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By Subhankar Banerjee

On January 6, 2021, as many of us in the United States were glued to TV watching the horrors of the insurrection against the U.S Capitol, the AFP News in France posted, on its Facebook page, an infographic built with data provided by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which “confirmed the extinction in 2020 of 36 plant and animal species, not seen for decades.”

Let us first acknowledge and then move from A to B: from apocalypse to build back better.

Visit “Build Back Better,” the official website of the Biden-Harris administrative team and vision. Click the “Nominees and Appointees” tab. “Climate” is a category of its own and appears on top (alphabetical). The names of nominees of the top leadership positions at Interior, Energy, EPA (Environmental Protection Agency), and the CEQ (Council on Environmental Quality) appear on the “Climate” page. There are other top positions with “Climate” on the title that appear elsewhere as well: “Special Presidential Envoy for Climate” in the “National Security” page, and “National Climate Advisor” in the “White House Senior Staff” page.

By naming and elevating “Climate” in this manner as a top priority of his administrative agenda, President Biden has done something that is significant, long overdue and urgently needed. Above and beyond the obvious posts with a clear mandate on climate, it is also expected that climate change will play a significant role in most if not all of the federal agencies and, there will be co-operation among and across those agencies.

Only time will tell how effective the Biden-Harris administration will be in mitigating the climate crisis. For now, let us celebrate the exemplary and expansive model that President Biden has built with intention and rigor—a whole-government approach that eschews silos in favor of co-operation among federal agencies and other institutions to mitigate the climate crisis.

But how did we arrive here?

I’d suggest that two things have led us to this point: public awakening and grassroots mobilization.

At the turn of this century, Indigenous peoples of the Arctic, who were “already witnessing disturbing and severe climate and ecological changes,” made a prescient assessment. They suggested that very little has been done to address the climate crisis because “majority of the Earth’s citizens have not seen any significant climate changes thus far” (see The Earth is Faster Now: Indigenous Observations of Arctic Environmental Change, edited by Igor Krupnik and Dyanna Jolly, Arctic Research Consortium of the United States, 2002, pg. 355).

Mere two decades later, today, we can safely say that “majority of the Earth’s citizens” have experienced at least some impact of climate change, which has led to wide public awakening about the crisis, including and most notably among the youth. Such witnessing and experiencing in turn also contributed to building grassroots movements that are intersectional—people from diverse race, class, gender, and abilities have participated; intergenerational—youth and elders have been collaborating; and inter-movements—environmental justice, economic justice, racial justice, Indigenous rights, each contributed their concerns in the larger movement for climate justice; and transnational.

In short, without public awakening and grassroots mobilization there would not be the expansive government-wide Biden Climate Mitigation Team & Model that we now see and celebrate, and in which we find radical hope for social transformation.

The Silence

Even as I rejoice seeing “Climate” as a top-priority item on “Build Back Better,” I’m saddened that “Biodiversity” does not appear in the drop-down menu.

This silence is disheartening, because the biodiversity crisis is just as significant, just as expansive, just as severe, and just as consequential as the climate crisis. According to the United Nations, 1 million animal and plant species face extinction due to human activity. And also consider, the tragic and no-end-in-sight coronavirus pandemic. The root causes of the pandemic are firmly situated in the human-caused biodiversity crisis. Studies have shown that 75% of all emerging infectious diseases come to humans from animals. Recent examples are Ebola, SARS, Zika, bird flu (there is a bird flu outbreak in India as I write this), and of course COVID-19.

“As we seek to build back better after COVID-19, we need to fully understand the transmission” of these emerging infectious diseases, Inger Andersen, Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) wrote in her Foreword to the UNEP report “Preventing the Next Pandemic,” which was published last year. Ingersen’s use of “build back better” is resonant for the Biden-Harris administrative agenda. But while President Biden has instituted an expansive multi-agencies approach to mitigate the coronavirus pandemic and the climate crisis, there is no such expansive effort to address the biodiversity crisis, which if instituted, would certainly help prevent future pandemics (which may come more frequently and be more deadly) and also help many species to bounce back from the brink of extinction and thrive.

I would not fault President Biden for the omission of not including “Biodiversity” as a top priority of his administrative agendas, at least not entirely. For a crisis to receive attention at the Presidential level, it needs to have wide public awakening and major push from grassroots movements, both of which have happened for the climate crisis but not for the biodiversity crisis, not yet despite hundreds of committed scientists and conservationists who have been working on it.

Notwithstanding the silence, we need to do all we can now to bring attention to the biodiversity crisis with the hope that President Biden may consider adding “Biodiversity” also as a top priority in the coming year, just as he has done for the “Climate”. The United Nations did so almost thirty years ago. It’s long overdue that the United States does the same.

In 1992, at the historic Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, the United Nations had established two separate bodies: the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)—to address the climate crisis; and the UN Convention on Biodiversity Diversity (CBD)—to address the biodiversity crisis.

I do not have any bias for favoring to bring attention to one crisis over the other. Both are equally important. At the turn of the century, during my first visit to the Circumpolar North, I witnessed and made a photograph of one polar bear eating another. That gruesome scene served, for me, as a visual evidence of both climate and biodiversity crises two decades ago and has informed and shaped my work ever since. I recently co-edited (with TJ Demos and Emily Eliza Scott) a book, Routledge Companion to Contemporary Art, Visual Culture and Climate Change, which will be published next month; and at the same time, this past Fall, I co-hosted (with then-U.S. Senator Tom Udall, now retired), the UNM Biodiversity Webinar Series, and now I’m co-writing (with Ananda Banerjee) a book on the biodiversity crisis provisionally titled, Species in Peril, which will be published next year by Seven Stories Press. All to say that I have been working on both crises, equally, for the past two decades.

The 30×30 Proposal to Save Nature: Proceed with Care, Caution and Compassion

Even though President Biden has not made Biodiversity a top priority of his administrative agenda, in the same manner that he has done for the Climate, he has however, expressed his unequivocal support for one significant biodiversity initiative.

“President-elect Joe Biden has said that one of his first steps upon taking office will be to pass an executive order to conserve 30 percent of U.S. lands and waters by 2030,” Inside Climate News reported last month. I offer below a brief history of how President Biden came to know and then offered his support for the conservation plan.

A team of 16 scientists wrote a paper “A Global Deal for Nature: Guiding principles, milestones, and targets,” which was published in the journal Science Advances in April 2019. A “science driven plan to save the diversity and abundance of life on Earth,” the paper calls for conserving 30% of land and oceans by 2030. In the United States, this call from the scientists has been embraced enthusiastically, including by the members of the U.S. Congress.

In October 2019, then Senator Tom Udall (now retired) from my home state of New Mexico introduced the Thirty by Thirty Resolution to Save Nature in the U.S. Senate. Three months later, Congresswoman Deb Haaland, also from New Mexico, introduced a companion 30×30 resolution in the U.S. House of Representatives. Last September, I moderated the inaugural panel “Building a National Biodiversity Action Plan: Science, Policy, and the Grassroots” of the UNM Biodiversity Webinar Series in which then-Senator Udall, Rep. Haaland, and marine conservationist Dr. Enric Sala, one of the authors of the “A Global Deal for Nature” paper, participated as speakers and all spoke about the significance of the 30×30 conservation plan.

President Biden has nominated Rep. Haaland to be the Secretary of Interior, author of the House 30×30 resolution and a key member of his climate team. If confirmed by the Senate, Secretary Haaland, a passionate champion of Indigenous rights, environmental justice and conservation would become the first Native American Cabinet member in U.S. history, and would undoubtedly help advance and institute the 30×30 conservation plan.

There is also strong international support for the 30×30 conservation plan.

At the One Planet Summit earlier this month in Paris, a coalition of more than fifty nations under the banner The High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People committed “to protect almost a third of the planet by 2030 to halt the destruction of the natural world and slow extinctions of wildlife,” Guardian reported. The 30×30 conservation plan is thought to be the key biodiversity goal of the “Paris agreement for nature” which will be negotiated at the COP-15 UN biodiversity summit in Kunming, China later this year.

But Indigenous peoples are already sounding an alarm about the 30×30 conservation proposal. They are weary, because in the past, large land conservation initiatives often led to evictions of Indigenous peoples from their traditional homelands, and to the destruction of their food security and cultural practices.

“By just setting a target without adequate standards and commitment to accountability mechanisms, the CBD could unleash another wave of colonial land grabbing that disenfranchises millions of people,” said Andy White, coordinator of the Rights and Resources Initiative. The Rights and Resources Initiative, which defends indigenous peoples’ rights, has calculated that “over 1.6 billion people could be affected—directly or indirectly—by the so-called ‘30-30’ initiative” (source: AFP). The AFP article also points out that a 2016 UN report concluded that “some of the world’s leading conservation groups had violated the rights of some indigenous people by backing conservation projects that ousted them from ancestral homes.”

I have personal knowledge of one such land conservation initiative. In 2007, the United Nations instituted a program called REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation), which later evolved into REDD+. The plan was reasonably straightforward: rich nations and corporations in the Global North while continuing business-as-usual pollution would pay (to buy carbon offset credits) poor and developing nations in the Global South to protect forests, which in turn would halt deforestation and contribute to climate mitigation, as tropical forests are significant carbon sinks. Two years later, I was in Copenhagen during the COP-15 UN climate summit. There, I learned about Indigenous peoples’ resistance to the UN REDD and the REDD+ program, and later wrote about it.

