Cholesterol Ghost Everywhere

B. M. Hegde

This white, powdery, odourless and waxy substance does not even have any taste, but causes so much trouble for almost all those who have the habit of reading today's health magazines. It does not cause so much havoc for human health as it does to human happiness, as no literate man, woman or child escapes its horrors in print and electronic media. The headlines scream: "Cholesterol is one of the three controllable risks for heart attacks"-"You could be the next person to get the heart attack"-"Heart attacks are the biggest widow makers" etc. In addition, the Task Force on cholesterol screening divides human levels as desirable, borderline high and high. Who can escape the mental torture of all this propaganda?

Where is the truth? Truth always is the casualty when money business gets into any field, medicine not excluded. The business of cholesterol research and the cholesterol lowering drugs runs into billions of dollars. As Professor Pickering wrote years ago about the business of anti-hypertensive drugs, more people make a living off cholesterol than dying of it. Some of the researchers have built their empires on this substance. They are the same people who sit in committees of research, or the watch dog bodies overseeing research and also in the advisory panels (pay roll) of big drug companies. They are the ones who make the rules for screening, testing, research grant giving and also drug advice to patients and their doctors. This is a close knit circle of fellow travellers!

There are a few who see through their game but do not have the money, time and also the academic support to pursue their intuition further into the complicated research web that the vested interests have woven around them to protect themselves with that magic word "science". Occasional ones who dare to take them head on are being frustrated. In their heartland, the USA, a layman declared war on the establishment by publishing a direct assault on the academia in the national press ten years ago. He was Thomas Moore.1 Interestingly a practising cardiologist, Randall Marsh, from Greeley in Colorado wrote to support Moore's contentions ten years later.2 I wonder how many of you have read my repeated assaults on the cholesterol myth in many of my writings, books and innumerable medical talks to the establishment, long before Moore, both in India and abroad. Most of the readers take me to be a "therapeutic nihilist" or a cynic. Drug companies have an eye on me.3

The fundamental economics of all this boils down to the fact that anti-hypertensive and anti-cholesterol drugs are the two classes of drugs that the hapless victims have to take for the rest of their lives, a good business proposition for the drug manufacturers. Rest of the drugs are used to treat symptoms of diseases and they are used for a short time and when the symptoms disappear they are no longer used. So the companies bend over backwards to sell the former two classes of drugs. The latest craze in America is in the vitamin market. They are also to be taken life long from childhood to the time of death. Most of the companies are in this business. Every house has a large stock of all kinds of vitamins, although studies have shown that these do not do much good compared to extra intake of fruits and vegetables. The latter have many other hidden anti-oxidants in them comapred to the known A,C, and E vitamins sold in the pills.
In fact, I am only worrying about the millions of people who fall a prey to the blatant misuse of the academic machinery that pours fourth half truths, falsehoods and fearful misrepresentation of the truth in this field. May be they believe in the old saying that a lie repeated thousand times could be passed off as truth. "Truth could influence only half a score of men in a century while falsehoods and mystery will drag millions by the nose", said Aristotle centuries ago. Having met with Marsh recently and having studied Thomas Moore carefully, I think time has come for me to update the readers in this field.

Cholesterol is found in all foods of animal origin. There is no cholesterol in anything vegetarian. It is an integral part of the animal cell wall. If one remembers that millions of cells die everyday in the human body to be replaced by new ones, one would quickly realize the importance and need for cholesterol for man. Various hormones in the body are manufactured from cholesterol. Even if one does not eat cholesterol at all, human liver could make enough for the body's needs. 90% of the total cholesterol is made inside our liver and only 10% of it comes from the diet. Since cholesterol does not dissolve in water its transport inside the body needs a vehicle. The latter is usually the protein package-the lipoprotein. Cholesterol is found in all major lipoproteins, the Low Density Lipoprotein (LDL) and the High Density Lipoprotein (HDL). Usual range of normal cholesterol has been, since my college days, between 150-250 mg per deciliter. Recently the American bosses of cholesterol research thought it fit to change this time honoured normal range by declaring three levels for humans thus:4

less than 200 mg/dl.................DESIRABLE.
200-239 mg/dl.........................BORDERLINE-HIGH.
More than 240 mg/dl...............HIGH.

The story behind this is intriguing. My hunch is that there are at least 50-60 million Americans in the normal range of 200-250 mg, who by the above classification are not only frightened out of their wits, but come under the net for life long anti-cholesterol drug therapy. With the present drugs being sold at such phenomenal prices the catch would not be less than 10 billion dollars per year for the drug companies. Apart from this there does not seem to be any other valid reason in the medical literature to support this new found wisdom on the part of the cholesterol pundits!

Americans are tormented by reports that swear that if only every one of them either ate very low fat diet or took the wonder drugs to lower their cholesterol levels they would survive for all times. If not 30% of the two million deaths in America per year due to heart attacks would eat them up as well. The pamphlets tell them "THE ARTERIES BECOME NARROWER AND NARROWER, MUCH AS OLD WATER PIPES BUILD UP SCALY MINERAL DEPOSITS".
This analogy also helps another money spinner of coronary revascularisation. Lay people think that blocked coronaries are like blocked toilet pipes to be bypassed. Never do they realize that the body has its own wisdom to compensate for those long standing blocks, many of which start in early childhood, by providing collateral vessels and also remodeling the blocked vessels.

The blood supply to the heart muscle does not as much depend on the blocked four large coronaries on the surface of the heart that your doctor shows you on the x-ray(angiogram) as it does on the capacity of the millions of small vessels going directly into the muscle of the heart having a wide capacity to dilate excessively in case of reducewd supply from the larger vessels. This Flow Fraction Ration (FFR) is called CORONARY RESERVE, the latter could vary from one to another, the large surface vessel patency notwithstanding!

It is not the science of medicine that is bad but it is the "scientist" that twists the facts to suit his convenience that is bad and is the pain in the neck. Thomas Moore was bold enough to take them head on. Years later he was joined by the American College of Physicians (ACP) who had their own guidelines-much more saner than the horrendous guidelines of the Task Force- the Force put together to fight the cholesterol war-may be against the gullible public!5 The ACP guideline tried to correct the mistake done by the task force, but was severely criticized by the latter in no uncertain terms. If an equally qualified body like the ACP could come forward to rubbish the earlier guidelines on their own turf without much success, lesser mortals like me and Mr. Moore have very little hope of succeeding in our uphill task. But fight we must for the truth to come out. Here are the facts for all to see.

