As Indian farmers step up protests against pro-agribusiness “reform,” Modi prepares mass repression

Wasantha Rupasinghe & Keith Jones

Indian farmers are threatening to expand their protests after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led central government reiterated that it will not repeal the three pro-agri-business laws it rushed through parliament last September.

Hundreds of thousands of farmers, many with their wives and children, are currently camped at four entrances to the Delhi National Capital Territory. Many have been there since Nov. 27, when phalanxes of security forces, acting on the orders of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his BJP government, barred them from bringing their Delhi Chalo (Let’s go to Delhi) agitation to India’s capital and largest city.

On Tuesday, millions across India joined a Bharat Bandh (all-India shut down) called by farmer organizations. According to the coordination committee of the Kisan Morcha (Peasants’ March), more than five million people participated in the four-hour shutdown, with 20,000 protests held in at least 22 of India’s 28 states.

Supporters of farmers shout slogans during a nationwide shutdown called by thousands of Indian farmers protesting new agriculture laws in Mumbai, India, Tuesday, Dec. 8, 2020. (AP Photo/Rajanish Kakade)

In the Punjab, where the farmers’ agitation is centered, daily life ground to a halt. In Haryana, which lies between Punjab and Delhi, there were protests throughout the state. Markets were shut down, and several roads and highways were occupied. Workers from Maruti Suzuki, Hero Motorcycle, and other auto plants in the Gurgaon-Manesar industrial belt, which lies in Haryana on the outskirts of Delhi, held a demonstration in support of the farmers.

On Tuesday evening, Modi’s chief henchman, Home Minister Amit Shah, led a government delegation in a hastily-organized, four-hour meeting with representatives of some of the dozens of farm organizations that are leading the protest movement. Shah repeated previous government offers to make minor amendments to the three laws, which will throw open Indian agriculture to domestic and transnational corporations by gutting the system of state-run markets, and reducing or eliminating restrictions on contract farming and land ownership. But he dismissed out of hand the farmers’ call for the three laws to be repealed.

Big business, which applauded the agrarian “reform” laws and an accompanying labour “reform” that outlaws most strikes and promotes “labour market flexibility,” is adamant that the BJP government stand its ground. First, because they view “modernizing” Indian agriculture at small farmers’ expense as a key element in competing with China for investment; and second, because they fear a visible government retreat in the face of the farmer protests would galvanize social opposition.

On Nov. 26, the first day of the Delhi Chalo agitation, tens of millions of workers across India mounted a one-day general strike to protest the government’s “pro-investor” economic policies. They also demanded emergency aid for the hundreds of millions who have been left to fend for themselves over the past 8 months as India has been roiled by the COVID-19 pandemic and its catastrophic economic fallout.

On Wednesday morning, the BJP-dominated Union cabinet met and formally approved a 9-point “offer” to the farmers. Under this “offer,” a handful of the most provocative clauses in two of the three laws would be eliminated. These include a stipulation that private markets, unlike the state-run mandis, shall be tax-free, and provisions that bar farmers from seeking redress from the courts for any matters regulated by the agrarian “reform” laws if government officials or corporate representatives have acted in “good faith”

The government also now says it is willing to “provide a written assurance that the existing Minimum Support Price (MSP) system will continue.” Farmers, however, want the MSP enshrined in law, since they have no confidence the government will honour its word. As it is, the MSP system has already largely collapsed due to the “pro-market” policies pursued by central and state governments, both those led by the BJP and its allies and those led by the ostensible “pro-farmer” opposition parties.

The farmers’ organizations have rejected the BJP government offer, and are now threatening to begin blocking the Jaipur-Delhi and Agra-Delhi highways and other roads into Delhi, one by one, starting no later than Saturday, Dec. 12. In a press release, the aforementioned All India Kisan Sangharsh Coordination Committee said the “Modi government (is) insincere and arrogant about resolving farmers’ demands; all farmers’ rightly reject old proposals dressed up as new.”

The farm organizations have also called for a nationwide gherao or sit-down protest blocking transportation routes on Dec. 14. But they remain open to further talks with the government.

The militancy of the farmers has clearly rattled Modi and his government.

They continue to seeking a means to defuse the crisis, by offering minimal concessions and exploiting divisions within the farm groups whose leaders are largely drawn from more privileged farmers and who have close ties to various factions of the political establishment. And while the BJP lashes out, often in vile communally-charged rhetoric against the opposition parties, it also knows that it can count on their help in preventing the farmer agitation from becoming a catalyst for a broader explosion of social anger, especially from the working class.

Last week, Amit Shah held private talks with the Punjab Congress Chief Minister Captain Amerinder Singh. At their conclusion, the Congress leader called on both the government and farmers to seek a compromise so as to ensure “national security” is not jeopardized.

That said, it is manifestly evident that the government is also making the political and technical preparations for violently suppressing the farmers’ agitation. Defence Minister Rajanth Singh has been conspicuously present whenever the most senior BJP ministers have met to discuss the government’s response to the farm protests.

Massive repression, it must be recalled, was the government’s initial response. On Nov. 26-27, the central government and the BJP state governments in Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, and Madhya Pradesh mounted a massive security operation to prevent the farmers from ever getting close to Delhi. Despite deploying para-military forces, tear gas and water-canon, invoking Section 144 of the Criminal Code in Haryana, thereby making all gatherings of more than four people illegal, and arresting hundreds; the authorities failed to stop tens of thousands of farmers reaching the borders of Delhi. There they were met with an ever-larger show of force.

The government provided a taste of what it is preparing during Tuesday’s Bharat bandh. Section 144 was imposed throughout Delhi and the entire state of Gujarat. The Delhi police, which are under the direct control of Home Minister Amit Shah, placed Delhi Chief Minister and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) head Arvind Kejriwal, under house arrest after he met farmers protesting at the city’s Singhu border entrance.

In Uttar Pradesh, the BJP Chief Minister and arch Hindu supremacist Yogi Adityanath ordered the temporary detention of his main political rival, Samajwadi party leader Akhilesh Yadav, and other Samajwadi party leaders as they were en route to participate in a Bharat Bandh rally. The UP police also detained Chandrashekhar Azad, leader of the Bhim Army, a Dalit rights organization, to prevent him from joining the farmers’ protest.

Yesterday, the two BJP ministers most directly responsible for the farm “reform” laws—Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar and Food and Consumer Affairs Minister Raosaheb Danve—sought to smear the farmer agitation as treasonous in a transparent attempt to manufacture a pretext for its violent repression.

“The agitation that is going on is not that of farmers,” Danve told a public event in Maharashtra. “China and Pakistan have a hand behind this … This is the conspiracy of other countries.” Later Agriculture Minister Tomar urged the media to investigate who is behind the farmers’ protest.

“Media’s eyes are sharp and we will leave it to find it out.”

