Why the Palestinian Unity Deal Might Not Change Much

Patrick Cockburn

The unity agreement between Hamas and Fatah under which they will set up a joint administration that will, among other things, control Gaza is going to be regarded with scepticism in the region. The accord signed in the main intelligence headquarters in Cairo has come about because both the Palestinian sides are weak and have not discussed many divisive issues, but they do not want to be seen as blocking a deal.

The Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank have very little freedom of action these days, far less than 40 years ago when they were an insurgent movement based successively in Amman, Beirut and Tunis. Driven from capital to capital, they tried to avoid becoming the permanent proxy of any single power. But the war in Iraq since 2003, and conflicts in Arabs states which once backed different Palestinian factions since the so-called Arab Spring of 2011, have pushed the Palestinian issue well down the international agenda.

Hamas has been isolated, subject to punitive sanctions and without regional allies. It will hope to use the new accord to expand its role on the West Bank and play a wider role that it has been able to do since 2007 when, after defeating Fatah in an election the previous year, it was denounced as a terrorist movement by Israel, the US and the western allies.

Gaza’s two million people have lived in conditions of near total siege ever since, a tight economic blockade imposed by Israel which means shortages of electricity, drinkable water and, above all, jobs which have left 80 per cent of the population reliant on international aid.

In these circumstances, almost any change should be a change for the better, though Palestinian experience over the last century does not confirm this. People in Gaza will hope for a degree of access to the outside world through the Rafah crossing into Egypt.  But crucial issues remain unsettled such as the future role of the 25,000 Hamas fighters, giving a sense that neither Hamas nor Fatah want to give up real authority.

A previous accord in 2011 was denounced by Israel and was never implemented, but the present one may have more chance because it is backed by the US, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, UAE and, according to most reports, by Israel.

The so-called peace process has long been dead in the water primarily because the balance of power between Israel and the Palestinians is so decisively in favour of Israel that it is under no pressure to compromise. Israeli influence in Washington has never been higher than under President Trump, as shown by the US withdrawal from the UN cultural body Unesco, citing “anti-Israel bias”.

For Gazans any alleviation of the conditions of siege in which they are living will be good news, but they will be dubious about the declarations of unity and cooperation between parties so deeply divided. They also know that they remain very much at the mercy of Israel and outside powers. Developments in Syria and Egypt since 2011 has left the Palestinians in Gaza and West Bank even weaker than before. The accord signed in Egypt may not change very much.

Make Big Pharma Pay for the Opioid Crisis

Karen Hicks

Big Pharma is the culprit for the opioid crisis we have today.  This is about crime in the suites.   Big Pharma is the biggest legal drug pusher. The 2017 ranking of just the top 10 U.S. biotech and pharmaceutical companies equals $321 billion, based on revenue, according to a current Financial Times equity screener database. Drug overdoses, primarily from opioids are now the leading cause of death for Americans under age 50.  In 2016, drug overdoses killed more people than guns or car accidents.

Government grants (mostly from the National Science Foundation) to university laboratories do the basic science to explore the causes of disease, which is essential before a cure can be investigated.  Big Pharma then cherry picks the most promising prospects into their corporate labs to find a formula that will work to treat the disease.  After they make progress through clinical trials, they apply to the FDA for approval. Then the highly sophisticated advertising begins. Mostly beautiful, young and fashionably dressed pharma reps are the drug pushers.  They  seduce doctors and their staff in their offices with free lunches and free samples (like street pushers do to hook addicts) and whisk doctors to exotic, tropical locations for “seminars.”

The “Mad Men” phenomenon of present-day drug advertising is also seductive.  The actors in the ads are mostly white and middle to upper class.  They live in beautiful, big homes. The long list of adverse drug reactions (ADRs) are recited generally while we watch the actors play tennis, pet their dogs, play with their grandchildren, run through fields of daisies or swim in crystal clear water in slow motion.   Middle-to-upper class Americans with generous company-sponsored health insurance pay very little for a wide variety of drugs.  “Other” people, unable to pay for legal medicines, turn to the streets to alleviate the painful symptoms of diseases they suffer with. And where do their “prescribers” end up?  Mass incarceration of mostly people of color is the answer to that question.

Some members of Congress are now pushing for government funding of opioid treatment centers.  NO!  Make Big Pharma pay!  People who were damaged by legal drugs used to seek trial lawyers to bring product liability lawsuits for damages but the enormous political power of corporate lobbyists now diminishes the ability of citizens to do that.  Furthermore, individual lawsuits take years to work their way through the courts before cases take on class action status.  I experienced this during the 1970s in the now infamous case of the damages done to hundreds of thousands of women who, like me, fell for the pharma advertising that claimed the Dalkon Shield IUD contraceptive was 100% safe and effective. Users experienced a variety of pelvic diseases, perforated uteruses, hemorrhaging, hysterectomy, infertility, and even death. After more than ten years of suffering and mounting lawsuits, this case of egregious corporate crime was exposed.  A large trust fund was eventually set up in 1999, almost 20 years after the damages took place.

Big Tobacco used deceptive advertising back in the day for getting people hooked on smoking. Some of the ads used actors dressed in a doctor’s white coat claiming that menthol cigarettes actually “soothed” the throat!  After decades, Big Tobacco finally made multiple million dollar payouts to many state health departments to help with healthcare needs.

Big Pharma must pay for its sins and take responsibility for this epidemic.  They must set up treatment centers and pay for rehabilitation of the unknowing patients who got hooked (or who had generous supplies of them in their medicine cabinets where teens could get easy access to them).  The medical need for pain relief after major surgeries is essential.  But were doctors ever instructed by Pharma to tell their patients that they must be weaned off the opioids slowly?  Or did they keep writing endless prescriptions once their patients get hooked because the risks were trivialized by Big Pharma?

