Thousands of civilians in danger as US-backed forces mount offensives in Iraq and Syria

Bill Van Auken

Aid groups are warning that at least 50,000 civilians are in danger of being “caught in the crossfire” in Fallujah as it is subjected to constant US-led air strikes along with artillery barrages, and forces loyal to the Washington-backed government of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi along with Shia militias encircle the central Iraqi city.

The predominantly Sunni city, which is about 40 miles west of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, has been occupied by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) since January 2014. It has now been targeted by the Iraqi government as part of a desperate bid to contain mounting political opposition from within Baghdad’s impoverished Shia population as well as from militia groups, including those aligned with the Shia cleric Moqtada al Sadr.

Within the last month, crowds numbering in the thousands have twice stormed Baghdad’s Green Zone, the heavily fortified seat of the Iraqi government. On the second occasion, on May 20, security forces repulsed the protesters with live fire, killing four and wounding hundreds.

Along with denunciations of the government for rampant corruption and a failure to provide essential services, the protesters have condemned it for failing to secure the capital from terrorist attacks, which have killed at least 200 this month, most of them in poor Shia neighborhoods.

Iraqi officials have claimed that the terrorist attacks have their origin in ISIS-controlled Fallujah, and the offensive is designed to show that it is doing something to halt these atrocities.

While the US military is providing air support for Iraqi government troops advancing on Fallujah—and denying it to the Shia militia forces of the Hashd al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilization Units), which work closely with Iran—Pentagon officials have made it clear that the siege of Fallujah is seen by Washington as a diversion from the principal strategic target in Iraq, the much larger city of Mosul in the north.

“You do not need Fallujah in order to get Mosul,” US Army Col. Steve Warren, the spokesman for the US military forces in Iraq and Syria, told the Reuters news agency in a telephone interview.

Nonetheless, Washington is supporting in Fallujah precisely the type of murderous siege that it has accused the government of President Bashar al-Assad of waging against areas controlled by the Western-backed Islamist “rebels” in Syria.

At least 21 civilians were reported killed in the US-led bombardment of Fallujah on Monday and Tuesday.

The population of Fallujah, which was the scene of bloody US sieges in 2004, has been subjected to bombardment for the last two years. Government forces have cut off supply routes to the city, depriving it of food, health care and other basic necessities. There are reports that substantial numbers of civilians are on the brink of starvation.

The Association of Muslim Scholars of Iraq, a militant Sunni organization formed in 2003, denounced the new offensive against Fallujah as “an unjust aggression, a reflection of the vengeful spirit that the forces of evil harbor against the city.” It reported in a statement that 10,000 Fallujans have been killed or wounded by government bombs and shells over the past two years.

While staying in Fallujah may entail starving to death, those who flee risk being killed by either ISIS or Iraqi government forces. As few as 80 families have managed to flee Fallujah.

The United Nations refugee agency has expressed concern over Iraqi government forces separating men and older boys from women and children, taking them to the Habbaniyah Military Base for “security screening.”

While the siege of Fallujah tightens in Iraq, a simultaneous offensive has been reported in the area north of the ISIS-held Syrian city of Raqqa.

Backed by US air strikes and accompanied by US special operations “advisors,” a force of several thousand fighters have begun advancing 30 miles to the north of the city. The Pentagon has described these fighters as belonging to the Syrian Democratic Forces, which is overwhelmingly dominated by the Kurdish People’s Protection Forces, or YPG.

The offensive was prepared by a secret visit to the Kurdish-controlled region of Syria by General Joseph Votel, the head of US Central Command, which oversees the US wars in the Middle East and Central Asia. Votel met with both Kurdish commanders and some of the hundreds of US special operations troops now on the ground in Syria.

The visit prompted an angry response by the Turkish government, Washington’s NATO ally, when Votel visited Ankara immediately after his unannounced foray into Syria.

Gen. Yasar Guler, the deputy chief of the Turkish General Staff, reportedly warned Votel against reliance upon the YPG, which Ankara fears will consolidate an independent Kurdish entity on its border. Instead, he proposed that Washington intensify its support for “moderate” Islamist rebels, forces which are largely dominated by either ISIS or the Al Nusra Front, Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate.

The group Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently, which regularly denounces ISIS atrocities against the city’s population, reported that US warplanes had dropped leaflets over the northern suburbs of the town, warning their inhabitants to flee the area.

The group pointed out, however, that there were no safe areas or access routes for such an exodus, adding via Twitter that the US reliance on the Kurdish dominated Syrian Democratic Forces to wage the offensive had pushed “a lot of people to join ISIS to defense of their city.”

Just as in Mosul and other predominantly Sunni areas of Iraq where the Iraqi army is seen as a hostile occupying force dominated by Shia interests, so in Raqqa, the SDF is seen as a hostile force dominated by Kurdish interests. In both areas, the local population fears, with reason, that they will be subjected to ethnic cleansing and driven from their homes.

In Iraq, there is already the example of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, whose “liberation” entailed the destruction of at least 70 percent of the city’s buildings. Since ISIS was driven out in December of last year, less than 15 percent of Ramadi’s previous population has been able to return.

