India is eyeing the acquisition of spare parts from Oman’s retired Sepecat Jaguar strike fighter fleet, according to Indian media reports. The spares are to be acquired to support the Indian Air Force’s (IAF) own Jaguar fleet. It is likely the IAF will acquire Oman’s existing inventory of spares for the type, in addition to […]
The post India eyes retired Omani Jaguar fleet for spares appeared first on Asian Military Review.
This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.
Hundreds of thousands of farmers across India protested against the new draft Seed Bill 2025 on Monday, December 8, burning copies of it and demanding its immediate withdrawal. The bill will compromise the country’s food security and threaten its seed sovereignty, the farmers claimed.
The call for the protest was made by Samyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM), a collective of various farmers’ organizations formed in 2020, which includes the left-wing All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS).
Farmers gathered in their villages/towns with banners and posters and burnt copies of the seed bill.
The post Indian Farmers Protest New Seed Bill, Calling It A Threat To Sovereignty appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
Months after appearing on national television with Shark Tank India, plant-based nutrition startup Earthful has closed a new funding round to supercharge its growth in the women’s wellness sphere.
The Hyderabad-based company, founded by two sisters in 2020, has raised ₹26 crores ($2.9M) in pre-Series financing led by Fireside Ventures and V3 Ventures, with participation from Atrium Angels. It takes the firm’s total raised to around $4M.
Earthful makes plant-based multivitamins and supplements for menopause, PCOS, sleep and stress support, as well as clean-label protein powders to address India’s growing demand for the macronutrient.
“Fundraising, to me, is like marriage. You need the right partner. Someone who shapes what your brand becomes, not just funds what it is today,” co-founder Veda Gogineni wrote on social media, adding that the new investors “cared about the founders’ vision and trusted our process, not just our numbers”.
Her sister and co-founder, Sai Sudha, added: “While we always believed in sustainable growth, we knew that to scale our impact, we needed the right partners. When V3 Ventures and Fireside Ventures came in – together, serendipitously – it felt different. It felt right. It felt like something to be grateful for.”
Abhiram Bhalerao, partner at V3 Ventures, remarked: “India focuses far too much on treating illness and far too little on preventing it. Earthful is helping change that – by making daily nutrition a habit, not a hospital visit.”
The Gogineni sisters founded Earthful to use plants to find undernutrition and clean up the supplements aisle in India. “Back then, shelves were full of additives, synthetics, and lab-made products. We wanted people to see that the nutrients they needed already existed in nature,” Veda explained.
“People truly believed these products were helping them, when they were often doing more harm than good,” added Sai Sudha. “Our mission was simple: provide Nutrition from nothing but nature. Create formulas we weren’t afraid for people to read.”
After years of working corporate jobs in different cities, they found themselves living under the same roof during Covid-19, which sparked the idea behind Earthful. The startup is designed specifically for women over 35+, which Bhalerao called “a deeply underserved segment with real health needs”.
Earthful introduced the first herbal multivitamin for menopausal women. “And when protein powders were under the scanner for unnecessary ingredients, we chose a different route: a clean protein made with just six [to seven] simple ingredients,” said Veda.
Indeed, its unflavoured protein powder contains a grand total of two ingredients: pea and brown rice protein isolates. The combination provides all essential amino acids, with each 28g scoop containing 24g of protein, 1.5g of fibre, and only 2g of fat (mostly unsaturated). Flavoured versions only contain a handful of additional ingredients.
For Bhalerao, the investment in Earthful was sparked by personal experience. “A few months ago, my mother started using Earthful’s plant protein and bone health supplements. What stood out wasn’t just that she felt better – it was how comfortable she felt consuming them,” he said. “No intimidating ingredients. No exaggerated claims. Just honest nutrition from real food sources.”
These attributes are also what helped the startup find success on Shark Tank India, when it bagged a ₹75 lakh ($28,600) investment from Oyo Rooms founder Ritesh Agarwal, who took a 2% stake in the company and made good on the funding promise.
Earthful has built a base of over 200,000 customers over the last two years, and will use the new capital to expand its team in Hyderabad and Mumbai, where it will open a marketing office. It will also look to grow the footprint of its protein powders and supplements across India.
The founders further teased a new project that will deepen the brand’s work on menopause. “With this investment, we want to expand our portfolio, grow deeper into Bharat [India], and build a movement where people know that their nutrition shouldn’t be intimidating, and should have nothing but nature in it,” said Veda.
Bhalerao lauded the founding sisters’ talent, empathy and technical expertise. “Their obsession with clean formulations, honest labelling, and real outcomes is what makes Earthful special,” he said.
V3 Ventures was convinced by the startup’s use of “real, plant-based ingredients like algae, chickpea, and herbs instead of synthetic alternatives”, its healthy repeat rates, retention, and “genuine brand love”, and its portfolio’s multifaceted benefits, from energy and bone health to hormones and digestion.
“India is going through an important moment in preventive supplements, and what drew us to Earthful was their pursuit of honest nutrition,” added Arjun Vaidya, co-founder of V3 Ventures. “Customers are looking for this now. We also appreciated their focused commitment to women’s wellness.”
India is already home to a $1.5B protein market, which is poised for growth thanks to skyrocketing demand. Researchers are conflicted about whether or not the world’s most populous nation has a protein deficiency problem, but in any case, its citizens are consuming more protein than ever before.
In fact, surveys show that 37% of Indians want to add more plant proteins to their diet, and a higher share of consumers want to increase their intake of protein from plant-based sources over that from animals.
This is supporting the growth of brands like Earthful. It is joined by the likes of SuperYou (co-founded by Bollywood star Ranveer Singh) Cosmix, and Mille, all of which sell yeast protein powders, as well as plant protein makers Nakpro, Origin, and Plantigo.
The post Shark Tank India Success Earthful Bags $3M to Fuel Women’s Nutrition with Plant Protein appeared first on Green Queen.
This post was originally published on Green Queen.
Far-right Indian leader Narendra Modi has reaffirmed his country’s relationship with Israel. The two violently Islamophobic governments agreed on a “zero tolerance approach” to terrorism. And Modi said the pair had agreed “to further strengthen cooperation” on X:
Spoke with my friend Prime Minister Netanyahu. We reviewed progress in the India-Israel Strategic Partnership and agreed to further strengthen our cooperation. Also reaffirmed our shared commitment to zero tolerance for terrorism. India supports all efforts aimed at achieving a…
— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) December 10, 2025
In November 2025, the countries signed a Memorandum of Understanding. Security and military exchange was the main focus. The Middle East Observer reported the document as:
a shared vision to deepen cooperation across a spectrum of domains including strategic dialogue, military training, defence-industrial partnerships, research & development (R&D), technological innovation, artificial intelligence (AI) and cybersecurity.
The agreement emphasised:
co-development and co-production of advanced military technologies—an important pivot from transactional procurement toward joint manufacturing and innovation.
Basically, Benyamin Netanyahu and Modi are expert internal repressors with a long history of violence against Muslims. Modi was governor of Gujarat province back in 2002. Essentially, he oversaw violent pogroms against Indian Muslims which left 2000 people dead.
Certainly, Hindutva nationalism unites Modi’s followers at home. But diaspora communities in the UK have felt Hindutva’s power too. Hindutva’s Hitler-inspired paramilitary wing is Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). In fact, even Norwegian mass killer Anders Breivik felt an affinity for RSS ideology.
Like Hindutva, Zionism is a violent ethno-supremacist supremacy. In truth, Zionism is deeply linked to British imperialism. And Hindutva is no different. As one commentator has it:
Granted, Israel and India are two very different countries. What they have in common is the intrusion of the British.
Accordingly, University of Leicester politics lecturer Dr Vikram Visana said Hindutva founder Vinayak Damodar Savarkar:
praised Zionism as the perfection of ethno-nationalist thinking. The way Zionism seamlessly blended ethnic attachment to a motherland and religious attachment to a holy land was precisely what Savarkar wanted for the Hindus.
“This double attachment,” Visana adds:
was far more powerful to his mind than the European model of “blood and soil” nationalism without sacred space.
All in all, Netanyahu and Modi share a fascistic politics and a militarist impulse. New Internationalist reports:
Indian companies like Adani-Elbit Advanced Systems India, Premier Explosives, and the state-owned Munitions India are actively supplying drones and weapons to Israel as it continues its genocidal war against the people of Gaza.
In April [2024], careful not to jeopardize these arrangements, India abstained from a UN ceasefire resolution that included calls for an arms embargo on Israel.
In return, Israel:
has continued its uninterrupted supply of military equipment to India – a significant commitment as Israel has delayed over $1.5 billion in arms exports to other countries since October 2023.
