What Does the U.S. Public Think of Its Government Arming and Bombing the World?

David Swanson

Data for Progress for quite a while appeared to be yet another U.S. PEP group (Progressive Except for Peace). They were producing useful polling reports on all sorts of topics as if 96% of humanity didn’t exist. Foreign policy just couldn’t be found. They told me they were just getting around to it. You still can’t find it from the homepage of their website (or at least it’s beyond my navigational skills), but Data for Progress has now published a report called “Voters Want to See a Progressive Overhaul of American Foreign Policy.”

They used “1,009 interviews of self-identified registered voters, conducted by YouGov on the internet. The sample was weighted according to gender, age, race, education, US Census region, and 2016 presidential vote choice. Respondents were selected from YouGov’s panel to be representative of registered voters.” This was a question:

“According to the Congressional Budget Office, the United States is expected to spend $738 billion on its military in 2020. That’s more than the next seven countries combined and more than the U.S. budget for education, federal courts, affordable housing, local economic development, and the State Department combined. Some say that maintaining a dominant global military footprint is necessary to keep us safe, and is worth the cost. Others say that money could be better spent on domestic needs like health care, education, or protecting the environment. Based on what you’ve just read, would you support or oppose reallocating money from the Pentagon budget to other priorities?”

A majority of 52% supported or “strongly supported” that idea (29% strongly supported it), while 32% opposed (20% strongly). If the sentence beginning “That’s more than . . . ” was left out, 51% supported the idea (30% strongly), while 36% opposed (19% strongly).

Of course there’s a major problem with the common pretense that the Pentagon budget is the military budget, namely the hundreds of billions of dollars going to “Homeland Security,” and the nukes in the “energy” department, and all the secretive spy-and-war agencies, and the military spending by the State Department, and the Veterans Administration, and so forth adding up to $1.25 trillion per year, not $738 billion. There’s a problem with opposing the State Department’s budget to the military budget when much of what the State Department does is in the service of militarism. There’s a problem with suggesting that money be moved to healthcare, namely that people in the United States already spend twice what they need to on healthcare; it’s just spent wastefully on sickness profiteers. There’s a problem with the choice being militarism or domestic spending. Why not militarism or peaceful spending? Both imperialists and humanists believe that the United States should share its wealth with the world in some ways other than militarism. “Protecting the environment” is hardly a “domestic need” — it’s a global project. The idea of militarism keeping people safe is best opposed not only to other priorities but also to the awareness that it actually makes people less safe. Etc.

Nonetheless, this is finally some U.S. polling data that is helpful in the project of ending war. That it accurately uses the term “military” rather than “defense” and that it asks about moving the money to useful things is a cut above the usual corporate polling, rare as even that is, on whether so-called defense spending should go up or down.

That the one sentence that was aimed at informing people of the extent of the trade-offs had limited impact is probably not because it was a bad idea but because it was only one sentence. As I noted eight years ago, we have polls showing that only 25% in the U.S. think their government should spend three times as much on militarism as the next most militarized nation, but only 32% (not 75%) think it currently spends too much. U.S. military spending across multiple governmental departments far exceeds three times Chinese military spending. A bill in Congress to restrict US military spending to three times the next most militarized nation might carry big popular support, but Congress would never pass it in the absence of intense public pressure, because it would require major cuts to the U.S. military that could trigger a reverse arms race.

When the University of Maryland, years ago, sat people down and showed them the federal budget in a pie chart (a more significant education than a single sentence) the results were dramatic, with a strong majority wanting to move serious money out of militarism and into human and environmental needs. Among other details revealed, the U.S. public would cut foreign aid to dictatorships but increase humanitarian assistance abroad.

Data for Progress also asked this question: “The United States currently spends more than half of its discretionary budget on military spending, which is considerably more than it spends on other foreign policy tools such as diplomacy and economic development programs. Some argue that maintaining U.S. military superiority should be the top foreign policy goal, and we should continue spending levels as they are. Others argue that rather than pouring money into war we should invest in preventing wars before they happen. Do you support or oppose a proposal to spend at least ten cents on non-military war prevention tools for every dollar we spend on the Pentagon?”

This question gets the percentage of the discretionary budget right and offers a progressive alternative. And the finding is that the U.S. public strongly prefers the progressive alternative: “A clear majority of voters support the ‘dime for a dollar’ policy, with 57 percent somewhat or strongly supporting and just 21 percent opposing the policy. This includes a plurality of Republican voters, 49 percent of whom support and just 30 percent of whom oppose the policy. The dime for a dollar policy is overwhelmingly popular among Independents and Democrats. A net +28 percent of Independents and a net +57 percent of Democrats support the dime for a dollar policy.”

I wish Data for Progress had asked about foreign military bases. I think a majority would be in favor of shutting some of them down, and that bits of education would raise that number. But they did ask about some important topics. For example, a plurality (and a strong majority among Democrats) want to withhold free weapons from Israel to curb its human rights abuses against Palestinians. A strong majority wants a no-first-use nuclear policy. A strong majority wants more humanitarian aid to Latin America. A strong majority wants to ban all use of torture. (We should properly say “re-ban” given how many times torture has been banned and re-banned.) Notably, the U.S. public, by a significant majority, wants a peace agreement with North Korea, but the group that wants it the most is Republicans. Obviously, that last fact tells us more about partisanship and presidential powers than about views on war and peace. But the collection of views listed here tells us that the U.S. public is far better on foreign policy than the U.S. corporate media will tell it, or than the U.S. government ever acts on.

