You Are Brave, Rohith

Farooque Chowdhury

Our heart goes with you, Rohith. You are brave. We love your courageous protest. Our love is with your protesting soul, with your resurrecting spirit, Rohit. Our dream goes with you to stars, to the star-studded life, your dreamland that humanity will reach one day.

We share your pain, Rohit. We share your humiliation. We, the millions of downtrodden in lands crossing plains and deltas, crossing mountains and ridges, crossing valleys and deserts, crossing forests and crop fields, crossing brooks and rivers have the same experience, have the same humiliation, same pain, same dispossession, same silence. It’s a silence imposed by power, a brute power, a power constructed by capital, a power sustained by a coalition capital constructs. This power buys in feeble souls, purchases opportunists, leases in opportunity-seekers. It’s the reality, a reality to be changed, Rohit.

But, we the downtrodden, dispossessed people in town shanties and city slums, in dark-dominated lower-middle class dingy rooms, in dust covered village huts are still alive as you are alive. You will remain alive as we will. You can’t die as we won’t. A spirit for justice, a spirit for equality, a spirit for a life with dignity can’t go dead. You personified those spirits. These are the spirits for liberation. These are our spirits also. So, you aren’t dead as we the people won’t be.

Rohit, you loved Science, Stars, Nature. (“Rohit Vemula’s Final Letter”, Countercurrents, January 18, 2016) These are our loves also. Rohit, you loved people. People love people. Bond of fraternity between peoples is thicker than blood. It’s a bond that grows up and develops over centuries of suffering, struggle and dream for liberation. It’s a long journey. No color, no custom, no creed, no other yardstick can install the dubious tales of division between peoples. These can’t and shouldn’t divide the peoples as everywhere people are in chains, people are exploited, people are subjugated, people are robbed of rights and just accesses to a fair life and dignity. So, Rohit, you and people stand together.

Science is taken away from peoples in lands. Rationality, scope for arguments and counter-arguments are taken away from peoples in lands. Science is made a tool for expanding the domain of profit and a tool to make gimmick so that peoples don’t understand science, so that peoples fail to identify contradictions, so that peoples fail to identify friends and foes, so that people live in dark dungeon. We all love science so that science comes up with its philosophy, so that trivial, unnecessary debates creating confusion and distraction are cast aside and real issues of life and dignity are discussed in an effective way. All advancements science makes are appropriated by the prevalent way of governance. Each foot-poundal science moves are snatched away from science by the prevalent system of governance so that peoples in lands don’t get benefit, so that they don’t get the illumination of rationality. This is done by narrowing down science to only into the world of physical/natural science, by ignoring social sciences. So we also love science, Rohit, as science helps us dissect the facts of rich-poor divide, the facts of exploitation and charity work, the facts of bond between all the exploited on this world.

Rohit, you would be around us always, in all our dreams for liberation from all forms of bondage, in all our struggles to get free from all forms of humiliation and indignity. Your letter is a live letter to us. It’s a song of life. It’s a song of pain.

We are not angry with you, Rohit. Rather, we are angry with our existing incapacity, with our misunderstandings, with division among us.

We know, you have no complaints on anyone of us. But we have complaints on the system that pushes Rohit, and many nameless-Rohits to many forms of death. It’s murder. The system commits murders. The murder has many forms, and the laws the system enacts don’t identify these murders.

Rohit, you always wanted to be a writer. You aspired to be a writer of science, like Carl Sagan. You are a writer, Rohit. You are a writer of one form of protest, one form of resistance. It’s not the last and only letter you have written. Your letters will be written each and every day in places of resistance, in all sparks of protests, in all risings like deluges.

The prevalent system has separated people from nature. You are correct, Rohit. “Our feelings are second handed. Our love is constructed. Our beliefs colored. Our originality valid through artificial art. It has become truly difficult to love without getting hurt.” (ibid.) A thin book said this also:

“It has degraded personal dignity to the level of exchange value; and in place of countless dearly-bought chartered freedoms, it has set up one solitary unscrupulous freedom – freedom of trade. In a word, it has replaced exploitation veiled in religious and political illusions by exploitation that is open, unabashed, direct, and brutal.

“[….] Doctor, lawyer, priest, poet, and scientists, have become its [the capitalist system] wage-laborers.

“The bourgeois has torn the veil of sentiment from the family relationship, which has become an affair of money and nothing more.” (Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto)

We, the wage-laborers, are victims of capital. It terrifies, it snatches away dignity, it blocks access to education for all. We are victims of the system. The system stands before us as an obstacle to humane attainments.

You are correct, Rohit, as you write “The value of a man was reduced to his immediate identity and nearest possibility. To a vote. To a number. To a thing. Never was a man treated as a mind. As a glorious thing made up of star dust. In every field, in studies, in streets, in politics, and in dying and living.” (“Rohit Vemula’s Final Letter”) We are nameless, we are faceless, we are subject of charity, we are bank capital’s tools to expand capital. We are numbers to NGOs, which mobilize us in the vast rural areas and in urban slums to secure status quo.

Rohit, you were not wrong as you were always rushing. All of us have promises to keep. So all of us are rushing, trying to rush. All of us are, as you said, “Desperate to start a life.” (ibid.)

Your birth is not a fatal accident. It’s an output of historical circumstances. Childhood of all from poor, powerless families is actually full with loneliness. All the children from these families are unappreciated. It’s a loveless childhood, it’s a childhood-less childhood.

Rohit, you are not coward. You are not selfish, or stupid. It takes courage to protest, and protest takes many forms, and circumstances influence forms of protest. We exactly don’t know the circumstance that compelled you to resort to this form of protest. We don’t encourage the form. But we feel the pain activating the form, the desperate circumstance that compels one to resort to such form of protest. Organizations will grow up to have a better form, to have a scientific form.

