US Army General Curtis Scaparrotti, the commander of NATO forces in Europe, says Russia practises "indirect" activity below the level of conflict AFP/File / JIM WATSON
NATO countries are working to determine when a cyber attack would trigger the collective defense provision in the alliance's charter, a US general said on Thursday.
The alliance is "dealing with the issue around this and in cyber and working to define an understanding of what would be a trigger for Article 5," General Curtis Scaparrotti, the commander of NATO forces in Europe, told a US Senate committee.
It "recognizes the difficulty in indirect or asymmetric activity that Russia is practising, activities below the level of conflict," Scaparrotti said.
Moscow operates "in a fashion that would be ambiguous, it would be most difficult to come to... a decision," he said.
NATO leaders have agreed that a cyber attack against a member state could trigger Article 5, and reaching a specific understanding on the issue would allow "greater agility, greater flexibility in determining how to respond," he said.
Sameh Makki's soup kitchen is barely 100 metres from the market, but it can take two hours to make the journey through Sudan's war-torn streets, often through hails of bullets.
The 43-year-old, his family and local volunteers have risked everything to get supplies to feed around 150 families caught in the crossfire between the army and paramilitaries.
"The only thing that matters is that people eat. If I had died while making that happen, so be it," said Makki.
Since the war began last April between the army of General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) of his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, tens of thousands have died and millions more have been forced to flee their homes.
Initiatives like Makki's are some of the only ways that people survive as the impoverished country hangs on the verge of famine.
Makki fled to Egypt to get medical care for his daughter and left the soup kitchen in the care of his mother and young volunteers from the neighbourhood.
Like many of his compatriots, he now coordinates donations from the Sudanese diaspora to send back to those trying to survive the fighting.
- Frontline for aid -
Shortly after the conflict's first shots rang out, young people began volunteering to cook in their homes, volunteer coordinator Abdel Ghaffar Omar told AFP in Cairo.
The idea quickly spread and hundreds of self-funded "community kitchens" popped up across the country.
They were able to use grassroots neighbourhood youth groups called "resistance committees" that had previously organised pro-democracy protests and helped coordinate the Covid-19 response.
When war erupted, the committees created Emergency Response Rooms (ERRs) to provide civilians in the line of fire with healthcare, evacuation help and food aid.
Most ERRs run their own kitchens, others help with coordination and funding.
International aid groups call them the frontline of Sudan's humanitarian response and the United Nations has said ERRs have helped over four million civilians across Sudan.
Several volunteers told AFP the kitchens serve anywhere from a few dozen to 200 families each day.
In the capital alone, tens of thousands rely on ERRs for daily meals, consisting mainly of rice, beans, lentils and the occasional animal protein.
- 'We have to smuggle' -
Volunteers like Makki were occasionally able to broadcast mealtimes from the local mosque in Omdurman, Khartoum's twin city.
The situation is starkly different just across the River Nile in Khartoum North, also known as Bahri, which has been under siege for nearly a year.
"The army thinks of Bahri as an RSF stronghold, and treats anything going in like RSF supplies," one activist told AFP, requesting anonymity in order not to compromise his work.
"We basically have to smuggle our stuff in."
Volunteers go door-to-door delivering every ration, but the streets of Bahri are filled with paramilitary fighters known for looting life-saving aid.
"Carrying large quantities of food draws attention," ERR Bahri volunteer Mahmoud Mokhtar told AFP in Cairo.
"If the army catches you, they say you're smuggling for the RSF, if the RSF catches you they call you an army spy."
When asked if he has lost comrades in the line of duty, Mokhtar's eyes quickly filled with tears.
"People have been killed and raped and assaulted and detained and beaten and taken away for months at a time, we're used to it," he said.
There is no official count for how many activists and volunteers both sides have targeted, but ERRs and the doctors' union regularly post obituaries for civilians killed while providing life-saving assistance.
"The kitchens themselves have been repeatedly shelled by both sides," according to Mokhtar.
- 'If we stop, we starve' -
According to several volunteers, kitchens usually only have about two weeks of supplies at best.
