UK National Health Service “haemorrhaging nurses” as 33,000 leave in one year

Benjamin Trent 

New figures reveal an alarming rate of nurses departing from NHS England, resulting in a concerning downward trajectory in retention rates. The already strained National Health Service (NHS) is seeing an exodus of nurses on an unprecedented scale, at a time when the strain on the service has already reached breaking point.

Last year, 33,000 nurses left the NHS, meaning that 10 percent of the nursing workforce have left NHS employment in each of the past three years.

The data is from an annual report published by the Royal College of Nursing (RCN). In the introduction, it states that “previous labour market review reports have warned of impending crises in the future supply of nursing staff, due to a lack of adequate workforce planning and workforce strategies. This year’s report shows that these warnings have inevitably been realised.” Such is the crisis that the RCN estimates there are now 40,000 vacant nursing positions in the health service.

The report goes on to qualify that this has been driven by a “perfect storm” of inter-related issues affecting recruitment and retention, which include the Brexit vote to leave the European Union (EU), workload, pay pressures and the impact on new nursing staff due to the restrictive changes for prospective nursing students.

The 33,000 nurses who left the NHS could staff 20 hospitals and is a 20 percent rise on that of 2012-13. These figures were provided by NHS Digital. As part of an analysis of their data, the BBC noted that the gulf between those leaving and joining the profession was much narrower in the earlier period. It explained, “Leavers outnumbered joiners by 3,000 last year, the biggest gap over the five-year period examined by the BBC.”

These figures confirm earlier reports delivered by the Nursing and Midwifery Council and the King’s Fund think tank last autumn. They both issued stark warnings of the decline in nursing staff, which the Department for Health and Social Care dismissively rebutted as a “mere 0.2 percent decrease” from the previous year.

The Department for Health declared that since the start of the Conservative government in 2010—in a coalition with the Liberal Democrats—the number of nurses has risen. However, figures show that it is a minute increase of just over 1 percent, whereas comparatively the population has grown by 5 percent. According to the BBC, the demands on NHS services as a whole have increased by somewhere between 10 and 20 percent in the same period.

The report highlights that staff across the board saw their real term median annual earnings fall by 14.3 percent between 2011 and 2017.

Applicants to study nursing in the UK have fallen steeply, with a 22.7 percent decline since 2016 as well as a 23.7 percent decline for those from the EU. Brexit has been chalked up as the obvious reason for such a decline for EU applicants. The changes in funding from bursaries to loans has had an adverse effect on UK applicants. Given 5 percent of nurses and midwives and 4 percent of auxiliary staff come from an EU country, the current post-Brexit situation—which has seen no specific guarantees afforded to EU migrants to the UK—the figure is hardly surprising.

Various sources cite that NHS Improvement—the regulating body of the NHS—already has various measures in place to try to halt the exodus of nursing staff. These include transfer systems for those looking for new jobs, master classes in retention for Human Resources teams and nursing directors, and “Awards schemes” in recognition of achievement.

The government points to its “historic” increase of nursing training places by 25 percent. But Siva Anandaciva, chief analyst at the King’s Fund think tank, responded that “training nurses takes many years and will not meet the short term needs of the NHS or its patients.”

Any claimed increases are set to fall from August as postgraduate nurses, midwives and allied health professional students are being forced to take out student loans to cover their costs.

Undergraduate nurses had their bursaries abolished last year, which immediately led to a 23 percent slump in the number of applications by students in England to universities nursing and midwifery courses.

Some 1,000 trainees, who are postgraduate students, come into the profession every year and receive a bursary for tuition and maintenance, worth up to £8,000 a year. This bursary is also being ended, with the postgraduates forced to take out loans from the Student Loans Company.

The lack of resources, both material and human, continues to undermine the world’s largest national health service, which is 70 years old this year. The systematic assault on the NHS by successive governments has taken its toll and the cracks are ever more evident. The scenes over the Christmas period—with thousands of people unable to access basis health care and scores of people dying whilst waiting for ambulances and on trolleys in hospital corridors—demonstrates the terrible impact of the slashing of the NHS funding.

In an unprecedented letter, dated January 10, doctors representing 68 A&E (accident and emergency) departments wrote to Prime Minister Theresa May that “the NHS is chronically underfunded. We have insufficient hospital and community beds and staff of all disciplines especially at the front door to cope with our ageing population’s health needs.”

The letter notes that “[t]housands of patients are waiting in ambulances for hours as the hospitals lack adequate space,” citing scientific publications and the length of time patients are expected to stay in Emergency Departments (ED), impacting negatively on mortality rates. The letter concluded by quoting the NHS constitution of 1948: “The NHS belongs to the people … it touches our lives at times of basic human need when care and compassion are what matter most.” For the ruling elite, these sentiments are a dead letter.

The growing privatisation of the NHS is the unstated goal of the Tory government and its big business backers. Recent figures revealed a further £3.1 billion out of the roughly £101 billion budget of the NHS was hived off to the private sector last year alone. This onslaught sees private companies now in control of 43 percent, an increase of 9 percent on last year’s 34 percent share.

Despite the pledges by the trade union bureaucracy to organise a “fight” in defence of the NHS, they have not lifted a finger as the government has intensified its attacks. The unions refused to mobilise their membership for a national demonstration in defence of the NHS last week.

All that is offered up are dead-end appeals to a government hell-bent on destroying the NHS. Commenting on its figures on nurses leaving the profession, head of the RCN, Janet Davies, declared “The government must lift the NHS out of this dangerous and downward spiral. We are haemorrhaging nurses at precisely the time when demand has never been higher.”

Along these lines, the RCN report notes of the Tory’s initiatives: “While it is surely welcome that attention is being paid to ensuring future supply, this must not be done at the expense of ‘hollowing out’ the nursing profession and undermining the role of the registered nurse. This will be the inevitable consequence of continued failure to invest in the workforce alongside the substitution of the registered nurse role with non-registered staff.”

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn absented himself from the demonstration, despite stating at last year’s national NHS protest that Labour would defend the NHS as “We’ve got the faith, we’ve got the fight and we are up for it!”

The struggle to defend the NHS cannot be conducted by any of the bourgeois parties, but only on the basis of the fight to build an independent party of the working class, based on a socialist perspective. This is the programme fought for by the Socialist Equality Party and its NHS Fightback campaign initiative.

UK: Corbyn tries to conceal Labour’s record of social cleansing

Jean Shaoul

Last week, Jeremy Corbyn presented Labour-run Haringey Council’s plan to hive off £2 billion in council assets into a partnership agreement with property developer Lendlease, as a special case.

Addressing an audience of Labour councillors and council leaders in Nottingham, he said Haringey’s plan to demolish huge swathes of public housing to make way for 6,500 expensive private homes was “highly controversial with local people worried about their futures.” Haringey should, he stressed, be viewed as “a unique situation.”

What a rotten lie. In London especially, Labour is the main party associated with such despicable acts of social cleansing.

