UK and Swedish governments continue their persecution of Julian Assange

Robert Stevens

On Friday, the United Nations issued a public statement finding that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been subjected to “arbitrary detention” through the collusion of the British and Swedish governments.

The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UNWGAD) is an expert group, founded in 1991 with a mandate “to investigate allegations of individuals being deprived of their liberty in an arbitrary way or inconsistently with international human rights standards, and to recommend remedies such as release from detention and compensation, when appropriate.”

Following the release of the UN’s opinion, Assange made a statement to the media via a video feed from the Ecuadorian Embassy, where he has sought sanctuary for more than three and a half years. He said that in total he had now been detained for five and a half years: “Today that detention without charge has been found to be unlawful. I consider the outcome a vindication.” The issue was “now a matter of settled law,” he added.

Releasing its findings, UNWGAD explained that they “are legally-binding to the extent that they are based on binding international human rights law, such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR)”. It added, “The Opinions of the UNWGAD are also considered as authoritative by prominent international and regional judicial institutions, including the European Court of Human Rights.”

In a manner that has characterised their actions from the very beginning of their witch-hunt of Assange, the UK and Swedish governments refused to abide by international law and rejected the UN’s verdict. The UK Foreign Office said, “This changes nothing. We completely reject any claim that Julian Assange is a victim of arbitrary detention.”

The opinion of the five-person UNWGAD panel consists of just five paragraphs, but is a devastating indictment of Assange’s illegal detention, carried out by the UK and Sweden, in alliance with the United States government.

“Assange has been subjected to different forms of deprivation of liberty: initial detention in Wandsworth prison which was followed by house arrest and his confinement at the Ecuadorian Embassy,” UNWGAD said. “Having concluded that there was a continuous deprivation of liberty, the Working Group also found that the detention was arbitrary because he was held in isolation during the first stage of detention and because of the lack of diligence by the Swedish Prosecutor in its investigations, which resulted in the lengthy detention of Mr. Assange.”

Assange has been detained in violation of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights (UDHR) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). UNWGAD states that it found Assange’s “detention is in violation of Articles 9 and 10 of the UDHR and Articles 7, 9(1), 9(3), 9(4), 10 and 14 of the ICCPR...”

The Working Group calls on Sweden and the UK to ensure Assange’s “safety and physical integrity” and “to facilitate the exercise of his right to freedom of movement in an expedient manner, and to ensure the full enjoyment of his rights guaranteed by the international norms on detention.”

The statement is based on the “Working Group’s Opinion on Julian Assange’s case”, adopted December 4, 2015. The 18-page document represents the findings on the application submitted to them in September 2014 by Assange’s legal team. The UK and Swedish governments also presented their case to UNWGAD. The conclusions of the Working Group are a crushing rebuttal of every claim made by the UK and Swedish authorities that Assange’s arrest and detention was in any way conducted according to international law.

The December opinion states, “Assange has not been guaranteed the international norms of due process and the guarantees to a fair trial during these three different moments: the detention in isolation in Wandsworth Prison, the 550 days under house arrest, and the continuation of the deprivation of liberty in the Embassy of the Republic of Ecuador in London, United Kingdom.”

It notes, “The Working Group is concerned that the only basis of the deprivation of liberty of Mr. Assange appears to be the European Arrest Warrant issued by the Swedish prosecution based on a criminal allegation. Until the date of the adoption of this Opinion, Mr. Assange has never been formally indicted in Sweden .” [emphasis added]

The opinion concludes: “Assange has been denied the opportunity to provide a statement, which is a fundamental aspect of the audi alteram partemprinciple, the access to exculpatory evidence, and thus the opportunity to defend himself against the allegations; (2) the duration of such detention isipso facto incompatible with the presumption of innocence.”

Friday’s UNWGAD statement declares, “In that [December] opinion, the Working Group recognized that Mr. Assange is entitled to his freedom of movement and to compensation.”

The UNWGAD reached its verdict by a 3-1 majority. It noted, “Given that Mr. Assange is an Australian citizen, one of the members [Ms. Leigh Toomey] of the Working Group who shares his nationality recused herself from participating in the deliberations.” This was in accordance with rule 5 of its Methods of Work, the UNWGAD said.

The lone dissenting opinion was made by Vladimir Tochilovsky, a Ukrainian prosecutor. Tochilovsky claimed that Assange was not being detained, so the UNWGAD had no mandate to even hear his case. The Swedish government supported Tochilovsky’s spurious opinion.

There is no doubt that the Working Group’s verdict was made in the teeth of bitter opposition from the, US, UK and Swedish governments.

The former UNWGAD panel chair, the Norwegian lawyer Professor Mads Andenas, told the Guardian Friday, “I’m absolutely convinced that [the panel] has been put under very strong political pressure.” Andenas completed his term in office last summer and was involved in earlier stages of compiling the report on Assange’s detention.

Andenas supported the panel’s findings in favour of Assange, adding, “This is a courageous decision which is important for the international rule of law.”

The hypocrisy of the imperialist powers, which have often used the findings of the UN panel on arbitrary detentions for their own predatory purposes, is staggering. Andenas correctly observed, “If this finding had been made against any other country with a human rights record that one does not wish to compare oneself with, then these states [Sweden and UK] would have made it clear that the [offending] country should comply with the ruling of the working group.”

The bitter hostility of the UK and Swedish governments, in collaboration with the Obama administration, to the rule of international law is at one with their assault on the fundamental social and democratic rights of the working class, made necessary by their pursuit of savage austerity at home and imperialist war abroad.

