US involvement in enslavement and rape of Afghan children

Kayla Costa

A report released Monday revealed the United States’ long-term complicity in widespread sexual violence against Afghan boys. Between 2010 and 2016 alone, there were nearly 6,000 accusations of child sexual abuse reported by American military personnel, with no actions taken in response.

In a practice known as bacha bazi, or “boy play,” high-ranking Afghan elites use boys between the ages of 10 and 18 to entertain them as dancers, dressed in make-up and girls’ clothing. They then hold the boys hostage, raping them and forcing them to engage in other sexual acts over extended periods of time. Once these boys escape their enslavement, they are left with deep psychological, emotional, and social trauma.

The US military has been aware of these abusive practices for years, but has worked to hide them from the public eye in order to proceed with its cooperative relationship with the Afghan police and military.

Completed in June 2017, the report was to remain classified as “Secret//Not Releasable to Foreign Nationals” until 2042. The Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR) was well aware that the incidents were in violation of domestic and international human rights law, but the Pentagon continued to funnel billions into their operations through a loophole called the “notwithstanding clause.”

The decision by the Obama administration to commission the report in 2015 only arrived after an article by the New York Times recounted reports from soldiers and commanders in the US military, some of whom had been dismissed for their attempts to intervene in the crimes. Captain Dan Quinn was one of those who left the Special Forces, telling interviewers, “ We were putting people into power who would do things that were worse than the Taliban did.”

Despite the number of reports of military personnel being told to ignore the incidents for the sake of privacy or cultural differences, the SIGAR report reiterates that they found “no evidence that U.S. forces were told to ignore human rights abuses.” Instead, it primarily blames the lack of clearly defined procedures in reporting incidents, and the apathy of the Afghanistan government.

While the promises of Afghan leaders to crack down on these child rapists have gone unfulfilled, they do not carry sole responsibility. Gul Agha Shirzai, an Afghan politician who was backed by the CIA, is deeply involved in bacha bazi, and currently works as the minister of border and tribal affairs. In another case, contractors who worked for DynCorp—an aviation, weapons, and law enforcement company that conducts nearly all of its business with the US government—were found to have bought drugs and “dancing boys” with their Afghan policemen in 2010.

Since 2001, the United States has funneled over $70 billion straight into Afghan military and police forces and easily over $1 trillion more broadly. The country has faced great destruction, with at least 175,000 Afghan casualties and millions displaced as refugees. Poppy production and the drug trade now have a huge influence over the national economy, elevating the same government officials, warlords, and elites that participate in child enslavement and rape.

The American military machine also has its own history of sexual violence, against its own forces and civilians. Rape has been used as an act of war against women, children, and prisoners of war throughout every major conflict in the past century. This is no exception for the United States interventions in the Middle East. In one striking example, a Preliminary Examination Report from 2016 documented 82 individual detainees of the CIA who were tortured, abused or raped in Afghanistan and the “black sites” of Poland, Romania and Lithuania.

After a brief hiatus at the start of 2016, the Pentagon has intensified operations in the Afghanistan. Civilian casualties are higher today than at any point since the first invasion, caused in part by a 300 percent increase in air strikes and artillery barrages. At least 16,000 US troops are now on the ground, just a fraction of the total forces throughout the Middle East.

Countless photos, videos, and stories of the killing and suffering of children and women have been circulated by the media to justify the wars in the Middle East. Accompanied by crocodile tears, these alleged violations of human rights by those targeted by the US military are seized upon as justification of wars of aggression.

This SIGAR report is just one more confirmation that the “human rights” politics of the US ruling establishment are shot through with hypocrisy and deceit.

German industrial workers poised to launch massive strikes

Dietmar Henning

Germany’s most important industrial sector, the metal and electronics industry, is on the brink of a major expansion of strike action. With 960,000 workers having participated in brief warning strikes and protests over the past two weeks, the IG Metall trade union has announced one-day strikes at 250 plants between Wednesday and Friday this week.

Despite its best efforts, IG Metall has failed to smother the movement surrounding the contract talks. The fifth round of bargaining collapsed because the union felt it could not, due to pressure from the workers, agree to a contract for the Baden-Württemberg region that would have served as a template for nearly 4 million workers nationwide.

The union and the employers’ organisations blamed each other for the failure of the talks. The latter proposed a wage hike of 6.8 percent in two stages as part of a 27-month contract, which would equate to just 3 percent per year. The union proposed a 4.5 percent increase in wages in the first stage and a total increase of 8 percent over 27 months. This would amount to 3.6 percent per year, far below the original demand for a 6 percent annual increase.

IG Metall has also largely abandoned its demand for a temporary reduction in weekly working hours in exchange for a partial offsetting of wages. Stefan Wolf, head of the Sudwest Metall employer association, indicated that the union was prepared to agree as part of its proposal to increased working time in the plants. This would enable the companies to achieve their most important goal—the abandonment of the 35-hour workweek and its extension to 40 or even 42 hours.

The demand for a partial offsetting of wages for certain groups of workers, such as shift workers and workers who look after children or relatives in need of care, has been entirely cast aside by IG Metall. Instead, workers would have the option of exchanging the second stage of the pay hike for additional holidays.

Despite the union’s backpedalling, the talks collapsed because the pressure from rank-and-file workers was so great that the unions could make no further concessions to the employers without running the risk of losing control of the workers. However, IG Metall continues to do all it can to sell out the contract struggle.

To this end, the union did not declare that the talks had failed and it avoided calling a strike vote to authorise unlimited strikes. The 24-hour strikes, which were initially meant to take place immediately, were postponed until Wednesday so as to create another window of opportunity to reach a rotten deal.

The union also handed the employers an opportunity to go to court to block the strikes. Rainer Dulger, head of the industrial employers’ association, has already announced his intention to file for an injunction against the strikes on Monday.

Even if the 24-hour strikes take place, IG Metall will strive to implement a rotten compromise immediately thereafter. Union head Jörg Hofmann explained the purpose of the strikes by saying that they should “increase the pressure on the employers to reach an acceptable compromise in the contract conflict.” Manager Magazin reported, “The contract parties had long considered making a final attempt to reach an agreement after another week of strikes in early February.”

The main factor behind IG Metall’s determination to seal a sell-out agreement as quickly as possible, without obtaining even half of its original wage demand, is the ongoing talks over the establishment of a new federal government. The unions want at all costs to avoid risking a collapse of talks between the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the conservative parties due to the pressure of a massive strike wave.

The German Trade Union Federation and IG Metall are fervent advocates of a new installment of the grand coalition, even though the SPD and the conservative parties bear responsibility for major attacks on the working class over the past 20 years, beginning with a massive tax cut that benefited the rich and followed by the Hartz labour laws, the Agenda 2010 social welfare reform, the lifting of the retirement age from 67 to 70 and a drastic deterioration of the health care system.