We understand the burden of debt, Rohit. We see it in village after village, in slum after slum. Student loan, in many forms, is not only an India-scene. In the US, thousands of students are burdened with billions of dollars of student loan. The total amount, probably, of the student loan is more than a trillion dollar.

Rohit, your silent funeral will blossom with our pain, with our untold pain, with our tears. Pardon us friend, we can’t stop shedding tears.

The system is responsible for your act of killing yourself. The system has instigated you, we know, dear friend.

Rohit, our beloved brother, you will travel to the stars as you aspire. Our love will be travelling with you.

Women –The Key Motors In Rural Financial Democracy

Moin Qazi

Poor women now plan the village development agenda. Poor people are bonsai people. There is nothing wrong with their seeds. Only society never gave them a base to grow on. - Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Laureate

In remote crannies of developing countries, poor women are pooling their talents and resources to build a new synergy of collective empowerment to transform their lives. These small clusters or collectives of women are known as Self-Help Groups.

A Self-Help Group is a group of a few individuals—usually poor and often women—who pool their savings into a fund from which they can borrow as and when necessary. Such a group is linked with a bank—a rural, cooperative, or commercial bank—where they maintain a group account. For a period of time in the beginning, the women only save money. They deposit a small sum, ranging from 20 rupees to 50 rupees (67 rupees equal one U.S. dollar) each month. After six months, the women are eligible to take small loans. These loans can either come from the group savings account or through the bank. The group helps determine if the loan is appropriate for each member and serves as a screening point for the bank. Because the liability of the loan is shared among the group, it is in each member’s interest to ensure that all other members are capable of paying back a loan on time.

Loans are then given out to individual members from these funds upon application and unanimous resolution drawn at a group meeting. The bank permits withdrawal from the group account on the basis of such resolutions. Such loans, fully funded out of the savings generated by the group members themselves, are called ‘interloans’, and have a short repayment period, usually three to six months.

After recording regular loan issuance and repayment for a minimum period of six months, the bank begins to lend to the group as a unit, without collateral, relying on self-monitoring and peer pressure within the group for repayment of these loans. The maximum loan amount is a multiple (usually 4:1) of the total funds in the group account. Once the group matures, and graduates to a business enterprise, the financing is more need-based and is directly linked with the capital needs of the business.

These women have now traversed a long path and are now part of the development landscape. Many of them have become panchayat leader and village pradhans in India’s villages and have become active The Self Help Group revolution which is also known as India’s indigenous microfinance movement has redefined the contours of women’s empowerment in the grassroots institutions that are engaged in village planning and development., The SHG movement which is India’s indigenous model for financial, social, and political empowerment of poor village women has proved to be a game changer for women’s destiny. The women of Self Help Grops have brought about a new transparency and imparted a vibrancy to rural governance .They serve as watchdogs to safeguard the development agenda of the grassroots government administration.

Participatory development has now adopted a more pragmatic approach . Participatory projects can also differ from one another in their nature and objectives; there is no easy single answer to how to implement them, but looking at what pitfalls to avoid can be a place to start..The ‘bottom up’ approach is about living and working with the poor, listening to them with humility to gain their confidence and trust. Their trust cannot be bought outright or manipulated with money, or by grafting urban assumptions of development onto existing rural practices, which in fact may destroy existing workable structures. We must first understand their economy at a granular level and, most important, thoroughly understand their local culture. That approach is a welcome contrast to the grandiose foreign-aid schemes that do more harm than good. Experiences show that governments too often derail the money intended to help the poor to pad the pockets of civil servants instead. Mired in bureaucracy and corruption, the benefits rarely reach those who needed them the most.

The bottom-up approach means that local actors participate in decision-making about the strategy and in the selection of the priorities to be pursued in their local area. Experience has shown that the bottom-up approach should not be considered as alternative or opposed to top down approaches from national and/or regional authorities, but rather as combining and interacting with them, in order to achieve better overall results.

The heroic stories of tenacious women scripting tales of economic success are great signs of a brighter tomorrow .For a world where people live on less than a dollar a day this is an important step. The journey of a thousand miles starts with a step. Truly, there is change in the air. Though not dramatic, not a headline grabber, it is a slow and quiet transformation that definitely is underway in remote and far-flung villages. Women who so far had been diffident and withdrawn are gradually shedding their earlier reticence and stepping out of the four walls of their homes to acquire an identity of their own. It is a silent effort in the country that is bound to accelerate progress on any indicator—economic, social, or political—the last fairly visible with most of the one million women elected over the years at the panchayat level coming out of the self-help groups.

This may not be a revolution- but at least it is a start.

What Do Almost All War Criminals And Dictators Have In Common?

Mickey Z.

Vice President Dick Cheney in Iraq. March, 2008. By soldiersmediacenter (iraq) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

For many people, the term “war criminal” means swastikas and concentration camps. Give it further thought and the more open-minded among us may recall grainy black-and-white images of My Lai. Hear the word “dictator” and perhaps your mind’s eye conjures up Hollywood-inspired images of Third World “banana republics.”

In reality, however, living under the yoke of relentless necrophilic rule provides an endless supply of despots, war-mongers, and the inevitable atrocities they command and commit. These criminals come from all walks of life, from every corner of the globe, e.g. Mobutu of Zaire, the Shah of Iran, Noriega of Panama, and Marcos in the Philippines -- to name but a few.

Manuel Noriega. By U.S. Marshals Service in Miami, Florida [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

From Harry Truman and his terror bombing of Japan to Saddam Hussein’s mass murders in Halabja. From Suharto’s bloody rise to power in Indonesia to the Contras making Reagan proud in Central America. From Ariel Sharon in Sabra and Shatila to Henry Kissinger’s legacy amongst the Vietnamese, the Kurds, the Chileans, the East Timorese, the Bangladeshis, etc. etc. etc.

From the earliest of recorded history right up to Barack Obama and his drones, his kill list, and his Nobel Peace Prize, ruthless rulers are ubiquitous and seemingly inevitable.

But what do almost all of them have in common?

