An Assassination Scandal Threatens India’s Relations With the Five Eyes

John P. Ruehl

The Five Eyes. Image Source: Applysense – Public Domain

Since mid-2023, a series of assassination plots have strained India’s relations with Canada and the U.S. In June 2023, a Sikh separatist activist living in Canada was reportedly killed on orders from Indian security services. Subsequently, in November, it came to light that U.S. authorities were investigating an assassination attempt against another Sikh separatist figure on U.S. soil. While India vehemently denied the accusations from Canada, it later committed to conducting an investigation following the accusations by U.S. authorities.

The U.S. ambassador to Canada, David Cohen, confirmed that the information that led Canada to accuse India of the assassination was facilitated by the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, consisting of the U.S., UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Originating from intelligence collaboration during World War II, the intelligence-sharing agreement operated in such secrecy that Australian prime ministers remained unaware of its existence until 1971 and it was publicly revealed only in 1999. The Five Eyes later gained wider public awareness following the 2013 Snowden Leaks.

In addition to extensive data and intelligence sharing, the Five Eyes share substantial military, technology, and cultural ties. With largely cohesive foreign policies, the Five Eyes have become a significant force in international affairs. India values diplomatic relations with all five countries, but its strategic focus is on the U.S., Australia, Canada, and the UK due to their geopolitical significance. India’s complex history with these countries has resulted in varying levels of cooperation and apprehension.

There has been significant tension between the U.S. and India since the latter’s independence from the UK in 1947. This included U.S. support for Pakistan during the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War and U.S. military maneuvers against India during the war. Sanctions were placed on both India and Pakistan following their nuclear tests in 1998, while India grew wary after the U.S. increased its support for Pakistan to aid the U.S.-led war effort in Afghanistan from 2001 onward.

Nonetheless, almost all U.S. sanctions against India were lifted in 1999, and its relations with the U.S., as well as Australia, have significantly strengthened in the 21st century. The U.S. has been India’s largest trading partner since 2022, and in late 2023 India agreed to most of the U.S.-led Indo-Pacific Economy Framework for Prosperity (IPEF) policies to deepen regional economic ties.

India also stands as Australia’s fourth-largest export destination, marked by the signing of the Australia-India Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreement (AI-ECTA) in 2022. Growing numbers of Indian emigrants and students increasingly travel to both the U.S. and Australia.

Washington continues to pursue closer collaboration with India in space, AI, defense agreements, and mineral supply chains. Yet the primary reason behind enhanced relations among India and all Five Eye countries is the shared concern over China. Their common anxiety has led to closer military ties among India, the U.S., Australia, and the strong U.S. ally Japan in the Indo-Pacific. In 2007, the first Quadrilateral Dialogue was held, with all four countries’ navies later taking part in the Malabar exercises to increase interoperability.

Closer military integration typically languished because of India, until the India-China clash in 2017 prompted New Delhi to revive the Quad. Following another clash with China in 2020, India extended an invitation to Australia to rejoin the Malabar exercises, and India currently conducts more joint military exercises with the U.S. than it does with any other country.

Nonetheless, India’s history as a founding member of the Non-Aligned Movement during the Cold War has continued to influence its foreign policy. Three weeks before the 2023 Malabar exercises, India declined to participate in the Australia-U.S. Talisman Sabre military exercises, underscoring India’s aversion to military alliances in pursuit of its own course for increasing power and influence.

India’s ascendance as a major power has added complexity to Washington’s strategy of preserving the U.S.-led global order. China’s assertive foreign policy challenges the established norms and influence of the U.S., while Russia’s is characterized by disruptions to that order. But India’s accommodating yet somewhat nonchalant foreign policy as a major power doesn’t quite fit with the formal alliance-based approach that the U.S. has historically used to develop ties with allies and isolate adversaries.

Despite ongoing concerns over India’s positive relations with Russia and Iran, hopes were high for an increasingly collaborative foreign policy alignment between the world’s two largest democracies. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi received a warm welcome when he visited in 2019 and 2023, despite reservations from progressive Democrats about India’s democratic backsliding. That was until the assassination attempt in the U.S. revealed in November derailed U.S.-India relations and resulted in significant criticism from U.S. officials.

