The Horrors of Israel’s Gaza Genocide Blown Open

Sukumar Muralidharan | 19 Nov 2024

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Two UN reports lay bare how over decades Israel has “advanced its settler-colonial project through military occupation, stripping the Palestinian people of their right to self-determination”. When will the ICC act?

Detail from Guardian of the Fire (1988), by Palestinian painter Ismail Shammout. Image Credit: Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research

On November 14, a Special Committee of the United Nations issued a report, summarising in prose the horrors that global media channels had broadcast and livestreamed since October 2023. Not for the first time since Israel began its most extreme assault ever on the isolated and impoverished Gaza strip – home to a people already displaced many times over – an official body of the UN has held Israel guilty of warfare methods “consistent with the characteristics of genocide”. Israel’s actions, the Special Committee ruled, were in gross violation of the fundamental principles of international humanitarian law: “distinction, proportionality, and precautions in attack”.

The Special Committee, set up in 1968 to monitor Israel’s conduct in territories occupied in the 1967 war, expressed its horror at the “unprecedented destruction of civilian infrastructure and high death toll in Gaza”. Media reports emerging in the early weeks of the assault had spoken of Israel’s deployment of mass surveillance and big data processing in target identification. These artificial intelligence algorithms often chose moments to strike when civilian damage was likely to be most severe. In relation to military objectives, the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) had scaled up the acceptable ratio of innocents killed in breach of all norms.

The 2.1 million people in Gaza had been displaced multiple times, corralled into narrow strips of territory which were then heavily bombed despite being declared evacuation zones. This had happened with “no regard for their rights to life, dignity, liberty and security”. The extent of devastation made it “impossible to conceive of any durable solution to their displacement, given Israel’s systematic destruction of civilian infrastructure, atop the immense psychological toll the conflict has taken on the people of Gaza”.

Humanitarian supplies had been weaponised and Israel made no secret of its intention to deny the people of Gaza essential sustenance. In an increasingly dire situation, Israel had repeatedly attacked aid convoys, even when notified well in advance and cleared for safe passage at every level. Humanitarian workers and health care professionals had been killed with little discrimination.

Well before the current genocidal assault, food security in Gaza was precarious, with a substantial number of people feeling the adverse long-term nutritional deficiencies of an Israeli siege imposed in 2005. By the end of 2023, “over 90 per cent of the Gaza population was estimated to face high levels of acute food insecurity”, 40% at an “emergency level”, and over 15% at “catastrophe levels”. The targeting of farmland with tonnes of munitions, their enduring potential toxicity, and the destruction of 70% of Gaza’s fishing fleet, spoke of the deliberate application of food deprivation as a means of warfare.

Parallel to the genocidal assault on Gaza, life in the West Bank and East Jerusalem had become more dire. Illegal Jewish settlements had expanded, alongside “mass detentions, arrests, torture and ill-treatment”. Arbitrary curfews made daily life almost impossible, resulting in “economic strangulation”. Frequent and lethal raids by the IDF had become a daily reality, when armed settler gangs were not carrying out their own depredations.

The UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, has meanwhile, filed two reports for the General Assembly’s consideration. The first of these, published in March, and granted official imprimatur in July 2024, summed up the state of affairs as observed after five months of military operations in Gaza:

… Israel has destroyed Gaza. Over 30,000 Palestinians have been killed, including more than 13,000 children. Over 12,000 are presumed dead and 71,000 injured, many with life-changing mutilations. Seventy per cent of residential areas have been destroyed. Eighty per cent of the population has been forcibly displaced. … Thousands have been detained and systematically subjected to severe ill-treatment. The incalculable collective trauma will be experienced for generations to come.

Certain inescapable conclusions followed: “The threshold indicating the commission of genocide by Israel has been met”, and “more broadly” the logic driving Israel’s actions were “integral to its settler-colonial project in Palestine”. This signalled a “tragedy foretold” since Israel has over decades, in full view of the world, “advanced its settler-colonial project through military occupation, stripping the Palestinian people of their right to self-determination”.

In a report datelined October 1, Albanese took these findings forward under a title chosen with intent: “Genocide as colonial erasure”. The signals were sent out very early in the assault on Gaza. Within a week of the armed incursion by Palestinian resistance fighters into the southern territory of Israel on October 7, 2023, Israel issued orders for 1.1 million Palestinians in the north of the Gaza strip, to move south. Compliance was demanded within 24 hours, in what the Special Rapporteur observes, was “one of the fastest mass displacements in history”.

Albanese had then “warned of the risk of deliberate mass ethnic cleansing”, and much to her regret, this “proved prescient”. The estimates she has since gathered are concurrent with the findings of the Special Committee: “At least 90 per cent of Palestinians in Gaza have now been forcibly displaced – many more than 10 times – amid calls from Israeli officials and others for Palestinians to leave and Israelis to ‘return to Gaza’ and rebuild the colonies dismantled in 2005”.

The July report of the Special Rapporteur details how Israel’s action meet every one of the criteria listed in the Genocide Convention, adopted by the UN in 1948. Genocide is an international crime every state is obliged to punish. There can be no justification for genocide, and its prevention is a peremptory norm.

South Africa was one state that saw the obvious within the first few months of Israel’s assault on Gaza. In December 2023, it petitioned the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague, demanding action against Israel under the Genocide Convention. In the first of many orders, the ICJ concluded that the requisites for “provisional measures” to safeguard rights claimed by South Africa, were met. It was however, at liberty to decree measures other than those requested by the petitioner.

