Tens of thousands of auto supply jobs under threat in Germany

Jan Peters

Workers in the auto industry supply chain must prepare to defend their jobs, wages and working conditions. Global auto production fell by almost 50 percent between 2000 and 2013, and in the European Union it fell by more than 11 percent. The pressure exercised by auto manufacturers on small and medium-sized suppliers to cut costs is increasing continuously.

In the last few weeks, the media have reported several studies on the situation in Germany. A study by the business consultants Boston Consulting anticipates a massive loss of jobs in the next five years. The firm estimates that 35,000 jobs will be destroyed in Germany—that is, 15 percent of the jobs in the supply industry.

In a press release, Boston Consulting states, “Worldwide, 42 auto supply chain businesses were questioned—including 25 of the 100 largest suppliers as well as a number of medium-sized businesses.” The study covers firms responsible for more than 60 percent of the supplier turnover in the German market, amounting to around €40 billion.

Eighty-six percent of the supply chain companies that were interviewed reported mounting cost pressures from auto producers seeking to lower their annual expenditure. “If two to three percent was usual in the previous years, in the future it should be four to six percent. This corresponds to savings of up to $6 billion.” In order to realise these savings, suppliers are following the manufacturers, who are building more and more plants in or around the remaining growing markets, above all in China or Mexico. These plants are being used to supply cars for the US market.

In this regard, as a low-wage country in competition with China, Mexico plays an increasingly important role as a production site. Mexico enjoys free trade agreements with more than 40 countries, including the US and most of the European countries. This means that cars produced in Mexico tax-free can be exported to other countries. Wages in Mexico are only about $7 to $10 an hour.

In three years, Mexico will export more cars than Germany, according to an analysis by business consultant company Deloitte. VW, Honda and Nissan have already established plants there, and General Motors, Audi, BMW and Daimler are moving into Mexico as well, along with their suppliers.

According to the study, in 2009 some 66 percent of the assembly plants of the businesses questioned were found in the so-called triad regions of Western Europe, the US and Japan. “Today this is only 58 percent—and by 2019 will probably sink to 47 percent.”

Manfred Beck, an auto supply chain expert at Boston Consulting, told Spiegel Online, “The current pressure has reached a new quality.” According to the study, the number of main plants in Germany will fall from 46 to 39. The number of plants in China alone will rise from 15 to 25 during this time.

The study by Boston Consulting did not interview any smaller businesses. The depth of production in auto manufacture has continued to decrease in the last two to three decades. Through outsourcing, considerable elements of production have been transferred to the suppliers, who have made themselves completely dependent on individual manufacturers.

This has led to a situation where only about 18 percent of the value of a car is created by the auto manufacturer. In 1985, the share of value created by suppliers was 56 percent. That means that the role of the auto supply chain in reducing the costs of manufacturers has become increasingly significant.

The majority of the suppliers for the large auto manufacturers are small and medium-sized businesses with up to 500 employees. Auto expert Professor Dr. Stefan Bratzel of the Centre of Automotive Management says these companies find themselves in a “structural sandwich position”. “On the one hand, the revenue base is worsening, since auto production in Germany and Europe will no longer grow in the medium and long term.”

On the other hand, medium-sized suppliers cannot keep up with the large players on the world market like Magna, Bosch or Mahle, since they simply do not have the resources. For a global supplier it is simpler to transfer a portion of its production to a low-wage country than for a business with 500 workers.

Among smaller suppliers in the auto industry with between 10 and 500 workers, 34 percent are active overseas, while for businesses with between 500 and 1,000 workers, the proportion is already 75 percent.

The cost pressure from auto manufacturers means that it is more and more difficult for smaller suppliers to maintain their position in the market. According to Stefan Bratzel, a survey showed that 59 percent of the suppliers confirmed that their main customers, the auto manufacturers, were almost exclusively concerned with price.

He writes, “That is an enormous threat, especially for small and medium-sized suppliers. Their competitive advantages lie less in low unit costs than in areas of quality, speed and flexible problem solving.”

In the new book, Auto Manufacture in Transition, Bratzel writes, “In the next years, if it is not massively combatted, over 1,000 medium-sized suppliers in the auto industry are threatened. And with that, 100,000 to 150,000 jobs”.

UK general election: Conflicts intensify over possible hung parliament

Julie Hyland

With just eight weeks to go to the general election on May 7, there is intense discussion in ruling circles of the implications of a rout for the Labour Party in Scotland.

Neither the Conservative Party nor Labour seem likely to win an outright majority in the election, with both running neck and neck in the low-to-mid-30 percentage points.

But even these figures do not adequately convey the alienation of many workers and young people from the official political setup that could see a massive abstention from voting.

There is widespread hostility to the Conservative-Liberal Democrat government, which has imposed the largest spending cuts since the 1930s. However, few have forgotten that it was Labour that initiated austerity as part of its massive bailout of the banks in 2008. For the younger generation especially, Labour is synonymous with the super-rich and criminal wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Scottish National Party (SNP) has been the main beneficiary north of the border of this collapse in support for Labour. With the aid of the pseudo-left groups, such as the Socialist Workers Party and the Scottish Socialist Party, it has postured as a left alternative to the “Westminster” parties.

According to opinion polls, in May’s election Labour could lose as many as 36 of the 41 constituencies it currently controls in Scotland to the SNP.

Labour is forecast to lose Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath and Edinburgh West, the seats of Labour’s former Prime Minister Gordon Brown and former Chancellor Alistair Darling respectively, both of whom are standing down in this election. This would leave Labour leader Ed Miliband dependent on SNP support to be able to form a government.

This prompted the Conservative’s decision to make a possible Labour/SNP pact the target of its election campaign.

This week, Prime Minister David Cameron unveiled posters depicting Miliband in the pocket of former SNP leader Alex Salmond. This follows an earlier poster depicting Miliband and Salmond outside 10 Downing Street (the prime minister’s home) under the slogan, “Your worst nightmare… just got worse.”

Just days before, former Conservative Prime Minister John Major took to the pages of the Telegraph to argue that an SNP-backed minority Labour government is the biggest threat to the “long-term unity” of the UK. Such a pact would leave Miliband “relying on support from a Party that will use every strategy it can to break free of the UK,” he wrote.

Last September’s referendum on Scottish independence from the UK was defeated by 55.3 percent to 44.7 percent. Despite the defeat, the pro-separatist SNP were able to increase their support in former Labour strongholds. The party has used its position to demand greater devolved powers, amid suggestions that a sizeable vote for the SNP in May could lead to another referendum on independence in the near future.

Major claimed that “the SNP would hold Labour to ransom,” paralyse government and ultimately lead to the “alienation of the Scots from the English.”

