400 Paar - Abki Baar?

 

Dhruv Rathee: A voice in the Wilderness?

 

The Last Chance for Indian Democracy?

 

Dhruv Rathee is wrong. If Modi is a dictator, why did he fail so often to get what he wants

Dilip Mandal in The Print

Content creator Dhruv Rathee’s recently uploaded video, ‘Is India becoming a DICTATORSHIP?’, has set social media abuzz, amassing over 13 million views on YouTube alone. The viral video examines concerns around Narendra Modi and Bharatiya Janata Party’s ‘One Nation, One Party’ ideology, citing instances of media control, horse-trading of MLAs, and the alleged misuse of enforcement agencies against opposition leaders. Of course, it also goes on to suggest that India is becoming a ‘dictatorship’ under Modi.

But in his two terms as Prime Minister, Modi has demonstrated an accommodating and somewhat indecisive leadership style. He really doesn’t carry the authoritarian tendencies of Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, or Indira Gandhi.

In fact, the PM has, on many occasions, developed cold feet or compromised despite being an undisputed leader of his party and scoring two consecutive Lok Sabha terms. He has never been one to bulldoze, always stopping to rethink his decisions in the face of resistance. Call it statecraft, or simply a compulsion to govern a nation as diverse and complex as India.

I will list here some of those instances:

No reform for the collegium system: Narendra Modi introduced a significant reform in the judiciary shortly after becoming Prime Minister for the first time. The National Judicial Appointments Commission Bill 2014, aimed at overhauling India’s judicial appointment process and modifying the collegium system, was introduced in the Lok Sabha on 11 August 2014 and subsequently passed by both houses of Parliament. Endorsed by over 20 state legislatures, its objective was “to broad base the appointment of Judges in the Supreme Court and High Courts, enable the participation of the judiciary, executive, and eminent persons, and ensure greater transparency, accountability, and objectivity in the appointment of Judges in the Supreme Court and High Courts.”However, a five-judge bench of the Supreme Court declared the National Judicial Appointments Commission Act and the 99th Constitutional Amendment unconstitutional, arguing that maintaining the judiciary’s independence from government influence forms the basic structure of the Constitution. The Act, which sought to give politicians and civil society a role in the appointment of judges, was struck down by a 4:1 judgment to preserve “judicial independence.”This decision marked the end of the road for Modi’s judicial reform agenda. He did not attempt to reintroduce the bill or press for changes to the Collegium system. A single setback led to the withdrawal of an important reform agenda. The decision of just four judges overruled the will of the people – which was reflected in Parliament and 20 state legislatures – and Modi let it happen. Clearly, he went by the rule book and respected institutions from the get-go.

The death of farm laws: In 2020, the Modi government tried to reform the agriculture sector with three farm laws, namely The Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, The Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement of Price Assurance and Farm Services Act, and The Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act. The laws were designed to facilitate direct farmer sales beyond Agricultural Produce Market Committees (APMCs) and without state taxes, allowing contract farming, deregulating certain commodities’ trade (except in emergencies), and enhancing trade freedom and farmer autonomy. However, the farmers protested saying that the new laws aimed to facilitate outside-APMC trade that would diminish government purchases in mandis, make the Minimum Support Price (MSP) system irrelevant and destabilise their assured income.Landed farmers, mainly from Punjab, Haryana and Western Uttar Pradesh, protested by blocking arterial roads leading to New Delhi. The government soon gave in, stopping the implementation of laws that could have modernised Indian agriculture.

Didn’t push too hard for land acquisition: The Modi government introduced the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement (Amendment) Bill in 2015 to simplify the land acquisition process for industries. However, after facing significant opposition from both political allies and competitors, as well as protests from civil society organisations, the government decided to withdraw important amendments to the bill.These amendments included removing the consent and social impact assessment clauses, which were part of the 2013 legislation and made land acquisition for industry difficult. Nine amendments were made to the bill before it was finally passed in the Lok Sabha. This was a big setback for Modi, who has not attempted to reintroduce these changes since. Industrial land acquisition remains a slow process in India because the Modi government prioritised consensus.

Citizenship Amendment Act—a law made but not implemented: The government amended the Citizenship Act of 1955 and passed the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) in 2019 to assist individuals from Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh who migrated to India after facing religious persecution in their home countries.Previously, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and Christians who entered India without proper documentation or stayed after the expiry of this documentation were considered illegal and faced difficulties in obtaining Indian citizenship.The CAA aims to simplify the process for individuals who arrived in India by or before 31 December 2014, allowing them to become citizens under more lenient rules. This amendment means they will no longer be viewed as illegals and can reside in India permanently. Although the bill was passed by Parliament and published in the Gazette, the government, probably in the wake of extensive anger and protests, has yet to frame the necessary rules. As a result, no one has been granted citizenship under the amended act to this day.

Uniform Civil Code: Despite its long-standing inclusion in the BJP manifesto, the Modi government has never attempted to advance the Uniform Civil Code. This reluctance stems from apprehensions about opposition, making the issue too contentious to handle. However, the Uttarakhand government recently passed a bill to implement the UCC, suggesting that the Union government may be gauging public sentiment and potential resistance before introducing nationwide legislation. A democratic approach, isn’t it?

Rohini Commission, too hot to handle?: In October 2017, the Commission for Other Backward Classes was established via notification to explore the sub-categorisation of OBCs. Justice G Rohini, a retired Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court, was appointed as its chairperson. The Rohini Commission submitted its final report to the President in August 2023, marking a critical step in addressing the complexities of OBC classifications.The commission sought 13 extensions before finalising its report. The slow progress of the commission and the government’s inaction on its report indicate that dividing OBCs into sub-categories is proving to be a complex task for the Modi government. This hesitancy raises questions about decisive leadership.