But the assassination accusations from Canada prompted a notably more confrontational response from New Delhi months before, indicative of the heightened antagonism that has come to characterize Indian-Canadian relations in the last few years. Following Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s accusation that India orchestrated the assassination, India expelled dozens of Canadian diplomats, suspended visa applications for Canadians, and warned Indian citizens to “exercise extreme caution” in Canada due to anti-India sentiment.

While Sikh separatist activities remain India’s most pressing concern in Canada, additional issues have strained relations between Ottawa and New Delhi. Under Trudeau, Canadian officials, more so than those from other Five Eyes countries, have become increasingly critical of India’s democratic backsliding and human rights violations. This includes India’s social media restrictions, internet blackouts, targeting of Muslims and other religious minorities, and the Indian governments confrontations with human rights organizations.

Trudeau’s 2018 trip to India was also beset by controversy. Criticism was directed at his choice to wear full Indian traditional dress and his decision to invite Jaspal Singh Atwal, previously convicted in a 1986 assassination plot, to an event. Atwal had targeted Punjab minister Malkiat Singh Sidhu, and Trudeau’s wife later posed for a photo with him, causing Indian media and social media to highlight the issue Additionally, visa and immigration issues, as well as trade disagreements, have also prevented closer ties, while economic ties remain limited.

Alongside worsening ties with Canada, India’s historical resistance to Britain, its former colonial ruler, continues to influence dynamics between the two countries. Since India gained its independence, the UK’s alignment with U.S. foreign policy also contributed to tensions with India, notably during the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War, British sanctions on India after the latter’s 1998 nuclear tests, and British politicians’ continued involvement in Kashmir.

Despite historical grievances, British-India ties experienced a positive shift from the early post-colonial era in the 1990s. The establishment of a Defense Consultative Group in 1995 reflected growing military cooperation. Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson committed to elevating UK-India ties in 2021, and the appointment of Rishi Sunak as Britain’s first Hindu leader was also warmly received in India.

British leaders often highlight India and the UK as the world’s largest and oldest parliamentary democracies to underscore the significance of the relationship. London also perceives its ties with India as crucial for maintaining global relevance in the aftermath of Brexit.

Yet despite being India’s second-biggest trade partner in 1998-99, the UK’s ranking plummeted to 17 just two decades later. Attempts by previous prime ministers, such as David Cameron, to strengthen UK-India ties, particularly through increased trade, proved unsuccessful.

Concerns within the British political establishment regarding India’s democratic backsliding have also been raised. In 2013, elements within the British Labour Party openly questioned the Labour Friends of India parliamentary grouping’s plans to invite Modi to the UK over his role in the 2002 Gujarat religious riots. These criticisms from the UK are often viewed with disdain in India considering the context of Britain’s colonial legacy. After a critical documentary on Modi’s role in the 2002 riots aired on BBC in 2023, Indian authorities exerted extreme pressure on the broadcaster that affected its operations in India.

Indian politicians have also long criticized British authorities for what they perceive as inaction over the proliferation of Sikh separatist elements in the UK. In 2022, pro-Khalistan separatists vandalized the Indian High Commission in London and assaulted staff. Dissatisfied with Britain’s response, India subsequently reduced security outside the British High Commission and the High Commissioner’s residence in New Delhi. Additionally, New Delhi authorities pledged to build a public toilet outside, sparking displeasure from London.

India stands as a unique factor among the foreign policies of the Five Eyes countries, which are typically aligned. New Delhi’s growing ties to the U.S. and Australia contrast to its more complex relations with Canada and the UK. With concern growing that shared democratic values will not resonate as effectively in the future, the major factor driving more positive relations between India and the Five Eyes will continue to be anxiety over China.

