Meet the CEOs Cashing In on Trump’s Aggression Against Iran

Sarah Anderson

CEOs of major U.S. military contractors stand to reap huge windfalls from the escalation of conflict with Iran. This was evident in the immediate aftermath of the U.S. assassination of a top Iranian military official last week. As soon as the news reached financial markets, these companies’ share prices spiked, inflating the value of their executives’ stock-based pay.

I took a look at how the CEOs at the top five Pentagon contractors were affected by this surge, using the most recent SEC information on their stock holdings.

Northrop Grumman executives saw the biggest increase in the value of their stocks after the U.S. airstrike that killed Qasem Suleimani on January 2. Shares in the B-2 bomber maker rose 5.43 percent by the end of trading the following day.

Wesley Bush, who turned Northrop Grumman’s reins over to Kathy Warden last year, held 251,947 shares of company stock in various trusts as of his final SEC Form 4 filing in May 2019. (Companies must submit these reports when top executives and directors buy and sell company stock.) Assuming Bush is still sitting on that stockpile, he saw the value grow by $4.9 million to a total of $94.5 million last Friday.

New Northrop Grumman CEO Warden saw the 92,894 shares she’d accumulated as the firm’s COO expand in value by more than $2.7 million in just one day of post-assassination trading.

Lockheed Martin, whose Hellfire missiles were reportedly used in the attack at the Baghdad airport, saw a 3.6 percent increase in price per share on January 3. Marillyn Hewson, CEO of the world’s largest weapon maker, may be kicking herself for selling off a considerable chunk of stock last year when it was trading at around $307. Nevertheless, by the time Lockheed shares reached $413 at the closing bell, her remaining stash had increased in value by about $646,000.

What about the manufacturer of the MQ-9 Reaper that carried the Hellfire missiles? That would be General Atomics. Despite raking in $2.8 billion in taxpayer-funded contracts in 2018, the drone maker is not required to disclose executive compensation information because it is a privately held corporation.

We do know General Atomics CEO Neal Blue is worth an estimated $4.1 billion — and he’s a major investor in oil production, a sector that also stands to profit from conflict with a major oil-producing country like Iran.

*Resigned 12/22/19. **Resigned 1/1/19 while staying on as chairman until 7/19. New CEO Kathy Warden accumulated 92,894 shares in her previous position as Northrop Grumman COO.

Suleimani’s killing also inflated the value of General Dynamics CEO Phebe Novakovic’s fortune. As the weapon maker’s share price rose about 1 percentage point on January 3, the former CIA official saw her stock holdings increase by more than $1.2 million.

Raytheon CEO Thomas Kennedy saw a single-day increase in his stock of more than half a million dollars, as the missile and bomb manufacturer’s share price increased nearly 1.5 percent. Boeing stock remained flat on Friday. But Dennis Muilenberg, recently ousted as CEO over the 737 aircraft scandal, appears to be well-positioned to benefit from any continued upward drift of the defense sector.

As of his final Form 4 report, Muilenburg was sitting on stock worth about $47.7 million. In his yet to be finalized exit package, the disgraced former executive could also pocket huge sums of currently unvested stock grants.

Hopefully sanity will soon prevail and the terrifyingly high tensions between the Trump administration and Iran will de-escalate. But even if the military stock surge of this past Friday turns out to be a market blip, it’s a sobering reminder of who stands to gain the most from a war that could put millions of lives at risk.

We can put an end to dangerous war profiteering by denying federal contracts to corporations that pay their top executives excessively. In 2008, John McCain, then a Republican presidential candidate, proposed capping CEO pay at companies receiving taxpayer bailouts at no more than $400,000 (the salary of the U.S. president). That notion should be extended to companies that receive massive taxpayer-funded contracts.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, for instance, has a plan to deny federal contracts to companies that pay CEOs more than 150 times what their typical worker makes.

As long as we allow the top executives of our privatized war economy to reap unlimited rewards, the profit motive for war in Iran — or anywhere — will persist.

The Incoherence of U.S. Policy in the Middle East

Melvin A. Goodman

Donald Trump’s decision to kill Qassim Suleimani, the most influential figure in Iran other than the Ayatollah Khamenei, will increase the terrorist threat to the United States and the global community.  Suleimani’s death has already provoked widespread outrage in Iraq and Iran among the Shiia populations.  Prior to the killing, Iraqi leaders were campaigning against Iran’s military presence in their country.  Now, the Iraqi Parliament has called for the removal of the U.S. military presence.  The decision has created more tactical and terrorist opportunities for the Islamic State as the United States has decided to cease operations against the Islamic State.

Trump’s decision has undermined fundamental U.S. decisions in every way, particularly the need to forestall terrorist threats; protect friends and allies; and prevent Iran’s nuclear ambitions.  The Trump administration has enhanced Russian President Vladimir Putin’s efforts to improve relations with Iraq and Iran; caused controversy and even dissent within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization; and further exposed the instability and ignorance of Trump’s national security team.  Since the decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear accord, the European co-signers of that agreement along with Russia and China, have questioned the wisdom of Washington’s international actions.

Trump’s interest in withdrawing U.S. forces from the region has created problems for Iraq’s Sunni and Kurdish populations and has made Iraq’s Shiia population more vulnerable to Iran’s influence.  Iraq has a legitimate fear of becoming the central battleground in a military confrontation between Iran and the United States.

Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, U.S. administrations have compromised the strategic stability of the Middle East, the Persian Gulf, and Southwest Asia.  The invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001 quickly removed the al Qaeda presence in that country, but our prolonged stay there has been a strategic nightmare.  The Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq, which was doomed from the start, targeted the wrong enemy and created the conditions for the current instability throughout the region.  The ignorance and deceit of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney has been trumped.

Less than a year after the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld asked his senior military commanders whether the United States was creating terrorists faster than it could eliminate them.  By then, Rumsfeld and other senior officials of the Bush administration knew that there would be no discovery of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, that the war’s human and financial costs would be immense, and that anti-American attitudes would strengthen in the Arab world and elsewhere.

Over the past two decades, U.S. policies have contributed to the metastasizing of al Qaeda into a diffuse global movement and propaganda organization that inspires terrorists of all stripes, and intensified anti-Americanism and radical militancy in the Moslem world.  The huge costs of the “global war on terror” have compromised our ability to fund key domestic programs at home.  Meanwhile, the Taliban appear poised to resume power in Afghanistan, and the  constitutional and electoral challenges that confronted Iraq in the wake of the death of Saddam Hussein are no closer to resolution.

Ironically, the United States is primarily responsible for the significant increase in Iran’s geopolitical influence in the region.  The immediate elimination of the Taliban government in Afghanistan in 2001 removed the greatest challenge to Tehran on its eastern border.  The removal of Saddam Hussein ended Tehran’s greatest problem on its western border.  U.S. use of force presented Iran with freedom of maneuver that it has exploited throughout the region, particularly in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen.

Iran was working secretly with the United States to resolve problems in Afghanistan and elsewhere until George Bush incomprehensibly branded Iran as part of the “axis of evil.”  Bush’s speech was written by Michael Gerson, a leading oped writer for the Washington Post, who now believes that the killing of Suleimani “could be a useful turning point in the containment of Iran.”

