May 30, 2011

THE CLC: A TALE OF TWO CONVENTIONS: By Sam Hammond, Vancouver, June 1-15, 2011, issue of People's Voice




http://www.peoplesvoice.ca/Pv01jn11.html#ATHECLC

For the 26th time since its founding, the Canadian Labour Congress met in Convention May 9-13 in Vancouver, BC. President Ken Georgetti welcomed the 2500 delegates with a speech that probably won't be remembered for more than a few days, if at all. The speech did not reflect the anger and anguish the people are going through across Canada, or the dangerous reality of a new Harper majority in Ottawa. That reality had to come from the floor, and it did several times during the week.
     The structural changes that will effectively reshape the CLC into a consensus of the largest private and public sector union leaders were adopted as expected, with only mild squirming from the Labour Councils which are left out of the new structure completely.

     Ken Georgetti managed the microphones with clumsy prejudice. Early in the convention he twice cut off Dave Pritchett from the Longshore Union, while CAW leader Ken Lewenza to go four minutes beyond the speaking time. On Tuesday morning, Georgetti apologized for his sins the day before, but throughout the week he continued giving speakers at pro mikes preference over speakers at con mikes. The chairing became quite a topic of discussion in the food courts and even in some of the caucuses. Many new affiliates and first‑time delegates were particularly upset.

     More than at any other CLC convention, the several hundred resolutions sent in were grouped into watered down composites and squeezed into debate times that were severely compressed by a line‑up of guest speakers, cultural presentations and discussion panels. Some of the delegates who took part in the Action Caucus estimated that in the week‑long convention, only about nine hours were allotted to floor debate on resolutions.

     One of the guest speakers was Jack Layton, who understandably was on a high over the NDP election success, and of course received a resounding welcome from the delegates.

     The Action Caucus had its first meeting on May 8, before most delegates had not arrived. Regular daily meetings of the Caucus began in earnest the next day. The main thrust of the Action Caucus was to get adoption of an "Action Plan to Resist the Harper Agenda". A petition to get the Action Plan on the floor was signed by over 500 delegates, the most effective work done at the convention. Although the Action Plan did not make it to the floor, it was in tune with the feelings of the majority of delegates. Much of it was incorporated by the executive into "Good Jobs, Better Lives: A Workers Program to Defeat the Right‑Wing Agenda," an action resolution which was passed and is now policy.

     Because of the behind the scenes work of the Action Caucus, the language of the "Good Jobs, Better Lives" resolution is militant and emphasizes the need to support unions in struggle and under attack such as CUPW and PSAC, to promote "public demonstrations" and "direct action where necessary to defeat the right‑wing agenda".

     The resolution states, "We will work with affiliates, federations and labour councils to build a strong progressive workers movement to counter the right‑wing corporate agenda in this country. This will include engaging in member‑to‑member campaigns, public outreach and direct action..."

     It also states, "At the 27th Constitutional Convention in 2014, the CLC will bring forward a political plan to defeat the Conservative government and to elect a federal New Democratic Party government." This is a much different posture than two conventions back when Gilles Duceppe and Jack Layton got equal billing.

     The members of the Action Caucus brought militancy to the mikes, reflected the urgency of delegates who want a stronger fightback, and built respect and prestige for the left, for the ideology of struggle against capital and unity of working people.

     In the words of one member of the Action Caucus, "It was as if there were two conventions going on at the same time that did not connect."

     This is an accurate observation. The thrust from the top is to prepare conditions for the election of an NDP majority in 2015. The thrust from the left is to fight every day over the next four years, to prevent the Tories from implementing their pro‑corporate, pro‑war, pro‑imperialist agenda.

     The youth, the homeless, the disenchanted, the unemployed and the abandoned, our entire working class, cannot wait for social democratic salvation in 2015. Thanks to the Action Caucus and the militant delegates the "Good Jobs, Better Lives" resolution gives equal billing to both agendas. It has the potential for unity and resistance.

                                                          ****************

(The above article is from the June 1-15, 2011, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, BC, V5L 3J1.)

May 13, 2011

Crisis of Capitalism: Act II Written by Zoltan Zigedy, Marxism-Leninism Today




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When, in the last few weeks, insiders and economists like Jeffrey Sachs and David Stockman – not noted for their radical postures – decry the state of the economy and the direction of policies, all of us should take note.

