Modi, Monsanto, Bayer And Cargill: Doing Business or Corporate Imperialism?

Colin Todhunter

Describing itself as a major ‘global communications, stakeholder engagement and business strategy’ company, APCO Worldwide is a lobby/PR agency with firm links to the Wall Street/corporate America establishment (arguably, part of it) and functions to serve its global agenda. India PM Narendra Modi turned to APCO to help transform his image and turn him into electable pro-corporate PM material. It also helped Modi get the message out that what he achieved in Gujarat as Chief Minister was a miracle of economic neoliberalism, although the actual reality is quite different.

In APCO’s India brochure, there is the claim that India’s resilience in weathering the global downturn and financial crisis has made governments, policy-makers, economists, corporate houses and fund managers believe that the country can play a significant role in the recovery of the global economy in the years ahead.

With Modi now at the political helm, the government is doing the bidding of global biotech companies and is currently trying to push through herbicide-tolerant GM mustard based on fraudulent tests and ‘regulatory delinquency‘, which will not only open the door to further GM crops but will boost the sales of Bayer’s glufinosate herbicide. In addition, plans have been announced to introduce 100% foreign direct investment in certain sectors of the economy, including food processing.

Neoliberal dogma

The opening up of India to GMOs and foreign capital is supported by rhetoric about increasing agricultural efficiency, creating jobs and boosting GDP growth. Such rhetoric mirrors that of the pro-business, neoliberal dogma we see in APCO’s brochure for India. It is the type of jargon that is rolled out by powerful corporate players and their compliant politicians across the world who seek to try to convince the public that an increasing concentration of wealth in the hands of a relative few – via deregulations, privatisations and lower labour and environmental protection standards, etc – is for their own benefit because it is good for ‘growth’.

From Greece to Spain and from the US to the UK, we are able to see this rhetoric for what it really is: record profits and massive increases in wealth (ie ‘growth) and control for elite interests and, for the rest, disempowerment, surveillance, austerity, job losses, the erosion of rights, weak unions, cuts to public services, bankrupt governments and opaque, corrupt trade deals.

APCO describes India as a trillion-dollar market. Note that the emphasis is not on redistributing the country’s wealth among its citizens but on exploiting markets. Whiles hundreds of millions live in poverty and hundreds of millions of others hover close to poverty, the combined wealth of India’s richest 296 individuals is $478 billion, some 22% of India’s GDP. According to the ‘World Wealth Report 2015‘, there were 198,000 ‘high net worth’ individuals in India in 2014, while in 2013 the figure stood at 156,000.

Global Finance Integrity has shown that the outflow of illicit funds into foreign bank accounts has accelerated since opening up the economy to global capital in the early nineties. High net worth individuals (the very rich) are the biggest culprits here. Not so much conforming to neoliberal ‘trickle down’ ideology but neoliberal ‘funnel out’, where tax havens across the globe exist for corporations and individual to stash their untaxed and unaccounted for wealth.

APCO likes to talk about positioning international funds and facilitating corporations’ ability to exploit markets, sell products and secure profit. In other words, colonising key sectors, regions and nations to serve the needs of US-dominated international capital. 
Paving the way for plunder

It is notable that Modi recently stated that India is now one of the most business friendly countries in the world. The code for being ‘business friendly’ is lowering labour, environmental, health and consumer protection standards, while reducing taxes and tariffs and facilitating the acquisition of public assets via privatisation and instituting policy frameworks that work to the advantage of foreign (US/Western) corporations.

When the World Bank rates countries on their level of ‘Ease of Doing Business’, it means nation states facilitating policies that force working people to take part in a race to the bottom based on free market fundamentalism. The more ‘compliant’ national governments make their populations and regulations, the more attractive foreign capital is tempted to invest.

The World Bank’s ‘Enabling the Business of Agriculture’ – supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and USAID – entails opening up markets to Western agribusiness and their fertilisers, pesticides, weedicides and patented seeds (listen to this, especially from 13 mins).

It might lead some wonder whose interests are really being served.

Anyone who is aware of the Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture and the links with the Indo-US Nuclear Treaty will know the answer to that as far as Indian is concerned. Those two projects form part of an overall plan to subjugate Indian agriculture to the needs of foreign corporations (see this article from 1999).

Politicians are clever at using poor management, bad administration and overblown or inept bureaucracies as an excuse for privatisation and dereugulation. Margaret Thatcher was an expert at this: if something does not work correctly because of bad management, privatise it; underinvest in something, make it seem like a basket case and privatise it; pump up a sector with public funds to turn it into a profitable, efficient enterprise then sell it off to the private sector. The tactics and ideology of and the justification for neoliberal economic policies take many forms.

And Indian agriculture has witnessed gross underinvestment over the years, whereby it is now wrongly depicted as a basket case and underperforming and ripe for a sell off to those very interests who had a stake in its underinvestment.

Leaving climate considerations aside, Britain used to be nearly self-sufficient in energy, with coal being the lynch pin. Since the 1980s, pits have been closed and the mining industry barely exists. Pits were deemed ‘uneconomical’ or ‘inefficient’. Now Britain imports coal, engages in costly wars to grab energy resources and pays the unemployed to do nothing rather than dig coal.  There is enough coal in Britain to last for hundreds of years. It would have made better economic sense to have kept these pits open (see this, this and this).

Neoliberalism is merely ideology masquerading as ‘economics’. The mines were closed in order to destroy the miners’ union, the strongest and most militant of Britain’s unions at the time who would have stood in the way of the economic plunder by and financialisation of Britain’s economy that followed. Energy security and livelihoods and towns and villages were decimated. And now we have the media celebrating ‘job creation’ when a new supermarket opens a branch to create a handful of jobs in what was once an area of full employment (while ignoring local store owners whose livelihoods are put in jeopardy).

And Indian farmers are now confronted by the similar forces of neoliberal capitalism.

India has many examples of poor management or inept bureaucracies and there are certainly deficiencies in food logistics. But rather than reform or improve them, the mantra is to let the market take over: a euphemism for letting powerful corporations take control; the very transnational corporations that manipulate markets, write trade agreements and institute a regime of intellectual property rights thereby indicating that the ‘free’ market only exists in the warped delusions of those who churn out clichés about letting the market decide or giving control to the ‘free’ market.

The destruction of livelihoods under the guise of ‘job creation’

But doesn’t FDI and foreign firms entering India ‘create jobs’. Yes, at least according to the neoliberal ideologues appearing in the media who claim that foreign investment is good for jobs and good for business. Just how many actually get created is another matter.

What is overlooked, however, are the jobs that were lost in the first place to ‘open up’ sectors to foreign capital. For example, Cargill may set up a food or seed processing plant that employs a few hundred people, but what about the agricultural jobs that were deliberately eradicated in the first place or the village-level processors who were cynically put out of business so Cargill could gain a financially lucrative foothold?

But won’t farmers better off as foreign firms enter the supply chain to create ‘efficiency’? Again, we need only look at the plight of farmers in India who were tied into contracts with Pepsico. Farmers were pushed into debt, reliance on one company and were paid a pittance

India is looking to US corporations to ‘develop’ its food and agriculture sector with foreign investment in retail, cold storage and various other infrastructure. Envisioning what this could mean for India, Devinder Sharma describes how the industrialised US system of food and agriculture relies on massive taxpayer subsidies and has destroyed many farmers’ livelihoods. The fact that US agriculture now employs a tiny fraction of the population serves as a stark reminder for what is in store for Indian farmers. Sharma notes that agribusiness companies rake in huge profits, while depressed farmer incomes, poverty and higher retail prices become the norm.

