WAR ON GAZA

Distant solidarity

Mahir Ali 

DAWN

Published March 27, 2024 

Mahir Ali

IT took almost six months for the UN Security Council to call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, after the US decided against kiboshing yet another call for peace with its customary veto against any challenge to Zionist belligerence.

In any context involving even a mild reprimand to Israel, outright US rejection has invariably been the default. An American abstention therefore supposedly counts as a big deal. That isn’t any more bizarre than the broader US-Israeli relations. Extensive Israeli interference in domestic US politics — generally unchallenged, unlike the less effective Russian or Chinese initiatives, imaginary or otherwise, that are condemned as threats to a depleted democracy — has been the norm since the 1950s.

It has evolved into more monstrous forms, but in recent decades has also faced vociferous resistance from younger American Jews who resent the idea of their identity being linked to a proto-fascist state that lays claim to their souls. This is not an entirely novel phenomenon. Even in what tend to be recalled as its halcyon days, Israel went out of its way to target diaspora critics — especially in the US, as Geoffrey Levin explains in his recent book Our Palestine Question.

The mission was reasonably successful, but became more or less redundant during and immediately after the 1967 and 1973 wars, when a perceived existential threat to Israel from its hostile Arab neighbours united most American Jews. Succeeding generations developed a less blinkered outlook, with a clearer view of the frequently murderous injustice ‘necessitated’ by Israeli expansionism. It reminded some of them of the atrocities their forebears faced in Nazi-occupied territories during World War II.

It is also worth noting the geopolitical changes in the Middle East since the 1973 Opec oil embargo spearheaded by Arab states in the wake of the Yom Kippur war and directed primarily against the US, which had emerged as Israel’s biggest supporter. It was still in place when its initiators and leading advocates gathered in Lahore 50 years ago for the Islamic summit co-hosted by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and King Faisal of Saudi Arabia but was lifted in March 1974. That may or may not have had something to do with Richard Nixon’s inclination to militarily capture oil fields in Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and Kuwait.

Muslim nations have betrayed the Palestinians.

It could be argued that even back then broad Arab support for the cause of Palestinian nationhood was largely a political manoeuvre intended to quell popular resentment, and a pressure tactic against the US perception of Israel as its principal satrapy in the Middle East. It’s complicated. Yet it’s obvious that Arab nations today are far less inclined to push back against Zionism’s excesses. The so-called ‘front line’ states of 50 years ago are broken entities today. The primary oil states are driven exclusively by self-interest, in which Israel plays a bigger part than its Arab victims.

The UAE remains wedded to the so-called Abraham Accords, even as many of the Emirati luminaries who saw money-making opportunities in the open relationship with Israel are compelled to reassess their enthusiasm amid evidence of a multipronged genocide. Saudi Arabia likewise is more keen to formalise commercial ties with Israel than to make any effort on behalf of the diminishing number of Palestinians, notwithstanding the lip service paid to a ‘peace settlement’ or a ‘two-state solution’. With the usual exception of Qatar, no Arab nation with regional clout has stood up to be counted.

Perhaps, after years of debilitating wars, none considers itself capable of taking a stand. For what it’s worth, though, the show of resistance by the Houthis — who have survived a Sa­­­udi/ Emirati mi­­litary campaign in­­tended to obliterate them — should shame others in the region. Nor have other Muslim countries, with the arguable exception of Malaysia under Anwar Ibrahim — offered much more than ‘thoughts and prayers’.

South Africa is the standout nation in this context, with its long history of comparable apartheid and consequent solidarity with the Palestinian cause. Left-leaning South American republics — from Brazil, Colombia, Bolivia and Chile to Mexico — have also resisted pressure to embrace the offensive Zionist narrative. Equally strikingly, European nations from Ireland and Spain to Norway have resoundingly rejected the Western attachment to Zionist extremism, standing far apart from Germany’s determination to be on the wrong side of history once again.

The US in particular could more or less immediately halt the massacres in Gaza by suspending all aid and weapons shipments to Israel. Without that move, any excoriation of the Netanyahu regime as the primary obstacle to peace is mere hogwash. History won’t easily absolve the US — alongside its Arab collaborators — of complicity in genocide.

mahir.dawn@gmail.com
Published in Dawn, March 27th, 2024

Ceasefire, finally

DAWN
Editorial Published March 26, 2024



OVER five months since the Gazan slaughter began, the UN Security Council finally approved on Monday a resolution calling for a ceasefire in the occupied Palestinian territory. Several such attempts had been made since the conflict between Israel and Hamas began on Oct 7, yet the US had vetoed three ceasefire resolutions.

This time, probably because of the international backlash against Israeli barbarism, as well as domestic criticism of the Biden administration’s ‘iron-clad’ support for Tel Aviv’s murderous campaign in an election year, Washington decided to abstain. This may indicate the American government’s moral ambiguity over the mass murder of over 32,000 Palestinian civilians — the US ambassador to the UN said they “did not agree” with everything in the resolution — but perhaps such a position is preferable to stonewalling every attempt to stop the butchery.

While there is little to celebrate, as the level of suffering in Gaza is staggering, at least the people of the besieged Strip will be given a break from the daily dose of death and destruction to mourn their loved ones, and start the long, painful process of healing. The UN secretary general was recently at the Rafah crossing and called for removing the obstacles that are blocking aid from reaching Gaza. Israel is the biggest obstacle, and it is hoped the ceasefire will allow food, water and medical aid to reach hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in distress. Famine — most of it manufactured by Israel — now stalks Gaza, with the WHO saying children in the Strip are on the “brink of death”. Moreover, thousands of children have been orphaned in this unholy war, and are in particular need of medical and psychological attention to help them deal with the trauma of watching genocidal violence unfold before their eyes. These must be the immediate goals of the international community.

Apart from extending prompt humanitarian assistance to Gaza’s population, all sides must work towards a more permanent cessation of violence. It should be remembered that an almost weeklong truce was agreed to in November, but broke down soon after.

The current arrangement should be more durable. While talk of ‘solutions’ may be unrealistic right now, once the dust has settled, Israel should be made to pay for the murder of thousands of innocents. Palestinian lives matter, and a generation of orphaned Gazan children will be looking to the world community to secure justice for them.

All eyes will now be on Israel and the US, its chief patron. Will Tel Aviv abide by the UNSC resolution? Or will it live up to its reputation of being a rogue state by dismissing this binding call, and continuing with its criminal campaign in Gaza? The days ahead will be critical for the entire region.

Published in Dawn, March 26th, 2024

PAKISTAN

Analysis: Pension reforms on the road to nowhere

Nasir Jamal

DAWN

Published March 27, 2024 

Experts say the annual public sector pension liability is nearly equal to what the government spends on development projects.—File photo


The finance ministry is understood to have shared a pension reform programme with the IMF to contain the growing pension liability as the consolidated federal and provincial pension expenditure is projected to increase by over 20pc from Rs1.252 trillion last year to Rs1.513tn this year.