Sachs, one of the fathers of neo-liberal "shock therapy," recently cited decades-long stagnant wages and obscene levels of inequality: "We've reached the greatest income [and] wealth inequality in history... This is a new 'Robber Baron' era, of course." He went on to say "...the people at the top buy the politicians... All of them – all parties. Everyone is in the hands of the super wealthy." (Interviewed by Aaron Task, Tech Ticker, Yahoo! Finance).

In a similar vein, David Stockman, former director of the Office of Management and Budget under the Reagan Presidency, ripped the "crony capitalism" that has changed "capital markets into a rip-roaring casino that really is not productive for the real main street economy and is generating windfall gains for a very limited number of people to no good purpose..." He sees ordinary folks trying to save in this environment as "savaged" by Federal Reserve and government policies. (Interviewed by Peter Gorenstein, Daily Ticker, Yahoo! Finance)
These gloomy, critical views stand in stark contrast to the generally up-beat, optimistic reports and forecasts that usually flow from policy makers and dominate the media today. For the experts and pundits, the crisis has passed and we are on the way – though, they concede, tentatively – to recovery.

In truth, our modern-day Pollyannas mistake the first act for the entire play. While our economy may not be on the edge of a precipice, the problems that placed the world economy near collapse have only been displaced, pushed forward or swept aside. Even an arch-advocate of capitalism such as Vincent Reinhard, senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, understands this: "After a severe financial crisis, we [tend to] get a severe recession, slower recovery and subpar expansion... Denial is a standard feature of financial crises..." (Interviewed by Stacy Curtin, Daily Ticker, Yahoo! Finance).

A closer look at the economy – an up-to-date report card from a Marxist perspective – is surely in order.

Gross Domestic Product

The broadest conventional measure of national and international economic performance remains GDP growth. Laden with the assumptions fundamental to the continued functioning of the capitalist economic engine, it valorizes all that is considered important to the ownership class and its continued accumulation of capital.

Conversely, if an enormous human asset, such as the addition of one year of life span, were added to every person in the US, that value would not show up in the annual GDP figures except insofar as it generated commercial economic activity. Yet, as biased as the GDP growth figures are, their trend does reflect something real – the prospect of capitalism's sustainability.

The first quarter figures for 2011 show a tepid US annual GDP growth of 1.8% from January through March. Pundits posture this as an aberration, a momentary stumble; but the trend line from the last quarter of 2009 is decidedly downward, in step with the drying up of stimulus funds. Nonresidential fixed investment has followed the same downward trajectory since its highpoint in the second quarter of 2010, even with spending on equipment and software leaping 11.6% this past quarter.

Likewise, export growth rates
touted by the experts as a leading force of recovery — show the same downward trend from the level reached in the last quarter of 2009. Despite the Federal Reserve's shrinking-dollar policy to sustain the rate of export growth, it is now falling below earlier levels of growth. Given that refined oil-based products account for the second largest component of export value and that the dollar value of these exports is highly inflated by the rising cost of oil, export growth calculated in dollars is exaggerated in the official numbers.

Further suggestive of foul weather ahead, the February GDP report for Canada – the US's leading export destination by far – demonstrated an actual decline of .2%. It is hard to imagine robust export growth ahead, with a stagnant Canadian economy.

The growth rate of government spending – the sole factor preventing the economy from falling over the cliff at the height of the crisis – is now in negative territory and falling rapidly. The debt hysteria gripping local, state and federal officials produced budget cuts that are only now beginning to affect the GDP and other key economic indicators. Their influence on key factors – employment, incomes, consumer spending, etc. – will be felt more dramatically and negatively in the months and years to come.

Consumer spending continues its modest growth from its decline in the depths of the crisis. Its sustainability is in question, however, given that wages failed to keep up with inflation in the first quarter of 2011. This suggests that consumer debt and shrinking savings will again be the source of consumption growth, a condition ominously reminiscent of the pre-crisis period.

Internationally, GDP growth shows the same downward trend in nearly all the developed capitalist world, particularly the European Union. For those countries that have surrendered their sovereignty to the International Monetary Fund and the European Union – Greece, Ireland, and Portugal – the decline is far more dramatic. In the case of Greece, compliance with the austerity hawks has been catastrophic, with four successive quarters of losses greater than an annualized rate of 5%. The People's Republic of China and many emerging markets, on the other hand, have sustained high growth rates for diverse reasons, ranging from rational planning to irrational investment bubbles.

Profits, Productivity and Employment

Profit growth in the US – the fuel for a capitalist economy – has sprung back sharply from its nadir in the last quarter of 2008. Accelerating rapidly from that point, growth has stabilized over the last year at a rate commensurate with the pre-crisis period. Pundits hail the growth of profits in the manufacturing sector, a factor that has now reached about 90% of its pre-crisis level of production. But they fail to ask how profit growth can be so strong with less production and capacity utilization well below pre-crisis levels.

