LCCC ENGLISH DAILY NEWS BULLETIN
February 12/2018
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani

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Why Are European Governments So Terrified of 'Fake News'?
Judith Bergman/Gatestone Institute/February 11/18
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/11830/europe-governments-fake-news
When Swedish authorities representing a Swedish left-wing government and media announce a project to prevent "fake news" from "decisively influencing" the 2018 elections, this ought to set off loud alarm bells among Swedes. Who determines what constitutes "fake news" anyway? Is it not the very essence of "fake news" when a media outlet refuses to report mass sexual assaults, because the perpetrators happen to be foreigners from third world countries?
A British Cabinet Office spokesperson told Sky News: "The Government is committed to tackling false information and the Government Communications Service plays a crucial role in this". Perhaps their "rapid response fake news unit" should begin with Theresa May herself, who falsely and against all factual evidence continues to claim that Islam is a religion of peace and that ISIS is not Islamic.
Meanwhile, European citizens continue to face costly legal prosecution for refusing to accept the fake news about Islam propagated by people such as Theresa May.
"I also thought that Islam was just a normal religion, but then I read the Koran and became shocked by the hatred that exists there, the misogyny... The more Islam takes over, the more we compromise. Islam is a totalitarian ideology, which means dictatorship. So, I believe that our democratic system is in danger... I hate no people. What I hate is ideology, Islam. One can criticize fascism or Nazism, but why not Islam? Why should Islam have any protection status?" — Denny, on trial in Sweden for "incitement to hatred" for calling Islam "a fascist ideology" on Facebook. If found guilty, he faces up to two years in prison.
The Swedish government's innovation agency, Vinnova, is financing a project led by the combined forces of Swedish mainstream media to, in the words of Vinnova, "prevent fake news and unfounded statements from spreading and playing a decisive role in the Swedish elections in 2018". The next elections, which take place every four years, are scheduled to take place on September 9, 2018. The Swedish media giants involved in the project consist of Swedish State Television, Swedish State Radio, Bonnier, Schibsted Sverige, and NTM. Together, these media companies effectively own Swedish mainstream media in the form of newspapers, online news outlets, and state and private television and radio. The Swedish state is financing the technical aspects of the project with 1.9 million Swedish kroner ($240,000), while the Swedish mainstream media is financing the remaining project costs themselves. The "fake news" project was originally launched in October 2017.
According to Maria Rimpi, chief editor of Svenska Dagbladet, one of the main Swedish mainstream newspapers:
"There are several successful examples of editors who have collaborated on fact-finding in different parts of Europe. As a result, the people in the steering group, who have great faith in each other, began to discuss whether we can do something similar in Sweden.
"We have seen how false statements and apparent news have been widely spread and influenced elections in other countries. To go into the depths of an assertion, and, for example, trace sources of origin, are very resource-intensive. Through this collaboration, more voters can access correct information".
How adorable that Swedish media, which has been going out of its way to conceal and beautify news about Sweden – migrant rapes and other crimes, for example -- in its news coverage, suddenly and conveniently in election season, pretends to care about whether Swedish voters can access correct information. Correct information has not exactly been a priority until now: Swedish media never reports the ethnicity of rapists, for example, thereby not only making it harder for the public to help locate the perpetrators, but also refusing to depict reality as it is. Swedish media has even covered up entire news stories in order to protect migrants: In 2015, there were widespread sexual assaults by young men, mainly from Afghanistan and Syria, at a music festival in Stockholm. One of the largest Swedish newspapers, Dagens Nyheter, once it was informed of the national origin of the criminals, did not want to report the story. The story was only finally reported -- six months after the newspaper learned about it -- because of the obvious similarity to the sexual assaults in Cologne, Germany, which had just occurred.
Granted, it is not always easy to be a journalist in Sweden: Sexual assaults had been ongoing at this Stockholm festival for years, yet the Swedish police suppressed the information. "Sometimes," according to Svt Nyheter, "[the police] consciously choose to cover up incidents where the suspects have a foreign background". According to police chief Peter Ågren, "This is a sore spot; we sometimes do not dare to say it as it is, because we think it could play into the hands of the Sweden Democrats".