For farmers in India, the vast majority are not to be empowered but displaced from the land. Farming is being made financially non-viable for small farmers, seeds are to be privatised as intellectual property rights are redefined (facilitated by prominent Trojan horse figures), land is to be acquired and an industrialised, foreign corporate-controlled food production, processing and retail system is to be implemented.

The long-term plan is for an urbanised India with a fraction of the population left in farming working on contracts for large suppliers and Wal-Mart-type supermarkets that offer highly processed, denutrified, genetically altered food contaminated with chemicals and grown in increasingly degraded soils according to an unsustainable model of agriculture that is less climate/drought resistant, less diverse and unable to achieve food security. This would be disastrous for farmers, public health and local livelihoods.

It begs the question: is the ‘Walmartisation’ of food and agriculture where India really wants to be heading?

While APCO wraps up the potential for economic plunder in corporate jargon, others cut through such technocratic rhetoric to expose the politics, motivations, players and corruption that are driving the restructuring of India and its agriculture:

“The WTO, with the TRIPS Agreement written by Monsanto and the Agreement on Agriculture written by Cargill, was the beginning of a new Corporate Imperialism. This imperialism is articulated by President Obama in suggesting that the resources, economies and markets of Asia – where half of humanity lives – are “up for grabs”. Trade Agreements like the TPP/TTIP/WTO, written in secret by Industry looking for raw materials, captive markets, lower labour costs and lower taxes, are what make it appear as though the land of South East Asia is “up for grabs” for palm oil plantations to the highest bribe… or that the farmers and food security of India are disposable as long as there is a giant market for chemicals and patented seed.” – Vandana Shiva, ‘Corporate imperialism – the only reason for GMO‘

From Africa to India, corporate America and global agribusiness are intent on colonising food and agriculture by recasting them in their own financially lucrative images, picking out only the most profitable sections of supply chains, while relying on public money to facilitate their profits.

The alternative would be to protect indigenous agriculture from rigged global trade and trade deals and corrupt markets and to implement a shift to sustainable, localised agriculture based on actual science (and appropriate price and/or income support and infrastructure). Instead, we see the push for bogus ‘solutions’ like GMOs and the side-lining of rational analysis and science in favour of neoliberal ideology.

Low input, sustainable models of food production and notions of independence and local or regional self-reliance do not provide opportunities to global agribusiness or international funds to exploit markets, sell their products and cash in on APCO’s vision of a trillion-dollar corporate hijack; moreover, they have little in common with Bill Gates/USAID’s vision for an Africa dominated by global agribusiness.

Modi was elected on 31 percent of the vote in 2014. It was heralded as a landslide victory due to the number of seats secured in parliament. Are those voters now getting what they wanted – or will they eventually get more than they bargained for?

What’s At Stake

Kathy Kelly

In the historic port city of Yalta, located on the Crimean Peninsula, we visited the site where Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin, in February of 1945, concluded negotiations ending World War II.

These leaders and their top advisors were also present at the creation of the United Nations and other instruments of international negotiation and non-military cooperation. Tragically, the creation of the “Cold War” was underway soon after.  Reviving tensions between the United States and Russia make it seem as though the Cold War might not have ended.

We also met with groups of young adults, teachers, and veterans of foreign wars. At each meeting, participants readily agreed that new peace agreements are needed.

Olga, a tour guide, told me that she was fairly sure most young people here in Yalta would know what NATO is, what the acronym stands for, and they would know about recent NATO developments.  Our delegation has been wondering how to cope with a quite different reality in the U.S., where many people may be poorly informed about NATO and would know even less about the Anti -Ballistic Missile  treaty that the U.S. more or less tore up in 2001.

The Federation of American Scientists, in its 2016 inventory of nuclear forces, states that approximately 93 percent of all nuclear warheads are owned by Russia and the United States who each have roughly 4,500-4,700 warheads in their military stockpiles.

Konstatin, a veteran from the USSR war in Afghanistan, now a grandfather, spoke to us about Yalta’s history during World War II.  “Many people perished here,” he said. “More than a million perished during WWII. This tourist resort was founded from the bones of people killed in the war.” Some 22 million Russians overall died during World War II, most of them civilians.  Konstatin urged all of us to find ways for avoiding further war, and he spoke about how funds spent on weapons are crucially needed to help heal children afflicted by disease or hunger.

Julia, a University student who wants to become an interpreter working with diplomats, said that she is glad and grateful never to have lived through a war.” I always want to choose words instead of weapons,” Julia said.

We asked university students what they thought of prospects for abolition of nuclear weapons. Anton, who studies engineering, told us that he believes “the youth of different countries would like to bridge the gap and work out ways to unite people.”  His words are extremely important now, as Russia and the U.S., possessing such huge stockpiles of nuclear weapons, engage in intensifying conflict.  “All of us should soften the geopolitical relations between our countries,” Anton continued, “and try to get together on the same level, on the same ground.  The idea of this future should be attractive to everyone and enable us to solve ecological problems. And if we all put efforts into reaching this idea of development and creativity, in the future, then the nuclear abolition will be something we can accomplish”

In 1954 the Soviet government transferred this largely Russian-speaking area from Russia to the Ukraine. In 2014, after Ukraine’s elected president was ousted and its new government formed in part by avowed neo-Nazis, Russia occupied the Crimea and after overwhelmingly winning an uncomfortably hasty vote, annexed it or “reunited” the Crimean peninsula with Russia, depending on who describes the history.  The Ukraine ouster, it is widely believed here and in much of the world outside the United States, is considered to have been engineered by the United States and NATO.  What plays in the U.S. as Russian aggression is seen by many here as a response to antidemocratic NATO interference along the Russian border.

It can be credibly argued that at its creation NATO’s mission was essentially defensive. Stalin was a terrifying dictator, suffering from increasing psychosis, with a long history of betraying even those who seemed to be his closest allies. Yet, as one Russian World War II veteran noted, the Russians had not tried to take over other countries far from their borders.  They actually had been very cautious and conservative about extending the boundaries or reach of the Soviet empire by military force, and after World War II Russia needed to focus on rebuilding the internal Soviet economy and society.

The continuously assertive military posturing of NATO undermines and conflicts with the mission and development of instruments for international negotiation and constructive cooperation. Among the most striking examples in recent years are:

i–the decision to expand NATO into eastern and southern Europe by accepting the membership or candidacy of countries as far south as Georgia;

ii–the 2001 decision by George Bush to abrogate the U.S. – Russian Anti-Ballistic Missile Systems treaty and to build a so-called ballistic missile shield system in East European countries, allegedly intended to protect against prospective Iranian missile launches directed toward Europe;

iii-the 2001 to the present decisions by the U.S. and NATO to invade Afghanistan and to establish long term military bases there, anchoring a military presence in the center of Central Asia.

New conflicts around the Ukraine are still brewing.