The UNWGAD report demolishes the pretence that the legal vendetta against Assange had anything to do with the pursuit of “justice” for his Swedish accusers. Sweden’s prosecutors could have easily, with Assange’s full compliance, have interviewed him at any point since his December 2010 arrest in London. That they didn’t was because they wanted to ensure that he was extradited to Sweden, in order to ship him to the US where he would pay, perhaps even with his life, for what they view as his real “crime”—WikiLeaks’ exposure of the heinous acts committed by the US and its allies in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan and throughout the world.

Workers and young people in the UK, US, Sweden and internationally must work for the defeat of the efforts to silence Assange and demand his immediate freedom.

Food In A Not Too Distant Future

Wayne Roberts

For the last few months, I’ve been working closely with three very different groups, each keen to hitch their wagon to a regional food system.

Thanks to Google, I quickly found out that these groups have a lot in common with groups around the world. One report that excited me was by the International Sustainability Unit, a group linked to the Prince of Wales.

They have done a royal good job of proposing city-based regional food systems as the basic organizing unit of a more humane and sustainable food system. They are also well-linked to initiatives and themes that may well dominate the coming season of international conferences.

The topic is likely to be at the center of some key international conferences this year, which, with any luck, will catapult the idea of regional food systems high up the list of ideas most likely to succeed.

Despite my preference for a less city-centric branding (countryside areas have lived in the shadow of cities too long and could resent this term), I think the unit’s report, Food in an Urbanized World has done a terrific job of sketching, as the sub-title describes it, The Role of City Region Food Systems in Resilience and Sustainable Development. In terms of countryside-city relations, we are at the dawn of a new era where the two harmonize by complementing each other’s strengths and weaknesses, rather than, as so often in the past, they live in parallel worlds, each exporting to distant markets.

The report identifies 16 benefits of reorganizing food production around self-reliant (as distinct from self-sufficient) and mutually-enriching (symbiotic) regions.

My proposed addition of 17 more benefits reveals my excitement for what I’ll call “complementary regionalism” where needs of one group are matched by the strengths of another and vice versa, starting with the fact that a city population needs a lot of food and a nearby countryside produces a lot of food.

Together, if I do say so myself, the two lists add up to a pretty impressive catalogue of 33 strong reasons for food advocates to endorse this “complementary foodshed” direction for a future that’s not-too-distant.

Food security and food rights

>> Organizing food production and supply around “foodsheds” and regions ensures a range of grains, produce, meat and dairy products are always available and accessible

>> Increased livelihood resilience for small-scale and mid-sized producers

>> Reduced food costs for urban consumers, when full costs taken into account

>> Increased resilience of overall food supply against shocks caused by international financial speculation

>> Increased access to culturally-appropriate world foods that can be produced in the region in collaboration with sponsoring community groups

>> Improved communication between producers and eaters, fostering increased food literacy and transparency

Economic development

>> Territorial and regional organization of a wide variety of foods for local markets optimizes opportunities to imbed multi-functionalism into the food system, thereby creating more opportunities for adding value through culture enlightenment, heritage preservation, and so on – the core magnets of a rich cultural, culinary, environmental and education-based tourism industry

>> Increased variety of rural jobs, including artisanal and other value-adding activities, thereby stemming youthful depopulation in countryside areas

>> Increased vitality, entrepreneurship and innovation as a result of increased options for business organization (co-ops, social enterprises. B corps, and so on), increased options for funding alternative employment (such as prepaid CSA memberships and Indiegogo), and increased discovery of complementary opportunities, as a result of ongoing direct relationships between producers and consumers

>> Increased income and employment in rural and urban areas as a result of multiplier effect of purchases within a more circular economy with many forward and backward linkages (farmer gets a haircut, barber goes to restaurant, restaurant buys from farmer, and so on)

>> Increased jobs in cities resulting from the fact that locally grown food much more likely to be locally processed, packaged, warehoused and delivered, perhaps through regional hubs

>> Increased creative employment in creative industries developing new small batch technologies for mid-scale farmers, processors and retailers

>> Increased employment from local purchase of alternative (non fossil fuel-based) materials sourced from farms, as farmers expand production beyond food, to include energy, fiber, fabric, cosmetics, supplements and medicines

Environmental goods and services

>> Opportunities for ‘circular economies’, waste reduction and lifecycle resource management, including return of high-quality composted food waste and returnable/reusable food and beverage containers

>> Increased local agroecological diversity, including world crops and heritage crops

>> Increased recognition and valuing of ecosystem services and farm-produced environmental goods and services, often supported with fees for environmental services financed through carbon credits and other ways by beneficiaries throughout the region

>> Lower greenhouse gas emissions from reduced transportation, food and packaging waste, and increased carbon storage from new perennial and forest growth

>> Local abattoirs, which greatly reduce unnecessary transportation of animals and animal cruelty associated with such travel

>> Higher valuation of and support for countryside- and farm-produced aesthetic and scenic values which increase eco-tourism and “staycation” possibilities, attracting both international tourists and nearby residents

>> Increased city and countryside partnerships to promote pollinator habitat, essential to future food security

>> Increased city and countryside partnerships to use “working landscape” to manage and improve air quality, flood control, water filtration

>> Increased initiatives to foster agriculture with a “regenerative agenda” that can actively reduce harm done by previous practices

>> Increased public appreciation for value of food-producing land reinforces planning efforts to encourage smart high-density growth and prevent low-density sprawl onto precious farmland