In the late eighty's a thinking American cardiologist, and a respected one at that, wrote an article in the American College of Cardiology Journal warning his colleagues about the fallibility of the task force guidelines. He said " if one were to very strictly follow the guidelines and eat no fat at all or take drugs to lower his cholesterol all his life, one could hope to live only for three days to three months extra on this planet!" Another great British expert on cholesterol, and a most respected one at that, Sir Michael Oliver, was so upset about the task force misrepresenting the Transatlantic Consensus Conference Data, wherein he was an important invited member, wrote an editorial in The Lancet, after coming back from the USA, entitled "Consensus or Non-senses Conference."

Let us look at the genesis of this myth.

“Lowering your cholesterol is next to impossible with diet, and often dangerous with drugs-and it won’t make you live any longer” said Thomas Moore in his article in the September 1989 issue of The Atlantic.

One morning in early October 1987 The US Health Department made a significant announcement that 25% of the US adult population had a very dangerous condition that has no symptoms, needing urgent medical treatment. Since there were no symptoms there is need to screen the whole population to identify those in danger. One in four adults would be on drugs for the rest of their lives. This was called the National Cholesterol Education programme.

At this stage no unequivocal evidence existed in science that lowering cholesterol would save lives! The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute must have spent about $ 300 million to get to this inconclusive stage of research. The total human subjects involved in research was a staggering 3,61,622 men and 60% of the Institute’s budget! At that point in time the only drug available was potentially dangerous and had no track record at all (Cholestyramine). In addition, the testing laboratories, even controlled by research bodies, could not deliver identical cholesterol reports, not to speak of the thousands of laboratories in the periphery.

“Nation’s clinical laboratories performance was so poor that millions of normal people were labelled high cholesterol victims.” wrote Moore.

This drama began in 1951 when Pentagon dispatched a team of pathologists to Korean war zone to study the autopsies of the young soldiers who were killed in the war. A large percentage of them had blocks of the coronary vessels at the young age of 22 years. This report by Major William F. Enos and Lieutenant Colonel Robert H. Holmes was the beginning of this sordid cholesterol drama. In Europe it had started after the second world war. 77% of the Korean war victims at the tender age of 20 had severe coronary artery blocks, which by today’s x-ray standards,would have warranted coronary artery bypass surgery. They were all very fit to be in the American army though and were unfortunately killed by the bullet!

Another drama was unfolding in yet another set up. Epidemiology has served medical science very well in detecting the cause of epidemics of infectious diseases. Cholera in London, typhoid Mary and many other examples could be given here. The same epidemiology applied to chronic degenerative diseases tells nothing about whether a particular person gets a particular disease; but it may identify groups of men at risk. However this was overlooked in all epidemiological diseases and today epidemiologists at times cause epidemics!

Such a scenario started in a remote small town of Framingham in Massachusetts way back in 1948.The Framingham experiments now being quoted everywhere in the world, “built a detailed portrait of coronary artery disease” from a very small sample of just 5,127 adults, of whom 404 died of heart attacks over a period of twenty-four years! There were so many loopholes that even the medical profession is not aware of. Many of the people did not come for regular check ups, the laboratory reports were not controllable over such a long period of time, while major changes took place in the laboratory technics themselves, so that their uniformity was lost completely. Although it was a sound study, its limitations in projecting it on to the world population are phenomenal, to say the least. While tidy mathematical charts and graphs using linear mathematics tell the tale of Framingham for lectures, lot of medical guess work went into the final conclusions.6, 7

A series of risk factors emerged out of this study, almost all of which have been shown to have no predictability for the future even for groups, leave alone individuals. Two of the major risk factors could never be changed- male sex and old age! So the war against all the minor and relative risk factors began from then on; one of them being the ghost of cholesterol which haunts every one even to this day, based on a study whose scientific validity is open to question. Advertisements, newspaper articles, books, and television talk shows kept up the tempo all over the world.

Life depends on cholesterol. All the life giving substances are derived from that chemical and that is why it is found in abundance in a hen’s egg. While it is true that all studies showed a direct relationship between rising cholesterol and heart attacks they also showed that extensive and fatal heart attacks could occur even in those with low cholesterol.

Be that as it may, the variations from laboratory to laboratory, even in the small group of research laboratories of the Task Force, were significant. The time of the day, the way blood is collected, whether taken sitting or supine, how long after collection was the analysis done, and even using diluants in blood, the diet that the patient was on just before taking blood and, of course, the laboratory which does the testing, could all change the results by as much as 10-18%. That, in itself, would make a man go from low to dangerously high levels, creating anxiety strong enough to provoke a heart attack!

The above statement does not take into consideration the quality of laboratories in the far flung areas of the world. Dr. D.M.Hegsted, of Harvard University, showed that a variation of 5-9% in serum cholesterol levels even in hospitalized patients, on uniform diet, was not unusual! The sub-fraction measurement of HDL and LDL was of no significance for use in clinical setting as shown by a group of researchers in Stanford where they found that 39% of the laboratories tested showed an error rate of 31%.

Then started the saga of lowering elevated cholesterol in the population. First attempts were by diet control. Very soon studies done even by the Framingham study group concluded: “There is, in short, no suggestion of any relation between diet and the subsequent development of coronary disease in the study group.” We have many other studies subsequently giving varied conclusions. Even the “Heat-Diet Pilot” of 1971 did not achieve significant success.

Then started the intervention trials with drugs. To sum up, all of them while showing a fall in fatal and non-fatal heart attacks in those whose cholesterol levels were significantly lowered by drugs, also showed a higher total death in the treated cohorts. The largest and the most expensive of them was the MRFIT study which cost $ 115 million and involved 250 researchers. The following facts emerged.8

* Behaviour of large groups of people could be changed.

* Drastic changes that the participants were made to make in their diets did not have any effect on the levels of cholesterol in their blood.

* No significant difference in deaths could be found in the treated group and the control after nine years of follow up as on 28th February 1982.

* In fact, slightly more deaths occurred in the treated group!

* In the control group deaths from heart attacks were 40% lower than expected in the beginning, showing how fallacious future predictions in linear mathematics could be. Doctors have been predicting the unpredictable.

At this point in time there was no scientific validity for all the advice given to patients. More studies followed. Another mile stone and expensive study was the Coronary Primary Prevention Trial (CPPT). It screened 4,80,000 middle aged men to select 3,810 subjects for this study over a period of three years.

