https://www.thenationalnews.com/opinion/comment/2022/11/29/is-the-us-supreme-court-living-up-to-the-minimum-ethical-standards/

With Trump out of office, nine justices now surpass all of Congress and the executive in spreading and wallowing in corruption.

Corruption is built into politics. No political system anywhere in the world has ever been completely free of it. But there are differing degrees of corruption between systems, or in various eras within any long-lasting one. The US is no exception. But it is particularly appalling that the Supreme Court now appears to be the centre of political corruption in America.

Venality may be universal, but each system has its own framework to delineate specific forms of corruption. The US, for example, traditionally practices a form of simony – the purchasing of official roles – given that both parties routinely appoint major donors as US ambassadors. In most countries, that would be considered intolerably corrupt. In Washington, no one even notices.

But recently, deeper and more corrosive forms of inequity have become common practice. Since former US President Donald Trump left the White House, the Supreme Court seems to have become the most corrupt major institution of the three branches of US government (the other two being the legislature and the executive.

It is a tall order for a mere nine judges to outdo the 535 Members of Congress and the vast and labyrinthine apparatus of the executive branch. But they’ve managed to do it, and if that’s ever been the case in the past, it was certainly well over a century ago.

In fairness, the court itself has been deformed by the legislature and the executive. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell arbitrarily denied Democratic President Barack Obama a Supreme Court seat by refusing to grant his nominee a hearing for almost a year, handing the opening to his Republican successor, Mr Trump. The two later conspired to ram through Amy Coney Barrett a mere week before the election in which Mr Trump lost to President Joe Biden.

Only one of the three justices appointed by Mr Trump was confirmed without parliamentary chicanery. That was Brett Kavanaugh, whose hearings instead featured allegations of a sexual assault in high school that he denied. It was never meaningfully investigated and was ignored by the Republican Senate majority.

An additional taint of corruption hangs over the confirmations of several serving justices, including Mr Kavanaugh. A stench of perjury hangs in the air, whether regarding seemingly credible allegations of sexual misconduct against him or Clarence Thomas, which they deny; or that Mr Kavanaugh and others who voted to overturn the constitutional right to an early-term abortion, swore under oath in their confirmation hearings that they considered the question “settled law.” There are now, therefore, unavoidable doubts about their truthfulness, even under oath.

In 2010, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations and other groups enjoy the same First Amendment rights as human beings and that donating money is a form of protected free speech. This overturned a century of restrictions on campaign finance and other political spending, and unleashed a flood of “dark money,” in which billions are spent annually manipulating the political system anonymously and without any accountability, transparency or public knowledge. In this regard, the Court is not only corrupted, it is evidently corrupting the country as well.

Democrats as well as Republicans have benefited from the resulting political corruption, though Democrats claim to want to eliminate the practice. At a time of exceptional wealth disparity in the US, the Court ruling weaponised the power of affluence and accumulation to protect and promote itself at the expense of the general public and broader society. A series of additional complementary decisions have combined to create a wild west atmosphere when it comes to dark money in US politics.

American politics has not been this tainted at least since the “Gilded Age” of the robber barons in the late 19th century. The current era has been frequently, and accurately, labeled a “Second Gilded Age.” This panoramic political fiddling rests on the Court’s repeated rulings that corporations have the same constitutional rights as actual, living human beings (though they cannot assume most corresponding social and legal responsibilities, beyond their usually circumscribed tax payments), and that spending money is a form of speech. These preposterous equivalencies – that corporations are people, and that money is speech – make no rational sense other than to enable and expedite the quick and easy transmutation of cash into political power and influence.

Unsurprisingly, given the nebulous and tantalising environment it has created, the court itself has become corrupt. Mr Thomas has repeatedly refused to abide by minimal ethical standards in failing to remove himself from several cases directly involving his wife Ginni Thomas. The Supreme Court has exempted itself from the ethical standards it applies to all other courts. Indeed, there are no means, short of impeaching justices, to holt it to any ethical standards.