Health and well-being

>> Increased knowledge about food and nutrition amongst urban dwellers, resulting in more healthy diets

>> Increased availability of, and access to, nutritious food

>> Increased food literacy resulting from deepened relationships between food producers and consumers

>> Reduced need for harmful food additives designed to increase shelf life during longhaul transportation

>> Greater opportunities for Netherlands-style care farms supporting health of vulnerable people

Governance and culture

>> Promoting a food culture

>> Integrated (‘joined-up’) policy and action

>> Greater participation in and transparency of food system from increased opportunities to facilitate deep democracy, deliberative democracy and direct democracy

>> Development of new organizations (such as food councils or commissions) which enhance region-wide food citizenship, governance and collaboration

>> Increased opportunities to build in region-wide synergies and mutual benefits that are not apparent when each entity is oriented to a faraway market

The great political economist Polanyi wrote about a “first movement” toward a commercialized and industrialized countryside during the 1700s, and a “second movement” to humanize society through social welfare reforms. Far from being narrow and parochial, a world of more self-reliant regions could have elements of a “third movement” that re-establishes social and economic reciprocity as a foundation of human development.

"Lies, Lies And More Lies" - GMOs, Poisoned Agriculture And Toxic Rants

Colin Todhunter

Have you ever read all of those pro-GMO scientists-cum-lobbyists professing their love of science? They are always talking about how science must prevail over ignorance and ideology then they play on the public’s ignorance by using ideology and sloganeering to try to get their points across.

As as been well documented (see here), it is the pro-GMO lobby/industry that distorts and censors science, captures regulatory bodies, attacks scientists whose findings are unpalatable to the industry and bypasses proper scientific and regulatory procedures altogether.

You also see the same people attacking and demonising credible scientists because their research throws up some very uncomfortable findings for the pro-GM cause. And they try to debunk peer-reviewed science with unscientific polemics (see this on the criticisms of Professor Seralini and his team had to endure), while masking their own conflicts of interests and industry links (also see this).

They accuse people who have concerns about GM as being inept, politically motivated and liars. In doing so, they try (but fail) to divert attention from their own lies, misrepresentations and political agenda. It is a classic case of psychological projection.

Shanthu Shantharam recently wrote the piece 'Lies, Lies and More Lies' that was a textbook example of this. Laced with deception, bluster and insults, he attacked individuals, accused them of being bombastic and liars and claimed that the introduction of GM crops to India had been delayed due to anti-GM activists and Greenpeace.

Frustrated by the inability of the pro-GM lobby to get GM food crops commercialised in India, Shantharan begins by saying:

“It is again that time when the India’s usually-in-slumber apex biotechnology regulatory body, the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC) has woken up, dusting itself off to decide whether to approve genetically modified (GM) mustard, an oil crop of considerable economic significance to the country.”

By promoting a fallacious economic justification for embracing GM mustard, he is conveniently ignoring the impact of trade policies that destroyed much of the indigenous mustard industry in India after the mid-1990s. If, as a bio-technologist, Shantharam wants to discuss economics, he would benefit from a lesson in the neo-liberal trade policies outlined here, which results in India now spending so much on buying in edible oil from abroad

Moreover, the higher yields often attributed to the GM mustard under discussion are not due to GM but to the hybridisation of normal crop genes (ie conventional breeding). Campaigner Aruna Rodrigues argues that the use of high-yielding hybrids is a deliberate ploy to camouflage the yield attributable to the hybrid and assign it to the GM crop instead.

Anti-GM malcontents or unremitting fraud?

Shantharam claims the delay in sanctioning GM crops is due to “anti-GM malcontents” and environmentalists who want to tie up “technology products in the regulatory quagmire, and hope that the whole technology dies off in due course of time” and who are “talking unscientific rubbish about GM crops just like many other anti-GM Luddites.”

The ‘Luddites’ slur is standard, lazy PR spin designed to try to denigrate valid concerns. It is nothing but a desperate attempt to steer the debate away from the social, political and economic issues that cause, hunger and poverty and promote GM as a proxy.

Like other lobbyists, Shantharam promotes the lie that the debate is over dusted where GM safety and efficacy are concerned. However, GRAIN challenges the myths that the pro-GM lobby likes to build its house of cards on, and this article illustrates how its cheap propaganda attempts to twist the debate for its own ends. Moreover, the book 'Altered Genes, Twisted Truth'highlights how GM is not based on sound science at all but on the systematic subversion of it.

Although Shantharam attacks bureaucracy and forwards his usual tirades about anti-GM ideologues for conspiring to prevent the introduction of GM, it is with good reason that this week the Supreme Court sought an explanation from the central government on its proposed move to introduce herbicide resistant mustard, cotton and corn in the face of a court-imposed ban on their introduction. The court asked the Attorney General of India to explain his stand on a contempt petition filed against the members of the committee which cleared the proposal.

The petition filed by Aruna Rodrigues, sought action against members of the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee for flouting court orders. Rodrigues says the government wilfully and deliberately not only conducted small-scale field trials but also large-scale field trials for commercial introduction of herbicide tolerant crops of mustard, cotton and corn in India for the first time.

The petition says: "These field trials have ignored fundamental bio-safety precautions as ordered by the court. Contamination during open field trials is specifically barred in the order of May 8, 2007." It continued: "In the light of this specific order... regulatory adventurism... is particularly unconscionable as they expose India to undue and high risk of GMO contamination of our food crops."