Britain’s capital is a playground for the financial elite, who have bought up property as a safe haven for their ill-gotten gains. Its housing market, rigged by successive governments, means only the rich, the very well-paid or those with generous parents can afford to buy.

This has pushed up house prices and rents and, together with the lack of public or social housing and the cap on Housing Benefit, forced out lower paid workers and their families to London’s fringes and beyond. The stress and isolation from family and friends has had a devastating impact on mental health.

Haringey’s plan is only one of many such plans all over London that are forcing thousands of working class families out of the area and sparking mass protests. Refuting the rosy picture painted by Corbyn, the Financial Times,reflecting the concerns of the property developers and financial institutions, warned of how, “Public anger over lucrative property contracts is calling into question future housing projects across London.”

It cited an “industry figure” stating that local authorities “in Camden, Vauxhall, Lambeth and Westminster are all facing growing opposition to their housing plans,” with pressure “building against development in ‘every’ Labour-controlled borough in the capital. ‘Haringey is the most extreme example, but there is a trend, whether it’s Camden or Hounslow,’ he said.”

Corbyn’s evasions make clear that the decision by Labour’s National Executive Committee (NEC) to ask Haringey Council to put their plans “on hold” is little short of a pledge to the City that a Labour government under his leadership had no intention of curtailing any council’s “regeneration” plans that have generated a bonanza for the banks and property developers.

Indeed, the NEC motion initially called only for the plans to be suspended, before Corbyn intervened personally to suggest “mediation.” His aim was to prevent a split in the local party that might end with the Blairite-right being driven out and which would risk galvanising broader opposition nationally.

London’s Labour-controlled boroughs are a battleground because council estates and social housing exist side by side with some of the most expensive property in the country. According to a London Assembly report in 2015, 50 previous council regeneration schemes resulted in a loss—estimated at more than a quarter—in the number of homes for social rent, despite an increase in the overall number of homes. The Independent estimated in 2015 that more than 50,000 families had been silently shipped out of London due to welfare cuts and soaring rents.

London councils own on average 25 to 30 percent of the land in their boroughs. Southwark Council owns 43 percent of the land in its borough. Councils work hand in glove with the building industry and property developers to demolish council estates and build higher density housing. Under the mantra of “estate regeneration,” 195 council-owned estates in Labour-run councils are being sold off to private developers against the wishes of residents, with luxury high-rises taking their place.

This massive land grab has been legitimised with propaganda vilifying council estates as crime ridden, poorly designed, run down and full of immigrants and benefit scroungers, fit only for demolition. In truth, crime rates on council estates are lower than in neighbouring areas, while their run-down state is the result of the councils’ failure to carry out repairs and maintenance that could easily be reversed.

None of the so-called development plans for London’s housing have any legitimacy. They are written by think tanks, research organisations, consultancies and university departments funded by interested parties. To cite one example, the Institute for Public Policy and Research’s (IPPR) report “City Villages,” which recommends that the main source of land for redevelopment is council estates, was funded and co-authored by Peabody housing association—one of the largest owners and managers of social housing in London.

Numerous studies have shown that refurbishment and the infill of existing estates could increase the number of homes by up to 50 percent and would be much cheaper than demolition. But the property developers and construction companies prefer new builds because building homes on high value land is akin to winning the lottery.

Labour councils have facilitated this, usually justifying it on the basis of the Conservative government’s financial squeeze, to cover up their own close relations with the property developers. By 2020, local councils will be entirely dependent on the council tax, business rate and local charges, compared with 2010, when 80 percent of council funding came from central government.

The regeneration plans are sewn up in back room deals between councillors and property developers long before they are publicly announced, and consultations begin. Such consultations as are held are fraudulent: tenants and owners are lied to, given misleading information, and kept in the dark, amid false claims, never publicly demonstrated, that demolition is the only financially viable option. Any opposition is then ignored.

Just months after his election in September 2015, Corbyn and his closest political ally, Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, sent a letter to all Labour councils demanding they abide by the law and impose the Tories’ austerity cuts. They have followed his instruction to the letter.

Labour Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, who based his election campaign on a pledge to build 50 percent of affordable housing on all new developments, has reduced this to 35 percent. His much-vaunted London Living Rent, set at a third the average household salary in the locality, is in reality another incentive to get middle class home buyers on the property ladder at the expense of working class council tenants.

He has promised to ensure 90,000 new “affordable” homes in the next five years, priced at up to 80 percent of the astronomic market rate, mostly being for shared ownership! This will do nothing to help the 250,000 London households currently on housing waiting lists, or a similar number with 320,000 children living in overcrowded accommodation, or the 50,000 households with 78,000 children currently homeless and living in temporary accommodation.

Khan’s pledge to build 50,000 homes a year on demolished council estates was based on a report, “Completing London’s Streets,” written by the London Housing Commission. The London Housing Commission was set up by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), which is routinely referred to as a “left-wing think tank.” The IPPR is chaired by the chairman of Peabody and sponsored by real estate firm Savills.

Labour, no less than the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, has abandoned any commitment to what was once taken as axiomatic—that society would seek to improve social and living conditions by the public provision of high-quality housing.

The right to a decent home cannot be secured by returning a Corbyn-led Labour Party to governmental office. It can only be secured by the working class mobilising in an independent political offensive against the policies of austerity and war espoused by all the main political parties.

French media endorse plan for anti-worker Grand Coalition government in Germany

Alex Lantier

French media outlets have endorsed the February 7 coalition agreement between German conservatives and social democrats to form a “Grand Coalition” government, as the first step in an alliance between French President Emmanuel Macron and what they hope will be the next German government.

This is a warning to workers internationally. The policy goals contained in last week’s agreement—for a re-militarization of Germany, doubling military spending, the adoption of far-right policies on immigrants, and a massive build-up of intelligence and police agencies—are shared by the ruling class across Europe. In particular, this is the basis for collaboration between Berlin and Macron, who is pushing for draconian austerity and major increases in military spending, particularly on nuclear weapons.

On Friday, Macron said the Grand Coalition deal was better than earlier attempts to form a CDU/CSU-Green-Free Democratic Party (FDP) coalition. “The terms of this provisional agreement are more favorable to the European project than were those raised in previous attempts last year,” he declared. He said this while greeting Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, the leader of a right-wing coalition government with the far-right Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ), to the Elysée palace.

While French dailies and news magazines pointed to longstanding differences between German and French positions on eurozone bank bailouts, they were mostly optimistic that despite the differences, Berlin and Paris would find common ground.

Euronews hailed the coalition deal, claiming it “opens the way to major reforms in the European Union” and “foreshadows a political rapprochement with the French president.” It peddled illusions that the Social Democratic Party (SPD), a longstanding party of austerity, would oversee a “softening of austerity and more openness to public investments.” Euronews then contradicted this assessment, citing Professor Mario Telo of Brussels, who said they would promote “business competitiveness.”

Other publications expressed more cautious hopes that Berlin and Paris could now come together despite their conflicts and agree on a joint European military and social policy.