The pension reform plan, which the government proposed to roll out from July, is a mirror image of the measures that ex-finance minister Ishaq Dar had introduced in his last budget for the current fiscal of 2023-24. The decisions, however, could not be implemented this year because of opposition from the Establishment Division that insisted it would put the civil servants at a disadvantage.

The reforms scheme shared with the lender seeks to cut the annual federal pension expense on its existing employees by changing the formula for pension calculation, slashing the commutation rate, discouraging early retirement through imposition of a penalty, restricting the list of beneficiaries of the deceased employees, and ending the current practice of multiple pensions.

In case, the spouse of the deceased employee is also a government employee, the spouse would not get the pension. Likewise, if a retired employee is rehired they will be given the option to choose either pension or salary. The plan also proposes to index any increase in pension with the Consumer Price Index, with a maximum allowable increase of 10pc per year.

Experts say current system unsustainable, short-term measures can’t be substitute for reform, move towards contributory schemes

The ‘reforms’ are being revived as the country seeks a new medium-term bailout from the lender to reduce its growing external vulnerabilities, and shore up its foreign exchange reserves. Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb said that “the matter of an Extended Fund Facility (EFF) with the IMF would be discussed in Washington next month”.

The government and the IMF have already reached an agreement regarding the disbursal of the last tranche of $1.1bn under the present $3bn short-term standby arrangement (SBA) facility, which expires next month.

Earlier, a statement issued by the IMF on the conclusion of the final SBA review had indicated that fiscal consolidation through cuts in public sector expenditure and improvements in revenue collection, restoration of the energy sector’s viability, reduction in inflation, foreign exchange market reforms, and private sector facilitation would be the key goals of the successor programme.

‘Parametric reforms’

While the suggested changes in the pension rules — described as “parametric” reforms by Hasaan Khawar, an Islamabad-based development consultant, are important short-term measures to contain the pension expenditure, they cannot be a substitute for contributory pension schemes.

“The proposed reforms to reduce retirement age and cut pension benefits are imperative. But both the federal government and provinces will have to ultimately move towards contributory pension models because the present pension system has become unsustainable…,” argued Sajid Amin Javed, an economist associated with the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics.

“The annual public-sector pension liability is now bigger or equal to what the government spends on development projects. This is unsustainable and must change.”

While most countries have already moved from unfunded to funded pensions or introduced “defined contributory” pension programmes, Pakistan continues with the unfunded “non-contributory, defined benefit pay-as-you-go” system for providing financial security to retired public sector employees.

Taimur Khan Jhagra, a former Khyber Pakhtunkhwa finance minister who introduced a contributory pension scheme for the provincial employees hired since July 1, 2022, the first ever such scheme implemented in the country, wrote in an article last July that India has done this in 2004 under a World Bank project. “The same project in Pakistan failed; the result is that the Rs1.5tr pension bill (a third of which is military pensions) for FY24 must be funded through the budget.”

“Our pension bill is guaranteed to grow at 22-25pc per year for the next 35 years,” he wrote, adding the cost of inaction could be calculated from the fact that the national pension bill had risen 50 times during the last 20 years. “They double roughly every four years. Without reforms, within a decade, most pensioners will not be getting a pension. We simply won’t have the money.”

Pensions payments

The federal allocation for pension payments this year stands at Rs801bn compared to Rs171bn in FY14.

The State Bank in its 2021 report commented that the federal pension expenditure was increasingly becoming unsustainable. “When we look at the federal pension bill, there has been a significant rise. Pension bill has increased at a Compounded Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of almost 14pc during 2012-23.”

According to the bank, the overall pension spending as percent of total budgeted expenditure for FY20 exceeded the federal and provincial health and education spending and is almost half the level of consolidated development expenditures.

Likewise, the World Bank in 2020 warned that salary and pension costs will persistently grow and crowd out other public expenditures in the coming years.

Mr Khawar maintains that the total pension payments for the ongoing financial year, if the pension costs of the autonomous and semi-autonomous public entities are also taken into account, would be to the tune of Rs1.7-1.8tr.

Retrospective increments alongside generous commutation and restoration facilities are said to be fueling the trend of early retirement of the civil servants, the SBP had pointed out. This, coupled with the improved life expectancy, higher replacement rate, a growing headcount of the government employees and the unfunded nature of pension payments, is making the current structure unsustainable in Pakistan and burdening the already tight fiscal situation.

Country’s debt sustainability

Both the IMF and the World Bank have been flagging the rising pension expenditure as a pressing concern for the country’s debt sustainability for the last several years. In the 2000s, Punjab led other provinces to set up a pension fund as part of public finance reforms to reduce the burden of pension payments on its budget. However, the pension fund continues to be financed through the provincial budget.

The next ‘pension reform’ it has rolled out ever since pertains to raising the age limit for the early retirements. “The reality is that successive governments have been pushing the issue down the road in the name of reforms to avoid political costs,” a former Punjab finance secretary maintained.

Mr Khawar was of the view that the existing pension model was burdening the national and provincial budgets, eating into revenues that must be spent on social sector and development.

“Growing pension costs, therefore, demand a quick transition from the present unfunded, non-contributory pension scheme to a contributory programme to create fiscal space for essential expenditure. This can be achieved in three-five years, or never, depending on the political will (of government),” he added.

Mr Javed said the government would need to first implement pension policy reforms, defining the retirement rules, pension eligibility criteria, etc, before replacing the existing programme with a contributory pension model.

“At the same time, the authorities would have to strengthen the capacity to invest pension funds profitably. In the initial phases, global investment companies may be hired to explore international investment opportunities. Last but not the least the federal and provincial governments must move in sync to implement the contributory pension model.”

Nevertheless, according to Mr Khawar, the real challenge is how to finance the unfunded pensions of the existing employees on the old defined benefit pension plan. “Even with the defined contributory programme for the new government recruits in place, the public sector pension bill will continue to grow,” he said, putting the current accrued public sector pension liability (to be paid to the government employees retiring in future) in the range of Rs18-19tr.

Published in Dawn, March 27th, 2024

BACKGROUNDER

IS-K Global terrorist threat 

Zahid Hussain 

DAWN

Published March 27, 2024 

THE deadly attack on a concert hall in Moscow last week, which left around 140 people dead, marks the expansion in the terrorist operations of the so-called Khorasan chapter of the militant Islamic State group. The daring IS-K assault in the Russian capital demonstrates the group’s increasingly destructive capacity to carry out high-profile acts of terrorism beyond the region it has so far been operating in.

The attack has raised the profile of the IS-K as a global terrorist group that has long been active in Afghanistan and the surrounding countries. The suspects who were arrested are from the Central Asian region, which has produced a large contingent of foreign fighters for the Islamic State in the Middle East in the past. Many of them are now associated with its Khorasan chapter after the routing of the transnational jihadi group in Iraq and Syria.

It is, however, not clear why the group targeted Russia. According to some analysts, the militants see Russia as responsible for the persecution of Muslims. In September 2022, IS-K claimed responsibility for a deadly suicide bombing at the Russian embassy in Kabul. Moscow has long been concerned about the rise of IS-K’s influence in the Central Asian states.