In so far as the Modi government retains room for maneuver, it is because of the treacherous role being played by the organizations that claim to speak in the name of the working class: the trade unions and the Stalinist parliamentary parties, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPM and the Communist Party of India (CPI).

They are determined to prevent the working class from intervening in the political crisis as an independent political force, rallying the farmers and all the rural masses—above all the agricultural workers and landless peasants—behind it in a struggle against the Modi government and Indian capitalism.

The Stalinist unions, the CPM-affiliated Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) and the CPI-aligned All India Trades Union Congress (AITUC), joined the other unions in instructing workers to remain on the job during Tuesday’s Bharat bandh, and to confine any show of support for the farmers to participation in protest rallies.

This goes alongside the CPM and CPI’s longstanding efforts to divert the mass opposition to Modi behind the Congress Party, until recently the Indian bourgeoisie’s preferred party of government and the party that long spearheaded the implementation of “pro-investor” policies, and various right-wing regional and caste-ist parties

Last Sunday, the Stalinist parties joined with the Congress, the Tamil Nadu-based DMK, the Maharashtra-based Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and other right-wing parties in issuing a statement hypocritically declaring support for Tuesday’s farmer protest. On Wednesday evening, CPM General Secretary Sitaram Yechury and CPI head D. Raja joined former Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and a handful of other opposition leaders in presenting their concerns about the farm bills to Indian President Ram Nath Kovind, a BJP hack.

Spelling out their opposition to the emergence of a mass movement and political general strike to bring down the hated Modi regime, both Yechury and Raja have declared that they don’t want to “politicize” the farmers’ agitation.

‘“It is a conscious decision on our part to stay away from the protest sites,” said Yechury. “The farmer groups themselves also told us that they would want it this way. So, we have no party banners at the protest sites. The CPI’s Raja was even more explicit, declaring, “We don’t need to politicize it [the farmers’ agitation].”

Meanwhile, in a ruling class frightened by the surge in social opposition and above all the possibility of an explosive intervention by the working class, support is growing for state repression and authoritarian methods of rule. Amitabh Kant, the head of the India government think thank NITI Aayog, told an online event Tuesday that “many more reforms still need to be done” if India is to compete against China as a “manufacturing nation.” He then complained “tough” reforms are “very difficult in the Indian context,” because “we are too much of a democracy.”

Sweden sees ICU occupancy approach 99 percent in Stockholm

Benjamin Mateus

The Swedish “experiment” to allow the virus to run rampant has proved to be an utter disaster. Intensive care units in Stockholm have nearly reached capacity as the death toll continues unabated.

Patient in an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) [Source: Wikimedia Commons]

The world has now seen over 70 million cases of COVID-19 infections, and nearly 1.6 million have died. Though the seven-day average has briefly peaked for new cases at 623,488 infections per day and deaths at 10,862 per day, there is still a tremendous velocity in the present surge ripping through Europe and North America as tepid containment measures attempt to stem not the virus but the economic damage the pandemic has wrought.

Much of the attention has turned to events in the United States, with deaths now exceeding 3,000 per day. The seven-day average has also surpassed 213,000, while the number of COVID-19 hospitalizations is approaching 110,000. Yet, the political establishment has washed their hands of any responsibility to contain the pandemic.

Yet, Sweden’s situation regarding the winter surge is not any better than in the United States. On a per-capita basis, the curves for new cases, deaths, and positivity rate grimly mirror each other, underscoring both countries’ criminal policies to let the virus run rampant.

Sweden vs US per capita cases

Sweden, a country with a population of just over 10 million, has documented 312,000 cases of COVID-19, or more than three percent of the population. The last 200,000 cases occurred in just the past two months as the surge has thoroughly thrashed the Scandinavian nation. There have also been 7,200 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic, 1,200 in just the last month, and that figure is accelerating upwards.

On Wednesday, the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet reported that intensive care units in Stockholm hospitals had reached 99 percent of their capacity as an influx of new patients on Tuesday quickly filled beds. A handful of ICU beds are available in a city of one million.

Bjorn Eriksson, Stockholm’s health director, explained at a press conference that the situation is quite serious: “We have mobilized everything we could and taken to everything we had to offer so that everyone will get the care they need. We now need to continue to do our utmost, all actors in society as a whole, to offer resistance to the virus and the pandemic.” Changing only the names of the city and country, this is increasingly the situation throughout Europe.

The intensive care unit is the last safety net for patients with critical COVID-19 infections, who have to fight for their life. Lifesaving oxygen, dexamethasone and various therapeutic agents are but a few weapons in the arsenal needed to combat the infection and its sinister manifestations. The physicians and nurses must pay careful attention to vital signs and laboratory findings, looking for subtle changes in the patient’s physiology. When these capacities, specifically those of the ICU team, reach their limit, the situation begins to change rapidly for the worse.

Sweden vs US per capita deaths

According to Bjorn Persson, the operations manager for the intensive care unit, adjustments with nurse-to-patient ratios have been maximized at the Karolinska University Hospital. Staff work times have been extended, or they are kept after their shift to bridge shortages. Eriksson added, “It was exactly this development that we did not want to see. It shows that we Stockholmers have been crowded too much and had too many contacts outside the households where we left. The healthcare is not under so much pressure that there are no major margins in the healthcare system.”

Since cases began to rise in late September, Sweden has shifted to implementing piecemeal restrictions. On Nov. 20, bars and restaurants were banned from selling alcohol after 10 p.m. Five of the 21 regions across the country were placed under stricter guidelines, specifically urging public social distancing. Indoor and outdoor gatherings have been limited to eight, down from 50. Additional measures included public health warnings against attending parties, avoiding indoor gatherings and not using public transportation if unnecessary. Yet, these measures have done little to stall the surge.

On Nov. 22, an emotional Prime Minister Stefan Löfven addressed the nation over the pandemic, saying, “It is clear that it is going to take time before we can go back to normal. The little respite we got this summer and autumn is truly over. It is November now. People’s health and lives are still in danger. And the danger is increasing.”

In the face of their present circumstances, the Swedish Health Agency continues to reject face masks despite the World Health Organization’s recently expanded recommendations for their use, citing “poor evidence” of their effectiveness and concerns people will use them to avoid isolating.

State Epidemiologist Anders Tegnell (Credit: Wikipedia)

“Face masks may be needed in some situations. Those situations have not arisen in Sweden yet, according to our dialogue with the [healthcare] regions,” said Anders Tegnell, the government’s chief epidemiologist. Tegnell had endorsed the homicidal policy of herd immunity under the deceitful pretense that this would entail “focused protection” that would supposedly protect society’s most vulnerable. The young and healthy were to become infected in sufficient numbers to establish broad-based immunity within the community while the elderly remained isolated to avoid infection. Yet, half of Sweden’s deaths in the spring occurred in long-term care facilities.