Le Point, which is close to Macron’s government, rejoiced that the “nightmare” of a conservative-Green-FDP government was avoided. Paris, it added, was “very relieved to see these talks break down and a government accord ultimately concluded with the social-democratic SPD. The latter are supposedly close to Emmanuel Macron’s European conceptions. But we should keep a level head. The ‘fundamentals’ in Germany never change.”

Le Point poured cold water on the French banks’ hopes that the SPD would oversee looser monetary policy and the common eurozone budget and investment plan proposed by Macron. It recalled how, after the 2008 Wall Street crash, during the eurozone debt crisis, Paris clashed with SPD Finance Minister Peer Steinbrück. Then-French President Nicolas Sarkozy called Steinbrück a “big as*hole” and considered him “arrogant,” Le Point wrote.

The daily Libération complained that German Chancellor Angela Merkel “is far from being a great European, as she showed during the euro crisis, where she only accepted reforms necessary to its survival unwillingly, at the last minute.”

Nevertheless, with a Grand Coalition government, Libération continued, “Macron can hope to see his European dream realized. Many commentators snickered at his overreach when he tried to influence Berlin’s agenda by speaking on Europe on September 26 at the Sorbonne, three days after the legislative elections. But in fact, he succeeded. … The future majority claims at the outset that it is ready to work hand in hand with France.”

The right-wing Le Figaro wrote, “Berlin will finally be able to respond to the propositions of French President Emmanuel Macron on relaunching the EU.” It added that Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian ally, the Christian Social Union (CSU), were torpedoing Macron’s plans, however: “The chancellor’s allies were at the same time inflicting a real defeat on Emmanuel Macron: the European Parliament—instigated by the CDU/CSU—rejected the plan for ‘transnational’ lists in the May 2019 European elections, a central ambition of the French president for the EU.”

Le Figaro, which is close to the Gaullist The Republicans (LR) party and its new leader, Laurent Wauquiez, was pointing to divisions between LR and its ostensible German ally, the CDU. Wauquiez claims to favor “economic protectionism” and is moving towards the neo-fascist National Front. “It is time for France to take care of our European priorities, and not only to be naïve about the Franco-German relationship. Germany is not the only country in Europe,” Wauquiez said on television, when asked about Merkel’s criticisms of protectionism.

Le Monde alluded to deep social opposition among German workers to the Grand Coalition’s right-wing agenda, which culminated in a recent metalworkers’ strike. It called the conservative/social-democratic coalition deal “an ad hoc compromise that aims to avoid what the leaders fear above all: the holding of new elections.” It added that the coalition agreement “gives mainly the impression of trying to guarantee the survival of an existing order.”

What is left unsaid is that the Grand Coalition deal and the Berlin-Paris axis to “lead” the post-Brexit EU is based on the most right-wing program since fascist parties ruled Europe. Berlin is rearming and preparing an aggressive military policy, combined with stepped-up repression at home, and the Grand Coalition is working with Macron on his reactionary social agenda and the imposition of a military-austerity diktat across Europe.

Macron aims to tear up all the social gains of the working class after the October 1917 revolution and the Soviet Union’s defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II. His labor decrees, worked out with the SPD, allow the unions to suspend the Labor Code and impose sub-minimum wage salaries, workplace by workplace. He also plans to end lifetime employment guarantees for public sector workers and rail workers, privatize the railways, and make draconian cuts to unemployment insurance. Unspecified, deep cuts to pensions and health care are announced for later in his term.

At the same time—amid escalating conflicts between Washington, Moscow, and Beijing threatening to provoke war between major nuclear powers—Macron and Merkel are plunging tens of billions of euros into tax cuts for the rich, the army, and nuclear weapons.

This agenda is deeply unpopular. Just as 70 percent of the French people opposed the labor law and Macron’s labor decrees, barely 30 percent of Germans support the Grand Coalition.

The Berlin-Paris axis proceeds only because Europe’s population is kept in the dark about its plans. Germany’s Left Party, which has aligned itself with the Grand Coalition, and Jean-Luc Mélenchon or the New Anticapitalist Party in France, who tacitly fell in behind the media campaign for a Macron vote and refused to boycott last year’s presidential run-off, are all politically complicit.

This underscores the significance of the call of the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party—SGP) for a rejection of the Grand Coalition and for new elections—what Le Monde admits the ruling class fears most. The SGP has demanded the publication of the secret agreements, between the German parties and between Berlin and Paris, underlying the Grand Coalition deal. This aims to give a voice to the working class and a way to intervene in political struggle against the drive to militarism and austerity in Europe.

There is no national road to oppose militarism and austerity. The forces claiming to speak for French national interests against Germany are unflaggingly chauvinist and anti-working class. The way forward for European workers opposed to the Grand Coalition is to fight to unify their struggles with those of their class brothers and sisters in Germany and support the revolutionary and internationalist campaign of the SGP and International Committee of the Fourth International.

New NATO headquarters planned in Germany

Johannes Stern

The Bundeswehr (German Armed Forces) is to build a new NATO headquarters in Germany. According to information from the Deutsche Presse Agentur (DPA), the member states of the military alliance have agreed in principle to accept an offer from German Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen (CDU, Christian Democratic Union). There were no other candidates for the headquarters. The official decision is due to be announced at the Defence Ministers' meeting this week.

A possible location for the new headquarters is the Cologne-Bonn region. The Bundeswehr already has its Joint Support Service and Armed Forces Office situated there. The Defence Ministry said that the establishment of a new planning and command centre for rapid troop and material transports was part of NATO's “ongoing modifications.” According to a spokesman for the ministry, Germany was “one of the nations that is fundamentally eligible for the establishment and operation of this command, given its competences, its recognition in the Alliance and its central geographical position.”

In reality, Germany, which has been massively upgrading its military capacity since 2014 and trying to increase its military weight within NATO, would become even more strongly involved in NATO preparations for war against Russia than before. Last autumn, a report in Der Spiegel quoted from a secret document of the military alliance underscoring how far the plans have progressed.

In the paper, titled “Progress Report on the Alliance's Strengthened Deterrence and Defence Posture,” leading NATO military officials plead for a marked strengthening of military capabilities to be able to lead a so-called “Major Joint Operation Plus.” The term describes a war in which the major military organizations of all NATO countries, and thus hundreds of thousands of soldiers, are involved.

The secret report further states that NATO “must be able to rapidly reinforce a threatened ally or allies, to underpin deterrence in peacetime and crises, and to reinforce an ally or allies for defense in case of attack.” It must be empowered to mobilize and retain troops quickly, “whatever the nature, demand, destination or duration of the operation, mission or activity.” This would require “a robust civil/military logistics structure and enabling capabilities” with lines of communications ranging from North America to the eastern and southern borders of the Alliance territory, including “intra-European routes.”

The plans drawn up behind the backs of the population are so far-reaching—among other things, to make the civil infrastructure (roads, rail networks and airports) combat ready and to better organize supplies—that even the newsweekly Der Spiegel concluded, “In other words: NATO is preparing for a possible war with Russia.”