The unfolding US-backed offensives in Iraq and Syria expose the catastrophe into which decades of US imperialist wars have plunged the entire region. The divide and conquer strategy employed by the US occupation in Iraq deliberately stoked sectarian tensions that have riven the country. Similarly in Syria, Washington and its regional allies have backed sectarian Sunni Islamist militias in a war that has claimed at least a quarter of a million lives.

Whatever the tactical victories achieved against ISIS, they will only exacerbate these divisions. US imperialism will continue its attempt to exploit them to further a military intervention whose underlying aim is not a struggle against terrorism, but rather the assertion of US hegemony over the Middle East and its immense oil wealth.

Apply. The 2016 BCFN Foundation Scholarship for Food and Nutrition Researchers

Application Deadline: July 27, 2016 11:59 p.m. Eastern time.

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: Global

To be taken at (country): Italy

Brief description: The BCFN Foundation has opened the research competition BCFN YES! 2016. For a grant of €20,000, researchers from across the globe are invited to put forward projects and concrete solutions on the themes of food and sustainability.The BCFN Foundation has opened the research competition BCFN YES! 2016. For a grant of €20,000, researchers from across the globe are invited to put forward projects and concrete solutions on the themes of food and sustainability.

Eligible Field of Study: The BCFN YES! Research Grant Competition offers the opportunity to put into action concrete proposals that will have the objective of making more sustainable one or more themes of the agri-food system (in terms of environmental, social, health and/or economic aspects). Among others, the following areas of particular interest are considered:

• Sustainable and healthy diets;
• Urban food systems and policies;
• Resilient agriculture, land use change and agroecology;
• The nexus between climate change, energy and food;
• Sustainable water management;
• Food supply chains;
• Ecosystems and ecosystem services;
• Healthy lifestyles;
• Food waste reduction;
• Food policy development;
• Food security: availability, access, utilisation, stability;
• Communication technologies and networks;
• Youth and women’s involvement in agriculture;

About the Award:The BCFN Foundation is strongly committed to addressing the future challenges of food. The Foundation is focused on reducing hunger, fighting food waste, and promoting healthy lifestyles and sustainable agriculture. In 2015, with the help of the BCFN Alumni –young thought leaders from 20 countries representing five continents – the BCFN Foundation drafted the Youth Manifesto on Food, People and the Planet. The document resulted from an intense workshop in which the young pictured change through seven key roles for the food system: policymakers, farmers, activists, educators, the food industry, journalists and researchers.

Type: PhD and postdoctorate Degree

Eligibility: 

• Students/applicants who are currently pursuing doctoral degrees are eligible, as well as researchers/applicants with a PhD or a doctoral degree received after December 2014.
• All the Participants must be under the age of 35 at the date of December 31, 2016.

Selection Criteria: The BCFN YES! Research Grant Competition Evaluation Committee will evaluate the proposals with the assistance of additional members (experts in specific sectors) in those cases where the methodology warrants. The proposals will be judged on:

• Consistency with the topic areas and the BCFN Foundation’s mission;

Significance of the problem; – Design of the study; – The investigator’s qualifications (possession of the requisite skills); – The appropriateness of the schedule and the likelihood that the work will be accomplished on time; – Completeness of the application. Submissions will be disqualified if they exhibit one or more of the following: – Lack of adherence to submission requirements; – Poor quality in the writing; – Poor organization of material; – Lack of specificity on required elements; – Lack of appropriate instrument samples; – Lack of appropriate theoretical framework

Number of Awardees: Three (3)

Value of Award: The Recipients shall present a preliminary report at the February 2017 first BCFN Advisory Board Annual Meeting. Upon submission by the Recipients to the Advisory Board of the BCFN Foundation of quarterly reports documenting the progress of the Research, BCFN Foundation will pay the grant in two periodic installments as the research progresses:

• The first tranche (10,000 €) after the winning ceremony – December 2016;
• The second tranche (10,000 €) after BCFN advisory board meeting – July 2017

How to Apply: BCFN encourages submission of:

• Either new or ongoing research projects;
• Either unfunded proposals projects that are co-financed by a research institute, trust, foundation, university, private companies, venture capital funds angel investors. Details of research timeline and supplemental sources of financial support should be specified in the application form.  Go here to register for the competition.

Visit Award Webpage for details

Award Provider: Barilla Centre for Food and Nutrition (BCFN)

Important Notes: Contestants should read the Competition Documentation before applying.

Cocky-Doody Politics and World Affairs

Marc Estrin

Reading through Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick’s minutely sourced and annotated book, The Untold History of the United States, I was struck by the language and thought-structures enunciated by our leaders concerning issues impinging on them.

Truman, for instance, on civil rights: “I think one man is as good as another so long as he’s honest and decent and not a nigger or a Chinaman.” (He regularly referred to Jews as kikes, to Mexicans as greasers.)

When Oppenheimer expressed to Truman his misgivings about having developed the atomic bombs, the president told his chief of staff, “I don’t want to see that son of a bitch in this office ever again.” He later called Oppenheimer a “crybaby scientist”.

When Elliot Roosevelt, FDR’s son, once spoke out against one of his policies, Truman characterized him as the “product of a piss-erection”, and chided the “damned fool congressmen crying like a bunch of women” over “nothing but a bunch of bullshit.”

