Sino–India dispute: how far can it go?

Amir Mohammad Sayem

In September 11, both India and China optimistically agreed to reduce tensions, caused by China’s occupation of Indian lands, with a joint statement in Moscow made by the foreign ministers of respective parties on the need to achieve results through negotiations and military de-escalation. In actual fact, the recent Sino-India border clashes, which started between the two Asian nuclear armed rivals in May 2020, has till now led to deaths of 20+ Indian soldiers and some unknown number of Chinese counterparts. After heavy clashes in the Galwan Valley of the western Himalayas, two countries gathered military strengths in the respective bordering areas raising a cause of concern in the region and beyond.

But a crucial question remains on whether the joint declaration can end clashes or tensions can lead to a war between the countries — and beyond. It is unsurprising that conflicts between the countries, which share the world’s longest unmarked border of several thousand kilometers, are not new; both fought a large-scale war in 1962 through which China occupied some of Indian territories — especially from India ruled Jammu and Kashmir — that is now known as Aksai Chin. Infrequent small-scale clashes occurred for several times since then, although increased in the last decade, such as the 21-day stand-off in the Daulat Beg Oldie sector in eastern Ladakh in 2013, 16-day stand-off in the Chumar sector of Ladakh in 2014, and 73-day tense stand-off in the Doklam region of Bhutan.

Possibility of further conflicts exists because of not only history of conflicts between the powers but also other reasons including existence of ultra-nationalism, China’s assertive means of progression — regionally and globally — and rising geo-political competition between the two Asian powers and between China and some other countries including the USA. In fact, China continued economic development and improved military strengths since the 1970s almost silently, but superbly rising economic power with the 2013 BRI initiative, rendered as the new version of the historic Silk Road, made China forward moving with assertive foreign policy to gain more control in Asia and beyond. Most probably, China will continue assertive foreign policy, noticeably enhanced during the pandemic, for materializing its forward-moving national goals in economic, political and other terms.

On the contrary, India’s rising nationalism and increased efforts to exert greater regional control, coupled with the USA’s China containment policy and some other recent developments in the region can motivate India to continue its rivalry. The QUAD — consisting of the USA, India, Japan and Australia — and several bilateral defense agreements of India with the USA in 2016 and 2020 including the Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement are to be specially noted here. These developments may not only motivate India to continue its efforts to becoming a regional hegemony in Asia but also compel China to deter these for its planned progression and regional and global hegemony. Indeed, China’s strengthening of military power in the South China Sea against the US navy presence and increased efforts to making military ties with countries neighbouring India clearly reflects such intention.

A significant mistake of anyone can, in my opinion, lead to a large-scale war between the countries with the further possibility of involvement of other powers at both sides — alternatively, India and its allied countries versus China and its allies — at the highest possible scenario. In that case, exchange of the most destructive weapons like nuclear, which can result in unprecedented devastation not only in the region but also beyond in terms of number of deaths, economic situations and some other terms, is not unlikely altogether. At the lowest possible scenario, on the other hand, small-scale conflicts may occur between India and China in the bordering areas, resulting in deaths of a small number of soldiers and, possibly, civilians of both sides, along with some other impacts.

But a large-scale war between the two giant Asian rivals is less probable, at least at this moment, even though its chance remains in the future. In fact, there are many deterrents from both sides that can cancel out such a possibility. Most of all, enormous economic impacts driven by the pandemic and the necessity of recovery from damages can put significant barriers; besides, both countries have more than 90 billion US dollars yearly bilateral trade that will be lost, given that any large-scale war occurs. Not less important is China and India are rising — the latter more rapidly though — in economic and other terms. No country, I think, may now take the risk of a massive war, a decisive setback to further progression of both.

In addition to deterrents between India and China, rising tensions in the South China Sea especially between china and the USA may serve as a major deterrent to any large-scale war between India and China, despite the fact that this simultaneously can provoke a large-scale war in the entire region and beyond if mishandled. While India may embrace South China Sea tension because of pressure it exerts upon its regional rival, China sees it as a challenge to its planned development. Additionally, China may not see war at two fronts — India and South China Sea — as beneficial and practical option. Consequently, China can be less interested in getting engaged with a large-scale war against India soon, unless it is significantly attacked by the latter, which now seems unwilling too.

Yet, small-scale Indo-China conflicts or border clashes may not be discarded in total. In fact, relations between the two countries are seriously hostile because of occupation of India’s land by China and many other reasons noted above that may not be mended significantly, even if both parties want. The Line of Actual Control between the countries is a potential hotbed of clashes owing to increased presence of military forces. Not less important is the fact that new form of cold-war which has in the mean time started between the USA and China — two global powers — may give less scope of improving confident relations between the two Asian rivals  and avoiding tensions altogether in the days ahead.

It is undeniable that Indo-China war is undesired by reason of its potential catastrophic impacts, not only in the region but also beyond. Under such a context, both India and China has some roles to play to end every possibility of war with the resolution of bilateral problems on the basis of negotiations. Given that geo-politics is unavoidable, it is at least desired that all parties engaged with the rising South China Sea tensions avert any large-scale war in the region. In my opinion, the world may not be able to recover from losses if any massive war occurs between India and China, along with their allied countries.

UAE and Israeli settlers find common ground in Jerusalem

James M. Dorsey

Weakened by Joe Biden’s electoral defeat of US President Donald J. Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu risks being caught between a rock and a hard place as Jordan, the Palestine Authority and the United Arab Emirates manoeuvre for control of what is to Jews the Temple Mount and to Muslims the Haram ash-Sharif, the third most holy site in Islam.

The rivalry for control of Jerusalem’s most sensitive, emotive, contested, and potentially explosive place is occurring against the backdrop of a parallel and interlinked run-up to a competition for the succession of Mahmoud Abbas, the frail 84-year old Palestinian president.

The Jerusalem site has been administered since Israel conquered East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war by the Jordanian and Palestinian-controlled Supreme Muslim Council.

Rivalry for the religious control of the site that hosts the Al Aqsa Mosque and is where the First Jewish Temple was built by King Solomon in 957 BC involves multiple risks for Mr. Netanyahu.

Mr. Netanyahu’s inclination to back attempts by the UAE with Saudi Arabia, home to Mecca and Medina, Islam’s holiest cities, in the background, to muscle their way into the administration of the Haram ash-Sharif could complicate relations with Jordan and widen differences with the Palestine Authority.

