Stop Protecting The Criminality Of The Global Pesticides Industry

Colin Todhunter

The agrochemicals industry wallows like an overblown hog in a cesspool of corruption. With its snout firmly embedded in the trough of corporate profit to the detriment of all else, it is most likely responsible for more death and disease than the combined efforts of the tobacco companies ever were. It indulges in criminality that hides behind corporate public relations, media misrepresentations and the subversion of respectable-sounding agencies which masquerade as public institutions.

Dominated by a handful of powerful parasitical corporations with a global reach, the message from this sector is that its synthetic biocides are necessary to feed billions who would otherwise go hungry. Often accompanying this public relations-inspired tale is the notion that organic agriculture is not productive enough, or is a kitchen-table niche, and that agroecology is impractical.

Of course, as any genuinely informed person would know that, as numerous high-level reports have suggested, organic farming and agroecology could form the mainstay of agriculture if they were accorded sufficient attention and investment. Unfortunately, big agribusiness players, armed with their chemicals or GMOs seek to marginalise effective solutions which threaten their markets and interests.

Armed with a compulsion to dominate and to regard themselves as conqueror and owner of nature, they require more of the same: allegiance to neoliberal fundamentalism and an unsustainable model of farming that is so damaging to soil that we could have at most just 60 years of farming left if we don’t abandon it.

Since the end of the Second World War, we have had to endure our fields and food being poisoned in the manner Rachel Carson highlighted decades ago. These companies sell health-and environment-damaging products, co-opt scientists, control public institutions and ensure farmers are kept on a chemical treadmill. From CEOs and scientists to public officials and media/PR spin doctors, specific individuals can be identified and at some stage should be hauled into court for what amounts to ‘crimes against humanity’.

In his 2014 book, ‘Poison Spring: The Secret History of Pollution and the US EPA’, E G Vallianatos, who worked for the EPA for 25 years, says:

“It is simply not possible to understand why the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] behaves the way it does without appreciating the enormous power of American’s industrial farmers and their allies in the chemical pesticide industries, which currently do about $40 billion per in year business. For decades, industry lobbyists have preached the gospel of unregulated capitalism and Americans have bought it. Today, it seems the entire government is at the service of the private interests of America’s corporate class.”

New UN Report

As recently reported in The Guardian, a new report delivered to the UN Human Rights Council says pesticides have catastrophic impacts on the environment, human health and society as a whole, including an estimated 200,000 deaths a year from acute poisoning. The report’s authors say: “It is time to create a global process to transition toward safer and healthier food and agricultural production.”

Authored by Hilal Elver, special rapporteur on the right to food, and Baskut Tuncak, special rapporteur on toxics, the report states, “Chronic exposure to pesticides has been linked to cancer, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, hormone disruption, developmental disorders and sterility.”

Although the pesticide industry argues that its products are vital for protecting crops and ensuring sufficient food supplies, Elver says “It is a myth.”

Elver adds that using more pesticides is nothing to do with getting rid of hunger. She argues that, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), we are able to feed nine billion people today. Production is definitely increasing, but she says that the problem is poverty, inequality and distribution.

Moreover, Elver says many of the pesticides are used on commodity crops, such as palm oil and soy, not the food needed by the world’s hungry people. She argues that the corporations are not dealing with world hunger, they are dealing with more agricultural activity on large scales.

The new report says:

“While scientific research confirms the adverse effects of pesticides, proving a definitive link between exposure and human diseases or conditions or harm to the ecosystem presents a considerable challenge. This challenge has been exacerbated by a systematic denial, fuelled by the pesticide and agro-industry, of the magnitude of the damage inflicted by these chemicals, and aggressive, unethical marketing tactics.”

Elver says:

“The power of the corporations over governments and over the scientific community is extremely important. If you want to deal with pesticides, you have to deal with the companies.”

The report recommends a move towards a global treaty to govern the use of pesticides and a shift to sustainable practice based on natural methods of suppressing pests and crop rotation and organically produced food.

Dr Rosemary Mason’s new open letter

The report comes at a timely point. Campaigner Dr Rosemary Mason has just written an  ‘Open Letter to the Global Pesticide Regulatory Authorities and the UK and US Media‘. To make her case. Dr Mason draws on that report as well as new findings and revelations that have emerged thus far in 2017.

Over the past few years, in her numerous documents, Mason has described the devastating effects of agrochemicals and has singled out certain individuals who should be standing in the dock to answer for their roles they have played in poisoning the environment and damaging public health. She has supplied strong evidence to highlight how agrochemicals are killing us and how public institutions and governments collude with the industry to frame legislation and polices

Early in her letter, Mason reminds her intended readership that The International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague is extending its remit to include ecocide. The ICC announced in September 2016 that it would prioritise crimes that result in the “destruction of the environment”, “exploitation of natural resources” and the “illegal dispossession” of land. Environmental destruction and land-grabs could possibly lead to governments and individuals being prosecuted for crimes against humanity by the international criminal court.

Over the years, Mason has written a great deal on glyphosate (active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup) and has described the massive environmental and health problems associated with its use. Conflicts of interest within public agencies and scientific fraud, which Mason has described many times before, have resulted in glyphosate entering and remaining on the market. A day or two after Mason wrote her letter, The European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) announced its decision in favour of re-licensing glyphosate, which may not come as much of a surprise to many given the conflicts of interest that may have swayed the decision in favour of industry interests.

Aside from the cocktail of various other biocides that end up in our bodies and in the environment, Mason has documented at length the destructive consequences of glyphosate in Wales, where she resides, as well as elsewhere, from the US, and the EU to Argentina. It is killing us as well as birds, insects and plants, thus destrying the ecosystem. She has also produced a great deal of evidence to indicate how glyphosate has ruined her nature reserve. Yet, despite her ongoing extensively researched and referenced open letters to key officials and agencies, she notes that corporate profit comes before human health and the environment and it is a case of ‘business as usual.’

In her letter, Mason quotes Katherine Paul from the Organic Consumers Association, who in the piece ‘Monsanto isn’t feeding the world, it is killing our children’ says:

“… the already large and convincing body of evidence, accumulated over more than half a century, that agricultural pesticides and other toxic chemicals are poisoning us. Both reports issue scathing indictments of US and global regulatory systems that collude with chemical companies to hide the truth from the public, while they fill their coffers with ill-gotten profits.”

Paul is referring to a new WHO report (and companion report) which argues exposure to pollution kills millions of children.