Accordingly, the ICJ chose not to order an urgent ceasefire, as demanded by South Africa, and instead, demand that Israel must take all measures within its power “to prevent the commission of all acts” defined under Article II of the Genocide Convention. Of the five distinct acts that constituted the crime of genocide under Article II, the ICJ specifically ordered Israel to refrain from four.

On March 28 this year, the ICJ reaffirmed its earlier order, responding to an urgent request from South Africa. It further required Israel, in view of the “catastrophic situation” prevailing, to take “all necessary and effective measures to ensure, without delay, in full co-operation with the United Nations, the unhindered provision at scale by all concerned of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance”. These supplies were to include “food, water, electricity, fuel, shelter, clothing, hygiene and sanitation requirements, as well as medical supplies and medical care”. They were to be provided “throughout Gaza, including by increasing the capacity and number of land crossing points and maintaining them open for as long as necessary”.

On May 10, South Africa submitted another urgent request in the light of the ferocity of the assault on Rafah, the southernmost administrative unit in Gaza. With most of Gaza’s population crowded into the south, Israel seemed embarked upon eliminating even the last of the zones where life may have been relatively safe.

Two weeks later, the ICJ issued its third order, underlining the urgency of full compliance with earlier orders, and adding on the imperative demand that Israel shall “immediately halt its military offensive, and any other action in the Rafah Governorate, which may inflict on the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of life that could bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”. This was the furthest the ICJ had gone, though it stopped short of fully acceding to South Africa’s demand for a ceasefire and unconditional withdrawal of Israeli forces “from the entirety of the Gaza Strip”.

While the ICJ continues its glacial deliberations, the International Criminal Court (ICC), a body set up outside the UN system with the mandate to sanction and punish (rather than merely advise), has been agonising over a request from its Chief Prosecutor, to issue arrest warrants against the Israeli political leadership.

In an effort at balance, the Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan also requested arrest warrants against three leaders of the Palestinian resistance group Hamas – Ismail Haniyeh, Mohammad Deif and Yahya Sinwar – all since eliminated in targeted assassinations by Israel.

This leaves the ICC with the simpler task of determining when or if Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Defence Minister (since sacked) Yoav Gallant, should be brought to justice. As of November 19, it has been 183 days since the requests were made, and the ICC is yet to act. A standard for comparison, as also an index of depth of duplicity here, would be the request made for an arrest warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin in March 2023, acceded to within a mere 23 days.

It has been credibly reported that Israel has in the past, threatened and blackmailed ICC officials to pre-empt any possibility of investigation into its actions. This may partly explain why Karim Khan took no less than seven months since the Gaza assault began, to make even a preliminary move. It may also explain why he has in recent weeks, come under investigation for alleged sexual misdemeanours.

The intelligence chiefs of the UK and the US recently published their first ever joint article, warning that Russia had by opening a war-front in Europe, posed the greatest threat to the global order since the Cold War. Afflicted by the myopia (that is shared by all patrons of Israel) they were understandably blind to the damage inflicted on every principle of international law by Israel’s genocidal rampage.

Law, it is often said, is a thin camouflage for the interests of power. And when an overt conflict arises between the two, it is the latter that prevails.

Sukumar Muralidharan is an independent writer and researcher based in the Delhi region. The views are personal.

Trump’s Victory and Collapse of Liberal Centre

Prabhat Patnaik | 16 Nov 2024

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The roots of the ubiquitous collapse of the political liberal Centre lie in the fact that it remains tied to economic neo-liberalism which itself has run into a crisis.

Donald Trump’s victory in the US Presidential election conforms to a pattern presently observable across the world, namely a collapse of the liberal Centre and a growth in support either for the Left, or for the extreme Right, the neo-fascists, in situations in which the Left is absent or weak. This was visible in France where Emmanuel Macron’s party lost substantially, and the ascendancy of neo-fascism was prevented only by a hastily-formed Left alliance. This is also evident in our own neighbourhood, in Sri Lanka, where a Left candidate emerged as president through a sudden and substantial increase in his vote share, defeating the incumbent president who belonged to the liberal Centre.

This ubiquitous collapse of the liberal Centre, indicative of a crisis of liberalism, is the most striking phenomenon of contemporary times. Its roots lie in the fact that political liberalism today remains tied to economic neoliberalism which itself has run into a crisis.

The political philosophy of classical liberalism, which provided the basis for liberal political praxis, was sustained by a long tradition of bourgeois economic thought, straddling both classical political economy and neo-classical economics. Both these strands believed, notwithstanding significant differences between them, in the virtues of the free market, whose shackling by State interference had to be removed on a priority basis.

The vacuity of this entire line of reasoning was exposed by the First World War (whose economic roots belied all claims relating to the virtues of the market) and even more blatantly of course by the Great Depression.

Keynes showed that laissez faire capitalism, leaving aside “brief periods of excitement”, systematically kept large numbers of workers involuntarily unemployed, that the free market, far from being the ideal institution it was portrayed to be, was so flawed that it exposed capitalism to the danger of being overthrown by the rising tide of socialism.

