American Apocalypse

John W. Whitehead 

“The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out … without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.”

— H. L. Mencken

The U.S. government is working hard to destabilize the nation.

No, this is not another conspiracy theory.

Although it is certainly not far-fetched to suggest that the government might be engaged in nefarious activities that run counter to the best interests of the American people, doing so will likely brand me a domestic terrorist under the FBI’s new classification system.

Observe for yourself what is happening right before our eyes.

Domestic terrorism fueled by government entrapment schemes. Civil unrest stoked to dangerous levels by polarizing political rhetoric. A growing intolerance for dissent that challenges the government’s power grabs. Police brutality tacitly encouraged by the executive branch, conveniently overlooked by the legislatures, and granted qualified immunity by the courts. A weakening economy exacerbated by government schemes that favor none but a select few. An overt embrace of domestic surveillance tactics if Congress goes along with the Trump Administration’s request to permanently re-authorize the NSA’s de-activated call records program. Heightened foreign tensions and blowback due to the military industrial complex’s profit-driven quest to police and occupy the globe.

The seeds of chaos are being sown, and it’s the U.S. government that will reap the harvest.

Mark my words, there’s trouble brewing.

Better yet, take a look at “Megacities: Urban Future, the Emerging Complexity,” a Pentagon training video created by the Army for U.S. Special Operations Command.

The training video is only five minutes long, but it says a lot about the government’s mindset, the way its views the citizenry, and the so-called “problems” that the government must be prepared to address in the near future through the use of martial law.

Even more troubling, however, is what this military video doesn’t say about the Constitution, about the rights of the citizenry, and about the dangers of locking down the nation and using the military to address political and social problems.

The training video anticipates that all hell will break loose by 2030—that’s barely ten short years away—but the future is here ahead of schedule.

We’re already witnessing a breakdown of society on virtually every front.

By waging endless wars abroad, by bringing the instruments of war home, by transforming police into extensions of the military, by turning a free society into a suspect society, by treating American citizens like enemy combatants, by discouraging and criminalizing a free exchange of ideas, by making violence its calling card through SWAT team raids and militarized police, by fomenting division and strife among the citizenry, by acclimating the citizenry to the sights and sounds of war, and by generally making peaceful revolution all but impossible, the government has engineered an environment in which domestic violence is becoming almost inevitable.

The danger signs are screaming out a message

The government is anticipating trouble (read: civil unrest), which is code for anything that challenges the government’s authority, wealth and power.

According to the Pentagon training video created by the Army for U.S. Special Operations Command, the U.S. government is grooming its armed forces to solve future domestic political and social problems.

What they’re really talking about is martial law, packaged as a well-meaning and overriding concern for the nation’s security.

The chilling five-minute training video, obtained by The Intercept through a FOIA request and made available online, paints an ominous picture of the future—a future the military is preparing for—bedeviled by “criminal networks,” “substandard infrastructure,” “religious and ethnic tensions,” “impoverishment, slums,” “open landfills, over-burdened sewers,” a “growing mass of unemployed,” and an urban landscape in which the prosperous economic elite must be protected from the impoverishment of the have nots.

And then comes the kicker.

Three-and-a-half minutes into the Pentagon’s dystopian vision of “a world of Robert Kaplan-esque urban hellscapes — brutal and anarchic supercities filled with gangs of youth-gone-wild, a restive underclass, criminal syndicates, and bands of malicious hackers,” the ominous voice of the narrator speaks of a need to “drain the swamps.”

Drain the swamps.

Surely, we’ve heard that phrase before?

Ah yes.

Emblazoned on t-shirts and signs, shouted at rallies, and used as a rallying cry among Trump supporters, “drain the swamp” became one of Donald Trump’s most-used campaign slogans.

Far from draining the politically corrupt swamps of Washington DC of lobbyists and special interest groups, however, the Trump Administration has further mired us in a sweltering bog of corruption and self-serving tactics.

Funny how the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Now the government has adopted its own plans for swamp-draining, only it wants to use the military to drain the swamps of futuristic urban American cities of “noncombatants and engage the remaining adversaries in high intensity conflict within.”

And who are these noncombatants, a military term that refers to civilians who are not engaged in fighting?

They are, according to the Pentagon, “adversaries.”

They are “threats.”

They are the “enemy.”

They are people who don’t support the government, people who live in fast-growing urban communities, people who may be less well-off economically than the government and corporate elite, people who engage in protests, people who are unemployed, people who engage in crime (in keeping with the government’s fast-growing, overly broad definition of what constitutes a crime).

In other words, in the eyes of the U.S. military, noncombatants are American citizens a.k.a. domestic extremists a.k.a. enemy combatants who must be identified, targeted, detained, contained and, if necessary, eliminated.

In the future imagined by the Pentagon, any walls and prisons that are built will be used to protect the societal elite—the haves—from the have-nots.

If you haven’t figured it out already, we the people are the have-nots.

Suddenly it all begins to make sense.

The events of recent years: the invasive surveillance, the extremism reports, the civil unrest, the protests, the shootings, the bombings, the military exercises and active shooter drills, the color-coded alerts and threat assessments, the fusion centers, the transformation of local police into extensions of the military, the distribution of military equipment and weapons to local police forces, the government databases containing the names of dissidents and potential troublemakers.

The government is systematically locking down the nation and shifting us into martial law.

This is how you prepare a populace to accept a police state willingly, even gratefully.

You don’t scare them by making dramatic changes. Rather, you acclimate them slowly to their prison walls.

Persuade the citizenry that their prison walls are merely intended to keep them safe and danger out. Desensitize them to violence, acclimate them to a military presence in their communities, and persuade them that there is nothing they can do to alter the seemingly hopeless trajectory of the nation.

Before long, no one will even notice the floundering economy, the blowback arising from military occupations abroad, the police shootings, the nation’s deteriorating infrastructure and all of the other mounting concerns.

It’s happening already.