For all the efforts to frame the election in such nationalist and regionalist terms, what emerges more fundamentally from the discussion on the makeup of a future government is the common right-wing agenda of all the parties.

The Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats are all committed to greater austerity. In January, they overwhelmingly backed the Charter for Budget Responsibility, which commits any future government to ensuring the “balancing [of] day-to-day spending.”

It is estimated that this alone would mean additional tax increases or spending cuts of around £30 billion. Justifying its vote, Labour said it was consistent with its pledge to “cut the deficit every year and get the current budget into surplus, and national debt as a share of GDP falling, as soon as possible in the next parliament.”

Yet having denounced Labour for signing up to Tory-Liberal Democrat spending cuts, the SNP has said it will support a pact with Miliband.

In the process, it has made clear that it is not opposed to austerity per se. Like the Tories and Labour, SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon has committed her party to cutting the national deficit as a proportion of GDP, arguing only that this should be done at a slower rate. The SNP’s miserly call for a 0.5 percent increase in “departmental spending” is balanced with plans for cuts in business taxes so as to “grow the economy faster.”

Sturgeon has also said she would drop demands for the cancellation of a new £100 billion replacement for Trident nuclear weapons stationed in the River Clyde as a precondition for backing Labour. This was the SNP’s main claim to be “anti-militarist”, having abandoned its 30-year opposition to membership of NATO in 2012.

Her statements underscore the pro-capitalist, anti-working class character of the SNP. It speaks for a section of the bourgeoisie for whom greater devolution, or outright separation, is a means by which they hope to secure a greater share in the exploitation of working people by turning Scotland into a cheap labour, low tax investment platform for the banks and major corporations.

Miliband, speaking at the Scottish Labour Party conference on the weekend, refused to rule out a deal with the SNP. While denying he was seeking such a pact, lest he worsen Labour’s meltdown in Scotland, Miliband did not categorically reject it.

Just as significant is the call by Conservative adviser Adam Tomkins that the Tories should consider their own deal with the SNP. Speaking to the Sunday Times, Tomkins suggested that Cameron could offer the SNP greater devolution in return for its support.

Cameron had shown he was prepared to make “big, open generous offers before,” he said, in forming a coalition with the Liberal Democrats following the 2010 general election. In return, the Liberal Democrats immediately dropped all their election pledges—including a pledge to veto increases in tuition fees.

Though Tomkins is considered a lone voice among Tories, his suggestion is not without precedent. As John Harris noted in the Guardian, it is in keeping with “recent Conservative history: the fact that in the Scottish parliament of 2007-11, the Scottish Conservative party regularly supported the supposedly awful, evil SNP; or that late last year, the Tory leader in Scotland, Ruth Davidson, refused to rule out an SNP/Conservative deal at Westminster.”

Taking things further still, Conservative peer Kenneth Baker has floated the possibility of a Tory/Labour coalition as a means of avoiding the “constitutional crisis” envisaged by Major after the election.

Baker, education secretary under the Thatcher government, said that while such a deal was “unthinkable” at the moment, it would be feasible.

In Germany, the Christian Democrats have governed with the Social Democrats, he pointed out. Similarly, it would be possible for a Tory/Labour coalition “to find areas of agreement” such as “defence, counter-terrorism, infrastructure investment in schools, road, rail and in the reform of skills training and energy.”

Labour MP Gisela Stuart has backed a possible Tory/Labour coalition, which would be the first since the Second World War. In the event of a hung parliament, “I think you should not dismiss the possibility of a grand coalition in terms of regrouping of the main parties,” she told the Financial Times.

Ian Birrell, former speechwriter to Cameron, also suggested such an outcome. Writing in the Guardian in January, he revealed that it was one of a number of parliamentary combinations under consideration.

Faced with the impracticalities of a Tory or Labour-led minority government, he wrote, “a government of national unity” between the two could be just what the “country needs to reboot its anachronistic political system.”

Toronto: University strikers denounce union officials

Carl Bronski

At a boisterous, seven-hour long contract ratification meeting attended by some 1,300 York University education workers Monday evening, scores of rank-and-file members bitterly denounced the tentative agreements placed before them by the bargaining team of Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Local 3903.

Union officials had come to the meeting recommending the membership ratify contracts for all three striking bargaining units, declaring the deals contained near “historic” gains for the 3,700 teaching assistants, contract instructors, and graduate assistants.

But when the votes were counted, Unit 1 Teaching Assistants and Unit 3 Graduate Assistants roundly rejected the union’s recommendation. Unit 2, comprised of 1,000 contract instructors, voted to accept their deal after the bargaining team split the membership by agreeing to reduced wage increases in exchange for the university modestly raising the number of full-time positions it will give to contract instructors over the life of the three-year contract.

Strikers who attended Monday’s meeting told WSWS reporters of a veritable rebellion against the union leadership, as speaker after speaker took the floor to lambaste union officials for recommending the sell-out agreements. The official on the podium representing CUPE National headquarters came in for particular opprobrium, with members demanding that the bureaucrat rein in a “condescending and arrogant tone.” The union’s lawyer also came under fire after her pro-administration interpretation of crucial contract language met with derision from the assembly.

The oppositional sentiment displayed at the union meeting is echoed daily on the York picket lines. “Our bargaining team is just trying to get jobs with the NDP (New Democratic Party) or the union after graduation,” said one Teaching Assistant.

“They’re trying to fool us by giving with one hand and taking more away with the other,” said a striking Graduate Assistant. “There’s a huge gap between what the union is trying to do and what the membership wants,” said a third striker to nods of agreement from his colleagues. Other strikers, disgusted with the antics of their own union officials, have raised the demand for “open negotiations” whereby union members can attend the bargaining sessions.

Central to the dispute are proposals surrounding the indexation of tuition fee-rebates. York University graduate students pay some of the lowest tuition fees in the province as a result of rebate provisions in previous Teaching and Research Assistant agreements. But in 2013, the university administration exploited a “loop-hole” in contract language to raise tuition fees for international graduate students by a whopping $7,000 per year. The union grieved this move and the issue still sits before an arbitrator.

In the just-rejected contracts, the union and the university agreed to a three-year tuition freeze for current members. Strikers were adamant that the freeze is a major concession and for multiple reasons. The international students would continue to pay the dramatically increased fees.

Furthermore, the proposed agreement created room for the university to attack the entire tuition rebate language in the contract to be negotiated three years hence and thereby do to domestic graduate students what it has already done to international graduates. Finally, the union-recommended deal would have created a two-tier system of employment, as incoming graduate students would lack the previous protections. With the prospect of huge rises in future tuition fees, this matter is crucial to any new contract.