Events catching up with Monsanto

As far as Monsanto is concerned, events seem to be catching up with the company. According to Mason, Monsanto is trying to conceal evidence of close relationships with the US EPA and glyphosate causing cancer. She describes how Monsanto filed a lawsuit in January 2016 against California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment in an attempt to block the agency’s stated intent to list glyphosate as a possible human carcinogen. Monsanto wrote:

“… Monsanto would be required to provide a warning on the labels to consumers that the chemical is a recognized carcinogen. Monsanto says this is a violation of their First Amendment rights and, according to the complaint, “would cause irreparable damage to Monsanto and the public and negatively affect the reputation of Monsanto for making safe and reliable herbicides would be potentially a loss of sales and force the company to spend large sums of money to re-label their products.”

Reputation and corporate profit trump all else.

Mason writes about US Right To Know (US RTK) suing US EPA for documents on glyphosate. She quotes journalist Carey Gillam:

“The litigation against Monsanto has been filed by people from around the United States who allege that exposure to Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide caused them or their loved ones to develop non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a type of cancer that originates in the lymphatic system and has been on the rise in recent decades…  The transcript of a recent court hearing reveals that Judge Vince Chhabria, the federal judge who is overseeing a combination of more than 55 lawsuits filed against Monsanto in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, warned Monsanto that many documents it is turning over in discovery will not be kept sealed despite the company’s pleas for privacy. He threatened to impose sanctions if Monsanto persists in “overbroad” efforts to keep relevant documents out of public view.”

In 2015, Monsanto Vice President Robb T Fraley asked on Twitter why people doubted science. Perhaps he should read Carol Van Strum. Mason refers to Van Strum who wrote a piece in 2015 about the US EPA’s failure to regulate biocides. Van Strum states:

“Within the first decade of the EPA’s existence, it became obvious that nearly all the “safety” tests supporting pesticide registrations were faked, with either fraudulent or nonexistent data. The massive lab fraud uncovered at Industrial Bio-Test Laboratories (IBT) revealed that 99 percent of long-term studies (for cancer, birth defects, mutagenicity, reproductive damage etc.) supporting some 483 pesticide registrations were invalid. For 25 years, in what US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) officials called “the most massive scientific fraud ever committed in the United States, and perhaps the world,” all major chemical and pharmaceutical companies had paid IBT to produce the test data they needed to register their products. All but forgotten now, the IBT fraud shook the chemical and pharmaceutical industries and regulatory agencies around the world. In 1983, a six-month-long criminal trial resulted in the convictions of three IBT officials. The trial revealed a vast, lucrative business of deceptive safety testing.”

Van Strum goes on to note that almost all of the products tested by IBT, including 2,4-D, glyphosate, atrazine and many of the 66 products banned on California red-legged frog habitat, are still on the market today. IBT, it turned out, was but the tip of a huge iceberg. Subsequent audits of 82 other testing laboratories found that more than half – 47 labs – had serious “deficiencies,” including some 22 labs that had destroyed all lab reports and raw data, making audits impossible and conclusions unsupported.

Maybe Fraley should also start sifting through Mason’s numerous documents pertaining to scientific fraud and the capturing and subverting of public bodies by Monsanto and others that belong to his sector.

Monsanto and the corporate media in the dock

The verdict of the International Monsanto Tribunal will be announced on 18 April, 2017. Mason states that the goal of the Monsanto Tribunal is to evaluate whether Monsanto’s activities are complying with international law. Through the case of Monsanto, the Tribunal considers an example of a multinational corporation whose behaviour ignores the damages its decisions cause to health, environment and scientific independence. The aim of the Tribunal is to give a legal opinion on the environmental and health damage caused Monsanto. This process will use existing international law but also contribute to the international debate to include the crime of ecocide into international criminal law. It will also give people all over the world a well-documented legal file to be used in lawsuits against Monsanto and similar chemical companies.

Mason’s letter is 42-pages long and covers a good deal of ground that she has previously highlighted. However, by writing an open letter whose intended readership includes the US and UK media, she wants the corporate media to stop colluding with the agrochemicals sector and to cease from conveying a misleading narrative about illness and disease. That narrative places the onus on individual responsibility for spiraling rates of illness and disease. Mason wants the media to report honestly about the role of the agrochemicals sector and its intimate relationship with governments, official bodies and health agencies.

Electoral Reforms For Developing Democracies

Nauman Sadiq

The biggest fault in democracy, as it is practiced all over the world, is the election campaign funding part, because the individuals and corporations that finance an election campaign always have ulterior motives: that is, they treat political funding as investment from which they intend to make profits by influencing executive policy and legislation.

In Pakistan’s political system, there are three major structural faults. A representative and democratic political system tends to weed out corrupt and inept rulers in the long run. But Pakistan’s democracy has frequently been derailed by decade long martial laws (1958-71, 1977-88 and 1999-2008) and every time we got back to the square one and had to start anew.

Democracy works like the trial-and-error method: the politicians who fail to perform are cast aside and those who deliver are retained through the election process. A martial law, especially if it is decade long, gives a new lease of life to the already tried, tested and failed politicians.

But this imperfection in the democratic system is only Pakistan-specific. When we take a look at the stable democracies, like India for instance, even their politicians are not representative of their masses, because they work in the interest of the elite rather than the underprivileged masses. This fact begs some further analysis of democracy as it is practiced in the developing world.

Politics is the exclusive prerogative of the ultra-rich in the developing world: that is, the feudals, industrialists and the big businesses. The masses and the members of the middle class cannot take part in elections because election campaigns entail huge expenses, and if individual candidates spend money from their own pockets on their election campaigns, or the election campaigns of their respective political parties, then how can we expect from such elected representatives that they will not use political office for personal benefits in order to raise money for their expensive election campaigns in the next elections?

In the developing countries politics works like business: the individual candidates of political parties make an investment on their election campaigns and reap windfalls when they get elected as law-makers in the legislature or as ministers in the government.

In the developed Western countries, individual candidates do not spend money from their own pockets on their election campaigns; political parties raise funds from contributions which are then spent on the election campaign of political parties and their individual candidates.

But this practice is also subject to abuse, because the donors of electoral funds, especially the corporations, when they donate money to a particular political party’s election campaign, in return they demand a say in the policy making of the government of such political parties. Such a government is beholden to its financiers and cannot pursue an independent policy in the interests of the masses.

A much better practice for generating election-related funds has been adopted in some developed countries, where the state allocates funds from its national budget for political parties’ election campaigns if they manage to obtain a certain percentage of popular vote on a national level.

