European Union working with African despots to deter refugees

Martin Kreickenbaum

“The refugee crisis is not resolved, but the solution is progressing well in Europe and very well in Germany,” claimed interior minister Thomas de Maizière at the announcement of the latest figures for asylum applications in Germany. It is possible for someone to make such a cynical appearance before the press only if they believe that the “solution of the refugee crisis” means drastically reducing the number of refugees that reach Europe and Germany.

In fact, the refugee crisis has sharply deteriorated internationally. The United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) has registered a significant rise in the number of people fleeing their homelands around the world, to over 60 million. The number of those who have lost their lives while fleeing has also risen in the first half of the year. According to official statistics, 2,920 refugees have already died on their way to Europe. The Mediterranean Sea is once again becoming a mass grave.

Refugees from the wars in Syria, Iraq, Yemen or Afghanistan, stranded in Turkey, Jordan or Lebanon, are sinking into poverty, misery and hopelessness. The EU has responded by making Europe’s borders even more impassable for refugees.

Although the EU leaders remained deeply divided at their latest meeting in Bratislava over the distribution of refugees, they agreed on a speedier deportation of refugees and closer collaboration with African despots to deter them.

Italian interior minister Angelino Alfano complained at the meeting above all about the difficulty of deporting refugees who have received no asylum in the EU. “The danger is that the refugee institutions explode and the system can no longer be sustained. The problem of repatriation is an issue that Italy has repeatedly placed in the forefront in Brussels,” according to Alfano. To overcome these “problems,” all considerations of human rights which have thus far stood in the way of deportations should be thrown overboard.

The interior ministers discussed the implementation of the “migration agreement” adopted by the EU summit on 28 June with selected African states, which are to be incentivised into “cooperation” with the EU by offering them the prospect of economic and military assistance to block routes of flight and accept the return of refugees.

The EU summit set as the goal of European refugee and immigration policy the “rapidly operating repatriation of irregular migrants.” The heads of government authorised foreign policy representative Federica Mogherini to quickly begin negotiations with African despots “so that by the end of the year the first migration pacts can be concluded.”

The EU Commission has since made clear what is to happen with the billions labelled “development assistance.” A document published last Tuesday proposed the redirection of €100 million in aid to Sudan into military and border security measures. This would mean the EU would for the first time be directly financing the military apparatus of another country—one, moreover, whose army and government militias are notorious for serious violations of human rights.

The Sudanese government militia “Rapid Support Force” (RSF) deployed 1,000 personnel to al-Dabbah in the north of the country to control the borders with Libya and Egypt. The goal is to perform the EU’s dirty work and block refugees from Somalia, Ethiopia and Eritrea. The RSF boasts that it has already captured hundreds seeking protection on the border.

These refugees now run the risk of being detained in internment camps in Sudan or returned to the torture chambers of their own country. The EU has no qualms about Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir having been sought for arrest by the International Criminal Court in The Hague on charges of genocide and war crimes. The EU commissioner for development aid, Neven Mimica, instead announced that a further €100 million was being made available, and declared, “Development and security go hand in hand.”

The EU would also like to conclude a migration pact with Eritrea, even though the director of the EU border protection agency Frontex, Fabrice Leggeri, recently said, “In Eritrea there is persecution and a brutal dictatorship, the fleeing people require protection.” Nonetheless, Isaias Afwerki, the president since 1993, is to be given €200 million in aid to combat smugglers and those assisting refugees, and expand border controls with Sudan.

The German government is playing a particularly perfidious role. While it has officially suspended cooperation with the East African countries because of their human rights records, it has involved the Society for International Cooperation (GIZ) in deterring refugees. A spokesperson for GIZ confirmed to online magazine Euractiv.de that it plans to work with 11 African states “to take action against criminal networks of people traffickers and smugglers.”

German interior minister Thomas de Maizière also once again raised the idea of internment camps in North Africa at the summit. People rescued on the Mediterranean route could then be “brought back, but not released anywhere, rather in secure camps.”

In the camps, which would be jointly run by the EU and UNHCR, asylum applications would be processed. It would therefore not be the “wallet” of the refugees, or smugglers deciding “who comes to Europe, but the European states themselves,” stated de Maizière in Bratislava. Given the long-running conflict over a few thousand refugees from Syria, it is already evident that the camps will become a trap for the refugees from which they will not be able to escape.

“As Europeans, we cannot close our eyes when we have to deal with flight in the world and people need protection,” said refugee organisation Pro Asyl director Günter Burkhardt on Deutschlandfunk, criticising the EU’s plans. “Now they are trying to offload all responsibility and strengthen other states according to the principle, out of sight, out of mind; others can deal with refugees, but the main thing is: not like Europeans.”

Sending refugees back to Libya would be criminal. Refugees would be detained, tortured and abused. Several detention centres where refugees are housed are controlled by militias. Responding to a parliamentary question in the Bundestag, the German government had to quietly acknowledge that “the conditions for refugees and migrants in Libyan detention centres [are] very bad.”

The sealing off of European borders against refugees is being further expanded. On 6 July, the European Parliament agreed to the establishment of a new EU agency responsible for border protection. The previous border protection agency Frontex is to be integrated into the new agency, which will receive an additional 1,500 personnel for police and military activities in surveilling the borders, and will be equipped with much more wide-ranging powers than Frontex.

The agency will be capable of deploying to a border area according to its own judgment and even against the will of an affected state, enabling it to intervene significantly into the sovereignty of EU member states.

In addition, the agency will actively deport refugees; forward data, including fingerprints, to Europol; and bring refugees intercepted on the high seas to the “closest safe port.” Given the rapid expansion of the list of “safe third countries and countries of origin,” this will result in the EU agency in the future sending refugees back to Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Turkey, Egypt or Libya.

In line with this, the Dutch government has suggested the establishment of hot spots at sea. Refugees would not only be registered on special internment ships, but their grounds for asylum would also be reviewed in a quick procedure so that those seeking protection would not even reach dry land in Europe.

Reports of rapidly rising numbers of refugees crossing the Mediterranean do not correspond with reality. Since the closing of the Balkan route and the EU’s deal with Turkey, the flow of refugees across the Aegean Sea has been practically halted. The alternative routes through Egypt or Libya are hardly reachable for refugees from the civil wars in Syria, Afghanistan or Iraq. According to figures from the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), 70,978 had crossed the Mediterranean to Italy by 6 July, practically the same number as in the same period last year.

Despite this, with officially 2,499 deaths, the number of victims on the central Mediterranean route has risen by around 30 percent.

Responsibility for this also lies with the Eunavfor Med “Sophia” mission implemented by the EU. As the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported, operation “Sophia” is not even connected to the Italian coastguard’s emergency system, because it is not seen as a rescue mission, but as a combat mission against people smugglers. However, military ships are not on the coastguard’s radar. The Italian coastguard always has to first ask the office of commander Enrico Credendino whether naval vessels are in the region of a stranded refugee boat.

The other side of the policy of hermetically sealing off and deterring refugees from the European Union, which de Maizière describes as a “solution of the refugee crisis,” is the misery and bitter poverty of Syrian, Iraqi and Afghan refugees, whose route to Europe is blocked.