Far-right and ethno-nationalism are the dominant forces in Indian and Israeli politics. And their leaders are committed to militarism and internal repression along racial lines. Ultimately, as products of British imperialism, what else could they be?
Featured image via the Canary
By Joe Glenton
This post was originally published on Canary.
Multipolarity — the idea that there are more than one decisive economic actors in the global economy — is an important fact. More than anything else, the rise of the People’s Republic of China demonstrates that fact. The size and rate of growth, along with the expansive Belt and Road Initiative, establishes that the PRC functions somewhat independently of the world’s most powerful player in the global market — the US. While the PRC spurns the language of rivalry, characterizing its desired relationship with the US as one of cooperation or partnership, the mere fact that the US rejects that relationship creates another competitive pole in the global economy, centered on the PRC.
Similarly, the US ruling class has sought to absorb the post-Soviet world — Russia, Eastern Europe, and other former Soviet collaborators — into the US-dominated economic order. The US demands that they play the same game and by the same rules or be banished from participation. When they object or defy accepting these terms, they, too, necessarily become alternative poles.
As other formerly minor or compliant participants — Brazil, India, etc. — have risen in economic stature, they can also represent counters to US unipolarity.
The tendency away from the US’s complete dominance of the international market economy is a reality of our time. No rational person can dispute this fact (though the tendency could easily reverse).
Since the origin of international trade, there have been conflicting tendencies and counter-tendencies toward concentration and diversity, toward monopoly and competition, and toward unipolarity and multipolarity. It is the very nature, the very essence of market exchange that a privileged trader will arise to dominate, only to be challenged by rivals who subsequently share or dominate the market, with the process repeating or reversing. As Friedrich Engels insisted: “In short, competition passes over into monopoly. On the other hand, monopoly cannot stem the tide of competition– indeed, it itself breeds competition.”
History shows many empires or countries rising to dominate an arena of commerce or trade over its trading “partners”: Venetian dominance in the Mediterranean, Dutch dominance in European trade with the Spice Islands, successive European empires’ dominance of the trading in slaves, British dominance of the opium trade with China, etc. In nearly all cases, other empires or nations challenge and often prevail.
With the rise of the Cold War, the immensely powerful US assumed and maintained the leading role in ruling and protecting the capitalist order, then over half of the world’s population. After the fall of the Soviet Union, US leaders sought to extend their dominance over the entire world, envisioning a new order codifying and guaranteeing the existing inequalities and the established uneven development. Of course, this status privileges US interests.
If this state of affairs constitutes what people consider to be unipolarity, then it is clear that it is not sustainable. Competitors unfailingly will rise to challenge US dominance. Rivals will strive to break the US economic reign, through innovation, deception, trickery, market manipulation, alliances, and even open conflict. That is the way of capitalism.
And that is what is happening.
Thus, the alternating tendencies toward multipolarity and unipolarity are inevitable consequences of market exchange in a world of private ownership and national self-interest.
It should be noted that — everything else remaining the same — this dynamic will guarantee neither that working people will benefit nor be disadvantaged by changes in existing poles. Changes in the relative economic position of nation-states in the global economy is neutral with regard to the fate of those living in class societies. A worker or peasant may gain little from a trend from unipolarity to multipolarity — any gain will be determined by other factors.
*****
There is, however, an entirely different understanding of multipolarity, unrelated to the factual tendency of competition to drive the global economy toward a unipolar or multipolar world. Since the time of Karl Kautsky, leftists have invested in multipolarity as a moral response to imperialism, an antidote to economic exploitation, as anti-imperialism. Nation-states were and are believed to rationally accept a stable order based on common interests and fair and equitable relations (if only the predators were tamed!). Lenin mocked this view and World War I crushed it.
But it doesn’t go away! The illusion of a brotherhood of capitalist powers accepting fair and equitable relations stubbornly persists!
Liberals and social democrats invested heavily in the League of Nations, a reset of the rules of international politics and economics after the disaster of World War I. Both little nations and big nations were expected to live amicably under its umbrella. The League promised to stifle the aggression and domination of great powers. Within two decades World War was again on the agenda.
Once again, after World War II, a new “multipolar” institution came into being– the United Nations. Dominated by capitalist powers (most also beholden puppets of the US ruling class), the promise of diverse poles ensuring peace, harmony, and fairness gave way to manipulation, indecision, and — on the best day — impotence. The UN — today, a multipolar institution governing capitalist-oriented nation-states — is a modern-day farce.
Now, we have BRICS — an alliance of a motley assortment of states with different ideologies, different modes of governance, different economies, different levels of development, and different commitments to social justice, but a common interest in finding some benefit from rearranging the existing world order. Centrists and leftists of every stripe have adopted BRICS and BRICS+ as an anti-imperialist front. With little reflection on history, with little appreciation of diversity, and especially with little understanding of market-based economies, they imagine that nation-states driven by self interest will somehow construct a common organization governed by mutual interest. Kautsky would embrace this shallow hope. Lenin would summarily dismiss it.
Persistently and consistently, I have challenged this misguided concept of anti-imperialism. BRICS is no more an answer to imperialism than an alliance of corporations is an answer to capitalist exploitation.
And that is the tragedy of the BRICS solution to imperialism. It fails to address the foundation of imperialism: the capitalist mode of production. It distracts social justice warriors, and even some Marxists, from the root cause of growing inequality within and between nations. Through ignorance or frustration, it creates the false hope of tempering exploitation without confronting capitalism.
*****
Where theoretical arguments fail, I have proposed a practical test of multipolarity and, specifically, BRICS. If BRICS is an anti-imperialist alternative, then it — or its most committed members — must stand tall against the most glaring, most egregious acts of imperialism. I have suggested that the response of BRICS members to the atrocities in Gaza are a litmus test of commitment to anti-imperialism, a test which BRICS has failed abysmally.
One might think that the recent UN Security Council vote on the US/Israeli plan to further maintain Gaza as a semi-colony — brazenly ruled as brutally as the old Belgian Congo — might have ignited a resistance from the “anti-imperialism” of BRICS. Instead, BRICS’s most vocal friends of Gaza choose to abstain from the vote.
And, yes, one would think that these scandalous abstentions would cause many multipolaristas to pause, and rethink their delusion of an anti-imperialist BRICS.
And many on the left have recoiled from this plan and criticized the Russian and Chinese abstentions. The Palestinian Communist Party denounced the vote, as did other Communist and Workers parties.
In an article entitled “BRICS Are the New Defenders of Free Trade, the WTO, the IMF and the World Bank” and Support Genocide by Continuing to Trade with Israel, Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism vigorously challenges BRICS on Gaza, and cites others, including left podcaster Fiorella Isabel and left journalist Vanessa Beeley’s similar critiques.
Nonetheless, apologists like the Friends of Socialist China defend China and Russia’s abstention. They argue bizarrely that: “For China, or Russia, to have exercised the veto would only have weakened their position vis-à-vis the Arab and Islamic nations and correspondingly further strengthened that of the United States.” As though voting against the Security Council resolution would have cost them friendship with some of the backstabbers of the Palestinian cause and defying the US plan would have somehow strengthened the already compliant US relationship with these same traitors to Gaza’s fate.
Since the Gaza resolution, the US has launched an offensive against Venezuelan sovereignty. US military might is staged in waters offshore from Venezuela, insisting that the Venezuelan people bow to US pressure. The threat is real and accompanied by the disgusting demonstration of US power by the murderous killing of boats’ crews in international waters, killings that have no established legitimacy.
How have the PRC and Russia — the “spear” of BRICS anti-imperialism — responded?
Kejal Vyas and James T. Areddy, writing in the Wall Street Journal, state smugly: “For two decades, Venezuela cultivated anti-American allies across the globe, from Russia and China to Cuba and Iran, in the hope of forming a new world order that could stand up to Washington. It isn’t working.” They understand that Cuba and Iran are in no position economically to help Venezuela. As for Russia and China, the authors conclude: “Both countries are trying to negotiate major diplomatic and trade deals with Trump now, giving them little incentive to waste political capital on Venezuela.”
It should be clearly understood that Russia, the PRC, and other BRICS states have the sovereign right to forge their own or an independent collective foreign policy, regardless of what others might want. Sadly, unlike in the throes of the Cold War against socialist states, no great power or alliance is willing to risk confrontation with other great powers, where willingness to do so is historically the measure of authentic anti-imperialism.
It should be equally clear that those who elevate the BRICs countries to the status of anti-imperialist icons are doing the left a disservice. However well-meaning some of the BRICS leaders may be, they fall far short of constituting an anti-imperialist bloc. To continue the fantasy that rallying around BRICS is the basis for an anti-imperialist front only deflects the left from attacking the foundation of imperialism: capitalism.
