A Grain of Truth: RCEP And The Corporate Hijack Of Indian Agriculture

Colin Todhunter

The plight of farmers in India has been well documented. A combination of debt, economic liberalisation, subsidised imports, rising input costs and a shift to cash crops (including GM cotton) has caused massive financial distress. Over 300,000 (perhaps closer to 400,000) have taken their lives over the last 20 years. From the effects of the Green Revolution (degraded soils, falling water tables, drought, etc.) to the lack of minimum support prices and income guarantees, it is becoming increasingly non-viable for many smallholder farmers to continue. The effects of last year’s demonetisation policy merely compounded the situation.

Indian smallholder/peasant farmers are under attack on all fronts. Transnational corporations are seeking to capitalise the food and agriculture sector by supplanting the current system with one suited towards their needs (the maximisation of profit), ably assisted by the World Bank and its various strategies and directives. Moreover, proponents of neoliberalism are pushing to further commercialise the countryside, which will involve shifting hundreds of millions to cities.

The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) could accelerate this process. A trade deal now being negotiated by 16 countries across Asia-Pacific, the RCEP would cover half the world’s population, including 420 million small family farms that produce 80% of the region’s food.

GRAIN is an international non-profit organisation and has just released a short report that outlines how RCEP is expected to create powerful new rights and lucrative business opportunities for food and agriculture corporations under the guise of boosting trade and investment.

Land acquisition and seed saving

What RCEP will do, according to GRAIN, is allow foreign corporations to buy up land. This would provide corporations with far more control than just use rights and drive up land prices and speculation, pushing small farmers out. If RCEP is adopted, it could intensify the great land grab that has been taking place in India.

Turning to the issue of farmer seed-saving, GRAIN notes that Monsanto and Bayer want to end this practice and force farmers to buy their proprietary seeds each season. The global seed industry is highly concentrated today and recent (proposed) mergers will consolidate power and influence over both governments and farmers. For example, China is currently in the process of buying Syngenta, one of the world’s top three seed firms. According to Grain, this means that China will have a new vested interest in seeing seed laws strengthened via tighter intellectual property rights under RCEP.

We have already seen the devastating effects on Indian farmers due to Monsanto’s ‘royalties’ (on ‘trait values’) on GM cotton seeds in India. Monsanto effectively wrote and broke laws to enter India. Under RCEP, things could get much worse. According to GRAIN, if states are allowed patents on inventions ‘derived from plants’ (whether hybrid or genetically modified seeds), we could see higher seed prices, a further loss of biodiversity, even greater corporate control and a possible lowering of standards (or a complete bypassing of them as with GM mustard) for high-risk products such as GMOs.

India’s dairy sector

The Indian government has encouraged the co-operative model in the dairy sector with active policy protection. However, the dairy trade could be opened up to unfair competition from subsidised imports under RCEP. We have already seen the effects of this in the edible oils sector, for instance.

According to RS Sodhi, managing director of the country’s largest milk cooperative, Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation, the type of deals being pushed under the banner of ‘free trade’ will rob the vibrant domestic dairy industry and the millions of farmers that are connected to it from access to a growing market in India.

India’s dairy sector is mostly self-sufficient and employs about 100 million people, the majority of whom are women. The sector is a lifeline for small and marginal farmers, landless poor and a significant source of income for millions of families. Up until now they have been the backbone of India’s dairy sector.

New Zealand’s dairy giant Fonterra (the world’s biggest dairy exporter) is looking to RCEP as a way in to India’s massive dairy market. GRAIN notes that the company has openly stated that RCEP would give it important leverage to open up India’s protected market. As a result, many people fear that Indian dairy farmers will either have to work for Fonterra or go out of business.

At the same time, some RCEP members not only heavily subsidise their farmers, but they also have food safety standards that are incompatible with the small-scale food production and processing systems that dominate in other RCEP countries. There is sufficient room for concern here: during the ‘mustard crisis’ in 1998, ‘pseudo-safety’ laws were used to facilitate the entry of foreign soy oil: many village-level processors were thereby forced out of business.

GRAIN argues that RCEP could accelerate the growth of mega food-park investments that target exports to high-value markets, as is already happening in India. These projects involve high tech farm-to-fork supply chains that exclude and may even displace small producers and household food processing businesses, which are the mainstay of rural and peri-urban communities across Asia. This would dovetail with existing trends that are facilitating the growth of corporate-controlled supply chains, whereby farmers can easily become enslaved or small farmers simply get by-passed by powerful corporations demanding industrial-scale production.

Fertiliser and pesticide use will increase

Fertiliser and pesticide sales are expected to rise sharply in Asia-Pacific in the next few years. Agrochemical use is heaviest in China and growing rapidly in India. GRAIN notes that China’s acquisition of Syngenta, the world’s top agrochemical company with more than 20% of the global pesticide market, puts the country in a particularly sensitive position within RCEP.

According to GRAIN, in January 2017, China announced that it will scrap export tariffs on nitrogen and phosphorus fertiliser in order to boost its market share abroad. RCEP trade ministers have promised to deliver a deal that immediately cuts tariffs to zero on 65% of trade in goods, followed by a second phase to cut the rest. GRAIN states that farm chemicals are bound to be part of this, resulting in increased residues in food and water, more greenhouse gas emissions, rising rates of illness and further depletion of soil fertility.

Big retail will wipe out local markets

RCEP also demands the liberalisation of the retail sector and is attempting to facilitate the entry of foreign agroprocessing and retail gaints, which could threaten the livelihoods of small retailers and street vendors. The entry of retail giants would be bad for farmers because they may eventually monopolise the whole food chain from procurement to distribution. In effect, farmers will be at the mercy of such large companies as they will have the power to set prices and also will not be interested to buy small quantities from small producers.

RCEP is designed to usher in a wave of corporate consolidation and help facilitate take-over of Asia’s food and agriculture sector from seed to plate. Corporate concentration will deprive hundreds of millions of their livelihoods. Moreover, the type of farming and food production practices that these corporations will bring entails massive social, health and environmental costs, which ordinary people and the state sector ultimately bear.