“A growing number of people now fall, after years of exile and after using up all their savings, into poverty,” said the spokesperson for the UNHCR, Leo Dobbs, to Reuters.

According to the UN, more than 70 percent of the one million Syrian refugees in Lebanon live below the poverty line. Two years ago, it was “only” 50 percent. In Jordan, it is even higher, with 90 percent of the 650,000 refugees living in poverty. Sixty-seven percent of families which have fled are highly indebted. Families in both countries are compelled to skip meal times or life-saving medication. Children are taken out of school to work.

Prison spending rises three times faster than education funding in US

Nancy Hanover

The US has increased its spending on prisons and jails to a staggering $80 billion a year. A new government report, issued last week, contrasts this extraordinary level of funding with state and federal support for education, comparing spending from 1979–80 with that of 2012–13.

Trends in State and Local Expenditures on Corrections and Education, issued by the US Department of Education, examined state-by-state trends from the US Census, the Bureau of Justice and the National Center for Education Statistics. The numbers are adjusted both for changes in population and inflation. It shows that literally every state in America has prioritized prisons over education.

Overall during the last three decades, government financing of the prison industry has grown more than three times faster than the costs of primary and secondary education. Higher education has fared no better, in fact, worse. Funding for post-secondary education has barely treaded water since 1989, while spending on jails and prisons has increased by 89 percent.

The uniformity of the report’s grim statistics throughout the US demonstrates the government policy—implemented by both Democrats and Republicans—to jettison the funding of public education while transferring vast sums to militarize the police and build prisons. It is, above all, reflective of the tremendous growth of social inequality and the yawning class gulf that dominates all social policy.

All 50 US states registered lower expenditure growth for pre-kindergarten through Grade 12 education than for the penal system. Twenty-three states increased per capita spending on corrections by more than double that for high education.

The report notes the linkage between declining educational opportunities and incarceration, indicated by the fact that two-thirds of state prison inmates have not completed high school. Young black men between the ages of 20 and 24, for example, without a high school diploma, or equivalent credential, are more likely to be in prison than working.

The depth of the growth of concentrated poverty, dramatically up under the Obama administration, recently led Columbia University researchers to coin the term “million dollar blocks.” It refers to city blocks where so many individuals are incarcerated that the state is spending over $1 million a year to keep them in jail.

It is notable that in West Virginia, the poorest state in the US, the increase in state and local corrections expenditures per capita was the highest in the nation. Texas, meanwhile, registered the highest overall percentage growth in prisons, with an 850 percent leap in spending.

Michigan has the distinction of having increased spending on education the least over the three decades (during which public school population has increased nationally by 20 percent), according to data from the report. From 1979 to 2013, Michigan increased spending on schools by 18 percent, while increasing money for corrections by a whopping 219 percent.

Kary Moss, executive director of the ACLU of Michigan, in an interview in theDetroit Free Press observed that the state has been on a downward spiral in terms of spending on public education for nearly two decades, a situation she said is “starving schools and creating inequities in funding from school district to school district.”

Michigan’s policy to “starve schools” has included a battery of regressive “reforms” tailored to the interests of charter school business and lucrative consultants which has, in turn, further bled public schools. This has included the Education Achievement Association, which largely relied on undertrained and underpaid Teach For America young people and widespread use of computer programs as “teachers.” As of June 30, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, with the support of the Democrats and unions, has used the Detroit Public Schools’ debt as the pretext to dissolve the 175-year-old district and introduce the use of uncertified teachers, among other punitive attacks on students and educators.

States across the US have been subjected to the same grotesque shifting of resources from education to incarceration. These states joined Michigan in increasing spending on jails and prisons more than five times as fast as it did on public education over the last three decades.

• Idaho: 106 percent increase in education; 701 percent increase in corrections

• Montana: 43 percent, education; 296 percent corrections

• North Dakota: 72 percent education; 410 percent corrections

• South Carolina: 134 percent education; 245 percent corrections

• South Dakota: 59 percent education; 566 percent corrections

• West Virginia: 58 percent education; 483 percent corrections

As for higher education, between 1989-90 and 2012-13 state and local higher education appropriations rose 5 percent, from $67 billion to $71 billion, while corrections funding grew from $37 billion to $71 billion, a leap of 90 percent.

While states showed variation, increases in corrections funding outpaced higher education both in total funding and funding per person across the board. Forty-six out of 50 states had declines in higher education funding on a full-time equivalent student basis, with average cuts of 28 percent per student. On average, per capita spending on corrections during the same period increased by 44 percent.

These trends were partially driven by the huge increase in the prison population. “According to data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics,” the report states, “the number of people incarcerated in state and local correctional facilities more than quadrupled over the past few decades, rising from about 490,000 in 1980 to over 2 million in 2014, due in part to the enactment of additional, often lengthy mandatory minimum sentence laws.” With only 5 percent of the world’s population, the US now incarcerates more than 20 percent of all prisoners.

This dramatic growth of incarceration, during a period of large decreases in crime rates, reflects, above all, the rise of social inequality throughout the US.

“Budgets reflect our values, and the trends revealed in this analysis are a reflection of our nation’s priorities that should be revisited,” said US Education Secretary John B. King blandly, announcing the report.

Were he to enumerate the “values” and “priorities” of the Obama administration, King might have mentioned its full-throated support to the 1033 program which has transferred billions of dollars of Pentagon munitions to police departments, the Community Oriented Policing Services Office (which advises local law enforcement agencies on how to deploy hyper-aggressive police protocols) and, above all, the role of the “war on terror,” drone warfare and ever-expanding US imperialism on the growth of militaristic tendencies both at home and abroad.

Finally, King could “revisit” the fact that over 300,000 educators have lost their jobs under this administration, the destructive role of Race To The Top and pro-charter federal policies on the financing of public education as well as the federal funding cuts to Title I (for children from low-income families) and special education.

The education secretary really didn’t need have to flesh out those facts, however, because the report speaks for itself, demonstrating the wholly reactionary priorities and trends underway in present-day capitalist America. The systematic and downright criminal de-funding of education over 30 years has paralleled the overall decline of bourgeois democracy and the growth of a financial oligarchy.

The study’s selection of the period between 1979-2013 is significant. It corresponds with the one-sided class war waged by the ruling elites and a vast shift in the economy toward globalization and financialization. This period of widespread attacks on education and social conditions for the majority in the US began with the capitulation of the United Auto Workers union during the Chrysler bankruptcy, which led to the decimation of auto jobs, begun under Democrat Jimmy Carter.

The ignominious refusal of the AFL-CIO to defend the PATCO air traffic controllers in 1981 then enabled Ronald Reagan to prosecute a broad national social counterrevolution, which he began by calling for the abolition of the Department of Education.

Democrat Bill Clinton followed with the “ending of welfare as we know it” and his infamous support to “three strikes” in the justice system, sending untold thousands to prison for long sentences. Clinton also passed a number of bills streamlining the provision of military-grade hardware to police departments, the most well known being the Defense Department’s 1033 program.