"They're always terrified their stocks could run out," said Omar, the volunteer coordinator.
In February, a communications blackout crippled the online banking app that Sudanese rely on, forcing every community kitchen in Bahri shut down.
Although around half have since come back to life, according to Omar, communications are not yet fully restored in the greater Khartoum area.
Volunteers are instead travelling hours to get an internet connection so they can access their money.
"One guy had nine phones of his neighbours, who trusted him with their mobile banking apps to get their own money back to them," said Makki.
Despite all the hardships, though, the volunteers are determined to carry on.
"We have no choice but to continue," said Mokhtar.
Increased spending combined with a reluctance to raise taxes has led to a push to find new sources of revenue. That makes sports betting an appealing option to politicians.
If gamblers bet around $3 billion on March Madness, then states will pocket over $50 million dollars in extra revenue just from a three-week basketball tournament.
Studies suggest between 1% and 2% of adults fall into this category. In Massachusetts, where I teach, a 2018 survey found that about 2% of adults were already problem gamblers, and a further 8% were at risk.
Betting on sports was illegal before 2018. This forced gamblers to either bet with a bookie or an offshore site. Betting with a bookie before 2018 was a relatively slow process. Gamblers typically needed to pay for their bets upfront with cash and ran the risk their bookie would be arrested or shut down.
Today, in-play or live betting is legal and almost instantaneous. Bettors sitting on their couches at home can make multiple types of bets, such as which player will make the first shot in a basketball game. In business terms, sports gambling went from extreme friction to a completely frictionless experience.
To reduce the harms of sports betting, I propose two ways to reinject friction into the system. The first is to prevent credit cards from being used for online gambling. While not every state and bank allows credit cards to fund a sports betting account, many do. Those credit cards that allow it often treat gambling payments as a cash advance, which is very costly.
The second idea, which I prefer, is to revert to common practice before 2018 of using cash to bet. The idea is simple. Anyone with an online gambling account would need to prefund their account with cash. Winners would never have to stop gambling.
In this 2006 file photo, the Brooklyn district attorney’s office presents evidence used to arrest 10 men in a sports betting ring. New Yorkers can now legally bet on March Madness.
Losers, however, would be forced to temporarily stop betting when their account runs out of money. Needing to take a break to go to a bank or simply pull money out of your wallet and hand it to someone would give people a chance to think about what they’re doing instead of being stuck in the moment of a bet-bet-bet mindset.
It’s an uncomfortable truth: Jon Stewart and Donald Trump both tapped the same well of latent public disaffection with politics and the media in the 2000s. Trust in media and government had been declining for several decades. But the symbiotic relationship between the White House and the press during the Iraq War highlighted the dangers of a lap dog press.
It was against this backdrop that Stewart and Trump used their positions outside the fray to ally themselves with their audiences and draw pointed contrasts with the artifice of postmodern politics. But they did this – and continue to do this – in opposing ways.
Trump lashes out when politicians and journalists bring us closer to truth. Stewart criticizes them for keeping us in the dark. To Stewart, the solutions to America’s political spectacle are political accountability and increased transparency. To Trump, the solution is far simpler: He alone can fix it.
During the George W. Bush years, Stewart perfected the art of ironic satire, playfully critiquing politicians, the press and the public, while implying something better was possible.
He feigned incredulity as he critiqued the Bush administration’s political hypocrisy and cynical invocation of Sept. 11 in its justification for the Iraq War.
Stewart used irony to describe failures of American policy as though they were fabulous successes. Like on July 16, 2007, when he said enthusiastically, “As you know, we are now entering our fifth year of making … very good progress in Iraq. Obviously the president defining ‘progress’ now as ‘moving forward in time.’” Stewart invited his young, politically interested, liberal/moderate audience to conclude the opposite: “Things should not be this way, and we deserve better.”
Around the same time, Trump was also criticizing Bush, but through hyperbole and outrage rather than ironic satire. In 2007, he told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that “everything in Washington has been a lie. Weapons of mass destruction – it was a total lie. It was a way of attacking Iraq.”