Swedish authorities thus have a history of joining forces with the media to keep Swedes from knowing what is going on in their own country, lest they vote the opposition into power. In fact, a 2002 survey from the University of Gothenburg revealed 70% of Swedish journalists to be left-wing and very loyal to the Swedish state, which in modern times has historically been dominated by Social Democrat Party. Therefore, when Swedish authorities representing a Swedish left-wing government and media announce a project to combat "fake news" from "decisively influencing" the 2018 elections, this ought to set off loud alarm bells among Swedes. Who determines what constitutes "fake news" anyway? Is it not the very essence of "fake news" when a media outlet refuses to report mass sexual assaults, because the perpetrators happen to be foreigners from third world countries?
Ultimately, the unholy alliance of government agencies and media giants to silence criticism of government policies in an election year in the name of "fake news", is not only indicative of an astonishing contempt for established democratic principles and the freedom of expression and information. It also reveals how truly terrified the political establishment is of falling from power, and just how far it will go in compromising democratic principles in order to be able to cling to that power.
Sweden, naturally, is not the only country with a political elite clinging to power at all costs and using the slippery slope of "fake news" to cover up the silencing of dissent and government criticism.
In France, President Emmanuel Macron has threatened to go as far as to block entire websites during election season in order to fight "fake news". He is expected to present new legislation on the topic in the near future.
In the UK, Prime Minister Theresa May is setting up a "rapid response fake news unit". The purpose is, according to a news report by Sky News, to "monitor social media and challenge false stories". The unit will be based in the Cabinet Office, according to Alex Aiken, the executive director of the Government Communication Service (GCS), the public-relations wing of the civil service. Aiken said that the civil service needed to "build a rapid response social media capability to deal quickly with disinformation and reclaim a fact-based public debate".
A British Cabinet Office spokesperson told Sky News: "The Government is committed to tackling false information and the Government Communications Service plays a crucial role in this". Perhaps the unit should begin with Theresa May herself, who falsely and against all factual evidence continues to claim that Islam is a religion of peace and that ISIS is not Islamic.
Meanwhile, European citizens continue to face costly legal prosecutions for refusing to accept the fake news about Islam propagated by people such as Theresa May.
In Sweden, for example, a 71-year old pensioner, Denny, who decided to read the Koran and was shocked to see what it said, is being prosecuted for "incitement to hatred" for calling Islam "a fascist ideology" on Facebook. According to Denny:
"A few years ago, I also thought that Islam was just a normal religion, but then I read the Koran and became shocked by the hatred that exists there, the misogyny... The more Islam takes over, the more we compromise. Islam is a totalitarian ideology, which means dictatorship. So, I believe that our democratic system is in danger... I hate no people. What I hate is ideology, Islam. One can criticize fascism or Nazism, but why not Islam? Why should Islam have any protection status?"
Denny's case will go to court in June. He could face up to two years in prison.
Sweden's government is leading an unholy alliance with media giants to silence criticism of government policies in an election year, in the name of "fake news". Pictured: Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven.
*Judith Bergman is a columnist, lawyer and political analyst.
© 2018 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute.

The Opening Skirmishes Of A Catastrophic New Conflict
Baria Alamuddin/Arab News/February 11/18
The world awoke on Saturday to an ominous new chapter in the escalating, multifronted war that is tearing the Middle East apart. The shooting down of an Israeli F-16 plane and a series of strikes against Syrian and Iranian targets (the “largest and most significant” Israeli action in Syria since 1982) bring us one step closer to an inevitable confrontation between Israel and Iranian proxy forces, fought across Arab soil. This is what global dereliction of duty looks like. When the international community shrugged its shoulders and walked away from the Syria conflict — having concluded that diplomatic or military solutions were too much effort — it became inevitable that this carnage would suck in neighboring states, ultimately reaping far-reaching consequences for these same world powers that had shunned their moral responsibilities.