The UAE enhanced its ability to manoeuvre by establishing diplomatic relations with Israel and rushing to forge closer ties to the country’s political, security and economic elites.

In a twist of irony, the UAE finds common ground with the Israeli settler movement and the Jewish far-right in wanting to weaken Jordanian-Palestinian control of the Haram ash-Sharif and counter Turkish efforts to stoke Palestinian nationalist and religious sentiment. The settlers and the far-right are calling for internationalization of the administration of the Haram ash-Sharif, which plays into the UAE’s hands.

“Ironically, it may be the case that calls for just such an arrangement may come from Muslim citizens of countries that have normalized their ties with Israel and find it offensive that a small group of Palestinians are attempting to ban them from visiting one of their holiest sites,” said Josiah Rotenberg, a member of the Board of Governors of the Middle East Forum, a Philadelphia-based right-wing think tank.

The UAE’s recognition of Israel and willingness to engage not only with businesses located in Israel’s pre-1967 borders but also those headquartered in Israeli settlements on the occupied West Bank and invest in a technology park in East Jerusalem has fueled a war of words with the Palestinians and sparked incidents with Emirati visitors to the Haram ash-Sharif.

“Most of the citizens of Israel, myself included, continue to… demand that Prime Minister Netanyahu apply full sovereignty to Judea and Samaria,” said settlement leader Yossi Dagan after heading a settlers’ delegation on a visit to Dubai to discuss business opportunities. Mr. Dagan was using the biblical name of the West Bank.

The visit reinforced Palestinian assertions that the creation of diplomatic ties between Israel and Arab states prior to a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would reinforce Israeli occupation rather than open the door to the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

The “Israeli-Emirati deal raises the concern and fear within the Jordanian Awqaf and among Palestinians, because it aims to give the UAE a new role inside al-Aqsa,” said former Palestinian minister of Jerusalem affairs Khaled Abu Arafa, referring to the Supreme Muslim Council.

Muhammad Hussein, the grand mufti of Jerusalem, didn’t need Mr. Dagan’s statement to come to that conclusion.

Resigning in protest from an Emirati clerical group established to project the UAE as a beacon of moderate Islam immediately after the announcement of UAE-Israel relations, Mr. Hussein banned Muslims from the Emirates from visiting and praying at Al-Aqsa Mosque.

An Emirati business delegation visiting Israel last month was verbally assaulted and told to go home by Palestinian worshippers when they went to pray at the mosque.

Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shatiyyeh scolded the Emiratis, saying that “one ought to enter the gates of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque by way of its owners, rather than through the gates of the occupation.”

Responding on Twitter, Laith al-Awadhi, an Emirati national, retorted: “We will visit Al-Aqsa because it does not belong to you, it belongs to all Muslims.”

Saudi lawyer and writer Abdel Rahman al-Lahim chipped in arguing that “it is very important for the Emiratis and Bahrainis to discuss with Israel ways of liberating Al-Aqsa Mosque from Palestinian thugs in order to protect visitors from Palestinian thuggery.”

Mr. Abbas, the Palestinian president, has slowed down a reconciliation between his Fatah movement and Hamas, the Islamist group that controls the Gaza Strip, in anticipation of a more empathetic policy by an incoming Biden administration.

Mr. Abbas broke off relations with the United States after Mr. Trump produced an Israeli-Palestinian peace plan that endorsed annexation, recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and cut off funding for the Palestinians.

Palestinian officials suspect the UAE, backed by Israel, of positioning Mohammed Dahlan, an Abu Dhabi-based former Palestinian security chief with close ties to Emirati Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed as well as US officials, as a potential successor to Mr. Abbas.

Mr. Abbas could be disappointed by the degree to which a Biden administration may reverse Mr. Trump’s policy and find that it may not oppose broadening the administration of the Haram ash-Sharif.

In an interview with The Times of Israel, Anthony (Tony) Blinken, Mr. Biden’s top foreign policy advisor and a former senior official under President Barak Obama, signaled that Mr. Biden would, in contrast to Mr. Trump, oppose Israeli efforts to annex parts of the West Bank and could adopt a more critical attitude towards expansion of existing Israeli settlements.

It would likely be a position endorsed by the UAE despite the Emirates’ engagement with the settlers.

Mr. Blinken insisted that a two-state solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was the “only way to ensure Israel’s future as a Jewish and democratic state and also to fulfil the Palestinian right to a state of their own.”

With both Israel and the Palestinians “far from a place where they’re ready to engage on negotiations or final status talks” Mr. Blinken said that a Biden administration would seek to ensure that “neither side takes additional unilateral steps that make the prospect of two states even more distant or closing it entirely.”

The Biden administration could well see broadening of the governance of Haram ash-Sharif as one way of achieving that goal.

Organic Farmers Need Support and Linkages to a Fair Market

Bharat Dogra

There is worldwide realization that food system has been  becoming less safe and healthy. This is to a large extent because of the use of excessive  chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides. Some of the inputs used in fact have been found to be so poisonous and harmful that it is a very sad surprise how their use in food and farming systems ever got authorized.

After second world war ended some of the  weapon factories found a new diversion in chemical fertilizers and chemical pesticides and this is how a highly harmful trend started in the food and farming system of the world. While the world has incurred truly massive health and ecological costs of this, instead of taking remedial actions the giant corporations trying to dominate world food system are moving fast in the direction of even more hazards in the form of GM foods and moving away from naturally grown foods in various ways towards industrial foods grown with a fearful cocktail of industrial chemicals and other inputs.

The entire effort is for profits and dominance, but is sought to be covered up , with the help of peddler ‘experts’, with a lot of high-sounding talk and objectives. If these experts have their way, hardly any natural, healthy, wholesome food will be left in a dystopian future.

To counter this, small farmer based farming using eco-friendly, organic methods to produce safe and healthy farming is needed. In conditions of developing countries like India, there is no room for expensive certification procedures which turn even organic farming into expensive farming which can be controlled by corporate interests. Here we need very low-cost and very self-reliant organic farming based on making best use of local resources.

While it is necessary to give up chemical fertilizers, pesticides, weedicides etc., it is equally important to emphasize that very careful nurturing of farms is needed, all the while learning from nature and natural processes. Good soil and water/moisture conservation practices are needed.