Neoliberal ideologues may say exposing farmers and those working in the food sector to such agreements can only be good for ‘growth’ and is a perquisite for transforming countries like India. But this is a bogus argument that seeks to hijack the development agenda by seeking to define it solely in terms of GDP growth – a narrow, outdated and wholly misleading concept. RCEP is a recipe for undermining biodiverse food production, food sovereignty and food security for the mass of the population. It will also massive job losses in a country like India, which has no capacity for absorbing such losses into its workforce.

Moreover, RCEP belongs to a model of development that is the wholly unsustainable due to the impact on the environment of capitalism’s ‘infinite growth’ paradigm. Given Gandhi’s views on the environment, if any country should recognise this, it is India. Writing from a Marxist perspective, prominent economist Prabhat Patnaik appreciates the need to align any notion of development with the requirement to live within the limits of the environment, which Gandhi stressed:

“This really is a spiritual/cultural question, about what it means to live a good life… Marxism shouldn’t be reduced to productionism. The goal of socialism has always been human freedom, which is about much more than material wealth… Gandhi talked about the ethical demands of nature… we do have to live within the limits of nature.”

Patnaik proposes an alternative to the current neoliberal agenda by saying we must delink ourselves from capitalist globalisation via capital controls, managing foreign trade and expanding the domestic market through the protection and encouragement of petty production, including peasant agriculture; through larger welfare expenditure by the state; and through a more egalitarian distribution of wealth and income.

While calling for new and innovative solutions to the problems we face under capitalism, aspects of his thinking dovetail with many in the environmental/food sovereignty movement who advocate a need for localisation not globalisation, self-sufficiency not corporate dependency.

There is a need to encourage localised food economies that are shielded from the effects of rigged trade and international markets. Rather than have transnational agribusiness corporations determining global and regional policies and private capital throttling democracy, we require societies run for the benefit of the mass of the population and a system of healthy food and sustainable agriculture that is run for human need.

We need only look at Mexico and what ‘free trade’ has done to that country’s food and agriculture sector: destroyed health, fuelled unemployment, transformed a rural population into a problematic group of migrants who now serve as a reserve army of labour that conveniently depresses the incomes of those in work. The writing is on the wall for India.

Current policies seek to tie agriculture to an environmentally destructive, moribund system of capitalism. RCEP would represent a further shift away from real, practical solutions to India’s agrarian crisis based on sustainable agriculture and which place the small farmer at the centre of the development paradigm.

In A Major Power Shakeup: Saudi King Appoints His Son Mohammed bin Salman As New Crown Prince

Abdus Sattar Ghazali

Saudi Arabia’s king Wednesday (June 21) appointed his son Prince Mohammed bin Salman as crown prince, replacing his nephew, Mohammed bin Nayef, as first in line to the throne.

King Salman bin Abdulaziz is 81 and reportedly not in the best of health.

Tellingly, replacing a Crown Prince is not unprecedented with the Arab monarchs.

In January 1999, while on the death bed, King Hussein of Jordan appointed his elder son Prince Abdullah as Crown Prince replacing his brother Crown Prince Hassan who enjoyed that position for about 33 years. King Hussein died on February 7, 1999 only 12 days after replacing the Crown Prince. The New Crown Prince Abdullah was from King Hussein’s second wife, Toni Avril Gardiner, an Englishwoman. Crown Prince Abdullah was a graduate of the British military academy at Sandhurst, England. The background of Prince Abdullah tells everything.

Before his latest promotion, Prince Mohammed bin Salman was reportedly responsible for leading Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen, overseeing the kingdom’s energy policy, economic reform and announced plans to sell off part of the vast state-owned oil company, Saudi Aramco.

According to BBC, the new crown prince is close to US President Donald Trump, and could ratchet up pressure against Iran – which would raise tensions in the region.

Al Jazeera pointed out that in March this year Mohammed bin Salman, visited the White House to meet President Donald Trump . That visit to Washington helped lay the foundation for Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia in May.

The decision by King Salman to promote his son and consolidate his power was endorsed by 31 out of 34 members of the Allegiance Council, the decree said. The council is made up of senior members of the ruling Al Saud family.

The Guardian

According to the Guardian, the upheaval follows a dizzying series of moves from the usually cautious kingdom, which in recent weeks has seen it recalibrate relations with Washington and open a diplomatic offensive against Qatar, led by Bin Salman’s office, while pressing ahead with a war in Yemen and an ambitious economic and cultural overhaul at home.

Bin Salman has been central to the changes, which have helped his profile and powers grow rapidly under the tutelage of an 81-year-old monarch who has given him an almost free hand across most aspects of society, the Guardian said adding:

“By contrast, Bin Nayef, a former interior minister and intelligence chief, and more traditional US ally, had been increasingly marginalized and the decree removed him from all his positions. He had played little role in the reform program and was given little face time with Donald Trump during the US president’s visit to Riyadh in May, which is widely seen to have precipitated the change in succession.”

The decision to blockade and isolate Qatar, nominally a Saudi ally, was also led by Bin Salman’s office. The move, which continues to reverberate around the regional Gulf Cooperation Council, was sparked by the Trump visit that publicly reprioritized Riyadh as a regional ally and wound back the Obama administration’s warming relations with Iran.

Iranian reaction

The Guardian reported that Iran’s Fars news agency Wednesday called the appointment “a political earthquake.” A senior Iranian MP, Seyedhossein Naghavi-Hosseini, who is the speaker of the parliamentary committee on national security and foreign policy, urged restraint from the Saudis.

“After the appointment of Bin Salman as the crown prince, we urge Saudi officials to act with prudence and according to international norms and they should know their limits,” Fars news agency quoted him as saying. “The Islamic Republic of Iran does not want war with any country and we believe we can resolve differences with dialogue. There is no need for foreign interference … but Trump visited Saudi Arabia to do warmongering.”

The new crown prince has ruled out any chance of dialogue with Iran. In remarks aired on Saudi TV in May, Mohammed bin Salman framed the tensions with Iran in sectarian terms and said it is Iran’s goal “to control the Islamic world” and to spread its Shia doctrine.

