The CIA’s Role in Operation Condor

Jacob Hornberger

The Washington Post reported that top secret documents confirm the role that the CIA played in Operation Condor, the international state-sponsored assassination, kidnapping, torture, and murder ring run by U.S.-supported military dictatorships in South America in the late 1970s. The documents confirm that the CIA’s role in the operation was to provide communications equipment to the ring, which enabled them to coordinate cross-border efforts to kidnap, torture, and kill suspected communists, which, of course, were nothing more than people who believed in socialism or communism.

The Post article makes it clear that the CIA was fully aware of the horrific human-rights abuses that the Latin America military regimes were engaged in and said and did nothing to prevent them.

One of the most laughable parts of the secret documents are ones that imply that the CIA struggled on whether it should do anything about the abuses.

Why is that laughable?

Because it is clearly nothing more than a “cover ourselves” protection in the event that Operation Condor ever was uncovered.

How do we know that?

Because the Operation Condor goons were doing precisely what the U.S. national-security apparatus wanted them to do — eradicate the threat of communism in the Americas!

The Cold War

Remember: This was the Cold War, when the U.S. national security establishment was 100 percent convinced that there was a worldwide communist conspiracy to take over the United States and the rest of the world, a conspiracy that was supposedly based in Moscow, Russia. (Yes, that Russia!)

The American people were exhorted to be on the constant lookout for communists. “Security” was the byword. People were looking for communists in the State Department, the military, Congress, Hollywood, and lots of other places. Suspected communists were hauled before Congress and asked whether they had ever been a member of the Communist Party. Even Republican President Dwight Eisenhower was suspected in some circles of being a communist agent.

If you want to get a sense of what life was like in the United States during the Cold War, take all the national-security hoopla surrounding the “war on terrorism” and multiply it by about a thousand.

After World War II, the federal government was converted from a limited-government republic to a national-security state, a type of totalitarian governmental structure with omnipotent, dark-side powers, such as the powers to assassinate, kidnap, and torture suspected communists.

For example, unbeknownst to the American people at the time, the CIA entered into a secret conspiracy with the Mafia to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro, even though Cuba had never attacked the United States or even threatened to do so. Former President Lyndon Johnson would later refer to the CIA’s assassination program as a “damned Murder Inc.”

In principle, Operation Condor’s assassination program was no different from the CIA’s assassination program.

The Chilean coup

It was the national-security state’s obsessive fear of communism that led to the CIA’s orchestration of the coup in Chile in 1973 that ousted the democratically elected socialist president of the country, Salvador Allende, and replaced him with the brutal right-wing unelected military dictator Augusto Pinochet. Although it appears that Allende ended up committing suicide, no doubt to avoid being tortured, there is no doubt that at the inception of the coup, the Chilean national-security establishment was trying to assassinate him with missiles fired from Chilean fighter planes into Allende’s position in the national palace, with the full approval of its counterparts in the U.S. national-security establishment.

Moreover, we mustn’t forget the CIA’s kidnapping and murder of Gen. Rene Schneider, the head of Chile’s armed forces. They targeted him because he was opposed to the U.S.-orchestrated coup. He took the position that his oath to support and defend the constitution of Chile superseded US. demands for a coup to protect Chile from Allende’s socialism. Thus, U.S. officials targeted him for removal.

After Pinochet took power, he instituted a reign of terror in which his national-security henchmen kidnapped, tortured, raped, disappeared, or murdered tens of thousands of suspected communists, with the full support of U.S. officials.

Operation Condor

Operation Condor followed from that reign of terror. To ensure that suspected communists could not escape to neighboring countries, several other South American right-wing military dictatorships conspired with the Pinochet military dictatorship to coordinate efforts to ensure that no suspected communists could not get away. As the secret documents revealed in the Washington Post article confirm, the CIA/s role in this Cold War operation was to provide the communications equipment that enabled its Latin American counterparts to efficiently coordinate their efforts.

Moreover, don’t forget also that the Pentagon and the CIA had just been defeated by the communists in Vietnam. Given their mindsets that the communists were winning and that America was now in greater danger than ever before of being taken over by the Reds, the Operation Condor brutes were viewed as great heroes for protecting America and the world from a  communist takeover.

The people who paid the price for this sordid, dark-side paranoia, of course were the tens of thousands of innocent people who were rounded up, tortured, raped, abused, disappeared, assassinated, and murdered.

The worst mistake the American people have ever made was permitting the federal government to be converted from a limited government republic to a national-security state. That conversion perverted America’s sense of moral values, conscience, and right conduct. Operation Condor is further proof of that fact.

Apocalypse Now! Insects, Pesticide and a Public Health Crisis

Colin Todhunter

In 2017, UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Hilal Elver, and UN Special Rapporteur on Toxics, Baskut Tuncak, produced a report that called for a comprehensive new global treaty to regulate and phase out the use of dangerous pesticides in farming and move towards sustainable agricultural practices.

In addition to the devastating impacts on human health, the two authors argued that the excessive use of pesticides contaminates soil and water sources, causing loss of biodiversity, the destruction of the natural enemies of pests and the reduction in the nutritional value of food.  They drew attention to denials by the agroindustry of the hazards of certain pesticides and expressed concern about aggressive, unethical marketing tactics that remain unchallenged and the huge sums spent by the powerful chemical industry to influence policymakers and contest scientific evidence.

At the time, Elver said that agroecological approaches, which replace harmful chemicals, are capable of delivering sufficient yields to feed and nourish the entire world population, without undermining the rights of future generations to adequate food and health. The two authors added that it was time to overturn the myth that pesticides are necessary to feed the world and create a global process to transition toward safer and healthier food and agricultural production.

The authors were adamant that access to healthy, uncontaminated food is a human rights issue.

