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By Michel Chossudovsky

Author’s Introduction

We must understand the history of the U.S.-sponsored February 2014 Coup d’Etat which paved the wave for the adoption of IMF-World Bank shock treatment, namely the imposition of devastating macro-economic reforms coupled with conditionalities. This process –imposed by the Washington Consensus– was applied in developing countries since the 1980s, and in Eastern Europe and in the countries of the Soviet Union starting in the early 1990s.

Below is an the article describing the IMF reforms which I wrote in early March 2014, in the immediate wake of the Euromaidan Coup d’Etat which was led by the two major Nazi “parties”: Right Sektor and Svoboda, with the financial support of Washington.

What Is the End Game

The World Bank and the IMF reforms –while establishing the ground work– are no longer the main actors, representing the country’s creditors.

The traditional IMF-World Bank reforms are in many regards obsolete.

The Neoliberal Endgame for Ukraine –resulting from unsurmountable debts– largely attributable to military aid is the outright privatization of an entire country by BlackRock which is a giant portfolio company controlled by powerful financial interests with extensive leverage.

BlackRock signed an agreement with President Zelensky in November 2022.

The Privatization of Ukraine was launched in liaison with BlackRock’s consulting company McKinsey, a public relations firm which has largely been responsible for co-opting corrupt politicians and officials worldwide, not to mention scientists and intellectuals on behalf of powerful financial interests.

The Kyiv government engaged BlackRock’s consulting arm in November to determine how best to attract that kind of capital, and then added JPMorgan in February. Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced last month that the country was working with the two financial groups and consultants at McKinsey.

BlackRock and Ukraine’s Ministry of Economy signed a Memorandum of Understanding in November 2022. In late December 2022, president Zelensky and BlackRock’s CEO Larry Fink agreed on an investment strategy.

—Michel Chossudovsky, April 27, 2024

The February 23, 2014 Coup d’Etat

In the days following the Ukraine coup d’Etat of February 23, 2014 leading to the ousting of a duly elected president, Wall Street and the IMF –in liaison with the US Treasury and the European Commission in Brussels– had already set the stage for the outright takeover of Ukraine’s monetary system.

The EuroMaidan protests leading up to “regime change” and the formation of an interim government were followed by purges within key ministries and government bodies.

The Governor of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) Ihor Sorkin was fired on February 25th and replaced by a new governor Stepan Kubiv.

Stepan Kubiv is a member of Parliament of the Rightist Batkivshchyna “Fatherland” faction in the Rada led by the acting Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk (founded by Yulia Tymoshenko in March 1999). He previously headed Kredbank, a Ukrainian financial institution largely owned by EU capital, with some 130 branches throughout Ukraine. (Ukraine Central Bank Promises Liquidity To Local Banks, With One Condition, Zero Hedge, February 27, 2014)

Kubiv is no ordinary bank executive. He was one of the first field “commandants” of the EuroMaidan riots alongside Andriy Parubiy, co-founder of the Neo-Nazi Social-National Party of Ukraine (subsequently renamed Svoboda), and Dmitry Yarosh, leader of the Right Sector Brown Shirts (centre in image below), which now has the status of a political party.

Kubiv was in the Maidan square addressing protesters on February 18, at the very moment when armed Right Sector thugs under the helm of Dmitry Yarosh (image above, centre) were raiding the parliament building.

The Establishment of an Interim Government

A few days later, upon the establishment of the interim government, Stepan Kubiv was put in charge of negotiations with Wall Street and the IMF.

The new Minister of Finance Aleksandr Shlapak (image below) is a political crony of Viktor Yushchenko –a long-time protegé of the IMF who was spearheaded into the presidency following the 2004 “Colored Revolution”. Shlapak held key positions in the office of the presidency under Yushchenko as well as at the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU). In 2010, upon Yushchenko’s defeat, Aleksandr Shlapak joined a shadowy Bermuda based offshore financial outfit IMG International Ltd (IMG), holding the position of Vice President. Based in Hamilton, Bermuda, IMG specialises in “captive insurance management”, reinsurance and “risk transfer.”

Minister of Finance Aleksandr Shlapak works in close liaison with Pavlo Sheremeto, the newly appointed Minister of Economic Development and Trade, who upon his appointment called for “deregulation, fully fledged and across the board”, requiring –as demanded in previous negotiations by the IMF– the outright elimination of subsidies on fuel, energy and basic food staples.

Another key appointment is that of Ihor Shvaika (image below), a member of the Neo-Nazi Svoboda Party, to the position of Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food. Headed by an avowed follower of World War II Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera, this ministry not only oversees the agricultural sector, it also decides on issues pertaining to subsidies and the prices of basic food staples.

The new Cabinet has stated that the country is prepared for socially “painful” but necessary reforms. In December 2013, a $ 20 billion deal with the IMF had already been contemplated alongside the controversial EU-Ukraine Association Agreement. Yanukovych decided to turn it down.

One of the requirements of the IMF was that “household subsidies for gas be reduced once again by 50%.”

“Other onerous IMF requirements included cuts to pensions, government employment, and the privatization (read: let western corporations purchase) of government assets and property. It is therefore likely that the most recent IMF deal currently in negotiation, will include once again major reductions in gas subsidies, cuts in pensions, immediate government job cuts, as well as other reductions in social spending programs in the Ukraine.” (voice of russia.com, March 21, 2014)

Economic Surrender: Unconditional Acceptance of IMF Demands by a Puppet Government

Shortly after his instatement, the interim (puppet) prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk casually dismissed the need to negotiate with the IMF. Prior to the conduct of negotiations pertaining to a draft agreement, Yatsenyuk had already called for an unconditional acceptance of the IMF package: “We have no other choice but to accept the IMF offer”.

Yatsenyuk intimated that Ukraine will “accept whatever offer the IMF and the EU made” (voice of russia.com, March 21, 2014).

In surrendering to the IMF, Yatsenyuk was fully aware that the proposed reforms would brutally impoverish millions of people, including those who protested in Maidan.

The actual timeframe for the implementation of the IMF’s “shock therapy” has not yet been firmly established. In all likelihood, the regime will attempt to delay the more ruthless social impacts of the macroeconomic reforms until after the May 25 presidential elections (assuming that these elections will take place).

The text of the IMF agreement is likely to be detailed and specific, particularly with regard to State assets earmarked for privatization.

Henry Kissinger and Condoleezza Rice, according to Bloomberg, are among key individuals in the US who are acting (in a non-official capacity) in tandem with the IMF, the Kiev government, in consultation with the White House and the US Congress.

The IMF Mission to Kiev

Immediately upon the instatement of the new Finance Minister and NBU governor, a request was submitted to the IMF’s Managing director. An IMF fact-finding mission headed by the Director of the IMF’s European Department Rez Moghadam was rushed to Kiev:

“I am positively impressed with the authorities’ determination, sense of responsibility and commitment to an agenda of economic reform and transparency. The IMF stands ready to help the people of Ukraine and support the authorities’ economic program.” (Press Release: Statement by IMF European Department Director Reza Moghadam on his Visit to Ukraine)

A week later, on March 12, 2014, Christine Lagarde met the interim Prime Minister of Ukraine Arseniy Yatsenyuk at IMF headquarters in Washington. Lagarde reaffirmed the IMF’s commitment:

“[to putting Ukraine back] on the path of sound economic governance and sustainable growth, while protecting the vulnerable in society. … We are keen to help Ukraine on its path to economic stability and prosperity.” (Press Release: Statement by IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde on Ukraine)

The above statement is wrought with hypocrisy. In practice, the IMF does not wield “sound economic governance” nor does it protect the vulnerable. It impoverishes entire populations while providing “prosperity” to a small corrupt and subservient political and economic elite.

IMF “economic medicine” while contributing to the enrichment of a social minority, invariably triggers economic instability and mass poverty, while providing a “social safety net” to the external creditors. To sell its reform package, the IMF relies on media propaganda as well as persistent statements by “economic experts” and financial analysts which provide authority to the IMF’s macroeconomic reforms.

The unspoken objective behind IMF interventionism is to destabilize sovereign governments and literally break up entire national economies. This is achieved through the manipulation of key macroeconomic policy instruments as well as the outright rigging of financial markets, including the foreign exchange market.

To reach its unspoken goals, the IMF-World Bank –often in consultation with the US Treasury and the State Department– will exert control over key appointments including the Minister of Finance, the Central Bank governor as well as senior officials in charge of the country’s privatization program. These key appointments will require the (unofficial) approval of the “Washington Consensus” prior to the conduct of negotiations pertaining to a multibillion IMF bailout agreement.

Beneath the rhetoric, in the real world of money and credit, the IMF has several related operational objectives:

1) to facilitate the collection of debt servicing obligations, while ensuring that the country remains indebted and under the control of its external creditors.

2) to exert on behalf of the country’s external creditors full control over the country’s monetary policy, its fiscal and budgetary structures,

3) to revamp social programs, labor laws, minimum wage legislation, in accordance with the interests of Western capital,

4) to deregulate foreign trade and investment policies, including financial services and intellectual property rights,

5) to implement the privatization of key sectors of the economy through the sale of public assets to foreign corporations,

6) to facilitate the takeover by foreign capital (including mergers and acquisitions) of selected privately owned Ukrainian corporations, and

7) to ensure the deregulation of the foreign exchange market.

While the privatization program ensures the transfer of State assets into the hands of foreign investors, the IMF program also includes provisions geared towards the destabilization of the country’s privately-owned business conglomerates. A concurrent “break up” plan entitled “spin-off” as well as a “bankruptcy program” are often implemented with a view to triggering the liquidation, closing down or restructuring of a large number of nationally-owned private and public enterprises.

The “spin off” procedure –which was imposed on South Korea under the December 1997 IMF bailout agreement– required the break up of several of Korea’s powerful chaebols (business conglomerates) into smaller corporations, many of which were then taken over by US, EU and Japanese capital. Sizeable banking interests as well highly profitable components of Korea’s high tech industrial base were transferred or sold off at rock bottom prices to Western capital. (Michel Chossudovsky, The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order, Global Research, Montreal, 2003, Chapter 22).

These staged bankruptcy programs ultimately seek to destroy national capitalism. In the case of Ukraine, they would selectively target the business interests of the oligarchs, opening the door for the takeover of a sizeable portion of Ukraine’s private sector by EU and US corporations. The conditionalities contained in the IMF agreement would be coordinated with those contained in the controversial EU-Ukraine Association agreement, which the Yanukovych government refused to sign.

Ukraine’s Spiraling External Debt

Ukraine’s external debt is of the order of $140 billion.

In consultations with the US Treasury and the EU, the IMF aid package is to be of the order of $15 billion dollars. Ukraine’s outstanding short-term debt is of the order of $65 billion, more than four times the amount promised by the IMF.

The Central Bank’s foreign currency reserves have literally dried up. In February, according to the NUB, Ukraine’s foreign currency reserves were of the order of a meagre $13.7 billion, its Special Drawing Rights with the IMF were of the order of $16.1 million, its gold reserves $1.81 billion. There were unconfirmed reports that Ukraine’s gold had been confiscated and airlifted to New York, for “safe-keeping” under the custody of the New York Federal Reserve Bank.

Under the bailout, the IMF –acting on behalf of Ukraine’s US and EU creditors– lends money to Ukraine which is already earmarked for debt repayment. The money is transferred to the creditors. The loan is “fictitious money.” Not one dollar of this money will enter Ukraine.

The package is not intended to support economic growth. Quite the opposite: Its main purpose is to collect the outstanding short-term debt, while precipitating the destabilization of Ukraine’s economy and financial system.

The fundamental principle of usury is that the creditor comes to the rescue of the debtor: “I cannot pay my debts, no problem my son, I will lend you the money and with the money I lend you, you will pay me back”.

The rescue rope thrown to Kiev by the IMF and the European Union is in reality a ball and chain. Ukraine’s external debt, as documented by the World Bank, increased tenfold in ten years and exceeds 135 billion dollars. In interests alone, Ukraine must pay about 4.5 billion dollars a year. The new loans will only serve to increase the external debt thus obliging Kiev to “liberalize” its economy even more, by selling to corporations what remains to be privatized. (Ukraine, IMF “Shock Treatment” and Economic Warfare by Manlio Dinucci, Global Research, March 21, 2014)

Under the IMF loan agreement, the money will not enter the country, it will be used to trigger the repayment of outstanding debt servicing obligations to EU and US creditors. In this regard, according to the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) “European banks have more than $23 billion in outstanding loans in Ukraine.” (Ukraine Facing Financial Instability But IMF May Help Soon – Spiegel Online, February 28, 2014)

What Are the “Benefits” of an IMF Package to Ukraine?