This was the man whose finger did press the button.

JFK. the Hahvad aristocrat with his royal wife? When he found that Khrushchev had declared he would resume nuclear testing JFK erupted, “Fucked again!” His advisors urged him to hold off responding in kind so that they could score a propaganda victory, but Kennedy brushed them off, exclaiming “What are you? Peaceniks? They just kicked me in the nuts. I’m supposed to say that’s okay?”

When the President invited the Chiefs of Staff in to thank them for their support during the Cuban missile crisis, there was (McNamara reporting) “one hell of a scene.” Curtis LeMay came out saying, “We lost. We ought to just go in there today and knock them off!” But Kennedy viewed the outcome differently. He privately boasted that he had cut Khrushchev’s balls off.”

LBJ? Well we know about him. Still, some of his locutions are worth meditating on. Concerning the Communists: “If you let a bully come in your front yard, be on your porch the next day and the day after that he’ll rape your wife in your own bed.”

Concerning his own intelligence operatives: “Let me tell you about these intelligence guys. When I was growing up in Texas, we had a cow named Bessie. I get her in the stanchion, seat myself and squeeze out a pail of fresh milk. One day I’d worked hard and gotten at full pail of milk, but I wasn’t paying attention and old Bessie swung her shit-smeared tail through that bucket of milk. Now, you know, that’s what these intelligence guys do. You work hard and get a good program policy going, and they swing a shit-smeared tail through it.”

When the Joint Chiefs recommended mining Hai Fong harbor, Johnson started screaming, “You goddamn fucking assholes. You’re trying to get me to start World War III with your idiotic bullshit – your ‘military wisdom.’” He insulted each of them individually. “You dumb shit. Do you expect me to believe that kind of crap? I’ve got the weight of the free world on my shoulders and you want me to start World War III?” He called them shitheads and pompous assholes and use the F-word more freely than a Marine in boot camp he really degraded them and cursed at them. So reported a military man in attendance.

When Sen. George McGovern warned that the bombing might provoke strong responses by both the Chinese and the North Vietnamese, Johnson responded, “I’m watching that very closely. I’m going up for leg an inch at a time…I’ll get to the snatch before they know what’s happening.”

Johnson would not stand insubordination. “I don’t want loyalty. I want LOYALTY!,” he said of one aide. “I want him to kiss my ass in Macy’s window at high noon and tell me it smells like roses. I want his pecker in my pocket.”

Good one. Onward in statecraft:

Nixon and Kissinger decided to bypass the “impossible fags” in the State Department and run foreign policy out of the White House. He advised Kissinger to disregard Africa. “Henry,” he said, “let’s leave the niggers to Bill Rogers and will take care of the rest of the world.” He assured Chilean Ambassador Edward Korry that he was going to “smash that son of a bitch Allende.”

And of course the Yalie in the cohort, George W, who popped unexpectedly into a meeting between Condoleeza Rice and a bipartisan group of senators and exclaimed, “Fuck Saddam. We’re taking him out.” He told press secretary Ari Fleischer, “I’m going to kick his sorry motherfucking ass all over the mid-East.”

I guess he did.

As one might expect, Obama’s potty-mouth is more Harvard educated, but equally spewing of shit:

Announcing the “end” of the Iraq war in 2011, he declared, “We’re leaving behind a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq, with a representative government that was elected by its people,” he told the troops at Ft. Bragg, praising their “extraordinary achievement.” The “most important lesson,” he declared was “about our national character… that there’s nothing we Americans can’t do when we stick together….And that’s why the United States military is the most respected institution in our land.” He commanded their willingness to sacrifice “so much for a people that you had never met,” which, he insisted, was “part of what makes us special as Americans. Unlike the old empires, we don’t make these sacrifices for territory or for resources. We do it because it’s right. There can be no fuller expression of America’s support for self-determination than our leaving Iraq to its people. That says something about who we are.”

Surely that speech does.

And we freak out at presidential primary talk about the size of Donald Trump’s hands, or the fictive throwing of a chair. Trump wants to kill Syrians. Bernie wants the Saudis to do it.

In 1946, Lewis Mumford wrote:

“Soberly, day after day, the madmen continue to go through the undeviating motions of madness: motions so stereotyped, so commonplace, that they seem the normal motions of normal men, not the mass compulsions of people bent on total death. Without a public mandate of any kind, the madmen have taken it upon themselves to lead us by gradual stages to that final act of madness which will corrupt the face of the earth and blot out the nations of men, possibly put an end to all life on the planet itself. ….

“Why do we let the madmen go on with their game without raising our voices? Why do we keep our glassy calm in the face of this danger? There is a reason: we are madmen too. We view the madness of our leaders as if it expressed a traditional wisdom and common sense: we view them placidly, as a doped policeman might view with a blank tolerant leer the robbery of a bank or the barehanded killing of a child or the setting of an infernal machine in a railroad station. Our failure to act is the measure of our madness. We look at the madmen and pass by.”

From the Green Revolution to GMOs: Living in the Shadow of Global Agribusiness

Colin Todhunter

What can we do about the powerful transnational agribusiness companies that have captured or at the very least heavily influence regulatory bodies, research institutes, trade agreements and governments? How can we assess the safety and efficacy of GMOs or their other technologies and products when narratives and decision-making processes have become distorted by these companies?