Milan Rai, writing for Peace News, helps put this conflict in context:

“Since Vladimir Putin’s first ascendancy to the Russian presidency in 2000, the Russian state has used its armed forces against other countries twice: against Georgia, in 2008; and now against Ukraine…

In the same time period, the US has used its armed forces in a criminal fashion against a number of countries, including: Afghanistan (2001-present); Yemen (drone attacks, 2002-present); Iraq (2003-present); Pakistan (drone attacks, 2004-present); Libya (2011); Somalia (2011-present)….

The western powers are in no position to lecture Putin, whose actions in Crimea look like a Gandhian direct action when compared to the normal US-UK mode of operation. From 28 February to 18 March, Russian forces captured over a dozen Ukrainian bases or military posts without the loss of a single life. Compare this to the US use of tank-mounted ploughs to bury alive perhaps thousands of Iraqi conscripts in desert trenches during the opening moves of the 1991 invasion of Iraq. (US colonel Lon Maggart, in charge of one of the brigades involved, estimated that between 80 and 250 Iraqis had been buried alive.)

When one thinks of the number of deaths caused by US-UK aggression since 2000, including the grim ongoing tragedy of the Iraqi civil war, it is difficult to listen to the wave of western outrage.”

“This is not to deny that Putin has presided over a repressive administration,” Mil continues, noting that Putin has also carried out atrocities, particularly the indiscriminate bombing of civilians in the southern Russian republic of Chechnya, which followed  massacres and the enforced disappearance of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Chechens.”

I believe that the greatest threat to the long range peace and security of Europe and the United States is the reality that the military sectors of western governments and the military spending sectors of western economies are so huge and bloated, like incurable cancers, that they cannot give up on inventing military threats and advocating military solutions which powerfully undermine diplomatic efforts to secure peace.

I hope Anton’s ideas will echo in the U.S. and help steer his generation toward pursuit of new acutely needed agreements.

India throws door open to international capital

Kranti Kumara

Two days after international investors were rattled by the unexpected announcement from Raghuram Rajan that he would not be seeking a second term as head of India’s central bank, the Hindu-supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government announced with much fanfare that it is opening up nine previously restricted sectors of the Indian economy to 100 percent foreign direct investment (FDI) and ownership.

The most prominent include civil aviation, single-brand retail stores such as Apple and IKEA, pharmaceuticals and military production. This decision, which will have far-reaching social and political impact by tightening the integration of India with a world capitalist system riven by contradictions and imbalances, was made without even a pretense of a public debate.

In a flight of hyperbole, Prime Minister Narendra Modi boasted that the moves will make India “the most open economy in the world for FDI.”

As recently as a decade ago, there would have been a howl of protest from a sizeable section of the domestic media at any dilution of legal barriers to FDI in these sectors. Now, however, there is virtually unanimous support. For example, The Hindu, an ostensible left-liberal daily that claims to be implacably opposed to the BJP government, declared that the removal of the FDI cap was precisely what the country needs because India’s economy can only grow by wooing foreign investors.

Although the BJP government has been determined to ram through pro-big business reforms since the day it came to office two years ago, the timing of Monday’s FDI “liberalization” announcement was clearly aimed at blunting concerns in the international and domestic corporate media that further “economic reforms”—a euphemism for measures aimed at swelling investor profits—might be hampered by Rajan’s departure.

The BJP’s FDI announcement also comes in the wake of Modi’s recent visit to the US, where he was feted by the Washington establishment as the leader of a “major defense partner” of US imperialism. The Obama administration has long been pressing India’s government to dismantle what regulatory and legal barriers remain to the unimpeded exploitation of the country’s vast reserves of cheap labor and natural resources by US big business.

Rajan, who was formerly the chief economist at the IMF, announced last Saturday that he will be stepping down when his three-year term as governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) expires in early September and will be returning to the University of Chicago where he was on a leave from his post as a professor of finance at the Booth School of Business.

Rajan is a darling of international capital, who has been given “rock star” treatment by mouthpieces of international finance like the Financial Times of London and the Wall Street Journal. This is because they consider him a reliable advocate of the interests of big business, including the push to fully open India’s economy to international capital.

In an indication of the fears his departure provoked in business and financial circles, it was immediately dubbed by the media as “Rexit,” in a reference to the economic turbulence that would surround a British vote to exit the European Union.

While Rajan’s resignation announcement was a surprise, there had been a running battle for most of the preceding two years between him and the BJP government due to the latter’s relentless pressure on the RBI to reduce its benchmark interest rates so as to “stimulate” languishing capital investment by Indian businesses.

To the anger of the government and a considerable section of Indian big business, Rajan stuck to his guns, insisting that the focus of monetary policy should be to reduce the endemic double-digit retail inflation rate, stabilize the Indian rupee which had essentially collapsed in 2013, and clean up the balance sheets of India’s major banks, which are staggering under the weight of “non-performing” loans.

Rajan’s fear was that international investors might suddenly withdraw funds from India, whether due to a new global financial crisis or to take advantage of rising interest rates in the US, provoking a fresh run on the rupee. This would endanger both corporate India and the Indian banking system because of the huge dollar-denominated loans many of India’s premier business houses have taken out over the past decade.

There is much to suggest that Rajan was pushed out. In the weeks prior to his resignation, a section of the BJP leadership openly campaigned for him to be sacked, while Modi and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley remained scrupulously silent. BJP Rajya Sabha member Subramanya Swamy, who is frequently employed as a BJP political attack dog, repeatedly denounced Rajan. In a letter to Modi urging his immediate dismissal, Swamy charged that Rajan is not fully “Indian at heart.”

According to news reports, the final straw for Rajan was when he was told that if he wanted to be appointed to a second term he would have to formally enter a competition with other candidates, although the norm at the RBI has been that second terms for governors are quasi-automatic.

Undoubtedly, part of the BJP’s animus toward Rajan is due to his longstanding connections to its principal electoral rival, the Congress Party. But the economic policy differences were real and deep.

The bitterness of these differences put the lie to the government’s claims that India is an economic star, experiencing 7 percent-plus annual growth even as all other major economies are either mired in crisis or experiencing anemic growth.

To the government’s consternation, Rajan himself publicly questioned the accuracy of the growth rates. But one hardly needed to be an economics professor to note the incongruity between Modi’s hype about India’s booming economy and a rash of statistics over the past 18 months showing huge declines in exports and slow growth across major sectors of the economy, including manufacturing and agriculture.

In so far as there has been economic growth, and in some sectors potentially rapid growth during the past two years, it has been “jobless growth.”

According to official statistics, only 139,000 jobs were created in 2015 in eight key and especially labor intensive economic sectors. Even if this report is incorrect by a factor of 10 or 25, it still constitutes a massive crisis for Indian capitalism, since the annual number of new entrants to the labor force is in the order of 12 million.

Needless to say, the government is touting the lifting of the FDI caps as a job-creation measure.

In reality, it is a boon to Indian big business, which hopes to benefit from acting as the middlemen and junior partners of international capital, and will lead to consumer price rises, job losses, and social dislocation in many sectors.

In the pharmaceutical sector, “Greenfield” FDI (i.e., building and operating a new production facility) can now be up to 100 percent through the so-called automatic route, meaning no government approval is required. “Brownfield” investments (taking over an existing production facility), on the other hand, can be up to 74 percent through the automatic route and 100 percent with government approval.

