The Great Depression, the worst economic downturn in the history of the industrialised world, was a time of great pain in the US.
At one point, in 1932, national unemployment rose to 25 per cent. Poverty-stricken people sold apples on the streets of Manhattan and San Francisco to make a few pennies. Mobs looted supermarkets; migrant workers moved from farms to cities, desperately seeking food and shelter. In the midst of such misery, the Klu Klux Klan had an evil resurgence and grown men fought like animals for scraps of leftover food in garbage pails. In Oklahoma, where drought ravaged the Southern Plains, ranchers threatened a revolution. The stock market lost almost 90 per cent of its value between 1929 and 1933. It was a time that threatened to bring America to its knees.
2020, dominated by Covid-19, did not reach those epic levels of misery, but it has taken a chunk out of America’s soul.
To compound this tragedy, climate change-related icy storms over the past weeks have made the lives of many miserable. There are power outages and rolling blackouts of electricity. Recent winter snow has left many in Texas – which rarely gets such weather – without power. People were having to crowd into churches, now known as “warming centres”. Where I live on the Bowery, a street in New York City, there are more homeless than I have ever seen, despite the bitter cold and grey mushy snow. People sleep in the subways.
His message is that freedom belongs to us all. It's about climbing through darkness to hope.
Midtown Manhattan is ghostly and empty. Many businesses are shuttered and dark; the once-glorious skyscraper offices empty. It’s hard not to compare the past year to the Great Depression.
We are now in mid-winter, with many weeks to go until our metaphorical spring and resurgence.
This is why Bruce Springsteen’s poignant advert for Jeep, “The Middle”, shown during the Super Bowl, matters so much. In it, Springsteen – who wrote, directed and executed the video – drives through the most central point of “the lower 48 of America” in Lebanon, Kansas. The images are stark and haunting: flat, snowy fields, abandoned factory towers and a small chapel “that never closes. All are welcome”.
Adverts shown at the Super Bowl are among the most-watched commercials every year in the US. AP
Springsteen is now 71 and an icon in America, a troubadour who speaks for the abandoned veterans and working class. He always shunned appearing in ads, but as the unofficial chronicler of the blue collar worker, he must have felt the time was right to talk about re-unifying America.
In order to recover from all we have witnessed, he says we must abandon our red and blue politics, our anger and our trauma. In a deeply divided country, we must move forward, taking our cue from the symbolic Middle America.
It’s interesting he chose the most central point of the Midwest of America, usually associated with conservative politics and family values. As a graduate student in Iowa, I remember arriving to that great expanse of land, pickup trucks and unshakable faith in Republican politics with a kind of stunned horror. It is vastly different to the East Coast where I was raised.
The Middle comprises the deep red states. Kansas, for instance, has given its electoral college votes to the Democrats only once – in 1964 – since 1940.
“The Middle has been a hard place to get to lately," Springsteen says quietly, lighting a candle in the chapel and eventually driving off.
His message is that freedom belongs to us all. It’s about climbing through darkness to hope.
While it sounds corny, with his masterful storytelling, the two-minute video is poetic, even if it is an advertisement for Jeep. “Fear has never been the best of who we are,” he says quietly. “And as for freedom, it is not the property of the fortunate few…it belongs to us all”.
I think it’s a message we need to hear. My mother grew up during the Great Depression. Her father lost his business and her entire family moved in with my great-grandmother. She says they were never hungry, but she remembers, even as a tiny girl, the fear that gripped the household.
She also remembers it ending. Her father went to work for the WPA (Works Progress Administration), a part of the New Deal. This was former US president Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s programme that began to heal America through a series of projects and reforms that gradually brought the country out of its misery. Although it did not end the Great Depression, it restored public confidence and brought relief to millions of Americans. “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” was FDR’s inaugural message.
Bruce Springsteen is one of America's most famous musicians. AFP
We are on hold right now, waiting for vaccines, waiting for President Biden’s first 100 days in office to erase the pain of the Trump years, waiting for schools to open and waiting to go back to work. Springsteen’s video, seen by 37 million viewers, means just that.
Not everyone liked it. One tweet sent to Steve Van Zant (a member of Springsteen’s E Street Band) said: "You think we can just move on now if we’re just nice to one another? I don’t. It’s whistling past the graveyard. And it was cynical on Jeep’s part and naive on Springsteen’s part."
All of this came as news broke that Springsteen was arrested last November for driving under the influence of alcohol in Sandy Hook, a national recreation area in New Jersey near his home.
According to police, Springsteen acted with his usual decorum, but Jeep took the advert off their YouTube page. It was later revealed that Springsteen reportedly blew a .02 on the breathalyser test, which is one-quarter of his home state's .08 legal limit for drink-driving. As I expected, the minor offence didn’t tarnish Springsteen’s reputation.
To me, the video was about getting to our core. Springsteen and Jeep aren’t telling us all to agree on everything, and yes, it is an advert that wants you to buy cars and albums. But it’s also telling us to put the greater good ahead of our pain and move forward. The US is a broken country and it is hurting. But it needs to find its way to the Middle.
