Cmore: South Africa’s New Smart Policing Surveillance Engine

Michael Kwet

“Ever watched a crime drama or spy film…where a team of technicians are sitting in a darkened room full of big, fancy monitors that enable them to constantly track and follow a Jason Bourne-like assailant with great precision, in real-time, while being in constant communication with a team of operatives and controlling traffic lights and surveillance cameras seemingly at will?  That is the kind of advanced shared situational awareness that the Cmore system can enable.”

These are the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research’s (CSIR) words to describe Cmore, South Africa’s high-tech domestic surveillance system.  A “platform for shared awareness”, Cmore covers vast geographic expanses, enabling real-time surveillance and analytics of “entities” of interest and “incidents” such as service delivery protests.

Cmore: Watching over South Africa

Post-apartheid South Africa looks increasingly unstable.  It is among the most unequal countries on earth – a situation which worsened within races since the transition to formal democracy in 1994.  The poor majority continues to face conditions of extreme poverty as neoliberalism ensures wealth remains in the hands of a few.  In the past decade, public protest rates are at record strike levels by global standards, while a new progressive student social justice is taking the country by storm.  In 2015 and 2016, #FeesMustFall protesters shut down the national university system and colleges in a unified struggle for free education, decolonization of curriculum, worker rights and sexual justice, among other issues.  It is the most powerful student movement since the 1976 Soweto uprisings.

In parallel, computer and military technology has undergone rapid development.  The digital revolution is offering powerful new tools shaping the conduct of human affairs, with dominant influence from the US military and its frequent ally, Silicon Valley.

Within this cauldron of affairs, the CSIR – Africa’s largest R&D organization – developed Cmore.  Mimicking the West, Cmore is a “comprehensive portal” integrating internal and external data sources to conduct surveillance, defence and policing operations.  Internal “forces in the field” – say, patrol units – use the Cmore Mobile app on mobile devices for movement coordination, real-time feedback and communications within the surveillance network.  External sources feed data to Cmore through sensors like “Public Webcams”, “Image/Video” resources and unmanned aerial surveillance drones (UAVs).

The software system consolidates information from different sources to watch over South African spaces.  Using a centralized server, Cmore can coordinate geo-spatial planning and perform predictive analytics as a function of “modern security” to allegedly prevent “future crimes”.

South African authorities now “Cmore” of maritime waters and national parks – the central focus of its initial development.

But Cmore also targets border areas to police immigration, a cause for concern given South Africa’s anti-immigrant troubles.  More controversially, these new Jason Bourne-like surveillance systems enlist participation from the South African Police Service (SAPS).

SAPS and CSIR – Partners in crime

In February 2014, the CSIR and SAPS signed a memorandum of understanding “aimed at improving the country’s safety and security”.  At the time, soon-to-be suspended police commissioner Riah Phiyega hailed it a “critical milestone in the journey of transforming the SAPS”, with CSIR tech offering “smart technology, smart planning, and ultimately ‘smart policing’”.  The agreement seeks co-operation with “other players in the national security sphere”.

Over the course of development, the CSIR began thinking about using Cmore “for police”, a key developer, Priaash Ramadeen said.  Details and slides in Ramadeen’s CSIR presentation showcase Cmore’s tools for policing categories frequently pursued by the SAPS in the streets, such as theft, illicit drugs and public protest.

Experiments involving the SAPS include “crowd-control concept demonstrations”.  More than 77 organisations have registered with Cmore.

The CSIR-SAPS partnership, as well as Cmore’s surveillance system, received scant attention from the media, academia and NGOs.  Much like United States police forces, the SAPS releases little detail about many policing practices.

With little press or public transparency, South Africa has so far been spared of controversy surrounding the smart policing revolution it is in fact deploying.  CSIR’s surveillance technology aims to “improve police management in…crowd and riot control”, integrate intelligence, enhance command and control and use unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) as an “eye in the sky” for “unrest situations” and “illegal border crossings”.  Facial recognition CCTV cameras on the streets, UAV surveillance and vast data collections used for predictive policing are a growing part of South Africa’s “defence and safety” arsenal.

Controversy in the making?

The smart policing revolution has come under fire by civil rights and liberties organizations – especially in the United States.  #BlackLivesMatter and civil libertarians have drawn attention to studies finding de facto racism in predictive policing software, as well as a concentration of surveillance equipment targeting poor black neighborhoods.

#FeesMustFall students are being monitored by police intelligence.  In 2016, CCTV cameras sprouted like mushrooms at Rhodes University – while management is withholding details.  Society now faces controversial high-tech surveillance in public spaces.

How much longer until South Africans discover smart policing?

Searching for Peace in a Troubled World

Graham Peebles

Throughout his Christmas message and in keeping with the hymn of the time, Pope Francis repeatedly called for Peace in our World. “Not merely the word, but a real and concrete peace” brought about by changing those attitudes, patterns of behavior and socio-economic systems that bring about conflict. Peace not simply in relationship to armed conflict, but peace for all people in a range of situations.

“Peace to our abandoned and excluded brothers and sisters, to those who suffer hunger and to all the victims of violence. Peace to exiles, migrants and refugees, to all those who in our day are subject to human trafficking. Peace to the peoples who suffer because of the economic ambitions of the few…. [and] peace to those affected by social and economic unrest.”

Ending War

If we are to find answers to the many crises facing humanity, we must first end conflict and establish peace, – within ourselves, our communities, between groups and nations. It sounds like a platitude but it’s the simple and urgent truth – we must learn to live peacefully together.