The New York Times recently revealed that a former anti-abortion lobbyist says he was informed at a dinner by Justice Samuel Alito of the upcoming outcome in a major case. That would be a colossal ethical breach. Mr Alito denies this, but emails and other contemporaneous evidence strongly support the allegation. Given that Mr Alito was one of the justices who swore under oath that abortion rights were settled law only to vote to abolish them, his potential for dishonesty has been established.

Naturally, massive, well-funded lobbying campaigns have been aimed at the Court. One group bought a building across the street to ensure constant access to justices and their staffers, who were plied with invitations to dinners, vacation homes and private clubs, contributions to the Supreme Court Historical Society and other favoured charities, and additional “inducements.”

If this sounds like the venal practice of spending money to influence politicians, that’s because it is.

Mr Alito – who must now be the prime suspect in the leak (that he especially furiously condemned) of a draft of the decision overturning abortion rights – and his colleagues in question have revealed themselves to be essentially dodgy politicians. Indeed, the Constitution makes the Court part of the political system. It is high time for everyone, not just the ethically challenged judges, to recognise and act on that forgotten fact.

The other branches of government – Congress and the White House – have the power, through various entirely constitutional means, to intervene. They cannot act soon enough to purge the Supreme Court of its current addiction to spreading and wallowing in corruption.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-11-25/us-navy-ai-drone-fleet-protects-persian-gulf-arabs-from-iran?srnd=opinion&sref=tp95wk9l

The high-tech Digital Ocean deployment in Middle Eastern waters needs to be coupled with an update of the 50-year-old Carter Doctrine.

For more than a decade, Washington’s Arab partners in the Persian Gulf have feared that the US is slowly abandoning the region. This view ignores strong evidence that the American security commitment remains high, even given the recent US-Saudi Arabia quarreling over oil prices. Nonetheless, the 50-year-old Carter Doctrine, the basis of the US security commitment in the Gulf region, needs to be updated and reaffirmed.

The 1980 Doctrine held that the US would intervene to prevent any outside force from gaining control of the region. It was understood this included repelling any assaults on Gulf Arab states, such as the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.

But the specter of tank columns rolling through the desert isn’t the stuff of 21st century Gulf security nightmares. Concern now focuses on precision-guided missile, rocket and drone attacks; assaults by nonstate actors and terrorist groups; and “gray zone warfare” including cyberattacks and new forms of sophisticated sabotage.

Because of setbacks such as President Barack Obama’s failure to enforce his 2012 “red line” against the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian dictatorship, and President Donald Trump’s refusal to respond to the 2019 Iranian missile attack on Saudi Aramco facilities, Washington’s Gulf partners no longer know what would trigger US action.

President Joe Biden’s administration seems to be taking its security role in the Gulf more seriously. This month, after Saudi Arabia discovered credible threats of an imminent Iranian missile and/or drone attack, US fighter jets were scrambled and flew near Iran in an aggressive show of deterrence. A National Security Council spokesman flatly declared, “We will not hesitate to act in the defense of our interests and partners in the region.”

This decisive action ought to have received more attention than it did in the region. Even less appreciated is a massive new effort in maritime security being pioneered by the US in the Gulf, the Arabian Sea and adjacent waters.

To secure the flow of energy and commercial shipping, as well as for general maritime security, the US is developing and deploying a cutting-edge surveillance system known as Digital Ocean. In particular, it will help protect the three crucial Middle Eastern maritime choke points: the Suez Canal, Bab el-Mandab at the mouth of the Red Sea, and the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf

Led by the Fifth Fleet’s Task Force 59, this operation integrates underwater, aerial and — thanks to recent breakthroughs in technology — surface unmanned systems, all in real-time coordination. Artificial intelligence assesses the information gathered by cameras, radar and other sensors to create a three-dimensional, constantly updated surveillance picture of all vessels operating in vast marine areas. When AI systems detect anything unusual or inexplicable, the information is shared immediately and further investigated by other drones and evaluated by humans. The US systems are controlled by operators in California and linked by satellite.

