Cover Ups and Confessions: Pope Francis and Child Abuse

Binoy Kampmark

It is the season for exposures and exposes, and the Catholic Church has been making regular ripples of the wrong and undeniably crude sort.  Globally, the church is finding itself being picked bare in terms of institutional malfeasance, not merely on the issue of having harboured abusive priests, but of placing a dark, impenetrable cover over them.

No area of influence has been spared.  In Guam, the disruptive efforts of former Archbishop Anthony S. Apuron made it into public eye with G. R. Pafumi’s work citing attempts to invalidate a 2016 statute lifting limitations for child sex abuse.  In Pafumi’s grave words, “The Church believes it is never wrong because it has been guided by the Holy Spirit for nearly 2,000 years.”

The Holy Spirit has not being doing much work of late, and seemed to have deserted Adelaide’s Archbishop Philip Wilson last week when he was found guilty of concealing acts of child abuse by a priest.  Australia’s media cognoscenti claimed this to be a globally significant move, as it made Wilson the most senior Catholic in the world to be found guilty of such a charge. The legal argument for Wilson had been one of ignorance: he had not known that a priest by the name of James Fletcher had abused a boy back in the 1970s.

Magistrate Robert Stone did not find much to merit that version, rejecting Wilson’s frail memory on a conversation in 1976 in which the then 15-year-old victim described the abuse by Fletcher, who was working in the Maitland/Newcastle diocese in New South Wales.

Would there be immediate effect upon his office?  Certainly no resignation, a move deemed arrogant by former NSW police detective chief inspector Peter Fox.  The Church, as ever, remains an obstinately self-policing institution at logger heads with secular institutions.  Wilson was hoping for a soft landing, a reprieve from “the people of the archdiocese of Adelaide” to whom he urged to “continue to pray for me.”   In the meantime, he would continue his “prayers and best wishes” for the faithful in the archdiocese.

There would, at best, be a temporary standing down, but hardly a genuine resignation.  Spokeswoman for the archdiocese Jenny Brinkworth seemed to undo the seriousness of the conviction with bureaucratic numbing.  “Standing aside doesn’t necessarily mean it’s forever.  He’s standing aside until process has run its course.”

Pope Francis has found himself reeling in managing the child abuse crisis, and more specifically the machinery of deception and concealment.  For all the claims of his supposedly more progressive streak, he has been traditionally resistant on the Church’s sclerosis in dealing with the culpable management of abusive priests.

Chile has proven to be particularly problematic, a veritable crown of thorns.  The Pope had, for instance, gone as far as accusing child abuse victims, notably those associated with the infamous Rev. Fernando Karadima, of calumny.  An exchange with a reporter at the gate of the Iquique venue, the site of Mass on the last day of his Chile visit, sent the press and commentators into a spin of dizzied alarm.

Central to the exchange was the pontiff’s 2015 appointment of Bishop Juan Barros.  The appointee to the diocese of Osorno had been a Karadima protégé, who survivors say bore witness and covered-up abuses in Chile.  In a more moderate tone, the Pope decided to sober up matters on returning to Rome.  “You [reporters],” went Francis, “in all good will, tell me that there are victims, but I haven’t seen any, because they haven’t come forward.”  This was a far-fetched assertion, given that Barros has been lighting up matters on the abuse trail since 2012.

Since then, victims have been furnishing Chilean prosecutors with a bounty of testimony.  Former member of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, Marie Collins, was significantly riled, having delivered a letter of 8 pages to the Pope outlining her own accounts of abuse.

Collins’ own resignation from the body was prompted by a seemingly incurable bureaucratic inertia.  “The most significant problem,” she penned in her resignation in March 2017, “has been reluctance of some members of the Vatican Curia to implement the recommendations of the Commission despite their approval by the pope.”

In his January 31, 2015 letter to the executive committee of the Chilean bishops’ conference, it became clear that Francis was entirely cognisant of the problems.  “Thank you for having openly demonstrated the concern that you have about the appointment of Monsignor Juan Barros.  I understand what you are telling me and I’m aware that the situation of the church in Chile is difficult due to the trials you’ve had to undergo.”

Having rounded up on critics of those accused of child abuse, he has been pushed into an act of near grovelling contrition, suggesting last month that there has been “serious errors of assessment and perception”.  The question lurking amidst the frocks was who had supplied the supposedly infallible Francis with the unreliable information. He had claimed to have precipitated the errors of assessment “due to lack of truthful and balanced information.”  Cardinals Francisco Javier Errázuriz and Ricardo Ezzati, both archbishops of Santiago, have denied being involved in that defective information loop.

By the end of April, the pontiff had met three victims of Karadima in Rome.  One of the survivors, Juan Carlos Cruz, claimed that the Pope had sorrowfully relented.  “I was part of the problem,” he is reported to have said.  “I caused this and I apologize to you.”

The Vatican Curia’s response to the dimension of shuffling, moving and redirecting errant and abusive priests supplies a general, global blue print.  Dioceses have duly complied, taking their lead from the top.  All in all, responses by the Church have been irregular and often soft.  Sabbaticals and exit strategies have been promised to those in the higher realms of the church food chain.

Those constructively guilty of abuse – through denial and administrative dissimulation – are merely moved on.  Individuals like Apuron have not been defrocked, nor restrictions placed on his continued ministry.  Wilson, despite his conviction, remains defiant.  Given the Vatican’s previous form, he has every reason to be so.

Over 100 killed in Bangladesh “anti-drug” crackdown

Wimal Perera

Over 100 people have been killed and around 12,000 arrested so far in an “anti-drug” crackdown launched last month by the Bangladesh government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. The operation has been compared with the murderous so-called anti-drug war conducted by Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte from mid-2016 to early 2017.

Under the pretext of “saving the country from the drug menace,” hundreds of police officers and Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) personnel have been mobilised against residents in slum areas of the capital Dhaka and other major cities. The RAB is notorious for brutality and has been widely condemned by human rights groups.

The real purpose of these police-state style operations is to strengthen the state apparatus against growing anti-government opposition by workers, youth and other oppressed layers, in preparation for mass social struggles against the Bangladesh capitalist elite.

Virtually all those killed in the crackdown were supposedly shot during “gunfights,” “crossfire” or “shootouts” with law enforcers. Not a single police or state security officer has been killed in the military-style operations.

