Nuclear Waste: Planning for the Next Million Years

Ruby Russell

Berlin.

It’s been over 60 years since the first nuclear power plant was switched on in Russia and now 31 years (last week) since the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

Yet despite the decades-long history of nuclear power, most countries still haven’t agreed on a way to safely store nuclear waste.

Leading the way is Finland with the world’s first permanent repository for spent nuclear fuel. High-level radioactive waste is to be buried 400 metres deep in the granite bedrock of Olkiluoto Island off the Finnish coast, where its operators claim it will be secure for the next 100,000 years.

Governments, on the whole, aren’t good at long term planning though. And this is a major problem for the nuclear industry where eventualities must be planned for in terms of hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of years.

Teams of artists and philosophers are even debating how to mark repository sites to warn off future generations who may be as removed from us as we are from the first homo sapiens to arrive in Europe.

Even the more easily grasped timescales involved in nuclear waste disposal pose huge technical, economic and social challenges. Finland is to start loading the Olkiluoto repository in 2020 and the process is expected to take 100 years. That may seem like a long time, and it is considering that the first observed nuclear reaction was made less than 100 years ago in 1919.

Sweden, which is pushing forward with the same technology as Finland, is the only other European country close to such an advanced stage of planning. Favourable geological conditions and relatively small quantities of just one type of waste – spent fuel, without the additional problems of reprocessed waste – mean both countries have advantages over other nuclear nations.

For the most part,says Stephen Thomas, Emeritus Professor of Energy Policy at Greenwich University, high-level radioactive waste is lying around waiting for a solution.

“Around the world, everybody is extending the spent fuel storage and reactors. Find me a reactor that’s been in operation for 20 years and I’ll find you a plant which has had its spent fuel facility increased. Every one. There’s nowhere to put it”, says Thomas.

Public resistance

In 2011, German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced a full phase out nuclear power by 2022, making Europe’s largest economy a trailblazer in renewable energy.

Back in 1977, Germany was seen as a pioneer of disposal solutions when it began exploring a former salt mine at Gorleben as a possible repository. From the start, locals protested vehemently. A decades-long battle ensued with intense debate over whether the site was geologically suitable.

Some experts claimed that with its location in a sparsely populated area close to the then border with East Germany, the site was selected more for political than scientific reasons. In 2000 the government put a moratorium on the investigation.

A bill passed this year will see Gorleben back on the agenda as a possible waste site, in a search that views the country as a ‘blank map’, with salt, granite and clay sites all to be considered.

Officially, a site is to be identified by 2031 and built by 2050. But the state of Saxony is already pushing to be excluded from the process and some experts say this bid looks highly optimistic.

In the UK, exploration of a potential site conveniently close to the Sellafield decommissioning and reprocessing site – home to by far the country’s worst nuclear waste problem – stalled and was cancelled following a public and scientific consultation process.

In France, the plan for a clay repository near the village of Bure is more advanced than most. French nuclear agency ANDRA plans to have it ready by 2035. But observers say there has been a lack of public consultation and public protests are heating up ahead of an upcoming parliamentary vote over the site’s future.

Unknown costs

Besides the technical and political issues surrounding final disposal there are also massive economic challenges.

In the UK, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority forecast that the current cost of clean-up is somewhere between £95 billion (840 billion yuan) and £219 billion (2 trillion yuan), based on the data available. The total planned expenditure for 2017/2018 is £3.24 billion (20 billion yuan), of which £2.36 billion (20 billion yuan) will be funded by the government and the taxpayer; £0.88 billion by income from commercial operations.

In Germany, nuclear power plant operators are largely responsible for decommissioning reactors once they are switched off – this is where spent fuel is removed and sites dismantled – a process that takes decades in itself.

Under an agreement reached last year, waste disposal is now the responsibility of the state. Utilities are to pay 23.6 billion euros (177 billion yuan) into a state-administered fund to cover this. But experts worry that ultimately, taxpayers will be left footing the bill.