The sight of police clad in body armor and gas masks, wielding semiautomatic rifles and escorting an armored vehicle through a crowded street, a scene likened to “a military patrol through a hostile city,” no longer causes alarm among the general populace.

Few seem to care about the government’s endless wars abroad that leave communities shattered, families devastated and our national security at greater risk of blowback.

The Deep State’s tactics are working.

We’ve allowed ourselves to be acclimated to the occasional lockdown of government buildings, Jade Helm military drills in small towns so that special operations forces can get “realistic military training” in “hostile” territory, and  Live Active Shooter Drill training exercises, carried out at schools, in shopping malls, and on public transit, which can and do fool law enforcement officials, students, teachers and bystanders into thinking it’s a real crisis.

Still, you can’t say we weren’t warned about the government’s nefarious schemes to lock down the nation.

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

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

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

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

All of this has taken place right under our noses, funded with our taxpayer dollars and carried out in broad daylight without so much as a general outcry from the citizenry.

And then you have the government’s Machiavellian schemes for unleashing all manner of dangers on an unsuspecting populace, then demanding additional powers in order to protect “we the people” from the threats.

Seriously, think about it.

The government claims to be protecting us from cyberterrorism, but who is the biggest black market buyer and stockpiler of cyberweapons (weaponized malware that can be used to hack into computer systems, spy on citizens, and destabilize vast computer networks)? The U.S. government.

The government claims to be protecting us from weapons of mass destruction, but what country has one the deadliest arsenals of weapons of mass destruction and has a history of using them on the rest of the world? The U.S. government. Indeed, which country has a history of secretly testing out dangerous weapons and technologies on its own citizens? The U.S. government.

The government claims to be protecting us from foreign armed threats, but who is the largest weapons manufacturer and exporter in the world, such that they are literally arming the world? The U.S. government. For that matter, where did ISIS get many of their deadliest weapons, including assault rifles and tanks to anti-missile defenses? From the U.S. government.

The government claims to be protecting the world from the menace of foreign strongmen, but how did Saddam Hussein build Iraq’s massive arsenal? The U.S. government.

The government claims to be protecting us from terrorist plots, but what country has a pattern and practice of entrapment that involves targeting vulnerable individuals, feeding them with the propaganda, know-how and weapons intended to turn them into terrorists, and then arresting them as part of an elaborately orchestrated counterterrorism sting? The U.S. government.

For that matter, the government claims to be protecting us from nuclear threats, but which is the only country to ever use a nuclear weapon in wartime? The United States.

Are you getting the picture yet?

The U.S. government isn’t protecting us from terrorism.

The U.S. government is creating the terror. It is, in fact, the source of the terror.

Just think about it for a minute: Cyberwarfare. Terrorism. Bio-chemical attacks. The nuclear arms race. Surveillance. The drug wars.

Almost every national security threat that the government has claimed greater powers in order to fight—all the while undermining the liberties of the American citizenry—has been manufactured in one way or another by the government.

Did I say Machiavellian? This is downright evil.

We’re not dealing with a government that exists to serve its people, protect their liberties and ensure their happiness. Rather, these are the diabolical machinations of a make-works program carried out on an epic scale whose only purpose is to keep the powers-that-be permanently (and profitably) employed.

It’s time to wake up and stop being deceived by government propaganda.

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

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

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

Be warned: in the future envisioned by the government, we will not be viewed as Republicans or Democrats. Rather, “we the people” will be enemies of the state.

For years, the government has been warning against the dangers of domestic terrorism, erecting surveillance systems to monitor its own citizens, creating classification systems to label any viewpoints that challenge the status quo as extremist, and training law enforcement agencies to equate anyone possessing anti-government views as a domestic terrorist.

What the government failed to explain was that the domestic terrorists would be of the government’s own making, and that “we the people” would become enemy #1.

As I make clear in my book, Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we’re already enemies of the state.

You want to change things? Start by rejecting the political labels and the polarizing rhetoric and the “us vs. them” tactics that reduce the mass power of the populace to puny, powerless factions.

Find common ground with your fellow citizens and push back against the government’s brutality, inhumanity, greed, corruption and power grabs.

Be dangerous in the best way possible: by thinking for yourself, by refusing to be silenced, by choosing sensible solutions over political expediency and bureaucracy.

When all is said and done, the solution to what ails this country is really not that complicated: decency, compassion, common sense, generosity balanced by fiscal responsibility, fairness, a commitment to freedom principles, and a firm rejection of the craven, partisan politics of the Beltway elites who have laid the groundwork for the government’s authoritarian coup d’etat.

Let the revolution begin.

What China’s Leadership is Really Worried About: Rising Debt

Tom Clifford

The resort town of Beidaihe has just held one of the world’s most important, and secretive, political gatherings. Members of the public flock there in the summer months to relax on the beach gently lapped by the shallow waters of the Yellow Sea. But far from the madding crowd, the resort, 200 km north of Beijing, hosts an annual sealed-off conclave of Communist party luminaries, including President Xi Jinping, for a month from mid-July. The leaders set out the agenda for the year and prioritize the issues facing them. They were not short of topics for discussion. Though the annual event is held in the utmost secrecy, it is a racing certainty that US arms sales to Taiwan, a trade war, a stuttering economy, Beijing’s treatment of the Muslim Uighurs in the western region of Xinjiang and mass protests in Hong Kong as well as growing debt will have featured. So too would have planned celebrations marking the party’s 70 years in power on October 1.  Only one of these issues is considered a clear and present danger to those who gathered in the resort.

The mass detention of members of the Uighur community in Xinjiang, designated an autonomous region, in China’s west, has not met with loud international criticism, even among Muslim countries. Consequently, Beijing feels it has a free hand and will not face any real repercussions. Providing Beijing can keep the army out of Hong Kong, it, too, should be manageable. Certainly Washington will not make waves. In Trump’s White House, Greenland is held in higher esteem.  Brexit-preoccupied London can’t and won’t get involved.