While the US is spearheading the effort, it isn’t sailing solo. According to Admiral Brad Cooper, commander of the Fifth Fleet, the goal is to have 100 unmanned surface vessels patrolling Gulf waters by the end of summer 2023, 20% from the US and 80% from regional and international partners. It’s precisely the kind of security development that demonstrates not just the depth of US commitment to the region but also the willingness of allies to share the burden.

Eventually, the system will be used in sensitive waterways around the world. But the fact that it is being introduced first in the Gulf is a clear demonstration of the US seriousness about regional security. Yet, despite these enormous political implications, Digital Ocean remains largely unknown to the local public, and largely unrecognized by analysts and opinion leaders who regularly criticize Washington for supposedly turning its back on the region to focus on China and the Pacific.

US willingness to stand up to Iran this month was a reassuring immediate response to an imminent threat. But Washington should also look at the longer term — by clarifying exactly how the Carter Doctrine functions in the 21st century, and what types of threats would trigger US military responses. Saudi Arabia and its neighbors need to know when, exactly, the US will step in to defend them.

Updating the Carter Doctrine, along with long-term deterrence efforts like Digital Ocean, would thoroughly debunk the dangerous misapprehension that the US is withdrawing from the Middle East and abandoning its Gulf Arab partners.

https://www.thenationalnews.com/opinion/comment/2022/11/15/can-desantis-loosen-trumps-vice-like-grip-on-the-republican-party/

The Florida governor’s re-election has encouraged some party members to break ranks, but the former president isn’t done yet.

When Kari Lake, the most Trumpian of all of Donald Trump’s anointed candidates in this year’s midterm elections, went down to defeat for Arizona governor, it was the final straw. Although Democrats wildly outperformed expectations, the real story of the midterms is more complicated and answers several questions about the state of US politics.

The elections were not a disaster for Republicans in general, although they are hugely disappointed. It was a great year for the incumbents of both parties, few of whom lost. Instead, it was Mr Trump’s candidates who, with a few exceptions such as Ohio Senator-elect JD Vance, were almost systematically rejected by the voters.

Since his Republican presidential nomination in 2016, an open question was whether his norm-smashing style could successfully transfer to other Trump-influenced Republican candidates. We now have a resounding answer: no. On the contrary, close association with Mr Trump and mimicking his approach – even when near-flawlessly as Ms Lake, a former newsreader who tosses out insults and threats as casually as the former president – proved a recipe for electoral disaster.

Republicans in general, especially party leaders, are on notice that the swing voters who decide most US elections, not to mention Democrats, want no part of Mr Trump’s style and agenda, in particular election denial and opposition to democracy. The Republican Party went into the midterms with a large batch of newly minted candidates trumpeting those messages, along with barely concealed or even open support for the January 6 insurgency, and it resulted in a nearly unbroken string of otherwise totally avoidable defeats in a year of near-perfect conditions for the opposition party.

In these pages in August, I wrote that “Americans are going to have to decide if they really want good government or a good show”. In many ways, these midterm elections tested precisely that. It was largely a choice between the performative, professional wrestling-style Trumpian version of Republican politics versus two versions of governance. When Trumpian candidates faced Democratic representatives running on President Joe Biden’s remarkably successful first two years, the Democrats almost always won. But it’s also highly significant that Republicans who distanced themselves from Mr Trump and who are still concerned with governance often had no trouble winning. Contrast re-elected governor Brian Kemp and Herschel Walker, who faces a daunting runoff for Senate, in Georgia.

The key divergence wasn’t between liberals and conservatives, but between actual politicians versus performative pranksters. Most Americans, and particularly the crucial independent voters in swing states, didn’t respond well to histrionic extremists declaring war on democratic norms and traditions.

