Ukraine war spreads suffering across the globe (The Sunday Guardian)

 

If UK, EU, US are suffering, so must Asia, Africa, South America through no fault of their own.

That the majority of Conservative Members of Parliament opted for Rishi Sunak as the new Prime Minister of the UK is a sign that the party has changed, much as the Democratic Party in the US changed in the 1960s. During that decade, the baby steps towards ensuring progress in social justice to the African American community that were taken by President John F. Kennedy were accelerated by his successor, Lyndon Baines Johnson. Few had expected the Texan to emerge as a transformative President of the US in his domestic policy. And yet, it was only with the passage of the Great Society legislation by the US Congress under his prodding that brought US society into the 20th century from the 18th. Unfortunately for Johnson, he allowed a group of intellectual zealots led by Defence Secretary Robert Strange McNamara to bully him into expanding the war against Vietnamese insurgents that Washington had inherited from Paris. The Vietnam Papers show how an Ivy League education may build a perception of infallibility and an inability to even examine opposing points of view. McNamara and the other “war hawks” encircling him were convinced that the metric of overwhelming US preponderance in weapons and resources would rapidly and inevitably prevail over Ho Chi Minh’s peasant army. Despite Johnson’s successor Richard Milhous Nixon together with Nobel Peace Prize winner Henry Kissinger converting large areas of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia into a wasteland, the US military had to leave Vietnam a defeated and demoralised force in March 1973. Much later, although the US together with its Afghan allies had not lost the war, President Biden ordered a withdrawal of not just US forces but logistical teams assisting the Afghan military by August 2021. From that time onwards, the credibility of the US as a reliable security partner plummeted where Asia was concerned. The Biden Withdrawal from Afghanistan and the handing over of that country to the Taliban gave a dose of steroids to the Sino-Wahhabi alliance that has not been helpful to global stability nor US security. An even greater blunder committed by Joe Biden is his unlimited support for the regime in Kiev, despite its oft-stated objective (a constant since 2014) of “recovering all the lost territories” has made a peace settlement impossible. UK Prime Minister Sunak has made the first mistake in what he hopes will be a long stay at 10 Downing Street by retaining Ben Wallace as Defence Secretary. Much in the manner of President Biden, Wallace is impervious to accommodating any view other than those expressed by Zelenskyy. Much of Asia, Africa and South America believes that it is because Ukrainians are “white” that Biden and the rest of NATO are ready to sacrifice the welfare of their own people for the sake of the Zelenskyy regime. A more logical reason may be the longstanding effort by strategists of the Atlantic Alliance to seek the break up and descent into chaos in the Russian Federation in the way that took place in what until then was the Soviet Union.
So hypercharged is the media-driven frenzy within the Atlantic Alliance to in effect destroy themselves to “save Ukraine” that even feeble efforts at restoring sanity to policy such as Progressive Caucus Chairperson Pramila Jayapal’s letter asking for a negotiated peace in the conflict was retracted after the White House intervened. President Biden and his UK and EU counterparts seem unaware or uncaring of the travails that their sanctions are causing, toxic measures that in no way have held back Vladimir Putin from continuing with the Ukraine campaign. Rishi Sunak must know how deadly the impact of draining UK resources to feed the insatiable appetite of the Ukrainian militias fighting Russia is, and yet (as shown by the re-appointment of Ben Wallace) he seems unable to prevent the train wreck that Ukraine is proving to be for the Atlantic Alliance. From the start of the conflict in February, this analyst was clear that CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping would seek to prolong it, and this he is doing by keeping the Russian military machine afloat through the cash and goods given in exchange for Russian resources at discounted prices. Compared with China’s, the Indian contribution to the Kremlin’s coffers is tiny, and yet is the cause of much hand wringing by Atlanticist politicians and media. In that estimation, Xi would like the proxy war being fought by NATO with Russia in Ukraine to continue at least until the initial months of 2023. Meanwhile, the trans-Atlantic formation seems motivated by an insistence on the rest of the world (except of course China) enduring an even higher level of privation as a consequence of policies formulated entirely in Whitehall, the White House and Brussels. If the UK, EU and the US are suffering, so must Asia, Africa and South America through no fault of their own. Charming.

Ukraine war spreads suffering across the globe

Xi relying on ‘Chissia’ to power PRC expansion (The Sunday Guardian)

 

Xi is banking on a combination of cheap Russian energy and Chinese manufacturing to turbocharge the PRC’s geopolitical challenge to the democracies, at a time when the West is scoring self-goal after self-goal.

New Delhi: Within policymaking bodies in the Lutyens Zone, fragments of Chindia (the assumed synergistic fusion between India and China) still litter some minds. Deng Xiaoping began his wooing of India with the 1981 opening of a route from India to Kailas Mansarovar. Since then, trade between India and China has ballooned, and is presently witnessing a surplus of trade in that country’s favour that has crossed US$80 billion. Although Deng kept the PLA on a leash, the military was set free under Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao. Salami-sliced expansion further into India of the Line of Actual Control (which remains unrecognized by Beijing) co-existed with honeyed language from PRC diplomats and interlocuters. Until the always visibly assertive, often aggressive Xi Jinping took charge as CCP General Secretary in 2012, the promise of Chindia was kept alive even though Beijing refused to backtrack on border issues, all the while deepening its cooperation with GHQ Rawalpindi, including through providing logistical and other support in operations directed at India. While Aksai Chin has from the 1950s been occupied by China, after Xi’s ascent to the highest office in his country, Pakistan-occupied Kashmir too has entered on a path of becoming a protectorate of the PRC, with the eager consent of the Pakistan Army. Since the second 5-year term of Xi began, hardly any attention has been given to the concept of the Russia-India-China axis, while intense effort has gone into strengthening the bilateral relationship between Beijing and Moscow. It is no secret that the CCP considers large chunks of Siberian land as having been taken from China by Russia in the past. Nor that Xi’s desire is to dominate the European part of Eurasia once he manages to establish not just ascendancy but control over the Asian part. In such a schema, Moscow will need to be content to serve as a junior partner to Beijing, a status that Moscow appears to have silently accepted.

CHINA-RUSSIA CONFLICT UNLIKELY
Despite their historical differences, once the Sino-Russian boundary was officially demarcated by mutual agreement, a kinetic conflict between the two countries comprising “Chissia” has become very unlikely. In contrast, China has refused to enter into a boundary

settlement with India, thereby reserving the right to launch another border conflict in the future. A warning bell was the distribution by the PRC delegation of maps of the SCO countries during the 15-16 September Samarkand summit. These maps show Arunachal and Ladakh as part of China, and Kashmir as part of Pakistan. There was no bilateral between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Xi Jinping in the SCO summit, unlike in the past. Since 2016, India has been moving from chasing the illusion of Chindia into factoring in the reality of Chissia. Unlike his predecessors, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, from the start of his coming to power in 2014, was clear-eyed about the objectives of the CCP leadership core, and has strengthened military defences on the boundary with China in a way not seen earlier. Now that Xi has secured a third term, he needs to deliver on his promise of expanding the territorial boundaries of the PRC before seeking his fourth (and possibly final) 5-year term in 2027. Given that the ASEAN Sea (otherwise known as the South China Sea) has substantially come under Chinese occupation, that leaves Taiwan and lands south of the Himalayas as obvious targets for attempts at takeover through the PLA.