The Experiment in Freedom is Failing

John W. Whitehead

Every day I ask myself the same question: How can this be happening in America? How can people like these be in charge of our country? If I didn’t see it with my own eyes, I’d think I was having a hallucination.

—Philip Roth, novelist

It is easy to be distracted right now by the circus politics that have dominated the news headlines for the past year, but don’t be distracted.

Don’t be fooled, not even a little, no matter how tempting it seems to just take a peek.

We’re being subjected to the oldest con game in the books, the magician’s sleight of hand that keeps you focused on the shell game in front of you while your wallet is being picked clean by ruffians in your midst.

This is how tyranny rises and freedom falls.

What characterizes American government today is not so much dysfunctional politics as it is ruthlessly contrived governance carried out behind the entertaining, distracting and disingenuous curtain of political theater. And what political theater it is, diabolically Shakespearean at times, full of sound and fury, yet in the end, signifying nothing.

We are being ruled by a government of scoundrels, spies, thugs, thieves, gangsters, ruffians, rapists, extortionists, bounty hunters, battle-ready warriors and cold-blooded killers who communicate using a language of force and oppression.

Our nation of sheep has, as was foretold, given rise to a government of wolves.

The U.S. government now poses the greatest threat to our freedoms.

More than terrorism, more than domestic extremism, more than gun violence and organized crime, even more than the perceived threat posed by any single politician, the U.S. government remains a greater menace to the life, liberty and property of its citizens than any of the so-called dangers from which the government claims to protect us.

This has been true of virtually every occupant of the White House in recent years.

Unfortunately, nothing has changed for the better since Donald Trump ascended to the Oval Office.

Indeed, Trump may be the smartest move yet by the powers-that-be to keep the citizenry divided and at each other’s throats, because as long as we’re busy fighting each other, we’ll never manage to present a unified front against tyranny in any form.

As American satirist H.L. Mencken predicted almost a century ago:

“All the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

In other words, nothing has changed, folks.

The facts speak for themselves.

We’re being robbed blind by a government of thieves

Americans no longer have any real protection against government agents empowered to seize private property at will. For instance, police agencies under the guise of asset forfeiture laws are taking Americans’ personal property based on little more than a suspicion of criminal activity and keeping it for their own profit and gain. In one case, police seized $53,000 from the manager of a Christian rock band that was touring and raising money for an orphanage in Thailand. Despite finding no evidence of wrongdoing, police kept the money. Homeowners are losing their homes over nonpayment of taxes (for as little as $400 owed) and municipal bills such as water or sewer fees that amount to a fraction of what they have invested in their homes. And then there’s the Drug Enforcement Agency, which has been searching train and airline passengers and pocketing their cash, without ever charging them with a crime.

We’re being taken advantage of by a government of scoundrels, idiots and cowards

Mencken calculated that “Congress consists of one-third, more or less, scoundrels; two-thirds, more or less, idiots; and three-thirds, more or less, poltroons.” By and large, Americans seem to agree. When you’ve got government representatives who spend a large chunk of their work hours fundraising, being feted by lobbyists, shuffling through a lucrative revolving door between public service and lobbying, and making themselves available to anyone with enough money to secure access to a congressional office, you’re in the clutches of a corrupt oligarchy. Mind you, these same elected officials rarely read the legislation they’re enacting, nor do they seem capable of enacting much legislation that actually helps the plight of the American citizen. More often than not, the legislation lands the citizenry in worse straits.

We’re being locked up by a government of greedy jailers

We have become a carceral state, spending three times more on our prisons than on our schools and imprisoning close to a quarter of the world’s prisoners, despite the fact that crime is at an all-time low and the U.S. makes up only 5% of the world’s population. The rise of overcriminalization and profit-driven private prisons provides even greater incentives for locking up American citizens for such non-violent “crimes” as having an overgrown lawn.  As the Boston Review points out, “America’s contemporary system of policing, courts, imprisonment, and parole … makes money through asset forfeiture, lucrative public contracts from private service providers, and by directly extracting revenue and unpaid labor from populations of color and the poor. In states and municipalities throughout the country, the criminal justice system defrays costs by forcing prisoners and their families to pay for punishment. It also allows private service providers to charge outrageous fees for everyday needs such as telephone calls. As a result people facing even minor criminal charges can easily find themselves trapped in a self-perpetuating cycle of debt, criminalization, and incarceration.”

We’re being spied on by a government of Peeping Toms

The government is watching everything you do, reading everything you write, listening to everything you say, and monitoring everything you spend. Omnipresent surveillance is paving the way for government programs that profile citizens, document their behavior and attempt to predict what they might do in the future, whether it’s what they might buy, what politician they might support, or what kinds of crimes they might commit. The impact of this far-reaching surveillance, according to Psychology Today, is “reduced trust, increased conformity, and even diminished civic participation.” As technology analyst Jillian C. York concludes, “Mass surveillance without due process—whether undertaken by the government of Bahrain, Russia, the US, or anywhere in between—threatens to stifle and smother that dissent, leaving in its wake a populace cowed by fear.”