According to IMF’s managing director Christine Lagarde, the bailout is intended to address the issue of poverty and social inequality. In actuality what it does is to increase the levels of indebtedness while essentially handing over the reins of macro-economic reform and monetary policy to the Bretton Woods Institutions, acting on behalf of Wall Street.

The bailout agreement will include the imposition of drastic austerity measures which in all likelihood will trigger further social chaos and economic dislocation. It’s called “policy based lending”, namely the granting of money earmarked to reimburse the creditors, in exchange for the IMF’s “bitter economic medicine” in the form of a menu of neoliberal policy reforms. “Short-term pain for long-term gain” is the motto of the Washington-based Bretton Woods institutions.

Loan “conditionalities” will be imposed –including drastic austerity measures– which will serve to impoverish the Ukrainian population beyond bounds in a country which has been under IMF ministrations for more than 20 years. While the Maidan movement was manipulated, tens of thousands of people protested they wanted a new life because their standard of living had collapsed as a result of the neoliberal policies applied by successive governments, including that of president Yanukovych. Little did they realize that the protest movement supported by Wall Street, the US State Department and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) was meant to usher in a new phase of economic and social destruction.

History of IMF Ministrations in Ukraine

In 1994 under the presidency of Leonid Kuchma, an IMF package was imposed on Ukraine. Viktor Yushchenko –who later became president following the 2004 Colored Revolution– had been appointed head of the newly-formed National Bank of Ukraine (NBU). Yushchenko was praised by the Western financial media as a “daring reformer”; he was among the main architects of the IMF’s 1994 reforms which served to destabilize Ukraine’s national economy. When he ran in the 2004 elections against Yanukovych, he was supported by various foundations including the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). He was Wall Street’s preferred candidate.

Ukraine’s 1994 IMF package was finalized behind closed doors at the Madrid 50 years anniversary Summit of the Bretton Woods institutions. It required the Ukrainian government to abandon State controls over the exchange rate leading to a massive collapse of the currency. Yushchenko played a key role in negotiating and implementing the 1994 agreement as well as creating a new Ukrainian national currency, which resulted in a dramatic plunge in real wages:

Yushchenko as Head of the Central Bank was responsible for deregulating the national currency under the October 1994 “shock treatment”:

• The price of bread increased overnight by 300 percent,
• electricity prices by 600 percent,
• public transportation by 900 percent.
• the standard of living tumbled

According to the Ukrainian State Statistics Committee, quoted by the IMF, real wages in 1998 had fallen by more than 75 percent in relation to their 1991 level. (http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft /scr/2003/cr03174.pdf )

Ironically, the IMF sponsored program was intended to alleviate inflationary pressures: it consisted in imposing “dollarised” prices on an impoverished population with earnings below ten dollars a month.

Combined with the abrupt hikes in fuel and energy prices, the lifting of subsidies and the freeze on credit contributed to destroying industry (both public and private) and undermining Ukraine’s breadbasket economy.

In November 1994, World Bank negotiators were sent in to examine the overhaul of Ukraine’s agriculture. With trade liberalization (which was part of the economic package), US grain surpluses and “food aid” were dumped on the domestic market, contributing to destabilizing one of the World’s largest and most productive wheat economies, (e.g. comparable to that of the American Mid West). (Michel Chossudovsky IMF Sponsored “Democracy” in The Ukraine, Global Research, November 28, 2004, emphasis added)

The IMF-World Bank had destroyed Ukraine’s “bread basket.”

By 1998, the deregulation of the grain market, the hikes in the price of fuel and the liberalisation of trade resulted in a decline in the production of grain by 45 percent in relation to its 1986-90 level. The collapse in livestock production, poultry and dairy products was even more dramatic (see this). The cumulative decline in GDP resulting from the IMF-sponsored reforms was in excess of 60 percent from 1992 to 1995.

The World Bank: Fake Poverty Alleviation

The World Bank has recently acknowledged that Ukraine is a poor country. (World Bank, Ukraine Overview, Washington DC, updated February 17, 2014):

“Evidence shows Ukraine is facing a health crisis, and the country needs to make urgent and extensive measures to its health system to reverse the progressive deterioration of citizens’ health. Crude adult death rates in Ukraine are higher than its immediate neighbors, Moldova and Belarus, and among the highest not only in Europe, but also in the world.”

What the report fails to mention is that the Bretton Woods institutions –through a process of economic engineering– played a central role in precipitating the post-Soviet collapse of the Ukrainian economy. The dramatic breakdown of Ukraine’s social programs bears the fingerprints of the IMF-World Bank austerity measures which included the deliberate underfunding and dismantling of the Soviet era health care system.

With regard to agriculture, the World Bank points to Ukraine’s “tremendous agricultural potential” while failing to acknowledge that the Ukraine bread-basket was destroyed as part of a US-IMF-World Bank package. According to the World Bank:

“This potential has not been fully exploited due to depressed farm incomes and a lack of modernization within the sector.”

“Depressed farm incomes” are not “the cause,” they are the “consequence” of the IMF-World Bank Structural Adjustment Program. In 1994, farm incomes had declined by the order of 80% in relation to 1991, following the October 1994 IMF program engineered by then NUB governor Viktor Yushchenko. Immediately following the 1994 IMF reform package, the World Bank implemented (in 1995) a private sector “seed project” based on “the liberalization of seed pricing, marketing, and trade.” The prices of farm inputs increased dramatically leading to a string of agricultural bankruptcies. (Projects: Agricultural Seed Development Project | The World Bank, Washington DC, 1995)

The IMF’s 2014 “Shock and Awe” Economic Bailout

While the conditions prevailing in Ukraine today are markedly different to those applied in the 1990s, it should be understood that the imposition of a new wave of macro-economic reforms (under strict IMF policy conditionalities) will serve to impoverish a population which has already been impoverished.

In other words, the IMF’s 2014 “Shock and Awe” constitutes the “final blow” in a sequence of IMF interventions spreading over a period of more than 20 years, which have contributed to destabilizing the national economy and impoverishing Ukraine’s population. We are not dealing with a Greece Model Austerity Package as some analysts have suggested. The reforms slated for Ukraine will be far more devastating.

Preliminary information suggests that IMF bailout will provide an advance of $2 billion in the form of a grant to be followed by a subsequent loan of $11 billion. The European Investment Bank (EIB) will provide another $2 billion, for a total package of around $15 billion. (See Voice of Russia, March 21, 2014)

Drastic Austerity Measures

The Kiev government has announced that the IMF requires a 20% cut in Ukraine’s national budget, implying drastic cuts in social programs, coupled with reductions in the wages of public employees, privatisation and the sale of state assets. The IMF has also called for a “phase out” of energy subsidies, and the deregulation of the foreign exchange markets. With unmanageable debts, the IMF will also impose the sell off and privatisation of major public assets as well as the takeover of the national banking sector.

The new government pressured by the IMF and World Bank have already announced that old-aged pensions are to be curtailed by 50%. In a timely February 21 release, the World Bank had set the guidelines for old-age pension reform in the countries of “Emerging Europe and Central Asia” including Ukraine. In an utterly twisted logic, “Protecting the elderly” is carried out by slashing their pension benefits, according to the World Bank. (World Bank, Significant Pension Reforms Urged in Emerging Europe and Central Asia, Washington Dc, February 21, 2014)

Given the absence of a real government in Kiev, Ukraine’s political handlers in the Ministry of Finance and the NUB will obey the diktats of Wall Street: The IMF structural adjustment loan agreement for Ukraine will be devastating in its social and economic impacts.

Elimination of Subsidies

Pointing to “market-distorted energy subsidies”, price deregulation has been a longstanding demand from both IMF-World Bank. The price of energy had been kept relatively low during the Yanukovych government largely as a result of the bilateral agreement with Russia, which provided Ukraine with low-cost gas in exchange for Naval base lease in Sebastopol. That agreement is now null and void. It is also worth noting that the government of Crimea has announced that it would take over ownership of all Ukrainian state companies in Crimea, including the Black Sea natural gas fields.

The Kiev interim government has intimated that Ukraine’s retail gas prices would have to rise by 40% “as part of economic reforms needed to unlock loans from the International Monetary Fund.” This announcement fails to address the mechanics of full-fledged deregulation which under present circumstances could lead to increases in energy prices in excess of 100 percent.

It is worth recalling, in this regard, that Peru in August 1991 had set the stage for “shock treatment” increases in energy prices when gasoline prices in Lima shot up overnight by 2978% (a 30-fold increase). In 1994 as part of the agreement between the IMF and Leonid Kuchma, the price of electricity flew up over night by 900 percent.

“Enhanced Exchange Rate Flexibility”

One of the central components of IMF intervention is the deregulation of the foreign exchange market. In addition to massive expenditure cuts, the IMF program requires “enhanced exchange rate flexibility” namely the removal of all foreign exchange controls. (Ukraine: Staff Report for the 2012 Article IV Consultation, See also http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/scr/2012/cr12315.pdf)

Since the outset of the Maidan protest movement in December 2013, foreign exchange controls were instated with a view to supporting the hryvnia and stemming the massive outflow of capital.

The IMF-sponsored bailout will literally ransack the foreign currency reserves held by the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU). Enhanced exchange rate flexibility under IMF guidance has been endorsed by the new NBU governor Stepan Kubiv. Without virtually no forex reserves, exchange rate flexibility is financial suicide: it opens the door to speculative short-selling transactions (modelled on the 1997 Asian crisis) directed against the Ukraine’s currency, the hryvnia.

Institutional speculators, which include major Wall Street and European Banks as well as hedge funds, have already positioned themselves. Manipulation in the forex markets is undertaken through derivative trade. Major financial institutions will have detailed inside information with regard to Central Bank policies which will enable them to rig the forex market.

Under a flexible exchange rate system, the Central Bank does not impose restrictions on forex transactions. The Central Bank can however decide –under advice from the IMF– to counter the speculative onslaught in the forex market, with a view to maintaining the parity of the Ukrainian hryvnia. Without the use of exchange controls, this line of action requires Ukraine’s central bank (in the absence of forex reserves) to prop up an ailing currency with borrowed money, thereby contributing to exacerbating the debt crisis.

The graph below indicates a decline of the hryvnia against the US $ of more than 20% over a six-month period.

(Source: themoneyconverter.com)

It is worth recalling in this regard that Brazil in November 1998 had received a precautionary bailout loan from the IMF of the order of $40 billion. One of the conditions of the loan agreement, however, was the complete deregulation of the forex market. This loan was intended to assist the Central Banking in maintaining the parity of the Brazilian real. In practice it spearheaded Brazil into a financial crash in February 1999.

The Brazilian government had accepted the conditionalities. Marred by capital flight of the order of $400 million a day, the money granted under the IMF loan –which was intended to prop up Brazil’s central banks reserves– was plundered in a matter of months. The IMF loan agreement to Brasilia enabled the institutional speculators to buy time. Most of the money under the IMF loan was appropriated in the form of speculative gains accruing to major financial institutions.

With regard to Ukraine, enhanced exchange flexibility spells disaster. Contrary to Brazil, the Central Bank has no forex reserves which would enable it to defend its currency. Where would the NBU get the borrowed forex reserves? Most of the funds under the proposed IMF-EU rescue package are already earmarked and could be used to effectively defend the hryvnia against “short-selling” speculative attacks in the currency markets. The most likely scenario is that the hryvnia will experience a major decline leading to significant hikes in the prices of essential commodities, including food, fuel and transportation.

Were the Central Bank able to use borrowed reserves to prop up the hryvnia, this borrowed money would be swiftly reappropriated, handed over to currency speculators on a silver platter. This scenario of propping up the national currency using borrowed forex reserves (i.e. Brazil in 1998-99) would, however, contribute in the short-term to staving off an immediate collapse of the standard.

This procedure provides “extra time” to the speculators, who are busy plundering the Central Bank’s (borrowed) currency reserves. It also enables the interim government to postpone the worst impacts of the IMF’s “enhanced exchange rate flexibility” to a later date.

When the borrowed hard currency reserves of the Central Bank run out –i.e. in the immediate aftermath of the May 25 presidential elections– the value of hryvnia will plunge on the forex market, which in turn will trigger a dramatic collapse in the standard of living. Coupled with the demise of bilateral economic relations with Russia pertaining to the supply of natural gas to Ukraine, energy prices are also slated to increase dramatically.