And this is not lost on environmental campaigner Dr Rosemary Mason who has just sent a detailed open letter/report to Minette Batters, president of the National Farmers Union (NFU) in the UK – ‘Open Letter to the National Farmers Union About Fraud in Europe and the UK’. Mason’s report contains a good deal of information about pesticides, health and the environment.

Health impacts aside, Mason decided to write to Batters because it is increasingly clear that pesticides are responsible for declines in insects and wildlife, something which the NFU has consistently denied.

In 2017, the Soil Association obtained figures from FERA Science Ltd under a freedom of information request. Using data extracted for the first time from the records of FERA Science Ltd, which holds UK Government data on pesticide use in farming, it was found that pesticide active ingredients applied to three British crops have increased markedly. The data covered British staples wheat, potatoes and onions. Far from a 50% cut – which the NFU had claimed – the increase in active ingredients applied to these crops range from 480% to 1,700% over the last 40-odd years.

Health of the nation

Mason’s aim is to make Batters aware that chemical-dependent, industrial agriculture is a major cause of an ongoing public health crisis and is largely responsible for an unfolding, catastrophic ecological collapse in the UK and globally. Mason places agrochemicals at the centre of her argument, especially globally ubiquitous glyphosate-based herbicides, the use of which have spiralled over the last few decades.

Batters is given information about important studies that suggest glyphosate causes epigenetic changes in humans and animals (diseases skip a generation before appearing) and that it is a major cause of severe obesity in children in the UK, not least because of its impact on the gut microbiome. As a result, Mason says, we are facing a global metabolic health crisis that places glyphosate at the heart of the matter.

And yet glyphosate may be on the market because of fraud. Mason points out that a new study has revealed the Laboratory of Pharmacology and Toxicology (LPT) in Hamburg has committed fraud in a series of regulatory tests, several of which had been carried out as part of the glyphosate re-approval process in 2017. At least 14% of new regulatory studies submitted for the re-approval of glyphosate were conducted by LPT Hamburg. The number could be higher, as this information in the dossiers often remains undisclosed to the public.

In light of this, Angeliki Lyssimachou, environmental toxicologist at Pesticide Action Network Europe, says:

“The vast majority of studies leading to the approval of a pesticide are carried out by the pesticide industry itself, either directly or via contract laboratories such as LPT Hamburg… Our 140+ NGO coalition ‘Citizens for Science in Pesticide Regulation’ regularly calls on the (European) Commission to quit this scandalous process: tests must be carried out by independent laboratories under public scrutiny, while the financing of studies should be supported by industry.”

Mason then outlines the state of public health in the UK.  A report, ‘The Health of the Nation: A Strategy for Healthier Longer Lives’,  written by the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Longevity found that women in the UK are living for 29 years in poor health and men for 23 years: an increase of 50% for women and 42% for men on previous estimates based on self-reported data.

In 2035, there will be around 16 million cases of dementia, arthritis, type 2 diabetes and cancers in people aged 65 and over in the UK – twice as many as in 2015. In 10 years, there will be 5.5 million people with type 2 diabetes while 70% of people aged 55+ will have at least one obesity-related disease.

The report found that the number of major illnesses suffered by older people will increase by 85% between 2015 and 2035.

Ecological collapse

Batters is also made aware that there is an insect apocalypse due to pesticides – numerous studies have indicated catastrophic declines. Mason mentions two scientific studies of the number of insects splattered by cars that have revealed a huge decline in abundance at European sites in two decades. The research adds to growing evidence of what some scientists have called an “insect apocalypse”, which is threatening a collapse in the natural world that sustains humans and all life on Earth. A third study which Mason mentions shows plummeting numbers of aquatic insects in streams.

The survey of insects hitting car windscreens in rural Denmark used data collected every summer from 1997 to 2017 and found an 80% decline in abundance. It also found a parallel decline in the number of swallows and martins, birds that live on insects.

Matt Shardlow, the chief executive of the charity Buglife, says:

“These new studies reinforce our understanding of the dangerously rapid disappearance of insect life in both the air and water… It is essential we create more joined up space for insects that is safe from pesticides, climate change and other harm.”

Of course, it is not just insects that have been affected. Mason provides disturbing evidence of the decline in British wildlife in general.

Conning the public

Mason argues that the public are being hoodwinked by officials who dance to the tune of the agrochemical conglomerates. For instance, she argues that Cancer Research UK (CRUK) has been hijacked by the agrochemical industry: David Cameron appointed Michael Pragnell, founder of Syngenta to the board of CRUK in 2010 and he became Chairman in 2011.

She asserts that CRUK invented causes of cancer and put the blame on the people for lifestyle choices:

“A red-herring fabricated by industry and ‘top’ doctors in Britain: alcohol was claimed to be linked to seven forms of cancer: this ‘alleged fact’ was endlessly reinforced by the UK media until people in the UK were brainwashed.”

By 2018, CRUK was also claiming that obesity caused 13 different cancers and that obesity was due to ‘lifestyle choice’.

Each year there are steady increases in the numbers of new cancers in the UK and increases in deaths from the same cancers. Mason says that treatments are having no impact on the numbers.

She argues that the Francis Crick Institute in London with its ‘world class resources’ is failing to improve people’s lives with its treatments and is merely strengthening the pesticides and pharmaceutical industries. The institute is analysing people’s genetic profile with what Mason says is an “empty promise” that one day they could tailor therapy to the individual patient. Mason adds that CRUK is a major funder of the Crick Institute.

The public is being conned, according to Mason, by contributing to ‘cancer research’ with the fraudulent promise of ‘cures’ based on highly profitable drugs manufactured by pharmaceutical companies whose links to the agrochemical sector are clear. CRUK’s research is funded entirely by the public, whose donations support over 4,000 scientists, doctors and nurses across the UK. Several hundred of these scientists worked at CRUK’s London Research Institute at Lincoln’s Inn Fields and Clare Hall (LRI), which became part of the Crick institute in 2015.

