The Political Rationale Behind Terrorist Activities

Suraj Kumar Thube

The recent “lone wolf” attack at a gay night club in Orlando which saw 50 people being brutally killed  has sent shock waves across the globe. The incident has rightly been condemned from politicians to ordinary people in no uncertain terms. However, the outpouring of condolence has seen a parallel political development that was quick to point fingers on how destructive religious fanaticism can be. Invariably, Islam becomes the main culprit in destabilising the normalcy of our day to day lives by invoking  jihad, a force that is seen as something which is out to spread mayhem and bloodshed. The lazy linearity  that gets developed is that of how attacks of such scope and magnitude are driven by religious zealots who only happen to come from a particular religion. The problem at the most fundamental level is that of our basic understanding of the two terms which are in the thick of things – religion and terrorism.

Nothing can be a more perfunctory way to describe terror activities than by equating it with the fanatic message purportedly sanctioned by  religious scriptures. The religious explanation is riddled with problems on a range of issues. Firstly, commoners like us, more often than not, have virtually no expertise or even a modicum of proficiency in knowing whatever that  has been said in a given religious text. The superficiality is glaring when one comes to conclusion of the perpetrator being religiously motivated only by looking at his outward personality, his name and of course the next logical derivation, his religion. The terminology of jihad has, like most of such complex terms, been injected into our minds by haters, bigots and scaremongers who themselves have a blinkered view toward worldly affairs. We no longer seem to entertain a different interpretation within this term itself, let alone talking about  its rationale for stretching it to the entire religion. Faisal Devji in his book Landscapes of Jihad talks about seeing the outrage of the fanatics, especially of a decentralised outfit like Al – Qaeda as an ethical, moral reaction which emanates from their socio-economic backgrounds posing a metaphysical, spiritual conflict and not necessarily only a political battle to the West. It remains to be seen as to how has this framework must have changed with the rise of the ISIS which is different than the Al – Qaeda in a number of ways. Nonetheless, it brought out a reasoning which goes well beyond the rigid, often stultifying narrations  of how terror acts are solely driven by overt religious motives. That the sub state actors are primarily driven by specific  political, strategic motives for tangible, material and political gains is increasingly losing steam. For a large number of people who blame religion for all the wrong that happens in the world suffer from an acute shortage of public memory.

If one even takes a quick glance over the events that caused enormous amount of violence and bloodshed in the 20th century, the totalitarian regimes ruled by staunch atheistic rulers top the list. From the dreadful rule of Stalin which saw millions  perish under his oppressive state policies to an equally despotic rule of Pol Pot that made the Khmer Rouge the worst possible nightmare to live in, religion was nowhere in the picture. If we have to push it further to different strands of terrorist activities, the claim of religion being the root cause of all evil falls flat on its face. Professor Robert Pape, during the initial years of this decade came out with a research paper titled  “The strategic logic of suicide” which was a detailed study of the logic behind all the suicide terror attacks since 1980. The results were baffling only to the bigots and religious polarisers. The basic argument was that acts like these are systematic attempts in coercing the values liberal democracies stand for, which in return stand a  strong chance for realising territorial concessions. The group that forms a perfect example to this study was the most fearsome organisation called the LTTE in Sri Lanka, heavily swayed by a distinct  Marxist/Leninist ideology. If one has to couple these acts of terror with the numerous ethnic clashes, civil wars and political battles that end up having an egregious statistic called “collateral damage”, terrorist acts driven purely by religion come down to a small fraction of them all. The stumbling block in realising the history and the myriad ways of discerning the logic of terror remains the myopic viewing of “terrorism” itself.

Orlando, Bataclan theatre in Paris, Brussels airport, London 7/7 are all termed as terror acts. There is no gainsaying the fact that they indeed were so. At the same time, it becomes incredibly callous on our part to highlight only those acts which focus on sheer numbers, the magnitude of the attack, its spectacular nature and most importantly, its association with a particular religion which happens to propagate it. What this does is that it naturalizes  other killings and murders especially of the recent past  as mere  aberrations, as incidents which were violent and brutal but not  acts of terror. This sort of a bigoted mentally gets amply clear when the recent killing of the British MP Jo Cox does not get termed as a ‘terrorist act’. We live in a world where a person crying Allahhu Akbar before shooting someone is immediately termed as a terrorist and a  far rightwing supporter driven by a deeply entrenched xenophobic belief , kills someone while saying “Leave Europe” never gets seen in the conventional frame of terrorism.

Raza Aslan, a scholar of comparative religions, has spiritedly come to the defence of religion in our everyday lives. According to him, religion remains to be only a symbol or a metaphor in expressing one’s core values and beliefs. By acting as a signpost, all it does is  to express oneself  with the help of a set of signs which a person can relate to. It acts as a cultural identity in the modern world, which is distinct than the way it was understood in the medieval ages. To conflate religion with culture has also been a prime factor in reifying the existing simplistic discourse that puts the blame squarely on religion. We should all realize that it is political goals like nationalism, patriotism and motley forms of strategic logics that propels the fanatics to perform such dastardly acts. Hooligans and scaremongers along with a group of atheists who most of the time like to ridicule the rationale of religion in the modern world, inadvertently as it may seem, fuel this polarising debate. They unfortunately find themselves on the same page along with the  xenophobes, homophobes and the sectarians. Religion seen as someone’s contempt getting translated as the fear of the “other” only distorts the larger picture. Politics stands vindicated even before a fair trial.

New Zealand PM’s diplomatic debacle in Fiji

John Braddock

Fiji’s Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama used what would normally have been a bland official speech in Suva on June 9 to bluntly air continuing grievances over the policies of the region’s imperialist powers, directing his remarks to his visiting New Zealand counterpart John Key.

The diplomatic strains are a sign of unresolved and deepening geostrategic tensions in the Pacific. Australia and New Zealand are determined to ensure their continued regional dominance as part of the US-led drive to counter growing Chinese influence and prepare for war.

Key’s 24-hour visit, the first by a New Zealand prime minister to the impoverished South Pacific country since Bainimarama’s 2006 military coup, was intended to advance New Zealand’s foreign policy interests. Australia and New Zealand both regard Fiji, the largest South Pacific island state, as critical to their hegemony.