Neoliberalism and Neo-Nazi Ideology Join Hands: Repressing the Protest Movement Against the IMF

With Svoboda and Right Sector political appointees in charge of national security and the armed forces, a real grassroots protest movement directed against the IMF’s deadly macroeconomic reforms will, in all likelihood, be brutally repressed by the Right Sector’s “brown shirts” and the National Guard paramilitary led by Dmitry Yarosh on behalf of Wall Street and the Washington consensus.

In recent developments, Right Sector Dmitry Yarosh has declared his candidacy in the upcoming presidential elections. (Popular support for the Yarosh is less than 2%)

“Russia put Yarosh on an international wanted list and charged him with inciting terrorism after he urged Chechen terrorist leader Doku Umarov to launch attacks on Russia over the Ukrainian conflict. The ultra-nationalist leader has also threatened to destroy Russian pipelines on Ukrainian territory.” (RT, March 22, 2014)

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s State prosecutor, who also belongs to the Neo-Nazi faction, has implemented procedures which prevent the holding of public rallies and protests directed against the interim government.

28 February 2025

Source: michelchossudovsky.substack.com

By Countercurrents Collective

Netanyahu’s office announced Sunday that Israel has stopped humanitarian aid from entering the Gaza Strip following the expiration of the prisoner-ceasefire deal. An Israeli official stated that the decision was made in full coordination with the Trump administration.

Israel has violated the ceasefire deal on the table by rejecting to go ahead with talks about the scond phase.

On Saturday night, Netanyahu’s Office announced that Israel had adopted the US’s proposal for a temporary ceasefire spanning the Ramadan and Passover periods in exchange for releasing half of Israeli living captives.

Israel demanded Hamas release five living captives and 10 bodies of deceased captives in exchange for Palestinian prisoners and increased aid to the Gaza Strip.
It also sought to extend the first phase of the ceasefire by a week. Israel requested, through mediators, Hamas’s response to their proposal before the end of Friday.

Hamas informed the mediators that it rejected the Israeli proposal and considered it a violation of what was agreed upon in the ceasefire.

Hardline former Israeli minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said: “Now is the time to open the gates of hell—cut off electricity and water, return to war, and, most importantly, not settle for only half the prisoners. Instead, we must follow President Trump’s ultimatum: either the immediate release of all prisoners or opening the gates of hell on Gaza.”

The Government Media Office in Gaza said:

⭕️ Israel’s announcement on blocking the entry of essential aid to Gaza represents a continuation of the genocidal war on the Palestinian people.

⭕️ Preventing the entry of aid effectively means waging a war of starvation against the people of the Gaza Strip, who are entirely dependent on aid coming through the border crossings.

⭕️ We have warned from day one about the dangers of silence regarding Israel’s violations of the ceasefire agreement.

⭕️ We demand that the mediators, as guarantors, exert pressure on the Israeli occupation to fulfill its commitments under the agreement in all its stages, implement the humanitarian protocol, and allow the entry of shelter and relief supplies.

Hamas movement in a press statement said:

⭕️ Netanyahu’s decision to halt humanitarian aid is cheap blackmail, a war crime and a coup against the ceasefire agreement.

⭕️ The mediators and the international community must press the Israeli occupation and stop its punitive and immoral measures against more than two million people in the Gaza Strip.

⭕️ Israel’s allegations regarding Hamas’s violation of the ceasefire agreement are misleading and baseless.

⭕️ The behavior of Netanyahu and his government clearly violates Article 14 of the agreement, which stipulates that all measures related to the first phase continue in the second phase.

⭕️ We reaffirm our commitment to implementing the signed agreement in its three phases, and we have repeatedly announced our readiness to begin negotiations for the second stage of the agreement.

⭕️ We call on the mediators to pressure the occupation to implement its obligations under the agreement, in all its stages, and to implement the humanitarian protocol.

2 March 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Brett Wilkins

As Palestinians released from Israeli imprisonment recount torture and other abuse suffered at the hands of their former captors, the Trump administration on Friday approved a new $3 billion weapons package for Israel.

The new package, reported by Zeteo‘s Prem Thakker, includes nearly $2.716 billion worth of bombs and weapons guidance kits, as well as $295 million in bulldozers. The Trump administration said that “an emergency exists that requires the immediate sale,” allowing it to bypass Congress, as the Biden administration did on multiple occasions. However, the weapons won’t be delivered until 2026 or 2027.

[https://bsky.app/profile/premthakker.bsky.social/post/3ljbfkyztf22p]

From October 2023 to October 2024, Israel received a record $17.9 billion worth of U.S. arms as it waged a war of annihilation against the Gaza Strip that left more than 170,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing and millions more displaced, starved, or sickened. Israel is facing genocide allegations in an International Court of Justice case brought by South Africa. The International Criminal Court has also issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.

Reporting on the new package came after U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Monday announced an effort to block four other arms sales totaling $8.56 billion in offensive American weaponry to Israel.

Meanwhile, some of the approximately 1,000 Palestinians released by Israel as part of a prisoner swap described grim stories of abuse by Israeli forces. The former detainees, who were arrested but never charged with any crimes, “have returned visibly malnourished and scarred by the physical and psychological torture they say they faced in Israeli prisons,” according toThe Washington Post. Some returned to what were once their homes to find them destroyed and their relatives killed or wounded by Israeli forces.

Eyas al-Bursh, a doctor volunteering at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City when he was captured by Israeli troops, was held in Sde Teiman and the Ofer military prison in the illegally occupied West Bank for 11 months.

“The places where we were held were harsh, sleep was impossible, and we remained handcuffed and blindfolded,” al-Bursh told the Post.

“We endured psychological and physical torture without a single day of respite—whether through beatings, abuse, punches, or even verbal insults and humiliation,” he added.

The Israel Defense Forces told the Post that it “acts in accordance with Israeli and international law in order to protect the rights of the detainees held in the detention and questioning facilities.”

However, farmer Ashraf al-Radhi, who was held for 14 months—including at the notorious Sde Teiman prison in Israel’s Negev Desert—told the Post that “we witnessed all kinds of humiliation.”

According to the newspaper:

Radhi said he “wished for death” during his detention, which included long periods when he was blindfolded, handcuffed, andcrammed into a filthy cell with dozens of other prisoners. The 34-year-old said he had no access to a lawyer; no idea why he was there; or what, in his absence, had become of his family.

Rahdi also said that Mohammed al-Akka, a 44-year-old detainee held with him, died last December. Al-Akka is one of dozens of Palestinian prisoners who have died in Israeli custody, some from suspected torture and, in at least one case, rape with an electric baton. A number of Israeli reservists are being investigated for the alleged gang-rape of a Sde Teiman prisoner.

Brett Wilkins is a staff writer for Common Dreams.

1 March 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Asma Anjum Khan

He was the second caliph of the Muslims who didn’t live in a big mansion, like his predecessors.

He would be found sleeping under a tree in hot summers.  Someone from outside Madinah would be surprised to find him thus. But as a matter of fact this happened often. The grand Caliph would feel tired running after and searching for  camels from the state treasury, then he would find some rest under a tree.

Such simplicity today seems unbelievable.

H.Umar Farooque RA is one of the most esteemed and interesting personalities of Islam.

Some say democracy and Islam have nothing to do with each other. While a clear reading without prejudice is all that it needs to inform us, that is not the truth,

In the incident below we find the seeds of democracy buried in and all those who say Islam is not democratic can modify their views if they choose to.

It so happened that….

Once a load of chaddors ( bedsheets)  arrived in Madinah from somewhere.

All were distributed one for one person living in Madinah.

When during the week Umar RA went to masjid on a jumma , a sort of unusual argument happened between him, his son and a questioner from the crowd.

The reason?

The reason was Umar’s abaya, his cloak.

Umar ‘s abaya was freshly and brilliantly stitched with the help of those large chaddors.

But how could one chador be enough for his large stature? He was a tall and well -built man.

Umar RA had been asked to stitch an abaya ,long flowy kurta, of the chaddor , but him being a very tall well built man the chaddor was not enough for  his kind of physical stature.

Yet his gown got stitched.

How?

You will know, read further.

He wore the new gown , thanked his Allah and went to deliver his jummah khutbah; as the leader of the Muslims has the duty of delivering a weekly address to the Muslims every Friday afternoon.

A common man call him Aam aadmi, from the gathering in the masjid , got up even before Umar RA could start speaking and pointed his arrow towards the caliph. Caliph was, you call call him,  sort of Prime Minister.

The questioner from the crowd, a common man, asked Umar, his leader,

“How could you get your abaya stitched , when you also got one chador like us?”

The man was right. Justice was the norm. Even Caliph Umar had received only one piece of Chaddor like the rest of the citizens.

Hence, the question and the questioner.

What was being implied here in the august gathering of men at the holy mosque of Madinah as is obvious, was corruption.

So had Umar taken ‘one chador more ‘ for himself? While the rest of the Muslims had received only one?

How could this be possible?

Justice was the norm in that Medinan society.

And did you notice the dare devilry of the questioner to get up in the gathering and pose the question directly to his Caliph, i.e. his leader?

This is, folks,  the true democracy where, even the most ordinary of the persons had the courage to pose a question to the supreme authority, without fearing of consequences.

In fact there were no consequences, muslims could question their leaders, demand to know the details of whatever was happening at the time.

Here you can imagine, your own dear irresponsible systems of justice, but at your own peril.

Now coming back;

Did Umar being, the Prime Minister steal one more chaddor when everyone else got only one?

Was the question. Perhaps in most minds.

Because it was obvious to everyone present, that Umar’s abaya would not fit into one chador. Him being very tall and stout.

One can imagine the thunder in the Friday crowd gathered ‘to listen’ patiently to their leader; not like us today who rush out of our well-built masjids to have a bite of our favourite biryanis and qormas, post jumma  khutbah.

Now let’s focus on this rare drama happening on a jumma some one thousand four hundred years ago.

The man angrily asked if the supreme leader “ had stolen” the second chador for himself?

Imagine!

The  supreme authority  being accused of theft by a common man.

No no, don’t imagine…Please don’t.

Just chill. Read and forget. Be as numb as possible.

Our collective habit is difficult to abandon for us.

H. Umar RA started crying hearing this.

Wonder he didn’t order to cut off the throat of the callous questioner.

After a brief and very difficult pause, Abdullah  the son of Umar got up and revealed the secret behind this alleged corruption.

Abdullah informed the august gathering that when he saw his father struggling to stitch his abaya with his one chador unsuccessfully, he gifted him his own share of  chador to him. And Umar’s abaya got stitched , now comfortably.

Umarthe Caliph after controlling his emotions, appreciated the one who raised the doubt about him stealing a chaddor, for this sensible question, and said,

“As long as people like you exist, we have amaan ( to live in safety.)

Wonder he didn’t send the man to the gallows for daring to ask a question to him the Prime Minister.

This is how truedemocracy works where the supreme authority stands equal with the rest of the citizens.

Umar further added that As long as, such fearless  people who have the  courage to question the authority ; the people(community) shall remain in peace.

A sensible reader would find lots of nuances for and of democracy in this incident. But as most of us have turned into dumb asses in the last few years, expectation criteria falls low.

Go and grab your next OTT with hot coffee. Have it cold , better  for you,  you and your sensitivities are cold.

The incident of Umar RA shows, most of all the ability the courage the audacity of the Aam Aadmi  to question the highest authority.

This is what true democracy is and should be and secondly and most importantly, the higher authority appreciates the questioner and welcomes him and didn’t send him to the gallows.

But Umar was Umar, he wanted to resolve the situation in his own way of truth.  He asked the man who questioned him, what in case,

had he found him guilty of stealing one chador from the state treasury?

The questioner was also one of his kind, he  replied,

“Had we found you stealing the chaddor or misbehaving with us for our questions,”   the subject of that young state, he said,

  “ we would have straightened  you with our arrows!”

(Yatha Raja , tatha Praja) ‘यथा राजा तथा प्रजा’

But what we see today is a spectacle of public and private sentiments. Ramadan has arrived. Can we from this year, try to be authentic in our speech and behaviour?

Let’s pledge so.

But   what have  we been doing now ; drawing our half torn chaddors more closely over us and pretending to sleep?

But not before our OTTs.

Shubh Ratri

Asma Anjum Khan teaches English , attempting and is tempted to write

28 February 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Admiral L Ramdas and Lalita Ramdas

This article was published in CC on 27/02/2022. We are republishing it due to its importance in the present times.

Twenty years ago, in end February 2002 we were in Palo Alto with our daughter towards the end of a successful lecture tour organised by  friends –to build a coalition of groups and voices prepared to stand up against the proliferation of Nuclear weapons.

