Robert Mugabe’s Legacy: Revolution, Amity and Decline

Binoy Kampmark

Robert Mugabe is the sort of figure that always caused discomfort. He was a permanent revolutionary, becoming, in time, the despotic ruler who frittered away revolutionary gain. He played multiple roles in international political consciousness. As Zimbabwe’s strongman, he was demonised and lionised in equal measure for a good deal of his time in power. His role from the 1990s – Mugabe, the West’s all-too-convenient bogeyman and hobgoblin – tended to outweigh other considerations. In the end, even his supporters had to concede that he had outstayed his welcome, another African leader gone to seed.

In 2008, Mahmood Mamdani noted the generally held view in publications ranging from The Economist to The Guardian that Mugabe the Thug reigned. Yes, he had helped in laying waste to the economy, refusing to share power with a more vocal and present opposition, and created an internal crisis with his land distribution policy. But this did little to explain his longevity, his recipe of partial coercion and consent, the teacher-visionary and the bribing mob leader. “In any case, the preoccupation with his character does little to illuminate the socio-historical issues involved.”

The obsession with character – one of Mephistophelian bargain and decay – is found in both the literature and the popular culture depicting Mugabe. The stock story is this: he taught in Ghana in 1963, a key figure in the nationalist movement split in what was then Rhodesia, becoming secretary general of the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU). The Shona dominated ZANU was formed from the original Ndebele ethnic minority dominated Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU).

Prison followed in 1964; Mugabe fled to Mozambique in 1974 though not before a spell of imprisonment at the hands of Zambia’s Kenneth Kaunda (his escape was probably engineered by Zambians); by 1977, he had assumed control of the organisation, though Mozambique’s President Samora Machel never quite trusted him, taking a leaf out of Kaunda’s book in detailing the mischief maker, albeit briefly. Military victory was sought against the Smith regime in what was then white-controlled Rhodesia, and it was with some reluctance that Mugabe found himself a signatory to the British-sponsored settlement in 1979, one assisted by Lord Carrington, Kaunda, the Commonwealth Secretary General, Shridath Ramphal, and, ironically enough, white apartheid South Africa.

On becoming leader, he was deliciously accommodating in his rhetoric, despite having entertained the prospect of confiscating land owned by whites a la Marx-Lenin and wishing to hold white leaders to account in war crimes trials. In his national address in 1980, he spoke of the bonds of amity; he wished for bygones to be bygones. “If you were my enemy, you are now my friend. If you hated me, you cannot avoid the love that binds me to you and you to me.”

Initially, Mugabe the progressive shone through: healthcare and education programs were expanded; literary rates and living standards rose; white farmers were reassured that mobs would not be knocking on their doors. Whites were included in a mixed cabinet; heads reappointed in the army, the police and the Central Intelligence Organisation. But he had his eye on dealing with rivals.

In 1983, former members of ZAPU’s military outfit attacked targets in Matabeleland. The result was uncompromisingly bloody: anywhere upwards of 20,000 civilians killed; many more tortured, maimed, tormented. In four years, ZAPU had been defeated, absorbed into the ZANU-PF structure. The extinguishment of such rivalry paved the way for a Mugabe presidency and near-absolute rule.

By the 1990s, economic conditions were biting. Real wages fell; the International Monetary Fund demanded domestic readjustments to the economy. Economic stagnation kept company with increasingly repressive policies against journalists, students and opponents. Calculatingly, Mugabe propitiated war veterans by awarding them generous pensions in 1997. Then came the next threat: the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) led by Morgan Tsvangirai.

In February 2000, a national vote on a redesigned draft constitution, the progeny of ZANU-PF, proposed British compensation for land; absent that, white farms would be seized without due compensation. Its defeat by a narrow margin saw Mugabe step up his campaign, featuring farm occupations and the sponsorship of veterans to assist in invasions of farms owned by white farmers. Mugabe was returning to an old platform.

The prevailing psycho-portraiture for such behaviour is never consistent. One variant finds its culprit in a decision Mugabe made in 1996. Secretary Grace Marufu, 41 years Mugabe’s junior, became his wife, considered within certain circles a less than worthy replacement for Sally, who died in 1992. Wilf Mbanga, editor of The Zimbabwean newspaper spared no punches, seeing in Marufu a lever pulling, power hungry creature akin to Lady Macbeth. “He changed the moment Sally died, when he married a young gold-digger.”

His former home affairs minister, Dumiso Dabengwa, pinpointed a different year when the great compromiser and negotiator changed: 2000. There are no gold-digging suggestions, merely political manipulations filtered with a bit of paranoia. “He held compromising material over several of his colleagues and they knew they would face criminal charges if they opposed him.”

Overwhelmingly, the narrative is of the great hope that failed, the rebel who trips. This echo of the good man gone bad is detectable in celluloid, with the fictional state of Matobo in The Interpreter, featuring as its political backdrop a bookish schoolteacher who defeated a white-minority regime but fouled up matters by turning into a tyrant. “The CIA-backed film,” suggested the then acting Minister for Information and Publicity, Chen Chimutengwende, “showed that Zimbabwe’s enemies did not rest.”

Mugabe was every bit the contradiction of the colonial-postcolonial figure, supported one day as the romantic revolutionary to be praised, reviled as the authoritarian figure to condemn, the next. The revolutionary to be feted was a motif that continued through the 1980s, despite signs that the hero was getting particularly bloodthirsty. A string of honours were bestowed like floral tributes to a conquering warrior: an honorary doctorate of laws from the University of Massachusetts in 1984, despite the butchering of the Ndebele; an honorary doctorate from the University of Edinburgh (subsequently revoked in July 2007); a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II in 1994.

Accounts such as Martin Meredith’s Our Guns: Robert Mugabe and the Tragedy of Zimbabwe, point to the aphrodisiac of power, violence as currency, the cultivated links with the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Laurent Kabila, and the creation of a crony state. The DRC connection softened the blows of international sanctions, at least to some extent, keeping rural voters in clover and the security forces content. Such arrangements, involving a juggling of loot and measuring out the spoils, is rarely indefinite.