The post BRICS Will Fail to Deliver Anti-imperialism first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
The world’s largest continent is home to 60% of its population and produces more than half of all crops, but its food security is facing a critical threat.
Asia’s already alarming water crisis is set to deepen three times more quickly over the next decade, with a combination of climate change plunging an additional billion people into water stress. With agriculture taking up 80% of the region’s freshwater supply, scarcity will disrupt food production and exacerbate food insecurity.
Action to protect the continent’s food security and maintain a stable water supply “must and can be taken now”, according to the latest Asia Food Challenge report by Oliver Wyman, Rabobank and Temasek.
The analysis lays out measures that could save enough water to fill 85 million Olympic-sized swimming pools, creating $141B in combined financial benefits each year.
“Rising water stress is threatening crop yields, livestock health and food security across the region,” said Dirk Jan Kennes, head of Rabobank’s RaboResearch Food & Agribusiness division in Asia. “The good news is that proven technologies and practices already exist to improve water efficiency and reduce usage.”
He added: “By investing in water distribution infrastructure and sustainable farming practices such as precision irrigation and soil management, stakeholders can collectively address the challenge of water stress while enhancing resilience across the entire food system.”
According to the report, Asia’s water crisis is a result of deeply entrenched structural issues. Agricultural production here is dominated by water-thirsty crops like rice, wheat, sugarcane, alfalfa, and cotton – and historical diets and cultural preferences have “locked farmers into practices that extract beyond ecological limits”.
Government subsidies have made such crops economically attractive, but environmentally costly. In India, for instance, free electricity and procurement support have embedded rice paddy cultivation in Punjab, where groundwater is being extracted at over 150% of annual recharge rates now.
Subsidies and financial markets also reward output over efficiency, and water risks remain systemically unpriced. There’s more funding towards water-heavy crops, and water-smart technologies remain underfunded and out of reach for smallholder farmers (who produce nearly 80% of Asia’s food).
Governance gaps make things worse. The report suggests that water policy can be fragmented across government ministries and tiers, with different authorities pursuing their own mandates and neglecting the bigger picture.
Meanwhile, irrigation and drainage networks built in the mid-20th century now suffer from heavy conveyance losses, sedimentation, and inadequate upkeep. Weak monitoring and water accounting mean that few countries can reliably track withdrawals or enforce penalties for overextraction.
Additionally, environmental externalities – like physical water scarcity, climate volatility, and soil or land degradation – exacerbate Asia’s water stress. Groundwater tables are sinking below viable extraction depths, threatening the natural buffer that can protect against surface water shortages, and rivers and reservoirs don’t provide reliable flows to meet agricultural demand anymore.
These effects are intensified by climate volatility, with rainfall more erratic, droughts longer, and flooding events more extreme. Soil and land degradation are further weakening agricultural productivity, with erosion stripping away fertile topsoil and rising salinity reducing plants’ ability to take up water.
A handful of technologies and initiatives can actually deliver water savings at scale. The single largest opportunity comes from irrigation efficiency – only one in 10 Asian farms use modern systems, versus 21% globally. Even a modest increase to close this gap could save 83 billion cubic metres of water over the next decade.
The second most effective lever is a shift towards alternative food sources and seed innovation. Crops like rice and wheat use up a disproportionately high amount of water, only surpassed by meat products like beef, pork and chicken.
Instead, more efficient plants like millets and sorghum need 60-70% less water on average. And pulses like lentils and chickpeas, which contain 20-25% protein (versus 23-27% of protein from animal sources), require 70-90% less water than meat.
According to the report, replacing just 2% of rice, wheat and maize with water-efficient crops like millets and sorghum, and 2% of conventional meat with cultivated or plant-based proteins could yield another 57 billion cubic metres in water savings.
Aside from these two measures, improving water distribution networks by lining 16% more agricultural canals can save 44 billion cubic metres of water; regenerating soil on 22% of degraded land in Asia can deliver 18 billion cubic metres in savings. Moreover, applying precision farming technologies, like IoT sensors, greenhouses, and controlled environment agriculture, to just under 1% of irrigated land can save 11 billion cubic metres of water.
By adopting these solutions, policymakers and investors can help lower on-farm water use by about 10% – slowing the growth of water stress by 2% – and save a combined 214 billion cubic metres of water by 2035. With greater adoption levels, this could stretch to a further 5-10% reduction.
Implementing these strategies would require a one-off investment of around $136B, delivering annual benefits of $141B. More efficient water and input use can boost crop yields by up to 40% and cut fertiliser 30%, alone producing $98B in added value from higher productivity and lower costs. Further, these measures would cut drought-related yield losses by 6-50%, and halve emissions from reduced flooding.
Still, water solutions only get 1-2% of overall climate tech funding, and most of this capital is concentrated in the West, highlighting an urgent need and opportunity for greater investment in Asia. “Addressing Asia’s water challenges will require directing targeted investment to strengthening the foundations of our water economy,” said Anuj Maheswari, head of agrifood at Temasek.
“By focusing resources on scalable, impactful solutions, we can embed innovation at the heart of the water economy, accelerating adoption and delivering meaningful, lasting benefits across the region,” he added. “Through strong partnerships, we can help ensure water security and resilience for communities across Asia.”
The post Efficient Irrigation & Dietary Shifts the Top Ways to Prevent Water Stress For One Billion Asians appeared first on Green Queen.
This post was originally published on Green Queen.
A video showing a woman in a burqa being hit by a man on the head is viral on social media with some users claiming that it was a case of an attack on a Muslims in India. The woman in the video collapses on the ground as people from passing vehicles look on.
X user New Muslims (@Muslims_2025) posted this clip on November 26 and mentioned in the caption: “Attacks against Muslims in India continue, and we call on the Indian authorities to protect the Muslim community”. At the time of this report being written, the post has received over 363,000 views and has been reposted over 4,800 times. (Archive)
Attacks against Muslims in India continue, and we call on the Indian authorities to protect the Muslim community.
— New Muslims (@Muslims_2025) November 26, 2025
Another X user, Parmanand Azamgarhi (@parmanandyadavv), whose bio states that he is the national secretary of Samajwadi Party chatra sabha, also posted the same clip on November 26 and mentioned in the caption: “Sanatani people are mistreating women of other religions, especially Muslim women, and no action is being taken against these people. The Constitution grants equality to everyone.”
This post has received more than 370,000 views so far and has been reposted over 1,800 times.
Several other users posted the viral clip with the claim that it is an incident in India. Below is another example:
On taking a close look at the video, we noticed an advertisement board with text written in Bengali script. We noticed that the board said, “Madrasatul Ehsan Al-Islamia”, and the fourth and fifth lines said, “In the academic year 2024” and “Admissions open”.
On running a Google search, we found an educational institution by the same name in Dhaka, Bangladesh. We went through the institution’s Facebook page, and the address on the page said, “83/1, Road – 2, Kalyanpur, Mirpur, Bangladesh”. This shows that the institution is based in Bangladesh, which indicates that the location of the viral clip is Bangladesh, not India.
Additionally, it should be also noted the last frame of the video shows a vehicle passing by which has ‘Energypac JAC’ written on its front panel.
JAC Motors is an automobile major from China. Their vehicles are not available in Indian markets. Enerygpac, on the other hand, is a Bangladeshi company that is the sole distributor of JAC Motors in the Bangladeshi market. If one looks more closely, the number plate of the vehicle can be seen written in Bengali. Though not very clear, one can discern the word ‘মেট্রো’ (Metro) written on it. Compare that with the image of a blue JAC truck from Dhaka in the photo below, which is a screengrab from a YouTube video uploaded by Dhaka Mirpur Motors.
Therefore, it is clear that the viral video is from Bangladesh and not from India. The claims that the video shows an attack on a Muslim in India is false.
The post Attack against Muslims in India? No, viral video of woman collapsing is from Bangladesh appeared first on Alt News.
This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Oishani Bhattacharya.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
The Indian Navy (IN) commissioned the first of eight Mahe-class Anti-Submarine Warfare Shallow Water Craft (ASW-SWC) on 24 November. As part of the government’s “Made in India” campaign to promote domestic ship design and construction, the vessel features 80% indigenous technologies. Built by Cochin Shipyard Limited (CSL) in Kochi, the 1,100-tonne INS Mahe measures 78m […]
The post India commissions its first Mahe-class ASW-SWC corvette appeared first on Asian Military Review.
This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.
