The Hillary Clinton emails: A record of imperialist crimes

Tom Hall

Last Monday, the US State Department published the last batch of declassified emails from a private, unsecured server used by Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton during her tenure as secretary of state. This latest release draws to a close a year-long review by US intelligence agencies of 52,000 pages of Clinton emails, ostensibly motivated by concerns over possible leaks of classified material.

To date, more than 30,000 emails dating from Clinton’s four-year tenure as secretary of state have been released to the public. Clinton played a central role in the prosecution of aggressive wars in Afghanistan, Syria and Libya as well as the carrying out of drone assassinations and other illegal actions in a number of additional countries, including Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. Yet in its extensive reporting of the email scandal, the American media has virtually ignored the actual content of these emails, which contain a wealth of information about the day-to-day functioning of the Clinton State Department.

A review of even a small sampling of the emails, which are available on the State Department’s web site, reveals the reason why: the emails are a damning indictment of the criminal activities of not only Hillary Clinton herself, but the entire imperialist state apparatus, with the corporate-controlled media in tow. The emails could easily serve as evidence in future war crimes trials of Clinton and other top US officials.

One particularly revealing email from 2010, cited by the Intercept web site but not picked up by the national media, recounts the experiences of former ambassador Joseph Wilson (whose CIA agent wife Valerie Plame was outed by the Bush administration in retaliation for his criticisms of the war in Iraq) during a recent trip to Iraq in his capacity as an executive for a US engineering firm. The Obama administration, elected by exploiting mass anti-war sentiment, continued the US occupation of Iraq for three years during Obama’s first term in office, when Clinton was secretary of state, prolonging a conflict that claimed more than 1 million lives. Since then, US troops have returned to Iraq, ostensibly to fight ISIS, as part of the US war for regime-change in neighboring Syria.

Wilson’s email begins: “My trip to Baghdad (September 6-11) has left me slack jawed. I have struggled to find the correct historical analogy to describe a vibrant, historically important Middle Eastern city being slowly bled to death. Berlin and Dresden in World War II were devastated, but they and their populations were not subjected to seven years of occupation.”

Describing the rampant racism and sadism among US occupation troops, Wilson writes, “Shirts with mushroom clouds [for sale at a gift shop on a US military base at the Baghdad airport] conveyed the Baghdad weather as 32,000 degrees and partly cloudy. Others referred to Arabs as camel jockeys and those were the least offensive… The service people don’t see themselves there to bring peace, light, joy or even democracy to Iraq. They are there to kill the ‘camel jockeys.’”

Hundreds more emails deal with the US-led proxy war in Libya, in which Clinton played a leading role. As a recent series of articles in the New York Times confirmed, Clinton was the leading advocate in the White House for the clandestine arming of “rebel” militias comprised largely of Islamic fundamentalists, which comprised the main fighting force against the regime of Muammar Gaddafi.

One email from February 2011, written by a veteran diplomat before the launching of the US-NATO war that ended with the murder of Gaddafi, lays out proposals for the construction of a future “post-Gaddafi” political order in Libya. The memo recommends the use of the United Nations to lend political legitimacy to the imperialist carve-up of the country.

“A UN ‘hat’ for multinational/international assistance efforts could be effective,” the author states bluntly. However, the extensive involvement of Italy, whose participation in the war marked a return to the scene of its bloody colonial occupation, should, the author recommends, be “kept relatively low-profile.” Another email chain discusses how to disburse the tens of billions of dollars of frozen Libyan assets stolen by the imperialist powers during the regime-change operation.

Many other emails concern the organization and coordination of the Obama administration's drone assassination program, which has killed thousands in Afghanistan and Pakistan alone. “Twenty-two of the emails on Mrs. Clinton’s server have now been classified as ‘top secret’ at the demand of the CIA because they discuss the program to hunt and kill terrorist suspects using drone strikes, as well as other intelligence operations and sources,” the New York Times noted two weeks ago, prior to the latest release. “The emails [also] contain direct and indirect references to secret programs,” the newspaper added obliquely.

One such secret program was the bribing of high-ranking officials in the Afghan government by the CIA. “[The US embassy in Afghanistan's] line has been and will be the standard approach--that we refrain from comment on stories discussing intelligence matters,” one embassy official writes in a 2010 email, in response to an impending New York Times story revealing that Muhammad Zia Salehi, head of the Afghan National Security Council, was on the CIA payroll. Later reports by the Times revealed that former President Hamid Karzai for years received shopping bags full of cash from the CIA on a regular basis.

Dozens of emails document the collusion between the corporate-controlled media and the State Department in containing the fallout from the release of US diplomatic cables by Wikileaks. In one 2010 exchange, Washington Postwriter Craig Whitlock reaches out to the State Department to request “a mechanism to receive [the] State [Department's] input” before running a series of articles based on cables revealing the existence of a secret US drone base in the Seychelles Islands, off the coast of Somalia.

The exchange demonstrates that the major newspapers, including the Washington Post and the New York Times, provided the State Department with advance printed copies of every cable about which they planned to write, along with drafts to the White House, to be redacted or censored at their discretion. In a conversation between Whitlock’s State Department handlers, they note approvingly that the practice “was extremely helpful in preparing our redaction requests, as well as anticipating what damage control we’d need to do in diplomatic channels.” Another email describes an editorial by the Washington Post calling for the prosecution of Wikileaks editor Julian Assange and Chelsea (then Bradley) Manning as “helpful,” adding, “We’ll try and get pickup in [the] international media.”

Clinton also received hundreds of emails via her private server from Sidney Blumenthal, a former advisor in the Bill Clinton administration, who served as the head of Hillary’s 2008 presidential campaign. Blumenthal, then an employee of the Clinton Family Foundation, functioned as a de facto backchannel intelligence gatherer and advisor for Clinton, despite not officially being a member of her staff. It was Blumenthal’s 2015 testimony to the House Select Committee on Benghazi, the Republican-controlled body set up for the purpose of torpedoing the likely presidential run of Clinton, which revealed the existence of Clinton’s private email server.

Blumenthal sent Clinton a wide array of intelligence reports from foreign countries targeted by US imperialism. In one email, he passes on concerns that Islamist militias in Libya might retaliate against the assassination of Osama bin Laden, using weapons obtained from the United States. In another, he recounts the furtive dealings between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Egyptian military to smother the Egyptian revolution, writing that the two will “continue to work together secretly in an effort to establish a stable government” and create “a secure environment throughout the country” for investment.

In another email, Blumenthal advises Clinton on how to orchestrate the cover-up of the circumstances surrounding the assassination of bin Laden in a cross-border raid into Pakistan by US Special Forces. As a report by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh later made clear, the official version of bin Laden’s death was a collection of lies from start to finish.