Janine di Giovanni is a Senior Fellow at Yale’s Jackson Institute. Her next book, The Vanishing, about Christians in the Middle East, is out in the autumn of 2021.
Our family matters legal consultant
Name: Hassan Mohsen Elhais
Position: legal consultant with Al Rowaad Advocates and Legal Consultants.
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Our legal consultant
Name: Dr Hassan Mohsen Elhais
Position: legal consultant with Al Rowaad Advocates and Legal Consultants.
What can victims do?
Always use only regulated platforms
Stop all transactions and communication on suspicion
Save all evidence (screenshots, chat logs, transaction IDs)
Report to local authorities
Warn others to prevent further harm
Courtesy: Crystal Intelligence
Ten tax points to be aware of in 2026
1. Domestic VAT refund amendments: request your refund within five years
If a business does not apply for the refund on time, they lose their credit.
2. E-invoicing in the UAE
Businesses should continue preparing for the implementation of e-invoicing in the UAE, with 2026 a preparation and transition period ahead of phased mandatory adoption.
3. More tax audits
Tax authorities are increasingly using data already available across multiple filings to identify audit risks.
4. More beneficial VAT and excise tax penalty regime
Tax disputes are expected to become more frequent and more structured, with clearer administrative objection and appeal processes. The UAE has adopted a new penalty regime for VAT and excise disputes, which now mirrors the penalty regime for corporate tax.
5. Greater emphasis on statutory audit
There is a greater need for the accuracy of financial statements. The International Financial Reporting Standards standards need to be strictly adhered to and, as a result, the quality of the audits will need to increase.
6. Further transfer pricing enforcement
Transfer pricing enforcement, which refers to the practice of establishing prices for internal transactions between related entities, is expected to broaden in scope. The UAE will shortly open the possibility to negotiate advance pricing agreements, or essentially rulings for transfer pricing purposes.
7. Limited time periods for audits
Recent amendments also introduce a default five-year limitation period for tax audits and assessments, subject to specific statutory exceptions. While the standard audit and assessment period is five years, this may be extended to up to 15 years in cases involving fraud or tax evasion.
8. Pillar 2 implementation
Many multinational groups will begin to feel the practical effect of the Domestic Minimum Top-Up Tax (DMTT), the UAE's implementation of the OECD’s global minimum tax under Pillar 2. While the rules apply for financial years starting on or after January 1, 2025, it is 2026 that marks the transition to an operational phase.
9. Reduced compliance obligations for imported goods and services
Businesses that apply the reverse-charge mechanism for VAT purposes in the UAE may benefit from reduced compliance obligations.
10. Substance and CbC reporting focus
Tax authorities are expected to continue strengthening the enforcement of economic substance and Country-by-Country (CbC) reporting frameworks. In the UAE, these regimes are increasingly being used as risk-assessment tools, providing tax authorities with a comprehensive view of multinational groups’ global footprints and enabling them to assess whether profits are aligned with real economic activity.
Contributed by Thomas Vanhee and Hend Rashwan, Aurifer
25-MAN SQUAD
Goalkeepers: Francis Uzoho, Ikechukwu Ezenwa, Daniel Akpeyi Defenders: Olaoluwa Aina, Abdullahi Shehu, Chidozie Awaziem, William Ekong, Leon Balogun, Kenneth Omeruo, Jamilu Collins, Semi Ajayi Midfielders: John Obi Mikel, Wilfred Ndidi, Oghenekaro Etebo, John Ogu Forwards: Ahmed Musa, Victor Osimhen, Moses Simon, Henry Onyekuru, Odion Ighalo, Alexander Iwobi, Samuel Kalu, Paul Onuachu, Kelechi Iheanacho, Samuel Chukwueze
On Standby: Theophilus Afelokhai, Bryan Idowu, Ikouwem Utin, Mikel Agu, Junior Ajayi, Valentine Ozornwafor
The smuggler
Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area. Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife. Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple. The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.
Khouli conviction
Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items. According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”. He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.
For sale
A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale. Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.
- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico
- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000
- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950
Company Fact Box
Company name/date started: Abwaab Technologies / September 2019
Founders: Hamdi Tabbaa, co-founder and CEO. Hussein Alsarabi, co-founder and CTO
Based: Amman, Jordan
Sector: Education Technology
Size (employees/revenue): Total team size: 65. Full-time employees: 25. Revenue undisclosed
Stage: early-stage startup
Investors: Adam Tech Ventures, Endure Capital, Equitrust, the World Bank-backed Innovative Startups SMEs Fund, a London investment fund, a number of former and current executives from Uber and Netflix, among others.
Company profile
Date started: 2015
Founder: John Tsioris and Ioanna Angelidaki
Based: Dubai
Sector: Online grocery delivery
Staff: 200
Funding: Undisclosed, but investors include the Jabbar Internet Group and Venture Friends
