Thursday, January 30, 2025

In Trump Era, States Should Fund Cultivated-Meat Research

January 30, 2025

With Republicans in control of all three branches of the federal government, liberal states should increasingly fund cultivated-meat research. For those who don’t know, cultivated meat is grown from animal cells, without slaughter. The new protein offers a number of environmental, public health and animal welfare benefits.

While there are individual Republican leaders who support cultivated-meat development, by and large the party is hostile to the emerging technology. For the foreseeable future, it strikes me as unlikely the federal government will provide money for the effort. Thankfully, at least two Democratic-controlled states have contributed to such funding.

Back in 2022, California directed $5 million toward alternative-protein research across three schools in its land-grant university system. The investment was championed by Assemblymember Ash Kalra, who cited the technology’s potential to mitigate global warming and secure additional economic opportunities as motivating factors.

“By providing California universities resources to advance public knowledge of alternative proteins, we can fuel innovation and enable Californian companies to play a greater role in combating climate change through the production of sustainable proteins,” Kalra said. “Investing in alternative protein science will secure our lead in this burgeoning field.”

Similarly, last year, Governor Maura Healey’s administration in Massachusetts, alongside a public development agency in the state, provided $2.1 million to the Tufts Center for Cellular Agriculture to launch the Foodtech Engineering for Alternative Sustainable Technologies center, which will accelerate the development of cultivated meat.

“We’re proud of the advances Massachusetts is making in cellular agriculture, leveraging our biomanufacturing infrastructure and research expertise to address the challenges of climate change and shifting supply chains,” said Massachusetts Economic Development Secretary Yvonne Hao. “We’re fostering innovation.”

Most people aren’t aware that animal agriculture is one of the leading causes of global warming. While the technology is still in its infancy, scientists believe cultivated-meat will require a fraction of the greenhouse-gas emissions to produce that slaughtered meat does. Environmentalists need to place a greater emphasis on our food system.

“Industrial livestock agriculture — raising cows, pigs and chickens — generates as much greenhouse gas emissions as all cars, trucks and automobiles combined,” Greenpeace states on its website. “Cattle ranchers have clear cut millions of acres of forests for grazing pastures, inhibiting the landscape’s ability to absorb carbon.”

Meanwhile, widespread adoption of cultivated meat would dramatically reduce the risk of zoonotic diseases making the jump to humans. Deadly pandemics can frequently be traced back to animal agriculture, where humans come into close contact with sick livestock. This is the sort of global catastrophe scientists fear will occur with bird flu.

“Both farmed and caged wild animals create the perfect breeding ground for zoonotic diseases,” Liz Specht wrote for Wired. “Extraordinarily high population densities, prolonged heightened stress levels, poor sanitation, and unnatural diets create a veritable speed-dating event for viruses to rendezvous with a weakened human host.”

Finally, if cultivated meat can achieve price and taste parity with slaughtered options, it has the potential to significantly limit the suffering and premature death we inflict on our fellow creatures. The scale of this violence is almost impossible to comprehend. Every year, humans kill more than a trillion aquatic and land animals for food.

To put that number in a little perspective, the Population Reference Bureau estimates only 117 billion humans have ever existed. Given these facts, it’s really no exaggeration to say our wars, disasters, and injustices don’t come close to the horrors of animal agriculture. Of course, we exploit nonhumans for a variety of other purposes as well.

When fully developed, the field of cellular agriculture will have the capacity to do tremendous good. While Republicans control all three branches of the federal government and are largely hostile to the technology, this needn’t mean the end of public funding for cultivated-meat research. Democratic states should close the gap.

Jon Hochschartner is the author of a number of books about animal-rights history, including The Animals’ Freedom Fighter, Ingrid Newkirk, and Puppy Killer, Leave Town. He blogs at SlaughterFreeAmerica.Substack.com

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A Fools Paradise: Thomas Friedman and the Middle East

Melvin Goodman

January 30, 2025
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Thomas Friedman, New York Times columnist and author in the newspaper’s Washington, DC bureau. Photograph Source: Michael Geissinger – Public Domain

“I am convinced that Bibi understands…that by significantly weakening Hezbollah and Iran, he has helped set in motion the possibility for Lebanon and Syria to restore their sovereignty and unity. I think he is ready to complete Israel’s withdrawal [from Lebanon] and finalize the border….”
– Thomas Friedman, “How Trump Can Remake the Middle East,” New York Times, January 21, 2025,

Thomas Friedman, the New York Times’ most influential columnist, has comprehensively recorded his dreamscape for the Middle East. It tells Donald Trump that “you have a chance to reshape this region in ways that could fundamentally enhance the peace and prosperity of Israelis, Palestinians and all the region’s people, as well as the national security interests of America.” Friedman believes that Benjamin Netanyahu is “ready to complete Israel’s withdrawal and finalize the border” with Lebanon, and that the United States has an “enormous opportunity to truly end the civil war [in Lebanon] and put the country back together.” Finally, he produces a threat: Iran’s nuclear program and malign regional strategy need to be eliminated, and if Trump can’t do this through “peaceful negotiations,” it needs to be “done kinetically.” That’s right: Friedman is willing to commit the United States to a war against Iran.