But the prospect of greater collaboration in areas such as countering piracy and confronting Islamist groups like the Taliban, ISIS, and Al Qaeda will remain stalled as long as India believes insufficient attention is being given to Sikh separatist elements in Five Eyes countries. In September 2023, Indian security agencies were instructed to identify all Khalistan separatists living in Australia, the U.S., Canada, and the UK, cancel their Overseas Citizenship of India status where applicable, and confiscate their assets in India.

The controversy surrounding the assassination plots highlights the broader challenge of Washington’s engagement with India, especially when core allies like Canada have additional issues with New Delhi. However, India’s leap over the UK in 2022 to become the world’s fifth-largest economy reflects the changing dynamics and India’s growing international profile.

Biden’s decision to decline Modi’s invitation for India’s Republic Day celebrations on January 26 reflects Washington’s frustrations. The U.S. remains cautious of providing India excessive leverage in international affairs to the point where it feels bold enough to assassinate U.S. citizens on American soil. However, as long as India remains crucial for the U.S. in confronting China, New Delhi will continue to test how far it can push the envelope in Washington, as well as in London, Ottawa, and Canberra.

Macron mobilizes 15,000 cops as protesting farmers threaten to blockade Paris

Samuel Tissot

Over the weekend, protesting French farmers released plans to blockade Paris and major economic centers in the capital region starting today. After French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal’s concessions announced on Friday failed to stem farmers’ anger, an emergency cabinet meeting was held where it was decided to mobilize 15,000 cops to keep farmers from strangling Paris’ main motorways and economic hubs with farm equipment.

Farmers block the M6 motorway near Lyon, central France, Wednesday, Jan. 24, 2024. French farmers protest across the country and in Brussels against low wages, mounting costs and other problems. [AP Photo/Laurent Cipriani]

Many of the farmers’ blockades that were in place at the end of last week were pulled back after Attal’s Friday speech, in order to prepare a new wave of disruptions across the country and to target the capital for the first time since the protests began.

The Seine-et-Marne branch of the National Federation of Agricultural Owners’ Unions (FNSEA) announced it plans to block the A4, A5 and A6 motorways as they join onto the Parisian ring roads starting at 2 p.m. on Monday. The Parisian regional branch of the Young Farmers union announced plans to block other major motorways around the capital and that they would also target the Rungis market, the largest food market in the world by turnover, which supplies produce for Paris and the surrounding region.

According to other regional sections of the farmers’ unions, plans to mount blockades have also been prepared for other regions. Michel Joux, president of the FNSEA Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, told BFMTV, “We are going to intensify our action at the national level. Our Parisian friends are going to block Paris. We are going to lay siege to France’s second-largest city, Lyon.” On Sunday, a blockade cut circulation on the A7 motorway between Lyon and Marseille.

After the emergency cabinet meeting on Sunday evening, fascistic Interior Minister Darmanin announced that 15,000 police officers would be mobilised on Monday to “ensure that no tractor enters Paris and the large provincial towns” as well as to the Rungis Market and the Parisian airports. Before the meeting started, a gendarmerie unit with armored vehicles had already been deployed outside the Rungis market. Helicopters will also be mobilised against the farmers.

Darmanin said that “it is a difficult week that is starting” and warned that circulation in the Paris area would be “extremely difficult” on Monday.

On Sunday, the Macron government laid out a strategy of combining vague promises of more concessions with threats of a violent crackdown. After the half-measures announced by Prime Minister Gabriel Attal failed to stem the protests, he conceded on Sunday that he had “not responded” to “all the unease and all the unhappiness” of farmers but “resolved to move ahead quickly.”

Later on Sunday Marc Fesneau, the Minister of Agriculture, promised new measures, both at the European and national level, to be announced on Tuesday. The cabinet was then convened for a 6 p.m. meeting and decided to mobilize 15,000 cops against protesters.

An anonymous high-ranking police official told the right-wing daily Le Figaro that their concern is “the number of machines that could come together.” The 1,000 multi-ton tractors heading for Paris could “be a headache for police forces, who don’t have equipment to remove them as they do for poorly-parked cars.” The police official said their plan was to block farmers “some distance away from Paris” and hope that “farmers would not risk breaking their machines, which they use to work, by forcing a police barricade.”