Data for Progress also found that huge majorities want to end the endless U.S. wars in Afghanistan and across the Middle East. Those who support continuing these wars are a tiny fringe group, plus the U.S. corporate media, plus the U.S. Congress, President, and military. Overall we’re talking about 16% of the U.S. public. Among Democrats it’s 7%. Look at the deference that 7% receives from the numerous presidential candidates who have not declared that they will immediately end all of those wars. I’m not aware of any candidate for U.S. president in the history of the United States producing a basic pie-chart or outline of even the roughest sketch of a desirable discretionary budget. Try listing the current candidates for U.S. president in order by what they think military spending should be. How could anyone do it? How could anyone even get anyone to even ask one of them that question? Maybe this data will help.

Bernie hinted at it on Saturday in Queens, and the crowd started yelling “End the wars!” Perhaps the more some of the candidates begin hinting at it, the more they will recognize how strong the secret public opinion is on these matters.

Data for Progress also found a strong majority against allowing U.S. weapons sales to governments that abuse human rights. Public opinion is crystal clear. Total U.S. government refusal to act is as well. Much less clear is the concept of a government that buys deadly weapons and uses them for something other than abusing human rights — nobody ever explains what that can possibly mean.

Data for Progress reports on three other questions they asked. One opposed isolationism to engagement, but they don’t tell us the words they used. They just describe what sort of question it was. I’m not sure why any pollster, knowing how much depends on the words, would report something that way, especially when the result was a near-even split.

Another was a question about U.S. exceptionalism, which — again — they don’t give us the wording of. We just know that 53% agreed with “a statement recognizing that the US has strengths and weaknesses like any other country and has in fact caused harm in the world” as opposed to an exceptionalist statement. We also know that the 53% dropped to 23% among Republicans.

Finally, Data for Progress found that a plurality in the U.S. said that the United States faces primarily non-military threats. Some things are of course so painfully obvious that it’s painful to realize that they really do need to be polled on in hopes of getting them reported on. Now, how many would say that militarism is itself a threat and the primary generator of military threats and of the risk of nuclear apocalypse? And where does nuclear apocalypse rank in the list of threats? There is polling yet to be done.

Freedom of Thought is Under Attack: Here’s How to Save Your Mind

Simon McCarthy-Jones

Freedom of thought stands at a critical crossroads. Technological and psychological advances could be used to promote free thought. They could shield our inner worlds, reduce our mental biases, and create new spaces for thought. Yet states and corporations are forging these advances into weapons that restrict what we think.

To lose freedom of thought would be to lose something uniquely human. We share our basic emotions with animals. But only we can step back and ask “do I want to be angry?”, “do I want to be that person?”, “couldn’t I be better?”.

We can reflect whether the thoughts, feelings and desires that bubble up within us are consistent with our own goals, values and ideals. If we agree they are, then this makes them more truly our own. We can then act authentically.

But we may also conclude that some thoughts that pop into our heads are a force other than our own. You sit down to do your work and “Check Facebook!” flashes through your mind. Did that thought come from you or from Mark Zuckerberg?

Freedom of thought demands dignity, enables democracy, and is part of what makes us a person. To safeguard it, we must first recognise its enemies.

Three threats to freedom of thought

The first threat comes from advances in psychology. Research has created new understandings of what influences our thoughts, behaviours, and decision making.

States and corporations use this knowledge to make us think and act in a way that serves their goals. These may differ to ours. They use this knowledge to make us gamble more, buy more, and spend more time on social media. It may even be used to swing elections.

The second threat comes from the application of machine learning algorithms to “big data”. When we provide data to companies we allow them to see deep inside us. This makes us more vulnerable to manipulation, and when we realise our privacy is being compromised, this chills our ability to think freely.

The third threat comes from a growing ability to decode our thoughts from our brain activity. Facebook, Microsoft, and Neuralink are developing brain-computer interfaces. This could create machines that will read our thoughts. But creating unprecedented access to our thoughts creates unprecedented threats to our freedom.

These advances in technology and psychology are opening the doors for states and corporations to violate, manipulate, and punish our thoughts. So, what can we do about it?

The law can save us

International human rights law gives the right to freedom of thought. Yet, this right has been almost completely neglected. It is hardly ever invoked in the courtroom. We need to work out what we want this right to mean so we can use it to protect ourselves.

We should use it to defend mental privacy. Otherwise conformity pressures will impede our free play of ideas and search for truth. We should use it to prevent our thoughts being manipulated, either through psychological tricks or through threatened punishment.

And we should use it to protect thought in all of its forms. Thought isn’t just what happens in our heads. Sometimes we think by writing or by doing a Google search. If we recognise these activities as “thought” then they should qualify for absolute privacy under the right to freedom of thought.

Finally, we should use this right to demand that governments create societies that allow us to think freely. This is where psychology can help.

Preventing manipulation

Better understanding our minds can help protect us from manipulation by others. For example, the psychologist Daniel Kahneman distinguishes between what we could call “rule-of-thumb” and “rule-of-reason” thinking.

Rule-of-thumb thinking involves effortless and ancient mental processes that allow us to make quick decisions. The price of this speed can be mistakes. In contrast, rule-of-reason thinking is a slow, consciously controlled process, often based in language. It takes longer, but can be more accurate.

This suggests that creating speed bumps in our thinking could help improve decision making. Clicking unthinkingly on content or adverts from corporations doesn’t allow us to exercise freedom of thought. We do not have time to work out if our desires are our own or those of a puppet master.

