NATO foreign ministers met in Bucharest, Romania, on Tuesday, along with representatives of the prospective NATO members Ukraine, Finland, and Sweden to discuss a further expansion of the NATO war with Russia in Ukraine and the stationing of more troops on Russia’s Western borders.
“In response to Russia’s full-fledged invasion of Ukraine, we are raising the readiness of our troops,” said NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg at the start of the meeting. “And we have doubled the number of NATO battlegroups from four to eight. Including one here in Romania, led by France.”
“We have increased our presence on the ground, we have more presence in the air,” Stoltenberg said.
He continued, “Just last week, NATO Allies conducted an exercise to test air and missile defenses in Romania. Involving Spanish, Turkish and US aircraft, as well as French jets flying from the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle. Demonstrating how NATO Allies operate together and are ready to defend every inch, but also the airspace above NATO Allies.”
The “airspace above NATO Allies” is rapidly expanding, with Stoltenberg all but treating Finland and Sweden as members of NATO. He declared, “Their membership of NATO is a game-changer for the European security architecture. It will make them safer, our Alliance stronger and the Euro-Atlantic area more secure.”
Stoltenberg doubled down on NATO’s involvement in the war with Russia, saying, “So our message from Bucharest is that NATO will continue to stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes. We will not back down.”
Behind the scenes, these general pledges of expanded NATO involvement in the war are being filled out with concrete discussions to send US fighter jets, long-range missiles, and attack drones into the warzone.
In an article that appeared in Bloomberg, James Stavridis, NATO’s former Supreme Allied Commander Europe, declared that the “West’s best option will be to significantly increase its assistance to Ukraine on the air war side of the conflict.”
Stavridis claimed that NATO members are actively discussing sending US fighter jets to Ukraine, saying, “Leaders in NATO capitals are also revisiting an idea that was discarded in the early days of the war: providing either MiG-29 Soviet-era fighters (the Poles have offered to transfer them to the Ukrainians) or even US surplus F-16s, a simple-to-learn multi-role fighter.”
In an interview with Bloomberg, Latvian foreign minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said that NATO should “allow” Ukraine to strike targets inside of Russia, saying, “We should allow Ukrainians to use weapons to target missile sites or air fields from where those operations are being launched.” He added that NATO “should not fear” the response from Russia.
Ahead of the meeting, Landsbergis tweeted, “My message to fellow foreign ministers at today’s NATO meeting is simple: Keep calm and give tanks.”
Such calls were closely coordinated with demands by Ukrainian officials. “No eloquent speech will say more than concrete action. ‘Patriot’, ‘F-16’, or ‘Leopard’ for Ukraine,” tweeted presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak – referring to US F-16 fighter jets and German Leopard battle tanks.
A group of US senators have meanwhile issued a letter calling for the United States to provide lethal armed attack drones to Ukraine, the so-called “Grey Eagle,” which they praised for its “lethality.”
They note, most importantly, that armed Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) could find and attack Russian warships in the Black Sea.
They declare that “The MQ-1C, along with already provided long-range fires capabilities, provides Ukraine additional lethality needed to eject Russian forces and regain occupied territory.”
The signatories include Joe Manchin, a key Senate ally of US President Joe Biden, and Trump ally Lindsay Graham.
In an indication of the degree of tension surrounding the conflict, this week Russia canceled nuclear talks with the US at the last minute.
Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said that “We are sending signals to the Americans that their line of escalation and ever deeper involvement in this conflict is fraught with dire consequences. The risks are growing.”
As the US intervenes ever more directly in the conflict, its military strategists are expressing their aims all the more bluntly. In an essay entitled “United States Aid to Ukraine: An Investment Whose Benefits Greatly Exceed its Cost,” veteran US geostrategist Anthony H. Cordesman acknowledges that “the war in Ukraine has become the equivalent of a proxy war with Russia.”
Cordesman explains that “the U.S. has already obtained major strategic benefits from aiding the Ukraine,” while “Russia is already paying far more of its Gross National Product and economy to fight the war in the Ukraine than the U.S. and its partners, and that Russia has suffered massive losses of weapons, war reserves, and military personnel.”
While Cordesman’s essay treats the deaths of Russian troops and the devastation of the Russian economy as a benefit, it does not anywhere factor in the cost in Ukrainian lives or the suffering inflicted on the Ukrainian population by the war.
Even as the US and NATO continue to pour weapons in to Eastern Europe, Russia has responded with weeks of strikes on Ukraine’s power and water infrastructure, leaving millions of people, including much of the capital of Kiev, without power in the freezing temperatures.
Originally published in WSWS.org
The total daily volume of crude shipped from Russia rebounded to 2.89 million barrels in the seven days to November 25, with the EU’s price cap deadline approaching, Bloomberg reported on Monday.
According to the report, the volume of crude on vessels heading to China, India, and Turkey, plus the quantities on ships that are yet to show a final destination, rose again to a new high of 2.5 million barrels a day in the four weeks to November 25. That is three-and-a-half times higher than the volume shipped in the four weeks immediately prior to the launch of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine in late February.
Tankers hauling Russian crude are becoming “more cagey about their final destinations,” Bloomberg reports. The volume of crude on vessels leaving the Baltic and showing their next destination at Port Said or the Suez Canal reportedly jumped to almost 650,000 barrels a day. “It remains likely that most of these vessels will begin to signal Indian ports once they pass the canal,” the media outlet said.
According to Bloomberg, the total volume of crude expected to end up in Asia hit 2.3 million barrels a day on a four-week rolling average basis, including 115,000 barrels a day on tankers “whose point of discharge is unclear.” The combined figure set a new high for the year so far, the media outlet reports.