President Obama. 2009. U.S. Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl. Michael J. Ayotte [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

For starters, the list I offered above is made up of Americans, U.S. allies, and those funded and supported by the Land of the Free™ (I was just checking to see if you were paying attention.) However, I could spend another 1,000 pages discussing the catalogue of thugs that pre-date the founding of God’s Country™. Yes, the Home of the Brave™ is the current king of atrocities but is still merely the latest in a long lineage of murderous monarchs.

War criminals and dictators come in many age ranges, are found in just about every geographical location, and run the gamut of religions, ethnicities, and financial classes. So, if none of these is the most universal marker for recognizing such predators, what is?

Think it over. I’ll wait.

A few more examples, while you ponder: Bill Clinton, Idi Amin, Kenji Doihara, Augusto Pinochet, and Curtis LeMay.

Go ahead. Say it.

Adolf Eichmann, Tariq Aziz, Colin Powell, Kim Jong-Il, and Efrain Rios Montt.

You know what it is, so just admit it.

Kang Kek Iew, Robert McNamara, Charles Taylor, Donald Rumsfeld, and Benjamin Netanyahu.

Do the thing.

Tojo, Hitler, FDR, Stalin, Mussolini, Bush, Pol Pot… I could keep going for days.

Name the problem.

Please. Just name the problem, before it’s too late to address the problem.

Forecast 2016: Nuclear Issues That Will Dominate 2016

Manpreet Sethi


Ever since the power and potential of nuclear energy first entered human consciousness and inter-state relations, nuclear issues have always remained at the centre stage. Expansion of peaceful uses of nuclear energy and risks of nuclear weapons and their proliferation are twin dimensions that engage national and international strategists year after year. None of this is likely to change in 2016. In fact, one can safely predict some of the issues that will certainly hit headlines in the coming  12 months.

North Korea and its periodic demonstration of nuclear machismo was the first to grab eyeballs in 2016 when Pyongyang rather cockily claimed the detonation of a ‘miniaturised hydrogen bomb’ on 06 January, 2016. Conducting its fourth nuclear test over the last decade, the DPRK has been steadily ‘improving’ its nuclear deterrent capability, including via regular testing of its delivery systems.

Every nuclear act of North Korea brings immediate attention to China, its protector. Many strategic analysts have urged Beijing to rein in its 'dear friend', and despite all Chinese voices of condemnation and exasperation, the reality is that North Korea’s nuclear brinksmanship serves to keep China's rivals such as Japan, South Korea and the US unnerved even as its own stature as an important, influential international actor rises. The danger, however, is that a proxy that it has long built and sustained might already be beyond its control, much like what has happened in Pakistan and its relationship with terrorist organisations.  Sale of nuclear technology, material or even a ready made weapon to terrorist organisations by a cash-strapped DPRK is not unthinkable , and is indeed a matter of international concern.

The most recent North Korean action sought to draw attention to itself, perhaps in the hope that if 2015 was the year of the nuclear deal with Iran, 2016 will bring some bargaining benefits for Pyongyang. Washington will be working overtime to crack this issue. But the US election process will not allow any serious action on the matter. Kim Jong-un may have to continue to make nuclear noises this year for it to be heard by the new US president soon after he/she takes office.

While lack of transparency hampers a clear assessment of North Korea's exact nuclear weapons capability, the fact that South Korea and Japan, and the US by extension, are concerned is evident. Their focus immediately shifts to protecting themselves through deployment of ballistic missile defences. Tokyo has also debated a reconsideration of its ‘no nuclear’ policy even as Seoul has hinted that the US should bring back tactical nuclear weapons to buttress deterrence. Whether or not such measures enhance national defence, they do add new value to nuclear weapons and take away from the possibility of their elimination. In fact, if anything, the current trends in all nuclear armed states indicate an increase in reliance on these weapons in their security strategies.

The latest development in this context is the news that the US has tested small, smart nuclear weapons to address a new class of threats. Previously, micro-nukes were considered during former US President George Bush's tenure, but the idea was abandoned for the adverse impact it could have on international security. Indeed, no nuclear weapon, however micro in yield, could avert a disaster with huge repercussions in space and time.

However, on 11 January 2016, the New York Times reported the test of the "nation's first precision guided atom bomb" by the US Energy Department and Pentagon. Russia and China are bound to move in the same direction. 2016 may then well prove to be the year to herald a cascade towards the so called low yield nuclear weapons with 'low' collateral damage. But this could also increase temptation for their use, thereby blurring the lines between conventional and nuclear, and adversely impacting the taboo against nuclear use.

The implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran will be another issue that will dominate 2016. The conclusion of the agreement has initiated a long journey that will be closely monitored in many capitals. Iran-Saudi tensions that broke out early in the year will pose a challenge to the smooth implementation process, since there will be a tendency to politicise everything in Tehran and in Washington. As it is, critics of the agreement abound, and it will be a struggle to stay the course. Nuclear concerns around Iran, and by extension, around the West Asian region, are unlikely to fade in 2016 despite a ground breaking deal in 2015.

Nuclear security will be the flavor of the Spring season this year given the scheduled Nuclear Security Summit in Washington. Over the last six years, these meetings of over 50 heads of governments and over 100 organisations have travelled across two nations before returning to the US capital for the last of such Summits. The initiative was kick-started by incumbent US President Barack Obama, whose 2010 Nuclear Posture Review had identified nuclear terrorism as the most potent threat to the US. He also realised that this was not a problem that he could tackle just by securing national borders. Weak links had to be removed worldwide, by getting every nation possessing nuclear and radiological material to do the needful on its own territory.

Since the first Summit, there has been a tremendous increase in the awareness of nuclear security concerns. Enactment of national legislations that criminalise unauthorised possession of such materials and memberships of international conventions that provide best practices on nuclear security has evidently grown. At every Summit, country heads have presented national or regional gift baskets comprising actions taken to secure nuclear materials. The April 2016 Summit, one hopes, will not mark the end of focus and attention to a matter that must remain a topmost national and international priority in order to minimise chances of nuclear terrorism.