We’re being ravaged by a government of ruffians, rapists and killers

It’s not just the police shootings of unarmed citizens that are worrisome. It’s the SWAT team raids gone wrong—more than 80,000 annually—that are leaving innocent citizens wounded, children terrorized and family pets killed. It’s the roadside strip searches—in some cases, cavity searches of men and women alike carried out in full view of the public—in pursuit of drugs that are never found. It’s the potentially lethal—and unwarranted—use of so-called “nonlethal” weapons such as tasers on children for “mouthing off to a police officer. For trying to run from the principal’s office. For, at the age of 12, getting into a fight with another girl.”

We’re being forced to surrender our freedoms—and those of our children—to a government of extortionists, money launderers and professional pirates

The American people have repeatedly been sold a bill of goods about how the government needs more money, more expansive powers, and more secrecy (secret courts, secret budgets, secret military campaigns, secret surveillance) in order to keep us safe. Under the guise of fighting its wars on terror, drugs and now domestic extremism, the government has spent billions in taxpayer dollars on endless wars that have not ended terrorism but merely sown the seeds of blowback, surveillance programs that have caught few terrorists while subjecting all Americans to a surveillance society, and militarized police that have done little to decrease crime while turning communities into warzones. Not surprisingly, the primary ones to benefit from these government exercises in legal money laundering have been the corporations, lobbyists and politicians who inflict them on a trusting public.

We’re being held at gunpoint by a government of soldiers: a standing army

As if it weren’t enough that the American military empire stretches around the globe (and continues to leech much-needed resources from the American economy), the U.S. government is creating its own standing army of militarized police and teams of weaponized bureaucrats. These civilian employees are being armed to the hilt with guns, ammunition and military-style equipment; authorized to make arrests; and trained in military tactics. Among the agencies being supplied with night-vision equipment, body armor, hollow-point bullets, shotguns, drones, assault rifles and LP gas cannons are the Smithsonian, U.S. Mint, Health and Human Services, IRS, FDA, Small Business Administration, Social Security Administration, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Education Department, Energy Department, Bureau of Engraving and Printing and an assortment of public universities. There are now reportedly more bureaucratic (non-military) government civilians armed with high-tech, deadly weapons than U.S. Marines. That doesn’t even begin to touch on the government’s arsenal, the transformation of local police into extensions of the military, and the speed with which the nation could be locked down under martial law depending on the circumstances.

Whatever else it may be—a danger, a menace, a threat—the U.S. government is certainly no friend to freedom.

To our detriment, the criminal class that Mark Twain mockingly referred to as Congress has since expanded to include every government agency that feeds off the carcass of our once-constitutional republic.

The government and its cohorts have conspired to ensure that the only real recourse the American people have to hold the government accountable or express their displeasure with the government is through voting, which is no real recourse at all.

Consider it: the penalties for civil disobedience, whistleblowing and rebellion are severe. If you refuse to pay taxes for government programs you believe to be immoral or illegal, you will go to jail. If you attempt to overthrow the government—or any agency thereof—because you believe it has overstepped its reach, you will go to jail. If you attempt to blow the whistle on government misconduct, you will go to jail. In some circumstances, if you even attempt to approach your elected representative to voice your discontent, you can be arrested and jailed.

You cannot have a republican form of government—nor a democratic one, for that matter—when the government views itself as superior to the citizenry, when it no longer operates for the benefit of the people, when the people are no longer able to peacefully reform their government, when government officials cease to act like public servants, when elected officials no longer represent the will of the people, when the government routinely violates the rights of the people and perpetrates more violence against the citizenry than the criminal class, when government spending is unaccountable and unaccounted for, when the judiciary act as courts of order rather than justice, and when the government is no longer bound by the laws of the Constitution.

For too long, the American people have obeyed the government’s dictates, no matter now unjust.

We have paid its taxes, penalties and fines, no matter how outrageous. We have tolerated its indignities, insults and abuses, no matter how egregious. We have turned a blind eye to its indiscretions and incompetence, no matter how imprudent. We have held our silence in the face of its lawlessness, licentiousness and corruption, no matter how illicit.

Oh how we have suffered.

How long we will continue to suffer depends on how much we’re willing to give up for the sake of freedom.

It may well be that Professor Morris Berman is correct: perhaps we are entering into the dark ages that signify the final phase of the American Empire. “It seems to me,” writes Berman, “that the people do get the government they deserve, and even beyond that, the government who they are, so to speak. In that regard, we might consider, as an extreme version of this… that Hitler was as much an expression of the German people at that point in time as he was a departure from them.”

For the moment, the American people seem content to sit back and watch the reality TV programming that passes for politics today. It’s the modern-day equivalent of bread and circuses, a carefully calibrated exercise in how to manipulate, polarize, propagandize and control a population.

As French philosopher Etienne de La Boétie observed half a millennium ago:

“Plays, farces, spectacles, gladiators, strange beasts, medals, pictures, and other such opiates, these were for ancient peoples the bait toward slavery, the price of their liberty, the instruments of tyranny. By these practices and enticements the ancient dictators so successfully lulled their subjects under the yoke, that the stupefied peoples, fascinated by the pastimes and vain pleasures flashed before their eyes, learned subservience as naively, but not so creditably, as little children learn to read by looking at bright picture books.”

The bait towards slavery. The price of liberty. The instruments of tyranny.

Yes, that sounds about right.

“We the people” have learned only too well how to be slaves. Worse, we have come to enjoy our voluntary servitude, which masquerades as citizenship.

Unfortunately, as I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we won’t be able to sustain this fiction much longer.

“Things fall apart,” wrote W.B. Yeats in his dark, forbidding poem “The Second Coming.” “The centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world… Surely some revelation is at hand.”

Wake up, America, and break free of your chains.

Something wicked this way comes.