Germany has, as a result, become one of Europe’s most unequal countries. More than 40 percent of the population earn less than they did 20 years ago. Some 3.2 million people have more than one job. The gulf between rich and poor has reached levels not seen since 1913. The 45 richest households own more wealth than the poorest half of the population.

German companies have also made huge strides in productivity. Workloads in the plants have risen continuously over recent years at the expense of workers’ health and well-being. For many, stress levels have become unbearable. According to the industrial employers association, productivity per worker rose by 2.5 percent during the period January to November 2017 alone.

This increased productivity goes exclusively to fatten the profits raked in by executives and shareholders. By contrast, workers’ wages have barely increased. The minimal pay hikes over the last decade have been eaten up by rising rent prices. A growing number of full-time positions are being replaced by low-paid temporary and contract labour. This is why the demands for a 6 percent pay increase and a temporary reduction in the workweek to be partially compensated secured strong support.

A new installment of the grand coalition would not only continue, but intensify the anti-worker policies of its predecessor. As has already been agreed in a paper published following the conclusion of exploratory talks, the new government’s main task will be to strengthen the European Union and expand it into a military fortress capable of enforcing the global interests of German and European capital. The SPD and the conservative parties plan to cooperate with French President Emmanuel Macron, who governs under a de facto state of emergency and has initiated the greatest social counterrevolution since the founding of the Fifth Republic.

The grand coalition’s real goals—a massive military build-up and strengthening of the domestic state apparatus, and a corresponding hike in military spending—are being discussed only behind closed doors or in specialist publications. However, even the lead article in the latest edition of Der Spiegel made clear that the mad drive to war is not unique to US President Donald Trump.

In a piece titled “World Power Against Its Will,” Ullricht Fichtner fantasised how, “In Manchester and Rome, in Warsaw and Lyon the window panes” will shake when Germany, which he compared to an “800-pound gorilla,” moves. “Every child should know,” according to Fichtner, “that a colossus like Germany has no choice whether or not to exercise power.”

IG Metall, which fully supports the plans for a new grand coalition, will do everything to smother the contract struggle and sell it out. Workers who want to fight to retain their jobs and gain improvements in wages and working conditions must break with the trade unions and form independent action committees. The action committees must take control of the organization of the strikes and make contact with workers in other countries who want to fight against the global corporations and their respective governments.

Get in contact with the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party) and the World Socialist Web Site, which will support you in this struggle. The SGP calls for an expansion of the strike movement and for it to be made the prelude to a political mobilisation for new elections. The SPD and the conservative parties, in league with the trade unions, cannot be permitted to put their reactionary plans into practice.

The SGP is the only party calling for new elections and fighting in the working class for a programme that combines the fight against war and exploitation with the fight for a socialist society.

2018 begins with US police reign of terror

Niles Niemuth

While largely ignored by the mass media, the reign of terror by police officers continues to rage across the United States. The entire state apparatus, from local cops to immigration agents, has been unleashed by the Trump administration to beat, maim and kill with impunity.

During a speech to hundreds of uniformed officers last July, Trump urged the police to not be “too nice” and to treat detainees “rough.” The Justice Department has at the same time ended the toothless pretense of federal oversight over a handful of police departments put in place by the Obama administration.

In the year since Trump was sworn in as president, at least 1,223 people have been killed by police. Since the beginning of 2018, according to killedbypolice.net, 3.5 people have been killed on average every day.

A Washington Post database reports 78 fatal police shootings so far this year. As in previous years, the figures show that police killings impact every race and ethnicity, with whites comprising the largest share of victims, while African Americans are killed at a rate higher than their overall percentage of the population. In those cases where race or ethnicity has been identified by the Post, 54 percent of victims were white, 25 percent African American, 15 percent Hispanic, 3 percent Asian and 2 percent Native American.

Among the most recent victims is Donte Shannon, a 26-year-old African American man who was killed by police in Racine, Wisconsin on January 17 after fleeing a traffic stop. According to the police account, Shannon’s initial crime was not having a front license plate on his vehicle. Officials claim the police were forced to unleash a hail of bullets after Shannon pointed a gun at them, though investigators have not reported finding a weapon at the scene.

On the same day, a deputy in Columbus, Ohio shot and killed 16-year-old Joseph Haynes, a white youth, during an altercation after a court hearing. Haynes, who was unarmed, was thrown to the ground and shot once in the abdomen after he confronted a deputy for pushing his mother up against a wall.

In addition to those killed, workers and youth are subjected to police harassment and brutality on a daily basis.

Earlier this month, Louisiana teacher Deyshia Hargrave was removed from a school board meeting and handcuffed by a deputy marshal after she raised questions about school officials awarding themselves raises while denying them to teachers and staff. Former coal miner Gary Michael Hunt was choked by a police officer and removed from a public meeting after demanding clean water for the residents of Martin County, Kentucky.

Not even children are spared, as shown by a report Sunday that a 7-year-old child in Miami, Florida was led away from his school in handcuffs after an altercation with a teacher last week.

The issue of police killings and brutality erupted into national and international prominence with the murder of Michael Brown in August 2014 and the militarized police response to protests. Popular anger over police violence has not gone away. However, over the past three and a half years there has been a systematic effort to smother opposition and channel it behind the Democratic Party.

A critical role has been played by Black Lives Matter (BLM), which was developed and promoted to push the false claim that police violence is a racial rather than a class issue. Along with the various other organizations that promote and support the Democratic Party, BLM sought to cover up the relationship between police violence and the nature of the capitalist state as an instrument of class repression. BLM pushed for various reforms, including body cameras, oversight boards and more minority police officers, as the supposed solution to police violence.

In 2016, the main leaders of BLM threw their support behind Hillary Clinton, the favored candidate of Wall Street and the military-intelligence apparatus. During the election season, the Ford Foundation announced that it would funnel $100 million to a panoply of organizations associated with the BLM movement. This was followed by the announcement of an initiative by BLM to promote “black capitalism,” including the introduction of a Black Lives Matter debit card.

The Democratic Party is fully complicit in the epidemic of police violence. The Obama administration presided over the continued militarization of police forces while ensuring that nothing was done to prosecute officers who perpetrated violence.

Since the election of Trump, the Democrats have entirely ignored the ongoing wave of police killings. They have worked to suppress and divert all manifestations of social opposition to the Trump administration behind a reactionary and militarist agenda of aggression against Russia, a further redistribution of wealth to the rich, and the destruction of democratic rights.

A significant factor in the efforts to censor the Internet, spearheaded by the Democratic Party, is concern that police killings and abuse videotaped on smartphones have become national and international issues through distribution on social media platforms. Facebook is now changing its newsfeed to limit the reach of content from news sources outside the so-called “mainstream,” with the aim of preventing the expression and propagation of opposition to police violence and social inequality.