Women’s reservation, a project deferred: This Act intends to reserve one-third of the seats in Lok Sabha and State Assemblies for women. However, its implementation is contingent upon the next Census and subsequent delimitation for seat allocation, postponing its effectiveness until at least the 2029 Lok Sabha elections. The government recognises the contentious nature of this issue and understands that the process of building consensus must continue beyond the bill’s passage through the legislative body.
Ram temple construction: The recent construction of the Ram temple in Ayodhya does not bear Modi’s stamp. The government waited for the Supreme Court’s order before proceeding with construction work. It is also waiting for relevant court orders to build temples in Mathura and Varanasi. This approach marks a departure from the BJP era of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Lal Krishna Advani, and Murli Manohar Joshi, during which the Babri Masjid was demolished in the presence of top party leaders. The BJP is far more law-abiding under Modi’s leadership.

Xi Jinping copying Modi?

 

150 years of data proves it: Strongmen are bad for the economy

By Annalisa Merelli in QZ.com

As governments around the world gravitate toward rightwing populist and authoritarian leaders, many have pointed to the 2008 global recession and the economic hardship that followed as the reason.

Take America, for instance: According to many analysts, the rise of US president Donald Trump has to be seen in relation to the great recession, and was aided by a frustrated working and middle class that saw in his election the promise of new economic wellbeing.

This repeats a historical pattern: When facing dire straits, populations tend to delegate responsibility and look for a leader who can (or at least promise to) get them back to better times.

It’s a bad idea, however, and not just for democracy: It’s terrible for the economy, too.

A study by researchers of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and Victoria University in Melbourne published in Leadership Quarterly looked at economic data in relation to the performances of authoritarian leaders versus democratic governments.

The authors analyzed the governments of 133 countries between 1858 to 2010, and found that autocrats were either damaging or inconsequential for the economy of their countries. Besides showing the poor economic outcomes of oppressive regimes, the study calls into question the idea of “benevolent dictators”—for instance Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew or Rwanda’s Paul Kagame—who are commonly believed to be good for the economy.

“Autocrats with positive effects are found at best as frequently as predicted by chance, while autocrats with negative effects are found in abundance,” wrote Stephanie Rizio and Ahmed Skali, the authors of the paper. Strongmen mostly leave a county’s economy worse than they found it, or simply “ride the wave” of an economic growth that would have happened regardless of their rule.

The researchers used data from the Archigos dataset of leaders, which lists both the leaders of countries and the person with the most power in a country at any given time. The official head of state might sometimes be no more than a figurehead, while someone else holds the actual power. For instance, the paper notes that Septimus Rameau was the de-facto ruler of Haiti between 1874 and 1876, while his uncle Michel Domingue was the official leader; or Ziaur Rahman, who was actually in charge of Bangladesh between 1975 and 1977, while Abu Sadat Mohammad Sayem was the country’s official leader.

---Also watch

----

The data was then cross-referenced with the Polity IV dataset, which establishes the kind of political government in place for 185 countries every year, defining whether the country is a democracy or an autocracy. For each year, countries are scored from 1 to 10. Scores below 6 indicate an autocratic regime, while democracies stand above six.

To analyze the economic outcome of a strongman’s rule, the researches looked at per capita GDP. The researchers then compared economic growth in countries with autocratic regimes to economic growth in democracies, looking at whether the impact of the autocrats (and the democratic leaders) was relevant—or if the results were ascribable simply to chance.

In the large majority of cases, countries led by autocrats—whether benevolent or otherwise—were found to have worse economic outcomes in terms of growth than democracies. And not just in the short term: The researchers also looked at delayed growth, testing the hypothesis that reforms put in place by a dictator might take time to bear fruit. They found no demonstrable growth to connect with autocratic rule.

Growth isn’t the only economic metric on which autocrats failed to deliver. They also fell short on employment, health and education spending, and government debt.

But—in what is possibly good news for Trump, who is facing the threat of another recession—while it seems people are inclined to vote a strongman into power to fix their economic woes, they aren’t as quick to get rid of him if the economy doesn’t improve. The paper found that while authoritarians do pay for their bad economic performances, it takes much longer for them to lose popular support and be deposed from power than they do in a democracy under comparable economic circumstances.

Skali told Quartz the research didn’t look into the relation between economic hardship and the rise of autocracies, and why distressed populations gravitate towards strongmen. But he did share a speculation: In times of hardship, primates tend to accept, and follow, the authority of an alpha male.

Iraq exposes the west’s hypocrisy in the Middle East

It’s right to take military action to protect Yazidi people. But the west’s record on who gets saved and who doesn’t is shameful

• 
• • Carne Ross
  • The Guardian, Monday 11 August 2014 20.30 BST

Kurdish soldiers keep guard on the outskirts of Kirkuk. Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

A friend from Pristina once told me that the happiest day of his life was when he heard Nato cruise missiles over his home town. This was in 1999 when Nato intervened from the air to stop the Serb campaign to drive Albanians from Kosovo. Often military intervention is wrong, but sometimes it is right. It was right in Kosovo, and Libya in 2011, and it is right today in northern Iraq.

----

Also read 

Muslim double standards abound

----

I resigned from the British foreign office because my government lied about the reasons for the invasion of Iraq in 2003. My scepticism about western motives runs deep. But the evident suffering of the Yazidis and others, and the imminent threat to the hitherto stable region of Kurdistan, overcomes these doubts. The views of the Yazidis and the Kurdistan regional government are clear. Their views matter most.

But the intervention in northern Iraq highlights the hypocrisy that characterises western policies in the Middle East. Who gets saved and who doesn’t? In Egypt, the west supports an authoritarian dictatorship where thousands, from Muslim Brothers to secular democrats like Alaa Abd El Fattah, are incarcerated in appalling, torturous jails. In Palestine, the US resupplied bombs to Israel during its callous bombardment of Gaza. And in Iraq itself, the US chose currently embattledNouri al-Maliki as prime minister, and continued to support him even after his militias had scythed down Sunnis and imprisoned thousands for their ethnicity. The UK government gives its tacit support to all of this, with a calculated display of rhetorical hand-wringing.

The west has worked itself into a grotesque muddle in the Middle East, supporting dictatorships in some places, calling for others to end; condemning the killings of civilians in one place, in another condoning them. These are the double standards that will be exploited by extremists across the world; a fount of terrorism that will continue to haunt us.