With clothing companies that will be offering discounted Black Friday deals this week relying heavily on the labor of tens of millions underpaid and overworked garment workers across the Global South, two reports by the human rights group Amnesty International make the case that ensuring these employees are afforded the right to organize their workplaces is key to ending worker exploitation across…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Indian Army requests to acquire both the Javelin man-portable anti-tank guided missiles (ATGM) and 155mm Excalibur precision-guided artillery projectiles have been approved by the US Defence Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA). Both weapons have featured prominently in the ongoing Russian-Ukraine war. The procurements, if they proceed, are being pursued under emergency procurement powers that allow the […]
The post Indian Army seeks Javelins and Excalibur rounds from USA appeared first on Asian Military Review.
This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.
The BvS10, a tracked and articulated all-terrain carrier produced by BAE Systems Hägglunds, has won an important contract from the Indian Army. The vehicle, known as the BvS10 Sindhu, is to be manufactured under license in India by local partner Larsen & Toubro (L&T). Asian Military Review learned the actual contract was signed on 7 […]
The post BvS10 scores its first sale in Asia with Indian contract appeared first on Asian Military Review.
This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.
The UK is following a global trend where far-right movements are uniting. This includes Hindu ultra-nationalists after flags associated with the Bajrang Dal militant group were raised in a Muslim-majority area of Leicester in August this year.
The Muslim Council of Britain said:
We are raising this urgently with the Hindu Council, Police, and community leaders, and we repeat our call for Hindutva extremism to be recognised as a domestic security threat. Authorities must ensure local events are safe, inclusive, and free from political provocation.
Even the Daily Mail reported in April on the growing alliance between Hindutva groups and far-right groups in the UK. A document, compiled by the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) and obtained by the Mail, says Hindutva extremists are collaborating with figures like far-right activist Tommy Robinson.
The Canary’s Barold was at a far-right march in Sheffield over the weekend where an Indian flag could be spotted amongst the sea of butcher’s aprons:
However, the presence of the Indian flag at such a rally is not as incongruous as it may first appear.
In a recent report, Professor S. Sayyid of the University of Leeds states that the 2022 riots in Leicester (disturbances that took place between Hindu and Muslim communities) were a shock given the city’s history. The report, called the “Community Tensions, Hindutva, and Islamophobia, Leicester City: A Case Study” by the UK Indian Muslim Council (UK-IMC), focuses on the Leicester riots of 2022 and was published this summer.
Leicester’s modern history is a showcase of Britain’s post-1945 postcolonial transformation. It began with the city’s 1972 newspaper advertisements that actively discouraged migration from Uganda, before evolving to become Britain’s first “hyper-diverse city”. Professor Sayyid wrote:
The Leicester unrest foreshadowed, for instance, the Southport riots of 2024, in which mosques were damaged, individuals considered to be Muslims were assaulted in public spaces, and refugee hostels were torched.
These acts of violence sit alongside institutional examples of racism that are directed at Muslimness, such as the Birmingham Trojan Horse Affair, where Islamophobic narratives succeeded in producing a moral panic that demonised Muslim educators and parents for trying to make their schools more responsive to the long-neglected needs of their students.
He added that there is a widespread sense among many Muslim communities that, from Guantánamo to Gaza, their concerns fail to register in the national conversation.
The report details the multifaceted methods used by the Hindutva movement to advance its ideological agenda globally. Key strategies include establishing front organisations to promote its ideology and channel funds. And, importantly, there is a deliberate effort to conflate criticism of its politics with “Hinduphobia,” thereby framing itself as a victim to silence opponents
The report specifically notes that the movement draws “parallels with Zionism, advocating for global Hindu solidarity and urging policies modelled on Israel’s strategies, particularly in regions like Kashmir.”
According to this LSE blog -. Hindutva is not a religion but a political ideology that believes in the hegemony of Hinduism in India, and which ties Hindu-ness to the identity of the nation: the goal being to establish India as a Hindu-only nation. An ethnonationalist ideology, Hindutva took inspiration from European fascism including Hitler’s Nazi’s and Mussolini’s Italy. One such organisation is the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) a paramilitary organisation that in today’s India has in excess of four million volunteers all of whom swear an oath of allegiance and take part in quasi-military activities. The Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, is a RSS member.
Last month, calls to Make London’s Diwali Celebrations more inclusive by excluding Hindu Nationalist groups were shunned by the Mayor of London.
Diwali celebrations took place last month (October 12), in Trafalgar Square.
Vishwa Hindu Parishad UK (VHP-UK), also known as the World Council of Hindus UK in the English language, are on the official committee of organisers for the City Hall-backed Diwali celebrations in Trafalgar Square – which have been denounced by inclusive groups like South Asia Solidarity Group and Hindus for Human Rights. The latter’s director, Rajiv Sinha, posted on social media:
A Diwali free from genocidal, anti-Muslim entities like the VHP and “Brahmin Society” casteist groups is a must. An event like this cannot take place in the name of progressive Hindus.
However,, the Diwali celebrations did include attendance from the Board of Deputies of British Jews. That same Board of Deputies have recently attacked musician Bob Vylan for his criticism of the IDF, part of a wider pattern of far-right movements silencing critics. The connection between the British far-right, Hindutva nationalism, and Israel is the same: an allegiance to ethnonationalism that uses borders as a weapon with which to stamp out ‘foreign’ presence.
And, India recently signed a new trade and investment deal with Israel, deepening a strategic partnership rooted in multi-billion-dollar investments in defence and surveillance technology. Just this year, Britain also signed a trade deal with India, further cementing the allegiances between these three states united under white supremacist ideology.
What better a foundation of neo-colonial ethnonationalism than a bedrock of capitalism?
The author of this article is a left-wing campaigner and British national of South Asian heritage.
Featured image via the Canary
By Anonymous
This post was originally published on Canary.
On Saturday, November 1, India’s southern state of Kerala officially declared itself free of extreme poverty. This makes the left-ruled state the first and only state in the country to achieve such a milestone.
Announcing the achievement during a session of the state’s legislative assembly, left leader and Chief Minister of the state Pinarayi Vijayan called it a “historic and proud moment” for the state and its people and hoped that “our experiments will become a model that states in the country can benefit from.”
India has the world’s largest population living in extreme poverty, as per the data released by the World Bank last year.
The post Kerala Becomes First Indian State To Eradicate Extreme Poverty appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
Nako Dost Muhammad (image on left) had never heard the hum of a fan. Living in a village named Kolahu in Tump, a tehsil in district Kech tucked between dusty hills and near the edge of the Iranian border, Nako’s life has been cloaked in darkness.
Since 2016, the electricity connections in their village had been completely cut off, making them rely on the dim, choking flame of a kerosene lamp. He remembers a night when his grandson was bitten by a scorpion. There was no proper light to see where the creepy creature had gone, no decent transport to take the boy to a dispensary or a fan to stop them from sleeping on the floor. From the school in the village to the dispensary nearby, none had power.
Until last month, Nako recalls, when a solar-panel-laden Zamyad vehicle from Turbat arrived. A local contractor and three other people came with unfamiliar tools: a metal pole, a solar panel, a fan, wires and, intriguingly, a battery that had neither sulphuric acid nor distilled water in it, he says. He was told by the contractor that he was among the 40 recipients from the village to receive “a home solar solution” under a new provincial scheme from the Energy Department of Balochistan.
Balochistan, Pakistan’s largest province in terms of area, remains the most energy deprived region. Almost 36 per cent of Balochistan is connected to the national grid and the connected ones receive erratic supply, according to a report presented in the National Assembly of Pakistan. Therefore, in this void, solar technology has been a boon. The Energy Department of Balochistan in collaboration with the People’s Republic of China is now providing home solar systems through a 15,000 solar home system grant aid by the China International Development Cooperation Agency (CIDCA) and the South-South Cooperation Assistance Fund (SSCACF). These include 250 Watts panels, wiring kits, charge controllers and critically lithium-ion batteries to store power to be utilised during night.
Lithium Solar Charge Controller
Nako didn’t know what a “lithium-ion battery” was, nor had he heard of Guangdong, a Chinese province, stamped on the battery casing. What he knew about was a solar panel that caught sunlight, a battery that stored something invisible and that by the evening, his home — one mud house — would have two working lights and a fan to sleep just like in the city.
These lithium-ion batteries that are used to power electric scooters in Karachi or power up laptops and mobile phones in Lahore, are now providing electricity to the far away hamlets of Balochistan, often forgotten by the National power grid. From the fertile lands of Pishin district in the North to the draught-hit district of Gwadar in the South, these Chinese-made lithium-ion batteries, compact yet powerful, are converting sunlight into steady electricity in the night.
A Tale of two chemistries
“Lead acid batteries are the grandfather of energy storage invented in 1859,” Says Abdul Saboor, a chemistry professor in Atta Shad Degree college, Turbat. “They are cheap, recyclable and are locally manufactured by firms like Exide, Osaka and AGS. But they are heavy, require maintenance and give away 50 per cent of the charge stored in them. Unluckily, depending upon usage, their life span varies from 2 to five years.”
