 Hello and welcome to Daily Debrief brought to you by People's Dispatch, I am Pragya. Germany has decided it will send battle tanks to Ukraine. Reports say it aims to change the scope of the Russia-Ukraine war and will reshape Germany's role in Europe. We go to Lebanon next where an investigation has resumed after a 13 month hiatus into the blast that killed 220 people in Beirut. And finally, as fans returned in masses to football stadium after COVID-19, football clubs gained, says a ranking of football clubs by Deloitte. Nearly a year after the Russian attack on Ukraine began, Germany has decided to send 14 Leopard tanks to Ukraine. It will also allow other countries to send their tanks. The US is also expected to announce dispatching its Abrams tanks. It would seem Germany has overcome reluctance to ship tanks into that battle front. These concerns stemmed from its relationship with Russia and the role it saw for itself in Europe over close to a century. We talk to Prabhupur Kaisal about this development. Right Prabhupade, thanks for joining us. Prabhupade, Germany's decision to send tanks now they seem to have cogitated and agitated over it for a while. What finally seems to have swung it one way? Well, you know, Germany was saying that, okay, we'll send the tanks provided the United States also sends its Abram tanks. So that is one part of the issue. We'll come to that in a minute. The second part is, is Germany worried about the escalation with Russia to the point that it will lead to a ground war in Europe? And the consequences of that could very easily escalate to a nuclear exchange. And of course, we know what will happen after that, the fact that it is a destruction of civilization as we know it. Happen in Europe, but it will affect everybody in the same way. It is not going to be restricted to Europe alone. So I think to some extent it was also a worry of that. And so part of it is also the Green Minister, the bareback, actually making the statement, yes, we'll allow Poland to give Leopard 2s, Germany will allow that put him on the spot that he was the one who was the holdout. And also therefore made it even more difficult for them to say, okay, Poland can give Leopard 2s, but Germany can't. So all of this was one part of it. The other part of it, and I'm always a little skeptical about all of this, is that there is an export market and Germany Leopard 2 tanks are sold widely to its allies, of course, to others also the global market, because American tanks are pretty expensive. And because of the expense of the Abraham tanks, they are not such a hot item for sale. Now, if they go to war, Leopard 2 goes to war, and Russia destroys them reasonably easily, then of course the export market drops. Now the Abraham tanks then become the dominant player in the market. That might be a consequence. They say, okay, we'll send Leopard 2 tanks, but you send your tanks as well. So if we suffer, both of us suffer the same market blow. So it could be also a marketing issue, because let's face facts, 50-100 tanks is not going to change the course of war in Ukraine. These are tanks which are going in with not so much of trained manpower behind it, because Germans and Americans and Polish personnel are not going to be in those tanks unless they go as mercenaries. So it is going to be Ukraine people who are not so familiar with the tanks. They are more familiar with the older Russian tanks, T-72s, and the various versions thereof. This T-72 is the main battle tank, so are these two. So is the T-90, the latest version that has come out of Russia out of the old T-72 tanks. So in that sense, they are not familiar with these tanks. So Russians use of these tanks could also mean that, sorry, the Ukrainians use of these tanks. Therefore, the Ukrainian use of these tanks might mean that they will suffer losses and relatively early losses. So given that, I don't think it's going to make that much of a difference to the war itself, even if they were run by Americans or Germans, because we have seen that the German leopards as well as the American tanks have suffered badly in various wars. Turkey in fact had leopard two tanks. ISIS hunted them down with relatively not very expensive weapons. You had also, we have also seen the Abraham tanks being used by Saudi Arabia. They were also, the Houthis took care of them. So none of these tanks in current war are invincible. It's not like the old second world war scenario. Anti-tank weapons work and therefore if they come on to the battlefield, I don't think they're going to be a qualitative change to the war scenario. It's still going to be a slog between the two armies. It's still going to be largely a ground war and the tanks would have a limited impact. Don't forget, Ukraine has, this is the third tank army they're trying to build. They had the tank from earlier times, which was Ukraine's originally, they had something like 700, 800 tanks. They lost that in the first set of battles itself. Then the European countries replenished with their Soviet-era tanks, which is Poland, Estonia, other countries. They gave them a bunch of tanks, which as I said, the old Russian tanks, they also, that was also lost by Ukraine. So this is the third set of tanks now they're going to get, some from Poland, other two again, some from Germany, some from the United States. So this is the third lot of tanks they're going to get. The third tank army they're trying to build. What will happen is that, yes, they'll have some success initially, but it's not going to make a qualitative difference. The numbers are too small. Russian tank army is much bigger. They're the T92 tanks, which are quite the same caliber. We will take a little. So I don't think this could change the, it will go to change up anything in the battlefield in any significant sense. So that's, that's where it is. So I think the issue is of the tanks as more of optics and the fact that Ukraine feels that without this, they really have no recourse, no ability