For too long, western policy has been guided by abstract and invented notions of “interests” and “security”, arbitrary guidelines that long ago degraded into “our friends” and “their enemies”. A new doctrine is needed, based on clear principles: protection of civilians, promoting local solutions, consistent rewards and punishments, all included in a comprehensive approach.

As everywhere, the welfare of civilians should come first and guide all policy. This offers a clear signpost in Kurdistan but also Palestine, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. In cases of violent repression, this means giving populations the means for self-defence. In extremis, it might mean military intervention.

Since Sykes and Picot carved up the Middle East a century ago, the west has imposed its own simplistic designs on the complexities of the region. Instead, it must always facilitate local discussion, without assumptions such as that Iraq should remain as one state. If the Kurds want their own state, we should not be the ones to stop them. Our role should be to aim for a negotiated solution, with clear protections for minorities.

When John Kerry visits Cairo bringing attack helicopters for President Sisi, it cannot be a surprise that the regime pays no attention when he calls for the release of political prisoners. Rhetoric counts for very little. Criticism over the shelling of UN schools in Gaza doesn’t matter when in private officials reassure Israel that support continues. If a government abuses its population or fails to engage in inclusive political dialogue, it should be criticised, then condemned, then shunned and, if it continues, sanctioned. This applies in Saudi Arabia; it should apply in Iraq, but also in Israel.

Western policy does not connect the dots between the interconnected crises of the Middle East. Protecting civilians in Syria means giving the means of self-defence, such as anti-aircraft missiles, to the moderate opposition (which my organisation advises). This would have limited the rise of Isis in Syria, preventing the threat in Iraq and thus the necessity of military intervention. Pounding Isis in Iraq won’t stop the danger re-emerging from Syria. Condoning repression in Egypt will sustain the terrorist threat worldwide.

These principles highlight the mess of western policy. Following them would, in the longer term, help put it right.

What the Maoist slavery sect tells us about the far-left

Far-left 'splittist' sects like Comrade Bala's proliferated in the 70s – and a genuine desire for change was corrupted

• 
• • Tariq Ali
  • The Guardian, Tuesday 26 November 2013 21.00 GMT

Journalists outside Peckford Place in Brixton, one of the properties linked to Aravindan and Chanda Balakrishnan, arrested on suspicion of holding three woman captive at addresses in south London. Photograph: Guy Corbishley/ Guy Corbishley/Demotix/Corbis

The recent Monty Python revival has come with a bizarre reminder from south London that once, long ago, there were a few tiny Maoist groups in Britain who used language that could have been cribbed from Life of Brian.

Aravindan Balakrishnan, 73, and his 67-year-old wife, Chanda – arrested last week on suspicion of holding three women as slaves in a flat for 30 years – were leaders of a tiny sect of 25 members known as the Workers' Institute of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought, invisible to the left at large. This sect had split from its father organisation, the Communist party of England (Marxist-Leninist), which itself had less than a hundred followers. The Maoists' antics were rivalled by a number of Trotskyist sects, smaller and larger, whose implosion often involved the mistreatment of women, and the story is by no means over.

The Balakrishnans' Brixton commune, it is now alleged, kept three women as virtual prisoners against their will. But it prospered. Membership declined, but property increased. The Balakrishnans pre-empted China's turn to capitalism – according to some reports they had interests in 13 properties, three more than their total membership at the time.

What was the attraction of Maoism? The figure of Mao and the revolution loomed large, but the outpourings from these groups did not suggest a close reading of On Contradiction or other texts by Mao that might have stimulated the brain cells. Instead they became fantasy outfits, each with its own homegrown Mao playing on the genuine desire for change that dominated the 1967-77 decade.

As a political current, Maoism was always weak in Britain, confined largely to students from Asia, Africa and Latin America. This was not the case in other parts of Europe. At its peak, German Maoism had more than 10,000 members, and the combined circulation of its press was 100,000. After the great disillusionment – as the Chinese-US alliance of the mid-70s was termed – many of them privatised, and thousands joined the Greens, Jürgen Trittin becoming a staunch pro-Nato member of Gerhard Schröder's cabinet. In France, the Gauche Prolétarienne organised workers in car factories, and set up Libération, its own paper that morphed into a liberal daily. Ex-Maoist intellectuals occupy significant space in French culture, though they are now neocons: Alain Finkielkraut, Pascal Bruckner, Jean-Claude Milner are a few names that come to mind. The leading leftwing philosopher Alain Badiou never hides his Maoist past.

Scandinavia was awash with Maoism in the 70s. Sweden had Maoist groups with a combined membership and periphery of several thousand members but it was Norway where Maoism became a genuine popular force and hegemonic in the culture. The daily paper Klassekampen still exists, now as an independent daily with a very fine crop of gifted journalists (mainly women) and a growing circulation. October is a leading fiction publishing house and May was a successful record company. Per Petterson, one of the country's most popular novelists, describes in a recent book how, when Mao died, 100,000 people in a population of five million marched with torches to a surprised Chinese embassy to offer collective condolences. All this is a far cry from the cult sect now being excavated in Brixton.

What always struck me even then as slightly odd was that, regardless of the political complexion of a sect, the behavioural patterns of its leaders were not so different. Even those most critical of Stalinist style and methods tended to reproduce the model of a one-party state within their own ranks, with dissent limited to certain periods and an embryonic bureaucracy in charge of a tiny organisation. It was in western Europe, not under Latin American or Asian military dictatorships, that clandestinity and iron discipline were felt to be necessary.

Young women and men who joined the far-left groups did so for the best of reasons. They wanted to change the world. Many fought against the stifling atmosphere in many groups. Women organised caucuses to monitor male chauvinism inside the groups and challenged patriarchal practices. Pity that not all the lessons were learned. Easy now to forget that many who fought within and led the women's and gay liberation movements – in Europe and elsewhere – had received their political education inside the ranks of the combined far left, warts and all.

I can still recall a South American feminist calmly informing a large gathering of revolutionaries in the 70s that advances were being made against machismo. "Only last year," she declared, "my husband, who is sitting on the platform, locked me in the house on 8 March so I couldn't join the International Women's Day demonstration." The husband hid his face in shame.