Through the ‘green revolution’ chemical-intensive model of agriculture these corporations and their powerful backers promoted and instituted, they have been able to determine what seeds are to be used by farmers, what is to be grown and what inputs are to be applied. This, in turn, has adversely affected the nutritional content of food, led to the over-exploitation of water and diminished drought resistance, degraded soil, undermined biodiversity, polluted the environment, destroyed farmers’ livelihoods and so much more: with 60 years’ farming experience behind him, Bhaskar Save outlined many of these impacts in his open letter to Indian officials some years back.

These powerful corporations increasingly hold sway over a globalised system of food and agriculture from seed to plate. And with major mergers within the agribusiness sector in the pipeline, power will be further consolidated and the situation is likely to worsen. While scientific innovation has a role to play in improving agriculture, the narrative about farming has been shaped to benefit the interests of this handful of wealthy, politically influential corporations whereby commercial interest trumps any notion of the public good.

The green revolution has proved to be disastrous in many areas (for example, see this, this and this). If the technology involved had been used more judiciously and genuinely in the public interest – and had not been married to geopolitical interests resulting in the creation of food deficit regions or instituted for the commercial gain of corporations – would we not now be in a better position? And would organic farming and agroecology have received greater attention and investment and be playing a much greater role (as research shows they should), even a dominant one, in agriculture?

Instead, while transnational agribusiness pays lip service to promoting a mix of different farming systems, alternative models are marginalised and continually discredited. PR replaces fact. Wild claims are made about the successes of the green revolution (or GMOs), which certainly should not be accepted at face value, and fail to acknowledge the massive external costs of this model.

How can the public, governments and regulatory agencies really evaluate the efficacy of technologies like GMOs when commercial interests continue to distort the narrative and hide behind slick public relations messages that are intended to mislead and misinform, while at the same time they co-opt politicians, trade policies, scientists and research?

There is of course enough independent evidence indicating the dangers, failures and shortcomings of GMOs to make anyone at least question the claims and motives of the industry, but this does not prevent the industry and its lobbyists misrepresenting the issue, smearing critics and using its enormous wealth and political clout to get GMOs onto the commercial market (see this), while suppressing research that is critical of its claims and technologies.

If we are ever going to have a system of food and agriculture that serves the interests of farmers, rural communities and consumers, rather than the interests of unaccountable corporations (that profit at the expense of human life) or extremely wealthy individuals like Bill Gates and others, we require transparency, accountability and a system of decision making that does not take place within the overbearing shadow of commercial influence.

With reference to GMOs, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI) (M) recently alluded to some of the issues mentioned above by stating:

“… there should not be any commercial release of GM crops without ensuring safety for humans, animals and the environment… The seed monopolies and agribusinesses only aim to maximise profits. They are not concerned about bio-safety or issues like biodiversity or the environment.”

The statement, which can be read in full here, continues:

“The Indo-US Knowledge Initiative in Agriculture with agribusinesses like Monsanto, WalMart, Archer Daniels Midland, Cargill and ITC in its Board made efforts to turn the direction of agricultural research and policy in such a manner as to cater their demands for profit maximisation. Companies like Monsanto during the Vietnam War produced tonnes and tonnes of “Agent Orange” unmindful of its consequences for Vietnamese people as it raked in super profits and that character remains.”

That character remains because the aim is always to maximise profit for shareholders.

In addition to promoting and supporting local food self-sufficiency and agroecology and shielding agriculture from the destructive impacts of manipulated trade and international commodity markets, what is also required to counter the power of these corporations is a leading role at national state level for the carrying out of public research that is free from the influence of commercial interests.

Again, focusing on GMOs, the CPI (M) continues:

“Hence we are of the opinion that all such experiments should be done exclusively by the public sector and the government institutions and no multinational corporations or monopoly agribusinesses should be allowed to undertake field trials… The government is facilitating profiteering by MNCs without addressing the concerns about bio-safety, monopoly control over seeds and having a fool-proof regulatory mechanism in place… the introduction of any such innovation… should be predicated on sound research and verification of claims open to public scrutiny.”

And in testing such claims, it should be not only the safety and environmental impacts of technologies that are taken into account, but also the potential effects on farmers, self-sufficiency, food security, biodiversity, nutrition, local economies and sustainability.

This approach should be based on democratic accountability and transparency and applies not only to India, but is also relevant for the US, Africa, Europe and every other country or region where transnational agribusiness has co-opted politicians and other key figures and bodies and behind the scenes has colluded with governments and agencies to gets its products onto the market.

India continues to dismantle its agriculture for the benefit of Western agribusiness at the behest of the World Bank, and what has happened in Africa has been described as a case study of how doctrinaire economics served corporate interests to destroy a whole continent’s agriculturally productive base.

If we do not strive to follow the route advocated for by the CPI (M) (and others, of course) on a global basis, we will have giant agribusiness conglomerates continuing to steam roll governments, farmers and the public into accepting patented seeds, poisonous chemicals, degraded environments and a centralised food production system that for the sake of profit (and geopolitical gain) aims to eradicate or marginalise traditional agriculture and successful alternative models across the globe.