While accusing the Islamic extremists of the attack, the Russian president has also tried to link the incident to the war with Ukraine. A recent UN report quoted by the Western media said, “Some individuals of North Caucasus and Central Asian origin travelling from Afghanistan or Ukraine towards Europe represent an opportunity for [IS-K], which seeks to project violent attacks in the West.”

Meanwhile, the Moscow massacre has alerted other countries to the growing terrorist threat. The IS-K has emerged as the most dangerous transnational terrorist group. A top American military official told a US congressional committee a day before the attack that the IS-K “retains the capability and the will to attack US and Western interests abroad, in as little as six months, with little to no warning”. According to some media reports quoting Western counterterrorism officials, in recent months, several IS-K plots to attack targets in Europe have been foiled.


A resurgent IS-K has emerged as the most dangerous transnational terrorist group.

An offshoot of the Middle East-based IS, the militant outfit, which was formed in 2015, has been involved in a series of spectacular attacks in Afghanistan and Iran. It was behind a bombing attack earlier this year that killed over 80 people in the Iranian town of Kerman during a memorial procession for Maj-Gen Qasem Soleimani, an Iranian commander who was killed in an American drone strike in 2020 in Baghdad. Several other attacks in Iran also have the group’s fingerprints all over them.

Just before the Moscow incident, the group had claimed responsibility for a suicide attack in Kandahar, the second largest city of Afghanistan, killing and injuring several people. The IS-K has also been responsible for attacks in Pakistan’s Balochistan province. Some banned Sunni sectarian groups have reportedly joined the group.

The first signs of the transnational militant group organising itself in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region emerged in 2014. Early IS-K recruits came from the ranks of splinter factions of the Pakistani Taliban, who had been driven into Afghanistan after large-scale operations in the former tribal region by the Pakistan Army. Some low-ranking Afghan Taliban commanders also joined the radical group.

In 2014, Abdul Rahim Muslim Dost — a former Afghan Taliban commander from Kunar province — was named organiser for the group’s Khorasan chapter. With some high-profile defections from the ranks of the Afghan Taliban, the group evolved a formal organisational structure.

In January 2015, the militants released a video proclaiming themselves the administrators of an official wilayat (province) for IS in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The creation of the shura for Khorasan (the historical name for the region including parts of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and Central Asia) was endorsed by the IS supreme command. It named the former TTP commander of Orakzai Agency in Pakistan, Hafiz Saeed Khan, as IS head in the Khorasan region and Mullah Abdul Rauf, a former Afghan Taliban commander who had spent many years in Guantanamo, as his deputy.

Soon after the formation of its Khorasan chapter, the group became active in many provinces of Afghanistan. In most cases, defections from the Afghan Taliban ranks to the IS-K were motivated by the group’s huge financial resources rather than its radical and rigid worldview and ideology. In many regions, the Afghan Taliban fought with the IS-K for control.

However, IS-K underwent a rapid surge in numbers — which reached, as per some estimates, 4,000 — after the US forces exited Afghanistan and the Taliban once more took up the reins. Most of them have apparently come from other transnational militant groups. Its alliance with the TTP has further strengthened it.

There was a marked escalation in IS-K attacks at the end of the American war. The terrorist group also attacked Kabul’s international airport in 2021, in which 13 US troops and a large number of civilians were killed during the chaotic American withdrawal from the country.

According to a UN report released in January, the Afghan Taliban’s efforts to defeat the group have caused the number of attacks in Afghanistan to decline. But the threat posed by this terror nexus goes beyond the region.

With their strength increasing, transnational militant groups and foreign fighters are a dangerous threat to not only Afghanistan but also its neighbours, especially Pakistan. The Afghan Taliban’s continuing support for militant groups such as the TTP is seen as a significant reason behind the IS-K’s resurgence.

Many IS-K fighters have come from TTP factions who took refuge in Afghanistan. While the IS-K has been fighting the Afghan Taliban, the group has coexisted with TTP factions in eastern Afghanistan.

The Moscow attack makes it clear that the group’s growing capacity threatens the region and beyond. A joint regional strategy is needed to deal with this common threat.

The writer is an author and journalist.
zhussain100@yahoo.com
X: @hidhussain

Published in Dawn, March 27th, 2024

 

Israel’s Conscientious Objectors Stand on the Shoulders of Giants

by Ariel Gold Posted onMarch 27, 2024

According to legend, the organization I lead, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, was founded in August 1914 when a British Quaker and a German Lutheran shook hands at a railway station in Cologne. With England on the cusp of joining World War I, they pledged, “We are one in Christ and can never be at war.”

After Germany sunk the Lusitania ship in May 1915, American public support for joining the war swelled. But not everyone got on board.

Political activist and theologian A.J. Muste responded to his country’s gearing up for war by becoming a pacifist. His views resulted in him being forced out of his pastoral position. Likewise, pacifist and social reformer Jane Addams (who later went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize) was viciously criticized for calling the war “an insane outburst.”

Despite the pro-war hysteria that countries use to justify their military endeavors, conscientious objection remains a courageous option for those committed to peace. As the ongoing genocide of Palestinians unfolds in front of the eyes of the world, a couple of young Israelis are choosing this brave, though unpopular, path.

“Slaughter cannot solve slaughter,” 18-year-old Israeli-American Tal Mitnick said in December 2023 before receiving his first 30-day prison sentence for refusing to join Israel’s military.

The same week that Tal refused for the third time and received a third term in prison, he was joined by fellow teenager Sofia Orr. “I reject participating in the violent policies of oppression and apartheid that Israel has imposed on the Palestinian people, especially now during the war,” she said.

It’s not the sentences Tal and Sofia are enduring that make their actions exceptional. They have options. In fact, 12 percent of conscripted Israelis get out of service through notoriously easy-to-obtain mental health exemptions. Instead of the 10-year terms that Russian draft evaders face, even when Israelis are sentenced for refusing, they receive consecutive sentences with breaks in between to see if they have changed their minds.

Tal and Sofia are not being held indefinitely in overcrowded, abusive, deadly prison facilities like incarcerated Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank. But, what Tal and Sophia are doing is heroic and places them within a legacy of great peacemakers.

The earliest recorded act of conscientious objection occurred in 295 A.D. when Maximilianus refused his conscription into the Roman Army. He was beheaded for refusing to kill. Later, he was canonized as a saint.

Like Maximilianus, Austrian farmer Franz Jägerstätter was arrested and executed for refusing conscription by the Nazis. He wrote, “I find that [my hands being in chains is] much better than if my will were in chains. Neither prison nor chains nor sentence of death can rob a man of the Faith and his free will.”

When, in 1944, devout Quaker Bayard Rustin was sentenced to three years for refusing to serve in World War II, he devoted his prison time to racial justice work. A disciple of Gandhian nonviolence, he organized his fellow prisoners to resist segregation in the prison. He was so successful that the head of the prison described him as “an extremely capable agitator.” Upon release, he traveled the country organizing communities, including the “First Freedom Ride” in 1947.