Since the ‘Cold War’ ended in 1989 violent conflict had been decreasing, but according to the Global Peace Index (measures: ‘the level of safety and security in society; extent of domestic or international conflict; and the degree of militarization’), in 2016 this trend was reversed, albeit marginally.

Terrorism, they found, is at an all time high, battle deaths are at a 25-year high, and the number of displaced people is greater than it’s been for sixty years. The ‘impact of terrorism and political instability’ measure was the area with the most severe levels of deterioration: Deaths from terrorism increased by 80% compared to 2015, with 94 of the 163 countries surveyed recording at least one terrorist incident, and 11 countries suffering over 500 deaths, compared with five the previous year.

In addition to the heightened terrorist threat, of significant concern is the US military build up in the South Asia Sea, where China is being encircled (see, ‘The Coming War On China’ by John Pilger). As well as the concentration of NATO forces in Eastern Europe, where Russia is being contained – or threatened depending on your point of view. Whilst American and allied nations paint China and Russia as the aggressors, such US sabre rattling is provocative and increases, rather than defuses tensions.

The Roots of Conflict

So in the midst of a world in turmoil and transition, what do we need to do to create peace? What are the causes of conflict and the obstacles to peace? In order to approach these questions it is essential to understand the relationship between society, in all its forms, and the individuals that make up society.

Is society and all that takes place within it, something separate from us, or, as the great Indian philosopher J. Krishnamurti repeatedly said, we are the world and the world is us; “our problems are the world’s problems.” It is a statement of fact that in many ways is self-evident; there is violence and intolerance within society e.g., because we ourselves are violent and intolerant.

Any change within the world is therefore dependent upon there being a change within us; “to put an end to outward war, you must begin to put an end to war in yourself.” One follows, and flows from the other.

Recognizing the inter-relationship of the individual and society opens up other enquiries, chief amongst them what we might term agitation, or elicitation.

A multitude of qualities and tendencies rest within all human beings – some good, some not so good, and whilst we accept the logic of Krishnamurti’s assertion, it must also be true that the nature of the society within which people are living, its values, beliefs and methods, encourage certain attitudes and types of behavior. Therefore the ‘question of peace’, and how it can be realized, needs to be approached both from the perspective of the individual and his/her role and responsibility in bringing it about, and from an understanding of the collective atmosphere within which we are living, and how one impacts on the other.

Injustice and tension

We live within a world fashioned by certain structural constraints, political, economic and social systems (including religious), ideologically rooted, promoting certain values. Ideals, many of which, feed selfish attitudes of ambition, and self-aggrandizement that in turn strengthen divisions and engender separation. And is peace possible in a world where such attitudes are encouraged?

These systems have been designed in an attempt to order society, to exert and maintain control, and, so the models proponents maintain, to establish practical methods of meeting humanity’s needs. These needs are universal: Food and water, shelter, clothing, health care and education, all of which are decreed to be, not simply needs, but rights – Human Rights, and are enshrined as such (articles 25 and 26 UDHR). But, much like peace, these dedicated ‘Rights’ remain little more than pretty words upon a dusty page of exploitation and apathy.

In every country in the world such Rights are dependent upon the size of a person’s bank account. If you happen to be born into a poor family in a either developed or developing country, and/or are part of a ‘minority’ group, your rights will be denied or restricted; if fate decrees you live in Sub-Saharan Africa or rural India e.g., the chances are food will be scarce, housing basic, health care and education poor or non-existent. In contrast, if you are born into an affluent family, why the world and all that is in it, is yours. The wealthy live in complacent bubbles, and have little or no idea or indeed interest in how the majority of people exist.

The prevailing economic system has allowed for the concentration of wealth and with it political power, into the hands of a hideously wealthy elite, whilst condemning billions to lives of poverty and suffering. Income and wealth inequality is greater than it has ever been, a recent report by Oxfam revealed that “ the world’s eight richest billionaires control the same wealth between them as the poorest half of the globe’s population [3.6 billion people].” Can there possibly be peace in a world where such inequality exists?

This division of men, women and children based on money, privilege and social standing is totally unjust. There seems to be an assumption amongst the privileged that those living in the developed nations are entitled to be as greedy, selfish, rich and powerful as they like, whilst billions live in crushing poverty. Such inherent injustice is a cause of tension, resentment and conflict – all of which run contrary to the cultivation of peace.

These feelings of hostility have been suppressed for years, for generations, but are now beginning to surface as anger and frustration directed towards systemic injustice, and governments that have constructed policies for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many.

Neo-liberalism is the inherently unjust and blind system – devoid of compassion. It promotes the decrepit idea that some are more deserving than others; some are entitled to live lives of excess whilst hundreds of millions literally have nothing. It pollutes democracy and relies on voracious consumption, which is poisoning the planet, for its survival.

Social injustice promotes separation and works in opposition to humanity’s underlying unity. It is one of the principle causes of conflict, and if we are to inculcate peace it is a poison that must be driven out of our world. This means we need to design new, just systems, which work for everyone; economic and political models that hold as their principle aim the goal of meeting the needs – addressing the Rights, of every human being.

To achieve this requires nothing more than the principle of sharing being firmly planted at the heart of human affairs; sharing of the world resources, including food and water, as well as the skills, knowledge and technologies, amongst the people of the world – based on need. Making sharing the guiding ideal of systemic change will allow trust to flower, and where there is trust peace becomes possible.