But being a liberal, and apprehensive about the socialist threat if the system was not rectified, Keynes proposed a new version of liberalism (which he called “new liberalism”) that was to be characterised by perennial State intervention to boost aggregate demand and to achieve high employment, rather than an avoidance of it that had been the hallmark of classical liberalism.

Keynesianism, however, was never accepted by finance capital. Keynes himself was intrigued by this and attributed it to a lack of understanding of his theory. The real cause, however, lay deeper, in the fear that any systematic State intervention would delegitimise the social role of the capitalists, especially of that section of capitalists which was engaged in the sphere of finance and whom Keynes had called “functionless investors”; this is a persistent fear and remains to this day.

Keynesianism became State policy only after the war, since the war had weakened finance capital and had led to the ascendancy of social democracy, which had embraced Keynesianism.

The post-war boom in advanced capitalist countries saw a consolidation of finance capital and an expansion in its size to a point where it became increasingly international. At the same time post-war capitalism, even though supplemented by State intervention, ran into a different kind of crisis, not one caused by inadequate aggregate demand but one that consisted in an inflationary upsurge that occurred in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

This crisis was rooted in the twin phenomena that characterised post-war capitalism: high employment that diminished the reserve army of labour and removed its “stabilising influence” in a capitalist economy, and decolonisation that removed the mechanism for compressing third world demand to keep primary commodity prices low. It allowed the new international finance capital to discredit the regime of Keynesian demand management (aided and abetted by a revival of apologetic bourgeois economics re-propagating the virtues of the free market) and to promote neoliberal economic regimes everywhere.

Since in the new situation, retaining the “confidence of the investors” (that is, preventing capital flight by kow-towing to the demands of international finance capital) was the overriding concern of State policy, Keynes’ “new liberalism” had to be jettisoned; the liberal Centre, much of social democracy and even certain sections of the Left, lined up behind neoliberalism.

Neoliberalism, however, brought immense suffering to the working class in advanced capitalist countries and still greater suffering to the working people in the Third World, even before it had run into a crisis; and the suffering increased greatly when it did run into a crisis.

The growth rate of the world economy slowed down significantly in the neoliberal era compared with the dirigiste period; and it slowed further in the period after 2008 when the last of the US asset price bubbles burst.

This crisis, a result of inadequate aggregate demand caused by the massive increase in income inequality under neoliberalism (which invariably produces a tendency toward over-production) had only been delayed by the US asset price bubbles that had kept up world aggregate demand through a wealth effect; the crisis manifested itself with the bursting of the bubble.

The crisis cannot be overcome within the bounds of neoliberalism, because neoliberalism eliminates the scope for Keynesian demand management; and a new bubble that could mitigate somewhat its intensity, is ruled out by the very experience of the previous ones that have made people more circumspect. In fact, monetary policy aimed at stimulating a new bubble has only succeeded in stimulating inflation through higher profit-markups even in the midst of stagnant demand, which only aggravates the crisis even further.

Contemporary liberalism, in short, committed as it is to the neoliberal order, does little, and indeed can do little, to alleviate the people’s distress. Not surprisingly, the people are turning away from it toward other political formations to the Right and to the Left.

The Right, too, can do little to alleviate the people’s distress: its pre-election rhetoric is invariably at variance with its post-election policy which is neoliberal, as Giorgia Meloni in Italy has shown, and as Marine Le Pen’s prime ministerial candidate, Jordan Bardella, was beginning to show even before the elections in France through a shift in his party’s stand vis-à-vis international finance capital.

But the Right whips up rhetoric against the “other”, typically some minority religious or ethnic group, or immigrants, to produce a semblance of some sort of activism in the face of the crisis, while the liberal Centre barely acknowledges the existence of the crisis. Monopoly capital in this situation shifts its support toward the Right, or the neo-fascists, in order to maintain its hegemony in the face of the crisis, which is another reason for the weakening of the liberal Centre and the crisis of liberalism.

Trump, it may be argued, does have an economic agenda, of protecting the US economy against imports not just from China but even from the European Union. He cannot be accused of merely adhering to the old neoliberal script like Meloni. But several points must be noted here: first, even while moving away from liberal trade to protectionism, Trump has never mentioned putting restrictions on the free cross-border flow of international finance capital, so that the crux of the neoliberal arrangement remains unchallenged by him even in his pre-election rhetoric. 

Second, protectionism is not Trump’s original idea; it had begun even under Barack Obama. Besides, protectionism alone would not revive the US economy; it can at best encourage domestic production at the expense of imports from competing economies, but it cannot per se expand the size of the domestic market, for which an expansion of State expenditure, financed either through a fiscal deficit or through taxes on the rich, is essential.

But with his penchant for corporate tax-cuts revealed from his last presidency, Trump will not resort to higher State spending, so that at best, after a temporary blip caused by greater protection, the US economy will settle back into stagnation and crisis.

While Trump’s victory was, therefore, expected, being in conformity with the globally-observed phenomenon of a collapse of the liberal Centre, it does show that the people have not seen through his economic agenda, of adherence to the basic tenets of neoliberalism (other than introducing greater protectionism which can at best produce a temporary increase in jobs while worsening the inflationary situation because of the absence of cheap imports).

The international context, it follows, is favourable for the ascendancy of the Left, which alone can bring an end to the ongoing crisis by bringing an end to neoliberalism, and which alone can bring about an end to the wars that are currently going on (and for which the liberal centre is culpable, a matter to be discussed on a later occasion). The Left, however, has to be prepared for this task.