By contrast, he explains, lithium-ion batteries especially the Lithium-iron Phosphate variants are now the heart of solar systems, electric scooters, and backup power. They last longer, are lighter and discharge up to 90 to 95 per cent.
So what is the fine print?
“The cost”, says a consumer from Tump. “A 100Ah battery in the market costs Rs. 28,000 while a lithium-ion battery in that range would cost you Rs. 80,000.”
This expensive cost puts the lithium-ion batteries out of the reach of the middle class people. Another resident from Turbat confided in me that he purchased a lithium-ion battery in Gwadar — similar to the ones distributed under the provincial scheme — for Rs. 60,000, giving birth to a black market driven by high demand of the lithium-ion batteries and their quality.
Made in China: A Double-Edged Sword
Almost all, 90%, of the lithium-ion batteries in Pakistani markets are imported from China, with the remaining 10 per cent from United States and Bahrain. Brands like Dynavolt, CATL and BYD arrive through CPEC-linked logistics chains or local distributors from Karachi’s Saddar or Lahore’s Hall Road.
Between August 2023 to July 2024, Pakistan’s lithium-ion battery import from China stood at a staggering 710 shipments, according to Volza Pakistan’s Import data. Reports from the Pakistan’s Customs and Pakistan Bureau of Statistics show that from the fiscal years of 2019 to 2024, the import money for lithium-ion batteries increased from $12 million to a jaw-dropping $49 million.
Another report by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA), shows the lithium-ion batteries import in 2024 in the country was totalled around 1.25 GWh and additionally 400 megawatt-hour( MWh) in the months of January and February of 2025 alone. This report also reiterates that if this current trend to solarize the country with solar-plus-battery installation continues, luckily, Pakistan’s 26 per cent of peak electricity demand would be met by 2030. For now, importing batteries from China is a blessing, but there is a cost to this convenience.
Pakistan currently lacks local manufacturing capacity for lithium-ion batteries. We have no lithium mining, no cell production capabilities and no infrastructure to recycle e-waste. Given that the world lithium supply chain is tense due to geopolitical rivalries, Pakistan’s entire dependency on a single supplier could cause trade shocks.
“Probably, there would be a continued import of lithium-ion batteries from China or passive assembly units in the days to come.” Expresses, Asumi Heibitan, an Electric Engineer graduate from Bahaudin Zakriya University, Multan. “ If there is a shift in export policy by Beijing, a shipping issue or a geopolitical service cut-off, Pakistan won’t have any alternative supplier.”
There would also be an issue of equity just beyond trade risks, Asumi warns. A 5kWh lithium-ion battery with solar panel and inverter would cost more than two lakh__ an unaffordable price for most of the low-income families. Though schemes like the Energy Department of Balochistan would make a dent, but many marginalised communities remain excluded to-date.
On a different aspect, The Electric Vehicles Policy 2020-2025 of Pakistan has also envisaged to turn 30 per cent of all the vehicles into EVs by 2030. BYD alone envisions to assemble EVs in Pakistan by mid-2026, but with a single lithium -ion battery ally and sky-rocketing prices of such batteries in the global market, Pakistan’s nascent dream of Electric Vehicles could collapse overnight.
Environmental Hazards
Pakistan also doesn’t have any formal lithium-ion recycling capacity, which means the end-of-life batteries — typically containing poisonous metals like cobalt, manganese, nickel and lithium salts — would end up in waste sites, weakening soil health and water contamination. Resultantly, Pakistan is going to be a dumping ground for e-waste, without policies on lithium waste management.
“We are sleepwalking to an e-waste crisis.” says Bahram Baloch, a student from BUITEMS, Quetta. “ It is like buying thousands of ships with no ship-breaking yards in sight.”
Unfortunately, none of the technical universities of the country, be it UET Lahore, BUITEMS in Quetta or NED University offer specialized courses on battery assembly, recycling and management. This educational gap would definitely force reliance on foreign Chinese or German consultants for large-scale energy projects.
Though geological surveys by the Pakistan Mineral Development Corporation (PMDC) also suggest the possible availability of lithium in the Chagai district in Balochistan and the Gilgit-Baltistan region, this would, definitely change Pakistan from a consumer to contributor but Chinese extraction models, local rights and environmental safety factors also remain fragile.
The way ahead and the continued import
While the world advances to a more sophisticated green energy future, the continued import of Chinese-made lithium-ion batteries not merely becomes a trade practice but raises broader national policy questions: Should the country rely on this traditional imported green tech or start developing its own local manufacturing capacity? What if the these tens of thousands of installed lithium-ion batteries pile up on garbage heaps with no future disposal plans? Is it wise to build a green energy future with products that Pakistan doesn’t control?
Our neighbours and others have answers to offer. India, one of the importers of lithium-ion batteries is now heavily investing on its production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme for Advanced Chemistry Cell (ACC) battery storage. It has also enacted the Battery Waste Management Rule of 2022 to manufacture and recycle lithium-ion batteries locally and to manage e-waste. Bangladesh is working with private companies to make lithium-iron phosphate batteries and even small African countries, for example, Rwanda is investing on such pilot projects while we are left behind a import-only paradigm, in spite of investing on incentives to localise, assemble and innovate.
A way for a safe and greener future requires coordinated developments on multiple fronts. First, the government ought to encourage local battery assembly units by offering tax incentives, cheap loans and technical trainings. This will not only create jobs for the locals but also reduce the dependency on imports. Simultaneously, bilateral agreement with China should go beyond trade, like joint technology developments on battery maintenance and assembly units in SEZs (Special Economic Zones) in Gwadar under CPEC. On the other hand, the Pakistan Council of Renewable Energy Technologies in collaboration with NADRA and provincial Energy Departments should start mapping lithium-ion battery installations nationwide so that they could forecast future replacement and predict as well as manage waste volumes.
While Public education on battery safety standards, life span and quality should be prioritize. We also need to diversify our import sources from South Korea, UAE and Japan to avoid any jerk from global lithium-ion battery supply.
Back in Tump, the days are getting hotter. Nako Dost Muhammad tells the visitors proudly that he doesn’t fear the nights. His grandson can now study at the ungodly hours of the night without a kerosene lamp and that his wife doesn’t need to cook before dusk.
But his fear about the battery started after a teacher in the village told him that these batteries catch fire in temperatures above 60 centigrade. He wonders how long that box with Chinese letters would last, since he has received no receipt, no warranty cards and no ways to replace it.
For now, the lithium in his battery has travelled a long way — perhaps from a mining site in Chile to a factory in Guangdong in China, to the Karachi port, and then to a village with bumpy roads long forgotten by the National grid.
Lithium-ion batteries are a good fit for a country which aspires for a green energy future and with unreliable electricity but the way Pakistan is using them now — only importing with no local assembly units is a real risk. We need to decide whether we only want to be consumers of foreign technology or a country that localises, manages and innovates their own green energy solutions. Only the future will tell.
The post The Battery Belt: When the Sun Touches the Silk first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
India is the thirstiest user of groundwater in the world, sucking up more of this valuable resource than both the U.S. and China combined. Indeed, the country relies on groundwater (like lakes and rivers) to keep its crops irrigated, its industries running, and its people quenched. In some rural communities, as much as 85 percent of their drinking water is pumped from underground.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Keir Starmer is considering Aadhaar as model for UK, but detractors warn of ‘digital coercion’ and security breaches
It is often difficult for people in India to remember life before Aadhaar. The digital biometric ID, allegedly available for every Indian citizen, was only introduced 15 years ago but its presence in daily life is ubiquitous.
Indians now need an Aadhaar number to buy a house, get a job, open a bank account, pay their tax, receive benefits, buy a car, get a sim card, book priority train tickets and admit children into school. Babies can be given Aadhaar numbers almost immediately after they are born. While it is not mandatory, not having Aadhaar de facto means the state does not recognise you exist, digital rights activists say.
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
Dassault Aviation has announced that it completed production of the 300th Rafale fighter jet in early October 2025, marking a significant milestone in the history of the French combat aircraft Saab. Although it was the slowest of the “Euro-canards” – a category that includes the multinational Eurofighter Typhoon and Sweden’s Saab Gripen – to secure […]
The post Rafale’s change of fortunes in Asia-Pacific appeared first on Asian Military Review.
This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.
£350 Million. That’s the benefit to the British war machine of a new missile deal with India. And the weapons for one former colony will be built in the capital of a current one: Belfast.
In a press release, the UK government said:
The contract is set to deliver UK-manufactured Lightweight Multirole Missiles (LMM) built in Belfast to the Indian Army, delivering on the Government’s Plan for Change in another significant boost for the UK defence industry.