Now the 70s really does seem another country. The thunder of money has drowned much that was and is of value. The campaign to demonise trade unions – indeed, any form of non-mainstream political activism or dissent – continues apace, despite the fact that the left has never been weaker. A sign, perhaps, that the votaries of the free market remain fearful of any challenges from below.

Chemical export licences for Syria – just another UK deal with a dictator

Britain is in no position to lecture on human rights when Vince Cable's authorisation follows a long history of arms sales

• 
• • Nick Dearden
  • theguardian.com, Monday 2 September 2013 15.30 BST

Defence Systems and Equipment International arms fair at the Excel Centre, Docklands, London. Photograph: Rex Features

The latest revelations about the authorisation of chemical exports to Syria proves that British ministers should avoid two things – lecturing the public on personal morality and lecturing the world on human rights. Both will come back to bite them. While Nick Clegg commented on the pages of the Guardian earlier this year that the UK was a "beacon for human rights", his business secretary was authorising companies to sell chemicals capable of being used to make nerve gas to a country in the middle of a civil war.

Clegg almost certainly knew nothing about the potential sales, and indeed the sales themselves might have been quite innocent, but our history should tell us that precaution is the best principle. If the companies had got their act together to ship the goods to Syria, they would probably have received government support through a unit of Cable's Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, called UK Export Finance. This unit has sold weapons to some of the worst dictators of the past 40 years – and had a role to play in the most serious chemical weapons abuses since the Vietnam war.

Jubilee Debt Campaign has released new information which confirms that the British government effectively armed both sides during the Iran-Iraq war – one of the Middle East's most bloody conflicts.

Britain had been happily selling weapons to Saddam Hussein, our ally during his war against the new Islamic Republic, in the early 1980s. The UK government also allowed the sale of the goods needed to make a chemical plant which the US later claimed was essential to Saddam's chemical weapons arsenal, with the full knowledge that the plant was likely to be used to produce nerve gas. Saddam used chemical weapons against Iranian soldiers and against civilians within his own country in 1988, killing tens of thousands.

This is old news, but we now also know that until the fall of the Shah in 1979, Britain also sold Rapier missiles and Chieftain tanks to Iran's autocratic regime – weapons that were undoubtedly also used in the Iran-Iraq war.

Both sets of arms were effectively paid for by the British taxpayer, as both Iraq and Iran defaulted on the loans given by Britain, and they became part of Iraq and Iran's debt. Though Iran still "owes" £28m to Britain, plus an undisclosed amount of interest, this didn't stop Britain guaranteeing £178m of loans to Iran to buy British exports for gas and oil developments in the mid 2000s, thus breaking its own rules.

This new information adds to a litany of such cases – supporting arms sales to the brutal General Suharto of Indonesia, both Sadat and Mubarak in Egypt and military juntas in Ecuador and Argentina, the latter using its British weapons to invade the Falkland Islands.

In opposition, Cable railed against the use of taxpayer money to support such sales, and his party promised to audit and cancel these debts and stop the sales. In power, he behaves the same way as his predecessors. While regularly claiming such deals are a "thing of the past", Cable has signed off £2bn of loans to the dictatorship in Oman to buy British Typhoon fighter aircraft, the sale of a hovercraft to the highly indebted Pakistan navy and an iron ore mine in Sierra Leone which has not even been assessed for its human rights impact.

Cable has ripped up Liberal Democrat policy to keep on supporting the sale of dangerous goods. He continues to insist on the repayment of debts run up by the UK selling weapons to now deposed dictators. Far from being a beacon for human rights, the UK has little legitimacy around the world when it comes to taking sides in wars – a fact that parliament recognised in its welcome vote last Thursday.

Next week, Britain's true role in the world will be on show in Docklands – when the world's "leading" military sales event meets in London. As war and the aftermath of war still rage across the Middle East, one way we as citizens improve our country's damaged reputation is to protest against such an appalling expression of Britain's role in the world. Authorising the export of chemicals to Syria is simply part of a long trend of support for dangerous technology which undermines this country's legitimacy when it comes to speaking about human rights.

There is still time to side with those committed to democracy in Egypt

The irony for some is that the Muslim Brotherhood and its supporters remain the upholders of the ballot box's legitimacy

• 
• • Maha Azzam
  • The Guardian, Thursday 15 August 2013 21.05 BST

Supporters of Mohamed Morsi: 'The security apparatus is taking revenge for the last two years when it felt threatened by the possibility of any new order.' Photograph: Mohamed Al-Sayaghi/Reuters

The military and police state has returned in full force to Egypt. A country that for a brief period after 60 years of dictatorship was on a path of democratic transition saw a reversal of that process with the coup on 3 July against Egypt's first freely elected president. The coup was justified on the basis of a mass popular outpouring on the streets, although it is generally accepted now that the numbers were a fraction of those claimed by the military and its supporters.

Those calling for a return to the days that preceded the 25 January revolution in 2011, which brought about the fall of Hosni Mubarak, were not only the military high command, the interior ministry, the security services and the police, but critically the judiciary and the state media. These coteries of power actively worked together to block the smooth functioning of the state.

This went hand-in-hand with a vicious campaign to vilify and demonise the party in power, namely the Muslim Brotherhood. Propaganda campaigns against them had been a feature of Egypt's dictatorships from Nasser to Mubarak in an attempt to weaken the main challenge to the regime. But the secular and liberal opposition, having failed to win enough votes themselves, played spoilers rather than engage in the political process, accept the results and campaign for the next elections.

And so the military and this opposition to Mohamed Morsi were to come together in an alliance of convenience with at least a nod from the US and UK to bring down the elected government through unconstitutional means. The street would have to be the way out if the ballot box was not delivering desired results. The method was a well-choreographed campaign that, despite genuine popular support, was essentially directed by the interior ministry and military.

As we examine the debris of Wednesday's massacre (where mounting casualty numbers are suggesting more than 1,000 deaths), there are two parties in today's power struggle. On one side is the ancien regime and its liberal allies – that small core of revolutionaries opposed to the Brotherhood and the politicking Salafi parties. On the other side is the Muslim Brotherhood and its supporters, including pro-legitimacy liberals who refused to broker the idea that votes suddenly counted for nothing. The irony for some is that it is the Islamist side that is upholding the legitimacy of the ballot box and the commitment to a civil state.