Friedman’s dreamscape for the Middle East makes no sense on any level. Even former secretary of state Antony Blinken eventually recognized that Israel has “systematically undermined the capacity and legitimacy of the only viable alternative to Hamas, the Palestinian Authority.” What has happened to Friedman’s concerns about Netanyahu have no political solutions for Gaza on the “Day After” the fighting stopped.

Israel is expanding official settlements and nationalizing land on the West Bank at a “faster clip than at any time in the last decade, while turning a blind eye to an unprecedented growth in illegal outposts,” according to Blinken. The attacks by extremist settlers on Palestinians, moreover, “have reached record levels.” Friedman believes that the Jewish supremacists in Netanyahu’s cabinet are responsible for this aggression, but significant evidence points to Netanyahu himself as supporting these actions.

Friedman believes that Netanyahu is ready to withdraw from the border with Lebanon even as Israeli Defense Forces are ignoring the so-called cease fire agreement and continuing to bomb Lebanese villages. On the very day that Israel was to withdraw from southern Lebanon, IDF forces killed at least 22 Lebanese civilians and injured more than 100. The withdrawal agreement was fragile from the start, with no monitoring mechanism in place and no definition of what constitutes a violation of the agreement.

Netanyahu simply has no faith in the ability of the Lebanese Army to stymie the resurgence of Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. Lebanon itself is a failed state, and there are no indications that Israel is preparing to withdraw its forces. Meanwhile, the right-wing Israeli defense minister, Israel Katz, has warned that, if there is a resumption of fighting, Israeli strikes would no longer differentiate between Hezbollah and the Lebanese state. That should come as no surprise as Israeli governments since the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in1982 have made no effort to protect Lebanese sovereignty. Nor has the IDF moved to disable the six military bases built in recent months in southern Lebanon.

If Donald Trump had any interest in a solution to the crisis between Israel and the Palestinians, he never would have stated that he wanted to “clean out” Gaza by transferring some of its population to Egypt and Jordan. I’m sure that Trump has no concern with the war crimes that would be committed to “clean out” Gaza. Nor I’m sure does he understand the “nakba” or catastrophe in 1948, when Israel began its policy of displacing Palestinians whose families had resided for hundreds of years in Palestine.

I’m also sure that moderate Arab leaders who might have worked with the United States to find a political solution realize that Trump has no understanding of the deep differences within the Arab community regarding a peaceful settlement. But Arab leaders do agree that a solution cannot include a resettlement that would destabilize their own fragile governments. Trump’s efforts to get Egypt and Jordan to take in more than a million Palestinians is not just one of the mistakes that he has made in less than two weeks in the White House. In fact, it may be his biggest mistake thus far; it’ll remind people of Trump’s Muslim ban in the first few months of his first term.

Friedman’s apparent support of war against Iran, meanwhile, is his biggest mistake. Iran is now more vulnerable than at any time since the war with Iraq in the 1980s. It has lost its “axis of resistance” (Hamas, Hezbollah, and Syria) to counter the regional influence of the United States and Israel. Iran could decide to weaponize its decades-old nuclear program, but it seems more interested in pursuing a comprehensive dialogue with the United States to get an end to the sanctions that have devastated Iran’s economy. Unfortunately, Trump has stocked his government with militarists who favor a kinetic approach to the problem of Iran as does Friedman.

Ironically, Friedman has ignored the one step that Trump has taken that would augur for a more moderate approach to the Middle East as far as U.S. involvement is concerned. In a step that has been totally ignored by the mainstream media, Trump has named Michael DiMino as the Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East. Not exactly a household name, DiMino has been skeptical regarding the close ties between the United States and Israel, and rejects the notion that the United States has “vital or existential” interests in the Middle East. He favors the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq and Syria, and he believes that Washington’s two primary interests in the region—energy resources and combatting terrorism—are exaggerations. The fact that pro-Israel Republicans as well as Israel itself object to this appointment is noteworthy. So perhaps Trump may consider ideas about the Middle East that are new and different.