We must also change our environment into one that supports autonomy. Such an environment would allow us to create our own reasons for our actions, minimise external controls like rewards and punishments, and encourage choice, participation and shared decision making.

Technology can help create such an environment. But whose responsibility is it to implement this?

Taking action

Governments must help citizens learn from a young age about how the mind works. They must structure society to facilitate free thought. And they have a duty to stop those, including corporations, who would violate the right to freedom of thought.

Corporations must play their part. They should state freedom of thought as a policy commitment. They should perform due diligence on how their activities may harm freedom of thought. They could be required to declare the psychological tricks they are using to try and shape our behaviour.

And we the people must educate ourselves. We must promote and support free-thought values. We must condemn those turning one of our species’ greatest strengths, our sociality, into one of our greatest weaknesses by using it as a means of data extraction. We must vote with our feet and wallets against those who violate our freedom of thought.

All this assumes that we want freedom of thought. But do we? Many of us would literally rather electrocute ourselves than sit quietly with our thoughts.

Would many of us also prefer governments and corporations do our thinking for us, serving up predictions and nudges for us to simply follow? Would many of us be happy for freedom of thought to be limited if it led to increased security? How much do we want freedom of thought and what are we prepared to sacrifice for it?

Simply put, do we still want to be human? Or has the pain, effort and responsibility of one of our signature abilities, free thought, become too much for us to bear? If it has, it is neither clear what will become of us nor clear what we will become.

The Sectarian Civil Wars in the Middle East are Ending, Replaced by Uprisings Against Corruption

Patrick Cockburn

The sectarian and ethnic civil wars that have ravaged a large part of the Middle East over the past 40 years are coming to an end. Replacing them is a new type of conflict in which protests akin to popular uprisings rock kleptocratic elites that justify their power by claiming to be the defenders of communities menaced by extreme violence or extinction.

I was sitting in my hotel room in Baghdad earlier in October thinking about writing an article about the return of peace to the Iraqi capital after the defeat of Isis. It has been three years since the last big bomb had exploded in its streets killing great numbers, something that used to happen with appalling frequency.

I was about to set to work when I heard a distant “pop-pop” sound that I identified as shots, but I thought it might be people celebrating a wedding or a football match. But the ripple of gunfire seemed to go on too long for this explanation to be true and I took the lift down to the lobby with the intention of finding out what was happening in the street outside the hotel. Before I got there, a man told me that the security forces were shooting protesters in nearby Tahrir Square: “There are 10 dead already.”

The death toll was to get a great deal worse than that: the official toll is 157 dead and 6,100 wounded, but doctors told me at the time that the real number of fatalities was far higher. The protesters, initially small in numbers, had wanted jobs, an end to corruption and improved essential services such as a better water and electricity. But somebody in government security, supplemented by pro-Iranian paramilitaries, had considered these demands for social and economic justice as a threat to the political status quo to be suppressed with live rifle fire, a curfew on the seven million inhabitants of Baghdad, and a shutdown of the internet.

Repression worked briefly, but such is the depth of rage against the theft of $450bn from Iraq’s oil revenues since 2003 that the protests were bound to break out again, as they did on Friday with 23 dead and the offices of a provincial governor set on fire.

I thought this was exactly what was happening a couple of weeks later when, back in the UK, I switched on the TV and saw masses of protesters in what was evidently a Middle East city. But it turned out to be Beirut not Baghdad, though the motivation is similar: anger against a ruling class saturated by corruption while failing to provide the basic services to the population. Encouragingly, in both Lebanon and Iraq, the leaders of different communities are finding that their followers increasingly view them as mafiosi and ignore appeals for communal solidarity.

It is a period of transition and one should never underestimate the ability of embattled communal leaders to press the right sectarian buttons in order to divide opposition to their predatory misrule.

I first went to the region in 1975, fresh from sectarian warfare in Northern Ireland, in order to report on the beginning of the Lebanese civil war between a mosaic of communities defined by religion and ethnicity. In later years in Iraq, I watched divisions between Sunni and Shia grow and produce sectarian bloodbaths after the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. Popular protests in Syria in 2011 swiftly turned into a sectarian and ethnic civil war of extraordinary ferocity that may now be coming to an end.

This is not because combatants on all sides have come to see the error of their ways or that they have suddenly noticed for the first time that their leaders are for the most part criminalised plutocrats. It is rather because winners and losers have emerged in these conflicts, so those in power can no longer divert attention from their all-embracing corruption by claiming that their community is in danger of attack from merciless foes.

Victors and vanquished has long been identifiable in Lebanon and became clear in Iraq with the capture of Mosul and the defeat of Isis in 2017. The winners and losers in the Syrian civil war have become ever more apparent over the last month as Bashar al-Assad, Russia and Iran take control of almost the whole country.

The Iraqi and Syrian Kurds had been able to create and expand their own quasi-states when central governments in Baghdad and Damascus were weak and under assault by Isis. The statelets were never going to survive the defeat of the Isis caliphate: the Iraqi Kurds lost the oil province of Kirkuk to the Iraqi army in 2017 and the Syrian Kurds have just seen their quasi-state of Rojava squeezed to extinction by the Turks on one side and the Syrian government on the other after Donald Trump withdrew US military protection.

The fate of the Kurds is a tragedy but an inevitable one. Once Isis had been defeated in the siege of Raqqa in 2017 there was no way that the US was going to maintain a Kurdish statelet beset by enemies on every side. For all their accusations of American treachery, the Kurdish leaders knew this, but they did not have an alternative protector to turn to, aside from Russia and Assad, who were never going to underwrite a semi-independent Kurdish state.