Many potential crises were avoided. There was no systematic voter intimidation or suppression, no significant violence or confrontations, and almost all of the extremist election deniers did what their leader would not: they almost all conceded, often graciously. The American culture of democracy appears alive and well.

However, much of the Republican Party, and certainly Mr Trump’s apparently still ardent base, really does want an endless pro-wrestling spectacle. That tends to drive performers to ever more outrageous and bizarre spectacles, which are, in turn, rewarded. That’s why the most offensive and ridiculous member of Congress, Georgia freshman Marjorie Taylor Greene, has been propelled in a mere two years into virtually overnight de facto leadership within the Republican ranks in the House of Representatives.

With Mr Trump’s weakness having been demonstrated as never before, increasing numbers of Republicans are, naturally, open to an alternative leader. It has, after all, become clear that in addition to historical patterns strongly favouring Mr Biden’s re-election in 2024, if Mr Trump is his opponent, in all likelihood the incumbent will calmly cruise to an easy, and almost effortless, victory.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who was just re-elected in a massive landslide and helped to lead other Republicans in his state to major victories, has solidified his position as the most likely challenger. This is not just because he looks like a proven winner while Mr Trump increasingly looks like a compulsive loser who stumbled into a gigantic fluke victory in 2016. It’s also because the Florida governor has pursued a mixture of serious, though often dangerous, policies and the performative posturing that the base adores.

Mr Trump is clearly worried. He has taken to referring to Mr DeSantis as “Ron DeSanctimonious”, clearly a reference to a bizarre TV advertisement about God creating “a fighter” – the Florida governor – on the non-existent eighth day of one of the Biblical creation myths.

Mr Trump threatened to ruin Mr DeSantis by revealing damaging secrets if he dares to run against him, saying: “If he did run, I will tell you things about him that won’t be very flattering. I know more about him than anybody other than perhaps his wife.” The former president also claims that he sent FBI and other federal agents to Florida during the 2018 gubernatorial election to “stop ballot theft” and stop Mr DeSantis’s eventual victory “from being stolen”. Any such action, for which there is absolutely no evidence, may well have been extra-legal if not completely unlawful, and the Justice Department and other relevant officials flatly deny anything of the kind took place.

His daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, issued a similarly veiled threat against Mr DeSantis, saying that because primaries get “very messy” and “very raw”, it would be “nicer for him” to wait until 2028 for a presidential bid. With a final twist of the knife in this remarkably soft-peddled threat, she added with a sweet smile “and I think he knows this”.

Mr DeSantis is entirely untested at the national level and his own overtly authoritarian performance in Florida, and his culture warrior stylings, both suggest that he may not be the curative Republicans require if he does aim for the White House.

Meanwhile, there’s no indication that the Republican base has reconsidered its cult-like devotion to Mr Trump, who is expected to announce another presidential campaign on Tuesday. Just as his acolytes – almost all of whom were defeated in the general election – dominated the midterm primaries, Mr Trump will most likely get nominated again if he wants to. If he somehow doesn’t, he can run as an independent, probably destroying the chances of any other Republican nominee.

Republicans are on notice that their leader and his politics are toxic. Yet, they didn’t break with him over the Access Hollywood video, the Charlottesville white supremacy riot, racist and anti-Semitic remarks, efforts to blackmail Ukraine, or even his plot to overturn the 2020 election, including the January 6 insurgency. Even this tsunami of midterm defeats might not prove enough to break Mr Trump’s grip on the Republican Party.

https://www.thenationalnews.com/opinion/comment/2022/11/10/has-american-democracy-begun-to-turn-a-corner/

The midterms have shown many swing voters value centrism over extremism, particularly of the kind fuelled by Trump.