XI WANTS UKRAINE WAR TO CONTINUE
While NATO capitals have from the start of the 24 February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine believed that Xi could be persuaded to reel back Vladimir Putin from his adventure, the reality is that the CCP leadership core prefers that the ongoing proxy conflict between NATO and the Russian Federation continues well into 2023. As a consequence, the bulk of the financial and other resources needed by Moscow to prosecute the war have their origin in China. Since the start of the year, Xi has studied the sanctions imposed on Russia and begun taking preventive steps designed to reduce to a minimum damage done to China in the event of similar sanctions being imposed on the PRC by NATO member states together with Japan, Australia and South Korea. Chinese dollar (as well as euro, Swiss franc and Japanese yen) reserves are in the process of being replaced, including with additions to the official gold stock. If the silent effort at depreciating the RMB yuan to 8 per dollar is judged insufficient to boost exports in a depressed global market, the level of 10 RMB to a dollar would be the next step, followed by the Hong Kong dollar (HKD) snapping its peg to the US dollar. That peg has tied Hong Kong to the policies of the US Federal Reserve, which seems to be set on a course that would make the US a more and more expensive location to invest in, and to produce and sell from. A higher USD would raise the debt burden on countries that have been given Belt & Road Initiative loans, all of which have been dollar denominated. As a consequence, physical assets worth inflated sums of money would come into the ownership of China from countries unable to repay BRI debt on the lines already witnessed in some countries. The risks to China from Taiwan-related sanctions by western countries that have been hyperactive in sanctioning Russia are being sought to be minimised through an increasing volume of commodity trade being settled in currencies other than USD. This would be helpful in the worst case scenario of the US Federal Reserve seeking to confiscate or starve China of access to USD. Under Prime Minister Modi, countermoves in the event of kinetic scenarios involving the PLA are being worked out. Similar is the case in Taiwan, where the central government has been active in dealing with the risks inherent in Xi’s penchant for expansionism. If further proof of Xi’s intentions towards India are needed, unlike in the case with Russia, the PRC has insisted that the surplus secured through Chinese exports to India should be paid in USD and not through a rupee-yuan arrangement, with predictable consequences for the dollar-rupee ratio.

HIGH USD FUELS GLOBAL INFLATION
Given the economic and social carnage wreaked as a consequence of the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic caused by a lab leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the manner in which boomeranging sanctions were imposed by NATO members has created choppy waters for the global economy. In a panic reaction to the pandemic in 2020, unprecedented lockdowns were implemented by numerous governments that had severe effects on the economies of the countries enforcing them. In attempts to mitigate the pain caused by the lockdowns, the US Federal Reserve and some other central banks unleashed Quantitative Easing (QE) directly into fiscal injections of liquidity. Such boosts in money supply led to price rises when conjoined with supply disruptions caused by the pandemic. QE was followed by the US Federal Reserve Board raising interest rates repeatedly since 2021 to “curb inflation”. Such moves are a throwback to monetary policy in the 1930s, that helped cause the Great Depression, and has had little effect on slowing down inflation, given that much of the price rise was caused by the supply and other disruptions caused by western sanctions imposed on Russia since its invasion of Ukraine. While the USD has shot up in value, this has had a devastating effect on the currencies of several US partners and allies, including in Europe. The debt to GDP ratio in the US has crossed World War II levels together with high inflation and the risk of stagflation to a level last seen in the 1970s. That crisis caused the current monetary system to be born. Another may result in a fresh transformational change that, in the expectation of the Sino-Russian alliance, could see the demise of the USD as the global reserve currency of choice.

WESTERN BANKS ENTER DANGER ZONE
Given the buffeting since 2020 of the Covid-19 and the Ukraine shock, major systemic cracks have started to appear in the US Treasury, which till now has been the anchor asset of global financial system. Treasuries should not be equated with the USD, which remains the global reserve currency, but which has steadily lost ground in the 21st century. Among the reasons why Liz Truss had to make way for Rishi Sunak at 10 Downing Street was fear of a UK pension crisis. Should the Ukraine war and western sanctions on Russia continue, most Western countries may face a similar situation. Democracies such as those in Europe as well as Japan and Korea may be pushed into a structural trade deficit. At the same time, Chissia has enabled President Putin to resist sanctions by the West. The ruble is among the few currencies that have strengthened against the USD, despite foreign reserve and individual asset confiscations by western countries, measures that have lowered confidence in the safety associated with parking reserves and property in western financial institutions. Western currencies have in 2022 begun to be perceived as less than a safe reserve, given the shifting geopolitical currents and consequent arbitrary actions taken in countries that prided themselves on the Rule of Law and due process. This may tip several western financial institutions into the danger zone, a point already reached by some such as Credit Suisse. The ban has been harmed as a consequence of Switzerland abandoning its neutrality in the proxy war between the Sino-Russian alliance and NATO. Given that the PRC is the main challenger to the primacy of the West, the dire situation of that grouping has been cause not for alarm but for jubilation in Moscow and Beijing.

COMMUNIST CHINA’S GAME PLAN
Among the scenarios likely to be followed given the context of recent events, the probable game plan of the CCP core appears to be as follows:
Xi depreciates RMB to 8 per US dollar, then subsequently to 10, which may trigger a repeat of the cause of the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, resembling in its effects the 2008 global financial crisis in scale due to excessive system leverage and diminishing firepower by both fiscal and monetary authorities.
This may coincide with (1) Xi repegging the RMB to gold at a much higher gold price, so to create an arbitrage drain of the already low western physical gold stockpile, and (2) nationwide rollout by China of its digital currency to boost the global credibility of RMB, followed by (3) de-pegging of the HKD to USD and re-pegging of the HKD to RMB. The CCP leadership core anticipates that its covert economic war on overly leveraged economies (such as those of the US and its NATO allies) due to the combined effects of Asia Financial Crisis 2.0 plus physical gold drain could elevate RMB’s international status, including via a repurposed HKD. Given the massive increases in the funds made available to the PLA, Xi believes that China is strong enough to seize BRI hard assets and projects into its own control under current contract terms. The snail’s pace of the development of Quad into a full-fledged defence and security alliance is also creating a window for economic and diplomatic power play backed by PLA muscle. When the Quad will be willing and able to offer reassurance to countries at risk of losing control of assets as a consequence of dollar-denominated BRI debt remains an open question.