Melvin A. Goodman is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and a professor of government at Johns Hopkins University. A former CIA analyst, Goodman is the author of Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA and National Insecurity: The Cost of American Militarism. and A Whistleblower at the CIA. His most recent books are “American Carnage: The Wars of Donald Trump” (Opus Publishing, 2019) and “Containing the National Security State” (Opus Publishing, 2021). Goodman is the national security columnist for counterpunch.org.

Britain

Defend the right to protest

Sunday 26 January 2025, by Roland Rance

The police harassment and disruption of the 18 January Palestine solidarity demonstration in London is evidence of a growing intolerance towards these events, and of a growing threat to criminalise all but the most minimal and ineffective protest movement.

Since the start of Israel’s genocidal attack on the people of Gaza in October 2023, there have been twenty-four very large national Palestine solidarity demos in central London. Many hundreds of thousands have marched through the West End and Westminster, on a Saturday afternoon, almost without incident. As one observer noted, the arrest rate at these demos was lower than at the Glastonbury festival.

Nor – despite repeated provocations – have there been any instances of attacks on or damage to synagogues or Jewish property, nor any harassment of individual Jews. Indeed, these demos have been marked by the presence of a large and vibrant Jewish Bloc, bringing together a dozen different Jewish organisations opposing Israeli genocide, including a group of Holocaust survivors and their descendants.

Nevertheless, there have been repeated attempts to portray these marches as characterised, even motivated, by unbridled Jew-hatred. This weaponisation of antisemitism, which worked so well in the campaign against Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party, is now being deployed against the Palestine solidarity movement as a whole.

It has been argued, for instance, that the slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is a call for extermination of Jews in Israel – though for some reason, no outrage is expressed when Israeli expansionists lay claim to the same territory with a similar slogan.

There have been claims that the marches, and the sight of Palestinian flags, of watermelon symbols, and of people wearing keffiyehs, are somehow unsettling, even a threat, to Jews going about their everyday business. And there are attempts to ban boycott and divestment activity, and even to proscribe PSC and to ban demos altogether, as has happened in Germany and France.
Palestine protests face criminalisation

These baseless smears and wild threats are evidence that Israel has lost the propaganda war and completely run out of any half-way plausible justifications for its behaviour, and must therefore work with its political allies in the imperialist states to prevent any expression of the universal revulsion at its continuing genocide. But this will not prevent activists from protesting loudly and visibly.

Yesterday’s demo is a case in point. The route, initially agreed with the police, was announced at the previous demo, in November, and people around the country had been making plans to assemble outside the BBC to protest at its one-sided presentation. But, barely a week before the march, it became clear that the police had reneged on the agreement. Citing spurious claims of a threat to worshippers at a “nearby” synagogue, the police informed organisers that the march could no longer assemble near the BBC. The synagogue in question is 500 metres away from the proposed assembly point, in a back street, and in the opposite direction from the proposed route; and the rabbi who made the complaint has given sermons strongly supporting Israel’s actions, while criticising the “heavy handed” policing of last summer’s far-right rallies.

The police refused to reconsider, despite numerous appeals, including a letter signed by more than 1000 British Jews rejecting the claim that the demonstration would make the area an unsafe place for Jews. The police also refused to meet representatives of the Jewish Bloc or to hear an alternative Jewish view to that presented by Israel’s supporters. They also imposed a restriction zone around the BBC, threatening to arrest any protester entering the area – and allegedly did arrest one person doing so. Instead, the police instructed that protesters should assemble in Russell Square before marching to Whitehall.

In response, the organisers stated that the protest would assemble in Whitehall, and then march to the BBC, arriving long after any synagogue service had finished. The police also banned this, insisting that all that would be permitted was a static rally in Whitehall. They subsequently tried to even further restrict the protest. Fortunately Palestine protestors in other parts of the country – notably in Salford and in Norwich – did hold events outside BBC buildings.

Salford Media City 18 Jan Photo Ian Parker
The ‘wrong sort of Jews’ for the establishment

I was standing with friends at the Jewish Bloc assembly point opposite the Women’s War Memorial when a couple of cops threatened to arrest us if we did not move. “You are not permitted to be here. Go down the road to the designated muster area”; to which one organiser retorted “Jews have been ordered before to report to a designated muster area. We’re not moving”. We didn’t, and the cops eventually backed down.