The Tuesday night midterm election was arguably the best news American democracy has had since 2016. Republicans underperformed spectacularly even though they seem headed toward a narrow House of Representatives majority. And Democrats might pull off the near miracle of not losing, or even gaining, seats in the Senate during the first midterm of a new presidency and under the current dire conditions.

But the key takeaway is that on aggregate, with some exceptions, Americans largely rejected the most dangerous forces in their midst:Donald Trump-inspired extremism in general and election denialism in particular.

This is specifically true in several key swing states where Republicans supporting the former president were attempting to win offices that oversee elections and adjudicate results. These candidates insist that the 2020 election was somehow stolen, Joe Biden is an illegitimate president, and claim that state officials, agencies or legislatures can overrule the voters and determine the outcome of elections no matter the actual result (we shall return to this idea below).

Ali Alexander, a leader of the 2020 insurrection, explained it bluntly: “Any election I don’t like is stolen. If I like it, it’s not stolen.” This unconditionally self-serving attitude was also articulated by Mr Trump, saying if the candidates he backed in the midterms “win, I should get all the credit, and if they lose, I should not be blamed at all”.

It’s the ethos of heads I win, tails you lose.

Unfortunately for Mr Trump, but very fortunately for the country, many of the worst midterm candidates embracing this sensibility he foisted on the Republican Party were trounced, while other Republicans had a much better night.

Among his more significant failures was the defeat of celebrity physician Mehmet Oz by Pennsylvania Lt Gov John Fetterman, which flipped a vital Senate seat to the Democrats. Dr Oz would have been the first Muslim-American senator, and neither Mr Fetterman nor other Democrats engaged in Islamophobic bashing (though they challenged his patriotism by noting that he served in the Turkish military and voted in its elections). By contrast, the amount and intensity of anti-Muslim bigotry that would’ve been unleashed on Dr Oz by Republicans had he run as a Democrat is terrifying to imagine.

Former football star Herschel Walker failed to win in traditionally Republican Georgia, and faces a Senate run-off in December against a well-positioned Rafael Warnock. Depending on other outcomes, that might maintain the 50-50 Senate and, with the vice-presidential tiebreaker, Democratic control. Blake Masters appears set to lose to Mark Kelly in the Arizona Senate contest. Tudor Dixon and Kristina Karamo lost in Michigan for governor and secretary of state respectively, which will have a unified Democratic state government for the first time in 40 years.

Democrats also performed strongly in state elections in Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Massachusetts and, at time of writing, it would appear also in Arizona and Nevada, which are still tabulating results. Kari Lake, a former newsreader known as “Trump in a dress,” is surprisingly still trailing her strikingly lackluster opponent, Katie Hobbs, for Arizona governor.

So, under near-perfect conditions when historical patterns, the worst inflation since the 1970s, a potential recession, rising crime rates and an unpopular president all pointed to overwhelming Republican success, Mr Trump’s wing of the party, with its open opposition to democratic elections, largely could not deliver. JD Vance was elected to the Senate in Ohio, and some other Trump acolytes won, but many more were soundly rejected by voters. 

The predicted “red wave” of overwhelming Republican victories did happen, but only in Florida. Governor Ron DeSantis and Senator Marco Rubio resoundingly trounced two excellent Democratic opponents, former governor Charlie Crist and Representative Val Demings.

The forgettable night for Mr Trump could hardly have been better for Mr DeSantis. Mr Trump lost the popular vote in 2016, the House in 2018, the popular and electoral college votes in 2020, the Senate in 2001, and has now authored the 2022 fiasco. Mr DeSantis lacks the former president’s mesmeric hold on his base, but he looks very much like a winner while Mr Trump has amassed an extraordinary record as a loser for both himself and the party.

He was reportedly planning a grandiose re-election campaign announcement on the assumption that Republicans would have a spectacular night – which by all rights they should, largely if not for him – and take credit for that as the springboard for his own magnificent comeback.

So much for that.