James Lawson, also a student of Gandhi, spent 13 months in prison between 1951 and 1952 for refusing to serve during the Korean War. Lawson went on to become, along with Rustin, an essential advisor to Dr. Martin Luther King.

Since its campaigns were broadcast on TV across America, the civil rights movement challenged the public, especially American youth, to choose between justice and segregation — between equality and oppression. At the same time, there was a surge of draft evaders and conscientious objectors to the Vietnam War, including prominent leaders like “good troublemaker” John Lewis.

Refusing and avoiding conscription became so popular during the Vietnam War that President Nixon’s commission reported that the movement was “expanding at an alarming rate,” leaving the government “almost powerless to apprehend and prosecute them.”

With the majority of Israelis opposing an end to the war in Gaza and 72 percent of them supporting no humanitarian aid, Tal and Sofia are not part of a growing popular movement, like what took place during the Vietnam War. But their contributions to peace are no less important.

Whether or not other young Israelis join them in jail — Tal and Sofia were part of a group of 200 Jewish Israeli 12th graders who pledged in August 2023 to refuse military service to protest the government’s effort to overhaul Israel’s judicial system — what Tal and Sofia have done places profound marks on the pages of history.

Members and contributors to the Fellowship of Reconciliation include the likes of Jane Addams, A.J. Muste, Mahatma Gandhi, Bayard Rustin, Martin Luther King Jr., Daniel Berrigan, Dorothy Day, James Lawson, and countless other brave conscientious objectors and peacemakers.

Today, as the world is watching a genocide take place in real-time — as of this writing, the death toll in Gaza is approaching 32,000 and famine is setting in — FOR-USA is proud to be raising money for an ad in an Israeli newspaper lifting up two of the most important conscientious objectors of our time. We invite you to join us by following Tal and Sofia’s journey at forusa.org/IsraeliRefusers.

Ariel Gold is the executive director of the Fellowship of Reconciliation – USA, the country’s oldest interfaith peace and justice organization.

 

The CIA Does “Soulful Work”

“The terrible truth is, that a Cult of Death rules America and is hell-bent on world domination.”

by Edward Curtin / March 25th, 2024

Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, a spate of books and articles extolling the word “soul” became the rage in the United States.  Soul became the chic word.  It popped up everywhere.  Everything seemed to acquire soul – cars, toasters, underwear, cats’ pajamas, assorted crap, kitsch, etc.  Soul sold styles from boots to bras to bibelots from The New York Times to O Magazine.

The vogue in soul talk spread to every domain as everyone was commodified and capital was financialized.  While political, economic, and ecological reality spun out of regular people’s control and they felt unable to feel connected to a religious tradition that cut through the materialistic and war miasma, they were ravaged with a hunger to devour, to consume.  It was soul propaganda, highbrow New Ageism at its finest, the religious equivalent of an old-fashioned Ralph Lauren interior.  It was the era of consuming souls in a society that had become a spiritual void.  At least for those who had become divorced from their bodies and tradition at its best.  Fantasy started to rapidly replace reality.

The great popularizer of this new sense of soul and self (though no-self would be more accurate) was Thomas Moore, the author of the best-selling book – Care of the Soul, “a pathbreaking lifestyle handbook” and soon to be soul franchise (The Soul of Sex, Soul Therapy, The Soul of Christmas, etc.)  His works replaced the idea of an existential self with a precious, epicurean conception.  “You have a soul, the tree in front of your house has a soul, but so too does the car parked under the tree,” he said, adding that things “have as much personality and independence as I do.”  Ah, soul!

Not soul as I once learned in Catholic school: the essence of human freedom and consciousness in God united with the body.

Definitely not soul as the essence of a person bound by conscience to God and other human beings.

Not soul as in “For what shall it profit a man if he should gain the whole world and lose his soul.”

Not even soul as the dictionary defines it” “the immortal essence of an individual life.”

Although I have seen this soul-talk used for decades now to sell all sorts of bullshit and thought I couldn’t be surprised by any more usage, I just stumbled on one that took my breath away.  I read in Life Undercover, a memoir by RFK, Jr.’s presidential campaign manager, daughter-in-law, and former CIA spy under nonofficial cover in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and North Africa, Amaryllis Fox (Kennedy), that CIA work is “soulful work.”  I didn’t know this.  I thought its job was to spy, kill, and foment chaos for its Wall St handlers (with certain exceptions being some analysts who gather information).  I recall former CIA Director Mike Pompeo saying, “I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, we stole. It’s – it was like – we had entire training courses. It reminds you of the glory of the American experiment.”  Or as my friend Doug Valentine, an expert on the CIA, puts it, the CIA is “Organized Crime,” not a bunch of soul-force workers out to feed the hungry and clothe the naked.  He writes:

CIA and military intelligence units now operate out of a global network of bases, as well as secret jails and detention sites operated by complicit secret police interrogators. Their strategic intelligence networks in any nation are protected by corrupt warlords and politicians, the ‘friendly civilians’ who supply the death squads that in fact are their private militias, funded largely by drug smuggling and other criminal activities.

Yet Fox effusively thanks her CIA colleagues for their great work and for making her the woman she has become.  “Your allegiance is to the flag, to the Constitution, to some higher power, be that God or Love,” she writes in gratitude.

For some reason, I don’t think the assassinated JFK or RFK would buy her love talk; rather, they may quote another eloquent Irish-American, the playwright Eugene O’Neill: “God damn you, stop shoving your rotten soul in my lap.”

The man Fox is trying to elect president of the U.S., Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., also wrote a memoir – American Values – that revolves around an indictment of the CIA for an endless series of crimes:  “What are we going to do about the CIA?” he quotes his father saying to his aide Fred Dutton at the beginning of JFK’s presidency, before both Kennedys had yet to be killed by the soulful CIA.  Kennedy, Jr. writes:

Critics warned that the ‘tail’ of the covert operations branch would inevitably wag the dog of intelligence gathering (espionage). And indeed , the clandestine services quickly subsumed the CIA’s espionage function as the Agency’s intelligence analysts increasingly provided justification for the CIA’s endless interventions.

Fifty-six years later his campaign manager Fox Kennedy – you can’t make this weirdness up – married to RFK, III, is touting the soulful work of the Agency.  She replaced Dennis Kucinich, who was a strong a supporter of the Palestinians.  Is Fox and RFK, Jr.’s relationship a matter of what the Boss says to Luke in the iconic movie Cool Hand Luke – “What we got here is failure to communicate” – or the kind of communication that takes place in elite circles behind closed doors?

Sometimes sick people utter truths that lead to sardonic assent.  They remind you of history that is so shameful you cringe.  Fox and Pompeo also seem to live in separate realities, their psyches twisted by some deep evil force for which they both worked.