On the contrary, many scientists have criticized the Health Agency’s approach. Anders Vahlne, a professor of virology at Karolinska Institute, said, “They didn’t try to save their lives. They were scared that the intensive care units would be overwhelmed and you couldn’t take care of young people. And so, they were selecting [patients], a bit too harshly, I think.”

Piotr Nowak, a physician working at Karolinska with COVID patients, said, “Authorities chose a strategy totally different to the rest of Europe, and because of it the country has suffered a lot in the first wave. We have no idea how they failed to predict the second wave.” He explained that the medical community as a whole did not share the public-health agency’s misplaced “optimism.”

US Federal Trade Commission sues Facebook over monopolistic acquisitions and anticompetitive practices

Kevin Reed

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), with the support of 48 US states and districts, sued the social media monopoly Facebook on Wednesday, charging it with suppressing competition and violating antitrust laws.

In a 53-page “complaint for injunctive and other equitable relief,” the FTC brought the lawsuit in the US District Court for Washington, DC against Facebook with the backing of 46 states and the District of Columbia and Guam.

The lawsuit says that Facebook has “maintained its monopoly position by buying up companies that present competitive threats and by imposing restrictive policies that unjustifiably hinder actual or potential rivals that Facebook does not or cannot acquire.”

The aim of the lawsuit is to seek a permanent injunction by the court that would require Facebook to “unwind” its asset acquisitions by means of alleged monopolistic practices—including Instagram and WhatsApp—and to both prohibit Facebook from imposing anticompetitive conditions on software developers in the future and require the company to seek government approval for any future mergers or acquisitions.

Facebook responded to the antitrust action with a lengthy Newsroom statement by Jennifer Newstead, Vice President and General Counsel. Newstead points out that both acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp were reviewed and approved by US regulatory bodies at the time. “The FTC conducted an in-depth ‘Second Request’ of the Instagram transaction in 2012 before voting unanimously to clear it. The European Commission reviewed the WhatsApp transaction in 2014 and found no risk of harm to competition in any potential market,” she writes.

Newstead adds defiantly, “Now, many years later, with seemingly no regard for settled law or the consequences to innovation and investment, the agency is saying it got it wrong and wants a do-over. In addition to being revisionist history, this is simply not how the antitrust laws are supposed to work.”

The FTC action against Facebook comes seven weeks after the US Department of Justice (DoJ) launched an antitrust lawsuit against Google in the same district court. The DoJ complaint stated that Google (and its parent organization Alphabet, Inc.) engaged in “unlawfully maintaining monopolies in the markets for general search services, search advertising, and general search text advertising in the United States through anticompetitive and exclusionary practices.”

The suit also follows by eight weeks the publication by the House of Representatives antitrust subcommittee report on the business practices of Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google. This report stated that the big tech companies “that once were scrappy, underdog startups that challenged the status quo have become the kinds of monopolies we last saw in the era of oil barons and railroad tycoons.”

The FTC issued a press release and a video statement by Ian Conner, Director of the Bureau of Competition, along with its legal brief. The press release says that the lawsuit followed a lengthy investigation “in cooperation with a coalition of attorneys general” that found Facebook has engaged in a systematic strategy “to eliminate threats to its monopoly.”

The press statement says further, “This course of conduct harms competition, leaves consumers with few choices for personal social networking, and deprives advertisers of the benefits of competition.”

In his video statement, Ian Connor said that the lawsuit is the product of 18 months of work by the “recently formed Technology Enforcement Division” of the FTC. Conner made the claim that the case against Facebook has been brought because “the American public deserves a competitive and vibrant personal social networking market” and to “restore the competitive vigor necessary to foster innovation and consumer choice.”

The document quotes a 2008 email from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, where he wrote, “it is better to buy than compete,” as evidence that the social media company has engaged “in a course of anticompetitive conduct with the aim of suppressing, neutralizing, and deterring serious competitive threats.”

The lawsuit alleges that Facebook had already emerged as a monopoly in the “personal social networking market” when it acquired Instagram in April 2012 for $1 billion and WhatsApp in February 2014 for $19 billion. The brief states, “Since toppling early rival Myspace and achieving monopoly power, Facebook has turned to playing defense through anticompetitive means.”

Known internally as Facebook Blue, the corporation’s primary social media product is the number one platform in the world, with over 3 billion users. The lawsuit states, “Facebook’s unmatched position has provided it with staggering profits. Facebook monetizes its personal social networking monopoly principally by selling advertising, which exploits a rich set of data about users’ activities, interests, and affiliations to target advertisements to users. Last year alone, Facebook generated revenues of more than $70 billion and profits of more than $18.5 billion.”

Instagram was founded in 2010 as a mobile-first photo and video sharing platform. Instagram began to threaten Facebook’s social media monopoly as it rode the wave of technology innovation associated with the rise of smartphones. As the FTC lawsuit explains, “Facebook initially tried to compete with Instagram on the merits by improving its own mobile photo-sharing features.”

However, Zuckerberg saw that Facebook had fallen far behind and he concluded in an internal email, “One thing about startups though is you can often acquire them.” The brief then states, “The Instagram acquisition has given Facebook control over its most significant personal social networking competitor, which both neutralizes the direct threat that Instagram posed by itself, and, additionally, makes it more difficult for other firms to use photo-sharing via smartphones to gain traction in personal social networking.”

WhatsApp was first launched in January 2009 and became the world’s most successful texting app and had 500 million users as of 2014 when Facebook acquired it. The lawsuit states that WhatsApp was viewed as “the next biggest consumer risk” at Facebook. An app offering mobile messaging services could “ enter the personal social networking market, either by adding personal social networking features or by launching a spinoff personal social networking app.”

Like with Instagram, WhatsApp was seen as a threat because it was mobile-first whereas many Facebook users’ activity remained desktop-based. Although Facebook was attempting to enable its platform for the growing number of smartphone users, it was having trouble catching up. As one of the Facebook executives wrote in an email, WhatsApp’s mobile messaging “is a wedge into broader social activity/sharing on mobile we have historically led in web.”

Lastly, the lawsuit focuses on other anticompetitive practices related to third party partners and its application programming interfaces (APIs). APIs are “adapters” that allow software developers to plug their applications into each other for interoperability.

The lawsuit says, “For many years— and continuously until a recent suspension under the glare of international antitrust and regulatory scrutiny—Facebook has made key APIs available to third-party apps only on the condition that they refrain from providing the same core functions that Facebook offers, including through Facebook Blue and Facebook Messenger, and from connecting with or promoting other social networks.”

In concluding their brief, the FTC states that sum total of these acquisitions and anticompetitive practices constitute a violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Act and “constitute unfair methods of competition” The lawsuit argues that the FTC Act empowers the court to “issue a permanent injunction” and “order equitable relief to remedy the injury caused by Facebook’s violations.”