The narrative of the power mad creature runs through as a counter to the liberal thesis that Mugabe started with promise, and went sour. This would have been tantamount to suggesting that Lenin insisted on changing the world through even-tempered tea ceremonies and soft voiced mediation, only to endorse revolutionary violence at a later date. James Kirchick, oft fascinated by the wiles of demagoguery, saw the strains of brutality early: Mugabe’s time in prison, as with other revolutionaries, led to a certain pupillage with power, a sense of its necessity. Degrees in law and economics were earned via correspondence from the University of London, a way to pass carceral time for subversive actions against the white Smith regime in 1964. All that time, he nursed Marxist-Leninist dreams.

As leader of the movement to oust the white regime, Mugabe was not sparing with his use of violence. In this, he differed from the founder of the ZANU founder Ndabaningi Sithole, who renounced terrorism and subversion after his 1969 sentence for incitement. Nor was he averse to internal suppression: his cadres had to be trustworthy in the cause.

Over time, the distance between Mugabe the ruler, and the Zimbabwean citizenry, grew. International sanctions, applied with much callousness, bit. Hyperinflation set in. The state was left bankrupt. Food shortages in 2004 did not sway him. “We are not hungry,” Mugabe told Sky News. “Why foist this food upon us? We don’t want to be choked. We have enough.”

In November 2017, a coup by senior military personnel was launched in terms that seemed almost polite, a sort of dinner party seizure. Mugabe was placed under house arrest; his ZANU-PF party had decided that the time had come. The risk of Marufu coming to power was becoming all too real, though this femme fatale rationale can only be pushed so far. There were celebrations in the streets. Thirty-seven years prior, there were similar calls of jubilation for the new leader. Left with his medical ailments, Mugabe died at Gleneagles Hospital, Singapore on Friday, farewelled by his successor President Emmerson Mnangagwa as “an icon of liberation, a pan Africanist who dedicated his life to the emancipation of his people.” The muse of history can be atrociously fickle.

Confronting Global Warming and Austerity

Dean Baker

In the United States, proposals for a Green New Deal have been getting considerable attention in recent months as activists have pressed both members of Congress and Democratic presidential candidates to support aggressive measures to combat global warming. There clearly is much more that we can and must do in the immediate future to prevent enormous damage to the planet.

However, major initiatives in the United States to combat global warming will almost certainly require some increases in taxes. There is likely some slack in the U.S. economy (perhaps we’ll see more slack as a result of Donald Trump’s misfires in his trade war), but a major push involving hundreds of billions of dollars of additional annual spending (2-3 percent of GDP) will almost certainly necessitate tax increases. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t move quickly to take steps to save the planet, but these steps will have some cost.

In contrast, most of Europe is in a situation where it could easily make large commitments toward increased spending on clean energy, mass transit, and conservation at essentially no economic cost. In fact, a Green New Deal Agenda in Europe is likely to lead to increased employment and output. The big difference is that Europe is much further from facing constraints on its economy. It has plenty of room to expand output and employment without seeing inflation become a problem.

Before getting into the specifics on Europe’s economy, it is important to add a bit of perspective. The European countries have been far better global citizens in this area than the United States. Their per-person emissions are roughly half as much as the United States. Furthermore, many European countries have already taken aggressive measures to promote clean energy and encourage conservation.

Solar energy accounts for 7.3 percent of Italy’s electric power, 7.9 percent of Germany’s and 4.3 percent for the European Union as a whole. By comparison, the United States gets just 2.3 percent of its electric power from solar energy. There is a similar story with wind energy where the European Union’s installed capacity is more than 70 percent higher than the United States.

But in the battle to slow global warming, simply doing better than the United States is not good enough. The European Union can and must do more to reduce its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

The most immediate obstacle to aggressive measures to reduce GHG emissions in Europe is the continent’s mindless push for austerity. European governments, led by Germany, have become obsessed with keeping deficits low and balancing budgets. Most have small deficits or even budget surpluses.

Germany exemplifies the European austerity obsession with a budget surplus that is close to 2.0 percent of GDP ($420 billion in the US economy). To some extent, fiscal austerity is not a choice. The eurozone’s rules require low budget deficits for the countries that use the euro, but even countries outside the eurozone have joined the austerity party. The United Kingdom has a budget deficit of less than 1.5 percent of GDP, Denmark less than 0.5 percent of GDP, and Sweden has a budget surplus of close to 0.5 percent of GDP.

There are certainly circumstances under which budget deficits can be too high, but these clearly do not apply to the countries in the European Union at present. Inflation has been persistently low and has been falling in recent months. The inflation rate for the eurozone countries has averaged just 1.0 percent over the last 12 months.

The story is even more dramatic if we look at interest rates. The classic problem of a large budget deficit is that it leads to high-interest rates that crowd out investment. Not only are interest rates extraordinarily low across Europe, in many countries investors have to pay governments to lend them money.

The interest rate on a ten-year government bond in France is -0.43 percent. In the Netherlands, it is -0.57 percent, and in Germany it is -0.71 percent. That means Investors have to pay Germany 0.71 percent annually to lend the government money.

This is the context in which the concern for low budget deficits in these countries is utterly mindless. The financial markets are effectively begging these governments to borrow more money, but they refuse to do so. The need to address global warming makes this refusal especially painful.

The fact that interest rates and inflation are so low indicates that these governments are needlessly sacrificing growth and jobs. That story would be bad enough in normal times –people should not go without work and important social needs should not go unmet for no reason — but the picture is much worse when we consider the urgent need to slow global warming.

If they were not limited by an unnecessary fixation with budget deficits, these governments could take strong measures to reduce emissions. For example, they could either pay directly to install solar and wind power, or provide large subsidies to businesses and homeowners. They could be subsidizing the switch to electric cars and making mass transit cheap or free, while they vastly ramp up capacity.