US and South Korea agree on THAAD anti-missile system

Ben McGrath

The United States and South Korea formally announced on Friday that a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system would be deployed to the Asian country. The anti-ballistic missile system is a key part of Washington’s preparations for war against China as well as Russia, and will lead to sharper tensions in the region. Washington and Seoul aim to have the THAAD system operational by the end of 2017.

Lt. General Thomas Vandal, chief of staff for US Forces Korea (USFK), and Deputy Defense Minister for Policy Yoo Jeh-seung made the announcement at a news conference. “South Korea and the US have made the joint decision to deploy the THAAD system with US Forces Korea as part of a defensive action to guarantee the security of the Republic of Korea and our people from North Korea’s nuclear weapons, weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile threats,” Yoo stated.

Japan welcomed the decision, but China and Russia both voiced their sharp displeasure. “The THAAD system does not help achieve the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and also hurts peace and stability in the region,” the Chinese foreign ministry stated. Beijing previously warned South Korea that allowing a THAAD installation on its soil would seriously harm relations between the two countries.

A Russian foreign ministry statement said the US-South Korean decision would “undermine the existing strategic balance in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond” and “have the most negative impact on global strategic stability, which Washington so likes to discuss a commitment to.”

Yevgeny Serebrennikov, the deputy chairman of the Russian upper house’s arms committee, said Moscow could deploy missile units to the eastern part of the country in response to THAAD, indicating the strong potential for an arms race developing quickly in East Asia.

The THAAD anti-ballistic missile system is vital to Washington’s “pivot to Asia,” aimed at militarily surrounding and economically undercutting China. The US has bolstered its ballistic missile capabilities throughout the region.

A THAAD battery includes interceptor missiles and the AN/TPY-2 X-band radar system. THAAD is designed to knock out incoming missiles in their terminal phase, that is, as they are falling to earth. At present, there is only one deployed battery, which is on Guam, but Japan currently hosts two X-band radars, one in the north at Shariki and the other in the south at Kyogamisaki, and is considering deploying a THAAD battery as well.

As part of its “pivot,” Washington has inflamed tensions in the East and South China Seas by exploiting longstanding, yet previously minor, territorial disputes and turning them into dangerous flashpoints. The US has already carried out three provocative “freedom of navigation” operations in waters claimed by Beijing and stated it would back allies like Japan militarily over their claims.

The US and South Korea began formal discussions in March, using North Korea’s fourth nuclear test in January and a ballistic missile launch in February as the pretext. On Saturday, North Korea conducted a submarine-based missile launch, likely in response to the THAAD announcement and additional sanctions imposed on leader Kim Jong-un last week. According to Seoul, the projectile left the submarine successfully, but exploded after a short flight. Such North Korean actions serve only reactionary ends, playing right into the hands of Washington.

Both US and South Korean officials claim the THAAD system is aimed solely at North Korea. These claims, however, are completely contradicted by US plans and actions. Washington’s strategy for war with China, known as AirSea Battle, includes large-scale, possibly even nuclear, strikes on Chinese military positions. The THAAD system would be used to prevent a retaliatory strike from hitting US bases in South Korea or Japan, which would be on the front lines of any war in Asia.

Moreover, according to the New York Times, after formal THAAD discussions between the US and South Korea began earlier this year, Beijing requested through South Korean President Park Geun-hye that the X-band radar be adjusted so as not to penetrate so deeply into Chinese territory. The request was rejected.

THAAD will also help integrate South Korean forces not only with the US but also with the Japanese military. In January, Seoul’s defense ministry announced that it would establish a connection to Link 16, an intelligence network used by the US, Japan and NATO nations to share information on enemy positions in real-time and includes THAAD. A Japanese official made clear at the time the connection was indeed aimed at China, saying: “There will be significant benefits to Japan if we can get information from South Korea, which is geographically closer to North Korea and China.”

North Korea is simply a convenient excuse for US military activity in East Asia. The Pentagon regularly holds large war exercises with allies like South Korea and Japan, which are clearly aimed at China, not the backward North Korean military. The scope of firepower the US could direct against the North in any conflict would dwarf the horrific death and destruction inflicted upon the country during the 1950–1953 Korean War.

The planned location of THAAD has yet to be announced. The exact spot, in fact, will be kept concealed from the population so it does not become a focus of anti-war sentiment in South Korea. Proposed sites include Pyeongtaek, where USFK headquarters is located, Wonju, near the North-South border, and Chilgok, near Daegu in North Gyeongsang Province.

None of the so-called progressive parties in South Korea is opposed to Washington’s and Seoul’s war preparations. The main opposition Minjoo Party of Korea (MPK) did not oppose the THAAD deployment but stated: “We would like to express discontent with the decision not having gone through enough public discussion.” The MPK refused to take a clear stand on the issue during last April’s general election, concealing the escalating war preparations from the public.

The People’s Party and the Justice Party, the third and fourth largest parties in the National Assembly respectively, opposed Friday’s announcement on economic grounds and the potential impact on trade with China, rather than opposition to war.

Coalition parties to form unstable government in Australia

James Cogan

The political crisis produced by the July 2 election entered a new stage yesterday, with the opposition Labor Party conceding that it cannot form a government and Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull claiming victory on behalf of the Liberal-National Party Coalition.

With votes still being counted and a number of seats considered too close to call, Turnbull will head one of the most precarious governments in post-war Australian history.

In the 150-seat House of Representatives, the lower house, the Australian Electoral Commission is currently projecting that the Coalition will likely hold 76 seats—a majority of just one—though it might still be forced to rule as a minority government. Within the fractious Coalition, the Liberal Party has probably won only 45 seats, however, down from 58; and the Queensland-based Liberal National Party (LNP) 21, down from 22; while the rural-based National Party likely to have 10, up from 9 in the previous parliament.

Despite recording its second-lowest vote in a century, the Labor Party appears likely to win 69 seats, up from 55, and could potentially win several more. The Greens did not win any additional seats and have just one member. Four other seats will be held by state-based independents and groupings.

The make-up of the House of Representatives is only a pale reflection of the massive repudiation delivered to the two-party system on July 2. In the Senate, where far more parties stand than in lower house seats, as many as 35 percent of voters took the opportunity to reject the Coalition and Labor.

Labor leader Bill Shorten’s decision to concede yesterday, despite counting still continuing, was aimed at signaling to both the financial markets and the United States, Australia’s key strategic ally, that the dominant parties of the political establishment will come together to try to stabilise the situation the best they can.

Shorten declared: “I understand that we need to make this parliament function… I pledge, and I have indicated to Mr Turnbull, that where there is common ground, we will work very hard to accomplish it. The Australian people expect all sides of politics to work in the national interest.”

In his victory speech, Turnbull praised Shorten for his statements and vowed “national unity.”

One of the immediate concerns in both the US and the Australian foreign policy and military apparatus was that ongoing uncertainty over the election result could prevent Canberra responding to the sharp escalation of tensions with China expected when the UN Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague rules tomorrow on South China Sea territorial disputes.