It is no coincidence that the construction of a new NATO headquarters in Germany—a second, according to the DPA, is to be built in the United States to secure the air and sea routes between North America and Europe across the Atlantic—was made public just a day after the agreement between Social Democrats (SPD) and Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) to form a new edition of the grand coalition. In the coalition agreement, the parties pledge “to make an appropriate contribution to preserving the deterrence and defence capability of the [NATO] Alliance and to a strong European defence.”

The section, “Germany as a Reliable Partner in NATO, OSCE and the Council of Europe,” also states, “We want to strengthen the European contribution to the transatlantic partnership and are committed to closer cooperation between NATO and the EU. We want to achieve the agreed NATO capability goals and fill in capability gaps.”

With this formulation, the CDU/CSU and the SPD are obviously committed to raising defence spending to the agreed NATO minimum of two percent of Gross Domestic Product by 2024. But what else is included? What specific war plans have the SPD and CDU/CSU representatives already approved when they negotiated the coalition agreement as part of a veritable conspiracy behind the backs of the people?

Would the German government, which played a central role in the pro-Western coup in Ukraine in 2014 and has had combat troops stationed in Lithuania for more than a year, take part in a US-led NATO war against Russia? Or does the ruling class in Germany see the new headquarters primarily as an opportunity to prepare German-European war missions independently of NATO?

“The special feature of the new headquarters in Germany is that it will not be integrated into the existing NATO command structure. This could also make it possible to use the staff and the capacity for national exercises and operations outside the Alliance,” according to the articles by the DPA .

Germany: The resignation of Martin Schulz

Peter Schwarz

Just two days after Martin Schulz announced that he would hand over chairmanship of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) to Andrea Nahles and head the foreign ministry in a new grand coalition government, he withdrew as incoming foreign minister. The circumstances of his resignation indicate that fierce struggles over power and political orientation are taking place behind the scenes in Berlin.

These struggles are not limited to the SPD and its coalition partner, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), where criticism of Chancellor Angela Merkel is growing. On Thursday, the influential editor of the Handelsblatt,Gabor Steingart, was fired by the paper’s publisher and majority shareholder Dieter von Holtzbrinck after Steingart fiercely attacked Schulz in his regular column on Wednesday. Gabor's sacking, however, could not save Schulz.

Officially, Schulz justified his resignation by declaring that he did not want to endanger the upcoming vote by the SPD membership on the coalition pact. He played a significant role in negotiating the pact. In his letter of resignation, Schulz wrote, “I saw a successful vote at risk due to the discussion surrounding my person.”

Schulz’s decision to take over as foreign minister in the grand coalition provoked widespread consternation in the SPD. Only a few weeks ago, he had declared that he would never join a government led by Angela Merkel. In addition, Schulz’s decision meant the ousting of the acting foreign minister, Sigmar Gabriel, who, according to opinion polls, is currently the most popular SPD politician.

Some media outlets, with Handelsblatt to the fore, had worked to whip up sentiment against Schulz. In his “Morning Briefing,” Steingart accused Schulz of seeking to “hunt down Gabriel and take his place in the ministry.”

“The crime is being planned meticulously these days,” he wrote. “The victim is to stumble, without any push being seen. He is to hit the ground, apparently without external influence. When the face has stopped twitching, Schulz wants to be the first to determine the cause of death of his friend from Goslar [Gabriel]…” He planned “nothing less than the perfect murder.”

Gabriel, who had led the SPD for seven years before relinquishing the chairmanship to Schulz last March, intervened and accused Schulz of breaking his word. “All that remains is to regret how disrespectful our dealings with one another have become in the SPD and how little a promise counts,” Gabriel said in an interview with the Funke media group.

Reports from SPD state and local associations indicated that anger over Schulz’s behaviour loomed as a potentially decisive factor in leading members to reject the coalition agreement, which was announced last week after months of closed-door negotiations. Apparently, the party executive put pressure on Schulz until he finally decided to forgo the post of foreign minister on Friday afternoon. Less than a year earlier, Schulz was being feted by the media as the saviour of the SPD and was elected chairman of the party with the votes of 100 percent of party delegates.

The rapid rise and fall of Schulz cannot be explained on the basis of personal rivalries. That political issues are at stake is also demonstrated by the dismissal of Steingart, which has triggered a severe crisis at the Handelsblatt.

In a letter to the newspaper’s publisher, Dieter von Holtzbrinck, the editors-in-chief and managing directors of the media group declared they were “shocked and stunned” at the sacking of Steingart and protested against interference with freedom of the press. They wrote, “In our view, this is a devastating signal to the editors and our entire house: the punishment for an–albeit awkward–opinion is immediate sacking.”

One can at this point only speculate on the precise political questions involved. Little is known about the agreements and deals struck behind the backs of the public during the weeks of wrangling over a new government.

What is certain is that as foreign minister Gabriel argued, like no other member of the government, for a great power policy for Germany based on its own national interests. He also argued strongly for loosening Germany’s long-standing relationship with the US. On this issue, Gabriel agrees with Steingart, under whose leadership the Handelsblatt took a decidedly critical view of the US.

At the beginning of December, Gabriel gave a keynote address to the Foreign Policy Forum of the Körber Foundation in Berlin in which he described the US as “a competitor and sometimes even an opponent.” He emphasised that this was “not just the result of the politics of a single President [Donald Trump]” and would “not change fundamentally even after the next election.” Germany had to advance its interests more confidently in future, he concluded, declaring, “It cannot afford to wait or merely react to decisions made in Washington.”

There is broad agreement with Gabriel in the German ruling elite that the country must build up its military force and pursue its own great power policy. This issue is at the heart of the coalition pact agreed by the SPD, the CDU and its sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU). But there are differences over the question of how far to go in breaking with the US and pursuing rapprochement with Russia and China instead.

There is no public discussion of these issues because of fears that the government’s plans for massive rearmament and war will meet with powerful popular opposition. This is why the media presents the clashes within the SPD solely as a power struggle between individuals.

On Friday, the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (SGP–Socialist Equality Party) issued a statement calling for rejection of the coalition agreement and the disclosure of the contents of all secret talks.

The working class and the 450,000 SPD members voting on the coalition agreement have “a right to know where the grand coalition is headed,” the statement declares. “This applies not only to the coalition agreement—the true contents of which are being concealed, sugarcoated and distorted by the media and the political parties—but also to the wide-ranging secret deals reached and the content of the discussions held behind the scenes. The SGP demands that all secret protocols and lists of participants in the coalition talks be published.”

The power struggles within the SPD, the behind-the-scenes intrigues, the way in which leading politicians are elected minister one day and shot down the next–all confirm the importance of this demand. It cannot be allowed that a cabal of politicians, business chiefs, the media and the military bring to power the most right-wing government since the overthrow of the Nazi regime.

Israeli attack on Syria heightens danger of wider Mideast war

Chris Marsden

Casualties from Israeli air strikes on military sites in Syria, carried out Saturday, reportedly included Iranian personnel working in conjunction with the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu made clear that his government deliberately targeted Iranian personnel in the attacks.

He gave as justification for the air strikes the destruction of an Iranian unmanned aerial vehicle that had allegedly invaded Israeli airspace from Syria.