The Global Food And Health Crisis: Monsanto’s Science Is Bogus

Colin Todhunter & Rosemary Mason

Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is the new director general of the World Health Organization (WHO). With a $4 billion annual budget, WHO’s decisions affects us all and its decisions also affect the bottom line of some of the most powerful corporations on the planet.

Health is political. And health is big business. For instance, WHO makes dietary and nutrition recommendations that can affect the likes of Nestle, Unilever, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, General Mills and Kellogg’s. WHO devises a list of essential medicines that governments should stock for the health of their people, thereby affecting the sales of major pharmaceutical companies. It also helps other UN agencies procure billions of dollars of pharmaceutical products by vetting manufacturers to ensure they meet WHO standards and specifications.

WHO wants to place restrictions on the use of antibiotics in food and livestock production, and it also reviews scientific evidence to appraise the cancer-risk of agricultural chemicals, including Monsanto’s glyphosate-based Roundup and Dow’s 2,4-D.

As you might imagine, WHO recommendations can have massive ramifications for big corporations, which can fight tooth and nail to attack and discredit any WHO decision that could damage their strategic market positions and financial bottom line. And this is exactly what we are witnessing right now as Monsanto battles to protect is multi-billion-dollar money spinner Roundup with yet another smear campaign, this time against US toxicologist Dr Christopher Portier. Given what happened to Seralini and his team’s study, it’s all highly predictable.

Rosemary Mason writes to the WHO

Due the pivotal role of WHO, Dr Rosemary Mason has contacted Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus through an open letter expressing major concerns about role of transnational agrochemical/agritech corporations and the impacts of their products on human health and the environment.

With the focus clearly on Monsanto, Mason brings to the attention of Ghebreyesus the many lawsuits filed against the company alleging that Roundup causes cancer. These cases have forced Monsanto to reveal emails that show it employed ghost-writing, used scientists as paid lobbyists and targeted those that produced evidence that challenged the company in order to keep Roundup, its flagship herbicide, on the market by fraudulent science.

More than 250 lawsuits are pending against Monsanto in US District Court in San Francisco, filed by people alleging that exposure to Roundup herbicide caused them or their loved ones to develop non-Hodgkin lymphoma and that Monsanto covered up the risks  (Roundup is linked to cancers of the bone, colon, kidney, liver, melanoma, pancreas and thyroid). Additionally, at least 1,100 plaintiffs have made similar claims against Monsanto in state courts, and US attorneys recently came to the European Union with two plaintiffs to support the Members of the European Parliament in their Public Hearing on The Monsanto Papers and glyphosate.

WHO International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has declared glyphosate as a 2A carcinogen. As glyphoaste comes up for re-licensing in Europe, in a public hearing in Brussels this month, Dr Christopher Portier and Dr Kate Guyton defended IARC’s position. Dr Portier drew attention to the significance of statistically significant tumor findings that have not been discussed in any of the existing reviews on glyphosate. 

Portier concluded that as the regulatory bodies, the European Food Safety Authority and the European Chemicals Agency’s analyses were scientifically flawed. These organisations had also used industry studies that were not in the public domain for ‘reasons of commercial confidentiality’ to support their case that glyphosate was not carcinogenic.

Mason presents a strong case to argue that the US Environmental Protection Agency and European regulators are colluding with Monsanto and the European Glyphosate Task Force: despite the evidence (see Mason’s fully-referenced document ‘Monsanto’ Science is Fraudulent’), they all deny that glyphosate causes cancer.

Corporate hijack of food and farming

Dr Mason goes on to discuss the ‘Green Revolution’ – chemical warfare on plants, soil and biodiversity – which has been a financially lucrative venture for Monsanto, Bayer, Syngenta and the other major agrochemical companies.

She identifies the now well-document links between the Rockefeller Foundation and the Green Revolution and how J.D. Rockefeller’s ‘philanthropy’ was instrumental in helping to destroy traditional health care practices  by having pharmaceutical corporations and allopathic medicine take over healthcare with chemical ‘cures’.

By referring to my recent article, Mason brings the director general’s attention to how powerful, unscrupulous interests have hijacked and redefined both food and agriculture to the detriment of human health and the environment. Global corporations have destroyed thousands of years of agriculture; an ongoing destruction that today rests heavily on the renewal of the license for glyphosate!

She also documents at length scientific fraud, corruption by regulatory agencies and collusion at the highest levels of government that have all conspired to destroy human health. In doing so, she presents a good deal of scientific evidence that highlights the deleterious impacts of various agrochemicals on health.

Re-licensing glyphosate: the European Commission must be stopped

As the preeminent body for directing global health and helping people build a healthier, better future across the world (as stated on the WHO website), it the responsibility of WHO to act:

1) The World Health Organization must declare that the current system of pesticides assessment is corrupt.

2) The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has stated his intention to introduce the crime of ecocide – the destruction of the environment – as a crime against humanity. It could be used against corporations as well as against individual governments.

3) WHO should press the prosecutor to complete the legislation so Monsanto can be prosecuted in the International Criminal Court in The Hague for crimes against humanity.

4) Other agrochemical corporations, the pesticide regulators and governments (including Britain) should follow.

“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.” UN’s special rapporteur on the right to food, Hilal Elver

It not just about the companies. You also have to challenge the destructive system that fuels the global food and health crisis.