“Show [the pictures of bin Laden’s body] to members of Congress in a special secure room, something like when members were permitted to view Abu Ghraib pictures,” Blumenthal writes. “Each of them will emerge speaking to the national and local press on what they have seen… Having members of Congress testify to the reality of the photos will suppress any potential ‘Deather’ movement, that the administration has either fabricated the event or suppressed some aspect of it.”

What the ultimate outcome of the Clinton email scandal will be is not yet clear. An FBI criminal investigation into the emails is ongoing, with signs that the case might be headed to a grand jury. On Wednesday, a former employee of Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign, Bryan Pagliano, who set up the private email server in Clinton’s home, was granted immunity by federal investigators as part of the investigation.

Leaked Australian document reveals plans for mass surveillance of immigrants

Max Newman

A document leaked last month revealed that the Australian government is preparing an extensive build-up of spying and anti-democratic measures aimed against immigrants from working class backgrounds. While few details were contained in the document, it sets out what can only be described as a police-state framework of mass surveillance.

Once again, the government is exploiting escalating scare campaigns globally and in Australia about terrorism to overturn fundamental legal and democratic rights. It is bringing forward a blueprint for continuous monitoring of immigrants and more severe citizenship tests to block access to the basic democratic rights of permanent residence and citizenship.

The document, obtained by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) “Lateline” program, reports a series of recommendations to the national security committee of cabinet following a meeting last November. The final plan is due to be unveiled by Immigration and Border Protection Minister Peter Dutton in the first half of this year.

One key recommendation is to change the visa system in order to “remove direct access to permanent residence” and “better align visa and citizenship decision-making with national security and community protection outcomes.”

This proposal would further strip working class immigrants of the right to become citizens. Under the Australian Citizenship Act, people seeking citizenship must have lived in the country for four years and have had permanent residency for at least 12 months.

The government has already removed access to citizenship for any refugees who succeed in reaching Australia. They are granted only Temporary Protection Visas (TPVs), which deny them permanent residency, and also bar them from bringing their family members, even their spouses and children, to Australia.

The leaked recommendations indicate an expansion of this draconian regime to any refugees selected by the government from overseas or those granted humanitarian visas to enter Australia, and possibly to wider layers of immigrants.

The document also calls for an “enforceable integration framework” by revamping the “Citizenship Test and Citizenship Pledge to strengthen accountability for commitments made at Citizenship conferral.” These measures are designed to further restrict access to citizenship and justify new powers to revoke citizenships, thus stripping individuals of fundamental democratic rights of residence, voting and access to health, education and welfare services.

Following the still-unexplained 9/11 terrorist attacks in the US, the Howard Liberal-National government, supported by the Labor Party, imposed a new citizenship test. It forced applicants to answer 30 written questions, all in English, on Australian “values,” history and society.

As well as requiring people to identify with “values” defined by the government, the test was designed to discriminate against non-English speaking migrants and poorer immigrants who could not afford thousands of dollars for English lessons.

The legislation gave the government enhanced powers to deny citizenship, and basic democratic rights that come with it, to anyone who was regarded as being not of “good character” or who received an adverse security assessment by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), the domestic spy agency. This gave governments and ASIO wide scope to bar citizenship to anyone regarded as a political threat to the ruling establishment.

These mechanisms were taken further when the Australian Citizenship (Allegiance to Australia) Act was introduced last December, again with bipartisan support. This legislation hands the government the power to strip citizenship from any dual citizen by ministerial decree on the basis of allegations of involvement in terrorism, fighting for a foreign force or other offences.

The leaked document proposes stricter “security checks” on the intake of 12,000 Syrian and Iraqi refugees that the government promised last September as millions of people fled the devastating wars instigated by the US and its allies, including Australia, in the Middle East. The government’s commitment was only made reluctantly, amid an outpouring of public support for the refugees.

According to the document, the security checks must exceed “those put in place by European countries to manage the irregular movement of people across continental Europe.” The screening regime imposed by the government is already so severe that only 26 Syrian refugees had been settled in Australia by last month.

The document recommends that “these additional screening criteria be applied to the entire Humanitarian Program,” thus extending the assessments conducted by ASIO to every person seeking a humanitarian visa.

Going further, the document proposes a “visa risk assessment tool that establishes an intelligence-led threat identification and risk profiling capability incorporating immigration as well as national security and criminality risk for visa applicants.”

This would require “enhanced access, use and protection of sensitive information to strengthen intelligence-led, risk-based decision making across the continuum, from pre-visa stage through to post-citizenship conferral.” This proposal is tantamount to a monitoring system for all visa holders for their entire lives, even after they become citizens.

The pretext for this surveillance is the threat of terrorism and “Australia’s potential exposure to the risks posed by extremism and radicalisation of migrants, including humanitarian entrants.” The document cites last year’s terrorist attacks in Paris and “social unrest” in Cologne—both highly dubious events that have been seized upon by media outlets and governments around the world to ramp up police powers and anti-refugee xenophobia.

Likewise, the document invokes two equally doubtful events in Australia—the 2014 Sydney cafe siege and the police killing of Abdul Numan Haider, an Afghani teenager, in Melbourne, Victoria—to justify placing all immigrant families under surveillance.

Without providing details, the document advocates measures that enhance “social cohesion” to reduce the “risk of radicalisation.” It refers to an “extremist landscape” in Australia that has been “significantly influenced by our refugee intake and subsequent related migration from relatives and spouses (chain migration).” In other government documents, references to “radicalisation” and “extremism” have gone far beyond terrorism to include left-wing, environmental and anti-capitalist activism.

In a particularly inflammatory and xenophobic section, the document states: “The most prominent ethnic group amongst Australian Sunni extremists are the Lebanese.” It asserts that the majority of these extremist “cohorts” were from the refugee intake during the 1975-90 Lebanese civil war “as well as their extended families and Australia-born descendants.”

As well as pointing to ethnic and religious profiling, the document calls for the tighter selection of immigrants on “an economic basis”—that is, on their capacity to be profitably exploited by employers and the corporate elite more generally.

In the name of “social cohesion” the document disparages family reunion immigration and claims better “integration” by “Skill stream migrants” who are better equipped with the “three E’s”: “English language proficiency, education and employment.”

Once it was leaked, Immigration Minister Dutton denied seeing the cabinet document. Nevertheless, he confirmed its thrust. He insisted that the government would be “tough in terms of the screening processes” because “this is a very serious time for our country, for Western democracies ... people will pretend to be refugees when they’re not.”

Labor leader Bill Shorten said nothing about the content of the document, instead criticising the government as “disturbingly” leak-prone on “national security.” Labor’s shadow immigration minister Richard Marles echoed Shorten’s comments, while saying the document “verges dangerously down the path of putting in place a discriminatory immigration policy.”