Eventually, after speeches had finished, protesters formed up in Whitehall, with the Jewish Bloc and the Holocaust survivors at the front, and started to walk towards Trafalgar Square. Police formed a line in front of us, but by this time many hundreds of protesters had passed us, and demanded why the police were blocking the Jewish protesters from joining them. Once again, the police backed down, and we were able to march as far as the square, where a massive police presence and rows of police vehicles blocked most exits.

Again, the police told us that if we remained we would be arrested; we could disperse, or return to Whitehall. By this time, there were no stewards and information was lacking. After some consultation, the Jewish Bloc agreed to hold a brief rally in the square, and then to leave. The Holocaust survivors decided to return to Whitehall, but were then told that they would be arrested if they did so.

Members of the Jewish Bloc went for a coffee. When we left the café some time later, we witnessed the arrest of several people – including apparently some Japanese tourists who had been caught in a police kettle at the square.

The Metropolitan Police are now reporting that they arrested 77 people. Most of these were for refusing to leave a police-imposed restricted zone – which in effect means that, had the police not decided to restrict the demonstration, there would have been very few arrests. Any disorder was the result of police decisions, not protesters’ actions. But we can be certain that this will be used as a pretext to further restrict, or even ban, future protests.
Unprecedented

One of the biggest concerns must be the arrest of the demonstrations chief steward, Chris Nineham of Stop the War. According to reliable eye-witnesses about 12 officers piled ontop of him in a violent manner when he was trying to facilitate the laying of flowers in Trafalgar Square to commemorate the dead children of Gaza as had been agreed with police.

Not only was he held for 20 hours in a police cell but has been charged under the Public Order Act effectively with organising an illegal demonstration and placed on bail conditions which prevent him being involved in any further protests at all. Further it has also become clear that both John McDonnell MP and Jeremy Corbyn MP, who not only witnessed the attack on Nineham but posted publicly about it are being interviewed by the Met under caution the next day.

Despite the reactionary nature of the police in general – and of the Met in particular – it is inconceivable that the government itself was not involved in instigating the overall direction of their actions yesterday. The whole movement needs to unite as one to demand the dropping of the charges against Nineham and the other protestors who have been charged – and address that call not only to the Met but to the Prime Minister, the Home Secretary and the entire government.

Meanwhile, Israel’s apologists have now called for similar action to ban demonstrations near another two synagogues, at Marble Arch and Knightsbridge. If put into practice, this would effectively prevent any demonstrations along Park Lane and Knightsbridge/Kensington High Street, two of the main routes of previous demos.

Jewish activists are angry. Angry at the nearly eighty years of Palestinian expulsion and dispossession. Angry at the repression of Palestinians in the Israeli state and the territories it governs beyond the 1948 borders. Angry at the co-option by the Israeli state of historical Jewish suffering in order to justify this genocide. Angry at the unthinking agreement by many that support for Israel is an integral part of Jewish identity and that all Jews support Israel. And angry at the way this false claim is likely to be used in order to further restrict the right to protest.

Never let it be forgotten that the Holocaust was a European crime, committed on European soil by European people. The Palestinian people, who bear no responsibility for this, have been forced to pay the penalty, while Europeans weep crocodile tears and once again put Jews up as the scapegoats for reactionary and oppressive measures that they would have imposed regardless.

Defend the right to protest! Liberate Palestine!

AntiCapitalist Resistance 19 January

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Roland Rance is a member of AntiCapitalist Resistance. He has been an anti-Zionist activist in Britain and Israel for 50 years.

International Viewpoint is published under the responsibility of the Bureau of the Fourth International. Signed articles do not necessarily reflect editorial policy. Articles can be reprinted with acknowledgement, and a live link if possible.

USA
Trump’s Wrecking Ball

Monday 27 January 2025, by Dan La Botz

President Donald J. Trump, in his first week in office swung a wrecking ball smashing institutions, breaking laws, and wreaking havoc. The effect is dizzying.

To begin, Trump used the presidential pardon to free over 1,550 people involved in the insurrection at the U.S. capitol on January 6, 2021, reversing the decisions of the Justice Department and the Federal courts. Among those released are two far-right leaders, Enrique Tario of the Proud Boys, and Stewart Rhodes of the Oath keepers, both convicted of sedition and serving 22 and 18 years. They are now free to organize their fascist movements.

Trump wants total control of the government and is acting to take it. Trump fired about 20 independent inspectors general whose job is to promote economy and efficiency and to prevent waste, fraud and abuse. At the same time, Trump established a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), headed by billionaire Elon Musk, to modernize technology and to maximize governmental efficiency. Various watch-dog groups and labor unions have filed suit to stop DOGE.