Gerson credits Trump with the creation of a “red line” that creates a “new strategic reality” that forms the basis for useful diplomatic talks involving Iran” and our “Arab allies.”  In other words, the President of the United States who favors the targeting of Iran’s most important cultural sites in Persepolis and Isfahan, and the Secretary of State who favors regime change in Iran are credited with creating a new policy that offers the “hope of deterrence.”  Gerson blithely concludes that “even if it results in some difficult consequences, we should hope it succeeds.”

Meanwhile, the United States is building up its force presence in the region with the deployment of B-52 strategic bombers and thousands of soldiers and marines.  Nevertheless, Dana Priest, the Washington Post’s intelligence reporter, believes that the U.S. military “would revolt and there would be no pilots to fly these missions,” if war was launched against Iran.  And she isn’t alone in taking this position.  Former CIA director and retired Air Force general Michael Hayden believes there is a “legitimate possibility that the U.S. military would refuse to follow orders in violation of international laws of armed conflict.”

Secretary of Defense Mark Esper has pushed back against the idea of targeting Iran’s cultural sites but, unlike his predecessor James Mattis, there is no reason to believe that Esper, like Pompeo, will try to counter Trump’s use of military power.  Pompeo and Esper, classmates at West Point in the 1980s, have formed a dangerous partnership in the Trump administration. Two other classmates, Ulrich Brechbuhl and Brian Bulato, are senior advisors to Pompeo at the State Department.

Since Iran has not attacked the United States and the UN Security Council has not authorized the use of force against Iran, any U.S. attack would be considered a violation of international law.  Like the attack on Iraq in 2003, it would create more enemies and terrorists than could ever be eliminated.

Trump’s call for additional sanctions against Iraq in the wake of its parliamentary vote to expel U.S. forces from Iraqi territory indicates that his administration has no intention to resort to diplomacy to repair the situation with Baghdad, let alone with Tehran.  The Department of Defense has become the major institutional mover in the implementation of U.S. national security policy; the institutional role of the Department of State has largely faded from view.

The declaration of a “global war on terror” may have been appreciated by certain domestic audiences in the United States, but it has been an overwhelming failure throughout the global community.  The policy has preoccupied the American national security process; compromised the needed debate on policy toward Russia and China; and created the impression that U.S. use of military power is a first, and not a last, resort.  There are important questions to be raised regarding U.S. policy toward the Middle East and the utility of U.S. power in the region, but Trump’s egregious decision to target Suleimani is the latest obstacle to such a deliberation.

The Origins Of The United States Of America, The Joker And The End Of White Supremacy

Franklin Frederick

At its root, capitalism not only meant slavery and white supremacy but also the ethos of the gangster –  Gerald Horne

      The film ‘Joker’ presents a contemporary phenomenon present in several countries, but which can only be understood in its complexity through the history of the origins of the USA.

African-American historian Gerald Horne argues in the book ‘The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America’ that the U.S. independence movement was born, on the one hand, from the fear of the wealthy classes in the colony of a growing abolitionist movement in the metropolis, England, which could put an end  to the basis of their wealth – the slaves. On the other hand, England also hindered the advance of the settlers to the west, which was to remain indigenous territory. For Horne, the war for U.S. independence was partly a ‘counter-revolution’ led by the ‘founding fathers’ with the aim of preserving their right to enslave other peoples, mainly Africans, and to continue to expand the young nation to the west, stealing more land from the indigenous peoples where more slave labor would be deployed.

In another book, ‘The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy and Capitalism in 17th Century North America and the Caribbean’, Horne summarized this process:

«Then finally, in 1776, they pulled off the ultimate coup and exhibited their novel display of patriotism by ousting London altogether from the mainland colonies south of Canada, while convincing the deluded and otherwise naive (to this very day) that this naked grab for land, slaves and profit was somehow a great leap forward for humanity.»

In this context occurred another process of fundamental relevance for today: the birth of U.S. military power. The U.S. army originated in the war for independence against the British, which was also a war against the vast majority of African slaves who allied themselves with the British – which promised their freedom – and against the many indigenous peoples who also allied with the British – aware of what would follow for them once the new republic became independent. And indeed, soon after the victory against the British and the established peace, the newly created U.S. army engaged in its new task: the genocidal war against indigenous peoples to secure the territorial expansion of the new republic.

In the book ‘The First Way of War: American War Making on the Frontier, 1607-1814’ author John Grenier argues that the U.S. armed forces were forged in the genocidal wars against American indigenous peoples, when virtually every means of destruction was allowed, all brutality was possible, and there was no distinction between civilian and combatant populations. One of the methods used by the U.S. armed forces against indigenous peoples was the destruction of their plantations and food reserves, leading to defeat by famine, a method widely used and perfected decades later by the U.S. in the Vietnam war, making the U.S. perhaps the only country in the world to specialize in the war against the Vegetable Kingdom.  In fact, an unbroken historical line leads from wars against indigenous peoples to the war in Vietnam. The most recent economic embargoes against Cuba and Venezuela are just another form of this method, the objectives remain the same – to cause hunger, to punish civilian populations in order to subdue them – and have been used since the beginnings of US military power.

The extermination of indigenous peoples was so central to politics at the time that participating in military campaigns against indigenous peoples was practically a prerequisite for becoming a candidate for the presidency of the New Republic. Andrew Jackson, the seventh president of the United States, is perhaps the one who best represents what this new country really was. Jackson was a wealthy planter and slave owner, leading troops during the War against the Creek people, which led to the conquest of many lands now belonging to the states of Alabama and Georgia. He also led the US troops in the war against the Seminole people. In the presidency, Jackson continued his crusade against the indigenous people. There is an interesting episode in the well-known TV series ‘House of Cards’ in which Indian representatives visit the White House. As part of the preparations for the visit, White House staff remove the portrait of Andrew Jackson from a wall, apparently in order not to offend the Indians – a rare moment of lucidity in such media. And it was Andrew Jackson’s followers who founded the U.S. Democratic Party…

In order to guarantee a ‘single front’ between the settlers against the indigenous peoples, on the one hand, and to ensure the practice of slavery on the other, the British forged an illusory ‘alliance’ beyond the social classes, between the ‘whites’ – white supremacy – that legitimated and allowed the exploitation, theft or extermination of all those who were not so endowed. According to Gerald Horne, this militarized identity politics that was ‘whiteness’’ was at the root of the colonial occupations as early as 1676, leading to the creation of a ‘white man ‘s’ country, a first ‘apartheid’ state, an example to be followed by South Africa. Violence against indigenous peoples and the violence inherent in the slave economy became common, ‘normal’ elements in the US white mentality to this day. Gerald Horne argues that one of the last expressions of ‘white supremacy’ in the mainstream U.S. politics was the election of Donald Trump, as a part of the electorate «(…) could not overcome the poisonous snare of white supremacy. That is, the seeds of the fiasco of an election in November 2016 in the United States, where the less affluent of European descent, including more than half of the women of this group, found their tribune in a vulgar billionaire, has roots in the cross-class coalition  that spearheaded colonial settlement in the seventeen century at the  expense of the indigenous and enslaved Africans.»