Meanwhile, Russia’s seaborne crude exports to European countries declined below 500,000 barrels a day in the 28 days to November 25. Flows were down by 104,000 barrels a day, or 18%, from the period to November 18. The figures do not include shipments to Turkey.
The report comes as EU nations struggle to decide on the price cap level for Russian crude, with the measure coming into effect on December 5.
“Should the politicians fail, which remains an outside possibility, EU companies will no longer be able to provide insurance and other services to ships carrying Russian crude and seaborne imports to the bloc will cease,” Bloomberg wrote. “If they succeed, European countries will still halt purchases from Russia, but companies will be permitted to carry Russian crude in European ships and to provide insurance and services as long as the cargo was purchased at a price below the cap.”
Moscow has already threatened to ban crude supply to countries that participate in the price cap scheme. “That could hit saborne flows to Bulgaria and possibly Slovakia and the Czech Republic, all of which have received exemptions from the EU’s import ban,” the report said.
Russia’s Warning To West
A price cap on Russian oil could cause shortages and disrupt investment in the energy sector, Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandr Novak has warned. Moscow will strictly observe its commitment to market principles in international trade, he added.
“Our position is pretty rigid here, and I have voiced it on many occasions. Regardless of what level is picked for the price cap, even it is high, it will be unacceptable in principle in terms of signing contracts. We will work under market conditions,” Novak told a business forum on Tuesday, according to Russian media.
The deputy prime minister blasted the U.S. and its allies for trying to impose various restrictions on Russia’s energy industry, blocking its access to technologies and stifling Russian international trade. Such actions “come with great risks” and may cause deficits and underinvestment, he said.
“This would be true for any commodity that Western nations may want to impose their rules on in the future,” Novak predicted.
G7 nations agreed to impose a price cap on Russian crude in September, with enforcement set to begin on December 5. The EU is negotiating its own version of similar restrictions, with Poland reportedly standing in the way of an agreement by pushing for a lower cap level. Shipments of Russian crude that do not comply would be denied insurance and other services by companies in Western jurisdictions, according to the plan.
Western officials believe Russia will still sell under the new terms, but would be denied windfall profits amid the global energy-price hike. However, Novak and other top Russian officials have said the country will not accept any cap.
Novak’s remarks came during the Russian-Chinese Energy Business Forum, an event organized by the governments of the two nations every year since 2018. Chinese Vice Premier of the State Council Han Zheng read a statement from President Xi Jinping during the event, in which the Chinese leader described energy as a “cornerstone of practical cooperation” between the two nations.
“China intends to build closer partnership with Russia in the energy sphere, foster development of clean and ‘green’ sources of energy, jointly defend international energy security and stability of supply chains, and contribute to the long-term reliability of the international energy market,” the message read.
Russia became the biggest supplier of oil to China after EU nations chose to cut trade with Moscow as a form of punishment for its role in the Ukraine conflict. Beijing disapproved of Moscow’s decision to send troops into its neighboring country in February, but blamed the US and the expansion of NATO in Europe for triggering the hostilities in the first place.
Russian Oil Price Cap: EU States Yet Fail To Agree
EU governments have been unable to agree on a proposed price cap for seaborne Russian crude oil as of Monday, diplomats told Reuters.
Poland and some Baltic states have reportedly demanded that the $65-70 figure proposed by the G7 countries be lower still, in order to hamper Russia’s ability to finance its military operation in Ukraine.
Warsaw insists the proposed cap will not have the desired effect on Moscow, pointing out that the country’s oil is currently trading somewhere between $52 and $63.50 per barrel. Along with Lithuania and Estonia, Poland has urged the bloc to set a ceiling of $30, allowing Moscow just $10 in per-barrel profits, assuming a production cost of $20 per barrel.
The three countries also want to add a review mechanism so that the cap can be revised further down should the desire arise, and have called for a more coherent outline of the next sanctions package targeting Russia.
Poland’s intransigence is reportedly irritating other bloc members, with one EU diplomat complaining to Reuters that Warsaw was “completely uncompromising on the price without suggesting an acceptable alternative” and adding there was a “growing annoyance with the Polish position.”
While Malta, Cyprus, and Greece had previously argued the G7’s proposed cap was too low, diplomats explained they secured concessions in the legal text and were willing to move forward with the current figures. Hungary withdrew its own opposition last week, after securing an exemption from the measure.
The price cap is supposed to prevent shipping, insurance, and reinsurance companies from doing business with Russian oil producers or resellers who try to sell the commodity at a profitable margin. Most major shipping and insurance companies are based in G7 countries, meaning an agreement among those nations would severely hobble Moscow’s ability to sell its oil at prices higher than the capped rate. Russia has repeatedly said it would not sell oil to any country that goes along with the cap.
Oil Supplies Will Be Withdrawn To Price Cap Countries, Warns Russia
Moscow will embargo countries that support the Group of Seven (G7) nations’ proposed price limit on its oil, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova warned on Thursday. The statement was echoed by Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov.
According to media reports, EU diplomats are optimistic they can reach a deal on a price ceiling for Russian oil exports despite sharp splits over the plan. Ambassadors are scheduled for more talks on Thursday evening to continue their discussions, Bloomberg sources say.
“We have repeatedly said that the introduction of so-called price ceiling for Russian oil is an anti-market measure, it disrupts supply chains, and can significantly complicate the situation on global energy markets,” Zakharova told a briefing on Thursday, adding “Russian Federation does not plan to supply oil to countries that will join the cartel of buyers.”