Although this practice may sound onerous for impoverished, developing democracies, but if we take a look at all other governance-related expenses, it would appear feasible. Take the cost of maintaining federal and provincial bureaucracies for instance: paying the salaries of bureaucrats; maintaining the federal and provincial public service commissions and academies etc.

The bureaucracy only constitutes the mid-tier of the governance structure; the top-tier is occupied by the politicians who formulate the state policy. Paying for election-related expenses of political parties is only a one-time cost and its benefits can be enormous, and it also avoids all the pitfalls of taking contributions from shady individual and corporate donors.

Notwithstanding, another major fault in Pakistan’s political system is the refusal of the party chiefs of the two national level political parties: Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N) and Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), to hold intra-party elections. How can one champion democracy on a national level when one refuses to implement representative democracy in one’s home? Because of this reason, both these political parties have become personality cults and family fiefdoms rather than representative political parties, as such.

The only mainstream political party which has held intra-party elections before the 2013 parliamentary elections is the new entrant in the Pakistani political landscape: that is, Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI). Those elections were far from perfect but it was a step in the right direction. Democracy evolves over time. Instead of losing faith in the political system, we must remain engaged in the repetitive electoral process, which delivers in the long run through the scientifically proven trial-and-error method.

Isn’t it ironic, however, that apart from PTI, the only two political parties in Pakistan that regularly hold intra-party elections and that have created a public fund for the election campaign related expenses are Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) and Jamaat-e-Islami (JI)? No wonder then, the Urdu-speaking Mohajir nationalists and the hardline Islamists vote in droves for these political parties, respectively, because they represent the middle class of a section of Pakistani society.

Had it not been for the racism and militancy of MQM and the hardline Islamist ideology of JI, both these parties would have easily swept the election the way PTI won an overwhelming mandate in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP) in the general elections of 2013.

Notwithstanding, in the developed Western societies a distinction is generally drawn between power and money. If we take a cursory look at some of the well-known Western politicians; excluding a few billionaires like Trump, others like Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Tony Blair and Francois Hollande, all of them were successful lawyers from the middle class backgrounds before they were elected as executives of their respective countries.

The Republican, Democratic, Conservative and Labour parties, all of them accept political contributions which are then spent on the election campaigns of their nominees, which generally are the members of the middle class. Nowhere in the developed and politically mature West is it allowed for individual candidates to spend money from their own pockets on their election campaigns, because instead of a political contest, it would then become a contest between the bank accounts of respective candidates.

Although money does influence politics even in the Western countries, but only through indirect means like the election campaign financing of political parties, congressional lobbying and advocacy groups etc. In the developing, Third World democracies, like India and Pakistan for instance, only the feudals, industrialists and billionaire businessmen can aspire for public offices due to election campaign related expenses, as I have mentioned before, and the middle class and the masses are completely excluded from the whole electoral exercise.

This makes a sheer mockery of democratic process because how can we expect from the ultra-rich elite to protect the interests of the middle and lower classes? They would obviously enact laws and formulate public policy which would favor their respective financial interests without any regard for the larger public interest.

In Pakistan, politics has become the exclusive monopoly of the feudal Bhutto fiefdom and the industrialist Sharif dynasty; while in India, the elitist Nehru dynasty has practically been kicked out of politics due to its neoliberal policies and hereditary leadership.

The Diabolical Business of Global Public Relations Firms

Peter Phillips

The expansion of  public relations and propaganda (PRP) firms inside news systems in the world today has resulted in a deliberate form of news management. Maintenance of continuous news shows requires a constant and ever-entertaining supply of stimulating events and breaking news bites. Corporate media are increasingly dependent on various government agencies and PRP firms as sources of news.

The PRP industry has experienced phenomenal growth since 2001. In 2015, three publicly traded mega PR firms—Omnicom, WPP, and Interpublic Group—together employed 214,000 people across 170 countries, collecting $35 billion in combined revenue. Not only do these firms control massive wealth, they also possess a network of connections in powerful international institutions with direct links to national governments, multi-national corporations, global policy-making bodies, and the corporate media.

In The Practice of Public Relations, Fraser P. Seitel defined public relations as “helping an organization and its public adapt mutually to each other.” Propaganda can be defined as the dissemination of ideas and information for the purpose of inducing or intensifying specific attitudes and actions. Both PR and propaganda seek to change behaviors and ideas among the masses in support of the agendas of public and private institutions. (For an early history of state propaganda, see Jacuie L’Etang, “State Propaganda and Bureaucratic Intelligence: The Creation of the Public Relations in 20th Century Britain,” Public Relations Review 24, no. 4 (1998): 413-41.)  As Douglas Kellner and other researchers have documented, since 9/11 public relations firms have contributed to increased levels of media propaganda.

Consider the Rendon Group, one of the key PR firms supporting US propaganda efforts during recent wars. In the 1980s, it produced public relations propaganda for the ousting of Panama’s president, Manuel Noriega. The Rendon Group also shaped international support for the first Gulf War, and in the 1990s created the Iraqi National Congress. The Rendon Group provided the images that mobilized public support for a permanent war on terror, including the fake news stories of the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue in Baghdad, the heroic rescue of US Army private Jessica Lynch, and dramatic tales of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. As James Bamford reported in a 2005 article in Rolling Stone, Pentagon documents show thirty-five contracts with Rendon from 2000-2004, worth a total of  between $50-100 million dollars.

PRP firms have emerged as orchestrators of global informion and news. The world today faces a military-industrial-media empire, bolstered by PRP firms, that is so powerful and complex that truth is mostly absent or reported only in disconnected segments with little historical context. In late 1999, Ben Bagdikian, the author of Media Monopoly and former Washington Post editor, told me that he estimated that two-thirds of all news stories originated with PR firms; in 2003, an article from the Guardian conservatively estimated that 50-80% of news and business stories originated from public relations firms. The result is managed news by governments, corporations, and PRP firms—often interlocked—including both the release of specific stories intended to build public support as well as the deliberate non-coverage of news stories that may undermine capitalist elites’ goals and interests.