“From an indigenous and human rights perspective, REDD could criminalize the very peoples who protect and rely on forests for their livelihood, with no guarantees for enforceable safeguards. REDD is promoting what could be the biggest land grab of all time,” Tom Goldtooth, Executive Director of Indigenous Environmental Network said at the time. He further added that “REDD will always be potentially genocidal.”

Thirteen years after its launch, the REDD and REDD+ initiative has largely “failed to achieve the central goal of curbing deforestation,” Mongabay reported last year in a two-part article, “The U.N.’s grand plan to save forests hasn’t worked, but some still believe it can.”

As many nations around the world are starting to formally adopt the 30×30 conservation initiative to mitigate the biodiversity crisis—I urge everyone to please proceed with care, caution and compassion; include Indigenous and local communities at all levels of decision making; and institute all necessary safeguards against evictions of Indigenous, poor and marginalized peoples from their traditional homelands.

As far as the U.S. is concerned, at the moment, about 12% of lands and 26% of oceans are protected, according to a report from Defenders of Wildlife. I keep thinking that it has taken nearly 150 years (since the founding of the first national park, the Yellowstone, in 1872, which was achieved with great violence committed against the Indigenous peoples) to protect 12% of lands—would it be possible to achieve an additional 18% land protection in just one decade? Are we setting too high an expectation that we may fail to achieve, like UN REDD?

Over the past two decades, I have been fighting to protect significant biological nurseries and cultural places in Arctic Alaska, including the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. So, don’t get me wrong. I do strongly support land conservation that also honors habitation and cultural practices of local communities, but I’m a bit concerned with the manner and speed with which the 30×30 conservation proposal is moving forward, not so much for the U.S. but internationally that may have significant consequences for the Global South. Let us not overlook justice and ensure all safeguards to protect the places but also the people who live in those places. Let us ensure a 30×30 conservation proposal that would honor those aims.

The Promise

The biodiversity crisis is as much a cultural crisis as it is scientific, because almost all aspects of modern life and our institutions are contributing to the escalation of the crisis. The biodiversity crisis is not a consequence of modern living, but rather, the foundation of modern life and its institutions in part has been built with biological massacres, since the dawn of the early modern age starting in the 16th century. Part of that story you will find in late American historian John Richard’s eye-opening book The World Hunt: An Environmental History of the Commodification of Animals, and Indian historian Mahesh Rangarajan’s India’s Wildlife History.

So, mitigation of the biodiversity crisis then must also include culture, in addition to science-based initiatives. I offer a concrete example below.

“A Global Deal for Nature” paper published in Science Advances that provided the foundation for the 30×30 conservation proposal includes a color-coded map of the whole Earth: dark green represents areas that already have at least 30% protection; lighter green represents at least 30% protected and remaining land that can be candidate for protection; orange represents 20-30% protected and remaining; and solid red represents less than 20% protected and remaining. Except parts of the East and the Gulf coasts, Midwest and the Mississippi River Basin, which is solid red, much of the rest of the United States looks light or dark green, meaning there is much potential to advance the 30×30 conservation plan in the U.S. But if you look at India—almost all of it is solid red, meaning there is very little hope for biodiversity conservation in India, according to the 30×30 conservation plan as proposed by the scientists.

Is protecting biodiversity in India a hopeless endeavor? Quite the contrary. India provides home to 7-8% of all recorded species on only 2.4% of world’s land area. India and the U.S. are both among the 17 mega-biodiverse countries and, India appears to have lesser number of species in peril than the U.S., according to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species version 2020-2. How is this possible? The answer lies, not in science-based conservation but more broadly in cultural and religious practices, ethics and values. On Thursday, January 28, I will give a public lecture “Visualizing Global Biodiversity: Toward an Understanding of Sacred Places and Relations” at Yale University to elaborate on this point. The online webinar is free and open to the public but registration is required. I hope to see you at the talk.

I end with this question for President Biden: should you put all your biodiversity eggs only in one basket, the 30×30, or should you start, perhaps after your first 100 days in office, thinking about instituting a government-wide team that would work on mitigating the biodiversity crisis, just like the inspiring model you have established for Climate? Like your Climate team, which includes global and domestic leadership posts, and leadership posts all across various agencies—I urge you to build a similar one for Biodiversity. The epic tragedy needs your leadership and demands no less.

Subhankar Banerjee works closely with Indigenous Gwich’in and Iñupiat community members and environmental organizations to protect significant biological nurseries in Arctic Alaska.

20 January 2021

Source: countercurrents.org

The youngest daughter of slain Iranian general Qassem Soleimani rebuked former US president Donald Trump in a blistering message, saying he ended his term in disgrace while condemning him for her father’s assassination last year.

“Mr. Trump, you murdered my father, the General who led the victorious war against ISIS/Al-Qaeda, with the perverse hope that you will be seen as some sort of hero,” Zeinab Soleimani tweeted on Wednesday, under an alternate spelling of her surname.

But instead you are defeated, isolated & broken – viewed not as a hero, but one who lives in fear of foes. The irony.

Mr. Trump, you murdered my father, the General who led the victorious war against ISIS/Al-Qaeda, with the perverse hope that you will be seen as some sort of heroBut instead you are defeated, isolated & broken – viewed not as a hero, but one who lives in fear of foesThe irony pic.twitter.com/gBN5kqsOsY

— Zeinab soleimany | زینب سلیمانی (@znb_soleimany) January 20, 2021

Soleimani’s tweet – which was accompanied by an image showing a poster of Trump’s face and the words “American terrorist” – came just hours after the swearing-in of President Joe Biden, who took office on the heels of a tumultuous Trump presidency that saw a dramatic spike in hostilities with the Islamic Republic. US-Iranian tensions peaked last January of after General Soleimani’s assassination near the Baghdad International Airport, which itself came amid a relentless US sanctions campaign seeking to cripple Tehran’s vital oil exports to “zero.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who shared Soleimani’s post on Twitter, issued a similarly harsh statement following Trump’s official ouster from the White House, saying that the ex-president and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had been “relegated to the dustbin of history in disgrace.” He added a tribute to the late Quds Force commander, noting that his memory would “shine on,” despite those “murdered, maimed & starved of food & meds by Trump’s state.”

Trump, Pompeo & Co. are relegated to the dustbin of history in disgrace.But the memories of Gen Soleimani & the 1000s murdered, maimed & starved of food & meds by Trump’s state—& economic—terrorism & crimes against humanity, will shine on.Perhaps new folks in DC have learned.

— Javad Zarif (@JZarif) January 20, 2021

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21 January 2021

Source: www.rt.com

By John W. Whitehead

“You have such a fervent, passionate, evangelical faith in this country…why in the name of God don’t you have any faith in the system of government you’re so hell-bent to protect? You want to defend the United States of America, then defend it with the tools it supplies you with—its Constitution. You ask for a mandate, General, from a ballot box. You don’t steal it after midnight, when the country has its back turned.”—Seven Days in May (1964)

No doubt about it: the coup d’etat was successful.

That January 6 attempt by so-called insurrectionists to overturn the election results was not the real coup, however. Those who answered President Trump’s call to march on the Capitol were merely the fall guys, manipulated into creating the perfect crisis for the Deep State—a.k.a. the Police State a.k.a. the Military Industrial Complex a.k.a. the Techno-Corporate State a.k.a. the Surveillance State—to swoop in and take control.

It took no time at all for the switch to be thrown and the nation’s capital to be placed under a military lockdown, online speech forums restricted, and individuals with subversive or controversial viewpoints ferreted out, investigated, shamed and/or shunned.

This new order didn’t emerge into being this week, or this month, or even this year, however.

Indeed, the real coup happened when our government “of the people, by the people, for the people” was overthrown by a profit-driven, militaristic, techno-corporate state that is in cahoots with a government “of the rich, by the elite, for the corporations.”

We’ve been mired in this swamp for decades now.

Every successive president starting with Franklin D. Roosevelt has been bought lock, stock and barrel and made to dance to the Deep State’s tune.

Enter Donald Trump, the candidate who swore to drain the swamp in Washington DC. Instead of putting an end to the corruption, however, Trump paved the way for lobbyists, corporations, the military industrial complex, and the Deep State to feast on the carcass of the dying American republic.

Joe Biden will be no different: his job is to keep the Deep State in power.

Step away from the cult of personality politics and you’ll find that beneath the power suits, they’re all alike.

Follow the money. It always points the way.

As Bertram Gross noted in Friendly Fascism: The New Face of Power in America, “evil now wears a friendlier face than ever before in American history.”