Change of Heart

In order for sharing, along with cooperation, tolerance and understanding, to fashion the political, economic and social systems and thereby create the conditions in which peace becomes possible, a major change in attitudes is required. A shift in consciousness that allows social responsibility and a new imagination to flower, because as Krishnamurti states, “to bring about peace in the world, to stop all wars, there must be a revolution in the individual, in you and me.”

A revolt against ingrained, selfish ways of thinking and acting is needed to bring about such a movement, and fundamental to such a change is the recognition that humanity is one.

We are brothers and sisters of one humanity, and when this underlying unity is sensed the focus on the individual self, with its various self-centered constructs, begins to fade. Harmlessness and responsibility for the group, which is humanity, is fostered, allowing peace within to grow. As the Dalai-Lama states, “what leads to inner peace is cultivating a compassionate heart.”

New systems that take the fear and uncertainty out of life, and unite people instead of dividing, will aid such a shift, but as Krishnamurti made plain, an economic revolution, “without this inward revolution is meaningless,” and would probably not take place. “For hunger is the result of the maladjustment of economic conditions produced by our psychological states: greed, envy, ill-will and possessiveness.”

An ‘inward revolution’ that recognizes our essential unity, dissipates selfishness and allows for peace of mind to quietly settle, will lead to a revolution in how life is organized, and will quite naturally lead to peaceful relationships within individuals, amongst communities and between nations.

The New Censorship Wars Begin: Porn, Sex Trafficking & Backpage

David Rosen

On January 10, 2016, the U.S. Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations released a 50-page report (along with an 800-page appendix) on Backpage.com.  The report accused the website of concealing evidence of criminal activity by systematically editing its “adult” ads to remove terms that facilitated sex trafficking of underage youths and children.

Sex trafficking involves the exploitation of females and (less often) males for commercial sexual purposes.  Sadly, many victims of such trafficking are underage young people, including children.  Such trafficking is a form of pedophilia, both illegal and immoral, a violation of consent, often involving rape and child porn.

In October 2015, Backpage management refused a Senate subpoena and held in contempt of Congress, the first time it had done so since 1995.  The report culminated an 18-month investigation claiming Backpage hid sex trafficking operations of underage girls behind terms like “lolita,” “teenage,” “rape,” “young,” “amber alert,” “little girl,” “teen,” “fresh,” “innocent” and “school girl.”  It insisted that the website engaged in criminal activity to conceal sex trafficking operations by removing these key words from 70 to 80 percent of the ads.

Backpage is one of the leading worldwide online companies promoting commercial sex, operating in 97 countries and 943 locations; it is reported worth more than a half-billion dollars.  Drawing upon data from a variety of federal agencies, including the Justice Department-funded National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), the study asserts that the website is involved in three-fourths (73%) of all child trafficking reports.

Based on the Senate report, it appears that Backpage’s management knowingly facilitated the sex trafficking of underage (mostly female) young people.  As such, the company’s management may face federal and state prosecution.  The new Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, might well pick-up on the Senate’s investigation to initiate one of the first anti-sex campaigns of the Trump administration’s renewed culture wars.

The Senate document, as could be expected, is a remarkably flawed analysis.  Most revealing, the report does not include an estimate of the total number of underage people in the U.S. subject to sex trafficking.  It fails to acknowledge the latest 2015 analysis from the U.S. Congressional Research Service that notes: “The exact number of child victims of sex trafficking in the United States is unknown because comprehensive research and scientific data are lacking.”

Equally troubling, the report lacks an analysis of America’s 21^stcentury sexual culture, let alone an acknowledgment that, over the last half-century, sex in the U.S. has become a $50 billion industry.   These weaknesses are likely to ensure that the report ends up lost on a shelf somewhere or floats unread on a website filing cabinet.  Without contextualizing child sex trafficking within terms of the larger changes remaking American sexual culture it will be impossible to end it.

The report was released by a Republican-controlled Senate subcommittee only days before Donald Trump was to inaugurated president.  Its release begs the question as to whether there is a relationship – real or symbolic – between Backpage’s sex trafficking of underage females and the ascendency of the nation’s first hedonistic commander-and-chief?  Will a possible prosecution of Backpage signify the limits of porn and prostitution during the reign of America’s 45^th president?

Trump’s sexual practice are, like his tax returns, a mystery.  Analogous to his “vast” business operations, Trump’s sexual proclivities seem equally vast.

Summer Zervos, a former contestant on “The Apprentice,” is the latest of some two-dozen women who have publicly declared that they had been groped or otherwise sexually assaulted by the nation’s 45^thpresident.

The Russian secret service likely hacked the DNC website and – equally likely – is the clandestine report that “the Don” engaged in a water-sports gala with a couple of Moscow’s finest sexual performance artists.  And why not?  Who knows how far a once oh-so hip, adventurous Club-54 type macho guy pushed the boundaries of sexual pleasure?  Hey, with a hit of coke, why not hookers galore, s&m play, homo-eroticism (but always as the top) or sex with an reputed “underage” female?  Other a-moral hedonist with total power – like John Kennedy and Bill Clinton – have preceded Trump to the Oval Office so why should anyone expect less from him.

***

Siting NCMEC data, the Senate report claims that 4.5 million people are trapped in “sexual exploitation” worldwide and in the U.S. “over eight in ten suspected incidents of human trafficking involve sex trafficking.”  Going further, “NCMEC reported an 846% increase from 2010 to 2015 in reports of suspected child sex trafficking—an increase the organization has found to be ‘directly correlated to the increased use of the Internet to sell children for sex.’”  In most media reports siting this study, the intentionally-misleading term “suspected” does not appear.