During the elected government's year-long term some said that the ballot box was not enough and that Morsi was not inclusive enough, but the fact remains that the ballot box is an essential part of the democratic process. Politically, what Egypt lacked during its experiment in democracy was a loyal opposition. Instead, the opposition that came together under the umbrella of the National Salvation Front decided to back a military coup.

The public is told through the state-controlled media that the sit-ins that have filled Egypt's squares were hijacked by terrorists bent on destroying state institutions. The west is told that part of the roadmap that General Sisi has sanctioned includes a limited number of cabinet posts for the Muslim Brotherhood. Notwithstanding such blatant distortion of electoral will, the vast majority of the Brotherhood's rank-and-file are determined that its opposition to the military coup be peaceful and its leadership categorically reject violence.

What Egypt has experienced since the coup has been the systematic return of the military and police state through arbitrary arrests, media clampdown and the shooting of protesters. Egypt's state institutions, as in most dictatorships, are corrupt and fearful of change. The security apparatus is taking revenge for the last two years when it felt threatened by the possibility of any new order that would eventually hold it accountable. Since the coup began it feels it has taken control again and is ready to strike hard at anyone who challenges it, whatever their ideology.

The civilian facade to this regime is no guarantee against human rights abuses. On the contrary, it provides them with greater shelter. Egyptians are divided today between those who long for security and economic stability, and those who know that although the price is high, the country is at a crossroads of military dictatorship and the possibility of a civil society.

There is still a window of opportunity to side with those committed to democracy in Egypt, and to put pressure on the military by cutting off aid from the United States and by ensuring that it has to be held accountable for any crimes against humanity.

Chavez a true Democrat - termed Dictator by the American Right

If you want to learn about human rights in Venezuela before Hugo Chavez, type “Caracazo” into Google, and do so with a strong stomach. Back in 1989, then-President Carlos Andrés Pérez won an election on a fiery platform of resisting free-market dogma: the IMF was “a neutron bomb that killed people, but left buildings standing,” he proclaimed. But after safely making it to the presidential palace, he dramatically u-turned, unleashing a programme of privatisation and neo-liberal shock therapy. With gas subsidies removed, petrol prices soared, and impoverished Venezuelans took to the streets. Soldiers mowed protesters down with gunfire. Up to 3,000 perished, a horrifying death toll up there with the Tienanmen Square Massacre – in a country with a population 43 times smaller.

It was his abortive coup attempt against Pérez's murderous, rampantly corrupt government in 1992 that launched Chavez to prominence. Though locked away, Chavez became an icon for Venezuela's long-suffering poor. By the time he won a landslide victory in 1998 on a promise to use the country's vast oil wealth to help the poor, Venezuela was a mess. Per capita income had collapsed to where it had been in the early 1960s. One in three Venezuelans lived on less than $2 a day. Oil revenues were squandered.

Over the coming days, you will be repeatedly told that Hugo Chavez was a dictator. A funny sort of dictator: there have been 17 elections and referenda since 1998. Perhaps you think they were rigged. When he won by a huge margin in 2006, former US President Jimmy Carter was among those declaring he had won “fairly and squarely”. At the last election in October 2012, Carter declared that, “of the 92 elections that we've monitored, I would say the election process in Venezuela is the best in the world.” I was there: perhaps you think I was like those hopelessly naïve Western leftists who visited Potemkin villages in Stalinist Russia. I was with a genuinely independent election commission, staffed with both pro-Chavez and anti-Chavez sympathisers, who had previously been invited by the opposition to run their own internal elections. We met with senior opposition figures who railed against Chavez, but acknowledged that they lived in a democracy. When they lost the election, they accepted it.

Social justice

Indeed, Chavez himself has had to accept defeat before: back in 2007, he lost a referendum campaign, and did not quibble with the results. Until he came to power, millions of poor Venezuelans were not even registered to vote: but dramatic registration drives have nearly doubled the electorate. There are 6,000 more polling stations than there were in the pre-Chavez era.

On the other hand, the democratic credentials of many of his opponents can certainly be questioned. In 2002, a Pinochet-style coup was launched against Chavez, and was only reversed by a popular uprising. Much of the privately owned media openly incited and supported the coup: imagine Cameron was kicked out of No 10 by British generals, with the support and incitement of rolling 24-hour news stations. But Venezuela's media is dominated by private broadcasters, some of whom make Fox News look like cuddly lefties. State television could rightly be accused of bias towards the government, which is perhaps why it has a measly 5.4 per cent audience share. Of seven major national newspapers, five support the opposition, and only one is sympathetic to the government.

The truth is that Chavez won democratic election after democratic election, despite the often vicious hostility of the media, because his policies transformed the lives of millions of previously ignored Venezuelans. Poverty has fallen from nearly half to 27.8 per cent, while absolute poverty has been more than halved. Six million children receive free meals a day; near-universal free health care has been established; and education spending has doubled as a proportion of GDP. A housing programme launched in 2011 built over 350,000 homes, bringing hundreds of thousands of families out of sub-standard housing in thebarrios. Some of his smug foreign critics suggest Chavez effectively bought the votes of the poor – as though winning elections by delivering social justice is somehow bribery.

Alliances

That does not mean Chavez is beyond criticism. Venezuela was already a country with rampant crime when he came to power, but the situation has deteriorated since. Around 20,000 Venezuelans died at the hands of violent crime in 2011: an unacceptable death toll. As well as drugs, near-universal gun ownership and the destabilising impact of neighbouring Colombia, a weak (and often corrupt) police force is to blame. Although the government is beginning to roll out a national police force, endemic crime is a genuine crisis. When I spoke to Venezuelans in Caracas, the sometimes frightening lack of law-and-order was brought up by pro-Chavistas and opponents alike.