Writing in 1980, Gross predicted a future in which he saw:

…a new despotism creeping slowly across America. Faceless oligarchs sit at command posts of a corporate-government complex that has been slowly evolving over many decades. In efforts to enlarge their own powers and privileges, they are willing to have others suffer the intended or unintended consequences of their institutional or personal greed. For Americans, these consequences include chronic inflation, recurring recession, open and hidden unemployment, the poisoning of air, water, soil and bodies, and, more important, the subversion of our constitution. More broadly, consequences include widespread intervention in international politics through economic manipulation, covert action, or military invasion…

This stealthy, creeping, silent coup that Gross prophesied is the same danger that writer Rod Serling envisioned in the 1964 political thriller Seven Days in May, a clear warning to beware of martial law packaged as a well-meaning and overriding concern for the nation’s security.

Incredibly enough, almost 60 years later, we find ourselves hostages to a government run more by military doctrine and corporate greed than by the rule of law established in the Constitution. Indeed, proving once again that fact and fiction are not dissimilar, today’s current events could well have been lifted straight out of Seven Days in May, which takes viewers into eerily familiar terrain.

The premise is straightforward.

With the Cold War at its height, an unpopular U.S. President signs a momentous nuclear disarmament treaty with the Soviet Union. Believing that the treaty constitutes an unacceptable threat to the security of the United States and certain that he knows what is best for the nation, General James Mattoon Scott (played by Burt Lancaster), the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and presidential hopeful, plans a military takeover of the national government. When Gen. Scott’s aide, Col. Casey (Kirk Douglas), discovers the planned military coup, he goes to the President with the information. The race for command of the U.S. government begins, with the clock ticking off the hours until the military plotters plan to overthrow the President.

Needless to say, while on the big screen, the military coup is foiled and the republic is saved in a matter of hours, in the real world, the plot thickens and spreads out over the past half century.

We’ve been losing our freedoms so incrementally for so long—sold to us in the name of national security and global peace, maintained by way of martial law disguised as law and order, and enforced by a standing army of militarized police and a political elite determined to maintain their powers at all costs—that it’s hard to pinpoint exactly when it all started going downhill, but we’ve been on that fast-moving, downward trajectory for some time now.

The question is no longer whether the U.S. government will be preyed upon and taken over by the military industrial complex. That’s a done deal, but martial law disguised as national security is only one small part of the greater deception we’ve been fooled into believing is for our own good.

How do you get a nation to docilely accept a police state? How do you persuade a populace to accept metal detectors and pat downs in their schools, bag searches in their train stations, tanks and military weaponry used by their small town police forces, surveillance cameras in their traffic lights, police strip searches on their public roads, unwarranted blood draws at drunk driving checkpoints, whole body scanners in their airports, and government agents monitoring their communications?

Try to ram such a state of affairs down the throats of the populace, and you might find yourself with a rebellion on your hands. Instead, you bombard them with constant color-coded alerts, terrorize them with shootings and bomb threats in malls, schools, and sports arenas, desensitize them with a steady diet of police violence, and sell the whole package to them as being for their best interests.

This present military occupation of the nation’s capital by 25,000 troops as part of the so-called “peaceful” transfer of power from one administration to the next is telling.

This is not the language of a free people. This is the language of force.

Still, you can’t say we weren’t warned.

Back in 2008, an Army War College report revealed that “widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security.” The 44-page report went on to warn that potential causes for such civil unrest could include another terrorist attack, “unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters.”

In 2009, reports by the Department of Homeland Security surfaced that labelled right-wing and left-wing activists and military veterans as extremists (a.k.a. terrorists) and called on the government to subject such targeted individuals to full-fledged pre-crime surveillance. Almost a decade later, after spending billions to fight terrorism, the DHS concluded that the greater threat is not ISIS but domestic right-wing extremism.

Meanwhile, the police have been transformed into extensions of the military while the nation itself has been transformed into a battlefield. This is what a state of undeclared martial law looks like, when you can be arrested, tasered, shot, brutalized and in some cases killed merely for not complying with a government agent’s order or not complying fast enough. This hasn’t just been happening in crime-ridden inner cities. It’s been happening all across the country.

And then you’ve got the government, which has been steadily amassing an arsenal of military weapons for use domestically and equipping and training their “troops” for war. Even government agencies with largely administrative functions such as the Food and Drug Administration, Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Smithsonian have been acquiring body armor, riot helmets and shields, cannon launchers and police firearms and ammunition. In fact, there are now at least 120,000 armed federal agents carrying such weapons who possess the power to arrest.

Rounding out this profit-driven campaign to turn American citizens into enemy combatants (and America into a battlefield) is a technology sector that has been colluding with the government to create a Big Brother that is all-knowing, all-seeing and inescapable. It’s not just the drones, fusion centers, license plate readers, stingray devices and the NSA that you have to worry about. You’re also being tracked by the black boxes in your cars, your cell phone, smart devices in your home, grocery loyalty cards, social media accounts, credit cards, streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon, and e-book reader accounts.

So you see, January 6 and its aftermath provided the government and its corporate technocrats the perfect excuse to show off all of the powers they’ve been amassing so assiduously over the years.

Mind you, by “government,” I’m not referring to the highly partisan, two-party bureaucracy of the Republicans and Democrats.

I’m referring to “government” with a capital “G,” the entrenched Deep State that is unaffected by elections, unaltered by populist movements, and has set itself beyond the reach of the law.

I’m referring to the corporatized, militarized, entrenched bureaucracy that is fully operational and staffed by unelected officials who are, in essence, running the country and calling the shots in Washington DC, no matter who sits in the White House.

This is the hidden face of a government that has no respect for the freedom of its citizenry.

Brace yourself.

There is something being concocted in the dens of power, far beyond the public eye, and it doesn’t bode well for the future of this country.

Anytime you have an entire nation so mesmerized by the antics of the political ruling class that they are oblivious to all else, you’d better beware.

Anytime you have a government that operates in the shadows, speaks in a language of force, and rules by fiat, you’d better beware.

And anytime you have a government so far removed from its people as to ensure that they are never seen, heard or heeded by those elected to represent them, you’d better beware.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we are at our most vulnerable right now.

All of those dastardly seeds we have allowed the government to sow under the guise of national security are bearing demon fruit.

The gravest threat facing us as a nation is not extremism but despotism, exercised by a ruling class whose only allegiance is to power and money.

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute.

21 January 2021

Source: www.informationclearinghouse.info

By Dr Ram Puniyani

As per the recent communiqué from Chief Minister of Haryana M.L. Khattar’s, the Government of Haryana has decided to change the name of Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan Hospital in Faridabad to Atal Bihari Vajpayee Hospital. So far we have witnessed the name changes by present ruling dispensation aplenty. Most of these changes involved the changing of names of roads/cities, which had names of Muslim rulers. Aurangzeb Road was changed to APJ Abdul Kalam, Allahabad to Prayagraj, Mughal Sarai to Pundit Deen Dayal Upadhyay and Faizabad to Ayodhya. In recent elections in Hyderabad the UP Chief Minister Adiyanath Yogi said name of Hyderabad should be changed to Bhgyanagar. Shiv Sena, which was a long time ally of BJP, has been calling for name change of Aurangabad, Ahmadnagar, and Pune among others. While Shiv Sena has woken up to electoral advantages of name change from Muslim rulers names to Hindu rulers lately, BJP is adept to this game and playing it to the hilt. Its major propaganda has been against Muslim Kings (Temple destruction, forcible conversion, oppression of Hindu women etc.) and reflected on the present Muslim community.

What is different this time in Haryana Governments’ move is that it is not the Muslim King whose name is being changed. It is the name of one of the great Indian Nationalists, one who stood rock solid against British rule, one who opposed the partition in the name of religion and one who was the devout follower of Father of the Nation: Mahatma Gandhi, Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan. He is also addressed as Badshah Khan or Bacha Khan with love and affection. He is also known as Frontier Gandhi.

He was a major leader from NWFP, who due to his anti British stance had to be in British prison and later was jailed by Pakistan authorities for his standing for plural, democratic values. Khan had founded Khudai Khidmatgar, which pledged to work for the nation, oppose British rule and follow the path of non-violence and amity. Khudai Khidmatgar’s agitation and resistance to British rule was best reflected in Kissa Khwani Bazar. This incident happened in Peshawar in 1930 when British armored vehicles trampled and shot the protestors, who were peacefully demonstrating.

Khan was the one who was totally against the concept of partition and when Congress leadership had to reluctantly accept the partition and NWFP was to be part of Pakistan, Khan said to Congress leadership, ‘you have thrown us to the wolves’. After partition many of his followers who migrated to Faridabad, built this hospital in the memory of their leader. Some of these followers of his who are still alive do say that they have no problems with the name of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, but probably a new hospital can be built in his name sparing the cherished memory of one of the great freedom fighters, one who stood for his principles to the end.

The present ruling dispensation, which was not the part of freedom movement, wants to erase the imprint of Islam and Muslim’s contribution to the building of Indian nation. While medieval Muslims kings have been demonized to the hilt, now BJP seems to be turning its attention to the Muslims who were inseparable part of freedom movement. The understanding being spread is that Muslims had been separatists and so the Pakistan was demanded by them. This is a totally superficial understanding of the history of Independence movement. The Muslim League which had its roots in the nawabs and landlords did not represent the majority of Indian Muslims. Surely Muslim League did succeed in attracting some middle class elements but the large majority of Muslims never supported it. Only elite, property owners and degree holders had the right to vote some of who stood with Muslim League while the average Muslims were with the freedom movement.