It was with horror and disbelief that we watched on the news, the unfolding of the tragic events starting 27 February into the first week of March….from Godhra to Ahmedabad and across the state

• The burnt train at Godhra – the incendiary speeches and broadcasts
• The fires, the killings, the mayhem –
• The deliberate targeting of all those belonging to one community
• The brutality of rapes and murders – of Muslim women
• A state and a people gone mad with blood lust
• The inaction of the State Police
• The deliberate delay in calling in the Army Units who had been flown in but remained in their barracks for the crucial 48 to 72 hours before being ordered to “restore peace, law and order”.

Were these indeed images of our land and our people? That too in Gandhiji’s Gujarat?

Being many thousand miles away was the toughest of all – what to believe – what to dismiss as exaggerated reports? This was  before the WhatsApp pandemic had hit us.

Then slowly as calls and eye witness accounts started trickling in – the dreadful reality slowly began to hit home and we could no longer escape from the numbing truth that this was indeed true and for the most part was deliberately organised violence leading to communal carnage. The world began calling it a Pogrom, and worse – Genocide.

I did the only thing I could do at that time, which was to write an anguished letter to my Prime Minister – Shri Atal Behari Vajpayee – one of the hardest things to do.  I am sharing extracts herewith:

“My Dear Prime Minister Vajpayee ji,

“It is indeed with a heavy heart that I write to my Prime Minister at this time. The recent happenings in Gujarat have completely shaken my confidence in the Government and its capacity to uphold and protect a democratic and secular India.”

“The entire nation is shocked at the callousness and inefficiency displayed by the law and order machinery of the Government of Gujarat, which not only failed to perform its duty to its citizens, but also stood by and in several cases actually incited what can best be described as a pogrom.”

“The democratic and secular traditions of India have been severely endangered by the recent events. In addition, the carnage in Gujarat has created an increasingly negative image of India among people in many parts of the world.”

“I joined the Navy at the age of fifteen just a few months after Independence. My growth in the Navy has coincided with that of the country and I rose to head the Indian Navy from 1990 to 1993. We have had many distinguished servicemen from the minority communities who have reached the highest ranks in the service.

To name a few: Field Marshal Manekshaw, Marshal of the Air Force, Arjan Singh, Air Chief Marshal Idris Latif, Admirals Cursetji, Pereira and Dawson – all Chiefs of the Indian Navy; the Keelor brothers of the Air Force who both won the Mahavir Chakra; Brigadier Usman, decorated posthumously with the Mahavir Chakra, Lance Naik Albert Ekka ñ Param Vir Chakra (posthumous), and men like my own steward, M.Ali, who served me faithfully while I was commanding INS Beas in the 1971 operations”

“The Indian Armed Forces have always been one of the strongest pillars of our secular democracy. They have maintained their political neutrality and have respected civil authority since Independence despite trends to the contrary in our immediate neighbourhood. They represent a microcosm of the diversity of India which has always been its strength. Over the years India has witnessed the steady process of communalization and politicization of our bureaucracy and the police. It would be a tragedy indeed if these processes were to affect the Armed Forces of this land. This could herald a potentially disastrous and unmanageable situation where our uniformed personnel could find themselves in opposing camps with all its attendant dangers.”

Here are a few among the list of recommendations sent to the Prime Minister Shri Vajpayee.

1. 1. Constitute a Commission of Enquiry by a Bench of three sitting judges from the Supreme Court of India to look into the entire sequence of events beginning with the tragedy on the train to the subsequent massacre of minorities in Gujarat.Bring to book all the guilty persons including politicians, bureaucrats and police personnel who have been directly responsible for dereliction of duty.3. Ban extremist right wing organizations like the VHP, Bajrang Dal, and the RSS, as has already been done with SIMI.4. Set up camps immediately for those dispossessed;  initiate a rehabilitation programme with neccessary resources; and equitable compensation to families of all victims.As a former Chief of the Indian Navy, and as a concerned citizen, I can no longer remain a silent observer of what is tantamount to ethnic cleansing and genocide of our own people. I urge you to steer the nation firmly away from the path of extremism and fundamentalism of all shades.

Unfortunately I am out of the country and cannot therefore meet you in person to share this with you.”

Ramdas

*********************************************************************
Needless to add, there was no acknowledgement let alone a response. This has, sadly been the fate, for the most part, of many of the letters and statements addressed to either the Honourable  President and Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, or indeed to the Prime Minister. But of that another time. To return to the Tragedy of Gujarat ……The letter from America was dated March 11 2002. We returned home to India by end March – but were part of the ongoing, intense debates and discussions that accompanied the public outrage and shock following the events in Gujarat.

Inter Faith Fact Finding and Peace Mission – April 2002

In early April of 2002, a number of us, representing many sectors and faiths, decided to make a visit to Gujarat. Many of us had known each other and worked on peace and conflict issues earlier.  We had been in continuous touch with each other ever since the terrible events of Feb 28 – March 2 when the Indian Army was finally provided the necessary facilities and invited to provide ‘aid to civil power’.

Although the worst of the carnage was over by the time we visited Gujarat a month later – it was clear that the people, especially the minorities, were both insecure and faced continuing harassment and abuse.

Our purpose was simple and clear – to gather facts from a variety of sources and to try to restore a sense of confidence among the people. Hence the composition of people from all faiths. These included the late Nirmala Deshpande who led the delegation; the Late Swami Agnivesh; John Dayal, Navaid Hamied ; Admiral Ramdas – to name a few…..

Knowing that a special Army Unit had been deployed to Gujarat, I decided to call on the General in charge and apprise him of our mission and our presence in the city. It was a pleasure to meet Lt Gen Zameeruddin Shah, and receive a briefing. I remember very clearly that this was an era before the mobile phone had become popular – and my wife had thrust our newly acquired phone into my pocket just before I left for Gujarat. I mention this in light of subsequent events.

Nirmala Didi’s colleague and friend had generously offered to accommodate the group in ‘Eswar Bhavan’ where he lived. No sooner had we moved in, we were virtually ‘gheraoed’ – by elements who clearly knew who we were.

One could guess their political affiliation, when we were told to “send out the Muslim members of the group” or else face arson and attacks on the entire group. How much more brazen could they get.

After a quick consultation we decided to move to the well known Sabarmati Ashram, so as not to embarrass or endanger our well meaning host..

But the unrelenting mobs followed us to the Ashram – with loud demands that we could only stay ‘if the Muslim members of the group were sent out’! At this point I realized that things may get worse, and the Sabarmati Ashram may itself be threatened.

I therefore decided to call the General, popularly known as “Zoom” Shah, and explained our predicament. He said don’t move sir, we shall do something very soon. Sure enough in about ten minutes two jeeps with mounted Machine guns appeared from either side of the road, no sooner were they sighted the members of the “Goonda Mob” scurried away. Just shows the effect of the mere presence of the ARMY. And yet it is a point to ponder seriously and ask the question why it took three days before the Army was deployed on the streets of Ahmedabad and elsewhere.

In 2018, on the occasion of the release of Gen Shah’s book called ‘ Sarkari Mussalman’, I remember being distressed to read that some senior officers of the Army had expressed concerns about “Zoom” aka an officer named ‘Zameeruddin’ being tasked with leading troops for this sensitive mission. It was good to hear that Gen Padmanabhan, then Chief of Army Staff, did exactly what I had myself done in 1971 – disregarded the voices of dissent and suspicion, and told ‘Zoom’ to proceed on this mission. As Captain of the INS BEAS in the 1971 operations, I was cautioned likewise about my steward Ali. Needless to say, I rejected the idea outright and sailed through the 1971 war against Pakistan with Ali by my side.

I am proud of officers like Gen Padmanabhan and Lt Gen Zameeruddin Shah who bring credit to our fine syncretic service traditions. But, these were also early signals of how communal prejudice was already present and active in the majority community, including our Armed Forces. Alas we did not take these warnings seriously enough.

WHY TALK ABOUT GUJARAT TODAY – WHAT LESSONS HAVE WE LEARNED?

Having managed to locate this letter after two decades – I have been in a further dilemma – as to whether or not to bring this up again at this time, twenty years after the tragedy of Godhra and Gujarat. My wife Lalita and I have agonised over this for some time. We both concluded almost simultaneously, that silence was not an option.  We are senior citizens – who have lived through partition and its horrors. My wife has seen at first hand the brutality of the 1984 Pogrom and worked for nearly two years with the survivors of the Sikh community. We are witness to similar incidents of growing intolerance and communal violence across the country. That these are happening, with impunity, in the land of Buddha, Mahavira, and Mahatma Gandhi is disturbing to say the least.

Therefore our decision is, that as a former head of one of our Armed Forces, I should continue to try to speak Truth to Power – which is the one lesson my training in the Navy has taught me.

I have always believed that the Armed Forces represented the uncompromising commitment to the Constitution and its values. We have been clear that there is no way our Services can allow the influence of intolerance, religious bigotry and divisive communalism to infect our secular fighting forces. And yet we have almost helplessly watched the toxin of xenophobic politics relentlessly being injected into the life blood of  our democracy.

Despite our Constitutional vision and Dharma so to speak – this is being eroded and weakened – and it is troubling to large numbers of us – possibly the silent majority. We draw attention to these personal and anecdotal events – because it is from the strength of one’s personal experiences that one builds convictions and value based principles which are essential in our varied and complex societies.

There are a few other troubling issues which must be highlighted in the lessons learned

• The role of Media which is no longer able to call a ‘spade a spade’ – someone rightly described Gujarat-02 an “archetypal post truth event”.
• Lack of accountability and liability – many fact finding missions and investigations later – the only ‘fact’ being quoted is that the then Chief Minister was cleared and given a “clean chit”
• Time and time again – leaders of many political parties who pour hate and invective and instigate violence have literally managed to get away with murder. In a recent article,  Cherian George, an academic, refers to this as “predatory populism” – which turns into a story of self defence instead of pre-meditated mass murder. This often leads to “decent citizens baying for blood”.
• Again to quote Mr Cherian George -we are facing a situation of ‘Think Global and Kill Local’ – the assaults on Human Rights and on Democracy are virtually ignored or condoned by the international community because of the imperative of geo-political and economic interests over so called concerns about Human Rights.

So as we approach the twentieth anniversary of the Tragedy of Gujarat – this is a call to the Conscience of all those who still believe in Humanity and Insaaniyat and who will continue to speak up and speak out on behalf of all the injustice , the deaths and violence wrought on thousands of innocents.  Let us not forget that few have been arraigned or brought to book – whereas 32 accused of bomb blasts, again in Gujarat, have been recently awarded the death penalty ….

Our struggles to uphold our Constitution must continue with renewed fervour. We reaffirm our belief in Justice, Equality, Freedom, Fraternity and Secularism, as the guiding principles of our Republic. Then alone can we proudly sing :

“Saare Jahaan se Achha Hindustan Hamara” – Jai Hind – Jai Jagat!

Admiral L Ramdas, Former Chief of Naval Staff with Lalita Ramdas

28 February 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Philip A Farruggio

Now that Trump has ‘ Muskrat’ using his chainsaw on this and then that within the federal government, beware MAGA seniors. This writer sat in a coffee shop right before the election, next to seven elderly MAGA men. How did I know? Easy, by the Trump 2024 baseball caps they all wore. I’m a baby boomer and these old guys ( I refuse to say ‘ Fools’ in hopes of reaching them and their fellow MAGAs) were definitely near or above 80 years old. Before they ended their morning breakfast with hand holding prayers ( with one guy doing the ‘ Speaking in tongues’ bit) their consensus was for Trump to ‘ Deport those drug carrying lazy illegals on DAY ONE’. My better half was outraged at this rhetoric, and came close to confronting these guys. She didn’t and thank goodness they were finished with their little circus and left.

I would have liked to give those old MAGA lemmings the story of my late parents, when they were ready for assisted living, followed by a nursing home. We had to get them to apply for Medicaid by ‘ Spending down’ their money ( which was very meager). Thank goodness they then were able to be placed in a nursing home nearby. This was 25 years ago, when Uncle Sam subsidized Florida Medicaid BDS ( Before DeSantis). I wanted to go into the parking lot of that coffee shop and shake a few of those old baseball cap wearing men. Most of them looked like how my parents looked in 2000, going by their attire. These guys had to be retired working stiffs. ” What’s going to happen to you when you get frail and need to go into a nursing home dude? Do you have the $10k to $20k a month to stay there? Trump and his ‘ Muskrat’, along with Captain Ron DeSantis want to cut federal aid for Medicaid, and your lovely Red States are going to cut it down locally. Keep praying guys.”