Zakharova noted that many oil-producing countries also oppose such a measure, pointing out: “They simply understand that today, by targeting Russia for purely economic reasons, the can apply such measures to any other country.”
She stressed that “price dictates undermine the world trade system and create a dangerous precedent not only in the energy market but also for international trade in general.”
In the price cap measure, there is a risk of a severe global energy crisis if Russia cuts off supplies and it is not clear if the price cap will have an impact on Moscow’s revenues.
On Thursday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow would embargo nations that support the proposed price limit on its oil.
Estonia’s Warning
A price cap on Russian oil proposed by the European Commission is too high and may be blocked by Estonia, Minister of Foreign Affairs Urmas Reinsalu said on Thursday, as quoted by Estonian state broadcaster ERR.
“Estonia finds that the price horizon’s ambition is too low, considering that the EU has also failed to agree on a ninth sanction package. The cap seems too high,” Reinsalu said at a government press conference, adding that discussions were ongoing.
Estonia’s warning came after EU leaders had already watered down the proposed cap by weakening some shipping provisions and delaying the implementation of the measure. Under the updated plan seen by Bloomberg, a grace period would apply to crude loaded before December 5, when oil-related sanctions come into effect, and unloaded by January 19.
It is hoped that the price limit would allow Russian production to remain at pre-sanctions levels, but reduce the country’s oil revenue.
India’s Purchase Of Russian Oil
India has bought about 40% of all seaborne Russian Urals grade oil capacity in November, Reuters reported on Monday citing its calculations based on Refinitiv figures and data from traders.
According to the figures, this made New Delhi the largest buyer of Urals oil this month.
India has been boosting imports of Russian oil for several months. In October, Russia overtook Saudi Arabia and Iraq to become the South Asian country’s largest oil supplier with a 22% share in India’s total crude imports, according to data from the energy cargo tracker Vortexa.
Prior to this year, European countries used to be the largest buyers of Russia’s Urals grade oil. Those exports dropped amid Western sanctions on Moscow, with European countries accounting for less than 25% of the shipments this month. Nearly all of them went to refineries in which Russian energy firms have a stake.
Traders expect the volume of Urals exports to the EU to drop further in December when a proposed price cap on Russian oil comes into force.
Overall, 7.5 million tons of Urals grade oil left Russian ports this month, apart from Kazakhstan’s transit volumes. Roughly 15% of those exports went to Turkey, which remained the biggest buyer of Urals oil in the Mediterranean. Several shipments were also on their way to Egypt, data showed, where they are likely to be reloaded onto other tankers for delivery to Asia.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is failing in its mission to help those in need after a disaster. Its mandate is simple — repair and rebuild — but racism, economic bias, and corruption leave the destitute without help. In Puerto Rico, the bureau made a bad situation worse after Category 4 Hurricane Maria devastated the area in 2017. When Hurricane Fiona hit this September, FEMA again floundered. Compounding the problems is the fact that, as a U.S. territory, the colony is treated like an abused stepchild.
Puerto Rico never recovered from the devastation of Hurricane Maria. Its electric system was destroyed and subsequently privatized. Congress put FEMA in charge of repairs but as of 2021, according to ABC News, the agency spent less than 1% of the $12 billion allotted to restore the power grid. The island suffers constant blackouts. Furthermore, to this day, 80% of the budget for wrecked infrastructure and buildings has not been spent. Tens of thousands of survivors have lived under leaky blue tarps for years.
Carmen Yulín Cruz, the mayor of San Juan at the time, called the failures in the federal response to the crisis “something close to a genocide.”
With little reconstruction accomplished, much milder Hurricane Fiona still caused serious damage. Once again FEMA was called in. A week after the storm, a million people were without power and hundreds of thousands lacked running water. Residents feared a repeat of Maria where 60% of homeowner applications were denied and poor, rural, Afro-Latinos were neglected.
Rife with fraud and bigotry. As climate-fueled disasters accelerate, more people will need federal relief. Unfortunately, FEMA is rampant with corruption. Even though it must compete for money with higher-status anti-terror groups in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), it is still a cash cow for disaster profiteers.
In 2019, FEMA’s Deputy Regional Administrator in charge of Puerto Rico’s restoration was indicted for fraud. She took bribes from a company that was paid $1.8 billion in federal funds to repair the electrical grid — which has yet to be fixed.
The organization has a history of allocating no-bid contracts to firms with little disaster experience. In procuring tarps post-Maria — for waterproof make-shift housing — the first two companies contracted failed to deliver and the third was investigated for fraud.
According to DHS’s own Office of Inspector General, FEMA mismanaged $65 million intended to help Puerto Rico residents. Another investigation found that the agency lost track of nearly $257 million worth of supplies. Commented Lía Fiol-Matta, with LatinoJustice PRLDEF, a Puerto Rican civil rights group, “These findings led to great suspicion about FEMA, but also it increased the probability that fraud has been committed.”
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights found that post-Maria FEMA discriminated against disabled people, Black and Latino residents, those of low income, and those who did not speak English. There were insufficient Spanish-speaking workers. Because money is doled out based on how much an applicant has invested in a house, poor homeowners got little relief due to low property values and informal proof of ownership.
FEMA uses outside labor instead of hiring local workers desperate for jobs. Its refusal to work with community-based organizations puts vulnerable populations like LGBTQ+ folks and non-English language speakers at a disadvantage. Furthermore, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), which represents the agency’s employees, reports many vacancies. Low-paid temporary workers and for-profit private contractors fill the void.
A federal panel established after Hurricane Katrina slammed FEMA for persistent income-based disparities concluding that “lower-income individuals sink further into poverty after disasters.”