Given who’s calling the shots in Riyadh and Washington, “it is not really a question of if but rather of when a new escalation with Iran starts,” the Bloomberg quoted Olivier Jakob, managing director of consultant Petromatrix GmbH as saying. “Under his watch, Saudi Arabia has developed aggressive foreign policies and he has not been shy about making strong statements against Iran.”

The Bloomberg News

Meanwhile, the Bloomberg News said the abrupt shake­up that made Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman heir to his father’s throne gives the 31-­year­-old extraordinary powers to push through his vision to wean the economy off oil and exert his influence in regional conflicts.

Even before the promotion, the new crown prince was dictating defense and oil policy, including overseeing plans to privatize state oil giant Aramco, the Bloomberg News said adding:

“The move suggests a harder foreign policy line for the key U.S. ally in a region fraught with instability. Prince Mohammed has led the war effort in Yemen against Iran­ backed rebels and was a key figure in the decision to isolate Qatar in the weeks after Donald Trump bolstered ties with the kingdom during a May visit.”

The prince is a staunch opponent of dialogue with Iran, a position backed by Trump, who’s been dialing back the Obama administration’s warming relations with the Islamic republic, according to the Bloomberg News.

Australian intelligence agency demands sweeping powers to suppress Chinese “interference”

James Cogan

The WSWS warned last September that hysterical media accusations about “Chinese agents of influence” in Australian politics and society raised the prospect of “political purges, police raids, mass arrests and internment camps for ‘traitors’ and ‘enemy aliens’.”

With the renewal of a McCarthyite-like anti-Chinese campaign over recent weeks, that prospect is becoming ever-closer to reality. The Liberal-National Party Coalition government has initiated an inquiry by the Attorney-General’s Department, tasked with proposing updates to legislation relating to treason and espionage, as well as new laws against “foreign interference.”

The inquiry has been given bipartisan support by not only the opposition Labor Party, but the Greens and the various populist third parties in the parliament.

A Joint Committee on Security and Intelligence hearing last week provided an ominous insight into the type of police-state measures being contemplated. The committee consists of 11 Coalition and Labor representatives from both houses of parliament. Its current chair is Andrew Hastie, a right-wing Liberal MP and former Army and Special Air Services (SAS) officer, who did tours of Afghanistan in 2010 and 2013 and the Middle East in 2014–2015. Elected to parliament only in 2016, he has been rapidly elevated based on his military credentials.

The committee took testimony from Heather Cook, the acting head of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), who declared: “Foreign interference is happening in Australia.”

Cook did not directly name China but she did not need to. The state-owned Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and Fairfax Media newspapers are conducting a “joint investigation” into “Chinese Communist Party influence” in Australia and have acknowledged that ASIO is the primary source of their information.

Serving as ASIO’s conduit, the media has implied that Chinese and Chinese-Australian business figures, leading establishment politicians and personalities, universities, Chinese-language newspapers, and Chinese students studying in Australia are all—consciously or not—part of an attempt by the Chinese regime to shift Australian foreign policy toward Beijing and away from the US alliance.

In this context, Cook told the parliamentary committee: “Foreign powers want to gain advantage for their nation or to disadvantage us.” They were trying, she asserted, “to influence our polity, bureaucracy and civil society ... and clandestinely interfere in Australia’s affairs.” Their activities, she claimed, were “extensive, unrelenting and increasingly sophisticated.”

Cook proceeded to outline ASIO’s demands. The intelligence agency wants the draconian powers it has been granted since 2002 on the fraudulent pretext of combatting “terrorism” to be extended to all areas of “security.”

Under anti-terror legislation, ASIO can seize a person suspected of terrorist activities and secretly hold them for questioning for up to seven days, without charges. Those interrogated cannot tell anyone they have been detained. Cook declared: “The fact that we don’t have it open to us under our current legislative regime, to be able to use a power such as compulsive questioning in the espionage and foreign interference space, is definitely a limitation.”

Cook’s statements have sweeping implications. Through the media, ASIO has indicated that it considers any expression of political opposition to Australian and US policy toward China as the possible outcome of “foreign influence.”

If ASIO is granted the powers it is demanding, the organisers of a demonstration opposing Australian military involvement in US-backed “freedom of navigation” operations against Chinese territorial claims in the South China Sea could potentially be hauled in, held and questioned for seven days, ostensibly to determine whether they are Chinese government “agents of influence.”

Cook proceeded to insist that the age limit at which ASIO can detain people for “compulsive questioning” be lowered from 16 to just 14. She also indicated that ASIO wants the attorney-general to have the power to verbally grant search warrants against people suspected of aiding “foreign interference,” rather than ASIO and the police having to wait for a written document.

While the Attorney-General’s Department considers such measures, a parallel inquiry by Special Minister of State Scott Ryan is drawing up proposed revisions to Australia’s political donation laws. Currently, foreign corporations can donate to political parties and political pressure groups such as GetUp! Liberal and Labor, in particular, receive millions of dollars each year from American, European, Japanese and Chinese-based companies.

The Coalition government has mooted that it will table legislation by the end of this year banning such donations. This will make the establishment parties even more dependent on the donations they receive from Australian banks and corporations—the majority of which have extensive share-holder interests from American-based finance capital.

The campaign to purge “Chinese influence” from the Australian establishment reflects the immeasurably greater influence of American imperialism.

Washington considers Australia an essential ally in the Indo-Pacific region. It hosts critical communications and spying facilities, and provides air and naval bases for American forces. US strategic documents, recalling how the Australian continent was used to wage the initial stages of the Pacific War against Japan from 1942, designate it as a “sanctuary” in the event of a major war against China.

Washington both cultivates and relies upon a vast network of pro-US elements in the major political parties, business, the media and the military-intelligence apparatus to prevent any shift by Australia from its strategic alignment with the US. American intrigue in the country increased significantly over the past decade, as China emerged as Australia’s largest trading partner and factions within the ruling elite began suggesting a refashioning of foreign policy in response.

Of even greater concern to both Washington and the pro-US constituency is that large sections of the Australian working class and youth are opposed to any more involvement in American-led interventions and wars.