It adds that the risk of contamination from GM mustard and corn is of an unprecedentedly high order and proven in other cases involving Canada, Japan and Mexico (corn) and US (rice). The petition declares there is a collective irresponsibility displayed by the regulators, ministries concerned and institutions of GMO governance, demonstrating a clear agenda to push GMOs into India's agriculture.

Rodrigues argues the approval of large-scale trials is undisguised malfeasance and regulatory delinquency. The members of the GEAC are said to be in contempt of court because: they have failed to provide public access to information, including full bio-safety dossiers, meeting minutes and safety dossiers, thus side-lining court orders, and they have failed to implement bio-safety measures during open field trials to ensure no contamination, which for GM mustard is a serious issue, as the petition makes clear.

The claim is that no active testing for contamination with validated protocols was done to demonstrate regulatory commitment to contain risk under the supervision of named scientists. Furthermore, as a herbicide-tolerant crops have been advised against and brings about various health and environmental dangers (see this and this too). It is thus with good reason that the final report of the Supreme Court-appointed Technical Expert Committee report of June-July 2013 specifically recommended a ban on HT crops.

The petition goes on to state:

“The regulatory vacuum constitutes deliberate malfeasance and fraud, putting us at infinite and irremediable and irreversible risk.”

And driving home the point, the petition adds:

“… what we are now confronted with, in the specific matter of Mustard DMH 11 and also LSTs (large-scale trials) of corn and flex cotton, all of them HT crops, is more corrupt and even sinister because we have brazen and repeated contempt including ‘underground’ approvals to keep the bio-safety fraud of these approvals secret and promote a clear agenda to promote GMOs into Indian Agriculture. The Regulators and our Institutions of GMO governance are ‘serial offenders’ without compunction.”

The conclusion is that there seems to be no room for transparency in this process. Rodrigues describes the push for GM in India to be based on “unremitting fraud” and is right to be concerned about contamination. But that doesn't seem to bother some, like Shatharam.

They seem to think it is fine to bypass proper procedures, ignore the various high-level reports advising against GM in India, draw a veil of secrecy over processes and misrepresent the case for GM crops in a rush to get GM into India at the behest of their tansnational agribusiness masters.

Of course, a strategy of deliberate contamination to render the GM/non-GM debate meaningless should not be dismissed lightly and is part of the overall agenda.

The scientific consensus on GM is a big lie

Shantharam has long specialised in attacking scientists whose findings challenge his agenda by depicting them as mavericks and standing outside the ‘scientific community’. This time, he argues that critics of GM rely on a “parallel science” created by a handful of anti-GM scientists. According to Shantharam, these scientists’ negative researches have been rigorously reviewed by the mainstream scientists and leading regulatory bodies and have been declared invalid.

This is simply not true. Shantharam seems to think public relations techniques and falsehoods will suffice. What he offers is personal opinion and PR masquerading as fact, which he hopes will be taken as truth, not least because he dangles a science doctorate before the public. He is not the only one who adopts this tactic. Forget the spin and look at the reality.

Food & Water Watch states that biotechnology seed companies, aided by advocates from academia and the blogopsphere, are using their substantial resources to broadcast the myth of a ‘scientific consensus’ on the safety of GMOs, asserting that the data is in and the debate is over.

In its report of September 2014, the group dismisses the so-called scientific consensus that Shantharam uses to forward his agenda.

The report notes:

“The “scientific bodies” that purportedly are part of the “consensus” are few in number and are by no means representative of the entire scientific community. They have not signed on to a specific “consensus” statement nor have they, in most cases, actually developed policy positions on the subject. By and large, the GMO-consensus campaign has misquoted or misrepresented these scientific bodies to falsely assert that they are part of a “consensus” on GMO safety.”

It goes on to state that the GMO-consensus campaign points to the Royal Society of Medicine and the Royal Society of London as part of the scientific ‘consensus’, but neither organisation has an official policy on GMO safety. The report notes the positions of several other leading scientific institutions and academies across the world that the pro-GM consensus campaign has used to forward its case. It concludes that the campaign uses a mix of cherry-picked quotes, industry-backed sources and misrepresentations of positions held to feed its spin.

One only has to look at Steven Druker’s open letter to the Royal Society in Britain to also appreciate just how prestigious institutions (or their members) engage in campaigns and tactics to push through a pro-GM agenda that has nothing to do with science. Moreover, hundreds of independent scientists - almost all of them holding advanced degrees in relevant fields - have come forward to condemn the GMO-consensus campaign, explicitly saying that there is “no consensus” on the safety of GMOs. Readers may also be interested in this article, which also highlights just who has said what about the safety of GM and puts paid to the big lie of a 'scientific consensus'.

Shantharam claims all that anti-GM people do is propagate lies in the hope that if they are repeated often enough, people will believe them. With no sense of irony or indeed shame, he claims that all credible science is on the side of GM and only a few incompetent maverick scientists indulge in anti-GM “parallel science.”

Perhaps he thinks that by propagating a falsehood time and again, people will believe it.

Aside from there being no consensus among scientific institutions, the Food & Water Watch report dismisses claims that there is an overwhelming consensus in the scientific literature and again points to the case being misrepresented via a mix of industry-supported sources and listing studies that do not claim there is safety regarding GM and which are not independent of the bio-tech industry, although the campaign depicts them as such.

Shantharam accuses critics of GM, whether scientists or campaigners, of indulging in invalid parallel science, bombast and lies. The reader can form their own conclusions on just whom is engaging in what.