 
The answer lies in a sharp increase in the rate of labor exploitation, expressed as intensified labor productivity. Labor productivity drove the explosion of profits after the 2008 collapse, settling at a level above historic averages. Put bluntly, the restoration of profitability came at the expense of an increasingly sweated, shrunken workforce.

Two factors opened the door to profit restoration: a weak, class-collaborationist labor movement, unwilling to confront capital, and the high rate of unemployment sowing fear throughout the workforce – what Marx called "the reserve army of labor." With little organized fight for a larger share of the surplus and generalized fear of job loss among the working class, intensified exploitation was readily available to the capitalist class.

Nonetheless, the trend in labor productivity, like the trend in profitability, is downward, suggesting strongly that the crisis has failed to wring from the economy the long-term tendency for the rate of profit to decline–the theoretical basis for the Marxist theory of crisis.

With private sector labor productivity losing momentum, capital has turned to the service sector, primarily public goods and services, as a target for countering slowing profitability and surplus accumulation. The current attack on public employees' rights, wages, salaries and benefits marks this tactical shift. With weak unions, disunity and nearly non-existent class consciousness, the private labor market is virtually elastic – capitalism can dictate the terms and conditions of labor. State-monopoly capital cannot tolerate a relatively inelastic public sector labor market with high union density, firm contracts and stable standards of living alongside a nearly enslaved private sector. Hence, it has launched an all-out assault on public sector workers, organized by capital's minions in both political parties. While they cannot outsource police, firemen, and other face-to-face employees, they can break their unions. Of course, this initiative is done under the transparent ruse of debt reduction.

Another alarming sign emerging from the profit picture is the return of financials as the leading force in US profit growth. While non-financial profits lost steam at the end of 2010, profits from the financial sector jumped dramatically. By the end of 2010, financial profits achieved the same percentage of total domestic profits as they did in 2005. Clearly, speculation and financial maneuvers have ominously returned to the main stage in the US economy. For example, hedge funds have been increasing their CDS bets against Japanese debt, doubling the notional value of swaps made over the last year. Millions were made with the recent natural disaster and nuclear crisis. Debt speculation is an active agent in amplifying the volatility of European debt.

While supporters and critics of Administration policies wring their hands over the persistently high rate of unemployment, massive layoffs — reducing the labor force dramatically faster than economic activity – was the key factor in restoring profitability and increasing asset value as expressed by equity markets. It would be naïve not to see unemployment as a capitalist tool of capitalist recovery, a tool that the ownership class is reluctant to surrender.

Much has been made of recent drops in the official monthly unemployment rates. Critics are quick to correctly note that these declines also reflect people who have left the workforce, people who are "discouraged" and statistically disappeared.

Perhaps a more realistic measure of the employment consequences of the crisis comes from examining the employment-to-population ratios and the labor participation rates compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The ratio of US employed to the total population has lost 4.5 points from its pre-crisis peak – a workforce loss of 13 to 14 million workers. When we add back those displaced but receiving unemployment compensation, we find a loss of 1.9 points in the labor participation rate, revealing 5 to 6 million workers officially disappeared – left without jobs or unemployment benefits. For these casualties of the crisis, savings, family support, food banks, social security, meager government aid, or the street are their only means of support. Unlike the politically biased official unemployment rates that obscure as much as they reveal, these grim BLS calculations offer little to celebrate.

Nor does the future of US employment appear bright. Over the last decade, US based multi-national corporations have added over two million jobs overseas while eliminating nearly 3 million here, a trend that will likely continue.

Running on Empty

Since the depths of the crisis over two and a half years ago, US policy makers have sought to stabilize and revive the critically wounded capitalist system. First, they offered a transfusion to the financial sector by injecting trillions of publicly obligated dollars into its lifeless body. Secondly, federal authorities cut away the gangrenous tissue infected by financial speculation – over a trillion dollars' worth of fetid securities — and placed it in the vaults of the Federal Reserve and Treasury, where it rests to this day. Thirdly, lawmakers agreed to an $800 billion stimulus package meant to restart the economy's feeble heartbeat. After all these treatments, the economy remains in critical condition.