Mason notes that recent research involving the Crick Institute that has claimed ‘breakthroughs’ in discoveries about the genome and cancer genetics are misleading. The work was carried out as part of the Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes project, which claims to be the most comprehensive study of cancer genetics to date. The emphasis is on mapping genetic changes and early diagnosis

However, Mason says such research misses the point – most cancers are not inherited. She says:

“The genetic damage is caused by mutations secondary to a lifetimes’ exposure to thousands of synthetic chemicals that contaminate the blood and urine of nearly every person tested – a global mass poisoning.”

And she supports her claim by citing research by Lisa Gross and Linda Birnbaum which argues that in the US 60,000-plus chemicals already in use were grandfathered into the law on the assumption that they were safe. Moreover, the EPA faced numerous hurdles, including pushback from the chemical industry, that undermined its ability to implement the law. Today, hundreds of industrial chemicals contaminate the blood and urine of nearly every person tested – in the US and beyond.

Mason refers to another study by Maricel V Maffini, Thomas G Neltner and Sarah Vogel which notes that thousands of chemicals have entered the food system, but their long-term, chronic effects have been woefully understudied and their health risks inadequately assessed. As if to underline this, recent media reports have focused on Jeremy Bentham, a well-respected CEO of an asset management company, who argued that infertility caused by endocrine disrupting chemicals will wipe out humans.

Mason argues that glyphosate-based Roundup has caused a 50% decrease in sperm count in males: Roundup disrupts male reproductive functions by triggering calcium-mediated cell death in rat testis and Sertoli cells. She also notes that Roundup causes infertility – based on studies that were carried out in South America and which were ignored by regulators in Europe when relicensing glyphosate.

Neoliberal global landscape

Mason draws on a good deal of important (recent) research and media reports to produce a convincing narrative. But what she outlines is not specific to Britain. For instance, the human and environmental costs of pesticides in Argentina have been well documented and in India Punjab has become a ‘cancer capital’ due to pesticide contamination.

UN Special Rapporteurs Elver and Tuncak argue that while scientific research confirms the adverse effects of pesticides, proving a definitive link between exposure and human diseases or conditions or harm to the ecosystem presents a considerable challenge, especially given the systematic denial by the pesticide and agro-industry of the magnitude of the damage inflicted by these chemicals.

In the meantime, we are told that many diseases and illnesses are the result of personal choice or lifestyle behaviour. It has become highly convenient for public officials and industry mouthpieces to place the blame on ordinary people, while fraudulent science, regulatory delinquency and institutional corruption allows toxic food to enter the marketplace and the agrochemical industry to rake in massive profits.

Health outcomes are merely regarded as the result of individual choices, rather than the outcome of fraudulent activities which have become embedded in political structures and macro-economic ‘free’ market policies. In the brave new world of neoliberalism and ‘consumer choice’, it suits industry and its crony politicians and representatives to convince ordinary people to internalise notions of personal responsibility and self-blame.

Conservative Islamic views are gaining ground in secular Bangladesh and curbing freedom of expression

Anders C. Hardig,

Bangladesh has seen an increase in terrorist activity in recent years, including attacks on foreigners, activists and religious minorities.

Perpetrators of these attacks have included people from privileged backgrounds. News reports indicate they were all motivated by the idea that Islam is under attack by secularists and must be defended.

This is significant in a country that was founded in 1971 on principles of secularism following an independence war with neighboring Pakistan.

My research on Islamist social movements has taken me to Bangladesh regularly for the past seven years. Over that time, I have found, conservative Islamic views have come to play a more central place in Bangladesh’s politics and society.

The birth of Bangladesh

When the Indian subcontinent gained independence from the British Empire in 1947, it was partitioned into two states, creating Pakistan out of the Muslim-majority regions of British India. The newly formed Muslim country was split in two parts, West and East Pakistan, separated by the vast landmass of northern India.

While these two parts of Pakistan shared a common faith, Islam, there were significant cultural, linguistic and political differences between them. The population in the eastern region – predominantly ethnically Bengali and speaking their own language, Bangla – was politically marginalized by the western region.

In 1971, the people of East Pakistan launched a war for independence and founded the “Land of Bangla” – Bangladesh.

While language and culture was at the core of Bangladeshi national identity, most people still identified as religious. In other words, it was a secular country founded by people of faith. “Secularism” in Bangladesh did not imply absence of religion, but rather that the state be neutral toward religion.

Islamists and political power

Since then, my research shows, Islam has come to be a prominent political force in the country.

Islamists, a broad label that covers political parties, preachers and militant groups, among others, actively promote a more conservative version of Islam.

The most influential Islamist party is Jamaat-e-Islami, whose name means “Islamic gathering.” Though it has never won many parliamentary seats, Jamaat-e-Islami has come to exert considerable influence in government.

Bangladesh’s parliamentary system requires mainstream parties to ally with smaller ones to gain the majority necessary to form a government. Because of this, major political parties in Bangladesh have at different times relied on alliances with Jamaat to secure a parliamentary majority.

Mobilization against secularism

Other Islamists use “street power” to promote their agenda.

In February 2013, a high-ranking official with Jamaat-e-Islami received a life sentence for war crimes committed during the 1971 independence struggle. This was considered by some as too light a sentence. A few days later, protesters began rallying in the streets to demand the death penalty for this official.

These secular-minded supporters of the war tribunal wanted local collaborators of the Pakistani army to be punished for atrocities they committed against Bengalis and religious minorities.

Most of those being tried by the tribunal came from the ranks of the Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami.