Cholestyramine was the drug used in this study, but even the placebo used did have side effects. The drug, of course, had significant side effects. In Europe clofibrate was being used at the same time for the first large study, The Newcastle Edinburgh Study. CPPT and the MRFIT together cost the NIH a total of $ 494 million dollars! The CPPT trial did not show any significant benefit in the treatment group compared to the control group at 99% or even at 95% significant levels. Instead of admitting that, the researchers went in for a less exacting “one-tailed” test to compare the groups and came up with the startling statement that “ the study leaves little doubt about the benefit of cholestyramine therapy.” 9

Although there were dissenting voices at that stage, the Heart Institute went ahead and bulldozed the population with the National Cholesterol Education Programme. The American Medical Association and many drug companies assisted the Heart Institute’s efforts. While we believe that lowering one’s cholesterol is good there are disquieting reports that lowered cholesterol levels could be associated with cancer.10 While there is a possibility that it could be due to the original cancer itself, studies have shown low cholesterol levels in those who developed cancer even after 5-7 years. Japanese studies have also shown a higher rate of stroke in people with very low cholesterol levels.

Many powerful drugs have come on the scene since then, but almost all of them showed a higher total death at the end of the day in treated groups compared to the controls.11,12,13 The latest are the statins. They have not been there for long enough to be really tested like their predecessors. Among the cholesterol-synthesis inhibitors like lovastatin, were triparanol and compactin. The first was withdrawn hastily because it produced severe side effects like rapid cataracts, severe skin rashes and heavy loss of hair. Compactin was also withdrawn under a veil of secrecy, but thought to have given rise to high cancer rate in dogs. Europe had by then gone ahead with another drug Gemfibrozil with the same results- good effect on the cholesterol levels in the laboratory reports but slightly higher death rate in the treated group!

The original screenees of the MRFIT study have been followed up, all 3,61,662 of them by a group led by Jeremiah Stamler at the Northwestern University, 70 times larger than the Framingham data and people coming from eighteen US cities. Although the data here are not reliable as it depended on death certificates it did show that the hazards of high cholesterol are, if anything, only modest. The study, however, put out one statement which is being used and reused by all and sundry all over the world. The statement goes thus: “Each one per cent reduction in cholesterol will lead to two percent reduction in death due to coronary disease.” The truth is that this result was never seen in this study. What was observed was: “For each one percent increase in cholesterol level the risk of coronary disease could go up by two percent.” 1 The difference in these two statements is like the difference between lightening and the lightening bug!

Much water has flown under the bridge since these studies and there have been many more small big and medium studies carried out in many other parts of the world, but even today the wisdom of the medical profession could be summed up in the words of Eliot Corday in his article in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology in 1989.

* Cholesterol should be checked only if there are sound clinical indications.

* A mixed diet low in calories and saturated fat should be recommended along with some physical exercise.

* It is irresponsible to force public into a costly cholesterol reducing programme without firm scientific evidence.
To that I add mine:14

* Do not rely on one reading of the fat profile, check at least five to six times from different laboratories, if the original result was high.

* Indian vegetarian diet without much fried foods and other saturated fats and low salt is the ideal one for most people.

* Avoiding alcohol and tobacco is as important if not more important than worrying about cholesterol.

* Recent studies show the mind and its effects on the heart as more important risk factors than all the above mentioned ones. Keep your mind at peace. Hostility and depression are real culprits for heart attacks.

* Future prediction, using linear mathematics, as we do now in medicine is only a part time job, as the rest of the time you will have to try and keep your foot out of your mouth.

* Epidemiology does not tell us who in society would get any disease, as time evolves.

US 2015 Oil Production And Future Oil Prices

Gail E. Tverberg

Oil production can be confusing because there are various “pieces” that may or may not be included. In this analysis, I look at oil production of the United States broadly (including crude oil, natural gas plant liquids, and biofuels), because this is the way oil consumption is defined. I also provide some thoughts regarding the direction of future world oil prices.

Figure 1. US Liquid Fuels production by month based on EIA March 2016 Monthly Energy Review Reports.

US oil production clearly flattened out in 2015. If we look at changes relative to the same month, one-year prior, we see that as of December 2014, growth was very high, increasing by 18.0% relative to the prior year.

Figure 2. US Liquids Growth Over 12 Months Prior based on EIA’s March 2016 Monthly Energy Review.

By December 2015, growth over the prior year finally turned slightly negative, with production for the month down 0.2% relative to one year prior. It should be noted that in the above charts, amounts are on an “energy produced” or “British Thermal Units” (Btu) basis. Using this approach, ethanol and natural gas liquids get less credit than they would using a barrels-per-day approach. This reflects the fact that these products are less energy-dense.

Figure 3 shows the trend in month-by-month production.

Figure 3. US total liquids production since January 2013, based on EIA’s March 2016 Monthly Energy Review.

The high month for production was April 2015, and production has been down since then. The production of natural gas liquids and biofuels has tended to continue to rise, partially offsetting the fall in crude oil production. Production amounts for recent months include estimates, and actual amounts may differ from these estimates. As a result, updated EIA data may eventually show a somewhat different pattern.

Taking a longer view of US liquids production, this is what we see for the three categories separately:

Figure 4. US Liquid Fuel Production since 1949, based on EIA’s March 2016 Monthly Energy Review.

Growth in US liquid fuel production slowed in 2015. The increase in liquid fuels production in 2015 amounted to 1.96 quadrillion Btus (“quads”), or about 59% as much as the increase in production in 2014 of 3.34 quads. On a barrels-per-day (bpd) basis, this would equate to roughly a 1.0 million bpd increase in 2015, compared to a 1.68 million bpd increase in 2014.

The data in Figure 4 indicates that with all categories included, 2015 liquids exceeded the 1970 peak by 16%. Considering crude oil alone, 2015 production amounted to 98% of the 1970 peak.

Figure 5 shows an approximate breakdown of crude oil production since 1945 on a bpd basis. The big spike in production is from tight oil, which is another name for oil from shale.

Figure 5. Oil crude oil production separated into tight oil (from shale), oil from Alaska,
and all other, based on EIA oil production data by state.

Here again, US crude oil production in 2015 appears to amount to 98% of the 1970 crude oil peak. Thus, on a crude oil basis alone, we have not yet hit the 1970 peak.