There is no indication that the Hong Kong government wants troops to be sent in from across the border in Shenzhen.

Legally, the army stepping in must be initiated by the Hong Kong government, though the standing committee of the National People’s Congress in Beijing can declare a state of emergency in Hong Kong if turmoil “endangers national unity or security.”

In practice, any decision would be made by China’s leader, Xi, with the endorsement of the seven-member Politburo Standing Committee, the highest level of political power in China.

Both geographically and politically, Xinjiang and Hong Kong are on the periphery. All bets are off should the Hong Kong protests seep across the border to Shenzhen, but that seems unlikely, providing there is no crackdown. In truth, Beijing knows there is little sympathy for Hong Kong on the mainland.

Taiwan? Nothing realistically Beijing can do. Protest to Washington. Done that. Boost the fleet presence near the Taiwan straits. Done that. Conflict is not an option.

Trade war? The United States launched it, China has responded, doesn’t want it but can live with it. Exports from China to the US are a relatively small part of its GDP.  The trade war with the US is a bad head cold, not a fatal disease.

Net exports as a percentage of China’s economy have shrunk sharply for years and now are under 1 percent of total GDP. China’s exports to the US make up just 5 percent of total exports. Even though China’s US exports fell nearly 8 percent in June, the result is not exactly a death blow to the nation’s $13.6 trillion economy.

Besides, blaming the US for targeting China and curtailing its growth could pay domestic dividends.

The real issue? A long time ago, in a faraway place from Beijing, it was the economy, stupid. Same today for China. Especially debt. China is one of the most indebted countries in the world.  By one measure, China’s debt has already passed 300 percent of gross domestic product. The Washington-based Institute of International Finance said China’s total corporate, household and government debt rose to 303 percent of GDP in the first quarter of 2019, up from 297 percent over the year. This is mostly financed by Chinese banks and off-the record lending by financial institutions in the “shadow bank” sector to provincial governments. Banks in China have actually been pressured not to cut back but to lend more. Beijing has unveiled billions of dollars in tax cuts and infrastructure spending. The world’s second-largest economy had the weakest quarterly growth since 1992, though officially at 6.2 percent is still beyond the wildest dreams of most economies.  Universities and higher-education institutes churned out 8.3 million graduates into the job market in the summer. They need jobs, not just for their own welfare but to show that the “Chinese Dream” is still viable. An International Monetary Fund report in 2016 showed that of the 43 economies whose credit-to-GDP ratio grew by at least 30 percentage points in the previous five years, 38 “experienced severe disruptions, manifested in financial crises, growth slowdowns, or both’’. China’s total credit-to-GDP ratio from 2012-17 grew by 48.4 percentage points.

Deflating the debt bubble is difficult when global events such as recessions, and slow economic growth, demand another shot of stimulus. Much of the cash injection goes into the bloated veins of inefficient state-owned enterprises that are important for maintaining high employment levels.  Beijing then gets an ever-decreasing bang for their buck in terms of any lasting impact on the economy. Over-building has been one of the responses. It is estimated that more than 20 percent of homes, the vast majority apartments in high rise buildings, in China are empty.

The unwritten agreement in China is economic growth for obedience which is why the issue of debt, and how to eventually tackle it, strikes at the heart of the political system. No other dilemma facing those who gathered in   Beidaihe comes close in its potential consequences.

Offering Choice but Delivering Tyranny: The Corporate Capture of Agriculture

Colin Todhunter

Many lobbyists talk a lot about critics of genetic engineering technology denying choice to farmers. They say that farmers should have access to a range of tools and technologies to maximise choice and options. At the same time, somewhat ironically, they decry organic agriculture and proven agroecological approaches, presumably because these practices have no need for the proprietary inputs of the global agrochemical/agritech corporations they are in bed with. And presumably because agroecology represents liberation from the tyranny of these profiteering, environment-damaging global conglomerates.

It is fine to talk about ‘choice’ but we do not want to end up offering a false choice (rolling out technologies that have little value and only serve to benefit those who control the technology), to unleash an innovation that has an adverse impact on others or to manipulate a situation whereby only one option is available because other options have been deliberately removed. And we would certainly not wish to roll out a technology that traps farmers on a treadmill that they find difficult to get off.

Surely, a responsible approach for rolling out important (potentially transformative) technologies would have to consider associated risks, including social, economic and health impacts.

Take the impact of the Green Revolution in India, for instance. Sold on the promise that hybrid seeds and associated chemical inputs would enhance food security on the basis of higher productivity, agriculture was transformed, especially in Punjab. But to gain access to seeds and chemicals many farmers had to take out loans and debt became (and remains) a constant worry. Many became impoverished and social relations within rural communities were radically altered: previously, farmers would save and exchange seeds but now they became dependent on unscrupulous money lenders, banks and seed manufacturers and suppliers. Vandana Shiva in ‘The Violence of the Green Revolution‘ (1989) describes the social marginalisation and violence that accompanied the process.

On a macro level, the Green Revolution conveniently became tied to an international (neo-colonial) system of trade based on chemical-dependent agro-export mono-cropping linked to loans, sovereign debt repayment and World Bank/IMF structural adjustment (privatisation/deregulation) directives. Many countries in the Global South were deliberately turned into food deficit regions, dependent on (US) agricultural imports and strings-attached aid.

The process led to the massive displacement of the peasantry and, according to the academics Eric Holt-Giménez et al, (Food rebellions: Crisis and the hunger for Justice, 2009), the consolidation of the global agri-food oligopolies and a shift in the global flow of food: developing countries produced a billion-dollar yearly surplus in the 1970s; they were importing $11 billion a year by 2004.

And it’s not as though the Green Revolution delivered on its promises. In India, it merely led to more wheat in the diet, while food productivity per capita showed no increased or even actually decreased (see ‘New Histories of the Green Revolution‘ by Glenn Stone). And, as described by Bhaskar Save in his open letter (2006) to officials, it had dire consequences for diets, the environment, farming, health and rural communities.