Following the coup, Canberra and Wellington imposed diplomatic and economic sanctions. These had nothing to do with defending democratic rights in Fiji but were driven by concerns that the coup could destabilise the region and open the way for Chinese influence.

The sanctions, however, backfired. Bainimarama responded with a “Look North” policy, seeking and receiving economic, diplomatic and military aid from China, Russia and elsewhere. In 2007, New Zealand’s high commissioner to Fiji, Michael Green, was accused of interfering in the country’s affairs and expelled.

In January this year a consignment of gifted weapons arrived from Russia for the Fiji army, followed by a 10-member team of Russian military instructors. The response by the Australian and New Zealand governments was muted, at least publicly, but Murdoch’s Australian declared that Bainimarama was “making a bad mistake” if he believed that the consignment was “a good idea for his nation.”

Canberra and Wellington are determined to counteract the growing presence of “outside” powers in what they regard as their own backyard. In March, the two governments exploited the devastation caused by Cyclone Winston to send warships, aircraft and hundreds of military personnel to Fiji. It was New Zealand’s biggest military deployment since World War II. While the intervention was characterised as a “humanitarian and disaster aid” mission, it was consistent with the intensifying militarisation of the Pacific.

Following the cyclone, China provided aid of $US100,000 to the Fiji Red Cross Society, the first country to do so. Beijing later increased its disaster relief package to $US10 million. Key derided the contribution, telling reporters that “when the need was great for Fiji … it was Australia and New Zealand that turned up.”

New Zealand Defence Minister Gerry Brownlee visited Fiji in March to reinforce Wellington’s “help” in the disaster relief. It followed a visit by Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop. The Lowy Institute, a Sydney-based think tank, noted that Bishop’s visit presented “a big opportunity for Fiji” to put behind it “all the bad blood between the two countries since the 2006 coup” and “normalise relations.”

Key’s visit this month had a similar agenda. Before leaving, Key told reporters that following the 2014 elections in Fiji, the military coup was now “ancient history.” Although democratic rule was still not “absolutely perfect,” the time was “right” for the highest-level diplomatic relations to resume.

No sooner had Key arrived in Suva than it became clear the trip would not go according to script. At the welcoming banquet, Bainimarama reminded Key that he won Fiji’s 2014 election with an overwhelming majority. “It is on that basis I stand before you tonight. Not as a coup maker or dictator, as some in your country would still have it, but as a properly elected, freely chosen leader of Fiji,” he declared.

During Key’s visit, Bainimarama refused to give way on two central matters. Firstly, he refused to rescind a ban on New Zealand journalists identified as being critical of the regime. Bainimarama claimed there was “a substantial body of opinion” in New Zealand, led by “your generally hostile media,” that “what is happening in Fiji somehow lacks legitimacy. That somehow I lack legitimacy. And my government lacks legitimacy.” Such claims, Bainimarama stated, were “not borne out by the facts.”

In reality, the government still rests directly on the military. The election in which Bainimarama’s Fiji First Party purportedly won 60 percent of the ballot was held under conditions of press censorship, military provocations and severe restrictions on opposition political parties.

The government remains anti-working class and authoritarian, ruling largely through fear and intimidation. A week before Key arrived, Bainimarama’s government used its numbers in parliament to suspend an opposition MP, the National Federation Party’s Roko Tupou Draunidalo, for more than two years after alleging she called a minister a “fool.”

Secondly, Bainimarama again refused to return to meetings of the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF), from which Fiji was earlier suspended. The Australian and New Zealand-dominated PIF rescinded the suspension after the 2014 elections. Bainimarama declined Key’s invitation to re-join the PIF. In return, Key said New Zealand would not quit the regional organisation, as Bainimarama previously sought.

Fiji has encouraged other Pacific nations to take a more “independent” stance, setting up the Pacific Islands Development Forum (PIDF) in 2012, from which Australia and New Zealand were excluded. In the lead-up to the COP21 environmental summit in Paris last year, Pacific leaders were highly critical of Australia and New Zealand for refusing to support their call to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to keep global temperature increases below 1.5 degrees centigrade. The PIDF declared the target was required to protect their tiny island states from rising sea levels.

Tensions between the official parties following Bainimarama’s outburst in Suva were reportedly palpable. Fairfax Media columnist Tracy Watkins described Wellington’s delegation as “seething over the Fijian prime minister’s extraordinary diplomatic slapdown.” Nor did it go unnoticed that Bainimarama was “hardly effusive” in his low-key acknowledgement of New Zealand’s assistance during Cyclone Winston. Watkins declared that, by the time it finished, Key’s trip had been stripped of any “diplomatic wins.”

New Zealand Labour Party foreign affairs spokesperson David Shearer described Key’s trip as a “disaster,” writing: “He [Bainimarama] didn’t step back from the restrictions on media [or] the heavy-handedness within parliament.” Key’s government needed to keep pushing Fijian officials “for a better democracy,” he declared.

Labour’s position is completely hypocritical. It was the previous Labour government that imposed New Zealand’s sanctions regime on Fiji after the 2006 coup. In 2014, Labour endorsed the “democratic” election of Bainimarama and the rehabilitation of his regime.

Australian jobs figures show expansion of part-time work

Mike Head

Official figures for April, released last Thursday, showed that while the headline unemployment rate remained unchanged at 5.7 percent, there was a further underlying shift from full-time to lower-paid part-time work.

During the month, the number of part-time positions rose by 70,000 but the number of full-time jobs dropped by 27,000, making it the fourth monthly decline in a row. Full-time employment has now fallen by about 60,000 since last September, when Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull ousted his predecessor, Tony Abbott.

This trend has gathered pace over the past year, pointing to the reality beneath the claims being made by both the Liberal-National Coalition government and the Labor opposition during the campaign for the July 2 election of a “transition” from the mining boom to a “new economy.”

Behind the deceptive slogans of “jobs and growth” (Coalition) and “growth with fairness” (Labor), tens of thousands of full-time jobs are being destroyed, particularly in mining and construction. A new “normal” has emerged—growing numbers of workers being forced to take part-time jobs, which are invariably less secure, worse-paid, often casualised and with inferior conditions.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) commented that a clear trend was developing. “This is the 11th consecutive month with part-time employment increases of more than 10,000 persons, and fourth consecutive month with full-time employment decreases of more than 5,000 persons,” its spokesman said.