For five years the world pretended not to notice as about 200,000 Iranian proxy forces were deployed across Iraq and Syria, all the way across to the Golan Heights. Meanwhile Hezbollah tightened its stranglehold on the Lebanese state and waded into Syria. As Israel reciprocally beefed up its own military posture, a titanic conflict became simply a matter of time.
The humiliating destruction of an IDF warplane by Syrian anti-aircraft installations (under Iranian and Russian “supervision”) is viewed by some Israeli hawks as a convenient pretext for crushing Iran’s proxies in Syria and Lebanon once and for all. Some Knesset members even accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of triggering these events to distract attention from the pending corruption probes against him. However, both sides appear hesitant to plunge off the precipice into all-out war. Israeli and Iranian statements have confusingly oscillated between pious aspirations to de-escalate the situation, and dire threats about consequences of further provocation.
Tel Aviv accused Iran of “playing with fire,” yet a spokesman was quick to assert that Israel was “not looking to escalate the situation.” Meanwhile, Netanyahu warned Putin that Israel would intervene to prevent further Iranian attempts to consolidate its position in Syria. Iranian officials studiously sought to distance themselves from these events, denying that an Iranian unmanned aircraft had entered Israel. Yet a military spokesman in Tehran crowed that downing the F-16 was a “clear warning” for Israel. Hezbollah declared that Israel’s actions had “swept away previous axioms,” forcing the conflict into a “new strategic phase.”
Israel has launched airstrikes inside Syrian territory on 26 previous occasions — each time followed by ineffectual admonitions from Assad’s regime that it would respond at “a time of its choosing.” All parties repeatedly declare their readiness for war: Israeli military officials threatened to send Lebanon “back to the Stone Age.” The Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah ranted about raining missiles down upon Tel Aviv and pledged to mobilize transnational Shiite militants for a confrontation launched from sovereign Lebanese soil. Iraqi paramilitaries scarcely disguise their enthusiasm about the prospect of attacking the “Zionist enemy.” Hezbollah even arranged guided tours to the Lebanon-Israel border for prominent militants such as Qais Al-Khazali. Last week a senior Iranian official, Ibrahim Raisi (seen by some as Ayatollah Khamenei’s successor), was also treated to such a trip, theatrically proclaiming that “Jerusalem’s liberation is near.”
That Saturday’s incidents on Israel’s borders failed to escalate into wholesale carnage is only a temporary stay of execution. One day soon we will be waking up to a massive new confrontation whose eruption was all too predictable.
Iranian and Israeli saber-rattling puts Russia in an uncomfortable position. Netanyahu recently made his sixth visit in a year to Moscow, demanding that Russia constrain Iran’s freedom of action in Syria. There have been indications of growing Tehran-Moscow tensions: Both sides still enjoy mutual tactical interests in combining forces to carve out Syrian spheres of influence, yet their strategic aims diverge. Moscow considers Israel a close ally and its statement on Saturday calling on both sides to exercise “restraint” was a doomed attempt to steer a neutral course.
Iran’s deployment of unmanned aircraft in Israeli airspace, and Syria’s “massive” use of anti-aircraft fire against Israeli warplanes, calculatedly seek to wrong-foot Russia, giving pro-Iran militants greater freedom of action to pursue their own agenda. Israel’s response was likewise a “shot across the bows” for Moscow, signaling readiness to act decisively if Tehran was not reined in. Russia has used the Syrian theater to project strength in the region, yet these events make Moscow look ineffective and indecisive — particularly as any escalation would probably necessitate a hurried drawdown of Russian forces.
Israel has expressed exasperation at recent Syrian status-of-forces agreements that allow Iranian proxies to base themselves just 5km away from the occupied Golan Heights. Israel will certainly use threats of force to press its demands for clearing these forces out of this sensitive region. Another factor is Lebanon’s recent agreement with a French-Italian-Russian consortium for offshore oil exploration in areas claimed by Israel. Tel Aviv’s potent mixture of legal arguments and military posturing appear designed to unnerve Beirut into making concessions.