It is likely that participants will put their weight behind the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to carry this process forward. However it remains to be seen as to how much human and material resources will be additionally proffered to the IAEA to be able to fulfill a new task.

Nuclear energy programmes that had suffered from a public perception issue in the immediate aftermath of Fukushima in 2011 are likely to gain lost ground in 2016.

Over the past five years, nuclear establishments across the globe have proactively engaged with the public to address concerns, reinforce safety and security at nuclear reactors, and invest in research and development to devise new designs and technologies to make risk free nuclear energy a viable option. Meanwhile, growing concerns about the adverse environmental impact of fossil fuels on climate change has also drawn attention to nuclear energy as a sustainable source of base-load electricity. While huge energy deficient countries such as India and China never gave up the nuclear option despite Fukushima, and are today witnessing the largest amount of nuclear construction, others that had suspended their programmes for a while seem to be returning to the option. Vietnam, the UAE, and Bangladesh are likely to be some of the new nuclear kids on the block whose programmes will see greater activity in this year.

From the Indian perspective,  2016 will be an important year for at least two reasons – the first relates to the implementation of the many peaceful nuclear energy agreements that the country has signed with a number of countries after its exceptionalisation in 2008. Australia, Japan and Canada are three of the newer nations that have agreed to support India’s nuclear energy ambitions and some of the pending wrinkles might get sorted out during this year. On the indigenous front, it is expected that the Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor would go critical later this year. Long delayed, the operationalisation of this reactor at Kalpakkam will mark a step into the second phase of India’s three stage nuclear programme.

Secondly, India’s full accommodation into the nuclear non-proliferation regime with its membership into the four export control groups is also likely to dominate the work and discourse of Indian nuclear diplomacy. High level inter-state politics prevented the Missile Technology Control Regime from granting India membership to the body that controls transfer of missiles and related technologies in 2015.

Since all the groupings work on the principle of consensus, the process will not be easy. And despite India fulfilling basic criteria for membership of the groups, it will be the political lay of the land that will determine whether the task is completed this year. However, India will have to maintain a high octane nuclear diplomacy to continue to make its case and undercut any attempts to hyphenate it with a similar deal for Pakistan.

Alongside its efforts towards building a credible nuclear deterrent, while regular testing of missiles shall continue to achieve operational readiness for Agni V and the conduct of user trials for other missiles, the major development that can be expected in 2016 is the formal induction of INS Arihant into the Indian Navy after a series of successful sea trials through 2015. Though this first nuclear submarine does not provide an operational sea-based deterrent for India yet, it nevertheless marks a huge step in technology demonstration that the country should well be proud of.

In a nutshell, 2016 promises to be another busy year for nuclear watchers. Happy new year!!

Forecast 2016: Pakistan, Aberrated Strategies and Strategic Stability

Vijay Shankar


In the immediate aftermath of the 26/11 terrorist assault on Mumbai, a grisly prayer was being intoned in many of the two lakh mosques of Pakistan. The Qunut-e-Nazla, a prayer in times of war, was accompanied by a fervent imprecation that al Qaeda and the Pakistan Army fight India jointly.  The verity of this statement is borne out by Azaz Syed in his recently published ‘tell-all book’, Secrets of Pakistan’s War on Al-Qaeda (Al-Abbas International 2014, P 69). The aim of the linkage was the creation of an Al-Qaeda State in Pakistan in the wake of a nuclear war between India and Pakistan.

The link between sub-conventional warfare and nuclear war fighting is at best a tenuous one. Conceptually, no nuclear policy, by the very nature of the weapon involved, can conceivably be inclusive of terror groups. And yet the strategic predicament posed by Pakistan is perverse, for their stratagem on select terror groups is that they are instruments of state policy. Now, consider this: Pakistan promotes a terrorist strike in India, and in order to counter conventional retaliation, uses tactical nuclear weapons, and then in order to degrade massive retaliation, launches a full blown counter force or counter value strike. This extreme chain of events would suggest the reality of a self-fulfilling logic of nuclear apocalypse.

A Pakistan that is controlled by a military-ISI-jihadi combine, is plagued by an obsession for parity with India and an inspiration that wallows in the idea of India as a threat in perpetuity (in great part to provide a reason for the army’s pretentious existence). One is spoilt for choice while discerning instances of Pakistan’s military-intelligence links with terrorist groups. It began at the time of partition, when tribal lashkars along with regulars invaded Kashmir; the clumsy and doomed Operation Gibraltar in 1965; state-sponsored insurgencies in the Kashmir valley during the 1980s and 90s; war following the 1999 invasion of Kargil; the failed attack on the Indian Parliament; the Kaluchak massacre of 2002; the 2008 Mumbai attacks; and the continuing low level insurgency across the Line of Control (LoC); and the latest manifestation was the failed assault on the Pathankot airbase on 02 January 2016 - coordinated with the failed assault on the Indian consulate at Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan, on 03 January 2016.

For India to suffer the violent effects of covert action in silence makes for poor internal as well as external policy. It is here that Pakistan will have to pay for Indian restraint (now frayed to the extreme), which in turn places before the Indian planner a host of considerations and a set of possible responses that include covert action against targets across the LoC or border who are known to have liaison with jihadi forces. Planners will do well to heed that it is Pakistan’s policy that has to be targeted; and more specifically, it is control of that nation by the ‘deep state’, by which is implied that the sway of the military-intelligence-jihadi combine must be subordinated.