In response to the contract rejections, the York University administration announced that most courses in the Schools of Engineering, Business, Nursing, Administrative Studies and Human Resources Management would resume as of yesterday. The university has said it is making plans to restart most other courses by this coming Monday.

The York University Faculty Association, the Canadian Association of University Teachers affiliate that represents tenured and tenure-track York professors, plans to take no meaningful action to oppose the university’s plans to resume classes. It issued a statement Wednesday saying that although it “cannot legally advise members to cease carrying out their professional responsibilities,” it will defend professors who in their professional judgment decide that a class cannot go forward.

The faculty association’s own contract with York expires at the end of April and there is every prospect of a major conflict as the university—in line with a provincial government drive to eliminate “duplication” at universities—is drafting plans to downsize and even eliminate whole departments.

For its part, the CUPE leadership has refused to give any instruction to the thousand Unit 2 contract teaching staff, for whom there is now a ratified deal, to respect the picket lines of their fellow Local 3903 members. The union, abandoning all principles of solidarity, has simply stated that crossing picket lines is an “individual decision.”

From the beginning, CUPE has been determined to keep the dispute with the University within the narrowest confines of trade union collective bargaining. Yet the conditions of low wages, precarious employment, and rising education costs faced by the York education workers arise directly from the cuts to post-secondary education carried out by Ontario and federal governments.

There has been no attempt to rally the 100,000 students who attend York and the University of Toronto (where a similar strike amongst CUPE graduate student employees and contract-instructors is underway) in support of the strike and in defence of public education, and to fight for the development of an working-class counter-offensive against the austerity program of the Ontario Liberal and federal Conservative governments.

These matters are of crucial importance if the strikes are to be won. At York, there has been increasing tension on the picket lines as police increase their mobilization against the strikers. In recent days police have threatened picketers with arrest in forcing their lines to move away from thoroughfares. Police now stand alongside picketers in some locations.

“The police are now picketing the picketers,” observed one York University professor. Their presence, however, is not directed at defending the right of strikers to peacefully picket. On Monday, an irate motorist rammed the picket line at the Shoreham campus entrance, injuring two strikers, including carrying one on the hood of his speeding vehicle for almost a kilometer.

At the University of Toronto (U of T), where a strike by CUPE education workers is also in its second week, the University has actively intervened to smooth the administrative process for strikebreakers to teach tutorials and labs. In addition, a private security firm has been engaged to monitor strike activity.

Over the past ten days, strikers at both York and the University of Toronto have received crucial lessons in the perfidy of the pro-capitalist trade unions. At U of T, a tentative agreement recommended by the union was rejected last week by over 90 percent of the voting membership.

This is an experience common to any group of workers in Canada and internationally who seek to mount a struggle. The unions today act as proponents of the employer and big business governments within the ranks of the membership they ostensibly “represent,” containing and suppressing job action and imposing wage and other concessions.

CUPE officials – alongside the Ontario Federation of Labour–have provided political support to the Ontario Liberal government and its austerity budgets and encouraged the New Democratic Party to prop up the Liberals in the provincial legislature during the nearly three years of minority government (October 2011-May 2014).

Based on the “success” of the campaign for “strategic voting” in the last Ontario election—which helped secure Wynne and her Liberals a majority—the unions, in the name of “defeating Harper,” now intend to stump for the election of a Liberal or Liberal-NDP federal government that will provide a “progressive” face for the Canadian elite’s program of austerity and imperialist aggression.

To find a way forward, the CUPE strikers at York and UofT must break free from the grip of the union and build new organizations of struggle controlled by the rank-and-file. These committees would fight to broaden the strike by rallying support from students and the working class to reverse the attacks of the university administration and the Liberal government.

Above all, the development of such an orientation requires the fight to develop an understanding among workers and students of the fundamental political questions at stake—that to secure their interests, workers and students must embark on a path aimed at reorganizing society internationally on the basis of socialist principles.

European Central Bank bond-buying program fuels financial turbulence

Nick Beams

The president of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, has strongly defended the bank’s bond-purchasing program, which began on Monday and is set to inject at least €1 trillion into the financial system over the course of the next 16 months.

Speaking at a conference of economists and financial analysts in Frankfurt yesterday, Draghi said the benefits of the program were filtering down to consumers and businesses and were protecting the rest of the euro zone from the turmoil in Greece.

“Developments are pointing in the right direction,” he said.

While he acknowledged that there were some risks in the policy, because it lowers the yield on government bonds and pushes investors to undertake riskier actions, he claimed these dangers were “contained.”

Draghi tried to downplay the significance of the ECB’s move, saying that while asset purchases were “unconventional,” they were not “unorthodox,” adding, “In fact, they are eminently orthodox.”

The assertion must have been made for wider public consumption, for the purpose of offering some sort of reassurance, because everyone in the audience was well aware that nothing like the asset purchasing program of the world’s major central banks, which has pumped at least $5 trillion into the global financial system, has ever been seen in history.

On the first day of the program, the ECB bought €3.4 billion worth of bonds in line with its objective of buying €60 billion a month at least until September next year, and possibly even longer, because officially the ECB has “no duration target for the program.”

Within days of its commencement, the purchasing program is having a significant impact on financial markets, setting up a series of processes that could have major adverse consequences, contrary to Draghi’s reassurances.

One of the most striking effects so far is the rapid fall in the value of the euro against the US dollar. This year, the value of the euro has dropped 12.8 percent, already beating the 10.6 percent decline recorded in the third quarter of 2008, in the midst of the global financial crisis.

It is expected to fall even lower as the bond-purchasing program proceeds, with predictions that the euro is headed for parity with the US dollar after falling to just over $1.05 yesterday.

The other major consequence is the further fall in yields on bonds, as their prices are pushed higher as a result of the entry of the ECB into the market. The yield on the benchmark ten-year German bund fell to 0.199 percent after starting the year at 0.5 percent. The spread between it and the equivalent ten-year US Treasury bond is the largest in 25 years. The yield on German five-year bonds fell to a record low of minus 0.125 percent compared to the yield on equivalent US treasuries of 1.6 percent.

The yield on French ten-year bonds also went below 0.5 percent, and yields on government debt in Spain, Italy, Finland and Austria also fell to record lows.

According to Draghi, by lowering interest rates, the asset-purchasing program will create the conditions for a revival of business investment in the real economy. In fact, the ECB’s intervention is financing massive speculation, in which investors figure that even though the prices at which they purchase bonds are at record highs (with yields correspondingly at record lows), they will be able to make money through capital gains by selling the bonds they have purchased at even higher prices.

The ECB program is pushing the US dollar higher against all major global currencies. There are growing concerns that the higher dollar is worsening the international competitive position of US corporations and impacting their bottom line.