Passed in 1890, the Sherman Antitrust Act was adopted during an era of significant industrial expansion, the emergence of huge monopolistic enterprises and the domination of the economy by finance capital associated with the emergence of the United States as a major global power. The law prohibited anticompetitive agreements and restricted monopolies, considering them a barrier to innovation and economic development. At that time, a section of the American ruling establishment identified monopolies with tendencies towards authoritarian and undemocratic forms of political rule.

It is safe to say that virtually none of those considerations are at work in the FTC lawsuit against Facebook. After the break-up of AT&T in 1982, there has been little in the way of major enforcement actions involving the Sherman Act for nearly four decades.

The timing of the government’s case—coming after the electoral victory of Democrat Joseph Biden in the 2020 presidential election and amid the ongoing coup plotting and refusal of President Donald Trump to acknowledge the results of the vote—is an indication that, regardless of the occupant of the White House in the coming weeks, there is a consensus developing within the ruling political establishment that big tech must be brought under control so that it can be wielded more effectively as an instrument of class rule.

The bipartisan offensive against Facebook was acknowledged by the New York Times in its initial report: “President Trump has argued repeatedly that the tech giants have too much power and influence, and allies of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. make similar complaints. The federal case against Facebook is widely expected to continue under Mr. Biden’s administration.”

While the two parties are approaching the offensive against Facebook from slightly different standpoints—the Democrats demanding the suppression of speech on the platform and the Republicans falsely claiming that right-wing views are the sole target of Facebook censorship—their class political objectives are the same.

There is no doubt that Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google are monopolies. These colossal conglomerates have functioned as a law unto themselves over a long period, trampling on the rights of users while contributing to the colossal wealth accumulation of the financial oligarchy. Indeed, as Facebook’s lawyers will doubtless argue in court, the conglomerate’s major acquisitions were ratified at every step along the way by the FTC itself.

However, the crisis of capitalism—intensified by the response of the Democrats and Republicans to the coronavirus pandemic—threatens to ignite mass struggles. The ubiquity of the mobile-wireless social media platforms in the hands of masses of people poses an existential threat to the entire capitalist system.

By pursuing antitrust actions against big tech, the ruling elite is seeking to tighten the reins on key technological infrastructure, with the aim of anticipating and obstructing its use by the working class to organize its struggles and restricting the circulation of material of a left-wing, anti-capitalist and socialist character.

US B-52 bombers threaten Iran for second time in three weeks

Bill Van Auken

For the second time in three weeks, Washington has sent a pair of B-52 heavy bombers to the Persian Gulf in a provocative threat of military aggression against Iran.

The two B-52H Stratofortress bombers carried out a 36-hour round-trip flight from Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. The previous deployment of the bombers, which are capable of carrying both nuclear and conventional weapons, was from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota, meaning that both B-52 wings of the US Air Force Global Strike Command have conducted rehearsals for airstrikes against Iran.

US Iran bombers

The deployments of the same massive warplanes that were used to devastate Vietnam half a century ago have been conducted in the context of mounting war threats and provocations against Iran from both the Trump administration in Washington and its closest ally in the region, the Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

On November 12, Trump convened a White House meeting of his national security cabinet to discuss a proposal for bombing Natanz, Iran’s main nuclear facility. Top aides, including Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, reportedly talked the president out of an act that would represent a world historic war crime, potentially killing thousands, while sickening many more.

This was followed by Pompeo’s extraordinary tour of the Middle East, which he preceded by telling a State Department press conference that he was committed to a “smooth transition” to a second Trump administration, making it clear that his foreign policy operations are directed at furthering the US president’s bid to overturn the results of the November elections.

Pompeo’s trip, which included extensive talks with Netanyahu and a semi-secret flight by himself and the Israeli prime minister to Saudi Arabia for talks with de facto Saudi ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was directed entirely against what he repeatedly described as the “malign influence” of Iran.

Within four days of this meeting, on November 27, Israel’s spy agency, Mossad, carried out the assassination of Iran’s top scientist, nuclear physicist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. This criminal provocation rivaled that of the US at the beginning of this year with the drone missile murder of top Iranian leader Qassem Suleimani after he had arrived at Baghdad International Airport for an official state visit. It is inconceivable that such an assassination would be ordered without the full support of Washington and preparations for an overwhelming military response to any Iranian retaliation.

Indeed, within hours of the murder of Fakhrizadeh, the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier strike group sailed into the Persian Gulf in a highly unusual back-to-back deployment in the region by warships that had been scheduled to return to their US homeport. The US Navy has announced that the length of the latest deployment is indefinite.

The Navy’s top commander in the region, Vice Admiral Sam Paparo, told a press conference last week that an “uneasy deterrence” supposedly created by US forces in the Gulf has been “exacerbated by world events and by events along the way.” Summing up the Navy’s operations against Iran, Paparo quoted former US Defense Secretary Gen. Jim Mattis: “Be polite, be professional and have a plan to kill everyone in the room. That’s how we conduct ourselves at sea.”

Amid the steady drumbeat of military provocations, the Trump administration is rolling out a continuous series of new anti-Iranian sanctions as part of its “maximum pressure” campaign, an economic blockade tantamount to a state of war.

Among the cruelest of these are blanket financial sanctions against the entire Iranian banking system, which has been used deliberately to block Tehran’s buying medicines and medical supplies, which are supposedly exempted from sanctions on humanitarian grounds. The Iranian government had accused Washington of committing “medical terrorism” even before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, as thousands of Iranians were left to die because of their inability to obtain imported medicines.

The pandemic has hit Iran the hardest of any country in the Middle East, with over a million cases and nearly 52,000 recorded deaths. The daily death toll is once again on the rise, now averaging 325. Health officials readily acknowledge that the real toll is probably twice these figures. The country is bracing for a “winter wave” of the pandemic that could bring its cash-strapped healthcare system to its knees.

The governor of Iran’s Central Bank charged Thursday that Washington is blocking Tehran’s efforts to secure vaccines to combat the pandemic. “The US pretends that food and medicine are not subject to sanctions but in practice (it) is stonewalling (the payments),” he said.

Kianoush Jahanpour, the spokesman for Iran’s Food and Drug Administration, said that announced plans to purchase 21 million coronavirus vaccine doses from four countries had been blocked by US sanctions. “While deals have been made for pre-orders, sanctions are casting a shadow over the banking transactions,” Jahanpour said.

At the outset of the pandemic in March, Iran applied for a $5 billion emergency loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to combat the virus. Intense US pressure blocked the body’s executive board from even considering the request.

Far from dampening US imperialist aggression, the pandemic has only served as a trigger for its escalation, while being utilized as a weapon for regime change by inflicting death and suffering upon the Iranian population. Underlying this murderous policy is the drive by US imperialism to counter the decline of its global hegemony by military means, particularly in the Middle East, where Washington’s principal rival, China, is securing energy supplies, including from Iran.

The danger that the Trump administration will launch a war against Iran in the final weeks of its four-year term has by no means receded. The potential pretexts for such an attack include Iran’s exceeding the limitations on its civilian nuclear program imposed under the international accord, known as the JCPOA, that the White House reneged on two years ago.