And here we are in another presidential election year.  When you think about presidential politics, you have to laugh.  I like to laugh, so I think about them from time to time.  It’s always a bad joke, but that’s why they are funny.  It makes no difference whether the president is Ford, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Clinton, Bush Jr., Obama, Trump, Biden, or anyone who tries to square the oval office for their special sort of big change that never comes.  Those who tell you with a straight face that the lesser of two (or more) evils is better than nothing have not studied history.  They choose the evil of two lessers and wash their hands.  They live on pipe dreams, as Eugene O’Neill put it in his play The Iceman Cometh:

To hell with the truth! As the history of the world proves, the truth has no bearing on anything. It’s irrelevant and immaterial, as the lawyers say. The lie of a pipe dream is what gives life to the whole misbegotten mad lot of us, drunk or sober.

I am reminded of advice I was given during the immoral and illegal Vietnam War when I had decided to apply for a discharge from the Marines as a conscientious objector.  But if you don’t go to the war, people said to me with straight faces, some poor draftee will.  The military needs good people.  To which I would often respond: Like the country needs good commanders-in-chief such as Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon.  It’s like what people say about buying a lottery ticket when your odds are 1 in 500,000,000 – someone has to win.  Ha!  Ha!  Never reject the system is always the message.

Contemplating U.S. history for the past fifty-five plus years confirms the continuity of government policy for war and economic policies that enrich the wealthy at the expense of the working class and massacre the innocent around the world.  But we can pretend otherwise.  For an egregious recent example, the three leading candidates in this year’s election – Biden, Trump, and RFK, Jr. – all stand firmly behind the Israeli genocide in Gaza that any human being with a soul would condemn.

That these men are controlled by the Israel Lobby is obvious, but we can pretend otherwise.

That this is corruption is obvious, but we can pretend otherwise.

We can pretend and pretend and pretend all we want because we are living in a pretend society.

What’s that old Rodney Dangerfield joke: the problem with happiness is that it can’t buy you money?  Well, the problem with presidential politics is it can’t buy you the truth, but if you do it right it can fetch you money, a lot of corrupt money to help you rise to the pinnacle of a corrupt government.  For the truth is that the CIA/NSA run U.S. foreign war policy and the presidents are figureheads, actors in a society that lost all connection to reality on November 22, 1963.

Scotte Ritter has recently written the following about the CIA and its spearheading of the U.S. war against Russia through Ukraine:

Now, amid such a tense environment, it appears the C.I.A. has not only green-lighted an actual invasion of the Russian Federation, but more than likely was involved in its planning, preparation and execution.

Never in the history of the nuclear era has such danger of nuclear war been so manifest.

That the American people have allowed their government to create the conditions where foreign governments can determine their fate and the C.I.A. can carry out a secret war which could trigger a nuclear conflict, eviscerates the notion of democracy.

If this is soulful work, God help us.

Ask the 32,000 + dead Palestinians in Gaza whose voices cry out for justice while the top presidential contenders cheer on the Israeli/U.S. slaughter.

“The terrible truth is,” writes Douglass Valentine, “that a Cult of Death rules America and is hell-bent on world domination.”

And yes, presidential politics is a funny diversion from that reality.  Eugene O’Neill could be humorous also.  He played the Iceman theme to perfection, the Grim Reaper of two faces.

There was a tale circulating in the 1930s that a man came home and called upstairs to his wife, “Has the iceman come yet?”  “No,” she replied, “but he’s breathing hard.”

Edward Curtin writes and his work appears widely. He is the author of Seeking Truth in a Country of Lies. Read other articles by Edward, or visit Edward's website.

 

The AUKUS Cash Cow: Robbing the Australian Taxpayer

by Binoy Kampmark / March 25th, 2024

Two British ministers, the UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron and Defence Secretary Grant Shapps, paid a visit to Australia recently as part of the AUKMIN (Australia-United Kingdom Ministerial Consultations) talks.  It showed, yet again, that Australia’s government loves being mugged.  Stomped on.  Mowed over.  Beaten.

It was mugged, from the outset, in its unconditional surrender to the US military industrial complex with the AUKUS security agreement.  It was mugged in throwing money (that of the Australian taxpayer) at the US submarine industry, which is lagging in its production schedule for both the Virginia-class boats and new designs such as the Columbia class.  British shipyards were hardly going to miss out on this generous distribution of Australian money, largesse ill-deserved for a flagging production line.

A joint statement on the March 22 meeting, conducted with Defence Minister Richard Marles and Foreign Minister Penny Wong, was packed with trite observations and lazy reflections about the nature of the “international order”.  Ministers “agreed the contemporary [UK-Australian] relationship is responding in an agile and coordinated way to global challenges.”  When it comes to matters of submarine finance and construction, agility is that last word that comes to mind.

Boxes were ticked with managerial, inconsequential rigour.  Russia, condemned for its “full-scale, illegal and immoral invasion of Ukraine”.  Encouragement offered for Australia in training Ukrainian personnel through Operation Kudu and joining the Drone Capability Coalition.  Exaggerated “concern at the catastrophic humanitarian crisis in Gaza.”  Praise for the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and “respect of navigation.”

The relevant pointers were to be found later in the statement.  The UK has been hoping for a greater engagement in the Indo-Pacific (those damn French take all the plaudits from the European power perspective), and the AUKUS bridge has been one excuse for doing so.  Accordingly, this signalled a “commitment to a comprehensive and modern defence relationship, underlined by the signing of the updated Agreement between the Government of Australia and the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland for Defence and Security Cooperation.”

When politicians need to justify opening the public wallet, such tired terms as “unprecedented”, “threat” and “changing” are used.  These are the words of foreign minister Wong: “Australia and the United Kingdom are building on our longstanding strategic partnership to address our challenging and rapidly changing world”.  Marles preferred the words “an increasingly complex strategic environment”.  Shapps followed a similar line of thinking.  “Nuclear-powered submarines are not cheap, but we live in a much more dangerous world, where we are seeing a much more assertive region [with] China, a much more dangerous world all around with what is happening in the Middle East and Europe.”  Hardly a basis for the submarines, but the fetish is strong and gripping.

With dread, critics of AUKUS would have noted yet another round of promised disgorging. Britain’s submarine industry is even more lagging than that of the United States, and bringing Britannia aboard the subsidy truck is yet another signal that the AUKUS submarines, when and if they ever get off the design page and groan off the shipyards, are guaranteed well deserved obsolescence or glorious unworkability.

A separate statement released by all the partners of the AUKUS agreement glories in the SSN-AUKUS submarine, intended as a joint effort between BAE Systems and the Australian Submarine Corporation (ASC).  (BAE Systems, it should be remembered, is behind the troubled Hunter-class frigate program, one plagued by difficulties in unproven capabilities.)

An already challenging series of ingredients is further complicated by the US role as well.  “SSN-AUKUS is being trilaterally developed, based on the United Kingdom’s next designs and incorporation technology from all three nations, including cutting edge United States submarine technologies.”  This fabled fiction “will be equipped for intelligence, surveillance, undersea warfare and strike missions, and will provide maximum interoperability among AUKUS partners.”  The ink on this is clear: the Royal Australian Navy will, as with any of the promised second-hand Virginia-class boats, be a subordinate partner.