In mid-2010, the Federal Reserve recognized that these efforts to resuscitate a sickly economy were failing. Despite offering financial institutions and corporations virtually cost-free loans, the economy continued to respond sluggishly. The authorities acknowledged that the huge accumulated federal debt would eventually require higher interest rates to entice purchases of treasury securities to offset that debt. They understood that higher interest rates to secure the purchase of government debt would rebound through our financial institutions, driving all interest rates up and slowing borrowing. With lending drying up, they anticipated that the economy would slow down.

Thus, they sought to backstop this potential setback to recovery by embarking on a massive purchase of US treasury securities to maintain extremely low interest rates and ease any barriers to borrowers – essentially a rearguard action dubbed Quantitative Easing II. As with the gangrenous financial securities, they purchased nearly $600 billion in government debt and locked it in the Federal Reserve vault, where it joins the garbage accumulated in the speculative frenzy that gave birth to the crisis. They hope to determine what they will do with it and the other "assets" at a later date.

Like most of the moves that flow from economic theories corrupted by wishful thinking and iron-clad confidence in capitalism, the Federal Reserve strategy produced consequences undesired. The huge infusion of dollars to purchase treasury securities cheapened the value of the dollar against other currencies. Imports, which outstrip the value of our exports to other countries, grew more costly to the US consumer; and inflation raised its ugly head, chewing away the living standards of working people.

Further, many commodities, like oil, are traded internationally in dollars. With the value of dollars declining, pressure drove suppliers to raise prices to offset the falling buying power of the dollar, creating more inflationary pressure internationally. Moreover, rising interest rates in several countries inflated their currencies against the dollar as well, further affecting the costs of imported goods. These inflationary forces amplify the costs of other products, feeding an inflationary spiral. Despite unfounded optimism purveyed by the authorities and the media, inflation poses a serious threat to the economy and, especially, working class living standards. Those elements of the Consumer Price Index most relevant to working and poor people – fuel, health care, food, childcare, school fees, rent, etc – are those showing the most dramatic increase.

In addition, Federal Reserve policies failed in their mission. Though the cost of funding the US government debt is relatively stable, the cost of borrowing in the consumer arena continues to grow. Interest rates on mortgages, student loans, auto loans, etc. are on the rise. Again, QE II offered little relief to working people.

Prospects

Rather than a recovery, we are in Act II of a severe crisis of capitalism. It is not merely a financial crisis, a severe business-cycle trough or a radical imbalance, but a profound crisis of the capitalist system. Yes, there are imbalances, especially in the global economy. However, they are the effects and not the causes of this deep crisis. The advanced economies are scrambling to find solutions – individually – to the intractable problems of stagnation or decline, inflation, debt, intensified competition and failing economic institutions. These problems have fostered equally intractable political crises. Economic blocs, like the European Union, are under great stress from the diverse interests of the member states.

The emerging economies, on the other hand, are super-heated and threatened by the influx of speculative capital boiling over into severe eruptions of inflation and over-production.

As I argued some years ago, early in the crisis, the ephemeral era of capitalist cooperation – once called "globalization" – is over. Nation-states are going it alone, trying to find solutions to their immediate life-and-death issues, often at the expense of their global "partners." Where they do find areas of limited cooperation, for example, in the aggression against Libya, their differences surface as well.

Years from now, when sober heads look back on the global crisis, they will recognize that the stability of thye People's Republic of China, with its publicly owned banks and rational planning, did more to save the global economy from the brink than all of the bankrupt policy antics of the major capitalist powers. But there are more acts to come before the global capitalist economy finds firm ground.

What is missing from the maelstrom is for the working classes of all nations to move to center stage and demand solutions benefiting the vast majority. The Economist magazine, the voice of free markets since Marx's time, reports that confidence in free markets has sunk by 21 percentage points internationally since 2002. Similarly, the Gallop Poll shows the confidence in banks and Congress is now at an all time low in the US. Only 23% of respondents have "a great deal of" or "a lot of" confidence in banks. The Congress scores even lower: a meager 11% share "a great deal of" or "a lot of" confidence in the US legislative branch.

The crisis opens great opportunity to shape the world in a new direction, a direction that would not merely tame capitalism, but remove its destructive forces forever.

Ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, or, democratic Israel at work, By Gideon Levy, Haaretz,12.05.11



While we are still desperately concealing, denying and repressing our major ethnic cleansing of 1948 - over 600,000 refugees, some who fled for fear of the Israel Defense Forces and its predecessors, some who were expelled by force - it turns out that 1948 never ended, that its spirit is still with us. 