to capture for the ground. And therefore, they desperately need this to keep, if nothing else, the spirits up. Right, Praveen. Thank you very much for joining us. A trial has unexpectedly resumed in the blast that occurred in Beirut's port area in 2020. The investigation stalled as various political factions in Lebanon contested how to go about it. These being investigated include top Lebanese officials. Some arrested after the blast were also recently released. More than 220 people died in that explosion. We go over to Abdul from People's Dispatch. Abdul, what is the latest on the investigation into the blast at the port in 2020? As per the reports, it seems that the judge Tariq Bitar has basically charged, formally charged former Prime Minister Hassan Diyab and some of his cabinet colleagues, former, of course, former ministers in his government, along with the state, higher state officials, a number of them, more than a dozen of them. And all of them have been charged with homicide and held responsible for the blast in which more than 200 people were killed and thousands of the Lebanese were injured. The fact is that the state's Prosecutor General has a question, the discharging by Hassan Diyab, who was basically, according to what the Prosecutor General is saying, that he has been suspended. His inquiry has been suspended pending the court cases in the for last almost a year and a half, which was filed by Hezbollah and other political groups accusing Hassan Diyab for bias and opposing political agenda instead of doing investigation. So on that particular note, despite the fact that the courts have not given anybody on those cases and despite the fact that the state has not revoked the suspension, on Monday, Bitar suddenly resumed, announced the resumption of investigation. And on Tuesday, he basically filed the charges against Diyab and other people. So it is a peculiar situation in Lebanon as that this moment where, of course, there are thousands of Lebanese who are seeking justice, who are seeking accountability for what happened in 2020. But there is a legal issue. There is a question of the legitimacy of the so-called inquiry process and so on. So the charges framed against Hassan Diyab and his colleagues look sensational, but actually do not have any legal value. Can you talk about, Abdul, how this case actually came to be in a state of suspension and also how it came to be revived? Well, as I just mentioned, after the blast on August 4, 2020, there were massive public, there was massive public outrage. People demanded some kind of accountability. This will not go where more than 30,000 people were displaced because their homes were destroyed or another infrastructure was destroyed. They lost billions of dollars of property in those blasts. And someone, of course, should be held responsible. So with that, those public, under the public pressure in the state at that time, Prime Minister Hassan Diyab constituted an inquiry commission, which soon had to resign following the allegations by Hezbollah and other political groups, some other political groups in Lebanon, which questioned who questioned the legitimacy and the processes which were adopted by the inquiry commission at the time. Then finally, with Gitar was appointed in December 2020, he was again accused of passing political agenda, in fact, Hezbollah claimed that he's passing US agenda. Those who know Lebanese politics understand that the politics in Lebanon is quite divided. There are sections which are considered to be pro US, there are sections we are considered to be anti US aligned with different regional players and powers. Therefore, it becomes quite normal, which in other societies will be quite absurd to assume in Lebanon, it becomes quite normal to accuse each other of pursuing a foreign country's agenda. So Hezbollah and other players accused Hassan, sorry, the judge, Bitar, that he is basically doing politics instead of doing investigation and he's biased against them. And they went to court, filed cases. Those cases are still pending because the judge, which was hearing the cases, got retired or removed. And there has been no new fresh appointment at his place. So the case is still pending. And despite and the public pressure is still there, there have been demonstrations held again and again demanding accountability and justice. So it seems that Bitar's move on Monday is a part of that it can be interpreted in either ways that due to the public pressure or due to some kind of pressure from somewhere else, which basically led to the resumption of investigation without a state sanction on Monday. Alright, Abdul. Thanks a lot for that update. For the second time in a row Manchester City generated the highest revenue involved football clubs. That's one of the findings of the Deloitte Money League Ranking of Clubs for 2023. It clocked a revenue of 731 million euros, a 13% jump over the previous year. We talked to Siddhanta about whether there are any other surprises in the report. Siddhanta, thanks for joining us. Siddhanta, what does the report say actually about the state of football, football clubs after COVID-19? Pragya, you know, on daily brief, we talked, I think, a few weeks ago when Davos was kicking off about Oxfam's global inequality report. It was called, I think, survival of the richest. And football, as we've said many times on various platforms where we bring our perspective to sport is a microcosm that pretty much reflects what's happening in the outside world in at least this regard. So the top 20 earning clubs in world football generated a revenue. This is of course for the last season that's gone by, which finished about eight months ago. A total revenue of over 9 billion euros, which puts the industry as such back at pre pandemic levels. So the positive in that sense from a very, very broad perspective is that the football industry is back to where it was before the pandemic. But if you go into the details of this report, it tells us