The ethics of the Green Revolution – at least it was rolled out with little consideration for these impacts – leave much to be desired.

As the push to drive GM crops into India’s fields continues (the second coming of the green revolution – the gene revolution), we should therefore take heed. To date, the track record of GMOs is unimpressive, but the adverse effects on many smallholder farmers are already apparent (see ‘Hybrid Bt cotton: a stranglehold on subsistence farmers in India’ by A P Gutierrez).

Aside from looking at the consequences of technology roll outs, we should, when discussing choice, also account for the procedures and decisions that were made which resulted in technologies coming to market in the first place.

Steven Druker, in his book ‘Altered Genes, Twisted Truth’, argues that the decision to commercialise GM seeds and food in the US amounted to a subversion of processes put in place to serve the public interest. The result has been a technology roll out which could result (is resulting) in fundamental changes to the genetic core of the world’s food. This decision ultimately benefited Monsanto’s bottom line and helped the US gain further leverage over global agriculture.

We must therefore put glib talk of the denial of technology by critics to one side if we are to engage in a proper discussion of choice. Any such discussion would account for the nature of the global food system and the dynamics and policies that shape it. This would include looking at how global corporations have captured the policy agenda for agriculture, including key national and international policy-making bodies, and the role of the WTO and World Bank.

Choice is also about the options that could be made available, but which have been closed off or are not even considered. In Ethiopia, for example, agroecology has been scaled up across the entire Tigray region, partly due to enlightened political leaders and the commitment of key institutions.

However, in places where global agribusiness/agritech corporations have leveraged themselves into strategic positions, their interests prevail. From the false narrative that industrial agriculture is necessary to feed the world to providing lavish research grants and the capture of important policy-making institutions, these firms have secured a thick legitimacy within policymakers’ mindsets and mainstream discourse. As a result, agroecological approaches are marginalised and receive scant attention and support.

Monsanto had a leading role in drafting the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights to create seed monopolies. The global food processing industry wrote the WTO Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures. Whether it involves Codex or the US-India Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture aimed at restructuring (destroying) Indian agriculture, the powerful agribusiness/food lobby has secured privileged access to policy makers and sets the policy agenda.

From the World Bank’s ‘enabling the business of agriculture’ to the Gates Foundation’s role in opening up African agriculture to global food and agribusiness oligopolies, democratic procedures at sovereign state levels are being bypassed to impose seed monopolies and proprietary inputs on farmers and to incorporate them into a global supply chain dominated by powerful corporations.

We have the destruction of indigenous farming in Africa as well as the ongoing dismantling of Indian agriculture and the deliberate impoverishment of Indian farmers at the behest of transnational agribusiness. Where is the democratic ‘choice’? It has been usurped by corporate-driven Word Bank bondage (India is its biggest debtor in the bank’s history) and by a trade deal with the US that sacrificed Indian farmers for the sake of developing its nuclear sector.

Similarly, ‘aid’ packages for Ukraine – on the back of a US-supported coup – are contingent on Western corporations taking over strategic aspects of the economy. And agribusiness interests are at the forefront. Something which neoliberal apologists are silent on as they propagandise about choice, and democracy.

Ukraine’s agriculture sector is being opened up to Monsanto/Bayer. Iraq’s seed laws were changed to facilitate the entry of Monsanto. India’s edible oils sector was undermined to facilitate the entry of Cargill. And Bayer’s hand is possibly behind the ongoing strategy to commercialise GM mustard in India. Whether on the back of militarism, secretive trade deals or strings-attached loans, global food and agribusiness conglomerates secure their interests and have scant regard for choice or democracy.

The ongoing aim is to displace localised, indigenous methods of food production and allow transnational companies to take over, tying farmers and regions to a system of globalised production and supply chains dominated by large agribusiness and retail interests. Global corporations with the backing of their host states, are taking over food and agriculture nation by nation.

Many government officials, the media and opinion leaders take this process as a given. They also accept that (corrupt) profit-driven transnational corporations have a legitimate claim to be owners and custodians of natural assets (the ‘commons’). There is the premise that water, seeds, food, soil and agriculture should be handed over to these conglomerates to milk for profit, under the pretence these entities are somehow serving the needs of humanity.

Ripping land from peasants and displacing highly diverse and productive smallholder agriculture, rolling out very profitable but damaging technologies, externalising the huge social, environmental and health costs of the prevailing neoliberal food system and entire nations being subjected to the policies outlined above: how is any of it serving the needs of humanity?

It is not. Food is becoming denutrified, unhealthy and poisoned with chemicals and diets are becoming less diverse. There is a loss of plant and insect diversity, which threatens food security, soils are being degraded, water tables polluted and depleted and millions of smallholder farmers, so vital to global food production, are being pushed into debt in places like India and squeezed off their land and out of farming.

It is time to place natural assets under local ownership and to develop them in the public interest according to agroecological principles. This involves looking beyond the industrial yield-output paradigm and adopting a systems approach to food and agriculture that accounts for local food security and sovereignty, cropping patterns to ensure diverse nutrition production per acre, water table stability and good soil structure. It also involves pushing back against the large corporations that hold sway over the global food system and more generally challenging the leverage that private capital has over all our lives.

That’s how you ensure liberation from tyranny and support genuine choice.

Can Modi save India from a looming disaster?

 Mike Ghouse

        The early warning signals are blaring, and a disaster is in the making. It will tear the nation apart severely impairing the economic prosperity gained in the last twenty years. Terrorism in the likes of Afghanistan was never a part of India, but the conditions are ripe to give birth to it. The United States has much to lose, first the huge investments made by Americans, and most importantly losing the imaginary bulwark America has made India be against the expansion of communism.

Modi can save India if he listens to the sane voices and restores the rule of law, and freedom to every Indian to pursue his/her life, liberty, and happiness. The downfall can be reversed, provided Modi sees the full picture.

