Toxic Relations: Stop Colluding with Monsanto and the Agrochemical Industry!

ROSEMARY MASON & COLIN TODHUNTER

Environmental campaigner Dr Rosemary Mason has just written to the UK’s Policy Advisor Nigel Chadwick at the Chemicals Regulation Directorate of Health and Safety Executive (HSE).

She also sent Chadwick a 19-page document (Monsanto_has_committed_slow_poisoning_of_the_people_of_Wales) in which she asserts that Monsanto has engaged in the slow poisoning of the people of Wales with PCBs and Roundup. This, she says, is with the help of the British government, the Expert Committee on Pesticides, the Health and Safety Executive, Defra, the Royal Society, European Food Safety Authority, European Chemicals Agency, the German Rapporteur Member State, the BBC, the BMA and Rupert Murdoch.

Mason also discusses how Monsanto has committed ecocide with Roundup in Wales thanks to Swansea City Council’s authorised the spraying of it on city roadsides. A total of 518 kg was used in 2016.

She mentions her long and unsatisfactory many years’ history of correspondence with the HSE about pesticides, which has failed to stimulate appropriate regulatory action despite the firm evidence she has provided about the damaging effects of biocides throughout the UK and across the globe.

As with many of her previous documents, Mason outlines how Monsanto has conspired to keep its money-spinning, disease-causing product (glyphosate-based) Roundup on the market via a combination of deception, the manipulation of science and regulatory processes and the co-option of key figures – the same company that was also involved in the cover up of Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs).

Monsanto in Wales: PCBs and toxic dumping

Mason states:

“Wales is the site of the worst environmental disaster that the public has never heard of because there was a massive cover up for more than 40 years.”

She describes the role of the British government in colluding with Monsanto by outlining how Monsanto poisoned the environment in Wales with the dumping of toxins from its factory there, where it manufactured PCBs and other dangerous chemicals. The company knew about the health risks of PCBs long before they were banned. Company papers subsequently released show that for more than 30 years Monsanto had sat on lab tests results that indicated PCBs were fatal to rats and other animals.

It stopped making PCBs in Anniston (US) in 1971 because of scandals about PCBs on the health of the population and wildlife. However, the British government agreed to ramp up production at the Monsanto plant in Newport, Wales.

Toxic waste from the increased production was dumped at various quarries in Wales and one in the north of England. The British government, which knew of the dangers of PCBs in the environment in the 1960s, allowed their production in Wales until 1977.

Mason notes the extraordinary lengths to which the British government went to protect Monsanto and cover up the truth. One quarry has been found to contain at least 67 toxic chemicals. Seven PCBs have been identified, along with vinyl chlorides and naphthalene. A few years ago, the unlined quarry was found to be still leaking (the pollution of water has been occurring since the 1970s). The waste and groundwater contain significant quantities of poisonous, noxious and polluting material.

PCBs are chemicals persist in the environment and will never disappear from Wales.

Mason argues:

“The continual leak of Monsanto’s toxic chemicals will carry on for many years from Brofiscin, Maendy or one of the other five quarries around Wales in which toxic chemical waste was carried in the past by lorries bearing IWD/Purle and Monsanto logos.”

Mason describes how important research has been ignored by regulators and governments over the years that showed how various agrochemicals and other man-made chemicals in the environment are changing humans: polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), DDT, chlordane, lindane, aldrin, dieldrin, endrin, toxaphene, heptachlor, dioxin, atrazine and dacthal – all identified as endocrine disruptor chemicals.

As a resident of Wales, Mason notes that in 1973, she swapped being poisoned by PCBs leaking into the Cardiff water supply for Monsanto’s test bed for its flagship glyphosate-based herbicide Roundup in Swansea. In her various papers, Mason has provided disturbing descriptions of how glyphosate has been used liberally in South Wales and data relating to the deteriorating health of residents as well as degradation of the environment and biodiversity across the UK.

Yet, due to government collusion with the agrochemical sector, European directives have been sidelined, regulatory processes subverted and ‘business as usual’ remains the order of the day.

Business as usual  

The British Government enjoys very close financial relationships with Monsanto, Syngenta, AstraZeneca, Bayer CropScience and Dow Chemicals. Mason states:

“The UK government supported the Glyphosate Task Force (GTF), a consortium of companies joining resources and efforts in order to renew the European glyphosate registration with a joint submission (most companies produce their own formulated glyphosate products).”

She then highlights how private corporations are shaping the government’s research agenda in Britain in a way that serves their own interests:

“In 2010 Michael Pragnell, founder of Syngenta and former Chairman of CropLife International, was appointed as Chairman of Cancer Research UK (CRUK) and by 2011 CRUK was donating money (£450 million/year) to the Government’s Strategy for UK Life Sciences and AstraZeneca (Syngenta’s parent company) was providing 22 compounds to academic research to develop medicines in the UK. One Corporation promotes cancer; the other Corporation tries to cure it.”

Whether it is CRUK, the Francis Crick Institute or the Oxford Martin Commission (see Mason’s letter to the OMC here) for Future Generations, Mason draws attention to the fact that these bodies, which say they are concerned about health and disease, appear to do their best to avoid addressing the issue of transnational agrichemical companies and their products.

She asks:

“When did Oxford University lose its way? Was it when the Global Corporations came in with money to offer for services? Sir Richard Doll the epidemiologist who, together with Austin Bradford Hill, worked out that smoking caused cancer became Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford University in 1969 and a Companion of Honour in 1996 for ‘services of national importance’. Only after his death it was discovered between 1976 and 2002 that he had been paid by Monsanto to defend Agent Orange and PCBs in Court.”

And it gets worse. The EU Commission (EC) has announced that it is planning to extend authorisation for glyphosate for a further ten years. The decision is based on the latest evaluation published by the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) declaring glyphosate to be safe. The EC has actually approved 14 new import authorisations for genetically engineered plants resistant to herbicides. All these plants will contain residues from spraying. Several of the genetically engineered plants recently approved for import are not only resistant to glyphosate but also to combined applications of other dangerous herbicides, such as 2,4-D, dicamba, glufosinate and isoxaflutole.