Lies, lies and more lies

His article is a blend of smears, falsehoods and deceit, which continues into the area of GM cotton. He claims Bt cotton in India has been a runaway success and churns out the myth that farmers have overwhelmingly adopted it. For good measure, he argues that if it were not for cutting edge technology of the green revolution, millions would have died in South Asia.

This is more spin. It has been highlighted time and again that GM cotton in India is not the success he claims it to be (for instance, see this and this), that farmers do not necessarily actively choose GM (contrary to what Shantharam’s neo-liberal ideological underpinnings would like us to believe, the actual reality is set out here, here, here, here and here) and that the green revolution has caused immense damage to agriculture, farmers and ecology in India, not least in terms of soil and health. Even its perceived successes are overstated and must be placed into a wider context, including the closing off of alternative approaches as a result of the rush towards and prioritising of export-oriented petro-chemical agriculture, which has been used to create food deficit areas across the world.

According to Shantharam, genetic engineering is an extension of classical plant breeding technologies and a lot more precise set of tools to manipulate gene-coding DNA. Wrong again. There is enough evidence to show that GE is not an extension of classical plant breeding techniques and enough evidence to indicate a lack of precision that should merit concern (for example, see section one of this report, this and this). Such claims have become standard among the pro-GM lobby and are in part designed to try to remove GM from regulatory processes and procedures to get them onto the market.

Finally, as if to gloss over all of the corruption and the capturing of regulatory agencies by global agribusiness and their compliant officials and politicians, Shantharam attempts to dismiss such concerns by implying critics of GM conveniently see conspiracy everywhere. Simply more spin and at odds with the actual political reality.

He finishes by saying it is essential to stop a bunch of anti-GM campaigners with commercial interests in what he perceives to be grossly inadequate organic farming (another baseless claim: see this and this) from creating a controversy over GM where none exists.

Such deluded wishful thinking. There is a massive and genuine controversy about GM, and the public as consumers, not just organic farmers, are very concerned. Or is everyone to be dismissed as liars and fools and their concerns brushed aside?

If we are to discuss commercial interests, consider the financial position of the biotech industry (consider Monsanto’s profits and its value as a company) and the massive influence it has over science, governments and policies (see this, this, this and this) – not to mention the $100 million spent to prevent labelling GMOs in the US and the amount spent on lobbying, advertising and campaign donations (see this spending by Monsanto for the US alone). And its massive influence in India should not be discounted (see this and this), although it is clear some wish it could.

It puts into perspective the ludicrous assertion that activists are driving the debate, brainwashing people and determining policy. But why bother with any of this when a good old unhealthy dose of twisted truths, pro-GM bluster and psychological projection will do? After all, this is what Shantharam has been engaging in for years.

“The long winded toxic argument by Dr Shantharam is not meant for any scientific discussion. It is to discredit all the independent studies done in India in order to bring pressure on GEAC to renew the permission to Monsanto… Bravo Dr Shantharam, you have done a yeoman service to your masters but on the day of judgement in a future not so far away, scientists like you will be remembered as "Enemies of the People".” P V Satheesh in response to a piece by Shantharam from some years ago.

Some things never change.

Many UK children go to school hungry

Tom Pearce

A survey conducted by YouGov on behalf of breakfast manufacturer Kellogg’s has exposed the extent of food poverty among children in the UK.

The survey took a nationally representative sample of head teachers, classroom, and supply teachers at state and independent schools throughout England and Wales.

YouGov found that four out of five teachers see hungry pupils arriving at school without having eaten breakfast each week, with many having nothing to eat until lunchtime. Nearly 50 percent of teachers said some pupils arrived at school hungry at least three or four times a week. The situation is mirrored in Scotland, with an increasing number of pupils going to school hungry. In some cases, children are stealing food from classmates, according to teachers.

The impact has been felt widely by those in the teaching profession, who have expressed heartfelt reactions to the children in their care. Eight percent of teachers said they had given pupils money for food, and approximately three in 10 admitted that they have brought food into school for pupils they believe have not had breakfast.

Nearly two-thirds of teachers said they knew of children at their school who regularly ate nothing until lunchtime. Almost two-fifths of school staff said they see pupils turning up for class who have not had enough to eat every day, while a similar proportion see it between one and four times a week.

Hunger is clearly detrimental to a pupil’s health and wellbeing. It has a devastating impact on their education, as pupils who are hungry are more likely to be lethargic and unable to concentrate. This contributes significantly to pupil behaviour. How can a child concentrate with an empty stomach? Nearly a third of those polled suggested that a child has blamed falling asleep in class on hunger or thirst.

Teachers and schools are being forced to deal with the outcome of a situation created by successive Labour and Conservative governments, which have funded financial institutions with vast amounts of money instead of providing for the basic requirements of working families.

According to YouGov, of the teachers that said there had been an increase in hungry pupils, 69 percent thought one of the main reasons was families continuing to struggle due to the economic downturn. Some 56 percent said welfare cuts are affecting families’ financial situations, making it tougher for them to provide breakfast for their children.

Just under half thought that some parents were struggling to find work and cannot afford to put food on the table in the morning.

This should not come as a surprise to Kellogg’s, considering they have contributed to the unemployment of families in the UK and globally. Over the past decade, the US-based conglomerate has shut factories and relocated to other countries to increase profits. The company has introduced “annualised hours”, changing the shift patterns of production staff at its UK plants in Wrexham, Wales, and Trafford, England.

Paul Wheeler, Kellogg’s director of corporate communications, said, “It’s a crying shame that so many children are going to school without having eaten a basic breakfast.” But the fact remains that the company’s interests are laser-focused on raising the profits made from their breakfast products, not the plight of families struggling to make ends meet. Figures released in 2015 revealed that the firm, which uses a number of tax avoidance loopholes, effectively paid no UK corporation tax in 2013 despite reporting huge profits.