Let’s picture an ideal society that functions cohesively, where each member of the community feels secure about his/her income, business, faith, culture, language, and ethnicity. When one is free from tensions and fears, he or she will be super productive and enriches his community. Indeed, the prosperity of a nation is directly proportional to its freedom, in the case of India, it is religious freedom. The economic success of the United States is directly attributable to freedom. One should be free to eat, drink, wear, think, speak, and believe whatever the individual wants in the pursuit of his/her happiness.

That’s the central lesson of the “2008 Index of Economic Freedom,” released by The Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal. “A country-by-country survey of how free people are worldwide to direct their economic fortunes; the Index repeatedly demonstrates the vital link between freedom and prosperity. In simple words, the freer the people are, the more an economy grows — and the more everyone benefits.”

Gill and Owen in a paper “Religious Liberty and Economic prosperity,” write in a Cato Publication, “A casual glance suggests nations that have developed strong legal guarantees of religious freedom are also ones that have had long-term sustained economic growth (Grim and Finke 2011).”

The reality is grim – the Indian Christians, Muslims, Sikhs, moderate Hindus, and Dalits are not feeling secure. Every day is laden with tensions, and everyone is apprehensive about walking alone on the street lest he/she be beaten, harassed, raped, or even lynched. Lynching is not only on beef pretext but clearly demanding to renounce one’s religion.

Let this be clear; the innocent majorities believe that everyone around them is treated fairly and equitably as they are treated. Neither the moderate white majority understands the fear a black man feels when he sits behind the wheel to go to work, nor does the moderate Hindu majority understands the concern a Muslim, Christian or a Dalit man or a woman feels walking alone on a given street in Modi’s India.

The number of Muslims and Dalits who are sacrificed number over 115 now. Muslims are afraid to get out on the street, lest someone lynches them for the suspicion of carrying beef. Recently, a woman was hung to a tree and beaten non-stop while a crowd gathered around and watched the shameless act. An individual was hacked to death with bare stones and ax in public, and they videotaped the gory murder for the world to watch. A Dalit man was chased and set on fire this week. Does Modi recognize the ruthless, mindless, and violent new generation of Indians he is fostering, is that the kind of Indians he wishes for India?

Last year, the men who gang-raped and brutally murdered a six-year-old girl in a Hindu temple were greeted with garlands by Modi’s men as if they were heroes. Two years ago, Chief Minister Yogi stood on the podium next to a man who announced to the extremists to dig out dead Muslim women from the graves and rape them.

Indian Muslim must be appreciated; they have shown extraordinary resilience and patience. Despite the lynching’s and injustices, they have not resorted to violence, unlike their counterparts in other nations. Presidents Bush, Obama, and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh have appreciated Indian Muslims. It is time for Modi to do the same and stop the growing discord. If the thinks he can remain silent while his men harass and subjugate nearly 1/3rd of Indians comprising Muslims, Dalits, and Christians, he is wrong. He will destroy India and American Interests.

There is a limit to pushing, harassing, and lynching, and it needs to be stopped before it blows up.

What if Indian Muslims, Christians, and Dalits cannot take it anymore and resort to violence? What will happen to the economy, investments from overseas, and the political stability of the nation? Every Indian will live in hell should that happen.  No Indian will leave in peace, Modi can save India or let it be destroyed from within.

Prime Minister Modi’s party lives in the past. The RSS wants to get even with Muslims of Independent India for the acts committed by a king or two some three hundred years ago. If the facts matter to Modi, almost all the kings of yesteryears, be it Hindu, Muslim, Jewish, Sikh or Christian expanded their territories by killing the resisting neighbors. None of them ruled for the sake of religion but for their own gain, they cleverly duped the people then, as well as now.

The Muslims of independent India should be held accountable for the acts they commit as any other Indian citizen would. Should one be punished for the actions of his grandfather or even father?

I hope Modi restores the rule of law and prevents India from getting a certificate of Particular Concern by the Department of State? Would the conscientious mega-corporations and investors continue to partner with India or hold back for lack of stability?  In that case, the ultimate losers are the Hindu businesses and individuals who have seen prosperity in the last two decades, all will be gone.

If Modi cannot change the mindset of the mobs, no one can.  All he has to do is frequently and boldly announce that anyone who harasses another Indian will meet severe punishment and he means it.  The action should follow the words. That is all it takes to save India from going into chaos. Would Modi do it?

Gandhi’s Contribution To Communal Harmony

Sandeep Pandey

It is well known that Mahatma Gandhi began his meetings with a all faith prayer – reciting portions from various religious texts. Gandhi was a firm believer in the idea of communal harmony. From his childhood as he used to nurse his father, he got an opportunity to listen to his father’s friends, belonging to different religions including Islam and Zoroastrian, about their faith. Interestingly, he was biased against Christianity as he heard some preachers criticise Hindu Gods and believed that drinking and eating beef were integral part of this religion. It was much later in England when a Christian, who was a teetotaler and vegetarian, encouraged him to read Bible, that Gandhi gave a serious thought to this religion. Once he started reading Bible, especially the New Testament, he was enthralled and particularly liked the idea that ‘if somebody slaps you on the right cheek, offer your left cheek.’

Even before reading Bible he had got this idea from perusal of different religious texts that evil should not be countered with evil but by good. He was exposed to different religions but he doubts whether he was a believer in his childhood. In spite of this he was of the firm view that all religions deserve equal respect. Hence seeds of communal harmony were sown even at a young age for him. In fact, he became more atheist after reading Manu Smriti as it supported non-vegetarianism. The essential learning he imbibed from these religious texts was that this world survives on principles and principles are subsumed in truth. Thus from his childhood truth was highly held value which became the basis for living his life and various actions that ensued.

It is ironical that Gandhi, who is wrongly accused of having supported partition of the country, whereas in reality it was people like famous poet Iqbal and fundamentalist Hindus like Savarkar who made public pronouncements supporting the idea of two nation theory, is questioned by the fundamentalist Hindus for not having undertaken a fast to prevent partition of the country? The fact is decision about partition was taken by Mountbatten, Nehru, Patel and Jinnah by marginalising Gandhi and he was only informed of the decision as a fait accompli. Had Gandhi supported the idea of partition why would he choose to remain absent from the ceremonies of transfer of power from the British to India and Pakistan? When India was becoming independent Gandhi was fasting in Noakhali to stop communal riots.