As a new generation of farmers has grown up which has seen only chemical-intensive farming in several parts of the country, sustained organic farming campaigns are needed. Even in areas where chemical-intensive farming has not spread much, it is being promoted as a model of progress, so here too to break this myth organic farming campaign is needed. In addition campaigns to protect diversity of  traditional seeds are needed as these seeds are certainly more important from the point of view of organic farming.

In addition efforts to link organic farmers with consumers  in cities who are keen to buy their food crops at a fair price are also needed. Certain identified villages of organic farmers can be linked to certain urban colonies where they have good support for selling their produce without any middlemen and without any curbs. Cottage-scale food processing which can add value to organic food crops is also much needed.

Sahbhagi Vikash Abhiyan in Odisha has encouraged organic farmers in various ways  while also setting up cottage scale rural food-processing units to add value. Save the Seeds Movement in Uttarakhand has worked for several years for saving traditional seeds and mixed farming systems. Alliance for Sustainable and Holistic  Agriculture or ASHA has worked consistently for protecting and promoting organic farming and for advancing the common interests and concerns of its members all over the country.

A program which has tried to combine these various efforts in several states of India is called Bhoomi Ka. Supported by Welthungerhilfe and involving several social and environmental activists, this program has reached out to many farmers for promoting organic farming, also organizing training programs for this. When such initiatives progress, community organizations and/or farmer producer organizations are formed to take forward the work . At the same time efforts are made to forge links with consumers in cities and to facilitate the inter-action of farmers and consumers. Safe and healthy food issues are also introduced in educational work.  Campaigns for safe food also contribute to improving the market prospects of organic farmers.

While all such efforts are welcome, at present their strength is much less compared to the powerful big business interests who are working against the interests of eco-friendly farming and safe, healthy food. Hence much bigger campaigns are needed to take organic farming forward in highly self-reliant and very low-cost ways so that healthy food produced in eco-friendly ways also becomes more accessible for all.

If such campaigns can convince governments to be more supportive, then a substantial share of the organic food crops grown in a village can be purchased by the government at a fair price for allocation to nutrition programs and ration shops of the same village.

Future of American Democracy: On Inequality, Polarization and Violence

Ramzy Baroud

In January 2017, the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU)’s Democracy Index downgraded the state of democracy in the United States from “full democracy” to “flawed democracy”.

The demotion of a country that has constantly prided itself, not only on being democratic but also on championing democracy throughout the world, took many by surprise. Some US pundits challenged the findings altogether.

However, judging by events that have transpired since, the accuracy of the EIU Index continues to demonstrate itself in the everyday reality of American politics: the extreme political and cultural polarization; growing influence of armed militias, police violence; mistreatment of undocumented immigrants, including children; marginalization of the country’s minorities in mainstream politics and so on.

The EIU’s Democracy Index has, finally, exposed the deteriorating state of democracy in the US because it is based on 60 different indicators which, aside from traditional categories – i.e. the function of government – also include other indicators such as gender equality, civil liberties and political culture.

Judging by the number, diversity and depth of the above indicators, it is safe to assume that the outcome of the US general elections this November will not have an immediate bearing on the state of American democracy. On the contrary, the outcome is likely to further fragment an already divided society and continue to turn the country’s state-run institutions – including the Supreme Court – into a battleground for political and ideological alliances.

While the buzzword throughout the election campaigns has been ‘saving American democracy’, the state of democracy in the US is likely to worsen in the foreseeable future. This is because America’s ruling elites, whether Republicans or Democrats, refuse to acknowledge the actual ailments that have afflicted American political culture for many years.

Sadly, when the campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders, former Democratic presidential nominee, insisted that massive structural adjustments were necessary at every level of government, he was dismissed by the Democratic establishment as ‘unrealistic’, and altogether ‘unelectable’.

Sanders was, of course, right, because the crisis in American democracy was not initiated by the election of Donald Trump in 2016. The latter event was a mere symptom of a larger, protracted problem.

These are some of the major issues that are unlikely to be effortlessly resolved by the outcome of the elections, thus will continue to downgrade the state of democracy in the US.

The Inequality Gap: Income inequality, which is the source of socio-political strife, is one of the US’ major challenges, spanning over 50 years. Inequality, now compounded with the COVID-19 pandemic, is worsening, affecting certain racial groups – African Americans, in particular – and women, more than others.

According to a study conducted by the Pew Research Center in February 2020, “income inequality in the US is the highest of all the G7 nations,” a major concern for 78 percent of Democrats and 41 percent of Republicans.

Political Polarization: The large gap between the wealthy few and the impoverished many is not the only schism creating a wedge in American society. Political polarization – although, interestingly, it does not always express itself based on rational class demarcation – is a major problem in the US.

Both Republicans and Democrats have succeeded in making their case to enlist the support of certain strata of American society, while doing very little to fulfill the many promises the ruling establishments of these two camps often make during election campaigns.

For example, Republicans use a populist political discourse to reach out to working-class white Americans, promising them economic prosperity; yet, there is no evidence that the lot of working-class white American families has improved under the Trump Administration.

The same is true with Democrats, who have, falsely, long situated themselves as the champions of racial justice and fairer treatment of undocumented immigrants.

Militarization of Society: With socio-economic inequality and political polarization at their worst, trust in democracy and the role of the state to fix a deeply flawed system is waning. This lack of trust in the central government spans hundreds of years, thus, the constant emphasis on the Second Amendment of the US Constitution regarding “the right of the people to keep and bear arms.”

Indeed, US society is one of the most militarized in the world. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), two-thirds of all local terrorism in the US is carried out by right-wing militias, who are now more emboldened and angrier than ever before. According to an October Southern Poverty Law Center report, there are about 180 active anti-government paramilitary groups in the US.

For the first time in many years, talks of another ‘American Civil War’ have become a daily mainstream media discussion.

It would be entirely unrealistic to imagine that democracy in the US will be restored as a result of any given elections. Without a fundamental shift in US politics that confronts the underlying problems behind the socio-economic inequality and political polarization, the future carries yet more fragmentation and, possibly, violence.

The coming weeks and months are critical in determining the future direction of American society. Alas, the current indicators are hardly promising.