In response to the Israeli strikes, the Syrian army brought down an Israeli F-16 jet after firing more than 20 antiaircraft missiles. The pilots bailed out.

Israel attacked 12 of the country’s main air defence sites, which the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) described as “Iranian targets.” The IDF said it had inflicted huge damage in the “most significant attack” against Syria since the 1982 Lebanon war and the first to claim Iranian lives.

IDF sources said the Iranian military has for some time been using the Tiyas (T4) Airbase near Palmyra “for the purpose of transferring weaponry to be used against Israel.”

Indicating that this will not to be the last such attack, the Jerusalem Postreported Sunday that the IDF was “preparing for war in the North.” It wrote that witnesses “reported seeing a convoy of missile defense batteries heading north near the Israeli-Arab city of Baqa el-Garbiyeh. Other witnesses posted photos of several trucks carrying the batteries on central highways in northern Israel.”

Iran has denied all of the allegations made by Israel. Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi stated, “Reports of downing an Iranian drone flying over Israel and also Iran’s involvement in attacking an Israeli jet are so ridiculous.”

Israel’s actions were given full support by the Trump administration and could have proceeded only after discussions with Washington. On Saturday, Pentagon spokesman Adrian Rankine-Galloway claimed that the US Department of Defense “did not participate in this military operation,” but added, “We share the concerns of many throughout the region that Iran’s destabilizing activities threaten international peace and security, and we seek greater international resolve in countering Iran’s malign activities.”

US State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert denounced “Iran’s calculated escalation of threat and its ambition to project its power and dominance, [which] places all the people of the region—from Yemen to Lebanon—at risk.”

On Sunday, the White House declared support for “our staunch ally, Israel” and its right “to defend itself from the Iranian-backed Syrian and militia forces in southern Syria.”

Israel’s actions are always calculated based upon its political and military alliance with the US. Former ambassador to Washington and now Netanyahu’s deputy minister in charge of public diplomacy, Michael Oren, wrote on CNN on the topic “How to restore US credibility in the Middle East.” This task, he said, centred on convincing “Arab diplomats, ministers, journalists and businessmen from Egypt, Jordan and the Gulf States” that they were wrong in believing “that America was secretly allied with Iran…”

This meant repudiating the Iranian nuclear deal and other initiatives associated with the presidency of Barack Obama that have “created a credibility deficit” for the US and strengthened “destabilizing actors, first among them Iran,” but also Russia, which “has returned as a regional power.”

Extending this theme, Education Minister Naftali Bennett of the Jewish Home party, who is a member of Netanyahu’s security cabinet, said Sunday that Israel had so far “only used the tip of our capabilities.” Israel was fighting “an Iranian octopus sending its tentacles to squeeze us in Lebanon, Syria, Gaza,” he added. The key to opposing it was to create an international coalition against Tehran.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster are this week visiting Egypt, Kuwait, Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon to discuss Trump’s Middle East strategy. The US has spent months consolidating an anti-Iranian alliance with the Gulf states and Egypt and wants to prevent a drift by Turkey into an alliance with Iran and Russia.

Tillerson’s visit to Lebanon is of significance, given that there is good reason to believe that the next action against Iran could be mounted against Hezbollah. Israel’s usual justification for action in Syria, including 100 attacks on alleged weapons convoys since 2012, is to cite fears that Iran is seeking to create a land corridor to Hezbollah forces in Lebanon.

On Friday, the US imposed additional sanctions on business figures and firms it accused of connections to Hezbollah, including five Lebanese nationals and one Iraqi.

The stridently anti-Iranian Baria Alamuddin wrote in Arab News that Israel is interested in preventing recent Syrian status-of-forces agreements “that allow Iranian proxies to base themselves just 5km away from the occupied Golan Heights” and “Lebanon’s recent agreement with a French-Italian-Russian consortium for offshore oil exploration in areas claimed by Israel.”

There are indications that Russia decided to allow Israel’s attack on Iranian forces in Syria to curb Tehran’s regional ambitions. This was the conclusion of Gabriel Ben-Dor, a Middle East specialist at the University of Haifa, who told the Jerusalem Post, “The Russians found Iran useful as allies in the fighting, but don’t want to see them as a huge regional power controlling Syria.”

When asked whether Russia would take a stand against Israel, Naftali Bennett said he would not go into details, but added, “I will just say that the bottom line is both militarily and diplomatically, we have full freedom to act.”

Russia’s Foreign Ministry expressed public concern at any escalation of the conflict between Syria and Israel, as did Putin in a phone conversation with Netanyahu. But ten days earlier, the two met face-to-face to discuss Iran’s infiltration into Syria, according to Israeli accounts. Israel regularly informs Moscow in advance of most of the strikes it carries out near Russian forces, noted Israel’s business journal, Globes.

“We agreed coordination between our armies would continue,” Netanyahu said following his conversation with Putin.

Whatever the manoeuvres between Moscow and Tel Aviv, however, Israel’s escalating conflict with Damascus is a dangerous new stage in the Syrian war that threatens a wider conflagration in the Middle East.

As Amos Harel wrote in Haaretz, “Israel and Iran are now, for the first time, engaged in a full-frontal confrontation on Syrian territory… Even if the current round ends quickly, in the longer term the strategic situation has changed.”

Days earlier, on Thursday, more than 100 Syrian government fighters were killed in a massive attack by US forces in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor. The casualties included Russian military advisers, according to multiple reports.

Meanwhile, there are no signs of a resolution of the conflict between Turkey and the US over Ankara’s invasion of the Kurdish enclave of Afrin and its on-going offensive against Kurdish forces allied with Washington, which threatens to pit two NATO allies against one another.

Responding to the shooting down of a Turkish military helicopter Saturday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared that Kurdish forces would “pay the price.” The day before, the Turkish military announced that it was constructing a fifth military post near Syria’s northwest region of Idlib under a deal reached with Moscow to reduce fighting between pro-Syrian government forces and Islamist insurgents.

The US is determined to prevent any further strengthening of Russia’s position at all costs.

On Saturday, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, advanced a possible basis for escalated military action against Russia and its Syrian ally. Declaring that 230 civilians were killed in the past week by a government offensive backed by Russian air strikes, he warned that these actions might constitute war crimes. Al-Hussein claimed to have video footage proving that “toxic agents” may have been released in the wake of at least one attack on the city of Saraqeb.

US to expand military deployments as war danger builds in Asia

James Cogan

The National Defense Strategy released by the Trump administration last month defined China and Russia as the paramount “strategic competition” facing US imperialism. It labelled the two nuclear-armed states as “revisionist powers” that must be prevented from undermining American global dominance. The document declared that the US had to “prioritize preparedness for war.”

The American military has been doing precisely that in Asia for over six years, since the Obama administration announced its provocative “pivot” to the region in November 2011. It has prepared and positioned a vast array of surface ships, submarines, bombers, jet-fighters, infantry divisions and marine units to wage a region-wide war against China. New bases for US forces have been established in Australia and Singapore and re-established in the Philippines and Thailand. India, which has been groomed as a “strategic partner” against China, now provides access, maintenance and supply arrangements to the US military.