Greg Sheridan, the international editor of the Murdoch-owned Australian, wrote today: “It is understood Canberra’s national security agencies are working on a range of possible responses, with the ruling posing a potential crisis for the newly re-elected Coalition government.”

A “potential crisis” could include requests by the Obama administration for Canberra to dispatch Australian warships and aircraft to join US operations in the South China Sea. During the election, the Labor Party vowed full support for confrontational US actions against China and demanded that the Coalition also fully commit to the deployment of the Australian military to back Washington. According to Sheridan, Chinese officials have threatened “economic consequences” if Australia intervenes in the South China Sea.

After the entire political and media establishment did everything possible throughout the election to prevent any public debate on the rising danger of war, the issue is set to erupt to the centre of discussion.

The second concern underlying Shorten’s concession was last week’s threat by Standard & Poor’s to downgrade Australia’s AAA credit rating unless there were commitments from the new parliament to impose sweeping austerity measures—regardless of the popular opposition to this agenda expressed in the election outcome. Australia is rapidly sliding into slump and toward its first recession in 25 years, which will be only intensified by conflicts with China, its largest export market and trading partner.

Shorten’s vow of “common ground” was echoed today by Labor Treasury spokesperson Chris Bowen, who has called for the Coalition to adopt Labor’s “budget repair” policies so it can give them bipartisan support. During the election, Labor committed to over $40 billion in budget cuts over four years and endorsed stripping $57 billion from health care funding to the states over the next decade. “The government, if they have a spirit of goodwill, will find willing partners with Labor,” Bowen declared.

Above all, the Coalition will rely on Labor to push militarist and austerity policies through the Senate, the upper house of parliament. Turnbull’s decision to call the first double dissolution election since 1987, with all seats up for re-election in both the lower house and the Senate, has resulted in a debacle. Far from gaining a majority in the Senate, the position of the Coalition has drastically worsened.

So far, it appears that the Coalition parties have definitely won only 29 of the 76 Senate seats. Labor appears likely to win just 25 and the Greens nine. The protectionist South Australian-based Xenophon Team will hold at least three. The anti-immigrant One Nation has probably won two. Tasmanian right-wing independent Jacqui Lambie and Victorian “law-and-order” campaigner Derryn Hinch have also been elected. Six seats remain in doubt and the final results may not be known for weeks.

Whether the Coalition will hold together once it faces the political backlash that will erupt as it attempts to impose unpopular policies is by no means certain. Already, sections of the Liberal Party are demanding that Turnbull repudiate measures that could affect the superannuation tax schemes that benefit the ultra-wealthy. The rural-based Nationals, facing a resurgent One Nation, especially in the state of Queensland, are making demands on issues ranging from milk pricing to foreign investment, and an additional ministry in the cabinet.

A break-up of the Coalition is only one of a number of possibilities that could lead to a new election.

The starkest feature of the political situation, as the ruling elite desperately tries to work out how to implement its agenda, is the crisis of political perspective in the working class. Millions of workers and young people are alienated from the capitalist parties, due to decades of ever-widening social inequality and worsening social conditions. At present, however, that disaffection has been largely diverted behind right-wing populists, leaving power in the hands of the corporate and political establishment.

What must be developed is the independent political intervention of the working class on the socialist and internationalist program that represents its interests. The fight for that perspective was at the centre of the campaign conducted by the Socialist Equality Party. It will be further elaborated at the SEP’s upcoming public meetings.

NATO summit plans escalation against Russia in Eastern Europe, Middle East

Alex Lantier

On Saturday, the second and final day of the NATO summit in Warsaw, NATO officials and heads of state approved a major military escalation in Eastern Europe and continuing deployments to Afghanistan. These initiatives, together with expanded NATO military cooperation with former Soviet republics, including Georgia and Ukraine, are all aimed at encircling and preparing for war against Russia.

The summit came in the aftermath of the June 23 British vote to exit the European Union and the eruption of sharp conflicts within the EU over financial and military policy, particularly over the war drive led by Washington and the Eastern European states against Russia.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg hailed the agreement to send a large force of NATO troops to Poland and the Baltic Republics as “historic.” His remarks were echoed by US and European officials, but strongly condemned by top Russian officials.

Speaking in Warsaw on the NATO plans, US President Barack Obama declared that “the United States will be the lead nation here in Poland, deploying a battalion of American soldiers.” He continued: “The United Kingdom will take the lead in Estonia, Germany in Lithuania, and Canada in Latvia. This will mean some 4,000 additional NATO troops, on a rotational basis, in this region. Moreover, the additional US Armored Brigade will rotate through Europe, including an additional 4,000 US troops. Meanwhile, to the south, we agreed on new deterrence measures in Romania and Bulgaria.”

US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russian Affairs Mike Carpenter summed up the tenor of NATO relations with Russia by saying that the US military’s European Command had to dedicate significant resources in order to become a “war-fighting” headquarters.

Obama also announced a major escalation of NATO operations in Central Asia and the Middle East. He reported pledges of $900 million and the deployment of 12,000 more troops by a 39-nation coalition to continue NATO operations in Afghanistan, as well as stepped-up air reconnaissance operations over Iraq and Syria.

Obama also joined UK Prime Minister David Cameron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President François Hollande and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi in a meeting with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. The Ukrainian leader, who heads the far-right nationalist regime that emerged from the NATO-backed putsch in Kiev in February 2014, received promises of further military aid conditioned on his imposition of more of the free-market economic “reforms” that have already devastated the country’s economy.

Leading Russian officials condemned the NATO summit. Even former Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev, whose policies set the stage for the dissolution of the USSR and the restoration of capitalism, and who played the key role in facilitating NATO’s rampage across the Middle East and Europe, felt obliged to criticize the summit.

NATO leaders “only talk about defense, but actually they are preparing for offensive operations,” he said, adding, “All of the rhetoric in Warsaw simply clamors for all but declaring war on Russia.”

Russian government spokesmen said it was “absurd to speak of a threat from Russia” to NATO, and parliamentarian Konstantin Kosachyov likened NATO’s deployment plans to “building a dam in the desert.”

The inescapable conclusion of Obama’s presentation is that NATO policy is to lock the populations of North America and Europe into perpetual wars of occupation. This policy, which is stoking up strategic tensions and ethnic conflicts across Eurasia, threatens to erupt into all-out war with Russia, a nuclear-armed power.

Obama spent much of his press conference answering questions about the escalating political crisis in the United States over deadly police violence and the mass shooting of policemen by a gunman in Dallas. Nonetheless, he took one question from New York Times journalist Mark Landler on the implications of the war policies being prepared by the NATO planning staffs.

Landler noted that “if you complete your presidency, as you will, with troops in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq, you will be the only two-term president in American history to have served with the country at war… should the American people simply resign themselves to living in a state of perpetual war?”

Obama’s response amounted to an acknowledgement that the American people, and the populations of all the NATO countries, would indeed have to get used to perpetual war. Taking the example of the Afghan war, he concluded that it would be impossible to ever sign a peace treaty in the Middle East that would put an end to war in the way the Allied powers concluded the war with Imperial Japan at the end of World War II. Instead, NATO would have to “partner with,” that is, militarily occupy, Middle Eastern countries indefinitely.