It is almost certain that in the pharmaceutical sector the dismantling of FDI restrictions will lead to take-overs by giant foreign drug-makers rather than to new research and manufacturing. India ranks as the fourth largest drug manufacturer in the world, with an estimated 2014 production of $31 billion, and is a major producer of generic drugs. Already, the owners of the more famous of India’s pharmaceutical labs and manufacturers are salivating at the prospect of being taken over by one of their European or North American rivals. There is no doubt that this will result in significant generic drug prices for consumers in India and other Third World countries, even while the giant drug-makers turn to India to produce brand-name pharmaceuticals taking advantage of India’s cheaper labor.

In single-brand retail, up to 49 percent of capital investment can now be made through the automatic route and above that with government approval. This move was clearly implemented to benefit the US technology giant Apple, whose CEO Tim Cook traveled to India to personally meet with Prime Minister Modi to lobby for the company to be able to open retail stores.

Since a long-standing law that required single-brand retailers to source 30 percent of the value of their annual operations from local suppliers, preferably artisans and small producers, stood in the way, the Modi government essentially got rid of it by fiat. Apple and other such companies will be exempt from this law for eight years. This will likely prove to be in perpetuity, since in the interim the government will no doubt move to get rid of the eight-year limit.

Investment in military production will henceforth be permitted by automatic route for up to 49 percent of the project and up to 100 percent with government approval. New Delhi has also waived a requirement tying such investments to the transfer of advanced technology.

The Modi government has placed military production at the very center of its campaign to attract international investment under the “Make India” banner. Already, US-based Boeing has started to build a joint manufacturing facility with the Indian transnational Tata near the south Indian city of Hyderabad to produce fuselage and other aero structures such as rotors for Apache attack helicopters. This facility is reportedly slated to become the sole global manufacturing facility for Apache fuselage.

Other major US military manufacturers, including General Dynamics, are considering siting production in India.

Over the past 15 years, under BJP and Congress governments alike, India has pursued a major rearmament drive, as part of the Indian bourgeoisie’s drive to secure global power status.

The opening of India’s military production sector to foreign investment has major strategic consequences and has long been advocated by Washington as a further means of harnessing New Delhi to its predatory strategic agenda. As former Defense Minister A.K. Antony noted, “Allowing 100% FDI in the defense sector means India’s defense sector is thrown mostly into the hands of NATO and American defense manufacturers.”

Already, the Modi government has integrated India into US imperialism’s anti-China “pivot to Asia,” supporting Washington’s provocative intervention in the South China Sea and agreeing to allow the Pentagon to use Indian military bases for rest, resupply, and the forward positioning of materials.

German court sentences former SS Auschwitz guard to five years imprisonment

Sybille Fuchs

The Detmold District Court has announced its verdict in the trial of the almost 95-year-old Reinhold Hanning, an SS guard at the Auschwitz extermination camp from 1942 to 1944. It is expected to be the last trial of someone who directly participated in the Holocaust.

The court found Hanning guilty of complicity in murder in 170,000 cases: i.e., all those who fell victim to the machinery of death at the camp from January 1943 to June 1944. Judge Anke Gudda spent over an hour explaining the ruling.

She stated that the defendant had made himself criminally responsible and that even 70 years later, such a judgement was important for the survivors and offspring of those who died in Auschwitz and other camps. Although there was no punishment that could match the horrific atrocities, such a trial was the least that could be done to provide survivors with a measure of justice, the judge added.

Despite its long delay the ruling has historic significance. For the first time, according to Cornelius Nestler, a lawyer for one of the joint plaintiffs, a German court declared that an SS guard was jointly responsible for all the murders committed at Auschwitz. State prosecutor Brendel, who called for a prison sentence of six years, described it as “a milestone in coming to terms with the Nazi injustice in Germany.”

During World War II, between 1.1 and 1.5 million people were murdered at Auschwitz. During the trial, many documented the atrocities in the camp. Nonetheless, Leon Schwarzbaum, whose family died at Auschwitz, said after the sentence, “I do not want Mr. Hanning to go to prison. He is just an old man.”

The judge acknowledged the statements of the joint plaintiffs Erna de Vries, Leon Schwarzbaum, Hedy Bohm and William Glied. She praised their statements because it was thanks to them that “the victims received a voice and a face.” Turning to the joint plaintiffs, she said, “Your pain lasted throughout your lives, while most of the perpetrators were able to return to their normal lives. We will not forget your statements.”

Hanning observed most of the process from his wheelchair with his head bowed, not daring to look at the survivors. Their statements, the judge stated, were “immensely important to get a sense of the atrocities, in order that such genocide never happens again. We can only hope that these reports have not left you unmoved, Mr. Hanning!”

“The entire camp was like a factory, whose purpose was to kill people,” said Judge Grudda. “One could not remain blameless in Auschwitz.” The defendant had contributed to the “seamless carrying out of mass extermination” and was guilty as a result.

“You watched for two-and-a-half years as people were murdered in gas chambers. You watched for two-and-a-half years as people were shot. You watched for two-and-a-half years as people starved.” He had solidarised himself with the perpetrators and at least accepted the deaths as a price to be paid. Twice in Auschwitz he had been called up, but refused deployment to the front.

The statement that Hanning never served on the ramp was a self-serving declaration. As is well known, this is where people were selected to be sent straight to the gas chambers, while the others were exterminated by labour. “We consider it to be completely irrelevant that you, Mr. Hanning, never stood on the ramp,” stated Gudda. It was equally “excluded that you never experienced people going to the gas chambers.”

During the trial, Hanning expressed regret about his SS membership in a statement and declared, “I am ashamed of myself that I watched those injustices happen and did nothing to counter them.” He wished that he had never been in the concentration camp. The judge said the court could not determine how honestly he meant this.

By contrast, Hanning’s defence relied on decades of jurisprudence, which is even applied by the German High Court. Accordingly, concrete participation in a criminal act must be proven. In line with this, the defence demanded an acquittal and has announced an appeal.

Lawyer Johannes Salmen argued that the defendant was just following the orders of his superiors and, as a result, was implicated in the Nazi system, against which he was defenceless. There was only indirect evidence, such as documents, to show that Hanning was at Auschwitz, and concrete participation, for example in the selection of individuals on the ramp, could not be proved. As an ordinary worker without a high school qualification, he had not been able to foresee the consequences of his actions.

One argument of the defence deserves notice, however, not because it cleared the defendant, but because it criticised post-war justice in Germany. The defence lawyer said, “My client was an ordinary worker. Were the judges and state prosecutors who handed out death sentences for a trifle not aware of what they were doing? Were they convicted of complicity in murder?”

He also referred to the fact that, from the founding of the Federal Republic until the Auschwitz Trial in the mid-1960s, the political elite and judiciary systematically pursued neither Nazi criminals nor members of the judiciary who were involved in the Nazis’ crimes, but rather did everything to cover them up.

Even thereafter, a court only convicted a perpetrator, if he was ever brought before the court, if it could be proven beyond doubt by documents or witness statements that they had concretely participated in a murder or other criminal offence. This led to horrific scenes at the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials, because the extremely traumatised witnesses had to make absurdly precise statements about the crimes of which the defendants were accused.

No small part in the failure to hold Nazi criminals accountable in court was played by the fact that the judicial apparatus was adopted almost fully intact from the period of Nazi rule. Even judges and prosecutors extremely compromised by rulings on their acts of terror were not held accountable and remained in office.