In truth, the document’s recommendations are completely in line with the regressive agenda pioneered by the Labor Party, which first introduced the mandatory detention of refugees in 1992 and reopened the offshore detention centres on Nauru and Manus Island in 2012. Labor has also voted for the barrage of anti-terrorism and citizenship legislation, overturning basic democratic rights.

Refugees face disastrous conditions in Greece

Katerina Selin

As European governments move to seal their external borders, tens of thousands of refugees fleeing to Europe are trapped in Greece, leading to a rapidly escalating humanitarian catastrophe. Each day hundreds of refugees risk the dangerous journey from their war-torn countries in the Middle East via Turkey and the Mediterranean to Greece. Most of them are trying to get to Western Europe via the Balkan route. In late February, the Macedonian government closed its border to Greece for the transit of refugees. Since then, the number of refugees in Greece has risen to over 30,000. According to the Greek state television ERT, last Thursday there were some 25,000 refugees on the Greek mainland and nearly 7,000 on the Aegean islands.

Idomeni

Thousands of exhausted people face desperate conditions at the border, in the hope they may soon be able to continue their journey north. Idomeni in the Kilkis region has been transformed from a tiny village of 154 inhabitants into a giant refugee camp. Meanwhile, over 13,000 people are camping in a field near the border fence and the railway tracks. Every day, hundreds more refugees arrive from other regions of Greece.

News station ERT has broadcast shocking images of the conditions faced by the refugees. Families from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries have been living for almost two weeks in temporarily shelters. Nearly half are women and children.

There is a shortage of food and basic consumer goods. The refugees have already consumed all the food and used up the money they had brought with them on their hazardous journey, and are now dependent on local aid organisations. A seventeen-year-old boy who had fled with his younger brother from Afghanistan told ERT that they had spent 8,000 euros for the trip and were now destitute.

Every day, refugees stand in long queues to get sandwiches. Volunteers complain that the food rations are not enough to feed everyone. Long queues also form outside the temporary toilet blocks.

In the Greek daily To Vima, the spokeswoman for the MSF refugee mission, Vika Markolefa, warns against the danger of epidemics, “We are very concerned about the health situation. Since there are not enough toilets and showers, many people are forced to go in the fields. When it rains, faeces spreads everywhere. This is particularly tragic for children, who are always playing on the ground. We fear the outbreak of an epidemic that could spread through the water.”

During the day, refugees try to keep away the cold by making fires using everything they can get their hands on, including wood, waste, and plastic. On Thursday night, it began to rain without pause. The wet and cold make the already horrible conditions in Idomeni even worse. There are not enough tents to go round. That evening, about 1,600 people were forced to sleep in the open in the rain, as temperatures dipped below 10 degrees Centigrade. The ground has turned into a mud pit. Even the tents no longer offer protection from the wet, so more and more children fall ill. The new, dry tents being erected over the next few days do not offer enough space for everyone.

About 5,000 more refugees have found a place in temporary shelters that were set up in the former military barracks at the nearby villages of Cherso and Nea Kavala. Two more accommodation facilities are to be set up in the villages of Drosato and Kentriko in the Kilkis region.

Anger and despair are spreading among the refugees. At a protest last Monday, refugees broke through the border fence and were brutally repulsed by the Macedonian military using tear gas. On Thursday morning, there was another demonstration in Idomeni. Protesters sat down on the railway tracks, calling out in English, “Open the borders,” and blocked the onward journey of a freight train. Many held up their children and carried homemade posters saying “Help us” and “Freedom.”

The Macedonian government opens the border for just a short time each day, permitting only a small number of refugees to enter its territory. According to the Greek newspaper Ethnos, only 320 people were able to pass through in the 24 hours before Friday evening. The refugees are at the mercy of the bureaucratic harassment of border guards. During the arduous passport control process many are rejected for lack of correct documents or inaccuracies in names and birth dates.

After Monday’s protests, the Macedonian government massively increased its security measures at the border town of Gevgelija. Hundreds of soldiers, police officers and police dogs were mobilised to deter the helpless and unarmed refugees. These forces are being used to extend the border fence, and have deployed additional water cannons to repress any potential protests. Macedonian helicopters also fly over the area. According to Spiegel Online, several of the Central and Eastern European Visegrad countries have also sent police officers and advisors to the Macedonian border.

Aegean islands and Piraeus

Amid these disasterous conditions, refugees continue to arrive in Greece every day. In the Aegean islands of Lesbos, Chios and Samos, several ferries and ships remain in port and are being used as emergency shelters.

In recent weeks, the Greek Armed Forces have erected four huge concentration camps, called “hotspots,” on the islands of Lesbos, Samos, Chios and Leros. According to recent figures, almost 3,000 refugees are accommodated there. Many have suffered traumatic experiences and are physically weak. A fourteen-month-old baby from Syria died last Wednesday night at the hospital on Lesbos from severe shortness of breath. The infant had arrived that day with its mother after crossing from Turkey to Greece.

Most of the refugees are carried by ships from the Aegean Islands to the port of Piraeus in Athens. On Thursday alone, more than 1,000 refugees arrived in the port, including many families with small children, for whom there is little accommodation. They sit and sleep in the harbour waiting rooms or are driven in buses to the train station, from which they depart to Athens.

Currently, about 2,000 people are in Piraeus. Some registration tents have now been established.

Doctors are on duty, bringing medicines and undertaking vaccinations to prevent the spread of disease. At least 16 children have been hospitalised with high fever.

Reception centre in Elliniko

In mid-December of last year, the government had begun to set up a camp at the former airport in the Athens suburb of Elliniko. Since the airport was shut down in 2001, the site has mainly been used for sports events such as the 2004 Summer Olympics. In winter, the hockey stadium was opened up for refugees. In February, the Greek army erected about 150 ten-person tents in the baseball stadium. Some 4,000 people are now housed in the two stadiums and at the old airport.

Families sleep on the floor and go to nearby beaches to bathe themselves and their children, to brush their teeth and wash their clothes in the icy sea water. “We have no washrooms,” a young man told ALPHA TV. “There are also no staff to clean the toilets. The stench is unbearable and many people are sick. There are no doctors.”

In Elliniko camp on Thursday, several Afghan refugees protested against the border closures. Women and children sat on the street and held banners reading, “Please open the borders,” “Let us go,” and “European Union: why racism?”