Many large companies increasingly rely on zero-hours contracts, with the number of these increasing by almost a fifth during 2015. Under zero-hours contracts, workers earn less per hour than staff in similar roles and are denied benefits such as sick pay.

Parents feel compelled to work which can lead to cutting out meals like breakfast. A smaller group of teachers surveyed cited that the pressures of work and the impact of unsociable contracts meant they were “too busy” to make breakfast.

Fully 20 percent of teachers said that the number of pupils arriving at school hungry had increased over the past 12 months, while 77 percent said it had stayed about the same.

Research last year by the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT) revealed that children were turning up for school cold, hungry and wearing unwashed or unsuitable clothing, because their families are facing serious financial problems. One unnamed teacher said, “Children … should not be hungry and coming to school with no socks on and no coats—some children are living in Victorian conditions—in the inner cities.”

Some teachers tell stories of pupils “hugging radiators” to keep warm, bringing in mouldy food in their lunch boxes and getting upset when they lose basic items such as pencils and rubbers.

More than three in four had seen pupils arrive at school with “inappropriate clothing” including no coat in bad weather. More children were being sent home with letters about unpaid school meals. Pupils who were sick were still being sent to school because parents could not afford to take time off work.

No attempt at tackling this desperate situation has been undertaken by those in power. A few token measures have been applied which cover free school meals for all key stage one pupils (aged between 5 and 7) and a paltry “pupil premium” budget to allow disadvantaged pupils to receive funding for trips and for “closing the gap with their peers”.

However, these only place the problem of hunger on schools with already stretched budgets.

Teachers also have to cope with the wider problems associated with family hardship, such as children living in temporary accommodations or relying on food banks. A UK all-party report released at the end of 2015, found that “hunger is now regarded as a ‘permanent fact of life’ in the UK’s poorest communities.”

Hunger has been “woven into the lives of people for whom going without food on a daily basis is now almost inevitable.”

The Scottish teaching union, the Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS), also recently carried out a survey on the impact of poverty in schools.

The leaders of the education trade unions make token criticism of government policies that lead to children going to school hungry, but the relentless austerity that has led to this intolerable situation only continues, because the unions have suppressed all struggles against government cuts to pay and conditions. In October, the EIS accepted a measly pay deal of just 2.5 percent over two years with 1.5 percent for 2015-16 and a further one percent for 2016-17.

Germany: Poorest half of population owns just 1 percent of wealth

Denis Krasnin

This year will see the publication of the fifth poverty and wealth report by the German Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs. It is to include three main topics: “Impact of atypical employment forms on career development and income earned in the course of life, the relevance of areas of social segregation (increasing ‘ghettoisation’ and poverty within cities), and wealth.”

Under the heading of wealth, already published figures for 2013 are included. The Passauer Neue Presse drew attention to last week: inequality of wealth among households is steadily widening. The top 10 percent owns more than half (51 percent) of the wealth, while the poorest half owns a mere 1 percent.

Since the Social Democratic Party (SPD)-Green government under Gerhard Schröder took office 18 years ago, the process of growing social inequality has accelerated. In 1998, the bottom half of the population owned 2.9 percent of the wealth. Their percentage of the wealth thus shrank by two thirds over the intervening period, while the top 10 percent saw their share rise by more than 6 percent.

As with all statistical projections, these figures fail to show the full social reality. In fact, social inequality in Germany is much more pronounced.

One reason for this is that the “income and consumer investigation” (EVS) of the federal agency for statistics, on which the latest figures are based, does not take millionaires or billionaires into account. In Germany in 2014, according to a wealth report by consultancy firm Capgemini and RBC Wealth Management, there are more than 1.14 million people with wealth worth more than US$1 million.

This tiny minority of the population does not generally take part in wealth surveys, such as the EVS study—at least not in sufficient numbers to provide accurate statistical projections. Money and property wealth are investigated, as well as loans, debts and income from employment or social welfare. Details on household income of more than €18,000 per month are so rare that they are not reflected in the statistics.

In addition, it is difficult for statisticians to gather accurate data about capital income. The Süddeutsche Zeitung acknowledged, “Capital income like interest, dividends or speculative profits, which flow overwhelmingly to wealthy households,” are captured only partially. Recent studies by the European Economic Research Centre and trade union-aligned Hans Böckler Foundation pointed this out.

The Ministry of Labour and the Süddeutsche Zeitung also drew attention to the fact “that in international comparison [of social inequality], Germany performs badly, because the percentage of land and property owners in the population is lower than in the eurozone.” In addition, many young people had their own household, but possessed no wealth.

Along with the points made by the ministry, another more important factor is responsible for the growth in social inequality: the vast majority of the population do not participate in the speculative activity of the banks on the stock market. In addition, temporary labour contracts and other atypical employment relations have had a grave impact on wealth distribution.

In spite of the reasons given for the limited picture of social reality presented, the published figures make clear that social inequality in Germany has already reached dramatic proportions. Sections of the ruling elite are increasingly concerned about this. In a comment in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Heribert Prantl remarked at the beginning of last week that “inequality cannot go beyond a certain limit, otherwise it takes away our freedom.”

The latest lead article in Der Spiegel also points out that “inequality in the industrialised world is [threatening] to reach the obscene level it did in the 1920s, when American author F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby .”

