Modi's visit to US:
All the Way to Washington to Genuflect.
(these articles published in CLASS STRUGGLE, monthly organ of CPI(ML).
In yet another visit
the US, the Prime Minister Narendra Modi seems to have agreed to all
the demands made by the
US imperialist monsters. This process of overtly aligning with the US imperialism began
when Vajpayee was the PM and continued through the UPA and NDA
governments.
According to press
reports quoting diplomatic sources, the US officials expressed their
“displeasure” over the slow pace of reforms, particularly in the
field of market access, intellectual property rights, retrospective
tax and goods and services tax, in official-level joint meeting.
On his part, Modi
assured Obama that the issues related to the market access for US
companies will be thrashed out in the Trade Policy Forum due to be
held before the end of this year. Modi immediately generated business
to US companies by agreeing to start preparatory work on the
designated site in India for six AP 1000 nuclear reactors to be built
by the Westinghouse and to the finance package for this project to be
arranged by the Export- Import Bank of US. The finalization of the
contract will be signed in June 2017. There is a confusion in the
Indian press whether the Westinghouse reactors would be erected in
Gujarat or Andhra Pradesh. The joint statement merely said it will be
at a designated place. Modi described this as the “largest of its
kind”, he did not only paid attention to the safety of Indian
people but also not even bothered to calculate the cost of
electricity to the end-user. For this break- neck speed decision,
Modi is rewarded with a promise to support fully the entry of India
into Nuclear Supply Group and Missile Technology Control Regime. Back
home Modi presented this as a symbol of Superpower status for
India. Notwithstanding these claims, it is clear that India’s
civil nuclear programme will be under full control of the US
imperialism.
The joint statement
announced the ‘finalisation of the text of the Logistics Exchange
Memorandum of Agreement”
which will be signed shortly. This will give access to the Indian
military bases for US armed forces as a routine affair. Modi went a
step ahead and said India is open to other such
agreements, such as
Communication and Information Security Memorandum of agreement, which
would facilitate further expansion of bilateral defence co-operation
in practical ways”. The military ties between the two
countries further pushed with Defence Technology and Trade Initiative
(DTTI) which included items
covering naval systems, air systems and other weapon systems. The US promised to assist
India in building an aircraft carrier. Thus knot by knot the US
imperialists are toeing India closer to its strategic aims as a
junior partner.
This is clearly
visible when it comes to the so- called co-operation on Asia –Pacific
region. As a part of “US-India Joint Strategic Vision for the Asia-
Pacific and Indian Ocean Region”. Though the joint statement used
subtle words in this regard, the US imperialism pinned down India to
specific action such as US-India maritime security dialogue and road
map to become Priority partners in this region. India is made a part
of the US hegemonic design which makes India to confront China in
South China sea. This ties India to the chariot wheels of the US’s
world hegemonic designs.
Back home Modi
showed his servile nature to imperialist masters. Within a fortnight,
his government allowed 100 per cent FDI in defence production,
aviation retail business, pharmaceuticals through automatic route.
The only sectors which are not allowed for the entry of FDIs are
lottery, gambling, real estate investment trusts, atomic energy and
Railway operations. This will give away every sector of Indian
economy to the imperialist domination conceding the demand for more
access to the Indian market by the imperialist companies.It plans to
perpetuate the dependence of India for its military needs on the
imperialist countries, particularly US imperialism. With
their regional hegemonic ambitions, the Indian ruling classes will
resort to raking up national chauvinism against the neighbouring
countries to divert the people’s attention from the hegemonic designs of
imperialist powers as well as regional ambitions of Indian ruling
elite in south Asia and Indian Ocean.
This should be
stopped. India needs an independent, sovereign foreign policy that
serves the interests if the country and people by establishing good
economic and friendly relations with the
neighbouring
countries and by not joining hands with the imperialist powers
against the other countries particularly the countries of Asia,
Africa and Latin America. We must oppose the campaign that sings
peons about the virtues of US-India alliance and demand that India
should come out of
the clutches of US imperialism.