These profit concerns appear to be behind the recent falls on Wall Street, coupled with fear that an ostensibly favourable US jobs report last Friday will encourage the Fed to begin lifting official interest rates from their current record low level of 0.25 percent. It is a sign of the way in which the financial markets have entered a “through the looking glass world” that what should be a sign of an improving real economy gives rise to a stock market fall.

The rise in the dollar’s value has reignited fears that so-called emerging markets could face financial problems because the more expensive dollar increases the real debt and interest burden from by dollar-denominated loans. In 2013, emerging market currencies fell sharply following indications by the US Federal Reserve that it was going to wind down its asset-purchasing program. Now there are signs that the “taper tantrum” could be repeated.

Last week, the JPMorgan Emerging Market Currency index fell to a record low after the release of the latest US jobs data. A JPMorgan analyst told the Financial Times that divergences in monetary policy between the US and emerging economies would become more relevant in the months ahead. If the Fed lifts interest rates, the money that has flowed into emerging markets over the past two years could rush for the exit.

Last week, both the Turkish lira and the Mexican peso fell to record lows against the US dollar. The Brazilian real is down to a ten-and-a-half-year low against the dollar, while the South African rand is approaching its lowest point in 14 years. The Indonesian rupiah is trading at levels last seen in the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98.

All these trends will be reinforced by the ECB’s asset-purchasing program. There are also growing risks for major European financial institutions, which were highlighted in an article by Financial Times columnist Wolfgang Münchau on Monday, in which he pointed to its implications for the life insurance industry.

The life insurance business model is based on selling products and annuities and then investing the money received from policyholders in government and corporate bonds on the assumption that the average return on the bonds they hold is higher than the rate at which they pay out. However, at zero rates, “it is very difficult for the industry as a whole to remain solvent.”

Münchau cited simulations conducted by staff at the German Bundesbank which showed that if interest rates stayed low for a long time, then, in one scenario, 12 of 85 German insurance companies could be insolvent by 2023, and in another, harsher scenario, the number would rise to 32 companies. In addition, under-funded pension schemes run by many German companies would be in trouble.

The precise course of events is impossible to predict, but the findings are significant from a broader perspective. The activities of life insurance companies, pension funds and other long-term financial investors, seeking steady, low-risk returns, have provided a basis for the financial system for many decades. But now these foundations are being blown up by the very central banks that are supposedly responsible for the maintenance of stability. It is as if pyromaniacs had been put in charge of the fire department.

With Senate letter, tensions mount over US policy toward Iran

Bill Van Auken

Political tensions in Washington over US foreign policy have continued to mount in the wake the “open letter to the leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran” signed by 47 Republican senators and sent on Monday. The letter warns that any nuclear deal reached with the Obama administration can be abrogated “with the stroke of a pen” by the next president, or changed at any time by congressional action.

The letter is clearly aimed at sabotaging any agreement limiting Iran’s nuclear activity in exchange for the lifting of punishing economic sanctions against the country.

It comes barely one week after the Republican leadership in Congress staged a State of the Union-style address by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to a joint session of the Senate and House to denounce a proposed agreement with Iran as a betrayal of both US and Israeli security. The speech, organized behind the back of the Obama White House, was, like the Senate Republicans’ letter intervening into ongoing diplomatic negotiations, without historical precedent.

The letter was organized by Republican Tom Cotton, a right-wing freshman senator from Arkansas, who has distinguished himself with calls for the US to wage a global war against “Islamic terror” and for “regime-change” in Iran. Last December, he called for Congress to consider providing both B-52 bombers and “bunker-buster” bombs to Israel to facilitate air strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities.

The letter took the form of a condescending lecture to the Iranians on the US constitutional system, which managed to get fundamental constitutional questions wrong. “First, under our Constitution, while the president negotiates international agreements, Congress plays the significant role of ratifying them,” it states.

In point of fact, it is the president who ratifies treaties, after a two-thirds majority vote expressing the “advice and consent” of the US Senate. More fundamentally, the blurring of the terms “agreement” and “treaty” entirely misrepresents the deal being negotiated with Iran. It is not a bilateral treaty between Washington and Tehran, but rather an agreement negotiated between Iran and the so-called P5+1, the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council—the US, China, Russia, Britain and France—plus Germany. The US, like other nations, enters into many such agreements, which are binding under international law, covered in this case by the existing Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

While the Obama administration has rejected claims that it needs Senate approval for the agreement, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, has sponsored a resolution that would give Congress a vote on any nuclear deal with Iran. It has been co-sponsored by the ranking Democrat on the committee, Robert Menendez of New Jersey, who is currently facing criminal corruption charges, and four other Democrats.

Obama is also empowered to suspend sanctions against Iran for up to two years, but he would have to seek a Senate vote to repeal them entirely.

Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif dismissed the letter, declaring that it had “no legal value and is mostly a propaganda ploy.” He mocked the Republican’s lecture on constitutional law, saying: “I should bring one important point to the attention of the authors, and that is, the world is not the United States, and the conduct of inter-state relations is governed by international law, and not by US domestic law. The authors may not fully understand that in international law, governments represent the entirety of their respective states, are responsible for the conduct of foreign affairs, are required to fulfill the obligations they undertake with other states, and may not invoke their internal law as justification for failure to perform their international obligations.”

He continued, “I wish to enlighten the authors that if the next administration revokes any agreement with the stroke of a pen, as they boast, it will have simply committed a blatant violation of international law.” The nuclear agreement, he stressed, would be reached not just with Washington, but with the five other powers participating in the negotiations, and would be codified through a United Nations Security Council resolution.

Behind the laughable attempt to present the Senate Republicans’ letter as a learned treatise on constitutional law, the document—like the invitation to Netanyahu—amounts to a brazen assault on constitutional government, particularly the principle of the separation of powers.

It has been widely described as a “stunt” aimed at currying favor with a key Republican base, the Christian right, as well as with the Israeli lobby.

More fundamentally, however, it expresses divisions within the US state apparatus over foreign and military policy that have only sharpened since the Obama administration backed away from a planned US air war against Syria in September of 2013 and turned toward rapprochement with Iran.

The actions of the Republicans are indicative of the deep-going breakdown of constitutional forms of government under the impact of the past period of unbridled militarism, combined with the consolidation of ever greater power and wealth in the hands of a narrow financial oligarchy.

It is doubtless also the case that the Republicans are emboldened to carry out provocations against the presidency because they enjoy support within key sections of the military and intelligence apparatus, which has increasingly become the most decisive branch of government.

The essentially reactionary character of Democratic denunciations of the Republican letter expresses fundamentally the same phenomenon. Obama himself set the tone by denouncing the Republicans for “wanting to make common cause with the hardliners in Iran.”