Obama said, “We have an option of going in, taking out Al Qaeda, pulling out, potentially then seeing a country crumble under the strains of continued terrorist activity or insurgency, and then going back in. Or we can try to maintain a limited partnership that allows them to continue to build their capacity over time, and selectively take our own actions against those organizations that we know are trying to attack us or our allies. Because they’re non-state actors, it’s very hard for us ever to get the satisfaction of [US General Douglas] McArthur and the [Japanese] Emperor meeting and a war officially being over.”

The picture that emerges from the NATO summit is of a terminal and extremely dangerous crisis of US and European imperialism. The inescapable conclusion of Obama’s remarks is that the foreign policy pursued by the United States and its NATO allies over an extended historic period has been a bloody failure. In the quarter-century since the dissolution of the USSR, Iraq, a Soviet ally, has been the target of NATO military action, as has the former Soviet ally Afghanistan, the Serbian-led remnant of the Yugoslav state, and now Syria, both of which were also Soviet allies.

The balance sheet of these wars is disastrous. Having spent trillions of dollars, lost tens of thousands of soldiers, and caused the deaths of millions of people, the NATO powers see no other option than to continue wars that have accomplished nothing and are hated by masses of working people in Europe and North America.

One major purpose of the war strategy, as laid out by its supporters, is to suppress the sharpening divisions among the imperialist powers themselves. Some hope it will limit the political fallout from the Brexit vote, including growing calls for a foreign and military policy led by Germany, with the assistance of France, Italy and other Western European powers, that is more aggressive and more independent from Washington and its British ally.

Judy Dempsey, a senior associate at the Carnegie Europe think tank, wrote that the pact could provide a “boost for the [pro-US] Atlanticist wing in the EU” and “make it more difficult for Russia to divide Europe and to weaken the transatlantic relationship.”

NATO leaders at the summit snubbed EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, whose staff had worked with Berlin to prepare a report calling for an independent EU foreign policy. They refused to let her join in signing documents on closer NATO-EU collaboration.

Nonetheless, top European officials who see the US-led war drive against Russia as cutting across their own imperialist interests continued to stress their differences with Washington. French President François Hollande declared, “NATO has no role at all to be saying what Europe’s relations with Russia should be. For France, Russia is not an adversary, not a threat.”

Terror Attacks in Dhaka: The Way Ahead for India

Souvik Chatterji

On 1 July 2016, suspected Islamic State (IS) militants mounted an attack in Holey Artisan café in Gulshan, Dhaka. There are indications of Jamaat-e-Islami groups being involved in the alleged terror attack.The Bangladeshi security forces intervened and after a serious fight, 13 civilians were rescued. However,  by that time, 9 Italians, 7 Japanese, 1 American and 1 Indian were brutally killed.

Bangladesh’s Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) along with police commandos fought against the terrorists in what has been named Operation Thunderbolt.

What is important at this stage is the way ahead for India. The IS is expected to create a launching pad in Bangladesh for terror attacks in India and Myanmar.They already have bases in Pakistan and Afghanistan. India being susceptible to such attacks on both its eastern and western flanks is an alarming scenario that merits discussion.

Current Scenario

For India, there is a huge course of action that needs execution. India shares a border with Bangladesh that stretches across 4,098 kilometres, passing through agricultural lands, forests, hilly areas and undulating surfaces, and it is facing a huge number of problems due to cross-border smuggling.

First, cattle smuggling has been a contentious issue over the years. In 2010, 32 Bangladeshis were killed when they were prevented by the Border Security Force (BSF) officials from smuggling cattle across the border. 2012 onwards, after India met Bangladeshi officials to discuss the issue, the BSF has started using non-lethal weapons like pump-action guns.

Second, in the guise of cattle smuggling, huge groups of Bangladeshis also smuggle fake currency. A member of Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami (HuJI) who was arrested in Uttar Pradesh in 2008 said that in the disguised as a cattle-smuggler, he had managed to smuggle guns and bullets for terrorists in the country. In April 2013, India’s National Investigation Agency (NIA) filed a chargesheet after investigating the cattle smuggling case of a cadre of Hizbul Mujahideen (HuM). These individuals were also smuggling fake currency into India across the India-Bangladesh border.

Third, Bangladeshi legislation is also a concern. Cattle smuggling is a crime in India but not in Bangladesh. If a smuggler from India illegally takes cattle into Bangladesh, he/she will be given the status of a cattle-trader. He/she would just have to pay 500 Bangladeshi taka as customs charges for the trading of cattle across borders. Significantly in India, cow slaughter is banned in large parts of the country. Cattle is primarily used for cultivation. In Bangladesh, there is huge demand of cows for different purposes; for example, the leather and bone of slaughtered cattle are used in the leather and ceramics industry.

Recommendations

There are steps that can be taken at the India-Bangladesh border. First, watercraft, speed-boats and floating border outposts (BOP) should be deployed along the riverine segments of the India-Bangladesh border. The water wing of the BSF can oversee the performances of these BOPs.

Second, there should be surveillance across the Jalangi-Ganges riverfront in the Murshidabad area of West Bengal and the adjoining area of Bangladesh. There are 17 illegal entry points here, called ghats. Like liquor vends, these ghats are auctioned and the ghatmaliks (owners of the ghats) set their own rates of commission for permitting illegal activity. Suprava Panchashila Mahila Udyog Samiti (SPMUS) did a study of 300 children involved in smuggling at six spots of the border, which included Jalangi, Sheikhpara, Sagarpara, Bhagwangola, Lalgola and Shamsherganj, in 2007. The study showed that children of 8 to 14 years frequently take cattle, rice and phensedyl (a cough syrup banned in India) across the border. This study also confirmed that young girls were involved in smuggling initially but later transitioned to the sex trade.

Third, more observation posts should be deployed in the Petrapole Benapole Border. Integrated Check Posts (ICP) were inaugurated at the end of 2013. It is necessary that these check posts be equipped to act as dedicated cargo terminals and passenger terminals. Modern ICPs across states have weigh bridges, security and scanning equipment, currency exchange booths, internet facility, cargo processing buildings, cargo inspection sheds, warehouses and cold storage, health and quarantine facilities, clearing agents, banks, scanners, close circuit television, public address systems, isolation bay, parking, cafeteria, hotels and other public utilities. The ICPs that are going to be installed at the Petrapole Benapole border should have all these facilities. Additionally, surveillance equipment should be modernised. The BSF should work in close coordination with the Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) to prevent inter-state smuggling. Another task that requires urgent attention is the fencing of un-fenced patches of land in the border areas.

Nadia and Murshidabad are border districts of West Bengal. Lack of land for cultivation and extreme poverty sometimes drive the bulk of the population here towards smuggling activities. Whenever the rural population face issues relating to land acquisition for a government project, their requirements should be studied. If the socio-economic causes of the problem are looked at closely, the task of the border officials and the Home Ministry of India can be addressed more comprehensively.