Pain: Man’s Greatest Enemy

B M Hegde

Pain has been man’s greatest enemy from time immemorial and shall be so for all times to come. Pain is also the best method the body can convey that all is not well with the owner to urge him/her to take some remedial action.

The physiology of pain is still not fully understood although from time to time people discover something new to evolve a drug treatment method. Pain killers, as they are called, are the real killers. Aspirin, the first pain killer to the latest complicated pain killers that the greedy drug industry has researched are making a big business, but are the leading killers in the adverse drug reactions (ADR) list. Some of them had to be withdrawn from the market as they led to heart attacks and heart failure even up to five years after their administration!

The dark side of pain killer research is that the most powerful pain killer, morphia, has recently been shown to act through its placebo effect ONLY! (Sc. Transl. Med 2011; 3:70) After this elaborate study from four universities was published I had a new thought on pain management. Why not we use the body’s capacity to contain pain as a tool in treatment? I thought seriously about making use of exercise as a mode of pain treatment. Conventional thinking in medicine was (is) that any bodily injury or disease needs complete rest for good recovery. This myth was blown off by one of my former teachers, Professor Bernard Lown, who invented the first chair treatment for heart attack patients in 1952. Up until then heart attack patients were put to bed permanently, mostly to meet their maker in heaven sooner than later through deep vein thrombosis!

This did not attract as much curiosity as the then American President Eisenhower’s heart attack three years into his first presidency. His two cardiologists, the fathers of modern American Cardiology-Sam Levine and Paul Dudley White, took courage in both of their able hands and asked him to be mobilised soon to not only run the remaining part of his presidency, but to contest for the second term as he was very popular. Eisenhower ran a hectic campaign and won the second term to complete it successfully. Early mobilisation became a reality since then. People started thinking that mobility soon after a major heart attack is one of the ways to keep people healthy and fit. I still remember the early days of heart valve replacement surgery. I was working for Malcolm Towers, a great cardiologist who was the left hand of one of the fathers of British cardiology, Paul Wood along with Evan Bedford. Our surgeon was Miss Mary Sheppard; a lion of a surgeon, tall and well-built she could out beat any man. This chain smoking thoracic surgeon was a dare devil. When she replaces one, two or, even, three valves patients remained in the ICU for eight to ten days and then only mobilised. A new young, dynamic, short built, Egyptian, Magdi Yacoub joined us as a second consultant surgeon by then from the National Heart Hospital where he was senior registrar to Mr. Donald Ross. Magdi’s valve replacement patients were mobilised on the second day even when they were in the ICU and they did much better . Miss. Sheppard stopped doing valve surgery conceding that Magdi did a better job, a magnanimity rarely seen among greedy doctors today. All these convinced me that work is good and rest is not that good for recovery.

I had a major car accident 40 years ago when I had 18 stitches on my scalp and a big bandage. I came home the same night and did not take even a single pain killer that were prescribed telling my mind that after all pain can be controlled by the mind. That did the trick. The role of the mind in controlling pain is now well understood. Mind being not in the brain helps much more in relieving pain.

I used to have a nagging pain in my left deltoid and triceps (shoulder) as I use them once a day to cut open a tender coconut for its water for breakfast. I had to pin the coconut down with my left hand to chop off its front portion with the right hand. Conventional methods, drugless of course, did not help. One day I gave my left shoulder a lot of work, like carrying large beds upstairs and also carrying my loaded suitcases in the left hand. My triceps and deltoid have been free from pain since then. Aches and pains are a sign of life in old age and doctors and patients together drug them so much that some elderly people are on two-three PAIN KILLERS on an average! I advise them to exercise to the best of their ability to get rid of the pain instead of resting and eating the killer pain medicines. Results have been very encouraging.

I travel a bit and each time after a long a hectic travel by plane, car etc. I get pains almost everywhere. When I get back I go for a long walk despite the fact I would have been fagged out completely. The real joy and josh that one gets after this mild exercise is something to be really enjoyed rather than learnt from others. Now I have made walking exercise a must after a hard day’s work and exhaustion to feel fit again. The exhilaration after bad day’s exhaustion is something one must enjoy to get convinced.

The other menace of pain is the misuse and abuse of pain killers. A Field researcher told me that in a village Gogi , in Yadgir District of North Karnataka where he had done a survey for Fluorosis he found 300 tablets of Declofanac were sold daily through Kirana shops in that village in addition to many prescription pain killers doctors there give. His health survey showed many kidney, liver, and heart diseases in that village. If this were the situation in a village, what would be the pain killer load and consequent ADR load on the people and our medical system?

Doctors were useful to treat pain in the past, present and will be useful to treat them in the future as well. We should innovate treatments for pain and suffering. Drugless treatments will not only be inexpensive; they will be healthy as they do not have the added menace of ADR.

Scientists Warn Of 10C Warming As We “Dial Up Earth’s Thermostat”

Andy Rowell

Nearly every week a new record is being broken on climate.

So far this year we have had warnings that the Great Barrier reef is “dying on our watch” due to coral bleaching caused by record temperatures; dramatic early seasonal melting of the Arctic Ocean sea ice and Greenland’s massive ice sheet; devastating wild-fires in Canada which are being linked to climate change, and month after month of record temperatures.