A problem in explaining developments in the Middle East over the last three years is that the US foreign policy establishment supported by most of the US and European media blame all negative developments on President Trump. This is a gross over-simplification when it is not wholly misleading. His abrupt and cynical abandonment of the Kurds to Turkey may have multiplied their troubles, but extracting the small US military from eastern Syria was sensible enough because it was over-matched by four dangerous and determined opponents: Turkey, Iran, Russia and the Assad government.

The final outcome of the multiple Syrian wars is now in sight: Turkey will keep a small, unstable enclave in Syria but the rest of the Syrian-Turkish border will be policed by Russian and Syrian government troops who will oversee the YPG withdrawal 21 miles to the south. The most important question is how far the Kurdish civilian population, who have fled the fighting, will find it safe enough to return. A crucial point to emerge from the meeting between Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Sochi last Tuesday is that Turkey is tiptoeing towards implicitly recognising the Assad government backed by Russia as the protector of its southern border against the YPG. This makes it unlikely that Ankara will do much to stop a Russian-Syrian government offensive to take, probably a slice at a time, the last stronghold of the Syrian armed opposition in Idlib.

The ingredient that made communal religious and sectarian hatreds so destructive in the past in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq is that they opened the door to foreign intervention. Local factions became the proxies of outside countries pursuing their own interests which armed and financed them. For the moment at least, no foreign power has an interest in stirring the pot in this northern tier of the Middle East, the zone of war for 44 years, and there is just a fleeting chance of a durable peace.

Genetically Engineered Golden Rice: A Silver Bullet that Misses the Target

Colin Todhunter

Promoters of genetic modification (GM) in agriculture have long argued that genetically engineered Golden Rice is a practical way to provide poor farmers in remote areas with a subsistence crop capable of adding much-needed vitamin A to local diets. Vitamin A deficiency is a problem in many poor countries in the Global South and leaves millions at high risk for infection, diseases and other maladies, such as blindness.

Some scientists believe that Golden Rice, which has been developed with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, could help save the lives of around 670,000 children who die each year from Vitamin A deficiency and another 350,000 who go blind.

Meanwhile, critics say there are serious issues with Golden Rice and that alternative approaches to tackling vitamin A deficiency should be implemented. Greenpeace and other environmental groups say the claims being made by the pro-Golden Rice lobby are misleading and are oversimplifying the actual problems in combating vitamin A deficiency.

Many critics regard Golden Rice as an over-hyped Trojan horse that biotechnology corporations and their allies hope will pave the way for the global approval of other more profitable GM crops. The Rockefeller Foundation might be regarded as a ‘philanthropic’ entity but its track record indicates it has been very much part of an agenda which facilitates commercial and geopolitical interests to the detriment of indigenous agriculture and local and national economies.

Smears and baseless attacks

As Britain’s Environment Secretary in 2013, Owen Paterson claimed that opponents of GM were “casting a dark shadow over attempts to feed the world”. He called for the rapid roll-out of vitamin A-enhanced rice to help prevent the cause of up to a third of the world’s child deaths:

“It’s just disgusting that little children are allowed to go blind and die because of a hang-up by a small number of people about this technology. I feel really strongly about it. I think what they do is absolutely wicked.”

Just recently, Robin McKie, science writer for The Observer, wrote a piece on Golden Rice that uncritically presented all the usual industry talking points. On Twitter, The Observer’s Nick Cohen chimed in with his support by tweeting: “There is no greater example of ignorant Western privilege causing needless misery than the campaign against genetically modified golden rice.”

Yes, that Nick Cohen; the one who cheer-led for the illegal invasion of Iraq and who remains unrepentant.

Whether it comes from the likes of corporate lobbyist Patrick Moore, Owen Paterson, biotech spin-merchant Mark Lynas, well-remunerated journalists or from the lobbyist CS Prakash who engages more in spin that fact, the rhetoric takes the well-worn cynically devised PR line that anti-GM activists and environmentalists are little more than privileged, affluent people residing in rich countries and are denying the poor the supposed benefits of GM crops.

Golden Rice does not work and opponents are not to blame

Despite the smears and emotional blackmail employed by supporters of Golden Rice, in a 2016 article in the journal Agriculture& Human Values Glenn Stone and Dominic Glover found little evidence that anti-GM activists are to blame for Golden Rice’s unfulfilled promises. Golden rice was still years away from field introduction and may fall far short of lofty health benefits claimed by its supporters.

Professor Glenn Stone from Washington University in St. Louis stated that:

“Golden Rice is still not ready for the market, but we find little support for the common claim that environmental activists are responsible for stalling its introduction. GMO opponents have not been the problem.”

Stone added that the rice simply has not been successful in test plots of the rice breeding institutes in the Philippines, where the leading research is being done. While activists did destroy one Golden Rice test plot in a 2013 protest, it is unlikely that this action had any significant impact on the approval of Golden Rice.

Stone said:

“Destroying test plots is a dubious way to express opposition, but this was only one small plot out of many plots in multiple locations over many years. Moreover, they have been calling Golden Rice critics ‘murderers’ for over a decade.”

Believing that Golden Rice was originally a promising idea backed by good intentions, Stone argued:

“But if we are actually interested in the welfare of poor children – instead of just fighting over GMOs – then we have to make unbiased assessments of possible solutions. The simple fact is that after 24 years of research and breeding, Golden Rice is still years away from being ready for release.”