The contract for LLM’s will be fulfilled by Thales, a French firm linked to Israeli drone producer Elbit Systems UK.
And what is the rationale? Well, it’s good because jobs, apparently;
It secures over 700 jobs in Northern Ireland as the air defence missiles and launchers due to be manufactured for the Indian Army are the same as those currently being manufactured in Belfast for Ukraine.
The relationship between the UK government, the death trade and even UK trade unions is synergistic. Earlier today, 8 October, we reported about the relationship between arms firms and Unite the Union.
Unite workers vote to strike at Leonardo – over pay, not complicity in genocide of course
How can @unitetheunion champion workers rights at home, while being complicit in genocide abroad via Leonardo? Sharon Graham seems unconcerned, writes @jjgjourno https://t.co/taIbMTJMSQ
— Canary (@TheCanaryUK) October 9, 2025
The government added;
The deal paves the way for a broader complex weapons partnership between the UK and India, currently under negotiation between the two governments.
A new milestone has also been reached in the UK and India’s cooperation on electric-powered engines for naval ships as both countries signed the Implementing Arrangement to advance collaboration to the next stage, worth an initial £250M.
It appears to be entirely lost on these characters that more jobs aren’t a net boon to society if they’re producing weapons to kill people halfway across the world. It’s almost as though capitalist profit margins matter more than anything else.
The deal is part of an effort to shape the British economy around war, while strengthening alliances. Labour’s 2025 Strategic Review recognises “the role that India plays” across a “a range of shared interests.” They added:
The February 2025 announcement of the UK-India Defence Partnership represents an important next step for bilateral defence cooperation, focusing on next-generation weapons in the critical area of air defence.
LLM’s are an air defence weapon. And, naturally, arms firms will make a solid profit from the new deal.
Those “shared interests” are a continued commitment to murdering brown people at the other end of the globe, whilst sharing a tidy profit.
Featured image via the Canary
By Joe Glenton
This post was originally published on Canary.
Protests broke out in various countries in Asia on Thursday, October 2, following the Israeli attack on the Global Sumud Flotilla (GSF) on Wednesday and the abduction of hundreds of activists.
The GSF, consisting of over 40 ships with hundreds of activists onboard, was heading towards the besieged Palestinian territory of Gaza in order to break the Israeli siege and deliver crucial humanitarian aid to its people forced to starve by Israel.
The ships were attacked by the Israeli forces on the night of October 1, an attack which continued until October 3, when they were scores of miles away from the Gaza coast. Israeli forces abducted the activists and seized the aid the ships were carrying for the people of Gaza.
The post People Across Asia And Latin America Mobilize In Support Of Gaza Flotilla appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
We are living through the most dangerous time in over a half-century when it comes to nuclear weapons and the prospect of them being used during an armed conflict. Nuclear treaties are unravelling. Rulers like Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, who lead the two nations with around 87 percent of the world’s nuclear inventory, are ratcheting up global tensions. The U.S. is set to spend $1.7…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Three cabinet colleagues of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi are promoting use of apps by domestic rivals to Google Maps, WhatsApp and Microsoft, in the strongest backing yet for “Made in India” products amid trade tension with the United States. After the United States imposed a 50 per cent tariff on Indian imports in August,…
The post India pushes local alternatives to US tech in tariff fight appeared first on InnovationAus.com.
This post was originally published on InnovationAus.com.
It is a continuing source of frustration that an important segment of the Left holds the view that weakening the United States’ long-established grip on the top rungs of the hierarchical system of imperialism is — in itself — an attack on imperialism.
Many of our friends, including those who claim to aim at a socialist future, mistakenly see an erosion in the US position as the imperialist system’s hegemon as necessarily a step guaranteeing a just future, lasting peace, or a step towards socialism.
While it is true that those fighting the most powerful nation-state in the imperialist system for sovereignty, for autonomy, for a path of their own choosing always deserve our enthusiastic and complete support, victory in that fight may or may not secure a better future for working people. They may, as happened so often in the anti-colonial struggles of the post-war period, find themselves cursed with a power-hungry, exploitative, undemocratic local ruling class continuing or expanding the oppression of the people, but maybe with a more familiar face.
Or they might suffer the replacement of a former, declining or defeated great power by another more powerful great power. Germany and Turkey, defeated in World War I, lost many of their colonies to the victors; after World War II, some of Japan’s colonies were recolonized, falling into the clutches of another superior power; and, of course, Vietnam defeated France, only to be oppressed into the US sphere of interest — a result decisively overturned by heroic Vietnam.
To contend that the decline or fall of the US as the leading great power in the imperialist system could close the book on imperialism is to grossly misunderstand imperialism. Imperialism lingers as a stage of capitalism as long as monopoly capitalism exists.The ultimate battle against imperialism is the struggle against capitalism.
We must not confuse the participants in the global imperialist system with the system itself, any more than we should equate individual capitalist corporations with the capitalist system itself.
History offers no example of a global or semi-global power falling or removed from the heights of its domination leading to a period of world-wide peace and prosperity. Neither the fall of the Roman or the Eastern Roman Empire or the Holy Roman Empire ushered in such a period of harmony. Nor did the rise and fall of the Venetian Republic, the Dutch Republic, or the Portuguese or Spanish colonial empires of the mercantilist era. In Lenin’s time, the rivalries challenging Britain’s global dominance brought world war rather than peace. And its aftermath brought no harmony. Instead, capitalist rivalries with Germany and Japan generated even more devastating aggression and war. And with the dissolution of the once dominant British Empire after the war, the US assumed and brutally enforced its position at the top of the hierarchy of global powers. There is no reason to believe that matters will change with the US knocked off its reigning perch. Capitalism and its tendency toward war and misery persist.
Thus, history provides no evidence for the supplanting of a unipolar world with a sustainable multipolar capitalist world of mutual respect and harmony. Multipolarity alone, as a solution to the oppression of imperialism, is, in fact, never found in world history.
Of course, it may be factually true that United States dominance of the world imperialist system may be on the wane. Certainly, the decisive defeat in Vietnam was an enormous setback to the US government’s ability to dictate to weaker states. Further the defeat in Afghanistan after a twenty year war shows a weakening. The defiance of the DPRK and Cuba’s resilience also show limitations to US imperialism today.
Further, the rise of Peoples’ Republic of China as an economic powerhouse and as a sophisticated military power is perceived by the US government as both an economic and military adversary, though there is no reason to believe that the PRC presents any greater threat to the imperialist system than does the Papal State. Both today express well-deserved outrage at the worst excesses of imperialism, but make little material contribution to its overthrow.
Marginalizing, weakening, or defanging the arch-imperialist power is to be welcomed, though the left should suffer no illusion that the action would be an end to imperialism, a decisive blow against the capitalist system, or of long-lasting benefit of working people.
A recent example of the multipolarity fallacy — the romantic illusion that imperialism is only US imperialism — is the many leftist reports on the early September meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) attended by President Xi, President Putin, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other Eurasian leaders. Professor Michael Hudson enthused that:
The principles announced by China’s President Xi, Russian President Putin and other SCO members set the stage for spelling out in detail the principle of a new international economic order along the lines that were promised 80 years ago at the end of World War II but have been twisted beyond all recognition into what Asian and other Global Majority countries hope will have been just a long detour in history away from the basic rules of civilization and its international diplomacy, trade and finance.
Hudson foresees a new economic order fulfilling a promise made eighty years ago. But he doesn’t tell us how a new capitalist international order will be different from the earlier capitalist international order, apart from the idealistic words of its advocates. He doesn’t explain how the inter-imperialist rivalries associated with capitalist great powers are to be avoided. He fails to show how the competitive, cut-throat nature of capitalist social-relations can be somehow tamed. He builds his case around high-minded words uttered at a conference, as if those or similar words were not uttered eighty years ago at the Bretton Woods conference.
Much has been made of the warm announcement by Xi and Modi that they are “partners not rivals”. But as the insightful Yves Smith relays:
A new Indian Punchline article, India disavows ‘Tianjin spirit’, turns to EU, reviews the idea that India is jumping with both feet into the SCO-BRICS camp is overdone. Key section from that post:
….no sooner than Modi returned to Delhi, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar had lined up the most hawkish anti-Russia gang of European politicians to consort with in an ostentatious display of distancing from the Russia-India-China troika.
A new Indian Punchline article, India disavows ‘Tianjin spirit’, turns to EU, reviews the idea that India is jumping with both feet into the SCO-BRICS camp is overdone. Key section from that post:
….no sooner than Modi returned to Delhi, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar had lined up the most hawkish anti-Russia gang of European politicians to consort with in an ostentatious display of distancing from the Russia-India-China troika.
To underscore the skepticism of the Indian Punchline article, Modi chose not to attend the virtual BRICS trade summit subsequently called by Brazilian President Lula da Silva.