Recently, this author engaged the US Secretary of State John Kerry’s International Security Advisory Board (on Strategic Stability, chaired by Dr. Raymond Jeanloz) in a dialogue on sub-continental strategic stability. During the deliberations with the group, two issues became apparent. First, the State Department group was split down the centre as to what defined strategic stability. The proposition on one side was the cold war paradigm that perceived stability through the ‘nuclear equilibrium’ prism - of survival through a nuclear first strike and then retaliating massively. A mirrored rationality of survivability and credibility of retaliation was of essence. The equilibrium between nuclear weapon states, from this perspective, was given surety by developing a nuclear war fighting capability and retaining a ‘limited nuclear option’ at hair trigger notice to control the escalatory ladder. This “Strangelovesque” advocacy appeared to disregard the fact that limits on use of nuclear weapons (by the nature of the weapon) defied escalatory control.

Second, the group also perceived the potential of terrorists being armed with nuclear devices justifying collaboration with Pakistan at any cost; this presented a strategic irony since it was the Pakistan deep state that made terror groups an instrument of state policy in the first place.

On the other side of the divide was the group that saw, in the contracting role of the US in Afghanistan, a diminishing utility of Pakistan. The sense that emerged was the need for strategic recalibration of their Pakistan policy. A common discernment in this group was that time had come to contend with the deep state in Pakistan for its’ duplicity throughout the US' war on terror, beginning with the evacuation of jihadis at Kunduz; providing a haven for al Qaeda; providing vital intelligence to various terror organisations; screening the AQ Khan network; or indeed, providing sanctuary to Osama bin Laden. This group also found definition in a holistic analysis of the various determinants that contributed to strategic stability (in line with this author's presentation). The determinants ranged from historical wholeness to geographic recognition; politico-social-religio conformity to economic friction; purpose and adequacy of military power; to the quest for a stasis; and lastly, the correlation between leaderships.

The question then reduced to what manner, intensity and degree did the interplay of determinants influence inter-state relationships? While it was generally accepted that transactions between determinants could either spell proclivity towards a symbiotic approach in relations, or it could persistently precipitate friction and conflict. In both cases, the basis of outcomes were largely predicated on discernability and rationality of both polity and leadership.

Unfortunately, the South Asian context is blurred by three contumacious factors. First, Pakistan’s cultivated reluctance to accept the anthropological reality of their identity as sub-continental Muslims, the preferred fiction is in favour of Arab or Central Asian descent rather than the truth of the vast majority being descendants of converts. This poses a unique dilemma when leveraging civilisational empathy as the basis of amity. Second, military power without political accountability views itself as the sacred keeper and absolute champion of national interests; and this presents an awkward predicament as to who is in charge when dealing with that State. But the most impious obstacle promoted by the deep state is its one track agenda of hostility towards India as the basis of its ascendancy. After all, if the question is put to the Pakistan establishment as to whether they accept a regime of strategic stability, the answer will most certainly be in the affirmative, with the caveat that control of the nation remain in the hands of the military-intelligence-jihadi nexus.

The strategic nuclear ‘self-fulfilling logic’ mentioned earlier cannot be the basis of doing business with Pakistan. For far too long, the world, and the US in particular, has taken an ambiguous and at times set double standards for terror groups and their sponsors. What needs to be recognised is that terrorism emanating from Pakistan is, unequivocally, a global scourge; and no other interests can justify their continuation. For as former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton famously put it, Islamabad could not keep "snakes" in its backyard to strike its neighbours. She said, "It's like that old story - you can't keep snakes in your backyard and expect them only to bite your neighbours. Eventually those snakes are going to turn on whoever has them in the backyard."

The establishment that promotes it as an instrument of state policy must be targeted internationally through exacting sanctions while the perpetrators of terror along with their handlers and infrastructure must be struck by covert military action.

More US drug price hikes in 2016

Brad Dixon

US drug makers kicked off the New Year with a new round of drug price hikes despite growing public anger and political backlash.

At the top of the list was Pfizer, which recently announced a $160 billion merger with Allergan that will make the new firm, which will keep the Pfizer name, the world’s largest pharmaceutical company—in addition to substantially cutting Pfizer’s tax rate.

According to reports in the Wall Street Journal and other news outlets, on January 1 Pfizer raised the prices of 105 of its drugs. The average price hike for 60 of its branded drugs was 10.6 percent, including the intravenous muscle relaxant Quelicin (42.3 percent), the erectile dysfunction drug Viagra (12.9 percent), the pain drug Lyrica (9.4 percent) and the breast cancer drug Ibrance (5 percent). Eight of the company’s products saw price increases of 20 percent or more.

Meanwhile, Allergan boosted the prices of 40 of its brand drugs by an average of 9.1 percent. Horizon Pharma increased the prices of five of its drugs by 9 to 10 percent.

Endo International raised the price of its pain drug Percocet by 25 percent—this is in addition to the 25 percent increase in 2015 and 30 percent increase in 2014. Vanda Pharmaceuticals likewise raised the price of its new drug to treat a sleep disorder in blind people by 10 percent, to $148,000.

Acorda Pharmaceuticals raised the price of its multiple sclerosis drug Ampyra by 11 percent. The company has raised the price of the drug several times since it was first introduced in 2010. It now costs more than $23,650 per patient and generated $315 million in sales for the company in the first nine months of 2015.

Drug companies often increase prices at the start of the year, and, in many cases, continue to do so over the course of the year. For example, last year Amgen raised the price of its anti-inflammatory drug Enbrel by 8 percent in May, 10 percent in September, and an additional 8 percent in December. The drug now costs $36,000 a year, nearly four times as much as the $10,000 it cost when it was first approved in 1998.

Christopher Raymond, an analyst with Raymond James, told the Journal that the price hikes for Enbrel and other drugs “seem to have increased in magnitude and frequency.”

Rebates may offset some of the price increases, but companies generally don’t make the amounts public and repeated increases can offset the rebates.

According to the Truveris OneRx National Drug Index, drug prices rose an average of 10.4 percent in 2015 (compared to 10.9 percent in 2014). Last year branded drugs rose by 14.8 percent (the same as in 2014), specialty drugs went up by 9.2 percent (9.7 percent in 2014), and generics increased by 2.9 percent (4.9 percent in 2014).

