Diet, Ignorance and the Environmental Catastrophe

Graham Peebles

Climate Change sounds vast and impersonal, but it’s really a very personal matter; a global crisis caused by the individual actions humanity has collectively taken. All too often such actions proceed from a position of ignorance selfishness and habit, and are undertaken with little or no understanding of the effects on the natural environment.

The debate around climate change commonly focuses on transportation, deforestation, and energy – replacing fossil fuels with renewables. This is right and urgent, and some countries are taking steps; however, what is not tackled at all is the devastating impact of a meat/dairy diet, – common to 97% of humanity. According to Reducing Food’s Environmental Impacts Through Producers and Consumers (RFEI), a detailed report published in the journal Science, consumption of animal produce is “degrading terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, depleting water resources, and driving climate change.”

Industrial farming of cows, pigs, sheep and chickens, plus harvesting fish, for human consumption is the single greatest cause of the interconnected environmental catastrophe; unless urgent substantive change takes place this could single-handedly lead to a polluting point beyond redemption. Misinformed, irresponsible lifestyle choices are behind the environmental crisis. The vast majority of people are unaware of the devastating effects of our collective eating habits, and from this position of uninformed ignorance disaster flows; the earth is poisoned, the climate disrupted and all manner of lives are lost.

Animal agriculture is responsible for approximately 15% of all greenhouse gas emissions (GGE), according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). This is more than any other sector, including manufacturing and transportation. The principal climate change contaminate is methane (44%), which comes mainly from rearing cattle – the source of 65% of all livestock GGE’s. While methane’s atmospheric life is only decades compared to centuries/millennia for carbon-dioxide (Co2) Scientific American reports that it “warms the planet by 86 times as much as CO2,” before degrading to become CO2: So it’s a double whammy, an intensely damaging one.

In addition to high levels of GGE’s the meat and dairy industry is responsible for a range of environmental ills: Colossal amounts of both land and water are used to produce meat and dairy for the dinner plate – a third of all the Earths fresh water is soaked up by the industry, according to PNAS, and Waterfootprint relate that over 15,000 litres of water are required to produce a kilogram of beef, compared to the 322 litres of water needed for a kilo of vegetables. In America, 55% of total water usage goes to animal agriculture, compared to 5% for domestic use.

Globally the human population drinks around 5.2 billion gallons of water and eats 21 billion pounds of food daily, the documentary Conspiracy states. Though a lot, this pales into insignificance compared to the 45 billion gallons of water the world’s 1.5 billion cows drink daily and the 135 billion pounds of food they consume.

Land: use and degradation

The demand livestock farming makes on worldwide land resources is equally alarming. Between 25% and 30% of all (ice-free) land is utilized for grazing (up to 60 times more than the combined urban conurbations of the world); add in land used to grow feed crops and the figure leaps to 45% the International Livestock Research Institute state. This voracious appetite for land is the primary cause of rainforest deforestation (which generates 10% of global GGE, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists) as huge tracts of land are cleared to graze cattle and grow genetically manipulated soya beans and maize, which are used in animal feed.

The World Resource Institute estimates that only 15% of the world’s rain forests remain, the other 85% has been leveled, badly degraded or broken up, destroying ancient ecosystems and displacing hundreds of thousands of indigenous people; and 91% of the lost rainforest is due to farming livestock to feed human beings with meat and dairy.

Tropical rainforests are the lungs of the planet, but an acre of this most precious land is being cleared every second, and it’s increasing: In the world’s largest rainforest, the Brazilian Amazon, from August 2015 to July 2016 deforestation rose sharply, to, The New York Times (NYT) reported “nearly two million acres…. that’s a jump from about 1.5 million acres a year earlier.” In neighboring Bolivia, the Bolivia Documentation and Information Center say that 865,000 acres of land have been cleared every year since 2011 – a huge increase on the 366,000 acres a year during the 1990’s and the 667,000 acres a year in the early 2000’s. The reason for the increase is “a strategy by multinational food companies to source their agricultural commodities from ever more remote areas around the world.” Areas where law is weak and corporations can do as they like – all in the name of profit.

Deforestation and soil degradation/erosion leading to desertification are closely connected. The UNCCD (United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification), records that “12 million hectares of arable land, enough to grow 20 tonnes of grain, are lost to desertification annually. With over 70% of the global arable land being used to grow crops for livestock, its clear that “animal agriculture is the leading driver for approximately 1/3 of the land lost on earth due to desertification.”

Animal agriculture is also the principal cause behind the unprecedented level of species extinction, and this because of a variety of factors: Clearing forests destroys natural habitat; wild animals are hunted to protect livestock; pesticides, herbicides and chemical fertilizers used in the production of feed crops “interferes with the reproductive systems of animals and poison water supplies.” Together with the broader impact animal agriculture is having on climate change, this all contributes, Conspiracy relates “to global depletion of species and resources.”

The industrial farming of livestock is a multi-layered environmental disaster, a global industry worth an estimated 3.178 $Trillions per year according to the World Bank that is growing at a phenomenal rate. Over the past 50 years global meat production increased fourfold. In 1963 it was 78 million tonnes, now, Global Agriculture records that it’s around 308 million tonnes per year. It’s expected to rise a further 75% by 2050 and demand for dairy to increase by 65%. If this trend continues, research published in Nature shows that by 2050 agricultural emissions will take up the entire world’s carbon budget, with livestock a major contributor. This would “mean every other sector, including energy, industry and transport, would have to be zero carbon, which is described as ‘impossible’.”

The enormous rise in production, of cheap low-quality food stuff is being generated through large-scale factory farming; it is how 70% of all farm animals are now reared, is the biggest cause of animal cruelty, and the source of many of the health pandemics in recent years. Livestock is regarded as human property – living commodities within a world of commodification to be used and profited from with no concern for the well-being of the animals.

Regionally, Asia produces almost half of the total meat production, Europe and America account for 19 and 15% respectively. The countries that consume most are currently the industrialized nations, Australia tops the chart of meat eaters, with, Forbe tells us, an average Australian eating “205 lbs. of beef and veal, poultry, pork and sheep meat a year”. America follows with 200 lbs. a year, then comes Israel at 189 lbs. It’s interesting to note that these countries also lead the world in wealth and income inequality.

Some will argue that even more livestock is needed to feed a growing global population. This claim is totally unfounded. Whilst the world is certainly overpopulated (7.6 billion), enough food is being produced to feed an estimated 10–12 billion people, but as FAO relates, “an estimated one-third of all food produced for human use, valued at $1 trillion, is lost or wasted each year.” In full sight of this criminal act almost a billion people are starving, whilst 1.9 billion are overweight. As the Meat Atlas makes clear, the global system for producing food is totally broken, it is a failed industry controlled by a handful of multinational corporations sitting within a dysfunctional economic system that places profit before people and the planet.

Change of Lifestyle

If humanity is to overcome the environmental crisis, a major shift in behavior is needed, including a change in diet. The RFEI report reveals that adopting diets which exclude animal products “has [enormous] transformative potential: reducing food’s land use by 2.8-3.3 billion hectares (a 76% reduction), including a 19% reduction in arable land; food’s GHG emissions by 49%; acidification by between 45-54%; eutrophication [excessive richness of nutrients in a body of water] by up to 56%.” In large meat eating societies like America, where meat consumption is three times the global average and a mere 3.5% are vegetarian, changing diet “has the potential for a far greater effect on food’s different emissions, reducing them by up to 73%.”