Longer-term statistics show that the shift to part-time work, at the expense of full-time jobs, began in 2008, the year of the global financial crisis. But the trend has deepened as the impact of that economic breakdown has been felt increasingly in Australia via depressed iron ore, coal and other commodity export prices, and a drying up of investment.

Westpac bank senior economist Justin Smirk noted that in the year to May, part-time employment expanded by 4.4 percent, or 160,000 jobs. By contrast, full-time employment grew by just 1.0 percent, or 83,800 jobs, which is not enough to match population growth, and has begun to go into reverse in recent months.

By the ABS estimates, the unemployed are also increasingly giving up looking for full-time jobs, with the number searching for full-time employment falling 6,200, while those looking for part-time work increased by 7,200. There was also a 4 percent decrease in total working hours, the fourth consecutive monthly drop, pointing to an overall decline in workers’ incomes and living standards.

The ABS figures understate the jobless rate because they exclude those working more than an hour a week. Roy Morgan Research surveys indicate a significantly worse situation, with 1.369 million workers unemployed and seeking work (10.7 percent) and 947,000 under-employed (7.4 percent), making a total of 2.316 workers (18.1 percent) either jobless or looking for more work.

According to Roy Morgan’s statistics, those looking for full-time work—661,000—are now outnumbered by those seeking part-time work—708,000. This is further evidence of a sharp turn since last December, when those seeking full-time work—722,000—substantially exceeded those looking for part-time jobs—534,000.

Over coming months, the destruction of full-time jobs is certain to accelerate as the global slump worsens and further closures tear through mining projects, the auto sector and other basic industries.

“Welcome to the new part‑time economy,” Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) senior economist Michael Workman commented.

Another CBA representative, Michael Blythe, pointed to a switch from mining to services industries, leading to falling incomes. “Typically all those service jobs pay less than those mining and construction jobs, where a lot of the employment losses have been, so you’re getting that lower-income effect coming through,” he said.

Over the past three years, according to ABS figures, mining employment has fallen by 36,500, manufacturing jobs by 13,100, public safety and administration jobs by 31,700 and employment in utilities by 11,600.

Over the same period, employment in real estate has climbed 32,400, and finance jobs by 5,600, largely reflecting the housing bubble that is now threatened by an emerging glut of apartments in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.

Employment has primarily grown in service industries where temporary, casual, part-time and contract jobs are prevalent. Employment has risen in healthcare and social assistance by 136,400, retailing 86,200, construction 25,500 and professional, scientific and technical services 110,000.

This shift, combined with the lowest wages growth for at least two decades, has produced a protracted decline in working class incomes. And because of the falling export prices and value of the Australian dollar, real per-capita national disposable income is now lower than 2008.

Treasurer Scott Morrison hailed the April result, saying it reflected the Coalition government’s economic management. “What this continues to show is a strong jobs performance,” he said. “That is the key. When people have a job, they have confidence. When they have confidence, they are participating in the economy and they are spending and businesses are investing.”

Behind this rhetoric, the corporate elite regards the jobs crisis as an opportunity to force unemployed workers, especially the quarter of a million young people out of work, into cheap labour. For the election, both the Coalition and Labor have unveiled programs for unemployed youth, essentially designed to use them to drive down wages and conditions across the board.

Labor leader Bill Shorten yesterday unveiled a scheme, cynically titled “Working Futures,” to subsidise employers to place young people who have been unemployed for a year on six-month placements at a minimum award-equivalent training wage. Few details have been provided but the plan seems little different from the government’s proposed Youth PaTH internships, which will force youth on unemployment benefits to work 25 hours a week for an extra $100 per week payment—effectively $4 an hour.

The corporate and government assault on jobs, conditions and living standards is part of a worldwide offensive against the working class. It can be opposed only through the fight for a workers’ government that will implement far-reaching socialist policies. In its election statement, the Socialist Equality Party calls for a vast redistribution of wealth to secure the social rights of all, including the right to a stable and decent-paying job.

Washington’s “second nuclear age”

Andre Damon

With virtually no discussion in the media and no mention in the presidential election campaign, the United States is moving ahead with its trillion-dollar nuclear weapons modernization program.

Last week, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute published a report noting that the Obama administration is leading a global expansion of nuclear weapons programs. It said the US “plans to spend $348 billion during 2015–24 on maintaining and comprehensively updating its nuclear forces,” adding that “Some estimates suggest that the USA’s nuclear weapon modernization programme may cost up to $1 trillion over the next 30 years.”

Hans Kristensen, a co-author of the report, declared, “The ambitious US modernization plan presented by the Obama administration is in stark contrast to President Barack Obama’s pledge to reduce the number of nuclear weapons and the role they play in US national security strategy.”

In the latest milestone in this ongoing process, the House of Representatives last week voted down an amendment that would have slowed the development of a $37 billion program to construct a new nuclear-armed cruise missile called the Long Range Standoff Weapon.

Behind the scenes, the program had met with muted opposition from sections of the military establishment, who criticized it on the grounds of its exorbitant cost and the fact that it would make nuclear war, either intentional or accidental, more likely.

“Because they can be launched without warning and come in both nuclear and conventional variants, cruise missiles are a uniquely destabilizing type of weapon,” wrote former defense secretary William J. Perry and former assistant defense secretary Andy Weber in a comment published in the Wall Street Journal last year.

They warned that such weapons, which do not trace the tell-tale arc into space of ballistic missiles, are hard to detect and impossible to distinguish from their conventional, or nonnuclear, counterparts. This makes deadly miscalculations by other countries more likely. However, with the latest House vote, such concerns were brushed aside.

Given the enormous nuclear superiority of the United States over all other countries in the world, why the rush to pour ever more money into the development of new nuclear weapons and delivery systems, especially ones that are so dangerous as to give pause even to sections of the military establishment?

The current US nuclear arsenal, which is large enough to kill everyone on the planet many times over, is a remnant of a period in which the use of nuclear weapons was envisioned as a last resort, and when the launching of a nuclear weapon was assumed to mean “mutually assured destruction.” During most of the Cold War, the idea that a nuclear war could actually be winnable was confined to the political fringe, and the theories of RAND Corporation military strategist Herman Kahn were pilloried—most famously in Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove.