The US has some 50,000 personnel in Okinawa and elsewhere in Japan, including 18,000 marines, an aircraft carrier battlegroup and squadrons of Air Force jet fighters. It has some 29,500 personnel in South Korea, on the frontline of any conflict with North Korea. Guam hosts 7,000 military personnel, as well as B-52 and B2 strategic bombers capable of delivering nuclear weapons.

On February 9, the Wall Street Journal reported on the next stage of the concentration of American power in Asia. The Pentagon is considering deploying to the region the three West Coast-based Marine Expeditionary Units (MEUs), which have primarily been used in Iraq and the Middle East over the past decade or more.

MEUs consist of 2,200 marines, jet fighters and helicopters aboard amphibious assault ships, accompanied by guided-missile cruisers and destroyers, support vessels and often an attack submarine. In a twenty-first century version of gunboat diplomacy, if deployed, they will roam up to seven months at a time throughout the region to “persuade Pacific nations to stand with the US” against China.

Pentagon officials told the Journal that the MEUs could “conduct patrols” and “training with allies” and could “respond if a conflict were to break out.” While left unstated, a potential role for amphibious forces would be to attack and seize the Chinese-held islets and reefs in the South China Sea, which the Chinese military has been developing into forward bases against the US Navy.

General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told journalists as he toured US facilities in the northern Australian city of Darwin last week: “We have enduring interests here, and we have an enduring commitment and we have an enduring presence here.” Pentagon officials foreshadowed that the number of marines sent from Okinawa to operate from Darwin for six months of the year will be significantly increased this March and over coming years.

In the short-term, the US military is preparing for the prospect of a massive onslaught against North Korea, followed by an invasion to overthrow its regime and drastically alter the balance of power in North East Asia. This would be to the direct strategic detriment of China and Russia, which border the economically destitute country of barely 25 million people. 

The conduct over the weekend of US Vice President Michael Pence, during the opening days of the Winter Olympics in South Korea, was ominous.

The South Korean government went out of its way to welcome the participation of a North Korean team and extend diplomatic honours to Kim Yo-jong, the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, and the isolated country’s nominal head of state, Kim Yong-nam. Tentative steps were taken toward talks between the two Koreas on winding down the current state of tensions which, if it resulted in war, could lead to hundreds of thousands of casualties and the economic and social ruination of both sides of the peninsula.

Pence, in a calculated display of imperialist arrogance and contempt for both South and North Korea, made clear that the US had no interest in a peaceful settlement. He walked out of a state dinner, refusing to even speak with the North’s leadership, then remained seated as the united team of the Koreas paraded as one in the Opening Ceremony.

These diplomatic affronts serve only one purpose: to send an unmistakable message that the Trump administration will only accept an outcome that turns North Korea into a client-state of the United States. Washington is demanding the complete capitulation of Kim Jong-un’s regime. The alternative is activating plans, already in place, to implement Trump’s threat to “totally destroy” North Korea with “fire and fury.”

In chilling remarks, General Dunford told US marines in Darwin: “[A]t the end of the day, it is going to be a nasty war if we fight on the Korean Peninsula. And it’s going to involve marines and soldiers taking ground, alongside, obviously, our allies and partners. If you are a marine, and frankly if you are anyone in uniform, if you wake up in the morning always believing that this is the last day that you will be at peace, you are going to be in the right place.”

What else is North Korea supposed to conclude from such actions and statements except that the militaries of the US, South Korea, Japan, Australia and other American “allies and partners” are being primed for combat in the wake of the Winter Olympics?

The contradictions of capitalism have brought the world to the brink of what would likely be the most horrific and costly conflict since World War II. The American ruling class, beset with internal crises and incapable of dictating to the world as it once did, has concluded that the escalation of 25 years of militarist violence is the only way to prevent its intractable decline.

Even if China and Russia stood aside from a war on the Korean Peninsula, such a conflict would heighten the danger of “great power” wars fought with nuclear weapons. The regimes in Beijing and Moscow, likewise representing crisis-stricken capitalist oligarchs, are actively preparing for an inevitable military confrontation with the United States. In the think-tanks and militaries of the European imperialist powers, calculations are also being made that conflict with Washington may ultimately be unavoidable.

In 1915, in the resolution he proposed to the anti-war conference in the Swiss village of Zimmerwald, Russian revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin wrote:

“All the objective conditions of recent times have put the proletariat’s revolutionary mass struggle on the order of the day. It is the duty of socialists, while making use of every means of the working class’s legal struggle, to subordinate each and every one of those means to this immediate and most important task, develop the workers’ revolutionary consciousness, rally them in the international revolutionary struggle, promote and encourage any revolutionary action, and do everything possible to turn the imperialist war between the peoples into a civil war of the oppressed classes against their oppressors, a war for the expropriation of the class of capitalists, for the conquest of political power by the proletariat, and the realisation of socialism.”

Today, that perspective is fought for by the International Committee of the Fourth International, which must be built as the leadership of the international working class.

Two Journalists Face Trial In Ahwaz For Criticizing Education Officials

Rahim Hamid

Two journalists in the Arab region of Ahwaz in Iran have been summoned to appear in a regime court after they condemned the deteriorating standards of education in the region, which are the worst in the country.

The journalists, NaimHamidi and Sayed Nashan Al-Boshawka, both wrote articles criticizing the performance of the education directorate in Ahwaz, condemning the terrible conditions and low quality of education in regional schools compared to other regions in Iran, and censuring the education ministry’s openly racist and discriminatory recruitment policies, which see highly qualified Ahwazi Arab teachers deliberately rejected in favor of less qualified, ethnically Persian teaching personnel.

Mohammed Taki Zadeh, the head of the regional educational directorate in Ahwaz regime, who resents any effort to publicize the racism of its policies towards Arabs, Kurds, and other minorities, immediately filed a complaint against Hamid and Al-Boshawka, accusing them of spreading false information and misleading public opinion. Both men have received court summons requiring them to answer the charges.

Hamidi is the director of the Asr Ma news website and Al-Boshawka is a prominent Ahwazi satirist. In their articles, the journalists criticized the education directorate’s appointment of more than 32,000 ethnically Persian temporary teaching staff at Ahwazi schools, with most of these teachers brought to the region from other areas of Iran, as well as condemning the woeful state of the education system in the region. Currently, the Arab Ahwazi region stands at the very bottom of the national education quality ranking.

Taki Zadeh, who succeeded the previous regional education chief, Rahman Falahi, in December 2013, is the eleventh official appointed to the position in recent years.  He is widely unpopular, overseeing a steady decline in the already poor education standards in the region, as well as being notorious for his openly racist policies towards the indigenous Arab Ahwazis.  Literacy levels in the region have fallen in tandem with educational standards, with the number of functionally illiterate adults in the region are now over 59,000.