The central office for investigating Nazi crimes would often not even initiate criminal proceedings against the perpetrators. The central office was founded in 1956 and was blamed for delays in a series of criminal proceedings.

Christine Siegrot, the lawyer for joint plaintiffs Moshe Haelon and Yaakov Handeli, complained during Hanning’s trial that the central office usually remained inactive, resulting in many Nazi perpetrators not appearing before a court, or, as in the case of Hanning, only decades later. Both her clients were taken to Auschwitz from Thessaloniki in Greece in April 1943.

In her plea to the court, Siegrot documented the Nazi past of many jurists, judges and prosecutors. She mentioned names and connections, “Even federal prosecutors were among them, and into the 1990s,” the lawyer said.

This favourable treatment of the perpetrators by the judicial system was only broken through in 2011, by the Munich district court. It convicted John Demjanjuk, SS volunteer in the Sobibur extermination camp, of accessory to the murder of 28,060 people and sentenced him to a suspended sentence of five years. An appeal was filed against the decision, but no ruling was issued because the defendant died in March 2012. Only after this ruling were survivors who had participated in the Holocaust, even at subordinate levels, systematically pursued.

Another recently concluded ruling against an SS member is yet to come into force. The Lüneburg District Court sentenced the so-called accountant of Auschwitz, Oscar Gröning, to five years imprisonment for accessory to murder in 300,000 cases. In Hanau, a trial against a high-ranking SS guard did not take place, because the defendant died shortly before the trial’s commencement.

Germany: The Left Party’s fraudulent refugee policy

Andy Niklaus & Verena Nees

Two poles of society have been revealed ever more clearly in recent months in the conflict over refugee policy in Germany. On one side, the persistent solidarity within the population for people forced to flee from devastating wars in the Middle East and the intolerably miserable conditions in Africa; on the other side, the state, government, media and established parties, which day after day campaign for the tightening of asylum laws and incite hatred against refugees.

In this atmosphere, the stance of the Left Party has become increasingly apparent. After the events of New Years Eve in Cologne, Left Party deputy chairperson Sahra Wagenknecht publicly advocated a cap on the number of refugees to be admitted into the country and with the approval of Alternative for Germany (AfD) deputy chairman Alexander Gauland declared: “Those who abuse our hospitality have forfeited the right to hospitality.”

Wherever the Left Party is in power it implements the inhumane refugee policies of the German government. That goes for the state of Brandenburg, where the Left Party has governed with the Social Democratic Party (SPD) since 2009, as well as Thüringen, where Left Party member Bodo Ramelow is premier in a coalition government with the SPD and the Greens.

According to a survey by Focus magazine, with around 1,080 deportations from January to April of this year, Thüringen is, along with Bavaria and Saxony, one of the three German states with the highest repatriation rates. In Thüringen, 30.5 percent of refugees with rejected asylum applications were deported. The national average is 17.9 percent.

Increasingly seen by the population as a right-wing party, and having suffered a defeat in the last state elections, some Left Party politicians are now attempting to pose as friends to refugees prior to the Berlin state elections.

Katja Kipping, Petra Pau and others organize publicity-friendly on-site aid missions such as the fundraising campaign of Berlin state chairman Klaus Lederer at the Office of Health and Social Affairs in January. They are also allowing the offices of leading candidates to be used for the coordination of aid and fundraising campaigns. Petra Pau, the Left Party candidate in the Marzahn district of Berlin, arranged a meeting with representatives of the advocacy group Alle Bleiben (Everybody Stays), which supports the right to residency for Roma.

In mid-June, representatives of several refugee initiatives and anti-racist groups gathered at a “Welcome2stay” congress in Leipzig, largely initiated by the Left Party’s parliamentary fraction. At the congress, party chair Katja Kipping called for “a societal awakening against social indifference and racism.” She appeared alongside a trade union representative from Ver.di and a “Solidarity4all” grouping from Greece, which is the byproduct of the discredited Syriza party.

The party paper Neues Deutschland states that they had attempted to “disseminate harmony and not bring up existing differences in the first place.” After the election setback in Baden-Württemberg and Rheinland-Pfalz, and above all in Sachsen-Anhalt where the Left Party was pushed into third place by the AfD, it could use some publicity. “Why not get the vote of every last refugee aid worker?” the paper wrote.

In their Berlin election platform, the Left Party put forward this vague demand: “Defend refugees and open up a perspective.” They hoped that younger Berliners would no longer be reminded of the period from 2002 to 2011 when the Left Party governed with the SPD under Klaus Wowereit and held the positions of the senator for social issues, work and integration as well as the senator of economy.

In their first year of governing, the Red-Red coalition continued unabated the deportation policies of the CDU-SPD senate under Eberhard Diepgen (CDU). As a May 5, 2006 Christian Democratic Union (CDU) inquiry in the house of representatives found, approximately 6,000 asylum seekers were deported from Berlin in the years 2002 and 2003 alone and a large number of them were imprisoned beforehand. It was not until 2004 that this number fell, due to the European Union’s eastward expansion. Many refugees came from Eastern European countries and that meant they now had to be dealt with under European law.

Like Diepgen’s senate, the “Red-Red” (SPD-Left Party) coalition coldly carried out the deportations. They allowed those affected to be taken away in the middle of the night in police raids without regard to minors or sick people and separated families. Dozens of refugees attempted to commit suicide, started hunger strikes or died on the run from police and border guards. Many of those deported were imprisoned in their homelands, tortured or murdered.

The Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), and later the Left Party, did not even close the deportation prison in Grünau that became infamous under Diepgen. In the coalition contract, they only agreed to the removal of the bars inside and better visiting rooms. The deportation detainees had to pay for the cost of their barracking themselves.

When demonstrators gathered at the prison in May 2006 to protest the “inhumane deportation policy of the Red-Red senate,” including members of the WASG, which in the same year merged with the PDS to form the Left Party, the Red-Red senate sent the police.

At no point did the Left Party consistently advocate for the right to stay of Roma who fled to Berlin during the war in Yugoslavia, or for protecting the Kurds who sought to escape Turkish attacks on their villages.

Protests by Roma, which culminated in the occupation of party headquarters in various cities at the end of 2002, led to nothing but empty promises from PDS social senator Heidi Knake-Werner. In the end, the Roma were ruthlessly sent back to Belgrade without winter clothing despite cold temperatures.

In mid-May 2009, more than 100 Romanian Roma again attempted to escape to Berlin when right-wing pogroms erupted in their homeland. They spent the summer months in Görlitzer Park in the Kreuzberg district of Berlin, until police drove them out by force. The Red-Red senate brought them to a camp in Spandau, Berlin, which was also used as a deportation centre for other refugees. Left Party senator Knake-Werner offered them €250 for travel expenses if they would leave voluntarily.

After her departure from the government in 2009, the former German Communist Party (DKP) member Heidi Knake-Werner became chair of the Berliner Volkssolidarität (Berlin People’s Solidarity organisation) and heads a refugee home in Marzahn-Hellersdorf.

In 2013, the current social senator Mario Czaja (CDU) appointed Heidi Knake-Werner to a cross-party “council for cohesion.” Along with ex-government head Diepgen, former SPD social senator Ingrid Stahmer and others, she will review the planned container village for refugees as part of the “Masterplan for Integration and Security.”