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid took the floor of the Senate Monday to denounce Republicans for “undermining our commander-in-chief while empowering the ayatollahs,” casting the negotiations with Iran as essentially a tactic within the generalized US strategy of global war.

The fight against police violence in Madison, Wisconsin

Andre Damon & Niles Williamson

The March 6 police shooting of unarmed 19-year-old Anthony Robinson has triggered an outpouring of opposition to police violence in Madison, Wisconsin. In this video, students and workers speak about the significance of the ongoing wave of state-sanctioned police killings.

https://www.youtube.com/watch

Obama administration seeks wider war powers

Patrick Martin

The three top US national security officials appeared together before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Wednesday to press the case for a broadly worded resolution authorizing the war against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

Secretary of State John Kerry, Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter and General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made brief statements and answered questions from Republican and Democratic senators during a three-hour hearing.

The session focused on a proposed Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) to approve the military operations launched by President Obama last August in Iraq and the following month in Syria. More than 3,000 US troops have been deployed to the region to train Iraqi Army and Syrian “rebel” forces, and US warplanes have killed thousands in a nonstop bombing campaign against ISIS targets in the two countries.

The Obama administration submitted a proposed three-page text for the AUMF only last month, more than six months after the air strikes and troop deployment began. The delay is unprecedented and underscores the increasingly open contempt of the military-intelligence apparatus for the formal trappings of democratic governance, including the constitutional prerogative of the legislature to declare war.

The White House initially refused to draft language for a resolution to approve the war against ISIS, claiming Obama had ample authority under two earlier resolutions: the AUMF of 2001, which was the basis of the war in Afghanistan and the subsequent “war on terror,” and the AUMF adopted in October 2002, which gave approval for the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq in March of 2003.

This claim is entirely specious. The 2001 AUMF gave the president authority to wage war against those who carried out the 9/11 attacks or harbored the perpetrators. ISIS did not even exist until a decade later, and it is actually at war with the Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria, the al-Nusra Front. Even more cynical is the claim that the 2002 AUMF for war against Iraq provides a legal basis for a war in which Iraq serves as a puppet and ally of Washington.

The new AUMF drafted by the White House would repeal the 2002 Iraq war resolution but leave the 2001 war resolution unaltered. At Wednesday’s hearing, Secretary of State Kerry and Secretary of Defense Carter reiterated the administration’s contention that the war against ISIS is legal under the 2001 AUMF and that a new resolution is desirable but not essential.

In his opening statement, which was twice interrupted by antiwar protesters who were ejected from the hearing by Capitol Hill police, Kerry asserted, “The president already has statutory authority to act against ISIL, but a clear and formal expression of this Congress’s backing at this moment in time would dispel doubt that might exist anywhere that Americans are united in this effort.”

The main purpose of the resolution, he said, was to make a political demonstration of bipartisan unity behind the US war plan. “Your unity would also send an unmistakable message to the leaders [of ISIS],” he told the committee. “They have to understand they cannot divide us…and they have no hope of defeating us.”

The new resolution would also reassure US allies in the bombing campaign in Syria, including nearly all the repressive monarchies and sheikdoms of the Persian Gulf, he said, but as far as US military actions went, it would have a purely symbolic significance. Asked directly about this later in the hearing, General Dempsey affirmed that the new AUMF would not change anything in the operations being conducted by US forces in Iraq and Syria.

These declarations, which went largely unchallenged by the Senate panel, gave the entire hearing the character of a farce. In effect, the representatives of the executive branch told the legislature that their concerns and questions, let alone the sentiments of the American people, were irrelevant. Congress could choose to rubber-stamp the new US war in Iraq and Syria or refuse to do so, but congressional action would have no effect on the actual course of events.

Committee Chairman Bob Corker, a Republican from Tennessee, admitted before the hearing, “I think we all know, at present, whether we pass an AUMF or don’t pass an AUMF has zero effect on what is happening on the ground, none, zero.”

This marks a further stage in the decomposition of what passes for democracy in the United States. Even the Bush administration felt compelled to obtain congressional authorization for war, albeit on the basis of lies about Iraqi “weapons of mass destruction” and ties between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda (who were actually bitter enemies).

Under Obama, the national security apparatus has gone a step further, waging war without a shred of constitutional or legal legitimacy, counting on the acquiescence or active support of both capitalist parties in Congress, as well as the corporate-controlled media.

Much of Wednesday’s hearing was taken up with wrangling between Republican senators opposing any limits on the war—for example, the three-year time limit stipulated in the administration’s draft AUMF, after which Congress would have to reauthorize the war—and Democrats expressing reservations about a new US ground war in the Middle East.

Defense Secretary Carter repeatedly explained that the three-year time limit was not an estimate of the duration of the war, but simply an acknowledgement that by 2017 there will be a new US president facing a different world security environment.

Secretary of State Kerry emphasized the administration’s opposition to any limitation on the geographic scope of the war. “What a mistake it would be,” he declared, “to send a message to [ISIS] that there are safe havens, that there is somehow just a two-country limitation…”

There was tedious parsing of the resolution’s ban on “enduring offensive ground combat operations,” which General Dempsey conceded had no precise legal meaning or military significance. One senator suggested that a conflict on the scale of the 1990-1991 Persian Gulf War would be permissible under that language, since the deployment of nearly 700,000 American troops lasted only seven months (hence, not “enduring”) and was ostensibly in defense of Kuwait (hence, not “offensive”).

None of these limitations would have the slightest practical or even legal effect, according to the Obama administration, if the 2001 war resolution also remains in effect. Any action forbidden by the 2015 AUMF could be undertaken anyway under the 2001 AUMF. That is why the White House is flatly opposed to suggestions that the 2001 AUMF should be repealed.

Two further issues emerged toward the end of the hearing. Under questioning from committee chairman Corker, General Dempsey said that the Pentagon views as a “positive thing” the support given by Iran to the Iraqi offensive against Tikrit in northern Iraq. Iran has armed and directed Shiite militias that are the spearhead of that offensive, which could result in sectarian massacres of the predominately Sunni local population.

Corker pressed the administration witnesses on whether the war resolution would permit US forces to act in defense of their Syrian “rebel” clients if they came under attack by Syrian military units loyal to President Bashar al-Assad. General Dempsey replied, “The answer to that is ‘no.’ The administration has not added a Syrian regime or an Assad component to the AUMF.”

The senator indicated he favored adding anti-Assad language to the resolution, and none of the administration officials objected. Corker also asked why the administration had not given its support to a Turkish proposal to establish a “no-fly zone” in Syria, a move that would pave the way for a direct US military intervention against the Assad regime. Dempsey replied that the US was considering that option.

These exchanges point to the ultimate purpose of the US intervention against ISIS, which is the overthrow of Assad and the establishment of a US puppet regime in Damascus.