This history and its consequences are very much still present in the Joker. Arthur Fleck, the character in the film, is just one of the millions of poor white men abandoned by the system, and it is not by chance that, in the film, practically everyone who comes into real, emotional contact with Arthur Fleck, is African-American, including the only woman he cares about. In this way, the film places white Arthur Fleck in the middle of a poor Afro-American community, that is, according to the myth of white supremacy, completely out of his ‘natural’ place. The social worker who allows him to get the medicine he needs is Afro-American and, when she informs him about the closure of the social centre – another result of the austerity policies of neoliberalism – she comments: ‘They don’t give a shit about people like you. Or like me.’ – They’, in this case, being a clear reference to the powerful, to the 1%. There is a permanent possibility of a haven for Arthur Fleck within the African-American community, as the social worker recognizes by placing the two as victims of the same system. But Arthur Fleck is unable to see or understand his situation in the broader context that would open him up to the dimension of solidarity with the African American community and others and, as I see it, it is his ‘whiteness’ that blinds him to this possibility. Instead, following the illusions of his adoptive mother that became his as well, he tries hard to be accepted again by the successful white community.

The ‘alliance’ beyond the social classes that connects whites in the myth of white supremacy is still sufficiently strong in Arthur Fleck’s unconscious to take him to Thomas Wayne seeking the ‘recognition’ of his ‘natural right’ to belong to Wayne’s successful white community, a way of updating the ‘alliance’ of white supremacy, just as so many impoverished and marginalized whites voted for Donald Trump did.To reinforce the image of unity of this white community, the dialogue with Thomas Wayne takes place in a theater full of white people celebrating the success of their social class. Thomas Wayne does not recognize his “fatherhood” – the symbolism here is clear – of Arthur Fleck and, even worse, violently refuses any contact with him, thus revealing the lie of the white ‘alliance’, the myth of racial supremacy as a bond between whites beyond social classes.

Thomas Wayne’s punch shows that such an alliance never existed.

But there is a gesture of solidarity shown in the film that really belongs to the ‘white alliance’: knowing that Arthur Fleck suffered an aggression in the street, one of his co-workers offers him a weapon to defend himself – the gesture of solidarity par excellence of the ‘white alliance’. The neo-fascist Bolsonaro is his campaign for the presidency in Brazil did exactly the same, just in a much bigger scale.  he promised to put weapons more easily within reach of everyone, especially his supporters, who promptly rewarded this ‘solidarity’ by helping to elect him.

The moment  when the myth of the ‘white alliance’ really explodes in the film is the sequence of the fight in the subway. Three well dressed and visibly successful white youths harass a woman sexually–feeling perfectly right in doing so, the “normal” behaviour of the white heterosexual male, in the U.S. as in Brazil. Arthur Fleck, with his nervous laughter, hinders the three young men who turn against him. Arthur Fleck is obviously poor, a clown, of a social class much inferior to that of the three young yuppies who start to assault him violently – betraying the ‘white alliance’ like Thomas Wayne – but Arthur Fleck has a weapon and, for the first time, gives way to his years of accumulated frustration and repressed anger – and kills his aggressors. For Arthur Fleck this moment is liberating and from then on, he feels stronger but also “goes crazy”, the symbolism used, I believe, to show the emotional price paid by Arthur Fleck for betraying his part in the white ‘alliance’. His oppressive violence was directed against white people, not against Latinos, black or indigenous immigrants – the ‘normal’ targets of white supremacist violence.

The “white” liberal public conscience, represented in the film by the character of Robert de Niro , Murray Franklin, an idol for whom Arthur Fleck also aims to be somehow recognized, condemns the murder of the three ‘promising young people’, because in this case the solidarity of the white ‘alliance’ really exists – as CLASS solidarity – the three were ‘successful’, obviously members of the dominant class. Three poor whites like Arthur Fleck murdered in the subway would certainly have no press attention, it was the social class of the three murdered that awakened, on the one hand, the sympathy of the Murray Franklins, and, on the other hand, the popular revolt that is the background of the film.

Arthur Fleck repeatedly declares himself without any political awareness or political objective. The Arthur Flecks of real life hardly vote, but if they do, they vote for Donald Trump or Jair Bolsonaro. The Arthur Flecks’ revolt is limited to spreading violence, ‘paying back’, creating chaos, it has no political content, it does not aim to change the system, the Arthur Flecks do not even have the slightest idea how the system really works, they only feel unjustly frustrated by something they can only react to with violence. Arthur Fleck is the potential fascist, what unites them, in the U.S. as in Brazil, is still the mystique of the white supremacy, the feeling of belonging to the dominant class, a kind of ‘natural right’ to be privileged, to have prestige and power.  For the capitalist system, the Arthur Flecks have an enormous importance, because they not only elect the Donald Trumps and the Jair Bolsonaros, allowing the international oligarchy of the capital to continue through them to dominate the world; but even more, the Arthur Flecks have the fundamental role of depoliticize society, of preventing public consciousness to focus on real issues. And it is through violence, intimidation, the attack on institutions, culture and everything that threatens their ‘white’ identity that the Arthur Flecks fulfill this role. The Thomas Waynes smile, the 1% rejoice at such stupidity so easily manipulated in their favour. And Thomas Wayne is not only a Gotham City type, there are many Thomas Wayne all over the world, as many in Brazil and Argentina as in Europe. All of them breeding the “Batmen” eager to fight “corruption” in the name of the Capital.

But ‘Joker’ also shows, even if only obliquely, the possibility of redemption for Arthur Fleck. What if Arthur Fleck managed to get out of his emotional prison, out of his whiteness ‘poisoning’ – to use the expression of Gerald Horne – and sought help and refuge in the African-American community? African-Americans have a long history of political consciousness and struggle, they have faced the violence of white supremacy from the beginning, they know what it means, they know its extent and also its main weaknesses. Above all, African-Americans know very well that the struggle is political. The greatest nightmare, the greatest threat to the U.S. oligarchical political system is precisely the solidarity union between the Arthur Flecks and the Afro-American community, with the consequent politicization that this union implies. The system, the international financial oligarchy, may well coexist with chaotic violence, with brief outbreaks of destruction and social conflict – in fact, this violence is even useful for the system and for the oligarchy, among other reasons because it can be used as a pretext for more repression and violence on the part of reactionary forces. But what the system cannot support is rebellion WITH POLITICAL CONTENT – as we see now in Chile, Argentina or Ecuador.

The Joker portraits  the ending of white supremacy because even the Arthur Flecks are already realizing that “whiteness”,this ‘solidarity alliance’ among“whites”, which for so long has fed them until it became the foundation of their own being, is nothing but a lie woven by the 1% – mostly whites – to better exploit all the others.

And meanwhile in Latin America, Argentina, Ecuador, Chile, Bolivia, and Venezuela, the political consciousness of the people has long since overcome the myth of white supremacy and “whiteness” loyalty to the oppressors and subservience to the international capital. There is a plural humanity, rich and proud of its many colours, genders and ways of being that increasingly assumes political control over its own destiny. It is this humanity that, with much clarity, determination and joy, is defeating fascism and the myths that support it.