Emanuel Macron did try steps in this direction last year, but he stumbled over the eurozone’s austerity requirement. Since France was already near the caps on budget deficits demanded by the rules of the eurozone, he was forced to impose new taxes to offset the additional spending he proposed to reduce GHG emissions. Since the taxes he imposed were largely regressive, they prompted a massive reaction (the “yellow vest” protests), which forced Macron to back away from most of his green agenda.

If France didn’t face an artificial budget constraint imposed by the European Union, Macron could have simply borrowed to pay for his green agenda. It likely would have been far better received in that situation. People who are just scraping by will resent taxes to discourage energy use. They are less likely to get angry over subsidies to improve the insulation of their homes or to install solar panels.

The absurd fixation of the EU on budget deficits should be getting more attention in the media. While events outside the United States generally don’t make much news, there has been no shortage of coverage of Boris Johnson, the prime minister of the United Kingdom, and his hare-brained efforts to pull the U.K. out of the EU.

Brexit, especially the no-deal Brexit that Johnson seems to favor, will impose needless economic costs on the country, but the harm done by unnecessary austerity in Europe is far greater. While Johnson is largely portrayed as a power-hungry clown in the U.S. media, the enforcers of European austerity are treated with great respect. While these enforcers may all be smart and highly-educated people, their clownishness on this issue puts Johnson to shame.

There is one more point on austerity and combating climate change that is worth mentioning here. The world has been appalled to see much of the Amazon in flames. While this is most immediately attributable to the development policies of Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, there actually is a much deeper problem here.

The Amazon is a unique habitat that should be preserved in any case, but its survival is so important in the fight to limit global warming because of what the rest of the world has been doing. Rich countries have engaged in large-scale deforestation of their own lands, as well as having paid developing countries to destroy much of their natural forests to provide wood and other resources. In addition, we have been spewing vast amounts of carbon dioxide into the earth’s atmosphere for more than a century.

This is the context in which the Amazon matters hugely for limiting GHG. Placing all of the blame on Brazil is fundamentally misrepresenting the history of the problem. Brazil must act to preserve the Amazon, but it should be paid for this choice by the rich countries. It will be foregoing a path that would aid its development, just as the rich countries were able to benefit economically by causing irreparable damage to their environment.

Since climate change really is a global problem, we need to have the most effective measures to be taken, regardless of the country. Where we expect the actions to come from a developing country like Brazil, the rich countries will have to foot the bill.

This is both a question of fairness and realism. We can’t force Brazil to protect the Amazon. No one is going to send in troops to prevent its destruction. We can make it more profitable for Brazil to protect the Amazon than to destroy it. And, with so much slack in the EU economies, this would be a great use of some of their resources. Perhaps one day we will have a sane government in the United States and we will contribute our share.

Gaddafi vs the West: Two Revolutions on the Wrong Side of History

Garikai Chengu

Sunday marked half a century since Muammar Gaddafi’s Libyan revolution, which led to the overthrow of the American-backed King Irdis.

In Libya’s 1969 revolution, Muammar Gaddafi inherited one of the poorest nations in Africa; however, by the time he was assassinated, Gaddafi’s socialism had turned Libya into Africa’s wealthiest nation. Libya had the highest GDP per capita and life expectancy on the continent.

The Western-backed counter revolution of 2011 has resulted in Libya becoming a failed state and its economy is in shambles. President Obama said that his worst mistake as President of the United States was Libya; and “failing to plan for the day after” toppling Gaddafi.

The two revolutions that have occurred in Libya over the last 50 years could not be more diametrically opposed.

Gaddafi’s demise has brought about all of the nation’s worst-case scenarios: Western embassies have all left, the south of Libya has become a haven for terrorists, and the northern coast a center of mass migrant trafficking. Egypt, Algeria and Tunisia have all closed their borders with Libya. This all occurs amidst an environment of rampant assassinations, rape and torture that complete the picture of a state that is failed to its core.

In 2011, the West’s objective was clearly not to help the Libyan people, who already had the highest standard of living in Africa, but to oust Gaddafi, install a puppet regime, and gain control of Libya’s natural resources.

People who think that the West’s intervention in Libya was just another oil grab are mistaken. Broadly speaking, for America, the military intervention was mainly about arms; for Italy, its oil and natural gas; and for France, its water.

Given that Libya sits atop the strategic intersection of the African, Mediterranean and Arab worlds, control over Libya has always been a remarkably effective way for Western nations to project power into these three regions and beyond.

France’s support for the 2011 revolution was primarily driven by her interest in a commodity more precious than oil: water. Water promises to be to the 21st century what oil was to the 20th century. Water will be the precious commodity that determines the wealth and fate of nations.

Unlike oil, there are no substitutes or alternatives for water. Nature has decreed that the supply of water is fixed. Meanwhile demand rises inexorably as populations grow and enrich themselves. Population growth, climate change, pollution and urbanization are relentlessly combining, such that demand for fresh water will outstrip supply by 40 per cent by 2040.

Libya sits on a resource more valuable than oil, the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer, which is the world’s largest underground source of fresh water. The fossil water aquifer system was formed approximately 20,000 years ago and contains 150,000 cubic kilometres of fresh water. Gaddafi had invested $25 billion in the Great Man-Made River Project, a complex 4,000-km long water pipeline buried beneath the desert that could transport two million cubic metres of water per day. Such a monumental water distribution scheme was on course to turn Libya, a nation that is 95 per cent desert, into a self-sustainable, arable oasis.

Today, France’s global mega-water corporations, like Suez, Ondeo and Saur, control more than 45 per cent of the planet’s water market, which is already a $400 billion global industry. For France, the 2011 revolution in Libya was about gaining control of and privatizing Libya’s astounding water resources.

Months before President Obama began dropping bombs on Libya, the Central Intelligence Agency warned of “…future ‘hydrological warfare’ in which rivers, lakes and aquifers become national security assets to be fought over…” or controlled through proxy armies and client states. The regime change revolution in Libya was a major instance of imperialist hydrological warfare.