Appendix

Cancer Research UK statistics for the UK

In 2014 there were13,605 new cases of non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) (4,801 deaths); 41,265 new cases of bowel cancer (15,903 deaths); 12,523 new cases of kidney cancer (4,421 deaths); 5,550 new cases of liver cancer (5,091 deaths); 5,419 new cases of melanoma (2,459 deaths); 3,404 new cases of thyroid cancer (376 deaths); and 10,063 new cases of bladder cancer (5,369 deaths)

There were 9,324 new cases of uterine cancer (2,166 deaths); 7,378 cases of ovarian cancer (4,128 deaths); 9,534 new cases of leukaemia (4,584 deaths); 55,222 new cases of invasive breast cancer (11,433 deaths); 46,690 new cases of prostate cancer (11,287 deaths); 8,919 new cases of oesophageal cancer (7,790 deaths); 2,418 new cases of testicular cancer (60 deaths); and 5,501 new cases of myeloma (2,928 deaths). In the US in 2014 there were 24,050 new cases of myeloma.

Unfortunately, the public narrative on cancer has been hijacked by the very corporations responsible for much of the increase in these diseases, thereby conveniently diverting attention away from their role.

Australian military covered up dangers of toxic fire-fighting foam

Patrick Davies

Contamination, an investigative television report which aired on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s “Four Corners” program last week, confirmed that the Australian Defence Department ignored explicit warnings issued three decades ago about the danger of fire-fighting foam used at its facilities.

While it was previously thought the defence department only learnt in 1991 of the risks posed by the foam leaking into water supplies, the program cited a 1987 consultant’s report which called for the foam to be treated as “toxic waste.” Defence deliberately withheld this knowledge from the public.

The fire-suppressant aqueous film forming foam, which contains perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and is also known as light water, was manufactured by the giant 3M chemical company. It began to be used for aviation fire-fighting in 1964.

Up to 18 air force bases around Australia have been potentially contaminated by the foam. The total number of sites currently under government investigation exceeds 70. This includes some local fire stations and civilian airports.

The foam was widely employed throughout Australia until 2003 when the National Industrial Chemicals Notification and Assessment Scheme called for the end to any “unnecessary” use of the product. The following year, the Defence Department claimed it would phase it out, but this was not completed until 2012.

Two years after receiving the 1987 consultant’s warnings, the defence department established the Tindal air force base in Katherine, in the Northern Territory, where it used the toxic material. It failed to warn defence personnel and residents of the dangers posed.

Tindal base fire-fighters told “Four Corners” that they trained with the toxic material for years and were told it was safe. Former flight sergeant Brian Wrigglesworth said fire-fighters had no idea of the risks and were often “saturated in” the product. He estimated that roughly two-hundred litres of foam would overflow into local waterways and groundwater each week.

PFOS and PFAS have been identified by international bodies, such as the Persistent Organic Pollutants Review Committee, as potentially dangerous to human health and highly persistent in the natural environment. Large-scale epidemiological studies conducted by the C8 Science panel in the US have shown probable links to six diseases, including thyroid and testicular cancer.

Philippe Grandjean, an assistant professor of environmental health at the Harvard School of Public Health, told “Four Corners” that PFAS chemicals can suppress the body’s immune system. “With immune dysfunction, the body does not pick up the abnormal cells that are spreading and developing into a cancer,” he said. Grandjean cautioned that further action was needed to “protect humans against these exposures.”

The contamination of water supplies in Katherine has placed its 6,000 residents at significant risk. Defence Department testing of bore water, which is relied upon by families for daily use including drinking and washing, has showed PFAS levels up to 80 times the safe limit.

Two months ago, the town was put on water restrictions. While the tropical community receives high rainfall, the restrictions have been imposed so town water supplies do not have to be topped up with the contaminated ground water.

The Bartlett family, who were featured on “Four Corners,” own a mango farm in close proximity to the airbase. They are among more than 40 people who rely entirely on bottled water because their bore water is unsafe. Kirsty Bartlett was diagnosed with thyroid cancer at around the same time that her family were told their water was contaminated.

The Defence Department’s failure to act on previous warnings was “just disgusting,” Bartlett said. “It feels a bit like we’re collateral damage. I know that sounds a bit extreme, but it just really feels like our lives here really don’t matter.”

Defence Department representative Steve Grzeskowiak attempted to deflect political responsibility for the disaster, telling “Four Corners” that standards and practices in place before the early 2000s were “not as good as they should have been.” He claimed to have had no prior knowledge of the consultant’s report in 1987 and refused to explain why residents and fire-fighters had not been warned of the dangers.

Residents of Oakey, Queensland and Williamtown, New South Wales, who live in areas contaminated by PFAS fire-fighting chemicals, have mounted separate class action suits to litigate for compensation. A Senate inquiry launched in late 2015 called for compensation and land acquisition but none of its recommendations were binding.

Oakey resident Brad Hudson told “Four Corners” about the impact of the contamination on his family. Hudson was diagnosed with testicular cancer shortly before he was informed that water on his property was toxic.

“Four Corners” also cited a 2012 internal email from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in which the defence department acknowledged elevated levels of PFAS chemicals leaving the Williamtown air base. The department, however, instructed the EPA to keep the information “confidential.” It was another three years before residents surrounding Williamtown were alerted.

During this period, several people purchased properties in the area and set up their lives, only to find out later that their homes had been placed in the “red zone.” These homes lost their value and now the banks will not lend to residents living in the zone. Water in some parts of the Williamtown “red zone” is currently registering PFAS readings 18 times the safe drinking level.

The federal government, which has offered free blood testing to the residents of contaminated areas around Williamtown and Oakey, has refused to do the same in Katherine until environmental investigations are completed, a process that will drag on well into 2018. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has defended this decision, reiterating government and defence department claims that there is “no consistent evidence that PFAS is harmful to human health.”