Mason has already written to the ECHA concerning its flawed evaluation of glyphosate.

Key figures are dismissive of Mason’s work

If you read Rosemary Mason’s series of documents, you will be impressed with the amount of information she has placed in the public domain. What might be more impressive is that her evidence is always supported with reference to many official reports and (peer-reviewed) scientific studies. Her work is not just about the science behind chemicals and their impacts on people and nature. She brings to the table analyses that also delve deep into the politics of policy- and decision-making.

For all the effort put in, the recipients of her open letters seem to dismiss or ignore what she has to say. These are high-level figures often working in publicly funded institutions and whose agencies – at least in theory – are seeking to balance the interests of the public with commercial interests to the benefit of everyone involved.

However, the response to her letters seems to be ‘thanks but no thanks, we have all this covered’, even though Mason has produced page after page of evidence to show they have not got it covered and are colluding with the agrochemical sector to privilege its interests ahead of all else.

While Mason writes about the poisoning of people, water, soil and food, what her writing is ultimately about is corruption in high places and a neoliberal capitalism that regards regulation as a barrier to lining the pockets of highly paid CEOs and shareholders.

What it amounts to is a crime against humanity because the whole of humanity is paying the price. From Wales and the US to Argentina and India, the impacts of transnational agribusiness and the rolling out of its toxins are clear to see.

The media largely remains silent on the issue of agrochemicals and disease, preferring to parrot a narrative about individual choice and lifestyle being responsible for various illnesses (see this). This conveniently diverts attention from the role of the agrochemical sector and how public institutions and governments are colluding with the industry to frame legislation and polices to ensure business as usual.

Green Revolution: money-spinning chemical revolution

The Green Revolution was a chemical revolution based on proprietary seeds and chemical inputs, monocropping and ultimately debt. It was exported across the world and pressed into the service of US geostrategic interests and corporate profit. The model is not only unsustainable but has and has been underpinned by a resource-grabbing, food-deficit producing US foreign policy agenda for many decades, assisted by the WTO, World Bank and IMF (for instance, see ‘this and ‘this).

Mason has discussed in her many documents the loss of biodiversity and the devastating impact on health as a result of this model of farming. In her new document, she refers to Iowa in the US with is chemical-drenched fields and monocultured of GM Roundup Ready corn: no birds, no bees, no insects in a world where corn is king. Anything that might eat corn, hurt corn, bother corn is destroyed.

Some 100 years ago, the same fields were home to 300 species of plants, 60 mammals, 300 birds, hundreds and hundreds of insects. That all gave way to industrialised ‘efficiency’ courtesy of a Monsanto model of agriculture propped up by billions of dollars of taxpayer handouts. A water-intensive model of agriculture that turns soil into degraded chemical cocktails and humans into carriers of disease.

Monsanto’s whole business model is based on conquest. It captures markets and key institutions, destroys competition and relies on the US government to maintain its profits and access to regions of the world. It relies on the US state to keep the fundamentally crisis-ridden neoliberal agenda on track by facilitating corporate imperialism.

There are genuine alternatives (see this as well) to the prevailing chemical-intensive model of agriculture and the massive social, environmental and health costs it entails. To be genuinely effective, however, these alternatives must go hand-in-hand with rejecting the prevailing moribund doctrinaire economics of neoliberalism, while at the same time continuing to hold to account the corrupt corporations that drive and profit from it as well as key figures in public institutions who facilitate the needs of these companies.

A Question for Every Parent: Is US Foreign Intervention Worth It?

Jacob G. Hornberger

In 1996 Leslie Stahl of CBS’s 60 Minutes, asked that question of U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Madeleine Albright.

We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?

Albright responded:

I think this is a very hard choice, but the price — we think the price is worth it.

What Stahl was referring to was the massive death toll among Iraqi children caused by U.S. interventionism in Iraq during the 1990s, specifically the attempt by the U.S. government to remove Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein from power and replace him with a U.S.-approved ruler.

To accomplish that end, the U.S. government employed a brutal system of sanctions that operated against the Iraqi citizenry. The idea was that by bringing maximum economic suffering to the Iraqi people, Iraqis would rise up and remove their ruler from power without the U.S. military having to invade the country and suffer casualties among the troops.

As Joy Gordon detailed in her Harper’s Magazine article “Cruel War: Economic Sanctions as a Weapon of Mass Destruction” and her excellent book Invisible War: the United States and Iraq Sanctions, the Iraq sanctions were tremendously successful in bringing economic harm to the Iraqi people. The entire country was squeezed into extreme poverty, with Iraq’s middle class being entirely destroyed.

That wasn’t the biggest success of the sanctions, however. The biggest success was the massive death toll that it brought to Iraqi children, with deaths mounting into the hundreds of thousands, especially from infectious illnesses. That’s partly because during the Persian Gulf intervention, the Pentagon, after concluding that the destruction of Iraqi’s water and sewage plants would help spread infectious illnesses among the Iraqi populace, issued the order to destroy the plants, an order that U.S. military pilots carried out, notwithstanding the clear and obvious war crimes implications. After the war was concluded, Iraqi officials were unable to repair the plants because of the sanctions, which then succeeded in bringing the high death toll among Iraqi children.

While successful in bringing economic harm and death to the Iraqi people, the sanctions, however, failed in removing Saddam from power. It would be another 7 years of death and destruction before the U.S. government finally gave up on the sanctions and just decided to resort to a military invasion in 2003 to oust Saddam from power and replace him with a U.S.-approved regime.

The essence of the question posed to Albright in 1996 was: Were the deaths of those estimated half-a-million children worth U.S. interventionism in Iraq? That is, were they worth the U.S. attempt to bring regime change to Iraq by ousting Saddam from power and replacing him with a U.S.-approved regime?

What Albright was essentially doing was weighing the deaths of the children against the interventionism. At the time she answered the question, she was essentially saying that the interventionism was, in fact, worth the deaths of those half-a-million children.

