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03/04/2006:

"Three Killed at Indian Anti-Bush Protests"

Anger at President Bush swept through parts of India on Friday as protesters burned his effigy and carried posters of Osama bin Laden. Three people were killed in clashes, and 18 were injured.

While most Indians look favorably upon the United States, and though the protests have not been as large as expected, anti-Bush demonstrations have been held in various Indian cities by communists and Muslim groups during his visit.



Violence erupted in the city of Lucknow when dozens of armed Muslims tried to force Hindu shop owners to shut their stores to protest Bush's visit, said Senior Superintendent of Police Ashutosh Pandey. The two sides argued, exchanged blows, and finally shot at each other, killing a Muslim teenager, Pandey said.

Television stations showed shrieking people carrying the injured on fruit carts through narrow streets choked with protesters.

In the southern city of Hyderabad, demonstrators burned an effigy of Bush around the time that he arrived there.

Chanting "Bush hands off India" and "Bush go home," several hundred communist and Muslim demonstrators marched through the city, and shops in the Muslim-dominated Charminar neighborhood were closed in protest. Some 40 percent of the city's 7 million people are Muslim.
breitbart.com

Not as many as expected Commies and Muslims...ok then.


Dinner with George and Manmohan

Since World War II, the US has consistently asserted and reasserted itself as the security agency of the global corporate interests, who in exchange sustain the deficit-ridden American (war) economy and the dollar hegemony. In such a situation, the American desperation is natural whenever a potential competitor or troublemaker emerges. In order to preclude such threats it has to continuously refurbish its ranks and partnerships. The American exercise to stabilize its tumultuous economy and hegemony in the post-Cold War situation has wonderfully synchronized with the Indian need to sustain itself as an important market (as the South Asian hegemon), while securing a place for its own expansionist corporate interests in the global market. The joint statement is an epitome of this 'corporatist' synchrony.

It was way back in 1998 the American corporate leaders warned its political protégé about the dire consequences of the sanctions that the US hurriedly imposed on India after the Pokhran blasts--that rival economic interests may take advantage of the American withdrawal. This prefaced Clinton's visit, in order to assure India of the ceremonial nature of those sanctions. Since then, the love affair has continually bloomed and boomed. It has been well supported by the US-India CEOs, who made recommendations for broadening bilateral economic relations, which the Joint Statement vows to implement. The statement indicates towards supporting the corporate world in its endeavor to prosper on the misery of the global majority. The official acceptance of the ideology of establishing "corporate fund" for combating diseases, like, for example, HIV/AIDS, only means towing the interests of the pharmaceutical monopolies against universalizing and cheapening medical facilities and drugs. The Indian state's subservience to this notion is indicative of the keenness of the Indian pharmaceutical companies that have become transnational in recent years to sow the benefits from the global police regime under the US which condemns 'piracy', and violation of 'property rights'.