US MUST AGAIN BE ARSENAL OF DEMOCRACIES
The democracies, though, are not without defences. Rather than lapse into a growth-destructive, inflation-fuelling mode, the US Federal Reserve could be used to promote global growth in democracies, as overall it remains potentially among the most destructive weapon against the enemies of democracy. Despite being infiltrated by the CCP based on recent Congressional reports, the Fed has the capacity to weaponize in defence of US allies. This was evident during the 2020 Covid pandemic via the “FIMA” facility of emergency lending of hard USD to allied countries, but not to China. The US, India and other major democracies have many cards under their sleeve. Their outcomes would of course depend on strategic awareness (including grey zone warfare initiatives) and the speed of recognition of threats and implementation of counter measures to disruptive actions carried out by the Sino-Russian alliance (Chissia). The developing situation is causing a realignment within the global community of the traditional three axes of power. These are (1) energy/commodities such as OPEC, (2) labour/production where China is the present and the future is India, as well as (3) capital, including GCC. The severing of the collaborating links among the three caused by the twin shocks of Covid-19 and the Ukraine war marked the end of structurally low inflation, low interest rates and low geopolitical risks. Xi is banking on a combination of cheap Russian energy and Chinese manufacturing so as to turbocharge the PRC’s geopolitical challenge to the democracies, at a time when the West is scoring self-goal after self-goal. India does not have the luxury of remaining on the sidelines, but needs to position itself in the ongoing contest between the democracies and the countries that regard such a system as anathema. Calculations as to what is the best way of doing this would be going on in the Prime Minister’s Office at South Block on an almost daily basis.

Xi relying on ‘Chissia’ to power PRC expansion

US MUST AGAIN BE ARSENAL OF DEMOCRACIES

‘Fight the enemy’ has become Xi’s motto (The Sunday Guardian)

 

In Xi’s speech to the 20th Party Congress, the word that was prominently used was ‘fight’, of course in its Chinese equivalent.

The General Secretary of the Communist Party of China has from the start of his getting that job portrayed himself in Napoleonic colours. Whether it be the many visuals of Xi Jinping striding in the middle of lines of immobile soldiers, or riding a jeep in the process of inspecting an army unit, the image that has been cultivated is that of Xi the Warlord. Of course, warlords have been plentiful in earlier periods of Chinese history, and seldom in a way that would evoke admiration, which is probably why neither of his two immediate predecessors (Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao) sought to clothe themselves in outfits resembling military fatigues. Xi’s wife, Peng Liyuan, is not just a popular folk singer but had until recently a high rank in the PLA. Indeed, through her contacts, across the decades Xi Jinping cultivated almost as many contacts in the military as he did amongst party officials who were civilians. As a consequence, he began favouring policy options (especially in international issues) through a military lens. As the unfortunate consequences of rule over Japan of General Hideki Tojo and his key senior military commanders, that country embarked on a series of steps beginning with the takeover of Manchuria and the invasion of China. Eventually, it was a civilian, Foreign Minister Shigemitsu, who was the first to sign the surrender document on September 2, 1945, bringing to a close World War II. Given the trajectory of the path taken by the CPC, it was inevitable that there would be Cold War 2.0. What Xi has done is to ensure through his actions and speeches that this fact can no longer be passed off as simply the imagination of a practitioner of geopolitics. Whether it be the largely successful cover-up of the origins of Covid-19 or the unchallenged takeover of more that 80% of the ASEAN Sea ( named in most maps as the South China Sea), Xi has had his successes. The problem facing him and the country he leads is that each success, the scale of which and the method used cause anger in much of the international community, sparks off a reactive process that may ultimately lead to a kinetic conflict involving the PLA and other powers. The takeover of the water spaces of the ASEAN Sea could be reversed, were the Quad to get over the influence of pacifists within it and fashion itself into a full-fledged defense and security alliance. As yet, such a progression in the trajectory of the Quad has yet to take place. Even otherwise, it seems unlikely that an attack by the PLA in Ladakh or Arunachal or both, together with an effort by GHQ Rawalpindi to accomplish what Field Marshal Ayub Khan tried and failed to do in 1965 with his thrust into Chhamb, would succeed in its objective. Which would be to cut off Kashmir from the rest of India in conjunction with a PLA effort to cut off the rest of India from Assam and the Northeast by occupying the Siliguri Corridor, otherwise known as the Chicken’s Neck. Were a security alliance involving the Quad members to be formed, an attack by the PLA would very quickly move to a contestation of the control of the Tibetan plateau, while moves against India by GHQ Rawalpindi would get repulsed with ease. What India would expect from its security partners would not be troops but weapons and intelligence, as well as coordination of the navies and air forces of the four powers to deny the PLA underwater and surface platforms access into the Indian Ocean Rim.
In Xi’s speech to the 20th Party Congress, the word that was prominently used was “fight”, of course in its Chinese equivalent. Since 2015, Xi has spoken of hostile countries seeking to throttle the PRC and once again subject the Chinese people to bondage. Unlike his predecessors Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, Xi was explicit in promising to annex Taiwan during his period in office. Given that he would need to build up support for a fourth term almost as soon as he enters on his third, Xi may regard the conquest of Taiwan as being necessary to make the CCP ignore the economic headwinds caused by his policies, and focus instead on the achievement of what has long been proclaimed as a key objective of Communist Chinese policy. Should the proxy war between Russia and NATO being played out in Ukraine continue in 2023, Xi may gamble that the adverse impact on their own economies of US-UK-EU sanctions on Russia would reduce to almost a nullity any chance of similar sanctions being imposed on China by the countries that have been sanctioning Russia since 2008. And if NATO is unwilling to directly intervene in a conflict involving a European power that has linked itself to the countries forming that alliance since 2014, would it intervene directly in a conflict involving an Asian power, given the legacy of Vietnam and Afghanistan? CCP planners may see that outcome as wholly improbable. Since Xi took charge in 2012, and not entirely by coincidence, the PLA has been building up its capabilities in the East China and South China ( or ASEAN) Sea, and its planners believe that it has the capacity to block any shipment of weapons from NATO to Taiwan in a manner that Russia has been unable to do in Ukraine. And that without such supplies flowing in a plentiful fashion, the Taiwanese military would be unable to hold back the PLA for very long. As of now, those voices opposing a policy of accelerated decoupling of industrial units of the democracies from China still seem ascendant, if trade volumes are any guide. However, public opinion in the democracies is hardening against the PRC, now that it is led by Xi, and this is influencing even politicians who in the past were regarded as pro-PRC into changing their views. An example is the technology ban imposed by President Biden, which is way more destructive of Chinese capabilities than anything done under President Trump. The third term of President Xi may turn out to be the most consequential in terms of outcomes. Xi is riding the tiger of hyper-nationalism, and if he dismounts, he will suffer the same or a worse fate than CPSU General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev when he blinked in the 1962 Cuban standoff with President Kennedy. From that time onwards, Khrushchev was doomed politically, and finally had to leave an otherwise impregnable office in disgrace in 1964. A warning from history that would not be lost on Xi Jinping.