Der Spiegel accused the “West’s political elite” of talking a lot about inequality while doing nothing about it. It pointed to the reaction of the “rich and powerful” to the latest Oxfam report on income inequality and painted a picture of growing concern over the uncontrolled development of capitalism.

The development charity Oxfam has reported annually in January “that a declining number of super-rich own a greater percentage of global wealth. Currently it is 62 billionaires and multibillionaires who own around half of the world’s wealth.” Following this, the global elites meet “annually for their glamorous conference in Davos, Switzerland” to complain that “they have once again become a bit richer and more powerful [and] to note disappointedly that nothing can be done to reverse this.”

Der Spiegel declares, “One does not have to be a Marxist to describe the concentration of wealth on both sides of the Atlantic as ‘neo-feudal’.”

One also does not have to be a Marxist to know that the social, geopolitical and economic contradictions to which the ruling elite has no answer—other than rearmament, the drive to war and the destruction of democratic rights—will provoke great social struggles with revolutionary implications. This is precisely the fear behind the concerned commentaries in Germany’s bourgeois press.

West Coast US cities sue Monsanto over toxic chemicals

Genevieve Leigh

Last week, Seattle, Washington became the latest addition to the list of cities filing lawsuits against multinational corporation Monsanto, joining San Diego, San Jose, Oakland and Berkeley in California, along with Spokane, Washington. These efforts, led by San Diego-based law firm Gomez Trial Attorneys, aim to extract tens of millions of dollars from the agrochemical company for knowingly promoting the severely hazardous line of polychlorinated biphenyls, more commonly known as PCBs.

The Seattle lawsuit holds the corporation responsible for PCB contamination that finds its way into the city’s stormwater that flows into the Lower Duwamish River, designated a federal Superfund site because of its high levels of pollution and the high cost of cleanup.

These lawsuits are based on a precedent set last year in a California case against lead paint manufacturers in which the prosecution, after a 12-year legal battle, won a $1.15 billion judgment using a new application of California’s “public nuisance” law. Under the ruling, liability was imposed against the defendant companies because they had actively sold and promoted lead paint with actual or constructive knowledge about its health hazards. Through this same framework it has become possible to build a case against Monsanto for actions taken over 50 years ago.

In previous legal suits, (namely in Alabama, where the company had a chemical production plant), evidence was produced from internal Monsanto reports dating to the 1960s and 1970s. The reports confirmed the company’s knowledge that PCBs were causing health problems in its workforce and becoming an environmental contaminant. The company, however, continued to produce the profitable compounds.

Monsanto has faced numerous attacks over the past few decades for its alleged disregard for society and the environment. The company, along with Dow Chemical, was known for its production of Agent Orange during the Vietnam war as well as its role in the development of nuclear weapons under the Manhattan Project.

In an effort to create a better public image and avoid liabilities from its industrial chemical business, Monsanto spun off its industrial chemical and fiber divisions into a company called Solutia in 1997. For their part, officials from Monsanto claim that the company has been exclusively focused on agriculture over the past decade and has no responsibility in the current lawsuit for the chemicals produced and sold by the company that was initially formed in 1901.

Manufacturing of PCBs began in 1929. The chemicals were largely produced in the post-war period as wartime chemical companies refocused their attention on domestic uses. In the next four decades, close to 600,000 tons of the toxins were produced in the United States almost exclusively by Monsanto, until their ultimate prohibition by US Congress in 1979. Production of PCBs continued by other companies in various parts of the world until the 1990s. These chemicals were used in hundreds of industrial and commercial applications, including transformers, paints, caulk, flame retardants and pesticides, just to name a few.

As a result of their tendency to spread quickly and easily through air, water, river sediments, and animal ingestion, the contaminants have been found in virtually every corner of the world, including the Arctic, where the polar bear population was affected.

In areas with high concentrations of PCBs, which include but are not limited to the major cities involved in the lawsuits, overwhelming populations of fish, birds and mammals were found to have levels of “chronic toxicity.” This condition has resulted in developmental complications, reproductive failure and mass death rates, causing major disruptions in many ecosystems, most notably in San Francisco Bay.

The unique set of properties of PCBs, namely their non-flammability, chemical and thermal stability and high boiling point, means they do not readily break down once released into the environment. These chemicals tend to build up in animal fat, with increasing density going up the food chain, often ending in human consumption. The Environmental Protection Agency has acknowledged that ingestion of products with high levels of PCBs, in addition to causing cancer, also have been proven to cause neurological disorders, and toxic effects on the human immune system, reproductive system, nervous system and endocrine system.

It should be noted however that the lawsuits will not demand any reparations for the people affected by these toxins, but instead will be limited to monetary compensation exclusively for local governments to use in a limited cleanup of environmental damage.

Outrage at the irresponsible, criminal behavior of companies such as Monsanto is a healthy and understandable reaction to such events. However, the ongoing legal efforts are not likely to spring from such motivations and will in any case prove completely unable to redress the problem.

Even a victory in these cases will primarily serve to line the pockets of Gomez Trial Attorneys and the corrupt local city governments that are in fact routinely complicit in similar crimes, so blatantly exposed currently in the ongoing Flint water crisis. Any money won through this lawsuit, assuming it is used appropriately, will not even come close to repairing the vast social and environmental damages caused by Monsanto and similar corporations over the past century.

Predictably, these legal proceedings are being hailed as a victory by various corporate media. In a San Diego Union Tribune article absurdly titled “Monsanto lawsuits unnerve corporate America,” the author, Joshua Smith, writes, “In a move that might give corporate America chills, a San Diego-led legal team is testing a strategy aimed at expanding companies’ liability for cleaning up pollutants.”