Prabhat Patnaik is Professor Emeritus, Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. The views are personal.

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

Adani Indictment: Concerned Citizens Seek Probe Into ‘Policy Corruption’ in Power Sector

Newsclick Report | 22 Nov 2024

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The Peoples’ Commission on Public Sector and Public Services also demanded a comprehensive report by the government in Parliament in 6 months.

New Delhi: Taking note of “disturbing concerns” following the US indictment of several companies, including Adani Green, in the alleged multi-crore bribery scheme in India’s solar power projects, several concerned citizens have demanded accountability in government and corporate players in India’s power sector. The also demanded that a comprehensive report on this be placed before Parliament within six months.

In a press release, the Peoples’ Commission on Public Sector and Public Services (PCPSPS) said the indictment by the US is “not only about large-scale corporate corruption that evidently prevails in India and the USA but also about how fraudulent policies adopted by the Union Ministry of Power at the instance of favoured business conglomerates have defrauded electricity consumers across the country.”

It demanded that under an independent judicial oversight, a comprehensive probe should be ordered “by CBI/ED/CBDT and other investigating agencies to gather further evidence from the US SEC/FBI, factual evidence on the circumstances that led to the Union Ministry of Power adopting such misguided policies and issuing such illegal directives to States, the role of the concerned Indian business conglomerates including the extent to which they unduly benefitted, the one-sided nature of the PPAs, the role of public functionaries at the Centre and in the States and the extent of loss suffered by electricity consumers in the country.”

The PCPSPS said if the allegations are proved true, the concerned conglomerate and their promoters should be blacklisted from undertaking activities in India’s electricity sector.

 

Read the full release below:

Concerned Citizens Demand Accountability for Corporate and Policy Corruption in India’s Power Sector

The US District Court (Eastern District Court of New York)’s recent indictment of several Indian companies, including Adani Green, part of the the Adani conglomerate and the Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI), a CPSE, raises disturbing concerns not only about large-scale corporate corruption that evidently prevails in India and the USA but also about how fraudulent policies adopted by the Union Ministry of Power at the instance of favoured business conglomerates have defrauded electricity consumers across the country.

In this connection, we refer to our statements issued on June 2, 2022, June 30, 2022 and August 16, 2024 in which we had repeatedly pointed out how the Ministry of Power irregularly invoked its authority under Section 11 of the Electricity Act of 2003 to impose an obligation on State power utilities to buy electricity from solar power plants to meet at least 10% of their total electricity requirement, irrespective of its unit cost and affordability. Similarly, the Centre created a man- made coal shortage situation across the country and the Ministry of Power equally irregularly ordered the State power utilities to buy coal from overseas sources to cover the shortage. Both those measures indirectly benefitted a few domestic private business groups known to be close to the ruling political executive at the cost of electricity consumers across the country. Such consumer-unfriendly measures so blatantly adopted by the Ministry led one to the inevitable inference that the policies adopted by the Ministry of Power during the last several years were at the instance of a few business conglomerates close to the executive, certainly not for safeguarding the interests of millions of electricity consumers, many below the poverty line. We hope that institutions like SEBI function independently so as to reinforce the integrity of the stockmarkets and elicit public trust.

The US court’s judgement, based on detailed investigations by US Security Exchange Commission and the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, clearly points to how the Adani Group officials acting in tandem with a US company persuaded SECI and the State-owned power utilities in several States including Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Chhattisgarh, Odisha and J&K to sign one-sided Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) that would enable those private companies to earn billions of dollars of profits over the next several decades, entirely at the cost of the electricity consumers in India. In the process, ably supported by the Ministry of Power’s anti-consumer policies and diktats, the private companies not only defrauded unwary consumers, crippled DISCOMs’ finances but also committed fraud on the public at large.                                                                                        

We demand that, under independent judicial oversight, a comprehensive investigation of this be taken up by CBI/ ED/ CBDT and other investigating agencies to gather further evidence from the US SEC/ FBI, factual evidence on the circumstances that led to the Union Ministry of Power adopting such misguided policies and issuing such illegal directives to States, the role of the concerned Indian business conglomerates including the extent to which they unduly benefitted, the one-sided nature of the PPAs, the role of public funcionaries at the Centre and in the States and the extent of loss suffered by electricity consumers in the country.

If the allegations emerging out of the indictment are found to be true, we feel that, not only the concerned business conglomerates and their promoters be blacklisted and prohibited from underataking activities in the electricity sector in the future but they should be forced to pay a deterrent penalty in addition to compansating electricity consumers for the additional costs borne by them on account of these acts of malfeasance. The culprits should be prosecuted for their criminal liability under the relevant laws.

We demand that a comprehensive report on this be placed before the Parliament within six months.

People’s Commission on Public Sector and Public Services, which includes eminent academics, jurists, erstwhile administrators, trade unionists and social activists.

CBI Should Book Adani on Corruption Charges: CPI (M); Arrest Him, Says Rahul Gandhi

Newsclick Report | 21 Nov 2024

Congress has demanded a comprehensive JPC to look into every aspect of the working of the Adani Group, the "deliberate" institutional erosion of the SEBI, SECI and government bodies, and the deals in foreign countries




File photo of Opposition protest in Parliament. Image Credit: PTI


New Delhi: After indictment of Gautam Adani and seven others by the US Justice Department, Opposition parties on Monday reiterated their long-standing demand for a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) probe into allegations against the Adani Group.

While Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi demanded the arrest of Gautam Adani, his party, Congress, demanded a comprehensive JPC, while the CPI(M) also demanded that the industrialist be booked forthwith by CBI.

In press release, the Communist party of India (Marxist) said the US indictment contains serious charges of paying bribes to Indian government officials at the Centre and state level.

“The indictment states that Rs. 2,029 crores was offered or promised to Indian government officials to get state electricity distribution companies to execute power sale agreements for the supply of solar power. The case has come up in the United States as the charge is that US investors were misled by the Adanis,” said the release.

The party said it was “shameful that such large-scale bribery and suborning of government officials by the Adanis had to be exposed not in India but in the United States through their criminal justice system,” adding that “Gautam Adani and his business empire have had the full protection of the Modi government to execute his unlawful and criminal activities. Prime Minister Modi himself had shielded Adani from any enquiry or prosecution on the charges emanating from the Hindenburg expose. “

The CPI(M) said the Modi government cannot hide behind any smokescreen now. “The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) must be directed to immediately file a case based on the material provided by the prosecution in the United States. Bribery of public servants comes under the Prevention of Corruption Act, which is under the remit of the CBI. A full-fledged investigation by an independent agency is required to unearth all other wrongdoings by the Adani group of companies.”

Vicious Nexus Involving Cronies: Congress

Taking a dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Ek Hain, Toh SAFE Hain”, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge said “it is about One Monopoly to protect the looted SAFE!”

In a post X (formerly Twitter), Kharge tagging the PM and Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi, Kharge said: “When a top ranking Indian businessman is indicted by a foreign country, it tarnishes our image at the global stage.”

He said, “The Indian National Congress has been continuously objecting to unethical business practices which profiteer and promote certain individuals by implementing Modi Govt’s policy of creating monopolies in key sectors and concentrating wealth in the hands of few by giving undue favours.

This entire vicious nexus involving cronies, compromised bureaucrats and certain politicians created by PM Modi & Adani has to be investigated and dismantled. This nexus severely hurts our people - poor and middle class, aspiring entrepreneurs, MSMEs, Startups and crores of small and medium retail investors, for it widens inequalities by snatching savings and opportunities.”

The Congress demanded a comprehensive JPC, which “not only investigates every aspect of the working of the Adani Group, the deliberate institutional erosion of the SEBI, SECI and government bodies, and the deals of Adani Group in foreign countries is the need of the hour.”

Arrest Adani: Rahul Gandhi

At a press conference, Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi called for the immediate arrest of Adani Group chairman Gautam Adani, alleging that the Prime Minister was “protecting him.”

The Congress leader, who has been for long demanding a probe into various allegations against the Adani group inside Parliament and outside, said the allegations and accusations made by the US Justice Department must be thoroughly investigated and appropriate legal action should be taken.

"Adani should be arrested and punished for his actions," he said, adding that the charges against the Indian billionaire highlight “serious governance and corruption concerns.”

The Adani Group in a statement has, however, brushed off the allegations as "baseless and denied."

Gautam Adani, 7 Others, Indicted in US in Alleged $250m Bribery Scheme For Solar Power Contracts

Newsclick Report | 21 Nov 2024

Adani Group shares tumble after indictment alleged bribes were “offered and promised” between 2020 and 2024 to people in the Indian government… and were allegedly concealed from US banks and investors.

Business tycoon Gautam Adani.

New Delhi: One of the world’s richest industrialists, Gautam Adani, who heads a conglomerate that includes diverse sectors such as ports, mining, energy, renewables, railways, roads, aviation, edible oils among others, has been indicted by US prosecutors in an alleged $250 million bribery case seeking favours for solar power projects, reports the Financial Times.

The business tycoon, perceived as close to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, along with seven other senior executives have been charged with “bribing Indian officials" and "concealing" it from US banks and investors.

“He (Gautam Adani) was charged alongside seven others, including executives of Adani energy subsidiaries and former employees of a Canadian pension fund. His nephew Sagar Adani, who is the executive director at a renewables company founded by Gautam Adani, is also among the defendants,” said the FT report.

The indictment notice alleged that they “orchestrated an elaborate scheme to bribe Indian government officials to secure contracts worth billions of dollars and Gautam S. Adani, Sagar R. Adani and Vneet S. Jaain lied about the bribery scheme as they sought to raise capital from U.S. and international investors.”

According to the FT report, “US federal prosecutors said more than $250mn in bribes were “offered and promised” between 2020 and 2024 to people in the Indian government as part of the scheme, which was allegedly concealed from the US banks and investors from which they raised billions of dollars. They claimed that Gautam Adani met an Indian official to “advance” the scheme.”

After the indictment, shares of the Adani Group’s 10 listed companies tumbled in the stock market in India.

Recall that the Opposition parties led by Congress leader and Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi have been repeatedly demanding a Joint Parliamentary Committee to probe into allegations of stock manipulation by the Adani group, more so after a damning report by US short-seller Hindenburg Research, as also into the alleged role of market regulator SEBI chief Madhabi Puri Buch.

Meanwhile, the Adani Group in a statement denied the allegations made by the US Justice Department against Adani Green officials as "baseless." It said it ill seek "all possible legal recourse."