Mr Trump will surely announce a presidential run anyway, because he needs whatever informal protection political candidacy might afford him in pending criminal cases, particularly regarding classified documents he appears to have unlawfully pilfered and concealed from the government involving possible obstruction of justice.

Pressure on Attorney General Merrick Garland not to criminally charge him will be somewhat eased because he’s no longer the incontestable leader of the opposition party. Besides, Democrats must now be salivating at the prospect of another Republican nomination of Mr Trump.

Voters said their number one midterm issue was inflation, but it was closely followed by abortion rights and protecting democracy. A key swing and independent constituency seems to be sending a message to both parties that it values and rewards centrism on both sides (most data suggests the majority is essentially centre-left, though the political system structurally privileges the right), rejects anti-democratic, anti-election extremism, and – with many voters “ticket-splitting”, voting for Democratic and Republican candidates for different offices on the same ballot – is sometimes willing to vote for candidates rather than parties.

Ironically, the next threat to democracy could come from the Supreme Court, which could soon endorse the once-fringe “independent state legislature doctrine”. It holds that the Constitution authorises state legislatures to control elections without any recourse or restraint. That could allow them to reshape election rules and procedures to produce whatever outcome they like.

If that sounds a lot like the wacky theories posited by election deniers described above, that’s because it is. Four justices have already expressed sympathy with aspects of this dangerous idea.

American democracy is still under serious threat. But it just passed a major stress test surprisingly well, as a crucial guardrail – the much-maligned voters – unexpectedly popped up in front of the anti-elections faction, causing it to careen, crash and burn. American democracy may have finally started to turn a corner towards safety.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-11-09/netanyahu-win-and-new-intifada-may-bring-west-bank-annexation?srnd=opinion&sref=tp95wk9l

This isn’t just another right-wing Israeli government, but may include extremists who want to expel all Palestinians from the occupied territories.

Israel’s election last week brought former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu into power yet again, but it’s hardly a case of the same old thing. First, it will usher in the most chauvinistic and religious government in the country’s history. Second, it occurs just as violence has been spiking in the occupied West Bank in ways not seen in decades.

Worst case scenario: a spiraling cycle of Palestinian insurgency and Israeli suppression not just in the occupied territories, but spilling into Israel itself. If that happens, Israeli annexation of the West Bank becomes not just a possibility but perhaps inevitable.

A low-level insurgency, although not quite a third intifada (uprising), has been brewing this year among Palestinians. It’s being driven by gangs of armed youths not affiliated with Fatah, Hamas or other established Palestinian movements. It’s a deadly mix, combining the spontaneous, leaderless quality of the first intifada, which began in 1987, with the armed nature of the second in 2000.

Israel’s response has been sustained, violent repression. The United Nations reported last month that 2022 has been the deadliest year for West Bank Palestinians since it started tracking in 2005. More than 30 people, including six children, have been killed by Israeli occupation forces, and 311 were injured. The Israeli government claims there have been 4,000 attacks aimed at Israelis, with two soldiers killed and 25 Jewish civilians injured.

Among the victims of the violence was the Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. The Israelis initially denied responsibility for the killing, which set off global outrage. They now say she was shot by accident, although Palestinians’ skepticism is amply justified.

Now into the caldron come some of the most extreme Jewish nationalists ever to hold office.

Itamar Ben-Gvir, who hopes to oversee the police and security forces, leads a party whose platform vows to annex “all parts of Eretz Israel” — meaning Greater Israel — “liberated in the Six-Day War” in 1967. It would also expel all “enemies of Israel,” a euphemism for Palestinians suffering under occupation, to neighboring Arab countries. Ben-Gvir has hung a portrait of Baruch Goldstein, the Israeli American doctor who massacred 29 Palestinians in Hebron in 1994, in his living room.