As the truism goes, prostitution is the oldest profession … and hookers of all ages in the New World date from the earliest Dutch settlement.  New Amsterdam’s first madam is reputed to be Griet or Grietje (“Little Pearl”) Reyniers, a lively bawd or doxie.  In 1668, when taunted by seamen on a departing sloop with the cry, “Whore! Whore! Two pound butter’s whore!”  She allegedly lifted her petticoat, pointed to her naked backside and replied: “Blaes my daer achterin.”  Repeatedly assailed by respectable citizens, she thumbed her nose at them, insisting, “I have long been the whore of the nobility, now I want to be the rabble’s.”

A quarter-century later, Lord Cornbury (Edward Hyde), Britain’s captain-general and governor-in-chief of New York and New Jersey between 1701 and 1708, was arrested by New York police for prostitution, soliciting soldiers along the waterfront.  In is reputed that he opened the New York General Assembly of 1702 in an exquisite formal gown in the Queen Anne style—a hooped gown with an elaborate headdress and carrying a fan.

America has been a battleground over commercial sex, along with other forms of unacceptable forms of sexual expression and experience, since before the nation’s founding.  Today, however, premarital sex is engaged in by two-thirds of American women and teen girls; between 1964 and 1993, the high-point of the culture wars, the teen birth rate fell 61 percent, to 24.2 births for every 1,000 adolescent females from 61.8 births.

The 21^st century sex culture seeks to fulfill the separate goals of both procreation and pleasure.  Most consequential, what was once considered “immoral” or a “perversion” has been normalized.  The Supreme Court legalized homosexual marriage and while commercial sex is legal in only a handful of rural Nevada localities, it is estimated to be an $18 billion business.  Pornography, driven by easy Internet access and DIY amateur content is estimated to be a $10-$14 billion business.

One consequence of the “mainstreaming” of sex is that sexual values have shifted from a moral issue, “sin,” to a legal concern, “consent,” be it private or public.  Formerly forbidden sex practices – e.g., oral sex, homosexuality, s&m — have been “normalized,” integrated into acceptable sexual life.  (Sex toys, now rebranded “sexual wellness products,” is estimated to be a $15 billion business.  Today’s only true sex crime is the violation of consent, whether involving rape, pedophilia, child porn, sex trafficking, intimate partner violence, knowingly infecting someone with HIV/STD or lust murder.

***

Backpage’s CEO, Carl Ferrer, appeared before the Senate investigative committee in response to a subpoena.  He refused to address any specific questions, claiming both a First Amendment media free speech right as well as his Fifth Amendment right against self-incriminating.

Backpage uses Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) to contest both federal and state (e.g. CA and NJ) “censorship” efforts.  The Act was originally passed in 1996 to regulate the distribution of obscene or indecent material to children via the Internet.  However, the following year the Supreme Court ruled, in Reno v. ACLU, the Act unconstitutional and, in 2003, Congress amended the CDA to remove the indecency provisions struck down by Reno.

Section 230 states: “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.”  It protects online publisher from all liability, civil and criminal, except liability under federal criminal and intellectual-property laws.

A day before the Senate released its report, the Supreme Court refused to hear a case brought by three Massachusetts and Rhode Island victims of forced prostitution and who accused Backpage of sex trafficking.  The Court backed a Boston lower court ruling that the CDA protects the website from being held liable for content its users publish on the sites.

Government entities — federal, state and local – have long conducted wars against unacceptable form of sexual expression and experience.  Since the nation’s founding, religious zealots, along with well-intentioned secular moralists, battled ever-increasing forms of illicit expression, censoring unacceptable media sexual representations and arresting legions of sex workers.  Over these centuries, books, magazines and comic books have been burned; drawings, pictures, post cards, photos, films/videos and websites have been suppressed; and birth-control information and devices – as well abortion procedures – have been criminalized.  Over the last century, numerous Supreme Court decisions have halted the suppression of “obscene” materials.

Often forgotten, for a brief period before World War I, many cities and town across the country enacted “Red Light Abatement laws” to regulated commercial sex.  While New Orleans’ Storyville, San Francisco’s Barbary Coast and New York’s Tenderloin were the most notorious of the dozens of “red-light districts” that flourished, others operated in Sioux City (IO), Eau Claire (WS), Waco (TX) and East Grand Forks (MN).  The Christian right was incensed by this effort not simply to regulate prostitution, but to maintain the health of sex workers and stop the spread of venereal disease to their clients.  In reaction, it mobilized a campaign to not simply suppress local districts, but to pass in 1910 the White-Slave Traffic Act (i.e., the Mann Act), a federal law ostensibly intended to halt interstate commercial sex; the first major victim of the Act was Jack Johnson, the first African-American heavyweight boxing champion.

Newly-inaugurated Pres. Donald Trump quickly signed an executive order reinstating the global ban on overseas discussion of abortion by individuals and organizations receiving federal funding.  He has insisted that one of his first actions will be to appoint a conservative to the Supreme Court.  The Backpage controversy may lead the Republican-controlled Congress to either remove or tighten CDA Section 230, thus increasing the possibility of a federal prosecution of Ferrer and an attempt to shut down the website.  Well-intentioned liberals like attorney David Boise and NYC deputy mayor Carol Robles-Román have joined the campaign. A truly conservative Court could go along with such an effort, initiating a new era of censorship.