On May 26, heavily-armed RAB personnel raided the poverty-stricken Stranded Pakistanis Relief Camp, popularly known as the Geneva Camp, in Dhaka’s Mohammadpu area. Over 150 people were arrested. More than 40,000 Urdu-speaking people are housed in miserable conditions in the settlement, with an average of 90 people forced to share a single toilet.

Later that night, 52 people were arrested during raids on Dhaka’s Kamlapur and Korail slums. Police claimed to have recovered marijuana, methamphetamine tablets and locally-made liquor.

Prime Minister Hasina has been centrally involved in the “anti-drug” campaign from the outset, giving a free hand to the RAB and other police units. In line with her instructions, RAB Director-General Benazir Ahmed announced on May 14 that the operations would include “mobile courts.” These virtual kangaroo courts violate basic legal procedures and democratic rights.

According to a bdnws24.com report on May 27, mobile courts sentenced 77 people in one day, issuing jail terms ranging from three months to two years. Geneva Camp residents told the Daily Star that most of the detainees were “innocent.” The real drug dealers had fled after being tipped off in advance.

Media reports revealed that some victims were killed after victims’ families failed to pay bribes to the police. A Daily Star editorial on May 25 reported: “In Feni and Gazipur, families of men killed in ‘shootouts’ have alleged that the local police sought bribes in exchange for their release. In Feni, relatives have alleged that the failure to pay the bribe led to their deaths, while in Gazipur’s Tongi, the police allegedly killed a detained man even after having been paid the bribe.”

A motor mechanic detained and later released during one raid told the media that ordinary people were “suffering” for a few drug dealers. “We can’t do anything against the drug traders because people in the administration and politicians are also involved in drug trade,” he said.

Under conditions of growing social inequality, wage demands by garment workers and student protests over jobs, sections of the ruling elite have begun voicing concerns about the anti-drug operations.

A New Age editorial on May 26 described the so-called gunfight deaths as “typical of extrajudicial killing.” It criticised “law enforcers” who were able to “play the judge, the jury and the executioner.” Two days earlier, the Committee for the Protection of Fundamental Rights condemned the anti-drug operations and mobile courts, and pointed out that the number of deaths had increased alarmingly.

The main bourgeois opposition party, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) of Khaleda Zia, and the Jatiya Party (JP) of former military dictator H.M. Ershad, denounced Hasina’s repressive operations as “extrajudicial killings.” These parties are manoeuvring in preparation for national elections later this year. Their statements are cynical frauds. Both parties were involved in extrajudicial killings whilst in power.

Just as hypocritical is the Democratic Left Alliance, a platform of eight Stalinist and Maoist parties, including the Socialist Party of Bangladesh (Marxist), Revolutionary Workers’ Party, United Communist League and Democratic Revolutionary Party. It issued a pathetic appeal to the Hasina government to defend “the rule of law, democratic norms and the constitution.”

Backlash against US over tariffs

Nick Beams

The meeting of G7 finance ministers taking place in Whistler, Canada this weekend has begun with a barrage of criticism directed at US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin over the Trump administration’s decision to proceed with tariffs on steel and aluminium exports from Mexico, Canada and the European Union.

On his arrival, German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz immediately denounced the US actions. “The decision by the US government to unilaterally implement tariffs is wrong and—from my point of view—also illegal,” he told reporters. “We have clear rules, which are determined at the international level, and this is a breach of those rules.”

The Trump administration has imposed the tariffs under section 232 of the 1962 Trade Expansion Act on “national security” grounds. Scholz denounced the claim as “spurious.”

“We’ll always be ready to talk about reaching common agreement on trade policy, but that’s only possible if unilaterally implemented tariffs are lifted,” he said.

Canadian Finance Minister Bill Morneau, the chairman of the meeting, said the issue of trade conflicts had moved to front and centre. “I don’t want to kid you, we will need to talk about this first and foremost,” he said. “We think it’s absurd that Canada is considered in any way a security risk, so that will be clearly stated by me.”

The invocation of “national security” by the Trump administration is not because it regards Canada or the EU as a threat, but because it is seeking to exploit a loophole in the rules of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) that permits such tariff impositions. But the WTO rule is meant to cover only situations where countries are actually at war.

Consequently, there is concern that the Trump move could prompt other countries to invoke “national security” grounds for the imposition of tariffs, leading to the disintegration of the global trading order.

Anthony Gardner, the US ambassador to the EU from 2014 to 2107, said Trump’s actions were “very foolish” and a “serious attack” on the world’s trading rules. “Guns should be pointed at enemies, not at allies,” he declared. He added that there was now little to prevent China or any other country from blocking imports on anything, unrelated to true concerns about national security.

The European Union is pushing ahead with counter-measures against the US and is expected to announce its final list of products to be targeted and the level of the tariffs later this month. At the same time, it has opened a case in the WTO against the US measures.

EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström rejected the claim that the tariffs were needed for national security, denouncing them as “pure protectionism.”

“We are not in a trade war, but we are in a very difficult situation caused by the United States,” she said. “I would not use the term ‘trade war’ because it has a psychological effect. The US is playing a dangerous game here.”

At the same time, Malmström announced that the EU was taking China to the WTO for “forcing” European companies seeking to do business in China to disclose technological secrets—the same issue raised by the US.

Malmström said the EU’s actions, against both the US and China, indicated that it was not choosing sides and that “we stand for the multilateral system, for rule-based global trade.” She added, “If players in the world don’t stick to the rule book, the system might collapse.”

She maintained the EU stance that there will be no negotiations with the US while the tariffs remain in place and the EU has “closed the door” on talks. “We offered dialogue and future negotiations under the condition that they took away this threat,” she said. “They didn’t and here we are. When they say America first, we say Europe united.”

Malmström’s emphasis on European unity and for no negotiations while tariffs remain in place reflects the hard line being pushed by France. French President Emmanuel Macron has denounced the tariff measure as “illegal.”

Speaking to reporters, he said the US decision was a mistake because it was “creating economic nationalism … and nationalism is war. That’s exactly what happened in the ’30s.”

However, German trade groups, fearing that further tariff measures by the US targeting the auto industry are in the pipeline, are calling for restraint on the part of the EU. Volkswagen said it would welcome a resumption of talks on a bilateral agreement with the US, without any mention of the prior removal of tariffs.