Farm Bills: The Great North Indian Famine Enclosure

Vinod Kumar Edachery

With Farm Bills rammed through Parliament, the ethnic majoritarian ‘sarkar’, the deep state and elites have initiated another covert attack to dismantle the subsistence economy of rural India.  Instead of focusing on poverty reduction measures these enactments facilitate the accumulation of profits by the agro industry monopolies. Without Government intervention and support direct income of the peasant farmer is reduced, justifying commercialisation of Indian agriculture with the promise of better prices in the global market.  The demands of the imperial market for export crops will compel the farmers to shift acreage from food crops to non-food crops resulting in an enduring famine.  Half the landmass of India, 52.62% of it being arable land will be transformed into Enclosures for exploitation by Adani, Ambani like monopolies and the much touted contract farming.  Control over farm land, and the right to sell agro products for value gained through the peasant farmer Champaran Andolan of 1917 has now been usurped by the Farm Bills.

The monopolies of the imperial North will now be able to import Indian farmers produce at low price – below the real value of the agriculture produce – reflecting cheap labour.  Due to the low prices the rural cultivator, 85% of them holding less than 2 acres of land will be forced into chronic debt, loss of small holdings to absentee landlords, amidst increasing uncertainty of subsistence.  The Farm Bills are structured to legalise hoarding and speculation ensuring farm produce ends up controlled by the non-agriculturalist moneylenders, and urban merchants.  This new breed of intermediaries between the village, the monopolies and the global market empowered by Farm Laws will continue to accumulate wealth. Correspondingly increasing rural farmers’ poverty which is created by individuals – new intermediaries, monopolies – competitively pursuing their own good.   Resulting in an impoverished population of landless labourers and their families forced to till the soil for ever decreasing wages.  Without Minimum Support Price guarantees, crop insurance, and the perishable nature of farm produce the farmers bargaining power is diminished. Naturally small holdings become uneconomical for the farmer, who unable to invest further, allows the land to waste and is forced to seek employment in the non – agricultural sector. The increasing numbers of rural unemployed becomes a mass colony of exploitable proletariat – referred to by Marx as ‘non-owners of the means of production’ – the distressed segment in the vice like grip of decreasing wages, and reduced social spending policies of the Government of India.

GoI’s reluctance to intervene in the plight of the peasants, farmers ought to be read in conjunction with the World Development Reports.  Since 1999 the World Bank Group has been propagating non-intervention by third world countries and ‘part of the strategy in which its central logic is betrayed, is to deny the poor any alternative, and to create a reserve army of labour…’ (Paul Cammack)  The World Bank diktat ‘to intervene less in industrial and agricultural pricing; deregulate restrictions to entry and exit’ has been complied both in letter and spirit by the pliant Modi regime. The Farm Laws are a testimony to Modi brand desi servitude to the imperial nations of the North – the ‘lakshman rekha’ he dare not cross – replicating the colonial agricultural policies of the British East India Company that will transform India into a food import dependent nation.    Such is the objective of the strategic dispossession of land from the kissan ‘crafted’ by the ethnic despot for finance capital.

While the war rhetoric is ramped up, defence spending increased, army pensions reduced the land – controlled by citizen peasant farmers in the Hindi heartland – is offered on a platter to the agro industry monopolies.  With the majority of defence personnel hailing from the North Indian rural sector, their salaries support their families’ engagement in traditional rural farming.  These ‘workers’ in uniform and their joint family holdings are the targets of dispossession by the indigenous brahmins and Marwari moneylenders for the forces of finance capital.   Kissan and jawan betrayed, the land has been alienated by acts of legislative treason.  Increasing poverty, malnutrition will be the lasting legacy of this perpetual lease ‘crafted’ with bad laws for the imperial monopolies.  Statutes are approved in ‘masked Cov-Indian silence’; without debate but resounding shouts, and claps of the ethnic majority in Parliament.

The Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act, 2020, and the other two enactments evidence the shameless surrender of sovereign policy space by GoI.  These enactments reaffirm a covenant promise to the imperial powers that there will not be any policy shift towards redistribution of wealth –  the abiding disaster of poverty and destitution will pan over India . A poverty landscape is ensured by exempting food items like pulses, cereals, rice and onions from the ambit of the Act.  GoI has declared their non-intervention policy by abstaining from procurement, and dismantling of the public distribution system.  Passing of the Farm Bills grants unfettered freedom for private industry to step into the void and engage in hoarding, and profiteering. The three Farm Bills are a carte blanche for the agro-business monopolies to accumulate profits at the cost of the Indian peasant farmer. The uneven field leaves ‘peasantry at the mercy of powerful private monopsonists, and that too in commodities subject to wild price fluctuations’ (Prof. Patnaik).  Freedom of commerce for hoarders, racketeers and market manipulators – impoverishment, misery and lathis’ for the poor.

The Indian farmer who puts rice, and bread on the table of the elites, would not be able to guarantee their own families’ subsistence.  Indicative of a community level food crisis, leaving children to bear the brunt of lopsided policy prioritisation.  Acreage for food and non-food crops will be linked to the fluctuating demand in the global marketplace, as a result land for subsistence farming is reduced. This village level food scarcity takes India to ‘the top spot in child wasting rate in the world’. The Global Hunger Index further states ‘around 90 per cent of children in India aged between 6 and 23 months don’t even get minimum required food’ ensuring a generation of stunted children.

If undernourishment is a central manifestation of poverty then there is already a famine oozing and destitution spreading over India.  Gandhiji led the Champaran Andolan in 1917 forcing colonial Britain to abolish indigo plantations. The demand of the peasant farmer to retain control over the land, and value for produce was first raised at Champaran and colonial Britain had to abolish anti-farmer laws. These are Famine Bills enacted to facilitate another imperialist conquest to take control of North India, creating an exclusive Enclosure for exploitation of lives, land and generations. While the promise maker Modi feeds peacocks the mass of children born in India united by poverty are forced to wander as orphans. Famine Bills evidence parliamentary dishonesty and treason that demands a verdict in the people’s court.

Timelines:

1917 Champaran Andolan, Bihar – movement established farmers right to control farming in the land, and sale of farm products for value.

1948 Nathuram Godse emerged from the admiring crowd, bowed and shot Gandhiji three times at point-blank range.

2020 Three Famine Bills ceding control of farmers land and rights to the imperial monopolies. The gains of Champaran reversed. Gandhiji killed again in Parliament by the ethnic majority Namaste Baapu !

Herd immunity policy in German schools leads to explosion of coronavirus infections

Marianne Arens

The number of people infected with coronavirus in Germany continues to rise steadily, with more people being taken into hospital, intensive care units and needing ventilators every day. On Friday, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) registered 23,542 COVID-19 infections in 24 hours, an all-time high. Over 600 new patients were admitted to intensive care units and another 218 patients died from the virus.