Now that Libya’s water profits are flowing to the West, unsurprisingly, western parts of Libya are running out of drinkable water. Due to corporate greed and neglect, two thirds of the nation’s key water conduits are no longer functioning. Mostafa Omar, a UNICEF spokesman for Libya, estimates that, in future, some four million Libyan people might be deprived of access to safe drinking water which could result in an outbreak of hepatitis A, cholera, and other diarrheal illnesses, despite having the world’s largest aquifer underneath their homes.

For Italy, support for the 2011 revolution was fuelled by a thirst for oil and gas from the nation’s former colony. Libya has the largest oil reserves in Africa and under Gaddafi, 85 per cent of its exports were to Europe. Prior to Gaddafi, King Idris let Standard Oil essentially write Libya’s petroleum laws. Mr. Gaddafi put an end to all of that. Money from oil proceeds was deposited directly into every Libyan citizen’s bank account. Unsurprisingly, Italian oil companies have stopped this noble practice.

Libya’s oil is very important to Italy because of its proximity, the ease of its extraction, and the sweetness of its crude. Most refineries in Italy and elsewhere are built to deal with sweet Libyan crude, they cannot easily process the heavier Saudi crude oil that has replaced the Libyan production shortfall.

Libya has natural gas reserves of over 52.7 trillion cubic feet and vast areas are still to be surveyed. With assured supplies available from Libya, Italy has become less dependent on supplies from Russia, which, on the energy front, is increasingly flexing its muscles and thumbing its nose at mainland Europe. Italian oil giant, Eni, just bought a controlling stake in British Petroleum’s Libyan assets and has a deal with Libya’s regime to extract 760 million cubic feet of natural gas daily.

With the spoils of war from Libya’s water market being enjoyed by the French, and the oil and natural gas largely going to the Italians, consequently, America backed the 2011 revolution for another market: arms.

The New York Times reported in June 2019 that American heavy weapons were found in an American-backed rebel armoury in Libya. The New York Times stated that the “markings on the missile crates identify their joint manufacturer, the arms giants Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, and a contract number that corresponds with a $115 million order for Javelin missiles”. Libya is now a bonanza for American arms dealers and home to the world’s largest loose arms cache.

From oil to water, and from arms to natural gas, the 2011 revolution in Libya has raked in billions of dollars for the West and only wrought misery and endless civil war for Libyans.

Gaddafi’s revolution fifty years ago was completely different.

For over 40 years, Gaddafi promoted economic democracy and used the nationalized oil wealth to sustain progressive social welfare programs for all Libyans. Under Gaddafi’s rule, Libyans not only enjoyed free health-care and free education, but also interest-free loans and free electricity.

Now thanks to NATO’s ouster of Gaddafi, electricity black outs are a common occurrence in once-thriving Tripoli, the healthcare sector is on the verge of collapse as thousands of Filipino health workers flee the country, and institutions of higher education across the East of the country are shut down.

One group that has suffered immensely from the Western-backed 2011 revolution is the nation’s women. Unlike many other Arab nations, women in Gaddafi’s Libya had the right to education, hold jobs, divorce, hold property and have an income. Even the UN Human Rights Council praised Gaddafi for his promotion of women’s rights.

When Gaddafi took control in 1969, very few women went to university. Just before the US Air Force began bombing Libya in 2011, more than half of Libya’s university students were women. One of the first laws Gaddafi passed in 1970 was an equal pay for equal work law.

After the 2011 revolution, the new “democratic” Libyan regime is clamping down on women’s rights. The new ruling tribes are strongly tied to patriarchal traditions. Also, the chaotic nature of post-intervention Libyan politics has allowed free reign to extremist Islamic forces that see gender equality as a Western perversion.

Contrary to popular belief, Libya, which Western media routinely described as “Gaddafi’s military dictatorship”, was in actual fact a democratic state.

Under Gaddafi’s unique system of direct democracy, traditional institutions of government were disbanded and abolished, and power belonged to the people directly through various committees and congresses.

Far from control lying in the hands of one man, Libya was highly decentralized and divided into multiple, small communities that were essentially “mini-autonomous States” within the State. These autonomous States had control over their districts and could make a range of decisions including how to allocate oil revenue and budgetary funds. Within these mini autonomous States, the three main bodies of Libya’s democracy were Local Committees, Basic People’s Congresses, and the Executive Revolutionary Councils.

The Basic People’s Congress (BPC), or Mu’tamar shaʿbi asāsi, was essentially Libya’s functional equivalent of the House of Commons in the United Kingdom or the House of Representatives in the United States.

However, Libya’s eight hundred Basic People’s Congresses were not comprised merely of invariably wealthy elected representatives who made laws on behalf of the people; rather, the Congress allowed all Libyans to directly participate in this process.

In 2009, Mr. Gaddafi invited the New York Times to Libya to spend two weeks observing the nation’s direct democracy. The New York Times, that is highly critical of Gaddafi’s democratic experiment, conceded that in Libya, the intention was that “everyone is involved in every decision. People meet in committees and vote on everything from foreign treaties to building schools.”

Far from being a military dictatorship, Libya under Gaddafi was Africa’s most prosperous democracy.

In the West’s version of “democracy” in Libya today, the militias variously local, tribal, regional, Islamist or criminal have recently formed two warring factions. Libya now has two governments, both with their own Prime Minister, parliament and army, fueling perpetual civil war and destroying all chance of an actual democratic state.

Clearly, Gaddafi’s revolution created one of the 21st century’s most profoundly successful experiments in economic democracy. In stark contrast, the 2011 Western-backed counter revolution may indeed go down in history as one of the greatest social and military failures of the 21st century.