“We’re in our third year of double-digit [price increases],” A.J. Loiacono, the chief innovation officer at Truveris, a firm that tracks drug prices, told theWashington Post.

According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, US prescription drug spending grew 12.2 percent in 2014 to $297.7 billion, largely due to increased spending on specialty drugs such as those that treat Hepatitis C, compared to the 2.4 percent rise in 2013.

Mary Brainerd, chief executive of the non-profit HealthPartners, told theJournal that drug-industry practices “are becoming increasingly intolerable for consumers, health plans, doctors and hospitals.”

The drug companies are moving ahead despite public outcry over the price hikes, criticism from the leading Democratic presidential candidates, and recent congressional hearings and investigations.

This “signals there’s still pricing power,” Jeffries analyst David Steinberg told the Journal. “Unlike other countries, there’s no mechanism whereby regulatory authorities can control price.”

Democratic legislators recently made a half-hearted proposal.

US representative Lloyd Dogget, a Texas Democrat, issued a letter on January 11 signed by more than 50 other House Democrats asking the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to exercise its “march-in rights” as a method of controlling prices. As part of the federal 1980 Bayh-Dole Act, the NIH was given the authority to “march-in” and issue patent licenses for drugs developed using public funding if the patent holder does not make the drug “available to the public on reasonable terms.”

“The failure to act in the past has undoubtedly sent an unfortunate signal that prices for federally funded inventions can be set as high as a sick or dying customer will pay,” stated the lawmakers’ letter.

The proposal by the Democrats is simply a smokescreen for the elections. NIH Director Francis Collins has stated in the past that it is not appropriate for the agency to exercise this authority to control drug prices. Thus, the NIH is unlikely to follow the suggestion, although it is preparing to respond directly to lawmakers.

The Democrats, however, were careful to emphasize that even this limited measure should be used sparingly, only “when wrongdoing occurs” so “innovation should not be threatened.” The goal is not to address the underlying cause of skyrocketing drug prices—an economic system where health care is subordinated to the profit interests of corporations—but, instead, to protect the profits of the pharmaceutical industry as a whole by reining in the worst offenders.

“There is a difference between earning a profit and profiteering,” stated Dogget in a press release.

Nonetheless, the drug industry responded belligerently to the proposal. The biotech industry trade group BIO stated that it would “disrupt the biopharmaceutical innovation ecosystem with intrusive governmental intervention,” according to Bloomberg BNA . The group issued a veiled threat that the drug industry stop developing federally funded inventions if the NIH acted on the suggestion.

At this month’s annual JPMorgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco, Ron Cohen, the chairman of BIO, claimed that profiteering by the pharmaceutical industry was “a perversion of reality,” while calling public anger at rising drug prices “an abomination,” according to STAT News.

Protests over high drug prices were staged at the conference aimed at Gilead’s pricing of its HIV and Hepatitis C drugs. Gilead CEO John Milligan dismissed their concerns as “more of a campaign issue than an actual issue,” reported the San Francisco Business Times. According to a Senate Report released last month, Gilead priced its Hepatitis C drugs (Sovaldi at $84,000 per treatment and Harvoni at $94,500) to maximize profits, knowing full well that the “prices would put treatment out of the reach of millions and cause extraordinary problems for Medicare and Medicaid,” in the words of Senator Ron Wyden.

The rising prices do not correspond to any significant increases in demand for the drugs. For example, in October, the Wall Street Journal examined the wholesale pricing data for 30 top-selling drugs in the US. It found that the growth in prices (76 percent) and revenue (61 percent), far outstripped the rise in prescriptions (20 percent).

To justify the price hikes, drug companies often argue that the added revenue is pumped back into research and development to produce new drugs. An analysis of how drug companies spend their revenue, however, belies this argument.

A recent investigation by CBS Mone y Watch looked at the 2014 financial data for 16 publicly held pharmaceutical companies, including their annual revenue, spending on R&D (research and development) and SG&A (sales, general, and administrative, which includes marketing), and net income (profit after taxes). The news outlet then listed these figures as a percentage of annual revenue. For example:

· Pfizer ($49.6 billion revenue; $9.14 billion profit): R&D spending as percentage of revenue (19 percent) versus sales, general and administrative (SG&A) spending as percent of revenue (28 percent).

· AstraZeneca ($26.1 billion revenue; $1.23 billion profit): R&D spending (19 percent) versus SG&A (42 percent).

· Sanofi ($34.11 billion revenue; $4.39 billion profit): R&D spending (14 percent) versus SG&A (27 percent).

· Novartis ($55.63 billion revenue; $10.21 billion profit): R&D spending (17 percent) versus SG&A (28 percent).

· GlaxoSmithKline ($23 billion revenue; $2.76 billion profit): R&D spending (14 percent) versus SG&A (33 percent).

(According to Fortune, in 2014 Pfizer spent $8.4 billion on R&D, but spent 14.1 billion on sales, informational and administrative costs, including advertising, and $12 billion on share buy backs and dividends to investors).

“In all cases but one, corporate overhead was higher than R&D, and often significantly so,” CBS reported. “In half, after-tax profits were higher than the research-and-development expenses the industry typically points to as the major reason for high costs.”

The CBS story referred to a May 2015 Credit Suisse report that found that drug price increases were the key driver for profit growth. Credit Suisse estimated that “whilst traditional SG&A grew only 4 percent in 2014, when this spend[ing] is combined with rebate expenses, overall promotional costs rose 17 percent, well ahead of reported sales growth.”

“One way of looking at this is U.S. consumers pay more to subsidize marketing activities and profits than to finance new-drug research,” the CBS report concludes.

What is driving the stock market panic?

Barry Grey

Banks, hedge funds and governments all over the world are entering a new week of trading with fear and trepidation. The US markets are closed Monday for the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, but one can be certain that the Federal Reserve, the major Wall Street banks and the Obama administration will continue to be involved in intensive behind-the-scenes discussions with their international counterparts following the most disastrous two-week start of a new year in history.