Victoria Square in Athens

Hundreds of refugees who have travelled on from the port of Piraeus to the centre of Athens are stuck on Victoria Square in the north of the city. Afghan families, who are denied the onward journey via the Balkan route, sleep here on the asphalt, scantily wrapped in blankets and sleeping bags. Many children are sick. All around, mountains of garbage have accumulated. In the trees on the middle of the square, refugees have hung cardboard signs demanding, “We want justice,” and ask, “Where are our human rights? We want open borders to Macedonia.”

Volunteers from the charity “Praxis” and the Red Cross deliver medicine, food and water. Every day, residents come to assist the refugees. A pensioner regularly shares out hot soup.

As in Germany and other European countries, a wave of solidarity has engulfed the whole of Greek society, which has itself been plunged into crisis and poverty by the EU’s incessant austerity measures.

In Piraeus and Athens, many volunteers support the care of refugees. From the capital and other parts of Greece, people come with clothing and home-cooked food. The “Network for Social Solidarity” organised a huge collection campaign of necessities for refugees. On its Facebook page, more than 7,800 people had promised help by Friday afternoon.

“While the presence of citizens [at Piraeus port] is impressive, the city authorities are noticeable by their absence,” the newspaper To Vima noted on Wednesday. Volunteers complain that the volunteers are not being coordinated, there are hardly any state representatives on site and the daily needs of refugees are not being assessed. The entire task of organisation is almost entirely in the hands of volunteers.

The Greek authorities are seeking to hinder the refugees’ onward journey to the border. An employee of MSF told the British Independent newspaper that travel agencies on the islands of Lesbos and Leros had been instructed by the authorities not to sell tickets to refugees. The number of ferry or hydrofoil crossings has been cut and some of the buses in Athens, for which refugees had already bought tickets to Idomeni, are not operating.

The appalling conditions in Greece are the direct result of the entire inhumane refugee policy of the European Union, which is based on closing borders and deportations. The government of the pseudo-left Syriza (Coalition of the Radical Left) is working closely with the German government to conclude a deal with Turkey to keep refugees from coming to Greece.

Like Turkey, Greece plays the role of border guard for Fortress in Europe due to its strategic position on the Mediterranean. The government of Alexis Tsipras has massively deployed the military to coordinate refugee policy, thus strengthening the status of the military apparatus within the state.

The ministry of defence is headed by the right-wing populist Panos Kammenos of the Independent Greeks (ANEL). His deputy, Dimitris Vitsas (Syriza), is now taking over the management of the newly-created “coordination centre for managing the refugee crisis,” in which several ministries are represented.

Amid growing class antagonisms in Greece, the bourgeois parties in Greece are closing ranks. It is significant that Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias has explicitly defended his coalition partners and stated that ANEL politicians should not be called right-wing because they too had shown humanity and solidarity to refugees. ANEL is a right-wing split-off from the conservative New Democracy, and is notorious throughout Greece for its xenophobic chauvinism and connections to the extreme right-wing milieu, particularly in the police and the armed forces.

The pseudo-left Syriza has betrayed all its electoral promises and offered itself to the European institutions as the force that could best implement a comprehensive austerity programme against the working class. Now it is taking the same path in relation to refugee policy. It is participating in the NATO mission in the Aegean and acts as the right hand of the EU in sealing off Europe against thousands of people fleeing war and misery.

Bank for International Settlements warns of build-up of global debt

Nick Beams

The governing council of the European Central Bank (ECB) will meet this Thursday where it is expected to expand its quantitative easing program through an extension of its asset-purchasing program and possibly lower interest rates further into negative territory.

But there are growing doubts about the efficacy of these policies amid ongoing euro zone deflation and worries that they are dangerously backfiring.

Since ECB president Mario Draghi promised in 2012 to “do whatever it takes,” the ECB has pumped billions of euros into the financial system without halting deflation or stimulating the real economy. Its only impact has been to fuel further speculation in financial markets.

In a note issued Monday, the chief economist at Société Générale, Michala Marcussen, summed up the general sentiment in financial markets. She expected a further cut in the deposit rate and an extension of long-term refinancing operations and added: “Our main concern is that, whilst the bank will continue to signal its willingness to do whatever it takes, its ability to provide further significant stimulus is becoming more limited.”

There are growing concerns that, not only is the policy ineffective, it is creating the conditions for a further financial crisis. In its quarterly review issued on Sunday, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), sometimes referred to as the central bankers’ bank but whose main role is an informational service, noted that the “uneasy calm,” to which it had pointed in December, had “given way to turbulence.”

Introducing the review, Claudio Borio, the head of monetary and economic research, said previously the BIS had highlighted that “the tension between the markets’ tranquillity and underlying economic vulnerabilities had to be resolved at some point. In the recent quarter, we may have been witnessing the beginning of its resolution.”

Borio then reviewed the two most significant developments of the past three months. First, there was the stock market turbulence in January when equities experienced one of their worst starts to the year in history. This was followed by the “briefer but perhaps more worrying episode in the first half of February” which focused on the “health of global banks” as their valuations plunged to new lows. The “main source of anxiety,” especially after the Bank of Japan’s decision to shift to negative interest rates at the end of January, was “the vision of a future with even lower interest rates, well beyond the horizon, that would cripple banks’ margins, profitability and resilience.”

A research paper published as part of the review warned it was difficult to predict how individuals and financial institutions would operate if interest rates stayed below zero for a long period of time and whether the mechanisms by which central bank moves are transmitted to the rest of the economy would “continue to operate as in the past.”

So far the banks had not passed on the cost or negative interest rates, under which they are charged for money deposited with the central bank, and it is by no means certain what the long-term consequences would be. “The viability of the banks’ business model as financial intermediaries may be brought into question,” the review said.

Pointing to a “certain composure” that had returned to markets since the turbulence of the first two months, Borio said it was necessary to look beyond the markets’ oscillations between hope and fear to the “deeper forces at work.”

“Once we do so, the clues are not hard to find. Against the backdrop of a long-term, crisis-exacerbated decline in productivity growth, the stock of global debt has continued to rise and the room for policy manoeuvre has continued to narrow,” he said.

In other words, while debt has continued to mount, the underlying economy has grown very slowly and in some cases stagnated. In the euro zone, for example, output is still yet to return to the levels reached prior to the 2008 crisis, while investment, which is the driving force of real growth, remains at around 25 percent below its previous trend.

According to Borio, debt was at the root of the events of 2008 and since then it had continued to grow in relation to global gross domestic product. Dollar-denominated debt to emerging market economies has played a prominent role, doubling from 2009 to some $3.3 trillion. Now there was evidence it was being reduced with the emergence of a “worrying vicious cycle between US dollar appreciation and tightening financial conditions for firms or countries that have heavily borrowed in dollars.”