But in what is becoming known in policy circles as the “second nuclear age,” the thinking expressed by General Buck Turgidson in Kubrick’s film—that the consequences of a nuclear exchange are “modest and acceptable,” even though the United States might get its “hair mussed”—is becoming mainstream doctrine.

A report published earlier this year by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments titled Rethinking Armageddon outlines a scenario in which the US responds to an intervention by Russian forces in Latvia. The Joint Chiefs of Staff give the president four options, three of which involve the use of nuclear weapons.

As a report published last year by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) noted, “The scenarios for nuclear employment have changed greatly since the ‘balance of terror’ between the two global superpowers.” As a result, the “second nuclear age” involves combatants “thinking through how they might actually employ a nuclear weapon, both early in a conflict and in a discriminate manner.”

The highly influential Washington think tank called for maximizing “flexibility and credibility” by moving to a “smaller but newer responsive stockpile, lower and variable yields, and special effect weapons, a more diversified set of delivery systems, greater distribution and forward deployment, and greater integration with nonnuclear capabilities.”

Components of this plan include the stationing of missile defense systems on the borders of Russia and China, such as the one installed in Romania last month, and the domination of key waterways, such as the South China Sea, Baltic Sea and Black Sea. These policies are intended to make it difficult for Russia and China to retaliate to a nuclear first strike, including by means of ballistic missile submarines.

But for all the money and resources being poured into US nuclear dominance, the idea that a nuclear war against Russia or China is winnable, even with the most advanced weapons systems a trillion dollars can buy, is just as insane as it was during the height of the Cold War. The use of low-yield “tactical” nuclear weapons will very likely escalate into a conflict in which billions of people, or even the whole of humanity, will die.

The doctrine of the viability of a nuclear first strike mirrors the grandiose delusion, expressed in the 1998 book The Future of War by George and Meredith Friedman, that the advent of precision-guided bombs and missiles would make US military force uncontested in the 21st century, a theory disproven in the military debacles in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.

The relentless scheming of US military planners has its roots in deep-going historical process. The American ruling class, facing growing popular opposition at home and the long-term decline of its global economic power, seeks to resolve the intractable crisis it faces through military means. Its reckless actions have already resulted in one disastrous and bloody adventure after another. However, like a gambling addict, it seeks to win by upping the stakes, bringing into its crosshairs not only Russia and China, but the entire planet.

Despite the distinction of having waged war for nearly eight consecutive years, the Obama administration faces mounting pressure from a military and political establishment that is seeking an even more aggressive display of military force in the Middle East and against Russia and China. These pressures will erupt after the November election, with incalculable consequences, whether it is Clinton or Trump who is elected.

The Rise of Think Tanks in India

D Suba Chandran


Suhasini Haidar in her recent commentary (South Block in the Shade) in The Hindu has highlighted an interesting foreign policy phenomenon in India – the rise of think-tanks. Though she sees it as a factor in checking the Indian Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) from being “India’s primary interlocutor for the world,” many working on foreign policy have been asking for an effective role by the think-tanks with quality inputs to the Establishment.

For a long time, the Indian political establishment across the board has viewed independent think-tanks in the country primarily from a negative perspective – as being foreign funded (thereby implying that they follow a different agenda than that of the government). Though the different ministries (especially the Indian Ministry of Defence (MoD) and the MEA) and different wings of the Indian armed forces have – directly or indirectly – supported their own, these think-tanks did not have a negative tag in the governmental corridors.

Do independent think-tanks such as the India Foundation (IF) and Vivekananda International Foundation (VIF) challenge the role of the South Block? Or do they signify, along with few others such as the Observer Research Foundation (ORF) and Gateway House (GH) – the rise of think-tanks that are much needed and timely? And do they not help the state in today’s world of having “speciality” independent institutions?

Unfortunately, those who criticise the VIF and the IF view them primarily based on who is funding them, and whom they are close with inside the Indian establishment. Such a perspective is not drastically different from the previous governmental perspective that those think-tanks funded by foreign foundations are essentially bad. Why should the background of the funders come to the forefront, instead of the work of these think-tanks and more importantly, their utility?

From the US to Japan, there are think-tanks funded and supported by the rightist, economic, environmental, and liberal foundations and lobbies. In India, think-tanks like the ORF, GH, The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) etc – have all been supported by business houses. Especially in a country where there is no governmental support for independent think-tanking, institutions will have to be dependent on sources – domestic and external. Of course, the government supports institutions such as the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA), Indian Council of World Affairs (ICWA) etc.; but they cannot be called completely “independent.”

The issue here is not about who is funding but instead what value they bring in for the larger foreign policy establishment; and more importantly, their effectiveness in reaching out to the world. True, the MEA has to remain “India’s primary interlocutor for the world.” Has it not been the case since independence? Despite that, there has been repeated emphasis that given the contemporary need and the vastness of global interactions, India would need additional power to help the MEA carry forward.

Let us face the facts. Given the bureaucratic tangle and the need for paper work within and with the Indian Ministry of Finance (MoF), independent think-tanks are much better placed to take forward a few multilateral dialogues. In fact, the MEA has already been doing the same via ICWA, IDSA, Research and Information System for Developing Countries (RIS), ORF etc. Perhaps the MEA realises the need and has in fact already opened its gates in different ways.

And this presents a huge opportunity for the think-tank environment in India. Today, the situation for independent think-tanks is sharply different from those initial days in the 1990s when visionaries like RK Mishra and PR Chari established think-tanks like the ORF and Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies (IPCS) respectively – independent from the government. From funding to hiring quality researchers – it was not an easy task for these pioneers then. Today, the situation is substantially different.

Global think-tanks such as the Brookings Institution and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP) have established a chapter in India. All three wings of the Indian armed forces – the army, navy and air force – have been supporting their own: the Centre for Land and Warfare Studies (CLAWS), the National Maritime Foundation (NMF) and the Centre for Air Power Studies (CAPS) respectively, in addition to the Centre for Joint Warfare Studies (CENJOWS). Additionally, TERI and Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER) have their own focus on issues relating to environment and economy. There is competition and at the same time cooperation among them. There is already an initiative amongst the leading think-tanks in New Delhi to have a dialogue amongst themselves, so that they could make useful contributions to India’s foreign policy decision-making, and also take forward some of the larger external objectives of the country.