According to “Four Corners,” the clean-up has already cost the Defence Department $100 million nationally with defence spokesman Steve Grzeskowiak admitting that it was possibly the “largest environmental investigation” in Australian history.

The Australian government is fighting the class action by residents and strenuously resisting demands for compensation for the poisoning of water supplies and the consequent health and social consequences, for which consecutive Liberal-National and Labor governments are directly responsible. Utterly indifferent to the plight of residents and their families, it continues to spend billions on the military and, in lock step with Washington’s “pivot to Asia,” is preparing for war against North Korea and China.

Power struggle in leadership of Germany’s Left Party

Peter Schwarz

In the wake of Germany’s federal election, a bitter power struggle has erupted in the leadership of the Left Party. It reached a high point on Tuesday at the first meeting of the party’s newly-elected parliamentary group.

The dispute was triggered by the issue of how much influence party leaders Katja Kipping and Bernd Riexinger should have over the parliamentary group. Several motions were presented at the meeting that would have given the two leaders voting rights in the parliamentary group’s executive and additional speaking rights in parliament (the Bundestag). The two parliamentary group leaders, Sahra Wagenknecht and Dietmar Bartsch, categorically rejected this.

Prior to the meeting, Wagenknecht appealed to all parliamentary deputies in a four-page letter accusing Kipping and Riexinger of sabotaging the election campaign, intriguing behind the scenes and bullying. She threatened to resign if they got their way in the parliamentary group.

The two party leaders, Wagenknecht wrote, “never accepted” that the party elected herself and Bartsch as the lead candidates for the federal election campaign. They had “engaged in a penetrating small-scale war” to “undermine” the election “from behind the scenes and by means of intrigue.”

“After the federal election—and with complete disregard to the Lower Saxony election campaign—the mounting conflict became an open campaign against the current parliamentary group leadership,” Wagenknecht continued. A climate has been created in the party “that no longer permits a normal culture of discussion.” Riexinger and Kipping are attempting to “force out” Wagenknecht and Bartsch.

Wagenknecht threatened to withdraw as parliamentary group leader if the group’s leadership is occupied by party executive candidates. She sees “no point in wasting my strength and health in permanent internal trench warfare with two party leaders who are obviously unwilling to cooperate fairly.”

After a seven-hour discussion and a meeting between the four, they finally agreed in the evening on a compromise. The party leaders will receive additional speaking rights in the Bundestag, but no voting rights on the parliamentary group executive. Bartsch and Wagenknecht were subsequently re-elected as parliamentary leaders by 80 percent and 75 percent of the votes, respectively.

But the disputes have not been resolved. This is shown by the aggressive tone of Wagenknecht’s letter. The Left Party is responding to the federal election and the rise of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) with a sharp shift to the right, which is tearing it apart internally.

The party has played an important role in eastern Germany in suppressing social opposition and, where it has held government posts, imposing its own attacks on the working class. This role has now been called into question. In all five federal states in eastern Germany, the AfD finished ahead of the Left Party. The party lost 400,000 voters to the AfD, above all from workers and the unemployed in their former strongholds in eastern Germany.

The Left Party was able to slightly improve its national result, because the party secured new voters from urban middle-class elements who previously backed the Social Democratic Party (SPD) or Greens. But the main beneficiaries of the major losses suffered by the Christian Democrats and SPD were the AfD and liberal Free Democrats. Both parties overtook the Left Party, which now, instead of being the third largest party, is only the fifth largest in parliament.

Wagenknecht has reacted to the party’s collapsing support among workers and in eastern Germany by adopting the AfD’s xenophobic programme. She and her husband, the former SPD leader and founder of the Left Party, Oskar Lafontaine, have been pursuing this course for some time.

Shortly after the election, Lafontaine published a comment on Facebook that was printed in the party’s newspaper, Neues Deutschland. He blamed the Left Party’s “mistaken refugee policy” for the “lack of support from those on the lower end of the income scale.”

In a manner typical of the AfD, Lafontaine sought to play refugees off against the poor. One should “not impose the burden of immigration on those who are already the losers due to increasing inequality in income and wealth,” he wrote, as if the refugees are responsible for the attacks on workers carried out by the ruling class, with the Left Party’s support, in the interests of the ruling elite!

Stretching his demagogy to the limit, Lafontaine went on to write that if one looks at “the people fleeing war, hunger and disease,” the “violation of the principle of social justice” is even greater. Only a minority manages “to come up with several thousand euros to pay smugglers to come to Europe, and above all Germany.” Instead, it would be much better to spend money to “improve conditions in the camps” than to allow refugees into Germany.

This comment provoked a sharp debate in Neues Deutschland, as several party leaders distanced themselves from the all too obviously right-wing positions advanced by Lafontaine.

Gregor Gysi, a leading figure for many years within the Left Party, rejected the idea “that one adopts wrong, semi-right-wing positions in the hope of getting votes from more workers and unemployed people… If you want more social justice, you have to struggle against unjustifiable wealth, not against other poor people.”

Kipping countered Lafontaine, writing, “Whoever adopts a right-wing position on the refugee issue is risking the Left Party’s credibility.”

Wagenknecht complained bitterly in her letter to the deputies about this criticism. Neues Deutschland publishes online “articles almost daily from party leader Kipping’s close political associates, who accuse me of ‘semi-right-wing’, ‘AfD-aligned’ or even ‘racist’ and ‘social-nationalist’ positions,” she wrote. “If anyone who does not share the position ‘open borders for everyone right now’ is immediately suspected of being a ‘racist’ and ‘semi-Nazi’, it is no longer possible to conduct a detailed discussion about a reasonable strategic direction.”