Prospects for an Oil Price Rise

Most recent analyses of oil prices have focused on the amount of mismatch between supply and demand, and the need to craft a temporary agreement to reduce oil production. The thing that is missing in this discussion is an analysis of buying power of consumers. Is the problem a temporary problem, or a permanent one?

In order for oil product demand to keep rising, the buying power of consumers needs to keep rising. In other words, some combination of consumer wages and debt levels of consumers needs to keep rising. (Rising debt is helpful because, with more debt, it is often possible to buy goods that would not otherwise be affordable.)

We know that in many countries, wages for lower-level workers have stagnated for a number of reasons, including competition with wages in lower-wage countries, computerization, and the use of automation (Figure 6). Thus, we know that low wages for a large share of consumers may be a problem.

Figure 6. Chart comparing US income gains by the top 10% to income gains by the bottom 90% by economist Emmanuel Saez. Based on an analysis IRS data, published in Forbes.

Figure 7 shows that world debt has been falling since June 30, 2014. This is precisely the time when world oil prices started falling.

Figure 7. Total non-financial world debt based on Bank for International Settlements data and average Brent oil price for the quarter, based on EIA data.

One reason for the fall in world debt, measured in US dollars, is the fact that the US dollar started rising relative to other currencies about this time. Oil is priced in dollars; if the US dollar rises relative to other currencies, it makes oil less affordable to those whose currencies have lower values. The big rise in the level of the dollar came when the US discontinued quantitative easing in 2014. World debt, as measured in US dollars, began to fall as the US dollar rose.

Figure 8. World Oil Supply (production including biofuels, natural gas liquids) and
Brent monthly average spot prices, based on EIA data.

As long as the US dollar is high relative to other currencies, oil products remain less affordable, and demand tends to stay low.

Another issue that struck me in looking at world debt data is the way the growth in debt is distributed (Figure 9). Debt growth for households has been much lower than for businesses and governments.

Figure 9. World non-financial debt divided among debt of households, businesses,
and governments, based on Bank for International Settlements data.

Since March 31, 2008, non-financial debt of households has been close to flat. In fact, between June 30, 2014 and September 30, 2015, it shrank by 6.3%. In contrast, non-financial debt of both businesses and governments has risen since March 31, 2008. Government debt has shrunk by 5.6% since June 30, 2014–almost as large a percentage drop as for household debt.

The issue that we need to be aware of is that consumers are the foundation of the economy. If their wages are not rising rapidly, and if their buying power (considering both debt and wages) is not rising by very much, they are not going to be buying very many new houses and cars–the big products that require oil consumption. Businesses may think that they can continue to grow without taking the consumer along, but very soon this growth proves to be a myth. Governments cannot grow without rising wages either, because the majority of their tax revenue comes from individuals, rather than corporations.

Today, there is a great deal of faith that oil prices will rise, if someone, somewhere, will reduce oil production. In fact, in order to bring oil demand back up to a level that commands a price over $100 per barrel, we need consumers who can afford to buy a growing quantity of goods made with oil products. To do this, we need to fix three related problems:

-Low wages of many consumers
-World debt that is no longer rising (especially for consumers)
-A high dollar relative to other currencies

These problems are likely to be difficult to fix, so we should expect low oil prices, more or less indefinitely. Lack of oil supply may bring a temporary spike in oil prices, but it cannot fix a permanent problem with consumer spending around the world.

Australian government to call an extraordinary “double dissolution” election

Mike Head

After just seven months in office, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull today announced he would ask the governor-general—the head of state—for a “double dissolution” election for all seats in both houses of parliament, “most likely” to be held on July 2.

At his media conference, Turnbull said it was his intention to make a formal request to the governor-general to dissolve the House of Representatives and the Senate for such an election once the government had delivered the annual budget, which has been brought forward to May 3.

As a result, Australia is facing the first double dissolution election in three decades, and only the seventh since the country was established as a federation in 1901. Normally only half the Senate, the upper house of parliament, is up for re-election.

The Liberal-National Coalition government’s manoeuvre is a desperate attempt to break the parliamentary logjam in which its austerity measures have been blocked by the opposition Labor Party and the Greens, along with so-called independents or crossbenchers.

Amid a worsening economic situation, the government has been under intense pressure from the corporate and financial elite to slash social spending and conduct a broad offensive against wages and working conditions. At the same time, it faces intense popular opposition to further inroads into living standards, which the opposition parties and crossbenchers are seeking to exploit.

The immediate pretext for the election was a vote by the Senate yesterday for the second time to reject a government bill directed against construction workers. This gave the government the constitutional trigger—two rejections of a bill passed by the lower house—it needed to call such an election.

Turnbull set the stage for yesterday’s parliamentary sitting via a proclamation issued on March 21 by the governor-general, recalling parliament for an unscheduled three-week session to demand that the Senate pass the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC) Bill, or face a double dissolution.

By 36 votes to 34, the Senate last night rejected Turnbull’s ultimatum. Only hours after the parliament reconvened, four so-called independent senators joined Labor and Greens to defeat the bill, which would reestablish a body with draconian powers to interrogate construction workers, under threat of imprisonment, for taking any form of industrial action.

The selection of the ABCC bill as a double dissolution trigger is a warning of the government’s underlying agenda. While presented as a measure directed against the construction trade unions, the bill is aimed squarely at building workers themselves. It is part of the government’s attempt to address the demands of big business for a wider offensive against workers’ conditions and basic legal and democratic rights.

Immediately prior to the March 21 proclamation, the Turnbull government, supported by the Greens in the Senate, pushed through changes to electoral laws designed to make it more difficult for minor parties and independents to win seats in the upper house. The aim is to purge the Senate of crossbench senators.

Turnbull’s maneouvres could seriously backfire, however. Half a year after Turnbull deposed his predecessor Tony Abbott, who had failed to break through the political impasse, the Coalition government is increasingly discredited and unpopular. The election could well result in another “hung” parliament like that of 2010–13, with neither the Coalition nor Labor able to gain a majority in the House of Representatives, or a Labor victory.

Moreover, a double dissolution election will halve the statewide quota of votes normally needed to win a Senate seat, lowering it from about 14 percent to 7 percent of voters. Despite last month’s changes to the electoral laws, this could result in a greater number of “crossbench” senators being elected.

The extraordinary election move points to an intensifying political crisis. Not only is the government facing demands from big business for tough austerity measures, but it is under pressure from Washington to play a more aggressive role in the US “pivot to Asia” against China. In particular, the US is pressing for the Australian military to join in so-called “freedom of navigation” operations to directly challenge Chinese territorial claims in the South China Sea.