‘Fight the enemy’ has become Xi’s motto

Danger signal from Russia on Xi Jinping (The Sunday Guardian)

 

Russian analysts have begun changing the nomenclature of Ladakh and Arunachal into the Mandarin substitutes now promoted in maps by the PRC. Such cartographic shifts have in the past preceded acts of aggression by the PRC.

Pakistan Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto’s Two Nation Theory-centred views on Kashmir seem to be an Indiaphobic outlook accepted almost wholly by the Foreign Ministers of Germany and its biggest trading partner, China. The ideology of the Green Party is not usually associated with measures that promote conflict, but Minister Annalena Baerbock seems not to be concerned about the past. She is as set on flooding Ukraine with weapons and prolonging the war between that country and the Russian Federation as the most hawkish in NATO are. GHQ Rawalpindi is eager to present the facade of being a partner of NATO even while (since the Musharraf era) serving the interests of the PLA. Which is why Imran Khan, who in the past had (and still has) several admirers in the UK and India in particular, was anointed the Prime Minister of Pakistan by the army. Imran proved ineffective as a cover-up artist, which is why the Pakistan Chief of Army Staff replaced him as PM with Shehbaz Sharif, who in his endearing way seeks to seem all things to all men. As a backstop where charming the Atlantic Alliance is concerned, in an inspired choice, Bilawal Bhutto was made Foreign Minister, just as his executed grandfather had been. Since 1945, Germans have embraced the concept of being not just Germans but Europeans First to Last. Bilawal, in common with some other South Asian politicians, is European in every way except (at least publicly) in citizenship. Hence Annalena Baerbock ought not to be blamed too harshly for so visibly falling for the lie—sorry, line—that he spun to her on the prompting of the very military that for years assisted the Taliban to kill German soldiers. Nor is Baerbock an outlier in her public disdain for the sovereignty of India, admittedly a country that is not European.
In recent weeks, there has been a spurt in actions directed against India by some of the most consequential members of NATO, especially the UK and the US. UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman was candid about her contempt for Indians, however poisoned such an attitude may have made UK-India relations in the Liz Truss era. It is difficult to believe that actions such as the getting of a Canadian, US or indeed many European visas has become close to impossible for citizens of India are unrelated to the refusal by the Government of India to join NATO in once again shifting focus to Russia in the way that counterparts in Canberra, Seoul or Tokyo have. Indeed, NATO as an alliance is clearly suffering from a genetic birth defect, which is that it is inflexibly focused on Russia as the primary threat to humanity. Although mouthing and even committing to the record ritualistic statements about the China threat, its heart is not in anything other than continuing to fixate on Russia. NATO does indeed seek to intrude into the Indo-Pacific, but by its actions on ground, sea and air, it is clear that the predominant motive for this is to try and strangle those trade routes within Asia that are frequented by Russia. Of course, such attention to Russia coexists with China being given a pass on whatever it does, barring verbal protestations and symbolic posturing indicating unease and opposition.

Atlanticist powers claim that among the primary reasons for the sanctions imposed by them on Russia since 2014 and exponentially increased this year was to warn China of what it would face were it to attempt an invasion of Taiwan. Cynics argue that when viewed against the backdrop of zero sanctions being placed on PRC entities and personnel even after serial infringements on sea and air of Taiwanese (and Vietnamese, Filipino or Indian) sovereignty, such words fail to convince. They point to the stark difference in the quantity, quality and financial terms of the armaments showered on Kiev as compared to those sold—repeat, sold—to Taipei. Unlike what has being seen in connection to Ukraine, thus far, the US, France and the UK have yet to convene a UNSC meeting to discuss PRC encroachments on sea and land across its lawful borders. Sanctions against Russia are on course to generate civil unrest across much of Europe within months, although in the US the Democratic Party is hoping to be rescued in the midterm elections from Biden’s unpopularity by the Republican-controlled US Supreme Court and the candidature of Forever Trumpers. Control of the legislative process at the federal level would ensure implementation of the social legislation favoured by Biden’s party until the present Supreme Court overturns them. Beijing’s policymakers believe that there would be scant public support within the Atlanticist alliance for a fresh raft of sanctions, this time against China, when the boomerang effect of the sanctions on Russia has become impossible to explain away as just the “fault of Putin”. Voices within Russia are these days claiming that Strongman Putin is acting like a wimp in not defeating Ukraine this far. This may result in the Kremlin adopting the Shock and Awe tactics that were employed by George W. Bush against Saddam Hussein in 2003. As for President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, he seems less than eager to get “off the ramp” and press for peace, perhaps because he has a comfortable future awaiting him in the Atlanticist world, even if in the process his country gets still more devastated. Given the Kissinger and Obama precedent, Zelenskyy may even get the Nobel Peace Prize.
The 2022 sanctions blitzkrieg against Russia led by President Biden, and encouraged by cheerleaders such as Jens Stoltenberg or Ursula von der Leyen, plus the consequences on the PRC economy of Xi Jinping Thought, are causing waves of pain in the rest of the world. While sanctions that are more than symbolic would be inevitable were Xi to intensify his kinetic moves against Taiwan, it is considered by the CCP leadership to be extremely unlikely that the US, the UK and other NATO member states would impose substantive sanctions on China in the event of another PLA foray into Indian territory. The Russians have flashed a warning sign to the Indian side of the danger posed by such a view in Beijing. This they have indicated by its analysts beginning to change the nomenclature of Ladakh and Arunachal into the Mandarin substitutes given in the latest maps that are now being shown by the CCP. Such cartographic shifts have in the past preceded acts of aggression by the PLA. Maps showing Ladakh and Arunachal as Chinese territory and Kashmir as Pakistani were distributed by some in the Chinese delegation to the September meeting of the SCO at Samarkand. Those in the Lutyens Zone who believe that there is no way that the PLA would initiate a kinetic showdown across the Himalayas at least until the close of the decade may be proved wrong. The tossing of a sweetener to the Atlanticist powers through Indian support of their resolution on Xinjiang against China at the UNHRC may have been a better option than abstaining from voting, rather than in joining countries who backed an investigation into the situation in Xinjiang.

Danger signal from Russia on Xi Jinping

Mr Biden, you are President of the US, not of Europe (The Sunday Guardian)

 

The perception is growing in Asia, South America and Africa that the only continent (besides his own) that President Biden cares about is Europe.