 

 

Second Struggle for African Independence Has Begun in Sahel

Pavan Kulkarni | 22 Nov 2024

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“Many people outside think we are living under a military dictatorship. But the delegates who have come to attend the conference are seeing that we are free” and exerting independence like never before, said a Nigerien leader, addressing the conference in Niamey in solidarity with the people of Sahel.

From right to left: Aboubakar Alassane, Philippe Noudjenoume, and Achy Ekissi. Photo: Pedro Stropasolas

“Before the arrival of the white people, we had no borders in Africa. They were drawn by colonizers. We should erase these borders and regain our freedom of movement,” said Nigerien leader Aboubakar Alassane of West Africa People’s Organization (WAPO), addressing a panel discussion on the emergence of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) on the second day of the three-day Conference in Solidarity with the Peoples of the Sahel.

“The US has 50 states united. Why can’t Africa,” he asked. Kwame Nkrumah, Pan-Africanist leader and the first president of independent Ghana, “had warned that Africa should unite or perish.” And Africa, disunited, was consequently “being killed.”

But a new lease of life and hope of unity has been offered to the continent by Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, which forced its former colonizer France to withdraw its troops from their countries, and subsequently came together to form the AES.

“Over 2000 kilometers of borders between these countries are erased. We can now move freely between these countries without requiring a passport or visa,” Alassane added.

Photo: Pedro Stropasolas

This process that has been initiated by AES was described by Achy Ekissi, the general secretary of the Revolutionary Communist Party of Ivory Coast (PCRCI), as Africa’s second struggle for independence. “The second will be true independence”, he said, adding, “We were deceived when we were told we achieved independence in the 1960s” from French colonization.

Through its colonial pact, France had continued to exert control over the natural resources of its African colonies even after their formal independence, leaving them with no capacity to develop infrastructure, education and healthcare, said Philippe Noudjenoume, the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Benin (PCB). While its riches like Uranium were used to power the nuclear plants to light France, “Niger was left in the darkness.”

It was in this context that the Sahelian states of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger “took the bull by its horn to say that they will not be dictated to by France anymore,” said Ekissi.

This responsibility of initiating the “second struggle for independence” fell on the military which undertook coups in these countries to remove French-backed regimes because the level of organization of popular movements in the neo-colonial context was weak, added Noudjenoume. But the success of this movement depends on the strengthening of the popular movements, he said.

“This Pan African struggle should be oriented towards constructive criticism so that we don’t commit the mistakes” which in the past were used by the imperialist forces to crush it, warned Djibril Annassa, secretary general of the Nigerien civil society organization Patriotic Front, addressing a panel on the role of youth in this struggle. Blaise Tulo, a leader of the Socialist Movement of Ghana (SMG), emphasized that popular education and the development of young cadres will be crucial for the success of this struggle.

Emphasizing the critical role women have played not only in fields like education but also in the protests against the French-backed regime of the ousted president Mohamed Bazoum, Amina Hamani Hassane of the WAPO added that women can no longer be sidelined to play a secondary role if this movement has to succeed.

While acknowledging the challenges that lay ahead before the movement, all panelists expressed optimism about the future and confidence in the military governments ruling the AES states.

“Many people outside think we are living under a military dictatorship. But the delegates who have come to attend the conference are seeing that we are free” and exerting independence like never before, said Alassane.

Courtesy: Peoples Dispatch

Fiscal Transfers to Capitalists Are Counter-Productive

Prabhat Patnaik | 23 Nov 2024  NEWSCLICK INDIA

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Far from reviving the economy, transfers to capitalists in a neo-liberal regime have the effect of further contracting the economy.

It is common for governments these days to provide fiscal transfers to capitalists, whether through reduced corporate tax rates, or by providing direct cash subsidies, to encourage greater investment by them and thereby stimulate the economy. During Donald Trump’s first presidency there had been a cut in corporate tax rate in the US with this objective in mind.

In India, the Narendra Modi government, as is well-known, has given massive tax concessions with the same objective. Even a minimum knowledge of economics, however, would show that such transfers to capitalists are counter-productive in a neoliberal regime.

This is because such a regime is characterised by “fiscal responsibility” legislation that fixes the upper limit to the fiscal deficit as a percentage of the gross domestic product, and normally the government operates at this ceiling. Transfers to the capitalists, therefore, have to be matched by reductions in expenditure elsewhere, typically in welfare expenditures undertaken for the working poor, or by an equivalent increase in tax revenue garnered from the working poor.

Now, the effect of handing over, say, Rs 100 to the capitalists by reducing transfers to the workers by Rs 100, is to reduce the level of aggregate demand and hence employment and output. Far from reviving the economy, transfers to capitalists have the effect of further contracting the economy. The way in which this comes about is the following.

Investment undertaken in any period is the result of investment orders given earlier, and hence of investment decisions taken in the past; this is so because investment projects have long gestation periods and it is as true of private investment as of public investment. If the tempo of investment is to be stepped up, then a decision for doing so will be taken in the current period and the actual tempo will increase only subsequently. Hence investment in any period must be taken as a given magnitude that does not change during the period in question.

What does change during the period in question is the level of consumption; and here, because the workers consume a higher share of their incomes than the capitalists, any shift of purchasing power from workers to capitalists has the effect of lowering consumption (the same happens if the government reduces its consumption in order to make transfers to capitalists).