In this, a false sense of submarine construction is being conveyed through what is termed the “Optimal Pathway”, ostensibly to “create a stronger, more resilient trilateral submarine industrial base, supporting submarine production and maintenance in all three countries.”  In actual fact, the Australian leg of this entire effort is considerably greater in supporting the two partners, be it in terms of upgrading HMAS Stirling in Western Australia to permit UK and US SSNs to dock as part of Submarine Rotational Force West from 2027, and infrastructure upgrades in South Australia.  It all has the appearance of garrisoning by foreign powers, a reality all the more startling given various upgrades to land and aerial platforms for the United States in the Northern Territory.

The eye-opener in the AUKMIN chatter is the promise from Canberra to send A$4.6 billion (£2.4 billion) to speed up lethargic construction at the Rolls-Royce nuclear reactor production line.  There are already questions that the reactor cores, being built at Derby, will be delayed for the UK’s own Dreadnought nuclear submarine.  The amount, it was stated by the Australian government, was deemed “an appropriate and proportionate contribution to expand production and accommodate Australia’s requirements”.  Hardly.

Ultimately, this absurd spectacle entails a windfall of cash, ill-deserved funding to two powers with little promise of returns and no guarantees of speedier boat construction.  The shipyards of both the UK and the United States can take much joy from this, as can those keen to further proliferate nuclear platforms, leaving the Australian voter with that terrible feeling of being, well, mugged.

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com. Read other articles by Binoy.

 

On Cartoon Noses, Antisemitism, and the Slaughter in Gaza

by Yves Engler / March 26th, 2024

Once again, the accusation of antisemitism was weaponized to trump both common sense and support for the victims of Israel’s murderous rampage.

Last week prominent Quebec cartoonist Serge Chapleau caricatured Benjamin Netanyahu as a vampire. The cartoon published in La Presse reads “Nosfenyahou, en route to Rafah.”

The pro-Israel and genocide lobby immediately condemned the caricature of Israel’s prime minister. So did NDP MP Alexandre Boulerice and others.

In my opinion there’s nothing antisemitic about the cartoon and Chapleau should be celebrated for using his mainstream platform to challenge Israel’s holocaust in Gaza. Even more, his refusal to apologize for a cartoon that was quickly withdrawn should also be applauded. Chapleau told CBC, “It’s a caricature based on an old character Nosferatu, an old vampire who goes and invades another country. That’s all, it’s not worse than that. If you look up cartoons of Netanyahu, you’ll see much worse. … It’s not antisemitic, it’s not that at all.”

Following the genocide lobby’s condemnation, Boulerice posted in French “The La Presse caricature, now withdrawn, was highly problematic and antisemitic. It should never have been published. In these difficult times, we all need to be more careful not to stir up the roots of hatred.” In what may have been a coordinated move with the party’s Quebec lieutenant, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh quickly retweeted Boulerice’s post.

The next day I questioned Boulerice about his criticism of the cartoon. His response suggested he hadn’t done much research on the matter. But the broader aim of my questioning was to highlight the connection between a willingness to disparage those opposing genocide and left-wing MPs failure to participate in anti-genocide protests. I asked Boulerice if he’d attended any of the mass marches that had taken place in Montréal over the past 25 weekends against Canada’s role in enabling Israel’s genocide. He hadn’t (though he participated in the following day’s large union-led march).

Over the years I’ve seen Boulerice at climate, poverty, immigrant rights, etc. marches. Imagine if there had been 25 weekends in a row of protests with thousands, even tens of thousands, coming out for workers’ rights or expanded Medicare or against racism, homophobia or even Canada deploying troops abroad. It is unthinkable that Boulerice and other NDP and Green MPs would fail to participate. But I’m only aware of one MP attending a Palestine protest. NDP MP Matthew Green spoke during a march in Toronto on November 12. (Conversely, the PM, Deputy PM, ministers and MPs have attended far smaller and less numerous pro-genocide rallies.)

One reason MPs have not attended the demonstrations is out of a concern for being smeared (Green was forced to release a statement defending himself after speaking in Toronto). That’s the power of the antisemitism stick. Leftists who echo the genocide lobby’s faux outrage about a cartoon are strengthening a stick that makes it less likely that anyone with profile or power will add their voice to the popular uprising.

Unfortunately, Independent Jewish Voices (IJV) played a dubious role in this anti-Palestinian affair. Former IJV communications lead Aaron Lakoff quickly echoed the backlash, posting to X that “this caricature in La Presse is antisemitic”. IJV’s main account retweeted Lakoff and the group’s spokesperson Corey Balsam immediately liked his post. Lakoff suggested the cartoon was a “blood libel” and claimed “it’s antisemitic because you just don’t draw Jews with exaggerated large noses. Netanyahu is already an evil monster. No caricature needed. For those Jews like me who were teased for our noses, this is foul.”

But a quick scan of Chapleau’s cartoons demonstrates that they largely all have big noses (if anything Netanyahu’s nose, which is not drawn in a stereotypical hook fashion, is exaggerated less than other public figures).

According to IJV’s definition of antisemitism posted on their website: “Antisemitism is racism, hostility, prejudice, vilification, discrimination or violence, including hate crimes, directed against Jews, as individuals, groups or as a collective – because they are Jews. Its expression includes attributing to Jews, as a group, characteristics or behaviours that are perceived as dangerous, harmful, frightening or threatening to non-Jews.”

Clearly Netanyahu is not targeted because he is Jewish, but rather because he is the PM of a country currently engaged in what even the International Court of Justice has ruled is a “plausible” case of genocide.

But let’s say for the sake of discussion you believe there is a problem with the depiction of Netanyahu’s nose and that the cartoon reinforces some residual ‘Jews as vampires’ stereotype, does the damage done to Quebec/Canadian Jews outweigh the benefit of a mainstream publication vilifying an Israeli prime minister committing a holocaust in Gaza? It’s not even close and focusing on Jewish sensitivities in this manner enables more Palestinian babies to be starved or slaughtered. IJV should remove Lakoff’s post and apologize to Palestinians and everyone seeking to mainstream critiques of Israel’s holocaust. (Long-time IJV member Larry Haiven corrected some of the harm done by the group with “Labelling La Presse cartoon ‘antisemitic’ falls into pro-Israel trap” but he takes pains to note that it’s “the personal opinion of the author alone and does not necessarily represent the views of Independent Jewish Voices Canada.”)

The La Presse cartoon highlights how IJV’s political weight in Palestine solidarity circles can be damaging. IJV’s quick tweet undercut those pushing back against the bad-faith attacks on the cartoon and Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East retweeted IJV (and to their shame two other criticisms of the cartoon). Even amidst the unimaginable horrors in Gaza, some mainstream respectability-oriented Palestine solidarity groups are willing to echo apartheid lobby panics.

This is, of course, not the first time IJV and CJPME have assisted the apartheid lobby in marginalizing Palestine solidarity. And it’s almost a pastime of those in the NDP leader’s office.

On Friday I also asked Jagmeet Singh why he echoed the genocide lobby’s claim that a march to stop the attack on Rafah last month “targeted” a Toronto hospital with Jewish roots. I mentioned to the NDP leader that over 6,000 individuals had emailed him to delete his smear, but it’s still on his account. He partially backed away from the post, but his answer was unconvincing.