Awareness is the critical ingredient in change, individually and collectively. In order to raise awareness of the impact of meat/dairy production and create a well-informed society, information needs to be widely available. The lead researcher on RFEI, Joseph Poore from the University of Oxford, proposes labeling which reveals product impact should be made available. Such a step should be compulsory, so “consumers could choose the least damaging options.” In addition, Poore suggests governments subsidize “sustainable and healthy foods” while “reallocating agricultural subsidies that now exceed half a trillion dollars a year worldwide.”

These measures would greatly help, but changing behavior is extremely difficult, particularly on the scale and within the time-frame required, and it won’t happen without incentives. In 2013 a group of scientists proposed “implementing a tax or emission trading scheme on livestock’s greenhouse gas emissions”, this “economically sound policy would modify consumer prices and affect consumption patterns.” Such a common-sense scheme should be implemented throughout the world as part of a set of global policies, consistently enforced, designed to change harmful behaviour and encourage responsible action. We all have a duty to do everything we can to restore the Earth to health and safeguard it for future generations and the most effective way to do this, as the RFEI study shows, is to stop eating animal produce.

The Middle East: History threatens to repeat itself

James M. Dorsey

If the notion that history repeats itself is accurate, it is nowhere truer than in the Middle East where the international community, caught by surprise by the 2011 popular Arab revolts, has reverted to opting for political stability as opposed to sustainability, ignoring the undercurrents of change wracking the Middle East. Major powers do so at their peril.

The failure of the United States, Europe, China and Russia to recognize key drivers of fundamental societal change and revisit the underpinnings of their policies towards the Middle East and beyond threatens to nullify professed aims of wanting to end bloodshed, curb extremism, stabilize the region and protect their interests.

In a just published study, Jose Antonio Sabadell, a former Spanish and European Union diplomat, argues that the narrow focus of the West, and by extension of China and Russia, on countering extremism, stemming the flood of refugees, and securing economic interests, blinds major powers from recognizing tectonic social and political shifts that are likely to reshape a region embroiled in volatile, often violent transition.

Without saying so explicitly, Mr. Sabadell harks back more than a decade to the immediate aftermath of 9/11 when Western leaders, including then US President George. W. Bush recognized that Western support for Middle Eastern autocracy that failed to address widespread popular grievances and perceptions of Western policy had created the feeding ground for jihadist groups focused on striking at Western targets.

That recognition produced an expectation that the Arab street would assert itself, neutralize breeding grounds of extremism, and counter radicalism by pushing for political and economic change.

When the Arab street did not immediately revolt, government officials, analysts and journalists wrote it off. The widespread discontent continued to simmer at the surface. It was palpable if one put one’s ear to the ground and finally exploded a decade later in 2011.

That pattern hasn’t changed despite a brutal counterrevolution that reversed the achievements of the revolt in Egypt and produced civil and covert wars and/or overt military interventions in Libya, Syria and Yemen.

Just how little has changed is evident in the continued validity of Egyptian-born political scientist Nazih Ayubi’s assertion 22 years ago that the Arab world is populated by hard rather than strong states whose power is rooted in bureaucracies, militaries and security forces.

Mr. Ayubi noted that these states were “lamentably feeble when it comes to collecting taxes, winning wars or forging a really ‘hegemonic’ power bloc or an ideology that can carry the state beyond the coercive and ‘corporate’ level and into the moral and intellectual sphere.”

Recent protests, often innovative in their manifestations, in Morocco, Egypt and Iran prove the point.

“The Arab world is in the middle of a process of deep social and political change… The emergence of Arab peoples as key political actors, in combination with widespread, profound and mounting popular frustration, is a game changer. What Arab populations think and crucially how they feel, will determine the future evolution of their countries,” Mr. Sabadell predicted.

Historical record backs up his assertion that fundamental change is a process rather than an event. The era of the 2011 revolts and their counterrevolutionary aftermath may be reminiscent of the 1789 French revolutionary wave that was countered by powerful conservative forces that ultimately failed to avert the 1848 revolution.

A renewed failure to recognize the social psychological, emotional, social, economic and political underpinnings of simmering discontent suggests that the international community’s focus on migration and extremism could boomerang by further antagonizing significant sectors of societies in a swath of land that stretches from Africa to China.

It is likely to impact stability in a region that borders on Europe, constitutes Russia’s backyard and soft underbelly and stretches into China’s strategic north-western province of Xinjiang. It also risks fuelling rather than countering extremism that feeds on its understanding and exploitation of the emotions, social psychology and identity politics of deep-seated grievances.

“We are at a crossroads… Vital interests are at stake…. These developments will define…interaction with 400 million people living in Europe’s immediate neighbourhood, and shape relations with the wider Middle East and North Africa region… This can have profound geopolitical implications, influence the global scenario for the foreseeable future and maybe change the nature of international politics,” Mr. Sabadell said.

Demonization of Islam in the West and major Asian nations as well as political Islam that is encouraged by autocrats in countries like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates despite the fact that religion is often the only permissible language in public discourse, and Islamophobia, magnify the risk and exacerbate the problem.

The centrality of Islam in Middle Eastern identity coupled with widespread anti-Western sentiment that is reinforced by the Trump administration’s immigration policy and anti-immigrant sentiment in Europe strengthens a belief that the West, and eventually China with its repressive policy in Xinjiang, is hostile to Islam. It’s a belief that hands opportunity to extremists on a silver platter.

It is also a belief that intrinsically links social and economic grievances with perceived threats to collective national, regional and religious identities, a pillar of populism on both sides of the Atlantic as well as the Mediterranean in what Indian essayist and novelist Pankaj Mishra dubbed “the flourishing international economy of disaffection.”

The key popular demand for dignity that characterized the 2011 revolts as well subsequent protests related as much to calls for clean, non-corrupt governance and efficient delivery of public goods and services as it did for acknowledgement of a proper place for Arab and Muslim states in the international system.

A key issue that world powers turn a blind eye to is the fact that even if religion constitutes the bedrock of autocratic legitimacy and frames public discourse, religiosity is in flux with youth increasingly embracing the notion that faith is a private affair rather than a ritualistic adherence to laws and a set of ironclad beliefs.

Closely related is the failure to realize that the gap between the Middle East and the West and potentially with China and Russia is not one that is rooted in values but in policies.

As a result, anti-immigrant sentiment coupled with Islamophobia, reducing the Middle East to concerns of migration and extremism, support for autocratic regimes, indifference towards the worsening plights of huge population groups, and the lack of even-handed policies towards key conflicts like Syria and the Israeli-Palestinian dispute threatens to turn the fictional value gap into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

It is a prophecy that is exploited by extremists who unlike world powers understand the power of and beneficial focus on emotions.

The self-fulfilling prophecy is underwritten by decades of failed policy in which military interventions, debilitating attempts at regime change, misconceived notions of nation building and misconstrued calls for reform of Islam have fuelled mayhem and crisis.