Finally, madrassas in West Bengal, which get grants from the state government, should be monitored. If there is information on any of the madrassas acting as grooming grounds for IS terrorists, they should be banned.

Jihadis from Bangladesh: Eyeing Trans-Border Playing Fields?

Wasbir Hussain

Bangladesh has clearly been sucked into the whirlpool of jihadi terrorism with a plethora of outfits managing to draw cadres from both the over-populous nation’s poor strata of society as well as the elites who go to universities and upscale schools in Dhaka. The 1 July raid in an eatery in Dhaka’s posh Gulsan area that led to the brutal killing of 20 hostages and two police officers was carried out by young men who were sons of people holding high positions, like an election commissioner, an Awami League leader, an executive with a foreign company, and so on. This indicates the menace in Bangladesh has spread to sections far beyond the madrassa-educated boys usually accused of being radicalised.

Dhaka has stepped up its crackdown on jihadis who belong to outfits like the Jama'at ul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), Ansar al Islam, Hefazat-e-Islam, the Hizb ut-Tahrir etc. Bangladeshi authorities have also sought India’s help in investigating the possible roles of Islamic preachers like the Mumbai-based Dr Zakir Naik who has close to 15 million followers on Facebook. With Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina already demonstrating her grit by letting influential war-crime accused and Islamist radicals face the law and get executed, it is likely Dhaka would go all out against jihadi terror. After the 1 July raid, the jihadis struck again on 7 July, Eid day, killing four people, including a policeman, and injuring several others at Kishoreganj, 140 km outside Dhaka.

What happens when the crackdown gains momentum and reaches its peak? Can the jihadis fight and retard the security offensive? What sort of a strategy could the jihadi terrorists adopt? The jihadi groups in Bangladesh appear to have some linkages and support from the Islamic State (IS), despite Dhaka’s rejection of the IS claim of the 1 July attack, and can, therefore, launch fresh terror raids, mounting the challenge for the pursuing security agencies. Alternatively, the jihadis could decide to lie low and even try to sneak across the border into India. If they decide to cross over into India, their favoured destination would be West Bengal and Assam, two states that share long and porous borders with Bangladesh with rivers criss-crossing these borders. Moreover, in both West Bengal and Assam, Bangladeshi jihadi outfits like JMB has some presence, demonstrated by several arrests by the Indian security agencies in the past few years.

The chars or sand bars in the riverine areas in western Assam, along Bangladesh, is ethnically and geographically the ideal hiding place for such elements. No wonder, after the Dhaka attack, the Assam Police and the paramilitary Border Security Force (BSF) have stepped up vigil in bordering districts like Dhubri, Goalpara, Barpeta, Karimganj, etc. The people who live in these areas on the Indian side lack access to education, healthcare services and livelihood opportunities. The char dwellers are mostly Muslims of migrant origin. But the silver lining is that although Assam shares a 262 km long porous border with Bangladesh, a country that is a hotbed of Islamist militancy, the Muslims in Assam, who comprise 34 per cent of the state’s population of 31 million, are practitioners of liberal Islam.

But in the last few years, some incidents have occurred that indicate that there is an attempt at radicalising a section of the Muslim population in the state, a development that cannot be brushed aside as a minor security matter. The incident that confirmed the inroad of jihadi elements into Assam was the arrest of twelve persons with links to the JMB in the state in November-December 2014. One of the arrested persons was Sahanur Alom, who had close links with the JMB and was in constant touch with the outfit’s leaders in Bangladesh. The arrested persons had revealed that JMB is eyeing pockets inhabited by people of Bangladeshi origin as well as districts like Sivasagar in eastern Assam, where it is said to have motivated some people. They had also apparently told interrogators that over a hundred recruits from the state, mostly youths from western Assam districts, had undergone "training" in the madrassas of West Bengal.

Then, on 16 September 2015, the police arrested three persons and busted a jihadi training centre in Chirang district, one of the four districts under the Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC). The BTC area had in 2012 witnessed clashes between the Bodos and the Muslim migrant settlers. Besides, insurgent groups like the Songbijit faction of the NDFB (NDFB-S) had directly targeted Muslim settlers in the area, killing nearly a hundred people in 2014-15. Based on the revelations made by the arrested persons in Chirang, one of their accomplices was arrested on 18 September 2015 and eight handmade AK-47 rifles and two handmade Insas rifles were recovered. Three videos - two on atrocities on Muslims, which are used for indoctrination, and one containing instructions on the use of arms - were also recovered from the training centre.

Again, on 18 September 2015, two members of a new militant outfit called the Muslim Tiger Force of Assam (MTFA) were apprehended by the Army from Gossaigaon in Kokrajhar district and one 7.65 mm rifle was recovered from them. The MTFA was apparently formed to take revenge for the killing of minorities in the BTC area. On 21 April 2016, the Assam Police arrested seven persons in Chirang district who were part of a module involved in indoctrinating jihadi ideology among the local people. These incidents are an indication of how jihadi elements are slowly trying to secure a foothold in the state.

Under-development and lack of access to basic facilities in these areas are factors that can be used by fundamentalists to lure some people towards their fold. According to a survey done by the Directorate of Char Areas Development, Government of Assam, in 2002-03, there were over 24 lakh people living in 2,251 char villages spread in 14 districts of Assam. The literacy rate among these people was only 19.31 per cent at that time, while the corresponding literacy rate of Assam and India during the period was 63.25 per cent and 64.84 per cent respectively. The percentage of people Below Poverty Line (BPL) in these areas in 2002-03 was 67.88 per cent, while the figures for Assam as a whole stood at 36.09 per cent and for India it was 26.10 per cent.

Another reason that many believe is the reason for the increased penetration by jihadi elements into the state is the unabated illegal migration from Bangladesh. This migration through the porous India-Bangladesh border has remained a cause of concern and it is surely abetting the influence of Islamist fundamentalism among a section of the Muslim population.

Illegal immigrants from Bangladesh fall into two categories – one, those who enter India with valid travel documents and then overstay, and second, those who enter India without any valid travel documents. A number of Bangladeshi nationals who come to India on valid travel documents overstay after the expiry of their visas. However, the majority of illegal migration is through the porous India-Bangladesh border. There is no accurate data on the number of such illegal migrants in the country. Now, after it has come to light that suave, educated Bangladeshis have taken to jihadi terror, the fear of potential jihadis coming in from that country on valid travel documents has also become real, adding to the challenge for Indian security agencies.

The bottom-line is simple—New Delhi cannot afford to end its responsibility by simply liaising with Dhaka and offering assistance to Bangladesh in tackling the jihadis. It has to actually draw up a slew of measures—administrative, policing and technological—to check jihadi terror from spreading and becoming a reality in Northeast India. Most importantly, New Delhi has to recognise the moderate Muslim voice in India, give it due weightage, and channel the energy of the young Muslim youth by giving them adequate education and livelihood options, and help them emerge from their economic backwardness.

UN: Root Of US Police Terror Is ‘Lack Of Accountability For Perpetrators’

Robert J. Barsocchini 


US police kill approximately 1,000 people per year according to Federal statistics, disproportionately targeting particularly African and Native Americans.  The UN expert panel on people of African descent observed this week that these killings “demonstrate a high level of structural and institutional racism. The United States is far from recognizing the same rights for all its citizens.”