The Curious Mind of the Indian-American

Romi Mahajan

Indian-Americans have distinguished themselves in a variety of fields and have been lauded as one of the most successful diasporic groups in the United States. From captains of technology to corporate board members, from university administrators to hotel tycoons and hedge-fund managers, Indian-Americans have certainly made their mark in their adopted country. Recently, the emergence of Indian-Americans in the political scene has also been noted, as Indians boast of many stars of the new political firmament as their own. All in all, the story of Indian-America is in some ways a remarkable one.

My view is that the story is remarkable in more ways than one. While any thinking person must concede that the group has done a great job in elevating it’s economic status (on the average) and in applying to American life the shrewdness and street-smarts that are a sine-qua-non of life in India, there are other facets to the Indian-American existence that need to be examined further.

One of these facets, as many scholars have noted, is the incredible rise of Right-wing Hindu nationalism in the community and recently, an overwhelming support in the Indian-American community for the BJP and its strongman Narendra Modi. Stadiums full of admiring Indian-Americans can be adduced here as well as thousands of posts on all manner of Internet fora. Indeed, the capacity of Indian-Americans to adopt jingoistic and self-serving ideologies is remarkable.

Perhaps the most interesting (and insidious) facet is the incredible ability Indian-Americans have of partitioning their minds and morals when it comes to their race, religion, and nation. Three incandescent and recent discussions I had bring this partitioning into bold relief.

The first of these was with an old acquaintance who I hadn’t seen in twenty years. We quickly bonded over our dislike of Trump. My critique was thoroughgoing, his caviled, but we were able to find common cause in our opposition to Trump. Still, as I extended the discussion to include Modi, he got uncomfortable. He could not brook any criticism of either Modi or the BJP and repeated their propaganda almost verbatim. A person who was able to see through Trump’s patina of lies and misdeeds was singularly unable to see in Modi anything but unalloyed good. Turns out that he’s not only a bigot when it comes to Pakistan and Islam, he also is economically conservative; it just turns out that he doesn’t believe Trump’s views on immigration will “help Indians.” A mind critical enough to see mendacity in Trump but one that was closed off to criticism of Modi was also porous enough to see racism only as it applies to Indian-Americans.

The second conversation had to do with members of my wife’s family. In a brief conversation, they too lamented Trump’s racism. One of them said that she saw and loved a bumper sticker that said “Make Racism Wrong Again.” Ten minutes into the conversation, as we changed subjects, their true colors were easily revealed as they told stories from work that singled out “African-Americans” as always having a victim mentality and constituting a predominant number of criminals and cheats. The Indian mind at work again: Hating racism when it is directed at me but gladly dishing it out against others.

The third conversations was subtler and more telling. In a gathering with “close” friends, the Indian moon mission came up. Ordinarily progressive people took massive umbrage to my suggestion that it was a colossal waste of resources for such a poor country to indulge in some massive, and unneededly grandiose projects just to flex muscles and pretend to be part of the big boys’ club. In their misty counterarguments they suggested many things including the notion that “India is not poor, it is in fact a rich country,” that, as regards the moon-mission, this is progress” and that “it elevated the country.” When I suggested that the very notions of “progress” and “elevation of the country” begged the question of “progress for whom?” and forced us to consider who in fact “the country” consisted of, the looks were vacant. In a moment of tragic Deja-vu (how little we’ve actually progressed), I thought of the great question posed by Nehru, “Kaun Hai Bharat Mata?’ Interestingly, when I asked that if indeed the moon mission “elevated” the country then did the failed mission bring us back down, I was told that in fact the mission had not failed. The conversation attained a surreal quality. Again, the Indian mind in all its eternal mystery- how people who can be relatively nuanced when it comes to work and in fact intelligently critical of their own political lot in the United States can be so monolithically and absurdly nationalistic when it comes to India is indeed puzzling.

But then it shouldn’t be. India is a country that prides itself on secularism but in which almost every private or public space and every public utterance is draped in religiosity. Indians all over the world bemoan the materialistic west and simultaneously covet money with the best of them. Indians bemoan racism but engage in some the worst forms of racism imaginable at home and in the diaspora. Hell, even the Indian Science Congress begins with an “aarthi” and includes sessions on things like “Vedic Physics.” We are a people hopelessly torn between planes of existence, between competing philosophies of life.

As such our minds are curious and inconsistent. Well except for three areas of incredible, hobgoblin-like consistency: obscurantism, self-love, and false pride.

A bird’s eye view of Asia: A continental landscape of minorities in peril

James M. Dorsey

Many in Asia look at the Middle East with a mixture of expectation of stable energy supplies, hope for economic opportunity and concern about a potential fallout of the region’s multiple violent conflicts that are often cloaked in ethnic, religious and sectarian terms.

Yet, a host of Asian nations led by men and women, who redefine identity as concepts of exclusionary civilization, ethnicity, and religious primacy rather than inclusive pluralism and multiculturalism, risk sowing the seeds of radicalization rooted in the despair of population groups that are increasingly persecuted, disenfranchised and marginalized.

Leaders like China’s Xi Jingping, India’s Narendra Modi, and Myanmar’s Win Myint and Aung San Suu Kyi, alongside nationalist and supremacist religious figures ignore the fact that crisis in the Middle East is rooted in autocratic and authoritarian survival strategies that rely on debilitating manipulation of national identity on the basis of sectarianism, ethnicity and faith-based nationalism.

A bird’s eye view of Asia produces a picture of a continental landscape strewn with minorities on the defensive whose positioning as full-fledged members of society with equal rights and opportunities is either being eroded or severely curtailed.

It also highlights a pattern of responses by governments and regional associations that opt for a focus on pre-emptive security, kicking the can down the road and/or silent acquiescence rather than addressing a wound head-on that can only fester, making cures ever more difficult.

To be sure, multiple Asian states, including Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Pakistan, Bangladesh and India have at various times opened their doors to refugees.

Similarly, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ (ASEAN) disaster management unit has focused on facilitating and streamlining repatriation of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh.

But a leaked report by the unit, AHA Centre, in advance of last June’s ASEAN summit was criticized for evading a discussion on creating an environment in which Rohingya would be willing to return.