“What the Arab world may need is not a religious leader but rather a social leader; not someone who wants to reform religion, but who wants to reform society…one who uses the popular legitimacy and the authority of religion to promote social and political change. Islam may need a Martin Luther King Jr. more than a Martin Luther,” Mr. Sabadell said.

Stopping failed policies from cementing false perceptions in a self-fulfilling prophecy will take more than counter narratives, political messaging and promotion of ‘moderate’ Islam. It will require fundamentally revisiting the notion that support for self-serving autocrats whose policies contribute to the threat of the prophecy is part of the solution.

The crisis in the Middle East offers the West a historic opportunity in the far larger struggle with China and Russia for a future international order. It is where the West has a strategic advantage that it can exploit if it is capable of dropping its horse claps that allow it to see primarily only the threats of migration and extremism.

Said Mr. Sabadell: “The way the West handles its relations with the region can and should make a significant difference. What it does and says will be the key; what it does not do and does not say will be equally important. How it acts, or not, and speaks up or remains silent will define its position and determine its effectiveness.”

GMO Agriculture and the Narrative of Choice

Colin Todhunter

The pro-GMO lobby claim critics of the technology ‘deny farmers choice’. They say that farmers should have access to a range of tools and technologies. It is all about maximising choice and options. Taken at face value, who would want to deny choice?

At the same time, however, we do not want to end up offering a false choice (rolling out technologies that have little value and only serve to benefit those who control the technology), to unleash an innovation that has an adverse impact on those who do not use it or to manipulate a situation whereby only one option is available because other options have been deliberately made unavailable or less attractive. And we would certainly not wish to roll out a technology that traps farmers on a treadmill that they find difficult to get off.

When discussing choice, it is can be very convenient to focus on end processes (choices made available – or denied – to farmers at the farm level), while ignoring the procedures and decisions that were made in corporate boardrooms, by government agencies and by regulatory bodies which result in the shaping and roll-out of options.

Where GMOs are concerned, Steven Druker argues that the decision to commercialise GM seeds and food in the US was based on regulatory delinquency. Druker indicates that if the US Food and Drug Administration had heeded its own experts’ advice and publicly acknowledged their warnings about risk, the GM venture would have imploded and would have never gained traction.

It is fine to talk about choice while ignoring what amounts to a subversion of democratic processes, which could result in (and arguably is resulting in) changing the genetic core of the world’s food. Whose ‘choice’ was it to do this? Was the choice given to the US public, the consumers of GM food? Did ordinary people choose for GM food to appear on their supermarket shelves?

No, that choice was denied. The decision was carried out above their heads, ultimately to benefit Monsanto’s bottom line and to gain strategic leverage over global agriculture. And, now that GM food is on the market, can they choose whether to buy it? Again, the answer is no. The massive lobbying firepower of GMO agritech and food corporations have ensured this food is unlabelled and the public has been denied the right to choose.

Of course, let’s not also forget that the GMO venture, like the original Green Revolution, often works with bio-pirated germplasm: little more than theft from the Global South to be tweaked and sold back as hybrid or patented GM seeds to the Global South (read The Great Seed Piracy).

But any serious discussion about the corporate capture of agriculture, seed patenting, the role of the WTO or World Bank, or issues concerning dependency, development and ensuring genuine food security by addressing the dynamics of neoliberal capitalism (globalisation), are often shouted down by pro-GMO scientists and their supporters with accusations of ‘conspiracy theory’. Based on my own personal experience, this even occurs when referring to the work of respected academics who are sneered at as non-scientists and whose PhDs and the peer-reviewed journals their work appear in are somehow unworthy of recognition.

Yet, aside from the issues mentioned above which need to be addressed if we are to achieve equitable global food security (issues the pro-GMO lobby and its prominent scientists in academia seem to not want to discuss – for them, the ‘conspiracy’ slur will suffice), the fact is that the industry has placed GM on the market fraudulently, is complicit in seed piracy and has fought hard to deny consumer choice by using its political and financial clout along the way to undermine democratic processes. Issues that are highly relevant to any discussion about ‘choice’.

(For the sake of brevity, Monsanto’s subversion of science and issues emerging from the ‘Monsanto Papers’ will be put to one side, as this has been presented on numerous occasions elsewhere.)

What are critics denying?

So, just what is it that critics are said to be denying farmers when it comes to the right to choose?

Pro-GMO activists say that GM crops can increase yields, reduce the use of agrochemicals and are required if we are to feed the world. To date, however, the track record of GMOs is unimpressive.

In India and Burkina Faso, for example, Bt cotton has hardly been a success. And although critics are blamed for Golden Rice not being on the market, this is a convenient smokescreen that attempts to hide the reality that after two decades problems remain with the technology.

Moreover, a largely non-GMO Europe tends to outperform the US, which largely relies on GM crops. In general, “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’).

GM agriculture is not ‘feeding the world’, nor has it been designed to do so: the companies that push GM are located firmly within the paradigm of industrial agriculture and associated power relations that shape a ‘stuffed and starved’ strategy resulting in strategic surpluses and scarcities across the globe. The choice for farmers between a technology that is so often based on broken promises and non-GMO agriculture offers little more than a false choice.

“Currently available GM crops would not lead to major yield gains in Europe,” says Matin Qaim, a researcher at Georg-August-University of Göttingen, Germany.

Consider too that once the genetic genie is out of the bottle, there may be no way of going back. For instance, Roger Levett, specialist in sustainable development, argues (‘Choice: Less can be more, in Food Ethics, Vol. 3, No. 3, Autumn 2008):

“If some people are allowed to choose to grow, sell and consume GMO foods, soon nobody will be able to choose food, or a biosphere, free of GMOs. It’s a one-way choice… once it’s made, it can’t be reversed.”

There is much evidence showing that GM and non-GM crops cannot co-exist. Indeed, contamination seems to be part of a cynical industry strategy. For instance, GM food crops are already illegally growing in India.

And if we turn our attention to India, recent reports indicate that herbicide tolerant (HT) cotton seeds are now available in certain states. Bt cotton (designed to be pest resistant) is the only legally sanctioned GM crop in India. HT crops are not only illegal in India but have led to serious problems in countries where they are used. The Supreme Court-appointed TEC Committee said that such crops are wholly inappropriate for India.

It seems that, however, according to reports, many farmers are ‘choosing’ to buy these seeds.  And this is where the pro-GMO activists jump in and yell their mantra about offering choice to farmers.

Regardless of the laws of the country being violated, things are not that simple.

Manufacturing ‘choice’

Professor Glenn Stone has conducted extensive field research concerning India’s cotton farmers. By employing the concept of technology treadmills as well as environmental, social and didactic learning, he can help us understand the ‘choices’ that farmers make.

Stone has noted where Bt cotton has been concerned, any decision by farmers to plant GM seeds was not necessarily based on objective decision-making. There was no experimentation or the testing of seeds within agroecological contexts by farmers as has been the case traditionally.