The government is making plans for the repression of the farmers in case it cannot engineer a stand-down, working through the pro-government bureaucrats who lead the farmers’ unions. Official circles mainly fear that popular sympathy for the farmers’ struggle could reignite the wave of mass protests and wildcat strikes independently of the union bureaucracies that broke out in the country in April 2023 after President Macron forced through his pension cut.

Workers must oppose plans for a crackdown on farmers, who are protesting hardships created by European Union (EU) military build-up and plans to slash EU food production. These plans are directed above all against the workers. However, workers cannot wait for the union bureaucracies to organize such opposition. General Confederation of Labor (CGT) union President Sophie Binet has issued a vague call for a “convergence” with farmers, but the union bureaucracies do not intend to take any action that would lead to an overt clash with the Macron government.

Exploiting the inaction of the union bureaucracies, neo-fascist National Rally (RN) leader Marine Le Pen has begun campaigning among farmers, denouncing the EU and the FNSEA, the farmers’ union closest to the government, while posing as a defender of French farmers. On Thursday, she spoke at a farm to warn of a “crisis that is starting and that can be long, violent and brutal.”

“The FNSEA has already lost control. I think that for a long time, farmers have no longer been able to rely on their unions,” Le Pen said. She blamed the FNSEA and President Emmanuel Macron for having “covered the agricultural world with charges, norms, taxes and injustice.” She hailed farmers’ union bureaucracies closer to the RN like the Rural Coordination, which, she said, “warn of the consequences of the EU and reject the government’s bogus offers.”

Interviewed about Le Pen’s comments, RN lawmaker and Rural Coordination farmers’ union official Christophe Barthès told Le Monde he hoped the farmers’ unions would maintain control: “For the time being, the union is holding back the anger. But it will have to get most of its demands to keep the rank-and-file from getting the better of them.”

Le Pen and the RN are not friends of the farmers, but of the riot police Macron is sending to assault them, seeking to block the entry of broader layers of the working population into struggle against Macron. They clearly aim to profit politically, notably in this year’s European elections or in the 2027 French presidential elections, from Macron’s repression of farmers and workers and the bankruptcy of the union bureaucracies and their pseudo-left political allies.

This underscores the necessity, as rail workers in Germany mount a powerful nationwide strike, of organizing an international movement in the European working class against war and against the EU.

The French farmers’ movement erupted last week in the wake of farmers’ actions in Germany and Poland since the beginning of the year. On Sunday, Belgian farmers also blockaded the E42 motorway just north of Namur. The eruption of social opposition across Europe reflects the international nature of the struggle against capitalist governments’ austerity policies and the impact of the NATO-proxy war against Russia in Ukraine on social conditions across Europe.

EU governments have sent hundreds of billions of euros in military aid for the war and used it as a justification for a massive rearmament campaign. All of these measures have been funded by deep cuts to social programs—particularly, in France, to pensions, and also to farm subsidies. Farmers were heavily impacted by hikes in fertilizer prices, which rose sharply in early 2022 and are still twice the price they were in 2020.

Massive wave of COVID infections throughout Europe

Tamino Dreisam

The coronavirus pandemic is spreading unchecked across Europe, causing rising death rates and pushing hospitals to their limits.

People wearing face masks as they wait for a doctor appointment inside a hospital in Barcelona, Spain, Monday, Jan. 8, 2024. A massive wave of COVID-19 infections and other respiratory viruses are putting a severe strain on the system. [AP Photo/ Emilio Morenatti]

On January 10, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stated: “In December, almost 10,000 deaths from COVID-19 were reported to WHO, and the number of hospital admissions increased by 42 percent compared to November with the number of ICU admissions at 62 percent. However, the trends [on mortality] are based on data from fewer than 50 countries, mainly in Europe and the Americas. It is certain that there is also an increase in other countries that is not being reported.”

The current wave is being driven primarily by the JN.1 (Juno) variant. It is an offshoot of BA.2.86 (Pirola). Pirola has more than 20 mutations on its spike protein, Juno has just one more. However, this makes the variant significantly more immune-resistant.