President Joe Biden is justifiably proud of his Irish roots. This columnist has long been partial in his regard for the Irish. His favourite uncle, Dr N. Mohandas, studied medicine and for a while worked in Ireland. He loved the place and its people, and used to describe both to his nephew in adoring terms. In another cameo, on a visit to Germany and after having a pot of tea and a bit of cake at a restaurant in Munich, this columnist discovered that he had left his wallet at the hotel. What came next? A visit to the police station, or washing the dishes in reparation? The waitress, who volunteered that she was Irish (which explained her flawless English) smiled at the dilemma and waived off charges, saying that “like you in India, we in Ireland too were oppressed by the English”. Not to forget that among the most biting satirists ever was another uncle, Aubrey Menen, whose mother was an Irish beauty who fell in love with and married a taciturn Indian doctor then practising in the UK, my great-uncle. Aubrey’s mother was warm and loving to her Indian relatives, a quality that was reciprocated by all who met her, according to family lore. How is it possible, then, not to love the Irish, despite the challenges faced in retaining such emotions while contemplating some of the ways in which Biden has been navigating through his Presidency of the US? In a world where Asia has replaced Europe as the centrepoint of geopolitical salience, and where the Peoples Republic of China has replaced the long deceased Soviet Union as the primary threat to the US and to its allies and partners, President Biden acts as though unaware of such a shift. In those countries and continents that are not members of the NATO alliance, the perception is growing that all President Biden cares for are the members of NATO, and not any other country or its people. How else to explain why the US embassy in the world’s other huge democracy, India, has functioned for two years and counting without an Ambassador? Or why a citizen of the PRC can get a visa for travel to the US in two days, while for a citizen of India, that process may take more than eight hundred days? If Secretary of State Antony Blinken were to be taken at his word that such a difference has been caused by Covid-19 disruptions, he needs to be informed that the situation regarding that population control mechanism discovered by the Wuhan Institute of Virology is (judging by Xi’s responses) rampaging across China in a much worse way than is the case in India.
Some in the Washington Beltway claim that the 46th President of the US consults with Bill Clinton far more often than he does with Barack Obama, although the latter made him his Vice-President and Clinton while in the White House has left no record of ever having offered Senator Biden any post in the Executive Branch. The Europeanist bias of the Clintons has rubbed off on Biden, who has returned US policy to the Soviet era. It may be mentioned that the explanation given by Bill Clinton for his refusal in the 1990s to agree to Moscow’s entreaties to make it part of NATO and the EU was that he could not forget the Russia of Ivan the Terrible and the other cruel despots who had ruled that land. A long memory indeed. Fortunately, Clinton does not view his own country through the lens of the period when slavery was rampant, or an earlier period when the American Indian population was not just decimated (with one in every ten being killed) but almost completely massacred. Besides honeyed words, President Clinton’s “gift” to the African-American community was to change the criminal laws in a manner that multiplied the number of them who entered prison, while President Biden is spending tens of billions of taxpayer dollars on sending armaments to Ukraine rather than on the African-Americans who en bloc voted for him in 2020. Soon after taking up residence in the White House, Biden vowed that he “would have the back” of the African-American community. Instead, with his obsessive focus on kneecapping Russia in Ukraine, he appears to many US voters to have shown them his own back. And not just to US citizens who en bloc had voted for Biden in 2020. The perception is growing in Asia, South America and Africa that the only continent (besides his own) that President Biden cares about is Europe. Small wonder that the influence of Washington on these continents is shrinking even faster than Biden’s popularity among African-Americans, which has been plunging since the initial months of his Ukrainian adventure. In South America, more and more countries have elected Heads of State who are immune to obedience to US dictates, the latest almost certainly being Brazil under a Lula Presidency. The GCC and OPEC toss the commands of the White House into the wastebasket. Given his Ukrainian obsession in lockstep with EU partners, those across the world who are not of European descent perhaps unfairly regard Biden as having the same ethnic bias as Trump, the difference being that Trump exhibited that bias within his country, while Biden is seen to be demonstrating it internationally and not internally. Trump was, love him or not, all-American. Joe Biden, in common with many of his top picks, still acts as though he considers himself less an American than a European relocated across the pond.

Somalia is being talked about as an illustration of Biden’s Eurobias. The people of that country are in agony, and yet not just Biden but even the usually voluble Ilhan Omar seems hardly to have noticed. Contrast such inattention and lack of any substantive response to the way in which taxpayer dollars and diplomatic and military attention are being paid to Ukraine to weaken Russia. Contrast this with the relatively anaemic logistical response to the threat faced by Taiwan, in comparison to the assistance given to Ukraine. Or indeed, the repeated incursions into and occupation of sovereign Indian territory by China and Pakistan over the decades. Such an illegal occupation is seen to merit a robust response from the White House only when a European population is involved, not citizens of the world’s other huge democracy. Indeed, the US Representative to the UN has explicitly repudiated Obama’s promise that the US would back India’s entry into the UNSC as a permanent member. Clearly, Biden now has the edge over Trump in losing friends and putting off people.

Mr Biden, you are President of the US, not of Europe

Victoria Nuland’s Stealth Sanctions against India (The Sunday Guardian)

 

The visa denial to Indians policy has become a form of collective punishment imposed in retaliation for India not following the Victoria Nuland way on S-400 or Ukraine, a path that is leading to trade disruptions, famine, unrest and a looming repeat of the Great Depression of the 1930s.

As a Senator, Joe Biden had always been a team player, which means that he ultimately followed the instructions given by the top leadership of the Democratic Party. For eight years (1993-2001) this was President Bill Clinton, and from that time onwards, Biden had been content to defer to Hillary and Bill on most matters of policy. The Clintons could not be described as admirers of Barack Obama before, during and after a Presidency in which Vice-President Biden was second in protocol rank across his country. It was welcomed by Biden when President Obama  adopted a Clinton Lite model in his first term, filling his administration less with his own supporters than with favourites of Hillary and Bill. In 2016, although he was the obvious choice for nomination as his party’s candidate for the Presidency after Obama, loyalty to the Clintons made him disregard the deathbed wish of his brilliant, idealistic son Beau, who wanted him to stand for election as President. Had it been Smiley Joe rather than Scowly Hillary as the Democratic Party candidate for the White House, it is close to certain that Biden would by now have been in the final stretch not of his first term but his second. Hillary Clinton was a gift to the Republican side, just as Biden would be to the Republican side, were he to stand again in 2024. Given his fealty to the Clintons, it comes as no surprise that Joe Biden, the Champion of Democracy vs Autocracy, has yet to visit India as the US President, or that he was instrumental in clearing the transfer of spares worth nearly $500 million to the Pakistan military, which is visibly making preparations for joining the PLA in a joint offensive against India. However, what has been an even deadlier blow, this time less to the government or military of India than to the people, has been the fact that it has become next to impossible for a citizen of India to get a visa to travel to the US, although such a situation remains not at all reciprocal.