When in 2011 the Left Party was voted out on the basis of their right-wing politics, she justified the deportation policy on the grounds of political “pressure.” The then economic senator Harald Wolf wrote in his book Social Democrat-Left Party coalition in Berlin: A (self) critical balance sheet: “The political room to manoeuvre in regional politics for a humane refugee policy is extremely limited by the federal government. That’s why there were also deportations under the Red-Red coalition.”

Wolf is right when toward the end of his book he calls the Left Party a “party within the state apparatus.” The danger that the population also recognises this truth and turns against all of the established parties, including the Left Party, is something he and other Left politicians are all too aware of. That explains his cynical call for the organization of a “smart and deliberately calculated division of labour” between the “parties in the state apparatus” and the “parties outside of the state apparatus.”

In other words: the latest activities of the Left Party in refugee initiatives and anti-racist and social protests are aimed at containing the growing opposition of workers and youth and preventing them from turning against the ruling parties.

Merkel announces massive military buildup

Johannes Stern

Germany plans an unprecedented military buildup. This was clear from the speech given by Chancellor Angela Merkel to the Business Forum of the CDU in Berlin on Tuesday night. “We confront asymmetric conflicts, of hitherto unknown proportions,” Merkel told German business leaders. “The defence capability of the European Union,” however, is “still not geared up to ensure security even in our own territory.”

The conclusion of the chancellor: “There has to be convergence between a country like Germany that today spends 1.2 percent of gross domestic product for defence and a country like the United States of America, which outlays 3.4 percent of gross domestic product on defence.” It would “not be expedient in the long run to say simply that we will hope and wait for others to undertake our burdens of defence,” she said.

Merkel’s speech has been greeted in the bourgeois media for what it is: Another milestone in the return of German militarism following the announcement of the about-turn in German foreign policy by Federal President Joachim Gauck, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen at the Munich Security Conference in early 2014.

On Thursday the Handelsblatt proclaimed in large print “Germany upgrades” and called Merkel’s declaration a “turning point.” In the past 25 years, the paper wrote, “Federal governments of different persuasions gratefully pocketed the peace dividend” and the proportion of military expenditure to GDP had fallen by 3.4 percent in the mid-1980s to just 1.2 percent. Now Merkel has signalled “that she is ready to up the ante.”

The business newspaper indicates what is meant by the federal government “upping the ante.” The Handelsblatt cites the military commissioner of the Bundestag, Hans-Peter Bartels (SPD), who states that in order to recruit the planned additional 7,000 soldiers and equip the army “with tanks or helicopters,” the Bundeswehr (armed forces) must “increase the proportion of GDP in the foreseeable future by 1.4 to 1.5 percent,” The paper then concludes: “As of today, that requires an extra €9 billion a year.”

To justify the massive upgrade, the paper repeats the official mantra of the federal government of a “world out of joint” that forces Germany to act. The “new era” had not come “by chance.” The Ukraine conflict and terrorism have alarmed Berlin, simultaneously increased “the expectations of its allies” and placed special new demands on the Bundeswehr in relation to “NATO deterrence plans directed against Russia.”

The Handelsblatt is well aware that the military upgrade involves the acquisition of raw materials and new markets for Germany’s export-hungry industry. In early 2013 the newspaper ran an editorial headlined “Expedition Resources: Germany’s New Course,” noting that “current policy to secure raw materials has reached its limits” and that Berlin must once again be ready to wage wars over resources.

Merkel’s announcement that Germany seeks to “converge” with US military spending to “secure its own territory,” underlines that the German elite is again prepared to secure its economic and geostrategic interests against its former post-war allies if necessary.

In a recent long article on the referendum on United Kingdom membership of the European Union, Der Spiegel warned that the EU’s disintegration could lead to the breakup of its alliance with the US. As the “biggest central power on the continent” Germany would then “finally be forced to take the leading role,” the magazine wrote.

In another recent article in Foreign Affairs titled, “Germany’s New Global Role,” Foreign Minister Steinmeier distances himself from the US and highlights Germany’s new claims to be a superpower. He bluntly declares Germany to be a “major European power,” which was forced “to reinterpret the principles that have guided its foreign policy for over half a century.”

Behind the backs of the population, the military upgrade is already taking place at full speed. Handelsblatt reported that the same German armament giants who built up Hitler’s Wehrmacht in the 1930s are currently preparing new tanks for the German army. “Krauss-Maffei Wegmann (KMW) and Rheinmetall have set up a depot in a “secret location” where they collect used battle tanks from Austria and Sweden.” In total, German industry has already bought up more than 100 Leopard 2 combat tanks. “Well maintained and oiled” they are now to be “brought up to the armament standard of the 21st century” for €5 million each and receive “a second life in the Bundeswehr.”

The tank upgrade is just one project among many. The current military report of the government lists “more than 20 projects with a budget of over €60 billion.” On the list are various tank models, “Tiger” support helicopters, A400M transport aircraft, “Euro Fighters,” missile-type “Iris-T” and “Meteor” warships (including frigates, corvettes and the 180 multi-role vessel) and a tactical air defence system.

Just 75 years after the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany, Merkel’s latest speech made terrifyingly clear that the German elite is quite prepared to follow in the footsteps of its wartime predecessor.

UK vote to leave the European Union triggers economic and political crisis

Chris Marsden & Julie Hyland

Britain voted to leave the European Union (EU) in yesterday’s referendum by a narrow margin—51.9 percent to 48.1 percent on a turnout of 72 percent. In response, Prime Minister David Cameron announced that he was standing down, but not until the Conservative Party conference in October.

The referendum result has sent a seismic shock, not only through Britain but Europe and the world. It confounded the expectations of the financial markets, hedge funds, bookmakers and the political establishment.

Even as polls closed at 10 p.m. yesterday, predictions were for a Remain vote—reflected in the value of the pound soaring and a recovery on global markets. By the early hours of Friday morning, however, the pound had fallen to its lowest level in more than 30 years, plunging 10 percent against the dollar and falling against the euro and the yen.

The UK is the fifth largest economy in the world and the second largest in Europe. The implications of its departure from the EU are widely seen as potentially precipitating its break-up, with France, the Netherlands, Spain, Greece and even Italy registering majorities for exiting the euro in polls.

The UK itself is divided, with England and Wales voting to leave and Scotland and Northern Ireland voting to remain. Fifty-three percent in England and 52 percent in Wales voted for Brexit, but 62 percent in Scotland and 56 percent in Northern Ireland voted to stay.

There is talk of a second referendum on Scottish independence, with former Scottish National Party leader Alex Salmond insisting that such a referendum must take place within the two years specified by Article 50 of the EU’s Treaty of Lisbon, which would begin the process of a UK withdrawal from the EU.

Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams stated that the referendum result raised the issue of a united Ireland, under conditions in which there are suggestions of the reintroduction of border controls and tariffs along the Republic’s 330-mile border with the North.

In England, London was the only region to vote for Remain, by 60 to 40 percent. Every other region went to Leave, by 58 percent in Yorkshire and Humberside, 54 percent in the North West, 59 percent in the West Midlands, and more than 50 percent in both the South East and South West.

The most significant exception to this voting pattern was among those under the age of 24, where the Remain vote was 75 percent in favour.