Opposition to police violence within the United States cannot be separated from opposition to war, social inequality and the capitalist system. With wealth concentration rising to levels without historic precedent, the ruling elite relies on the police to enforce inequality.

And as the Pentagon prepares to wage war abroad on an unprecedented scale, the ruling class is preparing for war at home. The concept of “Total Army” has been coined to embrace the innumerable and growing connections between the police, border patrol, immigration agents and the military—a single apparatus of war and repression.

The ruling class is well aware that it faces its greatest danger within the United States, in the form of the growth of working-class struggle and the development of a mass movement against capitalism. It is only through the building of such a political movement that the reign of police violence can be ended.

Bitcoin, Innovation of Money And Reinventing Activism

Nozomi Hayase

Bitcoin’s price explosion made news headlines this last year. Topics of digital assets entered onto dinner tables and friendly chats at work places. Fever of the digital gold rush that has swept mainstream finance became contagious. Institutional funds are now entering into cryptos, seemingly hedging their bets with their “sugar high” bubble economy. Jamie Dimon, the JPMorgan CEO who previously slammed Bitcoin as a fraud is said to be regretting his claim. He now praises the blockchain, the underlying technology of Bitcoin. Goldman Sachs recently acknowledged Bitcoin as money, comparable to gold. The firm is already setting up a trading desk for digital currencies.

While Bitcoin is gaining traction in financial circles, Naval Ravikant, the CEO and co-founder of Angel List saw this technology’s profound socio-political impact. He noted, “Bitcoin is a tool for freeing humanity from oligarchs and tyrants, dressed up as a get-rich-quick scheme.” WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange also recognized the revolutionary power of this money based on math. At the end of 2017, from the Ecuadorian embassy in London where he has been confined more than five years, Assange tweeted, “Bitcoin is a real Occupy Wall Street”.

What is this disruptive force of Bitcoin? The Occupy movement that had spread over dozens of US cities and across many countries created a wave of uprising. It inspired a new vision of politics outside of the electoral arena. Now, years after Occupy’s demise, this new innovation of decentralized digital currency could offer a way to reinvent activism, helping all around the world to organize and create radical social change.

The era of creditocracy

First, let’s look back at the rise of OccupyWallStreet protest. The movement kicked off in New York’s financial district in 2011, uniting people from all walks of life under the banner of the 99% against economic inequality and corporate greed. Occupy emerged within a cultural milieu of transparency, spearheaded by WikiLeaks’ disclosure of documents pertaining to government secrecy and corruption.

The insurgency in lower Manhattan marked a peak of disillusionment about the current state of democracy. People began to wake up to an invisible hand of the market – 1% global oligarchy, that was controlling resources through money based on debt. In the article “Student Debt Slavery: Bankrolling Financiers on the Backs of the Young”, attorney and author Ellen Brown described the advantage of “slavery by debt” over owned slavery, which was an idea argued in a document reportedly circulated during the American Civil War among British and American banking sectors. Brown showed that while slaves need to be housed and fed, “free men could be kept enslaved by debt, by paying wages insufficient to meet their costs of living”.

This debt-based financial system has become what professor and veteran of the Occupy movement Andrew Ross calls a “creditocracy”. In this, ordinary people with student loans, medical and credit card bills have become indentured servants. Ross explains how it is the Western version of a “debt trap”, where debts are piled up with monthly credit card balances or underwater mortgages that cannot be ever paid to ensure continuing revenue for the banks. He notes how this is similar to the developing countries that fell under IMF dependency in the course of the 1970s and 1980s.

In the era of creditocracy, ubiquitous anonymous corporations keep the force of control invisible, making people obey their rules. MasterCard tells their customers who the master is with exuberant chargeback fees and penalties. VISA maintains US hegemony of the world, denying access to finance for refugees and immigrants and assisting US government sanctions on countries like Russia and Iran that challenge dollar supremacy. This is a two-tiered financial patronage network that exempts fees and extends credit lines to the rich and privileged, while it exploits the poor by seizing their funds and engaging in predatory lending.

Creditocracy now expands around the globe and threatens civil liberties. Recently, PayPal came under scrutiny, with their failure to provide services in the West Bank and Gaza, while making its service available in Israel. This payment processing company was accused by pro-Palestinian activists as enacting “online apartheid” against Palestinians.

Vision of new democracy

It is people’s indignation against this systemic economic oppression that sparked revolt at the center of world finance seven years ago. Occupy was unprecedented in its scale and its unique style of no central coordination or formal leadership. It was a move away from electoral politics and top-down decision making to the principle of consensus and direct action, which activist scholar David Graeber described as “the defiant insistence on acting as if one is already free”.

During the early days of this movement, the mainstream media criticized demonstrators for not having a clear mandate. Yet this lack of demand was a strength and refusal to recognize the legitimacy of power structures that protesters were challenging. What unfolded then was a new form of activism that truly channels uncompromising power of ordinary people. It was an activism that doesn’t acknowledge external power or seek for permission. Instead it encourages people to change society by simply building new alternatives.

This was a seed for a real democracy that is horizontal and participatory. It was manifested through activists’ effort of creating people’s libraries, media hubs and kitchens and forming a new way of governance through mic check and General Assemblies. This vision of organizing society through mutual aid and voluntary association went viral, spreading with internet memes and Twitter hashtags, creating solidarity across borders.

Cypherpunks write code

Occupy’s permissionlessness, without a need to refer to central authority, is embodied at the core of Bitcoin. The idea of Bitcoin was introduced in a whitepaper published in the midst of the 2008 financial crisis. It is clear that the anonymous creator of Bitcoin was concerned about deep corruption of government and their mishandling of monetary policies. This was shown in the message embedded in the genesis block of the blockchain. It contained a headline of a newspaper that read “The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks”.

Richard Gendal Brown, chief technology officer at software firm R3, provides a summary of the invention of this open source software:

“Bitcoin is the world’s first system of digital cash, which allows peer-to-peer value transfer over the internet with no reliance on third parties. It is built on a new invention, the decentralized global asset register. This global asset register is the world’s first decentralized consensus system.”

What is behind the protocol of a truly peer-to-peer currency is a revolutionary mind that refuses to obey the command from above and declares independence from all that claim authority. This fierce autonomy is the moral value of cypherpunks, a group that emerged in the late 1980s, who saw a potential of cryptography as a tool to shift balance of power between the individual and the state.

Cryptographer and one of the notable cypherpunks Adam Back, who was cited in Bitcoin’s whitepaper for his invention of Hashcash described the ethos of cypherpunks as that of writing code. This is an idea of making changes by creating alternatives. Back noted how pressuring politicians and promoting issues through the press tends to be slow and create an uphill battle. He pointed out how instead of engaging in the political process through campaigns and appealing to authority for changes, people can simply “deploy technology and help people do what they consider to be their legal right”. Then society would later adjust itself to reflect these values.