This week, pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and BioNTech announced news of a possible breakthrough in the search for a COVID-19 vaccine. Other clinical studies also confirm that it may soon be technically possible to provide the world’s population with a vaccine against Sars-CoV-2. A possible end to the pandemic is thus within reach. And yet capitalist politicians refuse to do everything possible to protect the population.

Students cram onto a crowded subway car.

They continue to insist that it is necessary to “live with the virus,” maintaining their de facto herd immunity policy. This is especially true in the federal state of Hesse and the cities of Offenbach and Frankfurt am Main. Both districts have unusually high case numbers. Offenbach, in Hesse, has the highest seven-day incidence rate—317 infected persons per 100,000 inhabitants—and Frankfurt follows in second place with an incidence rate of 273.2.

It is no coincidence that it is precisely in these two cities that the most elementary World Health Organization requirements for controlling the pandemic—testing, isolation and contact tracing—are blatantly disregarded. To keep schools, day-care centres and businesses open at all costs, the politicians responsible in Frankfurt and Offenbach have decided to quarantine only those students who have tested positive at school. If a student is proven to be infected, neither the student’s classmates nor teachers are sent home or even tested. This was confirmed by both health authorities following a query by the Hessenschau .

The case of a schoolgirl in Offenbach reported by the Hessenschau and broadcaster ARD brings to light the full extent of the criminal negligence involved. Schoolgirl Mara, whose classmate tested positive for coronavirus, sat in the classroom behind the sick girl. Nevertheless, she continued attending school untested. Her mother then organized her own test—and lo and behold, Mara was also positive. “If I had stayed in school,” the girl commented, “I would have spent more time with my classmates and friends, who might have become infected.”

To keep the numbers low and schools open, those responsible insist on this irresponsible policy and resort to long disproved fake news as justification.

“There is no reason at all to close schools,” René Gottschalk, head of the Frankfurt Health Department, claimed in an interview with the Frankfurter Rundschau. Regarding the lockdown in March, he adds untruthfully, “This decision had hardly contributed to the fact that the numbers had already fallen in the spring.” And the earth is flat, one might add!

The view that schools are not the drivers of the pandemic has been clearly refuted by science. Only recently, a group of leading Austrian scientists again proved that the closure of schools during the spring lockdown was “certainly a significant contribution” and “one of the most effective individual measures ever.” They pointedly write, “All those who are now speaking out against school closures must state that they are in favour of triage”—in other words, treating some patients and letting others die.

Asked about the situation in schools, Charité virologist Christian Drosten also confirmed again on Tuesday in an NDR podcast, “We have repeated so often: school classes contribute to the spread [of COVID-19] as much as anyone else.” What was needed is a consensus that “we need to reduce contacts throughout society,” he said. Responding to the dogged claim that children are not the drivers of the pandemic, and less happens in schools than in the rest of society, Drosten repeated, “The virus does not care who it affects, and that includes children.”

He explained in detail once again that an infected person is contagious several days before the onset of symptoms, and that it is therefore urgently necessary to locate and test contact persons, “because they are particularly at risk of developing new cases and passing on the virus.”

Drosten also confirmed that considerably more people than known about may already have been infected. Since the federal and state governments deliberately refrained from systematically stepping up the relevant capacities and health authority resources in the summer, the test sites and laboratories were extremely overloaded, and many health authorities had already discontinued systematic contact tracing.

“We know that laboratory capacity and tracing are both overloaded at present,” Drosten said. Everyone was noticing that it is not so easy to get a test. “It could also be that we have a kind of decoupling between the occurrence of infection and the detection process. This means that we do not notice what is actually going on in the population.”

In the meantime, parents and teachers are reacting increasingly anxiously and angrily to the inhumane school and coronavirus policy.

In the Facebook group “Teachers of all subjects and school forms, unite!” Mara’s mother writes about her experience that schools are classifying KP2 [a lower contact rating] contact persons as “coronavirus-free” from the outset. “No! We have experienced it, and so have many others. Infected at school, wrongly rated as KP2 and later tested POSITIVE for coronavirus. My daughter got infected in this way. Fully occupied classes are an enormous risk, and the virus does not stop there either. There should be more publicity ... Also speaking for teachers, who have to submit to all this and have to structure and organize things again and again—what chaos for all concerned!”

Others confirm that this has “been the case here for four weeks now” and that the same is also being done in Frankfurt. Anja reports, “Half the college is in quarantine, but nothing has happened. It’s covered over and covered over. Full classes, [wearing] masks over 7 hours, no distancing possible. It is a tragedy.”

Melanie writes, “Keep the school open come hell or high water—but why?”—“Numbers,” answers Anja. “I was told via the grapevine that the numbers should be kept low to avoid school closures.” [Frankfurt] Mayor Roland [Koch] says, “Leave schools ‘operating normally,’ but allow coronavirus denial demos and ban St. Martins processions for the children—that doesn’t compute!”

The World Socialist Web Site has been explaining for months that opening up schools is part of the concept of keeping capitalist businesses running and that the politicians who do not want to jeopardize big business profits are walking over dead bodies in the process. The IYSSE, the youth organization of the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party), calls for a European-wide school strike against the herd immunity policy and for the establishment of independent action committees in schools and factories, independent of the bourgeois parties and trade unions, to fight for effective pandemic protection.

After opening up schools under unsafe conditions, the establishment politicians are refusing to close them again despite mass infections, to make sure parents can go to work. In the Hesse state legislature, where the Social Democrats (SPD) and Left Party are in opposition, they reacted to the discontent of students and teachers in a debate on Thursday by merely demanding that school classes be divided up until Christmas.

Meanwhile, the Greens, who sit in the Hesse state executive along with the Christian Democrats (CDU), took it upon themselves to vehemently defend the opening of schools by CDU Culture Minister Alexander Lorz. Green Member of Parliament Daniel May gave express thanks for the fact that “school reality” had been established since the summer vacations and “that we can realize the educational mission.” He praised the state government’s measures and called for schools to be kept open for as long as possible. “Better to put on a mask than close schools,” he added cynically.