Perhaps this is a new beginning. Let us not try to vilify them by looking at who is funding whom. They have a useful role to play and will be extremely helpful to the foreign policy establishment. Let us not see and pursue foreign policy as some sole entity’s prerogative. There has to be a collective push, and with the right imagination and strategy, the think-tanks will be able to help the Indian Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) and the MEA by being independent.

In fact, the PMO, the MEA and other related institutions should take a conscious effort to take this process even further. Though the number of think-tanks have witnessed a phenomenal increase in the last ten years, a majority of them are located in New Delhi. A huge country such as India, with substantial issues all over its land and maritime territories, also needs regional think-tanks based in Chennai, Kolkata, Guwahati, Mumbai and Jammu. There are a few in these cities, but have serious problems with funding and outreach. Given India’s regional matrix and the role played by the states, it is imperative to have successful regional think-tanks.

Second, it is also imperative to invest in think-tanks focusing on non-foreign policy issues. Science, environment, trade, maritime issues etc are specialised areas that demand focused attention. For example, the National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS) in Bengaluru (with whom this author is associated) has a specialised focus on science butis  least aligned with the foreign policy establishment in India.

Finally, if think-tanks have to have maximum impact on decision-making, they have to substantially improve their inputs. Organising conferences, dialogues and hosting dignitaries from outside cannot be their primary functions. There have to be “quality” inputs, which are “actionable.” While “research” has to be the bedrock of these institutions, they should have “policy” relevance, otherwise there would not be a big difference between a PhD and policy research reports.

There is a new dawn of independent think-tanks in India. It would not have happened without the South Block and the PMO making a conscious decision to open up. The latter should not expect the former to be their second fiddle. Let them remain independent and yet be integrated within their own space.

Why Go To Russia?

Kathy Kelly

Since 1983, Sharon Tennison has worked to develop ordinary citizens’ capacities to avert international crises, focusing on relations between the U.S. and Russia. Now, amid a rising crisis in relations between the U.S. and Russia, she has organized a delegation which assembled in Moscow yesterday for a two week visit.  I joined the group yesterday, and happened to finish reading her book, The Power of Impossible Ideas, when I landed in Moscow.

An entry in her book, dated November 9, 1989, describes the excitement over the Berlin Wall coming down and notes that:

Prior to the Wall’s removal, President Reagan assured Secretary General Gorbachev that if he would support bringing down the Wall separating East and  West Berlin, NATO would not move ‘a finger’s width’ closer to Russia than East Germany’s border. With this assurance Gorbachev gladly signed on. Little could he or the world have guessed that this promise would soon be broken during the next administration – and that the redeveloping distrust between the countries would threaten to become a second Cold War, due to NATO’s expansion up to Russia’s borders.

Today, NATO and U.S. troops will conclude 10 days of military exercises, Anakonda, on Russia’s western border, involving 31,000 troops. The operation was named after a snake that kills by crushing its prey. Ongoing deployment of 4,000 additional NATO troops has been announced.  U.S. and South Korean military exercises just completed at the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea were dubbed “Decapitation” and mobilized 320,000 troops.

Conn Hallinan, in “Bear Baiting Russia,” notes that:

Russia has two bases in the Middle East and a handful in Central Asia. The U.S. has 662 bases in foreign countries around the world and Special Forces (SOF) deployed in between 70 and 90 countries at any moment. Last year SOFs were active in 147 countries. The U.S. is actively engaged in five wars and is considering a sixth in Libya. Russian military spending will fall next year, and the U.S. will out-spend Moscow by a factor of 10. Who in this comparison looks threatening?

It’s important for U.S. people to learn more, from ordinary Russian people, about their responses to troop build-up and new bases on their borders, threatening military exercises, and antagonistic arsenals of nuclear weapons on high alert. As President Vladimir Putin begins summoning a new Russian National Guard that could include 400,000 troops, it’s also important to hear how Russian people feel about this development.

Rather than foster cartoonized versions of foreign policy, the media should help people recognize complexity in Russian society and include awareness of desires to live in peace on the part of most people in both countries.

U.S. people committed to peace making might help ordinary Russians sense the complexity of U.S. society and better understand how U.S. military spending and build up toward war adversely affects civil society in the U.S.

Suppose someone in Russia were to ask me what I was doing before coming to Russia. I’d explain that the previous week, companions and I finished a 150-mile walk to a supermax prison in my home state of Illinois which could eventually subject 1900 people to tortuous years of solitary confinement, doubling the number of such cells in the U.S. Like the military-industrial complex in the U.S., the prison-industrial complex is now rooted in government salaries and corporate profits, and it’s hard to uproot it.

Before joining the walk, I lived for several weeks in late May and early June with young volunteers in Kabul who long to “live without war.”  Fifteen years into the U.S. war in Afghanistan, the U.S. has “succeeded” in creating conditions for ongoing war.

NATO and U.S. officials claim that their military exercises in countries around the world will enhance international security, but those of us who are members of the  delegation here in  Russia believe that it’s essential to swiftly reverse the present trend toward Cold Wars with Russia and China. The fantasy of world domination endangers people throughout the world and within the U.S. as people again shudder over the possibility of war between nuclear armed powers.

This morning, Dmitri Babich, an active journalist for more than 25 years focusing on Russian politics, said it’s important to name the problem we face, and he believes the fundamental problem is the U.S. insistence on being institutional supremacists/exceptionalists.

In other words, the policy fantasy that stands in the way of addressing major world problems cooperatively is the idea that the United States can retain and expand the boundaries of “sole superpower” domination. United States policy should stop poking and provoking Russia and China along their frontiers, and instead seek negotiated peaceful coexistence.

Missiles fitted with thermonuclear warheads and on battle-ready status are unstable, and, at any time, can result in the catastrophic destruction of cities on both sides, and even end civilized life on earth.

With active cooperation among the great powers and large reductions in wasteful competitive military spending, all countries could cooperatively address the threats from climate change, water shortages, regional underdevelopment, and economic pressures caused by population growth.

Ordinary people everywhere should do all that we can to demand that all international disputes be resolved  by non-military means, avoiding all wars and achieving the deactivation of all nuclear weapons.

Sharon Tennison’s work to develop citizen-to-citizen diplomacy, since 1983, suggests that people could work together to tackle such problems.

But, informed public opinion in the U.S. and in Russia will be crucially needed.