In his place, minister Jaishankar chose the occasion to raise the issue of trade deficits with BRICS members, noting that they are responsible for India’s largest deficits and that India is expecting to secure a correction — hardly a gesture of mutual confidence in India’s BRICS brothers and sisters. It is more an example of geo-political bargaining.
Nor does Peoples’ China embrace the romantic idealism of our leftist friends, as the following quote asserts:
China is very cautious about working with these two countries [Russia and DPRK]. Unlike what is depicted in the West as them being allies, China is not in the same camp. Its view of warfare and security issues is very different from theirs,” said Tang Xiaoyang, chair of the department of international relations at Tsinghua University, pointing out that Beijing hasn’t fought a war for more than four decades. “What China wants is stability on its borders.
One might conclude that the left’s hope in a BRICS led new, more just international order is little more than a chimera. BRICS appears to be, at best, an opportunistic economic alliance, with neither the political or military weight to press multipolarity on a unipolar world.
There is. as well, a theoretical argument for a left investment in the idea of multipolarity as an answer to imperialism. It is an old argument. It was crafted by Karl Kautsky and advanced in an article entitled Ultra-imperialism and published in Die Neue Zeit in September, 1914, just a month after the beginning of World War I.
In short (I deal with the arguments more fully here, here, and here), Kautsky argued that the great powers would divide the world up among themselves and resolve to avoid further competition and rivalry. They would recognize the irrationality and counter-productiveness of aggression and war, opting for a harmonious imperialism that Kautsky called “ultra-imperialism”. He maintained that:
The frantic competition of giant firms, giant banks and multi-millionaires obliged the great financial groups, who were absorbing the small ones, to think up the notion of the cartel. In the same way, the result of the World War between the great imperialist powers may be a federation of the strongest, who renounce their arms race.
Similarly, today’s multipolaristas/ultra-
Lenin, in a 1915 introduction to Bukharin’s Imperialism and World Revolution, mocked Kautsky’s argument and ideas like ultra-imperialism:
Reasoning theoretically and in the abstract, one may arrive at the conclusion reached by Kautsky… his open break with Marxism has led him, not to reject or forget politics, nor to skim over the numerous and varied political conflicts, convulsions and transformations that particularly characterise the imperialist epoch; nor to become an apologist of imperialism; but to dream about a “peaceful capitalism.” “Peaceful” capitalism has been replaced by unpeaceful, militant, catastrophic imperialism… In this tendency to evade the imperialism that is here and to pass in dreams to an epoch of “ultra-imperialism,” of which we do not even know whether it is realisable, there is not a grain of Marxism… For to-morrow we have Marxism on credit, Marxism as a promise, Marxism deferred. For to-day we have a petty-bourgeois opportunist theory — and not only a theory — of softening contradictions (quoted in my article cited above)
The key relevant thoughts here are “peaceful capitalism”, “Marxism on credit”, and “softening contradictions”. Lenin is shocked at Kautsky — a self-styled Marxist — even entertaining the notion of a peaceful capitalism, an idea that violates the very logic of capitalist social relations; it should be a wake-up call to multipolaristas.
“Marxism on credit” is a mockery of the notion that counting on some hoped for agreement between capitalist great powers to tame imperialism is as foolish as running your credit card to its limit. For multipolaristas, it is pushing the day of reckoning with capitalism off into the far, far distant future.
Likewise, Kautsky “softens” the contradiction between rival capitalist states by imagining an impossible agreement to guarantee “harmonious” relations, a proposition Lenin completely rejects. Concisely, Lenin sees Kautsky’s opportunism as a retreat from the socialist project. The same can be said for the multipolarity project.
Far too many on the left refuse to look at multipolarity through this lens of Lenin’s theory of imperialism, especially as expressed with considerable clarity in his 1916 pamphlet, Imperialism.
Regarding the promise of multipolarity, Lenin here offers a hypothetical scenario where imperialist powers do manage to cut up the world and arrive at an alliance dedicated to peace and mutual prosperity. Would that idealized multipolar system– what Kautsky calls “ultra-imperialism”– succeed in eliminating “friction, conflicts and struggle in all and every possible form”?
The question need only be stated clearly enough to make it impossible for any other reply to be given than that in the negative… Therefore in the realities of the capitalist system, and not in the banal philistine fantasies of English parsons [Hobson], or of the German “Marxist,” Kautsky, “inter-imperialist” or “ultra-imperialist” alliances, no matter what form they may assume, whether of one imperialist coalition against another, or of a general alliance embracing all the imperialist powers, are inevitably nothing more than a “truce” in periods between wars. Peaceful alliances prepare the ground for wars, and in their turn grow out of wars; the one is a condition for the other, giving rise to alternating forms of peaceful and non-peaceful struggle out of one and the same basis of imperialist connections and the relations between world economics and world politics. [Lenin’s emphasis]
Thus, while capitalism persists, Lenin makes the case for unabated intra-class struggle on the international level, struggles that manifest as inter-imperialist rivalry and war.
Of course it is possible to reject Lenin’s argument, even Lenin’s theory of imperialism. It is also possible to praise Lenin’s views as relevant for its time, but inapplicable today, in light of the many changes in global capitalism. That would be to say that the system of imperialism that Lenin set out to analyze no longer exists, replaced by a different system.
There is a precedent for correcting Lenin’s theory. Kwame Nkrumah, writing in 1965, showed that imperialism had largely abandoned the colonial project in favor of a more rational, efficient, but still brutally exploitative form of imperialism: neo-colonialism. His book, Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism makes that case persuasively.
One cannot assume that Lenin’s is the final word on today’s imperialism.
And that is the tactic that Carlos Garrido takes in his recent essay, Why Russia and China are NOT Imperialist: A Marxist-Leninist Assessment of Imperialism’s Development Since 1917. Garrido ambitiously explores many subjects in this brief essay, including the errors of “Dogmatic Marxist-Leninists”, the place– if any– of Russia and the PRC in the imperialist system, Marxist methodology, the contemporary status of finance capital, Michael Hudson’s notion of super imperialism, the significance of Bretton Woods and the abandonment of the gold standard, as well as the relevance of Lenin’s theory of imperialism to today’s global economy.
Addressing all of these issues would take us far away from the current discussion, though they deserve further study.
To the point, he writes:
It appears to me that the imperialist stage Lenin correctly assessed in 1917 undergoes a partially qualitative development in the post-war years with the development of the Bretton Woods system. This does not make Lenin “wrong,” it simply means that his object of study – which he correctly assessed at his time of writing – has undertaken developments which force any person committed to the same Marxist worldview to correspondingly refine their understanding of imperialism. Bretton Woods transforms imperialism from an international to a global phenomenon, embodied no longer through imperialist great powers, but through global financial institutions (the IMF and the World Bank) controlled by the U.S. and structured with dollar hegemony at its core.
He adds that with Nixon’s move from the gold-standard, “imperialism becomes synonymous with U.S. unipolarity and hegemonism.”
This is wrong. As Garrido affirms, “Imperialism [in Lenin’s time] was not simply a political policy (as the Kautskyites held), but an integral development of the capitalist mode of life itself.” [my emphasis]
Likewise imperialism today is not a set of political policies, but an essential expression of contemporary capitalism.
Yet Garrido follows Kautsky in confusing today’s imperialism with a set of political policies: Bretton Woods and the US withdrawal from the gold- standard. The entire post-war trade and financial infrastructure was the result of policy decisions. They were shaped not by a “new” imperialism, but by the overwhelming economic power of the US after the war. As Garrido knows, that asymmetry is being challenged today, but it is a challenge to the policies or the power enjoyed by the US and not to the imperialist system.
The “transformation” that Garrido believes he sees is simply a reordering of the international system that existed before the war with New York now replacing London as the financial center of the capitalist universe. It is the replacement of the vast colonial world and the bloody rivalries and shifting alliances and hierarchies of the interwar world with the creation of a neo-colonial system dominated by the US and reinforced by its assumption of the role of guardian of capitalism in the Cold War. The monopoly capitalist base is qualitatively the same, but its superstructure changes with historical circumstances. The Bretton Woods system and the later discarding of the gold standard reflect those changing circumstances.
How does Garrido’s “new” imperialism function?
What matters is that capitalism has developed into a higher stage, that the imperialism Lenin wrote of is no longer the “latest” stage of capitalism, that it has given way – through its immanent dialectical development – to a new form marked by a deepening of its characteristic foundation in finance capital. We are finally in the era of capitalist-imperialism Marx predicted in Volume Three of Capital, where the dominant logic of accumulation has fully transformed from M-C-M’ to M-M’, that is, from productive capital to interest-bearing, parasitic finance capital.