These demands have only intensified the dilemma confronting the Australian ruling class which is heavily reliant on China as its biggest export market, but remains dependent on the US as its longstanding ally to defend its strategic interests. Turnbull has just returned from his first trip to China as prime minister where he had to walk a fine line between promoting Australian business interests while at the same time toeing Washington’s line on the “pivot.”

Yesterday, however, Turnbull underscored the government’s agreement with Washington to meet another US demand, for increased military spending. On the first day of what has effectively become a 10-week election campaign, he announced the local construction of a new fleet of naval patrol boats.

The government and the media presented this as a “jobs” announcement. Turnbull declared that the boat contracts would “directly secure” more than 2,500 jobs for decades in South Australia and Western Australia. It was blatant pork-barrelling in two states where the Coalition fears heavy electoral defeats.

But the announcement is also part of a $40 billion commitment to build 42 new warships, including frigates, over the next decade. Within weeks, the government is also expected to name the successful bidder from competing Japanese, German and French contractors to build a $50 billion new submarine fleet.

Throughout the election campaign, every effort will be made by the political and media establishment to continue burying from public view the US preparations for war against China, and Washington’s escalating pressure on the Australian government to step up its involvement in the confrontation.

Nevertheless, the naval shipbuilding program is a warning that, amid the political crisis, the danger of war is escalating. In recent months, Labor has publicly called for Australian warships and planes to participate in the US-led “freedom of navigation” operations against China.

For electoral purposes, Labor, which began the slashing of health, education and welfare under the 2007–13 governments of Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, is attempting to capitalise on the popular discontent by making an anti-austerity pitch.

Labor leader Bill Shorten yesterday declared that Labor stood for “decent jobs,” “better schools” and healthcare, not “vested interests and the big banks.” In reality, Labor has assured the financial markets that it is committed to austerity. In response to last week’s warning of a credit rating downgrade by Moody’s, shadow treasurer Chris Bowen swiftly pledged to heed the message and take the “tough decisions” needed on revenue and spending.

In a revealing incident yesterday, Shorten was compelled to join the chorus of condemnation of one of his senior shadow ministers, Steven Conroy, for criticising the role of Governor-General Sir Peter Cosgrove in using his constitutional powers to summons the parliament to re-assemble yesterday.

Conroy had raised the spectre of former Governor-General Sir John Kerr, who invoked the “reserve powers” of the British monarchy to dismiss the Whitlam Labor government in 1975. Shorten sprang to Cosgrove’s defence, saying: “The governor-general has one of the most important roles in our democracy and that should be respected by everyone.”

The extreme sensitivity of the political establishment to any reference to the 1975 coup is an indication of the depth of the current crisis and the recognition in ruling circles that the broad, undemocratic powers held by the governor-general might have to be used again.

Doha oil talks collapse

Nick Beams

Global oil prices initially fell sharply after the collapse of talks between major oil-producing countries in Doha on Sunday, sparking fears of a return to the market turbulence that characterised the first two months of the year. Prices then steadied yesterday on the basis that supply would fall because high-cost producers were starting to be forced out of the market.

The failure of the talks, which had been expected to result in an agreement among the world’s major suppliers to hold production at last January’s levels and stabilise the market, came after Saudi Arabia made an about-turn and insisted that Iran had to be part of the deal.

Before the talks began, the Iranians had signaled they would not take part in any restrictions until their production returned to the levels reached before the imposition of sanctions that were lifted in January. On the eve of the meeting, Iran’s oil minister Bijan Zanhaneh said the reality of the country’s return to the oil market should be accepted. “If Iran freezes its oil production … it cannot benefit from the lifting of sanctions,” he said.

According to the International Energy Agency, Iran’s output was 400,000 barrels higher in March than it was at the start of the year. Iran has indicated that it wants to add a total of one million barrels of production this year.

Saudi oil minister Ali al Naimi appeared to have agreed that Iran would not be a part, at least initially, of any agreement. Delegates to the meeting said they had expected the Saudis to rubberstamp the deal. According to a report in the Financial Times, a “senior delegate” of the oil group, OPEC, said last month the Saudis would comply with a curb on production, even without Iran’s involvement.

However, when the talks opened, a second draft of the agreement was circulated. Directed against Iran, it indicated a freeze would only take place “as long as all OPEC members and major exporting nations” were unanimous on a deal.

This shift followed a major intervention by the 30-year-old Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, the second in line to the throne and the country’s defence minister. Bin Salman has been given wide powers by his father, the king. As well as being the youngest defence minister in the world, he has been placed in charge of the state oil monopoly. The New York Times reported in January that his “swift accumulation of power and influence” had “upended the usual power balance within the vast royal family.”

In an interview with Bloomberg, bin Salman insisted Saudi Arabia would not hold back production unless all oil producers, including Iran, did the same. He warned that his country could increase production immediately “if we wanted to.”

The crown prince’s intervention is directly related to the ongoing rivalry between the Saudi regime and Iran. One of his first actions after being appointed defence minister in 2015 was to organise the Saudi military intervention in Yemen against the Iranian-supported Houthi rebels.

The chief area of contention is Syria, where Saudi Arabia is working for the ousting of the Assad regime, which is supported by Iran.

The political tensions and conflicts were reflected in the responses to the break-up of the talks. They had been organised on the basis of an agreement in mid-February between Saudi Arabia, Russia, Venezuela and Qatar that something be done to halt the slide in oil. At one point earlier this year, the price fell below $30 per barrel, compared to the high of $115 per barrel as recently as June 2014. In the wake of those discussions on an output freeze, the price of oil rose to over $40 per barrel.

After the failed meeting, Russia’s oil minister, Alexander Novak, said he was “surprised” some OPEC members put forward new demands at the meeting. He added, in a thinly veiled criticism of Saudi Arabia, that Iran was not the cause of the collapse of the talks. Russia is allied with Iran in its support for the Assad regime in Syria.

Qatar’s oil minister Mohammed bin Saleh al-Sada tried to smooth over the differences, telling a press conference that the group of nations assembled at the meeting “needs more time” to reach an agreement. The next scheduled gathering is the OPEC meeting on June 2. That meeting will involve Iran but not Russia, which is not a member. Some OPEC members said if Iran agreed to join the production freeze at that meeting then talks with non-OPEC producers could resume.