The British Office for National Statistics also recently reported that, in addition to the normal symptoms of a coronavirus infection, Juno can also cause sleep problems and anxiety. According to the survey by British scientists, 10.8 percent of those infected experienced sleep problems and 10.5 percent reported anxiety disorders.

The variant is already occurring in many European countries, including Iceland, Portugal, Spain, France, Germany and the Netherlands. A number of countries in Central and Eastern Europe also reported a significant increase in respiratory illnesses at the end of last year. In Spain and Italy, the rising numbers of patients have pushed hospitals to their limits. The COVID wave also coincides with rising flu and RSV infections across Europe.

In the UK, Juno is causing new record highs. At the end of October, the JN.1 share was still at 1 percent, in mid-November it was at 5 percent, but by Christmas had risen to 51.4 percent. Professor Steve Griffin, a virologist at Leeds University, said, “There has clearly been a massive surge in COVID infections in recent weeks. This is undoubtedly due to socialising indoors over the festive period. It is also likely that the return to schools, universities and businesses will increase this even further.”

Asked if the UK could set a new record this month, he replied, “Yes, I think we could see something similar to BA2 [the previous record wave].” Data scientist Professor Christina Pagel from University College London also expects infections to rise for another week or two, “equaling” or “even surpassing” the record waves at the beginning of 2020.

In Germany, the number of infections reached a record high at the end of the year, with hospitalisation rates on a par with previous waves. Although the wave receded in the first weeks of January, according to data from Fluweb, the incidence rate remains at 500. Almost 8,000 people had to be hospitalised in the first three weeks of the year and 1,316 have already died.

The situation in Spain is particularly dramatic. Hospitals have been under increasing pressure since the beginning of the year as a result of a “triple-demic” of COVID-19, influenza A and RSV. In large parts of the country, emergency departments are heavily overloaded due to the high volume of patients. The Universitario La Paz hospital in Madrid, which treats around 500,000 patients, making it one of the largest hospitals in Spain, has had to postpone operations to make room for new patients.

Due to the dramatic situation, the Spanish government was forced to reintroduce compulsory masks in healthcare facilities. However, local governments, such as those in the Basque Country, have reacted by taking legal action against the mask requirement.

The rising number of deaths from flu and COVID-19 is even putting pressure on funeral services. According to an article in Euro Weekly News, funeral service operators are warning they will struggle to cope with the rising number of deaths by the end of January.

Manuel Tejadas, head of the Interfunerarias funeral service chain in Catalonia, said, “We are overwhelmed. I haven’t seen such an increase in deaths since the pandemic.”

Piles of corpses are also being reported in hospitals in the regions of Madrid and Valencia. “Hospitals are continually calling us to collect bodies and we are very overloaded here,” explains Tejadas. In some cases, families have to wait up to four days for a funeral. That is twice as long as the usual period of between 24 and 48 hours.

Doctors and local newspapers in Italy are also warning that hospitals could be overwhelmed by the flu and COVID wave. Hundreds of patients are having to wait days to be transferred to normal hospital wards or intensive care units. According to the Italian National Institute of Health (ISS), cases of respiratory infections reached record levels in the last two weeks of 2023, surpassing corresponding periods during the pandemic. At the end of December, the number of deaths peaked at 425 per week, and the figure remained at 371 in the first weeks of January.

Foce, the Italian association of oncologists, cardiologists and haematologists, issued an appeal to the Italian government, warning: “For some weeks now, we have been observing the phenomenon of worsening chaos in our emergency systems. Emergency departments are in a nightmare situation and hospital wards are “under siege.’” It continues: “It is clear that the claim made at the end of July that the COVID pandemic is ‘numerically over’ is not true. The virus never disappeared.”

In Portugal, Health Minister Manuel Pizarro also publicly admitted that he was concerned about the increase in admissions to intensive care units as a result of respiratory infections. “The virus is causing very serious illnesses,” he explained. At the beginning of January, there were long waiting times of sometimes more than 10 hours in hospitals across the country.