The senior Democrat on the panel, Robert Menendez of New Jersey, a war hawk of the first order in relation to Iran and Cuba, nonetheless sought to pose as an opponent of a new Middle East war on the scale of Iraq or Afghanistan. “What I don’t think Democrats are willing to do, is give the president an open authorization for war or a blank check,” he said.

The thrust of the resolution, however, is to authorize virtually open-ended warfare by the US military in any country targeted by Obama or his successor. Several senators suggested during the hearing that the AUMF would constitute a green light for US military action in Nigeria against Boko Haram, an Islamist guerrilla group that this week publicly pledged allegiance to ISIS, and to renewed US military operations in Libya, where Islamist militias claiming ISIS affiliation carried out beheadings of Coptic Christians.

None of the administration witnesses rejected these examples as possible venues for war, merely observing that the president would have to determine that targeted groups were both affiliated to ISIS and actively threatening to attack the United States or its allies. Given Kerry’s boast that “62 nations” were engaged in the US-led coalition against ISIS, the number of “allies” where US troops might be deployed under the new AUMF has grown exponentially.

No senator in either party is opposed to another imperialist war. The issues in dispute revolve around tactics—air power versus ground troops—and concerns that another massive US military deployment on the scale of Iraq and Afghanistan could ignite popular opposition both in the Middle East and at home.

There are also those—including the three top officials who testified Wednesday—who see looming conflicts with Russia over Ukraine and with China throughout the Asia-Pacific region as more important from the standpoint of the world position of American imperialism. In this view, the war with ISIS is significant but distinctly subordinate.

The paramilitary occupation of America

Joseph Kishore

It is necessary to call things by their right names. The obscene regularity of police murders in the United States has reached the point where it is appropriate to speak of the police as an occupying army, whose daily violence and brutality can best be described as a war against the country’s poor and working people.

Practically every day brings a new outrage. The death toll mounts relentlessly, against the backdrop of harassment and beatings that are daily facts of life in much of the country. The government does not publish figures on police killings; however, according to statistics compiled from media reports, some 1,000 people lose their lives as a result of police violence every year in the United States. That averages out to almost three fatalities a day.

The list of victims reported just over the past three weeks includes:

• Anthony Hill, 27, Atlanta, Georgia. Unarmed, naked, suffering from mental illness, reportedly seen hanging from his balcony and crawling on the ground. Shot dead by a police officer on March 9.

• Anthony Robinson, Jr., 19, Madison, Wisconsin. Unarmed. Shot dead by a police officer who forced his way into the victim’s apartment building on March 6.

• Naeschylus Vinzant, 37, Aurora, Colorado. Unarmed, wanted on an arrest warrant. Shot and killed by a heavily armed paramilitary SWAT team on March 6.

• Derek Cruice, 26, Volusia County, Florida. Unarmed, killed in his home. Victim in a “no-knock” SWAT raid that turned up a few ounces of marijuana. Fatally shot in the face on March 4.

• Ernest Javier Vanepa Diaz, 28, Santa Ana, California. Unarmed, killed in his car. Father of four, working two jobs. Shot dead on February 27 after, in the words of the local police chief, he “did not cooperate.”

• Ruben Garcia Villapando, 31, Euless, Texas. Unarmed, killed in his car. Shot dead on February 20 after he allegedly disobeyed an officer’s commands during a traffic stop.

• Antonio Zambrano-Montes, 35, Pasco, Washington. Unarmed. Accused of throwing rocks at police. Shot dead as his hands were raised on February 10.

These names must be added to a list that includes Akai Gurley and Eric Garner in New York; twelve-year-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland, Ohio; Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri; and many others.

The mind-boggling level of police violence in the United States far exceeds that of any other major industrialized country. In Germany, there were eight police killings in 2013 and 2014 combined. In Canada, about a dozen people are killed by police each year.

In the past year, more people were killed by the police in Pasco, Washington (population of 68,000) than in all of Great Britain (population of 64,000,000) over the past three years.

Some of these killings are captured on videotape and become national news. Many more are barely reported or go unmentioned.

One web site that compiles local media reports, “Killed by Police,” documented 212 police killings in the first 70 days of this year, including at least seven on Wednesday alone. One brief media account is indicative: “A suspect has been fatally wounded after a brief police pursuit… The sheriff’s deputy discharged his weapon at the car after it finally stopped. The suspect was pronounced dead…”

The above incident could have happened in Iraq or Afghanistan. Such atrocities against civilians are commonplace in the countries occupied by the American military. There have been countless reports over the past 14 years of cars shot up by US military patrols because their drivers did not follow orders; of homes raided by American troops, their occupants beaten, arrested or shot.

Like the military, the police are trained to see the population as a hostile force. They demand that anyone they encounter act with complete submissiveness. Failure to obey is punishable by a beating, a jolt of electricity, arrest or summary execution.

The local police have intimate ties with the uniformed military and Pentagon. The latter has transferred billions of dollars in heavy weapons and military-grade equipment—including armored vehicles, helicopters and automatic weapons left over from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq—to police departments across the country, in a program fully endorsed by President Obama.

Aurora, Colorado, for example, where Naeschylus Vinzant was killed last week, has received $500,000 in military equipment since 2006, including a Mine Resistant (MRAP) vehicle, shields, and dozens of automatic rifles.

Volusia County, where Derek Cruice was shot, has received $1,251,000 in military equipment, mainly in the form of automatic rifles, a $250,000 personnel carrier, and a MRAP valued at nearly $700,000.

To account for the militarization of domestic policing over the past half-century, one must examine the far-reaching changes in the structure of American society that have occurred. While police violence—overwhelmingly directed against the working class and its struggles—has long been a basic feature of American life, the systematic militarization of the police has developed alongside the transformations that have taken place since the 1960s.

Heavily armed SWAT teams first made their appearance in the latter years of that decade, in response to the urban uprisings and social upheavals of the period. By the end of the decade, the ruling class was repudiating the policy of social reform it had followed since the New Deal of the 1930s.

At the end of the 1970s, the political establishment launched an offensive against the jobs, wages and living standards of the working class that has continued ever since. “Law and order” politics became the political cover for a rapid buildup of the police powers of the state, including a vast expansion of the prison system and the transformation of the police into a paramilitary force.

These processes were intensified after 9/11 under the banner of the “war on terror.” The police were integrated more directly into the massive military-intelligence apparatus—the FBI, CIA, NSA and Pentagon. The local police today are tied by a million threads to the national system of repression and control.

This is what underlies the Obama administration’s insistent interventions in defense of the police, including Obama’s statement supporting the exoneration of Darren Wilson, the Ferguson cop who killed Michael Brown, and his declaration last week that “the overwhelming number of law enforcement officers” do their job “fairly, and they do it heroically.”