While the failure of the talks appears not to have caused too much immediate turbulence—oil prices rebounded after initially falling by as much as 7 percent—the underlying instability of the market, fuelled by both political and economic tensions, remains.

In comments issued on the eve of the talks, oil industry historian Daniel Yergin, now vice-chairman of the market consultant IHS, said the fundamental issue was money because the revenues of oil-exporting countries had collapsed.

“In 2014, OPEC revenues were about a trillion dollars. Last year, they were half a trillion dollars. This year they’re on a course to be down another 20 percent,” he said. “This creates inordinate pressure on governments. Very difficult choices have to be made. Budgets have to be cut, credit ratings go down. There is a risk of social turmoil and problems.”

Besides the Saudi crown prince’s concern to deal a blow against Iran, these pressures may well have been at work in his intervention. In an interview with Bloomberg earlier this month, bin Salman set out a plan for establishing a Public Investment Fund (PIF) that will eventually control some $2 trillion. This would involve corporatising the state-owned oil giant Aramco and transferring its shares to the PIF, so that investments would become the source of Saudi revenue rather than oil sales.

The “restructuring” of the Saudi economy has already begun with a series of measures, taken at the end of last year, following the oil price plunge, to cut government spending and raise the price of fuel and electricity. Bin Salman told Bloomberg that the investment plan would be “very aggressive” and the PIF would be the world’s largest fund.

US announces new Iraq deployments

Thomas Gaist

US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter announced a further escalation of the US war in Iraq to include deployment of at least 200 additional troops, along with Apache helicopter gunships and artillery.

Carter’s announcement, made during an unannounced visit to Iraq, is the latest in a steady drumbeat of US escalations in Iraq and Syria, which now occur on a near-weekly basis. This is despite the fact that current troop levels are already well above the Obama administration’s official limit of 3,870. US forces are increasingly involved in conventional and large-scale ground combat, making a mockery of Obama’s numerous vows to the contrary.

Carter made clear that the deployments are part of a generalized escalation of the US wars in Iraq and Syria, continuing into the indefinite future. “We’ve gotten approval from the White House every time the chairman [of the Joint Chiefs of Staff] and I have gone to ask for something that we’ve needed to accelerate. So that really isn’t the issue for us, the issue for us is to identify more ways to accelerate the campaign.”

The additional US troops and heavy weaponry are being deployed in support of a joint US-Iraqi force overseen by American advisors. This force will use the reinforcements as part of an offensive for control of Mosul, Carter said. The new US forces will perform “training and advising” missions, and will embed themselves in frontline combat commands.

Carter’s announcement must be taken as a warning: a massive escalation of war in the Middle East and beyond is being readied for the period after the US elections in November. These plans—and the growing danger of world war—are being deliberately excluded from the election campaigns of both major parties and all of their candidates, including the supposed “socialist” Bernie Sanders.

The financial-corporate elite and the military-intelligence establishment do not want the war drive to become a topic of discussion in the elections, because they are well aware of the broad antiwar sentiment of the population. The exclusion of this, the most critical of all questions, highlights the antidemocratic character of the electoral process.

The additional US soldiers, drawn primarily from the US Army’s Special Forces, will link up with frontline Iraqi units as part of the preparations for “a punishing battle” to retake Mosul from ISIS, the Washington Post reported.

The US is also allocating an additional $400 million to fund Kurdish proxy forces in northern Iraq, which are being organized by US commandos and will be “critical in retaking Mosul,” Pentagon spokesman Jeff Davis said.

The Kurdish fighters, acclaimed by the Wall Street Journal on Monday as “the US’s most reliable partners in the fight against the Islamic State,” began carrying out regular airborne raids throughout northern Iraq this year, under the supervision of the “special targeting force” announced by Carter earlier this year.

The US plans to enlist regional states to assist American forces intervening in the ISIS-held regions of northern Iraq once Mosul and other ISIS-held cities are retaken, according to the Pentagon. Over the past year, the Pentagon has repeatedly announced measures to bolster the US military’s basing arrangements in Iraq, including the new firebases announced earlier this month as part of the “accelerated campaign against ISIS.”

The return of US forces to major combat operations, less than five years after the official “end” of the Iraq war, is aimed at propping up the US puppet regime installed after the 2003 invasion and reinforcing the US military presence in the oil-rich region. Having already lost significant parts of the north and west to ISIS forces, the Iraqi government faces a spiraling crisis, fueled by the fall in world oil prices. Oil exports account for more than 90 percent of Iraq’s revenues.

The decades of war crimes committed by Washington have wrecked Iraqi society nearly “beyond the point of repair,” according to a study by the Minority Rights Group International (MRG), which found that more than 8 million Iraqis are in dire need of humanitarian aid and more than 3 million remain internally displaced.

Hundreds feared dead as another refugee boat sinks in Mediterranean

Peter Schwarz

According to numerous news sources, another disaster involving a refugee boat took place Monday in the Mediterranean Sea. Italian President Sergio Mattarella spoke of several hundred deaths, while German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier confirmed over 300. Somalia’s ambassador in Egypt told BBC Arabic that there were 400 deaths.

Reports say the refugees came from Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Egypt and Sudan. They were reportedly traveling from Egypt to Italy in boats that were poorly equipped for the voyage.

The BBC published interviews with 41 survivors who said up to 500 people died. The survivors spoke to the BBC from the southern Greek city of Kalamata, where they are being held after their rescue. The news agency quoted Abdul Kadir, a Somali, as saying some 240 migrants left the Libyan port of Tobruk heading for Italy. He said that once out on the Mediterranean, traffickers made them move in the middle of the night onto a bigger wooden boat that already had at least 300 people on it. This boat then capsized.

The BBC quotes Muaz, from Ethiopia, saying, “My wife and baby drowned in front of me.”

At the time of writing, neither the Italian nor the Greek coastguard had confirmed the reports about the tragedy. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) and other voluntary organisations also had no information on it. However, Reuters cited a United Nations refugee agency official as telling Swiss broadcaster SRF that he knew of 40 survivors from what appeared to be the same incident.

In a separate incident, six bodies were recovered and 108 migrants rescued when a rubber dinghy sank off the coast of Libya, according to the organization SOS Mediterranean.

Experts have long been warning that another incident involving large numbers of deaths would occur in the Mediterranean. The responsibility for this lies with the European powers and the European Union, which are forcing refugees to take ever more life-threatening routes by sealing off Europe’s borders and largely suspending sea rescue programmes.