In the wake of the latest terrorist attack in England, a variation of the question 60 Minutesposed to Albright is one that confronts every American parent and every parent of children whose government is partnering with the U.S. government’s interventionism in the Middle East and Afghanistan: Is continued interventionism worth the deaths of children who are killed as a result of terrorist retaliation?

Not surprisingly, that’s not a question that British officials are asking or requesting their citizens to ask. Like U.S. officials, they don’t want people to be questioning or challenging the U.S. and British interventionism. Thus, British officials are responding to the terrorist attack in the same way that U.S. officials and the U.S. mainstream press respond to anti-American terrorist attacks. They’re saying the terrorists are evil and cowardly, that people shouldn’t succumb to fear, and that the government is going to have to take some measures that infringe on liberty in order to keep people safe.

We can concede that British and U.S. officials are right in their assessment of the terrorists — that they are evil and cowardly and that they have no right to engage in terrorism in retaliation for the death and destruction that the U.S. government has wreaked and continues to wreak in Iraq, Libya (where the suspected British bomber’s parents were from), Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.

But isn’t that all besides the point? The point is that no matter how evil and cowardly the terrorist retaliation is and even if we concede that people don’t any right to retaliate against U.S. interventionism with terrorism, the fact is that it’s going to happen.

“But Jacob, I want the U.S. government to be able to continue killing people in the Middle East and Afghanistan without terrorist retaliation!”

Okay. I understand that that’s what you want. But that’s not what you’re going to get. That’s like saying, “But Jacob, I want lightning but I don’t want thunder.” No matter how much you want lightning without thunder, you’re going to get thunder with lightning. And no matter how much you want U.S. interventionism without terrorist retaliation, you’re going to get terrorist retaliation with continued U.S. interventionism.

Here is something else to keep in mind: The government cannot keep you safe and it can’t keep your children safe from terrorist retaliation. Go ahead — put metal detectors at the entryways for sports events and concerts. What’s to prevent suicide bombers from waiting outside the exits when crowds of people are leaving the venues? Indeed, what’s to prevent suicide bombers from hitting crowded malls or subway stations? What’s to prevent them from striking at Sunday church services, given that churches are mandatory gun-free zones? They can’t put metal detectors everywhere.

For more than 25 years, U.S. officials have said that the terrorists are coming to get us and that they have to kill them over there before they come over here. That’s sheer nonsense. The terrorists are not coming to get us. They never were coming to get us. The terrorists come to retaliate for U.S. interventionism in the Middle East, which, interestingly enough, began when the U.S. national-security establishment lost its old official enemy, communism, when the Cold War suddenly and unexpectedly ended in 1989.

Is all the death and destruction worth continued U.S. interventionism? That’s the question facing the American people, including every single parent. It’s the question facing the British people. It’s the question facing the French people. It’s not a question facing the Swiss people because they’re not partnering with the U.S. government’s interventionism and, therefore, are not the targets of terrorist retaliation.

Indonesian Borneo is Finished: They Also Sell Orangutans into Sex Slavery

Andre Vltchek

How destructive can man get, how ruthless, in his quest to secure maximum profit, even as he endangers the very survival of our planet?

The tropical forests of Kalimantan (known as Borneo in Malaysia), the third largest island in the world, have almost totally disappeared. Coalmines are savagely scarring the hills; the rivers are polluted, and countless species are endangered or already extinct.

It is all a terrible sight, whether you see it from the air or when driving (or walking) through the devastation that is taking place on the ground. The soil is black; it is often saturated with chemicals. Dead stubs of trees are accusatively pointing towards the sky. Many wonderful creatures, big and small, who used to proudly inhabit this tropical paradise, are now hiding in the depth of what remains of one of the largest tropical jungles on earth.

Engines are instantly roaring everywhere; huge equipment is continually cutting through something pure, or digging and finally transporting what has already been extracted, killed, or taken down mercilessly.

Ms. Mira Lubis, Senior Lecturer at Tanjungpura University, Pontianak in Western Kalimantan, summarizes the situation honestly but brutally:

“I think we, the people of Borneo, have lost our sovereignty over our own space and resources, under the pressure of global capitalism… Apparently, we just became poor despite all the wealth that we have.”

***

One morning I looked from my hotel window in the city of Samarinda (East Kalimantan), spotting an enormous coal barge. It was sitting right in front of me, stubbornly, under the bridge (one of only two bridges connecting two shores of this steamy city of 850,000). The barge was too big to move, as the current appeared to be too strong. One push boat and one tugboat were trying to move it against the torrent, in vain.

I went downstairs and encountered a frustrated Mr. Jailani, a shipping manager employed by a coal company.

“They were supposed to use a pilot boat, but there is none in sight,” he lamented. “This happens so often. Coal barges already hit this bridge on at least three occasions.”

Coalmines were exactly what I was looking for, but he dismissed my questions with a polite but firm answer:

“You can never make it to the mines. They are off-limits. Guards are everywhere, and you’d have to have special permit to enter the area. And there is not much to see, anyway. Our company was recently awarded a prize for environmental consciousness.”

I decided to ignore his words and polite warning. I went to Sambutan, a mining town a 40-minute drive from Samarinda. At some point, continuous and depressing urban sprawl gave way to a fully devastated landscape. Some images were striking: a man, alone, with a metal bar, singlehandedly crumbling the entire side of a mountain, supposedly in order to sell stone for a local construction site.

Nearby, in a makeshift stall, a couple and a child were selling fruits. I asked them about the mountain and the man, and they replied with a certain amount of admiration:

“We are selling coconuts here for almost two years. For as long as we are here, he has been here as well. He is a real daredevil. What he is doing is so dangerous, but he never stumbles, never falls.”

Before Makroman town, we turn left, soon leaving the main road behind. Wherever one looks, the entire landscape is ruined: mountains mutilated beyond recognition, forests gone, and huge tracts of land “cleared.”