Turkish finance minister resigns amid a deepening crisis

Barış Demir

Recent economic developments in Turkey underscore that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) government and the Turkish economy are drifting towards a deepening crisis amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

In this Aug. 10, 2018 file photo, Berat Albayrak, Turkey's Finance and Treasury Minister, son-in-law of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, speaks about a "new economic model" in Istanbul. (AP Photo, file)

Sunday evening, Turkey’s Treasury and Finance Minister and son-in-law to Erdoğan, Berat Albayrak, resigned citing alleged “health issues.” In unprecedented fashion, he announced his resignation suddenly and on social media. This surprise move followed Erdoğan’s ouster of the head of the Turkish central bank, Murat Uysal, without any explanation, on Saturday. Former Treasury and Finance Minister, Naci Ağbal was brought in to replace him.

This came after a collapse of the Turkish lira, the world’s worst-performing currency in 2020. The Turkish lira has lost nearly 45 percent of its value against the US dollar this year. Before the removal of Turkey’s top economic officials, the lira fell to a record low of 8.58 against the US dollar on Friday, with annual inflation running at 11.89 percent.

Erdoğan’s main economic goal supposedly was to keep interest rates low, which he claimed was the cause of inflation. He aimed to thus spur lending and economic growth. Turkey’s central bank burned through an estimated US$120 billion in foreign currency reserves to prop the Turkish lira up since the beginning of 2019.

Nonetheless, inflation remains in the double digits, the official unemployment rate is above 13 percent, the economy is in recession and the Turkish lira has collapsed.

President Erdoğan officially accepted Albayrak’s resignation only on Monday evening, and former Deputy Prime Minister Lütfi Elvan was appointed finance minister on Tuesday.

On the first day of the week, financial markets welcomed the news amid debates on whether Erdoğan would accept the finance minister’s resignation. On Monday, the Turkish lira rose more than 5 percent against the US dollar, while the stock market rose more than 3 percent.

Addressing the AKP parliamentary group meeting on Wednesday to reassure international and domestic investors, Erdoğan said new steps will be taken soon to improve the investment climate. After he announced that “We will provide all kinds of convenience and support to domestic and international investors who trust in the Turkish economy and Turkish lira,” the lira also rose more than 4 percent that day.

In his speech, Erdoğan pledged that Turkey would continue to be a platform for financial profiteering and cheap labour. “We are determined to make our country a low-risk, reliable and profitable attraction centre. We will strengthen macroeconomic stability. We want to make the business and investment environment more attractive,” he said, adding: “Economic management will be in close contact with international investors. We will personally explain to these investors by holding a series of meetings. Structural reforms will continue.”

In the media, there are various speculations regarding the reasons for the resignation. Some hypothesized that many AKP deputies would move to two newly-formed AKP split-offs, the Future Party of former AKP Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu and the Democracy and Progress Party (DEVA) of former AKP Economy Minister Ali Babacan, if Albayrak did not resign. This could cost the government its majority in parliament.

Others said that Albayrak and new central bank chair Ağbal were on a collision course, or cited factional conflicts between Albayrak and Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu over the future party administration.

In any case, this political turmoil flows not from this or that political figure in the government but from a deepening crisis of the global capitalist system accelerated by the pandemic. Amid an unprecedented international socioeconomic disaster, it is clear that the AKP government is in a deepening crisis and the Turkish economy is on the verge of collapse.

Turkey’s economy, and especially the lira, have worsened since 2016 amid growing tensions with its American and European imperialist allies. US-Turkish relations have been in free-fall since Washington made Syrian Kurdish forces its principal proxy army in its regime-change war in Syria. Washington backed an unsuccessful military coup against Erdoğan in July 2016.

In recent years, Trump administration and Pentagon officials have been making ever more explicit threats against Turkey, a NATO member since 1952, about its plans to purchase Russian S-400 air defence missiles. While US sanctions against Turkey have remained on the agenda, in 2018 Trump imposed economic sanctions on Turkey, leading to a collapse of the lira.

The US dollar, which was around TL3 at the beginning of 2016, increased steadily after the July 2016 coup and rose to nearly TL8.50 when Democrat Joe Biden won the 2020 US elections. Biden, who was vice president during the 2016 coup attempt, recently declared his support for Turkey’s Republican People’s Party (CHP)-led bourgeois opposition. Though Erdoğan congratulated Biden on Tuesday, future US-Turkey relations are highly uncertain, if Biden takes office in January.

This process goes hand-in-hand with the impoverishment of the working class. Inflation is well above official figures, and real unemployment is around 30 percent. While the minimum wage in Turkey was nearly US$385 in January 2016, it has decreased to near US$270 (now it is US$295), generally below the minimum wage in China. Moreover, almost half of Turkish workers are paid the minimum wage.

Imposing a “herd immunity” policy in the interests of the ruling class, the Erdoğan government has repeatedly declared that Turkey would gain ground against its economic rivals after the pandemic—promising to transform Turkey into a paradise for investors and accelerated attacks against the working class.

As around the world, with billions being pumped into the coffers of the ruling class with low-interest loans and stimulus packages, this debt has to be paid by the working class with increased exploitation and deep attacks on its social rights.

The Erdoğan government has extended the forced “unpaid leave” process until July 2021 for hundreds of thousands or millions of workers. They have been forced to take unpaid leave, receiving only TL1,170 (about US$150) per month from the state unemployment fund.

Moreover, the government recently proposed a law to expand flexible and temporary work, especially among workers aged under 25 and over 50, effectively eliminating their right to severance pay and pensions. However, it had to withdraw these articles of the bill for fear of mounting anger within the working class amid the pandemic.

Sri Lankan government and opposition greet US president-elect Joe Biden

K. Ratnayake

President Gotabhaya Rajapakse and his brother Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse this week led the congratulatory messages from Sri Lanka to US president-elect Joe Biden. The parliamentary opposition leader Sajith Premadasa and the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) joined the chorus, issuing their own greetings.

Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapakse, attends an event to mark the anniversary of country’s independence from British colonial rule [Credit: AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena]

In a Twitter message, President Rajapakse greeted Biden’s “historic victory” and said he hoped to work “closely” in “strengthening the bilateral relations between our two countries.” Rajapakse expected an “even more robust, mutually rewarding partnership” under Biden and vice president-elect Kamala Harris.

Prime Minister Rajapakse remembered 72 years of diplomatic relations between the two countries and added that he looked forward to working with Biden and Harris “to further enhance Sri Lanka-USA relations.”