Muslim League did succeed in forming ministries in Sindh and Bengal in collaboration with Hindu Mahasabha but average Muslims kept aloof from its separatist politics. The point is that while Jinnah is known as the Muslim leader, it is not generally known that there were other Muslim leaders who were either part of national movements or through their organizations they supported the politics of freedom movement in opposition to the separatist politics of the communalists who believed in ‘two nation theory’, nation based on religion. Shamsul Islam in his book ‘Muslims against India’s partition’ brilliantly brings forth the politics of ‘Nation loving Muslims’ (as he calls those Muslims who stood with the values of Composite nationalism).

In response to Jinnah’s Pakistan resolution, Allahbaksh who was twice the premier of Sindh Province not only returned his titles to support the 1942 Quit India movement. He had earlier formed ‘Azad Muslim Conference’ to oppose the demand of partition of India. He organized this Conference to oppose the demand of partition with huge response from the average sections of Muslim community. Allah Baksh in his speech stressed that our religions may be different but we have to live as a joint family respecting the different opinions of our family members. There are many other significant leaders who had substantial following among Muslims and were for Hindu Muslim unity. Shibli Nomani, Hasrat Mohani, Ashfaqulla Khan, Mukhtar Ahmad Ansari, Shaukutllah Ansari, Syed Abdullah Barelvi, Abdul Maziz Khwaja are some of these.

Similarly Maulana Abul Kalam Azad was a tall leader who led the Congress number of times and it was under his President-ship of Congress in 1942 that the call of Quit India movement, the greatest anti- British campaign, was given. Many a Muslim organization like Jamiat-E-Ulema Hind, Momin Conference, Majlis-E-Ahrare Islam, Ahle Hadis, Maualans of Barelvi and Deoband and many others stood unflinchingly to support national movement. Muslim League was totally against these Nationalist Muslims.

Changing the name of the hospital in the memory of Bacha Khan symbolizes the further growth of sectarianism where ruling party wants to undermine and erase the contribution of Muslim freedom fighters, who contributed immensely in the making of modern India.

19 January 2021

Source: countercurrents.org

By Farooque Chowdhury

The old tone is now set again. There’s Navalny, a Russian opposition politician the Empire finds useful, and there’s concern by Mr. Jake Sullivan, the National Security Advisor of US President-elect Joe Biden.

Alexey Navalny was detained in a Moscow airport upon his return from Germany on January 17, 2021. Mr. Sullivan has demanded Russia immediately releases Navalny. It’s that old tone of interference that tells others about duties and responsibilities for upholding “democracy” and interest of the Empire.

This tone will be used and re-used increasingly in the coming days. This tone will be used in cases of other countries, be it Myanmar or China, India or Bangladesh, Venezuela or Cuba. Wherever the Empire will find its interest, and the Empire’s interest is spread all over the Earth, the cacophony will be repeated with varying degree, pitch and form, beginning from “expressing concern” and “calls for democracy” to the infamous R2P and the no-fly zone tact. It may be the South China Sea or Rohingyas in a Bangladesh island or procurement of Russian missile system by India. Issues for interference will be always there for the Empire, and the neocons have gathered there. Therefore, tensions, like the old Cold War days, will rise in regions.

After spending months in Germany, Navalny returned Moscow. He went to Germany to have medical treatment of a case of “poisoning” as he collapsed while on a domestic flight on way to Moscow. Initially, he was treated in a Russian hospital, and then was flown to Germany. The Russian political activist, German doctors claimed, was poisoned with a nerve agent called Novichok.

Russian doctors who treated the political activist found no trace of the toxic agent in the activist’s system. A toxicologist claimed that others travelling with the activist would have suffered if the activist was poisoned with the military-grade nerve agent. Germany ignored Russia’s repeated calls to Berlin to provide Moscow with Navalny’s medical data. Russia also called for a joint investigation of the incident. That was ignored also. Nevertheless, the case, beginning around August-2020, of poisoning persisted with those interested to play with.

Navalny is facing charge: breaching of terms of his probation, and that was also from an earlier criminal allegation. So, he was wanted in Russia. In Moscow, he has been remanded.

Whatever is the case of Navalny, that’s to be sorted out by the concerned authority and the Russian political figure fighting corruption. But, the case is the concern, etc. of the Empire. It’s a part of intervention in other countries.

However, it’s difficult for the Empire to survive without intervention in other lands. Its economy demands intervention. That’s a problem that always accompanies the Empire. But, these days, on one hand, are not those Saddam-Iraq or Gaddafi-Libya days. Some changes are there in the world theater of geopolitics. The change is difficult to handle by the Empire. Therefore, it’ll not be like putting a hot knife on a piece of butter as was done in Libya during Gaddafi’s last days.

Now, there’re voices from Moscow and Beijing. Only days ago, Beijing reminded Washington George Floyd’s choked voice telling difficulty in breathing. Beijing was responding to Washington’s concern with a certain region in China.

Sanctions-regime, a tool of the Empire, is used to threat, coerce and compel any “disobedient” or “going-to-be-disobedient” state. However, that sole authority to use the tool is going to go away. China’s foreign ministry said on January 18, 2021: US officials who have engaged in “nasty behavior” over Chinese-claimed Taiwan will face sanctions. China’s cautionary note came after the US lifted curbs on exchanges between US and Taiwanese officials.

Similarly, on the Navalny case, spokesperson of the country’s foreign ministry, wrote in response to Jake Sullivan’s demand: “Foreign politicians should focus on domestic issues at hand, and respect the Russian law.” A biting truth – domestic issues at hand – has been mentioned. The fact is so much bitter that it’s difficult to swallow for the party concerned.

The Russian spokesperson told the plain truth as she cautioned all interfering into internal affairs of Russia as she wrote in a facebook post: “Have respect for international law, do not interfere with the national law of sovereign countries and deal with your own domestic problems.” These demand and response happened in mid-January 2021.

The present tone is different from the tone of those Gorbachev-days. Those were tones in submission.

Years ago, the Empire was the sole standard-bearer of “rights” and “democracy”, a guardian-like figure. However, that day is now lost. Already it has lost image – that cloak has flew away with the air of exposures in home and abroad. Moreover, other geopolitical players have emerged; and, they have clouts. Since the 1990, one of the watershed moments in the world history, the Empire has not faced such competition, and such complex competition.

On the other hand, the Empire is having problem in home. It’s much serious. It appears in its society, in its economy, and in its politics now ridden with belligerency. These are devouring the Empire. The Empire, very learned and intelligent, can’t ignore this fact of its life.

The single case of the pandemic, if all other fundamental cases are set aside, in the Empire tells a lot about the condition of the state machine. “For nearly the entire pandemic,” writes The New York Times, “political polarization and a rejection of science have stymied the United States’ ability to control the coronavirus. [….] [G]overnors and local officials who were left in charge of the crisis […] as they sidelined health experts, ignored warnings from their own advisers and, in some cases, stocked their advisory committees with more business representatives than doctors. [….] [T]he full extent of the nation’s failures has come into clear view: The country is hurtling toward 400,000 total deaths, and cases, hospitalizations and deaths have reached record highs, as the nation endures its darkest chapter of the pandemic yet.” [1]

While discussing challenges Joe Biden’s presidency faces, The Guardian presented a picture that also tells the Empire’s condition:

“[T]he threat of violence from his [Joe Biden’s] predecessor’s supporters.”

“[A] nation so politically, geographically and socially divided that seven in 10 Republicans say the election was stolen from Donald Trump.”

“[A]n almost total shutdown of the heart of American governance.”

“Even before the assault on Capitol Hill, Biden warned that deepening partisanship was a threat to the stability of the United States.

“‘The country is in a dangerous place,’ he said during the election campaign. ‘Our trust in each other is ebbing. Hope is elusive. […]’”

“The enormity of the challenge was made starkly clear by the sacking of the Capitol. Most Americans recoiled in horror at the sight of their compatriots, some dressed as if ready for war, smashing up congressional offices, beating police officers and threatening to hang the vice-president.”

“Yet more than 70% of Republicans agree with the protesters’ core claim that November’s election was rigged and say Biden is not the legitimate president.”

“‘We are so polarised that polarisation is not going to go away no matter what he [Biden] does in the short term,’ said Charles Franklin, director of the respected Marquette opinion poll in swing state Wisconsin.”

“[L]arge numbers of Americans continue to believe the system does not work for them.” [2]

With this condition, the Empire’s external reach will not be as smooth as the Libya- or Iraq-invasion days. This condition will make the Empire more desperate. It’ll find, as it always finds, interference and war are the real businesses that bring benefit to it.

It, therefore, can be assumed that the coming days will hear more “concerns”, “suggestions”, “calls”, “demands”, and measures – machinations, sanctions, etc. – from the Empire, and the days will be more charged as newcons with experiences of intervention have reassembled to face the situation. A desperado-game it’ll be.

NOTE:

1. “One Year, 400,000 Coronavirus Deaths: How the U.S. Guaranteed Its Own Failure”, January 18, 2021

2. “America is broken – can Biden and Harris put it back together?”, January 17, 2021

Farooque Chowdhury writes from Dhaka.