The 2017 survey of public opinion by the Lowy Institute, a strategic think tank, underscores the contradictory and volatile popular sentiments. Reflecting the general affinity with the American people, the majority of the population supports the US alliance. A clear majority, however, opposes participation in a war against China over “disputed territories and islands”; or against Russia even if it “invaded one of its neighbours.” Despite the media hysteria over the threat posed by North Korea, a majority opposes any involvement in a war on the Korean Peninsula.

The media propaganda against China is aimed at silencing anti-war sentiment by stoking nationalism and chauvinism. The legislative changes being discussed seek to give the state apparatus powers to carry out the violent political repression of opposition, which will take increasingly overt forms as the dangers of war increase.

Over 8,000 VW autoworkers launch unlimited strike in Slovakia

Dietmar Henning 

Autoworkers at Volkswagen (VW) began an unlimited strike Tuesday in Slovakia. Approximately 8,600 of the 12,300 workers gathered at the beginning of the strike in front of the plant in the capital city of Bratislava and shut it down. It is the first strike at Volkswagen since the company opened operations in Slovakia in 1991, and the first strike at a major auto plant in an Eastern European country since the reintroduction of capitalism.

In the VW plant, where the SUV VW Touareg and Audi Q7 are built, as well as the small vehicles VW Ap, Seat Mii and Skoda Citigo, the strike halted assembly lines. Production of bodies for the Porsche Cayenne, mid-sized luxury crossover vehicle, was also stopped.

The workers are demanding a wage increase of 16 percent. VW rejected this and in its last offer presented a 4.5 percent increase for this year, 4.2 percent for next year and a one-off payment of €350 (US $391).

The trade union at VW, “Moderné odbory Volkswagen” (Modern Union Volkswagen), was compelled to reject the eleventh round of talks last Friday and call a strike. “We deserve at least a double-digit increase,” said trade union chairman Zoroslav Smolinsky. VW workers in Slovakia earn roughly €1,800 (US $2,010) per month. Although this is more than the national average wage, which stands at €970 (US $1,083), it remains significantly less than in Germany.

Stanislav Galva, a worker, told AFP, “Money is not the issue. The issue is the decency of the company.” V” had “such large profits” and should share them with the workers, he added.

The mounting anger among autoworkers over growing social inequality—the minimum wage in Slovakia is around €400 per month—compelled Prime Minister Robert Fico from the social democratic Smer-SD to feign support for the strike.

“Why should a company that builds the most expensive and luxurious cars with a high level of labour productivity pay its Slovakian workers half or a third of what they pay the same workers in Western Europe?” he said.

Far from supporting the workers, Fico, who leads a coalition government with far-right nationalist parties, has sought to divert the social anger of the working class along anti-German and nationalist lines. This would not be the first time. Fico’s election campaign last year was directed entirely against refugees, even though only 330 asylum applications were made in Slovakia in 2015 and just eight accepted.

The workers who build the vehicles at VW have no hope of affording them. The Bratislava plant produced almost 390,000 vehicles last year, more than 1,000 per day. But almost all production is for export. Around 99 percent of the production is exported to 148 countries, above all Germany, the US and China.

The bodywork produced at the Slovakian plant for the Porsche Cayenne—which starts at €53,000 (US $59,000)—is sent to the VW plant in Leipzig, Germany, where final manufacturing is carried out. VW also produces engines in Bratislava and has three further production facilities, in Martin, Stupava and Kosice. Production was reportedly “normal” at these plants.

VW is by far the largest private sector employer in the country, which has a population of 5.4 million. Calculated according to its population size, Slovakia is the largest auto manufacturer in the world. More than a million vehicles are produced each year. For almost three decades, the major producers have exploited the low wages in the former Stalinist-run countries by outsourcing parts of the production process to Eastern Europe. Jaguar Land Rover will open a new plant in Slovakia next year.

But the self-confidence of the autoworkers, and their wages, have been rising. The French PSA-Group (Peugeot-Citroën) and South Korea’s Kia recently increased wages at their Slovakian plants by 6.3 and 7.5 percent respectively.

It is widely anticipated in industry circles that workers in other Eastern European countries will follow the example of the Slovakian VW workers, since they often earn even less than their colleagues in Bratislava. In the neighbouring Czech Republic, workers at the VW subsidiary Skoda earn €1,400 (US $1,564) per month.

On Tuesday afternoon, chief executive of Volkswagen Slovakia Ralf Sacht told a press conference, “We are at the top of the remuneration scale within the V4,” i.e., the Vysegrad states of Poland, Slovakia, Czech Republic and Hungary. Wages in Slovakia were the same level as in Portugal and Spain, he complained.

The plant management described the strike as reflecting a “lack of willingness to constructively negotiate”. The demands of the trade union were unacceptable and would damage the plant’s competitiveness, the interests of the company and also the workers, the statement claimed.

On Monday, a VW spokesperson maintained this position. The union’s demands were “unacceptable,” he said, adding that a wage increase of 16 percent would endanger the competitiveness of the company and its future.

Sacht, a German executive, took over the leadership of VW Slovakia last year. Accustomed to the IG Metall union in Germany collaborating with management to suppress strikes, he expressed surprise at the resistance of workers, saying he expected the Slovakian union to start negotiations by offering concessions to VW. He did comment on the strike, only saying, “We are prepared.”

VW workers in Slovakia are digging in for a long battle. To advance this fight, however, however, they should strive to unite with the 600,000 VW workers in Germany and throughout the world in common fight against the global auto giant.

Grenfell Tower fire victims and survivors treated with contempt by UK authorities

Robert Stevens

Those who perished in horrific deaths and the survivors of the Grenfell Tower inferno—which has killed at least 79 people—are overwhelmingly poor and working-class.

Their deaths were the result of the policies of successive governments, going back nearly four decades, through which the social rights of working people, including the right to safe housing, have been eviscerated.

Numerous representatives of the political elite and their media backers have engaged in handwringing and mock indignation over the fate of the victims. Their real attitude, however, is shown in the way that the survivors and their families have been treated by the authorities, with undisguised class hatred and contempt.

This is sanctioned from the very top of government. For days, there was no governmental or local authority assistance for the victims. It took two days for Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May to make a 30-minute visit to the site, where she was kept away from the public on “security” grounds. Only after the awareness of growing anger in London and nationwide finally hit home in ruling circles was an emergency relief fund initiated. This was after public donations had already raised more than £3 million—totally independently of the government.