The protesters wanted local collaborators of the Pakistani army to be punished for atrocities they committed against Bengalis and religious minorities. They demanded that Jamaat-e-Islami be banned and their financial interests, including Islamic banks, be dismantled.

This mobilization, however, was soon met with a coordinated counterprotest led by a movement known as Hefazat. As many as 500,000 people shut down major roads to the capital and interpreted the protesters demands as defaming Islam and the Prophet Muhammad.

In a 13-point list, the Hefazat demanded the death penalty for blasphemy. The group also asked for an end to Bangladesh’s education policy, which, in its view, prioritized “secular” subjects like science and math over religious studies. The group also wanted compulsory Islamic education.

Islam under threat

To appease Islamist interests, the government agreed to meet some of the demands.

One major concession was expanding the government’s ability to crack down on those who “hurt religious beliefs” and for “acts of defamation.”

Under this revised law, called the Information and Communication Technology Act, Bangladesh has arrested at least eight bloggers since 2013. The alleged crimes of these bloggers include writing articles critical of the Saudi government and posting derogatory remarks about the Prophet Muhammed online.

Police have used the defamation clause of the Information and Communication Technology Act and its replacement, the Digital Security Act of 2018, to silence criticism of the government. Over 1,200 people have been charged under this law between 2013 and 2018.

Educational policy too has shifted toward Islamic education.

The Islamic revival

Hefazat did not see all their demands met, but my research shows it moved Bangladesh away from its secularist ideals.

In truth, the shift in Islam’s role in politics and society really began as early as 1975 when Bangladesh’s founder and first president, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, was assassinated in a military coup.

After that, Bangladesh experienced considerable political instability and was ruled by successive military governments until 1990, when a nonviolent mobilization ushered in a return to democracy.

During the dictatorship years, however, military rulers began to gradually open up politics to Islamists.

A ban on Islamist political parties was lifted in 1975, which allowed Jamaat-e-Islami to run candidates for office and establish itself as a legitimate Bangladeshi political party.

In 1979, the commitment to secularism was removed from the preamble of Bangladesh’s constitution. In 1988, Islam was made the official state religion.

The number of religious schools – madrasas – increased exponentially, from 1,830 in 1975 to 5,793 in 1990. And that’s just government-sanctioned Islamic schools following a state-approved curriculum.

Reliable data is missing for the vast majority of private madrasas in Bangladesh, which operate without any curricular control from the state.

Changes in society

In today’s Bangladesh, there is another influential group: preachers who aspire to shape society according to their interpretations of what constitutes “pure” Islam.

Popular Islamic televangelists reach millions across the Muslim world, spreading the notion that Islam in the Indian subcontinent must be “purified” of non-Arab elements. They believe Arabic is God’s language and to be properly pure, Muslims should use Arab practices and the language whenever possible.

For example, Muslims in South Asia commonly say “Khuda Hafiz” when parting, a phrase derived from Persian, meaning “God be your protector.” Now, a popular Islamic televangelist, Zakir Naik, has revived an old argument that emerged in the 1980s in Pakistan, saying that “true Muslims” should use the Arabic version “Allah Hafiz” instead.

Similarly, as several Bangladeshis have told me, it is not uncommon in today’s Bangladesh to be corrected when using the Persian “Ramzan,” when referencing the Muslim holy month. The Arabic is “Ramadan.”

These may seem like minor semantic changes, but they are representative of a broader “corrective movement” that seeks to “purify” Islam of perceived “un-Islamic” tendencies.

In my view, Bangladesh’s secularism, a constitutional concept meant to guarantee the separation of religion and state, has become so vilified by Islamists that it has come to mean something akin to “atheistic” or “anti-Islamic.”

Toxic Air: Pollution from fossil fuels costs 5.4% of India’s GDP annually

Rohin Kumar

(Coal fired power plants in India have repeatedly missed the emission deadline set by the Union Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change)

For the first time, Greenpeace Southeast Asia and the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) have quantified the global cost of air pollution from fossil fuels, finding that it has reached an estimated US$8 billion per day, or 3.3% of the world’s GDP. While coal, oil and vehicle companies continue to push outdated technologies, public health and our communities are paying the price.

It is found that the China Mainland, the United States and India bear the highest costs from fossil fuel air pollution worldwide, at an estimated US$900 billion, US$600 billion and US$150 billion per year, respectively.

Report is an astonishing revelation that exposure to fossil fuel generated fine particulate matter (PM2.5) alone is attributed to an estimated 1.8 billion days of sick leave annually.

This report, ‘Toxic air: The price of fossil fuels’, assesses the impacts on global health and the economic cost of air pollution from the continued burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas. Using data published in 2019 – including the first study to assess the contribution of fossil fuels to global air pollution and health – the report provides a global assessment of the health impact of air pollution from fossil fuels in 2018 and a first-of-its-kind estimate of the associated economic cost.

Air Pollution from burning fossil fuels

Historically, energy from fossil fuels has dominated power generation (Figure. 2), but as the cost of establishing and maintaining renewable sources of power (such as wind and solar) continues to fall, These options are now frequently less expensive than the fossil fuel alternative.

Global active power plant capacity

[Data: Toxic Air: The Price of Fossil Fuel Report]

 Research by the International Renewable Energy Agency published in 2018 took into account the lifetime cost of electricity in its calculations of cost comparisons to generate power from renewable sources versus fossil fuels. Although in most parts of the world newly commissioned power plants that use renewable sources, such as wind and solar, will be cheaper or at a similar cost than from fossil fuels, including coal, oil and gas18, companies continue to push outdated technologies with the outcome that fossil fuels continue to dominate, creating air pollution when cleaner alternatives are readily available.