Pakistan and Indian Muslims

Ram Puniyani

‘Go to Pakistan’ has probably been most often used phrase used against Muslims in India. Recently in yet another such incident the SP of Meerut, UP has been in the news and a video is circulating where he, Akhilesh Narayan Singh, is allegedly using the jibe ‘Go to Pakistan’. In the video he is seen shouting at protestors at Lisari Gate area in Meerut, “The ones (protestors) wearing those black or yellow armbands, tell them to go to Pakistan”. His seniors stood by him calling it ‘natural reaction to shouting of pro Pakistan slogans. Many BJP leaders like Uma Bhararti also defended the officer. Breaking ranks with fellow politicians, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi of BJP, criticised the said officer and asked for suitable action against him. Interestingly this is same Naqvi, who earlier when the beef related arguments were going on; had stated that those who want to eat beef can go to Pakistan.

Interestingly this is probably the first time that any BJP leader has opposed the use of this jibe against the Indian Muslims. True to the dominance of trolls who support divisive politics, Naqvi has been trolled on the issue. As such vibe ‘Go to Pakistan’ has been a strong tool in the hands of aggressive elements to demonise Muslims in general and to humiliate those with Muslim names. One recalls that when due to the rising intolerance in the society many eminent writers, film makers were returning their awards, Aamir Khan said that his wife Kiran Rao is worried about their son. Immediately BJP worthies like Giriraj Singh pounced on him that he can go to Pakistan.

The strategy of BJP combine has been on one hand to use this ‘go to Pakistan’ to humiliate Muslims on the other from last few years another Pakistan dimension has been added. Those who are critical of the policies of BJP-RSS have on one hand been called as anti National and on the other it is being said that ‘they are speaking the language of Pakistan’.

Use of Pakistan to label the Muslims and dissidents here in India has been a very shrewd tool in the hands of communal forces. One remembers that the ‘cricket nationalism’ was also the one to use it. In case of India-Pakistan cricket match, the national hysteria, which it created, was also aiming at Indian Muslims. What was propagated was that Indian Muslims cheer for Pakistan victory and they root for Pakistan. There was an unfortunate grain of truth in this as a section of disgruntled, alienated Muslim did that. That was not the total picture, as most Indian Muslims were cheering for Indian victory. Many a Muslim cricketers contributed massively to Indian cricket victories. The cricket legends like Nawab Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi, Irfan Pathan, and Mohammad Azaruddin are just the few among the long list of those who brought glories for India in the field of cricket.

Even in matters of defence there are legions of Muslims who contributed to Indian efforts in the war against Pakistan all through. Abdul Hamid’s role in 1965 India Pak war and the role of Muslim soldiers in Kargil war will be part of Indian military history. There have been generals in army who contributed in many ways for the role which military has been playing in service of the nation. General Zamiruddin Shah, when asked to handle Gujarat carnage, does recount how despite the lack of support from local administration for some time, eventually the military was able to quell the violence in some ways.

During freedom movement Muslims were as much part of the struggle against British rule as any other community. While the perception has been created that Muslims were demanding Pakistan, the truth is somewhere else. It was only the elite section of Muslims who supported the politics of Muslim League and later the same Muslim League could mobilize some other section and unleash the violence like ‘Direct Action’ in Kolkata, which in a way precipitated the actual process of partition, which was the goal of British and aim of Muslim League apart from this being the outcome of ‘Two Nation theory’.

Not much is popularized about the role of great number of Muslims who were part of National movement, who steadfastly opposed the idea and politics which led to the sad partition of the subcontinent. Few excellent accounts of the role of Muslims in freedom movement like Syed Nasir Ahmad, Ubaidur Rahman, Satish Ganjoo and Shamsul Islam are few of these not too well know books which give the outline of the great Muslim freedom fighters like Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Ansari Brothers, Ashfaqulla Khan.

Immediately after partition tragedy the communal propaganda did the overdrive to blame the whole partition process on Muslim separatism, this totally undermined the fact that how poor Muslims had taken out massive marches to oppose the Lahore Resolution of separate Pakistan moved by Mohammad Ali Jinnah. The whole Muslim community started being seen as the homogenous, ‘The other’ and other misconceptions started against the community, the one’s relating them to atrocities of Muslim kings started being made as the part of popular folklore, leading the Hate against them. This Hate in turn laid the foundation of violence and eventual ghettoisation of this community.

The interactive-syncretism prevalent in India well presented by Gandhi-Nehru was pushed to the margins as those believing in pluralism did not actively engage with the issue. The economic marginalization of this community, coupled with the increasing insecurity in turn led to some of them to identify with Pakistan, and this small section was again presented as the representative of the whole Muslim community.

Today the battle of perception is heavily tilted against the Muslim community. It is a bit of a surprise as Naqvi is differing from his other fellow colleagues to say that the action should be taken against the erring police officer. The hope is that all round efforts are stepped up to combat the perception constructed against this religious minority in India.

Canadian engineering firm SNC-Lavalin shielded from fraud, corruption charges

Laurent Lafrance

The Quebec Superior Court has found a former senior executive of the Montreal-based engineering firm SNC-Lavalin guilty of fraud, corruption and laundering proceeds of crime for his role in the company’s multimillion-dollar bribery scheme to secure contracts in Libya.

Sami Bébawi, 73, who served as head of SNC-Lavalin’s international construction division, faces a possible nine years’ imprisonment for having paid millions of dollars to Libyan officials to help SNC-Lavalin win lucrative construction projects. Most of the money, paid through a shell company in Switzerland, reportedly went to Saadi Gaddafi, one of the sons of Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader killed by Islamist fighters at the conclusion of the 2011 US-led war against the country.

Bébawi and Riadh Ben Aissa, another former SNC-Lavalin executive at the time who was already convicted in 2014 for the same crimes, used the shell company to reward Saadi Gaddafi with luxurious gifts such as a C$25 million yacht and lavish trips to Canada. Bébawi also used the shell company’s account to personally pocket millions of dollars, resulting in the money-laundering conviction.

While Bébawi has been thrown to the wolves, SNC-Lavalin and its big bosses have been left largely unscathed and can continue business as usual. Two days after Bébawi’s conviction, the company reached a court agreement under which its construction subsidiary pleaded guilty to a charge of fraud over C$5,000. It will have to pay a C$280 million penalty and will be subject to a three-year probation order. All the other charges against SNC-Lavalin Group and SNC-Lavalin International—including those related to their having paid nearly C$48 million to public officials in Libya between 2001 and 2011 to influence government decisions, and having defrauded various Libyan organizations of about C$130 million—have been dropped. Both divisions can thus continue to bid on federal contracts.

Many details remain unclear in this sordid case. The company claims that it was not aware of Bébawi’s money laundering and is a “victim.” According to the defense, however, the millions amassed by the two executives were “bonuses” authorized by then SNC-Lavalin CEO Jacques Lamarre.

According to the Crown, Bébawi was behind a “business model” that began in the late 1990s and functioned until the fall of the Gaddafi regime in 2011, involving kickbacks to “foreign agents.” During that period, SNC-Lavalin won Libyan contracts totaling at least C$1.85 billion.