Garrido’s reference to volume III of Capital would seem to be at odds with mine and others’ reading of that volume. In chapter 51, the last complete chapter, Marx, via Engels, brings matters back to the beginning, to commodity production. He dispels the view that there is any independent source of value in distribution — in circulation, rent or “profit”. It is wage labor in commodity production that produces value in the capitalist mode of production. That is why Marx notes in Volume III that “The real science of modern economy only begins when the theoretical analysis passes from the process of circulation to the process of production.” (Vol. III, International Publishers, p.337).
Of course Marx acknowledges stock markets and would not be shocked by the financial sector’s suite of exotic instruments like derivatives and swaps. Marx explains them under the rubric: “fictitious capital”. By “fictitious” Marx means forward-looking — promissory notes against future value or “bets”. They circulate among capitalists and are acquired as contingent value. They become attractive in times of over-accumulation — the super-concentration of capital in few hands — when investment opportunities in the productive economy grow slim. And they disappear miraculously when the future that they depend upon does not materialize.
Garrido’s misunderstanding of the international role of finance capital leads him to make the claim that “…the lion’s share of profits made by the imperialist system are accumulated through debt and interest.” At its peak before the great crash of 2007-2009, finance (broadly speaking, finance, insurance, real estate) accounted for maybe forty percent of US profits; today, with the NASDAQ techs, the percentage is likely less. But that is only US profits. With deindustrialization, industrial commodity production has shifted to the PRC, Indonesia, Vietnam, India, Brazil, Eastern Europe, and other low-wage areas and the US has become the center of world finance. If commodity production sneezes, the whole edifice of fictitious capital collapses, along with its fictitious profits.
As all three volumes of Capital explain in great detail, commodity production is the basis of the capitalist mode of production and wage-labor is the source of value, not the mystifying maneuvers of Wall Street grifters.
Garrido joins many leftist defenders of multipolarity in decoupling imperialism from the capitalist system, whether through revising the mechanism of exploitation, denying the logic of capitalist competition and rivalry, or redefining its characteristics. Garrido’s unique contribution to this maneuver is to locate the injustice of imperialism not in labor exploitation, but in “debt and interest”.
In the world of left multipolaristas, the real anti-imperialists are the BRICS states (for Garrido, Russia and the PRC). But for those of a lesser theoretical bent, for those reluctant to go into the weeds of theoretical debate, we have a handy litmus test: Palestine. If a genocidal assault on the Palestinian people by a greater-Israel theocratic state is the signal imperialist act of this moment, where are these anti-imperialists? Have they organized international opposition, stopped trade, imposed sanctions, withdrawn recognition or cooperation, sent volunteer fighters, or otherwise offered material resistance?
In the past, Chinese and Soviet material, physical aid benefited Vietnam fighting imperialism; the Soviets pushed to the brink of war to support Cuba against imperial threats in the early 1960s; the Cubans fought and died in Angola against imperialism and apartheid in the 1990s. Even the US joined the Soviet Union in thwarting British, French, and Israeli imperial designs on the Suez Canal in 1956.
Will today’s acclaimed “anti-imperialists” step up or is multipolarity all talk?
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
On 25 September, Delhi finalised a contract with state-owned airframer Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) for 97 Tejas Mk1A light fighters. The order comprises 68 single-seat fighters and 29 twin-seaters in a deal worth more than INR620 billion (US$7.1 billion). India’s MoD moved with surprising alacrity to conclude this deal with HAL, barely a month after […]
The post HAL bags order for 97 additional Tejas fighters appeared first on Asian Military Review.
This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.
A bilateral investment agreement was signed recently by India and Israel, with Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich even travelling to New Delhi for it.
However, notably, Smotrich is banned from entering the UK for inciting violence in the West Bank. During the signing ceremony, Smotrich emphasised the need for greater collaboration between the two nations in the fields of cybersecurity, defence, innovation, and high-technology sectors.
His Indian counterpart, Nirmala Sitharaman, expressed condolences for a terrorist attack in Israel that had occurred the same day, framing the two nations as united by a shared threat of terrorism.
A new report titled Profit & Genocide, released on Thursday by India’s Centre for Financial Accountability (CFA), lays bare the depth of an alliance between the two nations.
This partnership marks a significant shift for India, which was the first non-Arab country to recognise Palestine in 1988. That historic stance was rooted in a shared experience of British colonial rule. India only recognised Israel in 1992.
The authors of the CFA report directly attributed its formation to the impetus provided by UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese’s work, From Economy of Occupation to Economy of Genocide. Albanese’s report named corporations like Microsoft, Alphabet, and Amazon for their direct complicity in the ongoing assault on Gaza. Building on this premise, the CFA charts out Indian capital flows that are central to what Albanese terms the “economy of genocide”.
Defence and technology sectors dominate Indian investments and joint ventures in Israel. The report lists Indian investments and joint ventures in Israel amounting to at least $5.2bn. Adani Group’s joint venture with Elbit Systems produces Hermes 900 drones, the very models used for surveillance and strikes in Gaza.
Adani also holds a majority stake in the strategically vital Haifa Port. Another major player, the public sector entity Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) entered into three major missile system contracts with Israel Aerospace Industries between 2017 and 2018, collectively worth over $3.4bn.
The Reliance conglomerate is also deeply involved, with investments including $25m in the Jerusalem Incubator in 2017 and funding for the tech firm Neolync, alongside an undisclosed joint venture with Rafael Advanced Defence Systems.
The publication of this report is an act of defiance, coming amidst a well-documented campaign by the Adani Group to suppress critical press through legal threats and the intimidation of Indian journalists.
In the UK too, following Albanese’s report, 23 UK groups called for legal action against companies like BAE Systems, BP, JCB and Barclays for their role in n human rights violations against the Palestinian people.
On the other hand, UK State and Institutions are embedded with Israel. The Canary previously reported London’s Science Museum even hosted a private cocktail event for the Adani Group. This highlights how money made from oppression abroad is still celebrated by powerful UK institutions, turning profit from suffering into something respectable at home.
A landmark $2bn deal in 2017 between Indian state with Israel’s NSO Group for the Pegasus spyware demonstrated how such commercial transactions are far from neutral as they have directly enabled political repression within India itself. The book, Incarcerations: BK-16 and the Search for Democracy in India, showed Indian Prime Minister Modi’s 2017 Israel visit coincided with Pegasus spyware attacks on Indian activists.
Scholars like Achin Vanaik explain this India- Israel partnership is underpinned by a shared political narrative where Israeli technology and methods provide the tools for the “corporatisation process” in India.
Domestically, the main opposition, the Indian National Congress (INC), has offered a feeble challenge, providing the Modi government with little resistance. In fact, it was a Congress government under Indira Gandhi that established India’s external intelligence agency, RAW, in 1968, partly modeled on the CIA, and soon after set-up secret ties with Israel’s Mossad.
Furthermore, Gandhi’s declaration of the Emergency in 1975, a period of democratic subversion, helped create conditions for the rise of the Hindu nationalist movement that now fully embraces Israel.
In contrast, India’s leftist parties, although flailing in the face of right-wing nationalism like their counterparts in the UK, have unequivocally condemned the “ongoing genocidal war” in a joint statement.
This deepening Israel partnership is part of a broader pattern of India’s foreign economic policy, which has recently prioritised rapid free trade agreements (FTAs) with the EU and UK – deals that, like the alignment with Israel, are highly favourable to corporate interests above all else.
UK-based campaign group Global Justice Now is concerned that the UK is pushing India to weaken its patent laws, jeopardising the production of low-cost generic medicines.
India must stand up to this pressure, and also against UK pressure to drop its desired reforms of Investor-State Dispute Settlement provisions. Otherwise, there is a real risk of corporations being granted powers to sue both governments in secret tribunals.
Featured image via the Canary
By Nandita Lal
This post was originally published on Canary.
The Indian Army is considering acquiring up to 3,000 Vehicle-Mounted Infantry Mortar Systems (VMIMS). Their procurement and fielding are intended to enhance the infantry’s firepower with a system that can flexibly deploy across diverse terrain types. According to Juan Carlos Estrella of the Spanish firm New Technologies Global Systems (NTGS), “India has announced the allocation […]
The post Indian Army mulls acquisition of 3,000 vehicle-mounted mortars appeared first on Asian Military Review.
This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.
India’s requirement for Reconnaissance & Surveillance Helicopters (RSH), which has been under way since 2008, received a reboot with the nation’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) issuing a fresh request for information (RfI) in August for approximately 200 rotorcraft. Some 120 of these helicopters are destined for the Indian Army, and 80 for the Indian Air […]
The post India revives army and air force light helicopter requirement appeared first on Asian Military Review.
This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.