The two men widely known to have been killed this week by police were both armed, though particularly in the case of Philando Castile, it is largely felt that choosing to shoot the men multiple times in the sternum from a distance of approximately three feet or less went beyond what an objective, reasonable person’s reaction would have been.

However, many have noted that US history and current culture leads the US public in general, including police officers, to be less than objective in dealing with African Americans and other minority groups.*  One way of addressing this issue has been to implement measures to improve various kinds of police training and monitoring, but the UN expert panel noted that “existing measures to address racist crimes motivated by prejudice are insufficient and have failed to stop the killings.”  Indeed, so far this year, US state forces have killed nearly 600 of their own people, largely targeting minorities.

The problem now, says the UN group, “lies in the lack of accountability for perpetrators of such killings despite overwhelming evidence against them, including video footage of the crime, being present.”

Thus the next step to decreasing police terror, the panel suggests, is for the US state apparatus to increase the consequences officers face; to begin taking clear, fair, publicly visible accountability measures for officers who cross the line from protecting and serving into murdering and terrorizing.

Since, as the UN notes, this has not yet occurred, some in the US, both in popular culture and academia, have argued that there may be times when the public must apply consequences for police terror that go beyond peaceful protest.

Rapper The Game wrote in response to the killings by police this week:

What happened to the generation of people who stood together, held hands and took to the streets peacefully or violently if it had to come to that…?  … We ain’t havin this shit no more!!!

In a recent lecture, attorney and history professor Gerald Horne was asked this question by a member of the audience:

Given that you argue in your book, Confronting Black Jacobins, that the Haitian revolution, which was decidedly a violent insurrection, precipitated the abolition of slavery in the United States, what is your opinion of violence as protest, and a vehicle for change in today’s political climate? For example, the riots that resulted from the murder of Freddie Gray, or uprisings in response to mass incarceration?

Horne’s response:

Professor Gerald Horne, JD, PhD

I find myself in strange agreement with US secretary of state John Kerry, who, during his visit to Hiroshima, the site of the first and hopefully only use of atomic weapons, was compelled to say that he saw war as the last resort that should be arrived at.  He did not exclude war altogether, just that it should be the last resort arrived at. And I would say something similar with regard to that very probing question that was just posed. That is to say that I don’t think, given the correlation of forces in North America, with many of our folks not being armed, only armed with strong lungs to yell in protest, and given the militarized nature of the police and the militarized nature of these police guards, who, by the way, in places like California and New York have very strong unions who make political contributions to politicians and therefore help to entrench their power even further, given the correlation of military forces, I don’t think that violence should be our first option with regard to pushing them back.  However, if you push people into a corner, and if you brutalize them, as has happened in this city of Baltimore, and if you have these examples like Freddie Gray, where a person enters into the custody of police alive and leaves dead, it’s perfectly understandable why there are forces in this city who refuse to accept that in a supine fashion, and I think that’s reasonable. Because they are trying to understand the lessons of history as well. And they recognize that unless you give a forceful rebuff to that kind of violence, then you are guaranteed to have a slew of Freddie Grays going forward, which I find wholly and totally unacceptable.

As has occurred in China in response to apparently far more rare killings by police officers, some in the US have responded to the lack of accountability for police terror by targeting police officers themselves.  This week, 5 officers were killed and 12 wounded by snipers after the killings of Castile and Sterling.

…

*Horne’s work explores many of the historical foundations on which the US’s “structural and institutional racism” (UN panel) stand.  Like John Kerry, Horne stresses that violence should always be a last resort, and that, indeed, the US peace and civil rights movements have, to their detriment, mirrored US culture in that they have grown increasingly insular, and have thus not in recent times fully utilized all of their options for peaceful protest:

If you are trying to understand the tribulations and trials and travails of black people in America over the centuries, particularly post 1776, you have to understand in the first place the reality that the United States of America was established as a slaveholding republic. … I can understand why lawyers, as a rhetorical device, will often speak warmly of the founders and their ‘noble documents’ and the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and how they were so ‘flexible’ that they were able to expanded to all of the rest of us who were initially excluded.  I understand that as a rhetorical argument, but the reality of the matter is that the founders did not have people like myself in mind when this country was established, just like they did not have cattle or furniture in mind when this so-called republic was established. We were considered on the same level as cattle and furniture, but we have been able to fight a glorious struggle to overcome those Antediluvian points of view. But once again, we were able to fight that glorious struggle not least because we had support in the international community. And for those in the Black Lives Matter movement, for those in the anti-police terror movement, until and unless you ingest that basic lesson, that is to say that international solidarity is a prerequisite in order to achieve some success and victories in the United States of America, you’ll be left sprawling in the dust.

Horne’s works explore these points in depth.

Curtis Bunn, in the popular magazine Atlanta Black-Star, notes some other historical foundations that seem to remain relevant to killings by police in the US (particularly the killings this week):

Civlian Drones: Are They Intruding Or Serving?

Owais Farooqui

Neil Armstrong once said that ‘science has not yet mastered prophecy, we predict too much for the next year and yet far too little for the next ten’.

This quote is so true in the Indian context as none can imagine exactly ten years ago that drones can be used for civilian purposes but now they are all set to cover our ‘skies’. Currently, Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has prohibited the use of drones for civilian purposes and formulating the policies for their implementation. Drones can be defined as those aircraft, either autonomous or remotely controlled, with no pilot aboard. They are also called as unmanned aircraft. They need certain components like data-link, control station, unmanned personnel etc, for their operation and hence, termed as unmanned aircraft system or unmanned aerial systems too.

The ‘Charming’ side:

The reason why civilian drones are ‘selling like hotcakes’ is due to their capability for enormous multifarious civilian applications like agricultural purposes, search & rescue, surveillance, traffic monitoring, motion pictures & journalism etc. Drones has the capacity to replace manned aircraft in many ways like they emit less CO2 & create less noise, can monitor dangerous sites without risking the life of human pilot, like it did in ‘Fukushima nuclear Catastrophe’ site in 2011, can deliver necessary aids in the remotest areas with less energy and time, comparatively to the manned aircraft. In agriculture, drones can be used to detect ‘crop diseases’ and to detect where crops need water and where it doesn’t, this could be a boon in arid/semi-arid regions.

Civilian drones are likely to have a huge economic impact as it has been predicted by Association of Unmanned Vehicle System International (AUVSI) that “70000 jobs will be created in the first three years of implementation of unmanned aircraft for civilian purposes in the United States only with an economic impact of $13.6 billion. This benefit will grow through 2025 when more than 100,000 jobs will be created with an economic impact of $82 billion. The global market for civilian unmanned aircraft stood at US$11.3bn in 2013 and has the potential to grow to over US$140bn in the next ten years.” It further stated that 80 percent of the commercial market for drones eventually will be for agricultural uses.

Hence, it is very much palpable that drones do not bring death only, but it brings life as well.