Friday’s panic sell-off on stock markets from China and Europe to the US, with the Dow giving up 391 points and crashing through the 16,000 point barrier, capped off two weeks that erased $5.7 trillion from global share values.

The current sell-off, which has officially thrown stocks in the US and Europe into correction territory (more than 10 percent below recent highs) and the Chinese exchanges into bear market mode (down by more than 20 percent), has been fueled by mounting signs of stagnation and slump in the real economy. These include a sharp slowdown in China, plummeting prices for oil and other industrial commodities and new signs of economic deceleration in the US.

The mood spreading within financial circles was summed up by the Royal Bank of Scotland’s credit team, which sent a note advising clients that 2016 could be a “cataclysmic year” and urging them to “sell everything except high quality bonds.”

Warning that “in a crowded hall, exit doors are small,” the note predicted that major stock markets could fall by 20 percent and oil could drop from its current already depressed level of $29 a barrel to $16. “China has set off a major correction and it is going to snowball,” the note added.

The mood of foreboding is compounded by the intersection of economic turmoil with intensifying geopolitical conflicts and escalating wars, alongside political crises and mounting social tensions in country after country. The fact that the financial eruptions are playing out against the backdrop of a presidential election in the US that is already revealing a profound crisis of the American two-party system heightens the general sense of apprehension.

Whatever the short-term turn in the markets, the turbulence that has marked the new year reflects profound and deepening contradictions within the world capitalist system. After more than seven years of bailouts and trillions in virtually free cash for the banks and financial markets, compliments of central banks and governments in the US, Europe and Asia, the real economy has not only not recovered from the Wall Street crash of 2008, it is rapidly deteriorating.

The working class has been hammered with mass layoffs, wage cuts and austerity, while the rich and the super-rich have gorged themselves with profits derived from parasitic and socially destructive financial activities such as stock buybacks and mergers and acquisitions.

Wal-Mart’s announcement Friday that it is shutting 269 stores and slashing 16,000 jobs, including 154 stores and 10,000 jobs in the US, exposes the real state of economic and social conditions in America behind the official talk of economic “recovery”—epitomized just three days before in President Obama’s delusional State of the Union depiction of the US economy. “Anyone claiming that America’s economy is in decline is peddling fiction,” the president boasted.

The closure of these stores—coming on the heels of multi-store closure announcements by Macy’s and Sears-Kmart—means severe hardship for communities where Wal-Mart is the main employer and retail outlet. US industry is in a recession, as is freight transport. Some 40,000 coal mining jobs have been wiped out and coal production has fallen by 15 percent since 2008.

Now, record high levels of debt, in the form of emerging market corporate bonds, energy junk bonds and speculative bets on currencies and commodities, are threatening to implode along with inflated stock values. The underlying and deepening crisis in the real economy—starved of investment in the productive forces and the social infrastructure—is undermining the massive edifice of financial assets that has been built up on the basis of speculation, debt and outright swindling.

The decision of the Federal Reserve to begin raising interest rates, despite its intention to do so gradually and incrementally, intensifies the debt crisis and sends new shock waves through global currency markets, already roiled by a 35 percent rise in the dollar since 2011.

Even more fundamentally, profit rates are being squeezed. Last Monday, Alcoa reported a $500 million net loss in the fourth quarter of 2015. The earnings of Standard & Poor’s 500 companies are estimated to have fallen 4.7 percent during the quarter, the second straight quarterly decline. S&P 500 firms are expected to show zero profit growth for all of 2015.

The focus of attention is on the slowdown and crisis in China because the world’s second largest economy and major cheap-labor manufacturing platform has played such an oversized role in propping up world capitalism, especially since the 2008 crash. But the problems in China are an expression of a global crisis whose real center is the United States.

The rise of China as a global economic force is bound up with the precipitous decline of American capitalism, which is at the heart of the world capitalist crisis. The transformation of the Maoist-ruled country into a bastion of cheap labor and super-exploitation for the transnational corporations is the obverse of the decay of American industry and the increasingly predominant role of financial speculation in the US economy.

For decades, Wall Street has fueled one speculative bubble after another—the “Asian tigers,” the dot.com frenzy, the subprime mortgage scam—each of which has collapsed and given way to the next financial bubble. Meanwhile, the social infrastructure of the country has been left to rot and the working class driven ever deeper into economic insecurity and poverty.

The most significant underlying factor behind the threatened collapse of the current financial house of cards is the growth of working class resistance. The Chinese regime, corrupt to its bones, is fearful of the social and political implications of carrying through the scorched earth privatizing and job-slashing policies demanded by international capital and favored by the present ruling clique.

The massive Chinese working class is already stirring. Last year, the number of strikes and labor protests more than doubled compared to the previous year, and December saw a record high total of such struggles.

In the US, the ruling class is acutely aware of the growth of working class resistance, reflected in the mass opposition of autoworkers to the contracts rammed through by the United Auto Workers at the end of 2015, and this month by the sickouts organized by Detroit teachers independently of and in opposition to the teachers union. The growth of working class militancy and anti-capitalist sentiment, and the erosion of the grip of the right-wing corporatist unions, fills the corporate-financial elite and its political mouthpieces with dread.

It also impels them to prepare new and even more brutal attacks on workers’ social conditions and democratic rights. This must be answered by the development of the movement of the working class as a political struggle for the abolition of capitalism and establishment of socialism.

Major companies announce job cuts across Europe

Kumaran Ira

Amid growing global economic gloom, including a slowdown in China and falling oil and commodity prices, major companies throughout Europe are announcing mass layoffs and job cuts.

Last Wednesday, US multinational General Electric (GE) announced plans to cut 6,500 jobs in Europe over the next two years, including 1,700 jobs in Germany, 570 in the UK, 765 in France and 1,300 in Switzerland. According to comments from the head of GE’s power division last September, this is part of a plan to squeeze out $3 billion in cost savings over five years.