Christian Vietmeyer, the head of the Steel and Metal Processors’ Association, called for restraint. “Reactions of the EU that lead to an escalation of the situation and more trade barriers would cause more damage. The EU should stay calm.”

The predominant reaction in US political, business and media circles to the tariffs is not opposition to trade war measures per se, but rather that the Trump administration is alienating its allies when it should be trying to win their support for action against China.

The Republican chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Kevin Brady, said the tariffs were “hitting the wrong target” and that when it came to unfair trade in aluminium and steel, Mexico, Canada and Europe were not the problem, “China is.”

Criticism of Trump’s tariffs has been considerably more vocal and pointed from the Republican congressional camp than the Democratic. Most of the Democratic leadership has avoided comment, while the most rabid trade war hawks, such as Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, have backed Trump.

An editorial in the Wall Street Journal said that rather than Trump being a “genius deal-maker” his actions revealed he was “merely an old-fashioned protectionist.” The editorial said that with his tax cuts and deregulation—the handing out of billions of dollars to the corporations and ultra-wealthy and the easing of restrictions on the operations of the banks—Trump had established a solid economic record, but his escalating trade war was putting this at risk. While he has aspired to be Ronald Reagan, his “tariff follies” echo Herbert Hoover, the newspaper declared.

In an editorial titled “America Declares War on its Friends,” the New York Times said the tariff measures would do nothing to reduce steel and aluminium capacity in China, and the president was “effectively isolating the United States from its closest allies—the very countries that it needs to work with to put pressure on China to change its course.”

Government report shows sharp rise in US teen deaths

Kate Randall

A report released Friday shows a shocking rise in deaths between 2013 and 2016 among US children and teens aged 10-19. While deaths in this age group declined between 1999 and 2013, from 2013 to 2016 the total number of deaths, as well as the death rate, increased by 12 percent.

These grim statistics expose the social crisis confronting America’s youth in the form of gun violence, suicide, the opioid crisis, poverty and war.

The study published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that injury deaths—including unintentional injury, suicide, homicide and war—comprised 70 percent of all deaths for persons aged 10-19 in 2016. By contrast, the non-injury death rate (from natural causes such as cancer and heart disease) declined for this age group by 23 percent from 1999 to 2013 and remained relatively stable after that.

Particularly telling, the number and rate of total deaths in 2016 for adolescents aged 15-19 was more than three times that of children and teens aged 10-14. For teens aged 15-19, the injury death rate increased by 19 percent in 2016 from the recent low in 2013. At a time when young men and women in this age group should be finishing high school and contemplating college or a career, increasing numbers of them are meeting a violent death.

The CDC report is based on data from death certificates filed in all 50 states and the District of Columbia between 1999 and 2016. The data collected by researchers shows that motor vehicle traffic fatalities accounted for 62 percent of unintentional injury deaths, followed by poisoning at 16 percent and drowning at 7 percent. Poisoning deaths include drug overdoses, which account for 90 percent of these deaths, mostly in older teens.

Following a decrease in homicide deaths among children and adolescents between 2007 and 2014, these deaths increased by 27 percent from 2014 to 2016. The suicide rate declined by 15 percent between 1999 and 2007, then rose by a staggering 56 percent between 2007 and 2016. The three leading methods of suicide in 2016 were suffocation (including hanging), firearms and poisoning (including drug overdoses).

In 2016, 2,553 young people age 10 to 19 took their own lives, compared to 1,661 in 2007. For every young person who makes the horrific decision to end his or her life there are families and friends left devastated. Nothing is more tragic than losing a child, sibling or classmate, but to grapple with why a young person would consciously choose to die is overwhelming.

A separate study in the medical journal Pediatrics also found a rise in suicidal thoughts and attempts among 10- to 24-year-olds. The study showed that the proportion of young people treated at 31 US children’s hospitals for suicidal thoughts or attempts more than doubled between 2008 and 2015, from 0.66 percent to 1.82 percent of all visits. Nearly two-thirds of these visits involved girls.

More than half of the suicide-related visits resulted in inpatient hospitalization, with 13 percent of patients treated in intensive care units. Researchers found that suicide-related visits were twice as high during October, at the start of the school year, than in July, during the summer vacation. The study did not investigate how academic pressure or bullying might contribute to suicidal thoughts among young people.

One of the researchers for the Pediatrics study, Gregory Plemmons, a physician and associate professor of clinical pediatrics at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, told CNN that he became interested in conducting the suicide study after noticing an increasing number of beds at his hospital being used for young people in need of psychiatric treatment, often after exhibiting suicidal behavior.

“What I’m noticing is kids seem to be less resilient and to have more pressure,” he said. “I think social media also fuels this Instagram life of everything is perfect and cool and you don’t see the other side of life.”

A study published in Clinical Psychological Science last year similarly concluded: “The increases in new media screen activities and the decreases in nonscreen activities may explain why depression and suicide increased among US adolescents since 2010.”

But while some are quick to suggest that social media, cyberbullying and violent videos are leading factors contributing to youth suicide and school shootings, the causes are far more complex. The continued growth of income inequality can fuel depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts, particularly among young people who are looking for a future but find themselves unemployed, in low-paying dead-end jobs, or saddled with student debt.

A report published in January by the Center for Children in Poverty at Columbia University in New York found that in 2016, 19 percent of US children under age 18 lived in families with incomes below the federal poverty threshold. At the time, this was an abysmally low $24,339 for a two-parent family with two children.

The Pew Research Center released a study this week reporting that since 2000, suburban counties have experienced sharper increases in poverty than urban or rural counties. Since 1990, poverty rates in suburban areas have increased by 50 percent, while the number of suburban residents living in high-poverty areas has almost tripled.

Scott W. Allard, author of Places in Need, wrote in a recent column that rising suburban poverty is due to the “changing nature of the labor market.” He added, “In most suburbs, unemployment rates were twice as high in 2014 as in 1990. Good-paying jobs that don’t require advanced training have started to disappear in suburbs, just as they did in central cities more than a quarter-century ago.”

A national survey by health service company Cigna revealed that nearly half of Americans report sometimes or always feeling alone or left out. Young adults of Generation Z (ages 18-22) report the most loneliness and claim to be in worse health than older generations.

The survey found the main contributing factors to loneliness to be lack of sleep, insufficient time spent with family, lack of physical activity and jobs that require more hours or less hours than desired. Not surprisingly, young adults are more likely to be unemployed, overworked or working at low-paid jobs—and susceptible to loneliness and depression.