And now a city in the north of India has registered the highest temperature ever recorded in the country at 51 C, during a chronic heatwave which has been going on for weeks. In nearby Pakistan, three cities recorded temperatures of 50 C or higher last Friday too.

The new Indian record, which breaks the previous one which was set sixty years ago in 1956, was set in the city of Phalodi, in the desert state of Rajasthan. It is the equivalent of 123.8F.

The heatwave is having a devastating effect and has caused the deaths of several hundred so far. Tens of thousands of farmers have also abandoned their land with crops devastated in 13 states. Rivers, lakes and even dams have dried up. Hundreds of farmers who have been left destitute have reportedly committed suicide.

Further south in Gujarat the sizzling temperatures are so bad that bats are falling lifeless from trees and pedestrians are getting their shoes stuck in the melting roads.

The Director General of the Indian Meteorological Association, Laxman Singh Rathore, has blamed climate change for the unprecedented temperatures: “It has been observed that since 2001, places in northern India, especially in Rajasthan, are witnessing a rising temperature trend every year.”

He added: “The main reason is the excessive use of energy and emission of carbon dioxide. Factors like urbanization and industrialization too have added to the global warming phenomenon. I think similar trend would be maintained in Rajasthan in coming days.”

The warnings have been getting stronger. Two months ago, Indian forecasters warned that heat waves are getting longer and more intense. Last year some 2,500 died from heat-related issues too.

And things are going to get worse.

As InsideClimate News reported last week about the annual greenhouse gas index released by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration: “The level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is not just rising, it’s accelerating”.

Last year, the average global concentration of CO2 increased to 399 parts per million, a record jump of almost 3 ppm from the year before.

Jim Butler, director of NOAA’s Global Monitoring Division, said: “This isn’t a model. These are precise and accurate measurements, and they tell us about how humans are changing the balance of heat in the Earth system. We’re dialing up Earth’s thermostat in a way that will lock more heat into the ocean and atmosphere for thousands of years.”

And now scientists, writing in the journal Nature Climate Change, are predicting that we could heat up the earth by a totally unsustainable 10C, if and its a big if, all fossil fuels are burnt. The Arctic could heat up by some 20C within a couple of centuries.

It goes without saying that temperatures like these would cause massive destruction on an unprecedented scale.

“I think it is really important to know what would happen if we don’t take any action to mitigate climate change,” said Katarzyna Tokarska, at the University of Victoria in Canada, the lead author on the research. “Even though we have the Paris climate change agreement, so far there hasn’t been any action.”

Tokarska called the research “a warning message.”

Belgian prison wardens strike met with government repression

Ross Mitchell

A nationwide strike of Belgian prison wardens enters its first month this week.

The strike is against the austerity measures being imposed by the right-wing government of Prime Minister Charles Michel against public sector workers. For this reason, a group normally treated with respect by the ruling class as administrators of its repressive state apparatus is now being subjected to brutal attacks.

The government plans to shrink the public sector by 20 percent, with pay and staffing being cut by 10 percent by 2020 overall. It aims at cutting staffing of prisons by 10 percent while making prison wardens work 12 months for 11 months’ pay. The cuts will reduce substantially what prison services can offer inmates in education, as part of their rehabilitation. Affected services include mental health care, apprenticeships, online learning, and arts activities.

The Belgium prison system is notoriously decrepit. The Forest-Berkaendel prison in Walloon was built in 1910 and 360 inmates currently live in a space designed for 280. A striking warden at the prison told the media that with the cuts, “What is removed from the prisoners is their chance to reintegrate society as a human being, their chance to have a job after doing their time, and their chance to remain a human being in the prison system.”

The cuts to the prison service will further de-humanise prisons. They will lead to increases in cell occupancy alongside the overcrowding of prisons with less wardens able to attend each prisoner. This creates more stress on both prisoners and guards, which produces a vicious circle of violence and repression.

On May 18, one inmate died in the psychiatric ward at the Lantin prison, as a result of a fight with plastic forks between inmates who are kept 22 hours a day in their cells. Lantin, in the Juprelle borough in the Liege district, holds 900 inmates.

According to the Belgian Human Rights League, prisons in Belgium, with 129 detainees to every 100 spaces, are more overcrowded than any in European country except Hungary. President Alexis Deswaef told the BBC the situation was “a complete violation of article three of the European Convention of Human Rights,” which prohibits inhuman or degrading treatment.

In an attempt to force the wardens back to work, when the fire sprinkler system broke at Lantin the mayor of Juprelle, Christine Servaes, took the decision to call in the police and military to operate the prison. Servaes said, “Fire safety equipment is failing so I am calling upon the use of emergency decree.”

The living conditions of the prisoners under the new regime are reported as appalling. On May 19, in St. Gilles prison in Brussels, 700 striking prison workers held a demonstration. Riot police barred access to the prison and manned the prison. Water cannons were used against the strikers, who clashed with the riot police.

Nationwide, basic prison services were lacking for the first 17 days of the strike. On the 18th day, May 13, the government started to use the military to break picket lines and man prisons with prison directors, managers and police.