Trump also eliminated all federal government positions working on diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) programs meant to insure fairness in employment for all whatever their gender, race, or disability. He called DEIA “radical and wasteful.’ Trump repealed Executive Order 11246, issued president Lyndon Johnson in 1965 to stop discrimination in government contracting. Trump also announced that the federal government only recognizes two genders, male and female and that Black and Women’s history months will no longer be celebrated.

Trump declared a “national emergency” at the southern border and sent U.S. troops there to stop what he calls “the immigrant invasion.” Trump shut down the app used to make asylum appointments and canceled 30,000 existing appointments. The president has also revoked temporary humanitarian parole for 30,000 refugees from Nicaragua, Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti and Ukraine who live and work in the United States. There is now also fear among the hundreds of thousands of immigrants from many other countries who enjoy temporary protective status, another program granting temporary residence. And immigration police can now target hospitals, schools, and churches, which were previously forbidden. Trump attempted to end birthright citizenship by executive order but a federal court stopped him saying his action was unconstitutional.

The president ordered an unprecedented 10-day pause of all activity by Health and Human Services agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health, stopping all external communications as well as scientific publications, and conferences. And Trump has withdrawn the United States from the World Health Organization.

President Donald Trump’s national security adviser Mike Walz told 160 aides employed at the National Security Council to go home and do nothing until the new administration decides their future. Twenty Justice Department officials were also reassigned. Trump has reclassified thousands of federal employees as “Schedule F,” making it easier to fire them, and he could remove civil service protection from all 2.5 million federal employees.

Fulfilling his promise to “drill baby drill,” Trump declared “a national energy emergency”—even though the United States produces more oil than any other nation. He is opening up more land to oil companies for drilling and fracking, though state and local laws may still regulate oil production. He is also undoing all federal regulations aimed at preventing climate change.

In foreign policy, Trump has changed the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, and says he wants to take back control of the Panama Canal and to change Greenland from a Danish to a U.S. possession and is willing to consider military force to do so.

The barrage of decrees and actions has overwhelmed his opponents, for the moment.

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Dan La Botz was a founding member of Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU). He is the author of Rank-and-File Rebellion: Teamsters for a Democratic Union (1991). He is also a co-editor of New Politics and editor of Mexican Labor News and Analysis.

International Viewpoint is published under the responsibility of the Bureau of the Fourth International. Signed articles do not necessarily reflect editorial policy. Articles can be reprinted with acknowledgement, and a live link if possible.

World Bank and IMF — Keeping Pakistan in shackles

Tuesday 28 January 2025, by Farooq Tariq

On 11th December 2024, while replying to a question in Pakistan’s National Assembly, the federal finance minister admitted for the first time that since 2019, and while under an International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme, gas prices increased by a record 840% and electricity tariffs rose over 110 %.

Both developments contributed significantly to the unprecedented inflation that has eroded the purchasing power and living standards of the majority of Pakistani people. Electricity, gas and oil price hikes due to IMF conditions have greatly impacted farmers, rural communities. On electricity alone, prices have gone up in the last three years from Rupees 10 to Rupees 65 per unit, the highest price of electricity in the region.

On top of skyrocketing inflation, Pakistan is still reeling from the 2022 massive flooding that debilitated the agriculture sector and the overall economy. About 4.5 million acres of crops were damaged and one million farm animals were lost during the torrential rains-induced flooding. No compensation has been paid to farmers until now, contributing to deeper inequalities and a record increase in the number of “new poor”.

Pakistan has been a member of the World Bank and the IMF since 1950. Thus far, the IMF has provided loans to Pakistan 25 times or an average of one loan agreement every three years. The latest loan approved in October 2024 amounted to $7 billion, which Pakistan will receive in 37 installments. Pakistan must repay $100 billion foreign debt within the next four years, with $18 billion due in the current financial year.

All these loans, along with their accompanying programmes which Pakistan is compelled to implement as part of loan agreements, are avowedly for the uplift of the people’s standard of living. However, results have been just the opposite.

A World Bank report estimated Pakistan’s poverty rate at 40.5% in 2024. This means that an additional 2.6 million people in Pakistan fell below the poverty line in 2024. In Balochistan province, one of the richest in natural resources, the poverty rate reached a staggering 70%. The poverty rate in Pakistan over the past five years has increased despite all these loans from the IMF, World Bank and China.

Pakistan is unlikely to meet many of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The health sector impacts alone of these loans from the IMF and World Bank have been devastating. With debt repayments prioritized over the strengthening of public service infrastructure and delivery, half the population are without access to basic sanitation and health. Those who can pay are often forced to turn to more expensive private health providers, while those without the financial means are forced to resort to self-medication and unqualified local healers, or none at all.