PRP firms provide a variety of services to major corporations and institutions around the world. Brand enhancement and sales are undoubtedly among their key services. However, companies offer much more, including research and crisis management for corporations and governments, public information campaigns, web design and promotions, and corporate media placement. WPP’s Hill & Knowton proudly brags on its website that they service 50% of the Fortune Global 500 companies from their offices in forty countries. Along with Omnicom’s Fleishman and Hillard, Hill & Knowlton have been the key PRP firms working with Monsanto to protect its brand Roundup, which contains the herbicide glyphosate. Roundup is the most widely-used herbicide in the world, being sold in over 130 countries, but the World Health Organization recently declared glyphosate a human carcinogen. As countries begin to restrict its use, PRP firms gear up to protect Monsanto’s profits.

WPP’s Hill & Knowton is also well known for its early involvement with the Council for Tobacco Research (CTR), originally established in 1954 to counter the 1952 Reader’s Digest report linking cancer to tobacco smoking. In 1993, the Wall Street Journal described CTR as the “longest-running misinformation campaigns in U.S. business history” (A.M. Freedman and L.P. Cohen, “Smoke and Mirrors: How Cigarette Makers Keep Health Questions ‘Open’ Year after Year,” Wall Street Journal, February 11, 1993.)

It was WPP’s Burson-Marsteller who created the frontgroup Global Climate Coalition (GCC). From 1989-2001, the GCC helped the oil and auto industries downplay the dangers of global warming. Initial members of the coalition included Amoco, American Petroleum Institute, Chevron, Chrysler, Exxon, Ford, GM, Shell, and Texaco. In addition

from 2007-2015 the US federal government spent over $4 billion dollars for PRP services. The US employs 3,092 public relations officers in 139 agencies. An additional $2.2 billion goes to outside firms to perform PRP, polling, research, and market consulting. The world’s top PRP firms reaped millions of US dollars in 2014 including Laughlin, Marinaccio & Owens ($87.98M), WPP-Young & Rubicam Inc. ($57.5M), WPP-Ogilvy Public Relations  ($47.93M), Omnicon-FleishmanHillard ($42.4M), and Gallup ($42.0M). WPP’s Burson-Marsteller won a $4.6 million contract with the US Department of Homeland Security in 2005 to develop public awareness and education for a major emergency, disaster, or terrorist attack in Washington DC.

Before the first Gulf War, a fake news propaganda spectacle took place courtesy of WPP’s Hill & Knowlton. They were hired by Citizens for a Free Kuwait and eventually received nearly $10.8 million to conduct one of the most effective public relations campaigns in history. Hill & Knowlton helped create a national outrage against Iraq by publicizing the horrifying events supposedly caused by Iraqi soldiers during Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. In testimony to the House of Representative’s Human Rights Caucus, a young woman named Nayirah said that she saw “Iraqi soldiers come into the [Kuwaiti] hospital with guns, and go into the room where 15 babies were in incubators. They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators, and left the babies on the cold floor to die.” What the public was not told was that Nayirah was the daughter of Kuwait’s ambassador to the US, and that her performance was coordinated by the White House and choreographed by the US public relations firm Hill & Knowlton on behalf of  the Kuwaiti government.

As Johan Carlisle reported, former CIA official Robert T. Crowley, who served as a liaison between the agency and PR firms, acknowledged that “Hill & Knowlton’s overseas offices…were perfect ‘cover’ for the ever-expanding CIA. Unlike other cover jobs, being a public relations specialist did not require technical training for CIA officers.” Furthermore, Crowley admitted, the CIA used its Hill & Knowlton connections to “put out press releases and make media contacts to further its positions… Hill & Knowlton employees at the small Washington office and elsewhere distributed this material through CIA assets working in the United States news media.”

A global war on terrorism requires continuous ideological justification, aimed at the mass of people who instinctively favor peace. PRP firms provide an on-going rationalization for war by servicing government propaganda activities, military contractors, pro-war Hollywood films, and the marketing of war toys, cartoons and related products. The techniques for marketing brands are essentially the same as for marketing war. PRP firms produce creative, visually-stimulating, emotional ads that spotlight families with loving children in danger of others, protected by official authorities, including homeland security, police or military personnel: “To get to you…they’d have to get past us,” touted the narrator of “America’s Navy—the Shield,” produced by the advertising firm Campbell Ewald, which first aired on CBS during the 2014 Army-Navy football game. In May 2015, the Navy Times reported that the Navy had awarded its Recruiting Command contract—“initially valued at $84.4 million for a one-year fixed-price”—to New York-based Young & Rubicam.

The big three global PRP firms are key contributors to the global hegemony of capitalism. PRP firms and their corporate media partners aid corporations, governments, and non-governmental organizations in an unrelenting ideological assault on, and pacification of the minds of the masses around the world. The overall message is the continued acquisition of material products and consumption, expanded desire for a life of luxury, fear of others—including terrorists, criminals, and threatening peoples—the support of police states, acceptance of a permanent war on terrorism, and the equation of private corporations with democratic governance. This is what Noam Chomsky called engineering opinion and parading enemies (Media Control, Seven Stories Press, 2002).

The PRP industry is highly concentrated and fully global. With $35 billion in annual revenue, the big three PRP firms are key components of the transnational capitalist class. The PRP industry’s primary goal is the promotion of capital growth through hegomonic psychological control of human desires, emotions, beliefs, and values. PRP firms do this by manipulating the thoughts and feelings of human beings worldwide. In many ways PRP firms are the ideological engine of capitalism, due to both their massive influence in world corporate media and their increasing embedded role in the propaganda of national governments, including psychological operations in support of a permanent war on terror.

Perhaps democracy movements can offer us some hope for the future. Consciousness of the dark side of PRP and its unrestricted power to warp minds is an important first step. Among some recent positive steps taken by activists to limit the power of PRP, Quebec has become one of the first regions to ban commercial advertising targeting children under the age of 13. For that matter, three generations of people in Cuba have grown up without product advertising in their lives. A group of graduate students from the Univeristy of Havana simply laughed when I asked them five years ago if they ever wanted a “Happy Meal.” It seemed absurd to them to even consider the idea. We too need to understand the absurdity of the PRP industry, and to move to eliminate its influence from our lives, our cultures, and our world.

Murky Picture of Death Figures begins To Emerge From US/Iraqi Mosul Siege

Robert J. Barsocchini


A prominent Iraqi Sunni politician, Khamis Khanjar, who is in touch with civilians on the ground in the ISIS stronghold of Mosul, which is being bombarded by US airstrikes and Iraqi ground forces, told Washington this week that

…a sudden surge in civilian casualties … [is threatening] to undermine the effort to crush the [ISIS] militants.

…at least 3,500 civilians have been killed since the push into the western side of the [city] last month.