On the back of a national media campaign about the miracle wonder seeds and a push by Monsanto to get Bt cotton into India in the 1990s, farmers eventually found themselves at the mercy of seed vendors who sold whatever seed they had in stock, regardless of what the farmers wanted. Without agricultural support services from trusted non-governmental organisations, farmers had to depend on local shopkeepers. They believed they were buying the latest and best seeds and created a rush on whatever supplies were available.

The upshot is that traditional knowledge, testing and evaluations by farmers in the field was undermined or broke down and, in many respects, gave way to an unregulated industry-orchestrated free for all. ‘Environmental learning’ gave way to ‘social learning’ (farmers merely emulated one another).

However, in agriculture, environmental learning has gone on for thousands of years. Farmers experimented with different plant and animal specimens acquired through migration, trading networks, gift exchanges or accidental diffusion. By learning and doing, trial and error, new knowledge was blended with older, traditional knowledge systems.

Farmers took measures to manage drought, grow cereals with long stalks that can be used as fodder, engage in cropping practices that promote biodiversity, ethno-engineer soil and water conservation, use self-provisioning systems on farm recycling and use collective sharing systems such as managing common resource properties. In short, farmers knew their micro-environment.

To get farmers onto a corporate technology treadmill, environmental learning pathways have to be broken, and Stone offers good insight into how this occurred with Bt cotton and is now happening with HT cotton. He describes how traditional ‘double-lining’ ox ploughing is breaking down due to ‘didactic learning’ under the promise of increased productivity. After having adopted ‘single-lining’ ploughing (as advocated by didactic ‘teachers’), this promise does not seem to have materialised. However, the farmer is now faced with more weeds.

So, who could blame the farmer for being attracted towards HT cotton and the purchasing of herbicides as a perceived easy fix when faced with an increase in weeds and government policies that have inadvertently increased farm labour costs?

The breaking with traditional practices (or pathways) to implement fresh approaches (which fail deliver much benefit) can be regarded as part of the process of nudging farmers towards seeking out alternative options to deal with the new problems that arise (the beginning of the treadmill).

It is highly convenient that illegal HT seeds now seem widely available. It dovetails with Monsanto’s stated plan to boost herbicide sales in India (which it regards as a potentially massive growth market). And if farmers demand these seeds, (farmers are a huge vote bank for politicians), Monsanto (now Bayer) might eventually achieve what is has been pushing for all along: India embracing GM agriculture.

In effect, Stone (with his colleague Andrew Flachs) helps us to understand how ‘didactic learning’ (which Monsanto has been undertaking with Indian farmers since the 1990s) can result in driving farmers towards the very option and very choice Monsanto wants them to make. Stone and Flachs also make it clear that once farmers are on an agrochemical/agritech treadmill, it is very difficult for them to get off, even when they are aware it is failing.

A question of power

When the pro-GMO lobby uses ‘choice’ as a stick to hit critics with, it fails to acknowledge these processes, which powerful agritech players are cynically manipulating for their own ends. In other words, ‘choices’ or options must be understood within the broader context of power.

Choice is also about the options that could be made available, but which have been closed off or are not even considered. Take the case of Andhra Pradesh in India. The state government is committed to scaling up zero budget natural farming to six million farmers by 2024. In Ethiopia, agroecology has been scaled up across the entire Tigray region. These types of initiatives are succeeding because of enlightened political leaders and the commitment of key institutions.

However, in places where global agribusiness/agritech corporations have levered themselves into strategic positions, their interests prevail. From the overall narrative that industrial agriculture is necessary to feed the world to providing lavish research grants and the capture of important policy-making institutions, these firms have secured a perceived thick legitimacy within policymakers’ mindsets and mainstream discourse. As a result, agroecological approaches are marginalised and receive scant attention and support.

This perceived legitimacy allows these corporations to devise and implement policies on national and international levels. For example, it was Monsanto that had a leading role in drafting the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights to create seed monopolies. The global food processing industry wrote the WTO Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures. Whether it involves Codex or the Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture aimed at restructuring Indian agriculture, the powerful agribusiness/food lobby has secured privileged access to policy makers.

So how can the pro-GMO lobby assert with any degree of credibility that it is a bunch of activists curtailing or defining choice when it has been powerless to prevent any of this, either at ‘field level’ in places like India or within governments and international bodies?

As Stone and Flachs describe, it is Monsanto – a Fortune 500 company with all its influence and wealth (not ‘anti-GMO activists’) – that has taken its brand of corporate activism (imperialism) to farmers to expand its influence and boost its bottom line:

“Beginning with 500 farmer programs in 2007, Monsanto India targeted a range of farmers through an herbicide research program… They also conducted more than 10,000 farm demonstrations directed at small and large farmers in 2012 to raise awareness of Roundup® and discourage knockoff products… These efforts build on Monsanto’s didactic activities since the late 1990s. For instance, in Andhra Pradesh the Meekosam Project placed Monsanto employees in villages to demonstrate products and promote hybrid seeds and chemical inputs…”

From the World Bank’s ‘enabling the business of agriculture’ to the Gates Foundation’s role in opening up African agriculture to the global food and agribusiness oligopolies, democratic procedures at sovereign state levels are being bypassed to impose seed monopolies and proprietary inputs on farmers and to incorporate them into a global supply chain dominated by powerful corporations.

Whether it involves the destruction of indigenous agriculture in Africa or the ongoing dismantling of Indian agriculture at the behest of transnational agribusiness, where is the democratic ‘choice’?

Ukraine’s agriculture sector is being opened up to Monsanto. Iraq’s seed laws were changed to facilitate the entry of Monsanto. India’s edible oils sector was undermined to facilitate the entry of Cargill. And Bayer’s hand is possibly behind the ongoing strategy behind GM mustard in India. Through secretive trade deals, strings-attached loans and outright duplicity, the global food and agribusiness conglomerates have scant regard for democracy, let alone choice.

As Michel Chossudovsky outlines in his book ‘The Globalization of Poverty’ (2003), the ongoing aim is to displace localised, indigenous methods of food production and allow transnational companies to take over, thereby tying farmers and regions into a system of neoliberal globalization. Whether it involves the undermining or destruction of what were once largely self-sufficient agrarian economies or what we are currently seeing in India, the agenda is clear.

In finishing, one final point should be noted. In their rush to readily promote neoliberal dogma and corporate-inspired PR, many government officials, scientists and journalists take as given that (corrupt) profit-driven transnational corporations have a legitimate claim to be custodians of natural assets. There is the premise that water, seeds, food, soil and agriculture should be handed over to powerful transnational corporations to milk for profit, under the pretence these entities are somehow serving the needs of humanity.

These natural assets (‘the commons’) should be under common stewardship and managed in the common interest by local people assisted by public institutions and governments acting on their behalf because that’s the bottom line where genuine choice is concerned.

And how can we move towards this? It is already happening: we should take inspiration from the many successful agroecological projects around the world.

Australian farmers testify to royal commission on predatory activities of banks

Oscar Grenfell 

Hearings over the past week at Australia’s Royal Commission into the banks have revealed the destructive impact on farmers and rural businesses of the predatory activities of some of the country’s largest financial institutions.

Like the commission as a whole, called by the federal Liberal-National Coalition government, the hearings on farmers are a desperate attempt at political damage control, and are aimed at assuaging public anger, without impinging on the profits of the banks.