In fact, Gandhi realised and he had publicly expressed his frustration on people not heeding to his advice of practicing tolerance, non-violence and communal harmony. The only role he could play was to bring moral pressure on people to desist from communal thought and violent action. He undertook a fast in Delhi in January 1948 upon returning from Bengal. This fast was in support of minorities – Muslims in India and Hindus and Sikhs in Pakistan. Hindu fundamentalists were furious and tried to defame him by spreading a rumour that he was fasting to force Indian government to give Rs. 55 crores to Pakistan, which was actually due to them as part of an agreement on division of assets of Government of undivided India with Mountbatten, it received positive response from Muslims in India and Pakistan. He was hailed in Pakistan as one man in both countries who was willing to sacrifice his life for Hindu-Muslim unity.

Some people say that Gandhi could not speak in harsh terms to Muslims as he could to Hindus and hence practised Muslim appeasement. This is also not true. During his fasts he convinced nationalist Muslims visiting him to condemn the treatment of minorities in Pakistan as un-Islamic and unethical. He beseeched Pakistan to put an end to all violence against minorities there if it wanted the State in India to protect the rights of minorities here. When some Muslims brought rusted arms as a proof to him that they had given up violence, probably out of concern for him so that he could give up his fast, he chastised them and asked them to cleanse their hearts instead.

Gandhi’s towering personality could contain communal violence to some extent. His assassination had a more dramatic impact and brought all such violence to an end. The ban on Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh by Sardar Patel also helped. But four decades later the communal politics raised its fangs again when Babri Masjid was demolished in Ayodhya. What followed is a downward slide of the nation into communal frenzy. For the first time a right wing party practising outright communal politics is in power with full majority at the centre and in most states of the country, incidents of mob lynching on suspicion of Muslims having partaken beef, their marginalisation in social, economic and political life, treating them as second rate citizens are the new normal. Majoritarian thinking, which is contrary to the idea of democracy, is dominating and the minds of people have been communalised as never before in the history of the country. The communal politics has brought out the worst in us.

It appears that the seed of communalism was buried is us. Probably seeds of good and bad both are buried in us. The atmosphere in which we grow will determine which thinking will flower. Communal politics in the post-Babri Masjid demolition era fanned communal thinking and it started dominating. By this time the generation influenced by Mahatma Gandhi’s ideas and who had seen Gandhi in flesh and blood was on its way out. Hence thought and practice of communal harmony waned.

I was once invited by a respected gentleman belonging to Jamat-e-Islami for a meeting on communal harmony. I told him that if he was inviting me as a representative of Hindu religion then he should rethink about it as I was an atheist. He opined that I need not come for the meeting. I argued with him that only an atheist can truly practice the concept of communal harmony because he is equidistant from all religions. Anybody practising a faith would always be more attached to his religion. Hence it appears that we have not even given a serious thought to what communal harmony is all about and have paid only a lip service to the idea. No wonder we have landed is such a messy situation today.

Suddenly West Is Failing To Overthrow “Regimes”

Andre Vltchek 

It used to be done regularly and it worked: The West identified a country as its enemy, unleashed its professional propaganda against it, then administered a series of sanctions, starving and murdering children, the elderly and other vulnerable groups. If the country did not collapse within months or just couple of years, the bombing would begin. And the nation, totally shaken, in pain, and in disarray, would collapse like a house of cards, once the first NATO boots hit its ground.

Such scenarios were re-enacted, again and again, from Yugoslavia to Iraq.

But suddenly, something significant has happened. This horrific lawlessness, this chaos stopped; was deterred.

The West keeps using the same tactics, it tries to terrorize independent-minded countries, to frighten people into submission, to overthrow what it defines as ‘regimes’, but its power, its monstrously destructive power has all of a sudden become ineffective.

It hits, and the attacked nation shakes, screams, sheds blood, but keeps standing, keeps proudly erect.

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What we are experiencing is a great moment in human history. Imperialism has not yet been defeated, but it is losing its global grip on power.

Now we have to clearly understand ‘Why?’, so we can continue our struggle, with even greater determination, with even greater effectiveness.

First of all, by now we know that the West cannot fight. It can spend trillions on ‘defense’, it can build nuclear bombs, ‘smart missiles’ and strategic warplanes. But it is too cowardly, too spoiled to risk the lives of its soldiers. It either kills remotely, or by using regional mercenaries. Whenever it becomes clear that the presence of its troops would be required, it backs up.

Secondly, it, the West, is totally horrified of the fact that there are now two super-powerful countries – China and Russia – which are unwilling to abandon their allies. Washington and London do all they can to smear Russia and to intimidate China. Russia is being provoked continuously: by propaganda, by military bases, sanctions and by new and newer bizarre mass media inventions that depict it as the villain in all imaginable circumstances. China has been provoked practically and insanely, ‘on all fronts’ – from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Tibet and the so-called ‘Uyghur Issue’, to trade.

Any strategy that could weaken these two countries, is applied. Yet, Russia and China do not crumble. They do not surrender. And they do not abandon their friends. Instead, they are building great railroads in Africa and Asia, they educate people from almost all poor and desperate countries, and stand by those who are being terrorized by both North America and Europe.

Thirdly, all the countries in the world are now clearly aware of what would happen to them, if they give up and get ‘liberated’ by the Western empire. Iraq, Honduras, Indonesia, Libya and Afghanistan, are the ‘best’ examples. Submitting themselves to the West, countries can only expect misery, absolute collapse and the ruthless extraction of their resources. The poorest country in Asia – Afghanistan – has totally collapsed under NATO occupation.