Addressing this crisis would begin with the allocation of billions of dollars for social services, including nutrition programs, job training and health care. The response of the ruling elite, however, is to impose work requirements for Medicaid and food stamps in an effort to cut people off of benefits. Funding for vitally needed mental health care services and treatment for opioid addiction is also a low priority.

There has been no outrage from the Democrats over the continuing wave of reports presenting indices of social misery—whether it be the rise in youth suicides or reports that the average US worker would need to work 275 years to earn the annual compensation of his or her company’s CEO. Instead, the Democrats have provided the votes to fund the Pentagon’s record $700 billion budget and secured the confirmation of black site torture administrator Gina Haspel as head of the CIA.

In a scathing critique, Philip Alston, the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, said the Trump administration is steering the country towards a “dramatic change of direction” that is rewarding the rich and blocking access for the poor even to the most basic necessities.

He told the Guardian, “This is a systematic attack on America’s welfare program that is undermining the social safety net for those who can’t cope on their own. Once you start removing any sense of government commitment, you quickly move into cruelty.”

The beginning of a new period of working class struggle in the US and around the world—seen most graphically in the US in the wave of protests and strikes by teachers against both the government and the corporatist trade unions—is the key to how young people can put an end to the conditions that underlie the rise in drug abuse and other social evils. Young people are themselves coming into struggle and looking for ways to oppose the intolerable status quo. This has taken the initial form of mass demonstrations against school violence.

What is critical is that youth turn to the working class and break free from both parties of the capitalist class in the fight to build a mass socialist movement to put an end to the profit system, the source of poverty, inequality and war.

Extreme right takes power in Italy

Peter Schwarz

The new Italian government sworn in yesterday afternoon in Rome is the most right-wing since the collapse of the fascist Duce Benito Mussolini’s regime in 1945. Installed with the approval of President Sergio Mattarella, it is a coalition of the far-right Lega and the populist Five Star Movement (M5S).

The strongman within the government is Lega leader Matteo Salvini. Although his party secured just 17 percent of the vote in the parliamentary elections, Salvini pulled strings and dictated terms during the weeks-long wrangling to form the government.

As deputy prime minister and interior minister, he is now gathering together the powers to proceed with the deportation of half a million refugees and the strengthening of the police, as agreed by Lega and M5S in their government coalition pact. He intends to construct a police state that will clamp down ruthlessly on all social and political opposition.

Salvini makes no secret of his fascist outlook. He invited leading figures of the European neo-Nazi scene to his rallies, including German New Right ideologist Götz Kubitschek and the Greek neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn. He also collaborates closely with France's National Front, the Alternative for Germany and other neo-fascist parties. He regularly makes fascistic denunciations of refugees and Muslims.

Formerly called Lega Nord, the party defended the interests of privileged sections of the population in the better-off areas of northern Italy before developing into a nationwide party. It ran in the election in an alliance with the Forza Italia of Silvio Berlusconi, who more than anyone else embodies the corruption and criminality of the Italian bourgeoisie, as well as Fratelli d'Italia, whose roots can be traced directly to Italian fascism.

The fact that M5S, the largest party in the coalition, is helping hand the levers of power to this right-wing filth puts paid to the myth that M5S is a party neither of the left nor right.

M5S was founded by the comedian Beppe Grillo following the 2008 financial crisis, which devastated Italy. For decades, every Italian government has pursued policies of militarism and austerity, including those based on the social democratic Democratic Party (PD) and various pseudo-left parties such as Rifondazione Comunista. The resulting social catastrophe and political vacuum on the left allowed Grillo to win a hearing with demagogic attacks on the corruption and self-enrichment of Italian politicians. M5S gained a foothold among youth who sensed that the so-called “left” around the PD defended capitalism.

However, the Five Star Movement’s programme was in essence right-wing from the outset, as the World Socialist Web Site noted five years ago. We wrote, “Under the guise of a struggle against corruption, monopolies and bureaucracy, it calls for an historic assault against workers and the entire framework of the postwar welfare state. While M5S claims to oppose the corrupt political class, its target is the social gains of the Italian working class.”

This assessment has now been confirmed. M5S’ alliance with Lega, whose xenophobic programme M5S has fully embraced, directly targets the working class and youth.

In the election, M5S secured most of its support by promising to furnish a basic minimum income to everyone. It won votes above all from young people, many of whom are so impoverished that they cannot leave their parents’ home until their late 30s and are unable to start a family. It also did well in the impoverished south.

As second deputy prime minister and minister of industry and labour, Five Star leader Luigi di Maio is now responsible for the implementation of this electoral promise, which amounts to a gift to the corporate elite. The basic income of €780 per month is conditioned on recipients accepting any and all job offers. Like Hartz IV in Germany, it will serve as a mechanism for the creation of a huge low-wage sector.

Lega and M5S have also agreed on the introduction of a two-stage flat tax, a multi-billion-euro handout to the rich and big business.

The installation of such a government is a warning to workers not only in Italy, but across Europe and internationally. The ruling elite is rapidly turning to authoritarian forms of rule.

The fascistic Lega-M5S coalition is coming to power with the stamp of approval of the European Union. Only days before Mattarella used his constitutional powers to give approval to the formation of an M5S-Lega government, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini stressed that she had “full trust” in the Italian president.

Last night, officials across Europe hailed the far-right regime in Rome. German Chancellor Angela Merkel praised the “close and friendly ties that unite Germany and Italy in all spheres—political, cultural and economic,” and told the new Italian government, “I look forward to developing and deepening this close partnership with you.”

EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker called for close collaboration between the EU and the new government, downplaying Salvini’s fascistic outbursts with the remark, “One should measure politicians by their deeds, not their rhetorical statements.”

The only reservations held by Mattarella and the EU were concerns that under Salvini, Italy might leave the euro or cease fully servicing its massive €2.3 trillion debt. Just last year, €66.4 billion in interest payments were due on the debt, though the interest rate of 0.7 percent was very low. A rise in interest rates would quickly multiply this figure.

Neither Mattarella nor the EU took issue with the government’s plans to detain and deport hundreds of thousands of refugees. They had just as little to say about the new interior minister’s racist tirades and his support for authoritarian rule. This is because these policies are now the consensus in Europe.