Underscoring their perfunctory character, the hearings on farmers had been scheduled to last just one week, and to hear only a handful of hundreds of public submissions. The inquiry in Brisbane was extended for several days last week, after widespread opposition from farmers. Further sessions may be held in Darwin this week.

Despite the limited extent of the hearings, they have further exposed the ruthless practices of Australian banks, which are among the most profitable in the world.

Farmers have testified that their businesses were devalued overnight, that the terms of their loans were changed without notice and that they were forced into near-destitution through foreclosures. The testimony follows similar damning evidence at earlier hearings into the treatment of small businesses and franchises, as well as workers and mortgage-holders.

Around one tenth of the submissions to the inquiry focused on ANZ bank’s acquisition of Landmark Financial Services’ loan book in 2010, a deal worth $2.3 billion, covering over 7,000 separate loans. Much of the testimony last week was by affected customers.

Charlie Phillott, a life-long grazier in central-west Queensland, reported that in early 2014, ANZ ordered his family off the Carisbrooke Station, which they had run since the 1960s, after devaluing it due to drought.

The bank deemed the property an “unviable risk,” despite the fact that Philott had never missed a mortgage repayment. He was only able to return in 2015, after a public campaign and the threat of legal action, forced the bank to back down and return him the property’s title deeds.

Former Tasmanian cattle farmers, Michael and Dimity Hirst, testified that they were forced from their property weeks before Christmas, at the end of 2013, triggering a “nervous breakdown” in the family, and a protracted legal battle with ANZ.

The Hirsts had suffered substantial financial losses in 2009 and 2010, in part as a flow-on effect of the collapse of Tasmania’s woodchipping industry. In 2011, ANZ reduced the valuation of the business by 40 percent, while substantially increasing repayments. The bank had not revealed to the couple that in internal documents it had expressed disapproval of their investment model, or that it had sought third-party valuations of the business.

The Hirsts were forced to settle their debt by selling the farm, its equipment and livestock. In 2017, ANZ paid them $684,000 and wrote-off the outstanding debt, after protracted legal negotiations.

In 2010, other former Landmark customers, Arthur and Rhonda Cheesman, lost their home and lentil business in western Victoria. ANZ had given them two months to sell their property under an asset management program, and rejected four alternative offers to settle the debt, without the Cheesmans having to surrender their house.

The bank pressed ahead with demands that the house be sold, despite internal documents showing it would lower the value of any sale, as buyers were seeking only the land for agricultural enterprise.

In late 2013, Western Australian sheep farmers Stephen and Janine Harley received a letter from ANZ, advising that they were defaulting on their loan and had just six months to pay off $2.5 million in debt. They received the document three weeks after they informed the bank that Stephen had suffered a major heart-attack.

The Harleys had raised $1.6 million of the debt by the deadline, by selling five of their nine land lots. ANZ, however, rejected their request for a nine-month extension. Instead, it sold the remaining four lots for $570,000 less than their market valuation.

At the royal commission hearings, ANZ representatives offered worthless apologies to some of those affected by their practices. They declared that the bank’s “culture” was changing. The breadth of cases, however, makes clear that asset-fire sales, abrupt revaluations and callous foreclosures were integral to the bank’s rural business model.

Other testimony made clear that the same was the case for other banks. Wendy Brauer, a northern Queensland grazier said her family was in a “dire financial situation” after their property was badly affected by 2011 floods.

Brauer requested an additional $300,000 loan that had earlier been offered her by Rabobank. The new bank manager, however, stated she would need to pay back $3 million within two years—a condition that she was not previously told of.

Testimony from Rabobank representatives revealed that the bank linked staff bonuses to the number of loans they secured, including to people who had little or no chance of being able to service them. Similar practices were revealed at Bankwest and other financial institutions.

Bob Katter, a northern Queensland federal member of parliament, and other right-wing populist politicians, have postured as champions of the farmers. They have presented the activities of the banks as a product solely of unscrupulous individuals, and of institutions that do not “understand” regional and rural life.

Katter and his ilk are seeking to cover-up the fact that the plight of farmers is another expression of a systemic crisis of the capitalist system, which they defend, and the resulting ever-greater dominance of finance capital. Amid a protracted slump in the real economy, the shift around the world has increasingly been to rampant speculation and predatory restructuring activities to bolster the fortunes of a new financial oligarchy.

The financialization of the economy, and the collapse of the old mechanisms of national regulation, as a result of the globalisation of production, has left farmers ever more vulnerable to economic headwinds and reliant upon the banks.

During the 1980s and 1990s, the Labor governments of prime ministers Bob Hawke and Paul Keating deregulated the money markets and privatised the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. This was part of a broader agenda, which included destruction of large swathes of manufacturing, and tens of thousands of jobs, to boost the “international competitiveness” of Australian businesses.

An article in the Conversation last week noted that as an aspect of this program: “The removal of single-desk marketing boards like the Australian Wheat Board, which protected farms from price fluctuations, increases the impact of price changes. Farmers are now expected to purchase financial products to reduce the risk of this volatility.” It stated that, as part of the government privatisation agenda, drought relief had been “reoriented to rely on market-based instruments, such as loans from banks rather than grants from governments.”

As a result of the “deregulation of the banking system,” it said, many loans to farmers are on the same terms as businesses that do not have to deal with the same seasonal fluctuations and environmental variations. These pressures are compounded by the growing concentration of the farming sector, which has left small and middle farmers vulnerable to takeovers, on unfavourable terms, by the major agribusinesses.

Since Hawke and Keating, successive governments have implemented pro-business policies that have continued to boost the dominance of the banks. As a result, the country’s seven largest authorised deposit-taking institutions (including the big four banks) hold roughly $4.6 trillion in assets—around two and a half times the size of Australia’s $1.8 trillion economy, as measured by nominal gross domestic product.

The banks exploit this massive economic power to dictate terms to small businesses and customers with callous indifference to the personal and social consequences.

Air pollution leading cause of death among children in sub-Saharan Africa

Eddie Haywood

According to a 2015 report by UNICEF, 500,000 children across sub-Saharan Africa died from pneumonia, and researchers found that air pollution was a leading contributor to pneumonia’s prevalence. An overwhelming majority of the deaths included children under the age of five.

Several recent studies have expanded upon UNICEF’s findings, including one published last week in the science journal Nature, conducted by a team of researchers at Stanford University and the University of California San Diego, in which scientists found a “[r]obust relationship between air quality and infant mortality in Africa.”

The study found that dirty air poses a deadly threat across the African continent, in both urban and rural areas alike. According to researchers, the scale of air pollution is not easily quantifiable due to the lack of air quality monitoring equipment in most regions and urban centers. Notwithstanding, what scientists have discovered is both alarming and extremely dire for public health.

“Air pollution is actually a much more important cause of excess mortality in sub-Saharan Africa than previously thought,” said Jennifer Burney, a co-author of the study.

The Stanford study relied on an array of data collected by satellites from over 30 African countries, together with over 65 demographic health surveys from these countries between 2001 and 2015 to arrive at their conclusion of a “robust relationship” between air pollution and excess mortality.