Pakistan’s current government, which has been in power since 2022 with an interval interim government, has fulfilled the conditionalities of IMF with such brutality that it earned them commendation from Kristalina Georgieva, the IMF’s Managing Director, who said, “I want to congratulate the government and people of Pakistan for moving forward with the home-defined Pakistan-owned reforms.”

The “home-defined” and “owned” reforms mentioned by Georigieva consisted mainly of the increase and expansion of indirect taxation, particularly the General Sales Tax or GST, which now stands at 18 %, the highest in South Asia. Packaged food and most medicines were the latest to be included in the items which will be levied GST. The increase in GST is part of the effort to meet the IMF’s loan conditionality to raise tax revenue targets, not for social spending but to raise the financial resources for debt servicing and assure lenders. The government has also withdrawn subsidies, raised taxes and levies on the agriculture, power, gas and oil sectors. After this wave of increased taxes, a liter of packed milk is now sold at over 400 Rupees ($1.44) in a country involved heavily in agriculture and dairy production. A litre of milk is today more expensive than the price of a liter in the Netherlands. Conditionalities also include keeping the legislated minimum wage low at only 37,000 Rupees per month ($134.05). But even this meager amount is not enjoyed by over 80% of agriculture and food workers.
Withdrawal of Minimum Support Price for crops:

Other IMF conditionalities have effectively withdrawn social protections and social safety nets such as the non-provision of subsidies to farmers for electricity, farm inputs and farm machinery. The IMF’s recent loan includes a new condition for the Pakistan federal and provincial governments to phase out the minimum support price (MSP) system for staple crops by June 2026. The MSP, widely used in many developing countries, serves two key purposes: to guarantee farmers a minimum return on their produce and to stabilize the production and supply of essential crops. While the former aims to protect farmers from global price fluctuations and distress sales during periods of surplus, the latter safeguards consumers from supply-demand imbalances and market inefficiencies. There were only four crops whose minimum support price was fixed by the government which is a little relief to the farmers.
Push for corporate farming

Government’s anti-farmer and anti-poor policies, driven by the neo-liberal economic order under the IMF and World Bank, are destroying farmers’ livelihoods. The anti-farmers government is giving control of the agriculture and food systems sector to the military and transnational agribusiness companies. The military and the government’s plan has started to grab millions of hectares of land from farmers in the name of corporate farming.

The government, under the guise of the Green Pakistan Initiative, is planning to seize a staggering 4.8 million acres of land (roughly 28 lakh acres), across our country for corporate farming. The marked area for corporate farming is larger than the island of Jamaica and is approximately 9.5% of Punjab’s total land area.

Corporate farming will lead to the displacement of small farmers as they struggle to compete with agribusiness corporations. The concentration of land ownership among corporate entities will reduce employment opportunities for agricultural workers and rural communities. Those who have been awarded the lease for corporate farming are already busy evicting those tenants who were cultivating that land for decades. The tenants have shown great resistance to the eviction and they are ready to go any length to keep the land for their families.

Another massive struggle is going on in Sindh province where masses of people are demanding a stop to canal-building on the river Sindh as there is little or no water available for these canals. The planned six canals are in the Cholistan area of Punjab where corporate farming would be carried out on at least half a million acres of land. Corporate farming and the massive irrigation project in Punjab province has further aggravated the water-sharing dispute with Sindh province.
IMF-Imposed Privatization of the Public Sector

The IMF has been pushing Pakistan to privatize state-owned enterprises (SOEs) since at least 1991. Despite privatizing 172 SOEs between 1991 and 2015, yielding $6.5 billion, the country was unable to solve its persistent budget deficit nor the issue of long-term growth. At present, there are 85 remaining SOEs, which operate in seven sectors. Two-thirds of these SOEs are turning a profit. Roughly 80-90% of public sector losses stem from only nine enterprises including five electricity distribution companies due to IMF-recommended Independent Power Producers and private power policies.

Government privatized state institutions included Zarai Taraqi Bank (Agriculture Development Bank) which provide critical support to the food and agriculture sector. Agriculture Development Bank was offering interest free or very low interest loans to farmers community for agri machinery and seeds. Utility Stores Corporations were mainly providing subsidized food items and groceries since 1972. Other key state institutions affected by privatization are Pakistan International airlines, Pakistan Life Insurance Corporation, First Women Bank Limited, House Building Finance Corporation, several power distribution companies (DISCOS), Pakistan Engineering Company, etc.
Perspective and Demands by PKRC and affiliated Farmers Unions

Pakistani farmers and peasants are demanding accountability for the WB-IMF’s promotion of neoliberal and open market economic policies that fuels hunger and inequalities. The Pakistan Kissan Rabita Committee (PKRC) rejects these neoliberal open market policies and Free Trade Agreements dictated by the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the IMF which prioritize corporate profits over people’s needs. The Pakistan government’s decision to allow private wheat imports undermines local farmers’ efforts and benefits transnational corporations. Relying on imports has made Pakistan’s food supply vulnerable to global market volatility.