A Communist Chinese citizen can get a visa for travel to the US in two or three days, but a citizen of India has to wait two or three years for the privilege. This has been explained away by Secretary of State Antony Blinken as being the consequence of staffing cuts caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. It may be that Blinken actually believes the flimsy lie that he has been fed by those lower down the food chain in the US administration. Those in the know of activities in Foggy Bottom  claim that the policy of visa denial to citizens of India was put on steroids by Under-Secretary of State Victoria Nuland after her Delhi visit that took place early in the year. Not used to having countries outside the Atlanticist group turn down her commands, Nuland inwardly fumed when South Block refused to scrap the S-400 deal and join the crusade against Russia that she has long been a champion of. If Blinken were to look into the mail and voice trail of the origins of his department’s Visa Denial to Indians policy, he would easily be able to track the individuals who are succeeding in punishing several in this country who are empathetic to the US. Just as China was delighted by Biden’s 2022 pivot from China to Russia and from Asia to Europe, Beijing must be gloating over the fact that business to business linkages between India and the US are going for a toss simply because travel from India to that country is practically becoming impossible for citizens of the world’s most populous democracy. But for the chokehold suggested, according to insiders, by Under-Secretary Nuland on the giving of US visas to Indian citizens, trade and investment between the two countries would have expanded by much more than they nevertheless have. The Visa Denial for Indians policy has become a form of collective punishment imposed in retaliation for India not following the Nuland way on S-400 or on Ukraine, a path that is leading to trade disruptions, famine, unrest and a looming repeat of the Great Depression of the 1930s. Friends and relatives seeking to participate in the marriage of their friends are unable to do so, tourists wanting to see the US are blocked in that desire. In multiple ways, people to people contact between the two largest democracies on the globe is being nuked, even while US visas are available as easily as buying an ice cream cone in Beijing or Shanghai.
Seeking to fool the people of India through lavish dollops of “utterly butterly” praise has long been a diplomatic staple in the global circuit. That same technique was used days ago by Antony Blinken to mask the reality of his department’s vicious visa policy towards India, a policy designed to punish the people of India for the refusal of their government to join Japan and South Korea in reflexively obeying Nuland’s diktat in the manner expected of non-Atlanticist countries. As a consequence, loved ones have fallen ill and died in the US without being able to meet for the last time friends and family from India. Earlier, both Presidents Clinton and Bush imposed an inhuman policy of sanctions on the people of Iraq for their “crime” in not rising up suicidally against the murderous Saddam Hussein Tikriti. What is being implemented by Secretary of State Blinken appears to be a deliberate policy of Sanctions by Stealth. Those in the US Congress and elsewhere who are genuinely seeking a US-India security and defense partnership that would keep the Indo-Pacific free of attempted hegemony need to make themselves heard, before the closet foes of the India-US partnership still being indulged in the Biden White House do further damage to India-US relations. Of course, it must be admitted that such a course by Washington delights not just Beijing but Moscow as well.

Victoria Nuland’s Stealth Sanctions against India

At SCO, Xi and Modi differed over their views on Ukraine (The Sunday Guardian)

 

Given their record of mistaking what they wish for as what is, Atlanticist media immediately reached the conclusion that Xi’s concerns were the same as Modi’s.

NEW DELHI: Months before he initiated the Special Military Operation (aka war) against Ukraine, Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin came to Delhi on a visit that barely lasted nine hours. Even during that brief period, it became clear that Putin was losing patience at the way in which the Ukrainian military and irregular “nationalist” groups such as the Azov Regiment were taking kinetic action against those parts of Ukraine that had broken away to form the Donetsk and Lugansk “republics”. Such activities were being backed by NATO, which since 2014 had been conducting a proxy war against Russia, through the generous provisions of training, intelligence, weapons and other battlefield requisites to Ukrainian forces. Together with what may be called either mercenaries or “guest fighters” from parts of Europe, Ukrainian units sought to win back the territory lost to Russian-speaking separatists in 2014, the year that saw the forced exit and exile of President Viktor Yanukovych. The disquiet over developments in Ukraine manifested by Putin during his nine-hour 2021 visit to Delhi was interpreted in Washington, London, Berlin and Paris as evidence that his confidence was getting shaky. Rather than hold back the Ukrainian forces from their assault on the newly declared Lugansk and Donbass republics, they were encouraged to deliver blow after blow, with artillery shelling and military probes into Russian-speaking territories multiplying as a consequence of the misreading  within NATO of Putin’s determination to not repeat his earlier example of doing little when Kosovo was formally detached from Serbia in 2008. That same year, Putin launched a military campaign against Georgia by annexing South Ossetia and Abkhazia as separate “republics”.

NATO MISREAD PUTIN
Encouraged by NATO in his desire to reconquer the eastern territories lost to separatists in 2014, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy began a military campaign that was explicitly designed to extinguish the separate status of the territories earlier lost to the Donetsk and Lugansk “republics”. In days, these and additional territories gained by the Russian advance during 2022 will be recognized by Putin as becoming part of the Russian Federation. Thereafter, an attack on them would be regarded by the Kremlin as an attack on the Russian Federation itself. Assistance by NATO to Ukraine in kinetic action against such territories would be regarded as a direct attack by the alliance on Russia for the first time in that organisation’s history. NATO’s serial misreading of the intentions of the Kremlin appear to be leading the world towards an unprecedented escalation of the Ukraine conflict. In 2014, the misreading of the intentions of one side by another converted what was to be just a Balkan war into a European conflict. In that conflict, Serbia was the catalyst. In this, it could be Ukraine.

Much of the misreading of Putin has come through reliance on information provided by oligarchs who claimed to know his mind. They fed policymakers in Washington particularly with the impression that Putin was deeply unpopular, and that there would soon be a public revolt against him. They were wrong. Just as the June 1941 attack by Germany unified the Russian people behind Stalin, the activation of a proxy war by NATO on Russia (in an echo of Cold War 1.0) is mobilising the Russian people behind their leadership. For Vladimir Putin, either he is seen to succeed in his mission, or he will be removed from the Kremlin.