Most bourgeois commentators agree that the plea deal was the most positive possible outcome for the company, which saw its share price jump by 20 percent following its announcement. Expressing the ruling elite’s relief that one of the crown jewels of Quebec Inc. and one of Canadian imperialism’s most globally active firms got off virtually scot-free, Quebec Premier François Legault commented, “So far I’m happy, because that’s what we were asking for.”

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who found himself roiled by the “SNC scandal” last year, also expressed satisfaction with the outcome. Asked by a reporter what he thought about the plea deal, Trudeau declared, “You only do the best you can to protect jobs, to respect the independence of the judiciary and that’s exactly what we did every step of the way. … This process unfolded in an independent way and we got to an outcome that seems positive for everyone involved, particularly for the workers.”

What hypocrisy! In reality, following last year’s media exposés and the testimony of Trudeau’s former justice minister and attorney general, Jody Wilson-Raybould, it became public knowledge that the Liberal government acted at the beck-and-call of SNC-Lavalin. The prime minister and a dozen other top officials worked frantically behind the scenes to block the company from being criminally prosecuted.

This included trying to bully Wilson-Raybould into ordering the federal Prosecution Service to offer SNC-Lavalin a Deferred Prosecution Agreement, or DPA. This would have allowed the company to pay a fine and make a pledge of “good conduct” rather than face a criminal trial for its corruption racket in Libya. The DPA option was itself only available because the Liberals amended the Criminal Code in 2018, in a piece of legislation that was so obviously tailored to the needs of SNC-Lavalin that it was described by Ottawa insiders as the “SNC-Lavalin bill.”

Underscoring the erosion of the separation of powers between the executive and judicial branches of Canada’s government, one of Trudeau’s top officials warned Wilson-Raybould that the Liberals might lose the upcoming election if they failed to rescue SNC-Lavalin. In the midst of a discussion as to why she should revisit her decision not to offer a DPA, Trudeau himself reportedly reminded Wilson-Raybould that he is a Quebec MP.

The Trudeau government’s criminal maneuvers to secure a DPA ultimately proved unsuccessful. But as Peter Zimonjic of CBC News observed, “the Quebec engineering firm at the centre of the controversy walked away today with a plea deal that looks a lot like what it asked the government for in the first place.”

As for its “preoccupation” with defending workers’ jobs, nothing could be more demagogic coming from a government that did not lift a finger to save thousands of jobs in the auto industry as GM was closing the Oshawa plant. Moreover, the Liberal government has cut billions in federal transfers to the provinces for health care and education, while at the same time increasing military spending by 70 percent over the next decade to join US-led imperialist military offensives around the globe.

One issue swept under the rug in the course of the SNC-Lavalin-Libya affair is how the company conducted similarly corrupt actions in Quebec with the complicity of the political establishment to rake in vast profits. In the course of the Charbonneau Commission on corruption in the Quebec construction industry launched in 2012, it was revealed that SNC-Lavalin, in violation of provincial law, financed municipal and provincial political parties (including the Parti Québécois and the Liberal Party) and paid bribes in exchange for lucrative construction contracts.

It was also revealed in what has been dubbed “the greatest fraud in Canadian history” that the company and the then president of its construction division, the same Riadh Ben Aissa, paid more than C$22 million in order to win the C$1.34 billion contract to build Montreal’s English-language mega-hospital.

In the end, the Charbonneau Commission targeted some corrupt individuals but whitewashed the big corporations and top politicians. It was ultimately used to attack workers’ rights in the name of combating union “bullying” on construction sites.

The SNC-Lavalin case is no aberration, but illustrates how Canadian corporations and their bought-and-paid-for politicians operate on a daily basis. Like all that of the other imperialist powers, the Canadian ruling elite bribes, bullies, and breaks the law to advance the interests of its own corporations.

Muammar Gaddafi’s bourgeois-nationalist Libyan regime was a major target of US imperialism in the 1970s and 1980s. However, at the end of the Cold War, it offered its services to the imperialist powers, opening up economic sectors to foreign investment and, post-2001, working with Washington in the so-called “war on terror.”

A frenzied race among the imperialists to gain control of the country’s vast oil resources broke out, with Canada an eager participant. In 2004, Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin met Gaddafi in Libya to develop business ties on behalf of big oil and construction corporations such as Petro-Canada and SNC-Lavalin.

In 2011, Canada, in league with the US-led NATO alliance, launched a savage air bombardment of the country on the bogus pretext of protecting the Libyan population from an alleged impending massacre by Gaddafi. Canada’s central role in the conflict, which included a Canadian general commanding the NATO air war, was fully endorsed by the entire political establishment, including the New Democrats.

The attempt by the imperialist powers to rely on CIA-backed Islamist militias to pillage the country’s wealth and resources has proven to be a catastrophe for the Libyan population, which has lived in a virtually uninterrupted civil war for the past eight years.

Earthquake strikes Puerto Rico, killing one and knocking out power to the island

Rafael Azul

On Tuesday morning, a 6.4 magnitude earthquake and several other strong tremors struck the island of Puerto Rico, causing hundreds of buildings to collapse, severely damaging many others and knocking out power across the US territory. So far at least one fatality and several other injuries have been attributed to the major tremor.

Tuesday’s quake was among numerous seismic events along an underwater fault line in recent days including a 5.8 magnitude earthquake the day before. In all, the US Geological Survey (USGS) estimates that 36 earthquakes with a magnitude of 3 or higher occurred since the sequence began.

USGS is warning that there remains an 82 percent chance of an earthquake 5.0 or higher in the coming days and a 99 percent likelihood of shocks of magnitude 3 or higher, between now and January 14.

It is likely that the string of quakes is already the most damaging wave to strike the island in more than 100 years.

The epicenters of the quakes were located less than 10 miles south of the southern coast of the island between the cities of Ponce and Yauco, a region home to over 170,000 people. Residents in the region have reported that houses, schools, churches and other buildings have “simply collapsed” leaving behind a trail of devastation.

A resident interviewed by the Spanish daily El País, described his experience, 14 kilometers away from the epicenter of Tuesday’s quake, as “super strong; I could hear vibrations coming from everywhere.”

A Puerto Rican flag hangs within the rubble, after it was placed there where store owners and family help remove supplies from Ely Mer Mar hardware store, which partially collapsed after an earthquake struck Guanica, Puerto Rico, Tuesday, Jan. 7, 2020. (AP Photo/Carlos Giusti)

In the Guayanilla municipality, one of the towns closest to the epicenter, 131 people have been evacuated. At least 31 homes have been reported as “collapsed” and another 15 as severely damaged. Residents also reported that a nearly 180-year-old Catholic church in Guayanilla was destroyed, along with numerous cars, businesses and government buildings.

In another town, Guanica, at least 180 people sought shelter at the Coliseum Mariano “Tito” Rodríguez on Monday after the first earthquake destroyed the town. However, after Tuesday’s earthquake the coliseum was evacuated due to fear of damage to the structure. Residents have since been camped out in the building’s parking lot with nowhere to go.