Evidence from public health studies suggests that exposure to an air pollutant or combination of air pollutants, such as PM2.5, NO2 or ozone, is associated with increased incidence of diseases including ischaemic heart disease (IHD), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), lung cancer, lower respiratory infections, premature birth (preterm birth), type II diabetes, stroke and asthma. Health impacts from air pollution generate economic costs from the cost of treatment, management of health conditions, and from work absences.

Commenting on the report Minwoo Son, Clean Air Campaigner at Greenpeace East Asia said, “Air pollution is a threat to our health and our economies. Every year, air pollution from fossil fuels takes millions of lives, increases our risk of stroke, lung cancer and asthma, and costs us trillions of dollars. But this is a problem that we know how to solve, by transitioning to renewable energy sources, phasing out diesel and petrol cars, and building public transport. We need to take into account the real cost of fossil fuels, not just for our rapidly heating planet, but also for our health.”

The properties and effects of air pollution vary from country to country; different locations are affected by different pollutants, pollution sources and environmental conditions. Combined with differences in population and lifestyle, the health impacts from air pollution change significantly depending on the geographical location. For example, a computer modelling study looked at seven different sources of PM2.5 and ozone air pollution: industry; land traffic; residential and commercial energy; biomass burning; power generation; agriculture; and natural. Using the model, the researchers calculated premature mortality resulting from air pollution generated by each of the seven sectors. Of premature deaths attributed to air pollution globally in 2010, almost one-third were attributable to exposure (while outdoors) to air pollution from residential and commercial energy, which was the principal source of air pollution-related premature deaths in India and China Mainland. Globally, land traffic was attributable for 5% of air pollution-related premature deaths and power generation for 14%.

The Indian Case

According to the report, India is estimated to bear 10.7 lakh crore (US$150 billion), or 5.4% of India’s GDP annually, the third highest costs from fossil fuel air pollution worldwide.

The analysis also suggests that an estimated one million deaths each year and approximately 980,000 estimated preterm births, equating to an annual economic loss of 10.7 lakh crore (US$150 billion) is attributed to air pollution from fossil fuel in India. Another source of economic costs is that approximately 350,000 new cases of child asthma each year are linked to NO2, a by-product of fossil fuel combustion. As a result, around 1,285,000 more children in India live with asthma linked to fossil fuel pollution. Exposure to pollution from fossil fuels also leads to around 49 crore days of work absence due to illness.

“The country spends around 1.28% of the GDP on health while air pollution from burning fossil fuels costs an estimated 5.4% of India’s GDP. This year the central government allocated only Rs 69,000 crore for the health sector in the union budget. This makes it clear that as a country we must fix our priority and stop burning fossil fuels which are harming our health and economy both,” said Avinash Chanchal, Senior Campaigner at Greenpeace India.

It must be noted that coal fired power plants in India have repeatedly missed the emission deadline set by the Union Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change. In 2015, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) legislated new standards to restrict and reduce hazardous emissions from coal-fired power plants giving them two years timeline till 7th December 2017. MoP (Ministry of Power) and APP (Association of Power Producers) extensively argued for extending and diluting the norms using unsound arguments on science and timelines which helped them secure an extension for implementation of the norms running from 2019 to 2022 in a staggered timeline.

According to the phasing plan for installing FGD (Flue Gas Desulphurisation) 16410 MW capacity out of total 166472 MW should have installed it by December 2019 but only 8% of this target is  achieved so far which shows complete ignorance of public health emergency of air pollution in northern India by the power generators and the government.

Analysis of 440 plants across the country pointed out that bids for FGD have been awarded for only 36560 MW out of 166472MW which is only 22% of the target. Notices for inviting tenders (NIT) were issued for 99195 MW units only. The percentage of bids awarded by Central, State and Private sector were 38%; 2% & 4 % respectively out of the capacity to be retrofitted for respective sectors.

“Strict action must be taken against non-compliance of thermal power plants. The government must ensure the construction of new coal-fired power plants is halted and existing plants must be shut down in phases. Moving our energy generation sector from fossil fuels to renewables would help to prevent premature deaths and vast savings in health costs. A just energy transition to renewable energy is feasible, and we can’t afford to wait any longer.  Government and fossil fuel companies need to take action now.,” Chanchal concluded.

East Timor’s coalition government collapses

Patrick O’Connor

After just a year-and-a-half in office, East Timor’s coalition government has collapsed.

Former President and Prime Minister Xanana Gusmão last month instructed members of his National Congress for Timorese Reconstruction (CNRT) party to abstain from giving parliamentary approval to the annual budget proposed by their own government. This extraordinary move saw the budget voted down on January 17. Prime Minister Taur Matan Ruak immediately declared that the Alliance of Change for Progress (Aliança de Mudança para o Progresso, AMP) ruling coalition was finished.

The always unstable coalition, sworn into office in June 2018, had involved Ruak’s People’s Liberation Party (PLP), Gusmão’s CNRT, and the smaller KHUNTO group, formed by martial arts street gangs.

Gusmão blew up the arrangement after East Timorese President Francisco ‘Lú-Olo’Guterres, a member of the opposition Fretilin party, repeatedly refused to swear in proposed government ministers from the CNRT party. Guterres insisted that seven of Gusmão’s candidates were unfit for office, on the basis of corruption allegations.

In an attempt to restore his pre-eminent position within the Timorese ruling elite, Gusmão blocked the budget as a means of triggering an early election. He boycotted a round-table discussion convened by President Guterres on February 10 of what were billed as East Timor’s “historic leaders.” Guterres pointedly left an empty chair for Gusmão, and invited the media to photograph him in discussions with Prime Minister Ruak, military chief Lere Anan Timur, former president José Ramos-Horta, former Fretilin prime minister Mari Alkatiri, and former Fretilin defence minister Roque Rodrigues.