Summing up the significance of financial market turbulence, he said “we may not be seeing isolated bolts from the blue but the signs of a gathering storm that has been building for a long time.” The report indicated that “central banks have been overburdened for far too long” and the confidence of financial institutions “in central banks’ healing powers—probably for the first time—has been faltering.”

The latest analysis of the BIS, which has been a long-time critic of the rationale behind quantitative easing—that problems resulting from the growth of debt can be alleviated by creating still more debt—underscores the bankruptcy of all bourgeois policy in the face of the deepening contradictions of the global capitalist order.

The quantitative easing program has done nothing to promote economic growth. Its main consequence has been to transfer untold wealth into the hands of the parasitic financial elites, worsening the social conditions of the working class and widening social inequality, while at the same time creating the conditions for another financial meltdown.

But the program advanced by its critics in the BIS—the purging of debt and the intensification of attacks on the working class through so-called “structural reforms”—amounts to nothing less than a prescription for a return to the conditions of the 1930s.

This political and economic fact of life has far-reaching implications for the international working class. It increasingly demonstrates that it is confronted not with a conjunctural downturn, from which there will be some “recovery,” by one or another means, but a breakdown of the entire capitalist economic order, for which it must advance its own solution based on an active political struggle for an international socialist program.

US airstrike massacres 150 at al-Shabaab training camp in Somalia

Joseph Kishore

US military airstrikes launched in Somalia over the weekend killed more than 150 people. The attack took place at what the US Pentagon yesterday said was an al-Shabaab training camp about 120 miles north of the country’s capital, Mogadishu.

The strikes mark a significant escalation of US operations in the Horn of Africa, a region that borders the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, a critical oil passageway that links the Mediterranean and the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean.

The airstrikes, carried out on Saturday against the Al Qaeda-affiliated group that controls parts of northern Somalia, are the deadliest in Africa in years. Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook asserted without providing evidence that the targets were graduating from the Raso training camp and posed an “imminent threat” to the US and US-backed African military forces in Somalia.

The Pentagon also claimed that there were no civilian casualties, though it would categorize anyone at the location as by definition a terrorist or military target. Those killed, according to an official cited by the New York Times, were “standing outside in formation” when a combination of drones and manned airplanes destroyed the camp and killed almost everyone present.

The Pentagon said that it had been monitoring the camp for weeks prior to the strike.

The attack on the training camp follows a years-long campaign of drone strikes in the impoverished North African country targeting individual leaders of al-Shabaab. In December of last year, a drone strike assassinated what the US said was one of the organization’s leaders, Abdirahman Sandhere, and two other individuals.

The strikes against the training camp indicate that the Obama administration is expanding its undeclared war in the Horn of Africa, aimed at bolstering the position of the corrupt regime of President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, based in Mogadishu. In recent months, al-Shabaab has carried out a series of attacks on Somali forces and those of a coalition of African countries that is backing the government with the support of the US.

Al-Shabaab has also carried out a number of terrorist attacks, including a January 22 suicide bombing and shootout at a restaurant in Mogadishu that killed 25 people.

While implemented under the framework of the “war on terror,” the main interests of the US in the region lie in Somalia’s geostrategic location. The country’s northern coast lies along the Gulf of Aden, which connects the Red Sea to the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean. On the other side of the Gulf of Aden lies Yemen, where the US has backed a brutal Saudi-led bombing campaign that began in the spring of last year.

Just to the northwest of Somalia lies Djibouti, where the US has its only permanent military base in Africa, Camp Lemonnier, the center of its drone operations throughout the continent. The water pathway between Djibouti and Yemen, known as the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, is listed by the US Energy Information Association as one of the major global oil transit choke points. Some 3.8 billion barrels of oil and petroleum products were transported through the strait in 2013, including much of the oil exported from the Persian Gulf to Europe and the US.

More broadly, the Bab el-Mandeb Strait is a key access point to the Indian Ocean, which now includes the most significant global trade routes, connecting Europe and the Middle East to Asia, including China.

In addition to the US, Britain has also taken a recent interest in the region, announcing last October that it was sending hundreds of troops to Somalia and South Sudan.

In their determination to retain control of the Horn of Africa, the major imperialist powers have stoked a series of civil wars and internal conflicts between different tribal and national factions. The population has been left to destitute poverty. Somalia, which has a population of more than 10 million people, has a gross domestic product per capita of just $112 and a life expectancy of 52 years. Some 1.1 million people are internally displaced.

Al-Shabaab itself arose out of factions of the Islamic Courts Union, which gained control of Mogadishu in 2006 after 15 years of civil warfare, before being toppled at the end of the year by an Ethiopian invasion orchestrated by the US. In 2007, the US backed the formation of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), comprised of about 22,000 troops from Kenya, Uganda, Burundi, Ethiopia and Djibouti.

After al-Shabaab launched an offensive against Mogadishu in 2010, AMISOM forces, again backed by the US, responded with a campaign that eventually drove the organization out of the capital and from the southern portions of the country. This was followed by regular drone strikes targeting the organization’s leaders.

The operations in Somalia are part of a broader escalation throughout northern Africa, overseen by the US military’s Africa Command and aimed largely at countering the growing influence of China on the continent. In recent months, the Obama administration has announced the deployment of troops and Special Operations forces to both Cameroon and Mali, and the US and European powers are also preparing for a major military escalation in Libya.

Conflict to Co-existence: Debating Heritage and Homogenisation

Asanga Abeyagoonasekera

“From amidst the Samanola’s montane rings

And sprawling glades there serenely springs

The Lotus-the Buddha’s Sacred Feet,

Ushering Loving-kindness wide, in surfeit

This is our heritage and birth-right

And our eternal Guiding Light”  

- Mahagama Sekara

translated by Prof Vini Vitharana

The singing of the Sri Lankan national anthem in both Sinhala and Tamil at Sri Lanka’s 68th national independence day elicited much discussion. Introducing the singing of the national anthem in Tamil was a sign of reconciliation. However, this led also led to hurt sentiments in certain sections of society.

Despite the criticism, the operatic version of Danno Budunge Opera version gained much popularity; with Youtube hits of more than seventy three thousand - an earlier version by Nanda Malini stands at eleven thousand hits.

One should also remember that the internationally reputed musician James Ross who has conducted over 950 works also played this beautiful song at the Nelum Pokuna Theater, which was breathtaking to most in the audience. This author was fortunate to meet Ross a day before his performance, when he explained the beauty of this song and that he would play with much respect. Kishani Jayasinghe who sang the operatic version did perform well in her own sphere, however, this author feels that this particular song should by sung or played with a resemblance to the traditional culture which is unique to Sri Lanka. This is because the soul of the song revolves around Buddha, Dhamma and the sacred Anuradhapura, the heart of Buddhism.