Washington has also threatened to retaliate against Iran for attacks by predominantly Shia militias in Iraq. While at Tehran’s insistence, these militias had ordered a ceasefire, there have been sporadic attacks claimed by previously unknown groups, including a rocket attack last month on the sprawling US Embassy compound in Baghdad that did little damage.

On Thursday, US sources reported roadside bomb attacks on two convoys transporting supplies for US forces in Iraq, one near the border with Kuwait and another on the outskirts of Baghdad.

Pompeo has stated that the death of an American in such an attack would be a “red line” triggering a US military response against Iran. Washington has recalled much of the staff of the US embassy in preparation for such a conflict.

Meanwhile, Israel continues to bomb Iranian-linked targets in Syria, while the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have been placed on a state of high alert, reportedly because of a possible US attack on Iran. Netanyahu, who faces the collapse of his government and criminal prosecution, has his own reasons for welcoming a war crisis and could stage a provocation to bring one about.

The conventional wisdom within the corporate media and Democratic Party circles is that Trump’s aggression against Iran is designed to create new facts on the ground that would block an incoming Biden administration from fulfilling its pledge to rejoin the Iran nuclear accord. For his part, Biden’s commitment to this agreement is highly conditional, with likely demands that Iran make even further concessions, including on its missile program

There is, however, a more sinister explanation for the launching of war provocations in the supposed “lame duck” period of an outgoing administration. With Trump’s multiple pseudo-legal challenges to the presidential election failing, a war in the Persian Gulf, and with it the potential for mass casualties among the tens of thousands of US troops deployed in the region, would provide Trump a pretext for realizing his threats to impose martial law and upend the transfer of power.

In the face of this clear and present danger, Biden and the Democrats have worked to conceal the gravity of the situation, fearing an eruption of resistance by the working class far more than the prospect of war and dictatorship.

US jobless claims spike to 853,000 while Congress stalls further aid

Jacob Crosse

Historic job losses continued in the US with the latest initial unemployment claims from the Department of Labor revealing 853,000 first-time claims for the week ending Dec. 5, a week-to-week increase of 137,000 from last week’s revised total of 716,000.

In addition to state claims, 427,609 initial claims were filed for the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) program, once again bringing the total claims between state and federal programs to nearly 1.3 million. Since March 21, combined state and federal claims have exceeded 1 million every week.

Overall, 70 million claims have been filed since mid-March, nearly seven times all the claims filed in 2019, a staggering figure that has no historical equivalent since the Labor Department began tracking initial unemployment claims in January 1967. The 853,000 claims this week exceeded bourgeois economists’ expectations and are the highest since the week of Sept. 18, disabusing delusional assertions of a “recovering” job market.

A significant data point in the report was the increase in continuing claims, which measures people collecting state unemployment benefits. The increase, which brought the total above 5.76 million, was the first since August.

Speaking to the Associated Press, AnnElizabeth Konkel, an economist for the job listing website Indeed, indicated that the increase in continuing claims is a sign that hiring is slowing, portending more layoffs. “Today’s report is the first overt signal of a backward slide,” Konkel said. “It’s evident that the labor market is still in crisis.”

The economic and social crisis shows no signs of abating with over 19 million people claiming some form of unemployment benefit according to the report, a decrease of 1.12 million from the previous week. In addition to the 8.55 million claiming PUA benefits, another 4.53 million are claiming Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation benefits. Without congressional action, both CARES Act programs will expire on Dec. 26, leaving some 13 million people with nothing.

Along with the expiration of state unemployment benefits and a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention eviction moratorium at the end of the month, previously allocated funds through the CARES Act to supplement food banks and farmers have also expired. The $4.5 billion Farmers to Families Food Box program, launched in May, ran out of funds this month, leaving food banks across the country to scramble for food, or outright cancel their weekly food drives.

“The needs are beyond what we can comprehend,” Lawdia Kennedy, founder of the Queen Material Community Center in Buford, Georgia, told the Washington Post. “We had three truckloads scheduled for Saturday and they just vanished. Six states are right now being told there will be no food, right before Christmas. It’s hard to put into words what this means for the families I serve.”

“I’ve been telling people that [the food drive] is postponed and might happen next weekend, but that hope is turning a lie,” she said.

Leaders from both big businesses parties showed little interest in alleviating the suffering of millions of people. On Thursday, Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi voiced her support for the bipartisan $908 billion relief proposal, which at this point, is not an actual bill, but a six-page summary that doesn’t include specific language on a proposed business liability shield or aid to state and local governments, two alleged points of contention between the parties.

It has been nearly six months since extended unemployment benefits expired, eliminating the $600 weekly federal supplement, leading to widespread hunger, evictions, mounting debt and death among the working class. But at her Thursday press conference, Pelosi thanked her colleagues for the “great progress” made on negotiations up to this point. She hailed the framework, which doesn’t include $1,200 stimulus checks and offers only half the previous federal supplemental benefits, $300 a week, as something that reflects bipartisan “values and priorities” and “what we need to do right away.”

As has been the case throughout the pandemic, the fact that unemployment benefits theoretically exist doesn’t mean workers get them, or can keep the money if they do. In Iowa, 84-year-old bladder, breast, skin and colon cancer survivor Audrey Birdsell has been ordered by Iowa Workforce Development to repay $3,530 she received through the PUA program earlier this year.

“I don’t think it’s quite right,” Birdsell told the Des Moines Register. Birdsell, at the behest of her family, took a leave of absence from her job at the Kwik Star convenience store when the pandemic emerged. “I really feel bad,” Birdsell continued. “I wouldn’t mind giving some back. But I wish I could have some, at least. I made an effort to stay home from work. And then they’re going to take it away when they promised they wouldn’t.”

A sample of 525 cases from late July reviewed by the newspaper found that more than 100 workers have been ordered to repay previously received funds with an average of $6,713 to be recouped.

As has been the case throughout the entire pandemic, Wall Street brushed aside the dismal report, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average rallying above 30,000 before a brief dip at the market’s closing bell ended the trading day at 29,996.26. The stock market was buoyed by promises of unlimited “quantitative easing” via the Federal Reserve and assurances from President-elect Joe Biden that he would reopen the majority of schools within the first 100 days of his administration—a key to forcing workers back to their jobs.

The artificial inflation of the stock market boosted the wealth of US billionaires by over $1 trillion since the pandemic began, according to a Dec. 9 report from Institute for Policy Studies and Americans for Tax Fairness. The report notes that the “total net worth of the nation’s 651 billionaires rose from $2.95 trillion March 18 … to $4.01 trillion on December 7, a leap of 36%…”

Topping the list is Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, whose wealth grew by 63.2 percent over that time from $113 billion to $184 billion. Tesla CEO Elon Musk saw the largest percentage growth, a monstrous 481.7 percent from $24.6 billion in March to $143 billion in December, for an increase of $118 billion.