WHAT XI WANTED OF PUTIN
After the Samarkand meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), a public admission was made by President Vladimir Putin that CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping had “concerns” about the war in Ukraine that Moscow “understood”. Unlike Xi, who even in this interaction was predictably reticent in public in matters of detail, Prime Minister Narendra Modi in full view of television cameras expressed to President Putin his view that “this was not the era of war”. It was a rebuke addressed as much to the Chinese as to the Russian leader, given that over the past six years, Xi Jinping has consistently upped the ante by taking aggressive actions in multiple theatres, including the Himalayan massif and more recently, Taiwan. Given their record of mistaking what they wish for what is, Atlanticist media immediately reached the conclusion that Xi’s concerns were the same as Modi’s, namely seeking a speedy end of a war that has raged since February. According to impeccable sources in the capitals involved in the Xi-Putin conversation that took place on the sidelines of the SCO Summit, what had been conveyed by Xi to Putin was that he should adopt measures that would in a much faster way ensure an end to the war on terms favourable to Moscow. The mobilisation of 300,000 more troops and changes in the tactics and weaponry used thus far in the conflict indicate that Putin has operationalised this advice from his “no limits” partner. Such a mobilisation was ordered for the Russian Army only twice before in history, first in July 1914 during World War I and subsequently in June 1941 after Germany invaded the USSR. Rather than going against Xi’s wishes, such a move only confirms that the CCP General Secretary advised President Putin to go all out in ensuring a rapid and favourable outcome to the conflict. Not a surprise, considering that the conflict is giving the PRC access at discounted prices to oil, gas and food grains, the prices of which have shot up worldwide as a consequence of the sanctions by NATO powers against Russia. Not for the first time, media pundits in Atlanticist outlets got a story wrong, in this case by making the erroneous assumption that Xi told his Russian counterpart to cut his losses and end the war immediately in the way that Prime Minister Modi had.

PUTIN’S UKRAINE PLAN NO SECRET TO XI
In the face of the logic of the Sino-Russian alliance, pundits in US and European media, government and academe continue to believe that Putin did not divulge to Xi his plan of beginning an outright war on Ukraine, in the meeting they had just a couple of days before the President of the Russian Federation launched the 2022 Ukraine-Russia war. In actuality, Putin got an assurance from his Chinese counterpart that, no matter what the public posture, the PRC would provide a lifeline to Russia sufficient to overcome the impact of Atlanticist sanctions. But for massively increased purchases by China of Russian resources, Putin would have been unable to finance what has become a long and costly conflict. Even while delighted at the misreading of western media of the CCP leadership’s position on the 2022 war, briefings and statements designed to mislead Atlanticist countries in particular have continued from Beijing in a steady flow. These have obscured the reality that Xi has been in favour of the NATO-Russia proxy war in Ukraine continuing until any chance of reconciliation between Russia and the Atlanticist powers ends, thereby making Moscow even more dependent on Beijing than it already was.

TAKE PUTIN SERIOUSLY ABOUT NUKES
In this 2022 version of the 1962 game of “chicken” played between the US and Russia, it is disconcerting but unsurprising that senior levels within military HQ in Moscow are examining the possibility of using tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield not only in Ukraine but in Poland, the country that in 1939 was influential in persuading Neville Chamberlain and Eduard Daladier to ignore Joseph Stalin’s request that France, the USSR and the UK immediately join forces against Germany, a situation in which Soviet troops would need to march through Poland to attack Germany. Among the more hawkish elements of the Russian military, the calculation is that NATO would lack the will to respond in kind to the use by Russia of nuclear weapons, a move that would achieve Xi’s objective of permanently fracturing the relationship between Moscow and Paris, Washington, Berlin and London. Given the pressure that Putin is under from those around him who seek a Chechenesque conclusion to the conflict, warnings of a possible use of nuclear weapons may not be a bluff, according to those aware of the thinking in the Kremlin. These are the sources who had first warned in the closing months of 2021 that Putin was losing patience with the way in which NATO was seeking to ensure that Ukrainian forces re-occupy the Donbass and Lugansk “republics” that have now been marked for incorporation into Russia on the Crimea model. While the leader of a democracy may on retirement face pesky prosecutors levelling mostly unprovable charges against him, the leader of an authoritarian state may after a fall from grace lose his freedom, if not his life. The manner in which military planners in NATO ignore the fact that they are dealing with a Head of State & Military who has a briefcase with nuclear codes always close by may prove to be their most consequential error in the saga over the future of Ukraine that began with the ouster of President Yanukovych in 2014 and the grooming of Ukraine to be to Russia what GHQ Rawalpindi-controlled Pakistan is to India.

PUTIN UNDER PRESSURE TO INCREASE EFFORTS
Atlanticist media narratives, despite freedom of the press, usually hew closely to the spin that their governments seek to communicate to their public. For months, this analyst has cautioned that the Atlanticist view that Putin is the hard-liner is wrong. In fact, a complaint since May 2022 that is finally coming out in the open is that he has been too cautious in his war aims and in the way in which he achieves them. The Putin who oversaw military operations in Chechnya (the factor that secured him his present job) has been absent in the Ukraine conflict. Outlets such as BBC, DW or CNN are filled with horror stories about Russian “atrocities” on civilians, the reality is that the President of the Russian Federation has sought to hold back his troops from going all out against the opposing side. The argument taking place within the precincts of the Kremlin is that Russia under Putin is anyway being demonised for its “brutality”, so why not let loose the dogs of war and actually earn the reputation that has been placed on Putin’s head from the very start of this conflict? An early sign of such a shift may come from the planned Russian response to efforts by Ukrainian forces to sabotage efforts at holding a vote in the referendums that are planned as a preliminary to annexation of those territories by Russia. Such a response is unlikely to stop at the boundaries of the Russian-speaking zones sought to be absorbed, but is likely to be witnessed in other zones as well, especially those that are the strongholds of the Ukrainian “nationalists”. Once the territories holding the referendums get formally incorporated into the Russian Federation, any attack on them would be taken as an attack on Russia, an attack in which NATO would be considered as no longer an accessory but a combatant. The danger to Putin is not from those wanting “peace at any price” with NATO, but from those unhappy with the constraints that he has imposed on Russian forces during their operations in Ukraine. The CCP leadership anticipates that such an escalation of the conflict and its consequence on future relations between Russia and NATO would drain the energy away from any moves by the Quad and other formations to seriously challenge China, should the PLA mount an effort at subduing the island country by force. Which is why adulatory reports of “Xi the peacemaker” that have been appearing since the start of the 2022 conflict are exercises in delusion.

MODI, XI VIEWS NOT SIMILAR BUT DIFFERENT
The stated desire of Prime Minister Modi from the start of the 2022 Ukraine war was to see an early end to it. In contrast, the intention of CCP General Secretary Xi has been to ensure that the faultiness caused by the war between Russia and the Altaicists become permanent. This is an objective in which Russophobic policymakers and commentators across both sides of the Atlantic are helping to achieve. Among the reasons why Putin had thus far held back substantial elements of his fire in the conflict was the influence of the St Petersburg school of strategic thinking in Russia, which has remained obsessed with the possibility of Russia and both sides of the Atlantic coming together in a repeat of the 1941-45 USSR-US-UK Grand Alliance. Among the casualties of the war has been the hold of the St Petersburg school on strategic planning by the Russian leadership. The war has, to the delight of Xi, majorly widened the faultiness already present between the Atlantic Alliance and the Russian Federation.