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/ethnic-cleansing-of-palestinians-or-democratic-israel-at-work-1.361196
It happened on the day after Independence Day, when Israel was immersed in praise of itself and its democracy almost ad nauseam, and on the eve of (virtually outlawed ) Nakba Day, when the Palestinian people mark the "catastrophe" - the anniversary of the creation of Israel. My colleague Akiva Eldar published what we have always known but for which we lacked the shocking figures he revealed: By the time of the Oslo Accords, Israel had revoked the residency of 140,000 Palestinians from the West Bank. In other words, 14 percent of West Bank residents who dared to go abroad had their right to return to Israel and live here denied forever. In other words, they were expelled from their land and their homes. In other words: ethnic cleansing.
While we are still desperately concealing, denying and repressing our major ethnic cleansing of 1948 - over 600,000 refugees, some who fled for fear of the Israel Defense Forces and its predecessors, some who were expelled by force - it turns out that 1948 never ended, that its spirit is still with us. Also with us is the goal of trying to cleanse this land of its Arab inhabitants as much as possible, and even a bit more. After all, that's the most covert and desired solution: the Land of Israel for the Jews, for them alone. A few people dared to say it outright - Rabbi Meir Kahane, Minister Rehavam Ze'evi and their disciples, who deserve a certain amount of praise for their integrity. Many aspire to do the same thing without admitting it.
The revelation of the policy of denying residency has proved that this secret dream is in effect the establishment's secret dream. There one doesn't talk about transfer, heaven forfend; nobody would think of calling it cleansing. They don't load Arabs onto trucks as they once did, including after the Six-Day War, and they don't shoot at them to chase them away - all politically incorrect methods in the new world. But in effect that's the goal.
Some people think it's enough if we make the lives of the Palestinians in the territories miserable to get them to leave, and many have in fact left. An Israeli success: According to the Civil Administration, about a quarter of a million Palestinians voluntarily left the West Bank in the bloody years 2000-2007. But that's not enough, so various and sundry administrative means were added to make the dream come true.
Anyone who says "it's not apartheid" is invited to reply: Why is an Israeli allowed to leave his country for the rest of his life, and nobody suggests that his citizenship be revoked, while a Palestinian, a native son, is not allowed to do so? Why is an Israeli allowed to marry a foreigner and receive a residency permit for her, while a Palestinian is not allowed to marry his former neighbor who lives in Jordan? Isn't that apartheid? Over the years I have documented endless pitiful tragedies of families that were torn apart, whose sons and daughters were not permitted to live in the West Bank or Gaza due to draconian rules - for Palestinians only.
Take Dalal Rasras, for example, a toddler with cerebral palsy from Beit Omar, who was recently separated from her mother for months only because her mother was born in Rafah. Only after her case was publicized did Israel let the mother return to her daughter "beyond the letter of the law" - the cruel letter of the law that does not permit residents of Gaza to live in the West Bank, even if they have made their homes there.
The cry of the dispossessed has now been translated into numbers: 140,000, only until the Oslo Accords. Students who went to study at foreign universities, businessmen who tried their luck abroad, scientists who went abroad for professional training, native Jerusalemites who dared to move to the West Bank temporarily - they all met the same fate. All of them were taken by the wind and expelled by Israel. They couldn't return.
Most amazing of all is the reaction of those responsible for the policy of ethnic cleansing. They didn't know. Maj. Gen. (res. ) Danny Rothschild, formerly the chief military governor with the euphemistic title "coordinator of government activities in the territories," said he heard about the procedure for the first time from Haaretz. It turns out that not only is the cleansing continuing, so is the denial. Every Palestinian child knows, and only the general doesn't. Even today there are still 130,000 Palestinians registered as "NLR," a heartwarming IDF acronym for "no longer a resident," as though voluntarily, another euphemism for "expelled." And the general who is considered relatively enlightened was unaware.
This is an absolute refusal to allow the return of the refugees - something that would "destroy the State of Israel." It's also an absolute refusal to allow the return of the people recently expelled. By next Independence Day we'll probably invent more expulsion regulations, and on the next holiday we'll talk about "the only democracy."



May 07, 2011

Osama bin Laden is dead – but US imperialism’s worldwide war lives on, By the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation

The following article is the editorial for the upcoming edition of ML Update. It is posted at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal.

* * *

http://links.org.au/node/2298

May 7, 2011 -- The US has proclaimed its success in its decade-long hunt for Osama bin Laden, culminating in the killing of bin Laden by US military operatives in a house in Abbotabad in Pakistan. As the televised triumphalism and images of hyper-nationalist celebrations in the US fade, however, Washington's heroic narrative is being subjected to uncomfortable questions.     