In Ponce, Puerto Rico’s second largest city, one person has been killed, crushed by a collapsing wall. Hospitals have been forced to evacuate patients and thousands of people have been displaced throughout the region. Thousands of buildings have suffered severe damage and are close to crumbling. Hundreds of people have been forced to pull their beds into the streets in fear that an aftershock could flatten their homes.

Among the most serious consequences of the quakes has been the damage to the highly sensitive power grid, which is still severely damaged from Hurricane María in 2017. All of Puerto Rico’s power generation plants are located along the southern coast near the origin of the seismic activity.

Quake damage to the Costa Azul power plant, the largest in Puerto Rico, has led to widespread power outages throughout the island, affecting hundreds of thousands of households. The Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) is said to have restored power to less than a third of the affected households.

Full restoration of electric service will require two weeks, according to experts who spoke at an evening press conference on Tuesday. However, as the recent experience of Hurricane María revealed, it is very likely that residents will be without power for much longer.

The complete lack of preparedness and inadequate response to the current crisis recalls the deadly scenes following Hurricane María which left tens of thousands of residents without power for months and led to an estimated 5,000 deaths.

In fact, many of the homes destroyed on Tuesday were still awaiting repair from the damage caused in 2017, collapsing with blue tarps still protecting their damaged roofs.

Workers in Puerto Rico are also no doubt recalling the experience of 2017—when devastating reports emerged in the weeks and months after the initial storm—of residents who relied on electricity for critical treatments such as dialysis dying in their homes as the longest and largest blackout in US history unfolded on the island.

The complete lack of emergency response then, both locally and nationally, created dire living conditions in the wake of the storm. In one case, residents were forced to drink contaminated water out of desperation. Due in part to the collapse of electric service Tuesday, 300,000 people have once again been left without water.

Wanda Vazquez, Puerto Rico’s acting governor, has declared a state of emergency for the entire island and the National Guard has been mobilized to participate in rescue efforts. In a press conference Tuesday, Vazquez tried to calm the population: “We are talking about an event that Puerto Rico has not experienced in 102 years and we are talking about something that we cannot predict,” she said. Vazquez also promised that all schools will be inspected for damage by January 13, claiming that the government has “learned lessons” since Hurricane María.

Vazquez noted that her government had not had direct contact with the White House, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) said officials were still considering the governor’s request for an emergency declaration.

The Financial Oversight and Management Board (FOMB), an unelected body that dictates the budget for Puerto Rico, reported Tuesday that it had approved the use of emergency reserve funds from fiscal years 2019 and 2020 for expenses related to the earthquakes. These funds, however, will not cover even the smallest fraction of the damage done by earthquakes to countless homes.

Central banks losing firepower to counter recession

Nick Beams

The outgoing governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, has added his voice to warnings that, having reduced interest rates to record lows, central banks may be running out of measures to deal with a recession.

In an interview with the Financial Times on Tuesday, Carney said the global economy was heading towards a “liquidity trap” in which monetary policy loses its effectiveness in producing increased spending and reviving economic growth.

“It’s generally true that there’s much less ammunition for all the major central banks than they previously had and I’m of the opinion that this situation will persist for some time,” he said.

Carney told the FT that if there were to be deeper downturn requiring more stimulus than a conventional recession “then it’s not clear that monetary policy would have sufficient space.”

Carney’s comments came in the wake of the annual meeting of the American Economic Association (AEA) held last weekend in Dan Diego which focused on the issues confronting central banks. According to Bloomberg, the central message of the meeting was that the US and euro area “face daunting economic challenges in a world of low inflation and interest rates and central banks alone don’t have the tools to cope.”

In his address to the meeting, the incoming president of the AEA, former chairman of the US Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke, said the new environment posed challenges for central banks that had traditionally relied on lowering interest rates to stimulate economies.

In a blog post on which his speech was based, Bernanke said interest rates around the world had been trending downwards since the 1980s and generally low rates meant that “in the face of an economic downturn or undesirably low inflation, the room available for conventional rate cuts is much smaller than in the past.”

Bernanke wrote that the new tools developed by the Fed and other central banks, including asset purchases, so-called quantitative easing (QE), as well as “forward guidance”—in effect assuring financial markets that interest rates would remain lower for longer—could provide some stimulus.

He also foreshadowed further measures, including negative interest rates, as implemented by the European Central Bank. The Fed should maintain a “constructive ambiguity” on the future use of negative short-term rates because ruling them out created an effective floor for long-term rates as well and “could limit the Fed’s ability to reduce longer term rates by QE or other measures.”

But Bernanke acknowledged that what he called his “relatively upbeat conclusions” about the effectiveness of the new monetary tools depended on the neutral rate of interest being in the range of 2–3 percent or above because all monetary strategies became much less effective when it was below 2. The neutral rate is the rate which leads neither to economic stimulus or a dampening of the economy.

But as Bernanke acknowledged there is “considerable uncertainty about the current and future levels of the nominal neutral rate.”

Other speakers at the meeting were more downbeat than Bernanke. Speaking via a video link, the former president of the ECB, Mario Draghi, said he believed that for the euro area there was “some risk of Japanification.” This refers to the situation where, as in Japan, the central banks has to keep interest rates at near to zero and functions as the main purchaser in the bond market in order to try to prevent recession and inflation is close to zero or even negative.

Draghi said the euro area could still avoid a deflationary malaise “but time is not infinite.”

Former Fed chair Janet Yellen said she agreed with former Clinton Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers that the US was in a state of secular stagnation—a term first used in the 1930s—where desired savings were higher than desired investment, resulting in low interest rates. She indicated this situation could prevail for some time as the conditions that gave rise to it, including lower levels of productivity, “were apt to prove chronic by nature.”

Monetary policy had a role to play in future downturns but was “unlikely to be sufficient in the years ahead.”

She repeated her concerns about the risks to financial stability arising from a prolonged period of low interest rates “as investors search for yield and take on leverage.” Countries need strong tools to counter asset bubbles but this was “lacking in the United States.”

The inability of monetary policy to meet a downturn was also emphasised by other participants. Mary Daly, president of the San Francisco Fed said: “We have less room to manoeuvre.”

In its report on the meeting, the Financial Times, noted that in the “usually understated world of monetary policy, these expressions of concern are notably explicit” and cited remarks by Raghuram Rajan, the former governor of the Reserve Bank of India. Rajan warned of the dangers of the easy money policy of the Fed in 2005, in the build-up to the 2008 crisis, for which he was denounced by Summers and many others.

“They can’t announce too loudly they have no tools left,” he said. “Part of the magic of central banking is to pretend you have a bazooka behind your back.”

There are already indications that further “unconventional” and emergency measures are not merely some future prospect but are already being enacted.

Following mid-September’s spike in interest rates in the repo market, where financial institutions borrow overnight to square off their books for the day, the Fed has been intervening aggressively to buy short-term assets in order to ensure liquidity and keep interest rates down. Normally interest rates in this market track the Fed’s base rate, now at between 1.5 and 1.75 percent, but rose to as high as 10 percent. The spike sounded alarm bells because the lack of liquidity in the repo market was one of the features of the 2008 crisis.