Under Taki Zadeh, parents have set up makeshift schools in caravans to provide a safe education environment for their children. No funding is available for repairs to existing schools, many which are dangerously dilapidated. Many of these schools are simply bare, flimsy one-or-two-room buildings incapable of withstanding the harsh climate and weather conditions in the region.

Enterprising parents in the Al-Masoudi district, in the destitute town of Dar khwain west of the Ahwaz regional capital, were so angered about the conditions their children were forced to endure at school—due to the  education authorities’ deliberate negligence—that they approached charitable organizations for money to purchase a caravan, which they turned into a makeshift school. This is not an isolated case; even Taki Zadeh himself admits that there are currently 600 makeshift schools in the province. News reports confirm that dozens of school buildings have had to be abandoned after falling into such disrepair that they were unfit for use.

In another area of Ahwaz, Abdel-Rahim Tabishi, an advisor to the governor of Ahwaz, declared Taki Zadeh personally responsible for the shockingly poor quality of education in the province, particularly in the city of Muhammarah.

The discriminatory policies pursued by Taki Zadeh are not confined to the areas of education, with Ahwazi children routinely subjected to racist abuse by ethnically Persian teachers, including punishments for speaking their own native language, Arabic, rather than in Farsi.  On November 4, 2017, designated as Student Day in Iran, the young pupils at a primary school for girls in a neighbourhood of the Ahwazi capital, Ahwaz, were reportedly forced to write out the sentence “Speaking Arabic in the classroom must be avoided at all times” 100 times as a penalty for speaking their own language.

In a similar case, pupils from the Hamza girls’ elementary school in the village of Beit Mohareb, near Ahwaz city, reported being insulted and punished by a Persian teacher named as ‘Miss Shushtari’ for speaking Arabic. Similarly, the girls were forced to write out sentences 100 times promising not to speak their own language, Arabic, in the classroom.”

Although angry parents and civil society organizations condemned this blatant racism, Taki Zadeh insisted that the teacher had committed no wrongdoing and defended her, refusing to dismiss her.

Ahwazi school pupils are also routinely physically abused by teachers, with one school headmaster reportedly hitting a 12-year-old boy so hard for a request to swap places in a queue with another child that he ruptured the child’s eardrum. But despite documented abuses, as Ahwazis, the children and their families have no recourse to legal action against regime officials, especially ethnically Persian ones. Speaking on condition of anonymity to avoid any reprisals by the regime, the boy’s father said, “Two days ago, my 12-year-old son, when he asked his classmate to swap places, he got punished by the school’s headmaster, who slapped him without any warning while he was in a queue that it led to the rupturing of his eardrum.”

In one particularly tragic case, a 12-year-old boy, Elias Sharifi, from the town of Howeyzeh, killed himself on December 25 after persistent racist harassment by an ethnically Persian teacher culminated in actually fining the boy for “writing more homework than necessary.”   Elias went home and hanged himself with one of his mother’s scarves. His mother found him and desperately rushed him to a clinic, where medical staff pronounced him dead shortly after his arrival.

Amongst other examples of TakiZadeh’s negligence, he also refused to take any action to prevent a school in the Alawi area of Ahwaz from being turned into a regime security facility, leaving the children with no school building.

In light of TakiZadeh’s unconscionable record, the Ahwazi Human Rights Organizations strongly condemned the official’s complaint and the decision to summon the two journalists to court simply for bringing attention to injustices.   The Ahwazi rights groups also denounced TakiZadeh’s efforts to muzzle the press and silence civil society activists in Ahwaz,   and called for ensuring respect for freedom of speech and allowing media outlets to convey the wholly justified concerns of citizens who are critical of the deterioration in the education sector in order to fight discrimination.

Fabricated Reality: Lobbying For GMO Agriculture In India

Colin Todhunter

Richard John Roberts is a prominent biochemist and molecular biologist. On his recent visits to India, he has talked about the supposed virtues of genetically modified (GM) food and crops, while attacking people who have valid concerns about the technology.

In 2015, while in Mysore, he implied the denial of GM food to people in developing nations is a crime against humanity. He also argued that the present engineering of GM crops is precise and is little different from conventional breeding.

Roberts has claimed on more than one occasion that “millions of people in the third world would die” of starvation unless GM crops are introduced and that Greenpeace is in the business of scaring people and should be put on trial for crimes against humanity.

As a Fellow of the Royal Society, Roberts should be aware of the Society’s misleading and exaggerated statements that it has used to actively promote genetically modified organisms (GMOs) since the mid-1990s. Unfortunately, Roberts himself reads from a similar script.

In an open letter to the Royal Society, author of ‘Altered Genes, Twisted Truth’ Steven Druker argued that the scientific institution has engaged in a campaign of disinformation and the smearing of credible research that has showed firm evidence pointing to health dangers of GM. He added there is not now nor never has been a consensus within the scientific community that GM foods are safe.

The World Health Organization cautions that “Different GM organisms include different genes inserted in different ways. This means that individual GM foods and their safety should be assessed on a case-by-case basis and that it is not possible to make general statements on the safety of all GM foods.” Renowned geneticist Mae-Wan Ho has addressed the “central dogma” of molecular biology, which provides a “simplistic picture” of the precision involved in GM.

In 2018, Roberts has been in India again. In a short interview, he agrees that GM mustard should be introduced to ease the edible oil import bill and then goes on to attack critics of GM:

“Bt cotton has been incredibily successful…very popular, good for the economy, get better yields… there’s just no reason not to be doing this… The rest of the world really needs them [GMOs]… by trying to pretend that they are dangerous, they are actively killing people. I think it’s just disgusting.”

Baseless claims: GM mustard and cotton

Campaigner Aruna Rodrigues says Roberts’s statements on GM cotton are just plain fabrications. She adds that there is no science nor integrity in what he says, and he has no understanding of the Indian context:

“GMOs are self-replicating organisms and genetic contamination of the environment, of non-GM crops and wild species through gene flow, is certain: it cannot be contained, reversed, remedied or quantified. Our seed stock will also be contaminated at the molecular level. Any toxicity that there is will remain in perpetuity. The traits for disease, saline and drought resistance, yield, etc. are found in nature, not biotech labs. We must maintain India’s still-rich genetic diversity for the future of our agriculture.”

It must be re-iterated that India’s edible oils import bill has risen not because the indigenous sector is unproductive and thus needs GM mustard to boost yields (it has no GM trait for improved yield and is anyhow outperformed by existing non-GM varieties). Until the mid-1990s, India was virtually self-sufficient in edible oils. Then import tariffs were reduced, leading to an influx of cheap (subsidised) edible oil imports that domestic farmers could not compete with. This devastated the home-grown edible oils sector. Roberts seems ignorant of this basic fact. It is essentially a trade policy issue which proponents of GM misrepresent.

Rodrigues has gone to the Supreme Court to seek a moratorium on the release of any GMOs in India in the absence of comprehensive, transparent and rigorous biosafety protocols and biosafety studies conducted by independent expert bodies. A recent report (p.5) by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Science & Technology, Environment and Forests is scathing in its criticism of the regulation and risk assessment of GMOs in India, including GM mustard. The Committee strongly believes that, given the situation, no GM crop should be introduced into the country. This report is entirely in agreement with four previous official government reports.