Not unlike the strategy of throwing out the baby with the bathwater adopted by the Christian right a century ago, the new Trump administration, Republican Congress and a conservative Court may well impose greater restrictions of online speech and voluntary adult commercial sex.  This will likely drive child sex trafficking further underground.  Failure to isolate this illegal and immoral practice will only make it harder to prevent and put more child victims at risk.

One of the few groups to oppose the repressive spirit of the Senate investigation – and Backpage! – is the San Francisco-based, Erotic Service Providers Legal Education Research Project (ESPLERP).  The question remains why more “progressives” have not considered the issue?

The Long War: Turkey’s Difficult Struggle Against ISIS in Syria

Patrick Cockburn

The Turkish army is suffering unexpectedly serious losses in men and equipment as it engages in its first real battle against Isis fighters holding al-Bab, a small but strategically placed city north east of Aleppo. Turkish military commanders had hoped to capture al-Bab quickly when their forces attacked it in December, but they are failing to break through Isis defences.

At least 47 Turkish soldiers have killed and eleven tanks disabled or destroyed according to the Turkish military expert Metin Gurcan writing in al-Monitor. Isis have posted a video showing a Turkish tank being destroyed, apparently by an anti-tank rocket and Isis fighters looking at the wreckage of other armoured vehicles.

The Turkish military intervention in northern Syria, known as Operation Euphrates Shield, which began on 24 August last year has also led to heavy civilian casualties. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, citing local witnesses, says that 352 civilians including 77 children and 48 women have been killed by Turkish artillery bombardments and air strikes over the last five months. Drone footage taken by Isis shows that the buildings in al-Bab, that once had a population of 100,000, have been devastated.

Turkey had intended to make a limited military foray into the territory between the Turkish frontier and Aleppo city 40 miles further south which would make it a serious player in the Syrian conflict. It would drive Isis from its last big stronghold in northern Syria at al-Bab and, above all, prevent the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) from linking up their enclaves at Kobani and Qamishli with one at Afrin, north west of Aleppo.

The strategy has proven far more costly and slower to implement in the face of determined and skilful Isis resistance than Ankara had foreseen. It wanted primarily to rely on Arab and Turkman militiamen under Turkish operational control, though these would be nominally part of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) umbrella group. These proxies would be backed up by Turkish artillery, air strikes and a limited number of Turkish ground troops.

The plan seemed to work in the beginning as the Turkish forces took over the Isis-held town of Jarablus, where the Euphrates River crosses the Turkish border. But swift success here came because Isis did not fight, its men retreating or shaving off their beards and melting into the local population. But when the Turkish-backed FSA advance failed to break through Isis lines in and around al-Bab, Turkey had to reinforce them with its own units which now do the bulk of the fighting.

Turkish leaders blamed their problems partly on the US which has failed to make more than a few air strikes in support of the al-Bab offensive. The US does not want to aid militarily a Turkish intervention aimed primarily at the YPG, who have proved the most effective US ally against Isis in Syria. The YPG has at least 25,000 battle-tested ground troops who are backed up by the massive firepower of the US-led air coalition. Ankara is hoping that the new Trump administration will be less cooperative with the Kurds and more so with Turkey.

Isis is using an effective cocktail of tactics similar to those which it employed to slow down the offensive of the Iraqi security forces in east Mosul which took them three months to capture. These tactics include frequent use of suicide bombers driving vehicles packed with explosives (VBIEDs),often especially armoured in Isis workshops so they are difficult to stop.

“Isis uses VBIEDs to disrupt its enemies’ field planning, organisation and morale,” says Mr Gurcan. “With tunnels, Isis maintains mobility, despite air attacks.” As in Mosul, Isis is able to move small mobile units containing snipers, specialists using ant-tank missiles and suicide bombers from house to house without exposing them to superior enemy fire power. The Turkish forces have been unable to encircle al-Bab and cut the main supply route to Raqqa, the de facto capital of Isis in Syria.

Turkey benefited at this week’s peace talks in Astana in Kazakhstan from being one of three foreign powers – the others being Russia and Iran – with ground troops in Syria. It had previously provided crucial aid, sanctuary and a near open border to the Syrian armed opposition. Reinforced by a diplomatic marriages of convenience with both Russia and Iran, Turkey has acquired significant influence over the outcome of the six-year long war in Syria. But the slow military progress at al-Bab shows Turkey’s growing military engagement in Syria is coming at a price – even in its initial phases.

The fighting in and around al-Bab underlines an important weakness of the plans announced at Astana to bolster the current shaky Syrian ceasefire announced on 30 December. The two most powerful rebel military movements, Isis and Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, formerly al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s branch in Syria, are not included in the ceasefire and have no reason to abide by its terms. On the contrary, Nusra has launched an offensive in west Aleppo province to eliminate rebel groups sympathetic to peace talks and a ceasefire.

Significantly, Isis is showing that, despite claims by the Iraqi and Syrian governments that it is facing imminent defeat, it is still capable of fighting on multiple fronts. It holds west Mosul in Iraq with a population of 750,000, recaptured Palmyra in Syria in mid-December and has repeatedly attacked the Syrian government enclave in the provincial capital of Deir Ezzor over the last ten days. The Russian air force was compelled to launch intense air strikes to help the Syrian army hold the city.

The British Government Colludes with Monsanto

Colin Todhunter

“The British Government has colluded with Monsanto and should be held accountable in the International Criminal Court in The Hague for crimes against humanity and ecocide.”- Dr Rosemary Mason.