And then there is the matter of some of Chavez's unpleasant foreign associations. Although his closest allies were his fellow democratically elected left-of-centre governments in Latin America – nearly all of whom passionately defended Chavez from foreign criticism – he also supported brutal dictators in Iran, Libya and Syria. It has certainly sullied his reputation. Of course, we in the West can hardly single out Chavez for unsavoury alliances. We support and arm dictatorships such as Saudi Arabia; Britain's former Prime Minister Tony Blair is paid $13 million a year to work for Kazakhstan's dictatorship. But our own hypocrisy does not absolve Chavez of criticism.

The so-called Bolivarian Revolution was overly dependent on Chavez's own reputation, and inevitably his death raises questions about its future direction. But have no doubt: Chavez was a democratically elected champion of the poor. His policies lifted millions out of abject poverty and misery. He represented a break from years of corrupt regimes with often dire human rights records. His achievements were won in the face of an attempted military coup, an aggressively hostile media, and bitter foreign critics. He demonstrated that it is possible to resist the neo-liberal dogma that holds sway over much of humanity. He will be mourned by millions of Venezuelans – and understandably so.

The UK's Protection racket in the Middle East

The Gulf protection racket is corrupt and dangerous folly

Sooner or later the Arab despots David Cameron is selling arms to will fall, and the states that backed them will pay the price

• 
• • Seumas Milne
  • The Guardian, Tuesday 6 November 2012 22.20 GMT

Illustration by Helen Wakefield

On the nauseating political doublespeak scale, David Cameron's claim to "support the Arab spring" on a trip to sell weapons to Gulf dictators this week hit a new low. No stern demands for free elections from the autocrats of Arabia – or calls for respect for human rights routinely dished out even to major powers like Russia and China.

As the kings and emirs crack down on democratic protest, the prime minister assured them of his "respect and friendship". Different countries, he explained soothingly in Abu Dhabi, needed "different paths, different timetables" on the road to reform: countries that were western allies, spent billions on British arms and sat on some of the world's largest oil reserves in particular, he might have added by way of explanation.

Cameron went to the Gulf as a salesman for BAE Systems – the private arms corporation that makes Typhoon jets – drumming up business from the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Oman, as well as smoothing ruffled feathers over British and European parliamentary criticism of their human rights records on behalf of BP and other companies.

No wonder the prime minister restricted media coverage of the jaunt. But, following hard on the heels of a similar trip by the French president, the western message to the monarchies was clear enough: Arab revolution or not, it's business as usual with Gulf despots.

The spread of protest across the Arab world has given these visits added urgency. A year ago, in the wake of the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, it seemed the Gulf regimes and their western backers had headed off revolt by crushing it in Bahrain, buying it off in Saudi Arabia, and attempting to hijack it in Libya and then Syria – while successfully playing the anti-Shia sectarian card.

But popular unrest has now reached the shores of the Gulf. In Kuwait, tens of thousands of demonstrators, including Islamists, liberals and nationalists, have faced barrages of teargas and stun grenades as they protest against a rigged election law, while all gatherings of more than 20 have been banned.

After 18 months of violent suppression of the opposition in Bahrain, armed by Britain and America, the regime has outlawed all anti-government demonstrations. In western-embraced Saudi Arabia, protests have been brutally repressed, as thousands are held without charge or proper trial.

Meanwhile, scores have been jailed in the UAE for campaigning for democratic reform, and in Britain's favourite Arab police state of Jordan, protests have mushroomed against a Kuwaiti-style electoral stitchup. London, Paris and Washington all express concern – but arm and back the autocrats.

Cameron insists they need weapons to defend themselves. When it comes to the small arms and equipment Britain and the US supply to Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and other Gulf states, he must mean from their own people. But if he's talking about fighter jets, they're not really about defence at all.

This is effectively a mafia-style protection racket, in which Gulf regimes use oil wealth their families have commandeered to buy equipment from western firms they will never use. The companies pay huge kickbacks to the relevant princelings, while a revolving door of political corruption provides lucrative employment for former defence ministers, officials and generals with the arms corporations they secured contracts for in office.

Naturally, western leaders and Arab autocrats claim the Gulf states are threatened by Iran. In reality, that would only be a risk if the US or Israel attacked Iran – and in that case, it would be the US and its allies, not the regimes' forces, that would be defending them. Hypocrisy doesn't begin to describe this relationship, which has long embedded corruption in a web of political, commercial and intelligence links at the heart of British public life.

But support for the Gulf dictatorships – colonial-era feudal confections built on heavily exploited foreign workforces – is central to western control of the Middle East and its energy resources. That's why the US has major military bases in Kuwait, Qatar, the UAE, Oman and Bahrain.

The danger now is of escalating military buildup against Iran and intervention in the popular upheavals that have been unleashed across the region. Both the US and Britain have sent troops to Jordan in recent months to bolster the tottering regime and increase leverage in the Syrian civil war. Cameron held talks with emirates leaders this week about setting up a permanent British military airbase in the UAE.

The prime minister defended arms sales to dictators on the basis of 300,000 jobs in Britain's "defence industries". Those numbers are inflated and in any case heavily reliant on government subsidy. But there's also no doubt that British manufacturing is over-dependent on the arms industry and some of that support could usefully be diverted to, say, renewable technologies.

But even if morality and corruption are dismissed as side issues, the likelihood is that, sooner or later, these autocrats will fall – as did the Shah's regime in Iran, on which so many British and US arms contracts depended at the time. Without western support, they would have certainly been toppled already. As Rached Ghannouchi, the Tunisian leader whose democratic Islamist movement was swept to power in elections last year, predicted: "Next year it will be the turn of monarchies." When that happens, the western world risks a new backlash from its leaders' corrupt folly.

Bankers are the dictators of the West

Robert Fisk in The Independent

Saturday, 10 December 2011

Writing from the very region that produces more clichés per square foot than any other "story" – the Middle East – I should perhaps pause before I say I have never read so much garbage, so much utter drivel, as I have about the world financial crisis.

But I will not hold my fire. It seems to me that the reporting of the collapse of capitalism has reached a new low which even the Middle East cannot surpass for sheer unadulterated obedience to the very institutions and Harvard "experts" who have helped to bring about the whole criminal disaster.