On May 17, the building of the Justice Ministry in the capital Brussels, headed by Koen Geens, was occupied during the morning by striking prison workers. Trade union representatives opposed this, calling for “peace and quiet so as not to jeopardise negotiations.”

Trade unions representatives of the main prison union federations—the Confederation of Christian Trade Unions (CSC) and General Union of Public Service (CGSP)—convened to meet the minister informally at the Justice Ministry. Striking prison workers demonstrating outside rammed through the main heavy entrance double doors and went upstairs to the justice minister’s office, shouting, “Together, Together!” and “We will not kowtow.”

Riot police were called in, leading to fighting inside the building with police using pepper spray and batons.

Michel Jacobs, a CGSP trade union representative, attempted to defuse the situation. Once back outside the building he said on national TV, “I did not have time to see much. I got hit by police batons and punches. Oh well! It does not matter. I am not dead. Now I am strongly calling out for a peaceful standing down of the strikers. This I want to make it clear. I hope that everyone now is going back to their prisons and we are going to think about the next step.”

Laurence Clamart, a permanent secretary of the CSC, concurred saying, “First of all, let me make it clear that the CSC trade union does not approve, does not sanction these actions taken by striking trade union members.”

Last Monday, a Forest prison striker said, “We are going all the way. Someone must kowtow and it will not be us. It will be the government.”

He added, “We have families and these cuts will take out one month’s salary from our yearly pay.”

The government is opposed to any compromise. Geens has repeated stressed that the prison Rationalisation Plan will go ahead. In this, the trade unions are on his side, as the plan began to be implemented with their collaboration a year ago, region by region.

Gino Hope, a representative of the Flemish trade union ACOD-CGSP, said last week, “I respect the struggle of my Walloon colleagues. But they must also respect the needs of their Flemish colleagues. The Rationalisation Plan started last summer. We struck against the plan in some prisons in Flanders. To no avail. Bruges prison struck for two weeks against the cuts last summer. To no avail. So we chose to go along with the plan. I am not saying that it is working well, 100 percent, but we are starting to get accustomed to it.”

In December last year, the trade unions stopped a strike against the austerity plan in the prisons of Walloon, except in Mons where a determined workforce balloted for the strike to continue.

At the same time, the magistrate service is undergoing a cull, with 245 magistrates to be cut by 2020. This will lead to a saving of around €23 million in salaries. Some 700 jobs are going among personnel working within magistrates’ courts, including clerks and secretaries. A 7 percent cut is being made to the number of trainee magistrates and a 10 percent cut to non-magistrate personnel. Non-magistrate personnel on non-permanent contracts will be cut by 9.3 percent.

Belgium spent just €81 per inhabitant in its justice system in 2012. In the Netherlands €125 was spent, in Germany €114 and in Luxembourg and Switzerland €147 and €198 respectively. Such is the scale of cuts that a magistrate’s verdict, in favour of prison inmates who sued the government for failing to meet their human rights during the strike, cannot be enacted. The verdict compels the government to pay inmates compensation of €200 to €10,000 a month. One magistrate commented regarding the case, “The rule of law cannot be applied evenly in Belgium today.”

Further evidence of ties between German neo-Nazi group and domestic intelligence agency

Dietmar Henning

The trial against the National Socialist Underground (NSU) at Munich’s district court is in the closing stages. For three years, the court and its chair, Judge Manfred Götzl, have looked at thousands of pieces of information. The main question has always remained: How could 10 murders, bomb attacks and a series of bank robberies take place under the noses of the police and intelligence agencies? Who held, and is holding, a protective hand over the right-wing terrorists?

Over recent weeks and months, further evidence has come to light demonstrating close connections between the domestic intelligence agency, police and NSU.

Research by Welt editor Stefan Aust and filmmaker Dirk Laabs recently revealed that Ralf Marschner, who worked for the intelligence agency (BfV) for a decade as agent Primus, most likely employed the three NSU terrorists, Uwe Mundlos, Uwe Böhnhardt and Beate Zschäpe, after they went underground in 1998. Both men worked in his construction firm, Mundlos as a foreman under the name Max Florian Burkhardt, while Zschäpe helped out in one of his businesses.

Aust and Laabs then reported earlier this month that in 2001, Marschner was involved in an attack on a pub in Zwickau together with Susann Eminger, Zschäpe’s best friend. At this point, Zschäpe, Mundlos and Böhnhardt had already lived in the city for a year. Eminger visited Zschäpe in the apartment throughout the entire period of their illegality. Eminger’s boyfriend at the time, André, and her husband since 2005, is charged in the Munich trial with aiding the NSU.

On April 21, 2001, Marschner, Eminger and other skinheads burst into the bar and assaulted guests. According to witness statements from the owner, Marschner was the leader of the group. A political motive was later ruled out by the relevant investigators.

The state prosecutor in Zwickau laid charges of grievous bodily harm against Marschner and Eminger. However, these charges were not included in the Munich proceedings. These charges was kept under wraps by the federal prosecutor’s office as part of its so-called investigation into support structures. “Further investigations on the part of the federal criminal office (BKA) to clarify the extent of relations between Eminger and the agent Marschner remain unknown, even though they would have been required due to the trial over the bar brawl,” wrote Die Welt .