The report notes that the $1 trillion hoarded by 651 people in the last nine months would be more than enough to send stimulus checks of $3,000 to all 330 million people in America, adults and children alike, providing a family of four with $12,000.

Contrasted to the euphoria of the markets and their “pandemic profiteers” is the unchecked spread of the coronavirus throughout workplaces and schools, leading to a record 3,124 deaths on Wednesday per John Hopkins University.

In comments made during a virtual event hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Robert Redfield warned that “for the next 60 to 90 days we’re going to have more deaths per day than we had at 9/11 or we had at Pearl Harbor.”

Asked why the US had a world-leading case and death total, Redfield didn’t acknowledge the abandonment of lockdowns and the implementation of a de facto “herd immunity” policy that has been enacted by Democratic and Republican politicians alike at the behest of their oligarchic benefactors. Nor did he explain that millions of workers have been blackmailed into working in virus-ridden factories and schools, leading to unchecked community spread.

He made no mention of debilitating supply chain issues, a result of the anarchy of capitalist production and the lack of scientific coordinated global planning which to this day has crippled US testing capacity, rendering contact tracing meaningless, and has left doctors and nurses to fend for themselves in regards to personal protective equipment.

Instead, Redfield covered for the ruling class and blamed the American people for the current wave of mass death. Redfield cited high rates of comorbidities such as obesity and diabetes as well as the “culture.”

“Different cultures have embraced public health recommendations with different degrees of rigor,” he said. Redfield didn’t elaborate if this “culture” included President-elect Biden falsely claiming that schools can be reopened safely so parents can be forced back to work, or Trump instructing the population to inject bleach and avoid masks.

Europe’s COVID-19 deaths approach half a million

Johannes Stern

Two weeks before Christmas, the Covid-19 pandemic is raging out of control in Europe. Yesterday, the number of Covid-19 deaths again exceeded 5,000, bringing the European death toll to at least 444,135 people.

On Thursday, 887 people died of Covid-19 in Italy, 529 in Germany, 516 in the UK, 562 in Russia, 292 in France and 470 in Poland.

A paramedic walks out of a tent that was set up in front of the emergency ward of the Cremona hospital, northern Italy [Credit: Claudio Furlan/Lapresse via AP, file]

If the death toll remains at this level, December will be the deadliest month since the pandemic began, with over 150,000 deaths. Already in November, there were over 123,000 Covid-19 deaths, making it the deadliest month to date. Now, in the first ten days of December, more than 50.000 people have already died of Covid-19, an average of 5,000 a day.

The situation is particularly dramatic in Sweden, where the “herd immunity” strategy that is effectively pursued by all European governments was first devised. By Thursday evening, it had recorded 7,354 deaths and over 312,000 infections. With a population of only 10.6 million, this means that almost 3 percent of all inhabitants have been infected. The infection rate doubled to over 500 cases per 100,000 inhabitants in the first two weeks of November. On Thursday, the Swedish government reported a new record of 7,935 new infections.

Germany has long been praised in the bourgeois media as a model for how to handle the virus. Now, the country is at the centre of the Covid-19 pandemic in Europe. After reporting a record death toll of 622 on Wednesday, Germany also reported a record in new infections on Thursday with 28,179 cases. This figure was far higher than in France (13,750), the UK (20,964) and Italy (16,999)—the countries with the highest overall infection and death rates in the European Union.

Despite the deepening catastrophe, European governments of all stripes refuse to take necessary emergency measures and close schools and non-essential businesses to prevent hundreds of thousands of deaths. On the contrary, they are already preparing further relaxation of their ineffective, “lock-down light” measures. These have always been aimed at concealing the responsibility of the ruling class for the catastrophe as it sends youth to school and workers to work in order to secure the profits of the financial aristocracy.

Most European countries have kept schools and universities open without providing even the most limited safety measures or switch to online learning. There is no regulation of public transport used by tens of millions of workers every day, and even the limited lock-down measures on retail were scrapped to not impinge on Christmas shopping. This will inevitably massively spread the virus. Nevertheless, the agenda for the December 10-11 EU summit states that European governments will discuss “the overall coordination effort in response to the COVID 19 pandemic, including... the gradual lifting of restrictions.”

On the evening of the first day of the summit, French Prime Minister Jean Castex announced that the population would be able to travel freely throughout France from 15 December. There will also be a nationwide 8 p.m.-6 a.m. curfew throughout the holidays with the exception of Christmas Eve. Castex said his government’s target to cut the number of daily new infections below 5,000 would not be achieved. Nevertheless, schools will continue to operate normally until Christmas holidays begin, on December 19, and then resume operations as planned on January 4.

Before the Brussels summit, German Chancellor Angela Merkel summed up the position of the European bourgeoisie. In a statement to the German Bundestag on Wednesday, she said: “The lesson we learned from the spring was that we will do everything in our power to keep day-care centres and schools open,” she said. Merkel proposed that students open school windows into the winter cold, since good “aeration is also part of the job in the winter months. This is simply because we have special conditions.”

That is unmistakable. Although the so-called “second wave” of the pandemic has already claimed more lives than the first, and scientific studies have shown that the “hard lock-downs” in spring saved millions of lives, European governments have agreed that this time there will be no comprehensive measures to contain the virus.

In her speech, Merkel spoke of the social and political interests behind this murderous policy. It is about imperialist economic and geostrategic interests in the struggle between the great powers. “This pandemic is something that will certainly reorganise the balance of power in the world, first of all economically, but perhaps also socio-politically,” she declared, “which means we must see how we are embedded in the global context.”

Merkel remarked that the German economy, like the US economy, will collapse by four to six percent this year. She said that Germany is far behind countries like China, “which will emerge from these years with growth of 1.9 per cent”. Germany must “do everything possible to ensure that the path of recovery that we embarked on in the third quarter after a massive slump in the second quarter can be continued.” German companies must “keep up with international competition,” and “everything possible must be done to ensure that we maintain German strength not only in the economic sphere”.

European capitalist governments refuse to close schools and factories—the main drivers of the pandemic—because they intend to relentlessly squeeze surplus value and profits from the working class.

The workers are to be made to pay for the hundreds of billions of euros handed out as part of the so-called Corona bailouts, mainly to the financial oligarchy, large companies and banks. Merkel said, “We must also always remember what public debt means. It means, of course, the burden on future budgets, it means the need to pay it back, and it means restrictions on future spending and on future generations.”

European governments’ propaganda claims that they reacted more responsibly to the pandemic than the Trump government have been exposed as a fraud. As in the US, the European population faces a ruthless ruling class that literally feeds on death and misery. As infection and death rates skyrocket and hospitals across Europe teeter on the brink of collapse, share prices are skyrocketing, vastly enriching a small layer at the top of society.