PKRC and its affiliated farmers’ unions are fighting for minimum support price (MSP) to protect farmers. This is a fight against neoliberal and capitalist institutions like the IMF and World Bank that are pushing the government of Pakistan to end MSP. It’s a fight against IMF-led neoliberal and anti farmers open market policies. It is a struggle to regulate the market to ensure fair prices for farmers’ produce. It’s a fight for parity prices and against the unfair competition, crippling production costs and influx or dumping of discounted imports.

The government has a responsibility to protect people from side-effects of stabilization through creating livelihood opportunities in agriculture, and other similar sectors, expanding social protection and safety nets and better administration and governance at a local level. Stabilization should not come at the cost of poor people.
Farmers’ bodies response to the withdrawal of subsidies and Minimum support Price system

In early May this year, tens of thousands of farmers in Pakistan held protests in several cities over the government’s decision not to buy their wheat, causing them huge losses in income. The farmers in Punjab, the country’s largest province and often called the “bread basket” of Pakistan, demanded that the government stop wheat imports that have flooded the market at a time when they expect bumper crops. The farmers were furious about the import of wheat in the second half of last year and the first three months of this year, resulting in an excess of wheat in the market and reducing prices. Last May 21, 2024, demonstrations in 30 districts responded to the call of PKRC to protect domestic products.

Following devastating floods in Pakistan in 2022, the impact on wheat farming caused a shortage of wheat in early 2023. While Pakistan consumes around 30 million tonnes of wheat per year, only 26.2 million tonnes were produced in 2022, pushing up prices and resulting in long queues of people in cities trying to buy wheat. There were even instances of people being crushed in crowds trying to access wheat.

The Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM), the ruling coalition at the time, decided to allow the private sector to import wheat in July 2023, just a month before the end of its tenure in government. According to figures from the Ministry of National Food Security and Research, between September 2023 and March 2024, more than 3.5 million tones of wheat were imported into Pakistan from the international market, where prices were much lower. As a result of the excess, at the beginning of April this year, when Pakistan’s farmers started harvesting their wheat, the country’s national and provincial food storage department was holding more than 4.3 million tones of wheat in its stocks.

Usually, the government purchases around 20 percent of all the wheat produced by local farmers at a fixed price (about 5.6 million tones, based on a 2023 yield of 28 million tones). This intervention in the market, it says, ensures price stability, prevents hoarding and maintains the supply chain. This year, however, it has announced that it will purchase only 2 million tones of wheat from Pakistani farmers. Allowing private importers to bring unlimited wheat into the country last year means that farmers will now have to sell what they can to other sources at much-reduced prices – and they will suffer great losses.

The overall impact of World Bank and IMF policies has been very negative for Pakistan economy and for people’s economy. It has increased price hikes and inequalities. Unemployment is at a historic high. Not surprisingly, the IMF and World Bank are very unpopular in Pakistan, as they have also been used by the local corrupt elite to carry out price hikes. In one form or another, there is always public opposition to the IMF every day. These energies and activism of ordinary citizens sustain the hope of forging unities among trade unions, farmer organizations and the people at large to mount stronger opposition to IMF and World Bank prescriptions and to apply greater pressure on the government to withdraw or cancel them outright.

Asian People’s Mpvement on Debt and Development 19 December 2024

Attached documentsworld-bank-and-imf-keeping-pakistan-in-shackles_a8834.pdf (PDF - 920.2 KiB)
Extraction PDF [->article8834]

Farooq Tariq is General Secretary, Pakistan Kissan Rabita Committee.
and President Haqooq Khalq Party. He previously played leading roles Awami Workers’ Party and before that of Labour Party Pakistan.

Geopolitics

With Trump in the White House, China and Latin America may try to forge an even deeper relationship

Wednesday 29 January 2025, by Jose Caballero

Within days of Donald Trump’s election win in November 2024, China’s president Xi Jinping was at a ceremony opening a deep-water port in Peru as part of a “diplomatic blitz” through Latin America.

Xi’s presence was a symbol of China’s rising influence in the region.