Network of resistance

While the mainstream media is obsessed with Bitcoin’s price and investors speculating gains in their portfolios, this technology’s defining feature lies in censorship resistance. The integrity of Bitcoin relies on decentralization, which is a method to attain security by flattening the network and removing levers of control, rather than performing checks and balances of power that tends to concentrate through control points inherent within the system, seen in the existing model of governance. This unprecedented security creates a network of resistance resilient to any forces of control.

When governments that are meant to defend civil rights act against their own people, Bitcoin preserves the network value of public right to free association and speech and distributes this to all users. This right was claimed and exercised in real time. In facing the illegal financial blockades imposed by Bank of America, VISA, MasterCard, PayPal and Western Union, WikiLeaks showed ordinary people how they can circumvent and combat economic censorship with Bitcoin.

As the whistleblowing site continues to publish CIA Vault publications, political persecution intensifies. Now the Freedom of the Press Foundation, an organization that was founded to tackle attacks on free press, decided to terminate processing of donations for WikiLeaks. In response to this new political pressure, Assange urged supporters to continue making contributions with cryptocurrencies and unleash the power of free speech that belongs to all.

As trusted institutions and governments are failing, people around the world are finding their own path of self-determination. In Argentina, as the Peso has been steadily falling since the country’s 2002 economic collapse, Bitcoin adoption has been accelerating. Bitcoin historian and former tech banker who goes by Tweeter handle @_Kevin_Pham noted, “Bitcoin’s killer app can be found in Venezuela, it’s called: ‘not dying.’” As hyperinflation is rendering their national currency worthless, Venezuelans are flocking to Bitcoin as a safe haven to store their savings.

In Iran, the government came on full force, engaging in internet censorship and cracking down on protesters who revolted in response to the country’s long economic stagnation. It was reported that leading up to the civil unrest, the Bitcoin community has grown with more people entering into cryptocurrencies. In Afghanistan, a company that advocates Afghan women’s computer literacy empowered women with bitcoin, helping them gain financial sovereignty.

Permissionless activism

The Occupy movement ignited aspirations for the rule of the common people, verified and upheld by a network consensus created through people’s trust in one another. Yet the enthusiasm for real democracy that was mobilized through social media could not withstand state coordinated police crackdowns. With the eviction of encampments and squares, people’s power that had arisen then dissipated.

Now, with Bitcoin surging, a new stream of disruption is emerging. These old financial engineers aim to protect their dying fraudulent world of central banks by upending their speculative casino with this hyped crypto market. As incumbent banks geared with regulatory arms try to control the bubbling civic power, perhaps this technology calls people to rise once again to halt financial aristocracy by innovating the ‘activism without permission’ – this time with better security and robustness.

Knowledge of computer science empowered by the ethics of cypherpunks now provides a viable platform for people to occupy society with their heart’s imagining. Sovereign individuals can now defy the rule of creditors and create their own rules, ending financial apartheid and discrimination. They can coalesce to fund independent media they support with their money and defund wars that they oppose. Permissionless activism can bring a jubilee, making rapacious debt obsolete through each individual simply walking away from this erroneous system, uniting with those who share goals to create a new economy.

The imagination of this invention opened the potential for a radically different future. From Rosa Parks’ refusal to give up her seat on the bus in Montgomery Alabama to occupiers’ adamant refusal to make demands, Bitcoin’s networked consensus creates an autonomous currency that allows all to move struggles of the past forward.

The rise of Bitcoin is poised to disrupt the world of creditocracy, as we know it. As the price rally continues, many now proclaim the rise and rise of Bitcoin! The question that remains is: Can our imagination rise with the revolutionary force this technology brings? Bitcoin already unleashed a potent power within. The future is now in our hands. It is up to each person to claim this power and show the world what democracy really looks like.

Is Indian Democracy Turning Into Mobocracy?

 Ashraf Lone

India’s democracy, social setup and secularism is in grave danger.  And this danger has become more visible now. The pace with which Indian society is indoctrinated with the hatred of muslims, dalits and other marginal communities is  increasing with each passing day. Killing of dalits and muslims on smaller pretexts is going on with no stop to these heinous crimes. Crimes are being committed in broad day light. With the “controversy” of bollywood movie “Padmavat”, which earlier was named “Padmavati” , but thanks the Karni Sena” threats, name was changed. But after the name-change of the movie and too many cuts, the socalled “Karni Sena” held to its threat that no public screening of movie takes place and this after Supreme Court lifting the ban on movie’s screening.

Democracy in India has turned into mobocracy. This started from the trial of a Kashmiri prisoner parliament convict Afzal Guru, eventually hanged to death to “satisfy the collective conscience” of the nation(read masses/mobs). The Indian justice system has continuously budged before the masses or some fringe organizations in various matters and this has posed a grave threat to the Indian judicial system. Recent revelations of the Supreme Court judges has also exposed the murky affairs of the Indian justice system.

Earlier the target were only the muslims and dalits but now the fire of hatred and bigotry has engulfed everything. With the attack on School Bus in Gurugram, Haryana and frightening scenes of children inside the bus, caught on the camera, India’s soft approach towards the fringe groups like Karni Sena, Shiv Sena, RSS etc. has got exposed on world stage and this has caused much embarrassment to Indian establishment. Karni Sena set the buses, cinema halls and other government buildings on fire and this arson and plundering has spread to most of the North and West India. Police has been deployed everywhere but to no avail. Karni Sena , with the patronage of ruling regime has set the entire North and West India on fire.

For this whole episode, a fictitious piece of poetry, a poem written by the poet Malik Muhammad Jayasi, is the sole reason, where history has taken the back seat much like the case of Babri Masjid/Ayodhya Issue, in which some fictitious tale was believed to be true rather than a well documented history. Infact in Babri Masjid case, leading historian’ assertions were ignored thus paving the way for masses and mobs to dictate terms to the judiciary and to the state. These incidents have put a question mark on Indian polity, judiciary and exposed the Indian society at the international stage.

India which recently was claiming to be the “largest democracy”(With so much human rights violations to its credit in Kashmir and North East) of the world has been held hostage by the fringe groups. These groups are dictating terms to political class, judiciary and to other state missionary and this is the alarming sign for the India on social and political level.

Indian social system is in total crisis. On every minor issue, mobs are dictating terms to the state and now least caring for judiciary as well. State is looking helpless or playing to the vote-bank lobby and surrendering before the mob. These are alarming signs for India as a secular nation. It is undeclared emergency like situation in India.

