An excerpt from a Counterpunch piece I wrote in 2006, warning about the effects of Manmohan Singh signing India up for the US-led global War On Terror, which actually fronts for the Rothschild “War On Terra”.
“In India, thousands if not millions of lives will likely be affected and India’s self-sufficiency in food destroyed, all for a few more H1B visas and some outsourcing businesses. And the sordid distinction of entry into the Big Boys Club of the WTO mafia.
Strike Two: Tariffs on industry were reduced and the coveted services sector was opened up like a brothel in Kanthipura. Public health, education, telecom, banks, water, all pimped by the state. And by failing to bring up TRIPS (The Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) for review and amendment, India – junior Big Boy – ensured that prices of patented drugs will continue to soar, affecting the common people in poor countries. The length of patents, the patenting of life forms, health and food security – all this might have been reviewed with ease. Not one was.
Strike Three: On the other side, the senior Big Boys got away with unctuous promises to ease out export subsidies by 2013 knowing full well that export subsidies are only a drop (2%) in the total subsidies to agriculture. Even the vaunted “Aid for Trade” is smothered in conditional loans contingent on further breaking open the markets of poorer countries. And what gains were made in market access in the developed world went largely to agri-exporters like Argentina and Brazil, not to poor countries.
And not to the lost leader of the third world.
None of this need have been. India might have stood with the Caribbean, South American, and African countries and galvanized the G 110. Cuba and Venezuela clearly drew the line on service liberalization and India might have joined them. But the current Congress administration, which took the place of the BJP with a mandate to resolve India’s growing agrarian crisis, has proved itself if anything less concerned with the country’s welfare. One could well ask if a nationalist BJP government would have had the ideological stomach to betray the heartland of India.
The Indian government’s cowardice at Hong Kong matches it’s cowardice over the Iraq war, which it could have opposed more vocally, and the vote against Iran, which it need not have joined. But the Cambridge-educated economist Manmohan Singh seems to have decided to put opportunism before principle. For our elites, perhaps it’ OK just so long long as it’s Cambridge-bred, not Varanasi-bred. (4)
The betrayal of Hong Kong is the background against which events in Bangalore must be viewed. Having reneged on its public duties, the government of India is bound to release a flood of propaganda intended as a smoke-screen and a distraction from its own craven performance.
It’s also likely to tighten its grip in the face of mass protests or resistance as the implications of Hong Kong become more and more widely known.
At Hong Kong itself, union leaders, farmers, and workers protesting peacefully were attacked with water-cannons, pepper-spray, and tear-gas. 900 were arrested and 70 were hospitalized.(5)
Want to know what to expect in the coming year? Here’s the graffiti already on the wall in Indonesia, which currently occupies the presidency of the Human Rights Commission (though it has yet to ratify key international human rights treaties) and in November, 2005 became a full-fledged compadre of the US in the War on Terra.
On September 18, 2005, in Tanah Awuk village in central Lombok, around a thousand peasants gathered peacefully to protest development policies denying local people the ability to feed themselves, on which they blamed a severe problem of child malnutrition. Indonesia has abundant fertile land and all available land is cultivated for agriculture. The real problem is that policies favor elite profits over the hunger of peasants.
At about 9 in the morning, Indonesian police forces attacked the crowd with plastic and rubber (as well as some metal) bullets, tear gas, and truncheons. 33 were injured, 27 from gunshots, and the rest from assault. At least one child and two women were shot.
National TV footage showed unarmed women being dragged violently across rough terrain and police roughing up a man bleeding copiously from the head.(5)That’s how you play the game when you join the US Terror team. Salaam, Bangalore.”