In Westminster, the primary concern was to try to stabilise the financial markets, with banks insisting that Cameron should delay invoking Article 50. The FTSE 100 fell by £120 billion—500 points—on opening, with particularly heavy losses for banks and house builders. Mark Carney, Chairman of the Bank of England, pledged to pump £250 billion into the markets, and there is speculation that interest rates will be cut to zero by August, with UK growth expected to “slow to a crawl.”

Cameron’s resignation announcement is designed to meet this demand for a delay. He insisted that it was still his prerogative to decide when Article 50 was invoked and he would not do so until a new Conservative Party leader was elected in the autumn. His pledge is at the same time an appeal to the Brexit wing of his party around former London mayor Boris Johnson, who led the official Leave campaign, to work together in the short-term to ensure economic stability.

Johnson is touted as the leader necessary to head off an electoral challenge by the UK Independence Party (UKIP). UKIP leader Nigel Farage is the only party leader to have gained from the referendum—striking a populist pose against the “merchant banks” and the “elite.” He has positioned himself as a critic of any compromise over invoking Article 50.

Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn’s position is by no means assured. Criticisms made by his Blairite opponents that he did not do enough to win the argument for Remain have been mirrored by the 10 to 15 Leave Labour MPs. They now claim to speak for 45 percent of Labour voters and have condemned him for abandoning his previous opposition to the EU and being “out of touch” on immigration.

With the likelihood of a leadership challenge, Corbyn’s response, as always, is an attempt to triangulate between his critics. He has called for Article 50 to be triggered immediately as representing the will of the people and indicated his support for immigration controls, based on economic criteria, once EU legislation on the free movement of labour is no longer in force. But he did so while insisting that the government must be supported in its efforts to stabilise the economy.

Crisis meetings are underway in Brussels between European Council President Donald Tusk, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, European Parliament President Martin Schulz and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who holds the EU’s rotating presidency.

Talks between the EU’s remaining 27 member states are to be held next week without the UK, with Tusk warning it was “not a moment for hysterical reactions.”

However, Manfred Weber, a senior German conservative Member of the European Parliament, warned the UK will receive “no special treatment,” declaring: “Exit negotiations should be concluded within two years at max... Leave means leave.”

Schulz said he would be speaking to German Chancellor Angela Merkel on how the EU “can avoid a chain reaction” of other member states following the UK’s lead.

The referendum has produced a significant shift to the right in Britain and throughout Europe. There is a large element of social protest involved in the result, which led to a significant increase in turnout in working class areas. Disaffection with the Tory government and the Labour Party was combined with hostility to the EU to ensure an overwhelming Leave vote—especially among those earning less than £15,000 per annum.

However, anger has been successfully channelled behind right-wing political tendencies deeply hostile to the working class, in a campaign characterised by nationalism and anti-immigrant xenophobia.

Across Europe, many far-right parties exploit anti-EU sentiment and the social devastation caused by austerity for reactionary ends. France’s Front National leader Marine Le Pen said: “Like a lot of French people, I’m very happy that the British people held on and made the right choice.” In the Netherlands, Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders called for a referendum on the country’s membership of the EU.

Their populist demagogy conceals the aim of a more aggressive offensive against the working class. On the morning of his “victory,” Farage said the Leave camp had made a “mistake” in promising that the £350 million in current UK contributions to the EU would be spent on the National Health Service in the event of a Brexit vote.

A politically criminal role has been played by George Galloway, the Socialist Workers Party, the Socialist Party, Counterfire and the Communist Party. As the Socialist Equality Party explained, in urging a “Left Leave” vote they helped subordinate workers to a right-wing initiative aimed at shifting political life even further along a nationalist trajectory, “thereby strengthening and emboldening the far-right in the UK and across Europe, while weakening the political defences of the working class.”

In calling for an active boycott of the referendum, the SEP insisted that the EU was in an advanced stage of break-up due to the global economic crisis and the rise of national and social antagonisms. But the working class must formulate its own independent response—one based not on a defence of capitalism and a retreat into the nation-state but on the unification of the European working class in the struggle for socialism.

India-Bangladesh Post Assembly Elections in West Bengal and Assam

Delwar Hossain


People from every corner of Bangladesh closely observed the 2016 assembly elections in the Indian states of West Bengal and Assam. These two state elections in India had generated huge interest and enthusiasm in Bangladesh about the future direction of the Bangladesh-India bilateral. Social media, print and electronic media widely covered the results of the aforementioned elections. The policy circle in Dhaka was, of course, highly curious about the outcomes of the elections. Led by Mamata Banerjee, the Trinamool Congress (TMC) bagged 211 of the 294 seats, while the Congress-Left combined won 76 seats. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) created history in Assam by winning two-thirds majority in the 126-member House and winning 86 seats along with its allies. The Congress, led by Tarun Gogoi, managed only 26 seats. The BJP stormed to power in Assam for the first time. The Congress was the worst hit in losing power in Assam, which it had ruled for 15 long years.

What does it mean for Bangladesh-India relations? The central governments in India and Bangladesh both were curious and worried enough to follow the poll verdict in these two states for two principal reasons. First, the central government of India led by the BJP was interested in bolstering its political presence in these two critical states that border Bangladesh. Basically, it is the domestic political interest of the ruling party. On the other hand, Bangladesh was interested in the issues and positions of state political parties that will have implications for bilateral relations. Particularly, two widely discussed issues – the signing of the Teesta water deal and the alleged illegal Bangladeshi immigrants in India – that have been source of disappointment for the people of Bangladesh despite strong friendship between the two countries, may be influenced by the results of the elections.

Many analysts in Bangladesh have assessed that the results of the West Bengal and Assam elections are not good news for Bangladesh. The new chief minister in Assam promised to seal the Bangladesh-Assam border completely and to deport the allegedly illegal Bangladeshis from India. As revealed in the media, New Delhi has already extended their cooperation to the Assam state government to implement the electoral agenda of BJP-led coalition government in the state.

People are speculating that a new level of tension will emerge between Bangladesh and India over the actions of the newly inducted Assamese government led by the BJP. The same group of people also strongly believe that the return to power of Mamata Banerjee’s TMC by a landslide victory will further delay the process of signing the Teesta water deal in the near future. With a massive popular mandate on Mamata’s leadership in the West Bengal, her government may continue with the same stubbornness against the Teesta deal this time with more confidence. These are disturbing developments to the people of Bangladesh, particularly to those who are against strong and friendly ties with India.

On the other hand, a strong perspective is that there is a scope for optimism about the Teesta water deal with a positive role by the Mamata Banerjee’s government. There was a view held by many experts over the past few years that Mamata could change her position after the crucial assembly elections in West Bengal that was due in 2016. She had a high stake in political calculation in her state vis-à-vis the Left and Congress forces. She would not have taken any risks before the elections with the Teesta issue. Now, Mamata can reassess her position as it is a historical fact that West Bengal always supported an amicable and just sharing of waters between Bangladesh and India. The support of the West Bengal government was crucial to sign the Ganges water sharing deal in 1996. People in Bangladesh are more optimistic about Mamata’s cooperation about the Teesta deal. The improved relations between Mamata and the Modi government, the proactive role of Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, and Mamata’s commitment to the people of Bangladesh may expedite the process of the Teesta deal.