The fact that no party exploited Saturday’s escalation to plunge into a full military confrontation is an encouraging sign that neither side yet feels ready for a devastating conflict. However, we know from bitter experience that the killing would be highly asymmetric against innocent Arab citizens caught in the crossfire. In the aftermath of a major war we cannot trust the international community to play a constructive role in conflict resolution and reconstruction. The Trump administration is short-sightedly refusing to fund reconstruction efforts in Iraq. Arab Gulf states played a dominant role in rebuilding Lebanon in 2006, but today have less ready cash available. Iran will look after its own, but would happily leave Lebanese and Syrian citizens to starve.
With Hezbollah’s arsenal of upgraded missiles swelling to 100,000 warheads, and with Israel having stepped up its own battle-readiness, a conflict in 2018 would make the bloody carnage of 2006 look like a walk in the park. This war would be fought over an expanded battlefront, with an array of paramilitaries contributing to the fight, and America happy to sell Israel all the military playthings it needs.
Provocative and belligerent policies by both sides have produced a situation in which, even if neither side desires war today, Tehran and Tel Aviv have locked themselves into an inevitable path of confrontation. Iranian proxies have ceaselessly used anti-Israel rhetoric to justify de facto annexation of Arab lands, swallowing up 100 times more territory in Iraq and Syria than Israel stole from the Palestinians! Meanwhile it is inconceivable that Israel would passively observe the paramilitary build-up around its northern borders without preparing to strike.
If Russia, America, Turkey, the GCC, UN and EU were to spring into action, there is perhaps time to force all sides to step back from the abyss, reignite Syrian peace efforts, and contain Iran’s expansionist policies. Yet these powers lack the foresight, unity of purpose, or political will to do what is necessary. The recent Turkish incursion against US-backed Kurdish forces represents the moment when the Syria conflict descended from tragedy into farce.
The horrors of the Syrian conflict produced a global refugee crisis, bloodthirsty new brands of global terrorism, and chemical and conventional weapons proliferation challenges. Can world leaders maintain the transparent lie that this expanding and mutating regional war is not their problem?
That Saturday’s incidents on Israel’s borders failed to escalate into wholesale carnage is only a temporary stay of execution. One day soon we will be waking up, not merely to trivial skirmishes and threats, but to a massive new confrontation whose eruption was all too predictable, and perhaps even preventable — if we’d only been willing to act.
Baria Alamuddin is an award-winning journalist and broadcaster in the Middle East and the UK. She is editor of the Media Services Syndicate and has interviewed numerous heads of state.

Who Will Hold Assad To Account For Chemical Weapons?
Kerry Boyd Anderson /Arab News/February 11/18
As new cases of the Assad regime using chemical weapons emerge, there are growing questions about whether Syria’s actions and the lack of serious response by other countries are badly eroding the global consensus against chemical weapons — and perhaps damaging broader norms and institutions that underpin the international system. The Assad regime began using chemical weapons against its own people in 2012. In 2013, the US government, under Barack Obama, threatened military action against Syria for doing so. However, Obama was reluctant to engage in the Syrian war, and Moscow and Washington worked on a deal in which Syria joined the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), an international treaty that bans the possession and use of chemical weapons. Syria formally declared its stockpile, and the international community removed and destroyed those weapons. The deal noted that any future use of chemical weapons would have consequences, potentially including military force. The Assad regime quickly violated the agreement and has continued using chemical weapons. In most cases, it uses chlorine gas, which is not subject to CWC declarations since chlorine is a dual-use chemical with non-military purposes; nonetheless, the weaponization of chlorine violates the CWC. In other cases, the regime appears to have used nerve agents.