The criticism went to the core of the problem: Civilizationalist policies, including cultural genocide, isolating communities from the outside world, and discrimination will at best produce simmering anger, frustration and despair and at worst mass migration, militancy and/or political violence.

A Uyghur member of the Communist Party for 30 years who did not practice his religion, Ainiwa Niyazi, would seem to be the picture-perfect model of a Chinese citizen hailing from the north-western province of Xinjiang.

Yet, Mr Niyazi was targeted in April of last year for re-education, one of at least a million Turkic Muslims interned in detention facilities where they are forced to internalize Xi Jinping thought and repudiate religious norms and practices in what constitutes the most frontal assault on a faith in recent history.

If past efforts, including an attempt to turn Kurds into Turks by banning use of Kurdish as a language that sparked a still ongoing low level insurgency, is anything to go by, China’s ability to achieve a similar goal with greater brutality is questionable.

“Most Uyghur young men my age are psychologically damaged. When I was in elementary school surrounded by other Uyghurs, I was very outgoing and active. Now I feel like I have been broken… Quality of life is now about feeling safe,” said Alim, a young Uyghur, describing to Adam Hunerven, a writer who focuses on the Uyghurs, arrests of his friends and people trekking south to evade the repression in Xinjiang cities.

Travelling in the region in 2014, an era in which China was cracking down on Uyghurs but that predated the institutionalization of the re-education camps, Mr. Hunerven saw that “the trauma people experienced in the rural Uyghur homeland was acute. It followed them into the city, hung over their heads and affected the comportment of their bodies. It made people tentative, looking over their shoulders, keeping their heads down. It made them tremble and cry.”

There is little reason to assume that anything has since changed for the better. On the contrary, not only has the crackdown intensified, fear and uncertainty has spread to those lucky enough to live beyond the borders of China. Increasingly, they risk being targeted by the long arm of the Chinese state that has pressured their host countries to repatriate them.

Born and raised in a Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh, Rahima Akter, one of the few women to get an education among the hundreds of thousands who fled what the United Nations described as ethnic cleansing in Myanmar, saw her dreams and potential as a role model smashed when she was this month expelled from university after recounting her story publicly.

Ms. Akter gained admission to Cox’s Bazar International University (CBIU) on the strength of graduating from a Bangladeshi high school, a feat she could only achieve by sneaking past the camp’s checkpoints, hiding her Rohingya identity, speaking only Bengali, dressing like a Bangladeshi, and bribing Bangladeshi public school officials for a placement.

Ms Akter was determined to escape the dire warnings of UNICEF, the United Nations’ children agency, that Rohingya refugee children risked becoming “a lost generation.”

Ms. Akter’s case is not an isolated incident but part of a refugee policy in an environment of mounting anti-refugee sentiment that threatens to deprive Rohingya refugees who refuse to return to Myanmar unless they are guaranteed full citizenship of any prospects.

In a move that is likely to deepen a widespread sense of abandonment and despair, Bangladeshi authorities, citing security reasons, this month ordered the shutting down of mobile services and a halt to the sale of SIM cards in Rohingya refugee camps and restricted Internet access. The measures significantly add to the isolation of a population that is barred from travelling outside the camps.

Not without reason, Bangladeshi foreign minister Abul Kalam Abdul Momen, has blamed the international community for not putting enough pressure on Myanmar to take the Rohingyas back.

The UN “should go to Myanmar, especially to Rakhine state, to create conditions that could help these refugees to go back to their country. The UN is not doing the job that we expect them to do,” Mr. Abdul Momen said.

The harsh measures are unlikely to quell increased violence in the camps and continuous attempts by refugees to flee in search of better pastures.

Suspected Rohingya gunmen last month killed a youth wing official of Bangladesh’s ruling Awami League party. Two refugees were killed in a subsequent shootout with police.

The plight of the Uyghurs and the Rohingya repeats itself in countries like India with its stepped up number of mob killings that particularly target Muslims, threatened stripping of citizenship of close to two million people in the state of Assam, and unilateral cancellation of self-rule in Kashmir.

Shiite Muslims bear the brunt of violent sectarian attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In Malaysia, Shiites, who are a miniscule minority, face continued religious discrimination.

The Islamic Religious Department in Selangor, Malaysia’s richest state, this week issued a sermon that amounts to a mandatory guideline for sermons in mosques warning against “the spread of Shia deviant teachings in this nation… The Muslim ummah (community of the faithful) must become the eyes and the ears for the religious authorities when stumbling upon activities that are suspicious, disguising under the pretext of Islam,” the sermon said.

Malaysia, one state where discriminatory policies are unlikely to spark turmoil and political violence, may be the exception that confirms the rule.

Ethnic and religious supremacism in major Asian states threatens to create breeding grounds for violence and extremism. The absence of effective attempts to lessen victims’ suffering by ensuring that they can rebuild their lives and safeguard their identities in a safe and secure environment, allows wounds to fester.

Permitting Ms. Akter, the Rohingya university student, to pursue her dream, would have been a low-cost, low risk way of offering Rohingya youth an alternative prospect and at the very least a reason to look for constructive ways of reversing what is a future with little hope.

Bangladeshi efforts to cut off opportunities in the hope that Rohingya will opt for repatriation have so far backfired. And repatriation under circumstances that do not safeguard their rights is little else than kicking the can down the road.

Said human rights advocate Ewelina U. Ochab: “It is easy to turn a blind eye when the atrocities do not happen under our nose. However, we cannot forget that religious persecution anywhere in the world is a security threat to everyone, everywhere.”

Poisoning of the Food Chain is Global but UK Officials Ignore Pesticides and Blame Alcohol and Biscuits for Rising Rates of Disease

Colin Todhunter


Although the following focuses on the situation in the UK, the chemical onslaught on our food chain is global. For instance, researcher and policy expert Devinder Sharma, cites that, according to Pesticide Action Network India, there are 291 pesticides registered; 112 of them are highly hazardous; 85 are possible carcinogens; 71 are possible endocrine disrupting chemicals; and 159 are possible reproductive and development toxins.