Researchers continue to have problems developing beta carotene-enriched strains that yield as well as non-GM strains already being grown by farmers. Stone and Glover point out that it is still unknown if the beta carotene in Golden Rice can even be converted to vitamin A in the bodies of badly undernourished children. There also has been little research on how well the beta carotene in Golden Rice will hold up when stored for long periods between harvest seasons or when cooked using traditional methods common in remote rural locations.

Claire Robinson, an editor at GMWatch, has argued that the rapid degradation of beta-carotene in the rice during storage and cooking means it’s not a solution to vitamin A deficiency in the developing world. There are also various other problems, including absorption in the gut, the low and varying levels of beta-carotene that may be delivered by Golden Rice in the first place and the rapid degradation of beta-carotene when stored.

In the meantime, Glenn Stones says that, as the development of Golden Rice creeps along, the Philippines has managed to slash the incidence of Vitamin A deficiency by non-GM methods.

In whose interest?

The evidence presented here might lead us to question why supporters of Golden Rice continue to smear critics and engage in abuse and emotional blackmail when they are not to blame for the failure of Golden Rice to reach the commercial market. Whose interests are they really serving in pushing so hard for this technology?

In 2011, Marcia Ishii-Eiteman, a senior scientist with a background in insect ecology and pest management asked a similar question: 

“Who oversees this ambitious project, which its advocates claim will end the suffering of millions?”

She answered her question by stating:

“An elite, so-called “Humanitarian Board” where Syngenta sits – along with the inventors of Golden Rice, Rockefeller Foundation, USAID and public relations and marketing experts, among a handful of others. Not a single farmer, indigenous person or even an ecologist, or sociologist to assess the huge political, social, and ecological implications of this massive experiment. And the leader of IRRI’s Golden Rice project is none other than Gerald Barry, previously Director of Research at Monsanto.”

Sarojeni V. Rengam, executive director of Pesticide Action Network Asia and the Pacific, has called on the donors and scientists involved to wake up and do the right thing:

“Golden Rice is really a ‘Trojan horse’; a public relations stunt pulled by the agri-business corporations to garner acceptance of GE crops and food. The whole idea of GE seeds is to make money… we want to send out a strong message to all those supporting the promotion of Golden Rice, especially donor organizations, that their money and efforts would be better spent on restoring natural and agricultural biodiversity rather than destroying it by promoting monoculture plantations and genetically engineered (GE) food crops.”

And she makes a valid point. To tackle disease, malnutrition and poverty, you have to first understand the underlying causes – or indeed want to understand them. Walden Bello notes that the complex of policies that pushed the Philippines into an economic quagmire over the past 30 years is due to ‘structural adjustment’, involving prioritizing debt repayment, conservative macroeconomic management, huge cutbacks in government spending, trade and financial liberalization, privatization and deregulation, the restructuring of agriculture and export-oriented production.

And that restructuring of the agrarian economy is something touched on by Claire Robinson who notes that leafy green vegetables used to be grown in backyards as well as in rice (paddy) fields on the banks between the flooded ditches in which the rice grew. She argues that the ditches also contained fish, which ate pests. People thus had access to rice, green leafy veg, and fish – a balanced diet that gave them a healthy mix of nutrients, including plenty of beta-carotene.

But indigenous crops and farming systems have been replaced by monocultures dependent on chemical inputs. Robinson says that green leafy veg were killed off with pesticides, artificial fertilizers were introduced and the fish could not live in the resulting chemically contaminated water. Moreover, decreased access to land meant that many people no longer had backyards containing leafy green veg. People only had access to an impoverished diet of rice alone, laying the foundation for the supposed Golden Rice ‘solution’.

Whether it concerns The Philippines, Ethiopia, Somalia or Africa as a whole, the effects of IMF/World Bank ‘structural adjustments’ have devastated agrarian economies and made them dependent on Western agribusiness, manipulated markets and unfair trade rules. And GM is now offered as the ‘solution’ for tackling poverty-related diseases. The very corporations which gained from restructuring agrarian economies now want to profit from the havoc caused.

Genuine solutions

In finishing, let us turn to what the Soil Association argued in 2013: the poor are suffering from broader malnourishment than just vitamin A deficiency; the best solution to vitamin A deficiency is to use supplementation and fortification as emergency sticking-plasters and then for implementing measures which tackle the broader issues of poverty and malnutrition.

Tackling the wider issues includes providing farmers with a range of seeds, tools and skills necessary for growing more diverse crops to target broader issues of malnutrition. Part of this entails breeding crops high in nutrients; for instance, the creation of sweet potatoes that grow in tropical conditions, cross-bred with vitamin A rich orange sweet potatoes, which grow in the USA. There are successful campaigns providing these potatoes, a staggering five times higher in vitamin A than Golden Rice, to farmers in Uganda and Mozambique.

The Soil Association says, despite the fanfare, Golden Rice has not yet actually helped a single person and if commercialised it will not be helping to reduce people’s reliance on a rice based diet. It believes that we could have gone further in curing blindness in developing countries years ago if only the money, research, and publicity that have gone into Golden Rice over the last 15 years had gone into proven ways of curing the Vitamin A deficiency that causes blindness.

However, instead of pursuing genuine solutions, we continue to get smears and pro-GM spin in an attempt to close down debate.

Moscow once again appears on the African continent with the first Russia-Africa summit

Abdus Sattar Ghazali

The first ever two-day Russia-Africa economic summit ended Thursday in the resort city Sochi, Russia resulting over 500 commercial agreements worth $12 billion.