The US government is equally culpable, having led the 2011 war for regime change that killed some 50,000 Libyans, toppled and murdered Muammar Gaddafi, and plunged the entire country into a tribal civil war that continues to devastate Libyan society. The bloodletting and chaos have forced thousands of displaced and desperate Libyans and others fleeing imperialist wars in the Middle East and North Africa to make the perilous trip across the Mediterranean.

Just last week, in an interview with Fox News, President Obama called the current situation in Libya a “mess” and termed his failure to “plan for the day after” the overthrow of Gaddafi the worst “mistake” of his presidency. At the same time, he defended the US-NATO intervention as justified by “humanitarian” considerations.

The US-led war in Libya was not a “mistake”; it was one of the greatest war crimes of the young 21st Century.

On the same day as this latest tragedy, exactly a year ago, 18 April, 2015, the worst refugee boat disaster to date occurred, claiming more than 700 lives. Within the space of a single week, 1,200 refugees were drowned.

Even at the time, the EU accepted the deaths as a price worth paying, and even desired them, as the study “Death by Rescue: The Lethal Effects of the EU’s Policies of Non-Assistance at Sea,” released immediately prior to the latest catastrophe, has confirmed.

Researchers from Goldsmiths College (University of London), who evaluated internal EU documents and protocols, demonstrate in the study that the EU deliberately ignored the warnings of the border protection agency Frontex that the number of refugee deaths would increase when it ended the Italian Navy’s “Mare Nostrum” rescue mission in 2014, replacing it with the Frontex operation “Triton.” Within the framework of “Mare Nostrum,” some 150,000 refugees in distress at sea were brought to Italian territory, while “Triton” was aimed above all at deterring refugees.

Charles Heller, the co-author of the study, said in an interview to the Press Association, “Can we really qualify the ending of Mare Nostrum and its replacement by Triton, in all knowledge of the consequences this would have, as a mistake? I would rather argue that this was a case of institutionalised wilful neglect, and that European policymakers and Frontex have made themselves guilty of killing by omission.”

After last April’s catastrophe, many refugees sought to reach Europe via the Balkan route. Many lost their lives in the sea leg of this route, but the relatively short distance from Turkey to the Greek islands made the voyage less risky than the much longer journey from either Libya or Egypt to Italy across the Mediterranean.

With the sealing off of the Balkan route and the dirty refugee deal with Turkey, many migrants are once again risking the more dangerous route across the Mediterranean. The estimates of the number of refugees waiting for an opportunity to travel from Libya range from 100,000 to half a million. Despite bad weather, 24,000 have made it to Italy since the beginning of the year. In March alone there were 9,000, four times as many as the same month last year.

The EU is responding by strengthening efforts to deter refugees and at the same time using the refugee crisis as the pretext for new military interventions and imperialist wars of conquest. Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has proposed a refugee deal with African countries along the lines of the EU-Turkey agreement. At the weekend, he sent a proposal to this effect to EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and EU Council chief Donald Tusk.

According to the plan, the regimes in North Africa will accept the return of rejected asylum seekers, establish EU-funded detention camps and “secure zones” in Africa, and “manage” migration flows by separating refugees from economic migrants. In exchange, the regimes will receive billions, which Renzi proposes to fund via “EU migration bonds.”

To this end, the EU intends by military means to establish a puppet regime in Libya, led by the “government of national unity’s” Fayez Sarraj, who is currently based at the Abu Sitta naval installation near Tripoli but does not control his own territory. These plans were discussed yesterday evening at a meeting of EU foreign and defence ministers in Luxembourg, in which Sarraj participated by video link.

On 14 and 15 April, the Munich Security Conference met for the first time in Africa. Some sixty high-ranking officials from Africa, Europe and the United States, including several foreign and defence ministers, discussed how German and European security policy in Africa could in the long term resolve “the two great challenges with which it must currently concern itself—the refugee crisis and terrorism,” as the head of the security conference, Wolfgang Ischinger, told Die Welt.

“We require something drastic, an offensive under the heading: Europe creates security,” the veteran German diplomat and foreign policy expert declared, making it clear that this “offensive” could include military action.

Brazil’s impeachment crisis and the debacle of the Workers Party

Bill Van Auken

The vote to proceed with the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff conducted by the lower house of the Brazilian congress Sunday night marks the end of a political era and the opening up of a new period of intense class struggle in Latin America’s largest country.

For 13 years, the Brazilian ruling class has relied upon the Workers Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores—PT), first under its founder, former metalworkers union leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, and then under his handpicked successor, Dilma Rousseff, to defend the interests of Brazilian and international capital, while dampening social tensions with minimal assistance programs and the collaboration of the union bureaucracy.

The impeachment drive, carried out amid the country’s worst economic crisis at least since the Great Depression of the 1930s, arises fundamentally out of the determination of the ruling financial and corporate oligarchy, backed by US imperialism, to fundamentally alter class relations.

Rousseff, Lula and their supporters have charged incessantly that the move to impeach her on flimsy charges of manipulating state funding is tantamount to a “coup.” To the extent that it is a coup, carried out through a gross abuse of constitutional procedures, its chief conspirators are to be found not within the Brazilian military or the American CIA, but on the financial markets of Sao Paulo and Wall Street.

Brazilian stocks have gained more than 35 percent since the beginning of the year, largely on the back of the drive to impeach Rousseff, while the national currency, the real, rose more than 10 percent against the dollar.

On the eve of the impeachment vote, leading corporate and financial industry figures aggressively lobbied the Congress to assure a vote for impeachment in the lower house. Deputies who said that they would not be able to get to the session in the capital of Brasilia had private jets placed at their disposal.

The vote easily surpassed the two-thirds majority needed to pass the process onto the Senate—367 in favor compared to a total of only 146 “no” votes, absences and abstentions. Without missing a beat, Folha de S.Paulo carried an article headlined “Business demands unpopular reforms in six months,” laying out an agenda for a post-PT government headed by Vice President Michel Temer, the head of the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB). Among other things, it calls for the repeal of requirements that the government meet fixed funding levels for health care and education, a radical “reform” of retirement laws, a rewriting of labor laws and a new wave of privatizations, including at Petrobras, the center of the kickbacks-for-contracts scandal that has engulfed not only the PT government, but every major party. What is plainly being prepared is a frontal assault on the social rights and conditions of the Brazilian working class.