19 January 2021

Source: countercurrents.org

 

By Dr Binoy Kampmark

The feeling from Rory Medcalf of the Australian National University was one of breathless wonder. “The US government,” he wrote in The Strategist, “has just classified one of its most secretive national security documents – its 2018 strategic framework for the Indo-Pacific, which was formally classified SECRET and not for release to foreign nationals.”

Washington’s errand boys and girls in Canberra tend to get excited by this sort of thing. Rather than seeing it as a blueprint for imminent conflict with China, a more benign reading is given: how to handle “strategic rivalry with China.” Looming in the text of the National Security Council’s US Strategic Framework for the Indo-Pacific (SFIP) is a generous doffing of the cap to Australia’s reckless, self-harming approach towards China. As an unnamed senior US official (of course) told Axios, the Australians “were pioneers and we have to give a lot of credit to Australia.” Australian senior intelligence advisor John Garnaut is given high praise for his guiding hand. When war breaks out between Beijing and Washington, we know a few people to thank.

The SFIP, declassified on January 5, is very much a case of business as usual and unlikely to shift views in the forthcoming Biden presidency. The timing of the release suggests that the Trump administration would like to box its predecessor on certain matters, notably on China.

In a statement from National Security Advisor Robert C. O’Brien, the SFIP “provided overarching strategic guidance for implementing the 2017 National Security Strategy within the world’s most populous and economically dynamic region”. The National Security Strategy, in turn, recognised “that the most consequential challenge to the interests of the United States, and those of our allies and partners, is the growing rivalry between free and repressive visions of the future.” Beijing is cast in the role of repressive force in “pressuring Indo-Pacific nations to subordinate their freedom and sovereignty to a ‘common destiny’ envisioned by the Chinese Communist Party.”

The imperium’s interests, according to the SFIP, must be guarded (“strategic primacy in the Indo-Pacific region”); a “liberal economic order” must be promoted while China is to be prevented “from establishing new, illiberal spheres of influence”. North Korea is deemed of high importance in terms of whether it threatens the US and its allies, “accounting for both the acute present danger and the potential for future changes in the level and type of threat posed” by Pyongyang. The US is also to retain “global economic leadership while promoting fair and reciprocal trade.”

One of the “top interests” of the US in the Indo-Pacific is identified in pure power terms: retaining “economic, diplomatic, and military access to the most populous region in the world and more than one-third of the global economy”. Washington is keen to preserve “primacy in the region while protecting American core values and liberties at home.” But there is the spoiling presence of China, aspirational superpower, and keen for its bit of geopolitical pie. “Strategic competition between the United States and China will persist, owing to the divergent nature and goals of our political and economic systems.”

China is ever the cheeky opportunist, seeking to “circumvent international rules norms to gain an advantage.” Beijing “aims to dissolve US alliances and partnerships in the region” exploiting “vacuums and opportunities created by these diminished bonds.” With this in mind, US defence strategy should be “capable of, but not limited to: (1) denying China sustained air and sea dominance inside the ‘first island chain’ in conflict; (2) defending the first-island-chain nations, including Taiwan; and (3) dominating all domains outside the first island-chain.”

The document also acknowledges an untidy region of shifting power balances and increased defence spending, which will “continue to drive security competition across the Indo-Pacific”. Japan and India are singled out for special mention in that regard. A measure of angst is registered: “Loss of US pre-eminence in the Indo-Pacific would weaken our ability to achieve US interests globally.”

The authors of the SFIP are unashamed about the fistful of principles that will maintain US power, the sort that masquerades in popular language as the “liberal rules-based order”. Desirable objectives include the US being the “preferred partner” of “most nations” in the region; and that these powers “uphold the principles that have enabled US and regional prosperity and stability, including sovereignty, freedom of navigation and overflight, standards of trade and investment, respect for individual rights and rule of law, and transparency in military activities.” No wobbling will be permitted; allies will have to get in line.

India, “in cooperation with like-minded countries,” figures as a shining hope. Its rise is deemed essential, serving as “a net provider of security and Major Defense Partner”. What is envisaged is a strategic partnership “underpinned by a strong Indian military able to effectively collaborate with the United States and our partners in the region to address shared interests.”

For its spiky anti-China message, the nature of the economic relationship with Beijing is hard to ignore, provided it is conducted on US terms. The strategy is, to that end, most Trumpian in character, emphasising the need to “prevent China’s industrial policies and unfair trading practices from distorting global markets and harming US competitiveness.”

In what has become a tradition of the Trump administration, the Framework document does not tally with messages from other equivalent national security assessments. The officials of empire are not speaking with a coherent voice. The 2019 Indo-Pacific Strategy Report by the Department of Defense, for instance, makes good mention of Russia as a “revitalized malign actor”. (Pentagon pundits can never seem to give the bear, or their paranoia, a rest.) Despite tardy economic growth occasioned by Western sanctions and a fall in oil prices, Moscow “continues to modernize its military and prioritize strategic capabilities – including its nuclear forces, A2/AD systems, and expanded training for long-range aviation – in an attempt to re-establish its presence in the Indo-Pacific region.”

The authors of the Framework document are, in sharp contrast, barely troubled by Moscow and, surprisingly, sober on the issue. “Russia will remain a marginal player in the Indo-Pacific region relative to the United States, China and India.” Abhijnan Rej of The Diplomat could not help but find this inconsistency odd. “So Russia is a threat in a public document but not one in a classified one?”

As for India, the 2019 IPSR does much to avoid exaggeration and elevation. “Within South Asia, we are working to operationalize our Major Defense Partnership with India, while pursuing emerging partnerships with Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Bangladesh and Nepal.” The Pentagon notes an increase in the “scope, complexity and frequency of our military exercises” with India. But for all that, New Delhi hardly remains a jewel of defence strategy relative to such traditional allies as South Korea and Japan.

The SFIP, in contrast, makes a bold stab at linking the goals of maintaining US regional supremacy with New Delhi’s own objectives. This is bound to cause discomfort in the planning rooms, given Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s rhetoric on regional multipolarity. An article of faith in Indian policy on the matter is ensuring that no single power dominates the region. Another potential concern is the prospect that India is being thrown into the US-China scrap.

Medcalf concludes his assessment of the framework document with his own call for what promises to be future conflict. “America,” he insists, “cannot effectively compete with China if it allows Beijing hegemony over this vast region, the economic and strategic centre of gravity in a connected world.” The conflict mongers will be eagerly rubbing their hands.

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.

15 January 2021

Source: countercurrents.org

By David W. Mathisen

Global Research Editor’s Note

We bring to the attention of our readers this carefully documented analysis of the so-called “Storming of the Capitol” by David W. Mathisen.

With regard to the coverage of the Wednesday Capitol Event, Global Research will be publishing opposing and contradictory points of view by several of our authors.

We are dealing with a complex and far-reaching political process. We are at the crossroads of a major political, economic and social crisis which has bearing on the future of the United States. This crisis must be the object of debate and analysis rather than confrontation of opposing political narratives.

***

I am continuously surprised that men and women believe whatever the corporate media tells them, even after we see beyond any doubt that they have been lying to us for over 50 years about the murders of President John F. Kennedy, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy, and about the events of September 11, 2001.

The supposed “Storming of the Capitol” that took place on January 06, 2021 does not make any sense on its face: there is simply no way a gaggle of “protestors” can burst into the Capitol Building unless they are deliberately allowed to do so. Footage shown during the event has all the appearances of drama: stage-acting (and not very convincing acting, either).

But what about the supposed fatal shooting of one so-called protestor?

Let’s take a look at the footage and see the very serious questions that footage raises. These questions are not being addressed at all by anyone in the corporate media or the government.

And yet despite these obviously suspicious facts, there is a heavy psychological resistance to admitting the possibility that the media (as well as the men and women occupying government office) are lying to your face. It is much less threatening to believe the media rather than our own eyes. But it causes internal displacement to do so.

Please watch my video, The Capitol Hill Fiasco and consider these important questions.

Thank you for watching.

January 11, 2021. Please note that David Mathisen’s video has been taken down by Vimeo.

January 12, 2021. Video has been uploaded on BitChute.

_____________________________

Important Note:

Only a few hours after posting this video, the friendly face of censorship arrived in the form of an email from google / youtube informing me that my video had been taken down for “content containing malicious harassment,” along with a cartoon image of a referee blowing a whistle:

The following link to Youtube is no longer active

“The Capitol Hill Fiasco 2021,

They also removed the video, along with the numerous positive comments provided by viewers from around the world, and for a time the blank screen where the video used to be stated that the video had been removed for violation of “harassment and cyberbullying.”

As you can see from the content of their email, these overseers of what content may be allowed into the public have included the patronizing consolatory statement that: “We know that this might be disappointing, but it’s important to us that YouTube is a safe place for all.”

Please note that “disappointing” is not the correct word to describe what is going on here.

This video provides analysis of an extremely important event which impacts everyone in the united states and indeed has interest for everyone in the world (since the behavior of the united states and its officials impacts men and women in many other nations). For google and the persons they describe as “our team” of reviewers to declare that this analysis “violates our Community Guidelines” and to take it upon themselves to censor it is unconscionable.