Members of the ruling elite are particularly concerned about how the political changes in Washington could affect them, while they are seeking close relations with this major imperialist power. These anxieties have significantly heightened in the past decade as the geopolitical tensions in the Asia-Pacific region have mounted, with the US and India confronting China.

The battle between Washington, New Delhi and Beijing has increased the pressure on governments in Sri Lanka, which is strategically located astride vital sea lanes in the Indian Ocean. Washington wants Sri Lanka to line up with its strategic and military preparations against China.

Just a week before the US presidential election, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited Sri Lanka and met with President Rajapakse and Foreign Affairs Minister Dinesh Gunawardena. Pompeo’s visit was part of a tour of the region to strengthen the US position against China.

In Colombo, Pompeo demanded that Sri Lanka directly support the US against China. He said: “[A] strong, sovereign Sri Lanka is a powerful and strategic partner for the United States.” The country could be a “beacon for a free and open Indo-Pacific.”

US governments are hostile to the cash-strapped Colombo regime increasingly leaning on financial assistance from China in the wake of the economic collapse triggered by the global pandemic. Pompeo thuggishly accused China of “bad deals, violations of sovereignty and lawlessness on land and sea.” He denounced the Chinese Communist Party as a “predator,” saying that the US had come to Sri Lanka as a “friend and a partner.”

The previous Obama administration, in which Biden was vice president, pursued a “pivot to Asia” policy designed to diplomatically isolate and militarily encircle China. It opposed the then government of President Mahinda Rajapakse for its relations with Beijing in seeking financial aid. The US supported his regime’s war against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) which killed tens of thousands Tamil civilians in the final weeks of the conflict that ended in May 2009.

Washington then hypocritically used the human rights violations to pressure Mahinda Rajapakse’s government to distance itself from Beijing. Finally, the Obama White House orchestrated a regime-change operation, with New Delhi’s backing, to oust Rajapakse in the 2015 presidential election and replace him with the Maithripala Sirisena.

President Gotabhaya Rajapakse, who came to power last November, has continued the military relations with the US that were built up by Sirisena and Prime Minster Ranil Wickremesinghe after 2015.

The Sunday Times has reported that Rajapakse entered into a deal with Pompeo to bolster these relations with Washington. By sending his greetings to Biden, Rajapakse is demonstrating his loyalty to the US.

In his greetings, opposition leader Premadasa showered praise on Biden for standing “with the American people to uphold the values of democracy and justice,” saying, “your platform provided the world with an example of progressive democracy, pluralist patriotism and social equity.” Premadasa claimed that his party, the Samagi Jana Balavegaya, upheld those ideals.

In reality, Premadasa backed the 2015 US regime-change in Colombo. Until recently he was a leader of the pro-US United National Party (UNP) government, enforcing its repressive rule and the three decades of bloody war against the LTTE.

Notwithstanding all the lavish tributes, Biden is a reactionary representative of US imperialism who will ruthlessly pursue its interests if and when he takes office.

R. Sambandan, leader of the TNA, another servile pro-Washington party, was equally keen to hail Biden and Harris. He told the Veerakesari on November 9 that: “Biden seems to be concerned over several issues, including justice, equality, fundamental rights, human rights and progressive [concerns].” Referring to Harris’s Indian origin, Sambandan said: “She is fighter for justice and voiceless people,” and said he hoped to “meet them in the future.”

The TNA leadership is issuing this sort praise in the hope of advancing its own interests. It supported the bogus US human rights campaign after the civil war and fully aligned with Washington’s 2015 intervention in Sri Lanka. In aligning with US strategic interests, it is seeking support for its request for power-sharing arrangements in Sri Lanka’s north and east.

After Donald Trump was elected president in 2016, the TNA leadership kept close contact with the US and its diplomats, and supported the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government’s measures to integrate more closely with the US military.

However, a November 9 editorial in the Colombo-based Daily Mirror indicated some nervousness by factions of the Colombo ruling elite that the political changes in Washington will see the US again using the war crimes in Sri Lanka as a means of intervening in the country.

The editorial stated that during the Sri Lankan war, “the US sanctioned arms sales to the country” but “when the War on Terrorism’ led to the successful defeat of the terrorist organisation, the US pursued a vigorous anti-Sri Lanka policy,” and began raising “war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

While the US limited some arms sales, Mahinda and Gotabhaya Rajapakse are on record of repeatedly stating that the war against the LTTE could not be won without the logistic and other support from Washington and New Delhi,.

The bloody conflict was not a “War on Terrorism” but a war to suppress the working class, dividing it on anti-Tamil ethnic lines, escalating the vicious communal policies Colombo has pursued for decades. The US has exploited the internationally documented war crimes to demand that Sri Lankan governments support Washington’s strategic maneouvres against China.

While the Sri Lankan ruling class and the military want immunity for their atrocities the Mirror warning “it is difficult to see any change in the US attitude toward Sri Lanka under a Biden presidency.”

Amid these nervous calculations, the Rajapakse regime, in line with its promises to Pompeo, is pledging to maintain close relations with Washington.

Stalinist Podemos minister pledges to keep US military bases in Spain

Alejandro López

Alberto Garzón, consumer affairs minister for the Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government and general coordinator of the Spanish Communist Party (PCE)-led United Left, has welcomed Joe Biden’s election as US president. On this basis, he pledged to keep US military bases in Spain.

Last Sunday, in a television interview in La Sexta’s programme El Objetivo, Garzón hailed Biden’s election as “good news.” Donald Trump’s defeat, he said, was a loss for “the far-right of the whole world,” adding: “People committed to freedom have voted en masse for the Democratic candidate who represents a very diverse space, who raises hopes around the world because he is something different from Trump.”

Spain's caretaker Prime Minister Podemos party leader Pablo Iglesias speaks after signing an agreement with Spain's caretaker prime Minister Pedro Sanchez in the Spanish parliament in Madrid, Spain, Monday, Dec. 30, 2019. (AP Photo/Paul White)

After promoting Biden—who as vice president of the previous Democratic administration bailed out Wall Street at the expense of the working class, waged war in Iraq and Afghanistan, launched new wars in Libya and Syria, and orchestrated coups and drone murders around the world—Garzón then went on to defend the renewal of Spain’s military agreement with the US.

He endorsed the agreement that regulates the presence of the US military bases of Rota (Cadiz) and Moron de la Frontera (Seville) in the southern region of Andalusia. He used the cynical argument that “from the labor point of view, it creates a large number of jobs and this is the first thing that has to be preserved.”