The problem with the present regime is that it has added fuel to the already fragile society of India, infact used this fuel and communal card in elections too. With fighting corruption and developmental and employment promises taking a back seat and government totally failing on these fronts, it is spreading venom and hatred in society and now it has become uncontrollable. It also seems the present regime is also giving a soft hand to fringe groups and using it as an election card by giving the “Padmavat Controversy” Hindu Vs Muslim color and showing a muslim king as brute and barbarian, prying upon the hindu women, and deliberately ignoring his bright side. Muslims also have every reason to protest against this distortion of history, but as always muslims of India have never chosen the violent path, inspite of the fact that right from 1947, on various instances, their religious and other sentiments have been hurt by Indian state and judiciary.

The rising interference of army in civil and other administrative affairs is also worrying sign for Indian polity. Army is calling shots on some important civilian administration issues, particularly related with Jammu and Kashmir. From Syllabus to Two Maps statements, this has exposed the rising role of army in Indian polity. And it also shows how Indian civil administration system has weakened over the years.

But there is also a section of people in Hindu majority India, who do not subscribe to this ideology of hate and bigotry. It is this class of Hindus, who have to rise to the occasion and protest openly against this hatred fomented by the political classes of India for their vote banks. The fire of hatred and bigotry has reached the doors of this moderate section also. Their time to act against this hatred and bigotry has come, otherwise this fire will engulf this section also and that will be the last nail in the coffin of the  already weakened democratic and social setup of India.

From Degrowth To De-Globalization

Samuel Decker

The rise of far-right globalization criticism requires a new role for the Degrowth movement. ‘Progressive De-Globalization‘ could be the counter-project that is urgently needed.

After the German and Austrian elections, it becomes clear once more that the rise of the new far-right is not a temporary phenomenon. Neither the difficult Brexit negotiations nor the missteps of Donald Trump are stopping new nationalism’s upward trend, as one could have hoped. Consequently, Yannis Varoufakis diagnosed the long-term emergence of a nationalist international: nationalist and far-right authoritarian leaders, parties, movements, NGOs and media that are gaining ground and interconnect on a global scale. They bring about what left-wing mass movements and parties were not able or willing to do in the ten years since the financial crisis: they formulate an alternative to the discredited ideology of neo-liberalism. A strong narrative of national empowerment, paired with religious, racist, anti-feminist and anti-ecological resentments is becoming a serious challenger of neoliberalism’s TINA principle (“There Is No Alternative”). Although the new far-right questions only some aspects of neoliberal economic policy and radicalizes it in other aspects, it nevertheless acts as an ideological countermovement to the neoliberal and post-democratic political model.

The far-right as a Degrowth-phenomenon

The nationalist international has more to do with Degrowth – understood as an empirical state, not as a political demand – than it first seems. Decelerating growth or even stagnation have become the new normal in in the countries of the global North. While neoliberal globalization has created new centers of growth in the global south since the 1980s, growth slowed down in the north. Stagnating wages, precarious jobs, growing inequality – the subjective relationship between economic growth and quality of life eroded. It seems natural to make sense of the new right as a countermovement to the rise of new economic powers. In the western “relegation societies”, those forces are gaining in strength that can credibly promise to secure the relative prosperity that is left or even a return to past golden ages.

But even beyond the old ‘industrialized nations’, right-wing and reactionary tendencies are gaining the upper hand. Whether Al Sisi in Egypt, Modi in India, Xi Jingping in China, Erdogan in Turkey, Duterte in the Philippines, Putin in Russia, Temer in Brazil, Macri in Argentina, Kaczynski in Poland or Orbán in Hungary – the nationalist international is certainly no ‘first world problem’. The growth models of globalizing capitalism, as different as they are, cannot keep their promise of wealth and advancement for all, also and especially outside the G7 countries, and thus require new legitimization strategies. Right-wing forces are more successful in addressing this legitimacy deficit than progressive alliances because they do not have to problematize the exclusive social logic of neo-liberalism and to formulate a political project ‘for all’. On the contrary, they can remain superficial and declare scapegoats. It is no coincidence that the new right-wing leaders are usually recruited from wealthy entrepreneurial dynasties. To sum up, the social costs and the economic limitations of the growth paths of globalizing capitalism are leading to the emergence of new domination projects within the elite, which often argue protectionist and attempt to channel discontent with neoliberal globalization into national resentments.

Transformation as a counter-project?

Thus, we are witnessing the emergence of a far-right version of globalization criticism, which, while not fundamentally politicizing markets and relations of production, offers a projection surface for the dissatisfaction with the neoliberal growth model. An economic counter-narrative from the left, however, is still taking time to materialize. The protests of the past 20 years against the WTO, social cuts, austerity policies or bilateral free trade agreements represented essentially defensive struggles and not future-oriented search processes for economic alternatives.

Meanwhile, “(social-ecological) transformation” has become a catch-all term for all sorts of progressive actors and specters to signal the need for some sort of far-reaching change. The current dominance of the concept of transformation in progressive debates is a problem in many ways. On the one hand, it mostly remains an abstract academic phrase, which is hardly practically and emotionally communicable and promises rather even more uncertainty and instability than robust crisis solutions. In addition, the concept of transformation is currently suffering a similar fate as sustainable development: it is being made compatible with the requirements of a profit and growth-oriented economic system. Above all, the transformation discourse is systematically concealing from discussion what the far-right is addressing very successfully: the need to tackle neoliberal globalization and its institutional manifestations (such as the European Economic Governance, NAFTA, TPP).

Degrowth is becoming a political force

The strength of the degrowth approach lies not only in pointing to the demise of the neo-liberal growth regime, but to turn it into a positive vision. Instead of promising a nostalgic return to the supposedly golden age of industrial capitalism, Degrowth envisages a ‘prosperous way down’ to a society in which perhaps less material wealth, but more social equality, more time and quality of life, more cooperation and social freedom are prevalent. The rediscovery of utopian and experimental economic thinking in the form of the Degrowth discourse has led to the gathering and mixing of diverse economic concepts and theories. It’s precisely the clear and antagonizing rejection of economic growth that made the Degrowth demand to a projection surface that brings various different actors and milieus together and by this steadily becomes a political force.

However, the Degrowth movement hast still a long way to go on this road. Attempts to expand the predominantly white and academic social base and the European perspective of the Degrowth movement by selectively integrating other discourses – such as self-determined development, digitization or post-extractivism – are heading to the right direction. However, these attempts are not yet sufficient to turn Degrowth and the climate movement as a whole into an actor or antagonist, which is taken seriously and perceived on the political stage. Although the demand for a departure from the growth imperative picks up on existing social discomfort with neoliberal globalization, the deciding societal conflict of our time is not addressed. The dominant societal line of conflict today runs between those political forces who want to maintain and deepen the economic globalization of the past decades (the “TINA principle”) and those forces who criticize it and develop new forms of international coordination.