what we already know, which is that much of this revenue goes to very select group of clubs in very select leagues, all of which are in Europe. Like you were mentioning in your intro, the figure of 731 million euros for Manchester City, a staggering figure. And we talk about how this compares to women's clubs a little bit later on. But even clubs like Tottenham and Arsenal, both clubs based in North London, and traditional rivals who haven't won a major trophy since, you know, God knows when generating revenues of 400 and 500 million euros every year. Now the interesting part in this, because we talk so much about how much the game is driven by fans, and all of that is that only about 15% on average of revenue generated by these big clubs comes from match day activities, which means the sale of tickets, programs, food and beverage, that kind of stuff on match days. The rest of it, which would be what 75 odd percent comes from commercial activity. So essentially, advertising and broadcast revenues. So the entire game is a television game. And we were saying this also during the pandemic that the top clubs are actually pretty happy with not having fans or the media in stadiums at all, because it's a lot less effort for them compared to what they get back in return in terms of money, which is what these clubs are. Most of them for profit clubs, they are being run as businesses, and they are very much a part of the entertainment industry, which is how we should look at big sport today. So you know, that there was this whole debate going on about the super league, a breakaway league that was hoping to entice some of these top 20. We say that if we are earning the revenue, let us keep the profit also, forget about this whole complete idea of any kind of trickle down economics at all, you know, to help with the rest of the leagues. That is happening anyway, pretty much is what we are seeing from this report. This is of course, one report generated by Deloitte, and I think Deloitte's UK branch. But but there are a series of similar reports studies done by FIFA, UEFA, various other entities that all point in very much the same direction that at the grass roots level at the mass level, the sport is sustained by community activity, people's participation, volunteer activity, all that kind of things. While these few big super rich clubs generate ridiculous amounts of money and then circulate it in various ways amongst themselves. So in that sense, football, men's football, particularly, provides a really interesting bite sized chunk in which to analyze how global financial systems and capitalism had had large actually functions. So so the idea that football is this mass sport, and you know, everyone has the hope of climbing up the pyramid and eventually earning as much money as Manchester City. It's a, it's a lot of bullshit. Forgive, forgive my language. Because the domination of these clubs is absolute. And the way the structure has been built for generations, and most mostly because it's dominated by by European broadcasters, and essentially all Europeans. It will remain this way unless there is some kind of revolution which no one is really asking for, except the richest who want an even bigger chunk of the fire for themselves. So that is in essence, the summary of this report, at least from my perspective. Right, right. So Dan, so Dan, what about the state of women's football? What does the report say? It's actually pretty damning, Pragya. I mean, you can look at it from the perspective that there are marginal improvements. Firstly, this is, I think the first time that any study at all is being done of this kind to look at what clubs in women's football are actually doing. But FC Barcelona women, which is the top revenue generating women's football club in the world, generates about 7.7 million euros, which is a hundred times less than the figure we talked about with Manchester City's men's team. So that is the difference in terms of money. And largely this comes because mostly men in suits run the system in terms of marketing, broadcasting, all of that. And therefore, there's this belief that no one watches women's football, so why spend any money on broadcasting it why telecast it to, you know, why telecast the women's Premier League to Asia, who cares, nobody wants to watch it. So it goes a step further actually, whether you talk about the number of women who are present on the boards of these money clubs, right, the figure that let around the 10 percent mark, which is if you look at the let's say the FTSE 100, which is which is the index, the UK index. There you have 40% representation of women on the boards of these FTSE 100 listed companies. So football is really lagging really far behind in terms of bringing women into the into the game. And it's really bizarre to understand because on the one hand, so many of the global leaders of the sport are fighting to increase revenues. On the other hand, you're ignoring half of the world's population and not even trying to seriously engage with them. So even from a pure capitalist point of view, I really can't find them why that's happening. And and this also extends to ethnic diversity, by the way, many of these clubs, including clubs that claim to be global football clubs have, you know, abysmal numbers when it comes to ethnic diversity representation on their boards and in senior leadership. So while the the teams that they feel might be diverse, might be players from all over the world, different, every different continent might be playing for one club in Europe. But when it comes to decision making, when it comes to the guys who are calling the shots, it is still largely white men that are doing those jobs. All right, so then thanks a lot for joining us. And that's a wrap for today. Thank you for watching daily debrief. Do come back to us tomorrow. You can find our stories on peoples dispatch.org and our social media updates on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.