Philip A Farruggio is a free lance columnist, host of a radio interview show and lifelong Anti War Activist.

28 February 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Edward Curtin

Eighty-nine years ago this month, the film Modern Times, starring Charlie Chaplin, was released. Considered one of the greatest movies ever, it was a comedic but savage critique of industrial capitalism and a prescient indictment of the alienated modern life to come, as Chaplin’s character, the Little Tramp, worked on an assembly line where he suffered a nervous breakdown from the stress and repetitive nature of the work.

But the film ends on a hopeful note, as the Little Tramp and his beloved Ellen hit the road and walk away from the mechanized life. It is a poetic call to replace the iron discipline of the machine life with rebellious spontaneity.

In All Consuming Images: The Politics of Style in Contemporary Culture (Basic Books, 1988), Stuart Ewen writes:

In Modern Times we confront a factory world which increasingly usurps human initiative. Within the scope of the film, people are trapped beneath the thumb of productivity, their bodies and souls shaped and overwhelmed by the assembly line. The priorities of such a world submerge human needs; misery and homelessness abound. People are seen as useful only if they can be plugged into the productive apparatus. Otherwise they are tossed aside like garbage.

Today, the Little Tramp, has been replaced by big Trump and his sidekick, Elon Musk, owners and operators of the new AI Digital factory Internet system, posing as saviors of the Little Tramp.

Just the other day, Musk, with an imagined twinkle in his eye and little boy grin, tweeted out on his bullhorn X (Twitter): “We are on the event horizon of the singularity.”

By the “Singularity” is meant the time when the machines – computers and artificial intelligence – exceed human control and dominate society. For technologists like Musk and his ilk in and out of government and in Silicon Valley, the idea of a machine run world is heaven on earth. A place where death will be defeated by synthetic means and love reduced to a passionless technique. This is the myth of the machine that has grown from a superstitious cult to a world-wide religion with the cell phone its cult object.
*
Up in the lake and down in the river the ice is breaking up. In the house a few little black bugs have appeared. The maple sap is running. And we have seen flocks of robins and cedar waxwings eating leftover berries that have clung to the bare ruined choirs of the trees and bushes. Even the turkey vultures have returned to perch everywhere, looking down like caring teachers over students’ desks, as if to say – wake up, look around, these are resurrection days.
*
By the late 1980s, the “Little Tramp” was pitching computers for IBM in a series of advertisements. His problems were again portrayed as caused by industrial chaos, but as Ewen writes:

But this time the solution is different. Beleaguered Charlie is saved by the computer, the quintessential modern instrument of order, control, surveillance. Here the frenetic conditions of modern life are solved by modern technology. The 1936 film had pointed an idealistic way out. The ad points the way back in. The critique has been turned on its head, packaged and used against itself.

Now the “smart phone” is sold as the way out and the way in, as resurrection battles singularity.
*
Even the bears are waking up around here. A guy I know said that on his way home the other night he saw one walking down Main Street. Now this is a nice little tourist town in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts, not a town in northern Canada, so I was a bit surprised by his sighting. It became somewhat clearer after I asked him where he was coming from and he said he had been down in The Well, a local bar, having a few drinks with an old girlfriend who had told him he had always been her true love but she had to marry the local police chief for protection. Confused, he asked her what did she need protection from. When she said – life, and got up and said good night, he ordered another round. Soon after that the bear appeared.
*
Now we have crossed over to a country led by a man and his sidekick so sick that no words are needed. Their use of artificial intelligence is fulfilling the dream of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, the Italian fascist, friend of Mussolini, and founder of the art movement called futurism, whose claim was that “the entire human drama revolves around the machine.” It was a ruse for power cached within an artistic manifesto based on the belief that the machine was the new god with supernatural powers beyond human control – very similar to AI and the alleged final coming of the singularity. “War,” said Marinetti, “is the father of all things . . . the culminating and perfecting synthesis of progress.”

Trump Gaza Video | Trump Posts Video Of AI-Generated ‘Future Of Gaza’ After US Takeover

Anyone who thinks this is what it means to Make America Great Again had better think quick – you have been deluded. This video is a shocking, psychopathic, and fitting result of years of U.S. supported genocide in Gaza.
*
I look forward to Ash Wednesday on March 5, the day on which as a young man I went to church to have the priest rub ashes on my forehead and say, “Remember, Ed, that you are dust and back to dust you will return.”

I no longer go to the priests, but I will still feel the ashes and those sacred words. I will do so on a little tramp up by the lake and into the woods, where perhaps I will detect the tracks of that bear my friend saw walking through town. He exists in us all.

And the night before that walk, I will drink deeply from the well – what my father learned to call “the smiles” from his Irish Uncle Tim, a blacksmith for the NY Fire Department, who so called the Irish whiskey he drank – and I will smile, knowing I will die with the winter and be resurrected in the spring as the sap rises.

It is Resurrection time, and despite the machine people, God rises in us all as we resist their machine dreams, and rejoice.

Edward Curtin is an independent writer whose work has appeared widely over many years.

28 February 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Norman Solomon

Donald Trump’s power has thrived on the economics, politics, and culture of war. The runaway militarism of the last quarter-century was a crucial factor in making President Trump possible, even if it goes virtually unmentioned in mainstream media and political discourse. That silence is particularly notable among Democratic leaders, who have routinely joined in bipartisan messaging to boost the warfare state that fueled the rise of Trumpism.

Trump first ran for president nearly a decade and a half after the “Global War on Terror” began in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. The crusade’s allure had worn off. The national mood was markedly different than in the era when President George W. Bush insisted that “our responsibility” was to “rid the world of evil.”

Working-class Americans had more modest goals for their government. Distress festered as income inequality widened and economic hardships worsened, while federal spending on war, the Pentagon budget, and the “national security” state continued to zoom upward. Even though the domestic effects of protracted warfare were proving to be enormous, multilayered, and deeply alienating, elites in Washington scarcely seemed to notice.

Donald Trump, however, did notice.

Pundits were shocked in 2015 when Trump mocked the war record of Republican Senator John McCain. The usual partisan paradigms were further upended during the 2016 presidential campaign when Trump denounced his opponent, Hillary Clinton, as “trigger happy.” He had a point. McCain, Clinton, and their cohort weren’t tired of U.S. warfare — in fact, they kept glorifying it — but many in non-affluent communities had grown sick of its stateside consequences.

Repeated deployments of Americans to war zones had taken their toll. The physical and emotional wounds of returning troops were widespread. And while politicians were fond of waxing eloquent about “the fallen,” the continual massive spending for war and preparations for more of it depleted badly needed resources at home.

Status-Quo Militarism

President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton represented the status quo that Trump ran against and defeated. Like them, he was completely insulated from the harsh boomerang effects of the warfare state. Unlike them, he sensed how to effectively exploit the discontent and anger it was causing.

Obama was not clueless. He acknowledged some downsides to endless war in a much-praised speech during his second term in office. “Our systematic effort to dismantle terrorist organizations must continue,” he affirmed at the National Defense University. “But this war, like all wars, must end. That’s what history advises. That’s what our democracy demands.”

New Yorker journalist Jane Mayer hailed that instance of presidential oratory in a piece touting Obama’s “anguish over the difficult trade-offs that perpetual war poses to a free society.” But such concerns were fleeting at the White House, while sparking little interest from mainstream journalists. Perpetual war had become wallpaper in the media echo chamber.

President Bush’s messianic calls to rid the world of “evil-doers” had fallen out of fashion, but militarism remained firmly embedded in the political economy. Corporate contracts with the Pentagon and kindred agencies only escalated. But when Hillary Clinton ran for president in 2016, being a rigid hawk became a negative with the electorate as pro-Trump forces jumped into the opening she provided.

Six weeks before the election, Forbes published an article under the headline “Hillary Clinton Never Met a War She Didn’t Want Other Americans to Fight.” Written by Doug Bandow, former special assistant to President Ronald Reagan, the piece exemplified how partisan rhetoric about war and peace had abruptly changed. Clinton “almost certainly would lead America into more foolish wars,” Bandow contended, adding: “No one knows what Trump would do in a given situation, which means there is a chance he would do the right thing. In contrast, Clinton’s beliefs, behavior, and promises all suggest that she most likely would do the wrong thing, embracing a militaristic status quo which most Americans recognize has failed disastrously.”

Clinton was following a timeworn formula for Democrats trying to inoculate themselves against charges of being soft on foreign enemies, whether communists or terrorists. Yet Trump, deft at labeling his foes both wimps and warmongers, ran rings around the Democratic nominee. In that close election, Clinton’s resolutely pro-war stance may have cost her the presidency.

“Even controlling in a statistical model for many other alternative explanations, we find that there is a significant and meaningful relationship between a community’s rate of military sacrifice and its support for Trump,” a study by scholars Douglas Kriner and Francis Shen concluded. “Our statistical model suggests that if three states key to Trump’s victory — Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin — had suffered even a modestly lower casualty rate, all three could have flipped from red to blue and sent Hillary Clinton to the White House.” Professors Kriner and Shen suggested that Democrats might want to “reexamine their foreign policy posture if they hope to erase Trump’s electoral gains among constituencies exhausted and alienated by 15 years of war.”

But such advice went unheeded. Leading Democrats and Republicans remained on autopilot for the warfare state as the Pentagon budget kept rising.

On the War Train with Donald Trump

In 2018, the top Democrats in Washington, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, boasted that they were fully aligned with President Trump in jacking up Pentagon spending. After Trump called for an 11% increase over two years in the already-bloated “defense” budget, Pelosi sent an email to House Democrats declaring, “In our negotiations, congressional Democrats have been fighting for increases in funding for defense.” The office of Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer proudly stated: “We fully support President Trump’s Defense Department’s request.”

By then, fraying social safety nets and chronic fears of economic insecurity had become ever more common across the country. The national pattern evoked Martin Luther King’s comment that profligate military spending was like “some demonic destructive suction tube.”

In 2020, recurring rhetoric from Joe Biden in his winning presidential campaign went like this: “If we give Donald Trump eight years in the White House, he will forever alter the character of our nation.” But Biden said nothing about how almost 20 years of nonstop war funding and war making had already altered the character of the nation.

At first glance, President Biden seemed to step away from continuing the “war on terror.” The last U.S. troops left Afghanistan by the end of August 2021. Speaking to the United Nations General Assembly weeks later, he proclaimed: “I stand here today, for the first time in 20 years, with the United States not at war.” But even as he spoke, a new report from the Costs of War Project at Brown University indicated that the “war on terror” persisted on several continents. “The war continues in over 80 countries,” said Catherine Lutz, the project’s co-director. The war’s cost to taxpayers, the project estimated, was already at least $8 trillion.

Biden’s designated successor, Vice President Kamala Harris, displayed a traditional militaristic reflex while campaigning against Trump. In her acceptance speech at the Democratic convention she pledged to maintain “the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world.” Such rhetoric was problematic for attracting voters from the Democratic base reluctant to cast ballots for a war party. More damaging to her election prospects was her refusal to distance herself from Biden’s insistence on continuing to supply huge quantities of weaponry to Israel for the horrific war in Gaza.

Supplementing the automatic $3.8 billion in annual U.S. military aid to Israel, special new appropriations for weaponry totaling tens of billions of dollars enabled mass killing in Gaza. Poll results at the time showed that Harris would have gained support in swing states if she had called for an arms embargo on Israel as long as the Gaza war continued. She refused to do so.

Post-election polling underscored how Harris’s support for that Israeli war appreciably harmed her chances to defeat Trump. In 2024, as in 2016, Trump notably benefitted from the unwavering militarism of his Democratic opponent.

Overseas, the realities of nonstop war have been unfathomably devastating. Estimates from the Costs of War Project put the number of direct deaths in major war zones from U.S.-led actions under the “war on terror” brand at more than 900,000. With indirect deaths included, the number jumps to “4.5 million and counting.” The researchers explain that “some people were killed in the fighting, but far more, especially children, have been killed by the reverberating effects of war, such as the spread of disease.”

That colossal destruction of faraway human beings and the decimation of distant societies have gotten scant attention in mainstream U.S. media and politics. The far-reaching impacts of incessant war on American life in this century have also gotten short shrift. Midway through the Biden presidency, trying to sum up some of those domestic impacts, I wrote in my book War Made Invisible:

“Overall, the country is gripped by war’s dispersed and often private consequences — the aggravated tendencies toward violence, the physical wartime injuries, the post-traumatic stress, the profusion of men who learned to use guns and were trained to shoot to kill when scarcely out of adolescence, the role modeling from recruitment ads to popular movies to bellicose bombast from high-ranking leaders, and much more. The country is also in the grip of tragic absences: the health care not deemed fundable by those who approve federal budgets larded with military spending, the child care and elder care and family leave not provided by those same budgets, the public schools deprived of adequate funding, the college students and former students saddled with onerous debt, the uncountable other everyday deficits that have continued to lower the bar of the acceptable and the tolerated.”