Syria’s flagrant violations — and disingenuous denials — pose a direct challenge to the global norm against the possession and use of chemical weapons. Norms are rules by which most states agree to abide. However, if rules are not enforced, they lose meaning and influence, and the international system lacks a clear enforcer. The primary institutional mechanism for enforcing global treaties and norms is the UN Security Council. However, Russia has used its veto power as a permanent member of the Council to protect Syria and impede the ability of investigators to establish who is responsible for using chemical weapons in Syria. Chlorine attacks on Syrian civilians raise pressing questions about the effectiveness of global rules in an age when it is unclear who will enforce them. When the UN system is paralyzed, enforcement lags. The US has struggled to determine its own role. Obama was criticized for setting a “red line,” then failing to act when Assad crossed it. In 2016, President Donald Trump authorized a US missile strike on a Syrian airbase in response to a chemical weapons attack against civilians, but it was too limited to persuade the regime to stop using chemical weapons. Various countries have imposed sanctions but with limited effect. What should the international community do? Rebecca Hersman, director of the Project on Nuclear Issues at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and previously US deputy assistant secretary of defense for countering weapons of mass destruction, told me: “The US has largely only looked at the use of force … but what we need is a much bigger menu of consequences.” If they can’t be imposed through the UN Security Council, they should still be implemented by several countries acting in concert, she said.
One potential example is a new effort led by France to gather and preserve evidence of chemical weapons use in Syria and “name and shame” individuals and entities linked to the chemical weapons program.
Meanwhile, Syria’s actions and the relative lack of consequences threaten to undermine the CWC and other global norms. “When you look at a system of arms control and nonproliferation that seeks to ban classes of weapons, if you continually face repeated use, it cannot help but call into question the efficacy of that ban and the normative underpinnings that support it,” Hersman said.
For now, most of the world continues to accept that chemical weapons should never be used. Syria is the only party to the CWC that is violating its prohibitions. CWC states have also made important progress in destroying the vast majority of the world’s declared chemical weapons stocks, said Alicia Sanders-Zakre, a researcher with the Arms Control Association. However, she said Russia’s defense of Syria had eroded the unity of CWC members. So far, Syria has used chemical weapons against its own people and not against other states. While this is a clear violation of the CWC, it is likely that other countries would act far more strongly against the Assad regime if it used such weapons against another state. The world is more likely to shrug its shoulders over a government’s actions against its own people. Syria poses a threat to the CWC but an even greater threat to the concept of “responsibility to protect.” The Syrian situation raises pressing questions about the effectiveness of global norms in an age when it is unclear who will enforce the rules. Kerry Boyd Anderson is a writer and political risk consultant with more than 14 years’ experience as a professional analyst of international security issues and Middle East political and business risks. Her previous positions include deputy director for advisory with Oxford Analytica and managing editor of Arms Control Today.
Twitter: @KBAresearch

Hollywood, movies, and the GCC: what is there in common?
Diana Galeeva/Al Arabiya/February 11/18
I would like to argue that the answer to the question ‘what do Hollywood, the BBC drama ‘McMafia’, and the GCC states have in common’ is the possibility of top-class movie production.
The idea of using the film or movie industry generally, or specific film industries such as Hollywood or Bollywood, is rooted in well-known concepts such as soft power and place branding, which are considered essential political tools for successful power. Soft power is ‘the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than coercion or payments’ (Nye, 2002:6).
The main elements of soft power are policies, political ideas, and culture. For America, for example, popular culture includes the production of movies by Hollywood studios. Nye presents a practical example of how movies assist the US to achieve political objectives in China.
As a result of watching American movies, Chinese activists will say: ‘We’ve seen a lot of Hollywood movies – they featured weddings, funerals and going to court. So now we think it’s only natural to go to court a few times in your life’. Thus, Nye explains that the US goal of solidifying the legal system in China and strengthening the rule of law will be achieved more effectively through the watching of movies than by the speeches of American ambassadors. The role of American movies is perceived as even more powerful than America economics or politics. For example, Wattenberg believes that while American popular culture contains elements of violence, vapidity and materialism, is also demonstrates American values of social mobility, openness, individualism and freedom. For Wattenberg, ‘that content is more powerful than politics or economics’ (1991:213). Similarly, Sandburg (2003) states that while Hollywood is ‘not as clean as Harvard’ its influence is ‘further reaching’.