I have since uploaded the video to another platform not controlled by google, and as you can see from the video there is no way to describe this video as harassing or bullying, and in fact the end of the video features a reference to Mahatma Gandhi and his strategy of non-violence.

In response to this censorship, I lodged a protest (youtube condescendingly terms it an “appeal”), which I have reproduced below (only 800 characters allowed):

Prior to being taken down, the video was seen by about 258 viewers, and had received about 43 “likes” and about 16 comments.

Thank you to those who liked and commented and shared, prior to the censorship of this content in violation of the inalienable right, articulated in the Bill of Rights as the First Amendment but obviously belonging to all men and women everywhere, regardless of the despicable efforts of petty tyrants to curtail that right, to freedom of speech and the press.

Note that misguided persons often rush in at this point to argue that “private corporations can do whatever they want: the First Amendment only restricts the federal government in the united states.”

That is untrue and mistaken.

Google and youtube can only exist in their present form and business model through the use of the electromagnetic spectrum, which is a gift of nature (or a gift of the gods, as the ancients would see it), much like the rivers and ports and oceans and soil of the land.

The electromagnetic spectrum is not a creation of any man or woman, any more than is the sea or the sunshine or the oil under the earth. It is properly understood to belong to the public domain, belonging to the people of the nation (those allowed to be born into that nation by the gods), and thus companies such as google / you tube are permitted to use that spectrum at the good pleasure of the people (that’s why the government, which is supposed to represent the people, in a democracy, allocates spectrum and that is right and proper).

Thus, google and you tube do not have any undisputed right to “do whatever they want” with the spectrum that is loaned to them by the people or by their representative government.

It is very much akin to banks, who are tightly controlled by the government because as anyone who studies the matter will understand, banks are given a special privilege to issue money — a privilege that is “loaned” to them by the government, because that power belongs only to the representatives of the people. If the banks abuse that privilege or violate their charter, it will be taken away. Google and you tube’s charters should have been taken away a long time ago already, along with other abusers of the inalienable rights given to all men and women — rights which it is the government’s first duty to protect and preserve.

David W. Mathisen is the author of eight books about the connections of the world’s ancient myths to the stars.

9 January 2021

Source: www.globalresearch.ca

By Tom Mitchell, Yuan Yang, Ryan McMorrow

Four years ago, when Ant Group’s premier money market fund was racing to a peak of more than $260 billion (€213.5 billion) worth of assets under management, many of China’s state-owned banks and their regulators started to get agitated. In a series of calls and meetings with Jack Ma, Ant’s founder, bank executives and regulatory officials demanded that its Yu’E Bao fund be reined in.

“Yu’E Bao was pulling a lot of money from the banks,” says one person familiar with the discussions. “The banks were worried about the impact on liquidity and wanted Ant to take measures to minimise the impact. The conversations were pretty tense.”

In the end, Mr Ma had to back down and Yu’E Bao imposed caps on how much people could deposit. Between March and December of 2018, its funds under management fell by a third to $168 billion and stood at $183 billion last September.

The showdown would prove to be a prelude to the much bigger confrontation that now pits the Chinese Communist party and President Xi Jinping against not just Ant but also Alibaba, the ecommerce group founded by Mr Ma.

The stand-off, which has sparked rampant speculation about Mr Ma’s whereabouts, could become a defining moment for the future of private business in Mr Xi’s China.

On December 24th, China’s market regulator announced it was launching an antitrust probe into Alibaba and sent investigators to its headquarters in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou, Mr Ma’s hometown. The announcement came just two weeks after the party’s politburo said it would target monopoly businesses to prevent the “disorderly expansion of capital”.

The move on Alibaba also came two months after financial regulators dramatically cancelled Ant’s planned $37 billion initial public offering, which would have been the world’s largest.

Squeeze on business

Taken together, the measures amount to an unprecedented squeeze on a business empire whose ubiquitous services are central to the functioning of China’s pioneering online economy.

Ant says Alipay, its payment app, is regularly used by 700 million people – half of China’s total population – and 80 million merchants, processing payments worth 118 trillion renminbi (€15 trillion) in the group’s last financial year.

Alibaba’s shares have fallen by almost 30 per cent since the regulatory showdown began in late October, putting a big dent in the net worth of Mr Ma, who has not been seen in public since then.

Over the same period his fortune has declined from $62 billion to $49 billion, according to Bloomberg data. The Hurun China Rich List estimated that Mr Ma had been the country’s richest man as recently as October 20th but would now rank fourth, his top slot taken by a bottled water tycoon, Zhong Shanshan.

The results of the showdown will say a lot about the sort of economy that China is developing. If Ant and Alibaba are crippled by regulators – or its founder is personally targeted by investigators – it will go down as a landmark moment in the party’s fickle relationship with China’s private sector even though Mr Ma is, ironically, a party member himself.

Since Deng Xiaoping launched the “reform and opening” era 40 years ago, the party has become ever more dependent on private sector companies for economic growth, job creation and tax revenues. But the party’s fixation with control, especially since Mr Xi came to power almost a decade ago, also triggers periodic crackdowns on the sector and prominent entrepreneurs.

Settlements

Yet there is another potential outcome that would indicate a less fraught relationship between the party/state and business. The investigations into Ant and Alibaba could lead to the sort of settlements that are not dissimilar to those pursued in the United States and the European Union against large finance and technology groups.

That would leave Mr Ma’s two flagship companies humbled but still formidable and highly profitable national champions. Even then, a strong political message would have been sent.

“Chinese internet magnates can still enjoy thriving businesses and enormous fortunes if they are able to convince the top leadership of their loyalty,” says Chen Long at Plenum, a Beijing-based consultancy. “The top leadership wants to ensure that neither Ma nor anyone else ever crosses the red line of trying to exert personal influence over government policies again – at least not publicly. The government will support them on the condition that they serve the national interest first.”

Mr Ma has not appeared in public since October 24th, when he gave a high-profile speech critical of the same state-owned banks he clashed with over Yu’E Bao’s rapid growth, as well as regulators who he said often sacrifice innovation on the altar of stability. According to people involved in the listing, the speech angered Mr Xi, who made the final decision to halt the Ant IPO.

“To innovate without taking risks is to strangle innovation,” Mr Ma said. “There is no such thing as riskless innovation in the world. Very often, an attempt to minimise risk to zero is the biggest risk itself.”

He was speaking at the same forum where Wang Qishan, Mr Xi’s powerful vice-president and former anti-corruption tsar, had earlier emphasised the paramount importance of financial system stability.

“Efforts should be made to prevent and lower financial risks . . . security always ranks first,” Mr Wang said. “While new financial technologies have improved efficiency and brought convenience, financial risks have been heightened.”

In an unprecedented public rebuke of Ant two months later, on December 26th, China’s central bank criticised Ant for being too cavalier about financial risk and taking advantage of regulatory loopholes. But as frustrated as regulators are with Ant, they cannot ignore the beneficial effects of the financial revolution it has led in China.

“Ant Group,” People’s Bank of China vice-governor Pan Gongsheng admitted in his otherwise critical comments, “has played an innovative role in developing financial technology and improving the efficiency and inclusiveness of financial services”. The central bank, he added in a nod to jittery entrepreneurs, was also “unshakeable” in its commitment to “protect property rights and promote entrepreneurship”.

Mr Ma has long enjoyed support from officials in a range of State Council ministries, as well as the lead financial regulators, who appreciate the contributions of Ant, Alibaba and their rivals, all of whom have transformed China’s economy and made its online services sector a global leader.

When his status as a party member was first confirmed only two years ago, it was in the context of an award he was receiving from the party’s Central Committee for “making China a leading player in the international ecommerce industry, internet finance and cloud computing”.

Alibaba and Ant’s ecommerce and online payment services were even more critical at the height of China’s successful battle to contain coronavirus, providing essential services to the hundreds of millions of people caught in draconian lockdowns.

Speech

“There are different lines of thought within the regulators,” Mr Chen says. “Until Jack Ma’s speech, the pro-growth people had the upper hand. But Xi thought the speech was too much and a second [risk-averse] group took the lead. If his speech hadn’t happened, everything would have been fine.”

Disappearing acts are unusual for Mr Ma, who also missed the November finale of his African reality TV show – Africa’s Business Heroes. He routinely gives flamboyant musical performances at Alibaba events and hobnobs with heads of state and government leaders.

As China’s most successful private entrepreneur, Mr Ma enjoys unique status in China – and overseas. His fluent English has made him a huge celebrity on the international conference circuit, with a star quality unmatched by any of his private or state-sector peers.

When Mr Xi hosted the G20 leaders summit in Hangzhou in 2016, some of his guests also visited Mr Ma – something that irked the Chinese president, according to one diplomat involved and other people familiar with the matter.

Mr Ma’s VIP callers included Indonesian president Joko Widodo, Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau and the then Italian premier, Matteo Renzi. Foreign leaders were offered limited time slots and the Chinese foreign ministry was mostly cut out of the process.

Over the past week, rumours about Mr Ma’s whereabouts have abounded on China’s carefully monitored social media channels, while domestic media outlets have received strict instructions from censors about the stories they can and cannot run on Ant and Alibaba’s regulatory troubles.