Despite what I already witnessed in all corners of Indonesia for years, I’m still not prepared for what soon opens in front of my eyes: the endless and horrifying sprawl of natural calamity: dozens of square kilometers of dust, noise, and mud.

I try to avoid 100-ton trucks, which almost run my car off the path. They are transporting coal. I see filthy processing plants. I see old, rusty equipment scattered all around the area.

Suddenly I realize that I’m “there,” in the middle of the notorious ‘PT CEM’ (Cahaya Energi Mandiri), a giant Indonesian-South Korean coalmining joint venture.

I’m not supposed to be here, and to see all this with my own eyes. But I’m entering the mining area with a car equipped with local license plates. It is right before 1pm – the end of lunch hour. Checkpoints are unattended. I step on the gas, and dash in. Guards will soon return, but it will be too late to stop me. My rented car is already cutting through dirt and dust, progressing towards its goal.

PT CEM has operated in this area since 2008, and it counts on mining concessions covering approximately 1,600 hectares, in the area of Sungai Siring, Samarinda.
In Indonesia, the images of natural disasters like this one are hardly ever publicized. Mining in Papua, Kalimantan, Sumatra, and elsewhere brings in billions of dollars annually, into both government coffers and into the deep pockets of corrupt individuals. This country, with the fourth-largest population on earth, is producing very little, but is extracting in an unbridled manner all that is still available above and below the ground. National mass media is fully subservient to both local and foreign business interests.

***

The native population is stuck with low-paying jobs and almost no benefits. The environment is “changing,” pollution is reaching epic proportions, but there is very little awareness, even among the poorest of the poor, of the dreadfulness of the situation.

On the way out from the mining site, three men (sub-contractors of PT CEM) are trying to fix their broken truck. They speak, first reluctantly, then more and more openly:

“The pay here is very low. Our basic salary consists of US$115 per month, which is bellow official minimum wage. We have no health insurance, and no housing allowances.”

In nearby Makroman, Ms. Suwarti, a housewife married to a farmer, explains:

“We have two lots, each with 200 square meters, producing bananas and other crops, but the mining company wanted to use it. They offered compensation of only US$110. If we’d refuse, the company would still grab and use the land, but would give us no compensation. After all, coal that was extracted from our plot, they filled the pit but now nothing can grow there, anymore. The land is ruined. We were very angry, but what could small people like us do?”

It is like this all over the area, all over Kalimantan, all over the entire Indonesian archipelago.

People are often confused; only few of them are fully aware of the situation.

Ms. Ruswidah owns a store near Muara Badak. She appears to be content with the increasing number of palm oil plantations:

“I think it is good that there are palm oil plantations here because there are many people out of jobs after an oil company VICO closed down its operation here. Business is very bad for me now. Now, at least there is something replacing VICO.”

Then she continues:

“Palm oil plantation is good for the environment around here. Why? Because after they set up this plantation here, there are no more forest fires here. I have already seen three big forest fires in my life, and I’m only 36 years old. Before, bad people would just burn the forest down, but now at palm oil plantations, they have guards.”

What Ms. Ruswidah doesn’t know or doesn’t want to know, is that most of the forest fires in the area were triggered in order to “clear” the land for either palm oil plantations or for mining operations.

Few kilometers further down the road, I speak to Ms. Nurliah, who used to work for PT. Kelapa Taruk, a palm oil plantation owned by Korean. Now she is considered an “outsource worker”:

“They used to pay me Rp. 76,300/day (US$5.7). But now, they pay us according to our performance. They pay us Rp. 200,000 per hectare, and Rp. 100,000 for chemical spraying per hectare.”

“The Korean company is using the customary lands that belongs to the village. Usually they negotiate a 25-year contract. And there is always some profit sharing scheme with the village, but I don’t know the details. They don’t share this information with us, laborers.”

“Recently, the Korean company hired a Javanese manager. Since he is in charge, the conditions of our jobs here are becoming worse and worse. Now for the whole month we probably get paid only about Rp. 1.5 million (US$112). They don’t construct school and don’t provide health insurance. I don’t think we get any benefits from having palm oil plantations here.”

***

Mr. Yhenda Permana, director of LNG-producing company PT Badak NGL, which is based in Kalimantan, says:

“I’m very sad to see destruction of Kalimantan. If we look from above, the island is already ‘bald,’ dotted with black toxic lakes. They burn the forest with, even with orangutans still living there. Local people do it, but who is behind them? Protected forests are also logged out and burned. Afterwards, in most of cases, palm oil is planted.”

One of the national forests I visited, symbolically named ‘Bukit Soeharto’ (Suharto’s Hill) is almost gone. I ask an old local lady, Ms. Halbi, who is selling basic goods at the side of the road, whether there is any respect for native protected forests on this island:

“We are allowed to grow some plants here. Even I do. Pepper and dragon fruit. It is not our land, but nobody does anything to stop us.”

Stubs and stubs, everywhere, ‘replacing’ magnificent trees, in what used to be one of the greatest areas, often described as “the lungs of the planet Earth.”
Ms. Windrati Kaliman, former lecturer at INSTIPER (Plantation Technology Institute) Yogyakarta, has her theory on the matter:

“Massive deforestation accelerated after ‘de-centralization.’ Now local governments are free to give permits for logging. Rainforest is being converted into palm oil plantations and mines. In theory, protected forests and parks cannot be used for logging, but in reality they are: In Kalimantan, but also in Aceh, Riau, and many other parts of the country.”

It is not only trees that are disappearing, and not only people who are living in increasing misery.

The legendary Borneo orangutan is almost extinct. And so are bears, countless species of birds, and insects.

In Samboja Orangutan Sanctuary & Rehabilitation Center, Mr. Andreas (a caretaker), can barely hide his outrage:

“You cannot imagine what is being done to these intelligent and fascinating apes. This one – we rescued him from a timber plant. Just for fun they had him chained under the generator, for years. As a result, he lost his hearing and suffers from brain damage. It is very common in Kalimantan to hunt for female orangutans, shave them and sell them for sex to desperate forestry workers. It is like rape, like horrible slavery. Remember, these apes have 97% same DNA as humans, and as humans, they have 4 types of blood.”