Amidst the genocide, Singh has yet to attend a demonstration against it. Singh was in Montreal on Saturday to attend former Conservative party leader Brian Mulroney’s funeral but failed to join the 5,000 who participated in a broad union and civil society led march against Israel’s holocaust in Gaza.

Why? Not because of principled anti-racism. Rather, the pro-Israel lobby has trained politicians, media pundits and other opinion leaders like Pavlov’s dogs to pile on condemnation when they ring the bell of “antisemitism” regardless of the merits of a particular accusation.

Too many on the left pathetically desire to appear “mainstream” and not threaten the status quo. And that “mainstream” space remains defined by a legacy media and its pro-Israel “commentariat” despite that media shrivelling in reach over the past two decades. Interestingly, the right has learned just how irrelevant the legacy media has become, but not the left.

But the most important lesson from the vampire cartoon affair is that self-described leftist MPs who echoed the Israel lobby’s condemnations of a cartoon also have failed to attend protests against Canada’s contribution to an incredible injustice in Palestine. That is not simply a coincidence. It reflects a fundamental concession to the power of Israel’s supporters. Some “on the left” think it is more important to consider the size of a cartoon figure’s nose than rally support for ending the genocide in Gaza.

Yves Engler is the author of 12 books. His latest book is Stand on Guard for Whom?: A People's History of the Canadian Military . Read other articles by Yves.

 

Genocide is Genocide

by Myles Hoenig / March 26th, 2024

What more can one say about the genocide in Gaza that hasn’t already been said? Special thanks to Ali Abunimah, Max Blumenthal, even Pierce Morgan, and others who break through the legacy media bubble and report what’s happening on the ground and the real history, not a sanitized, Hollywood version of it, like the movie Exodus.

Disclosure: I grew up in the late 50s, early 60s with Zionism as much a part of my childhood as going to shul and being Bar Mitzvah’d. As a teenager I joined a social-political group called Masada, mainly to break out of my own personal bubble, meet other people, and maybe even a girl! (Failure on all aspects). I remember one workshop where we went around talking about what it was to be Jewish, or Zionist (can’t remember exactly) but you heard the same refrain from everyone. (This was only a few years after the 1967 war.) What surprised me then, and even to this day, was that afterwards the moderator actually warned us about accepting ‘facts’ without actually knowing the truth behind it. Even looking back, that was pretty ballsy of him to do that. Who knows, maybe today he’s a self-hating Jewish Hamas fanatic. Aren’t we all? (At least our Zionist cousins would likely think so.)

Back up a few years to the 6-Day war. I asked my father who we would support if the US went to war against Israel. Was I that politically conscious even back then? His answered somewhat surprised me. Without blinking he said, “The US.” I didn’t have to ask him why but today it’s obvious. Although a secret draft dodger during WW2, (he did enlist at the time of occupation. He worked in the shipyards and was able to avoid such service, and  later talked my older brother out of joining the Marines.) He always saw himself as a loyal 1st generation American. I wonder today if this question were to be asked of many Jews, what would their immediate gut answer be?

What’s happening in Gaza is as wrenching to me as what’s happening in Ukraine, but not for the reasons many would expect. Russia was wrong to invade but was forced to do so by the West, primarily the US and Great Britain. There’s debate over this except by those who actually know some history, but the war did not start in February 2022. This was personal to me for another reason.
The shtetl that my mother’s family was from was in what’s today Ukraine. Some left in the 20s but those who stayed were all killed. My mother didn’t talk much about it but we knew how painful it was. She was the first in her family born here. Although I can only go by geography and history, I’m all but sure that her family and the village of Trochenbrod was erased by Stephen Bandera’s army, which today makes up parts of the modern Ukrainian army and attacking Russians in the east is as enjoyably now for them as it was for them 80 years ago.  So when people put yellow and blue flags out on their front lawn, or ‘stand with Ukraine’, I wince.

Genocide is genocide. Ethnic cleansing is ethnic cleansing. Pogroms are pogroms. Regardless of who the victims are, the results and the reasons behind them are the same. It cannot be justified in any way. Ever.

Myles Hoenig is a veteran of the Prince George's County Public School system in Maryland, USA. He's a long time activist for social justice. He lives in Baltimore. Read other articles by Myles.

 

Who Must Go?

Permanent government vs. the People

by T.P. Wilkinson / March 26th, 2024

President Kennedy was furious at the CIA for having misled him. Waiting several months before he compelled CIA Director Allen Dulles to resign, Kennedy told him, “Under a parliamentary system of government it is I who would be leaving. But under our system it is you who must go.”

Thus John F. Kennedy defended the illusion that the Anglophile dominated US government had transcended its British aristocratic-monarchical roots. Allen Dulles resigned from his office as Director of Central Intelligence to preside over the committee that would disprove Kennedy‘s naive belief in an American system of responsible government in the hands of popularly elected representatives.

A Conservative friend of the Thatcher regime in Great Britain created a series called “Yes Minister” (with a sequel “Yes Prime Minister”) in which the power of the permanent civil service over elected parliamentary government was lampooned. Yet behind the sarcasm with which Sir Humphrey exhibits his scarcely concealed contempt for the “barbarians” – meaning His Majesty’s ordinary subjects- lies the admission of simplicity in what has been recently called the “Deep State”. Denied by most in the West, the existence of what Prouty called “the secret team” is so obvious to the scriptwriters of the aristocratic- monarchist British Broadcasting Corporation that it could be advertised in prime time. The history of the current regime in the Federal Republic of Germany, ignored by most of occupied Germany’s licensed “free media”, was so obvious that GDR prime time TV broadcast a series in the 1970s which dramatized the US-Nazi cooperation in the remilitarization of Germany (west) to fight the war now actually impending against Russia. Das Unsichtbare Visier told the story of secret rearmament using the core of the SS and reliable Wehrmacht officers and the use of CIA Gladio operations to create pseudo-Left terrorism in the strategy of tension against the nominally legal Left in the NATO-occupied countries.

The best the US could do was House of Cards, which follows the Dallas template with some cynical steroids. However while the British and the GDR series admit this is a system, the US version is unable to transcend celebrity and the superficiality of daytime soap operas. All three series were devised as entertainment. They therefore have aesthetic attributes, which permit the viewer to suspend belief. However the difference in context is remarkable. While the GDR version fictionalizes history and the British version reeks of the smugness in the senior common room, Americans at their most cynical cannot transcend the Disneyland/ Leave it to Beaver (even if Beaver now would be a trannie) exceptionalism by which only the individual is good or bad. Despite the candid asides and opportunism of the players, the story is always about corruption. The politicians are dishonest and greedy for wealth and power. But so is everyone else. House of Cards conceals the interests of power inherent in the system by making all the participants sinners with varying degrees of indulgence and grace. The clever are the elect (or elected). Calvinism is affirmed.