The British public and the environment are being poisoned with a deadly cocktail of 320 pesticides. Moreover, Wales has become a storage dump for Monsanto’s most toxic chemicals. These are the messages conveyed by Dr Rosemary Mason in her recent open letter to Councillor Rob Stewart, the leader of Swansea City and County Council.

Dr Mason adds that Swansea has over the years been a testing ground for glyphosate with the outcome being a huge spike in illness and disease among the local population as well as ongoing environmental devastation. There has been a long-term reckless use of a glyphosate-based weedkiller in Swansea, regardless of EU recommendations.

Dr Henk Tennekes, an independent toxicologist from the Netherlands, and Dr Pierre Mineau, an expert on ecotoxicology from Canada, both prophesied environmental catastrophe from the self-regulated and unsustainable use of pesticides by the agrochemical industry.

In Tennekes’ book, ‘The Systemic Insecticides: a disaster in the making’, he showed that these chemicals act on the brains of insects (and humans). He showed that collapse of bee colonies, the loss of other invertebrates and bird declines in Europe are associated with chronic low levels of these chemicals. Dr Pierre Mineau wrote a Report for the American Bird Conservancy ‘Neonicotinoids and Birds’ in which he accused the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of collusion with the agrochemical industry and negligence.

Mason has written to the relevant UK authorities about these issues and the situation in Wales, but the UK Environment Agency has refused to act.

Monsanto using Wales as a toxic dump

Monsanto established a factory in Newport in 1949, and Mason notes that the company paid a contractor to illegally dump chemical waste in Brofiscin Quarry, Grosfaen. These included polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), the defoliant Agent Orange and dioxins used in the Vietnam War. When PCBs were banned in the US, the UK government agreed to ramp up production in a Monsanto-owned factory in Wales in 1971. They were manufactured until 1977. Toxic dumps were established at seven quarries around Wales.

Brofiscin Quarry in Grosfaen, near Cardiff, is one of the most contaminated places in Britain. In 2003, the lining of the quarry burst and the orange contents drained into west Cardiff. According to engineering company WS Atkins, the site contains at least 67 toxic chemicals. The Environment Agency claimed: “they offered no identifiable harm or immediate danger to human health.”

Citing a study by WWF-UK in 2003, Mason shows that residues of PCBs and other organochlorines were found in 75 adipose tissue samples taken from human cadavers throughout 1990 and early 1991 from Welsh populations. The researchers found: “little changes in the concentrations of these compounds in the Welsh population over the last decade, despite reduction in their use that came into force in the 1970s.”

Mason states that children in Wales have low scores in the PISA tests, a measure of reading, maths and science ability in 15 year olds, and low educational achievement in primary schools.

She also notes that organophosphate pesticides have supposedly been banned but are now used on salmon lice in fish farms: from 2006-2016 the salmon produced by fish farms has increased by 35%, but the use of OPs increased by 932%.

Theresa May promoting the great agrochemicals-pharmaceuticals scam

Glyphosate contamination of food is associated with an epidemic of diseases: in 2012, the area treated by glyphosate in the UK was 1,750,000 ha and by 2014 it had increased to 2,250,000 ha. Glyphosate (captures) and washes out the following minerals: boron, calcium, cobalt, copper, iron, potassium, magnesium, manganese, nickel and zinc.

Hypercholesterolaemia caused by glyphosate is now treated by statins.

The enzyme aromatase is activated by glyphosate and atrazine. Aromatase inhibitors are used to treat breast cancer and prostate cancer.

Mason says that the UK prides itself in being ‘in the forefront of new technologies’ that its companies can sell privately to the rich or to other countries: many are drugs to treat the toxic effects of pesticides. These include treatment for infertility, gene therapy, new treatments for cancer, Alzheimer’s and diabetes and drugs to boost immunity.

Theresa May was very upbeat about Brexit: she said Britain had many things to sell to the world including chemicals, pharmaceuticals and medical expertise.

Cover-ups, deceptions and the dodging regulation  

The industry has worked overtime to cover-up its crimes, to try and discredit those who challenge its products and practices and to put a positive spin on what it does. Mason discusses the Seralini affair and how a massive PR campaign sprang into operation to try to discredit the study and pressurize the editor of the journal that published it to retract it. The UK-based Science Media Centre (SMC) was in the forefront of the attacks. The SMC defends and promotes GM technology and is 70% funded by corporations, including Monsanto and other big GMO developer firms.

The SMC’s director was subsequently reported as saying that she took pride in the fact that the SMC’s “emphatic thumbs down” on the study “had largely been acknowledged throughout UK newsrooms.” Bruce M. Chassy, professor emeritus of food science at the University of Illinois provided scathing quotes about the study.

Yes, that Bruse Chassey: the one later exposed as having received a grant from Monsanto of more than $57,000 in less than two years.

Mason says that in Wales there are cancer/disease hotspots in the surrounding villages where Roundup has been sprayed: for example, brain tumours (mostly glioblastomas), cancers of the breast, ovary, prostate, lung (more than half of which were in non-smokers), oesophagus, colon, pancreas, rectum, and kidney as well as non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL), uterine carcinoma, leiomyosarcoma of the uterus, multiple myeloma, Parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis, motor-neurone disease and Alzheimer’s/Dementia.  Many of the cancers are aggressive and unusual; they resemble the cancers that were seen in factory workers in the pesticides industry in the 1960s.

And yet a global biocide industry has emerged to advise on dodging regulations. It is controlled by the pesticides industry and is based in the UK making lots of money for Britain.