Many of Mr Ma’s friends and colleagues strongly dispute suggestions that he is personally in any sort of legal jeopardy, let alone on the run. “He is in China and not travelling because of Covid, not anything else. He’s lying low,” says one friend of Mr Ma.

Another friend who communicates with Mr Ma regularly adds: “Everyone is asking me if he’s in danger, but he’s doing fine. He responds [to messages and calls] quickly and seems like he’s in good spirits. Discussions with regulators are still very much in process so he just has to stay quiet until they are resolved.”

Leadership missteps

Friends add that while Mr Ma may now regret the consequences of his October 24th speech, he meant what he said and still believes passionately in what he sees as Ant’s mission to transform the provision of financial services in the world’s second-largest economy.

Yu’E Bao, which translates as “account balance treasure”, was started in 2013 and allowed anyone in China, from restaurant staff to the urban yuppies they serve, to deposit as little as Rmb1 (13 cent) in a money-market fund and earn more interest than they could in a Chinese savings deposit account.

Just four years later it became the world’s largest money market fund, surpassing JPMorgan’s US government money market fund.

The fund’s success was a dramatic demonstration of Ant’s potential. But it was also a threat to one of China’s most powerful vested interest groups – state banks and the officials who regulate them. The central bank was also concerned. In its annual financial stability report published in late 2019, the PBoC said it would “strengthen regulation of systematically important money market funds”, without mentioning Yu’E Bao by name.

“When a taxi driver can deposit one renminbi in a money-market fund and get interest, that’s a big breakthrough,” says a former Alibaba executive. “Jack feels what Ant is doing is good for society.”

Mr Ma’s companies have rebounded strongly from regulatory disputes before, although Ant and Alibaba never faced scrutiny as intense as they now do. Ant’s run-in with banks and regulators over Yu’E Bao, for example, did little to hinder its overall business or influence. Ant’s credit business grew so large that it now facilitates about one-tenth of all of China’s non-mortgage consumer loans.

The group also aligned its interests with those of powerful investors. Ant’s first fundraising in 2015 brought in a slew of well-connected shareholders, all of whom were set to be rewarded handsomely in the IPO. The Chinese government’s social security fund and a group of state-owned insurers held stakes in Ant valued at, respectively, R48 billion and R45 billion at the IPO price.

Shares belonging to an investment vehicle put together by Boyu Capital, whose executives have included the grandson of former Chinese president Jiang Zemin, were valued at R15 billion. Even China Central Television, the country’s state broadcaster, held Ant shares worth R3 billion.

“Financial regulators have been very concerned about Ant’s growing power and ability to push back against any attempts to bring it under control,” says one Chinese government adviser. “Previous attempts to bring Ant under more control were not really working because it was so big and so powerful. There is now clearly a very dramatic shift.”

Bill Deng, a former Ant executive and co-founder of XTransfer, a cross-border payments platform, says Mr Ma may have become too confident.

“For a long time, regulators let Ant expand and I think [management] became a bit too complacent,” he says. “If there are hundreds of people praising you, you can get overly optimistic. Financial deleveraging policies have been a trend for several years now and the government is extremely careful when it comes to finance.”

Healthy growth

The cancellation of Ant’s IPO triggered a cascade of official and state media criticism of the fintech group. Regulators have also made clear they want the group to shift many of its businesses – including payments, lending, insurance and wealth management – into a new, more tightly regulated holding vehicle. This will increase Ant’s capital requirements and lower its valuation.

Authorities see the holding company model as a way to rein in large financial conglomerates while increasing their transparency. They also want Ant to share its vast trove of consumer data with the central bank – something it has refused to do before.

Having to wait for a smaller return than they almost locked in a few months ago will be disappointing for Ant’s investors, but there are worse alternatives.

“The Chinese government does not want to kill Ant, but to make sure it grows in a healthy way,” says Mr Deng. “Ant can surpass its current obstacles. If they have patience, they will be able to rise again.”

As for the antitrust investigation into Alibaba, a manageable outcome for the group would include an end to exclusivity arrangements that restrict merchants from selling on rival platforms. Alibaba could also potentially face a large fine – the maximum allowed would be 10 per cent of its previous year’s revenues – if it is deemed to have violated China’s anti-monopoly law.

“Debates about exclusivity have been going on for years, it’s a competitive market,” says the former Alibaba executive. “I don’t think Alibaba is going to get broken up. It’s just that the methods by which they fight for the market are going to be more regulated.”

12 January 2021

Source: www.ft.com

By Thomas Piketty

After the invasion of Capitol Hill, the bewildered world wonders how the country that has long presented itself as the self-proclaimed leader of the « free » world could have fallen so low. To understand what has happened, it is urgent to leave the myths and idolatry on one side and to go back to history. In reality, the Republic of the United States has, since its beginnings, been run through by weaknesses, violence and considerable inequalities.

The Confederate flag, the emblem of the pro-slavery South during the Civil War of 1861-1865, which was waved a few days ago by the rioters on the floor of the federal parliament was not there by chance. It refers to very heavy conflicts that need to be confronted.

The system of slavery played a central role in the development of the United States, and indeed of Western industrial capitalism as a whole. Of the fifteen presidents who succeeded one another until Lincoln’s election in 1860, no fewer than eleven were slave owners, including Washington and Jefferson, both of whom were born in Virginia, which in 1790 had a population of 750,000 (of which 40% were slaves), equivalent to the combined population of the two most populous northern states (Pennsylvania and Massachusetts).

After the 1791 revolt in Santo Domingo (the jewel in the French colonial system and the biggest concentration of slaves in the Atlantic world at the time), the south of the United States became the world centre of the plantation economy and underwent rapid growth. The number of slaves quadrupled between 1800 and 1860; cotton production increased tenfold and fed the European textile industry. But the North-East of the USA and especially the Mid-West (the birthplace of Lincoln) developed even more rapidly. These two groups relied on a different economic model, based on the colonisation of the West and free labour, and wanted to block the expansion of slavery in the new territories in the West.

After his 1860 victory, Lincoln, a Republican, was ready to negotiate a peaceful and gradual end to the slaveholders, with compensation for the owners, as had happened during the British and French abolitions in 1833 and 1848. But the Southerners preferred to play the secession card, like some of the white settlers from South Africa and Algeria in the 20th century, in an attempt to preserve their world. The Northerners refused their departure, and the war began in 1861.

Four years later, and after the death of 600,000 persons (as many as the cumulative total of all the other conflicts in which the country took part, including the World Wars, Korea, Vietnam and Iraq), the conflict ended with the surrender of the Confederate armies in May 1865. But the Northerners did not consider the Black population were ready to become citizens, let alone property owners, and they let the Whites regain control of the South and impose a strict system of racial segregation, which was to allow them to retain power for another century, until 1965.

In the meantime, the United States became the world’s leading military power and was able to put an end to the cycle of nationalist and genocidal self-destruction which opposed the European colonial powers against each other between 1914 and 1945. The Democrats, who were the party of the erstwhile pro-slavery South, managed to become the party of the New Deal. Driven by communist challenge and African-American mobilization, they conceded civil rights without reparations.

But as from 1968, the Republican Nixon recovered the white Southerners’ vote by denouncing the social largesse that the Democrats would grant to blacks through clientelism (a little like the way in which the right-wing in France suspects the left of Islamo-leftism when it evokes anti-Muslim discrimination).

A major reversal of the alliance as then took place, amplified by Reagan in 1980 and Trump in 2016. Since 1968, Republicans have won a clear majority of the white vote in all presidential elections, while Democrats have always obtained 90% of the black vote and 60-70% of the Latino vote. Meanwhile, the share of whites in the electorate has steadily declined from 89% in 1972 to 70% in 2016 and 67% in 2020 (against 12% for Blacks and 21% for Latinos and other minorities), fuelling the hardening of the Capitol’s Trumpists and threatening to plunge the Republic of the United States into an ethno-racial conflict with no way out.

What can we conclude from all this? According to a pessimistic reading, supported by many of the most educated groups who henceforth vote for the Democrats (which allows the Republicans to present themselves now as anti-elite, even though they continue to include a good part of the business elite, if not as yet appealing to the intellectual elite), Republican voters are described as « deplorable » and ‘beyond redemption’. Democratic administrations are said to have done everything they could to improve the lot of the most disadvantaged, but the racism and acrimony of the white working classes apparently prevents them from seeing it.

The problem is that this vision leaves little room for a democratic solution. A more optimistic approach to human nature might be as follows. For centuries, people from different ethno-racial backgrounds have lived with no contact with each other except through military and colonial domination. The fact that they have recently been living together in the same political communities is a major civilisational advance. But it continues to give rise to prejudice and political exploitation that can only be overcome by more democracy and equality.

If the Democrats want to regain the socially disadvantaged vote, whatever its origin, then more needs to be done in terms of social justice and redistribution. The road ahead will be long and arduous. All the more reason to get started now.

Thomas Piketty joined the London School of Economics (LSE) in 2015 as the distinguished Centennial Professor.