One part of the soft power concept is place branding, focused on concepts such as values, norms and rules in worldwide politics (Ham, 2008). A place brand is intellectual property, which is ‘the totality of the thoughts, feelings, associations and expectations that come to mind when a prospect or consumer is exposed to an entity’s name, logo, products, services, events, or any design or symbol representing them’ (Lindsay, 2010; Ham, 2008:2). Ham suggests that anything can be branded, such as a credit card (American Express), computer components (Intel), or even a state. In other words, any state can be branded with symbols and meanings, and a government can create an attractive and positive global image for their state. In contrast, when governments do not consider branding seriously enough, not only do they miss the opportunity to promote a positive image of themselves, but they also leave open their identity to misappropriation. Counterparts in other nations can produce their own movies about another state or its citizens which play on the lack of knowledge about the target nation. This illustration of a state can forever stick in the memories of the worldwide community who are unfamiliar with a particular state, its history, or its traditions, and have received their first information about a state through this channel, and this negative perception can harm the image of state.
Borat and Mission Impossible
The success of the movie ‘Borat, Cultural Learning of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan’ was enormous. It was distributed by 20th Century Fox, and made $26.4 million on a limited release of 837 screens in the US in November 2006, before going on to further success in Western Europe. The film portrays a fictional Kazakh journalist travelling in the US to create a documentary for ‘benefit of glorious nation of Kazakhstan’, and generated significant controversy. According to Ham (2008:8) it presents Kazakhstan as a ‘backward and anti-Semitic country’. For an American audience, the main purpose of the movie was to demonstrate how easily Americans would along with the journalist’s homophobic, racist, and sexist jokes. For viewers in Kazakhstan, however, the movie was viewed as highly offensive. Kazakhstan’s Foreign Ministry proclaimed that the character’s behaviour was deemed ‘utterly unacceptable, being a concoction of bad taste and ill manner which is completely incompatible with the ethics and civilised behaviour of Kazakhstan’s people’, and threatened legal action against any similar pranksters. For people who know Kazakhstan, the story is clearly fictitious. However, as Ham suggests, although Kazakhstan is the size of Western Europe, ‘it was basically unknown to most people in the West, and their first ‘information’ about the country came from watching Borat’. This example is crucial for highlighting that, firstly, governments should seriously consider the development of film industries in their own states, able to produce movies of sufficient quality compete in the global market. Secondly, they should not rely on a Western film industry to create movies about their states, as this could just as easily be a damaging misrepresentation as a positive image.
The use of movies as tool of soft power has become an essential part of place branding for the GCC states. For example, scenes in movies such as Star Wars, Mission Impossible, and Fast and Furious, as well as the children’s series Sesame Street were made in the UAE. However, it seems that it is essential for the GCC states to not only use movie production in their place branding, but also as soft power. This soft power can be introducing their domestic unique values to the world or presenting the traditions and history of the GCC states, and for foreign policy objectives, such as competing with their rivals.
The use of movies as tool of soft power has become an essential part of place branding for the GCC states.
Let’s focus on usage soft power as demonstration of domestic uniqueness of the GCC states. There are plenty of Western movies that do not reflect realities of states, or show a nation little respect. For example, some movies produced by the West, such as ‘A Hologram for the King’, do not show Arabs in a positive light, and portray the Gulf mainly in association with oil and wealth. As Western movies are popular globally, this means that those cinema-goers who do not have a particular interest in the region will believe that this is all they need to know about Arabs from the Gulf.
While some Western movies misrepresent the image of the GCC states, most films created by GCC nationals are rooted in the demonstration of traditions and the uniqueness of their homelands. Representatives of GCC states, such as the UAE and Saudi Arabia, are among the most famous Arab directors. Most have developed a reputation for portraying stories of their countries and traditions, and presenting the social developments within the region. For example, ‘Nearby Sky’ (2014), from the Emirati director Al-Ghanem’s tells the story of the first woman in the UAE to enter her camels in Abu Dhabi’s male-dominated camel beauty contest. Two Saudi movies which demonstrate Saudi society and its distinctive characters and identity are Wadjda and Barakah Meets Barakah, both of which were submitted to the Oscars (Gulf News, 2016). It seems that supporting the film industry at the governmental level, aiming to produce top-quality movies and compete with Western counterparts, will increase the visibility of GCC states’ identities, and histories. It could also represent them differently from the Western perspective of events in the region, and could become one of the most economically profitable economic sectors in states that are looking for means of diversification their economies.