The official “Grenfell Tower Residents’ Discretionary Fund” is a pittance of just £5 million. Of this, a minuscule £500 is being made available as an upfront payment to those who were burnt out of their homes. Another £5,000 is supposedly to be transferred into their bank accounts, which many cannot access, as their entire possessions went up in flames. As of Tuesday, the £5 million has barely been touched, with one news channel reporting that a total of just £330,000 has been paid out to survivors.

This is approximately half of the amount spent on refurbishing the Tower with the combustible cladding that almost certainly enabled the fire to spread with such devastating speed.

Moreover, it stands in stark contrast to the £369 million in taxpayers’ money that has been granted to the Royal Family for a 10-year refurbishing of Buckingham Palace, which stands in the same London borough. The lives of 80 people, if not many more, and the destitution of an untold number displaced—who have lost everything they possessed—is valued at just a tiny fraction of the amount being lavished on one family, already amongst the most privileged in the country.

The work on the Queen’s official residence, estimated to be worth £2.2 billion, will include replacing cables, lead pipes, wiring and boilers. When it was announced last year, a statement from Buckingham Palace read, “An independent specialist report concluded that without urgent work there is a risk of serious damage to the palace and the precious royal collection items it houses from, amongst other scenarios, fire and water damage.”

No such concerns ever crossed the minds of those in power responsible for Grenfell Tower, and the fate of around 600 people, who were left without the most basic safety requirements, including a central fire alarm and sprinkler system.

It was clear to all from the very outset that the fire was a major catastrophe requiring a massive emergency response. Yet no such co-ordinated action was organised by the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC) council—despite it being the wealthiest local authority in the country—to offer emergency respite, including the provision of food, drink, warmth and shelter to those devastated by the crisis. This was their response to working class people, some of whom fled the blaze in terror wearing just t-shirts and their underwear.

It was the local population and others who rushed to the area, coming from as far afield as Birmingham, to organize support and help for those who fled the inferno. Many of those assisting were visibly shocked at the lack of any official emergency operation, complaining they had worked for days providing food, clothes and shelter, with no assistance from the authorities.

The inaction of the RBKC meant that hundreds of people made homeless by the fire, including those who lived in rented social housing adjacent to Grenfell—told to vacate their homes on safety grounds—were not provided with any proper alternative accommodation. Instead many were dumped at the nearby “official rescue centre”—Westway Sport and Fitness Centre. Here they were forced to sleep on the sports hall floor, on rubber mats with sleeping bags and makeshift pillows.

Seeing their plight, many Londoners offered survivors rooms in their houses and access to food, drinks and shower facilities.

Rather than provide decent accommodation for the victims and demand government step in to ensure it, RBKC has sent around 250 of those affected by the fire to stay temporarily in dingy hotels all over the capital.

Speaking to ITV’s Peston on Sunday show, West London film producer Nisha Parti, who has been helping victims of the fire, said, “Victims were going to hotels, arriving at hotels, with no one from the council to greet them, to check them in, to give them clothes and food.” Parti revealed that Kensington and Chelsea council were giving just £10 a day to the survivors on arrival at the hotels, an amount even lower than the daily amount allotted in welfare payments to the unemployed. This barely allowed its destitute recipients to pay for a sandwich and a beverage.

Reports also emerged that RBKC council were sending Grenfell and nearby residents into accommodation miles away from London. The council denied claims that people have been sent outside of central London.

This however is contradicted by accounts, including the detailed statement given by one survivor, who lived in a flat on Grenfell’s 17th floor and who managed to escape from the blaze with his aunt.

In a video widely shared on social media, the young man explained that, “Another guy, they took him out of the hotel [the council originally sent him to] and they sent him to Preston...They [the council] are putting pressure on people that if you don’t accept their offer [of accommodation] you are making yourself intentionally homeless.”

He also revealed that one of his neighbours—whose wife had died in the fire and who “was in a terrible place right now and losing it”—was “put in an old people’s home. He’s not going to get rehoused now. That’s it.”

He continued, “They are doing some disgusting things. They are cutting corners and we are already scared about what’s going to happen to us.”

By announcing the fund, May was acknowledging the scale of opposition that was developing against her pro-austerity government and the ruling elite, fuelled by the blatant refusal of the government and the Conservative-run local authority to assist survivors. May said, “Frankly, the support on the ground for families who needed help or basic information in the initial hours after this appalling disaster was not good enough.”

Yet even as she was forced to state this, after denying it for days, May would not guarantee those made homeless would be rehoused in the borough, only that “as far as possible” they would be placed “within the borough or neighbouring boroughs. Some people may actually want to go to another part of London.”

Shortly after May’s statement, furious local residents descended on Kensington Town Hall to demand “Justice for Grenfell” and that those suffering be afforded basic, civilised treatment. Thousands more participated in a demonstration that marched through central London.

The Labour MP for Kensington, Emma Dent Coad, told the BBC’s Sunday Politics show, “We are still hearing stories of people not being allocated properly. There’s one woman this morning and her child, they have been moved three times since Wednesday into different accommodation.”

On Tuesday evening, almost a week after the fire, Sky News reported that a number of survivors were still sleeping in the Westway Centre. They feared, it reported, that if they went elsewhere council officials would wash their hands of them entirely and prevent them from being rehoused in the borough. Sky reported that it had been told that a number of people were sleeping in cars and even in parks since the fire and had received no assistance.

The callous disregard for human suffering by the powers that be and the humiliating treatment that survivors have been subjected to over the past week is an object lesson in the real priorities of the ruling elite.

The terrible, entirely preventable, catastrophe unleashed on the Grenfell residents and the working-class community around it reveals the true face of a society in which a sated layer of multi-millionaires and billionaires wallow in unimaginable wealth and privilege while working people are condemned to live in death traps.

Weakened May government sets out plans for hard UK exit from the European Union

Julie Hyland

Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May set out her government’s legislative agenda yesterday in the Queen’s Speech. It is widely acknowledged to be her first and last one.