Proceedings against Marschner for the bar assaults were “temporarily suspended” two years later, while Eminger had to perform 20 hours’ community service. Agent Marschner has apparently enjoyed protection from the judiciary for decades. In Saxony alone, several dozen legal proceedings have been led against him since 1990 by the judiciary. The intelligence informant has never been sentenced to prison.

Even when Marschner was accused of killing a 17-year-old on the “Day of German unity” in 1990, he emerged innocent from the proceedings. The files on Marschner and the murder investigation were allegedly destroyed during the flooding in Chemnitz in 2010, authorities announced last week.

A petition by a representative of the joint plaintiffs in the NSU trial to order Marschner, who now lives in Switzerland, to appear as a witness was rejected by Judge Götzl, following consultation with the federal prosecutor. Even if the agent knew and employed Mundlos, Böhnhardt and Zschäpe after they went underground, this was not of immediate relevance in determining the questions of the acts committed and guilt of the defendants, the court said by way of justification.

The inviting of another witness, who was present at a meeting in 1998 between the Brandenburg interior ministry and agents from Thuringia and Saxony, was also rejected by the court. This meeting decided not to provide information to the police about an agent who had supplied the underground trio with a weapon. While a representative of a joint plaintiff concluded from this that the Interior Ministry had “made possible the series of murders by the NSU,” the court declared that it did not draw the conclusion that “joint responsibility of the state existed in the acts of the defendants.”

But this is precisely what is becoming ever clearer. Marschner’s handler at the intelligence service, code-name “Richard Kaldrack,” was at the same time managing agent Thomas Richter, code-name “Corelli.” Richter was also active around the NSU terrorists and was possibly in contact with them. He worked for the intelligence agency for 18 years and received €300,000 for his services.

Among other things, he made available electronic storage space for a neo-Nazi magazine, which published a greeting to the NSU as early as 2002. He was a founding member of the Ku Klux Klan in Baden-Württemberg, which also included two colleagues of police officer Michèle Kiesewetter, who was murdered by the NSU in 2007. A CD containing data with the title “NSDAP/NSU,” which he handed over to the intelligence service in 2005, only emerged years later. In 2014, shortly before he could be questioned about this, the 39-year-old died suddenly of a diabetes illness that apparently nobody was aware of.

Now, a telephone from Richter, “Corelli,” has also appeared. Corelli allegedly used it in 2012 and handed it over to the BfV in autumn 2012. There it was concealed in an armoured cupboard. It was then discovered in a fifth search in the summer of 2015, the intelligence agency now declares. Intelligence agency experts, who were until April this year working on it, have found a series of pictures and names from the radical right-wing scene. It has now been passed to the BKA for further evaluation of the available data.

Journalist Thomas Moser, who has been working on the NSU story for years, told Teleopolis last Tuesday about “overlaps” between the intelligence agency and the NSU.

He cited from protocol notes from a situational briefing in the police directorate (PD) in Gotha from November 5 and 6, 2011, found by the parliamentary NSU committee. As part of its area of responsibility, the bodies of Mundlos and Böhnhardt had been found in a burnt-out caravan the previous day.

In the protocol, among other things, the following statements are cited: “Efforts to locate the trio were abandoned in 2002. It was known that the state domestic intelligence agency (LfV) was concealing the target persons.” “The PD head intended to do everything to locate Ms. Zschäpe before she was withdrawn by the LfV.” And: “At least one member of the trio was allegedly working for the intelligence service until 2003. … The trio or part of it was closely tied to the intelligence agency, or the state intelligence agency had something to do with them, something like that.”

The police in Thuringia therefore assumed that the NSU trio was being protected by the intelligence agency. The situation briefing was led by Michael Menzel, who had led the police directorate in Gotha since 2009 and since 2015 has worked as criminal director in the Thuringia Interior Ministry. Menzel was also on location when the bodies were discovered and could have tampered with evidence. He was invited as a witness by the Munich trial, as well as by a number of parliamentary investigations, but always responded in vague terms.

Menzel, who began his police career in the GDR, is tied by several threads to the NSU. Among his colleagues in Saalfeld, where he headed the criminal police from 1998 to 2001, was Mike Wenzel, who as an intelligence officer dealt with the Thuringia Home Protection (THS), a right-wing organisation out of which the NSU emerged. Wenzel’s niece, Kiesewetter, was believed to be the NSU’s last victim in 2007. Her service weapon was later found in Mundlos and Böhnhardt’s burnt-out caravan. Even though nothing was publicly known about the NSU at that time, Wenzel immediately drew a connection between the so-called “döner murders” and the death of his niece.

It has long been known that over 20 agents of the intelligence service were operating around the NSU. A handler for agents in Hesse, Andreas Temme, was even present when Halit Yozgat was murdered in Kassel in April 2006. Any boundaries between the intelligence services and the NSU terror gang are virtually undetectable.

Whether the intelligence service is jointly responsible for the NSU murders, or whether one of the NSU members collaborated with intelligence, remains unclear, largely thanks to the joint efforts of the interior ministry, intelligence agencies, police authorities, federal prosecutor and the Munich District Court.