I walk around the Center, observing from the distant these fascinating, melancholic creatures. So many awful stories and fates! This used to be a paradise on Earth: for apes, for other mammals, for butterflies, plants and hundreds of different trees. This used to be “the end of the world” and the beginning. Oh Borneo, what is left of you now?

I traveled through several parts of Indonesian Kalimantan, around Samarinda and Balikpapan, as well as Pontianak. I testify that I saw those “black lakes and rivers,” as well as countless open pits, and palm oil plantations, almost everywhere. I flew over hundreds of kilometers of hellish wastelands. I listened to people suffering from cancer, from respiratory diseases, but above all, from hopelessness.

Ms. Mira Lubis confirmed what I discovered:

“Now the Kapuas River and its tributaries are increasingly polluted by all types of waste, ranging from household waste, pesticides, fertilizers to mercury, which is mainly dispersed because of mining activities and large scale palm oil plantations. This creates a serious threat to the survival of communities along the river network…”

As Mr. Yhenda Permana concluded: “Can you imagine, this once stunningly beautiful island with deep native forests and thousands of living creatures, is now converted and ‘dedicated’ to only one crop: palm oil?”

The tragedy is not only devastating Kalimantan, but almost the whole of Indonesia. This is what has been happening to this country with a deep and ancient culture, and enormous natural beauty, ever since the 1965 US-sponsored coup, and re-introduction of savage capitalism, feudalism, and unrestrained corruption.

Not much is left. Who knows whether anything at all will remain here in one or two decades from now? If not, then what will happen? But the savage capitalism does not bother to ask such questions. It consumes, it plunders everything, while it can. In Indonesia, it seems that there is absolutely nothing that can stop it!

The Political Aftershocks of the Kabul Blast

Patrick Cockburn

The explosion of a giant bomb in a sewage tanker close to the diplomatic quarter in Kabul is receiving much publicity because of the heavy loss of life and because so many foreign embassies were damaged. A BBC driver was killed and four BBC journalists were wounded by the blast.

But, aside from spectacular incidents where foreigners are involved, the Afghan war has largely dropped off media and diplomatic agendas since direct foreign combat involvement ended. This has happened even though, over the past two years, the conflict has been escalating with the Taliban gradually gaining ground and the Afghan affiliate of Isis, also known as Khorasan Province and which holds far less territory, losing several of its strongholds in recent months. The number of civilian casualties last year was 11,000 of whom 3,500 were killed according to the UN, the highest number since 2009. The severity of the fighting also forced half a million Afghans to flee their homes.

The Taliban denies that it is responsible for the latest bomb blast and it has not yet been claimed by Isis, though it appears likely that it was behind the attack. Isis’s Khorasan Province has been under severe pressure this year from Afghan and US special forces in its strongholds in Nangarhar province in eastern Afghanistan. It was here that the US dropped what it claimed was the largest conventional bomb ever on an Isis tunnel complex on 13 April, though this was reportedly not as effective as first claimed. The Isis leader in Afghanistan, Sheikh Abdul Hasib, was killed in the fighting.

It is a traditional tactic for Isis to respond to setbacks on the battlefield by suicide bombings targeting civilians in order to show that it is still a force to be feared. Isis has made devastating attacks in Ramadan in many countries as it did earlier this week in Baghdad. Isis specialises in urban terrorism directed at civilians to a unique degree. In March this year its gunman entered a military hospital in Kabul and killed more than 50 people.

The war in general in Afghanistan is close to a stalemate, though the Taliban has been making ground since international forces withdrew at the end of 2014. They control or contest areas inhabited by more than 40 per cent of the Afghan population, though the government of President Ashraf Ghani holds all the provincial capitals. US air strikes limit the ability of the Taliban to win strategic victories or capture and hold urban centres.

President Trump is considering sending a further 3,000 to 5,000 troops to bolster the 10,000 who are already there as a “counter-terrorism mission”.  It became clear during the past two years that the Afghan government could not survive without foreign assistance, much of it from the US. While President Obama tended to play down its growing military engagement in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, Mr Trump plays up more air strikes or troop reinforcements as a sign of stronger US resolution under his leadership.

In practice, it has been unlikely over the past decade that the Taliban would lose so long as it had a strong core of indigenous support and the covert backing of Pakistan, where its forces could always seek sanctuary. Though aware of this, the US has always balked at a confrontation with Pakistan as a leading US ally in South Asia and a nuclear armed military power. It has likewise been unlikely that the Taliban would win because of sectarian and ethnic limitations to their support in Afghanistan and the financial and military backing of the US for the government in Kabul.

End the Greedy Silence – Enough Already

Ralph Nader

It is time Americans rise up against the corruption, inefficiency, and cruelty of our healthcare system and tell its corporate captors and Congress –   Enough Already!

For decades other countries have guaranteed universal health insurance for all their people, at lower costs and better outcomes (President Truman proposed it 72 years ago in the US). When are we going to break out of this taxpayer-subsidized prison built by the giant insurance companies, drug goliaths and monopolizing hospital chains?

How long is Uncle Sucker going to pay through the nose for gouging drug prices, patient-denying health insurance companies and all the brutal fine print rules in consumer contracts whose trap doors are maddening tens of millions of Americans?

Deductibles, exclusions, waivers, co-pays, corporate immunities from injured patients, disqualifying changes in patients’ status and just plain stonewalling are just some examples of this cruel madness.

Not to mention the endless electronic bills with their inscrutable codes and unchallengeable charges – that is if you can get anyone on the phone to answer your questions. Billing fraud and abuses alone cost us up to $330 billion a year!

Why do we put up with “pay or die” drug prices? Why do we tolerate our fellow Americans dying in the tens of thousands each year because they cannot afford health insurance to get diagnosed and treated in time?