The meeting raised the spectre of a military-backed “national unity” government of Ruak’s PLP and Fretilin. However, the political situation remains deadlocked. President Guterres earlier insisted that he backed Ruak to remain prime minister and would not dissolve the parliament for an early election.

In the absence of a budget, the government is funded on the basis of Timor’s “duodecimal system,” which doles out the equivalent of the 2019 budget in 12 monthly instalments. But this effectively blocks any significant investment projects and the provision of basic services is also threatened.

The Tatoli news agency reported on January 22 that health officials were unable to bulk purchase medical supplies, including vaccines, hepatitis treatments, and antibiotics. Senior official Odete Freitas said: “Maybe [in] one or two months coming we will be out of stock for very basic items of medication.”

The curtailment of government spending threatens to plunge the economy into sharp recession, further devastating workers and farmers already struggling to survive in one of the world’s most impoverished states.

East Timor’s political and economic crisis comes amid sharpened geo-strategic regional rivalry between China, on the one hand, and American and Australian imperialism, on the other.

Gusmão’s main role within the now defunct AMP administration is to preside over the multi-billion dollar Tasi Mane infrastructure development on Timor’s southern coast. The project involves the construction of major roads, a still unused regional airport, and a naval port, all developed around a liquid natural gas (LNG) processing plant for a Timor Sea gas pipeline that does not yet exist.

The government has staked enormous sums on the prospect of overseeing the construction of a pipeline from the Greater Sunrise gas fields in the Timor Sea, to Tasi Mane. Its aim is to reap LNG export royalty revenues while also developing related onshore manufacturing industries to generate jobs and help alleviate the country’s mass unemployment.

Chinese construction companies have been involved in different aspects of the Tasi Mane project. State-owned China Civil Engineering Construction last year won a contract of nearly $1 billion to construct the LNG offloading terminal for the yet to be built Beaço gas plant.

Gusmão repeatedly hinted that China could be invited to develop the Greater Sunrise pipeline and processing plant. There are certainly incentives for Beijing to become involved; the Asian power has seen a rapid rise in its LNG consumption and is now the second largest national market behind Japan. In September last year, Credit Suisse analyst Saul Kavonic told the Petroleum Economist website: “We expect Gusmao to play the geopolitical card. He will try to access funding on favourable terms, playing Chinese and Australian geopolitical goals against each other.”

Australia’s Woodside Petroleum, supported by the Australian government, has long refused to go along with a Greater Sunrise pipeline to Timor. Woodside has a 33.44 percent stake in the Sunrise Joint Venture, alongside Japan’s Osaka (10 percent), while the Timorese state now controls a majority 56.56 percent after buying stakes held by ConocoPhillips and Shell. Woodside has adamantly insisted that the gas reserves either be piped to Darwin in northern Australia, or to a floating processing facility developed in the Timor Sea.

The stand-off between Dili and Canberra on how to develop Greater Sunrise has lasted years. At stake for the Timorese ruling elite is the ability to maintain even the semblance of an “independent” state, following the former Portuguese colony and Indonesian-occupied territory’s gaining of formal sovereignty in 2002. More than 90 percent of the government’s budget is derived from oil and gas revenues from the Timor Sea’s Bayu-Undan fields, but these are expected to run dry as early as next year. In the absence of Greater Sunrise revenues, the ruling class is confronted with the threat of outright economic collapse.

Layers within the Australian ruling elite are concerned that the impasse will result in the Timorese government turning more directly towards Beijing.

On February 5, South Australian Centre Alliance Senator Rex Patrick attempted to have a federal senate subcommittee investigate whether the Australian government should back the Tasi Mane project. His motion received the support of the Greens and One Nation senators but was defeated by the “no” votes of the major parties—Liberal, National, and Labor.

Patrick’s remarks went unreported in the Australian press but pointed to the discussions underway within ruling circles. “If we go back to December 2007,” he told the Senate, “we know from WikiLeaks that the Chinese offered to do things like put a surveillance radar on the south coast of Timor-Leste [East Timor]. There is interest in Timor-Leste from the Chinese as they expand their influence.

“It’s my strong view that there could be Chinese military assets—which will eventually occur if we ignore Timor-Leste—on what is, effectively, a stationary aircraft carrier just to the north of Australia. It is not in our strategic interest to have a strong Chinese footprint in this neighbouring country, not in any way, shape or form, and that means we need to engage. […] In ten years’ time, I can guarantee you, I’ll be sitting in a park somewhere reading back today’s Hansard—on the day that we’re seeing [Chinese] military bases being established on the south coast of Timor-Leste.”

After supporting Indonesia’s invasion of the territory in 1975 and collaborating in the plunder of its natural resources, Canberra staged a so-called “humanitarian” military intervention in 1999 after Jakarta’s control became untenable. Throughout the transition to the nominally independent East Timorese state, Australian imperialism’s paramount concern was to maintain control over the lucrative oil and gas fields in the Timor Sea. Its provocations included an illegal spying operation involving intelligence operatives posing as aid workers to bug government buildings in Dili, and a 2006 military intervention and regime-change operation that ousted the elected Fretilin government.

Now there is rising Chinese economic and diplomatic activity in what Australia, backed by its US ally, regards as its “patch.”

Senator Patrick’s remarks, crudely referring to Timor as a “stationary aircraft carrier” to Australia’s north, were issued less than three weeks after the collapse of East Timor’s ruling coalition. They point to what is undoubtedly intense and ongoing behind-the-scenes manoeuvring in Dili by Australian officials who aim to exploit Timor’s political crisis for Canberra’s benefit.

20,000 flee Kazakhstan after inter-ethnic violence claims 11 lives

David Levine

On February 7–8, the rural Korday District in southern Kazakhstan became a scene of violent rioting, ending in the deaths of 11 people and more than 170 injured. 30 residential buildings, 17 commercial sites, and 47 automobiles were damaged or destroyed by arson. More than 20,000 people, most of them Dungans, have fled the villages where the violence erupted.