In every country, the ruling class is resorting to censorship, state repression and fascistic methods to defend its rule. This is driven on the one hand by the unprecedented crisis of European and world capitalism, and, on the other, by the mounting opposition in the working class to social cuts, repression and militarism. This opposition threatens to break free of the suffocating grip of the trade unions, the social democrats and their allies in the pseudo-left, whose ability to contain and suppress the class struggle is eroding.

Far-right parties now sit in government in several European countries, including Austria, Hungary and Poland. The fact that an ultra-right government has assumed power in Italy, a founding member of the EU with a population of 60 million and the fourth largest economy in the EU, must be seen as a warning to the entire European working class.

The social democratic parties, the pseudo-left organizations and the trade unions are neither able nor willing to oppose the danger of fascism. The have helped legitimize the extreme right. By pursuing right-wing policies in the interests of big capital, they have allowed the fascist parties to posture as opponents of the status quo. Moreover, the social democratic and pseudo-left parties have adopted much of the platform of the extreme right, demanding a crackdown on refugees, domestic repression and the remilitarization of society.

Only an independent movement of the working class can oppose the threat posed by the far-right. The objective prerequisites for such a movement are present. Social tensions and the class struggle are growing across Europe, together with opposition to attacks on democratic and social rights and the militarisation of the continent.

Everything now depends upon the building of a new Marxist party to unite the Italian, European and international working class and mobilise its revolutionary potential for the overthrow of capitalism. This urgently poses the task of building sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International in Italy and other European countries.

Israel deepens crackdown on human rights advocates, opponents of government’s policies

Josh Varlin

The Israeli government is deepening its crackdown on human rights activists and academics critical of the criminal policy being carried out by Tel Aviv in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

It has initiated unprecedented proceedings to deport Human Rights Watch (HRW)’s Israel and Palestine Director Omar Shakir from Israel, while carrying out similar actions against other human rights advocates.

While a Jerusalem District Court issued an interim injunction on May 23 pausing the deportation, court proceedings on the deportation order are set for next month. Shakir had his work permit revoked and was given a 14-day notice to leave Israel on May 7.

The Interior Ministry ordered Shakir’s deportation after compiling an extensive dossier on his activities stretching back over a decade to his time as a student at Stanford University. The dossier includes tweets and petitions Shakir has signed and alleges that he is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign. Neither HRW nor Shakir actively promote BDS, and HRW has noted that only a handful of other countries, including North Korea and Sudan, have restricted their activities.

The injunction was based on the fact that the information used by the Interior Ministry to order Shakir’s deportation—alleged support for BDS—was known before his work permit was granted in the first place.

The mere existence of the dossier will have a chilling effect, as it indicates that other human rights activists and academics in Israel, or who merely publish writing on Israel, have had their political activities monitored by the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs.

A May 25 piece by Shakir in Haaretz notes that “Israel claims to be the region’s only democracy, yet it is deporting a rights defender over his peaceful expression,” and that HRW “has offices in Lebanon, Jordan and Tunisia” and other countries in the region.

Shakir has previously been expelled or blocked from entering other countries due to his activities. “In 2009, Syria denied me a visa after an official said that my writing ‘reflected poorly on the Syrian government,” he notes. “In 2014, I was forced to leave Egypt after I wrote a report for Human Rights Watch documenting the Rab’a Massacre, one of the world’s largest single-day killings of protesters. A year ago, Bahrain held me for 18 hours and denied me entry after I identified myself as working for Human Rights Watch.”

The temporarily delayed deportation of Shakir is in line with Israel’s other recent actions aimed at restricting the movement of human rights activists and even elected officials.

Katherine Franke and Vincent Warren [Source Twitter]

Israeli authorities denied entry to Katherine Franke, a human rights activist and professor at Columbia University, on April 29 due to her political views. An anonymous spokesman for the Strategic Affairs Ministry confirmed to Haaretz that she was prevented from entering the country because of her alleged “prominent role” with Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), which supports BDS.

Franke was one of four human rights activists detained for 14 hours by Israeli immigration authorities before being deported. The four were part of the “Justice Delegation,” consisting mostly of American activists who went to visit Israel and Palestine and speak to organizations and activists. Franke, who is the chair of the board of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), was to lead the delegation along with Vincent Warren, CCR’s executive director.

The other two deported activists asked not to be identified.

Franke is the Sulzbacher Professor of Law, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Columbia University in New York City, and is also a member of the Executive Committee of Columbia’s Center for Palestine Studies. Her faculty page notes that “she works regularly in Palestine, most recently serving as an academic mentor for the human rights faculty at Al Quds University in East Jerusalem.”

Warren, formerly an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, said: “The Israeli government denied us entry, apparently because it feared letting in people who might challenge its policies. This is something that we should neither accept nor condone from a country that calls itself a democracy.”

During her interrogation, Franke was presented with supposed “proof” of her ties to BDS-supporting organizations, in the form of what she believes were articles taken from right-wing Zionist websites that post information about critics of Israel. Franke told Democracy Now! that “the security personnel of the Israeli government have assigned to private, right-wing, unreliable trolls the job of deciding who is a security risk and who isn’t.”

She was also told that she was going to Palestine to promote BDS, which she pointed out was false—they were there to witness human rights violations—and illogical—promoting BDS in Palestine does not make sense, as “BDS takes place elsewhere.”

After being harshly interrogated and fingerprinted, Franke was told that she has been banned from Israel for five years, although her deportation order does not mention a ban. Warren told the press that he was told that he would be deported even before his interrogation. The Israeli government absurdly claims that Warren left voluntarily.

Franke has previously supported Steven Salaita, whose appointment as a professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign was revoked because of his tweets protesting the Israeli slaughter of Palestinians during the 2014 war against Gaza.

Less than two weeks after Franke was deported, Israel launched air strikes against Iranian positions in Syria, highlighting the acute risk of a regional war involving at least Israel and Iran, and potentially Saudi Arabia and the United States. The ultimate aim of Tel Aviv, backed to the hilt and encouraged by Washington, is regime change in Tehran.

Moreover, Franke’s deportation came only weeks before the expected culmination of weeks of protests by Palestinians in Gaza. Palestinians are protesting the apartheid-like conditions under which they live, including the debilitating blockade by Israel and Egypt. The Israeli response has been to kill over 100 protesters and injure thousands more. Notorious videos depict unarmed protesters shot by Israeli sniper fire.