In Punjab, pesticide run-offs into water sources have turned the state into a ‘cancer epicentre‘ and  India is one of the world’s largest users of pesticides and a profitable market for the corporations that manufacture them. Ladyfinger, cabbage, tomato and cauliflower in particular may contain dangerously high levels because farmers tend to harvest them almost immediately after spraying. Fruit and vegetables are sprayed and tampered with to make them more colourful, and harmful fungicides are sprayed on fruit to ripen them in order to rush them off to market.

Research by the School of Natural Sciences and Engineering (SNSE) at the National Institute of Advanced Studies in Bangalore has indicated disturbing trends in the increased use of pesticide. In 2008, it reported that many crops for export had been rejected internationally due to high pesticide residues. Moreover, India is one of the largest users of World Health Organization (WHO) ‘Class 1A’ pesticides, which are extremely hazardous.

Research by SNSE showed farmers use a cocktail of pesticides and often use three to four times the recommended amounts. It may come as no surprise that a report about children in Hyderabad are consuming 10 to 40 more times pesticides in their food than kids in the US.

Pushback against pesticides

Campaigner and environmentalist Dr Rosemary Mason has written an open letter to the Chief Medical Officer of England, Sally Davies. In it, Mason states that none of the more than 400 pesticides that have been authorised in the UK have been tested for long-term actions on the brain: in the foetus, in children or in adults.

The UK Department of Health (DoH) has previously stated that pesticides are not its concern. But, according to Mason, they should be. She says that Theo Colborn’s crucial research in the early 1990s showed that endocrine disrupters (EDCs) were changing humans and the environment, but this research was ignored by officials. Glyphosate, the most widespread herbicide in the world, is an EDC and a nervous system disrupting chemical.

In a book published in 1996, ‘Our Stolen Future: How Man-made Chemicals are Threatening our Fertility, Intelligence and Survival’, Colborn (d. 2014) and colleagues revealed the full horror of what was happening to the world as a result of contamination with EDCs. There was emerging scientific research about how a wide range of these chemicals can disrupt delicate hormone systems in humans. These systems play a critical role in processes ranging from human sexual development to behaviour, intelligence and the functioning of the immune system.

In addition to glyphosate, EDCs include polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). DDT, chlordane, lindane, aldrin, dieldrin, endrin, toxaphene, heptachlor, dioxin, atrazine and dacthal.

Colborn stated:

“The concentration of persistent chemicals can be magnified millions of times as they travel to the ends of the earth… Many chemicals that threaten the next generation have found their way into our bodies. There is no safe, uncontaminated place.”

Mason says that Colburn predicted that this would involve sexual development and adds this is why certain people may be confused about their sexuality.

She says to Davies:

“You were appointed as interim CMO by David Cameron in June 2010; you became the permanent holder in 2011. Was that once you had assured him of your loyalty by not mentioning pesticides?”

She continues by saying:

“You did not train as a specialist in public health but as a consultant haematologist, specialising in haemoglobinopathies. You joined the Civil Service in 2004 and became Chief Scientific Adviser to the Health Secretary. Did David Cameron instruct Tracey Brown OBE from Sense about Science, a lobby organisation for GMO crops, to be your minder? When the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists published a paper saying that exposure to chemicals during pregnancy could damage the foetus, you and Tracey Brown publicly made fun of it.

“After that I wrote to you about the Faroes Statement: in 2007, twenty-five experts in environmental health from eleven countries (including from the UK) met on the Faroes and contributed to this statement: ‘The periods of embryonic, foetal and infant development are remarkably susceptible to environmental hazards. Toxic exposures to chemical pollutants during these windows of increased susceptibility can cause disease and disability in infants, children and across the entire span of human life.’ You asked Dr John Harrison from Public Health England to write to me to reassure me that there was no evidence that it was true.

“You made an announcement in 2011 that antibiotic resistance was an apocalyptic threat to humans and the issue should be added to the government’s national risk register of civil emergencies… When I informed you that one of glyphosate’s many actions was as an antibiotic, you ignored me.  Dr Don Huber, a Plant Pathologist from Purdue University, Indiana, says that glyphosate is an antibiotic, an organic phosphonate, a growth regulator, a toxicant, a virulence enhancer and is persistent in the soil. It chelates (captures) and washes out the following minerals: boron, calcium, cobalt, copper, iron, potassium, magnesium, manganese, nickel and zinc.”

Mason doesn’t waste much time in drawing conclusions as to why her previous letters to Davies and other officials have been ignored or sidelined. She notes that between May 2010 and the end of 2013 the UK Department of Health alone had 130 meetings with representatives of industry and concludes that commercial interests are currently in control of key decisions about the public’s health.

In 2014, an open letter from America warned citizens, politicians and regulators in the UK and EU against adopting GM crops and glyphosate. It was endorsed by NGOs, scientists, anti-GM groups, celebrities, food manufacturers and others representing 60 million citizens in the US. Mason draws attention to the fact that the letter outlined eight independent papers describing environmental harm and six about the threat to human health.

But David Cameron, PM at the time, ignored it. The European Commission and the European Food Safety Authority also ignored it. Glyphosate was relicensed.

Mason asked relevant officials why the EFSA was regularly increasing the maximum residue levels of glyphosate in foods at the request of Monsanto but has received no reply.

Professor Philippe Grandjean, the leader of the conference that issued the ‘Faroes Statement’, released the book: ‘Only One Chance: How Environmental Pollution Impairs Brain Development – and How to Protect the Brains of the Next Generation’ (2013). In reviewing the book, Theo Colbern said:

“This book is a huge gift to humankind from an eminent scientist. Grandjean tells the truth about how we have been ruining the brain power of each new generation and asks if there are still enough intelligent people in the world today to reverse the problem. I cannot rid myself of the idea that too many brains have been drained and society is beyond the point of no return. We must learn from the follies and scandals that Grandjean reveals and stop the chemical brain drain before it is too late.”