Let's kick off with the "Arab Spring" – in itself a grotesque verbal distortion of the great Arab/Muslim awakening which is shaking the Middle East – and the trashy parallels with the social protests in Western capitals. We've been deluged with reports of how the poor or the disadvantaged in the West have "taken a leaf" out of the "Arab spring" book, how demonstrators in America, Canada, Britain, Spain and Greece have been "inspired" by the huge demonstrations that brought down the regimes in Egypt, Tunisia and – up to a point – Libya. But this is nonsense.

The real comparison, needless to say, has been dodged by Western reporters, so keen to extol the anti-dictator rebellions of the Arabs, so anxious to ignore protests against "democratic" Western governments, so desperate to disparage these demonstrations, to suggest that they are merely picking up on the latest fad in the Arab world. The truth is somewhat different. What drove the Arabs in their tens of thousands and then their millions on to the streets of Middle East capitals was a demand for dignity and a refusal to accept that the local family-ruled dictators actually owned their countries. The Mubaraks and the Ben Alis and the Gaddafis and the kings and emirs of the Gulf (and Jordan) and the Assads all believed that they had property rights to their entire nations. Egypt belonged to Mubarak Inc, Tunisia to Ben Ali Inc (and the Traboulsi family), Libya to Gaddafi Inc. And so on. The Arab martyrs against dictatorship died to prove that their countries belonged to their own people.

And that is the true parallel in the West. The protest movements are indeed against Big Business – a perfectly justified cause – and against "governments". What they have really divined, however, albeit a bit late in the day, is that they have for decades bought into a fraudulent democracy: they dutifully vote for political parties – which then hand their democratic mandate and people's power to the banks and the derivative traders and the rating agencies, all three backed up by the slovenly and dishonest coterie of "experts" from America's top universities and "think tanks", who maintain the fiction that this is a crisis of globalisation rather than a massive financial con trick foisted on the voters.

The banks and the rating agencies have become the dictators of the West. Like the Mubaraks and Ben Alis, the banks believed – and still believe – they are owners of their countries. The elections which give them power have – through the gutlessness and collusion of governments – become as false as the polls to which the Arabs were forced to troop decade after decade to anoint their own national property owners. Goldman Sachs and the Royal Bank of Scotland became the Mubaraks and Ben Alis of the US and the UK, each gobbling up the people's wealth in bogus rewards and bonuses for their vicious bosses on a scale infinitely more rapacious than their greedy Arab dictator-brothers could imagine.

I didn't need Charles Ferguson's Inside Job on BBC2 this week – though it helped – to teach me that the ratings agencies and the US banks are interchangeable, that their personnel move seamlessly between agency, bank and US government. The ratings lads (almost always lads, of course) who AAA-rated sub-prime loans and derivatives in America are now – via their poisonous influence on the markets – clawing down the people of Europe by threatening to lower or withdraw the very same ratings from European nations which they lavished upon criminals before the financial crash in the US. I believe that understatement tends to win arguments. But, forgive me, who are these creatures whose ratings agencies now put more fear into the French than Rommel did in 1940?

Why don't my journalist mates in Wall Street tell me? How come the BBC and CNN and – oh, dear, even al-Jazeera – treat these criminal communities as unquestionable institutions of power? Why no investigations – Inside Job started along the path – into these scandalous double-dealers? It reminds me so much of the equally craven way that so many American reporters cover the Middle East, eerily avoiding any direct criticism of Israel, abetted by an army of pro-Likud lobbyists to explain to viewers why American "peacemaking" in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can be trusted, why the good guys are "moderates", the bad guys "terrorists".

The Arabs have at least begun to shrug off this nonsense. But when the Wall Street protesters do the same, they become "anarchists", the social "terrorists" of American streets who dare to demand that the Bernankes and Geithners should face the same kind of trial as Hosni Mubarak. We in the West – our governments – have created our dictators. But, unlike the Arabs, we can't touch them.

The Irish Taoiseach, Enda Kenny, solemnly informed his people this week that they were not responsible for the crisis in which they found themselves. They already knew that, of course. What he did not tell them was who was to blame. Isn't it time he and his fellow EU prime ministers did tell us? And our reporters, too?

Why I had to leave The Times

Robert Fisk:

When he worked at The Times, Robert Fisk witnessed the curious working practices of the paper's proprietor, Rupert Murdoch. Despite their jocular exchanges, the writer knew he couldn't stay...