His far-right compatriot Bezalel Smotrich, who seeks a role overseeing the occupation of the West Bank, has called for the segregation of Jewish and Arab maternity wards. Significantly, he wants governance of West Bank settlement areas taken away from the Israel Defense Forces and given to government ministries, a major step toward annexation.

Smotrich and Ben-Gvir aren’t outliers — they are simply the most extreme additions to an already radicalized Israeli politics that has long given up on a two-state solution and is drifting toward permanent occupation of much or all of the West Bank.

A major explosion of violence would provide the opportunity for an extreme Israeli government to say that annexation is a painful necessity needed to protect “Jewish communities” — i.e., illegal Israeli settlements — from dire threats. Large numbers of Palestinians may again be expelled, as they were in 1947-48 and 1967. The logical consequence is the unilateral imposition of a new border, with Israel consolidating control over land it conquered in the 1967 war.

It may not happen anytime soon, but the new cabinet will certainly drive dynamics in that direction. And just as they will push Jewish power deeper into the West Bank centrifugally, Israeli extremists are likely to pull aspects of the occupation back into Israel itself in a centripetal manner.

Ben-Gvir and his colleagues view Israeli Arabs with the same degree of suspicion they apply to Palestinians living under occupation. His vow to expel everyone not loyal to the Israeli state, as he would define it, may well apply to a significant percentage of Arab citizens.

Moreover, these parties want to use the power of the Israeli government to bring the religious sensibility of the most radical settlements into the largely secular towns and cities where most Israelis live, far from the West Bank. They want Israel to become in effect a theocracy, governed by Jewish religious law, or Halakha.

The one thing that might convince Netanyahu to dump Ben Gvir and the other extremists, and replace them with people like Defense Minister Benny Gantz — a hardliner on security but not a religious extremist — would be for the state to drop his ongoing corruption trial.

Yes, that would be a perversion of justice, but as long as he faces the prospect of conviction, Netanyahu will use the anti-establishment religious radicals as a shield against prosecution. If the charges were dropped, Israel, and the world, might get a less radical Netanyahu-led cabinet.

Even in that “optimistic” scenario, nothing can cancel out the alarmingly strong performance of the religious ultra-right and diehard annexationist parties. Most worrisome, their support is strongest among Jewish youth, suggesting a generational shift in their direction.

A massive crackdown in the West Bank could transform the simmering low-level insurgency into another major Palestinian uprising. If that happens, all bets are off about what this new, more extreme and religious Israel might be willing to do.

https://www.thenationalnews.com/opinion/comment/2022/11/08/is-musk-demolishing-twitter-as-a-de-facto-public-square/

He might be flailing or trying to win points with the Twitter-hating US right and Chinese government.

Before Elon Musk purchased Twitter for $44 billion on October 7, the company undoubtedly had big problems. But instead of carefully nursing the wounded blue bird back to health, he wasted no time in snapping its neck and having it plucked, trussed and garnished with foie gras. The world’s richest man is now gobbling up what has been the main way experts, professionals, journalists, activists and others share information and ideas in public.

Twitter’s ousted executives were escorted out of the building by security. Mr Musk fired about half of its staff. Many employees were told that the next morning they would receive an email. If it came to their private account, they were sacked. If it came to their company account, they were reprieved. It’s hard to imagine a more cruel, bizarre, and seemingly random, process.

Some sacked employees have already been asked to return, as many of Mr Musk’s proposed projects turn out to be already or nearly completed by fired engineers.

Teams tasked with human rights, artificial intelligence ethics, accessibility, curation, public policy, and combating misinformation and disinformation were simply eliminated on the eve of the crucial November 8 US midterm elections.

Twitter has vitally functioned as a forum for information and ideas based on knowledge and expertise. Yet it never found a way to effectively avoid being also used to spread misinformation and disinformation.

Twitter’s teams helping to protect the public from malicious deception are largely eliminated, and the most important guardrail, the blue check identity verification label, looks like it could turn into a serious public menace.