May called a snap general election in June, fully two years ahead of schedule, hoping to use the crisis in the Labour Party to secure a significant increase in her government’s narrow 17-seat majority. This was so as to force through policies of greater militarism and austerity, especially in the wake of last year’s vote for Britain to leave the European Union (EU).

Instead, popular disaffection over seven years of government spending cuts, saw her government reduced to a minority—seven seats short of the 326 required.

It is the first time in more than 40 years that a legislative programme has been set out by a minority government. The last was in 1974 when the then Conservative Premier Edward Heath also called a snap election, only to lose it to a Labour minority. In June’s election, although Labour increased its number of seats to 262, it does not have enough to govern without support from the Liberal Democrats, Scottish National Party and others. Even then, it would still fall short of an absolute majority.

May had hoped to get a confidence and supply agreement with the 10 MPs from the ultra-right Northern Irish Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). This would mean the DUP backing May on key votes, crucially in preventing it being brought down by motions of no confidence. If May were to lose such a motion, or her legislative programme is voted down next week, the path would be cleared for Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn to form an alternative administration.

Eleven days ago, the government claimed it had reached agreement with the DUP but was forced to backtrack. Senior DUP sources complained they were being shown a lack of respect. This is in reference to criticisms of the party’s hostility to gay marriage and abortion, amongst other democratic rights.

Sinn Fein and others have warned that any Tory/DUP deal would undermine the rigorous impartiality required of the British government under the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. If any agreement is reached, it will face a legal challenge in the High Court on the grounds that it breaches the power-sharing arrangements.

Neither the threat of renewed conflict, nor the DUP’s ties to loyalist paramilitary organisations, is what caused the stalemate, however. According to reports, May is holding out against DUP demands for an increase in public spending in Northern Ireland, and cuts in corporation tax, which the government is concerned would ignite similar demands across the UK.

The state opening of parliament underscored the degree to which the prime minister herself is, to all intents and purposes, the political equivalent of a human shield. Her many opponents in the Tory party are keeping her in position only so long as it enables them to regroup and, especially, implement their demands for a hard Brexit.

In the period since May called the election, the UK has seen three terror attacks—in Manchester and London—and the terrible blaze at Grenfell Tower, in west London that killed at least 79 people.

Both have laid bare, in the most devastating way, the human cost of the foreign and domestic policy pursued by successive governments.

The war on terror has been used to dismantle democratic rights, while the security and intelligence agencies have cultivated a network of Islamic extremists that are allowed to operate without hindrance because of their use-value in British imperialism’s regime-change operations in the Middle East.

Likewise, the Grenfell Tower inferno—in which the lives of working class people were knowingly jeopardised in the interests of cost cutting—stands as a grisly monument to the Thatcherite neo-liberal agenda enforced by the Tories, Labour and Liberal Democrats alike over the last four decades.

May had pledged to respond with humility and resolve to the message the electorate sent. She did nothing of the sort.

While the government has postponed its most contentious plans—such as junking free school lunches and forcing the elderly to agree to the sale of their homes in return for social care—there was no commitment to end austerity, or even to ease the freeze on public sector pay and welfare benefits.

The real attitude to working people was shown by the response to Grenfell Tower. While apologising for the failure of the state, local and national, to help people when they needed it most, May made no acknowledgement that it was the collusion between government policy and business interests that turned the high-rise into a death trap.

Nor was there any guarantee as regards future housing and compensation for all those affected, much less legal action against those responsible. All that was forthcoming was the pledge for a public inquiry that will produce yet another cover-up and the introduction of an independent public advocate, who will act for bereaved families after a public disaster—a sign that the ruling elite are fully reconciled to another such horror.

Most of the legislation outlined centred on the bourgeoisie’s main preoccupation—Brexit. Negotiations on the terms of Britain’s exit from the EU began on Monday. Having pledged to win a massive mandate that would force the EU powers to accept all of its demands, the government is now so weakened that Brexit Secretary David Davis had to carry out a u-turn and accept the EU timetable in which the terms of the divorce must be agreed before discussions on future trade terms commence.

A section of the Tory Party, represented by Chancellor Philip Hammond, want a softer Brexit, based around a comprehensive trade agreement, a transitional deal for when negotiations end in 2019, and an option to maintain open borders. Hammond had outlined this policy in his annual Mansion House speech Monday, which was backed by Bank of England chief Mark Carney and the Institute of Directors.

Their stance represents significant sections of the City of London and big business that fear being cut out of EU markets. Automakers have said the government must keep the UK in the EU single market and customs union for at least five years or risk permanent damage to the industry.

May’s election debacle, however, has left her and the Tory Party even more beholden to its most extreme pro-Brexit wing, and right-wing billionaire media owners, such as Rupert Murdoch.

At the centre of the speech, and overshadowing everything, was the Great Repeal Bill. This is the largest legislative programme undertaken by a government and is intended to transfer existing EU laws and regulations—of which there are more than 19,000—into UK law when Brexit is finalised. Described as the largest power-grab by a government in history, it provides for the use of secondary legislation—so-called Henry VIII clauses—which will enable ministers and civil servants to decide which aspects of EU legislation to keep or discard without recourse to parliament.

In addition, separate customs and trade bills, and an immigration bill are to be brought forward. These indicate that May hopes to stick to her pledge to remove Britain from the single market and the customs union, and to overturn free movement.

To this end, it was announced that the Queen’s Speech will not take place next year, as this parliamentary session will be extended for two years rather than one. This is because May does not expect to be able to get another legislative programme through.

Labour and the Liberal Democrats are to table amendments to the speech, which will be voted on next week. On Wednesday morning, shadow chancellor John McDonnell said the Tories had no right to govern and that in the interest of the country, they should stand down.

Corbyn was more circumspect in parliament, presenting himself as a responsible Labour leader and prime minister-in-waiting. Claiming that austerity is a choice, he said a Labour government would ask big business and the rich to pay a little more. On anti-terror measures, he confined himself to criticisms of cuts in police numbers. No mention was made of the danger of war, while he insisted that immigration policy must be decided by what the economy needs.

In the 2016 Brexit referendum, Corbyn campaigned for a Remain vote. In the General Election, however, he said Labour accepted the Leave vote and would not seek to overturn it.