McMafia and the cure for Iranian expansion
Considering movies as foreign policy tool for dealing with its counterparts, we can examine the example of political outcomes from the popular BBC thriller ‘McMafia’, aired in early 2018. The drama presents the story of a Russian family living in the UK. Their son Alex Godman, having been educated at a British private school and graduated from Harvard, is trying to make a success of his investment fund without the financial assistance of his parents. However, after the murder of his uncle, he descends into a world of money laundering and drug smuggling, failing to escape from his family background. Most journalistic pieces have described the series only from this perspective. However, the drama also calls attention to a number of aspects of the life of Russian immigrants, their relations within the family, their understanding of family and family values, and their love for their country. For example, the father of the family, Dimitri, asks for soil from the cemetery of their family home to put in his brother’s coffin. Even before all eight episodes had been aired, the show had political outcomes. The Russian Embassy in the UK criticised BBC, saying that the programme was a clichéd and inaccurate portrayal of Russians’ contribution to the UK. The embassy’s Twitter feed commented that the drama ‘depicts Britain as a playground for Russian gangsters’ and asked its followers to guess how many Russians offenders were in UK prisons. Almost 60 per cent of respondents cited the correct answer of ‘fewer than 10’ (Guardian, 2008).
The Russian Embassy also commented: ‘Crime rate among Russians in UK is well below national average. Good that our followers are not buying into the clichés BBC is spreading’. The political fall out has not ended with highlighting that the series creates a cliché and harmful image of Russians, but also that it has led British officials to action. The security minister Ben Wallace stated that the success of ‘McMafia’ will be raise awareness of corruption, and he warned that Russian oligarchs might be targeted in the latest crackdown. Wallace highlighted the importance of the drama for understanding the finances of wealthy Russians, stating in an interview with the Times that: ‘McMafia is one of those things where you realise that fact is ahead of fiction’. As a result, British officials will apply new unexplained wealth orders (UWOs) to seize doubtful possessions until they have been accurately accounted for. UWOs permit the British authorities to freeze and recover possessions if individuals are unable to clarify how they obtained assets in excess of £50,000. It is surprising how a television series can generate such a reaction: ‘When we get to you, we will come for you, for your assets and we will make the environment that you live in difficult,’ Wallace said. This example shows how popular media can harm the image of a nation and launch a new political and legal actions against particular state-citizens.
Learning from this example, it is clear foreign policy objectives can be accomplished not only by diplomatic means but also by the production of movies and television shows aimed to resonate with the political actions of other governments and affect worldwide public opinion. One of the goals in the creation of popular culture can be its use as a political tool to engage with counterparts, and to create a ‘counterargument’ to a state’s competitors or enemies. For example, movies can be applied as soft power tool to counter Iranian destabilizing behaviour in the Middle East, focusing on the Iranian regime itself and Iranian-backed militias, for example high-quality movies based on true stories about how the Iranian regime has started to use sectarian policies to influence the region. Movies based on real stories about the operation of Hezbollah, the Houthis, or Hezbollah in Bahrain will cause these groups and events to be viewed in a new light by the worldwide community. Just as Nye cited that the US ambition of promoting the legal system in China was promoted more by movies than American speakers, by creating movies to global quality standards and with internationally famous actors, Gulf states will be better able to solve political problems in their region. Thus, movies can be used to break Western stereotypes about the GCC states, gain economic advantages from both movie production and tourism, and implement ‘power of discourse’ – telling the stories that the GCC governments would like to tell about their counter-parts and rivals in the political arena.