The fact that Wagenknecht was elected by 75 percent of the deputies despite this proves that her right-wing, xenophobic positions enjoy broad acceptance within the Left Party.

Kipping and Riexinger are not concerned about declaring their support for refugees. They see the Left Party’s future in “cosmopolitan, mobile, often urban milieus” (Kipping) which are chiefly interested in questions of environmental protection, gender politics and similar matters, and would be repelled by too close an identification with the AfD.

Riexinger wrote in Neues Deutschland, “The struggle to compete, nationalism and racism dominate the daily thinking of sections of the population, unfortunately also the workers and unemployed.” For the Left Party, the issue is therefore to “build bridges with the social democratic and left-green milieu.”

For all the factions engaged in the infighting, the responsibility of the Left Party for the AfD’s rise remains completely taboo. The Left Party’s right-wing policies dressed up in left rhetoric—the social cuts, lay offs and strengthening of the police for which the Left Party is responsible—have created the frustration, anger and outrage which the AfD now seeks to exploit. It is no accident that in Thuringia, the only state with a Left Party Minister President, the AfD led the Left Party by six percentage points in the election.

Notwithstanding the bitter conflicts, all tendencies in the Left Party continue to seek to prevent social opposition from getting out of control and to suppress the class struggle. The Lafontaine-Wagenknecht wing want to do this by adopting AfD slogans, while the Kipping-Riexinger wing seek to mobilise privileged sections of the middle class. The divisions between both factions are fluid.

Military industry stocks soar amid growing threat of war

Gabriel Black

Amid the growing threat of world war, Wall Street is investing huge sums of money in the armaments industry.

Since the beginning of this year, the Standard & Poor’s (S&P) Aerospace and Defense Industry subsector index has climbed 31.5 percent, while the S&P as a whole increased by only 12.9 percent. This surge in the stock value of the weapons industry—at a pace 2.5 times the rest of the market—should be taken as a warning of the bloodshed that is being prepared by the ruling elite.

At the top of the list in growth are giant companies such as Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Boeing and Raytheon. These companies are responsible for the most-used and deadliest weapons of the US arsenal, including the F-16, F-22 fighter planes, the B-2 bomber, the Patriot Missile, and all sorts of lesser-known ammunitions, high-tech communication devices, and vehicles essential for modern warfare.

Raytheon, the largest producers of guided missiles, is typical of the group, with its stock price continually breaking record highs. It is up 32 percent from the beginning of this calendar year. Its recent acceleration, however, is just the tail-end of a steep five-year climb in growth. Since 2013, its stock price has increased threefold.

The growth in defense industry stocks reflects several interconnected phenomena. First, there is the growing danger of war. At no point since before World War II have international relations between major powers been so tense. Should the United States launch a war against North Korea, China and Russia could quickly become involved, sparking a global conflict. Countries such as Saudi Arabia, Germany, and Japan are making moves to greatly increase their defense budgets, and they will rely heavily on US armaments to do so.

Second, the stock markets in the United States and globally have been fed by a coordinated central bank policy of historically unprecedented cheap credit. This policy has produced a massive bubble that threatens to explode, dwarfing the 2008 financial crisis. The low rate of return on actual industrial investment has caused the loose money floating around the financial markets to inflate pre-existing assets. This is why economic growth and inflation remain low while asset prices have exploded.

Third, the Trump administration is signaling a new stage in the United States’ descent into military rule. Trump has already signed a series of record armament deals with other countries, such as Saudi Arabia. At the same time, it has pledged to massively increase the US war budget. Trump’s policy of allowing the top military brass to essentially make its own decisions has sent a strong signal to Wall Street that major defense companies will experience a massive growth in the coming period.

Raytheon CEO Tom Kennedy told investors this July, “We have an administration that is significantly supporting international work for the domestic U.S. industry and that has opened several doors for us.” He said that Trump as commander-in-chief “changes the game. … The bottom line is it’s just accelerating our ability to grow internationally.”

In May, Trump signed a deal to give Saudi Arabia $350 billion worth of armaments. Raytheon’s Patriot missile system stood prominently in this package.

The growth of the armament industry amid economic stagnation, whatever the trajectory of the stock market, is a testament to the parasitic character of the word capitalist system. While billions of people around the world have no decent work and basic social services are being slashed, the ruling elite is pumping hundreds of billions of dollars into more-sophisticated ways to kill and destroy their adversaries.

Rift deepens between Britain and European Union as talks reach no agreement

Robert Stevens 

Twenty-seven European Union leaders will today inform British Prime Minister Theresa May that after five rounds of negotiations over the terms of its exit from the EU, the UK needs to make further concessions.

At the beginning of negotiations six months ago, today’s annual summit of the European Council was set as the date by which it was expected agreement on the first round of talks would have been concluded.

A draft statement released last week, agreed by the European Council (EC), representing the 27 other member countries, states that agreement has not been reached with the UK on the three areas it stipulated when it issued its hard-line Brexit negotiating strategy in April.

The EC stated then that in order to progress to an agreement over a future trading relationship with the UK, the following issues had to be resolved:

* The residency rights of EU and UK citizens post-Brexit.

* The UK payment to the EU as part of its “divorce” settlement.

* An agreement avoiding the creation of a “hard” border between the Irish Republic—which is an EU member—and Northern Ireland.

