A thirty year mystery behind the true identity of the informant code named ‘Deep Throat’ has been revealed. Ironically it was Vanity Fair who came out with the expose as opposed to the Washington Post, the daily that broke the bureaucrats in the 70’s with aid from ‘deep throat’.

Mark Felt, former deputy director of the FBI, was the infamous ‘Deep Throat’. Mark Felt was responsible for leaking the misdeeds of the White House and the then president Richard Nixon to the Washington Post which resulted in the Watergate Scandal and which eventually led to Nixon’s resignation.

Rather than pronouncing him as an American hero, Mark Felt should be sentenced to death for his role in the fiasco which held a whole nation to ransom. He broke the most sacred covenant, that of a fiduciary nature. A fiduciary relationship exists between a father and a son, a teacher and a pupil, a priest and his disciple, a govt. employee and the government. This trust is not to be broken no matter what. By breaking this fiduciary relationship, Mark Felt has disgraced himself for ever.

As the No 2 man in the FBI, it was his duty to uphold the prestige of the institute and the government, which was his foremost duty. There are other civil and governmental organisations like ‘Internal Affairs’ who would be bound by duty to bring the misdeeds of Nixon to light. Moreover his diatribe against Nixon was more of a personal vendetta than anything else, retribution for having overlooked him as the Director of the FBI. If he felt that he did the right thing, then why wait 30 years, to reach his twilight years and then come out in the open?

In this whole fiasco, I have respect only for the two journalists, Woodward and Bernstein who kept their end of the bargain by not disclosing their source; they maintained their fiduciary relationship between that of a journalist and his source. If Mark Felt thinks that, being in his nineties he cannot be held accountable for his actions, he is ‘dead’ wrong. If His Excellency Augusto Pinochet can be tried for crimes against humanity in his twilight years then so can Mark Felt. He should be tried for treason, I hereby issue a fatwa, a bullet through the head should suffice.

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Umpteen times have I come across sites which displayed a Makepovertyhistory.org banner and hitherto owing to good judgement I refrained from clicking on it; but alas today against my better judgement I clicked on it and went to their site and predictably so the site champions the cause of the poor and the deprived; well its a known fact that I too have my own visions of ending world poverty - Help end poverty, eat the poor and the downtrodden!

Ending world poverty is a utopian idea but alas the world we live in is not. If we were to eradicate poverty who would do all the dirty menial jobs? You and me thats who! Poverty is the only cause for a low wage labour pool which we can exploit. If all were equals, if there were no poor people we would have to do our own dirty work, we couldn’t exploit the poor anymore; so ending poverty is not in our best interests. if poverty were to be eradicated, who would buy all the cheap alcohol and other mundane items. What would all the NGO’s do once poverty is eradicated? All the employees of these NGO’s themselves would need to find another occupation. Its a hierarchical society that we live and hence somebody has to be at the bottom, all cannot be at the upper end of the spectrum.

I am an avid proponent of the laissez-faire school of thought and so if the poor are deprived then its their own wrong doing not ours. The only people to be blamed are the poor. The G8 writing off Africa’s debt is not the solution, you or me giving more alms is not the solution, the poor lazy buggers themselves have to get up and start working. The poor remaining poor has got to do more with culture than with economics. The poor are unable to seize the opportunity, this is the outcome of their upbringing and if poverty is to be tackled this is where one should begin. I remember an old adage that my grandfather once told me, “Buy a beggar a fish and he will eat for a day, teach him to fish and he will eat his whole life”. But then again I am more comfortable knowing that there are poor people around who will do my menial jobs. The battle between the bourgeois and the proletariat is a never ending one in which both sides are co-dependent on each other; eradicate one and you eradicate the other. I think I might as well start pleasedontmakepovertyhistory.org.

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