While the warfare state seems all too natural to most politicians and journalists, its consequences over time have been transformational for the United States in ways that have distinctly skewed the political climate. Along the way, militarism has been integral to the rise of the billionaire tech barons who are now teaming up with an increasingly fascistic Donald Trump.

The Military-Industrial-Tech Complex

While President Trump has granted Elon Musk unprecedented power, many other tech moguls have rushed to ingratiate themselves. The pandering became shameless within hours of his election victory last November.

“Congratulations to President Trump on a decisive victory,” Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote. “We have great opportunities ahead of us as a country. Looking forward to working with you and your administration.” Jeff Bezos, the owner of Amazon, Whole Foods, and the Washington Post, tweeted: “wishing @realDonaldTrump all success in leading and uniting the America we all love.”

Amazon Web Services alone has numerous government contracts, including one with the National Security Agency worth $10 billion and deals with the Pentagon pegged at $9.7 billion. Such commerce is nothing new. For many years, thousands of contracts have tied the tech giants to the military-industrial complex.

Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos, and smaller rivals are at the helm of corporations eager for government megadeals, tax breaks, and much more. For them, the governmental terrain of the new Trump era is the latest territory to navigate for maximizing their profits. With annual military outlays at 54% of all federal discretionary spending, the incentives are astronomical for all kinds of companies to make nice with the war machine and the man now running it.

While Democrats in Congress have long denounced Trump as an enemy of democracy, they haven’t put any sort of brake on American militarism. Certainly, there are many reasons for Trump’s second triumph, including his exploitation of racism, misogyny, nativism, and other assorted bigotries. Yet his election victories owe much to the Democratic Party’s failure to serve the working class, a failure intermeshed with its insistence on serving the industries of war. Meanwhile, spending more on the military than the next nine countries combined, U.S. government leaders tacitly lay claim to a kind of divine overpowering virtue.

As history attests, militarism can continue for many decades while basic democratic structures, however flawed, remain in place. But as time goes on, militarism is apt to be a major risk factor for developing some modern version of fascism. The more war and preparations for war persist, with all their economic and social impacts, the more core traits of militarism — including reliance on unquestioning obedience to authority and sufficient violence to achieve one’s goals — will permeate the society at large.

During the last 10 years, Donald Trump has become ever more autocratic, striving not just to be the nation’s commander-in-chief but also the commandant of a social movement increasingly fascistic in its approach to laws and civic life. He has succeeded in taking on the role of top general for the MAGA forces. The frenzies that energize Trump’s base and propel his strategists have come to resemble the mentalities of warfare. The enemy is whoever dares to get in his way.

A warfare state is well suited for such developments. Pretending that militarism is not a boon to authoritarian politics only strengthens it. The time has certainly come to stop pretending.

Norman Solomon is co-founder of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy.

28 February 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Tariq Ali

To the victors, the spoils. A hundred years ago, after the conclusion of the First World War, the British Empire and its French ally broke up the old Ottoman-dominated Arab world and created new countries (Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia), principalities and outposts (the Gulf States, southern Yemen) and puppet states (Egypt, Iran), as well as laying the foundations on which Israel would be built, after the Second World War.

To the victors, the spoils. A hundred or so years later, after the collapse of the Communist world, the triumphant United States moved rapidly to balkanize the Arab world and remove all real and imagined threats to its hegemony. A tally of the 21st-century wars that have wrecked the Middle East provides a horrific balance sheet, by any standard. How is the situation they created viewed by the imperial strategists in Washington? ‘Freedom’ and ‘democracy’ are even more remote than they were under the authoritarian-nationalist Arab dictatorships. Even the most cynical occupants of the White House and the Pentagon find it difficult to justify in public the mess they have created.

Over the past year alone, the occupied Palestinian segment of the Arab world has been subjected to the most savage assault by the West, acting through its ever-loyal relay, Israel. The medieval Crusades were brutal, but the lack of technical superiority in weapons on either side gave the Arabs, fighting on their own lands, an advantage. This time Israel and its Western allies have been starving and killing Palestinians. Images of infant bodies being devoured by dogs wandering through deserted streets are a chilling symbol of the full-spectrum nature of this destruction. The British Prime Minister now wants to convince Trump to change the definition of genocide, to avoid future legal embarrassment. Western civilization/barbarism at play. Curiously enough, Trump, judging by his own remarks, may be less keen on killing than the leader of the British Labour Party.

On the face of it, American hegemony in the region is virtually complete. The us embarked on a global policy of divide, occupy, buy and rule. What started in earnest with the Yugoslav civil war has now become a regular feature of us strategy supported by Britain and most of the eu. The gains made by the West in the world’s richest energy zone since the defeat of the Axis powers in 1945 have been breathtaking. A brief survey of the region can help to highlight what has been lost and signal the direction in which it is heading.

Saudi Arabia

The first foreign call made by Trump after his 2025 inauguration was to the Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman (mbs). Few were surprised. True, mbs had ordered the execution and dismemberment of a critic, Jamal Khashoggi, who backed another faction in the royal family and wrote regularly for the us press, criticizing mbs for ultra-liberalism and involvement in the Yemen war. Khashoggi’s family had been lampooned in Cities of Salt, the celebrated tetralogy by the exiled Saudi novelist, Abdurrahman Munif.¹ Khashoggi’s uncle was the personal doctor of the founding monarch, Ibn Saud, and became a rich and influential businessman. This proximity to Saudi and Jordanian royals led Jamal to imagine that he was untouchable, an error of judgement that cost him his life. He traipsed along happily to the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul to collect an official document. Captured by an mbs assassination team, or firqat el-nemr (‘leopard squad’), he was shot dead and dismembered, his body parts packed neatly in separate parcels. The Turkish secret police filmed the whole business, since the Consulate was naturally under surveillance. They prevented Khashoggi’s remains from leaving the country and Erdoğan exposed the Leopard Prince to global scrutiny. American colleagues professed themselves shocked and Khashoggi was granted a Time cover and matching obituary; but mbs was secure. The fuss soon died down. With the Israelis killing over two hundred Palestinian journalists in Gaza, a solitary Saudi, despite the victim’s high-society contacts in Riyadh and Washington, seems a bagatelle.

Saudi cynics supporting mbs could point out that the modernization of Saudi Arabia has always required the elimination of dissenters. When the British created the Kingdom after the First World War, its structures were masterminded by St John Philby of British intelligence. Fluent in Arabic and Koranic interpretations, he was on a search mission for reliable allies against the Ottoman Empire. He picked the most fanatical Islamic sect available, the Wahhabis, uniting it with an easily controllable local tribe under a dim-witted leadership, rebuffed and isolated more capable non-Wahhabis on the Peninsula, and turned the combination against the Ottoman Empire. The Wahhabis regarded mainstream Islam—Sunni and Shia—as the enemy. Key personnel were put on the imperial British payroll. It was a master-stroke; the late offspring produced by this marriage—al-Qaeda remnants and isis—carry on the same tradition today.

During the Second World War, Britain handed the Kingdom to the United States. The ceremony took place on St Valentine’s Day in 1945. The location was the uss Quincy, moored in the Suez Canal. President Roosevelt and the King, Ibn Saud, signed a concordat that would guarantee perpetual single-family rule. fdr retained the monarchy as a safeguard against perceived radical nationalist and communist threats.² These were not discussed. Roosevelt instead opened the conversation on the Quincy by asking the King his views on the Jewish refugees in Europe. What to do? The memorandum of the conversation informs us:

The President asked His Majesty for his advice regarding the problem of Jewish refugees driven from their homes in Europe. His Majesty replied that in his opinion the Jews should return to live in the lands from which they were driven. The Jews whose homes were completely destroyed and who have no chance of livelihood in their homelands should be given living space in the Axis countries which oppressed them. The President remarked that Poland might be considered a case in point. The Germans appear to have killed three million Polish Jews, by which count there should be space in Poland for the resettlement of many homeless Jews . . .³

Ibn Saud wanted assurances that Arab lands would not be taken by the Jews: ‘His Majesty stated that the hope of the Arabs is based upon the word of honour of the Allies and upon the well-known love of justice of the United States, and upon the expectation that the United States will support them.’

The sons of Ibn Saud ruled the state with an iron fist. In the 1950s, the King and his Princes began trying to increase their share of revenue from Saudi oil production, managed by us-controlled Aramco which made sure that strikes were savagely crushed, workers deported to their country of origin and no Saudi employees were permitted entry to the company cinema. Jim Crow laws prevailed. Hardly surprising, given that a large chunk of white us employees belonged to the Ku Klux Klan. The anti-colonial wave that swept through the Arab world did not leave the Kingdom unaffected. In 1956, the Egyptian leader, Gamal Abdel Nasser had defied Britain and France, nationalized the Suez Canal and declared: ‘Let the imperialists choke on their rage.’ Joined by eight-year-old Israel, the imperial powers invaded Egypt. In America’s Kingdom, Robert Vitalis provides a unique account of this period, destroying many mythologies in the process.⁴ The two Saudi figures that come off best are the former Oil Minister, Abdullah Tariki, and the veteran Saudi diplomat, Ibn Muammar. Tariki, a shrewd, skilful, incorruptible technocrat, argued for the state takeover of Saudi oil in the late 1950s, and was demonized by Aramco. Both men staunchly defended Saudi interests against the us oil giant from the start.

Tariki helped split the royal family, publicly exposing the corruption of the then Crown Prince Faisal. In 1961 Tariki and the dissident Prince Talal, a supporter of Arab nationalism, accused Faisal of demanding and obtaining a permanent commission from the Japanese-owned Arabian Oil Company (aoc). The story went public in a Beirut newspaper. An enraged Faisal issued a denial and demanded proof. It was provided. Faisal was shamed. Tariki was sacked and fled into exile. Vitalis informs us that an Aramco spy who met him during his time in Cairo reported back to his superiors:

I asked him how he would envisage a change in regime. He said that it would be very simple. A small army detachment can do the job by killing the king and Faisal. The rest of the royal family will run for cover like scared rabbits. Then the revolutionaries will call Nasser for help.⁵

This option no longer applies, but continuing chaos in the region could unsettle the Kingdom as happened after 9/11 (hits orchestrated by Osama bin Laden and carried out mainly by Saudi citizens).

King Faisal was assassinated in 1975 by a nephew, also named Faisal, who had studied at Berkeley and the University of Colorado Boulder in the late sixties. But he had laid the foundation of present-day Saudi Arabia, with its reliance on Wahhabism for social control. Though his brother and father before him had sought to institutionalize Wahhabi beliefs, they were more relaxed about it. After the first Gulf War in 1990, the us military arrived;  American bases in Saudi Arabia and Qatar were used to launch the war against Iraq. Foreign armies have historically provided one sort of protection; Wahhabi theology another.

For almost a century now the Wahhabi Kingdom has served the needs of the West. mbs is the grandson of its founder. His father, Salman (b. 1935) is not long for this world and, short of a civil war, little can prevent mbs from becoming King. Even in the unlikely case of domestic opposition, he is strongly backed by the us and Israel, as are Jordan and the uae states (a Qatari friend once joked: ‘We are the United Arab Emirate States of America’). mbs was preparing to seal a compact with his rival for us affections in the region, but Israel let him down by reacting to Hamas’s October 7 attack with a full-blown genocidal response, isolating itself from a majority of the non-Western world. The Saudis did nothing. Their tiny rival Qatar outshone them yet again: the images and reporting on Al Jazeera provided a sharp contrast to the fake news on Western networks. Had it not been for Gaza, there is no doubt that mbs and Netanyahu would have done a deal already. As they will.

Egypt

Since the 1970s, Egypt has been the biggest success story for the us in the Middle East. Conversations in Cairene cafes are often punctuated by dates rather than years. The day King Farouk was toppled by a radical officer’s rebellion. The day Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal. The last day of the Six Day War, which marked the virtual end of Arab nationalism. Anwar Sadat, Nasser’s successor, took power in 1970, fought against Israel in 1973, then made ‘peace’ with Israel at Camp David in 1978. Three years later, he was shot dead by soldier assassins during a military parade marking the anniversary of the Yom Kippur War. His successor, Vice-President Hosni Mubarak, barely escaped with his life.⁶ Mubarak deepened relations with Israel, banned the use of live ammunition at ceremonial parades and settled down to enjoy the corrupt fruits of a brutal dictatorship. His name came to stand for torture, amorality, cynicism, duplicity, corruption, greed and opportunism—and, most importantly, blind loyalty to the us and Israel. The High Command of the Egyptian Army did not go down this route involuntarily. They agreed to sell out. In 2024 the Army received $1.3 billion.