While I was searching for Kennedy’s words to Allen Dulles (not knowing who would have recorded the original exchange), I listened to some of Kennedy‘s press conferences. I can recommend them highly. They are remarkable for their studied candour, lacking that vacuous, manipulative staging by the handlers of subsequent POTUS. John F Kennedy campaigned among other things on alleged indicators of US weakness in comparison to the Soviet Union- the so-called missile gap. This persisted in his speeches about the space program. However as POTUS he also implied the Soviet Union or the communist countries were ahead of the US in social welfare. In his 21 April 1961 press conference he replied to a question by saying not that the US was better or more successful than the USSR but that he believed it was “more durable”.

At this point one could have asked what virtue lies in a durable yet inferior system? Needless to say this question was not asked. Sixty years after his assassination the US system has proven resilient and reactionary. Despite almost quadrennial changes in the executive branch the resilience of the Reaction continues to amaze while innumerable analysts draft obituaries for the expected demise of the great empire. Meanwhile long-term rises in living standards are only found among the enemies (Russia and China).

To put this in perspective the Soviet Union accomplished the equivalent of two industrialisation phases between 1917 and 1962 (45 years) despite a world war, civil war, foreign invasion and “cold war” that lasted from 1910 until 1989. All that was accomplished based on domestic resources. China accomplished similar development between 1949 and 1989. The US required a century with African and Chinese slave labour, the extermination of a whole continent of indigenous people and some 182 wars fought to dominate the Western hemisphere. Russia and China out produce the US quantitatively and qualitatively despite latter having the highest armaments expenditure in the world. Clearly durability does not translate into human welfare. Kennedy was oblique but somehow aware that the US system would be durably unattractive if something essential did not change in the country whose chief executive he had become.

The press conferences reveal a man who knew how the formal machinery of Congress worked but seemed oblivious to the operation of government itself. His hesitancy and caution betrayed that novitiate status. One need only compare him to Lyndon Johnson, Dwight Eisenhower or Richard Nixon. His seniors in the business all clearly understood how precarious elected office was. Eisenhower’s farewell may not have been cynical but it suggested that there was actually a choice between elected government and the permanent state. As a career Army officer and high functionary in the permanent bureaucracy he must have known that no later than the machinations that made Truman the new tenant in the White House the POTUS had become a cupid doll for the cultic rituals of entrenched power. The patriotic (loyal) opposition chronically overvalue this speech.

If one believes the government is only corrupt – although that is bad enough – then it is very tempting to believe that if only the right, honest people get elected then change or even salvation is in sight. However if one begins with the questions what do ordinary people need to live decent lives? And how are those needs satisfied? Then the constant threat that those needs will not be met can be openly addressed. Instead of abstract, negative freedom (Isaiah Berlin) where one is more or less free to sleep under bridges in default of eternal debts, one might judge a government by its willingness to spend maybe half of what it appropriates for killing people to keeping people alive. Then with such a modest proposal one might assess the willingness and ability of one’s government to facilitate well-being for all instead of deliberately preventing it. That could lead to questions about who makes decisions if not the elected representatives (sometimes pretending to be leaders)?

Until the mid-19th century the US had no permanent civil service like the British had developed. In history books one can read deprecatory discussions of the “spoils system”. Whenever there was a change in elected office, the new officer or his party exercised patronage privilege to hire and fire the civil servants to fit the taste or priorities of the incoming officeholders. Even letter carriers and secretaries owed their posts to the officeholder’s pleasure. In the Reform Era leading into the 20th century the US adopted a competitive civil service system with permanent appointment regardless of party. The only posts that remained discretionary were cabinet-level and those subject to Senate confirmation. This rational improvement and professionalization was intended to give daily government and administration quality and efficiency. However it also created a class of officials whose primary interest was career promotion and not professional implementation of government policy. The very security which was to keep them out of politics created a political subculture insulated from expressions of the popular will. This clerical caste operated like its cultural predecessors in the Latin clergy. The prelates, i.e. cabinet officials and agency directors relied on the senior and ambitious junior civil servants to implement policy but also to defend ministerial/ cabinet secretary turf. While the British filled these ranks from the aristocratic families, new and old, the Americans filled these preferments from the plutocracy. Thus the civil service was socially reproduced like the British service with the US equivalent of titled privilege. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was not the first to call attention to industry “capture” of the regulatory agencies. As serious and justified as that critique is it misses the class component of capture entirely. The “revolving door” which amplifies “capture” is not merely corruption. It is a direct reflection of how the American class system works. There is no better head of NIH or Dr Anthony Fauci’s fief just waiting for an honest selection to confirm his appointment. The DIE dogma is not a solution but a further obfuscation of the problem. There is no “better CIA” or “cleaner FBI” any more than there was a better Inquisition or Gestapo to be had. Philip Agee was clear about that point, as was David Atlee Phillips. Moshe Lewin in his discussion of the eternally maligned Soviet government under Joseph Stalin (The Making of the Soviet System, 1994) pointed out that from the start of the October Revolution the Soviet Union was dependent on the vast majority of Tsarist civil and military servants simply because there were never enough educated Communist cadre to fill all the administrative positions for the vast Russian territory. This Tsarist civil service was even more rigid than those of the “modern” Western states. The only way to change policy was to change personnel. Hence throughout the Stalin era the so-called purges were mainly the punishing or serial replacement of recalcitrant and entrenched bureaucrats with those schooled and tested to enforce the new policies. The bulk of those purged according to Lewin were CPSU cadre and functionaries. Aggravated by war, the Politburo had few direct ways to communicate policy and assure its implementation—using one bureaucracy against the rest. Such periodic “draining of the swamp” is an allusive task, especially in countries like the US, Great Britain and France where the senior civil service is entirely dominated by the ruling class and its aristocratic-corporate cadre.

The term “deep state”, an expression Peter Dale Scott used to describe the “continuity of government” apparatus that expanded massively under Ronald Reagan, is a meaningful cliché. In increasingly common parlance it directs us to the failure of electoral politics as a means of democratic social management. Electoral politics is in fact a strategy applied by the ruling oligarchy through the permanent state apparatus to manage the population. However it is not something mysterious, secret or transcendental. The term has arisen to poorly substitute for a term and concept still prohibited in serious political action, namely class power. Perhaps the last American to seriously describe this phenomenon both empirically and theoretically was the renegade sociologist C Wright Mills. Mills called it the “power elite”. Today that insight has been distorted beyond recognition by obsession first with the “rich and famous“ and then celebrity. In fact the genre “reality TV” is the paramount vulgarization of the concept. That a former and aspirant POTUS enjoys such celebrity also shows the impact of fantasy on the political unconscious. The term “deep state” is a weak if concerted attempt to reformulate the question: if the people as electors have no power, then who does? Call it a class or the “power elite“ or as George Carlin said the big club – and you ain‘t in it. And it’s also the club they beat you with… till your own deep state is six feet underground.

Dr T.P. Wilkinson writes, teaches History and English, directs theatre and coaches cricket between the cradles of Heine and Saramago. He is also the author of Church Clothes, Land, Mission and the End of Apartheid in South Africa. Read other articles by T.P..