12 January 2021

Source: www.lemonde.fr

By Richard Rubenstein

As we know, the United States Capitol building in Washington, D.C. was invaded on January 6th by right-wing protestors bent on disrupting the proceedings of a joint session of Congress called to certify the results of Joe Biden’s and Kamala Harris’s election as U.S. president and vice-president. The house in which I am now writing this editorial is located two short blocks from the Capitol, and from my study I could hear the shouts of the crowd, punctuated by sirens, helicopter noises, and occasional explosive “bangs” later revealed to be the sound of flash grenades detonating. My impulse to walk a short distance to see what was happening was short-circuited by a phone call from my daughter, who said, “Turn on your television, and don’t you dare go there. You haven’t avoided the coronavirus just to be shot by some Proud Boy!” One look at the chaos onscreen confirmed the correctness of her advice.

The events of January 6

The facts, as lawyers like to say, are not in dispute. Donald Trump, the outgoing president, invited his supporters to come to Washington to demonstrate against the certification of the Biden/Harris victory on the grounds that the election was “rigged” and its outcome the result of massive fraud in the voting and vote count. The facts that Trump and his allies had filed more than sixty lawsuits in state and federal courts making the same claims, and that their complaints were uniformly rejected by Republican- as well as Democratic-appointed judges, were simply ignored. A crowd estimated by the police at 40,000-45,000 listened for more than one hour on the National Mall as Trump repeated his charges, insisted that he had won the election in a “landslide,” and branded the vote a “disgrace.” He then invited his followers to march to the Capitol to insist that election results be rejected.

It took almost no time for the crowd to surround the building, which was virtually unprotected by police or other security forces. A few score members of the U.S. Capitol Police, a special force used to police the Capitol grounds, were quickly and thoroughly outnumbered by demonstrators, who climbed the stairs and walls on both sides of the building, smashed windows, and entered the building, going so far as to occupy Congressional offices and the U.S. Senate chamber. Six people died in the assault – a woman demonstrator shot by police as she tried to enter the chamber of the House of Representatives; a Capitol policeman struck on the head by a demonstrator wielding a fire extinguisher canister; and four protestors who suffered heart attacks or strokes during the violence. Searches of the building and grounds immediately afterward turned up automatic weapons, ammunition, paraphernalia for taking hostages, and live pipe bombs.

President Trump watched the fracas on television with his family, then issued a statement praising the rioters, but asking them to go home. Two days later, with calls for his resignation or impeachment mounting, he issued another statement regretting the violence. One day after this, he issued another statement regretting his prior statement.

The problem restated

Recently, a television interviewer asked me to discuss “short term” and “long term” solutions to the problems revealed by the assault on the Capitol. I began by talking about the need to prosecute demonstrators who had invaded the building or hurt other people, and to hold Trump responsible for the violence, perhaps by having a joint session of Congress censure him. Short term solutions would also include reviewing the colossal security failure that permitted the attack to occur and quickly designing improved measures to protect the Capitol and other potential targets from future attack. (Far Right groups have already announced their intention to hold “peaceful armed demonstrations” in Washington and other capitals on January 17.) It seems clear, however, that aside from a few punitive or protective actions, there really are no short-term solutions to discuss. Since the problem is long-term, so are the solutions.

Let me say clearly that the problem is not merely Donald Trump. This maleficent demagogue with fascistic leanings is surely a problematic leader, but he is a symptom and constituent of a much larger problem: the intense polarization of U.S. politics that has tribalized American political conflicts. Once thought of as struggles between competitive “interest groups,” these conflicts increasingly resemble the ethnic, racial, religious, values-based communal conflicts that have long plagued nations in other parts of the world. The 74 million U.S. citizens who voted for Trump in 2020 and the 79 million who voted against him consider themselves members of communities united by common cultural, political, and moral tastes and values. Socioeconomic issues involving growing income and wealth inequality, job insecurity, poverty, and precarity, not to mention the near collapse of social services in many rural and urban communities, are actually at the heart of this polarization. But, since challenging the overall health of the capitalist order is still taboo, these issues are increasingly translated into ethnocultural grievances and a search for scapegoats.

In saying this, I am aware that many readers will suppose that I am talking about right-wing white supremacists, religious fanatics, and conspiracy theorists. Of course, I am, at least in part. Watching the attack on television, it was impossible not to notice the Confederate flags being carried into the Capitol building, the “Camp Auschwitz” sweatshirt worn by one demonstrator, and the QAnon regalia sported by others. Although investigations of the perpetrators are still at an early stage, it is likely that they will reveal the active presence of neo-fascist groups like the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and other Far Right militias.

But anti-Trump forces, no less than pro-Trumps, have come increasingly to constitute a political tribe. Their ethnocultural grievances tend to be directed against conservatives stereotyped en masse as violent white supremacists, and their particular scapegoat is Donald Trump himself, seen as a primary cause of political decay rather than as a representative of a decaying system. Largely college educated, they are quite conscious of themselves as a distinct culture group superior to the benighted, manipulable “deplorables” who oppose unrestricted immigration, the liberal news media, gun control regulations, and the Deep State.

The bulk of Trump supporters are regularly described by respected U.S. newspapers and journals as “whites without a college education.” This means is that they are members of the working class (a term scrupulously avoided by the American press) whose standard of living was declining sharply even before the COVID pandemic worsened their situation. But the more educated, technologically sophisticated, urbane masses who tend to support liberal Democratic candidates are also wage workers. This points to an enormous, highly consequential split between sectors of the working class – a split that has become the basis for a status differentiation which gravely undermines social unity. Some workers feel that their work is honorable and important and that they have an economic future, while others, humiliated and despairing, seek a recompense for their declining status in dreams of vanished glory and myths of racial superiority. Still others suffer from economic insecurity, poverty, and violence-ridden neighborhoods because they are people of color: the victims of systemic, trans-generational racial and ethnic discrimination.

The solution reimagined

We cannot talk about solutions to the problems that generated the attack on the U.S. Capitol without understanding their social roots. To halt the radicalization of many workers by the Far Right, one of these sources of conflict – the split between more and less “skilled” strata of the working class – must be recognized and overcome. But how to accomplish this without understanding that such splits are products of the normal operations of an unplanned socioeconomic system driven by the compulsion to maximize short-term profits? Dividing workers into viciously competitive status groups may not be the result of any conspiracy by owners or elite “opinion-makers,” but the results are the same whether the strategy is consciously designed or adopted spontaneously, as a sort of Darwinian response to threats to the supremacy of Big Capital. Divisions between white workers and workers of color have long been encouraged or tolerated for the same reasons. If Joe Biden is serious about “bringing Americans together” – a goal that he never tires of confirming – he will need to start by bringing sectors of the working class together, whether or not this pleases the wealthy donors who finance the Democratic Party’s electoral campaigns.

Since the problem is long term, the solution must be long term. It seems clear that the movement that elected Donald Trump will outlast his demise, just as the jihadi movement on several continents has outlasted the disappearance of charismatic leaders from bin Laden to al Baghdadi. The challenge, in both cases, is to prevent larger and larger segments of the movement from moving from conservatism to fascism, and from mostly nonviolent protest to calculated, organized terrorism. The January 6 attack on the Capitol was not an act of terrorism, in my view, nor was it an “insurrection” or a “coup,” even though it was an illegal occupation aimed at disrupting Congress in the performance of its duties. But, even if one thinks that a comparison with Mussolini’s March on Rome or Hitler’s 1923 Munich putsch is apt, the question is how to prevent 1923 from becoming 1933 – how to stop the mass radicalization that could produce a violent neofascist movement with mass support.

It might help to begin by admitting that nobody has yet proposed an effective ready-made answer to this question. The results of a decade of research into “CVE” – countering violent extremism – have not been particularly encouraging. In part, I think, this is because of the difficulty of recognizing that the problems requiring solution are systemic, not just the result of bad leaders or policies. Political tribalization in America is not a recent development. The modern roots of the current crisis go back at least to the 1960s and 1970s when young radicals on the left participated in a controversial “cultural revolution,” and to the 1980s and 1990s, when right-wing forces launched a cultural counter-revolution under the banners of states’ rights, rugged individualism, and evangelical religion. The intense polarization that presently confronts us is the product of a systemic crisis, not just the appearance of demagogic leaders, and can be challenged only by measures that restore failing socioeconomic and political systems to health.

Our job, from here on, must be to diagnose those failures correctly and to propose imaginative and practical cures. To do this will involve challenging widely held taboos and convincing people to allow themselves to think more freely about the sort of society that they want to create for themselves and their descendants. This in turn requires sustained conversation – dialogue, if you like – between social groupings that have been far more inclined to tune into self-confirming social media and news sources than to talk with members of another tribe.

Punishing the perpetrators of the assault on the Capitol is both warranted and necessary. President Trump should surely be held responsible for encouraging a mob to surround the building and threaten Congress. But punitive measures alone will not help us to conduct these desperately needed inter-tribal conversations. Punish the perpetrators and secure our public sites, certainly. But start these dialogues now!

Richard E. Rubenstein is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment and a professor of conflict resolution and public affairs at George Mason University’s Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter Center for Peace and Conflict Resolution.

11 January 2021

Source: www.transcend.org