The Fed has maintained its operations are merely aimed at countering technical problems in the operation of financial markets. But nearly four months on from the mid-September spike, they are assuming a permanent character.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday that the New York Fed had pumped nearly $100 billion in short-term liquidity into financial markets that day following a $76.9 billion intervention on Monday. The Fed has said repeatedly this is not quantitative easing in a new form. But its own figures belie this assertion. Last Thursday it reported that its holdings of assets had risen to $4.17 trillion as of the beginning of the year, up from $3.8 trillion on September.

Inadequate government relief for Australian bushfire victims

James Cogan

Confronting a wave of public anger over its initial indifference to the country’s bushfire crisis, the Australian government of Prime Minister Scott Morrison is now engaged in an exercise in damage control to salvage its standing with limited promises of aid and assistance.

The federal Coalition government rejected expert advice that the 2019–2020 fire season would be catastrophic and refused to finance even limited increases in firefighting capabilities. Moreover, working people have watched with growing fury as Morrison and his ministers responded to the outbreak of unprecedented blazes by dismissing overwhelming evidence that the fire crisis is linked to global warming.

On Tuesday, with his government under siege, Morrison announced that $2 billion in assistance will be provided over the next two years, dispensed by a newly-established National Bushfire Recovery Agency. The money will be focused in particular on business with emergency financial grants to farmers and small business owners, the rebuilding of damaged roads, bridges and infrastructure and the provision of mental health services in affected communities. Funds will also be used to promote tourism in the numerous tourist-reliant towns ravaged by fire.

Wildfires rage under plumes of smoke in Bairnsdale, Australia. (Glen Morey via AP)

The announcement followed the government’s unprecedented mobilisation of 3,000 army reservists without bothering to notify fire services as to how they would be deployed. Most have no training in firefighting and are being used to fill in the gaping logistical holes that exist because of the under-funding of civilian emergency services. They are loading and unloading trucks, delivering supplies, clearing roads and burying the carcasses of thousands of livestock killed by the blazes.

State governments have also brought forward their own relief measures. In Victoria, the Labor government of Premier Daniel Andrews, which has presided over the running down of the state fire services, has announced the establishment of “Bushfire Recovery Victoria.” The agency has been allocated an initial budget of just $50 million with other money to come from a government-run charity collecting donations.

In New South Wales, where the losses have so far been the worst, the state Coalition government today announced a $1 billion package to assist in the rebuilding of fire devastated communities. It also unveiled a scheme that allows affected farmers, businesses and non-profit organisations to apply for up to $15,000 in assistance. The South Australian government is soliciting corporate and private donations for a “State Emergency Relief Fund.”

In contrast to these limited government measures, there has been an outpouring of public sympathy and support for those impacted by the fires. Charities appealing for food and clothing to send to the fire victims have been overwhelmed with contributions. An online appeal launched by comedian Celeste Barber, with an initial aim of raising $750,000 for the volunteer NSW Rural Fire Service (RFS), has collected over $45 million so far. A Red Cross fire assistance appeal has raised a similar amount. A Salvation Army appeal has collected over $15 million.

Australian and international artistic celebrities, including Nicole Kidman, Kylie and Dannie Minogue, Russell Crowe, Chris Hemsworth, Pink, the rock band Metallica and Elton John, have all announced large personal donations. The Business Council of Australia, representing the largest companies in the country, has asked its members to finance a modest $25 million trust to provide long-term education and other support to the children of firefighters who have lost their lives. Major Australian-based banks and corporations have announced donations of between $1 million and $5 million.

Donations from around the world are also flooding into animal welfare organisations, in response to the footage that has been broadcast of the fire impact on koalas and other native wildlife, and the estimate that at least 500 million animals have been killed.

The financial assistance will, at best, only deliver relief for some of those affected by the fires. Many victims will receive little or no financial assistance.

More than 2,000 homes have burnt to the ground and hundreds more have been damaged. Hundreds of vehicles have been destroyed. Affected people will have to wait for insurance pay-outs before they can even begin to consider whether they rebuild their lives. A Victorian government survey in 2017 found that 26 percent of households in the state had no insurance, and 28 percent were underinsured. So far, 8,000 fire-related insurance claims have been filed across the country, totaling barely $700 million—an average of just $87,500 per claim.

Farms have lost not only livestock, outbuildings, equipment and fencing, but the land itself will take time to recover. Even the most comprehensive insurance pay-outs will not cover the full losses. Many farmers face the wrenching decision of whether re-establishing their operations is even worth the years of financial hardship and stress.

People who suffered physical injuries defending their homes or evacuating from them are not eligible for compensation. Tens of thousands of casual and contract workers who have not been able to work for weeks due to the fires will not be compensated. Unemployment and poverty will soar in affected areas. The tourism will take years to recover—regardless of government-funded advertising campaigns.

Moreover, the federal and state governments have no plan, let alone funding, for the urgently needed expansion of fire and other emergency services and fire prevention measures. The 2019–2020 fire season has already been devastating and the most intense summer months have only begun. The reality, however, is global warming means conditions will only worsen in future years.

Billions of dollars are required to finance the immediate recruitment and training of a standing, professional national firefighting force, equipped with its own fleet of aircraft and helicopters and array of heavy earth-moving and clearing vehicles. Local volunteer fire brigades and overstretched national and state park services are unable to carry out necessary hazard reduction measures during the winter months. More funding is required to ensure that local volunteer fire brigades have up-to-date firefighting vehicles and equipment and to fully pay their members for the time they take away from their work or businesses.

The entire political establishment is complicit. Both the opposition Labor Party and the Greens far from condemning the Morrison government are pushing for another Royal Commission inquiry into the fire crisis as a means of defusing public anger.

Yet the lack of preparedness for the scale of the 2019–2020 fires is in part due to the fact that federal and state governments, both Coalition and Labor, have ignored the main recommendations of previous inquiries into the impact of previous fires and other disasters on the grounds they would be too costly to implement.

Massive all-India general strike protests Modi’s pro-investor, communalist policies

Deepal Jayasekera & Keith Jones

Tens of millions of Indian workers, youth and rural toilers joined a one-day nationwide general strike yesterday to protest the Bharatiya Jananta Party (BJP) government’s pro-investor and communalist policies.

Since winning re-election last May, with massive big business and corporate media support, the BJP government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has dramatically escalated its assault on the working class. Through changes to the country’s labour laws, it is promoting the proliferation of precarious contract-labour jobs and further limiting workers’ right to strike and organise. It has also dramatically accelerated the privatisation of public sector enterprises, moving forward with plans to sell off India’s railways, open up the coal industry to private investors, and privatise Air India and Bharat Petroleum. It has also provided big business with another bonanza by slashing the corporate tax rate by 8 percentage points, or more than a quarter.

Members of various trade unions listen a leader during a general strike called by various trade unions in Ahmadabad, India, Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2020. T(AP Photo/Ajit Solanki)

At the same time, with the aim of splitting the working class and mobilising its Hindu-supremacist base as a battering ram against mounting social opposition, the Modi government has taken a series of provocative steps targeting the country’s Muslim minority. These include illegally abolishing the special, semi-autonomous constitutional status of Jammu and Kashmir, hitherto India’s only Muslim-majority state, and, last month, rushing into law a discriminatory Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).