The massive new coronavirus wave is a direct result of the ruthless pandemic policy of all European governments. They are putting profits before the lives and health of the population and have long since cancelled all measures to contain the pandemic.

Amid fourth winter of death, COVID excess death toll approaches 30 million globally

Benjamin Mateus

After more than two months of silence, on Wednesday the London-based weekly financial outlet, The Economist, finally updated their global daily estimate of excess deaths attributable to the COVID-19 pandemic. According to their projections, the cumulative global excess death toll now stands at 28.5 million, 4.1 times higher than the official COVID death toll, which surpassed 7 million at the end of 2023.

For inexplicable reasons, The Economist’s tracker, which uses a machine-learning model that provides estimates of excess death for every country on every day since the pandemic began, suddenly stopped updating in mid-November, just as the winter surge of the JN.1 variant began.

Global excess death estimates through November 8, 2023, before the latest update by The Economist [Photo by Our World In Data, The Economist / CC BY 4.0]

To place this into context, in the US, the winter surge began to accelerate in mid-October and peaked just before the New Year. In the aftermath of the Biden administration scrapping the COVID public health emergency (PHE) declaration last May, this wave was completely covered up in official figures. Only estimates of the actual toll of infections were provided through wastewater collection data tracking levels of SARS-CoV-2 across the country’s sewage systems, in particular those curated by Biobot Analytics.

Principled data scientists, based on their own initiative, like Jay Weiland and Dr. Mike Hoerger, model these wastewater data and provide estimates of the actual infection rates through their social media accounts. They also provide ample warning and guidance on how to protect oneself and take measures to minimize the impact of infections on one’s health, performing essential roles of public health abandoned by the CDC and the entire political establishment.

Although daily COVID-19 infections are trending down again in the US, the rates of infection continue to remain high, with an estimated nearly 1 million cases per day earlier this week. In all, more than 100 million Americans are believed to have been infected in the past three months of the current surge, accounting for nearly one-third of the population. The overwhelming majority of these are reinfections, which have been proven to compound one’s risk of Long COVID, heart attack, stroke and other long-term consequences associated with COVID-19 infection.

Daily COVID infections in the US during winter wave 2023-2024. [Data from Dr. Mike Hoerger]

Extrapolating these infection estimates to the rest of the world, this could very well mean that upwards of 1-2 billion more infections have transpired during the ongoing global wave of JN.1, meaning that tens of millions or more Long COVID cases should be expected to develop in the coming weeks to months. More concerning, the cumulative long-term impact of these repeated infections remains a disturbing unknown, but all data indicate that this will increase cardiovascular, metabolic, and neurological disorders being diagnosed.

With respect to immediate mortality from acute COVID infections, at their first press conference in 2024, the World Health Organization (WHO) remarked that the pandemic continues to rage and close to 10,000 people officially died of COVID-19 in December, pushing the cumulative toll above 7 million. This grim statistic passed with virtually no comment from the mainstream media to commemorate the horrific milestone or issue a reminder of the deadly nature of the ongoing pandemic.

The WHO also acknowledged that the deaths were significant undercounts. Fewer than 50 countries, mostly in Europe and the Americas, were reporting these figures to the international health agency. Considering the complete dismantling of all pandemic tracking measures and attempts to obfuscate the real figures, even these numbers must be viewed as misrepresenting the real scale of mortality that is being covered.

Returning to The Economist’s excess death tracker, with the benefit of hindsight, a clear surge in mortality was well underway in October, peaking at over 10,000 daily deaths at the end of November. These figures remained elevated through December. The data for January, which shows a sudden drop in deaths, may be the lag factor in obtaining data from a host of countries and institutions that inform their models, and will likely be revised upwards in the future.

What is evidently clear though, is that official COVID deaths and excess deaths now differ by as high as 50-fold or more. Specifically, while on November 27, only 183 COVID deaths were officially reported, there were 10,200 excess deaths above the pre-pandemic period.