Progressive De-Globalization

The idea of a coordinated economic De-Globalization is nothing new. Walden Bello coined the term in the early 2000s, sparking heated debates in the anti-globalization movement of that time. Bello never got tired of stressing that De-Globalization by no means meant isolation and nationalism, but a new form of international regulation and political cooperation. In his 14 Principles he calls, among other things, for domestic production, economic subsidiarity, development-oriented industrial and trade policy, economic pluralism, redistribution of income and assets and a departure from economic growth.

But the term De-Globalization has provoked criticism, too. Already in 2003, Patrik Bond criticized Walden Bello’s approach as “double-reformist” because he relied on a combination of international regulation and local economic approaches and ignored revolutionary strategies. In today’s context, the even bigger problem is that that the revaluation of local, regional and national levels, as embodied in the concept of De-Globalization, could strengthen the current trend towards re-nationalization. To state the obvious, the space of politics today is transnational, if not global; neither financially dominated capitalism nor the nationalist international can be tackled on a national level. Already the Mitterrand government of the 1980s encountered the limits of national transformation strategies, before the Syriza government suffered the same fate 2015. Any economic alternative and any political strategy for its implementation today must be articulated transnationally if it wants to develop a real alternative.

Cosmopolitan and voluntaristic strategies of ‘another globalization’ or a ‘great transformation’ in turn represent no realistic alternatives as well.

De-Globalization in the form of a fragmentation of political power relations and the emergence of multipolar capitalism has long begun. It is no longer about whether De-Globalization is taking place, but about who is shaping it and how. The central conflict of the present is what the alternative to the Western-style system of global governance and its neoliberal economic software will look like. Are we expecting a new bloc confrontation and intensified geopolitical conflicts? Will reactionary forces in part wind up neoliberal globalization while radicalizing the social-chauvinist components of neoliberal politics? Or can a progressive counter-project emerge that wants to shape the De-Globalization of its own while overcoming nationalist and neo-liberal policies?

Degrowth must be put into practice

The new political role for the Degrowth movement consists in picking up the concept of a coordinated economic De-Globalization and positioning it as a progressive antipode to the globalization critique from the right. De-Globalization is a necessary sharpening and concretization of the Degrowth program. While Degrowth formulates a goal, De-Globalisation points out the direction to go. How is Degrowth supposed to be put into practice differently than by stopping and reversing the ever-increasing transnationalization of capitalist production and trade, the spread of financial markets and concentration of capital, the commodification of all spheres of life and the dismantling of democracy? The concept of a Progressive De-Globalization could also bring about the urgently needed co-operation between the globalization-critical movement of the 2000s, the mass movements against austerity policies after 2008 and the protests against bilateral free trade agreements since 2015, and at the same time integrate the perspective of the global south. We need, as Varoufakis pointed out, a Progressive International that draws away attention from the conflict between the (neo-)liberal center and the far-right by formulating an own-standing political vision. In order to really develop a counter-proposal to the critique of globalization from the right, however, the existing concept of De-Globalization has to be widely discussed and reformulated, first.

One opportunity to do so could be the Degrowth conference in Malmo in August 2018.

Southeast Australian heatwaves signal a horror fire season

Frank Gaglioti

In stark contrast to freezing conditions in the northern hemisphere, southeastern Australia started the year with record-breaking heatwaves that foreshadow a severe summer fire season over the next two or three months.

On January 6, Penrith, a western suburb of Sydney, experienced 47.3 degrees Celsius or 117 degrees Fahrenheit, making it the hottest place on the planet for that day—just below the hottest temperature ever recorded in Sydney.

The scorching conditions extended across the southeastern corner, where the great majority of the Australian population live. The states of South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales (NSW) all experienced temperatures over 40 degrees C. That heatwave was followed by another on January 18–19 with similar temperatures,

Many areas were subject to power outages, including on the NSW Central Coast, where more than 4,000 properties were affected. Approximately 3,000 properties were cut off in Sydney, along with thousands of homes in Melbourne. As in other heatwaves, there is likely to have been a spike in deaths, with the elderly, infirm and young children the worst affected.

Fire is an ever-present danger as southeastern Australia is one of the most bushfire prone areas of the world. High temperatures, especially when accompanied with strong winds, create the perfect conditions for fire storms fuelled by highly-flammable eucalyptus vegetation.

On January 6, several homes were destroyed by fires that swept through 12,100 hectares of scrub and farmland at Sherwood in South Australia’s southeast. In Victoria, 139 fires broke out across the state, including in Carrum Downs on the outskirts of Melbourne. One of the worst fires was fanned by 90 km/hr winds at Glenormiston in the state’s west. Beginning on January 19, a bushfire has burned over 59,000 hectares (about 146,000 acres) of the Pilliga State Forest in northwestern NSW. Fire crews from across the state continue to battle the blaze.

These fires are a warning of the dangers ahead as high temperatures continue to dry out vegetation. Moreover, concerns are being raised that such heatwaves are becoming the new norm as a result of global warming and climate change.

The Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) climate statement for 2017 reported that Australia experienced the third-warmest year on record, and the warmest non-El Niño year on record. El Niño, a broad weather pattern associated with shifts in ocean currents and atmosphere conditions over the Pacific, is usually accompanied by rising temperatures in Australia.

According to the BOM, seven of Australia’s 10 warmest years have occurred since 2005. The annual mean temperature has increased by approximately 1.1°C since 1910, mostly since 1950. The bureau concluded that the higher temperatures are due to “anthropogenic climate change”—that is, the impact of human activity on weather patterns.

The rise in temperatures has been accompanied by lower than average rainfalls, leading to a long-term drying out of forest environments, making them even more flammable.

The BOM’s head of climate monitoring, Dr. Karl Braganza, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation: “We have seen that warming across the [Australian] land surface temperatures and in the ocean surrounding Australia, so they have both warmed by a similar amount and that’s consistent with global warming as well … odds [now] favour warmer-than-average temperatures more often than in the past.”

Climate change deniers have pointed to the record low temperatures in the northern hemisphere to dismiss global warming and/or the role of human activity. US President Donald Trump tweeted sarcastically in December: “In the East, it could be the COLDEST New Year’s Eve on record … Perhaps we could use a little bit of that good old Global Warming …”

However, the disparity between the northern hemisphere freeze and the Australian heatwave does not contradict global warming, as average temperatures have risen across the planet. Higher mean temperatures do not have a uniform impact across the globe but disrupt longstanding weather patterns producing new extremes—such as more frequent, destructive hurricanes and cyclones, as well as the northern deep freeze.

Climate Council of Australia councillor Will Steffen explained in the SydneyMorning Herald: “The climate disruption we are increasingly experiencing is not natural. It is caused by the heat-trapping gases we humans are pouring into the atmosphere primarily by the burning of coal, oil and gas. This enormous increase in energy in the atmosphere is disrupting normal circulation patterns.”

In Australia, successive governments, Labor and Coalition, have done nothing to cut greenhouse gases. Last year’s emissions were the highest on record, making this the third consecutive year of increases.