LONG WAR SUITS XI
Where India is concerned, from the start of the conflict, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, assisted by External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, stressed that by far the most significant theatre of potential threat to the democracies was in the Indo-Pacific and no longer in the Atlantic, and implicitly that the country to watch out for was not Russia but China, especially under Xi Jinping. Those who seek to avoid the abyss of war and economic distress back Modi’s counsel to Putin at the SCO to end this war soonest. However, such a view conflicts with the logic of Communist China, which sees in the Ukraine conflict an opportunity to realise several of its most important strategic goals, including a permanent rift in relations between Moscow and the Atlantic Alliance, and a de facto extinguishing by the PRC of the sovereignty of Taiwan. All this by taking advantage of a world in which the US and the rest of NATO have become embroiled in a global disaster, in the magnification of which their own contribution has not been trivial.

At SCO, Xi and Modi differed over their views on Ukraine

Iranian women have the right to choose their dress (The Sunday Guardian)

 

A young Iranian woman died simply because she refused to accept the dress code commanded of her by clerics.

Mysterious are the ways of the human heart. If the Iranian Moral Police are to be believed, a 22-year-old woman with a normal heart suddenly died of a heart attack. There was no independent post mortem done on Mahsa Amini, a young Iranian who had spent her entire life in a country controlled by clerics who have abandoned the spiritual for the temporal. Since the 1980s, the clerical aristocracy in Iran see more value—,or in their words virtue—in influencing state policy rather than in the study and contemplation of the theology they claim to be the champions of. Mahsa had been detained and taken to a “Moral Police Station’’, an abomination that is incongruous in a country with a civilisation that can compete with those of the Greeks and the Romans, not to mention Indic and Sinic traditions in antiquity. “Moral Police” worldwide believe virtue to be only as deep as cloth that, once it cloaks the body and much of the face, doubles as a certificate of morality. Mahsa’s offence was that she had been seen without the abaya, a dress dating back nearly two millennia. Judging by the treatment meted out to women who show a lack of regard for a dress that is not among the five pillars of the Islamic faith, it is clear that the justification that Iran’s Moral Police rely on to enforce the wearing of the abaya is not from that faith but from pre-Islamic customs. Soon after Mahsa’s death in custody of a “heart attack”, social media posts emerged showing the barbaric treatment meted out to women who had for a time dispensed with the abaya (for in Iran, the clerical overlords believe as does the Taliban that not wearing just the hijab but a full abaya is the definitive proof of a woman’s high moral standards). Judging by such an edict, men are so uncontrollable in their impulses that the mere sight of a partly uncovered woman leads them to horrible acts of violence against the lady in question. According to this belief, Bondi Beach and similar other seashore getaways must experience an epidemic of assaults against women, something that the media appear to be covering up. The clerics believe that Iran would fall apart, were women to go about wearing an abaya in the way Mahsa sought to do. According to the version of the death proffered by the Iranian police, the Moral Police were so gentle in their behaviour to Mahsa that there was no “physical encounter” between them and her. They apparently believe that beating a prisoner with a stick would not constitute “physical” contact. So civilised are the Moral Police that they never beat up a prisoner with their bare hands, but only with “moral” implements such as a stick or a whip.

The Moral Police imply that Mahsa Amini was given the comforts of a 5-star hotel while in their company. What is implied is that the luxurious treatment given to Mahsa so overwhelmed the young woman that in ecstasy, her heart stopped beating, killing her. Grand Ayatollah Khamenei has been known to speak out whenever the police in the US commit an atrocity, as took place during the murder of George Floyd by a policeman two years ago. Given his sensitive soul, the fact that Ayatollah Khamenei has not this far publicly commented on Mahsa Amini’s death indicates that the Supreme Leader of Iran is convinced that Mahsa died not as a consequence of police brutality but of natural causes brought out by the sheer joy experienced by a woman who falls into the custody of the Iranian Moral Police. Meanwhile, President Ibrahim Raisi announced a police probe into the death at the hands of the police, in a bid to damp down public anger at the manner in which a young woman was killed by philistines in a country once famed for its culture.

A young Iranian woman died simply because she refused to accept the patriarchal commands of clerics who in their behaviour showed none of the compassion, mercy and benevolence that are repeatedly enjoined in the Quran as divine virtues. The murder of an innocent by the country’s Dark Ages police force motivated several young women in Iran to come out into the streets. They came without wearing according to clerical codes the full-length tunic that was in vogue among women in the sandstorm-prone Arabian desert nearly two thousand years ago. Stony faces and vile behaviour seem to be essential requisites for getting admitted into the ranks of the Moral Police in those countries that have such elements in their gendarmerie. The forgiving attitude of Ayatollah Khamenei towards the Moral Police indicates that the Supreme Leader of Iran trusts wholeheartedly in the correctness of the actions of the Moral Police. Perhaps the Supreme Leader has adopted an “If you don’t ask, you don’t need to know” attitude to the way in which elements of the Iranian police have adopted the Standard Operating Procedure of the worst elements of Savak, the brutal force that terrorised people in Iran before the Shah was deposed in 1979? Aware of the anger in the streets caused by the murder at the hands of the Moral Police of Mahsa Amini, President Raisi has ordered an inquiry into her death. An inquiry by the police, for the police, that is on track to find out that the young lady had a rare heart condition that was suddenly and triggered by the limitless hospitality of her jailors, sorry, her educators. For the story given out is that Mahsa was forcibly brought into a police station in order to be educated in how to be a virtuous woman. Or rather, to dress in a manner that would be sufficient to deem her a virtuous woman in public, no matter what her behaviour in private was.

When an educational institution in Karnataka banned the use of the hijab (headscarf) in its precincts some time ago, this columnist was of the view that a headscarf worn voluntarily (whether black or saffron) was not sufficient grounds for a ban, although wearing an abaya would be. The operative word is “voluntarily”. Young women who get coerced into wearing the headscarf (hijab) or even the abaya is a different matter. Wearing a uniform is all that is needed in an educational institution. To equate an additional item of clothing with piety or with virtue is fantasy. To remain healthy, society must deny freedom to elements that seek to coerce others in the way that Iran’s Moral Police do. Their actions are an infringement of rights, and should be opposed, as they are being after the murder of a hijab-less 22-year-old. The people of Iran want their lives back from the grip of a clergy still frozen in extreme patriarchy. Mahsa Amini is a martyr in the battle of the women of Iran to ensure that freedom and not coercion prevail in their ancient land. She will not be forgotten.

Iranian women have the right to choose their dress