Trump’s critiques of the press echo an authoritarian perspective, too. When Trump lambastes the press as “fake news,” it is in response to negative coverage of himself or fact checks of his own false statements.
To Stewart, though, journalism’s failures are not ideological or personal, but professional. He criticizes them for not getting us closer to the truth. He has critiqued how journalists leave political spin uninterrogated, give time to “both sides” and “leave the conversation there,” even when one side is demonstrably wrong. He has criticized politicians’ reliance on communications professionals who obfuscate the truth to get more favorable coverage.
Stewart’s new old role
Though a political outsider two decades ago, Stewart now finds himself inside the political and media institutions whose roles include making the public aware of – and thus safeguarding them from – the antidemocratic and destabilizing forces of populist authoritarians like Trump.
Since Stewart’s return to “The Daily Show” after his 2015 departure, he has interviewed democracy expert Steven Levitsky on ways to protect democracy, journalist Jonathan Blitzer about the complex forces shaping U.S. immigration policy, Middle East-focused journalists Murtaza Hussain and Yair Rosenberg on Israel’s war in Gaza, and legal scholars Melissa Murray and Kate Shaw on Trump’s efforts to avoid prosecution.
Jon Stewart does a segment on freedom of the press, cued to Donald Trump saying he would jail certain journalists.
Through these conversations, Stewart showcases guests who espouse a pluralistic liberal vision of democracy. And through his satire, Stewart himself shows that democratic institutions and processes may be messy, but their ability to protect the will and liberty of the people makes them indispensable.
Or, as Stewart said in a February episode, “The difference between America’s urinal-caked chaotic subways and Russia’s candelabra’d beautiful subways is the literal price of freedom.”
Stewart explained his 2024 return to “The Daily Show” as wanting to “have some kind of place to unload thoughts as we get into this election season.”
But having studied the content and effects of political satire since Stewart became “The Daily Show” host in 1999, I see his return as evidence he recognizes the protective role he can play for American democracy. Because even if ironic satire isn’t great at persuading people to change their minds, research shows it does subtly shape how we think about and engage with our political world.
When satirists cover an issue, viewers become more likely to see that issue as important. Satire also shapes how people think about politicians and issues. In the early 2000s, I conducted a series of studies that revealed that exposure to jokes about presidential candidates provided study participants with criteria they then used to evaluate those candidates – like Al Gore’s lack of charisma or George W. Bush’s lack of intellect or performance on Iraq. And when study participants didn’t have a lot of political knowledge, satire helped them fill in the gaps.
Satire encourages audiences to pay attention and discuss politics in new ways, motivating them to seek out other information or talk about politics with friends. And even though satirists like Stewart may be critical of journalism, their programs highlight the importance of an independent press to a democratic society, increasing viewers’ perceptions of the importance of news.
There’s always a role for the satirist
Because Trump’s rhetoric is so explicit and outrageous, some have suggested it may rob satirists of the ability to deconstruct his messaging. But despite its explicitness, there is still a lot that authoritarian populists like Trump don’t ever say.
This is where satirists like Stewart can help fill in the gaps: By juxtaposing populist authoritarians’ glittering generalities with the ugly reality of life under authoritarianism.
For example, in a recent episode of “The Daily Show,” Stewart deconstructed Tucker Carlson’s interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Carlson’s glowing reviews of Russia’s grocery stores and sparkling subway system.
“Perhaps if your handlers had allowed,” Stewart says as though addressing Carlson, “you would have seen there is a hidden fee to your cheap groceries and orderly streets. Ask likely assassinated opposition leader Alexei Navalny or any of his supporters.”
In a 2021 discussion on CNN about American democracy, Stewart lamented Democrats’ endless hand-wringing over Trump’s threat to democracy. Instead, Stewart proposed: “Action is the antithesis of anxiety.”
What we see in Stewart’s return is him reminding us that American democracy is never done. It takes constant action.
Stewart may still be “a tiny, neurotic man,” but far from throwing tomatoes at the chalkboard, now he’s standing tall in front of the class, and school is in session.