The BOM national bushfire outlook released last November warned that heavily-populated areas, including around Sydney, Melbourne and Hobart, face an above-average fire risk. The bureau also announced the formation of a weak La Niña pattern—the counterpart of an El Niño—suggesting it will be warm and dry for the next three months.

At a meeting of Australian fire chiefs last September, NSW fire commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons said “the vegetation moisture levels today are considerably drier and are showing a worse situation than they were leading into the 2013 fire season.”

In 2013, fires swept across southern Australia. It was considered the worst fire season since 2009, when the infamous “Black Saturday” occurred on February 7. The Black Saturday fires in Victoria, which were the most catastrophic in recorded history, killed 173 people, including 23 children, and incinerated 300,000 hectares and 2,100 homes.

The tragedy led to a royal commission that exposed major failures by emergency services officials, lack of fire warnings, the absence of fire refuges or an evacuation policy, and poor maintenance of high-voltage power lines that sparked many of the fires.

Ultimately, however, the royal commission was a whitewash. It failed to indict the state Labor government’s “stay or go” policy, which was to blame for most of the deaths. The policy shifted the responsibility for deciding whether to remain or flee onto individuals in bushfire-prone areas and relied entirely on emergency alerts that failed to occur.

Two key recommendations were the burying or bundling of high-voltage power lines and a government buy-back scheme of homes in the most vulnerable areas. Both proposals were rejected by Labor Premier John Brumby as too expensive.

Although the “stay or go” policy was abandoned, there are still only five refuges available across Victoria. Lines have been buried underground on a very limited basis. The Victorian Powerline Replacement Fund has a $200 million budget, a tiny fraction of the $7.5 billion required.

The danger of fire disasters has worsened as more workers have been forced to live in semi-rural areas due to the precipitous rise in urban housing costs. In 2011, what is known as the peri-urban population of Melbourne reached 1.36 million and was expected to increase by 400,000 by 2021. A similar pattern is reflected on the fringes of all Australian major cities, where these peri-urban communities are ill equipped to cope with extreme fire conditions.

Rising temperatures, unpredictable weather patterns, poor urban planning, failure to implement preventative measures, inadequately equipped fire-fighting services and the lack of evacuation shelters are all combining to create the conditions for new fire tragedies.

New evidence of mistreatment in Western Australian juvenile prison

Eric Ludlow 

In a statement released earlier this month, which was quickly buried by the corporate media, Amnesty International (AI) detailed mistreatment and abuse of youth at a detention centre in Perth, the Western Australian state capital.

During a visit to the Banksia Hill Youth Detention Centre, AI interviewed two inmates who said they were subjected to solitary confinement in the “Intensive Support Unit” for weeks on end. This occurred in cells no larger than a car parking space, with as little as 10 minutes outside the cell each day, during which time they were handcuffed.

The inmates were sometimes denied showers, fed through a grill in the cell door and had limited access to psychological support.

The AI statement also revealed that, “according to several sources,” three young people were held in solitary confinement in the unit for at least two weeks at a time between last May and August after several detainees allegedly went on a “rampage.”

Further concerns were raised about the treatment of prisoners in the unit, including lack of proper medical treatment, excessive use of force, lack of family contact, education and exercise time and denial of access to programs or services.

The mother of one of the two teenagers who spoke with AI told the Guardian they were held in solitary confinement for more than 250 days. She said: “Banksia Hill has demonised him. He’s not being rehabilitated, he’s being contained, and that’s what we do to animals.”

Amnesty International’s indigenous rights manager, Tammy Solonec, said: “These are very serious allegations, which if confirmed would put the practices at the Banksia Hill Detention Centre in clear breach of international law and standards, and may amount to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment (CIDT).”

Under international law, solitary confinement is defined as “physical and social isolation of individuals who are confined to their cells for 22 to 24 hours a day.” Short-term solitary confinement (less than 15 days) can constitute torture. More than 15 days of solitary confinement “constitutes torture or CIDT and must be absolutely banned.”

These outrages are continuing after a series of official reports acknowledged abuses in Australian juvenile prisons, but held no governments to account for them.

Last June, Western Australia’s Office of the Inspector of Custodial Services (OICS) released a report outlining issues at Banksia Hill, such as low staff morale, incorrect records regarding cell lockdown times, the use of spit hoods and a massive increase in “self-harm” among inmates.

Some prisoners were denied legally-required time out of cells, violating the state’s Young Offenders Regulations, requiring that all detainees have a minimum of one hour of exercise every six hours. Log books indicated that one young person was “out of cell for 15 minutes, five minutes of which were to speak to a psychologist.”

According to the report, there were 196 incidents of self-harm and attempted suicide in 2016 compared to 77 in 2015 and 38 in 2014. It said changes in reporting practices did not account for the increase and there were likely many more undocumented incidents.

The state’s Department of Corrective Services did not “routinely assess young people when they are admitted to custody” for mental issues and, therefore, such problems were never identified.

The OICS report cited a 2009 survey in the state of New South Wales, which found that 87 percent of juvenile prisoners had “at least one mental health diagnosis.” Around 82 percent of the females and 68 percent of the males had behavioural disorders.

The report also raised concerns about the accuracy of reporting at the centre. One inmate was logged as having spent an extra 3.5 hours in a cell when the actual time spent was 19 hours.

The OICS received “credible claims that some electronic records were deliberately being entered incorrectly to meet legislative requirements.” The OICS requested CCTV footage to test the accuracy of the log books and electronic records, but it was informed by the department that the footage had been taped over.

These accounts follow a royal commission into the Don Dale youth detention centre in the Northern Territory after video footage surfaced in 2016 showing systemic abuse and torture there. As intended, the Turnbull government’s royal commission was a whitewash, with no one held to account. As a result, the abuses have continued.

Last October, the New South Wales government held a review of behaviour management in the state’s juvenile detention centres following claims that some detainees were being locked in their cells for up to 23 hours per day.

The Queensland Labor government ordered a similar review in August 2016 after concerns were raised about lack of staff and the use of excessive force.

In Victoria, punitive measures by the Labor government have reached unprecedented levels. After unlawfully moving teenagers to the adult Barwon Prison in November 2016, Premier Daniel Andrews’s government passed, with bipartisan support, legislation requiring any youth over the age of 16 charged with serious offences to be tried and sentenced as an adult.

This is part of a broader campaign against working class youth in Australia and internationally, under conditions of high unemployment and ever-more glaring social inequality. Governments and the media are attempting to portray youth as “out-of-control” to justify the brutal measures to punish and intimidate them.

India: First-ever visit by an Israeli PM used to strengthen strategic ties

Wasantha Rupasinghe

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s six-day visit to India last week highlighted the moves by both governments to further develop already close bilateral military-strategic and commercial ties. Netanyahu’s visit to India was the first ever by a sitting Israeli premier.