Although the events began in the village of Sortobe, the riots and destruction occurred primarily in the village of Masanchi, about 12 kilometers away.

The Dungan people are a Muslim minority of Han Chinese descent. Estimates put the Dungan population living in Kazakhstan at between 51,299 and 72,000 (just 0.4 percent or less of the population). Most of them live in the southern district of Korday which borders Kyrgyzstan. About 64,000 Dungans live in Kyrgyzstan.

Burnt out building Masanchi

Masanchi, located fewer then 10 km from the Kazakhstan/Kyrgyzstan border, had a population in 2009 of just 13,606 people, of whom over 90 percent were Dungans. The village is known popularly as the “unofficial Dungan capital of Kazakhstan.”

Media sources based outside Kazakhstan have widely portrayed the February 7–8 events as an ethnically motivated pogrom perpetrated by ethnic Kazakhs against Dungans.

According to Eurasianet, “mobs of Kazakhs attacked the village from two sides, armed with stones, metal bars and firearms. Mobs went on the rampage, beating and shooting Dungans and hurling Molotov cocktails into houses and shops, while sparing the few Kazakh-owned buildings, according to those testimonies.

“Locals in both communities agreed that the spark on the day was a rumor that Dungans had beaten up an old Kazakh man. While most Kazakhs in the area insisted this story was true, Dungans expressed doubts.” The village of Manachi, according to the online newspaper, was “a picture of devastation,” and police in riot gear were patrolling the streets.

The Eurasianet article proceeds to cite anonymous Dungan sources who claimed that the attacks were planned in advance and the attackers had traveled there from distant parts of the country. One eyewitness said that the police stood idly by while people were killed and homes destroyed.

National Guard units were mobilized to intervene in the riots. Law enforcement agencies called upon the population to believe only official notices, and not to spread rumors and falsehoods.

According to Kazakh news sources, the conflict began with a routine stop by a police road patrol of a Honda Odyssey minivan in the village of Sortobe. After the law enforcement officers had established that the driver did not have the required registration documents for the minivan, he attempted, unsuccessfully, to escape the police in the vehicle. The police officers followed the driver to his residence, where he and his relatives beat the police officers and pelted them with rocks. Eventually, about 400 people came to participate in the violence. More than 47 people were initially arrested and then released.

On February 8, government authorities in Almaty, Kazakhstan’s largest city, shut down the Yalyan, Baisat, and Alatau markets, which have been operated primarily by Dungans. The markets were not reopened until February 11, and then only under the presence of police and National Guard forces.

Over 25 criminal proceedings have been initiated. On February 18, the US-aligned Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported that police have arrested three ethnic Dungan brothers who are accused of having been involved in a road-rage brawl that the Kazakh police claims triggered the ethnic clashes.

Following a well-established pattern of strict governmental control over access to information regarding local conflicts, evidence from independent sources as to what occurred on February 7-8 has been scarce. Tokayev’s February 8 announcement included a statement that the National Security Committee and the General Prosecutor’s Office are to “hold accountable persons who incite inter-ethnic discord, spread provocative rumors and disinformation.” In other words, not only has the government tightly controlled the available information about the incident, but it has threatened criminal proceedings against anyone who disseminates information that contradicts the official version.

At the same time, a number of actions taken and statements made by high-ranking government officials have demonstrated an understanding that, in fact, the bloodshed and arson took place within a context of inter-ethnic strife.

Deputy Prime Minister of Kazakhstan Berdibek Saparbayev, whom Tokayev appointed to head the government commission on the Korday events, acknowledged on February 10 that approximately 24,000 people had fled across the international border into Kyrgyzstan. Saparbayev did not clarify who those refugees were or why they left, but all the concomitant circumstances indicate that they must have consisted primarily of Dungans. He also asserted that thousands had already begun to return to Kazakhstan. Additionally, more than 600 women, children, and elderly men were allowed to take refuge in border-crossing checkpoints between Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

Korday region

Also on February 10, upon a proposal from Tokayev, the Akim (head) of Kazakhstan’s Jambyl Region (i.e., a position analogous to a US state governor) was removed and replaced by Saparbayev. Prime Minister Askar Mamin commented on the event by asserting a need to “pay special attention to ideological work and the strengthening of inter-ethnic harmony.”

As of February 12, control-access checkpoints had been set up in the Korday District at all road entrances to the predominantly Dungan villages of Karakemer, Masanchi, Bular Batyr, Sortobe, Karasu, and Aukatty.

On February 14, the Kazakhstan Minister of Information and Social Development Dauren Abayev commented on the events, saying, “The authorities do not classify the guilty parties as either Kazakhs or Dungans. All of them are Kazakhstan citizens and are equally accountable under the law.”

As with all of the ex-Soviet republics, the Kazakhstan government has systematically fostered nationalist sentiments since before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, including through the passage of laws that institutionalize discrimination against those who do not speak the Kazakh language or are less than fully fluent in Kazakh. Such policies are primarily aimed at dividing the working class and diverting from intense class tensions in the impoverished country, as well as minimizing Russia’s political influence in the region. They have had a particularly discriminatory effect against ethnic minorities.

The 15 years have seen several instances of inter-ethnic clashes in Kazakhstan. This includes the October 20, 2006, mass fighting that took place among Kazakh and Turkish workers at the Tengiz oil and gas field. According to media sources based outside Kazakhstan, more than 1,000 people took part in the fighting and over 40 were killed. In March 2007, in the Almaty Region, a conflict between Kazakhs and Chechens led to the deaths of nine people, seven of them Chechens. In 2015, the stabbing of a Kazakh man by a Tajik man resulted in a rampage in a predominantly Tajik village.