What is unique must be preserved. This includes the cultural mythology of a nation that to an extent still stands as the reference point to Sri Lankan identity. Anything global is often seen as a homogenisation of the local, and the tension with rising globalisation is the collision between what is considered global versus what is local. Preserving local culture is a challenge for many nations nowadays. The cultural fabric of Sri Lanka, which is closely knit with village temple, irrigational water tank and the mythology is far more embedded than newer movements emboldened through modern slogans.

Mythology derived from the Greek word ‘Mythos’ meaning the story, which is significant from earlier socialisation to shape cultural values and behaviour. What exists should be preserved as it is, and the great poet Mahagama Sekara paints the picture of this birth right clearly. This message must permeate to all levels, including Sri Lankan youth.

The youth bulge in South Asia is an asset for countries but unfortunately has not fully tapped in the field of economic development. The youth population below 30 years is around two-thirds of the global population. Last week, Sri Lanka witnessed a massive youth demonstration by degree-holders in Colombo demanding jobs from the government. The protest had to be aborted forcefully by the police using water cannons and tear gas. At the same time, within the city of Colombo, Young Global Leaders, a youth group of the World Economic Forum discussed solutions to many issues including providing a better future for the youth in South Asia.

According to the World Bank’s latest report, more than 40 per cent of the population lives on less than Rs. 225 a day. This is a very low figure, which needs serious attention from the government. A top priority of policy-shapers should be creating better living conditions for the less privileged of society. While the affluent of society including ministers can afford to fly to Singapore for medical treatment and higher education, not many ordinary citizens can afford the same health care or education - it is therefore important to provide first class services within the country.

In a move to introduce positive reform to increase women’s representation in political office by 25 per cent for the forthcoming local government elections, Prime Minister Ranil Wickramasinghe managed to get the relevant bill passed with much criticism from many parliamentarians. It is a great deed and a move towards women’s engagement in decision-making, which is required. President Paul Kagame of Rwanda is an example of bringing more women to his cabinet and parliament to recognise the importance of women’s representation in Rwanda. Rwanda has achieved an impressive level of gender equality; no country in the world has a larger percentage of women in its parliament than Rwanda - more than 50 per cent. Going further in amending the constitution to support women, representation-setting limits should not have less than 30 per cent in cabinet with 64 per cent of people in parliament being women. 42 per cent are in the judiciary with women mayors and women ministers.

In Sri Lanka, the number of female MPs stands at 5.6 per cent, which is less than 15 of the 225 members of the House - among the lowest in South Asia. This is an important area for improvement in Sri Lanka which has more than 40,000 war widows and many other women involved directly in economic activity. 

North Korea And The Nuclear Question

Chandra Muzaffar

As expected, the North Korean leadership has escalated its rhetoric in the wake of the United Nations Security Council’s (UNSC) new, harsh sanctions on Pyongyang.

Whenever the international community speaks or acts against North Korea, it responds with threats of ‘attacks’ against Washington and/or Seoul. This time North Korea, it is alleged, has fired half a dozen rockets about 100 to 150 kilometres into the sea off its eastern coast. It is meant to be a warning to South Korea.

Most analysts dismiss it as ‘mere posturing’. No one expects North Korea to go beyond this though there is perhaps much more anger in Pyongyang over the recent UNSC Resolution.They are the toughest sanctions ever imposed on Pyongyang. Key sectors of the economy are targetted. This includes mineral exports and North Korea’s access to international transport systems. This is the fifth time that the UNSC has imposed sanctions on North Korea. The first was after it tested an atomic device in 2006. The UNSC vote this time was unanimous. China’s endorsement of harsh sanctions in particular has hurt North Korea which knows that China is its only real ally.

This is why while supporting sanctions against its ally, China has also emphasisedthe importance of opening a dialogue with North Korea. It does not want North Korea to be pushed against the wall. Beijing knows that if North Korea becomes even more isolated, it may become even more irrational and aggressive. Russia is also of the view that dialogue should be the priority. It is hoping that the comprehensiveness of the sanctions will persuade Pyongyang to enter into serious talks with its neighbours and other actors such as the United States.

For both China and Russia, dialogue is vital for yet another reason. They fear that the situation precipitated by North Korea’s nuclear test in January and long-range rocket launch in February may be exploited by South Korea and the US to tighten their military grip over the entire region. In fact, formal talks have begun between Seoul and Washington on the possible deployment of an advanced US missile defence system in South Korea. The THAAD system is an anti-ballistic missile system which smashes into enemy missiles either inside or outside the Earth’s atmosphere during their final flight phase. China and Russia are strongly opposed to the deployment of the THAAD system since it will impact adversely upon the military balance inthe region and increase tensions among states that are already confronted with major bilateral issues.

In the ultimate analysis, the real challenge confronting North Korea and South Korea; China and Japan; Russia and the United States is not so much North Korea’s posturing or the efficacy of UN sanctions. The only way to dissuade countries outside the formal ‘nuclear weapons club’ from acquiring nuclear weapons is to ensure that ALL states without exception eliminate their nuclear weapons stockpiles and refrain from manufacturing nuclear weapons and indeed, all weapons of mass destruction. It is utterly hypocritical of the US or Russia or China to demand that North Korea refrain from nuclear testing when none of the big powers is making any move towards total nuclear disarmament.

The time has come for the citizens of the world to mount a massive global campaign for the elimination of all nuclear weapons and all weapons of mass destruction.

The Other Side Of The Global Crisis: Entropy And The Collapse Of Civilizations

Jacopo Simonetta

When we discuss the impending crisis of our civilisation, we mainly look at the resources our economy need in a growing quantity. And we explain why the Diminishing Returns of resource exploitation pose a growing burden on the possibility of a further growing of the global economy. It is a very interesting topic, indeed, but here I suggest to turn 180 degrees around and take a look at the "other side;" that is to what happens where the used resources are discarded.

Eventually, our society (as any other society in history) is a dissipative structure. It means that it exist only because it is able to dissipate energy in order to stock information inside itself. And there is a positive feedback: more energy permits to implement more complexity; and more complexity needs, but it also permits a larger energy flow. This, I think, is a crucial point: at the very end, wealth is information stocked inside the socio-economic system in different forms (such livestock, infrastructures, agrarian facilities, machines, buildings, books, the web and so on). Human population is peculiar because it is a large part of the information stocked inside the society system. So, from a thermodynamic point of view, it is the key part of “wealth”, while from an economic point of view people can be seen as the denominator of the global wealth.

The accumulation of information inside a system is possible only by an increment of entropy outside the same system. This is usual with all the dissipative structures, but our civilisation is unique in its dimension. Today about 97% of the terrestrial vertebrate biomass is composed of humans and of their symbionts and we use about the 50% of the primary production (400 TW?), plus a little less than 20 TW we have from fossil fuels and other inorganic sources.