Do we know that the profiteering drug companies regularly are given a slew of handouts, including huge tax breaks, free drugs developed by our National Institutes of Health, and few restraints on their high pressure sales of dangerous and addictive drugs (eg opioids) or, together with their corporate middlemen, return the favor by charging Americans the highest prices in the world? Other countries put limits on such blatant greed and exploitation.

Groping for ever more profits, the big drug companies offshore production to less regulated labs in China and India, which amount to 60% of the drugs we buy and 80% of the active ingredients in all medicines sold in the US. Unpatriotic in the extreme!

Compounding these inhumane practices is a supine Congress, with few exceptions like Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D, TX), and state legislatures, misusing the power we entrusted to them. These legislators see large pharmaceutical companies as honey pots for campaign cash that work as hush money paid by hordes of drug industry lobbyists. So craven was the majority in Congress in 2003 that, when the drug benefits bill was passed, it prohibited Medicare from negotiating volume discounts for this lucrative corporate sales bonanza (Past Congresses authorized the Pentagon and Veterans Administration to bargain and they get lower prices as a result).

Despite the fact that these healthcare challenges have been dealt with more humanely and economically by other Western countries in the world, Americans are consistently told to tolerate an aggravating status quo. Scores of books, articles and television exposés highlight all the ways we’re pushed around, denied, excluded, harmed, overcharged and  deceived, yet so many of these authors still maintain  that our system of health insurance/healthcare can’t be replaced with a much better one? So these writers continue to advise us how to duck, slide and swivel our escape from a few of these commercials chains and scams.

In all the fine articles written to help consumers navigate Obamacare, Medicare, and private health plans, the authors trap themselves in this vast corporate cul-de-sac by never mentioning the way out.

That way is Single Payer or Full Medicare for all, everybody in, nobody out, with free choice of doctors and hospitals – at far lower costs, mortality and morbidity. These narrow reformers can’t escape their “it ain’t going to happen here” syndrome.

Really? Don’t they know that the public has long viewed Single Payer favorably (including a majority of doctors and nurses), even without political leaders standing up for it or mass media reporting this proven safe path.

The surrender to corporate tyranny infects the 113 members of the House of Representatives who have co-signed HR 676 to create full Medicare for all. They signed, but then gave in to a silent resignation by not fighting for it in Congress and back home.

When the companies and their apologists argue for a “free market” approach to healthcare, you can retort – what free market? Half the money coming to these companies is from the federal, state and local governments. Taxpayers also pay tens of billions of dollars for much of the discovery and testing of drugs. Tax breaks and loopholes in patent laws block generic drugs and distort the free market.

Drug patents are by definition monopolies. Concentration by mergers and acquisitions of hospitals, clinics and physician practices (note dwindling independent cardiology practices) raise serious anti-trust issues. Fine print contract peonage takes away the consumers’ freedom of contract, as do the daily buy and sell equations, so often rendered by third parties for patients. Corporate billing and other crimes are endemic. What free market?

Each of you can help the Single Payer movement build momentum. Ask your members of Congress in writing if they support HR 676 and, if not, demand their appearance in person at a town meeting arranged by people like you to answer why. If they refuse, peacefully picket their local offices.

Ask the newspapers, radio and television stations, including the culpable public radio and public television, when are they going to cover the basic full Medicare reform supported by tens of millions of their listeners and viewers?

Finally, go to the website SinglePayerAction.org to find out what other people are doing and what more you can do with your friends and co-workers.

One percent of you, together with popular backing, can make it happen, through a persistent civic hobby. Remember, you only have to turn around less than 450 members of Congress.

Enough Already?

Jihad 2.0: the Making of the Next Nightmare

Pepe Escobar

Let’s start with 28 EU leaders discussing the Western Balkans at a recent summit and blaming – what else – “Russian aggression” in the EU’s backyard.

Cue to a Montenegro prosecutor raging that “Russian state bodies” staged a coup attempt during the October 2016 elections to stop the country from joining NATO.

And cue to President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker warning that Donald Trump’s anti-EU rhetoric could lead to war in the Balkans. Juncker, condescending as ever, maintains that, “If we leave them to themselves — Bosnia and Herzegovina, Republika Srpska, Macedonia, Albania, all of these countries — we will have a war again.”

The Balkans may be about to explode – all over again. Yet with a twist; unlike 1999, NATO won’t get away with bombing a defenseless Belgrade for 78 days. A new generation of Russian missiles would easily prevent it.

The 1999 tragedy in the Balkans was essentially stirred up by fake massacres in Kosovo set up by the BND – German intelligence — using local Albanians and BND agent provocateurs, who shot both sides to stir up a war and break up Yugoslavia.

All Eyes on Albania

What’s evolving at the current geopolitical juncture is even murkier.

The usual suspects do what they usually do; blame Russia, and damn any evidence.

So let a knowledgeable insider, Dr. Olsi Jazexhi, director of the Free Media Institute in Tirana, Albania, be our guide.

In December 2016, the CIA’s John Brennan went to Albania and issued a fatwa for “war against Russia” – especially in Macedonia.

As Dr. Jazexhi explains, “after Brennan left Edi Rama, Prime Minister of Albania, a close friend of George Soros, gathered all Albanian political parties in Macedonia and ordered them to support  Zoran Zaev against Nikola Gruevski. Gruevski is seen as filo-Russian and anti-NATO, while Zaev is a lapdog of Soros. As a result, Gruevski was boycotted by Albanians and Zaev had their support to form a government. The promise of Zaev to Albanians is that Macedonia will adapt Albanian as an official language and create a third (half) Albanian state in the Balkans. Macedonians are resisting, but Tirana and Edi Rama are orchestrating Albanian political parties against Gruevski. The end game is to make Macedonia a NATO member.”

Meanwhile, in Kosovo – essentially a nasty narco-Mafioso scam posing as a state and housing Camp Bondsteel, the largest overseas US military base on the planet — Hashim Thaci, the president and former Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) goon, is “building an army for Kosovo. The final aim is to integrate Kosovo into NATO even though Serbia rejects this for its former autonomous province.”