Tens of thousands of UK university staff begin 14 days of strikes

Simon Whelan & Robert Stevens

Up to 50,000 lecturers, technicians and library staff are beginning 14 days of strikes nationally, with a two-day stoppage Thursday and Friday. The strikes are the largest ever in the UK, with staff walking out at 74 universities.

A series of rolling actions over the next three weeks will culminate in a week-long strike beginning March 9.

University workers are opposing increased workloads, casualization and pay restrictions. They are resisting demands from employers that they increase their pension contributions.

The strike was called after the University and College Union (UCU) failed to reach agreement following months of talks with the employers’ organisations—Universities UK (UUK) and Universities and Colleges Employers Association (UCEA). UUK represents universities over pensions and UCEA represents them in the pay and conditions dispute.

A ballot of UCU members exceeded the 50 percent turnout to reach the legal threshold. Eighty percent of voting members backed strikes over pensions, while 76 percent voted for strike action over pay and conditions.

The strikes show the determination of university workers to oppose the destruction of their pensions, pay, terms and conditions. The industrial action is the second this academic year, following an eight-day stoppage by staff at 63 institutions last November/December. In 2018, UCU members held a 14-day national strike against pension cuts at 64 institutions involving 50,000 lecturers and other university staff.

Reflecting the growing resolve of university employees to fight, 14 more universities passed the 50 percent turnout threshold required for industrial action than in November. Workers at the 24 major public research Russell Group universities, the ex-polytechnics (the post-1992 universities) and at distance learning institutions, including the Open University, voted to strike.

The UCU said around a million students were affected during the strike last November. With 14 additional institutions, that number is set to leap by another 200,000.

From the moment the UCU leadership announced the strikes, up until the last minute on Wednesday, they were pleading with the employers to make an offer to avoid strike action. As it became clear that management were refusing to make any concessions, the UCU put out a statement Wednesday declaring, “Blame for strikes lays squarely at door of university heads.”

University workers want the institutions to cover the cost of pension contribution rises that have been imposed on academic and other staff over the past year. After the refusal of the UCU to fight previous management attacks on pensions, staff now pay 9.6 percent of salary into their pension plan (up from eight percent in 2019). A typical university lecturer is paying about £30 a month more for the same retirement benefits.

Just ahead of the strike, UUK announced that 84 percent of 111 employers who responded to a consultation did not want to make a new offer to the union. A survey by UUK of its institutions found that four employers wanted to offer only an additional 0.5 percent in employer contributions, while 14 employers wanted to offer between 0.6 and one percent. Just two employers were willing to offer more than one percent.

Since 2009, the pay of staff has dropped by around 21 percent in real terms.

The UCEA made a new offer in late January, which UCU General Secretary Jo Grady described as “a big step forward” though still falling short of the UCU’s demands. University employers aim to set sector-wide “expectations” around the use of casual contracts, gender and ethnicity pay gaps and workloads. But the proposals did not include any movement on a pay offer of just 1.8 percent.

The UCU Left faction—comprising members of a number of pseudo-left groups and dominated by the Socialist Workers Party (SWP)—describe the struggle by university workers as the “Four Fights” dispute because they claim four issues are at stake: casualisation, equality, pay and workload. They barely mention the fight to oppose the destruction of pension rights. In a statement last week, the UCU Left gave the 2018 dispute a one sentence mention, while declaring, “The USS dispute must be fought now because the future of the pension scheme is in the balance. Unless we fight to put it on a sustainable basis, it may not survive.”

The UCU Left betray their nervousness over the issue of pensions because it is such a sore point in the aftermath of the betrayal of the 2018 strike.

University workers face a concerted offensive on their pensions, pay and conditions because the UCU bureaucracy caved in and ended what was then the largest strike ever in higher education institutions. Even after staff voted to reject the cuts planned by the employers—including organizing a nationwide rebellion against the UCU leadership trying to enforce a sellout deal—the union bureaucracy, with the assistance of the UCU Left, finally pushed through a deal which led to huge cuts in pension provision after retirement.

By 2019, after eight years of attacks on their pension scheme, a typical USS member was being asked to pay £40,000 more into their pensions but will receive almost £200,000 less in retirement—leaving them £240,000 worse off in total.

The UCU Left never tires of promoting the UCU and calling on university workers to join it. But the UCU has never called all its 120,000 members out in a unified all-out stoppage and refuses to unite higher education staff with its substantial membership in the further education sector, who face the same onslaught on their pay, terms and conditions.

The 14-day action is deliberately fragmented, with UCU members at some institutions striking over both disputes, while at other universities workers are striking on the basis of just pay and working conditions, and others just rising pension costs.

The role of the UCU and its pseudo-left backers in dissipating every struggle was seen last November when the strikes were limited to eight days, resulting in the national stoppage abruptly ending on December 4. This was to ensure that the strike did not clash with a December 12 general election that Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn wanted to win based on his demobilizing any struggle by the working class.

Had the Communications Workers Union defied the High Court’s move to rule a strike ballot of postal workers illegal, November’s higher education strike would have taken place at the same time as action by more than 100,000 postal workers. This would have represented a powerful movement against the employers and Boris Johnson’s Conservative government, who are determined to tear up all gains won by workers in decades of struggle.

UCU members must draw the lessons from their recent experiences at the hands of the UCU. The unions do not function as organisations that defend the interests of their members, but act to enforce the diktats of management.

Workers should wrest the struggle from the suffocating confines of the unions and establish rank-and-file committees that operate independently of the bureaucratic apparatus. They must actively seek and appeal for support from all sectors of workers in the education sector and unify the struggles of educators and students throughout the UK against the rapacious demands of the universities.