the meritocrats, perform and by pulling an increasing proportion of all economic activity into their purview and away from everyone else’s.

To Markovits, because of what the meritocrats have done to American society, there is hardly any difference these days between the middle class and the poor: “Meritocracy remakes the middle class as a lumpenproletariat.” The United States now features a bipolar labor market, “epitomized by Walmart greeters and Goldman Sachs bankers.” And the meritocrats don’t even get to enjoy feasting on the carrion of the good society they have ruined, because they are working too hard: “A brilliant vortex of training, skill, industry, and income holds elites in thrall, bending them from earliest childhood through retirement to an unrelenting discipline of meritocratic production that alienates superordinate workers from their labor, so that they exploit rather than fulfill themselves and eventually lose authentic ambitions that they might never fulfill.” A meritocrat can’t go into “teaching, . . . or journalism, public service, or even engineering,” because to do so would mean “sacrificing her own, and her children’s, caste.”

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OUTSIDE THE IVORY TOWER If one believes that the overall social and economic conditions of the United States have been produced by meritocracy, then it’s natural to look to meritocracy as the zone where reforms should take place. Markovits proposes to solve the larger problems of the country by taking away private universities’ tax deductions unless they draw half their students from the bottom two-thirds of the income distribution; he believes this would force them to expand their enrollment.

The narrowness of this remedy is a sign of how little space the nonelite, non-university world takes up in Markovits’s vision. There is very little politics or economics or history in The Meritocracy Trap—only the cascading effects of changes in elite college admissions, which explain practically everything.

Even within higher education, Markovits’s scope is strikingly limited. Public universities, plagued by low graduation rates and large cuts in funding, might be a plausible place to look if one wants to enhance opportunity and promote equality, but they are hardly mentioned in the book. “The thought that a generic BA constitutes a general ticket of admission into the elite is . . . a midcentury idea,” Markovits writes dismissively.

But the data clearly show that getting any college degree meaningfully improves one’s life chances and that the difference in value between an elite degree and a “generic BA” is less than most Anyway, isn’t shoring up the middle class, rather upper-middle-class parents probably believe. than providing access to membership in the elite, Markovits’s larger mission?

Rising inequality and the stalled progress of the middle class are the preoccupying problems of American society today, and most of the possible solutions offered by politicians, intellectuals, academics, and activists don’t involve meritocracy at all. Markovits suggests changes in the notoriously regressive payroll tax and redistributing work in ways that support “mid-skilled production.” But these fall far short of the grand effort, on the scale of the New Deal, that he plausibly insists would be necessary to address the situation successfully. Because he is so focused on selling the distinctiveness of his

There is very little politics or economics or history in ‘The Meritocracy Trap’—only the cascading effects of changes in elite college admissions, which explain practically everything.”

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Students react as they prepare to receive their diplomas at commencement at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., on May 2016 ,26. (Getty)

approach, he tends to ignore or underrate the many other possible remedies that are part of the national conversation right now. These include enhanced antitrust policies (a concentration of economic power and inequality go together), wealth taxes, higher income tax rates in the top brackets, and significant enhancements to the basic welfare-state package of public education, health care, and old-age pensions. Ninety percent of young American adults now go to college, but their completion rates are parlously low—60 percent for those pursuing a bachelor’s degree and 30 percent for those pursuing an associate’s degree at a community college. Both those degrees are strongly correlated with higher lifetime incomes and lower unemployment rates.

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Enhancing teaching and advising so as to improve college completion rates would be a good way to expand opportunities for most Americans.

Works of social diagnosis and prescription are always produced from within a particular time and place and culture. Some of them wind up looking like trenchant analysis, and others like documents that vividly expose the world from which they emerged. The Meritocracy Trap seems destined to wind up in the latter category. It displays a brilliant mind choosing to understand a great global turn toward market ideology and policy as the product of changes at a handful of elite universities. That’s a sign of how unconsciously constrained the view from those places can be.