GE acquired French engineering company Alstom in a €9.7 billion deal in 2014, promising to create jobs. GE France spokesman Laurent Wormser said job cuts in France will hit mainly administrative jobs in the Paris area, in human resources, public relations and the legal department.

After reaching an agreement with the trade unions, French nuclear group Areva announced plans for 6,000 job cuts worldwide, including in Germany, the United States and 2,700 in France. The “competitiveness plan” deal would net Areva €1 billion in savings by 2017.

British Airways is eliminating 5,800 jobs under a plan to cut its debts, on top of 7,600 job cuts already announced earlier. These will largely hit major British airports, including 6,600 jobs cut at Heathrow airport and 3,000 at Gatwick.

France’s largely state-owned electricity firm EDF is cutting 4,000 jobs, or 6 percent of its workforce, through attrition over the next three years―twice the number announced previously. On a €72.8 billion turnover in 2014, EDF amassed a €3.7 net profit. This comes after last month's announcement of more job cuts in the French state sector, with French state-owned rail operator SNCF announcement of 1,400 job cuts in France as part of a plan to shed 10,000 jobs by 2020.

Air France plans to cuts 2,900 jobs between 2016 and 2017, including 1,000 jobs this year, despite making a significant operating profit over the last year. “Air France’s recovery is continuing and the current buoyant economic situation allows us to offer a return to growth as from 2017,” Air France CEO Frederic Gagey boasted.

Tata Steel will cut 1,050 jobs in Britain, hitting plants in Port Talbot, Llanwern, Trostre, Hartlepool and Corby, after announcing hundreds of job cuts last year as steel prices plunged. Ceramics group Royal Doulton will cut up to 1,000 jobs, mostly in Britain, amid the closure of its Baddeley Green factory.

While amassing huge profits from speculation and European Union (EU) bailouts, European banks have announced over 30,000 job cuts for 2016, after Europe’s top 30 banks shed over 80,000 jobs from 2008 to 2014. According to the Financial Times, two of Europe’s biggest banks, Barclays and BNP Paribas, plan to unveil job cuts to slash 10 to 20 percent of their investment banking costs.

The assault on the European working class comes amid escalating signs that the world economy is nearing another major collapse like the one triggered by the 2008 Wall Street crash. Since the New Year, stock markets worldwide have seen massive sell-offs amid plunging prospects of economic growth in China and collapsing prices for oil and basic commodities.

As a result of a slowdown in global trade, notably in China, Germany’s export-driven economy is highly vulnerable, while Southern European economies, undermined by EU austerity bailouts, remain plagued by mass unemployment and weak consumer demand.

In a January 17 article in the South China Morning Post, New View Economics CEO David Brown warned, “If Germany’s export powerhouse begins to falter, the rest of the euro zone will suffer as internal demand starts to trend lower. With up to 50 percent of euro zone exports traded internally within the single market, the consequences for growth and employment could be severe. Another quick recession should not be ruled out.”

Larry Fink, CEO of Blackrock, the world’s biggest private investment fund, told US financial channel CNBC that the crisis was set to worsen. “I actually believe there’s not enough blood in the streets,” he said, adding, “you’re going to start seeing more layoffs in the middle part of the first quarter, definitely the second quarter.”

The renewed economic collapse underscores the bankruptcy of capitalism. After the 2008 crisis, the European ruling class imposed harsh austerity policies, while plunging trillions of euros into bank bailouts, claiming this was necessary to prevent a complete collapse. Unenployment and social inequality skyrocketed as industries and living standards were undermined, while the super-rich saw a massive rise in their wealth.

Now, however, the economic devastation and financial criminality unleashed by the ruling class are provoking another global economic breakdown, with far-reaching consequences―not least of which is rising social opposition in the working class.

The financial press is nervously reporting social protest in China, which saw 2,774 worker protests last year, including 400 in December alone―a monthly record. Geoffrey Crothall of Hong Kong’s China Labour Bulletin told Bloomberg, “The increase in strikes and protests began last August around the time of the yuan devaluation and subsequent stock market crash and continued to build during the final quarter of the year, as the economy has showed little sign of improvement.”

Above all, the European ruling class is increasingly concerned about social protest at home. In one widely reported incident in October, after Air France announced thousands of jobs cuts, workers stormed an Air France works council meeting and assaulted two executives, ripping their shirts, amid widespread sympathy from workers across France and internationally. Air France took the unusual decision to sack and mount legal action against several of the workers.

These escalating class tensions are driving preparations in the European ruling class to try to use the military to crush strikes and social protests. In 2014, a study by the European Union’s Institute for Security Studies called for using military force to put down strikes, stating, “Within the framework of the joint foreign and security policy, the responsibilities of the police and armed forces are increasingly being merged, and the capacities to tackle social protest built up.”

Identifying “conflict between unequal socioeconomic classes in global society” as the main threat to EU “security,” it warned, “the percentage of the population who were poor and frustrated would continue to be very high, the tensions between this world and the world of the rich would continue to increase, with corresponding consequences. … we will have to protect ourselves more strongly.”

Less than two years later, these issues have taken an acute form. Draconian security policies are being imposed across Europe on the pretext of the “war on terror,” a far-right regime is emerging in Poland and France’s Socialist Party (PS) government has imposed a three-month state of emergency after the November 13 terror attacks in Paris.

This state of emergency bans demonstrations and the PS has cracked down on ecological protests that proceeded in defiance of this ban. It is also preparing a constitutional amendment to extend the state of emergency indefinitely, allowing police to detain and search anyone they view as a potential threat to public order.

The ruling class will seek to turn this climate of law-and-order hysteria against workers’ struggles. Last week, in an unprecedented act of political intimidation, French courts condemned eight former Goodyear tire workers to prison for briefly detaining executives during a strike, setting a precedent for broader crackdowns on social opposition against layoffs and austerity.