The study utilized earlier research into the effects of air pollution in Africa conducted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which found that polluted air on the continent is deadlier than malnutrition or dirty water.

OECD researchers found that across Africa, annual deaths brought by ambient particulate matter pollution increased by 36 percent between 1990 and 2013.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), for children in Africa who make it past age five, the effects of persistent air pollution can stunt brain development, trigger asthma and cause strokes and cancers later as adults.

The OECD’s study, conducted in 2016, was the first attempt to quantify both the human and financial toll of air pollution on the continent, and its findings were shocking: dirty air is killing more than 700,000 people a year prematurely, significantly more than the 542,000 annual deaths for unsanitary water, 275,000 for malnutrition, and 391,000 for lack of sanitation.

Corroborating the OECD data was a study by Lancet published in February, titled “Commission on pollution and health,” which found that over 9 million people died prematurely in 2015 around the world from the effects of dirty air, more than three times the deaths from AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria combined. In the most severely affected countries, pollution-related diseases are responsible for one death out of every four.

Notably, the Lancet study’s findings concluded that pollution disproportionately kills the poor and more vulnerable; 92 percent of deaths caused by air pollution occur in low-income and middle-income countries, and children in these countries are especially high risk for pollution-related diseases.

The OECD study relied on research conducted by UK scientist Mathew Evans, professor of atmospheric chemistry at York University, who spoke to the Guardian regarding the complexity in the study of air pollution in Africa.

“London and Lagos [Nigeria] have entirely different air quality problems. In cities such as London, it’s mainly due to the burning of hydrocarbons for transport. African pollution isn’t like that,” Evans explained. “There is the burning of rubbish, cooking indoors with inefficient fuel stoves, millions of steel diesel electricity generators, cars which have had the catalytic converters removed and petrochemical plants, all pushing pollutants into the air over the cities. Compounds such as sulphur dioxide, benzene and carbon monoxide, that haven’t been issues in western cities for decades, may be a significant problem in African cities. We simply don’t know.”

Reflecting the generalized impoverishment of the African masses across the continent, many households use open fires for cooking and kerosene for lighting. Electricity is either unaffordable or unavailable for many residents.

The OECD calculated the financial costs of premature deaths caused by air pollution in 2013 were $215 billion for outdoor air pollution and $232 billion for indoor, or household air pollution.

Henri-Bernard Solignac-Lecomte, head of the Europe, Middle East and Africa unit at the OECD development center, made clear the economic impact of air pollution by listing several courses of action for governments, which are very unlikely to be undertaken, as they would threaten the profits to be made by large corporations and banks.

“Air pollution in Africa increasingly hurts people and hinders economic development. Bold action to improve access to electricity, using clean technologies such as solar power, can contribute to reducing the exposure of the poorer families to indoor smog from coal or dung-fired cooking stoves.” Solignac-Lecomte suggested.

In his concluding statement of the OECD study, its author, Rana Roy wrote: “If Africa’s local air pollution is contributing to climate change today, at a time when its population stands at 1.2 billion, or 16% of the world’s population, it is safe to suppose that … it is likely to contribute considerably more when its population increases to around 2.5 billion, or 25% of the world’s population in 2050, and thence to around 4.4 billion, or 40% of the world’s population in 2100.”

While of immense scientific value these latest studies are severely limited by their political scope. Nowhere referenced in either the OECD report or the study published in Nature is any substantive analysis undertaken of the impact of the renewed “scramble for Africa” by international corporations and banks and their drive to extract profits from Africa’s working masses and vast economic resources.

Not considered in any of the studies is the impact of Washington’s wars and military interventions currently being conducted across the continent, nor the broad impact of mass migration of people fleeing war-torn countries and regions, the consequence of decades of Washington’s imperialist interventions. The OECD bases its report on the absurd premise that capitalism can reduce social misery, if only organized in a more “humane” way.

But it is precisely the capitalist system itself, and the social misery it produces, that leads to the intolerable state of health and well-being for hundreds of millions across Africa.

The only effective way to combat air pollution and its adverse effects is through the overthrow of capitalism by the African working class, replacing it with socialism, a social and economic system which will reorganize productive activity based on social and human need rather than the profit motives of a wealthy elite.

Prince William visit seeks to reinforce Britain’s ties with Israel

Jean Shaoul

The British and Israeli media hailed as “historic” the visit by Prince William, second in line to the throne, to the Middle East. He met with Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu, the Jordanian royal family and Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas.

The royal staff were at pains to emphasise that the trip was “strictly non-political,” focused on the “people and culture of the region,” with its sightseeing and “meet the people” tours of Jordan, the West Bank and Syrian and Palestinian refugee camps. It was the first ever official visit by a British royal since Israel was founded in 1948. Yet there was no accounting as to why the decision to end this boycott was made.

One factor is undoubtedly attempts to groom William to replace his deeply unpopular father, Charles, as the ageing Queen’s immediate heir. So too is Britain’s increasing isolation following the shock 2016 vote to leave the European Union. Under conditions of growing trade war and protectionism, the government has targeted Israel as one of 10 countries with which it is trying to sign new bilateral free trade and investment agreements. Bilateral trade of goods rose from $7.2 billion in 2016 to $9.1 billion in 2017, plus an additional $1.6 billion for trade in services in 2015. Following the Brexit referendum, Israeli investment in the UK rose from £114 million to £154 million.

More fundamentally, as the Israeli media boasted, the future monarch’s trip was a boost for Israel’s international legitimacy. It came just weeks after the slaughter of more than 120 Palestinians—including 12 children, two journalists and a paramedic—and injuries to another 12,600 during the weeks of protests that started March 30 demanding the right of return to their homes and villages. The Israel Defence Forces unleashed live bullets, teargas and rubber bullets against unarmed protesters, who posed no threat to Israel or its border fence. There was not one Israeli casualty.

Despite some handwringing, Britain failed to condemn Israel or propose any sanctions against it. It has not opposed Israel’s illegal blockage of Gaza, merely calling on Israel to ease its restrictions on the besieged enclave. Neither has it reviewed the export of British arms, aircraft components, drones and military materiel to Israel that have totalled $445 million since Tel Aviv’s 2014 war on Gaza that were undoubtedly used in the Gaza massacres.

When questioned in Parliament in April about Israel’s use of British-supplied arms against the Palestinians, Foreign Minister Alastair Burt either refused to answer or gave the standard, meaningless mantras about “following procedures.” Britain abstained in the vote at the UN Human Rights Council to establish a commission of inquiry into Israel’s criminal actions against unarmed and defenceless Palestinians in Gaza, in favour of Israel carrying out its own inquiry that would—if carried out at all—inevitably be a whitewash.

In March, the Board of Deputies of British Jews praised the UK for voting against two UNHCR resolutions critical of Israel, while the watchdog, UN Watch, noted that this was a pattern begun in 2016 of switching to active opposition to the bodies’ treatment of Israeli crimes as opposed to yes votes or abstentions.

Prime Minister Theresa May gushed that Israel was “one of the world’s great success stories” and a “beacon of tolerance.” Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson called the UK-Israel relationship the “cornerstone of so much of what we do in the Middle East” and has described Israel as a “light unto the nations” whose relationship with the UK “is underpinned by a shared sense of values: justice, compassion, tolerance.”