The political establishment views the whitewash of Wilson not as a local question, but as a national necessity. In defending the police, in ensuring that there is no accountability for their crimes, Obama is upholding a critical part of the apparatus of repression.

The police carry out “heroic” work not in the service of the people, but in defense of the capitalist system and the ruling corporate-financial oligarchy. As social struggles develop, the police are called on to ever more directly use the violent methods honed by the military abroad against the working class at home.

Police violence is not fundamentally a question of racism, as claimed by the various organizations that orbit the Democratic Party. Whatever role racism may play in any given act of brutality, police violence is embedded in the irreconcilable conflict between the interests of the capitalist class and those of its opposite—the working class. This basic class division of society has grown all the more explosive with the colossal growth of social inequality.

This is why the fight against police violence must be rooted in the unification and mobilization of the working class, and the working class must see the fight against police violence as central to its own interests.

In drafting the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson included among the “long train of abuses and usurpations” of the British King the following: “Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us” and “protecting them, by mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they commit.” Then it was a question of overthrowing the British monarchy. Today it is a question of overthrowing the capitalist system.

Deprecate Lynching Of A Muslim Youth At Dimapur Of Nagaland

Lateef Mohammed Khan

It is Crime against Humanity based upon political motivation – Judiciary, State and Central Government are culpable

Civil Liberties Monitoring Committee expresses shock over this grievous act of planned murder. Words are not enough to condemn this inhuman act. But this committee can say that this is an exact example of crime against humanity as well as the mindset of people which is filled with hatred extended up to turning equal to beasts. On one side majoritarian people in the country were celebrating holi with colours and in other part of India people were playing holi with the blood of a Muslim youth.

Civil Liberties want to clear that it is not a sudden incident but a planned conspiracy by anti-Muslim private gangs as well as state officials. By examining this episode one is reminded of Gujarat genocide, there it was the whole Muslim community target of Hindutva forces, here it was the whole anti-Muslim gangs targeting one Muslim youth and in both the incidents the state seems to be the perpetrator. This target killing sends a signal to whole Muslim community of the country that Muslims are not safe even in the judicial custody.

The facts of this case are that Syed Farid Khan also known as Syed Sarif aged 28 years was native of Karimganj district of Assam and presently was residing in Dimapur city of Nagaland. His father served in Indian Air Force for 20 years and one of his brothers was killed in the Kargil war in 1999 and two others are presently serving in the Indian Army.

Four years back he married a Naga woman and lived happily along with his wife and three years old daughter. His younger brother Nasiruddin also lived with him. He was running flourishing scarp car business. He went to a party along with his wife’s cousin and her friend to a hotel on 23rd February. Next day morning police came to his house and took him away, saying that they are arresting him because his wife’s cousin has filed FIR of rape on him. It also came to know that second day that woman came to Farid’s house and demanded Rs. 2 lakhs from his wife and said that she will take back the complaint of rape. Farid’ wife denied paying the amount to her. After, that Farid was taken away to Dimapur police station and then shifted to Dimapur central jail. He was in the judicial custody since 24th February. The arrest and detention of Farid was reported by a local newspaper on its front page a week after the incident and also false stories of IBI and rapist spread by using social media.

On 4th March, Naga people belonging to racist group of Nagaland met the district officials and demanded accused to be handed over to them. On March 5, a mob of about 6000 to 7000 marched towards jail, broke into the jail, dragged him out, stripped him naked, beat him up, pelted him with stones and dragged him by tying him to the motor bikes towards the centre of Dimapur town, seven kilometers away. He died from his injuries on the way after which the mob displayed his body from a clock tower. It should be noted that Dimapur central jail is under CRPF security and those personnel did not take any measures to protect the life of this youth by using the minimum power.

According to the SP of the city who was later suspended, the allegation of rape was false and it was a case of blackmailing by the girl. The medical report also did not confirm the rape. Moreover, when the mob reached the jail, they pre-planned targeted only this youth because of two reasons one he was a Muslim, moreover a Bengali speaking Muslim and another he was alleged to be illegal Bangladeshi immigrant; the mob did not touch the other person on whom also the charges of rape were alleged because he was neither a Muslim nor a Bengali, in fact he is a Naga. This shows that this was not a handiwork of a single woman, but it was a politically motivated and pre-planned target killing of a Muslim youth.

It should be noted that Nagaland is a North-East state of India; though it is largely Christian populated area but due to the national and international scenario, anti-Muslim and racial feelings are growing among majority community in north-eastern states. Earlier it was in Assam where Muslims were massacred now it is Nagaland people who lynched a Muslim youth. On this brutal killing so many facts are exposed: first that the Muslims are soft targets both for the state as well as fascist groups whoever it may be; Muslims are not safe even in the judicial custody; Judiciary, state and central government are totally responsible for the brutal killing of Farid Khan.

Therefore, this committee holds the judiciary responsible as he was in judicial custody and administratively the state government of Nagaland and central government of India are responsible for the brutal killing of Farid Khan. We demand the Chief Justice of India to intervene into the matter and self introspect as to why this youth was killed while under the judicial custody; the chief justice should take suo moto and take action accordingly. We also demand resignation of Nagaland chief minister and central home minister, Rajnath Singh as both are responsible for administration and law & order of Nagaland.

Feeding The Vultures, While Starving Agriculture: Capitalism's Great Indian Con-Trick

Colin Todhunter

The story goes like this: India is an economic miracle, a powerhouse of growth. It is a nation that increasingly embodies the spirit of entrepreneurship. And the proof? Until recently, India had year on year 9% GDP growth (or thereabouts).

Such logic, statements and figures are the stuff of headlines that pay homage to the supposed wonders of neoliberalism which the corporate media trots out time and again in the belief that if something is repeated often enough then it must be true.

Visit Delhi or Mumbai and you can witness the trappings of this ‘success’. Newly built towns on the outskirts with gleaming apartment blocks and sterile shopping malls. What more could a person want? All well and good for those who have benefited from neoliberal economic reforms that began in 1991 - because indeed it seems that is all they do want.

But these beneficiaries of neoliberalism comprise a minority. They constitute but a section of the urban population, which in turn constitutes a minority within the country. They are the ones the ideologue-economists and corporate-controlled media in the West focus on when celebrating capitalism and its global ‘success’. But what about the bulk of the population, the two thirds that live in villages and rural India?

According to Sudhansu R Das, the Indian village was once enshrined in a performing eco-system and a healthy social life (see this). In fact, the village was the centre of a rural economy, an economic powerhouse of agricultural innovation, artisanship and entrepreneurialism. However, the British Raj almost dismantled this system by introducing mono crop activities and mill-made products. Post-independent India failed to repair the economic fabric and is now actually accelerating the dismantling. As a result, rural India is too often depicted as a ‘basket case’, a drain on the nation's subsidies and resources.