…the mounting casualties came mainly from air strikes and indiscriminate shelling of heavily crowded neighborhoods as the U.S trained elite Counter Terrorism Service (CTS) forces push deeper into the Old City and city center.

“This will have dangerous repercussions on the post-Mosul phase..there will be anger by residents and Daesh will benefit from the large human losses…”

Reuters adds the Iraqi and US regimes are refusing to provide death figures.

A US official claimed early on in the US’s unprovoked 2003 invasion of Iraq that the US does not “do body counts.”  However, “estimates as of December of 2004 revealed that at least 6,000 Iraqi citizens in Fallujah had been killed, and one-third of the city had been destroyed.”

Of the similar Syrian/Russian coalition bombing campaign against the al Qaeda stronghold of East Aleppo, Syria, Gelhorn prize-winning journalist Gareth Porter recently noted the “Aleppo Health Directorate, a local monitoring group, estimated that 400 civilians had been killed in the first three weeks of bombing” while the “United Nations put the death toll at 360.”

Could An Unlikely Right-Left Alliance Stall Ecuador’s Citizens’ Revolution?

Federico Fuentes

Ecuador will return to the polls on April 2 after a first round presidential vote failed to deliver a decisive victory for Lenin Moreno, the candidate seeking to continue outgoing President Rafael Correa’s pro-poor “Citizens’ Revolution”.

Moreno now faces the challenge of ensuring Ecuador does not join the list of countries in the region where the left has recently lost at the ballot box.

Despite defeating his nearest rival by more than 1 million votes, Moreno fell just short of obtaining the 40% required for outright victory in the first round on February 19, winning 39.36%.

Moreno ran as the candidate for PAIS Alliance, a party set up by Correa to help him first win the presidency in 2006. As a radical economist and outsider candidate, Correa rode to power on the back of what he dubbed a Citizens’ Revolution against the political elites.

The origins of this political process lie in the predominantly indigenous-led popular revolts that rocked Ecuador from the early ’90s and overthrew several presidents during the next decade and a half.

Correa’s election was a big blow to the country’s corrupt political class. It led to Ecuador joining the then-growing ranks of left and progressive governments in the region. As president, Correa promoted anti-imperialist unity and regional integration.

He also implemented some key demands of the social movements, including expelling a US military base, defaulting on the country’s illegitimate foreign debt and facilitating a process to democratically draft a new constitution that reflects the progressive aspirations of the majority.

Policies directed at wealth redistribution, particularly in the oil sector, along with a doubling in government social spending, helped spur an unprecedented cut in the poverty rate (which fell by 38%) and extreme poverty (down 47%) during Correa’s 10 years in office.

Correa remains popular, but he declined to stand in these elections so as to pave the way for a leadership transition. He campaigned heavily for Moreno, a wheelchair-bound disability rights activist and his vice-presidential running mate in 2006 and 2009.

Correa’s backing, however, was not enough to get Moreno over the line. Moreno will now face-off against the millionaire banker and right-wing CREO party candidate, Guillermo Lasso, who won 28.09% of the vote.

In the ’90s, Lasso was appointed governor of Guayas by then neoliberal president Jamil Mahuad and briefly served in his cabinet before Mahuad was thrown out by a popular uprising.

Lasso has already signalled his intention to implement a range of anti-poor austerity measures and reverse key social gains achieved by Correa’s government.

Unsurprisingly, the entire right-wing opposition has swung behind Lasso in the hope of dealing the Citizen’s Revolution a critical blow.

The right was divided in the first round: while one section backed Lasso, another supported Social Christian Party candidate Cynthia Viteri (who won 16.32% of the vote). However, this division had more to do with the regional nature of each candidate’s support base than any major political differences. All this will be put aside in an effort to block Moreno’s victory.

It is also likely that several of the other five presidential candidates will support Lasso. However, the support of one candidate in particular — Paco Moncayo — and his backers could be critical to the final outcome.

Moncayo, a former military general from the centre-left Democratic Left (ID) party, won 6.71% of the vote standing for the National Accord for Change (ANC), an alliance which also includes anti-Correa left parties (the indigenous party Pachakutik and the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party of Ecuador, among others).

While ID said it will not support either candidate and leave it up to voters to decide, Moncayo said on March 7 he will be voting for Lasso in the second round as the “only way to get rid of Correa”.

Pachakutik’s Political Council adopted a similar position on March 2, saying it opposed “more of the same” and therefore would not support Moreno in the second round, although differences exist over whether to openly call for a vote for Lasso or not.

A similar stance has also been adopted by leaders of some of Ecuador’s indigenous organisations and trade union confederations.

The national indigenous confederation, CONAIE, continues to debate its formal position at the grassroots level, but a February 23 statement issued after a national leadership meeting seemed to indicate that support for Moreno has been ruled out.

The statement echoed the sentiments expressed the day before by Carlos Perez Guartambel, president of CONAIE’s largest affiliate, Ecuarunari, who said “A banker is preferable to a dictatorship”.

This position has also been backed up in statements by CONAIE leader Jorge Herrera who, while stopping short of declaring support for Lasso, indicated that CONAIE would neither support a vote for Moreno nor a blank or null vote.

The presidents of two national trade union confederations (Ceols and FUT) told a press conference on March 8 that they too would not support a vote for Moreno or a blank or null vote, as both would “benefit the government of Rafael Correa”.

These positions are a further reflection of the shift that has occurred among some social movements from critical support for Correa to open confrontation. In the process, the door has seemingly been left open to tacit alliances with the right.

It is the result of years of bitter conflict between the government and certain social movement leaders over key issues, such as control over natural resources, indigenous autonomy and respect towards the elected leaders of indigenous and social movements.

There is no doubt the government has been at fault in many cases, particularly in its hostility towards leaders of the indigenous movement. This was a factor in the rise in support for right-wing candidates in some indigenous communities, particularly in the Amazon region.

It is also equally the case that many of these leaders have progressively lost the support of their own base due to their confrontational approach towards a government that many see as being on their side. This division is evidenced by the strong support Moreno has received from local and regional indigenous groups and trade unions. More than 1200 such organisations have already declared their support for Moreno.

In what is likely to be a close and tense second round — in which, if the race is tight, the opposition will cry fraud, regardless of any proof as they did after the first round — it may still be the case that a section of the left helps pave the way for the return of its old enemies to power, while further tilting the balance of forces in the region to the right.