In her various submissions to the Supreme Court, Rodrigues has made it clear – supported by a good deal of data – that GM mustard does not improve yields and that there is in fact no need for it. Field trails have been based on invalid tests, secrecy, poor science and a lack of rigour and there has been an outright case of unremitting fraud and regulatory delinquency.

From the issue of labelling GM food to ‘substantial equivalence’, the science around GM in general has been distorted, debased and bypassed to serve commercial interests. Not a single long-term epidemiological study has been conducted with GMOs despite claims about ‘safety’.

As far as GM cotton in India is concerned, despite what Roberts claims, Rodrigues’s evidence to the Supreme Court makes it patently clear that yields have stagnated and insecticide use has increased to pre-GM cotton levels as new highly damaging pests have emerged and pest resistance to the technology is spreading. Add to that the high costs of GM seed, continued insecticide use and usury costs and the situation has become economically devastating for poor farmers and is likely the proximate cause of the increase incidence of suicides.

The myth that GM will feed the world

GM crops that are on the market today are not designed to address hunger. Four GM crops account for almost all of worldwide GM crop acreage, and all four have been developed for large-scale industrial farming systems and are used as cash crops for export, to produce fuel or for processed food and animal feed. Roberts talks about GM being necessary for feeding the hungry millions, yet GM crops deliver no traits for yield.

Consider that “GM crops have not consistently increased yields or farmer incomes or reduced pesticide use in North America or in the Global South (Benbrook, 2012; Gurian-Sherman, 2009)” (from the report ‘Persistent narratives, persistent failure’). Consider too that GM agriculture is not ‘feeding the world’, as described in the 2016 New York Times piece ‘Broken promises of GM crops’. Evidence shows that, across the globe genetic engineering has not increased the yield of a single crop.

Numerous high-level reports have argued that to feed the hungry in poorer regions like India we need to support diverse, sustainable agroecological methods of farming (not GM) and strengthen local food economies. Agroecological approaches account for the ecological aspects of agriculture, including the building of soil fertility, the need to ensure biodiversity such as natural pest enemies and pollinators and the genetic diversity of crops and breeding and adapting crops to local or regional agroecological conditions. All the things that chemical-intensive industrial agriculture has undermined, as underlined in this very revealing open letter to Indian officials by Bhaskar Save, which Roberts should certainly read.

While Roberts makes various fanciful claims about the benefits of GM, they just do not stack up.

Aruna Rodrigues:

“There are promises of GMOs with traits for disease, drought etc., but these are complex, multi-gene traits and remain futuristic. What is abundantly clear is that traditional breeding outperforms GMOs hands down.”

In the report GMO Myths and Truths, the evidence presented shows that conventional breeding continues to outstrip GM in delivering crops that yield well, resist disease, are nutritious and tolerate drought and other types of extreme weather.

Roberts’s approach is just plain reductionist. His attitude to the politics of GM is also one dimensional. It is not Greenpeace or a bunch of green-oriented elitist ideologues that is contributing to world hunger but the power, influence and ambitions of a very wealthy and politically well-connected group agribusiness concerns that is promoting a highly profitable GM technology.

The GM approach and the model of agriculture it is linked to is ecologically unsustainable and upheld by taxpayer handouts: in the US, the average costs of production for (GM) commodity crops is often greater than the price farmers get; farmers rely on subsidies that are often more than the crop value, while most profits in the chain are secured by the seed and pesticide corporations. At the same time, GM has resulted in the increased use of herbicides as well as the coating of most seed with powerful and harmful insecticides and fungicides.

Moving beyond reductionism

For all the talk about GM ‘feeding the world’ and scaremongering about the actions of critics of GM, Roberts opts to sidestep the root causes of hunger and poverty. Eric Holt-Giménez:

“The World Bank, the WTO, the World Food Program, the Millennium Challenge, The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, the US Department of Agriculture and industrial giants like Yara Fertilizer, Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland, Syngenta, DuPont and Monsanto carefully avoid addressing the root causes of the food crisis. The ‘solutions’ they prescribe are rooted in the same policies and technologies that created the problem in the first place: increased food aid, de-regulated global trade in agricultural commodities, and more technological and genetic fixes. These measures only strengthen the corporate status quo controlling the world’s food.”

To serve the interests of these corporations, a number of treaties and agreement over breeders’ rights and intellectual property have been enacted to prevent peasant farmers from freely improving, sharing or replanting their traditional seeds. Large corporations with their proprietary seeds and synthetic chemical inputs have eradicated traditional systems of seed exchange. They have effectively hijacked seeds, pirated germ plasm that farmers developed over millennia and have ‘rented’ the seeds back to farmers. As a result, genetic diversity among food crops has been drastically reduced, and we have bad food and diets, degraded soils, water pollution and scarcity and spiralling rates of poor health.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimates that globally just 20 cultivated plant species account for 90% of all the plant-based food consumed by humans. This narrow genetic base of the global food system has put food security at serious risk.

The corporate-dominate industrial model is not only an attack on biodiversity and – as we see the world over – on the integrity of soil, water, food, diets and health but is also an attack on the integrity of international institutions, governments and officials which have too often been corrupted by powerful transnational corporations.

It is very convenient for Roberts to ignore issues surrounding international trade policy, inappropriate development strategies, the impacts of commodity market speculation, sovereign debt repayment issues, land speculation, the nature of export-oriented monocropping, sustainable agriculture, fluctuating oil prices, the dynamics of structural inequality and poverty or any of the other issues that impact global and regional food security and which create food deficit areas and fuel hunger and malnutrition.

Perhaps it is convenient for him to overlook all of the above issues, which in reality, not in the fantasy world of a pro-GMO lobbyist, determine humanity’s ability for feeding itself effectively and properly.

It certainly does not lie in an already failed pesticide resistant GM plant technology in India or herbicide resistant plants which would be wholly inappropriate for a dominated by small multi-cropping farms.

Aruna Rodrigues:

“There is serious concern that Monsanto may have known for 30 years that glyphosate is an endocrine (hormone) disruptor; no regulatory agency anywhere regulates for endocrine disruption despite overwhelming evidence from Argentina of horrendous birth defects because of glyphosate used in herbicide-tolerant (HT) soybeans. In this context, Bayer’s glufosinate, the herbicide linked with Indian HT mustard, is an acknowledged neurotoxin banned in the EU. The Supreme Court-appointed Technical Expert Committee recommended a ban on any HT crop in India for this among several other reasons.”

The globalised industrial food system that transnational agribusiness promotes is not feeding the world, has destroyed rural economies and is responsible for some of the planet’s most pressing political, social and environmental crises.

But for Roberts to acknowledge any of this would derail his agenda. What many might find “disgusting” is a scientist who ignores available evidence to lobby for GM and seems unable or unwilling to come to terms with the wider issues. Willful ignorance is no excuse for promoting inappropriate technology in India or for denigrating critics who have valid concerns.