Jazexhi also details how, “in Albania, we have two major terrorist organizations being protected by the Americans and the Europeans.”

The first is what Ankara describes as the Fetullah Gulen Terror organization (FETO), allegedly instrumentalized by German intelligence; “Turkey is protesting why Albania hosts the FETO group but the Americans host them against Erdogan.”

The second is Mojahedin-e Khalq (MKO), which fights against Tehran; “Albania is being turned into the center of MKO. John Bolton was recently in Tirana, with other international supporters of MKO, and they are attacking Iran and calling for regime change.”

The MKO’s wacky Marjam Rajavi has also visited Tirana, developing  plans to “topple the Ayatollahs” in Iran.

The key issue, as Jazexhi emphasizes, is that “after turning the Balkans into a recruiting center for ISIS/Daesh during the Syria war, now the Americans are turning Albania into a jihad 2.0 state.”

So what is developing is “the same historical mistake as made by the Albanians of Kosovo, who have 100% linked their future with Camp Bondsteel and would will be instantly re-invaded by Serbia in case NATO or the US leave (which they will, sooner or later, inevitably).

Meanwhile, the European Union and the Americans, who want to de-radicalize the Wahhabi Muslims of Europe, keep mum about the Iranian jihadis.”

The “Invisible” Enemy

So the key piece of the puzzle is the configuration of Albania as the center of Jihad 2.0 — against the Slavs in Macedonia, against Tehran, and also against Ankara. No wonder the chief adviser of the Albanian government, until a few months ago, was a certain Tony Blair.

But then there is the “invisible” enemy that really matters.

In late March, Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic went to Beijing in his last official visit before the April 2 elections. Chinese President Xi Jinping stressed that economic cooperation with Serbia – and the Balkans at large – is a priority for China.

No question. In 2014, Beijing created a fund that will invest 10 billion euros in Central and Eastern Europe. Last year, China Everbright bought Tirana’s airport in Albania. China Exim Bank is financing highway construction in both Macedonia and Montenegro.

In Serbia, China Road and Bridge Corporation built the 170 million euro Pupin bridge over the Danube in Belgrade – a.k.a. the “Sino-Serbian Friendship Bridge”, inaugurated in 2014 and 85% financed by a China Exim Bank loan.

And the cherry in the (infrastructure development) cake is the 350 km, $2.89 billion high-speed rail line between Athens and Budapest, via Macedonia and Belgrade.

The EU has set off alarm bells on the flagship $1.8 billion Budapest-Belgrade stretch, investigating whether the Hungarian section violated strict EU laws according to which public tenders are a must for large transportation projects.

Inbuilt is the proverbial Western haughtiness, ruling that the Chinese could not possibly be capable of building high-speed rail infrastructure as well if not better – and for a lower cost – than in Europe.

Budapest-Belgrade happens to be the crucial stretch of the Land Sea Express Route that Beijing pledged to build, way back in 2014, with Hungary, Serbia and Macedonia. That’s the crux of the Southeastern Europe node of the New Silk Roads, now Belt and Road Initiative (BRI); a trade corridor between the container port of Pireus, in the Mediterranean – co-owned by China Ocean Shipping Company since 2010 – all the way to Central Europe.

NATO’s official spin is that it must be planted in the Balkans to fight the “threat of terrorism.” According to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, “I recently visited Bosnia Herzegovina and Kosovo, and I’m encouraged to see how focused they are on countering the threat of foreign fighters.”

Well, the “foreign fighters” happen to be right at home, not only in Kosovo but soon in Albania, the capital of Jihad 2.0. NATO after all excels in creating emerging “threats” that are essential to justify its existence.

Jihad 2.0 may be directed against Slavs in Macedonia, against Iran and against Turkey. Not to mention against the Russian underbelly. The invisible angle is that they can always be deployed to jeopardize China’s drive to integrate southeast Europe as a key node of the New Silk Roads.

Envisioning A World Where Women Inherit Property, Not Poverty

Moin Qazi

The Indian women farmer, almost never publicly acknowledged, reviled by superstition and patriarchy, and increasingly troubled by entrenched social and cultural mores and taboos bears the real burden of farm labour. Nearly 98 million Indian women have agricultural jobs, but around 63% of them, or 61.6 million women, are agricultural labourers, dependent on the farms of others, according to 2011 Census data. There has been a 24% increase in the number of female agricultural labourers, from 49.5 million in 2001 to 61.6 million in 2011. Reflecting growing distress in Indian agriculture, millions of women have gone from being land owners and cultivators to becoming labourers over a decade

Poverty and vulnerability are not purely economic phenomena reflecting what people have; they are also social phenomena reflecting who they are and what are the everyday tragedies they have to cope with .We must remember that most poor live on the edge, in constant fear of a catastrophe or tragedy.

A raft of interventions have been initiated to empower these women .Multiple strategies have to be deployed in concert because it is now a fact that there is no one-size-fits –all mechanism. One of the ambitious programmes for empowering women through membership of a collective is the Self Help Group. A typical Indian SHG consists of 10-20 poor women from similar socio-economic backgrounds who meet once a month to pool savings. Their collective strength is used as social collateral to avail loans from financial institutions. That ensures social pressure to repay . I was completely blown as I listened to the stories of these tenacious women. They have sophisticated credit algorithms: “Does the woman own a buffalo? Some chickens? Does she have a toilet in her home? What kind of roofing material does her home have? Does she bring a shawl to the village meeting? Does she come barefoot to the meeting, or does she wear slippers? Do her children come to the school properly washed and dressed?”

Our experience of working with poor women emphasises the fact that work is their foremost priority, around which their lives revolve. As they say, “If we work, we survive.” The women have the drive, ambition, and capability to create streams of income for themselves, but they often need a lump sum to get started. Through the group all manner of self-employment—sewing, delivering small items, making handicrafts—could be facilitated with a small amount of capital for a sewing machine, a bicycle, or tools. The mere act of leaving the isolation of family compounds and joining the weekly peer group discussions increase women’s confidence and motivation.