But pesticides are ignored

A key point that Mason wants to make to Davies is that lifestyle choices are not to blame for rising rates of diseases, cancer and obesity; these increases are the outcome of the toxic cocktails of pesticides and other chemicals we are consuming.

Mason says to Davies about the Chief Medical Officer for England’s 2019 annual report:

“For your final report, you failed to mention many diseases afflicting people in the UK… You claim that you work independently and you are going to write about childhood obesity in September. But why did you collude with Cancer Research UK to blame the people for obesity?”

Not only did David Cameron ignore the ‘Letter from America’, he also appointed Michael Pragnell, founder of Syngenta and former Chairman of CropLife International, to the board of Cancer Research UK in 2010. He became Chairman in 2011. As of 2015, CropLife International´s member list included BASF, Bayer CropScience, Dow AgroSciences, DuPont, FMC Corp., Monsanto, Sumitomo and Syngenta. Many of these make their own formulated glyphosate.

Mason says to Davies:

“CRUK, you, the Chief Medical Officer for England, and Public Health England, linked cancer to alcohol, obesity and smoking. You all blamed the people for ‘lifestyle choices’. Where is the scientific evidence for this?”

Syngenta is a member of the European Glyphosate Task Force, which sought to renew (and succeeded) European glyphosate registration. Not surprisingly, Mason says, the CRUK website denies that there is any link between pesticides and cancer. Its website says the following about pesticides:

“For now, the evidence is not strong enough to give us any clear answers. But for individual pesticides, the evidence was either too weak to come to a conclusion, or only strong enough to suggest a “possible” effect. The scientific evidence on pesticides and cancer is still uncertain and more research is needed in this area.”

Mason refers to a survey commissioned by CRUK, ‘People lack awareness of link between alcohol and cancer’, but asks what credible scientific evidence is there that alcohol causes seven different types of cancer and that obesity causes 13 different types of cancer? She concludes, none, and writes that certain top scientists have questioned (ridiculed) the messages being conveyed to the public about alcohol use.

In the Observer and the Guardian in July 2019, CRUK took out half-page advertisements stating that obesity (in huge letters) is a cause of cancer. In a smaller box, it was stated that, like smoking, obesity puts millions of adults at greater risk of cancer. Bus stops and advertising hoardings were replete with black text on a white background. The adverts invited people to fill in the blanks and spell out OBESITY, asking the public to ‘Guess what is the biggest preventable cause of cancer after smoking’.

Mason notes that CRUK has also paid for many TV adverts, describing how it looks after people with cancer and encourages donations from the public. It claims to have spent £42 million on information and influencing in 2018.

She says that the Department of Health’s School Fruit and Vegetable Scheme (SFVS) has residues of 123 different pesticides that seriously impact the gut microbiome. Mason states that obesity is associated with low diversity of bacteria in the microbiome and glyphosate destroys most of the beneficial bacteria and leaves the toxic bacteria behind. In effect, she argues (citing relevant studies) that Roundup (and other biocides) is a major cause of gross obesity, neuropsychiatric disorders and other chronic diseases including cancers, which are all on the rise, and adversely impacts brain development in children and adolescents.

She asks Davies:

“Why did you not attend the meeting in the Houses of Parliament on Roundup? If you were away, you have hundreds of staff in the DOH or Public Health England that could have deputised for you. Dr Don Huber, Emeritus Professor of Plant Pathology at Purdue University, Indiana, and one of four experts on Roundup, spoke at a meeting in the House of Commons on 18th June 2014 on the dangers of Roundup. In what was one of the most comprehensive meetings ever held in Europe on Glyphosate and Roundup, experts from around the World gathered in London to share their expertise with the media, members of a number of UK political parties, NGO representatives and members of the general public. EXCEPT THAT NONE OF THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA WAS PRESENT, NOR THE DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH NOR PUBLIC HEALTH ENGLAND. They are protecting the pesticides industry.”

Mason makes much of the very cosy relationship between the Murdoch media and successive governments in the UK and asks:

“Roundup weed killer is present in all our foods: why does the UK media not want us to know?”

She notes that women in the UK are being warned to cut back on sweet treats or risk cancer. Sally Davies says women are consuming “two biscuits too much each day” and should lose weight. Davies says obesity will surpass smoking as the leading cause of cancer in women by 2043. Last year, official figures revealed 30 per cent of women in the UK are overweight and 27 per cent are obese. Obesity levels across all genders have risen from 15 per cent to 26 per cent since 1993.

But as Mason has shown time and again in her reports and open letters to officials, pesticides (notably glyphosate) are a key driver of obesity. Moreover, type 2 diabetes is closely associated with being very overweight. According to NHS data, almost four in five of 715 children suffering from it were also obese.

“Type 2 diabetes is a disaster for the child and their family and for the NHS,” says Graham MacGregor, a professor of cardiovascular health at Queen Mary University of London who is also the chair of the campaign group Action on Sugar. “If a child gets type 2 diabetes, it’s condemning them to a lot of complications of that condition, such as blindness, amputations and kidney disease,” he said. “These figures are a sign that we are in a crisis and that the government doesn’t seem to be taking action, or not enough and not quickly enough. The UK obesity levels now exceed those of the US.”

Mason explains:

“I am one of the many British women in 2014-16 who were spending nearly 20 years of their life in poor health (19.3 years) while men spend just over 16 years in poor health. Spanish women live the longest, with UK longevity ranked 17th out of 28 EU nations, according to Public Health England’s annual health profile. Each year there are steady increases in the numbers of new cancers in the UK and increases in deaths from the same cancers, with no treatments making any difference to the numbers.”

She concludes:

“Britain and America are in the midst of a barely reported public health crisis. These countries are experiencing not merely a slowdown in life expectancy, which in many other rich countries is continuing to lengthen, but the start of an alarming increase in death rates across all our populations, men and women alike. We are needlessly allowing our people to die early.”