There is a 40% increase in bankruptcy in people of color neighborhoods while whiter, wealthier areas stay stable. Historic Black and Latino neighborhoods are pockmarked with empty lots and dilapidated homes that people cannot afford to fix.
Adding to Puerto Rico’s problems is its status as a U.S. territory. In comparing aid responses on the mainland and on the island, a recent report noted that “if you were a Puerto Rican national, you faced perceptions that you were not really Americans. FEMA’s complete lack of preparedness to respond to Maria seemed directly proportional to that perception.”
A humanitarian crisis. The U.S. government has utterly failed Puerto Rico, from Congress to Department of Homeland Security. To survive, neighbors and community groups are working together to fill in the gaps, creating mutual aid networks to help rebuild homes, repair water damage and share food. Like all those abandoned by Uncle Sam and FEMA, the people of Puerto Rico need a system that works for their benefit.
Originally published in Socialism.com
Just in case you didn’t notice, authoritarianism was on the ballot in the 2022 midterm elections. An unprecedented majority of candidates from one of the nation’s two major political parties were committed to undemocratic policies and outcomes. You would have to go back to the Democratic Party-dominated segregationist South of the 1950s to find such a sweeping array of authoritarian proclivities in an American election. While voters did stop some of the most high-profile election deniers, conspiracy theorists, and pro-Trump true believers from taking office, all too many won seats at the congressional, state, and local levels.
Count on one thing: this movement isn’t going away. It won’t be defeated in a single election cycle and don’t think the authoritarian threat isn’t real either. After all, it now forms the basis for the politics of the Republican Party and so is targeting every facet of public life. No one committed to constitutional democracy should rest easy while the network of right-wing activists, funders, media, judges, and political leaders work so tirelessly to gain yet more power and implement a thoroughly undemocratic agenda.
This deeply rooted movement has surged from the margins of our political system to become the defining core of the GOP. In the post-World War II era, from the McCarthyism of the 1950s to Barry Goldwater’s run for the presidency in 1964, from President Richard Nixon’s Southern strategy, President Ronald Reagan, and Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in its current Trumpian iteration, Republicans have long targeted democratic norms as impediments to establishing a neoliberal, race-based version of all-American authoritarianism. And that movement has been far too weakly opposed by far too many Democratic Party leaders and even some progressives. Don’t think of this phenomenon as right-wing conservativism either, but as a more dangerous, even violent movement whose ultimate aim is to overthrow liberal democracy. The American version of this type of electoral authoritarianism, anchored in Christian nationalist populism, has at its historic core a white nationalist pushback against the struggle for racial justice.
Liberal Democracy for Some, Racial Authoritarianism for Others
Liberal democracy had failed generations of African Americans and other people of color, as, of course, it did Native Americans massacred or driven from their ancestral lands. It failed African Americans and Latinos forced to work on chain gangs or lynched (without the perpetrators suffering the slightest punishment). It failed Asian Americans who were brutally sent to internment camps during World War II and Asians often explicitly excluded from immigration rosters.
The benefits of liberal democracy — rule of law, government accountability, the separation of powers, and the like — that were extended to most whites existed alongside a racial authoritarianism that denied fundamental rights and protections to tens of millions of Americans. The Civil Rights reforms of the 1960s defeated the longstanding, all-too-legal regime of racist segregationists and undemocratic, even if sometimes constitutional, authority. For the first time since the end of the Reconstruction era, when there was a concerted effort to extend voting rights, offer financial assistance, and create educational opportunities for those newly freed from slavery, it appeared that the nation was again ready to reckon with its racial past and present.
Yet, all too sadly, the proponents of autocratic governance did anything but disappear. In the twenty-first century, their efforts are manifest in the governing style and ethos of the Republican Party, its base, and the extremist organizations that go with it, as well as the far-right media, think tanks, and foundations that accompany them. At every level, from local school boards and city councils to Congress and the White House, authoritarianism and its obligatory racism continue to drive the GOP political agenda.
The violent insurrection of January 6, 2021, was just the high (or, depending on your views, low) point in a long-planned, multi-dimensional, hyper-conservative, white nationalist coup attempt engineered by President Donald Trump, his supporters, and members of the Republican Party. It was neither the beginning nor the end of that effort, just its most violent public expression — to date, at least. After all, Trump’s efforts to delegitimize elections were first put on display when he claimed that Barack Obama had actually lost the popular vote and so stolen the 2012 election, that it had all been a “total sham.”
During the 2016 presidential debates, Trump alone stated that he would not commit himself to support any other candidate as the party’s nominee, since — a recurring theme for him — he could only lose if the election were rigged or someone cheated. He correctly grasped that there would be no consequences to such norm-breaking behavior and falsely stated that he had only lost the Iowa caucus to Senator Ted Cruz because “he stole it.” After losing the popular vote but winning the Electoral College in 2016, Trump incessantly complained that he would have won the popular vote, too, if the “millions” of illegal voters who cast their ballots for Hillary Clinton hadn’t been counted.
Donald Trump decisively lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden, 74.2 million to 81.2 million in the popular vote and 232 to 306 in the Electoral College, leaving only one path to victory (other than insurrection) — finding a way to discount millions of black votes in key swing-state cities. From birtherism and Islamophobia to anti-Black Lives Matter rhetoric, racism had propelled Trump’s ascendancy and his political future would be determined by the degree to which he and his allies could invalidate votes in the disproportionately Black cities of Atlanta, Detroit, Milwaukee, and Philadelphia, and Latino and Native American votes in Arizona and Nevada.