Such statements must be set in the context of Britain’s role in the establishment of the Israeli state via the infamous Balfour Declaration of November 1917 that pledged Britain’s support for a homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine. The Declaration was a sordid deal made over the heads of the inhabitants of Palestine in pursuit of Britain’s imperialist war aims. It launched a nakedly colonial project that was to set in motion the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, regional wars between Israel and its Arab neighbours and the rupture of the entire Middle East.

From Britain’s perspective, the project backfired, provoking a hostile response from the Palestinians and Arab leaders and prejudicing its broader geostrategic interests in the region. Britain not only abstained in the vote on the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan, it also repeatedly refused to support Israel’s membership of the UN, only recognizing it in April 1950.

Relations warmed, however, with Britain and France working with Israel in the 1956 Suez operation attempting to unseat Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser and regain possession of the Suez Canal. They became even closer as the UK’s declining economic and political position made it ever more dependent upon US imperialism, which has since the 1967 war—when Israel demonstrated its military superiority over its Arab neighbours—used Israel as its local gendarme to guard its interests in the Middle East, suppress the Palestinian and Arab working class and maintain its local stooges in power.

This has intensified since the liquidation of the Soviet Union in 1990 by the Stalinist bureaucracy, with US imperialism launching a series of disastrous neo-colonial interventions—supported by Britain—in a bid to establish its global hegemony. The Syrian Civil War—facilitated by the US, UK, Israel, Jordan and others—and Washington’s increasing bellicosity against Russia and Iran, has consolidated these relations.

This became more marked still with the return in 2015 of a Conservative government, viewed as friendlier to Israel than the Labour Party.

The past few years have seen vicious efforts directed by the Israeli embassy in London against leader Jeremy Corbyn on bogus allegations of anti-Semitism—the purpose of which is to suppress any criticism of Israel and its sponsors.

The veil was lifted on the close and covert relations between Britain and Israel when then International Development Secretary Priti Patel met several senior Israeli politicians, including Netanyahu, while supposedly on a family holiday in Israel. The meetings were so extensive they could only have been carried out with the participation of Whitehall.

Last year, the Royal Air Force (RAF) carried out joint exercises with the Israel Air Force (IAF), the first time such an exercise was made public. In November, HMS Ocean, the fleet flagship of the Royal Navy, docked in Haifa as part of a visit marking Israel’s active partnership with NATO. In April, the RAF joined Poland, Austria, Greece, Italy and Canada in the IAF’s traditional flyover for Israel’s 70th anniversary celebrations over Israel’s coast line.

Israel has long sought an official senior royal visitor, but the Foreign Office previously refused to give its consent in accordance with its long-standing policy that there would be no official royal visit without significant progress on an Israeli-Palestinian deal. London now considers there is no longer a valid reason to refuse to sanction such a visit, after Washington effectively buried talk of “reconciliation” under the so-called two-state solution. This was made clear by US President Donald Trump’s decision to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Prince William and his entourage were at pains to present Britain as honest brokers in the vacuum created by Trump’s provocative moves which the UK voted against in the UN. But this is yet more duplicity. His Royal Highness’s visit was a very visible signal of Britain’s endorsement of these actions and of the arch-criminal Netanyahu himself.

Prince William made a point of calling on Netanyahu and his wife Sara, who had just been indicted with fraud and breach of trust over the alleged misuse of state funds to pay for $100,000 worth of meals at the prime minister’s official residence. Benyamin Netanyahu is under criminal investigation in three separate cases, with police saying they have enough evidence to indict him on charges of fraud, bribery and breach of trust.

The government also breached its rule that no British representative should officially visit East Jerusalem, the West Bank or the Golan Heights—which Israel has illegally occupied since the 1967 war—allowing William to visit East Jerusalem’s Old City and Ramallah in the West Bank. The Foreign Office even sanctioned his stay at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, the British government’s headquarters in Palestine that was blown up in 1947 by the Irgun, a terrorist outfit—killing 91 people, among them Britons, Arabs and Jews, and injuring many more. The Irgun was led by Menachem Begin who became prime minister of Israel in 1977.

Britain’s revisiting the scene of its historic crimes is to prepare and legitimise new ones. It indicates it is ready to support the Trump administration’s attempt to force the PA to accept a formal accommodation with Israel based on a renunciation of the Palestinians’ right of return to their homes from which they fled or were driven out in 1948-9 and 1967.

Massive victory for Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexican elections

Rafael Azul

Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the leader of the Movement for National Reconstruction (Morena), was elected President of Mexico yesterday by a massive margin amid high voter turnout. His two main opponents, José Antonio Meade (Institutional Revolutionary Party, PRI) and Ricardo Anaya (Together for México coalition, which includes the National Action Party, PAN, and the Party of the Democratic Revolution, PRD) conceded early yesterday evening.

Though full results will not be known until later on Monday, exit polls give López Obrador between 43 and 49 percent of the vote, ahead of Meade, who obtained between 22 and 26 percent of the vote, and Anaya with 23 to 27 percent of the vote. Other exit polls have López Obrador winning over 50 percent.

Other Morena candidates also appear likely to win, including Claudia Sheinbaum, the Morena candidate for Mayor of Mexico City, ending 21 years of PRD control. Morena also reportedly will win the governorships of the states of Morelia, Tabasco and Chiapas.

A record number of voters cast their ballots. Voters waited for hours at their polling stations and by noon over fifty percent of those eligible had already voted. By the end of the electoral process, seventy percent had voted, a historic turnout.

The results show a collapse in support for the main parties of the Mexican bourgeoisie in the face of widespread hostility to inequality, state-sanctioned violence, the militarization of society, and the xenophobic policies of US President Donald Trump. The PRI and PRD were devastated by the results.

Exit polls from the legislative elections show the Morena-led alliance, which also includes the Christian right-wing Social Encounter Party (PES) and the Workers Party (PT), with above 50 percent of federal deputies. According to unofficial exit poll results, the PT won between 64 and 75 seats—nearly double the PRI’s expected total (between 37 and 47 seats). The PAN won between 63 and 76 seats, and the PRD between 33 and 43 seats. Morena is expected to win between 127 and 142 seats. If these results hold, the PRI will have lost three-quarters of its current seats in the chamber of deputies.

The projected results of the PT—a party with Maoist origins—would be particularly notable if they hold. The PT currently has zero seats in the chamber of deputies (though it has 19 of 128 seats in the Senate). In a statement yesterday, López Obrador said he cast his presidential vote symbolically for Rosario Ibarra de Piedra, former candidate for the Pabloite Workers Revolutionary Party (PRT) and now a PT member.

The candidates of the parties opposing Morena and López Obrador were conciliatory in their concession speeches, indicating an intention on the part of the ruling class to accept López Obrador’s election. The bourgeois press has lauded the election as “a victory for democracy.”

Nevertheless, the vote was marred with several hundred incidents of violence and disappearances.