About four dozen African leaders and high-level government officials attended the summit and economic forum, from Nigerian President Muhammad Buhari to African Union Commission Chairman Moussa Faki Mahamat. Over 40 African nations were represented by heads of state or government at the summit, while 11 others sent their vice presidents, foreign ministers or ambassadors.

The two-day event was the first of its kind hosted by Russia, which is seeking a new engagement on the African continent in competition with China, the United States, and even countries like India and Turkey, which have increased their diplomatic efforts in recent years.

According to Financial Times Russia offered nuclear power plants, fighter jets and missile defense systems to African countries in a charm offensive designed to win back influence on the continent, at the summit.

Russia has defense orders worth $14bn from African countries, its state-run arms export agency said at the summit. Sales to the continent account for about a third of Moscow’s military exports. Mr Putin said Russia had agreed “military technical co-operation agreements” with more than 30 African states, to supply weapons. “Some of these deliveries are free of charge,” he added. Elina Ribakova, deputy chief economist at the Institute of International Finance, described Russia’s offerings as “no strings attached”.

While the Soviet Union was a close partner with many African states during the cold war, Russia’s current bilateral trade of $20bn is just a tenth of China’s, and relies heavily on exports of arms and grain to a handful of richer states.

Mr Putin promised to double trade within the next “four to five years”, and used a marathon schedule of back-to-back bilateral meetings with visiting delegations on both days of the summit to offer deals on everything from diamond mining to pork exports — though few have yet materialized.

The Kremlin’s aim is to use military and trade ties to reinsert itself as a geopolitical powerbroker on the continent, the Financial Times said.

Agreements signed

Some of the agreements signed at the Russia-Africa Forum as reported by Sputnik:

Trade financing: The Russian Export Center, VEB.RF state development corporation, Sberbank and GemCorpCapital LLP investment company have signed a $5 billion worth framework agreement for creating a mechanism of Russian-African trade financing.

Nuclear energy: Russia and Ethiopia have signed an intergovernmental agreement in Sochi for cooperation on the peaceful use of nuclear energy. Russian oil company Lukoil signed a memorandum for drilling rights in Equatorial Guinea and Nigeria, while state-run atomic energy group Rosatom inked a preliminary agreement to build a nuclear power plant in Ethiopia. It also agreed to begin construction on an Egyptian reactor next year.

Defence ties: Russia plans to deliver $4 billion worth of weapons to Africa in 2019, Rosoboronexport Director General Alexander Mikheev told Sputnik.

Russia and Nigeria have signed a contract for deliveries of 12 Russian Mi-35 attack helicopters, Russian Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation Deputy Director Anatoly Punchuk told Sputnik on Wednesday at the Russia-Africa forum.

Although Russia has signed military agreements with some two dozen countries, its actual presence on the ground is still relatively marginal in comparison to the French or the US. The US military has outposts in 34 African countries and had at least 33 active missions in 2017, according to journalist Nick Turse. This includes special forces fighting covert wars in Libya, Somalia, Tunisia, and Niger, with little to no accountability to the US Congress or the broader American public.

Late to the Party: Russia’s Return to Africa

“Late to the Party: Russia’s Return to Africa,” is the title of the article of Paul Stroski about the Russia-Africa summit published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Paul Stroski, a senior fellow in Carnegie’s Russia and Eurasia Program, said:

“After a decades-long absence, Russia is once again appearing on the African continent. The Kremlin’s return to Africa, which has generated considerable media, governmental, and civil society attention, draws on a variety of tools and capabilities. Worrying patterns of stepped-up Russian activity are stirring concerns that a new wave of great-power competition in Africa is now upon us.

“U.S. policymakers frequently stress the need to counter Russian malign influence on the continent. On a visit to Angola in early 2019, Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan said that “Russia often utilizes coercive, corrupt, and covert means to attempt to influence sovereign states, including their security and economic partnerships.”

“Advocates for a more forceful Western policy response point to high-visibility Russian military and security cooperation in the Central African Republic and the wide-ranging travels of Russian political consultants and disinformation specialists as confirmation that Russia, like China, represents a major challenge in Africa.”

Resurgence of a global power on the continent

Joe Penney of Quartz Africa says Russia’s Africa summit is the latest step in its resurgence as a global power on the continent. Since 2015, Russia has signed military agreements with 21 African countries, and in the past decade, it has grown its trade with the continent to $20.4 billion in 2018 from $5.7 billion in 2009.

“Forced to find new diplomatic partners as well as markets for arms and goods after United States and European Union’s sanctions for Russia’s annexation of Crimea, the rapid growth of this partnership has set off alarm bells in Washington, D.C. and Paris,” Joe Penney said adding:

“Russia’s interest, like those of other major world powers in Africa, “involves arms exports, imports of natural resources, and the projection of power,” writes Jakob Hedenskog, researcher at the Swedish Defense Research Agency. It has accelerated its diplomatic, military and economic push by building upon its former Soviet ties, when it armed anti-Apartheid and anti-colonial movements like those in Angola, Mozambique, and Algeria. While Russia is Africa’s top arms supplier, nearly 80% of the weapons it sells the continent are directed to its longtime ally Algeria, who have relied on Russian equipment since their independence war against France in the late 1950s. Its economic plans for Africa include lucrative oil and gas, mining and nuclear energy deals across the continent.”