What is most concerning is that excess deaths remained stubbornly high throughout the entirety of 2023. While official COVID deaths for 2023 stood at only 284,000 globally, the excess death toll was 3.2 million, a figure that is more than 11 times higher. During the JN.1 surge, while official public health agencies have counted a mere 31,802 COVID-related deaths across the globe, excess deaths have been estimated at over 700,000 so far, or 22-times higher.

Relatedly, the actual figures for hospitalizations and ICU admissions have risen considerably in December but are based on incomplete data provided to the WHO from a handful of countries, underscoring the complete blackout on the real state of the pandemic and its impact on healthcare systems. As World Socialist Web Site writer Evan Blake noted in a recent widely shared thread on the latest excess death figures and the JN.1 surge, “Hospitals have been slammed across North America, Europe and other countries for the fourth year in a row. This wave, as with all others, will have untold long-term consequences for the health of society as a whole.”

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There are important parallels between the ongoing pandemic and Israel’s escalating genocide against the Palestinian people, which has the full support of the US and European imperialist powers. In both cases, the ruling elites have sought to normalize mass death and misery, while imposing regimes of censorship to cover up these social crimes that have radicalized masses of people and accelerated the global class struggle.

As the evolution of the highly mutated Pirola variant and its progeny JN.1 has aptly shown, not only has SARS-CoV-2 been given ample berth to infect anyone at any time who is not constantly on guard against the airborne pathogen, it has repeatedly demonstrated that it has the ability to find ever more novel mechanisms to evolve into immune-evasive variants and remain highly infective. This raises many additional concerns, as noted in recent studies on JN.1’s ability to reach the lower respiratory tract and possibly achieve a virulence akin to the pre-Omicron variants.

French government offers minor concessions to try to strangle farmers’ protests

Alex Lantier & Samuel Tissot

Yesterday, newly installed French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal made his first public statement on mass farmers’ protests shaking the country. Speaking in the Haute Garonne department around Toulouse, he offered minor concessions in a cynical attempt to shut down the protests, without satisfying farmers’ demands, before they trigger mass strikes by workers.

As Attal spoke, protesting farmers were blockading roads across most of France. At least 72,000 farmers were protesting in 85 of France’s 101 departments, the National Federation of Unions of Agricultural Owners (FNSEA) stated. Last night, there were 60 blockades of major roads, mainly in France’s economic or agricultural centers: the southwest, where protests began, the Mediterranean coast, the southeastern Rhône valley linking Lyon and Marseille, Brittany in the west, the northern area around Lille, and the Paris area.

Farmers block a highway leading to Paris, Friday, Jan. 26, 2024 in Saclay, south of Paris. Snowballing protests by French farmers crept closer to Paris with tractors driving in convoys and blocking roads in many regions of the country to ratchet up pressure for government measures to protect the influential agricultural sector from foreign competition, red tape, rising costs and poverty-levels of pay for the worst-off producers. [AP Photo/Christophe Ena]

In the southeast, protesting farmers burned a rural savings bank in Narbonne, a customs office in Nîmes, and highway toll booths near Montpellier.

Farmers organized at least five major blockades of highways in the Paris area and maintained their threat yesterday to take their tractors into the capital to blockade the government. “All we have to do is to cross this barrier to arrive to the gates of Paris,” said FNSEA official Alexandre Plateau at a highway blockade at Saint Arnoult, outside Paris. He added, “It is a possibility for us even this evening, all of our members and other farmers are ready to do it.”

The protests are overwhelmingly popular. Over 85 percent of the French population support the farmers, and France’s fascistic Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin has promised, for the time being, not to unleash riot police against them. Moreover, it is more or less apparent that FNSEA officials have lost control of the protests on the ground, as reports emerge that farmers started major highway blockades across southern France without its approval.

Attal’s speech was part of an attempt by the government to divide and disorient the farmers and create better conditions for the FNSEA and other federations, like the Rural Coordination or the Peasants Confederation, to wind down the movement. The strategy was spelled out bluntly in a column published Wednesday night by editorialist Cécile Cornudet on the web site of France’s main business daily, Les Echos.