This winter of death in Europe shows the bankruptcy of capitalism. If hundreds of thousands of lives are to be saved, the working class must intervene independently in political life, against the social system that has led to this horrific disaster by blocking a rational, scientific policy. Fighting the pandemic—and also social inequality, war and dictatorship—requires the expropriation of the financial oligarchy and the transformation of society on a socialist basis.

Eighteen state governments urge Supreme Court to overturn Biden victory

Patrick Martin

In an extraordinary scene of political warfare, a total of 44 of the 50 states have filed briefs with the US Supreme Court arguing for and against honoring the results of the 2020 presidential election won by Democrat Joe Biden over President Donald Trump. Only six states did not file briefs by the 3 p.m. Thursday deadline set by the high court.

The state of Texas filed the first brief Monday, directed against four “battleground” states won by Biden over Trump: Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. The brief asked the Supreme Court to overturn the results of the vote in those four states and to refer the appointment of electors to the state legislatures, which are Republican-controlled in each state.

Clouds roll over the Supreme Court at dusk on Capitol Hill in Washington, Sunday, May 3, 2020. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

In effect, Supreme Court is being asked to suppress the votes of nearly 20 million people in the four states. The effect would be to shift 62 electoral votes from Biden to Trump and reverse the overall result in the Electoral College. Instead of Biden defeating Trump by 306 to 232, a margin that Trump termed a landslide when he achieved it in 2016, Trump would be victorious by a somewhat smaller margin, 294 to 244.

Seventeen states with Republican attorneys general have joined in an amicus brief supporting the Texas suit, including Florida, Indiana, Missouri and Tennessee. The combined population of the 18 pro-Trump states, all carried by him in the presidential election, is 107 million people.

Another pro-Trump amicus brief was filed by 106 Republican members of the House of Representatives. Half of the entire Republican caucus is thus calling on the Supreme Court to overturn the result of an election in which they won their own seats. Apparently, voters are to be allowed to elect Republicans to Congress, but not to put a Democrat in the White House.

The states of Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin all filed rebuttal briefs by the 3 p.m. Thursday deadline set by the Supreme Court, harshly criticizing the Texas suit and calling on the high court to flatly reject it. An amicus brief was filed by the District of Columbia, which was joined by 20 states, including California, New York, Illinois, Massachusetts, North Carolina and Virginia. The combined population of the 24 states and the District of Columbia, all of which voted for Biden except North Carolina, is nearly 190 million people.

Separate briefs were filed by Republican attorneys-general in Arizona and Ohio, generally defending the outcome of the election in their own states—one carried by Biden, the other by Trump—but side-stepping the broader issues. These two states have a combined population of 19 million.

Only six states, Alaska, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, New Hampshire, and Wyoming, with only 12 million people, did not seek to intervene in the Texas suit. Biden carried New Hampshire, but the state government there is Republican. Trump carried the other five states.

Quite apart from the substance of the issues—on which the Texas suit is entirely false and politically provocative—it is historically unprecedented that 18 of the 50 states are openly flouting the result of 2020 election and demanding that the Supreme Court overturn the will of the people. The line-up of states for and against the recognition of the 2020 elections suggests that the United States is on the brink of a political break-up.

President Trump also filed an amicus brief in support of Texas, which asserted, in perhaps its only true statement, “Our Country is deeply divided in ways that it arguably has not been seen since the election of 1860.” This was the election won by Abraham Lincoln, which precipitated the secession of the Southern states, the formation of the Confederacy, and the assault on Fort Sumter that triggered the American Civil War.

Members of the Electoral College are to meet Monday, December 14, in the capitals of the 50 states and in Washington DC to cast their votes, 306 for Biden and 232 for Trump, unless the Supreme Court intervenes along the lines demanded by Texas. The justices are set to meet on Friday to discuss pending motions, and could well issue a ruling on Saturday, December 12, which is the 20th anniversary of the notorious decision in Bush v. Gore that awarded Florida’s electoral votes and the presidency to George W. Bush.

It is noteworthy that the Texas lawsuit cites the reactionary Bush v. Gore precedent at several points, suggesting that today’s Supreme Court employ the same specious arguments devised by the arch-reactionary Antonin Scalia 20 years ago to suppress vote counting and award the presidency to the loser in the popular vote. The abrogation of democratic principles is infinitely greater, however. While Bush lost the popular vote by 500,000 to Al Gore in 2000, Trump lost the popular vote to Biden by more than 7 million.

The Texas brief actually cites as its first legal basis the declaration by Scalia in Bush v. Gore: “The individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for electors for the President of the United States unless and until the state legislature chooses a statewide election as the means to implement its power to appoint members of the electoral college.”

The argument then proceeds through a tendentious interpretation of the “Elector’s clause” in the US constitution, which reads, “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors.”

Because the Constitution assigns this power to the state legislatures, the Texas brief argues, any change in the conduct of the presidential election in any state, including the shift to mail ballots because of the coronavirus pandemic, is illegitimate if the changes were carried out by the executive branch or the courts rather than by the legislature.

For example, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson sent out applications for mail-in ballots to every registered voter to give them the opportunity to vote more safely. The Texas brief denounces this decision repeatedly as a violation of the Constitution because it was initiated by the executive branch rather than the legislature. Virtually every action taken by the four states along these lines—establishing drop boxes for turning in absentee ballots, expanding early voting, extending the period for receiving mail ballots as long as they were sent by Election Day—was similarly condemned as unconstitutional.

The cynicism of this argument is demonstrated by the fact that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton challenged only the changes in election procedures in four states that would shift the outcome of the vote from Biden to Trump, ignoring similar actions taken in nearly every other state because of the pandemic, including many of those carried by Trump.

In relation to each of the four states, the supposed violations in election procedures have already been litigated repeatedly by the Trump campaign and other Republicans, and the efforts of state governments to accommodate voters under conditions of the pandemic have been upheld by local, state and federal courts. There is literally nothing new, of a factual character, in the Texas brief.

As the Michigan rebuttal brief points out: “The base of Texas’s claims rests on an assertion that Michigan has violated its own election laws. Not true. That claim has been rejected in the federal and state courts in Michigan, and just yesterday the Michigan Supreme Court rejected a last-ditch effort to request an audit.”

As for the legal and constitutional basis of the suit, the briefs by the four battleground states make a properly scathing and convincing rebuttal. Nothing in the Constitution or 230 years of US history give one state government the right to pass judgment on the electoral policies of another. Nor can the executive of one state—in this case Texas—assert and defend the supposed rights of the legislature of another state—the four in question—when the legislatures themselves have declined to take such a position.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said Wednesday, “Nobody in Michigan elected AG Paxton to intervene in our electoral systems or processes here.” Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro argued, “Texas’s effort to get this Court to pick the next President has no basis in law or fact,” calling the suit a “seditious abuse of the judicial process,” and urging the justices to “send a clear and unmistakable signal that such abuse must never be replicated.”