It is not, however, agriculture that is the subsidy-sucking failure it is so often portrayed as in the mainstream media. The spotlight should instead focus on corporate-industrial India, the supposed saviour of the nation, which has failed to deliver in terms of boosting exports or creating jobs, despite the massive hand outs and tax exemptions given to it (see this and this). As subsidy-sucking failures go, it has much to answer for.

Of course, corporate-industrial India is engaged in a huge con-trick, which forms part of the neoliberal agenda worldwide: subsidies to the public sector or to the poor are portrayed as a drain on the economy, while the genuinely massive drain of taxpayer-funded corporate dole, tax breaks, bail outs, sops, tax avoidance and evasion are afforded scant attention. If anything, through slick doublespeak, all of this becomes redefined as being necessary to create jobs or fuel 'growth'.

But what does the taxpaying public get in return for subsidising the private sector in this way and for paying for its fraudulent practices? What do ordinary people get for being forced to ‘stand on their own two feet’ while subsidising a system of ‘free’ enterprise that is anything but free? Jobs... 'growth'?

No, they see record profits and levels of inequality and experience austerity, the outsourcing of jobs, low pay, the destruction of rights, deregulation, mass unemployment and the erosion pensions and social security (see this and this).

The machinery of state is pressed into the service of private capital for the benefit of private capital under the guise of 'growth' or the 'national interest' and that is the price the rest of us pay.

This is exemplified by the following quote:

“We don’t think how our farmers on whose toil we feed manage to sustain themselves; we fail to see how the millions of the poor survive. We look at the state-of-the-art airports, IITs, highways and bridges, the inevitable necessities for the corporate world to spread its tentacles everywhere and thrive, depriving the ordinary people of even the basic necessities of life and believe it is development.” – Sukumaran CV

What Sukumaran CV describes above is in India underpinned by unconstitutional land takeovers, the trampling of democratic rights, cronyism, cartels and the manipulation of markets, which to all purposes is what economic ‘neo-liberalism’ has entailed in India over the last two decades. Corporations have run roughshod over ordinary people in their quest for profit.

In the process, there have been untold opportunities for well-placed officials and individuals to make a fast buck from various infrastructure projects and sell offs of public assets, such as airports, seeds, ports and other infrastructure built up with public money or toil.

This neoliberal agenda is based on state-corporate extremism, which has across the world resulted in national states submitting to the tenets of the Wall Street-backed pro-privatisation policies, deregulation, free capital flows, rigged markets and unaccountable cartels. It is the type of extremism that is depicted as being anything but by the corporate-controlled media.

Powerful corporations are shaping the ‘development’ agenda in India and the full military backing of the state is on hand to forcibly evict peoples from their land in order to hand it to mineral extracting and processing industries, real estate interests and industry.

Moreover, the deal that allows the Monsanto/Syngenta/Walmart-driven Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture in return for the US sanctioning and backing the opening up of India’s nuclear sector to foreign interests has shown who is setting the agenda for agriculture, food and energy.

Almost 300,000 farmers have taken their lives since 1997 and many more are experiencing economic distress or have left farming as a result of debt, a shift to (GM) cash crops and economic ‘liberalisation’ (see this). And yet the corporate-controlled type of agriculture being imposed and/or envisaged only leads to bad food, bad soil, bad or no water, bad health, poor or falling yields and an impending agrarian crisis.

It’s not difficult to see where policy makers’ priorities lie. In a recent TV interview (watch here), food policy analyst Devinder Sharma highlighted such priorities:

“Agriculture has been systematically killed over the last few decades. And they are doing deliberately because the World Bank and big business have given the message that this is the only way to grow economically… Sixty percent of the population lives in the villages or in the rural areas and is involved in agriculture, and less than two percent of the annual budget goes to agriculture… When you are not investing in agriculture, you think it is economically backwards, not performing. You are not wanting it to perform. You are ensuring that the price they get today under the MSP (Minimum Support Price) has also being withdrawn. Leave it to the vagaries or the tyranny of the markets… Twenty-five crore people in this country are agricultural landless workers. If we give these people land, these people are also start-ups, these people are also entrepreneurs... But you are only giving these conditions to industry... agriculture has disappeared from the economic radar screen of the country… 70 percent of the population is being completely ignored…”

Farmers have been imbued with the spirit of entrepreneurship for hundreds of years. They have been "scientists, innovators, natural resource stewards, seed savers and hybridisation experts" who have increasingly been reduced to becoming "recipients of technical fixes and consumers of poisonous products of a growing agricultural inputs industry" (see here).

In his interview, Devinder Sharma went on to state that despite the tax breaks and the raft of policies that favour industry over agriculture, industry has failed to deliver; and yet despite the gross under-investment in agriculture, it still manages to deliver bumper harvests year after year. Furthermore, when farmers are prioritised, politicians are accused of populism and playing to a vote bank. Yet when industry receives subsidies, hand outs and tax breaks, it is called 'reform'and portrayed as contributing to 'growth':

“When we talk about budgets, it’s going to be populism or reforms. What is reforms? … if you don’t give anything to industry, they call it ‘policy paralysis’. But if you give them all kinds of dole then they think it is growth, they think it is a dream budget. In the last 10 years, we had 36 lakh crore going to the corporates by way of tax exemptions. Where are the jobs? They just created 1.5 crore jobs in the last ten years. Where are the exports? ... The only sector that has performed very well in this country is agriculture. Year after year we are having a bumper harvest. Why can’t we strengthen that sector and stop the population shift from the villages… Why do you want to move the population just because Western economists told us we should follow them. Why? Why can’t India have its own thinking? Why do we have to go with Harvard or Oxford economists who tell us this?”

With GDP growth slowing and automation replacing human labour the world over in order to decrease labour costs and boost profit, where are the jobs going to come from to cater for hundreds of millions of former agricultural workers or those whose livelihoods will be destroyed as transnational corporations move in and seek to capitalise industries that currently employ tens of millions (if not hundreds of millions)?

Are they to become what Arundhati Roy calls the "ghosts of capitalism," the invisible, shoved-aside victims of neoliberalism who are deemed surplus to requirements?

India’s development is being hijacked by the country’s wealthy ruling class and the multinational vultures who long ago stopped circling and are now swooping. Meanwhile, the genuine wealth creators, the entrepreneurs who work the fields and have been custodians of the land and seeds for centuries, are being sold out to corporate interests whose only concern is to how best loot the economy.

As they do so, they churn out in unison with their politician puppets the mantra of it all being in the ‘national interest’ and constituting some kind of 'economic miracle'.