In April, Israeli authorities denied Patrice Leclerc, the mayor of Gennevilliers, France, entry to the West Bank due to his support for BDS. The same month, they attempted to deny Dublin Lord Mayor Mícheál Mac Donncha entry, but due to a clerical error he was let through. Before returning to Ireland, Mac Donncha signed a document saying he would not reenter the country without permission.

The crackdown by the Zionist state on its critics, including BDS proponents and human rights officials, is symptomatic of the growing crisis of the Israeli ruling class as it attempts to divert growing social contradictions outward in the form of war.

Harley-Davidson workers’ anger grows over impending Kansas City plant closure

Marcus Day

Anger among workers at Harley-Davidson continues to build over the planned closure of the motorcycle manufacturer’s Kansas City, Missouri assembly plant. Fueling the outrage is the company’s brazen display of corporate greed, as they revealed weeks later that they would be showering investors with hundreds of millions of dollars more in dividends and stock buybacks.

The initial announcement of the plant closure on January 30 came on the heels of the enactment of President Donald Trump’s corporate tax-cut package. The news was an embarrassment for the Trump administration and refuted claims by Republican Party officials and their media mouthpieces that the legislation would benefit American workers through better job security and higher wages.

Trump, who lauded Harley-Davidson executives when they visited the White House in February 2017, asserted at the time—baselessly—that the company was “going to even expand” following the slashing of corporate taxes. “We want to make it easier for businesses to create more jobs and more factories in the United States, and you’re a great example of it,” he added.

Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan, visiting a Harley plant in Wisconsin the following September, said, “Tax reform can put American manufacturers and American companies like Harley-Davidson on a much better footing to compete in the global economy and keep jobs in America.”

Harley has stated that its effective tax rate for 2018 will drop by roughly 10 percentage points, from approximately 35 percent to 25 percent or less. With annual pre-tax income of around $1 billion, the company stands to save nearly $100 million per year.

As Harley’s decision to close its Kansas City plant demonstrates, the corporate tax cut bonanza was intended from the beginning solely to enrich American companies’ wealthy executives and investors, while doing nothing to improve workers’ living standards let alone prevent future layoffs or factory closures. Meanwhile, the reduction in government tax revenue as a result of the cuts is being used to justify massive reductions to social services, public education, health care, and other programs on which the working class and poor rely.

As Rick Pence, a worker with over 20 years at the Kansas City plant, told MSNBC, “When the tax cut finally rolled down to us, I got about $16, $17 more a week. But now Harley’s giving me one heck of a tax cut, ‘cause I won’t have no income at all next year.”

“They’re just pulling the rug out from underneath us. Putting 800 people out on the street, and all our families, too.”

Adding insult to injury, workers were not informed of the decision until the morning the company released the news to the press. Workers were kept in a hallway, told the plant would be shut down, and sent home for the day without pay, according to a report by the online news site Vox.

Harley has claimed that it had no choice but to shut down its Kansas City plant in the face of flagging sales, with those in the US declining 12 percent in the first quarter of this year. Nervous over recent reports of workers’ anger over the plant closure, the company blocked the press from attending its annual shareholders meeting on May 10, while writing in a statement, “Unfortunately there is nothing that could have been done to address the pressure of excess capacity we have in the US market.”

However, these claims are contradicted by the company’s recent moves to open the spigots and transfer enormous sums of money to its shareholders.

Less than a week following the news of the closure of the Kansas City factory, Harley announced that it would increase its dividend and initiate the repurchase of an additional 15 million shares, valued at $696 million.

In an April conference call with Wall Street analysts, Harley Chief Financial Officer John Olin obliquely referred to plans for layoffs and restructuring as a “multiyear manufacturing optimization initiative…[which] will simplify our manufacturing footprint,” while emphasizing the company’s determination to enrich its investors, stating, “Beyond what we invest in the business we will return and continue to return all excess cash to our shareholders.”

The inflation of Harley’s stock price will overwhelmingly benefit a handful of major financial institutions. Just ten firms control nearly sixty percent of Harley’s shares, while the top three—Capital Research Global Investors, the Vanguard Group, and BlackRock—own approximately 30 percent of Harley’s shares.

Harley’s looting of workers’ livelihoods in order to give ever-larger windfalls to the financial aristocracy is by no means an aberration, but rather increasingly the norm. Corporations have spent  at least $158 billion on stock buybacks in the first three months of 2018, and analysts from Goldman Sachs expect that corporate spending on buybacks and dividends will continue at the current record pace, topping $1.2 trillion by the end of the year.

While the corporations are accelerating their drive to transfer billions of dollars and more from the working class to their coffers, the trade unions are doing everything possible to block a collective fight back, and instead are promoting illusions in appeals to the Trump administration, while simultaneously seeking to whip up national chauvinism and direct workers’ anger against their brothers and sisters in other countries.

Following the announcement by Harley in 2017 that it would be opening a plant in Thailand, Robert Martinez, Jr., the president of the International Association of Machinists (IAM), which represents most of the workers at the Kansas City plant, said, “It’s a slap in the face to the US workers who built an American icon.” In March, Martinez wrote a letter to Trump, saying it was “galling” that the company supported jobs overseas, and appealing to the president to intervene with Harley executives. “Our nation deserves better,” he said.

The nationalism promoted by the unions, based on the lie that American workers and corporations share the same interests, dovetails with the “America First” chauvinist populism peddled by Trump and his fascistic advisers.

In reality, the true allies of Harley workers in Kansas City are not the criminal billionaire politicians such as Trump, but rather the millions of workers in South America, Asia, Europe and beyond, who share the same class interests as workers in the US. If workers are to conduct a successful fight against plant closures and in defense of secure, safe, good-paying jobs, wages and benefits, they must break with the pro-capitalist unions and form their own democratically elected organizations—rank-and-file factory committees—that unite with workers internationally in a common struggle.

Sri Lanka and the World: Whither Political Prudence?

Asanga Abeyagoonasekera

There is piercing hopelessness for the future when listening to certain political rhetoric in Sri Lanka. The International Workers Day, a day to remember workers’ rights, was initiated from the 1886 Haymarket affair in Chicago. It grew from a general strike for the eight-hour workday and has over time developed into a showcase of political muscle at the May Day rally. The competition among the political parties is to generate the most amount of crowd moving out of the initial idea.