The Chinese-funded (£2.8 billion) Chancay port represents an expansion of the relationship between China and Peru. The two countries also signed an agreement to expand free trade. Xi said this was the beginning of a maritime version of China’s belt and road initiative, to expand its worldwide trade and influence.

The first Trump administration opted for a confrontational stance towards many countries in the region, including Peru. This ultimately pushed it to deepen its alliance with China. Beijing saw the opportunity, through favourable trade deals and investments, to position itself as a more reliable and beneficial partner than Washington.

In the last 20, years China has dramatically expanded its role as a top trading partner for Latin America. In 2002, trade between China and the region was worth US$18 billion (£14.34 billion), that amount increased to US$500 billion by 2023. In the first two months of 2024, China’s exports to Latin America increased by 20.6%.

Trump’s first term was widely seen as driving Latin American nations away from US values and alliances and towards China. Brazil, for example, saw trade with the US drop to its lowest level for 11 years, while trade with China grew significantly. Joe Biden did little to improve relations.

Trump’s campaign rhetoric signals that the upcoming administration will continue that trend. And China is certainly ready to build on its partnerships in the region if, and when, opportunities arise.

The Trump administration is likely to be focused on immigration and drug trafficking, as well as trade. For instance, Mexico is more likely to become a policy priority, because of illegal immigration, than Brazil.

Trump may look for regional allies whose policies seem more aligned with his own. Argentina’s president Javier Milei and El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele seem likely candidates, with their form of populism echoing some of Trump’s.

Despite efforts by Brazil’s president Jair Bolsanaro to work with Trump when they were both in power, and to echo Trump’s soundbites, trade between the two nations fell. Significantly, during Trump’s term of office three nations – the Dominican Republic, El Salvador and Panama – withdrew recognition of Taiwan as a sovereign country, publicly shifting allegiance to Beijing and away from US-backed Taipei.

Video. President Xi visits Peru.
What next?

In 2025, countries with close ties with China could become targets for the Trump administration. Trump has threatened to increase tariffs on Chinese goods and outlined his tough China policies as part of his “America first” agenda. China may see the Chancay port as a back door to the US market, and possibly a way to avoid rising US tariffs. So Peru could become a trade-relations battleground.

Meanwhile, Trump’s America first policy, prioritising US interests, could also result in the reduction of regional aid.

Reduced US support might lead Latin American countries to seek even stronger ties with China. The latter has already been actively offering economic investments and supporting infrastructure projects through programmes related to the belt and road initiative over the past decade. Argentina has even become the base for a Chinese space station.

Belt-and-road-related projects are often seen as more attractive compared with aid and investments from western countries, including the US, as they come with fewer demands on the country receiving the investment.

Trump’s potential disengagement from multilateral organisations, such as Nato and the World Bank, could also strengthen China’s influence, globally. This US position would reduce its capacity to shape international norms and policies, leaving Latin American nations with fewer reasons to side with Washington.

Latin American countries, which often rely on multilateral institutions such as the Inter-American Development Bank for economic and political support, could turn to China for increased investment. China’s diplomatic efforts, including high-level visits and participation in regional forums, continue to rise, signalling its intent to strengthen ties with Latin America.

Strong economic relations with China will probably remain appealing to Latin American countries. Particularly so for those that have experienced economic instability in the post-pandemic period and are looking for new avenues of growth and development.

Importantly, China’s investments in the region’s infrastructure and energy sectors have already been substantial in the last decade. They have provided much-needed capital and technology transfers. Such investments have not only boosted local economies but also strengthened diplomatic ties, positioning China an important partner in the region’s development.

China v US

Another aspect of China’s foreign policy that can be attractive to Latin American countries is its non-interventionist approach. This policy emphasises respect for sovereignty and the right of countries to choose their own development paths.

China presents itself as an alternative to traditional western powers. This enables China to portray itself as a fellow developing economy, suggesting a sense of solidarity with Latin American countries. This contrasts with the US’s complex history of intervention in the internal affairs of many of the region’s economies.

As Trump continues to emphasise a more isolationist and protectionist approach, countries in Latin America may find China’s approach more compatible with their own policies.

The hostile rhetoric towards many Latin American nations, particularly over immigration, during the first Trump term has left those nations expecting something similar this time. China appears poised to make even more of those opportunities.

The Conversation

Attached documentswith-trump-in-the-white-house-china-and-latin-america-may_a8835.pdf (PDF - 921.8 KiB)
Extraction PDF [->article8835]

Jose Caballero

>Jose Caballero, Senior Economist, IMD World Competitiveness Center, International Institute for Management Development (IMD)

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