In 2011, the mass movement known as the Arab Spring erupted in Tunisia, toppled the dictator and rapidly spread to Egypt. With its public headquarters in Tahrir Square, the struggle to get rid of Mubarak turned out to be hugely popular. Once this became obvious, the Muslim Brotherhood joined the fight. The spectacle in the Square was livestreamed on Al Jazeera. There was one demand: ‘Democracy!’ The Egyptian Army stationed its tanks in the square and was greeted by the students as the saviour of democracy. ‘The Army and the people are one hand’ became a popular chant, but this was an expression of hope rather than a fact.

Mubarak rang his friends in the us and Israel for help. The Clintons tried to save him, but it was too late. The Army realized that in order to preserve its own rule, Mubarak had to go. The military leaders of the scaf who took charge had no illusions in democracy whatsoever. They set about dividing the masses, targeting women in particular. For its part, the movement did not occupy the state tv building situated just behind the Square to broadcast their demands and let the voices of the people be heard day and night. Political consciousness grew by leaps and bounds but the ‘revolution’ was ultra-cautious. Liberty was foregrounded, but Fraternity (Arab unity) and Equality (social justice) remained in the shade. The us and Israel had backed Mubarak’s dictatorship, but there was very little visible opposition to them—no symbolic burning of the Stars and Stripes, no sighting of a Palestinian flag, no demand for elections to a constituent assembly to prepare a new constitution. The Left forces were tiny. Liberals dominated the spectacle before the Brotherhood decided to join, led by Mohammed Morsi. The latter then became the only seriously organized political force. Their brightest leaders, with some idea of political strategy and tactics, had been expelled, leaving an extremely mediocre layer in command.

As I wrote at the time, while the Arab upheavals did resemble Europe in 1848, not every aspect of life was called into question:

Social, political and religious rights are becoming the subject of fierce controversy in Tunisia, but not elsewhere yet. No new political parties have emerged, an indication that the electoral battles to come will be contests between Arab liberalism and conservatism in the shape of the Muslim Brotherhood, modelling itself on Islamists in power in Turkey and Indonesia, and ensconced in the embrace of the us.⁷

American hegemony in the region had been slightly dented but no more than that; the scratch was easily repaired. The post-despot regimes remained weak. Unlike in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, new constitutions enshrining social and democratic needs never emerged. The military in Egypt and Tunisia ensured nothing rash happened. The Muslim Brotherhood won the elections and Morsi became President, but was useless on every front. The people were offered very little and the Brotherhood became unpopular. The Army took charge and General Sisi, a former intelligence chief, organized a quick election, winning liberal backing.

Sisi is still in power (now more unpopular than Mubarak), doing as he is bid by Washington and Jerusalem. The cult created for him was grotesque, including bras and men’s underwear with his image on the front. Liberal euphoria didn’t last long. He is now loathed by large sections of the population. This makes him nervous about taking in a million Gazans, in order to empty the Strip on us-Israeli orders and hand it over to global real estate. Were he to do so, he might need to seek asylum elsewhere. And while Arab people have been cautious since 2011, their quiescence should not be taken for granted.

The Arab Spring varied from country to country, but nowhere did it challenge the system. It was comforting to think of the upsurges as revolutions, but that stage was never reached. Mass uprisings on their own do not constitute a revolution—that is, a transfer of power from one social class, or even layer, to another that leads to fundamental change. The actual size of the crowd is not a determinant. It is only when, in its majority, it develops a clear set of social and political aims that it may become one. If not, it will always be outflanked by those who do, or overwhelmed by the state that will move to recapture lost ground very rapidly.

Egypt after 2011 was the clearest example of this. No organs of autonomous power ever emerged. The Muslim Brotherhood’s errors included factionalism, stupidity and over-eagerness to reassure the us, Israel and the national security apparatuses that it would be business as usual. As for a constituent assembly, little such thinking was taking place, in Egypt or elsewhere. When new mass mobilizations erupted against Morsi, even larger than those that led to the toppling of Mubarak, the Left suggested that some of those who swelled the crowd were army and police units in civilian gear. Others already saw the Army as their saviour and, in more than a few instances, applauded the military’s brutality against the Muslim Brothers. The result? The ancien régime was soon back in charge. If the original was not a revolution, the latter was hardly a counter-revolution. Simply the military reasserting its role in national politics. It was they who had decided first to dump Mubarak, then Morsi.

Who will dump them? Another mass mobilization? Until the West-backed Israeli assault on Gaza, this was difficult to imagine. Social movements incapable of developing an independent politics are fated to disappear. But, contrary to appearances, Gaza has revived political consciousness. The Army permitted a few large pro-Palestinian demonstrations, allowing people to vent their anger; but this also helped to concentrate attention on the weaknesses of the Army and the shame it had brought the country by its total failure to help the Gazans. Netanyahu had the Egyptian generals in his thrall. And not just them. Jordan did not ban mass demonstrations, but it did nothing for the Palestinians. The Saudis and their cousins in the Gulf were inflicted by self-paralysis. A few friendly noises. Little else. Never before have leaders of the Arab world been so united behind the Stars and Stripes while their people were being butchered.

Libya

In Libya, the old regime was destroyed by nato after a six-month bombing spree in which up to 50,000 people died. There is convincing proof that Gaddafi was prepared to negotiate and offered numerous concessions to his own people and the West. In Loved Egyptian Night, Hugh Roberts has effectively demolished the ‘humanitarian intervention’ case that was being put forward by Obama adviser Samantha Power and some on her left.⁸ The motive for the nato intervention was regime-change; to complete the mopping-up of residual Arab nationalism. Three jihadi groups took power, while armed tribal gangs of one sort or another roamed the country, demanding their share of the loot. Hardly a revolution, by any criterion.

Gaddafi had been flattered by the British and French into abandoning his nuclear pretensions and more. Blair’s debased political adviser, Anthony (Lord) Giddens went to Tripoli to thank him in person, comparing the Libyan leader’s awful writings to his own ‘Third Way’, and returned to inform Guardian readers that Libya would soon become the Norway of Africa. A generous tip to the London School of Economics ensured that Gaddafi’s favourite son was provided with a PhD, crafted by Anne-Marie Slaughter. Sarkozy’s praise was equally forthcoming, winning him Libyan financial backing for his election campaign. All appeared to be going well until the Arab Spring allowed the West to have its way. First the un ‘duty to protect’ propaganda campaign against a purported genocide-in-waiting, then nato’s aerial bombardment and the lynching of Gaddafi, allegedly sodomized with a red-hot iron bar after his whereabouts were leaked by us intelligence, while Clinton, Obama’s Secretary of State, crowed: ‘We came. We saw. He died.’ Five years later, she lost to Trump.

Syria

In the 1960s there were serious attempts to lay the foundations of a unified Arab world, with three major countries, Egypt, Syria and Iraq, run by popular radical-nationalist governments, on which the hopes of so many rested. It came to naught because of their own mistakes. Egypt bought off. Iraq re-colonized and divided. What would be Syria’s fate? Here, too, the mass uprising of 2011 was largely genuine and reflected a desire for political change. Western powers were involved but could have been outflanked. Had Assad agreed to negotiations during the first six months, or even later, there might have been a constitutional settlement. Instead, he embarked on repression. The tragically familiar Sunni–Shia battlelines were re-drawn. Once the opposition decided to take up arms, the die was cast. A civil war began and a large section of the movement was drawn into a confessional umbrella backed by the us and its allies. Turkey, Qatar and the Saudis poured in weaponry and volunteers to their side. The notion that the Syrian National Coalition (snc) was the carrier of a Syrian revolution was as risible as the idea of the Brotherhood playing the same role in Egypt. A brutal civil war with atrocities on both sides ensued. Did the regime use gas or other chemical weapons? We do not know. The strikes envisaged by the us were primarily designed to prevent Assad’s military from defeating the opposition. Until December 2024, the Iranians and Russians kept the regime in power. Most Syrian refugees in Lebanon and Jordan, including many who started the uprising, were only too aware that us strikes would not make their country better. Those at home feared both sides.

After repeated assaults on the Palestinians, the Israelis have gone into over-stretch mode and occupied parts of Syria in an informal alliance with hts, the Turkish-supported offshoot of Al-Qaeda, and the Syrian Kurds. The Israeli-Kurdish alliance is becoming a feature in the region. So preoccupied are the Kurdish leaders with their own situation that they have thrown in their lot with the us-Israeli cartel. They appear not to have noticed the killing fields in Palestine. They will be disappointed once again. Of course, and understandably, many Syrians celebrated the departure of Assad, but so did Netanyahu and Washington. The alliance is a marriage made in Hell. And the news coming out of the ‘liberated’ country is not good. Revenge killings galore. Syria is no longer a sovereign state. The post-colonial period has come to an end. The us wants the Gulf model adopted by the conquered territories. It’s not going to be easy.

Iran

Why is Israel so desperate to knock out Iran? Any sovereign well-armed state in the region is seen by the Zionist leaders as posing a threat to their creation. They’ve had a run of striking successes over the past twenty years: Iraq destroyed, Libya divided, Syria now taken over by a Turkish-Israeli combination, which has cut a deal with sections of the Baathist apparatus. But there have been some unintended consequences. The us decision to regime-change Iraq in 2003 meant handing some authority to the Shia clerical outfits there. This changed Iran’s status overnight. With their co-religionists in power in Baghdad, the Islamic Republic became a major factor in the region, stronger than ever before and wielding more influence. It is also getting to the stage where it could acquire nuclear weapons relatively rapidly and the Zionist military-intelligence establishment feels threatened. While the whole world knows that Israel has 300 nuclear warheads and missiles that could reach anywhere in Europe or Central Asia, any potential rival still needs to be destroyed.

For the us, Iran’s sovereignty and its oil are a dangerous combination. Washington wants to control both, so that China and Russia will have to get an American greenlight before they can trade with the Islamic Republic. For its part, the clerical leadership is divided. The turbaned ones have been tricked before. They backed the us in Iraq and Afghanistan, and got very little in return. Their anti-imperialism is that of fools. National self-interest is what really matters—and that means preventing the collapse of the clerical system. Another 2022-style revolt is to be avoided at all costs. Reports from Tehran suggest many women these days walk around with heads uncovered in the streets, just like in Beirut. The law ‘on hijab and chastity’, passed by the Majlis, has been suspended. But the population has been hard hit by the economic crisis caused by us sanctions, symbolized by widespread power cuts, and the urban middle classes loathe the regime. Some would like change brought by outside intervention, but many value the relative peace and security of their state, by comparison to the devastation that Western intervention has brought to their neighbours in Afghanistan and Iraq. A Syrian-style operation would be virtually impossible here. The Revolutionary Guards are not a pushover, however shaken by their recent defeats, and there is no force inside the country that could defeat them militarily. If anything, it is they who might be provoked to replace the existing regime with hardliners. Despite the defeats in Lebanon and Syria, the Iranian military can still strike back at Israel. If Trump demands too much and the Guide caves, action by the pasdaran cannot be excluded.

Israel–Palestine

And what of Israel? Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein, two leading Jewish critics of Israel, yet, for many decades, staunch opponents of a single-state solution, have now stated publicly that Israel should no longer exist. What they mean, of course, is Israel as presently constituted: an apartheid settler state, a colonial monster that has been wreaking revenge on the Palestinian Arabs, from the 1948 Nakba on, for past sufferings inflicted by Europeans on the Jews. Despite some disagreements on whether they should adopt a more friendly attitude to Arab nationalism, the bulk of Zionist leaders decided to stick with the powers that had created them, ignoring the crucial help they got from Stalin in the shape of Czech weaponry in 1948. Hence the decision to join Britain and France in invading Egypt in 1956 and attempting to topple Nasser. They did so without us permission and Eisenhower was livid. Neither Israel nor Britain made the same mistake again.