The line that divides the opposition and government in Sri Lankan politics has been blurred by a bipartisan mechanism introduced by the incumbent government. It is further blurred with 16 Sri Lanka Freedom Party ministers having become part of the joint opposition or ambiguous in their political affiliation. Political party loyalty and discipline has reached the lowest ebb in Sri Lankan politics.

The appointment of cabinet ministers in the beginning of this month to what the largest cabinet in the world is perhaps has been questioned by former members of the former government who claim there is no scientific basis to the allocation of ministries to particular individuals. Yet such an accusation leaves the general public to wonder if the previous government itself had a mechanism to select its cabinet ministers. Although there was a message to the public from certain politicians including a senior cabinet Minister who said “Cabinet reshuffle will take place in a scientific manner” and that a “scientific formula” was introduced to allocate ministers, the substance of the formula was not revealed to the public. A government should allocate its cabinet ministers based on merit and achievements in their area/s of expertise even though party leaders will be limited to selecting only 25 out of 225 members. Whatever the “scientific formula” used was, it will not give results because most members of parliament were elected from a grave miscalculation, and not based on merit.

Sri Lankan political scientist Dr Jayadeva Uyangoda rightly calls for academic scrutiny of this changing behavior of political party members towards their leadership, especially on the question of party discipline/indiscipline changing the dynamics of Sri Lanka’s political party system. According to Dr Uyangoda, “Sri Lanka’s political parties have become new creatures with some unusually new characteristics. Monitoring these new changes requires not only scholarly vigilance, but also detachment from our old images of what democratic political institutions are.” The new creature created by the system sows confusion for political society. 

Moving from domestic political society to the international, China’s President Xi Jinping recently spoke of Karl Marx’s idea of the struggle of the proletariat, the ideal that underpins some international workers’ movements. Xi said, “Writing Marxism onto the flag of the Chinese Communist party was totally correct.” Two centuries since Marx’s death, while advancing a much more open economic system, the leader of the second largest economy of the world said Marx is “the greatest thinker of modern times.” As a rising power, China liberalised its economy and ushered in globalisation to move millions out of poverty. 

Closer home in South Asia, India took up a somewhat similar formula. As China and India underwent these changes, their respective foreign policies were impacted. After 1990, with the end of the Cold War era, India underwent two important adjustments to its foreign policy: first was economic liberalisation and deregulation; and the second was India’s changing relationship with the US. In their book, India at the Global High Table: The Quest for Regional Primacy and Strategic Autonomy, ambassadors Teresita and Howard Schaffer correctly identify this phenomenon. Over 50 years ago, the classical realist international relations theorist Hans Morgenthau had explained that “The character of foreign policy can be ascertained only through the examination of the political acts performed and of the foreseeable consequences of these acts.” By assessing given actions, one could evaluate what statesmen have actually done for the foreign policies of their countries and the profound impact on the outlook towards the world outside. Sri Lanka, with its middle path idealistic foreign policy, is stuck somewhat in the non-aligned past, which needs re-calibration towards a more realistic approach in this century. The idealistic view adopted in the past could be due to the influence of Buddhist values towards our leaders.

Today, China has expanded its trade with US. Nonetheless, in the past few weeks, Beijing has faced a serious trade war with Washington due to the US Department of Commerce ban on ZTE, one of the largest Chinese telecommunications companies in the US. In February 2018, US intelligence agencies warned Americans against buying products from ZTE and Huawei, another Chinese telecom company, claiming that the companies posed a security threat to American customers. The chairman of ZTE called this “unfair and unacceptable,” decrying the US export ban as a massive disruption to its business since the company relies on US firms for key smartphone components. 

This incident is a clear indication of how national security plays out in the present context despite an open trade policy. Meanwhile, Sri Lanka has opened its gates for the lowest price with a high percentage of telecommunication infrastructure based on ZTE and Huawei products. Such a predicament was anticipated and highlighted during a discussion of experts from national security think tanks in Sri Lanka a year ago. Its outcome was circulated among the highest policy makers. 

Should such warnings from experts go unheeded?

Japanese and Russian leaders meet to discuss economic and security concerns

Gary Alvernia

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Russian President Vladimir Putin met in Russia on Saturday, on the sidelines of the Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum. Economic and security concerns dominated the talks, underlined by the unpredictable outcome of the United States’ approaches toward North Korea and continuing fraught geopolitical tensions.

Putin told a joint press conference the talks were “very constructive and business-like.” Both leaders spoke on the need to resolve the territorial dispute over the four southernmost Kuril Islands (which Japan refers to as the Northern Territories) and conclude a peace treaty to formally end World War II between the two countries. The Soviet Union occupied the islands during the war.

Abe and Putin hinted there could be a resolution to the issue at some point in the future. They agreed that a Japanese business delegation would go to the islands to work on joint economic projects, and former Japanese residents could return to the islands for the first time to visit relatives’ graves.

Abe stated: “The Japanese and the Russians will be able to reap the fruits of the joint work on the islands. If we cooperate, we can achieve great results that bring mutual benefit.” The Japanese prime minister indicated in January the importance he is putting on Russia, saying it had “the most potential of any bilateral relationship.”

Despite the public pleasantries, tensions remain between Tokyo and Moscow. Japan is planning to deploy one of two Aegis Ashore missile batteries to cover the northern part of the country and almost certainly the disputed islands.

In response to this deployment, Moscow has held military exercises on the islands this year, involving thousands of troops. It has also converted a civilian airport on Iturup, one of the four disputed territories, into a base capable of hosting military aircraft for the first time since the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

As with all territorial disputes in Asia, the rival claims over the Kuril Islands are used to stoke nationalism and project domestic tensions outward, and in the case of Japan, to paint itself as a victim and provide another rationale for remilitarisation.

Furthermore, while Abe said he and Putin discussed the issues on the Korean Peninsula in detail, the two leaders did not speak at great length on North Korea, suggesting key differences exist.

Japan has called for continued pressure on North Korea, which has included threats of military action, but Russia has taken a different approach. Putin told the press conference that “every side in the process should exercise restraint, preventing any further confrontation.” This was a reference not only to North Korea, but to the United States and Japan.