Asked in parliament to clarify the party’s position, Corbyn said Labour would now fight for tariff-free access to the single market—an attempt to square the circle.

But a significant section of the Parliamentary Labour Party—led by many of the Blairites that have led the putsch attempts against Corbyn’s leadership—are demanding he end such ambiguities and commit to remaining in the single market.

A letter in the Guardian Tuesday was signed by 51 Labour MPs, including Blairite coup plotters Chuka Umunna, Liz Kendall, Ben Bradshaw and Wes Streeting, under the heading, “As Labour politicians, we reject a hard-right Brexit, and defend the single market.”

In a veiled threat, it set out the price of Corbyn’s continued leadership. As an ambitious and confident alternative government—with Corbyn at the helm, it read, Labour should fight unambiguously for membership of the single market.

Amazon’s purchase of Whole Foods and the case for public ownership

Eric London

On June 16, Amazon announced a bid to purchase US grocery giant Whole Foods for $13.7 billion. The deal, which is expected to close later this year, sent Amazon’s shares soaring and netted $2.88 billion for CEO Jeff Bezos in a single day.

The Whole Foods purchase gives Amazon a foothold in the $800 billion grocery industry and ownership of over 460 grocery stores across the US, Canada and Great Britain. The expansion is an expression of the unprecedented concentration of economic power among a handful of corporations that dominate the world capitalist economy.

The Wall Street Journal reported on June 17 that Amazon’s purchase “is just the most extreme example of a larger, more consequential phenomenon”—the fact that many businesses across industries “are going to get bought or bulldozed and power and wealth will be concentrated in the hands of a few companies in a way not seen since the Gilded Age… We’re going to have to ask ourselves, as a country and as a civilization, just how much power we’re comfortable having consolidated in the hands of so few businesses.”

The move foretells a ruthless assault on the jobs, wages and working conditions of Whole Foods workers, which will mark a new stage in the assault on all retail service workers. Bloomberg News noted that Amazon “wants fewer employees in each [Whole Foods] store, with those who remain providing product expertise, rather than performing mundane tasks.” Amazon workers’ horror stories of super-exploitation will give Whole Foods workers an idea of what they can expect.

Amazon has not only grown to become the largest online retailer, it increasingly owns the infrastructure of the marketplace, netting $1 out of every $2 spent online. Its algorithms conduct the flow of billions of dollars of products across the world each day. It has used its domination of the online market as a springboard into other industries, leveraging its economic clout to drive less powerful companies out of business by artificially lowering prices and then sweeping up market share.

Lina Khah wrote in a 2017 Yale Law Journal in regard to Amazon’s growing monopoly, that “in addition to being a retailer, Amazon is a marketing platform, a delivery and logistics network, a payment service, a credit lender, an auction house, a major book publisher, a producer of television and films, a fashion designer, a hardware manufacturer, and a leading provider of cloud server space and computing power. For the most part, Amazon has expanded into these areas by acquiring existing firms.”

Amazon’s cloud data storage service, for example, controls 33 percent of total market share, more than Microsoft, IBM and Google combined. Its clients include leading corporations and the Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency and Department of Defense.

The company controls a significant portion of the logistical veins of international distribution, linking together roughly 400,000 warehouse workers at hundreds of fulfillment centers spread across five continents. Amazon commands a fleet of trucks, freighters, drones and airplanes, plus a small army of Uber-like flex delivery drivers who transport goods to over 100 countries.

Amazon’s growing dominance is part of a broader concentration of power across all industries. The share of GDP produced by America’s largest 100 corporations rose from 33 percent in 1994 to 46 percent in 2013. The five largest American banks now account for 45 percent of total banking assets, nearly double from 25 percent in 2000.

Each industry—airlines, telecommunications, health care, computers, pharmaceuticals, etc.—is dominated by a smaller and smaller number of corporations. This is the product of deliberate policies enacted by the Democratic and Republican Parties gutting corporate regulations and pulling the teeth from already meager anti-trust laws from the early and mid-20th century.

As a result, mega corporations are linked by a common network of owners concentrated in the financial industry. A small number of Wall Street firms own most of Amazon and Whole Foods, with institutional shareholders owning 62 percent and 93 percent, respectively. Three financial companies—BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street—are among the largest institutional shareholders of both Amazon and Whole Foods.

When their ownership stakes are combined, these three financial institutions represent the largest shareholder of 1,662 of the 3,900 publicly traded US corporations, employing over 23 million people and with a market capitalization almost equal to the GDP of the United States.

The domination of the banks and monopolies fuels competition among corporations to intensify the extraction of surplus labor value from their workforces, drastically expanding social inequality.

One 2017 study by two academics from Colombia University and the University of Girona in Spain, titled “Finance and the Global Decline of the Labour Share,” found that up to 57 percent of labor’s declining share of world income is explained by the growing domination of finance capital over the world economy, further enriching the financial oligarchy. According to US data from a 2016 report by economists Saez, Picketty and Zucman, 89 percent of all corporate equities are owned by the wealthiest 10 percent of the population.

Amazon’s vast international operation testifies to another subterranean process taking place in the world economy. The organization of global supply lines, spurred by advancements in the areas of communication, transportation and engineering, are transforming social relations, linking the international working class in different industries together in the process of production like never before.

The conditions for bringing the world economy into harmony with the needs of the human race are already present. But under capitalism, these progressive tendencies are turned against the working class and society as a whole. The advances in technology and the global integration of production become weapons in the hands of the capitalist class to destroy jobs and living standards for the broad masses of people, while the conflict between the global character of economic life and the nation-state system of capitalism erupts in the form of militarism and war.

What is required is the socialist transformation of the world economy, expropriating the wealth of corporations like Amazon and turning them from for-profit exploitative giants into international public services, organized and directed democratically by the workers themselves.

Amazon’s international logistics network is a prime example. Instead of enriching Amazon shareholders and facilitating the exploitation of the working class, the precision and rationality of Amazon’s supply lines could be used to rationally organize the distribution of goods across the world, from each region according to its ability, to each region according to its need, on a real-time basis.