Ironically, Osama bin Laden’s death has come, not in the wake of 9/11 when he was at the peak of his strength, but at a time when bin Laden and his al Qaeda were effectively sidelined in an Arab world that is witnessing a democratic awakening and upsurge. This fact too robs the US narrative of some of its sheen.

The US itself has put forward conflicting versions of the night-time raid by its military team. The initial US claim of an intense firefight has now been discarded, with the US admitting that in fact, only one man opened fire on the US operatives. The claim that bin Laden himself opened fire too has been withdrawn, and the US has admitted that he was in fact unarmed. Osama bin Laden’s killing is said to have been witnessed by his 12-year-old daughter. Apart from Osama and his son (whose bodies were speedily disposed off in the sea), at least three other men and one woman were killed, while many have been injured.

Why was it necessary to kill an unarmed Osama bin Laden rather than arrest him and bring him to justice? Why has his body been hurriedly disposed off in a way designed to prevent the possibility of any closer scrutiny of the manner and circumstances of his death? The US has yet to answer these questions convincingly. Moreover, an armed attack on a sleeping household including several children, the killing of an unarmed terrorist in the presence of his child, and the killing of other unarmed men and a woman – these are not the stuff of a heroic encounter with a dreaded terrorist.

US President Barack Obama has claimed the killing of bin Laden to be the crowning achievement in the war on terror. Some have even tried to glorify it with comparisons to the end of Hitler and the defeat of fascism. Such inflated claims are quite baseless. The end of Hitler did mark the end of WWII and a world historic defeat and decline of fascism. The killing of Osama bin Laden, in contrast, spells neither the end of terrorism as a phenomenon nor the end of the US imperialist "war on terror".

By-product of anti-Sovietism

Osama bin Laden and the al Qaeda are known to be the most dangerous by-products of the anti-Soviet strategy pursued by the US in the 1980s using the popular resentment in Afghanistan and the Islamic world against the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. Modern-day terrorism is largely a US strategy that has backfired, and this cannot be contained or ended by the end of Osama bin Laden. Rather, continuing US occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and wars on Libya are likely to keep spawning more terrorism.  

The most immediate political effect achieved by the Osama killing is the sharp rise in popularity ratings of Obama, who is soon to face elections. The Osama coup has effectively taken the wind out of the sails of the aggressive Republican/Tea Party campaign that had been gathering momentum in the backdrop of growing unemployment and continuing economic crisis in the US and the huge politico-economic costs of the US misadventure in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now, Obama’s claim to have avenged 9/11 may well outweigh the propaganda of his rivals.    

There are indications that the despotic Saudi rulers, threatened by the Arab uprising and seeking a convergence of Arab ruling interests and those of US imperialism and Obama in particular, helped deliver Osama to the US.

Pakistan’s military establishment is facing tough questions within its own country about how much it knew and concealed of Osama bin Laden’s hideout, which was a stone’s throw away from a military academy. The Raymond Davis episode, Wikileaks revelations of Pakistan’s rulers’ doublespeak on US drone attacks, and now the Osama episode, have created some ferment in Pakistani society about the nexus between the Pakistan ruling class, the military establishment, terrorism and US imperialism.

The Pakistan rulers and military as well as the US are wary of possible reverberations of the "Arab spring" in Pakistan. Whether Pakistan will indeed witness some version of an "Arab spring" remains to be seen, but it must be stressed that only a democratic and anti-imperialist awakening of the people can be an effective answer to both imperialism and terrorism (which, after all, is nothing but an imperialist ploy gone berserk).

India

In India, we are witnessing some hawkish clamour to use the US Osama operation as a precedent for unilateral action to hunt down the masterminds of 26/11 [the November 26, 2008, Mumbai terrorist attack] inside Pakistan. The Indian army and air force chiefs have indulged in irresponsible statements about India’s preparedness for a similar operation against terrorists in Pakistan. Instead of indulging in such misplaced jingoism, India should re-examine its own relationship with the US in the light of the US treatment of Pakistan.

The Osama operation, like the Raymond Davis episode, has underscored the sheer contempt the US has for the sovereignty and independence of its so-called allies and partners. All US "partners", including new members of the club like India, should be warned. Terrorism and imperialism pose similar threats to both Pakistan and India. With the increased US presence in South Asia, with its accompanying spiral of terrorism, people of both countries need to recognise the need to come closer to tackle these twin challenges of terrorism and imperialism effectively.

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