Mr Musk claims to be a champion of free speech, but his attitudes became all too clear a few days after his takeover. A right-wing fanatic driven by QAnon conspiracy delusions broke into the San Francisco home of the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, at 2am with the intention of kidnapping and torturing her. Finding only her 82-year-old husband, Paul Pelosi, at home, the intruder attacked him with a hammer and fractured his skull.

Mr Musk’s reaction to this appalling crime was to respond to a tweet by former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton by promoting and linking to a preposterous story that suggested Mr Pelosi was engaged in a drunken sexual encounter gone wrong with a male prostitute. The source was a notorious purveyor of absurd disinformation that once claimed Mrs Clinton had died and Democrats sent a body double of her to debate Donald Trump in 2016.

Mr Musk eventually deleted his inexcusable tweet that promoted a particularly vile and indecent conspiracy theory, but it reveals much about his sense of propriety, his notion of what freedom of speech means in practice, and his apparent lack of basic human decency.

For whatever reason, by destroying the blue check identity verification system, Mr Musk appears to be demolishing Twitter as a de facto public square for journalists, intellectuals, activists and others with genuine knowledge to exchange information and ideas rapidly and efficiently. This is what has made Twitter so powerful and useful for reality-based constituencies in the West and human rights and pro-democracy activists in authoritarian countries, as well as a source of real-time information that is invaluable for the public during disasters, elections and so on.

That system rested on the blue checks that Twitter developed in 2009 to confirm the identity of users involved in government, journalism, sports and entertainment, activism and other publicly relevant content. It crucially allowed readers to know who was saying what. Many notable users don’t have blue checks, but their identities became well-established, and some important accounts relied on anonymity for various legitimate purposes, including avoiding repression.

Yet the blue checks crucially established real trustworthiness in an otherwise wild west of fake identities, dangerous misinformation and poisonous disinformation. Now instead of verifying identity, the blue check will verify payment. It could be a field day for the likes of the Russian Internet Research Agency with its disinformation-spreading trolls and bots, many that have reportedly just been reactivated. Meanwhile, the use of racist terms has skyrocketed on Twitter.

For $8 a month anyone can purchase a blue check for any account, under any identity. All that will be verified is that Mr Musk has received payment. He insists he won’t allow impersonations, but without verification, that is seemingly impossible.

Meanwhile, verified users who do not pay up face elimination of their verification. Mr Musk warns that payment resisters will find their postings downgraded and, he adds with a chuckle, you’ll have to “scroll really far” to find them as those from paid up accounts are promoted aggressively by algorithms. His slogan is “power to the people” but it’s really “stand and deliver”.

He’s basically asking Iranian protesters, for instance, to cough up $8 for every account or find their tweets suppressed.

But why immediately target the one feature that made Twitter socially and politically valuable and intellectually vibrant, despite the bots and trolls? Perhaps this really is the only thing he could think of to make money.

But maybe he is trying to aid his other companies with two constituencies that have made their resentment of blue-check Twitter clear: the American right-wing and the Chinese government. This mystifying virtual vandalism makes some sense if Mr Musk hopes he will ultimately be rewarded by Twitter-hating political forces in the world’s two most powerful countries and biggest markets by purchasing the closest thing to an international shared public space and essentially unravelling its processes and strengths.

His new policy will apparently allow anyone to pay $8 and establish an apparently credible account mimicking a vital public agency, government or police department, or major news source, and get to work spreading dangerous disinformation.

During a natural disaster, election, ongoing terrorist attack or any number of other scenarios, users will no longer be able to trust what they see on Twitter, because there will be no verification. It is hard to overstate the recklessness of this move, given how much people have come to rely on Twitter for crucial real-time information.

Mr Musk’s motivations are not clear. But he is driving a gigantic bulldozer through the centre of what, for over a decade, has served as a de facto worldwide town square.

This is not just an instance of billionaires behaving badly. It has all the makings of a global tragedy.