‘Hurdles’ & Challenges Ahead:

Being an intrusive technology, drones are likely to have some privacy implications. It gathers data either authorized by the state entity or private organization, in either case, privacy is going to intrude. It can record the activities of the people on the ground, for instance, Surveillance of riot affected area of ‘Trilokpuri’ in Delhi and ‘Kumbh Mela’ in UP. by drones etc, can raise a  basic question that how can a state regulate the ‘freedom’ of the citizens by aerial surveillance? And if it can, then to what extent?   And how can we prevent somebody from ‘prying’ in the public place by a drone?

Here what we should be solicitous about that how can the ‘privacy rights’ be protected as drones are coming with huge benefits and with greater risks too. And we better be ready to overcome these risks.

The law of privacy in India is quite enigmatic, though the Indian Judiciary tries to clarify the position ofttimes, like in, Gobind V. State of M.P., the Supreme Court widely interpret Article 21 of the Indian constitution and recognized ‘Right to Privacy’ as a fundamental right.  Though this right is not absolute and the state can invade the privacy if an emergency or public safety requires. Here the observation by the Bombay High court recently in ‘Beef Ban Case’ seems promising that ‘right to privacy is a part of personal liberty under article 21 and a citizen has a right to lead a meaningful life within his house & outside his house as well. Hence, The State cannot intrude the life of a citizen within the premises of his/ her home. This intrusion on the personal life of an individual is prohibited by the right to privacy which is a part of personal liberty guaranteed by Article 21.

But the attorney general argued, interestingly, in Justice K.S. Puttswamy (Retd.) V. Union of India (‘Adhar case’) that ‘Privacy is not a fundamental right as it never was because the supreme court in its eight- judge bench judgment of ‘Satish Chandra V. MP Sharma’ held that privacy is not a fundamental right. And only the smaller bench decided later on that privacy to be a fundamental right’.

Hence, the plausible solution to this perplex situation is to have a separate legislation on privacy covering drone surveillance.

Here, the ‘reasonableness’ of drones surveillance should be determined but the expectation of the citizens relating to privacy must be ‘reasonable’ too.  And in the same corollary, an American case namely; California v. Ciraolo, is noteworthy, where the Court held ‘the warrantless aerial surveillance of a backyard within the home was a reasonable search because even though the homeowner had a privacy fence, the ‘marijuana’ in his backyard was clearly visible’.

And to ensure the same, the DGCA must come up with a stringent certification & licensing policy for civilian drones and maintains a harmony between the right to privacy and aerial surveillance by the drones. No technology should be condemned for not bringing the solution with it. Drones have immense potential for civilian applications but proactive steps should be taken for their usage. And in implementing drones for civilian purposes, protecting privacy is a ‘key’. As Edward Snowden has very aptly remarked that “If you don’t care about privacy because you have nothing to hide, it’s like saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say”.

Widespread destruction in China following floods

Ben McGrath

Catastrophic floods hit central and southern China along the Yangtze River after several days of heavy rain this past week. While figures vary, at least 186 people have been killed and dozens remain missing. Some 32 million people have been affected overall. The devastating impact of this and other so-called natural disasters can be traced back to corruption and the lack of adequate planning and preventative measures.

Rain began tapering off on Thursday leaving behind the floods that are the worst in nearly 20 years. However, more rain is expected as super typhoon Nepartak hits Fujian Province. In total, 26 provinces have been affected with 1.4 million people displaced. Hubei Province and its capital Wuhan, a city home to 10 million people, have been particularly hard-hit with a record 600mm of rain falling, according to the Chinese government.

President Xi Jinping ordered thousands of soldiers and police officers to take part in the relief efforts. According to China’s state-owned CCTV, 2,700 troops were working in the most severely struck areas. Millions have lost access to transportation, power and clean water.

The most recent figures from the Chinese government also indicate a severe material and economic toll. There is an estimated $7.6 billion in damages while 7.4 million acres of farmland has been flooded and 56,000 homes destroyed. These numbers are likely to rise, however, as China released them on July 3.

Premier Li Keqiang visited the worst struck areas on July 5 and 6 to make perfunctory statements of sympathy and pose for photo ops. As is the case after such devastating events, Li claimed safety would be a high priority going forward, while trying to project an air of leadership.

Speaking to the Huaihe River Water Conservancy Commission, Li said, “The harder battle is yet to come. The Commission should always bear safety in mind and never slacken efforts. It should work in a well-coordinated way between the upper stream and lower stream, make good preparation for various kinds of emergencies and gain the initiative in flood control and disaster relief.”

Heavy rains in the region also resulted in flooding in mid-June when 22 people were killed. Other regions of China have also been affected by the weather, including Xinjiang in the northwestern part of the country. A landslide in the Kunlun Mountains struck a village on Wednesday, killing at least 35 people.

Summer in the region is monsoon season with heavy rains and floods common. The large amount of precipitation this year has been attributed to a “super El Niño” effect, which is warming parts of the Pacific Ocean and impacting on global weather. A similar occurrence took place in 1998 when floods along the Yangtze killed 4,150 people. While the extreme weather could not have been prevented, it could have been predicted and planned for. In June, Vice Premier Wang Yang warned of the high probability of flooding in the Yangtze and Huai River basins.

The social impact of these floods is due to criminal negligence and corruption, which is rife throughout the Chinese government and businesses. While a small stratum at the top have enriched themselves, little attention is paid to flood prevention and the safety of workers and farmers whether in their neighborhoods or at their workplaces. Last year, according to Forbes, there were 335 billionaires in China, second only to 536 in the US.

In Wuhan, once called “the city of 100 lakes,” many have been filled due to urbanization. Since the 1980s, the number in the city center fell from 127 to 30. With the lakes filled, it becomes harder for water to drain properly, increasing the likelihood of flooding. Wang Caihua, a resident of the city and owner of a small cement plant, told the South China Morning Post, “Construction waste was dumped into the ponds and they became land. But they’ve now gone back to being underwater.”

Allocated money is often either lost or used improperly. In 2013, Wuhan began work on improving the city’s drainage system, which was scheduled to be completed this year. While allocating 13 billion yuan ($US1.9 billion) for the project, only 4 billion yuan has been spent and the completion date is now set for 2018. Scheduled upgrades to dikes to hold back floodwaters have not been completed. According to Quartz, some of those working on the projects have been arrested for corruption, including a local official in 2014 surnamed Tang who was leading the project.

When he came to power in 2012, President Xi Jinping initiated a broad anti-corruption campaign from the provincial levels up to the highest echelons of government. This gave Xi the appearance of trying to clean up Chinese politics in the eyes of the population, fed up with the corrupt practices of the bureaucracy as well as declining economic conditions.

In reality, the campaign was to consolidated Xi’s rule by targeting political opponents. Officials have been removed under the pretext of corruption, but their assigned duties, such as upgrading dikes, go unfinished.

The lack of adequate flood prevention measures is not restricted to China. Capitalist governments around the world ignore safety or improvements to infrastructure. One has only to look at the recent floods in the US state of West Virginia for another example of the terrible impact of official indifference for the lives of the poor and working class.