India’s flagship social programme National Rural Livelihoods Mission has self help groups as its amoeba units and focuses on the formation of institutions of the poor and the aggregation of those institutions beyond the community level. The institutions and their aggregate federations will form an institutional platform—from the self‐help group to the district—with the scope and scale to leverage resources from the public and private sector and to interact favorably with markets. These platforms create an ecosystem for innovation where the poor work together and with external agents to identify problems and design solutions

When Laxmi, in a depleted village in Chandrapur, had first held Rs. 500 in her hands, they had trembled. It was money that gave strength to her hands, changed her life, and that of thirty other women in the village who had been rooted to a patch of soybean that glowed like emerald and scorched their bare feet. Laxmi’s eyes filled with tears while telling us that, as a widow, she couldn’t provide her four children with enough to eat. Today, although finances are tight, Laxmi and her family are getting back on their feet. “I’ve always wanted a better life but didn’t know what to do, but now I have this mushroom-growing skill and can support my family. Why didn’t you people come three years earlier?” she asks playfully. She did not have much else to look forward to and was expected to go on in the same way miserable way all her life. . Fear of poverty and respect for society keep many women locked in bad marriage, as does the prospect of losing custody of their children. In a life bound to realities beyond the grasp of man, there was little room for an identity to emerge. Most important, Laxmi’s reputation for honesty made people adore her. Incidentally her name also means honesty. In a village where honesty was in short supply I was glad to see a woman who was respected just because her only wealth was honesty.

Experience worldwide shows that when a woman receives money, her extended family usually benefits, as any profit percolates down and brings about the greatest amount of good to the greatest amount of people. We create the most powerful catalyst for lasting social change. For all interventions, the fundamental logic is plain: if we are going to end extreme poverty, we need to start with girls and women

Through exposure to various roles in these self help groups, women have become more self-confident in their activities. Previously, when government officials or the bankers interacted with the village women in the absence of their husbands, they generally responded with statements like – “I don’t know”: “What can I say””My husband has gone out”, “Let him come” or “He only knows”.

The hallmark of any intervention for the poor is that it should stand on the following legs: Empathy, humility, compassion, conscience. These are the key ingredients missing in the pursuit of innovation. What we need today are innovative solutions that can take into account the peculiarities of the people at the bottom of the pyramid.

A lot of good programs got their start when one individual looked at a familiar landscape in a fresh way. But several of these programmes were difficult to scale up. The measure of success is always relative to the native culture, which is why it’s so important to work with local groups who are part of the culture and thus know what success looks like .As Bill Clinton noted during his presidency, “Nearly every problem has been solved by someone, somewhere.” The frustration is that, “we can’t seem to replicate [those solutions] anywhere else.” We know what to do if we just can summon the political will.

Wake Up: India Is Changing Faster Than We Can Imagine

Neha Saigal 

Ever since the Rajasthan High Court judge made public, his suggestions on declaring the cow, the national animal of India solely based on his inner voice and also went a step further to enlighten us on his knowledge of the non-existence of sexual intercourse between peacocks and peahens, social media is in a frenzy with memes and jokes on the judge’s absurd statements. For all those who feel like India is a bad comedy show but still can’t help laughing, you need to snap out of it now.

This is not to undermine the creativity behind the humour, which should continue as it is vital for our democracy. But we should not loose sight of the tragedy that is playing alongside this comical fest. I get this really bad feeling in my gut that the issues of importance are clearly forgotten by frivolous and irresponsible statements made by characters that are introduced into this bad comedy at various points and we are caught unaware as it is cleverly orchestrated.

The most recent rules introduced by the Environment Ministry on the ban of sale of cattle for slaughter, at markets in the name of cruelty, is very suspect. While there were some heated reactions to this including from the Kerala Chief Minister, the momentum of dissent that this non-transparent and sketchy move by the Government required, died down quickly. Even for those self-proclaimed pious Indians, this move is worrying as it comes at a huge cost to our farmers and the meat industry. 90% of the meat industry relies on these markets for supply and in 2014-15 alone this industry brought in a revenue of INR 30,000 Crores based on export of buffalo meat.

The farmers on the other hand have built a model on the sale of these animals and their ability to buy a new animal which is more effective on the farm for tasks like ploughing. But the Government by simply using the word cruelty has undermined the part of economy that depended on the sales of these animals in market places.  What the Government hasreally done, is further alienated people on the margins and given a nod to cow vigilantism and the violence that accompanies it.

Dr BR Ambedkar suggested that the food hierarchy in India segregates people into those who do not eat meat, those who eat meat but not beef and at the bottom those who eat beef. This food segregation  is closely linked with the Hindu caste system which used food choices, like eating beef to outcast other religions and communities like the Dalits. The NSSO data tells us that 70% of the beef eating population is Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes and the historical reason is, that it was the most easily available food. Sometimes the cows was the only available source of protein or even food for Dalits who were on the margins of society and unfortunately they still are. It seems like archaic methods utilized by interest groups 1000s of years ago to ostracize people is now back with a bang, but in a more sophisticated form of a law. And all of this has happened without our knowledge,who in some way will be impacted by this.

When a few people realised the damage that the Government’s Rules could cause to food security and livelihoods, they had only started raising their voice when conveniently an interview of a non-consequential judge appeared everywhere on a suggestion he made to the Central Government as part of an order. The anger that was rising in all of us is now converted to a mere joke.

The violation to our food choices merits us hitting the streets in protest but that is now reduced to a meme with many likes and shares. But the fear is that while we laugh and ridicule the Government and its right wing trolls, people of less privilege will be lynched as they consume foodand carry out trade involving the holy cow. And this is not because they are rebels but its what they know.

Again this is not to remove humour from the equation which is by far one of the best ways to  communicate, but is to express an anguish that India is moving in a  frightening direction and its all happening with much ease. While we laugh and the Prime Minister fulfills his dreams of traveling every corner of the world, India is changing much faster than we all imagined. Wake up!