Russia has largely sided with China in the dispute over the Korean Peninsula. Beijing has regularly called for the resumption of the six-party talks over North Korea’s nuclear program, which would include Russia, allowing both to have their security concerns heard. Beijing has sharply criticised the deployment of a US Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery in South Korea, ostensibly directed at the North, and the ballistic missile systems in Japan.

China and Russia, which both share a border with North Korea, correctly fear that these missile systems and accompanying radar systems are being used to spy on their territories and could be deployed against them if a larger war breaks out. Washington earlier this year said it was preparing for great power conflicts with both China and Russia.

The United States is concerned that Japan’s relationship with Moscow will cut across Washington’s rabid anti-Russia campaign. Last year, trade between Japan and Russia grew by approximately 25 percent, amounting to $US18.3 billion. Japan, the world’s largest importer of liquefied natural gas (LNG), receives 10 percent of that total from Russia.

Tokyo still publicly states that the US is “the foundation of peace, prosperity and freedom not only in Japan but also across the Asia-Pacific region,” according to its 2018 Diplomatic Bluebook. Yet, Tokyo was caught off guard by Trump’s announcement of a summit with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un and fears being left out of any negotiations.

In addition, the US tariffs on aluminum and steel, as well as Trump’s threatened tariffs on automobiles, brought a sharp rebuke from Abe on Wednesday. He told parliament: “From a security perspective, it’s very difficult to understand why this would be imposed on Japan, a military ally.”

While a sharp change in US-Japan relations is unlikely in the near future, these emerging cracks highlight the inter-imperialist rivalries between the two nations. The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), which has close connections to the US Defense Department, pointed out following the Abe-Putin summit that Tokyo fears Washington’s anti-Russia campaign is pushing Moscow toward a front with China, at the expense of Japan’s security interests.

While the CSIS called for the US and Japan “to stay joined at the hip” in their response to matters in East Asia, the Trump administration’s actions on trade and lack of communication on North Korea are contributing to a wedge between the two allies.

Ultimately, Japan hopes that it can win enough favour with Russia to prevent a growing Moscow-Beijing relationship, which would negatively affect Tokyo’s imperialist designs on the Asian mainland. The growing isolationist sentiment of the US is bringing tensions, once hidden behind the phony talk about “democratic values” or “human rights,” to the surface. Regardless of any potential deal with North Korea in coming weeks, these tensions will only sharpen.

Bangladesh & Nuclear Power: Significance for India

Tarika Rastogi


The Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant (RNPP) in Bangladesh has the potential to re-energise India-Russia cooperation and significantly enhance India's geopolitical clout and standing in the nuclear community. 

The RNPP (whose construction began in 2013) will be Bangladesh's first and is being constructed by Rosatom (State Atomic Energy Corporation, Russia). It is the first atomic energy project in a third country under an India-Russia deal where Indian companies train the workforce while Russia builds the reactor. The RNPP involves two units, each with a capacity of 1200MW. Built on a turnkey basis, Rosatom will manage the entire project and will be liable for any complications that arise in the plant. The estimated cost of the project is US$12.65 billion; of which, the Russian government will provide 90 per cent of the cost on 1.75 per cent interest. The Bangladeshi government would arrange the remaining 10 per cent. The loan will be settled 28 years after the plant becomes operational, and, if required, a grace period of an additional 10 years period would be provided.

For India, this is important for a variety of reasons, foremost of which would be the exposure to international project management. This involves being closely associated with all stages of construction, albeit on an observer basis to ensure knowledge of construction and then acting as an interface between the Russian engineers and the Bangladeshi operators. This is an important role of understanding, translating and transmitting information, the lack of which can result in severe cost overruns—as was seen in the Olkiluoto 3 reactor in Eurajoki, Finland. Moreover, it will mean the adaptation or development of a new set of standards, guidelines and legal frameworks to deal with holistic nuclear plant management such as safety (from sabotage or terrorism, static or during transport); countering the possibility of pilferage and smuggling; setting up emergency response centres; and cyber security to name but a few. It will give India the opportunity to stress test frameworks it will develop from this and similar projects in Vietnam and Sri Lanka. The knowledge gained through these projects enhances India’s credibility and enables it to further undertake such projects as a knowledge partner.

The knowledge and human aspect here are particularly important as it leverages India's experience with several generations of Russian reactors. The training of a diverse set of Bangladeshi experts from operational to supervisory and regulatory staff in much the same way as graduating from Western universities creates a point of reference and peer approval of an alumna network; and such training essentially makes Bangladesh's emerging nuclear experts dependent on and therefore closely linked to the Indian nuclear ecosystem, in most human aspects. What is particularly important here is that this will be the first 3rd generation Russian reactor that India has dealt with, as opposed to India's Russian reactors which are second generation. This means India has internalised the operational philosophy of Russian reactors and can provide more culturally sensitive training to third countries in a brand new design from its construction stage; and as such this marks a significant increase in Indian human capital generation.

All of this required much sustained effort from the Russian and Indian sides. It did not develop in a vacuum but out of a deliberate plan. In 2014, Russia and India signed a strategic vision (Strategic Vision for Strengthening Cooperation in Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy) under which both countries will explore opportunities of sourcing materials, equipment and services from Indian industry for the construction of Russian-designed nuclear power plants in third countries. In this regard, the Russian Nuclear Agency, Rosatom, opened a regional centre in Mumbai in 2016 to facilitate projects in the region to facilitate greater Indian inputs and suppliers. This is significant because it represents the first seemingly successful attempt by both countries to break the traditional relationship that was focused on fossil fuel and military sales.

This is also good for India's reputation on the international stage. First, it validates the 2008 International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) exception for India, showcasing its credentials as a responsible country in the international nuclear market. Moreover, given the visible lack of a functioning export worth reactor in India, the provision of knowledge services to third party nuclear reactors augments India's case for membership to the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG). The very fact that this is being carried out in partnership with Russia—a country that China is increasingly drawing closer to and one that disagrees with China on India's NSG membership—is significant as may create a point of friction between China and Russia. This becomes even more important given how Chinese projects in the region are either extractive or financially unsustainable, whereas the RNPP is designed to give Bangladesh clean energy and energy security on a financially sustainable basis.

India should consider this project as a stepping-stone to becoming an international knowledge partner for third country reactors. Such projects are a low risk, high yield way of gaining institutional links with other countries and greatly enhance the capability and credibility of India's nuclear industry as well as its standards, procedures, safety and security.