Garzón was referring to the estimated 500 civilian jobs, and a few thousand more indirect ones, involved in the bases. He did not mention that these two bases played a key role in US-led wars in the past three decades in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria that led to the deaths of millions in the Middle East, North Africa and the Balkans.

Garzón’s comments were a calculated signal to Washington. Days after the interview, the Spanish government announced it would grant a one-year extension to a bilateral defence agreement with the United States that expires on May 21, 2021. This would give an incoming Biden administration time to organise new geopolitical guidelines and renegotiate the defence agreement with Spain.

The military bases are an important asset for Madrid in trade and military negotiations with Washington. The PSOE-Podemos government hopes to use US military presence in Spain to request lower US tariffs on Spanish products. Last year, the Trump Administration imposed 25 percent tariffs on Spanish agricultural products such as olive oil, wine and cheese, whose exports to the US total around €800 million.

More importantly, it is a bargaining chip for a greater Spanish presence in South America. Diplomatic sources told El País: “there is some leeway [with the renewal of the agreement] on a few issues, like the sanctions imposed on Spanish entrepreneurs in connection with Title IV of the Helms-Burton Act [and] Latin America policy, particularly with regard to Cuba and Venezuela.”

The bases are of key strategic importance to Washington. In 2011, Washington secured with the previous PSOE-led government an eight-year extension to the Agreement on Defence that allowed the deployment of four Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, 1,200 soldiers and 100 civilians. In 2017, two US warships steamed from Morón to the eastern the Mediterranean to fire 59 Tomahawk missiles at Syria.

At the end of 2019, the PSOE-Podemos government accepted that more modern US warships would replace these US destroyers. They are to arrive next year. They are part of the Missile Defence System, which forms an essential component of the Pentagon’s plans for waging offensive nuclear war against Russia and China: this system would aim to shoot down whatever missiles Russia and China fired back at the United States or Europe after a US nuclear first strike.

The Washington Post has named Rota as a candidate to house the headquarters of USAFRICOM, the United States Africa Command.

While Garzón was defending Spain’s imperialist interests with the US on television from Madrid, his government counterpart, Spanish Deputy Prime Minister and Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias was attending the inauguration of Luis Arce of Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) in Bolivia at the behest of Spain’s major corporations and banks.

The Spanish ruling class banked on Iglesias’ “left populist” ties in the region. Travelling with Spanish King Philip VI with a large delegation to welcome the MAS government in Bolivia, Iglesias held closed meetings with candidates to the presidency of Peru and Ecuador, Verónika Mendoza and Andrés Arauz, and Argentine president Alberto Fernández.

While most of the pseudo-left groups orbiting the Podemos-United Left alliance remained silent on Garzon’s comments and the imperialist foreign policy trip of Iglesias, the Morenoite Workers’ Revolutionary Current (CRT) expressed concern at how Podemos is rapidly exposing itself.

Its article published in Izquierda Diario stated: “Garzón’s replies show up to what point IU [United Left] and the PCE are subordinated to the PSOE and to positions on ‘order’ and ‘responsibility of state’ in order to get a seat in the government. IU and the PCE have historically made rhetorical points against military bases and NATO. To be consistent in this central anti-imperialist question (against US and Spanish imperialism) would mean going much further than the ‘politics of gestures’ they have had in recent years. But what happened with Garzón is a qualitative leap. The integration is such that the IU and Podemos ministers have become true defenders of the agenda of Spanish imperialist capitalism.”

It concluded with an appeal to members of the Stalinist PCE machine to “ask themselves how is it possible to talk about ‘communism’ while their leaders, such as Alberto Garzón or [Labour Minister] Yolanda Díaz, are ministers of a neoliberal and imperialist government with the PSOE.”

The pro-imperialist role of Podemos and the PCE flows from their history and anti-Trotskyist programme, and the middle-class interests that they defend. These are state parties that attack workers’ living standards, support wars and coups, attack democratic rights and block working class opposition to the bourgeoisie’s fascistic agenda. The CRT’s appeal to the PCE underscores that the CRT is itself a barely disguised wing of the United Left and of Podemos.

In truth, the Stalinist politics of the PCE and Podemos have for decades been inseparable from their support for Spanish imperialism and, in the last four decades, for the PSOE.

Under the 1953 Madrid Pacts, agreed with the fascist dictator General Francisco Franco, four US military bases were built in Spain. In exchange, the Franco dictatorship received economic and military aid, and de-facto international rehabilitation after years of isolation following the Second World War, when Franco tacitly backed Nazi Germany after having received aid from Hitler in the Spanish Civil War. The Franco regime was integrated into the Western defence system aimed at the Soviet Union, though without formally being accepted into the NATO alliance.

Three years later, in 1956, the PCE called for a “National Reconciliation” with Spanish capitalism’s “modern” sector, based on a perspective of establishing a capitalist parliamentary regime. The PCE called for the fictitious “peaceful coexistence” and “neutrality” between Spanish imperialism and the Soviet Union, while not calling for the end of US military bases.

In 1975, according to recently-declassified CIA documents, PCE leader Santiago Carrillo spoke to a Time magazine correspondent, who was apparently functioning as a US intelligence asset. Carrillo, who was infamous for his implication in Soviet intelligence agents’ murder of revolutionaries in Spain during the Civil War, told him that “Americans can stay as long as the Russians keep troops in Czechoslovakia.”

In 1976, as the PCE suppressed the largest strike wave since the 1930s against the Franco regime, Carrillo said he was against “all foreign bases, both American ones in capitalist countries and Russian ones in socialist countries.” For now, he added, the PCE “would accept the American bases in Spain.”

Washington welcomed Carrillo for an 11-day visit the following year. He spoke at Yale, Harvard and John Hopkins and the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. The New York Times wrote: “Chatting informally at a dinner Saturday with politicians, businessmen and journalists with connections to the United States, Mr. Carrillo said half‐jokingly that he was going to the United States ‘to sell merchandise’—namely, his novel brand of Communism.”

Since then, the PCE and since 2014 Podemos have aligned themselves ever more closely on NATO wars in the Middle East in Afghanistan and Libya, Spanish weapons sales to Saudi Arabia in its war against Yemen, and Spain’s membership in NATO. Former chief of the Armed Forces General Staff General Julio Rodríguez, who led Spanish participation in the 2011 NATO war in Libya that left 30,000 dead, is a leading Podemos member.