UN Official Resigns After Pressure To Withdraw Israel Apartheid Report

Ali Abunimah

A senior United Nations official has resigned, following pressure from Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to withdraw the landmark report published earlier this week finding Israel guilty of apartheid.

Rima Khalaf, the head of the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) which published the report, announced her resignation at a press conference in Beirut on Friday.

Reuters reports that Khalaf took the step “after what she described as pressure from the secretary-general to withdraw a report accusing Israel of imposing an ‘apartheid regime’ on Palestinians.”

“I resigned because it is my duty not to conceal a clear crime, and I stand by all the conclusions of the report,” Khalaf stated.

As of Friday, a press release announcing the report remained visible on the ESCWA website, but the link to the report itself from the press release no longer works.

A full copy of the report is available below.

It concludes that “Israel has established an apartheid regime that dominates the Palestinian people as a whole.”

It finds “beyond a reasonable doubt that Israel is guilty of policies and practices that constitute the crimes of apartheid” as defined in international law.

It urges national governments to “support boycott, divestment and sanctions activities and respond positively to calls for such initiatives.”

Palestinians warmly welcomed the report, but Israel angrily denounced it as akin to Nazi propaganda. Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the UN demanded that the report be withdrawn.

That demand came just as the Trump administration announced a budget plan that includes sweeping cuts in US contributions to the UN.

Khalaf’s resignation indicates that Guterres acted obediently and swiftly to carry out the orders from the United States. In a tweet, the Anti-Defamation League, a powerful Israel lobby group in the United States, thanked Guterres for urging ESCWA to withdraw the report.

The Israeli government has long targeted Khalaf for retaliation for doing her job. In 2014, its UN ambassador demanded she be removed from her post for criticizing Israel’s policies of occupation and Jewish colonization of Palestinian territory at the expense of Muslim and Christian communities.

The Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC), the civil society coalition that leads the global boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, condemned Guterres’ intervention.

“The fact that a UN secretary general has bowed to threats and intimidation from the Trump administration to protect Israel from accountability, yet again, is hardly news,” the BNC said. “The real news is that this time round, Israel, with all its influence in Washington, cannot put the genie back into the bottle.”

“Palestinians are deeply grateful to ESCWA’s director, Dr. Rima Khalaf, who preferred to resign in dignity than to surrender her principles to US-Israeli bullying,” the BNC added.

Khalaf’s resignation, under pressure to suppress factual and legal findings unfavorable to Israel, will send a chilling message to other UN officials that they are better off serving those in power than in upholding any mandate to advance human rights and respect for international law.

New Zealand union complicit in Cadbury factory closure

Sam Price

A protest was held on March 11 in the city of Dunedin, in the south island’s Otago region, against the impending factory closure by chocolate manufacturing giant, Cadbury. Today, however, after four weeks of backroom consultations with the E Tu union, the company confirmed the closure, which will destroy more than 350 jobs by 2018.

About 200 people attended the rally, which was organised by the union to try to divert workers’ anger into reactionary nationalist appeals to the multinational Mondelez, owner of Cadbury. Speakers included union officials, local Labour MP Clare Curran and Dunedin mayor Dave Cull.

Curran insisted there are “Kiwi brands here that must not be taken offshore.” Cull called on Mondelez to “reconsider the city’s invite to work together to find a solution” by retaining part of the factory.

The Dunedin plant, originally opened in 1868 by biscuit maker R. Hudson & Co, was bought by Cadbury in 1930. It is the fourth largest employer in the city. Mondelez (formally Kraft Foods) bought Cadbury in 2010 for £11.5 billion. The company’s 2016 international revenue was nearly $US26 billion, with profits totalling $10 billion.

Manufacturing is being moved to Australia, where two-thirds of the plant’s products are sold, as part of a global cost-cutting drive, begun in 2014 after shareholders expressed dissatisfaction over profit margins. In 2016, Mondelez reduced its international workforce from approximately 99,000 to 90,000. It has shut down factories in Philadelphia and Chicago in the US, Somerdale and Birmingham in the UK, Toronto and Montreal, Canada, and Mem Martins, Portugal. Production has been moved to cheap labour facilities in Mexico, China and India. Market approval for its plans has driven up the price of Mondelez shares from $US26 in 2013 to over $42.

In New Zealand, Cadbury’s revenue fell from $294.2 million to $283.4 million from 2007 to 2008. Its response was to close the Avondale factory in Auckland in 2009 and cut staff in Dunedin, totalling 268 layoffs.

The Service and Food Workers Union (now part of E Tu) did nothing to oppose the previous closure and sackings. E Tu, which fully accepts the company’s determination to drive up profits, criticised the closure as “a poor economic decision” that would “do huge harm to this brand.”

No details have been released of E Tu’s negotiations with Cadbury management, but the union hinted it was offering concessions, such as job cuts, supposedly to make the factory more competitive. On March 10, E Tu official Chas Muir stated: “What we are doing is fighting to keep the plant open. We ’ re fighting to keep every job possible ” [emphasis added].

E Tu, the largest union in New Zealand’s private sector, was formed in 2015 when the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union (EPMU) and the SFWU merged, due to dwindling membership. The union has aided in laying off thousands of workers across the country, including at New Zealand Post, coal miner Solid Energy and New Zealand Steel.

The unions have systematically suppressed workers’ struggles. Industrial action plummeted from over 200 strikes in 1986 to an historic low of 13 in 2014. Union bureaucrats collaborate with businesses to ensure that factories shut down as smoothly as possible, with minimal disruption to the accumulation of profits.

Since the 2008–09 financial crisis, the Otago region’s manufacturing industry has been gutted. Fisher & Paykel’s dishwasher plant closed in 2008 with 350 redundancies, with no opposition from the EPMU. In 2011, the construction of rail wagons by Hillside Engineering Workshop was outsourced to China, leading to 44 job losses, and the company’s eventual sale in 2012 resulted in a further 90 job cuts.

The Japanese-owned Summit Wool Spinners Oamaru factory closed in 2013, resulting in 192 redundancies. The EPMU accepted the closure and said Summit had “been a very good employer.”

Various media figures called for a boycott of Cadbury products. Actor Sam Neill tweeted on February 22, urging New Zealanders and Australians to “NEVER sell or buy anything Cadbury EVER again.” Such a boycott would have a negligible impact on Mondelez and would do nothing to address the root cause of the redundancies: the drive for increased profit in a global capitalist market.

Opposed to any mobilisation of the working class to defend jobs, E Tu launched an online petition and appealed to the public to write to members of parliament. The petition expressed concern for the New Zealand economy.