Penney quoted journalist Nick Turse as saying: Although Russia has signed military agreements with some two dozen countries, its actual presence on the ground is still relatively marginal in comparison to the French or the US. The US military has outposts in 34 African countries and had at least 33 active missions in 2017, according to journalist Nick Turse. This includes special forces fighting covert wars in Libya, Somalia, Tunisia, and Niger, with little to no accountability to the US Congress or the broader American public.

China-Africa summit

Russia-Africa summit and economic forum follows a similar approach by the Chinese. The Forum on China-Africa Cooperation has become so influential as a source of economic support for African countries, twice as many African leaders attended the Beijing event in September 2018.

The 2018 Beijing Summit of the Forum on China Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) was defined by Beijing as its most important home diplomatic event of the year, with 53 out of 54 African countries represented, leaving out only Swaziland, which still maintains diplomatic relations with Taiwan.

Established 18 years ago, FOCAC has achieved fruitful results and has become a significant mark of China-Africa cooperation. China-Africa trade volume amounted to $170 billion in 2017, up from just over $10 billion in 2000, according to data from China’s Ministry of Commerce.

the Forum on China-Africa Co-operation-Ministerial Conference (FOCAC) was held in Beijing from 10 to 12 October 2000. This was the first gathering of its kind in the history of China-Africa relations.

The second FOCAC adopted the Beijing Action Plan (2019-2021).

The vigorous development of China-Africa cooperation has not only promoted the progress of Africa, but also inspired international partners to pay closer attention to Africa and increase their input into and cooperation with the continent, Chinese President Xi Jinping said.

African leaders expressed support and appreciation for the Belt and Road Initiative, believing that the joint building of the Belt and Road by Africa and China will speed up African regional integration.

The year 2018 marked the fifth anniversary of the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative, with more African countries expressing their interest in joining the grand project.

So far, nearly 10 African countries have signed Belt and Road cooperation agreements with China, and a few more are in negotiations..

Proposed in 2013, the Belt and Road Initiative refers to the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, which aims to build a trade and infrastructure network connecting Asia with Europe and Africa along the ancient trade routes of the Silk Road.

China is willing to work with Africa to dovetail its Belt and Road Initiative with the Agenda 2063 of the African Union, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development of the United Nations, as well as the development strategies of individual African countries to explore new opportunities and inject new impetus for Africa’s development, said Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

Report From Iran: The Country Moves Onward

Ugo Bardi

Iran is a country that maintains something of the fascination it had in ancient times, when it was both fabulous and remote. In our times, it remained somewhat remote, but also something that couldn’t be ignored as it went through a series of dramatic events, from the revolution of 1979, the hostage crisis, the Iraq-Iran war from 1980 to 1988, and much more. The latest political convulsion was the “Green Revolution” in 2009 that quickly abated, but the country clearly keeps evolving, especially in its relations with the West. It is impossible for anyone, including perhaps the Iranian themselves, to evaluate everything that’s going on in their country. For sure, Iran is complex, changing, varied, and fascinating, perhaps as much as it was at the time of Marco Polo when it was the hub of the merchants carrying silk and spice from China. These are some notes from a trip to Tehran where I stayed for a week in October 2019.

The first impression you have when you arrive in Tehran is of chaos: heavy traffic, throngs of people, movement and noise everywhere. But it takes little time to understand that this is friendly chaos. Especially if you happen to be Italian, you find yourself rapidly at ease in the confusion. Tehran is appropriately exotic in the bazaars, but also quiet in the suburbs, and very modern in places such as the shopping center near the Azadi lake, where you could think you are in Paris.

One thing about Iran is that it is a remarkably friendly place. That’s not unexpected: in most places in the world, the local people will normally be able to separate real foreign visitors from the image their TV presents to them. Most people everywhere are naturally friendly if they don’t feel threatened, or feel that they are being swindled or chided. If, as a visitor, you approach them in a friendly manner, they will almost always reciprocate in the same way. In Iran, Western governments are often perceived (and for good reasons) as evil entities, but that doesn’t apply to individual foreign visitors.

Just to give you some idea of the Iranian attitude, let me tell you of when I was sitting with my wife at a local restaurant (by the way, if you happen to be in Teheran, try the Baba Mirza on the Mirza Kurchak Khan street: Iranian fast food, absolutely great!). There, we entered in a conversation with another customer who turned out to be a civil engineer. When he learned that we were heading to see the Abgineh (glassware) Museum of Tehran (again, a highly recommended visit), he accompanied us there and then he insisted to pay our tickets in order, he said, “to show us the traditional Iranian hospitality.” That surely takes Iran several notches upward in the classification of friendly countries but it was not the only example in our experience in Teheran. That friendliness may also extend to American visitors even at the times when the US was referred to as the “Great Satan,” as Terence Ward reports in his book “Searching for Hussein” (2003).

This said, Iran doesn’t seem to be just friendly to foreigners, it seems to be friendly also to Iranians — at least these days. Of course, for a foreigner it may be difficult to detect social tensions brewing below the surface but what I can tell you is that in Tehran there is no heavy security apparatus detectable, unlike what you can see in many Western cities. We were taken to see from outside the residence of president Hassan Rouhani in a building in the Northern Area of Tehran: the security of the President seemed to require only a few policemen standing around the building. Of course, there may have been other, invisible, security measures. But it is impressive how they don’t seem to expect serious troubles.