As the polls were about to open, Flora Reséndiz González, 49, an activist of the PT, was assassinated at her home in Contepec, Michoacán. Reséndiz died in the hospital at 6:30 a.m. Her death added to the 138 candidates killed during the election campaign in Mexico. PT leader Alberto Anaya Gutiérrez condemned the killing and called for an investigation: “We are profoundly saddened by the death of our beloved comrade,” declared Anaya, adding that this and other killings are symptoms of “social decomposition.”

The killing of candidates has been a feature of this campaign. It is blamed on local drug gangs that get to decide with impunity which candidate is not acceptable to them. On the day of the election there were also reports from the states of Chiapas, Veracruz and Mexico of the destruction of polling stations, armed gunmen in the open forcing voters to vote and instructing them on how to vote. In Veracruz, in an incident seemingly unrelated to the voting, two men waiting in line were kidnapped and whisked away.

Polls opened at 7:00 a.m. National Election Electoral Institute head Lorenzo Córdova indicated that there were 156,807 polling stations around the country and that only 4 would not open. Some 89 million voters were eligible to vote, half of which are under forty years old. Thirteen million are first-time voters.

All in all, more than 3,400 posts are being determined by the vote. In addition to electing a president, Mexican voters also voted to fill 500 seats in the lower house of Congress, and 128 senatorial seats.

The massive turnout reflects the anger and frustration of the Mexican working class. In addition to outrage over two hundred thousand killings and tens of thousands of disappearances over the last twelve years, there is mass anger over the interrelated issues of increasing poverty, inequality, and widespread government corruption and impunity for criminal acts.

A business elite, allied with the ruling PRI, in league with the PAN and PRD, is widely hated. The collapse of the PRI is particularly significant, as the party has exercised its domination over the country’s political system for nearly a century, with the exception of two PAN presidencies from 2000-2012.

Popular anger has fed support for López Obrador, particularly among young voters, who have repeatedly shown that they have no confidence in the traditional parties. An estimate based on social media gives López Obrador 51 percent of the youth vote, followed by 24 percent for the PRI’s Meade and 14 percent for Anaya of the PAN coalition.

Protest rallies took place at special voting stations, set up for those voters that could not get to their assigned locations. Many of them ran out of ballots, as voters demanded their democratic right to vote.

López Obrador, long depicted as a “leftist,” who fell short of winning the presidency in his 2006 and 2012 elections, ran a pro-corporate campaign. Its main purpose was to convince the Mexican and American ruling classes that his election would not impinge upon private profit or capitalist property relations.

Islamic State's Tactical Continuity in Iraq: Will it Lead to Territorial Control?

Pieter-jan Dockx


After the fall of the Islamic State's (IS) so-called Caliphate and Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s victory speech on 9 December 2017, there was widespread speculation regarding the future of the militant organisation. The prevailing narrative was that IS would depart from its aim of controlling territory and focus on attacks against security forces, and especially on terrorist attacks against civilians, much like its competitor al Qaeda. However, although attacks and kidnappings of civilians have been reported, the focus of the post-Caliphate IS’ operations seems to be on insurgent attacks against the state’s security apparatus and those collaborating with the state. By comparing this modus operandi with the group’s pre-Caliphate tactics, it can be argued that the IS has not yet abandoned its dream of establishing an 'Islamic state'. While the re-emergence of a new full-fledged ‘Caliphate’ seems unlikely, small-scale territorial dominance remains a possibility.

Despite attacks against civilians (often non-Sunnis), the IS has primarily embarked on a campaign of targeted attacks against the Iraqi security forces, Shia militias, and political actors. The new approach has often involved setting up fake check-points to ambush government-linked security forces. This way, dozens of members of the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), an umbrella organisation of predominantly Iran-linked Shia militias tasked with fighting the IS, and police officers have been killed in Diyala, Salahuddin and Kirkuk. In addition to the security forces, another group that has found itself in the cross hairs of IS are Sunni political figures, village chiefs and those belonging to tribes and organisations collaborating with the Iraqi government.

To understand how these attacks point to state-building intentions, the Salafists’ pre-'Caliphate' strategy needs to be examined. Apart from exogenous elements such as the civil war in neighbouring Syria, the US' departure from Iraq, former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s discriminatory policies and rampant corruption in the Iraqi security forces, an oft-ignored factor that paved the way for the 'Caliphate' was the IS’ strategy of targeted assassinations. In order to create a security vacuum in Sunni provinces, the group directed its attacks against the Sunni Awakening fighters–a movement of local tribal fighters enlisted by the US who had become the dominant local security actor. Moreover, the IS also targeted tribal chiefs, council members and Islamic Party representatives, with an objective of punishing those working with the government and to send a signal to those contemplating assisting the state.

Similarly, the current IS offensive has goals identical to their assassination campaign preceding the 'Caliphate'. Despite the change in the dominant security actor (i.e. the PMF and the Iraqi security forces rather than the Awakening fighters), IS attacks against the new security guarantor foremost intend to weaken security in Sunni territories. Rumours of a possible return of Kurdish Peshmerga fighters to territory contested between the Erbil and Baghdad indicate the effectiveness of IS operations. Attacks against local political figures are meant to send a signal to those contemplating joining the state and its formal political process–much like it was in the run up to 2014. Attacks on civilians are especially aimed at those belonging to tribes that are aligned with the security forces.

A crucial factor that links these tactics to territorial ambitions is the element of popular support. In an attempt to re-capture Sunnis’ hearts and minds, the IS has largely refrained from mass-casualty causing terrorist attacks against civilians and instead targeted the Iran-linked PMF. These predominantly-Shia militias have been accused of abusing the local Sunni population and are, in some instances, refusing local leaders’ calls to disengage from their districts. Although the IS’ reign of fear in its ‘Caliphate’ has alienated many, their attempts to continue to spearhead the ‘Sunni cause’ could lead to a degree of local acceptance again. The previous instance of the IS' rise and the associated suspicion of Sunni support for the group has created deep rifts between the various communities in the country. With some Sunni Arabs afraid to return to their multi-ethnic villages, suspicion of IS allegiance (that Iraqi Sunnis have been facing from non-Sunnis in the country) could ironically lay the foundation for future popular acceptance of the group. The aforementioned issue between the PMF and local leaders could equally witness some weighing their options.

Whether the IS will be able to re-establish territorial control over population centres will also depend on exogenous security developments in the country. While security in Sunni areas has no doubt improved in comparison to the 2013-14 period, two recent events have cast shadows over this relative stability. First, US President Donald Trump’s decision on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (the Iran nuclear deal) has led to increased tension between PMF factions and US forces, whose alliance formed the backbone of the fight against the IS and the resultant stability. Second, with the results of Iraq's May 2018 election being challenged and leading to tension between the various political factions, stability is in jeopardy again. Much will depend on the future trajectory of these developments.

Contrary to popular predictions, the IS has not embarked on an al Qaeda like campaign of mass civilian killings. Similar to its pre-'Caliphate' tactics, the group has used calculated attacks intended to weaken security, instil fear and pave way for popular support. All these factors point to a continuity in the IS’ territorial ambitions. With the current security situation more volatile than is portrayed in the mainstream media, the possibility of the IS gaining localised territorial control of populated areas in the future cannot be ruled out.