The GOP effort to disqualify Black, Latino, and Native American votes was a plot to create an illegitimate government, an unholy scheme that took an inescapably violent turn and led to an outcome for which the former president has yet to be held accountable. Sadly enough, the forces of authoritarianism were anything but dispatched by their defeat on January 6th. If anything, they were emboldened by the failure so far to hold responsible most of the agents who maneuvered the event into motion.
Democracy, Authoritarianism, or Fascism?
The last decade has exposed a severely wounded American democratic experiment. Consider it Donald Trump’s contribution to have revealed how spectacularly the guardrails of liberal democracy can fail if the breaking of laws, rules, and norms goes unchallenged or is sacrificed on the altar of narrow political gains. The most mendacious, cruel, mentally unstable, thin-skinned, vengeful, incompetent, narcissistic, bigoted individual ever elected to the presidency was neither an accident, nor an aberration. He was the inevitable outcome of decades of Republican pandering to anti-democratic forces and white nationalist sentiments.
Scholars have long debated the distinction between fascism and authoritarianism. Fascist states create an all-engulfing power that rules over every facet of political and social life. Elections are abolished; mass arrests occur without habeas corpus; all opposition media are shut down; freedoms of speech and assembly are curtailed; courts, if allowed to exist at all, rubber-stamp undemocratic state policies; while the military or brown shirts of some sort enforce an unjust, arbitrary legal system. Political parties are outlawed and opponents are jailed, tortured, or killed. Political violence is normalized, or at least tolerated, by a significant portion of society. There is little pretense of constitutional adherence or the constitution is formally suspended.
On the other hand, authoritarian states acknowledge constitutional authority, even if they also regularly ignore it. Limited freedoms continue to exist. Elections are held, though generally with predetermined outcomes. Political enemies aren’t allowed to compete for power. Nationalist ideology diverts attention from the real levers and venues of that power. Political attacks against alien “others” are frequent, while public displays of racism and ethnocentrism are common. Most critically, some enjoy a degree of democratic norms while accepting that others are denied them completely. During the slave and Jim Crow eras in this country — periods of racial authoritarianism affecting millions of Blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans — most whites in the South (and perhaps a majority outside of it) either tolerated or embraced the disavowal of democracy.
Under the right confluence of forces — a weakened system of checks and balances, populist rhetoric that taps into fears and perceived injustices, an anemic and divided opposition, deep social or racial divides, distrust of science and scientists, rampant anti-intellectualism, unpunished corporate and political malfeasance, and popularly accepted charges of mainstream media bias — a true authoritarian could indeed come to power in this country. And as history has shown, that could just be a prelude to full-blown fascism.
The warning signs could not be clearer.
While, in many ways, Trump’s administration was more of a kakistocracy — that is, “government by the worst and most unscrupulous people,” as scholar Norm Ornstein put it — from day one to the last nano-seconds of its tenure, his autocratic tendencies were all too often on display. His authoritarian appetites generated an unprecedented library of books issuing distress signals about the dangers to come.
Timothy Snyder’s 2017 bestseller On Tyranny was, for instance, a brief but remarkably astute early work on the subject. The Yale history professor provided a striking overview of tyranny meant to dispel myths about how autocrats or populists come to and stay in power. Although published in 2017, the work made no mention of Donald Trump. It was, however, clearly addressing the rise to power of his MAGA right and soberly warning the nation to stop him before it was too late.
As Snyder wrote of the institutions of our democracy, they “do not protect themselves… The mistake is to assume that rulers who came to power through institutions cannot change or destroy those very institutions — even when that is exactly what they have announced that they will do.” He particularly cautioned against efforts to link the police and military to partisan politics, as Trump first did in 2020 when his administration had peaceful protesters attacked by the police and National Guard in Lafayette Square across from the White House so that the president could take a stroll to a local church. He similarly warned about letting private security forces, often with violent tendencies (as when Trump’s security team would eject demonstrators from his political rallies) gain quasi-official or official status.
The period 2015 to 2020 certainly represented the MAGAfication of the United States and launched this country on a potential path toward future authoritarian rule by the GOP.
The Vulnerabilities of Democracy
Journalists have also been indispensable in exposing the democratic vulnerabilities of the United States. The New Yorker’s Masha Gessen has, for instance, been prolific and laser-focused in calling out the hazards of creeping authoritarianism and of Trump’s “performing fascism.” She writes that while he may not himself have fully grasped the concept of fascism, “In his intuition, power is autocratic; it affirms the superiority of one nation and one race; it asserts total domination; and it mercilessly suppresses all opposition.”
While Trump is too lazy, self-interested, and intellectually undisciplined to be a coherent ideologue, he surrounded himself with and took counsel from those who were, including far-right zealots and Trump aides Steve Bannon, Sebastian Gorka, and Stephen Miller. Bannon functioned as Trump’s Goebbels-ish propagandist, having cut his white nationalist teeth as founder and executive chair of the extremist Breitbart News media operation. In 2018, he told a gathering of European far-right politicians, fascists, and neo-Nazis, “Let them call you racist. Let them call you xenophobes. Let them call you nativists. Wear it as a badge of honor. Because every day, we get stronger and they get weaker.”
Someone who knows the former president better than most, his niece Mary Trump, all too tellingly wrote that her uncle “is an instinctive fascist who is limited by his inability to see beyond himself.” For her, there is no question the title fits. As she put it, “[A]rguing about whether or not to call Donald a fascist is the new version of the media’s years-long struggle to figure out if they should call his lies, lies. What’s more relevant now is whether the media — and the Democrats — will extend the label of fascism to the Republican Party itself.”