But the problem remained. Revisionist Israeli historians like Benny Morris published revealing research exposing the Nakba, which he also continued to justify. A former idf paratrooper himself, Morris admitted everything that Palestinian leaders and intellectuals had been saying was true. Yes, villages were forcibly emptied, houses were stolen, Arab women were raped by Israeli soldiers. Yes, there were massacres. But so what? A superior social order was taking over and large-scale ethnic cleansing was central to the Zionist project. As Morris told a Haaretz interviewer, ‘Even the great American democracy could not have been created without the annihilation of the Indians. There are cases in which the overall, final good justifies harsh and cruel acts that are committed in the course of history.’⁹ Jewish supremacist arguments of this type are common in Israel today, where at least 70 per cent of the population justifies the genocide in motion. The aim of the Zionist leaders, regardless of party differences or doctrinal divides, was always the creation of Eretz Israel. Invented history, crazed references to the Old Testament, downplaying of genetic and archaeological evidence, constant weaponization of the Judeocide—all were brought into play to make it clear that no peaceful settlement with the Palestinians was ever possible.¹⁰

Benny Morris has just provided a new analysis of the changes in Israeli society since October 7. He begins by asserting that Israel is not currently committing genocide in Gaza: ‘The prosecutor in The Hague and all the learned professors, from Omer Bartov on down, who talk about a genocide, are wrong.’ There is no deliberate intention to wipe out the Palestinians: ‘Many of them have been killed, but this is no policy.’ However, Morris writes, the genocide may be in the offing: ‘Israel may be on the way there, already deep in the loop that leads to mass murder, shaping the public’s hearts and minds.’ Some may already be there, citing ‘Amalek’, the biblical enemy to be exterminated, with a nod to the Palestinians; speaking about uprooting them, exiles and transfers—just like the Nazis before 1940, Morris notes. Religious Zionists openly declare their desire to flatten Nablus and Jenin:

The dehumanization that has to take root before mass murder is already here. Once upon a time, a minister in Israel talked about ‘cockroaches in a bottle’ and was reprimanded. Today there are hardly any reprimands. The Jewish public appears largely indifferent to the mass killing in Gaza, including of women and children. It is apathetic toward the starving of Palestinians in the West Bank by means of banning them from working in Israel, and to the violent harassment of Palestinians there, including in the past year as many were killed at the hands of settlers.

The dehumanization is evident every day, apparent from the soldiers’ testimonies; from the killing of civilians in Gaza; from the brutality shown by soldiers and jailers while detainees, some from Hamas and some civilians, are led half-naked to the detention camps; from the routine of beatings and torture in the detention camps and prisons themselves. The Jewish-Israeli public is indifferent to all of it. And apparently the political gatekeepers are too. They are relentlessly buffeted by acts of injustice and corruption, by manipulations from all around, therefore helpless in the face of this overflowing cruelty. These are all signs of the dehumanization that precedes and promotes genocide.¹¹

Unlike the bbc, cnn and French tv networks, Morris wants to make this dehumanization known. He is not indifferent; but his Zionism remains unshaken. He ascribes equal blame to the Palestinians for their ‘dehumanization of Jews’. True, their uprooting in 1948 and the oppression they had suffered since 1967 in the West Bank at the hands of the Jews, ‘frequently with brutality and always with humiliation’, played a part in this priming of Arab hearts and minds, Morris admits. It will only be deepened by ‘the mass killing and displacement of the past 15 months.’ He then ‘goes back into history’, like Netanyahu and his father (also a historian), to describe all the massacres that have been inflicted upon the Jews, ‘mainly by Christians but also by Muslims’, over the past 2,000 years.

Morris wants another state for the Palestinians but knows it is ‘unimaginable’; and if there is no second state, there will be a ‘proper’ genocide. He does not dwell too much on who has prevented a second state—the plo? Hamas? Or the Zionist entity whose ‘ethnic cleansing’ of Palestinians he continues to defend? All the evidence shows that it was Ben Gurion who instigated the Nakba in 1948. It was he who ordered the idf to kill if Palestinians resisted the expulsions, which they did. Morally there is no difference whatsoever between Ben Gurion then and Netanyahu today.¹²

Twenty years ago, the Hebrew poet Aharon Shabtai warned his people about Ben Gurion:

nostalgia

The dumpy little man
With the scourge in his hand,
In his free time
Runs his fingers
Over the keys of a baby grand . . .
He’ll help solve the economy’s problems:
The unemployed will man the tanks,
Or dig graves,
And, come evening,
We’ll listen to Schubert and Mozart . . .
But now, who will I meet
When I go out for dinner?
Gramsci’s jailers?
What clamour will rise
up through the window facing the street?
And when it’s all over,
My dear, dear reader,
On which benches will we have to sit,
Those of us who shouted ‘Death to the Arabs’
And those who claimed they ‘didn’t know.’

The tragedies have multiplied since you wrote these words, dear Aharon. For many years I believed there were two options. Two states of the same size or a single state with equal rights for all. Had Zionism been so inclined either would have been possible, if neither totally satisfactory. But Ben Gurion, Morris, Begin, Sharon, Netanyahu prevailed in the end. The PLO continued to think that the US would force through a deal and finally surrendered at Oslo. Israel now behaves like a junior partner of the Great Satan. Leaders need to be killed? Countries need to be bombed, divided and bombed again? Just do it. In return, Israel gets to devour more Palestinians. And if the million and a half don’t want to become refugees, will the Zionists be allowed to exterminate them wholesale? It’s their fault, after all, for being Palestinian in the first place.

Notes

1 See the portrait by Sabry Hafez, ‘An Arabian Master’, nlr 37, Jan–Feb 2006.

2 The us did the same in Japan after the War. American interests, it was argued, entailed keeping Hirohito on the throne, despite the fact that he had authorized the attack on Pearl Harbor.

3 Office of the Historian, ‘Memorandum of Conversation Between the King of Saudi Arabia (Abdul Aziz Al Saud) and President Roosevelt, 14 February 1945, Aboard the uss Quincy’, Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers, 1945.

4 Robert Vitalis, America’s Kingdom: Mythmaking on the Saudi Oil Frontier, Stanford 2006.

5 Vitalis, America’s Kingdom, p. 234.

6 There is a matchless account of the Egyptian Army after Nasser’s triumph and the petty rivalries and stupidities at the top that led to serious political setbacks in the region: Hazem Kandil, Soldiers, Spies and Statesmen: Egypt’s Road to Revolt, London and New York 2012.

7 Tariq Ali, ‘This Is an Arab 1848, But us Hegemony Has Only Been Dented’, Guardian, 22 February 2011.

8 Hugh Roberts, Loved Egyptian Night: The Meaning of the Arab Spring,London and New York 2024. The first chapter gives a sober and unanswerable account of what happened in Libya. Pages 109–13 provide a withering critique of soas’s Gilbert Achcar, whose arguments were ‘exactly the position of the Western powers’. The book’s title is a scathing reference to Kipling’s appeal to the McKinley White House, in well-polished tragic-imperial mode: ‘Take up the White Man’s burden / And reap his old reward: / The blame of those ye better / The hate of those ye guard / The cry of hosts ye humour / (Ah, slowly!) towards the light: / “Why brought ye us from bondage, / Our loved Egyptian night?”’ (1899).

9 See the candid interview, apparently intended for an Israeli-only audience, reprinted by nlr: Benny Morris, ‘On Ethnic Cleansing’, nlr 26, March–April 2004.

10 See Rashid Khalidi, ‘The Neck and the Sword’, nlr 147, May–June 2024.

11 Benny Morris, ‘It’s Either Two States or Genocide’, Haaretz, 30 January 2025.

12 For a remarkable study of the idf, see Haim Bresheeth-Zabner, An Army Like No Other: How the Israel Defence Forces Made a Nation, London and New York 2020.

Tariq Ali: Writer, journalist and film-maker Tariq Ali was born in Lahore in 1943. He owned his own independent television production company, Bandung, which produced programmes for Channel 4 in the UK during the 1980s.

28 February 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr Ram Puniyani

The economic plight of minorities, particularly Muslims has been a very disturbing factor for all those who would like the society to strive for equality and justice. If we see the origin of Muslim community in India apart from the spread of Islam through Arab traders from 7^th Century AD in Malabar Coast, the majority conversions have been mainly from the victims of caste oppression who were also economically deprived sections of society. During what is called the Mughal period, the Muslim King ruled from Delhi-Agra. During this the structure of society where landlords were Hindus in great numbers the economic plight of large sections of Muslims remained similar to poor Hindus.

After the 1857 uprising the backlash from the British was directed more against Muslims as Bahadur Shah Zafar was the one who was leader of this rebellion. The Muslim community had to face the bigger brunt of the British wrath. Post Independence the biases and myths against Muslims were highlighted and gradually they became major targets of the communal forces. As other communities were coming forward and lifting themselves through education and jobs, Muslims lagged behind due to multiple reasons, including the prevalent propaganda against them and the inheritance of their economic backwardness.

Our Constitution recognized the social and economic backwardness of dalits and Adivasis giving them the reservation which held the communities in some way. While at National level of OBC’s got 27% reservations in 1990, some states on their own had brought this earlier also. By and large these OBC reservations were strongly opposed by Organizations like “Youth for Equality”.

Even the reservations for Dalits other sections started getting opposed at large level like the anti Dalit and anti caste violence of 1980s and then in mid 1985 in Gujarat. Meanwhile as the Constitution did not recognize the reservations on the basis of religion, the minorities kept languishing in economic backwardness. Some states did try to incorporate Muslims in OBC quota but any move to uplift this community through quotas was strictly opposed by the Hindu Nationalist forces. The economic status for this community was a terrible mix of insecurity due to violence and economic deprivations due to lack of jobs and ghettoization, which was the direct outcome of violence. Every time some talk of reservation for Muslims came up it was strongly countered by the Hindutva politics and they cried hoarse about ‘appeasement of Muslims’. This also put some brakes on the intentions of the state to undertake the implementation of recommendations of the committees.

One recalls that after the Sachar Committee came out with the report in 2006, Dr. Manmohan Singh, the then Prime Minister of the country, stated its intention to undertake the reforms to improve the lot of this hapless community. “The component plans for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes will need to be revitalized. We will have to devise innovative plans to ensure that minorities, particularly the Muslim minority, are empowered to share equitably in the fruits of development. They must have the first claim on resources. The Centre has a myriad other responsibilities whose demands will have to be fitted within the over-all resource availability.”

State did try to understand the economic plight of Muslims through the Gopal Singh Committee, Ranganath Mishra Commission and finally through Sachar Committee. Most of these reports pointed out that the economic condition of Muslims is pathetic and has worsened over a period of last many decades.

This was propagated by BJP company as “This is what the Congress manifesto says,” he (Narendra Modi) claimed, “They will take stock of the gold that (our) mothers and sisters have, they will count and assess it, and then they will distribute that wealth, and they will give it to those people that Dr Manmohan Singh’s government had said – that Muslims have the first right to the nation’s wealth.”

It is in this light that one welcomes a new report from US-India Policy Institute and Centre for Development Policy and Practice, ‘Rethinking Affirmative Action for Muslims in Contemporary India’. The report has been prepared by Hilal Ahmad, Mohammad Sanjeer Alam and Nazeema Parveen. This report takes an approach away from the quota for Muslims. They recognize that Muslim community has different economic layers. While few of them are prosperous who don’t have to be considered for reservations. For the majority of sections of Muslims they suggest a religion neutral approach, focusing more on caste. Here caste-occupation is what should be looked at.

Already an increase in the ceiling is being campaigned by many to increase. With that apart from other things more Muslims categories can also be accommodated in OBC and dalit quotas. The report uses CSDS-Lokniti data. The authors of the report also consider the perceptions of Muslim communities. As reservations for Muslim is like a ‘red rag to the bull’ for the BJP and its ilk, the report talks more of accommodating these sections related to occupation based OBC. The Pasmanda Muslims, (Low caste ones’) the most deprived among Muslims, do fall in the category of Dalits. Many a Christian communities also fall in this category, which also need state support for a decent livelihood.

The report also considers the changing nature of the state and calls it ‘Charitable state’ which uses the word Labharthi for those who benefit from the state schemes. As per Hilal Ahmad, one of the authors of the report as far as state is concerned there is a shift from “…’group centric approach’ to ‘space centric’ welfarism.

They recommend a rational, secular sub categorisation of OBCs. Existing schemes and programs need to be jacked up. Affirmative action is the need of the hour. Here given all other qualifications-experience being equal; preference is given to the marginalized (Caste, Gender) for the selection for a job. There are many artisans in these communities; up-scaling their technology should help them.

The report is comprehensive and keeps the limitations of the present situation where the ruling politics treats minorities close to second class citizens. The million rupee question is, will the current dispensation following sectarian nationalism implement such a report with sincerity, overcoming their political biases’?

27 February 2025

Source: countercurrents.org