The suffering and pain of the Afghan and Iraqi people is very well known to the citizens of Iran and Venezuela. They are not giving up, because no matter how tough their life is under sanctions and the West-administered terror, they are well-aware of the fact that things could get worse, much worse, if their countries were to be occupied and governed by the Washington and London-injected maniacs.

And everyone knows the fate of the people living in Palestine or Gollan Heights, places which have been overrun by the closest ally of the West in the Middle East, Israel.

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Of course, there are other reasons why the West cannot get any of its adversaries to kneel.

One is – that the toughest ones are left. Russia, Cuba, China, North Korea (DPRK), Iran, Syria and Venezuela are not going to run away from the battlefield. These are the most determined nations on earth. These are the countries that have already lost thousands, millions, even tens of millions of their people, in the fight against Western imperialism and colonialism.

If one is following the latest attacks of the West carefully, the scenario is pathetic, almost grotesque: Washington and often the EU, too, are trying hard; they are hitting, they are spending billions of dollars, using the local mercenaries (or call it ‘local opposition’), and then they quickly withdraw after wretched but anticipated defeat. So far, Venezuela has survived. Syria survived. Iran survived. China is fighting horrible Western-backed subversions, but it is proudly surviving. Russia is standing tall.

This is a tremendous moment in human history. For the first time, Western imperialism is being not only defeated, but fully unveiled and humiliated. Many are now laughing at it, openly.

But we should not celebrate, yet. We should understand what and why this is happening, and then continue fighting. There are many, many battles ahead us. But we are on the right track.

Let them try. We know how to fight. We know how to prevail. We have already fought fascism, in many of its forms. We know what freedom is. Their ‘freedom’ is not our freedom. Their ‘liberty’ is not our liberty. What they call ‘democracy’ is not how we want our people to rule and to be ruled. Let them go away; we, our people, do not want them!

They cannot overthrow our systems, because they are, precisely our systems! Systems that we want, that our people want;systems we are ready to fight and die for!

Diverging Gulf responses to Kashmir and Xinjiang ripple across Asia

James M. Dorsey

Recent diametrically opposed responses to repression of Muslims by China, India and other Asian countries highlight deep differences among Gulf states that ripple across Asia.

The different responses were evident in Gulf reactions to India’s unilateral withdrawal of Kashmir’s autonomy and Qatar’s reversal of its support of China’s brutal clampdown on Turkic Muslims in its troubled, north-western province of Xinjiang.

The divergence says much about the almost decade-long fundamentally different approaches by Qatar and its main detractors, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, towards an emerging more illiberal new world order in which minority rights are trampled upon.

The UAE and Saudi Arabia lead a more than two-year-long economic and diplomatic boycott of Qatar in a so far-failed attempt to force the Gulf state to alter its policies.

The feud and divergence reflect the Gulf states’ different efforts to manoeuvre an environment in which the United States has sent mixed signals about its commitment to Gulf security and China and Russia are seeking to muscle into US dominance of the region.

In what was perhaps the most surprising indication of differences in the Gulf, Qatar appeared to reverse its tacit acquiescence in China’s clampdown, involving the incarceration in re-education camps of an estimated one million predominantly Turkic Uyghur Muslims.

Qatar did so by withdrawing from a letter it initially signed together with dozens of others countries expressing support for China’s human-rights record despite its clampdown in Xinjiang.

In a letter to the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), Ali Al-Mansouri, Qatar’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, advised the council that “taking into account our focus on compromise and mediation, we believe that co-authorizing the aforementioned letter would compromise our foreign policy key priorities. In this regard, we wish to maintain a neutral stance and we offer our mediation and facilitation services.”

Signatories of the letter included Qatar’s detractors – Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt – as well as Kuwait and Oman, who together with the feuding Gulf states are part of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).

The withdrawal coincided with a US warning that kowtowing to China’s “desire to erode US military advantages” in the Middle East by using its “economic leverage and coercion” and “intellectual property theft and acquisition” could undermine defence co-operation with the United States.

“Many investments are beneficial, but we’re concerned countries’ economic interests may blind them to the negative implications of some Chinese investments, including impact on joint defence co-operation with the United States,” said Michael Mulroy, the US Defence Department’s top official responsible for the Gulf.

The Qatari move also came against the backdrop of the Gulf state, home to the largest US base in the region, being the only country and the greater Middle East to host an expansion rather than a reduction of US facilities and forces. Qatar is believed to have funded the expansion to the tune of US$1.8 billion.

The United States has withdrawn some of its forces from Syria and is negotiating with the Taliban a US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Nevertheless, Qatar, an enlightened autocracy that has yet to implement at home what it preaches abroad, was unlikely to reap the full soft power benefits in liberal Western democracies of its withdrawal from the pro-Chinese letter despite Uyghur and human rights activists welcoming its move.

It was unclear what prompted the Qatari change of heart that followed an incident last month at Doha’s Hamad International Airport that drove home the limits of China’s ability to flex its financial, economic and political muscles to control the fallout of its clampdown beyond its borders.

The limits were evident when Ablikim Yusuf, a 53-year old Uyghur Muslim seeking protection from potential Chinese persecution, landed at the airport. After initially intending to deport Mr. Yusuf to Beijing at China’s request, Qatar reversed course.

But rather than granting Mr. Yusuf asylum under its newly adopted asylum law, the Gulf’s first, Qatar gave him the time to seek refuge elsewhere. Even that was in sharp contrast to countries like Egypt and Turkey that have either deported Uyghurs or entertained the possibility.

As a result, Qatar’s withdrawal drove one more wedge into the Muslim world’s almost wall-to-wall refusal to criticize China for what amounts to the most frontal assault on a faith in recent history.

Turkey, Qatar’s ally in its dispute with Gulf states, as well as the Turkic republics of Central Asia have been walking a tightrope, attempting to balance relations with China and domestic public criticism of Chinese policy in Xinjiang.

Kazakhstan this month silenced a detained Kazakh rights activist of Uyghur descent by forcing him to plead guilty to a hate speech charge and abandon his activism and public criticism of China in exchange for securing his freedom.