Yesterday’s strike was called by 10 central union federations, and had the explicit support of the Stalinist parliamentary parties—the Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPM and the Communist Party of India (CPI)—and the implicit support of the big business Congress Party, with whom the Stalinists are closely aligned.

Key union demands—formulated in a 12-point charter—include measures to provide jobs for the unemployed, now estimated to number 73 million or almost 8 percent of the workforce; basic social protections for all workers; and increases in pensions and the derisory minimum wage. The strike also demanded the repeal of the CAA and the scrapping of the government’s plan to force all of the country’s 1.3 billion residents to prove their entitlement to Indian citizenship, a scheme transparently aimed at intimidating and harassing the Muslim minority.

The corporate media, big business, and the Modi government are all trying to downplay the impact of yesterday’s protest strike.

However, while the strike’s size and scope did vary across states and sectors of the economy, there is no doubt that it had a massive impact overall, and that yesterday’s action attested to both the growing militancy and the immense social power of the working class.

According to the Stalinist-led Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU), 35 million bus, truck, and auto rickshaw drivers joined the strike. In many urban centres, including in the eastern Indian states of West Bengal, Odisha, and Bihar, and in Kerala in the southwest, much or most of public transport was shut down.

Bank workers also joined the strike in huge numbers to protest the BJP government’s plans to merge and privatise many state-owned banks, which, like India’s financial system as a whole, are weighed down by massive corporate debts.

Many government workers joined the strike in defiance of threats of reprisals issued by the BJP-led central government and various state governments. A central government order stated that workers who joined the strike would face “consequences,” including “deduction of wages” and “appropriate disciplinary actions.”

News reports indicate that industrial workers, including in India’s globally connected auto sector, came out in force. Outlook India reported that workers walked out at Honda Motorcycle and Scooter’s Manesar, Haryana, plant and numerous auto parts plants in the Manesar-Gurgaon industrial belt, which lies on the outskirts of India’s capital, Delhi. The strike also crippled production at the Bajaj Auto plant in Chakan, Maharashtra, and at Volvo bus and truck, Toyota car, and Bosch auto parts, and Vikrant Tyres plants in neighbouring Karnataka. Hundreds of thousands of Coal India workers in Jharkand and across India, and jute plantation workers in West Bengal also joined the strike.

The power sector was heavily hit by the strike, with electricity production down by as much as 5 percent, as 1.5 million engineers and other power workers walked out.

There was also huge support for the strike from the extremely poorly paid, state-funded Anganwadi or rural child care workers, the vast majority of whom are women.

In some states, there were mass arrests of strikers and strike supporters. In Tamil Nadu, the AIADMK state government, an ally of the BJP, ordered police to arrest protesters in the state capital, Chennai, and in Coimbatore, a textile manufacturing centre, where more than a thousand people were detained.

In West Bengal, led by the Trinamool Congress (TMC), a right-wing regional rival of the BJP, there were clashes between security forces, TMC goons, and strike supporters. After strike supporters blocked trains, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee went on a tirade, accusing the CPM and its Left Front allies of seeking “cheap publicity by calling bandhs [strikes] and hurling bombs at buses.”

According to the Newsclick website, farmers and agricultural workers joined rallies, road blockades and other protests in nearly 480 of India’s 732 districts, and students at 60 universities boycotted classes.

Yesterday’s strike took place amid the countrywide wave of mass protests that erupted in response to the passage of the discriminatory CAA. These protests, while spearheaded by Muslim youth, have cut across the communal, caste and ethnic divisions that the ruling elite has long cultivated so as to set working people against each other.

Roiled by the seemingly sudden, but in reality deeply-rooted, emergence of mass opposition, the BJP government has responded with massive state repression—including lethal police violence, blanket bans on protests, and Internet shutdowns—and by ratcheting up its promotion of Hindu communalism.

In late December, Indian Army Chief Bipin Rawat, flouting elementary democratic-constitutional principles, rallied to the government’s support, labeling the anti-CAA agitation as “violent” and chastising students for “misleading” the nation. Modi has since promoted him to be India’s first Chief of Defence Staff.

Last Sunday evening, in an outrage for which even the Hindu has held the BJP government responsible, members of the ABVP, the student group linked to the BJP and its fascistic ideological mentor, the RSS, savagely assaulted students at Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). More than 40 students had to be hospitalised, many with serious injuries after being attacked with iron rods, field-hockey sticks and stones.

JNU has been an especial target of the BJP government and Hindu right since at least 2016, because of its long association with left-wing activism and socialist politics.

Meanwhile, global and domestic capital are demanding that the BJP government introduce a new wave of “big bang” neo-liberal reforms, so as to attract the investment needed to pull the Indian economy out of an accelerating slowdown.

In line with these demands, the BJP government has reportedly decided to slash its annual spending in the remaining three months of the 2019-2020 fiscal year by 2 trillion rupees (US$27.87 billion) or the annual equivalent of 7 percent. Even so, due to a massive revenue shortfall, the budget deficit is expected to swell from a planned 3.3 percent of GDP to 3.8 percent.

To gird itself to contend with mounting economic turbulence and working-class opposition, the Modi government is moving to further strengthen the Indian bourgeoisie’s reckless and incendiary anti-China alliance with Washington. On Tuesday, as Trump was discussing the next steps in the US war drive against Iran following his criminal assassination of Iranian Revolutionary Guard General Qassem Suleimani, Modi telephoned the US president. According to a White House statement, Modi and Trump discussed “ways to further strengthen the United States-India strategic partnership in 2020.”

The mounting working-class challenge to the Modi regime is part of a global upsurge in the class struggle. The past year that has seen major strikes and sustained, and in some cases insurrectionary, protest movements around the world, including in Chile, Ecuador, Haiti, Mexico, the United States, France, Britain, Algeria, Sudan, Lebanon, and Sri Lanka.

As everywhere, the pressing task in India is to politically arm the growing working-class counter-offensive with an international socialist programme and revolutionary leadership.

In diametrical opposition to the needs and aspirations of the tens of millions of workers and youth who joined yesterday’s strike, the unions and Stalinist parties are seeking to channel the mass opposition to the BJP and the bitter fruits of three decades of India’s capitalist “rise” behind the Congress Party and a parade of right-wing ethno-chauvinist and caste-ist parties. For them, yesterday’s strike was a manoeuvre aimed at burnishing their “militant” credentials, the better to contain, defuse and suppress working-class opposition.

Their hostility to genuine class struggle is epitomised in their callous abandonment of the 13 Maruti Suzuki workers jailed for life on frame-up murder charges for the “crime” of leading resistance to contract labour and a brutal work-regime, and their pleas for Modi to resume regular meetings of the tripartite Indian Labour Conference.

For decades, in the name of opposing the Hindu supremacist BJP, the CPM, CPI and their respective union affiliates, the CITU and All India Trades Union (AITUC), have supported right-wing governments, most of them Congress-led, that implemented pro-market policies and pursued ever-closer relations with Washington.