My friend Brad Lyttle, a lead organizer of and participant in the “San Francisco to Moscow Walk” (1960 -1961) recently wrote to President Obama that there is no reason the U.S. and Russia should continue to jeopardize the very existence of the human species with their huge nuclear arsenals. “Work with President Putin to reduce and eliminate these,” wrote Brad. “Emphasize a trustful and positive approach. Don’t assume that the future needs always to be as bad as much of the past.”

A Covert Life

John Hutchison

It was a rule of thumb for my father’s generation that the spooks came from Fordham, as my father had, and the gumshoes from Holy Cross. Thus did the national security state in its formative stages staff the middle-level apparat of its two major corps, the CIA and the FBI. The upper tiers of The Company, as the CIA fondly refers to itself, were blue-blooded Ivy League, and you could perhaps not have better proof of Adam Smith’s invisible hand at work than that patriciate national interests would be carried out by second-generation Irish and Italian underlings molded in that peculiar Jesuitic pedigree for defense of empire.

My father was representative of that first contingent of CIA officers, Depression-reared and working-class. Their way up and out of the neighborhoods was stymied by the war, and at its close they had jumped headlong at the first tenders of peacetime regimentation. My father’s reaction was typical. At 33, a veteran of Army Intelligence and with a war bride and two children, the CIA’s was the logical entreaty and meant the first real opportunity he had to pursue a livelihood.

I make no excuses for him beyond the exigencies of necessity, and 35 years since his passing entertain no illusions about the nature of his handiwork. He was a tough, firm, and cranky Cold Warrior, an ideologue unmistakably shaped by Coughlinite catholicity and parochial clannishness. What extenuations I could cite for him are of a different order, however insufficient: More than a passing interest in literature, a longing and a reverence for the sea his merchant seaman father had bequeathed him, a public courtliness and affability which was totally genuine, a pampering gentleness toward my mother — offsets, albeit minimal and dilettantish, against the life role he had assumed and which held him in sway. My father did what he had to do without the long view perspective affords. And that allowance, I’d be remiss not to argue, has the heft of moral hindsight: Unlike myself, he lacked a smorgasbord of affluence cushioning his adolescent years, still more the luxury of revisionist history as a political Baedeker or the contemporary tools for decoding the biases of media and propaganda.

Not that those amenities would have necessarily made any difference. I was half expecting to see my father’s name some years ago on a declassified CIA documents list of the agency operatives responsible for the 1954 coup in Guatemala. While it’s true that the scared junior officer off-loading guns at a rebel airfield was a different man from the one two decades later whose disgust at our toppling of Allende helped occasion his early retirement, to his credit my father needed no prompts to admit that there was no inner statute of limitations for such complicity.

But by then compensation owed had long put him in arrears, and my own outrage added punctuation. We quarreled over Vietnam, predictably, with all the ugliness of the most profound estrangement, apparatchik facing off against poet-dreamer, one steadfast to the notions of nest and hearth, the other loosened to the streets and the road and undreamt of possibilities, with a willingness to risk much to realize them.

A sense of decorum born of proud poverty always propelled my father, and gradually it amplified whatever basic instincts for proportion he possessed. The truest thing that can be said of him is that he was a man and of a generation trapped by history, and he well knew it. I still find a bit remarkable his assumption that I should share his confidences, as if my listening would better solidify the distinctions he laboriously mulled over. In the daily service to the wrong ends, his was a serial dramaturgy. “Despicable soldiers of fortune,” was my father’s assessment of the Chiang Kai-Shek generals for whom he toted water as third-in-command of CIA’s secret base on Saipan in the Marianas Islands in the mid-1950s. The training of Kuomintang guerrillas for sabotage missions against the mainland, he was forced to conclude, would not regain the China that had ostensibly been “lost” by John Stewart Service and the old China Hands at the State Department. By degrees, my father would come to hew to an old-school professionalism which prescribed that intelligence and policy never mix. Blame for the Bay of Pigs, he conceded, lay with the operations wing of the CIA foolishly usurping policy prerogatives and expecting that a new president would fully back a plan he hadn’t initiated. The consequence was the worst of possible lapses, and by “bringing embarrassment” to the agency one’s personal repute was similarly tarnished.

The Thomistic scholasticism the Jebbies had provided apparently rooted him: Down and dirty espionage was necessary, even admirable; but fomenting foreign and domestic destabilization except under extreme circumstances failed his ends/means test. My father didn’t live to see Iran-Contra and the cumulative evidence on the CIA’s long involvement in drug running, and missed witnessing the agency’s paymastering of surrogate terrorism in Central America. I suspect he would have regarded these manifestations as an outgrowth of the predilections of the new breed of officers he railed against late in his career, sycophantic bag men like Robert Owen, and semper-fi “assets” like Ollie North, eager to emulate OSS nostalgics like William Casey and the aloof ruthlessness of the perennial Yalie directorate. And yet it’s a given that my father could never abandon his beloved employer. On his deathbed, his frail voice barely audible, he speculated about how the agency should best approach the aftermath of Anwar Sadat’s assassination. In the end, as in life, it was all he had.

Along the way there was always my father’s strained consternation about what would finally become of me. My impulse to challenge the state in the 1960s he could at least ascribe to Quixotic youthfulness. But I had also abandoned the safe sinecure of academia, and later the trivialities of mainstream journalism and its corresponding stench of careerist fear. I had informed my father, to his considerable bewilderment, that I intended to follow Camus’ counsel to “create dangerously.”

Evidently some of the gods are apportioned to look out for renegades like myself, and what laurels of public certification I’ve been accorded would probably please my father, though he would likely rather acknowledge my entrepreneurial abilities than my political analyses.

I daresay in the end I knew the man better than he knew himself. The times in which he lived had made him a quick study. And yet I remain uncertain if he sensed that his example of stealth and cunning, the very covertness of his existence, had found a corollary in me. It’s a rich irony, but certainly it was plain that I needed neither his blessing nor his applause — neither his nor anyone else’s, for that matter.

Such self-containment clearly discomfited him, perhaps because it was a reminder of his own essential isolation, as well as the options he, by contrast, hadn’t exercised, for either want of nerve or the constraints of a sense of responsibility to his era. Once, at the end of a visit, I told him I loved him and he turned quickly back toward the house, sobbing. I realized, in retrospect, that the fact that I absolutely bore no uneasiness in telling him must have been all too apparent, and what I thought was merely embarrassment on his part went far deeper.