The Georgia brief, written under the direction of the state’s Republican attorney general, declared, “The novel and far-reaching claims that Texas asserts, and the breathtaking remedies it seeks, are impossible to ground in legal principles and unmanageable … This Court has never allowed one state to co-opt the legislative authority of another state...”

Two additional aspects of the Texas brief deserve attention, because they demonstrate the completely fraudulent, even provocative, character of the argument.

The lawsuit cites a supposed statistical argument against Biden’s victory, pointing out that he was trailing in the vote counting through the night of the election, only to overtake Trump the next day, or several days later, as mail ballots were counted. The brief goes so far as to claim that the possibility of Biden overtaking Trump was a quadrillion to one.

The basis of the statistical argument is the claim that ballots were “randomly drawn” to be counted. But this is completely false: all four states had legal restrictions on the counting of mail ballots before Election Day. Democrats disproportionately cast mail ballots, while Republicans mainly went to the polls November 3, responding to ultra-right claims that there was no significant danger from coronavirus. Hence the pattern, in many states, of an early Trump lead subsequently overtaken by Biden.

Finally, as noted by several legal analysts, the Texas brief actually admits that there is no evidence of fraud, and argues instead the changes in election laws were such that “fraud becomes undetectable.” The brief actually states: “The unlawful actions of election officials effectively destroy the evidence by which the fraud may be detected…” In this demented and upside-down world, the absence of evidence is now to be treated as proof!

How Growing Corporatization Has Harmed Farmers and Farming

Bharat Dogra

The most prominent feature of world farming in recent decades has been that of growing corporate control, and this has often been at the expense and interests of farmers. It is important to understand the wide-ranging adverse implications of this  corporatization of farming for the sustainability of farming systems, for the welfare of ordinary farmers and for food-security of the entire world.

As the most basic role in agriculture is that of seeds, it is not  surprising that corporate interests assigned the greatest importance to strengthening their  control over the seeds sector.

Till about 60 to 70 years back the farming systems of most countries, particularly tropical countries, were characterized by a very rich diversity of seeds and crop varieties, the result of nature’s bounty as well as hundreds or even  thousands of years  of careful observation,  selection and protection by farmers. Farmers had detailed knowledge about these diverse seeds and  this had enabled them to maintain some self-reliance and autonomy despite all the exploitative practices  of the earlier colonial system. To give just one example, India alone had thousands of rice –varieties.

The first step of the corporate sector to attack this autonomy was to try to replace the diversity of indigenous seeds with a much narrower genetic base of varieties which will necessarily have to use chemical fertilizers and pesticides to get good yields. This was done in the name of the so-called green revolution. This led to a very rapid erosion of bio-diversity in agriculture.

To give just one example, the harm done to biodiversity of rice, the most important food crop in India, by the introduction of new seeds during  the early stage of the green revolution in India was described by an officially constituted task force on rice breeding chaired by Dr. R.H.Richharia in 1979, “ This narrow genetic base has created alarming uniformity, causing vulnerability to diseases and pests. Most of the released varieties are not suitable for typical uplands and low lands which together constitute about 75 per cent of the total rice area of the country.”

Thus top experts had confirmed had a very early stage that the new varieties being introduced were not suitable for most of our farming area and in addition were more susceptible to pests and diseases, yet this same strategy of farming was continued as it led to much bigger opportunities for corporate interests.

Once farmers became dependent on these seeds the next step was for the corporate sector to expand rapidly in the seeds sector. This process was helped by ‘gene robbery’, a term used by activists to refer to the trend of developed countries to collect the genetic wealth of bio-diversity of developing countries and then use this to obtain and sell their seeds and related inputs to developing countries at huge profits. Pat Roy Mooney, the senior expert on this issue who received the prestigious Right to Livelihood ward has written, “ Industrialized governments—often overruling the intentions of their scientists—have come to hoard germplasm and to stock seeds as part of the arsenal of international power diplomacy. Private companies in the North—although glad to receive free genes—are loath to divulge or share the adaptations they draw from these donations.”

The big seed companies expanded in two ways, first by buying the smaller seed companies at a rapid pace and secondly by also taking up the production, directly or through related companies, the production of chemical pesticides, herbicides etc. which were linked to these seeds.

Another step towards this increasing control was to improve the technology of genetic engineering in a big way to spread GM or genetically modified crops. This made it more convenient for bigger companies using more sophisticated technologies to increase their domination and the world seed industry and agro-chemical industry got heavily concentrated in a few companies. Multi-billion dollar deals were made to further enhance this concentration and control.

Similarly the concentration of marketing of important crops increasingly got concentrated in the hands of a few big multinational companies. Some companies directly or indirectly gained ownership of huge monocultures of plantation farming, while other resorted to contract farming on exploitative terms to have assured access to huge quantities of certain crops. Their methods were invariably more chemical input-intensive and capital intensive, causing more environmental ruin but contributing few satisfactory, sustainable jobs.

Yet another device used to increase corporate control was to introduce  strong and unjust  system of patents or somewhat similar intellectual property rights for seed and plant varieties.   A new way of imposing this system on developing countries was to include intellectual property rights in the new trade regime of the WTO which was being introduced in place of GATT. Even though developing countries tried rather desperately to include some safeguards, the overall impact was to increase corporate control to yet higher levels.

Other aspects of the changing trade regime also led to very disruptive impacts on the livelihoods of small farmers of developing countries as under the new trade regime these small farmers had to face a lot of unfair competition from imports from developed countries whose farming and farm marketing systems were increasingly dominated by very powerful and huge agribusiness giant companies who also cornered a big chunk of the massive farm subsidies paid by their governments to the farm sector.

The power of food and farm MNCs increased a lot due to the strong support they got from their governments. Henry Miller, who was formerly in charge biotechnology at the Food and Drug Administration, USA, has written “ In this area the US government agencies have done exactly what big agribusiness has asked them to do and told them to do.”

Another trend for big business was to use corruption unabashedly to advance their interests. Dr. Pushpa Bhargava, former Vice-Chairman of the National Knowledge Commission who was also appointed by the Supreme Court to protect safety concerns regarding genetic engineering,  was one of the foremost experts to hold very senior government positions while also opposing the onslaught of multinational companies on farming systems. He warned against the corrupt practices used by these companies to buy support of governments of developing countries. He wrote,” According to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Monsanto bribed at least 140 Indonesian officials or their families to get Bt. cotton approved without environmental impact assessment. In 2005 the firm paid $1.5 million in fine to the US Justice Department for the graft. This is one of the many penalties that Monsanto has paid in its country of origin in spite of its close ties with the US government and its various regulatory agencies.”

More recently farmers’ organizations have become more aware of the dangers of rapid corporatization of agriculture and this is why are resisting legislative and other measures of government which increase corporatization trends. It is in this wider context that the emerging opposition of farmers’ movements to corporatization of  farming in several countries, particularly India, should be understood and supported.