Sunday’s vote had the character of a grotesque carnival, steeped in reaction and hypocrisy, with deputies waving banners, chanting slogans and even setting off fireworks as they voted to impeach. With fully 60 percent in the lower house facing criminal charges, speakers railed against the corruption of Rousseff, while invoking God, their children and grandchildren, fear of sex being taught in school and the supposed heroism of the junta leaders and torturers of the dictatorship that ruled Brazil for more than 20 years after the US-backed coup of 1964.

As disgusting as the spectacle was, it hardly reflected well upon the PT leaders who were the target of these deputies’ ire. The most reactionary and corrupt among those backing impeachment were, until recently, the coalition partners of the Workers Party, and Lula himself had spent the previous week trying to win their favor with political bribes and promises.

In seeking to counter the “coup,” the PT was unable and, indeed, never wanted to mobilize the working class. Brazilian workers have suffered mass layoffs of over 100,000 a month over the past year, while inflation has eaten away at living standards. With the Rousseff administration imposing austerity measures, the PT government enjoys scant support.

The principal argument utilized by the PT leadership in attempting to deflect the impeachment drive was directed not to workers, but to the Brazilian bourgeoisie. According to Rousseff, a post-impeachment government under Temer would lack the “legitimacy” to enforce the sweeping “sacrifices” being demanded by the stock markets and big business. The PT itself was better suited for the task, utilizing its partners in the unions and various institutionalized “social movements” to smother social upheavals.

While it appears certain that the Senate will accept the impeachment case against Rousseff, requiring a simple majority vote and triggering her suspension for 180 days until the upper house reaches a final judgment, it is far from clear that Temer and his allies will prove capable of restoring stability for capitalist rule. Temer—nicknamed “Dracula” for his marked resemblance to Bela Lugosi in that role—himself faces impeachment charges, and the second and third in line of succession are up to their necks in the Petrobras scandal.

Of decisive importance for the Brazilian working class is an assimilation of the bitter lessons of the protracted betrayal carried out under the banner of the PT. Before there was a Syriza to betray the Greek workers and impose the dictates of European finance capital, and before there was a Podemos being groomed to carry out a similar betrayal in Spain, there was the Brazilian Workers Party.

Founded in 1979, in the midst of massive industrial strikes and a growing student movement that shook the foundations of the military dictatorship, the PT served as a vehicle for diverting these tumultuous struggles back into the safe channels of bourgeois politics. As the apparatus of the party and the affiliated CUT union federation grew, it became ever more firmly rooted in the interests of a privileged middle-class layer and increasingly hostile to those of the working class.

As with Syriza and Podemos today, a host of pseudo-left organizations promoted the PT as an alternative to the building of a revolutionary party of the Brazilian working class based on the perspective of socialist internationalism. The PT, they argued, offered a new peaceful Brazilian road to socialism.

Central to this political operation were the efforts of a collection of organizations calling themselves socialist and even Trotskyist, all of which had, in an earlier period, broken with the International Committee of the Fourth International, the world Trotskyist movement. They touted Castroism and petty-bourgeois guerrillaism as the new road to power, with disastrous results throughout Latin America.

The followers of the French revisionist Pierre Lambert, the Argentine Nahuel Moreno and the Pabloite United Secretariat of Ernest Mandel all liquidated themselves into the PT. Some were expelled as the party turned ever further to the right, while others have managed to remain inside to this day, among them individuals implicated in the party’s successive corruption scandals.

The drive to impeach Rousseff is a sharp warning to the Brazilian working class. Workers can defend their rights only through a conscious break with the PT and the CUT, which are instruments not for waging the class struggle but for suppressing it.

What is required is a political rearming of the working class and the construction of a new revolutionary leadership, based on a relentless critique of the political tendencies and perspectives that were responsible for the debacle of the PT.

This means building a Brazilian section of the International Committee of the Fourth International, whose decades-long defense of Marxist and Trotskyist principles provides a powerful foundation for forging a new revolutionary leadership dedicated to unifying the working class internationally against capitalist exploitation, oppression and war.

The Ludicrous European Parliament Vote on Glyphosate

Georgina Downs

The European Parliament vote has seemingly recognised the risk to the health of transient bystanders and non-professional users of pesticides, but left at risk from exposure and adverse impacts the group with one of the highest levels of exposure, which is rural residents living in the locality of sprayed crop fields.

Agricultural use is by far and away the largest sector not only here in the UK but also across Europe regarding the use of glyphosate.

There are many millions of rural residents across the EU (including babies, children, pregnant women, the elderly, people already ill and/or disabled) who have no protection at all from exposure to this (or indeed any other) pesticide that is often sprayed in the locality of residents’ homes and gardens.

Although Roundup is probably the most well-known glyphosate product there are in fact 431 products currently approved for use in the UK containing glyphosate, the majority of which are for use on farm crops.

The latest Government statistics on pesticide usage show that in 2013 the total area treated with glyphosate on all crops in Great Britain was 1,743,735 hectares, with the total weight applied being 1,471,997 kg.

The original text of the resolution that the European Parliament was voting on last week had already recognised that “76 % of the use of glyphosate worldwide is in agriculture” and that “the general population is exposed primarily through residence near sprayed areas.”

Despite this rural residents will be rather perplexed to know that although MEPs voted not to approve glyphosate for various non-agricultural and non-professional uses, as well as for no approval in or close to public parks, playgrounds and public gardens, re-approval has seemingly been supported by MEPs for the agricultural use of glyphosate in the locality of residents’ own homes and gardens.

It is absurd for all those concerned about the health risks and harm of glyphosate to argue for non-approval of glyphosate in the non-agricultural sector to protect the health of what are effectively short term bystanders and yet for rural residents who are one of the highest exposure groups (far higher than for bystanders!) compromise amendments were tabled and adopted that have resulted in MEPs support of the re-approval of glyphosate on crop fields in the locality of residents’ own homes.

So called IPM (Integrated Pest Managment) referred to in one of the adopted compromise amendments is a red herring and will change nothing significant as it is system that still uses pesticides to some degree whichever definition one goes by.

If the health risks and harm of glyphosate is recognised for some lesser exposure groups it is ridiculous to then not recognise it for one of the highest exposure groups which is rural residents living in the locality of sprayed fields.

If glyphosate re-approval is refused for certain uses because of the risks to human health then it should be in relation to the use of glyphosate full stop!

No doubt many so called environmental NGOs will hail the European Parliament vote as a “victory“ but it certainly isn’t for rural residents, nor regarding the biggest sector for glyphosate use which is agriculture!