Mason cites the example of Exponent Inc., which describes itself as “a research and scientific consultant firm with clients from industry (including crop protection) and government.” Exponent was employed by Bayer to criticise EFSA’s work on neonicotinoids and bees in 2013. It also contributed to a review by a Dow employee that concluded that “exposure to specific pesticides during critical periods of brain development and neurobehavioral outcomes is not compelling.” This review was supported by the various UK government agencies.

Glyphosate and the destruction of biodiversity

In her letter, Mason describes how Japanese knotweed Reynoutrie japonica was introduced to Europe in the mid-16 Century. For 500 years, it caused no problems. Glyphosate was introduced in 1974 and by 1981 both plants were classified in the Wildlife and Countryside Act as invasive species. Mason argues that Swansea has been a test-bed for Roundup and is known as the Japanese knotweed capital of Europe because recurrent spraying makes the plants grow bigger and stronger. It grows in in old mine workings where the soil is loose. So, the people most affected by Roundup are the poor.

She then highlights that in the US the first confirmed glyphosate-resistant weed, rigid ryegrass, was reported in 1998 within two years of Roundup Ready crops being grown. Super-weeds in the US in GM cropping systems are now a massive problem. Between 1996 and 2011, as a result of GM technology, 22 glyphosate-resistant super-weeds had developed.

In 2016, Charles Benbrook said:

“Since 1974 in the U.S., over 1.6 billion kilograms of glyphosate active ingredient have been applied, or 19 % of estimated global use of glyphosate (8.6 billion kilograms). Globally, glyphosate use has risen almost 15-fold since so-called “Roundup Ready,” genetically engineered glyphosate-tolerant crops were introduced in 1996. Two-thirds of the total volume of glyphosate applied in the U.S. from 1974 to 2014 has been sprayed in just the last 10 years.”

The 2016 UK State of Nature Report highlights the devastating loss of biodiversity in the UK.

What we are seeing a war on any plant (or creature) that is not part of the moncultured (increasingly genetically engineered) system of agriculture favoured by the agrichemicals/agritech cartel.

What can be done?

At the end of her letter, Rosemary Mason states:

“The people of Wales are sick and NHS Wales is in crisis. Human health depends on biodiversity and Wales has an environmental catastrophe caused by pesticides.”

The UK government is engaged in criminality by colluding with agrochemicals manufacturers that are knowingly poisoning people and the environment in the name of profit and greed. As Mason points out, communities, countries, ecosystems and species have become disposable inconveniences.

Corporate totalitarian tries to hide beneath an increasingly fragile facade of democracy.

The agrochemicals industry lobbies hard to have its products put on the market and ensures that they remain there. It uses PR firms and front groups to discredit individuals and studies which show the massive health and environmental devastation caused and gets its co-opted figures to sit on bodies to guarantee policies favourable to its interest are put in place. Mason has documented all of this in her numerous fully-referenced documents and has identified and named the culprits.

We have enough information to know that agrochemicals are killing us and exactly who (corporations, public bodies and individuals) is culpable.

Readers can consult all of Mason’s fully-referenced documents here.

The regulatory system surrounding agrochemicals is not broken and in need of a bit of tinkering to put things right. From bought-and-paid-for science and public relations that masquerades as journalism to policy implementation and the lack of regulation, the argohemicals industry wallows in a highly profitable cesspool of corruption. Money wields power and political influence.

We must restore the link between farmer and consumer and challenge the corporate hijack of the food system. As a global movement, Nyeleni has a radical agenda that is committed to challenging some of the issues that fuel the problems we are facing, including:

“Imperialism, neo-liberalism, neo-colonialism and patriarchy, and all systems that impoverish life, resources and eco-systems, and the agents that promote the above such as international financial institutions, the World Trade Organisation, free trade agreements, transnational corporations, and governments that are antagonistic to their peoples.”

The Nyeleni Europe website contains some valuable information.

The agrochemicals industry continues to get away with crimes against humanity and the environment. Not everyone can grow their own or afford to eat healthily all the time and no one can escape the pollution and destruction of the environment and the impacts. The aim must be to educate, organise, agitate and inform the wider public who are gradually waking up to the reality of a corrupt food system.

“The model of production dominating European food systems is controlled by corporate interests and is based on concentrated power, monocultures, patenting seeds and livestock breeds, imposing pesticides and fertilisers…. it is a system perpetuated by ineffective regulation and unjust laws. Across Europe we are developing and supporting local food systems, swapping local seeds, realising peasants’ rights, building the fertility of our soils, and strengthening and increasing the resilience of local production and food webs. We need to strengthen local food cultures and public policies that support links between producers and consumers… .” – Nyeleni Europe

The Paris Peace Conference: Signaling an End to a Western-dominated Era?

Ramzy Baroud

No, it was not just ‘another Middle East peace conference,’ as a columnist in Israeli ‘Jerusalem Post’ attempted to depict the Paris Peace Conference held on January 15, with top official representations from 70 countries attending. If it was, indeed, just ‘another peace conference’, representatives from the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority (PA) would have attended as well.

Instead, it was a defining moment that we are likely to remember: as the one that has officially ended the peace process charade after 25 years.

In fact, if the Madrid Conference of October 1991 was the vibrant official start of peace talks between Israel and its Arab – including Palestinian – neighbors, the Paris talks of January 2016 was the sad termination of it.

As soon as the Madrid talks began, the positive energy and expectations that accompanied them began to fade. Even before the talks began, Israel had set political traps and erected obstacles. For example, refusing to deal directly with the Palestinian negotiations team led by the late Haidar Abdul-Shafi (since, as far as Israel was concerned, Palestinians did not exist), and even protested that negotiator, Saeb Erekat, was wearing the traditional Palestinian headscarf (kufiyah).