For all our disaffected and impassioned differences, he may have seen more reminders of himself in me than he liked. Clearly in that mirror with its vying dance of shadow and light was a reflection each had yet to detect, one where history and ideology were without visage, and what showed was only the timeless calm of blood and gristle, marrow and bone, father and son.

The World is a Gas Chamber

Elliot Sperber

The world is a gas chamber, and not just in the general sense that the world’s a type of chamber (a vaulted space) filled with gas (nitrogen, oxygen, etc.). The world is (or, rather, since the industrial revolution, has become) a gas chamber in the particular sense of a space filled with poison gas, that kills people, animals, etc. Yes, although they’re most notorious for killing people with hydrogen cyanide, gas chambers are also known to use carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide to kill whatever happens to find itself trapped within their confines.

And, did you hear? The carbon dioxide-reading research stations of the planet, including those in Antarctica, now register (and are expected to continue to register for decades) concentrations exceeding 400 parts per million. A level not seen in 4 million years, incompatible with life as we know it, the gas chamber we’ve made of the planet has just reached a new degree of lethality.

Unlike the gas chambers of the Nazi genocide (or, closer to home, the constellation of gas chambers used to execute – often innocent – prisoners throughout the US), the gas chamber that the world has become is not being filled with poison gas for the purpose of killing people, and other animals.

Yet, in spite of this lack of intent, widespread harm and death is a completely foreseeable consequence of our particularly exploitative political-economic system. That is, though widespread killing (the sixth great extinction no less) may not be committed with the specific intention of killing, it is done entirely knowingly (a state of mind sufficient to confer criminal guilt). The causal relationship has been beyond all reasonable doubt for years.

Classified by the World Health Organization as a leading carcinogen, the very air we breathe is responsible for not only lung and bladder cancer but for conditions ranging from emphysema and heart disease to mental illness and cognitive decline. And let’s not overlook the fact that the pollution streaming from countless power plants, livestock lots, tailpipes, and other sources of poison, also produces the devastating heat waves killing so many worldwide.

Like the super storms straddling the barrier between norm and deviation, the changing climate is not a cause of harms but an effect of the toxic runoff of our global political-economy. Organized around the pursuit of exchange value (money), as opposed to use value, the global political economy not only poisons the air, water, soil, and bodies of the human and non-human animals of the world as a matter of business, it leads as well to such ecocidal phenomena as deforestation, desertification, and the expansion of oceanic dead zones.

Monstrous in itself, the devastation of these ecosystems’ forests and marine algae (responsible for converting so much carbon dioxide into oxygen) exponentially compounds the toxicity and volatility of the gas chamber of a planet in which we’re all confined – a gas chamber that cannot be meaningfully dismantled until the prison (i.e., systems and relations of domination), which it’s an adjunct to, and outgrowth of, is dismantled as well.

Are You a Racist? Take the EU Test

Michael Barker

Xenophobes and racists were always going to vote to Leave the EU; so should you let this affect how you vote on Thursday? If, like many people, you are worried that a vote to Leave will provide a devastating victory to right-wing racists and murderers then a more thorough examination of the track record of each of the main parties may be necessary.

All of the mainstream political parties are tarnished with toxic record of supporting cuts, austerity, and the needs of big business. And each of these parties are now attempting to use fear to guide our vote in the upcoming EU referendum. The official campaigns of UKIP, the Tories, the Lib Dems, and the Labour Party are all guilty of this.

Although in 2015 workers voted overwhelmingly to elect a democratically-minded individual as the leader of the Labour Party, this has tragically not altered the fundamentally right-wing nature of the rest of the parliamentary labour party. Labour remains beholden to the interests of big business.

In fact, it is the entrenched Blairites who are driving support for the Labour Remain campaign.

In lieu of a principled Labour Leave position, the more vibrant and militant socialist-led trade unions, like the Bakers Union, RMT, ASLEF, and the largest public sector union in Northern Ireland, NIPSA, have had to carry the torch of Euroscepticism.

At the other end of the political spectrum, the hard right of the Tories, and their fellow travellers in UKIP, seek to blame foreigners/immigrants for economic problems caused by the increasing concentration of wealth and property.

The hard right also use the EU as a scapegoat to generate anti-migrant feeling, so any referendum was always going to have been seized upon eagerly by hard-right exiteers.

But does that then mean that the 99% must always vote in opposition to such forces of reaction? Of course not.

Just because Labour, the official opposition party to the uber-racist Tories, happen to be backing the Remain camp, doesn’t mean working class voters must feel obligated to vote Remain.

The deluge of misinformation on immigration is particularly virulent and problematic because, in recent decades, the Labour Party has done little to counter the racist lies spouting forth from the mainstream media, the Tories and UKIP. After all it was not so long ago that Labour created their own “controls on immigration” mug, and electoral broadcast that reinforced popular fears about immigration without pointing toward any socialist solutions to the urgent problems facing the 99%.

Labour supporters may now be wringing their hands over the racist nature of the official Leave campaign, but the Parliamentary Labour Party has been instrumental in steering the debate in this direction. Moreover, Labour’s continued support for cuts and austerity has created a political vacuum on the left, which, unfortunately, we are now seeing filled out.

A successful British Exit from the EU was always going to embolden far-rightwing forces within society, so it is a wonder why so many on the left have been taken by surprise. The fear of fascists marching unopposed across the country is insulting to the working class who have and continue to play a leading role in fighting racism.

What is needed is to build a clear socialist alternative to the austerity of the EU and of the mainstream political parties.

There are many good non-racist reasons for voting to Leave the EU, which is, without a doubt, an anti-democratic Employers’ Union that enforces the hopeless politics of austerity across Europe. It is after all the politics of austerity — that are so central to the EU project — that provides the fuel for racists and the far-right to grow in the first place.

So vote Leave on the 23rd and fight for a socialist, democratic future for Britain, for Europe, and for the entire world.

Billionaire former BHS boss faces down UK parliamentary committee

Jean Shaoul

High street retailer BHS’ former boss, the billionaire Sir Philip Green, gave “evidence” to the parliamentary pensions select committee last week.