Monday, 11 July 2011 in The Independent

He is a caliph, I suppose, almost of the Middle Eastern variety.
You hear all these awful things about Arab dictators and then, when you meet them, they are charm itself. Hafez al-Assad once held my hand in his for a long time with a paternal smile. Surely he can't be that bad, I almost said to myself – this was long before the 1982 Hama massacres. King Hussein would call me "Sir", along with most other journalists. These potentates, in public, would often joke with their ministers. Mistakes could be forgiven.
The "Hitler Diaries" were Murdoch's own mistake, after refusing to countenance his own "expert's" change of heart over the documents hours before The Times and The Sunday Times began printing them. Months later, I was passing by the paper's London office on my way back to Beirut when the foreign editor, Ivan Barnes, held up the Reuters wire copy from Bonn. "Aha!" he thundered. "The diaries are forgeries!" The West German government had proved that they must have been written long after the Führer's death.
So Barnes dispatched me to editor Charles Douglas-Home's office with the Reuters story and I marched in only to find Charlie entertaining Murdoch. "They say they're forgeries, Charlie," I announced, trying not to glance at Murdoch. But I did when he reacted. "Well, there you go," the mogul reflected with a giggle. "Nothing ventured, nothing gained." Much mirth. The man's insouciance was almost catching. Great Story. It only had one problem. It wasn't true.
Oddly, he never appeared the ogre of evil, darkness and poison that he's been made out to be these past few days. Maybe it's because his editors and sub-editors and reporters repeatedly second-guessed what Murdoch would say. Murdoch was owner of The Times when I covered the blood-soaked Israeli invasion and occupation of Lebanon in 1982. Not a line was removed from my reports, however critical they were of Israel. After the invasion, Douglas-Home and Murdoch were invited by the Israelis to take a military helicopter trip into Lebanon. The Israelis tried to rubbish my reporting; Douglas-Home said he stood up for me. On the flight back to London, Douglas-Home and Murdoch sat together. "I knew Rupert was interested in what I was writing," he told me later. "He sort of waited for me to tell him what it was, although he didn't demand it. I didn't show it to him."
But things changed. Before he was editor, Douglas-Home would write for the Arabic-language Al-Majella magazine, often deeply critical of Israel. Now his Times editorials took an optimistic view of the Israeli invasion. He stated that "there is now no worthy Palestinian to whom the world can talk" and – for heaven's sake – that "perhaps at last the Palestinians on the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip will stop hoping that stage-strutters like Mr Arafat can rescue them miraculously from doing business with the Israelis."
All of which, of course, was official Israeli government policy at the time.
Then, in the spring of 1983, another change. I had, with Douglas-Home's full agreement, spent months investigating the death of seven Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners of the Israelis in Sidon. It was obvious, I concluded, that the men had been murdered – the grave-digger even told me that their corpses had been brought to him, hands tied behind their backs, showing marks of bruising. But now Douglas-Home couldn't see how we would be "justified" in running a report "so long after the event".
In other words, the very system of investigative journalism – of fact-checking and months of interviews – became self-defeating. When we got the facts, too much time had passed to print them. I asked the Israelis if they would carry out a military inquiry and, anxious to show how humanitarian they were, they duly told us there would be an official investigation. The Israeli "inquiry" was, I suspected, a fiction. But it was enough to "justify" publishing my long and detailed report. Once the Israelis could look like good guys, Douglas-Home's concerns evaporated.
When he died, of cancer, it was announced that his deputy, Charles Wilson, would edit the paper. Murdoch said that Wilson was "Charlie's choice" and I thought, so, all well and good – until I was chatting to Charlie's widow and she told me that it was the first time she had heard that Wilson's editorship had been her late husband's decision. We all knew Murdoch had signed up to all manner of guarantees of editorial independence, oversight and promises of goodwill when he bought The Times – and had then fired his first editor, Harold Evans. He would deal with the trade unionists later.
Charles Wilson – who much later became, briefly, the editor of The Independent – was a tough, friendly man who could show great kindness, as well as harshness, to his staff. He was kind to me, too. But once, when I was visiting Wilson in London, Murdoch walked into his office. "Hallo, Robert!" Murdoch greeted me, before holding a jocular conversation with Wilson. And, after he had left, Wilson said to me in a hushed voice: "See how he called you by your first name?" This was laughable. It was like the Assad smile or the King Hussein "Sir". It meant nothing. Murdoch was joking with his ministers and courtiers.
A warning sign. Still in west Beirut, where dozens of Westerners were being kidnapped, I opened The Times to discover that a pro-Israeli writer was claiming on our centre page that all journalists in west Beirut, clearly intimidated by "terrorism", could be regarded only as "bloodsuckers". Was the paper claiming that I, too, was a bloodsucker? In all this time, Murdoch had expressed exclusively pro-Israeli views, and had accepted a "Man of the Year" award from a prominent Jewish-American organisation. The Times editorials became more and more pro-Israeli, their use of the word "terrorist" ever more promiscuous.
The end came for me when I flew to Dubai in 1988 after the USS Vincennes had shot down an Iranian passenger airliner over the Gulf. Within 24 hours, I had spoken to the British air traffic controllers at Dubai, discovered that US ships had routinely been threatening British Airways airliners, and that the crew of the Vincennes appeared to have panicked. The foreign desk told me the report was up for the page-one splash. I warned them that American "leaks" that the IranAir pilot was trying to suicide-crash his aircraft on to the Vincennes were rubbish. They agreed.
Next day, my report appeared with all criticism of the Americans deleted, with all my sources ignored. The Times even carried an editorial suggesting the pilot was indeed a suicider. A subsequent US official report and accounts by US naval officers subsequently proved my dispatch correct. Except that Times readers were not allowed to see it. This was when I first made contact with The Independent. I didn't believe in The Times any more – certainly not in Rupert Murdoch.
Months later, a senior night editor who had been on duty on the night my Vincennes report arrived, recalled in a letter that he had promoted my dispatch as the splash, but that Wilson had said: "There's nothing in it. There's not a fact in it. I wouldn't even run this gibberish." Wilson, the night editor said, called it "bollocks" and "waffle". The night editor's diary for that day finished: "Shambles, chaos on Gulf story. [George] Brock [Wilson's foreign editor] rewrites Fisk."
The good news: a few months later, I was Middle East correspondent for The Independent. The bad news: I don't believe Murdoch personally interfered in any of the above events. He didn't need to. He had turned The Times into a tame, pro-Tory, pro-Israeli paper shorn of all editorial independence. If I hadn't been living in the Middle East, of course, it might have taken me longer to grasp all this.
But I worked in a region where almost every Arab journalist knows the importance of self-censorship – or direct censorship – and where kings and dictators do not need to give orders. They have satraps and ministers and senior police officers – and "democratic" governments – who know their wishes, their likes and dislikes. And they do what they believe their master wants. Of course, they all told me this was not true and went on to assert that their king/president was always right.
These past two weeks, I have been thinking of what it was like to work for Murdoch, what was wrong about it, about the use of power by proxy. For Murdoch could never be blamed. Murdoch was more caliph than ever, no more responsible for an editorial or a "news" story than a president of Syria is for a massacre – the latter would be carried out on the orders of governors who could always be tried or sacked or sent off as adviser to a prime minister – and the leader would invariably anoint his son as his successor. Think of Hafez and Bashar Assad or Hosni and Gamal Mubarak or Rupert and James. In the Middle East, Arab journalists knew what their masters wanted, and helped to create a journalistic desert without the water of freedom, an utterly skewed version of reality. So, too, within the Murdoch empire.
In the sterile world of the Murdochs, new technology was used to deprive the people of their freedom of speech and privacy. In the Arab world, surviving potentates had no problem in appointing tame prime ministers. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.