Last July, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi became the first Indian premier to visit the Zionist state, underscoring New Delhi’s determination to purge any lingering vestiges of its former “non-aligned” foreign policy in pursuit of closer ties with the US and its principal Middle East ally.

Ties between Israel and India are burgeoning in the context of rapidly escalating global tensions. Both countries are key allies of US imperialism, Israel in Washington’s reckless drive to consolidate its hegemony in the Middle East by pushing back Iranian influence, and India in the US drive to economically, strategically and militarily isolate China.

Modi’s BJP government has transformed India into a front line state in the US military-strategic offensive against China. Modi has also moved to develop closer bilateral and trilateral ties with Japan and Australia, Washington’s two most important Asia-Pacific allies. In November, India joined a US-led, anti-China quadrilateral strategic dialogue with Japan and Australia, which the Trump administration hopes to develop into a NATO-type alliance.

India sees its closer ties with Israel as a means of pursuing New Delhi’s strategic interests, mainly by securing the supply of arms and advanced military technology. Modi’s Hindu-supremacist BJP also has very definite ideological interests in deepening ties with Israel, especially hard-right Zionists like Netanyahu. Hindutva ideologue V.D. Savarkar championed Zionism as part of his aggressive communal opposition to India’s Muslims, whom he claimed were alien to the Indian nation and should be denied full citizenship rights.

Modi, in a clear indication of his government’s enthusiasm for closer ties with Israel, broke protocol by rushing to New Delhi airport to receive Netanyahu with a warm hug. Netanyahu was accompanied by a 130-member delegation, the largest business delegation ever to accompany an Israeli Premier on an overseas tour.

At the beginning of Netanyahu’s visit, both sides rushed to declare that India’s vote with 127 other countries in favour of a UN resolution condemning US President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, would not impact the two countries’ close relationship. On January 15, Vijay Gokhale, Secretary in charge of Economic Relations at India’s External Affairs Ministry, stated, “Both sides agreed that our relationship is much larger and our relationship is not determined by this [vote].” Upon arrival in New Delhi, on January 14, Netanyahu himself asserted this, telling the media “one negative vote would not affect the ties,” even though Israel was “disappointed” by India’s vote.

On January 15, the two countries signed nine pacts to boost cooperation in key areas, including cyber security and energy, following delegation-level talks headed by Modi and Netanyahu.

In the course of discussions with Modi, Netanyahu managed to secure a $US500 million deal for New Delhi to buy 1600 anti-tank missiles from Israel’s state-owned defense contractor, Rafael. India had cancelled the contract just weeks before Netanyahu’s visit in favour of building indigenous missiles.

The deal has been finalized under conditions in which war tensions between India and its arch-rival Pakistan are escalating. India’s NDTV recently reported that Pakistan’s soldiers may have missiles that can strike Indian tanks and bunkers at a distance of 3-4 km, while India’s equivalent missiles have a range of just 2 km.

In the joint statement issued during Netanyahu’s visit, both prime ministers noted the “readiness of Israeli companies to enter into joint ventures with Indian companies in the defence sector under the Make in India initiative.”

India has purchased some $10 billion worth of weapons and military equipment from Israel over the last decade, making Israel India’s third-largest supplier of weapons and weapons systems, and India Tel Aviv’s biggest market for arms. Just last year, India signed two new mega arms deals, spending $2 billion on Israeli missile defence systems.

Another significant development was the two leaders’ emphasis on the “importance of building comprehensive cooperation in counter- terrorism,” for which they signed a memorandum of understanding. This indicates mutual support for each other’s militaristic policies pursuing their own strategic aims—against the Palestinians in the case of Israel, and against Pakistan in the case of India.

In an exclusive interview to Times Now, Netanyahu expressed Israel’s support for any future military attack by India on Pakistani territory across the Line of Control (LoC), which divides Indian- and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, in the name of hitting “terror hideouts.” His remarks will undoubtedly encourage India to repeat the “surgical strikes” its military carried out inside Pakistan in September 2016.

Even as Netanyahu gave the interview, India and Pakistan were exchanging fire across the LoC, resulting in the deaths of soldiers and civilians on both sides.

Publicly, the Modi government has peddled the transparent lie that India’s ever-deeper cooperation with Israel in no way affects its stance on Palestine. The Joint Statement said the two leaders had discussed the diplomatic situation with the Palestinians, but omitted, no doubt at Netanyahu’s insistence, even a standard reference to India’s support for a so-called “two-state solution.”

Rattled by the fall in India’s growth during 2016-17, the BJP government has intensified its push for “pro-investor” reforms. Speaking at the India-Israel Business Innovation Forum on January 15, Ramesh Abhishek, the secretary in the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion, promised New Delhi will “resolve all problems and make things easier and better for Israeli companies to do business in India.” Seeking unfettered access for Israeli big business, Netanyahu declared, “If you want to have economic power, you must reduce taxes, simplify taxes and you must cut bureaucracy.”

Under India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, and his Congress Party government, New Delhi opposed Israel’s admission to the UN in 1949, the year after the Zionist state had been founded and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians dispossessed. To bolster its phony “anti-imperialist” credentials, and as part of its promotion of a “non-alignment” policy during the Cold War, India for decades thereafter claimed to be a champion of the Palestinian cause and refused to establish formal diplomatic ties with Israel.

This policy was bound up with the close relations India established with the Soviet Union during the 1950s in response to Washington’s burgeoning military-strategic partnership with Pakistan. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, New Delhi reoriented its foreign policy toward the pursuit of closer relations with the western powers, especially Washington. In 1992, Narasimha Rao’s Congress government established full diplomatic ties with Israel. Since then, New Delhi’s relations with Tel Aviv have been systematically expanded by both Congress- and BJP-led governments.

Having initiated diplomatic ties with Israel and enthusiastically developed the relationship with Tel Aviv, the Congress Party has no serious differences with Modi’s drive to expand India’s partnership with Israel so as to pursue the Indian elite’s strategic interests, especially the strengthening of it military prowess. The Congress Party issued no official statement on Netanyahu’s visit, but did post a video on Twitter mocking Modi’s bear-hugs of several world leaders, including Trump and Netanyahu.

The only significant dissent within the ruling elite on Netanyahu’s visit came from the Indian Stalinists. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPM, and the Communist Party of India (CPI), along with several other parties in their Left Front, held a protest in New Delhi on January 15 against the visit, criticizing Tel Aviv mainly for its brutal repression of the Palestinians.

However, the Stalinists’ opposition is based on defending the national interests of the Indian bourgeoisie and has nothing to do with the interests of the Indian and international working class or the struggle against imperialism. An article in the CPM’s English weekly Peoples Democracy on January 14 blamed the Modi government for “sacrificing the country’s interests to serve the cause of countries like Israel and the US.”