The opposition Labour Party, whose leader Andrew Little previously led the EPMU, accepts the closure. Labour’s press statement suggested that “civic leaders and the business itself works to ensure all of these workers have the training opportunities they need to find alternative employment.”

Similarly, Green Party co-leader Metiria Turei promised that if elected, the Greens would “establish a Minister for Manufacturing in Cabinet, to better represent the interests of manufacturers and ensure they thrive.”

The pseudo-left International Socialist Organisation promoted last Saturday’s rally on its web site and sought to bolster illusions in E Tu. It suggested that industrial action by the union could force Mondelez “to rethink, and to negotiate.” Socialist Aotearoa demagogically called “for the workers to occupy the plant” and “start up production themselves, supported by the wider union and social movement.”

The pseudo-lefts aim to subordinate the Cadbury workers to E Tu—the very organisation that has collaborated with thousands of job cuts and will enforce the factory closure. Far from “supporting” the Cadbury workers, the union has joined the company’s “working group” with employers to select an alternative manufacturer to make the company’s local brands Pineapple Lumps, Jaffas, Chocolate Fish and Buzz Bar.

A real struggle to defend Cadbury jobs can be carried out by breaking from the pro-capitalist unions. Cadbury workers must co-ordinate with fellow workers in New Zealand and with Mondelez workers internationally, who are facing similar attacks. This means, above all, a rejection of all forms of nationalism used by corporations, governments and unions to demand ever greater sacrifices from workers for the sake of profit.

New organisations, independent of the unions and democratically controlled by rank-and-file workers, must be built to wage an industrial counter-offensive by the working class. These struggles must be guided by a new political strategy based on the fight for international socialism.

Australian media directs anti-Muslim witch-hunt at primary school children

Oscar Grenfell 

The Murdoch-owned Daily Telegraph and Australian have stepped-up their anti-Muslim witch-hunt, with articles yesterday featuring hysterical allegations that primary school children as young as 10 years of age are “showing signs of extreme radicalisation.”

The entirely unsubstantiated claims were taken up by a number of other corporate media outlets. They were made in the context of an ongoing campaign against the principal and vice-principal of Punchbowl Boys High School in south-western Sydney, who were dismissed by the New South Wales (NSW) Education Department at the beginning of the month amid absurd reports that the school had become a hotbed of “Islamic extremism.”

As the WSWS has documented, the two were removed, with the support of the state and federal Liberal-National governments, because they had allegedly opposed the introduction of an “anti-radicalisation” program that compels teachers to inform on their students. Under the initiative, rolled-out by the state Liberal-National government last year, schools are required to report “anti-social and extremist” behaviour to the police, under a definition so vague as to include any political opinion, including anti-war views.

Yesterday’s articles in the Murdoch press make clear that in addition to agitating for increased government and police surveillance of working-class schools, the media campaign has a broader political purpose. Under conditions of mounting social tensions and intense hostility to the entire political establishment, it is aimed at diverting anger into the reactionary channels of nationalism and xenophobia, with the most right-wing, backward and disoriented layers of the population being incited against Muslims.

The front page article in the Daily Telegraph was almost entirely based on the comments of “Mrs A,” an anonymous woman said to be a former teacher at Punchbowl Public School, along with brief excerpts that the Telegraph claims are from “school incident reports” and “complaints” from 2014. Many students at Punchbowl Public School, a primary school, go on to attend Punchbowl Boys High School.

While the front page headline in the print edition blared “BEHEAD OF THE CLASS. Teachers document extreme alarm,” the allegations contained beneath failed to deliver on its hype.

A complaint, for instance, stated that two young students had been “repeatedly uncooperative and disruptive” and “began audibly chanting the Koran in Arabic” when placed in “time-out.” In one “incident,” a group of children allegedly called one of their class mate’s names. In another case, “boys were teasing each other about ‘eating sausages and seafood because they were doing work related to food in the classroom.’”

The article, and other coverage, made much of “death threats,” and warnings of “beheadings.” All that was cited, however, was “Mrs. A’s” claims, unsupported by any evidence, to have received notes on her desk, which she asserted were from students, and to have seen children run “their fingers across their necks.”

The accompanying Daily Telegraph editorial stated that the primary school was plagued by an “aggressively Islamic atmosphere” and called for the education department to take “action.”

Other reports yesterday quickly called into question “Mrs. A’s” claims.

SBS news highlighted comments she made, which were not included in the online version of the Daily Telegraph, declaring that Australia was a “Christian nation” and denouncing the presence of Halal-certified food in schools. Far-right parties, which specialise in anti-Muslim xenophobia, have focused a number of campaigns on conspiracy theories that Halal certification funds terrorism, or is part of a plot to “Islamise” Australia. In addition, none of “Mrs. A’s” multiple complaints were upheld or acted upon by education authorities.

Undeterred, the Daily Telegraph followed up today with an article claiming to cite the comments of parents at the school alleging a culture of Muslim “groupism.” The article featured quotes, supposedly from anonymous non-Muslim parents at the school, declaring that Muslim parents “reject the school rules around violence” and will not “make eye contact.”

In publishing such comments, shot through with thinly-veiled racism, the unmistakable aim of the Murdoch media is to whip-up sectarian divisions in the working class, and encourage the development of fascistic and xenophobic movements. The Daily Telegraph article yesterday was immediately picked up by a number of Facebook pages associated with the extreme right, with venomous comments directed at the primary school children from Punchbowl.

The clearest indication that the filth pouring from the Daily Telegraph is part of a broader agenda was the response of the NSW Education Department. The department’s head, Mark Scott, assured right-wing radio host Ray Hadley that, in response to “Mrs. A’s” allegations, there had been a meeting with senior police, and that police and education officials were holding talks at the primary school yesterday.

In other words, all that is required for the highest levels of the police and the Education Department to be brought down on a school, are highly dubious, anonymous, anti-Muslim allegations. Their response highlights the extent to which 15 years of the bogus “war on terror” have been used to eviscerate basic democratic rights, and boost police powers, including over schools.

At the same time, the response of both the media and the NSW Education Department is another indication of the normalisation of anti-Muslim witch-hunts in official political life. In 2005, less than four years after 9/11, senior Liberal-National and Labor politicians, acting in concert with radio “shock-jocks,” whipped-up a nationalist and chauvinist atmosphere over false claims of racially-motivated violence by Middle-Eastern men, leading to racist riots in Cronulla, in Sydney’s south-east.