Mainstreaming Extremism and Democracy’s Decline
Given these developments, some scholars and researchers argue that the nation’s democratic descent may already have gone too far to be fully stopped. In its Democracy Report 2020: Autocratization Surges — Resistance Grows, the Varieties of Democracy (VDem) Project, which assesses the democratic health of nations globally, summarized the first three years of Trump’s presidency this way: “[Democracy] has eroded to a point that more often than not leads to full-blown autocracy.” Referring to its Liberal Democracy Index scale, it added, “The United States of America declines substantially on the LDI from 0.86 in 2010 to 0.73 in 2020, in part as a consequence of President Trump’s repeated attacks on the media, opposition politicians, and the substantial weakening of the legislature’s de facto checks and balances on executive power.”
These findings were echoed in The Global State of Democracy 2021, a report by the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance that argued, “The United States, the bastion of global democracy, fell victim to authoritarian tendencies itself, and was knocked down a significant number of steps on the democratic scale.”
The failure of Donald Trump’s eternally “stolen election” coup attempt and the presidency of Joe Biden may have put off the further development of an authoritarian state, but don’t be fooled. Neither the failure of the January 6th insurrection nor the disappointments suffered in the midterm elections have deterred the ambitions of the GOP’s fanatics. The Republican takeover of the House of Representatives, however slim, will undoubtedly unleash a further tsunami of extremist actions not just against the Democrats, but the American people.
Purges of Democrats from House committees, McCarthyite-style hearings and investigations, and an all-out effort to rig the system to declare whoever emerges as the GOP’s 2024 presidential candidate the preemptive winner will mark their attempt to rule. Such actions will be duplicated — and worse — in states with Republican governors and legislatures, as officials there bend to the autocratic urges of their minority but fervent white base voters. They will be supported by a network of far-right media, donors, activists, and Trump-appointed judges and justices.
In response, defending the interests of working people, communities of color, LGBTQ individuals and families, and other vulnerable sectors of this society will mean alliances between progressives, liberals, and, in some instances, disaffected and distraught anti-Trump, pro-democracy Republicans. There are too many historical examples of authoritarian and fascist takeovers while the opposition remained split and in conflict not to form such political alliances. Nothing is more urgent at this moment than the complete political defeat of an anti-democratic movement that is, all too sadly, still on the march.
Sustainable Consumption
Life on earth can be divided in two parts – plant life and animal life. The difference between the two is that plants produce their own food whereas animals, humans included, live directly or indirectly on food produced by plants.
To sustain themselves, humans consume goods and services not only from plant sources but also from inanimate sources such as minerals. These are called renewable and non-renewable resources respectively. Non-renewable resources, like fossil fuels and metals, are finite in nature by definition; in other words, the more we use them, the scarcer they get. Renewable sources, like plants, trees and agriculture, are by definition renewed in nature; both by natural processes and helped by human efforts.
Now, a rough definition of sustainability is that we consume resources in such a way that the same level of resources we enjoyed is available to succeeding generations and all other forms of life. This issue was not important in history because our population was small and levels of consumption per capita were also small. Today, both have increased substantially.
So, for sustainable consumption, the first requirement is that we reduce our per capita consumption. Secondly, more of it should come from renewable resources.
There is an interesting fact about non-renewable resources. Be it fuel used in transport, chemical pesticides in agriculture, cement used in our housing or plastic used in our packaging industry, they almost always tend to pollute and add to global warming. This is one more important reason for us to reduce the component of non-renewable sources in our consumption.
Value Chain
What is a value chain? It is the chain of value [the term ‘value’ used here is a business term and not value in the normal sense] added to a product from the source till it reaches the consumer.
If we climb a tree and eat its fruit, there is no value chain. Similarly if we live in a cave, go naked as animals and as some ‘primitive’ people do, there is no value chain.
But most of us buy the goods we consume. An apple is produced in Himachal Pradesh, picked, packed and transported to Hyderabad. In Hyderabad you buy it either on a bandi (push cart) or in a supermarket. So the ‘value’ gets added to the original apple in a chain consisting of picking, packing, transporting and retail selling in Hyderabad. Now if this apple was converted into apple juice, involving some processing, there would be more links in the value chain and hence more value would be added.
There is a difference between an apple sold on a bandi and in a supermarket. It can happen that the price in the supermarket is lower, but it is not difficult to understand that the value added to it in a supermarket is more. This extra value is called a shelf rent – which can include the rent of the place, salaries and air conditioning. You would also have noticed that a big chunk of the difference comes from non-renewable resources, in transportation etc., contributing to pollution and global warming. Hence, it is less sustainable.
We can add some more attributes to sustainability. Instead of an apple, suppose it was a sitafal produced in or around Hyderabad and sold in Sitafal Mandi or on the footpath? It will have much less value added and it will be more sustainable.
We can extend this logic to other sectors of our activity. Locally produced food is more sustainable as we have seen above. Mud houses or brick and lime mortar houses or ecological houses are more sustainable, not only because of the material used, but also because less energy is used in lighting and keeping them cool. In fact, air conditioning is the biggest guzzler of energy in domestic consumption. To mention another example, neighbourhood schools can reduce transport costs and so would more use of cycles for small distances. Similar is the case if we use cotton in our clothing.
In many cases, sustainable products are more ‘expensive’. While ‘value added’ can be calculated, price is determined by a variety of unpredictable factors, which have a lot to do with politics and the present social order.
To conclude, for sustainable consumption, there are four principles we can follow:
- Consume less.
- What you consume should have a higher proportion of materials from renewable resources.
- The chain from the source to end user should be as short as possible, so that ‘value addition’ is reduced. That is, consume local products as much as possible.