At the beginning, our modern civilisation performed in the same way that all the others in the history: appropriating energy forms such food, livestock, commodities, slaves, oil, carbon and so on. And throwing entropy to biosphere in different forms such as pollutants, ecosystems transformations, extinctions, heat and so on; while throwing entropy to other societies as war, migration, etcetera.

As the industrial economy overruled and substituted all the others, it became the only one economy in the world. And so, necessarily, found more and more difficulties to dissipate energy outside itself. In practice, sinks become problematic before wells do. But remember that in order to implement its own complexity, a dissipative system needs a growing energy flow, that is it needs cornucopian energy wells.

Today, both global pollution and massive immigration into the more industrialized countries evidence that our system is no more able to expel entropy out of itself. But if entropy is not discharged out of the system, it necessarily grows inside it. And when there is more energy, there is more entropy in a typical diminishing returns dynamic. Maybe, we can see here a negative feedback which has stopped the economic growth and that will possibly crash the global economy in some decades.

If this reasoning is correct, the political and the economic crisis, social disruption and, finally, failing states are nothing less than the visible aspect of the growing entropy inside our own meta-system. Eventually, global society is so large and complex which is articled in many correlated sub-systems and we are managing in order to concentrate entropy inside the less powerful ones: some yet problematic countries, lower classes and, especially, young. But these phenomena produce political shifts, riots and mass migrations to the core of the system. This means that also the elites have lost the capability to understand and/or control the internal dynamic of the global socio-economic system.

In the meantime, the overloading of the sinks is starting to cause the deterioration of the wells. It evident, for instance, with air and water pollution, ocean acidification, mass extinction, ecosystems disruption, and much more. In the end, as the economy grows, the global system necessarily looses the capability to dissipate energy, condemning itself to disruption.

We can find the same phenomenon at smaller scales, such as for a single organism. such as a single human being. If a good energy flow is available in the form of food and heat, a baby can develop into a strong and healthy adult. Good flows of energy during adult life mean a better life and the possibility to develop culture, skills, art, science and a to keep one's health for a long time. Insufficient energy means starvation and illness. But it is also true that if the body absorbs a quantity of energy larger than its capability to dissipate it, then we have are problems such fat, illness, obesity and, finally, a bad life and premature death.

We found the very same phenomenon at larger scales as well. The Earth as a whole is also a dissipative, complex system. It does not have any problems with its main energy well: the Sun. We can be sure that the 86.000 TW that we receive from the sun on the average are not going away, although they will gradually increase over very long time spans. But the whole biosphere is collapsing in one of the most serious crisis it ever faced during the 4,5 billions years of its history. This crisis is the result of the human activity that reduces the capability of the ecosystem to dissipate the energy input, in particular as the result of the greenhouse effect caused by the combustion of fossil fuels. So the internal entropy grows with the consequence of harming even more the ecosystems and reducing complexity. Possibly leading to a global disaster at a geological scale.

In conclusion, I suggest that, in the coming decades, entropy will be a much challenging problem than that of the energy supply. Only a drastic reduction in the energy input could save the biosphere. But this is a high price to pay because a reduction of energy flow means necessarily a reduction of complexity and information stored inside the human sub-system. It means misery and death for the human population, although it means also hope for the future one (assuming that it will exist, but humans are too adaptable and resilient to go extinct as long as a functioning biosphere exists) So, new civilizations will appear but, in order for that to occur, the present civilization will have to collapse fast enough to leave a livable planet to our descendants.

Violence On The Factory Farm: How Not To Feed The World

Colin Todhunter

The amount of meat humans eat is immense. In 1965, 10 billion livestock animals were slaughtered each year. That number is now over 55 billion. Factory farming is the fastest growing method of animal production worldwide. While industrialised nations dominate this form of farming, developing countries are rapidly expanding and intensifying their production systems.

Violence on the farm

A new virtual reality film project by Animal Equality shows the public how a factory farm operates. The film focuses on how pigs live out their lives from birth to death – from the perspective of a pig. It is clear that it is not just the pig’s final death that is brutal but its whole life

The film shows how a factory farm pig is born in confinement (and into its mother’s excrement), its tail is docked and teeth clipped and it is castrated (if male) - all without pain relief. It is separated from its mother, which has been pinned down by a metal bar, and will never see the outdoors.

If the pig is female, ahead of it lies a life of artificial insemination and the taking of its children by humans over and over again, for as long as it remains fertile. Males will be taken to be fattened and will again live in overcrowded cages without stimulation, often leading to mental distress played out by biting other pigs in the cage, and fattened for five months until slaughter.

It is a life worse than that of the worst incarcerated prisoner, yet its only crime is to have been born. And immediately before having its throat cut, the pig can see its own fate as other pigs are hung up in front of it, struggling and bleeding.

Animal Equality is an International animal advocacy organisation that is dedicated to defending all animals through public education, campaigns and investigations. It works to create a more just and compassionate world for animals and is active in many countries. Its film does not go in for sensationalism. What we see appears to be an ordinary factory farm from where the public’s food increasingly derives.

Hidden filming inside factory farms shows that, from pigs and cattle to chickens, the stories are similar and the treatment of animals often barbaric. Various organisations have posted short films about the practices and standard abuses of animals within factory farms that take place in many countries (for example, Mercy For Animals has carried out numerous undercover operations in the US and Canada, which can be seen here, and Animal Equality has conducted similar investigations across Europe).

Why factory farms – why meat?

It is commonly claimed that we need to massively increase the amount of food we produce to feed a growing world population. Another claim is that chemical-intensive (GM) agriculture and factory farming is the only way to do this. These claims are erroneous.

The world already produces enough food to feed the anticipated increase in global population, and various official high-level reports state that small-scale/family farms using ecologically friendly methods are better placed to feed a growing population if adequately invested in (see this and this). Small farms already feed most of the world (see this as well), whereas factory farming belongs to a globalised model of chemical-intensive, mono-cropping and export oriented food and agriculture that produces and fuels food poverty and insecurity.

Moreover, if as a species we were to cut down on meat consumption or even eradicate it from our diet, we could feed the world more easily.

However, meat eating and factory farming are fuelled by government policies. The heavily subsidised meat industry has encouraged people, especially in the US, to eat more much meat than is necessary. A more healthy, non-meat based diet is being discriminated against due to the meat industry’s taxpayer-subsidised cheap meat (see this, this and this).

It comes as no surprise then that, according to the United Nations Population Fund, “Each US citizen consumes an average of 260 pounds of meat per year, the world’s highest rate. That is about 1.5 times the industrial world average, three times the East Asian average, and 40 times the average in Bangladesh.”