The Qatari withdrawal complicates the Turkish and Central Asian balancing act and strengthens the position of the United States that is locked into multiple trade and other disputes with China.

The withdrawal and the US criticism of Chinese policy in Xinjiang put Muslim states, increasingly selective about what Muslim causes they take up, in an awkward position.

The UAE, in sharp contrast to Qatar, has not only maintained its support of China, but also, alongside Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, ignored requests for support on Kashmir by Pakistan, their long-standing regional Muslim ally.

Adding insult to injury, the three Gulf states are rewarding Indian prime minister Narendra Modi for his undermining of Kashmiri autonomy and imposition of unprecedented, repressive security measures.

Mr Modi is scheduled to travel this week to the United Arab Emirates to receive the country’s highest civilian honour and on to Bahrain for the first-ever visit to that country by a sitting Indian prime minister.

Meanwhile, Saudi national oil company Aramco announced a US$15 billion investment in an Indian oil company as Mr. Modi was clamping down on Kashmir.

For its part, Qatar, has remained largely silent about Kashmir, advising its nationals to leave the region.

If the policy divergences in the Gulf say anything, they suggest that differences among the region’s rivals s as well as in in the greater Middle East are likely to deepen rather than subside.

A study last year by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace concluded that conflict in the region was fuelled by a “dearth of regional communication channels, dispute resolution mechanisms, and norms for warfare as well as a surplus of arms imports.”

There is little on the horizon to suggest that this state of affairs is about to change any time soon.

New human species discovered in the Philippines

Frank Gaglioti 

The discovery of a new human species, Homo luzonensis on the island of Luzon in the Philippines has further highlighted the complexity of human evolution. The findings were published in April in the journal Nature in an article entitled “A new species of Homo from the Late Pleistocene of the Philippines.”

The lead scientist was the archaeologist Armand Mijares from the University of the Philippines, along with scientists from Australia and France.

Mijares found evidence of ancient human activity in the Callao cave located in the north of Luzon in 2003. He was spurred on to dig down to deeper strata after the discovery of Homo floresiensis, commonly referred to the Hobbit due to its diminutive size, on the island of Flores in Indonesia in 2004.

The Callao cave and part of the dig

The breakthrough came in 2007 when Mijares found a foot bone. Subsequent excavations in 2011 and 2015 unearthed two more toe bones, a thigh bone, seven teeth, and two finger bones. The fossils came from two adults and a child and are between 50,000 and 67,000 years old.

“From the beginning, we realised the unusual characteristics of these fossils,” Florent Détroit, a palaeoanthropologist from France’s Musee de l’Homme, told a press briefing. “We completed the comparisons and analyses, and it confirmed that this was something special, unlike any previously described species of hominins in the homo genus,” he said. Hominins include modern humans and all species that are considered ancestral to them.

The scientists conducted a three-dimensional analysis and computer modelling of the bones and found a mixture of modern and more ancient traits. The teeth are relatively small with simple shapes suggesting modern origins, but the upper molar has three roots, an extremely rare trait in modern humans. One of the foot bones is curved, resembling Australopithecines (earlier hominins), and suggesting an arboreal existence as well as walking upright. It is thought that H. luzonensis had a relatively small size, although this is not conclusive due to the lack of larger bones.

Every hominin fossil discovery deepens our understanding of human evolution. It is thought that humans evolved from Australopithecines, known as the southern ape. These emerged in Africa around Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania about four million years ago and are known to have survived to two million years ago. Several Australopithecines have been discovered, including A. afarensis that was able to walk upright but still inhabited trees.

A photo of the excavation

The most famous Australopithecine was Lucy, a representative of Australopithecus afarensis discovered in 1974 by Donald Johanson in Ethiopia. Although Lucy had a relatively small brain, the critical development was that she walked upright, freeing the hands for the use of tools. Features such as speech and increased brain capacity evolved later.

The species that is thought to have evolved from the Australopithecines was Homo habilis, first discovered in Tanzania by the famous Kenyan paleoanthropologist and archaeologist Louis Leakey in 1962 and 1964. H. habilis or “handy man” was a proficient tool maker and was considered to have lived between 2.8 to 1.4 million years ago. The species had a larger brain than A. afarensis.

The next major species to emerge was Homo erectus, or upright man, which was originally discovered in Java in 1886 and existed from 1.89 million years ago to 143,000 years ago. H. erectus had a body structure very similar to modern humans and was known to be able to run considerable distances. The species was associated with the significant invention of hand axes and was the first to migrate out of Africa.

Our species, Homo sapiens, or intelligent man, was thought to have evolved 300,000 years ago. Numerous other Homo species have been discovered, but it is not always straightforward to determine their exact relationships. The ability of scientists to extract DNA from relatively recent fossils has enabled a better estimation of the complex genetic connections.

Neanderthals are considered our closest relative and were known to have existed 400,000 to 40,000 years ago. They had a much stockier body than H. sapiens but a similar sized brain. They had a very sophisticated tool kit and had mastered the use of fire. Some scientists consider them a subspecies of modern humans and have found evidence of interbreeding.

A limited number of bone fragments discovered in Siberia in 2010 have been called Denisovans. A finger bone indicated a robust body structure similar to Neanderthals. Mitochondrial DNA analysis has shown a close similarity to Neanderthals and modern humans. Part of the Denisovan genome is shared with modern humans in South East Asia and Australian Aborigines.

The period that the latest discovery, H. luzonensis, is known to have existed is a complex one for human evolution. Recent discoveries have shown that several hominin species existed contemporaneously, including modern humans, Neanderthals, Denisovans and H. floresiensis.

A recent study published in Nature in February, “Mosaic dental morphology in a terminal Pleistocene hominin from Dushan Cave” in southern China reported the discovery of atypical H. sapiens fossils that were 15,000 years old with primitive characteristics similar to H. luzonensis and H. floresiensis.