- The components of the chain should use as little non-renewable resources as possible. For example, the transport can be done on animal carts or bicycles or hand pushed carts. The packaging can be minimal. Consumers can carry their own bags, paper or cloth bags instead of plastic carry bags and so on.
T. Vijayendra (1943- ) was born in Mysore, grew in Indore and went to IIT Kharagpur to get a B. Tech. in Electronics (1966). After a year’s stint at the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, Kolkata, he got drawn into the whirlwind times of the late 60s. Since then, he has always been some kind of political-social activist. His brief for himself is the education of Left wing cadres and so he almost exclusively publishes in the Left wing journal Frontier, published from Kolkata. For the last nine years, he has been active in the field of ‘Peak Oil’ and is a founder member of Peak Oil India and Ecologise. Since 2015 he has been involved in Ecologise! Camps and in 2016 he initiated Ecologise Hyderabad. He divides his time between an organic farm at the foothills of Western Ghats, watching birds, writing fiction and Hyderabad. He has published a book dealing with resource depletions, three books of essays, two collections of short stories, a novella and an autobiography. Vijayendra has been a ‘dedicated’ cyclist all his life, meaning, he neither took a driving licence nor did he ever drive a fossil fuel based vehicle. Email: t.vijayendra@gmail.com
This movie produced by Richard Attenborough which was released 40 years ago on November 30th, 1982, was classic in it’s own right. Ironical that it took an Englishman to embark upon the making of a film on this legendary figure.
I can’t visualize a better pictorial portrayal of Gandhi’s life or an actor getting in the skin of the character an exuding the mannerisms as actor Ben Kingsley.
Episodes are crafted and grafted surgically, illustrating how Gandhi wove fragmented bits into a cohesive force, to confront he British empire. Most boldly the movie unfolds how British colonialism subjugated the Indian people to barbaric cruelty.
With great mastery the cinematography captures the vast Indian landscapes and essence of livelihood of Indians under colonial rule.
The movie most illustratively shows the crystallisation of anti-colonial fervour from the embryonic stage and how it fermented into an integrated movement.
In a most subtle manner it illustrates Gandhi’s transition from a stalwart of the British into a die hard enemy of colonial rule.
The movie reveals the methods Gandhi adopted to win over the masses through his deep simplicity in style of living and his deep-rooted mastery of the psyche and idioms of the people, at the very grassroots. This was illustrated in the scenes from the Tolstoy farm in South Africa itself, when Gandhi shows his adulation for manual labour, making his wife clean the latrine. Vibrations are given of an Indian version of Tolstoy, in the movie. It illustrated Gandhi’s genius in innovating methods to bring in millions into the fold of the Congress party. Heart touching scenes of Gandhi touring India, in a third class train, examining India’s poverty. I can’t forget a scene of Gandhi in a meeting, personally placing his tea cup back in the kitchen. The movie manifests what Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh stated “I and others may be revolutionaries but we are disciples of Mahatma Gandhi, directly or indirectly, nothing more nothing less.”
The salt march of 1930 is projected at it’s maximum intensity projecting how it manifested anti-colonial spirit at helm through galvanising people like a mighty army, revealing how it embarrassed the colonialists in their very den.
The event of Jallianawallah Bagh is covered giving complete justice to the casualties.
Heart touching scenes of Gandhi touring India, in a third class train, examining India’s poverty.
Also vividly delves on the injustice of the zamindari system, through projecting plight of Indigo planters.
Classically in black and white reels, it encompasses period of Gandhi visiting Lancashire workers when going for the Round Table conference.
Positive that it projects Gandhi as a champion of secularism, who in every juncture professes Hindu-Muslim Unity, capped at Noakhali, where he fasted to prevent Hindu-Muslim riots. Poignant scenes of Gandhi and Nehru rebuking the RSS, which is relevant in this day and age, when Hindutva fascism is fermenting at an unprecedented height. Also noteworthy it projects Gandhi stating “I am a Hindu, Muslim, Christian and a Jew and so are all of you.”This is message all the more relevant today, with religious wars breaking up the world.
A very poignant scene in the movie, where General Dyer is placed on trial by the English jury ,after the firing in Jallianwallah Bagh.It tends to portray a British sense of justice ,even as a colonial power. Similar reflections when Gandhi is charged in court in the 1920’s for sedition. Projects the evolution of parliamentary democracy and human rights concept in Britain. Whatever grave cruelties unleashed an the most malicious intentions, the roots of parliamentary democracy were laid down by the British.
Flaws
The main flaw of this film is projecting Muhammad Ali Jinnah as a villain, responsible for partition. It fails to highlight the role of the Congress in crystallizing this outcome, colluding with the British. The movie virtually depicts partition as an inevitable historical outcome, and absolves the conspiracy of the British in being responsible for breaking India. Even in riot scenes we witness grievances of Hindus but not of Muslims. It shows Jinnah sitting around with Congress leadership in Gandhi’s ashram after the 1931 Round Table Conference, rebuking the Mahatma: ‘After all your travels, after all your efforts, they sent you back empty-handed.’ Jinnah attended the Round Table Conference, from which everyone came away empty-handed, including him – so this would have been an odd thing to say. It’s even odder to picture Jinnah casually hanging out with Congress leadership in the 1930s: he had left the party in 1920, abhorring Gandhi’s ‘pseudo-religious orientation to politics’. During World War II, Gandhi is shown saying sadly that ‘Jinnah has cooperated with the British.’ He did, but let’s not forget that – whatever their crimes as imperialists – the British were on the right side in World War II. At the time, Jinnah’s cooperation was viewed by many as more morally defensible than Gandhi’s non-cooperation.