In terms of social tensions, the obvious thing that comes to the mind of a Westerner about Iran, just as for all Islamic countries, is the status of women. Iran and Saudi Arabia are probably the only states in the world enforcing by law the Islamic tradition for women to cover their heads. Yet, the time when women were harassed by the police if they didn’t cover their heads well enough seems to be a thing of the past. In Iran, if a woman likes to wear a black chador that makes her look like a European nun, she is free to do so and many do. But most Iranian women, at least in Tehran, tend to interpret the rules creatively. The headscarf, the hijab, is worn halfway over the head and it is often light and brightly colored. The dress is also colored and decorated, women also wear jewelry and makeup. The result is often very elegant and lively. My wife reports that after a few days in Tehran she felt completely at ease wearing the hijab and that she even felt a little strange when she had to abandon it, coming back to Europe.

Then, of course, the impressions of a week may be badly misleading, but what I noted in terms of the social structure of the country seems to be consistent with the data. In Iran, women are still a minority in terms of being part of the workforce, but their role is important and larger than in other Middle-Eastern countries. Also, the gap seems to be rapidly closing. Of course, Iran remains a relatively poor country: in terms of GDP per person (PPP), it ranks at about half that of Italy and one third the value of the US. Nevertheless, in terms of social equality, as measured by the Gini coefficient, Iran does better than the United States, although not as well as Italy. Iranians also have a good public health service. 

A country’s educational system is a good indicator of social cohesion: dictatorial governments have no interest in an educated citizenship — they rather tend to exterminate their citizens or use them as cannon fodder. Iran, instead, shines in this area with the state providing free of charge education for all citizens with impressive results. Some 4.5 million students enrolled in university courses, which is only slightly less than in the US in relative terms and much larger than in Italy. Iran has one of the largest ratios of students to the workforce anywhere in the world.

Of course, an evaluation of the Iranian education system would have to consider the scientific level of the universities and it is true that, right now, they don’t score as high as Western ones. But the universities I visited seemed to be staffed by competent people and the research level was good. Here, one has to take into account the language barrier that often puts non-native English speakers at a disadvantage in the competition for space in the best scientific journals. I noted also that the research institutes I visited were massively staffed with women although, as it happens in Europe, the top-level positions are still mostly in the hands of men. That may rapidly change, though.

Islam is also part of the national Iranian culture: visiting Iran at the time of the Arba’een celebration gives you some idea of the importance of some religious traditions: you need not be a Shi’a Muslim to understand how deep the feelings for these traditions run and how fascinating they can be. Nevertheless, I would say that the current Iranian society is remarkably secularized. I can’t quantify that, just take it as a personal impression.

And now something about the current situation and perspectives. The first question is population: The number of Iranian citizens reached 80 million and it continues to grow, although at a progressively slower pace: Iran is moving toward its demographic transition, but it is not there, yet. It is also a population that’s becoming more and more urbanized, a typical characteristic of many non-Western countries. That may be a serious problem in the future: Iran is a large country but mostly dry and only a fraction of its land is arable. The result is that food must be imported from abroad. So far, this has not been a problem: globalization has made it possible to buy food anywhere and the result has been the near disappearing of hunger and famines worldwide. But things keep changing: globalization is on its way out and we may see a return of the old maxim that says “thou shalt starve thy neighbor into submission.” The food supply problem seems to be recognized by the Iranian government, hence the emphasis on research on desalination and water management (incidentally, the reason why I was in Tehran). But desalinated water, so far, has been way too expensive to be used in agriculture. In any case, water management is a vital element in the future of Iran.

Then, there is the question of oil production. Here are the latest available data for Iran. (From “peakoilbarrel.com” — the Y scale is in thousands of barrels per day)

At its peak, around 1978, the Iranian oil production had reached about 6 million barrels per day making Iran one of the main oil producers in the world. After the revolution and the war, it reached a certain stability near 4 Mb/day. But you see the effect of the economic sanctions: Iran’s production was nearly halved and exports nearly zeroed. At the current prices of oil, it is a loss of revenue of tens of billions of dollars, not at all negligible for a GDP of less than 500 billion dollars.

The Iranian economy can survive the loss of revenues from oil: it is surviving it right now, although with difficulties. But, in a certain sense, the sanctions are not completely bad: they can be seen as a stimulus to move in a direction in which Iran has to move anyway. The national oil resources are not infinite and the gradual loss of demand worldwide is going to bring Iran to a point where it will have to cease to be an oil-based economy. These are the same challenges faced by all countries in the world: abandon oil and move to an economy based on renewable energy. It is a difficult challenge that won’t probably be met without trauma and suffering, but it is not a choice. Willing or not, we all have to go in that direction.

One problem, here, is the evident lack, in Iran, of what we call “environmental awareness.” Of course, university researchers and teachers are aware of climate change, but most people in Iran seem to think that it is just one more Western hoax concocted to force them into submission. Seeing the world from the Iranian side, I can’t fault them for being oversuspicious. In recent times, Western governments have been doing their best to lose even the last shreds of credibility they had managed to maintain. And the results are easily detectable: I asked a group of about 30 students of the faculty of engineering of Tehran University what they thought of Greta Thunberg. It turned out that none of them had any idea of who she was.

Overall, though, I am not pessimistic about the future of Iran. Facing a difficult challenge, Iran has some advantages. One is that of being at the hub of the nascent Eurasian exchange zone. Another is to be a well-insulated country that makes it especially suitable for solar energy. In the end, I would agree with the idea proposed by Hamid Dabashi in “Iran, the Birth of a Nation” (2016) where he notes that Iran was a nation before it was a state. The Iranian nation is kept together by strong cultural traditions and linguistic ties. It has survived tremendous challenges in the recent past, it has a chance to survive the new ones that will come.