World elites – wished or not – have lots in frequent – #INA

Who knew that past being a homicidal dictator – is there another type – Bashar al-Assad additionally occurs to be a comic.

The world’s most wished, for the second, fugitive briefly emerged from his secure home – someplace in Russia close to a retailer nonetheless promoting luxurious manufacturers that his choosy spouse, Asma, covets – to make clear the circumstances which led to the sudden flight of Syria’s “first household”.

Al-Assad resurrected his Telegram account to say that he had remained on the entrance – helmet on and able to struggle with, little doubt, a bayonet-tipped musket in hand – till that wrenching hour when all was misplaced.

“[My] departure from Syria was neither deliberate nor did it happen through the last hours of the battles, as some have claimed,” al-Assad wrote. “Quite the opposite, I remained in Damascus, finishing up my duties till the early hours of Sunday, December 8, 2024.”

The nation’s courageous, pencil-thin, commander-in-chief retreated to a Russian army base within the coastal metropolis of Latakia solely after “terrorist forces” had occupied the capital.

From there, a valiant al-Assad might “oversee fight operations” till, sadly, the bottom got here beneath sustained drone assaults.

Alas, the phantom resistance proved futile. So, Bashar and Asma grudgingly heeded Moscow’s recommendation and promptly obtained out of Dodge earlier than they joined the opposite, much less well-known, martyrs who fought with – to borrow a phrase – the final full measure of devotion for a free Syria.

Comical stuff.

However equally farcical is the predictable assemble amongst some Western media that al-Assad’s overthrow was a consequence, largely, of his household’s longstanding and insatiable avarice on the expense of frequent Syrians – a signature trait of Center East henchmen and never, after all, of enlightened leaders of “liberal democracies”.

On this cussed calculus, the West is synonymous with uplifting egalitarianism, whereas the Center East breeds, with out exception, crushing despotism.

True to grating kind, The Washington Publish printed the next headline, reflective to the syllable of this haughty angle: “Assad lived in quiet luxurious whereas Syrians went hungry.”

Now, you and I do know that the Publish won’t ever pen a headline that reads: “King Charles lives in quiet luxurious whereas Brits go hungry”.

It might be unbecoming.

This, regardless of the very fact the shrinking Commonwealth’s new head – like all his gilded predecessors – calls the 775-room Buckingham Palace dwelling and his each whim is catered to by greater than 1,100 bowing workers.

The ailing British monarch’s personal fortune – together with hereditary estates, art work, uncommon stamps, jewelry, vehicles, horses, investments, and different property – is estimated, conservatively, to quantity to $2.3bn.

In the meantime, a latest research discovered that one in three youngsters and 1 / 4 of adults reside in poverty on the completely happy island that King Charles III reigns over with such a benevolent hand.

So as to add insult to the egalitarian fallacy, hundreds of thousands of his grateful topics endure from “meals insecurity” – a palatable euphemism for “starvation” that reportedly a bureaucrat with the US Division of Agriculture coined within the late Nineties.

In contrast to the plump Windsor clan, one in 5 British households routinely skips meals as a result of they can’t afford to purchase groceries. In 2023, greater than 800,000 sufferers in England and Wales have been hospitalised for malnutrition – sure, malnutrition – and different “dietary deficiencies”, a threefold enhance over the previous 10 years.

King Charles III shouldn’t be the one titular or true head of state in London or Washington, DC to forgo a vow of poverty within the “service” of commoners and the nation.

Virtually instantly after former Prime Minister Tony Blair left the modest comforts of 10 Downing Road, the saviour of the forgotten proletariat started behaving like a wanton capitalist making up for misplaced, profitable time.

Blair leveraged his contacts and affect to turn into a lowly multimillionaire who insists that his private kitty is nowhere near the 45-million-pound determine usually bandied publicly about.

“I haven’t truly modified, regardless of what folks wish to say,” Blair mentioned, unconvincingly, in 2014. “The identical factor that motivated me once I stood right here … 20 years in the past motivates me right now. It’s not about being profitable, it’s about making a distinction.”

You see, in contrast to the venal al-Assads, altruism, not greed, is what motivates former Western prime ministers and presidents to “give again” whereas, conveniently, amassing their cloaked-in-secrecy riches.

That humble Man from Hope, Invoice Clinton, and his ever-faithful spouse, Hillary, take pleasure in an estimated internet value of maybe as excessive as $120m.

Keep in mind, in 1996, President Clinton, working hand-in-white-glove with congressional Republicans handed draconian laws that tied welfare advantages to work – proving {that a} Democrat might wage struggle on the poor for parochial political dividends.

Certainly, the variety of Individuals who have been pressured by Clinton’s tough-on-welfare edicts to endure “deep poverty” surged, prompting Senator Bernie Sanders to excoriate The Man From Hope for erasing hope among the many impoverished.

“What welfare reform did, in my opinion, was go after a few of the weakest and most weak folks on this nation,” Sanders mentioned in 2016.

Just like the voracious Clintons, these shining avatars of equity and equality – Barack and Michelle Obama – have been charging six-figure talking charges, and signing $65m ebook advances to extol the virtues of equity and equality to gullible audiences ready to pay to hearken to or learn the ex-president and first woman weave myths about equity and equality in flowery speeches and prose.

By means of instructive distinction, the median earnings of an African-American family is a paltry $56,490 and the Black unemployment fee stays twice that of white employees.

Earlier than departing the Oval Workplace, Obama posted a message of solidarity on social media assuring his fellow Individuals that he deliberate to return to his “citizen” Obama roots.

“It’s been the dignity of my life to serve you,” he wrote. “I gained’t cease; I’ll be proper there with you as a citizen, impressed by your voices of fact and justice, good humor and love.”

Proper.

Would “proper there with you” be on the Obamas’ sprawling compound on the unique island of Martha’s Winery that the couple purchased in 2019 or their 8,200-square-foot mansion which boasts eight bedrooms and nine-and-a-half baths in addition to these easy folks – Jeff Bezos and Jared Kushner – as neighbours in a tony enclave of the US capital.

The American Specific Gold Card-carrying members of the “world elite” – on the run or not – have much more in frequent than they or The Washington Publish are ready to confess.

The views expressed on this article are the writer’s personal and don’t essentially mirror Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.