It fails to highlight how although Gandhi championed untouchability, to the last core he defended the caste system, by undertaking fast against Poona pact created by B.R Ambedkar.In important phases, Gandhi refuted Ambedkar and confronted the germinating of anti-caste movements.
There was no reflection of how inspite of morally championing the downtrodden Gandhi’s orientation was towards compromising class struggles. This was apparent in Champaran and when major peasant revolts sprouted, engulfing the whole country.
The movie did not touch upon the role of the Industrial working class and how Gandhi opposed class conflict between workers and Industrialists. The Ahmedabad workers strike was not shown.
The film obliterated how in junctures Gandhi obstructed genuine mass uprisings or revolts like Bhagat Singh’s movements or non-cooperation movement when it reached a height or even certain non-violent militant actions like Garhwali soldiers refusing to fire or Indian navy revolting were condemned by Gandhi.
The film obliterates Gandhi’s thoughts on Axis powers. A clear cut picture was not illustrated on Gandhi’s reaction to World War 2 and fascism, portraying how Gandhi colluded with both Britain and the fascist powers, ideologically. Examples are Gandhi’s advising the Jews to surrender to Hitler, forecasting fascist victory as inevitable and showing hesitation in supporting Britain against the Axis countries n World War 2.
The Quit India movement of 1942, which was major turning point in the Independence movement, is not projected in the correct light. The compromising nature of the Congress is not unmasked, who subdued it in taking a militant turn.
A grave omission was the Bengal famine of the 1940’s, which illustrated apathy towards suffering at magnitude rarely surpassed in a colonial country. It obliterated projecting not only the insensitive attitude of the British rulers but also the apathy of the Congress, who did not wet it’s feet to the slightest.
We do not witness Gandhi’s closeness to Industrialists like GD Birla, who often hosted him, inspite of being an ardent opponent of any strike of the Workers, and a staunch supporter of Hindu forces.
. On 13 April 1919, British Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer encircled several thousand men, women and children in a walled garden in Amritsar, where they were listening peacefully to political speeches. Without warning, he opened fire. Even the low official figures admitted at least 379 were killed, 1,200 injured. The film correctly illustrates, Amritsar immediately radicalised Jawaharlal Nehru, among others. However does not portray that the effect on Gandhi was slower with his first reaction to criticise the victims for having ‘taken to their heels’ rather than accept death naturally. It was over a year later when he finally handed back his British Empire medal and vowed to fight for Indian independence.
After Partition, Calcutta was torn apart by Hindu-Muslim violence. Gandhi declared he would fast until it ceased. It did, in little more than a day. Surprisingly, the film distorts this, projecting Gandhi demoralised and struggling in Calcutta. In real life, this fast was one of the most intense displays of the moral power for which he reknowned. As Lord Mountbatten, then Governor-General of India wrote to him: ‘In the Punjab we have 55,000 soldiers and large scale rioting on our hands. In Bengal our forces consist of one man, and there is no rioting.’ That, surely, was a manifestation of the secular spirit.
No coverage of his racist attitude towards the black community in South Africa. During his entire South African tenure and for some time after, until he was about fifty, Gandhi was completely subservient to the colonial powers, bargaining for Indians the rights of Englishmen but relentlessly loyal to the crown. He supported the empire devotedly in no fewer than three wars: the Boer War, the “Kaffir War,” and, with the most extreme zeal, World War I.
In a critique Richard Grenier summarises how Gandhi’s full fledged desire to disentangle India from the British empire did not instill within him the slightest sympathy with other colonial peoples pursuing similar goals.. A trend encompassing his entire life displayed the most grosses inability to comprehend or even absorb people unlike himself—a trait which V.S. Naipaul considers specifically Hindu. Just as Gandhi had been totally unconcerned with the situation of South Africa’s blacks (he hardly noticed they were there until they rebelled), so now he was totally unconcerned with other Asians or Africans. In fact, he was diametrically opposed to certain Arab movements within the Ottoman empire .Gandhi—ignoring Arabs and Turks—became an adamant supporter of the Khilafat movement out of strident Indian nationalism.
The movie does not highlight how Gandhi’s adherence to Ram Rajya and Bhagavad Gita,and how he made Hinduism penetrate into the agenda of the freedom movement. Quoting Richard Grenier “During the key part of his life, Gandhi devoted a great deal of time explaining the moral and philosophical meanings of both ahimsa and satyagraha. However the theme of the film projects Gandhi to the point where one would mistake him for a Christian saint, and illustrates India to the point where one would take it for Shangri-la, it places into oblivion Gandhi’s ethical and religious thoughts, his complexities, his qualifications, and certainly his vacillations, which modifying leaves us with pacifism. It is true that Gandhi was much impressed by the Sermon on the Mount, his favourite passage in the Bible, which he read over and over again. But for the entire Sermon’s inspirational value, and its service as an ideal in relations among individual human beings, no Christian state which survived has ever based its policies on the Sermon on the Mount since Constantine declared Christianity the official religion of the Roman empire. And no modern Western state which survives can ever base its policies on pacifism. And no Hindu state will ever base its policies on ahimsa. Gandhi himself—although the film dishonestly conceals this from us—many times conceded that in dire circumstances “war may have to be resorted to as a necessary evil.”
Arguably the film misses out on the merciless cruelty unleashed on militant freedom fighters, portraying are relatively lenient approach to the Congress led struggles.
A proper distinction is not clearly made on Gandhi being a social reformer, and not a social revolutionary.
Harsh Thakor is a freelance journalist who has undertaken extensive research on life of Gandhi
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