Green was called to give an account of his period at the helm of BHS, his decision to sell the stores to such a dubious character as Dominic Chappell—a twice bankrupt former racing driver with no previous retail experience and his proposals—if any—to make good a huge pension fund deficit.

After starving the high street chain of investment, plundering its resources for the benefit of his wife, a Monaco resident, and other family-owned entities, and allowing the pension fund’s surplus to become a massive deficit, Green sold the debt-ridden company in March 2015 to Retail Acquisitions Ltd. This financially dubious outfit was headed by Chappell, who was interested in acquiring—and selling—BHS’ property portfolio.

As Chappell failed to deliver on his promises to inject capital into the business and continued Green’s strategy of syphoning off a significant part of asset sales for his own benefit, the situation went from bad to worse. In April, with Green screaming for an immediate refund of his loan, BHS’ new boss put the company into administration.

By this time, BHS’ debts had risen to £1.1 billion, chief among them being the pension fund, with a deficit of nearly £600 million—and the taxpayers. Earlier this month, the administrators announced that they had been unable to find a buyer and the company’s assets would be sold to pay off the creditors, the first being Green who has secured his loan to BHS against some its assets.

In contrast, 11,000 workers are set to lose their jobs and around 22,000 present and future retirees will see their pensions decimated.

Green’s appearance in Parliament provided an object lesson in the real state of relations between Britain’s corporate and political elites. The session demonstrated Parliament’s craven subservience to the demands of the arrogant super-rich, who brook no fetters on their rapacious, venal and criminal exploitation of the working class.

Instead of accounting for the disaster that occurred at BHS on his watch, Green demonstrated his profound contempt for democracy, scrutiny and accountability. For six hours he interrupted, bullied, mocked, insulted and lied to the MPs, who for the most part grovelled before him. One had the impression this was something he had done many times before to anyone who queried his actions.

The billionaire’s every word spoke to his outrage over their audacity to question him. At one point, he told them “that is not the right question to ask me” and on another, he demanded they rephrase the question. He not infrequently drowned out their questions as he talked over them with pre-formulated answers on his tablet computer. He told one of the MPs to stop staring at him as it was “really disturbing” and another not to bully him when the MP read out a letter contradicting Green’s statement. When all else failed, he either resorted to the memory loss akin to someone suffering from Alzheimer’s or adopted a tone of injured innocence.

The upshot was that Green was in no way responsible for the company’s collapse. He had done nothing wrong. Everyone else was to blame: Chappell, his advisors, the pension trustees and Pensions Regulator. He could not be expected to know every detail of what went on in his vast empire, and so on.

This was all of a piece with an earlier report in the Daily Mail that one of Green’s friends had said, “This is all bull***t.” The friend added, “Frank Field [the Labour Party MP who chairs the Work and Pensions Committee and had called for Green to make good the pension fund deficit] is behaving like a complete a**hole, and Philip has no intention of appearing before his stupid committee.”

Just the week prior to the parliamentary pensions committee summoning the billionaire to answer questions, Green demanded that Field resign from the inquiry, accusing him of seeking to destroy his reputation, refusing to attend unless he did so. This was a reference to Field’s comments to the Financial Times that his committee “would just laugh at him” if Green offered less than £600 million to plug the hole in the pension fund.

However, what Field says in public and does in private are two different things. Media reports claimed he had made a deal with Green not to call Lady Christina Green to give evidence if he made an appearance. But Ian Wright, who chairs the business select committee which is carrying out a parallel inquiry, was not above some grandstanding of his own, saying that he had not signed up to that deal, and hinted that she could yet be called. This is so much hot air. As a resident of Monaco, she cannot be forced to answer MPs’ questions.

In relation to the pension fund deficit, Green blamed the fund’s trustees for “stupid, idiotic” mistakes, and the Pensions Regulator for moving too slowly, while refusing to say what he intended to do to remedy the deficit. He claimed that the Pensions Regulator had refused to engage with him over his proposal, possibly for a small contribution towards the government-backed Pension Protection Fund, but gave no details. The Pensions Regulator for his part denied that his office had refused to engage with Green and his advisers, saying it was still waiting for “details of a new proposal from Sir Philip.”

Green’s retail empire’s assets are registered in his wife’s name in Monaco to minimise UK corporation tax, already one of the lowest in Europe. Green dismissed questions about his offshore tax arrangements and his family’s lifestyle, saying he had been told by his doctor, “envy and jealousy are two incurable diseases.” He added he could have taken “much more aggressive routes to avoid tax”, such as moving his groups’ well-known brands—Dorothy Perkins, Miss Selfridge, Burtons and Topshop—offshore and gaining royalties on them.

While Britain’s 13th richest family is able to avoid paying tax to the state, its profits are crucially dependent on a system of low wages promoted by the very same state. According to the OECD, Britain has the third most deregulated labour market in the developed world, while the state tops up low wages via the in-work benefit system of tax credits that cost, after recent cutbacks, around £30 billion a year. Nearly 40 percent of working households received more in benefits than they paid in tax in 2010, up from 28 percent in 1979.

In a revealing answer to a question about his decision to sell BHS to Chappell, the retail tycoon claimed he had been “duped” by Chappell, and blamed his chums and financial advisors, Goldman Sachs, for not vetting him properly. Neither Goldman Sachs nor Chappell’s legal advisors Olswang, nor accountants Grant Thornton appear to have been paid for their services. Instead it appears they were being retained on a “contingency” basis akin to “no win, no fee,” implying a major conflict of interest. Green alleged that Chappell’s advisors were paid £8 million for the deal and helped Chappell to syphon off £7 million from the £32 million sales of BHS’ London office.

Green’s evidence gives the lie to right-wing politicians who claim, in an attempt to divide workers and deflect social tensions, that immigrants are to blame for undercutting workers, taking their jobs and are the cause of all social ills. This has been the basis of the filthy propaganda spewed out by the right-wing Leave campaign throughout the EU referendum campaign, and has been mirrored by Remain campaign.

As the looting of BHS demonstrates, just after the revelations about the anti-worker operations of another UK retail giant, Sports Direct, it is not immigrants but Britain’s corporate elite and their political minions who are slashing workers’ jobs, wages, working conditions and pensions, while at the same time gutting the social safety net by refusing to pay taxes.