What is more, transfers from workers to capitalists (and even from the government to capitalists) have the effect of reducing net exports (that is, the excess of exports over imports), since capitalists’ consumption is more import-intensive. But let us deliberately understate our argument by assuming that transfers to capitalists, that are financed at the expense of the workers, do not change net exports. Since the gross national income, Y, of a country must equal the sum of consumption C, investment I, government expenditure G, and the surplus on the current account of its balance of payments (X-M), that is,

 Y = C+ I + G + (X-M)        ……              (i)   

transfers to capitalists, by lowering C, lower the right-hand side, which depicts the level of aggregate demand.

The equality in the above equation, therefore, can be restored only through a fall in Y, that is, through a reduction in output and employment.

When this happens, the degree of unutilised capacity in the economy increases, which has the effect of lowering the investment decisions of the capitalists taken in the current period and hence their actual investment in the subsequent period. The economy, therefore, far from getting stimulated, actually contracts.

But the story does not end there. Any such contraction in itself, that is, if other things remain the same, has the effect of reducing profits. Thus, while transfers to capitalists as such, have the effect of increasing profits, the fact that such transfers are obtained by reducing the purchasing power of the workers, have the opposite effect, of reducing profits. And under fairly realistic assumptions, these two effects cancel each other out exactly, so that total profits of the capitalists remain exactly the same as would have obtained without the transfers. The assumption under which this result holds is that the working people consume their entire income.

This is a fairly realistic assumption because the proportion of the total wealth of the economy that is owned by the bottom segment of the population is quite minuscule. In India, for instance, the bottom 50% own only 2% of the total wealth of the country. Since all wealth necessarily arises from savings, this only shows that they scarcely save anything at all. Hence our assumption that the working people do not save and that the entire savings in the economy come from the rich, apart from the government, is quite realistic.

Let us, only for a moment, assume that the rich, in this case the capitalists, save their entire income; then private savings equal profits. Since in any economy, total domestic savings must equal total domestic investment minus the inflow of foreign savings, and since government investment minus government savings is what is called the fiscal deficit, this amounts to saying that private savings, and hence profits, in the economy, must necessarily equal private investment plus the fiscal deficit minus foreign savings F coming into the economy during the period; that is,

Profits = Private Investment + Fiscal Deficit – F …(ii)

Since we have argued that private investment and the inflow of foreign savings (which is the just the negative of X-M above) will remain unchanged during the period, as will the fiscal deficit because of the “fiscal responsibility” legislation, profits must remain the same despite the transfers to capitalists.

Dropping the assumption that all profits are saved makes no difference to the above argument. If a proportion α of profits is saved, then equation (ii) simply becomes:

α. Profits = Private Investment + Fiscal Deficit – F… (iii)

If the right-hand side of (iii) remains unchanged, for reasons we have just discussed, then profits must also remain unchanged even if α is not equal to one. Budgetary transfers to the capitalists in short, in a neoliberal regime where the fiscal deficit cannot be increased to finance such transfers and where, therefore, workers’ incomes have to be reduced correspondingly, have the effect not only of precipitating a contraction in output and employment, but of not even increasing the magnitude of capitalists’ income if the workers consume their entire income.

Budgetary transfers to the capitalists in other words cause inequality to increase in an economy without even increasing the capitalists’ income, because they cause an output contraction that negates the profit-increasing effects of such transfers.

They do, however, have one other important effect which is the real reason why the government resorts to them, and that is to change the distribution of profits among the capitalists in favour of the monopoly stratum, away from non-monopoly capitalists. This is so for the following reason. We have seen that total profits remain unchanged despite budgetary transfers to capitalists because while transfers are an addition to profits, the fact that they are associated with taking away incomes from the workers, and reducing aggregate demand, lowers profits to an exactly equal extent; but while this is true in the aggregate, the capitalists who face reduced demand and the capitalists to whom the bulk of the transfers accrue are not the same. In particular, large capitalists are not affected much by the reduction in workers’ consumption demand; but they get the lion’s share of the budgetary transfers. They are, therefore, net gainers, while smaller capitalists whose presence is more pronounced in the market for workers’ consumption goods, become net losers, even when total profits remain unchanged at the aggregate level.

Budgetary transfers to the capitalists are thus a means of aiding what Marx had called “centralisation of capital”, of hastening the replacement of smaller capitals (or even petty producers who produce goods for workers’ consumption) by large capitals. This is what its “crony capitalists” want and the government obliges them. Such transfers are undertaken in the name of stimulating the economy, but they do nothing of the sort; on the contrary they succeed only in contracting the economy, but even in such a contracting economy, they strengthen the position of the monopoly capitalists.

There is some recognition in the media and among Opposition parties that small producers in the country were harmed by demonetisation and the introduction of the Goods and Services Tax. There is, however, less recognition of the harm done to them by the tax concessions and other forms of budgetary transfers made to the capitalists.

Prabhat Patnaik is Professor Emeritus, Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. The views are personal.

PAKISTAN

Delivering clean air

Ali Tauqeer Sheikh 

November 21, 2024 
DAWN

IN recent days, we saw economic and social life in almost all of Punjab and KP come to a standstill. The air quality in Punjab, the most populous and most urbanised province of the country and parts of KP endowed with pristine mountains has become a more serious climate crisis than the magnitude of the 2022 floods.