Amazon’s vast data troves and its Echo device could be used to detect emergencies, disasters or areas of general social need. At the click of a button, workers could direct the distribution of medical equipment, building materials, clean water and food from all corners of the world. Thousands of schools, libraries, museums, hospitals, theaters, water treatment facilities and parks could be built. Geographic limitations would no longer determine the availability of resources or the cultural level of the inhabitants.

In May, the International Committee of the Fourth International launched the International Amazon Workers Voice, an online publication aimed at reporting on the struggles of hundreds of thousands of Amazon workers and providing a political strategy based on the understanding that the fight against this international behemoth requires an internationally unified response. The IAWV has been met with overwhelming enthusiasm from workers in dozens of countries, thousands of whom follow the IAWV on Facebook.

The growing opposition to the company dictatorship among Amazon workers reflects the response of the working class to social inequality and the concentration of wealth and power among a handful of banks and corporations.

To defend their rights, workers must establish their own factory committees, based on the principle of the class struggle and free from the influence of the company, the nationalist and pro-capitalist trade unions, and the parties of the ruling class. The aim of these committees will be to link up with their class brothers and sisters around the world in a united international fight. This must be connected to a political struggle of the entire working class to end the dictatorship of the giant banks and corporations and establish a society based on social need, not private profit.

India-US: Convergences and Divergences

Chintamani Mahapatra

When Narendra Modi won the landslide victory in 2014 general election, eyebrows were raised in concerned circles about the future of India’s relations with the US. The UPA II government had already witnessed the bottom low in the relationship with the US in the wake of a dysfunctional economic policy, rampant corruption allegations and a diplomatic row sparked by the arrest of an Indian diplomat by the New York police.

Many were watching the Modi wave during bitter election campaigns and some foreign leaders, including those from Europe, had already begun to engage with Modi as the prospective prime minister. But Washington was still very cold towards him. The then Barack Obama administration in the US was not in a hurry to politically engage a man to whom they had denied a visa consecutively for nine years. 

Modi-Obama: Expanding the India-US Strategic Partnership

The scenario completely changed when Modi emerged as the leader who would rule India for at least the next five years. Several foreign policy analysts wondered whether Prime Minister Modi would be interested in seriously engaging the US. However, he clearly demonstrated that he thinks out of the box, takes bold steps and springs surprises, when he promptly accepted the invitation to visit the US extended by President Obama during their congratulatory conversations. 

Modi’s first visit to the US as India's prime minister was a grand success. In one stroke he was able to undo the damage caused to the relationship and restored the momentum of an India-US strategic partnership. His address to a huge gathering of Indian Americans in New York, penning of an article in the Wall Street Journal to woo corporate America, one-on-one conversations with a host of CEOs, summit meeting with President Obama, and the release of a joint statement, titled “Chalein Saath Saath” (Lets walk together) had a magical effect in the bilateral relationship. All stalled dialogues, including ones related to energy, defence, trade and investment, resumed in the relationship.

The two governments set an ambitious goal to elevate bilateral trade to the level of US$500 billion, even as defence trade spectacularly picked up and India was able to purchase several high-tech weaponries. Military exercises expanded, both in number and sophistication. The two countries displayed their resolve to take defence and security ties to newer heights by seeking joint research, co-development and co-production of defence items in India.  

Prime Minister Modi and President Obama met several times at various international forums and the chemistry between the two leaders became exemplary. This was certain to push the momentum of the cooperative relationship. 

The two countries have openly displayed their determination to combat international terrorism, particularly groups like the Islamic State (IS) and the Pakistan-backed terrorist outfits. More significantly, the two countries discussed China’s muscle flexing; while this might have surely annoyed the Chinese government, it spoke volumes about the new assertiveness in India’s foreign policy. And although India and the United States are not interested in forging an alliance against China or in taking measures that would appear to be for the containment of China, they were no longer reticent in speaking against developments that would adversely affect the freedom of navigation and provisions of United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is to be credited for yet another diplomatic innovation in India-US relations - President Obama was invited to be the Chief Guest at India’s Republic Day celebration in January 2015. Never before had an Indian Prime Minister thought of inviting an American president to this function, albeit visitors from Pakistan and even China  have had this opportunity in past. Even though, this was a symbolic gesture, its significance cannot be underestimated in the field of diplomacy. 

One of the key developments during the Modi-Obama summit in January 2015 was the release of a Delhi Declaration of Friendship and a Joint Strategic Vision for the Asia-Pacific and the Indian Ocean Region, elevating the geographical space of India-US strategic partnership. Such comprehensive defence and security cooperation and the expansion of the geographical areas for potential bilateral cooperation were the achievements of the Modi government. 

Modi-Trump: Challenges and Prospects

The election of Donald Trump as the 45th US president has brought new challenges to the Modi government. The Indian American community in the US played an important role during the 2016 presidential election campaign. Candidate Trump was rarely critical of India, as compared to his critical remarks on China and Pakistan and a host of other countries. Once Trump won the election, the Modi government showed no complacency in seeking to build bridges with the new occupant in the White House. 

India's National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar promptly touched bases with their counterparts and other relevant officials to keep the strategic partnership, trade and investment ties on track. Several of the the Trump administration’s policies – including his economic policy, guided by the “America First” principle, social policy to restrict immigration, transactional strategic approach towards allies and partners, initiatives to raise visa fees for foreign workers, reduction/elimination of tax incentives to companies hiring foreign workers and the decision to walk away from the Paris Climate Accord - pose enormous challenges to the Modi government. 

Despite the hurdles that these developments will bring to the bilateral relationship, the fundamentals of India-US strategic partnership are sound and durable. Both leaders, Trump and Modi, consider terrorism as the principal threat to their national security as well as to global peace and stability. Moreover, China’s assertiveness in the South China Sea and an attempt to build a new colonial empire through the One Belt, One Road initiative have alerted India and the US to deal with it through a coordinated approach without resorting to unmanageable conflict. Significantly, the bipartisan consensus in the US is in favor of strengthening the strategic partnership with India and the national political consensus in India also favors strong ties with the US. Thus there may be periodic turbulence between India and the US on certain issues, but the new paradigm of their bilateral relations in the post-Cold War and terrorism-ridden scenario is not going to face any existential threat.