It has been 25 years since that initial meeting. Since then, several of the original Palestinian delegation members have passed away; others have aged while talking about peace, but with no peace in sight. The then young Erekat became the ‘chief negotiator’ of the PA, again, yet with nothing to talk about.

What is really left to be negotiated, when Israel has doubled its illegal settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem? When the number of Jewish settlers have grown from a negligible 250,000 (in 1993) to over 600,000; when the rate of Palestinian loss of land has accelerated like never before, since the war and occupation of 1967; when Gaza has been under lock and key for over 10 years, suffering from war, polluted water and malnourishment?

Yet, the Americans have persisted. They needed the peace process. It is an American investment, first and foremost, because American reputation and leadership depended on it.

“We are joined at the hip with Israel,” said Professor John Mearsheimer, co-author of the ‘Israeli Lobby’ in a recent interview. “What Israel does and how Israel evolves matters greatly for America’s reputation.”

“This is why President Obama – and President George W. Bush before him, and President Clinton before him – went to great lengths to get a two-state solution.”

Precisely. They persisted and failed, and they failed again and again, until the two-state solution (which was never a serious endeavor, to begin with) became a distant and, eventually, an impossible quest.

As Israel’s political center moved sharply to the right under the leadership of Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, the US maintained its position, as if oblivious to the fact that ‘facts on the ground’ have altered the political landscape beyond recognition.

Former President Barack Obama began his career in what some saw as an earnest push for renewed talks, which were halted or stalled during the administration of George W. Bush. He dispatched Senator George Mitchell, whose negotiations skills in 2010 to 2011 could not move Israel from its obstinate position on settlement expansion and, again, dispatched his Secretary of State, John Kerry, who tried unsuccessfully to revitalize talks between 2013 and 2014.

Obama must have, at one point, realized that the efforts were futile. For a start, Netanyahu seemed to have greater influence on the US Congress than the President himself. This is not an exaggeration. When Netanyahu clashed with Obama over the Iran nuclear deal, he snubbed the US President and gave a talk to a joint Congress in March 2015, in which he chastised Obama and the ‘bad deal’ with Iran. Obama appeared forlorn and irrelevant, as the representatives of the American people gave numerous standing ovations to a foreign leader, who boasted, yelled, assigned blame and praise.

Kerry’s nostalgic last speech in late December was an indication of that epic failure, the gist of his plea being that it was all over. However, both Kerry and Obama have no one to blame but themselves. Their administration had the political clout and the popular mandate to push Israel, and exact concessions that could have served as the basis of something substantial. They chose not to.

And now, an opportunistic real-estate mogul, Donald Trump, is the President of the United States. He comes with an eerie agenda that looks identical to that of the current Israeli government of right-wingers and ultra-nationalists.

“We have now reached the point where envoys from one country to the other could almost switch places,” wrote Palestinian Professor, Rashid Khalidi, in the ‘New Yorker’:

“The Israeli Ambassador in Washington, Ron Dermer, who grew up in Florida, could just as easily be the US Ambassador to Israel, while Donald Trump’s Ambassador-designate to Israel, David Friedman, who has intimate ties to the Israeli settler movement, would make a fine Ambassador in Washington for the pro-settler government of Benjamin Netanyahu.”

So that’s it folks, the show is over. The era of the peace process is behind us, and early signs indicate that Palestinians, themselves, are now realizing it as they are clearly seeking alternatives to the various overbearing US administrations.

Indeed, several administrations under George Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama have all contributed to the idea that peace was at hand, that Israel was willing to compromise, that pressure has to be applied (mostly on Palestinians) to end the seemingly equal ‘conflict’, that the US was a neutral party, even-handed ‘honest broker’, even.

The Israelis did not mind playing along as long as the game did not jeopardize their colonialization scheme in the Occupied Territories; the (largely unelected) Palestinian leadership joined in, seeking funds and meaningless political recognition; and the rest of the world, including the United Nations, watched from afar or played their assigned, marginal role.

But, now, Israel does not need to accommodate the rules of the game anymore, simply because the American ‘broker’, himself, has lost interest. Trump understands that his country can no longer maintain policing a unipolar world and has no interest in picking fights with regionally powerful Israel.

Although Trump began his presidential campaign promising to keep an equal distance from Palestinians and Israelis, only to then head in an extremely alarming direction – with the promise to move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem thus, possibly, igniting another Palestinian uprising.

Knowing that the US is no longer an ally, so-called ‘Palestinian moderates’ are now seeking alternatives. On the day of Trump’s inauguration in an unprecedented lavish party seen as the most expensive in history, Palestinian factions were meeting, not in Washington, London or Paris, but in Moscow.

The news of an agreement that will see the admission of both Hamas and Islamic Jihad into the Palestine Liberation Origination (PLO) received little media coverage, but it was consequential, nonetheless. The timing (Trump’s inauguration) and the place (Moscow) were very telling of a changing political reality in the Middle East.

But what are we to make of the Paris Conference? It was a sad display of a final French-European-American attempt at showing relevance in a region that has vastly changed, in a ‘process’ that existed on paper only, in a political landscape that has become too complicated and diverse for the likes of Francois Hollande (an ardent supporter of Israel, to begin with) to matter in the least.

No, it was not just ‘another Middle East peace conference’, but an end of an era. The American era in the Middle East.