With almost 100 million people inhaling polluted air — 10 times more toxic than WHO standards — the scale of this crisis has become a health emergency. The rain will provide temporary respite as it will help improve visibility but not permanently bring pollution levels down to healthy standards.

The problem has not emerged suddenly, nor can it be resolved quickly. How can Pakistan reverse the rapidly deteriorating situation? We need to set realistic targets for 2047 to commemorate our first 100 years as a nation.

The brewing challenge was recognised in 2014, by a World Bank-compiled study Air Quality in Pakistan: A Review of the Evidence, revealing that Pakistan’s urban air pollution ranked among the worst globally, and significantly exceeded international limits.

The report showed that air pollution contributed to approximately 235,000 premature deaths and over 80,000 hospital admissions annually. The air quality reduced life expectancy by up to 2.7 years across Pakistan. It seems that the report in 2014 was predicting the newspaper headlines of November 2024.

The problem of pollution has not emerged suddenly, nor can it be resolved quickly.

The warnings were ignored by policymakers, even though the study also pointed out that air pollution was costing up to 6.5 per cent of GDP annually. Healthcare expenditures amount to $47.7 billion (about 5.8pc of GDP), while lost labour output reaches $6.6bn. The cost of environmental degradation at the time was estimated at Rs365bn annually.

Given the gravity of the challenge, the study set a target of 70pc reduction in air pollutants by 2030 and 81pc by 2040. These goals required coordinated interventions across transportation, industry, agriculture, and waste management sectors, supported by strengthened institutional capacity and regulatory frameworks.

The Lahore High Court’s Smog Commission (2017) and the Judicial Water & Environment Commission (2019), could not persuade the provincial government to bring the issue to the forefront.

Ironically, it was only in March last year that the National Clean Air Policy was approved. Within a month, it was followed by the Punjab’s Clean Air Plan. Both NCAP and PCAP have shifted the signposts: achieving a 38pc reduction in PM2.5 emissions by 2030, compared to baseline levels, and to 81pc by 2040. In reality, a credible scientific baseline still does not exist. The policies’ effectiveness is further compromised by limited air quality monitoring infrastructure. While Punjab has begun to install such infrastructure, Balochistan, KP, Sindh, and Gilgit-Baltistan lack monitoring networks entirely.

Several complex factors drive this crisis. Some developing countries have used the following five framework principles to orient their policy on clean air:

First: adaptation and mitigation are intrinsically linked. We need to bust the myth that as a developing country, emissions reduction or mitigation is not our priority, and only adaptation is. The present air pollution crisis is proof that it is perilous for Pakistan to ignore mitigation measures.

Second: policies are for implementation. Starting with the National Environment Policy (2005), a stack of policies have highlighted the need for ambient air quality. Despite several trillion rupees worth of PSDP, air quality hardly received any investments.

Further, the policies beg implementation, not a downward revision of targets. NCAP and PCAP have both relaxed air quality parameters that fall behind the WHO’s 2021 guidelines. No reasons are offered for lowering standards. By reverting to pre-2021 WHO interim targets, Pakistan has effectively loosened the existing National Environmental Quality Standards from 2013. Some experts believe that it will potentially raise PM2.5 levels by more than 50pc.

Regrettably, some functionaries are now also arguing for reducing the ambitions of Nationally Determined Contributions (2021). Instead of assessing the barriers for its slow implementation, an important thought leader has recently stated that NDC 2.0 has “unrealistically high ambition”. In reality, the NDCs still lack an implementation plan, costing, or a secretariat to monitor its progress. Far from scaling down its sovereign commitments, Pakistan needs to scale up climate action for a convincing narrative for greater access to climate finance.

Third: align with global trends. The present crisis provides Pakistan an opportunity to join the global drive for decarbonisation, now gaining new momentum after Donald Trump’s announcement of exiting the Paris Agreement. This is the right time for Pakistan to commit to net zero. At this time, about 75pc of states have set net-zero targets accounting for 98pc of global GDP and 88pc of greenhouse gas emissions. The list includes our neighbours Bangladesh, China, India and the Maldives. This decision can serve as a compass for the direction of our journey.

Fourth: decentralised clean air plans and engaging stakeholders. Technical capacities as well as willingness exists in academia, think tanks, start-ups, and the private sector to engage in data generation, map emissions hotspots, deliver research analytics and carry out advocacy campaigns. This is particularly important as the data generated by the government is expensive, delayed, and unusable. The Punjab government can give legitimacy to independent datasets and spearhead their environmental data generation.

Fifth: formally engage with the government of Indian Punjab. Air quality is a transboundary issue, even if crop-burning is a small contributory factor. A dialogue is needed for cleaner air on both sides of the border, and for early closure of two coal-fired power plants closer to the border: Guru Hargobind Thermal Plant and Guru Gobind Singh Super Thermal Power Plant. The agenda and purpose, however, has to be collaborative rather than accusatory.

Finally, the 18th Amendment has not clearly delineated all environmental issues. The provinces can agree with the federal government to firewall Rs1.28tr to be collected as petroleum levy for urban transportation, pre-agree on the quality of imported fuel and vehicles, agree on subsidies and incentives for energy transition for two and three-wheelers away from combustion engines, and fast-track the phasing out of rickshaws. Afterall, 2047 is only 23 years away.

The writer is an Islamabad-based climate change and sustainable development expert.

Published in Dawn, November 21st, 2024