In its draft statement, the EC says only that some progress has been made regarding EU citizens’ rights and calls on the UK, “to build on the convergence achieved so as to provide the necessary legal certainty and guarantees to all concerned citizens and their family members who shall be able to exercise directly the rights protected by the withdrawal agreement…”

On the Irish border issue, it notes only there has been “some progress on convergence on principles and objectives …” As regards the “avoidance of a hard border,” the EC declares it expects “the UK to present and commit to flexible and imaginative solutions called for by the unique situation of Ireland.”

Regarding the financial settlement the UK must make, the EC notes the “UK has stated that it will honour its financial obligations taken during its membership,” but this has “not yet been translated into a firm and concrete commitment from the UK to settle all of these obligations.”

Moves to a second phase of talks on trade will be reassessed at the next session of the European Council in December, “with a view to determining whether sufficient progress has been achieved” to allow this.

As the document was released, EU lead negotiator Michel Barnier said bluntly, “We have reached a state of deadlock. This is very disturbing.”

The EC position was released just hours after the May government called on the EU to relax its hard-line negotiating position. It confirms that the EU, at the insistence of Germany and France, will allow no concessions to Britain. The response follows the speech May gave in Florence September 23, which was hyped by London as being crucial to breaking the deadlock in negotiations with the European Union, but which achieved nothing.

In a desperate move to progress the negotiations ahead of the summit, May made a surprise visit to Brussels on Monday for talks with European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker. Under pressure from the “hard Brexit”, anti-EU wing of her Conservative Party, May had nothing more to offer Juncker than a €20 billion settlement.

May left Brussels empty-handed, with only a brief joint statement with Juncker stating that negotiations were ongoing and “these efforts should accelerate over the months to come”.

The British prime minister received the same rebuff from German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The Financial Times reported that Merkel “warned her that the EU would not start discussing a transition deal with Britain until she put more money on the table.” It added, “That message was also conveyed to Mrs May on Monday by French President Emmanuel Macron, with French officials saying Paris and Berlin are ‘perfectly aligned’ in their approach on Brexit.”

While May adopted a diplomatic pose in Brussels, the stance of her government to the EU—and an indication of the nationalist rivalries tearing the continent apart—was provided last Friday by her Chancellor Philip Hammond who told Sky News, “The enemy, the opponents, are out there. They’re on the other side of the negotiating table. Those are the people we have to negotiate with, negotiate hard to get the very best deal for Britain.” This followed a statement by Juncker asserting, “We Europeans have to be grateful for so many things Britain has brought to Europe. During the [Second World] war, before the war, after the war. Everywhere and every time. But now they have to pay.”

Tensions have ratcheted up even further in the 48 hours following the failure of May’s Brussels trip.

Brexit Secretary David Davis told the British parliament on Monday, “They [the EU] are using time pressure to see if they can get more money out of us… Bluntly that’s what is going on—it’s obvious to anybody.” He warned, “We all must recognise that we are reaching the limits of what we can achieve without consideration of the future relationship,” adding, “The maintenance of the option of no deal is both for negotiating reasons and sensible security.”

On Tuesday evening, Antonio Tajani, European Parliament president, which has to ratify any final agreement, told BBC’s Newsnight that Britain would have to pay far more than €20 billion. Asked if the EU was delaying talks in order to extract larger financial sums from the UK, he replied, “€20 billion is peanuts, it's peanuts €20 billion... The problem is 50, 60 [billion euros], this is the real situation… We are realistic. The UK government is not realistic.”

With increasing talk by the hard Brexit wing, including Davis, that not reaching a deal with the EU was a possibility, the government has stated soldiers could be mobilised to patrol the border of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland in that scenario. Appearing before the Commons Home Affairs Committee alongside the Home Secretary Amber Rudd, Philip Rutnam, the department’s top civil servant, said, while our “strong preference is to deal with the border and security needed at the border through Border Force and that is the basis in which our planning is proceeding… any use of the military would be an absolute last resort.”

The government is being torn asunder between its pro-and anti-EU wings over Brexit, with other senior cabinet figures, including Rudd, opposed to a no-deal conclusion to the talks, something she described as “unthinkable.”

Those advocating a possible, no-deal outcome are opposed by the majority of big business and most MPs. On Sunday, Labour Party Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell—party leader Jeremy Corbyn’s most senior ally—told the BBC, “I don’t think it’s a realistic option, it’s not going to happen. I don’t think there is a majority in parliament for no-deal. They haven’t got a majority to get through a no-deal situation in parliament. If we amend the legislation for parliament to have a meaningful vote, that will force the government to negotiate and come to their senses.”

McDonnell was referring to the upcoming debate on the government’s EU Withdrawal Bill, the first step in the UK leaving the EU—scheduled for March 2019.

The scale of changes being proposed to the Bill by both the Remain and Leave factions of parliament--300 amendments and 54 new clauses have been tabled according to the government—is such that it will not now be discussed until November 13, after MPs return from the autumn recess. Originally, the government had intended to bring the bill back to the House of Commons straight after the Tory annual conference earlier this month, if it was to have any chance of being passed by next spring.

Labour’s shadow cabinet has put forward more than 20 amendments to the bill and oppose it being passed without amendments. Pro-EU MPs in the cross-party group on European relations—led by Labour’s Chuka Umunna in alliance with the Tory Anna Soubry, have put down dozen’s more amendments, which according to the Guardian, “have enough Conservative signatures to potentially threaten May’s majority.”

One of the main amendments has been tabled by former Tory cabinet member Dominic Grieve and nine other Conservatives. Backed by members of the other main parties, it states that any final deal must be approved by an entirely separate act of parliament, which if passed, means the pro-EU wing of parliament would have the opportunity to veto a hard-Brexit or no-deal outcome.