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Orlando Massacre in
the US: Unending Wars abroad – Escalating Violence at Home.
A lone gunman,
identified as Omar Mateen, 29 years, killed 50 people and injured 53
more at an LGBT nightclub, the
Pulse, in Orlando, Florida state early morning of 12th June. He was
son of immigrants from
Afghanistan and US citizen. He was killed in firefight with police.
At the time of
shooting, the nightclub was packed with 350 people who had turned
out for a music night. Many of
the victims were Hispanic. What was going in the mind of Omar Mateen
will likely never be known with any certainty.
However it is clear
that this horrific tragedy in Orlando is only the latest in a series
of bloody incidents. Omar Mateen made a call to 911 (emergency
number) at the time of attack declaring his allegiance to the
ISIS. Just hours after the attack, the ISIS declared that it was
“carried out by an Islamic state fighter”. The truth in this claim
may not be ascertained, but it thoroughly exposes the reactionary
nature of ISIS.
The FBI acknowledged
that it questioned Mateen three times, twice in 2013 in connection
with his alleged inflammatory
statement and in 2014 in relation to his possible ties to Moner Mohammad Abu Salha, who grew
up in Florida and went to fight for an Islamist militia in the
US-backed war for regime change in
Syria. The FBI said that Mateen did not pose a threat. Mateen’s
father said that his son voiced strong
anti-gay sentiments and his son’s actions had “nothing to do with
religion” So, the exact nature of
Mateen’s motives remains unclear. The FBI also was skeptic about
the claim of ISIS that his fighter had committed this crime.
Mateen worked for a
private security contractor that served government agencies providing security personnel.
So he had firearms and security officer’s licenses. So it is not
correct to attribute the crime
to the availability of firearms in the US society. Mateen lived in fort
Pierce, 120 miles away from Florida city, where one third of the
population subsists below the poverty line and the official
unemployment rate is over 16 per cent.
The
lone-gunmen-attacks have become virtually a daily fact of life in the
US. There were 280 mass shootings in the US
in 2014. There were 372 mass shootings in 2015 leaving 475 dead and
1870 wounded. In 2016
until now there were 175 such incidents. A look at the mass shooting
statistics reveals a disproportionately large number of such
incidents in the US and they were carried out in the US by all types
of people. They are not performed by one religion or ethnic group.
Hence attributing
Orlando massacre to the Islamic terrorism has no substantial evidence
and smells of a
political drama.The US witnessed escalating murderous violence at
home in parallel with
unending wars abroad. The US imperialist military continuously
engaged since 2001
in invasions,
bombings, drone strikes and “targeted assassinations” that had
claimed the lives of over a million
people in predominantly Muslim countries. As a corollary, or to use
the US imperialist term, “collateral damage”, the US imperialist
masters whipped up the most
reactionary
ideologies to justify discrimination and violence against immigrants
in general and Muslims in particular and to encourage the most
backward homophobic sentiment.
In this process,
they intensified the state repression in the US and escalated wars
abroad. Within hours of the
incident, the US media and political leaders claimed that it was a
terrorist attack stemming from
regressive religious doctrine. Barack Obama said that it was “an act
of terror and an act of hate” while he authorized recently
escalation of 15-year old US war in Afghanistan. His former secretary
of state, Hillary Clinton said there is “need to defend our country
from threats at home and abroad that means defeat terror groups, go
after them wherever they are”.
Her Republican rival
Donald Trump utilized this massacre to bolster his anti-Muslim and
anti-immigrant bigotry. He claimed that “our leaders are weak. That
is why such incidents are happening. I will not allow them to
happen”.
The aim of the US
imperialist ruling elite is to intimidate, frighten and disorient the
American people with the spectre of terrorism in order to distract
attention from the irreconcilable crisis it has landed, thus deciding
the political discourse to get the approval for its acts to
escalation of wars abroad and intensified attacks on the rights and
conditions of the working class.
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