Since then, social distress and alienation from official politics has only grown, with one election after another, at both state and federal level, dominated by mass rejection of incumbents and a slump in support for official parties. Explicitly anti-Muslim forces, such as Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party are being promoted precisely in order to channel the widespread disaffection with social inequality, job losses and the gutting of essential social services in a reactionary direction.

The witch-hunt underway at the two Punchbowl schools, and the absence of any opposition from the political and media establishment, including its “left-liberal” wing, must sound a serious warning to the working class. Under conditions of the deepest crisis of capitalism since the 1930s, sections of the Australian ruling elite are emulating their counterparts in Europe and the United States, promoting the same virulent anti-Muslim racism that is the stock in trade of fascistic and right-wing populist movements, and the harbinger of major attacks on the democratic rights of the entire working class.

Foreign minister warns US to guarantee Australian interests

James Cogan

In a speech delivered Tuesday in Singapore, Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop appealed to the Trump administration to ensure that its “America First” economic agenda does not impact on its key allies and that longstanding strategic relationships in Asia remain in place. Labelling China as a mutual “geo-political and geo-strategic competitor,” Bishop said the United States “must play an even greater role as the indispensable strategic power in the Indo-Pacific.”

Bishop framed her appeal to Washington in the context of the inexorable tendencies, arising from the globalisation of production, that have plunged world capitalism into frenzied economic and military struggles between rival nation-states and the corporate elites that rule over them.

Bishop briefly reviewed the vast economic and social transformations over the past 40 years, as country after country in Asia developed along the “export-orientated model”―a model based on the ruthless exploitation of the working class at far lower costs than in the advanced economies.

As an undesired consequence, Bishop declared, “there are now too many countries and too many firms making too many products for too few consumers.”

Bishop noted that despite purported “over-production,” there has been no slowdown in the deployment of new technology, such as “robotics, automation and artificial intelligence,” as corporations seek to gain advantage over their rivals. “In short,” she said, “globalisation and technological advances will only intensify rather than alleviate regional and global competition between nations and firms.”

Bishop excluded from her attempted analysis of the crisis of global capitalism that the cause of “over-capacity” is not lack of demand on the part of the world’s population for affordable goods and services. Rather, it is the intractable slump that followed the collapse in 2007–2008 of an entire edifice of parasitic financial speculation. More than eight years after the meltdown, there has been no return to pre-crisis economic growth. World trade is stagnant and even greater financial turbulence is looming as a result of the ongoing build-up of debt, especially in developing economies such as China.

While left unstated, Bishop’s remarks point to the fact that the only solution to the crisis under capitalism is that a large section of global finance and industry must be eliminated in order to guarantee profitability for the sections that survive.

Bishop’s speech gave voice to a major fear in the Australian political establishment: That the Trump administration is calling into question the entire framework of alliances through which Washington exercised global dominance following World War II.

The Australian ruling elite has been one of the main beneficiaries of US hegemony, or what commentators call the “existing rules-based order.” Financial and corporate relations between Australia and the US have vastly expanded over the past 40 years. In the last 15 years alone, Australia, based on its status as the 12th largest economy in the world―a status underpinned by massive US, European and Japanese investment in the country―has secured free trade agreements with Singapore, Thailand, the US, Malaysia, Chile, Japan, South Korea and China. It is currently negotiating pacts with the European Union, Indonesia and India.

Confronted by mounting global competition, Australian capitalism placed particular hopes on the potential benefits it could derive from the US-dominated Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP). Initially including the US, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Mexico, and six other Asian and South American countries, the TPP would have delivered Australian-based investors and corporations even greater preferential access to the massive US and Japanese markets.

In the longer term, the exclusion of China, the world’s second largest economy, was explicitly aimed at pressuring the Chinese government to meet the terms of entry by deregulating its financial markets, lifting limits on foreign ownership, privatising state-owned assets and enforcing international intellectual property laws.

The expectation in Australia was that Hillary Clinton would win the US presidency and, in broad outline, continue the TPP and the economic agenda pursued by the Obama administration. The victory of Trump therefore came as a shock, followed by an even greater shock when he proceeded to repudiate the TPP in one of his first acts as president.

Trump’s actions shattered expectations that the TPP would provide the basis for the Australian capitalist elite to weather, and even prosper in, ever more turbulent international economic conditions. Instead, the US now looms as the greatest potential risk to Australian trade interests and the so-called rules-based order. The Trump administration’s demands that countries enter into bilateral trade agreements or face tariffs and other sanctions threaten to result in the loss of lucrative markets for Australian-based firms in Japan, China, South Korea and South East Asia and, above all, the US.

To the extent that there was any coherent strategy contained in Bishop’s speech it was that loyal American allies such as Australia and Singapore can somehow influence the Trump administration to take into account the interests of their ruling elites. The “political system and values” of the US corresponded with Australia’s, Bishop declared. Those of “non-democracies, such as China,” she asserted, did not.

In strategic circles, the perspective of gaining assurances from Washington that Australia will not be sidelined has been labelled “doubling down” on the US alliance. Its advocates expect it will require even greater Australian involvement in the aggressive US military build-up in Asia and provocations against China than took place under the Obama administration’s “pivot” to Asia. If competition results in war between the US and China, Australia would be both a participant and a key base of operations for American forces.

Other options, however, are being canvassed.

In perhaps her most politically significant remark, Bishop stated: “Many regional countries are in a strategic holding pattern, waiting to see whether the United States and its security allies and partners can continue to play the robust and constructive role that they have for many decades in preserving the peace.”

Within its cautious "diplomatic speak," Bishop’s statement contains an implicit warning: If the US disregards the concerns of its allies in Asia―particularly Australia and Japan―it could rapidly lose their support.

Every action of the Trump administration is being assessed, and not only on the basis of its immediate consequences. With ever-mounting anxiety, the Australian ruling elite is weighing up whether Trump’s policies will ultimately trigger a collapse of US influence in the region and call into question Australia’s ability to rely on the post-World War II US alliance to assert its economic and strategic interests.

Contrary to Bishop’s assertion that Australia and other states are in a “holding pattern,” her very presence in Singapore indicates diplomatic activity by Canberra to consolidate and strengthen relations, first and foremost with Japan and South East Asian countries. While there is no suggestion from the dominant sections of the Australian establishment of withdrawing from the US alliance, Australian imperialism is seeking to develop alternative counterweights to what it perceives as a strategic threat from China.