In reality, even if the San Diego law firm is successful in securing damages from this particular firm, corporate America, far from being unnerved or wracked with “chills,” will emerge virtually unscathed by these legal proceedings. The capitalist system’s drive for profit, which led Monsanto to essentially poison the environment and society in the first place, will continue unabated. The crises created by capitalism, environmental and otherwise, cannot be solved through the legal avenues provided by the same system which creates these problems.

This situation, like that of Flint Michigan, the 2014 nuclear reactor explosions in Japan, the historic oil spills of 2010, the ongoing global warming crisis, and the many other environmental catastrophes experienced over the last century, expose again and again the much larger systemic problem characterized by today’s irrational organization of society.

The critical environmental issues facing humanity today cannot be solved by corporate lawsuits, moral appeals to the uninterested political establishment, or through any charade of multi-national collaborative “efforts,” but instead can only be addressed on the basis of a rationally organized socialist society.

Politics of Caste in India: Challenges and Opportunities

Ashok Bharti


Teachers have resumed teaching at Hyderabad Central University (HCU). However, a handful of students continue to sit in at the make-shift space created by Rohith Chakravarthy Vemula and his four expelled colleagues. Rohith Vemula was not the first victim of systematic exclusion, humiliation and expulsion that the students of Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Notified/de-Notified Tribes and ethnic, religious and sexual minorities face in educational institutions - from the day they first enter a school till the day they complete even their highest levels of education. This phenomenon is also wide-spread in professional institutions of excellence such as the Indian Institutes of Management, the Indian Institutes of Technology, and medical colleges. It is prevalent in colleges and universities that dot the country. The HCU was no exception to this deep-rooted systematic exclusion that forced Vemula into unbearable haplessness, living in humiliation, and finally, pushed him to end his life.

Though not adequately represented, there are over 50 Dalit/Adivasi teachers at the HCU; but none stood up against the ordeal Vemula and his four peers suffered, compelling the latter to put up their struggle at Velivada by themselves. Although not in a correct proportion, there are enough numbers of non-teaching SC/ST employees too at the HCU, but the plight of these students did not move them. Other teachers and students are in thousands, but their conscience and higher callings did not evoke any response on the indignities heaped upon Vemula and his peers who stood up for freedom of ‘food, faith and ideas.’

These five students, active members of the Ambedkar Student Association, have not been the 'stereotypical' Dalit students. They were doing better than many non-Dalit students. They opposed draconian capital punishment, broke religious barriers among Hindus, Muslims and Christians, and forged an identity around Dr. Ambedkar - actions anathema for several Caste Hindus.

This nation-wide uproar that we witness is not because Rohith was the first victim of institutional exclusion, humiliations and apathy but because it has never been so straightforward between Ambedkarites believing in 'Prabuddha Bharat' or 'Enlightened India' and those believing in 'Hindu Rashtra'. Therefore, Vemula's tragic death is symptomatic, and poses challenges. India needs to confront these challenges and convert them to bigger opportunities.

What are the challenges? India faces the challenge of coming to the terms with the reality of caste. For long, most elites in all religions, Muslims and Christians included, have neglected/rejected caste and its associated behaviours such as endogamy, hierarchical exclusion, indignities, untouchability, and rampant discrimination. Dr. BR Ambedkar said, "caste has killed conscience." Caste is violent institution.

Data compiled by the NACDAOR reveals that since 1991, over a staggering 6.74 lakh atrocities have been committed against people belonging to Scheduled Castes, with less than 3 per cent conviction rate. Can an aspiring world power like India neglect and overlook such a sorry state of impunity? This poses serious challenges not only to the right to live with dignity, but is also a potent threat to the growth story that India is writing.

Modern India cannot be built while its archaic values, especially such as the monster of caste, continue to haunt its people. Therefore, everyone must come forward to 'annihilate caste' in public and private life. And this problem cannot be effectively combatted unless the idea of a 'Hindu Rashtra' based on a Frankensteinian superiority complex and dominance of few Caste Hindus over the rest is fought by all the well-meaning people of this country.

Moreover, caste is not the only challenge. Most public institutions be it academic, administrative, law and order, judicial and even media, have their roots in colonial interests. Several were built to suppress ingenious talent, constrict creativity and limit competition, in order to perpetually keep the masses in a wretched state and maintain a 'loot system'. India cannot be that 'Chinese Tailor' - that Dr. Ambedkar had compared colonial Britain with, in 1931 - who stitched a new coat with all patches and holes, like the worn out old coat given to him for measurement. As an independent country with limited resources and that is home to 17 per cent of the total world population, India needs to build institutions that promote, encourage and nurture talent, amplify creativity, and make its large population capable of surviving competition with values of social, economic and political justice, equal dignity, and righteous sharing. 

Academia, administration, law and order systems, judiciary and executive, all need to be sensitive and respond quickly in discharging justice in order to prevent prolonging the suffering that a significant number of the country's citizens currently experience. India requires to keep its exclusionary system in perspective, and create institutional mechanisms that are inclusive in concept, design, and practice.

In 2016, when the nation will celebrate the 125th birth anniversary of Dr. BR Ambedkar, the principal architect of the Indian constitution, we must stop harping on the archaic ‘Dronacharyan’ values that punish and exclude people on the basis of their birth, origin, sexual and ideological orientations. Speeding up the inclusion of excluded Dalits, Adivasis and other minorities is the key to building a humane, dignified and developed India.