Regarding Assam, the civil society and policy circles in Bangladesh tend to subscribe to the political pragmatism of new leadership in the state. Electoral politics demands rhetoric and hyperbole in most cases. The issue of Bangladesh figured in Assamese politics as part of electoral politics since the question of Bangladesh migration is intrinsically embedded with historical reality since the transition from British India to an independent Bangladesh. The issue of minorities is a hot one in electoral politics as seen in many countries in the world. Political leaders love to grab these issues to accrue political gains. Interestingly, the same political parties behave otherwise when they come to power.

When there are matters related to bilateral relations, the state government is bound to act in a restrained and rational manner. National interests and global norms are the fundamental determinants in this regard. Besides, the numbers of Muslims in Assam is significant. The opposition political parties have different views about the so called migration issue in Assam. Therefore, state politics in Assam and bilateral relations between Bangladesh and India will continue to determine the actions of the Assam government in the future. For example, during the ratification of India-Bangladesh Land Boundary Agreement (LBA), the then Assam government and the BJP as opposing parties altered their positions in the greater interests of India.

The critical issue is that both Bangladesh and India have worked hard over the past eight years to transform their bilateral relations into a solid rock of friendship; and no forces can reverse it. There has already been a paradigm shift in Dhaka-New Delhi relations, which is largely focused on Northeast India and West Bengal.

Transit facilities, energy cooperation and bandwidth export are the frontier issues that will bring both countries further closer. Strategic considerations like the China factor, the rise of terrorism, sub-regional cooperation, and maritime cooperation, are crucial for both the countries. Against this backdrop, state governments in the bordering regions have limits to maneuver controversial issues to their favour or benefit. In fact, India must act together to resolve outstanding issues with Bangladesh to create a zone of prosperity instead of tensions and rivalry.

The Coming End of the EU-USA Military Industrial Complex?

Afshin Rattansi

The hallmark of the months leading to today’s EU referendum has been horrifying censorship. One can but hope that Noam Chomsky’s dictum that censorship is a “brand on the imagination” and that it affects those who have “suffered it forever” does not apply.

The British electorate has been treated to a fake debate about issues that mask some of the most critical issues of our time. And that’s even if the issues will not be addressed whoever wins in the early hours of Friday morning.

The Right wing case for Britain leaving the EU is as idealistic as it is bizarre. It arises from the complexities of EU-formation. The Right accurately remembers the elite liberal Left which wanted to impose fairness “from above” given their despair at electorates unwilling to fight for revolution. The Right is blinded by memory – of a misty past of speeches about “Euro-Communism” and “Social Democracy” by people who no longer matter. To the Right, all the “free market reforms” fostered by EU institutions are forgotten. Maybe, idealistic free marketeers look the other way because the results of the EU experiment are clear: free markets inevitably lead to corporate monopoly power crushing the will of the people. Free markets lead inexorably to concentrations of wealth and power. To inequality and – before the uptick – austerity.

The Left wing case for Britain remaining in the EU is not really Left wing at all. It is founded on atavism and pessimism about the working classes of Europe. To this section of society, the EU can somehow be reformed from within. They believe elite governments in Europe – already out of touch with their own electorates – can negotiate in Brussels and Strasbourg with corporations, on the same terms.

The idea of being able to reform the European Union by negotiation is fantasy. In the U.S. context, it would be a bit like a future President Bernie Sanders transplanting Washington’s “K Street” of lobbyists into the West Wing for fruitful discussion about creating a fairer America. There is no negotiation to be had, except around the edges. Every aspect of the EU is targeted to one goal, to create a militarily powerful satellite of the United States that borders Africa and Eurasia, underpinned by corporate power. For every progressive law the EU has successfully passed, a hundred hurl millions into economic catastrophe.

It took months before UK politicians knew the acronym “TTIP” – so ignorant are they about the consummation of the marriage between Eurocrats and the kind of people you might meet on the ski slopes of Davos every winter. UK Prime Minister David Cameron was forced to make a statement denying that Britain’s National Health Service – a chronically underfunded but visionary universal healthcare system – would be broken up and destroyed by TTIP. Will it sway today’s vote? Actually, the secret deal to empower corporations to take on democratically mandated legislation in EU states may have already hit the buffers.

There’s another trade deal – between Canada and the U.S. – which could formalise the power of U.S. multinationals over European legislation. We didn’t hear anything about CETA before the referendum. Nor did we hear anything about the brutality of EU institutions when it came to what the UN now calls the worst refugee crisis in history.

Even famous NGO charities who are usually reticent about entering “the political” are privately askance about EU policy on refugees. One minute it’s border fences, the next it’s paying cash to prospective EU members to dump children fleeing wars. Where is the recognition that European powers have been at the front of the queue baying for war, from the Atlantic to the Persian Gulf, from the Baltic to the Caspian? Sometimes, even in Latin America.

The liberal commentariat decries the xenophobia of right wing Brexiteers. It argues that the BREXIT club is furnished by those who want to do harm to refugees. No one can surely join a club so full of racists, they say. Presumably, it would be like people voting for Donald Trump because they didn’t want an Iraq War which has killed, displaced or wounded millions.

What liberal “remainers” don’t say is that they are in a club with the IMF, Goldman Sachs and a politician who carries out thousands of targeted assassinations, President Obama.

Because, Britons voting today should not be in any doubt that a vote to remain in the EU is a vote to catalyse the Lehman Brothers disasters of the future. The EU exists –pre-eminently – to forge a deregulated world with vulture funds and private equity that contaminates every aspect of relations between human beings. From cradle to grave, there will be the privatisation of public space let alone education, health and aspiration. Not only that, but there’s something even more financially lucrative than the European health market : war.

War will be a privatised Europe’s crowning achievement. With EU connivance, it killed hundreds of thousands in Yugoslavia in the 1990s. And that was only a precursor. For when trade deals entrench the U.S. armaments industry in EU institutions, even chemical additives in food fade into the background as an issue.

The EU will do nothing about climate change except create “markets” to trade in gruesome carbon credits. And climate change and wars for resources will give ample opportunity for EU nations to wage war for one side or another. The EU will create phantasms and spectres for people to hate. Human rights policies will be conjured to attack the enemies of U.S. corporate capital: statist nations, countries that refuse to bow down to the orthodoxy of open capital markets.

If there is hope on the horizon regardless of today’s vote – it is that the rest of the world is gathering forces. China no longer looks the other way as President Obama attempts to place ever more bases around it. Together with Russia, it will not play ball with the neoliberal power-plays of Washington and its EU client bloc. And fissures are developing fast. Britain, whichever way the vote is swung, will be a member of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. When it seeks urgent infrastructural capital, or when it seeks lenience from big BRICS power over steel it will have to tow the line from BRICS capitals. It’s a line that will be towed at the expense of EU membership. And domestic electoral change in EU nations amidst the continuing fallout of Lehman 2008, will inevitably lead to the breakdown of negotiations.

So ironically, both sides in today’s referendum will win. The EU will have to reform because the peoples of Europe will have none of the EU-US military-industrial complex. Whether what is born is called the EU or a new kind of economic bloc, tied to emerging markets, it must happen. If the UK votes out, it will merely be the beginning of the end of a failed project, like the Berlin Wall 27 years before it. It must fail because with the threat of climate change to the threat of nuclear war, humanity depends on it.