Cornudet’s comment, titled “Attal Government: The Unions are Our Friends!,” began by admitting that the French government and the peasant confederations have lost control of the situation. “Anger is spreading,” she wrote, recalling the mass “yellow vest” protests against social inequality in 2018-2019. “Nothing is worse than a movement with a thousand slogans … without anyone we can speak to, to negotiate with and to channel the movement. It is like the time of the ‘yellow vest’ movement.”

The ruling class and the government, she argued, should use the farmers’ federations the same way they use France’s corrupt trade union bureaucracies: to channel and strangle the rank-and-file.

She wrote, “Since the anger erupted among the rank-and-file, the FNSEA therefore had to take the lead and act quickly to try to restore its credibility. It took two days to extend what it was doing, then it presented 40 well-organized demands Wednesday, there will be an arbitrage meeting with the government on Thursday, and then the announcements of Gabriel Attal on Friday. It’s a well-oiled machine, well-orchestrated.”

As there are reports that truck drivers, fishermen and taxi drivers are joining farmers protests, Cornudet argued for making concessions, to wind down the movement and keep it from spreading to broader layers of working people. She wrote, “We must reply quickly now, because letting anger prosper is the best way to let it spread, maybe like wildfire.”

In line with this counter-revolutionary script, Attal appeared Friday afternoon at a farm whose owner, TF1 reported, had been vetted by his public relations team and the Interior Ministry. Jérôme Bayle, who reportedly participated in some initial highway blockades around Toulouse and over the last 24 hours has suddenly been widely promoted in capitalist media as the “gutsy rancher who speaks for the movement” (according to Libération), was also conveniently on hand.

Attal began with a few nationalist platitudes, declaring that he was bringing “Two slogans. First, protect our heritage and our identity” and also to “Buy French,” as “farmers are France.” He also warned against violence and thanked the farmers confederations. He then listed the measures his government is adopting to ask farmers to end the movement.

Attal proposed to suspend a planned tax hike on diesel fuel used for agricultural equipment, increase emergency funds for agriculture in Brittany, and to sanction agribusiness or supermarket chains that violate the Egalim law on how food sales revenues are to be shared. He also pledged to limit ecological restrictions on farmers’ construction projects and opposed a trade deal between the European Union (EU) and Mercosur, the South American free trade zone. This would aim to prevent South American farmers’ products from reaching EU markets.

These measures would harm Mercosur farmers and are totally inadequate as a response to the economic crisis facing farmers in France and across Europe. It does not address the collapse in the real value of EU farm subsidies due to inflation. Nor does it provide the massive financial assistance needed to help farmers meet targets, dictated by the EU’s “Farm-to-Fork” program, for reduced use of energy, nitrate-based fertilizer, and other products the EU is trying to limit with its anti-climate change strategy.

TF1 reported that the Attal government itself did not expect its proposals would satisfy the farmers, and that protests would continue for a few days. Nevertheless, the hand-picked crowd around Attal duly applauded, and Bayle gave press interviews declaring that the movement is over, before going to have a drink with Attal.

“Now some people are sending me messages saying you can’t stop, you have to think of this guy, this guy, or that guy. But we’ve been here for nine days,” he said. Speaking of Attal’s government, he added: “They kept their word, we’re keeping our word.” Indeed, it seems Attal agreed to this cynical charade based on a promise from Bayle that he would work with the government to wind down the protests.

Most of the protesting farmers reject Attal’s attempt to strangle the protest, however. Many social media posts showed assemblies of farmers gathering to watch Attal’s remarks and booing him as they ended.

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The FNSEA, which is desperate to establish control over the protests and shut them down, therefore felt compelled to continue posturing as supporters of the movement.

FNSEA President Arnaud Rousseau went on TF1’s prime time 8 p.m. news show to say it would continue supporting the protests despite Attal’s speech. “It’s a bit too thin, with his announcements he managed to take care of one highway blockade,” Rousseau said, adding: “What was said today does not calm the anger, we are going to have to go further.” Rousseau appealed to Attal to meet with him this morning to “keep working on the demands that are advanced by the FNSEA and the Young Farmers [association].”