And all this meat eating has a huge impact.

A 2010 report from the United Nations Environment Programme’s International Panel of Sustainable Resource Management declared: “Impacts from agriculture are expected to increase substantially due to population growth and increasing consumption of animal products… A substantial reduction of impacts would only be possible with a substantial worldwide diet change, away from animal products.”

Livestock needs land, which places pressure on wildlife habitat and forest. Livestock is the world’s largest land user. Grazing occupies 26% of the earth’s ice-free terrestrial surface, and feed crop production uses about one third of all arable land. Producing 1kg of meat through typical industrial methods requires 20kg of feed for beef, 7.3kg for pork and 4.5kg for chicken (see this).

The above-mentioned 2010 UN report explained that western-type dietary preferences for meat would be unsustainable in future, given that the world population is forecast to rise to 9.1 billion by 2050. Demand for meat is expected to double by this date, and meat consumption is already steadily rising in countries such as China, which once followed more sustainable, vegetable-based diets.

David Pimentel, professor of ecology in Cornell University's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, implies a switch to a diet based on vegetable protein could have massive implications:

"If all the grain currently fed to livestock in the United States were consumed directly by people, the number of people who could be fed would be nearly 800 million."

According to Pimental, animal protein production requires more than eight times as much fossil-fuel energy than the production of plant protein while yielding animal protein that is only 1.4 times more nutritious for humans than the comparable amount of plant protein.

Far more energy is put into animals per unit of food than for any plant crop because cattle consume so much more grain as they produce as meat. Animal farms use nearly 40 per cent of the world’s total grain production. In the US, nearly 70 per cent of grain production is fed to livestock. If humans continue to eat more and more meat, it means we’re not just going to destroy more forest and use far more land and water, but we’re also going to manufacture more chemical fertilisers and pesticides to grow the feed. We will thus be creating far more pollution and greenhouse gases.

Meat and water

Meat production also places a great strain on fresh water, which is going to become an increasingly scarce resource in the coming years. John Anthony Allan, professor at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, argues that the average meat-eating US citizen consumes five cubic meters of water compared to half of that which vegetarians consume. But not all meat is equally water-intensive.

He adds that beef requires 15,500 litres of water per kilogram compared to chicken, which needs 3,900 litres per kilogram. So, at the very least, consumers could think about reducing their beef consumption since it requires the most unsustainable water footprint.

In her book, Stolen Harvests, Vandana Shiva says that for every pound of red meat, poultry, eggs and milk produced, farm fields lose about five pounds of irreplaceable top soil. She also states that the water necessary for meat breeding comes to about 190 gallons per animal per day, or 10 times what a normal Indian family is supposed to use in one day, if it gets water at all.

The great Ogallala aquifer in the US is the largest body of fresh water on earth. The water in it is left from the melted glaciers of the last Ice Age. It is not replenished from rainfall. Author John Robbins notes that more than 13 trillion gallons of water are taken from the aquifer every year. More water is withdrawn from the Ogallala aquifer every year for beef production than is used to grow all the fruits and vegetables in the entire US. Robbins states that it’s only a matter of time before most of the wells in Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Colorado and New Mexico go dry, and portions of these states become scarcely habitable for human beings.

Of course, much has also been written about the impact of modern agriculture on the climate as well as the massive adverse health, social and environmental impacts across South America, which supplies much of Europe with its (GM) animal feed and in doing so drives ecocide and genocide (see Helena Paul's piece in the link).

One last point should be made about the one billion cattle currently alive and the manure produced. In traditional, sustainable systems of agriculture, manure is part of a holistic cycle: it’s fertiliser. But in modern factory farms, this waste is not cycled through the farm because there’s just too much of it. Instead, waste is stored in manure ‘lagoons’, which emit methane and, even worse for the environment and climate, nitrous oxide.

For instance, in North Carolina hog production has increased faster than anywhere else in the US. The hogs produce over 19 million tons of manure each year and most of it gets stored in lagoons. Many of those lagoons flooded and burst when Hurricane Floyd swept through the region in 1999. Hundreds of acres of land and miles of waterway were flooded with excrement, resulting in massive fish kills and millions of dollars in clean-up costs. The lagoons' contents are also known to leak out and seep into groundwater.

Sustainable agriculture and less meat

Factory farming is now a global phenomenon. For example, just 40 years ago the Philippines’ entire population was fed on native eggs and chickens produced by family farmers. Now, most of those farmers are out of business. And because world trade rules encourage nations from imposing tariffs on imported products, they are forced to allow cheap, factory-farmed US meat into the country. These products are then sold at lower prices than domestic meat. There is therefore pressure for local producers to scale up and industrialise to compete.

The route to feeding the world sustainably and equitably depends on a model of agriculture that first and foremost is locally centred, serves local communities and is based on ecologically sound organic practices, including agroecology. In other words, a model of agriculture not dominated by factory farming, manipulated global markets, transnational agribusiness, commodity speculators, petrochemical interests and giant retailers as well as trade agreements and rules which act to undermine localised, smallholder farming (described here). It also involves cutting back on global meat consumption.

Small farms are more productive, more resilient and more beneficial to local economies than factory farms: they tend to ensure local food security, employ more people and money (and food) tends to stay within the locality. Yet, despite this, small farmers are being displaced and larger factory farms are being planned, which will employ fewer and fewer people, thus sucking the life from local communities. They will grab the lion’s share of taxpayer subsidies (as is the case, explained here and here) and send even more small farms to the wall.

Of course there is a lot more that could be said about the issues at hand, but, in finishing, we should not lose sight of two points that are key to this discussion.

First, neoliberal capitalism is sowing the seeds of humanity’s destruction. It is stripping the environment bare through unsustainable levels of consumption and institutionalised economic plunder, the latter of which involves the programmed eradication of indigenous, productive agriculture. In doing so, the world’s ability to feed itself is being destroyed.

And the destruction of rural livelihoods and communities is for what? Agriculture and food poisoned with chemicals and the mass incarceration of animals who suffering is hidden from public view; an urban-centric model of ‘development’ defined by greed and narcissism on the one hand and austerity and poverty on the other; all to be played out in polluted, congested mega-cities shaped by powerful private corporations which seek to colonise and mould the very essence of existence, from cradle to grave, from field to plate.

Second, there are deep-seated questions to be asked about how we as individuals personally regard our mass slaughter and wholesale exploitation of animals on factory farms. Should we be treating animals more humanely in agriculture, or should we even be producing animal products for eating at all? Even if our consciences can continue to live with this, in the long run it will be not only impractical to expand factory farming and increase meat consumption but, based on the evidence presented here, catastrophic to do so.