“For all the waste management and disposal of waste there is no technical concept and so you cannot estimate costs“, says Wolfgang Irrek, professor for energy management at Ruhr West University of Applied Sciences in Germany. Instead, the calculation is based on 20-year-old estimates for the Gorleben site.

Long-term intermediate storage

Some experts say final disposal is a bit of a red herring in any case. As appealing as the idea of settling the matter once and for all might be, questions have been raised about the long-term security of even the Finnish project.

“It’s very arrogant, scientifically, to say today we have safe disposal for tens of thousands of years”, says Mycle Schneider, an independent nuclear policy analyst and lead author of the annual World Nuclear Industry Status Report. “I am not convinced geological storage is good forever – I have not seen the argument made conclusively. It’s too early to say.”

Instead, Schneider advocates a focus on ensuring that interim storage is up to the job, which, for the most part, it isn’t.

“We have got into problems with waste because it has been packaged on the assumption that it would go in the ground at a certain time, and it hasn’t, and the packaging has degraded”, Thomas says.

The UK and France have used wet storage for spent nuclear fuel, meaning the waste is kept in pools for long periods of time. Schneider says if there is anything to be learned from the European experience with nuclear waste it’s to take the German route of getting the cooled waste out of the water and into dry storage as quickly as possible.

“There is absolutely no doubt that dry storage is much safer and much more secure than pool storage”, says Schneider. “If you lose the water you are in trouble because the fuel will heat up. Depending on the age of the fuel, you might get fuel fires that will dwarf the nuclear accidents we have seen so far.”

He points to the Fukushima disaster, where it was initially unclear if a spent fuel fire was on the cards; a scenario which would have called for the evacuation of at least 10 million people.

In the UK, Andrew Blowers of independent expert group Nuclear Waste Advisory Associates says the locations of planned reactors pose their own set of problems.

“A lot of dangerous spent fuel is going to be stored on new-build sites which are in vulnerable coastal locations, which stacks up to a huge problem for the next century with climate change”, says Blowers.

Tip of the iceberg

And all this concerns only a tiny fraction of the overall radioactive waste problem. “High-level waste represents the smallest volume”, says Schneider. “The biggest volumes are [found] the lower you go in the contamination levels. A single uranium mine, like the German Wismut, can generate hundreds of millions of tonnes of waste.”

Decommissioning generates huge volumes of contaminated material. Intermediate-level waste storage repositories in Germany have also been fraught with technical and public acceptance problems, while decommissioning in the UK has seen costs spiral out of control.

“Britain is an example of how to make provisions for decommissioning wrong – we have made every mistake it is possible to make and have ended up with a nuclear authority that has no money”, Thomas says.

Germany has decided to phase out nuclear power altogether. Having defined volumes of material to deal with should give it some advantage, but Thomas says there is still too little experience of decommissioning to really know what the country is in for.

“The amount of decommissioning that has gone on in the world is negligible. I think there are six plants that have been fully decommissioned that operated for a decent amount of time.”

Still, Blowers says Germany’s got one thing right. “What we don’t want is more nuclear waste created when we are not at all sure what we are going to do with what we’ve already got.”

Apartheid in the Shadows: the USA, IBM and South Africa’s Digital Police State

Michael Kwet 

“Beggars and vagrants” are not welcome in Parkhurst, a mostly white suburb of about 5,000 in Johannesburg, South Africa.  Criminals of “increasing sophistication and aggression” are on the prowl, residents claim.  To combat local crime, community members proposed a solution: put surveillance everywhere.  Their proposal, however, was not for “traditional” surveillance.  Thanks to the digital revolution, Parkhurst could now integrate facial recognition, thermal sensors, infrared tracking, and data analytics.  Armed with powerful new tech, poor black “vagrants” can be watched, flagged, policed, and intimidated into submission.

“Smart” surveillance systems are being assembled quietly inside the country.  The public has been kept uninformed.  This is the first in-depth exposé of smart policing in South Africa.

A New “Revolution”

Two years ago, Parkhurst became one of the first SA neighborhoods to embark on the installation of their own smart surveillance system.  This little community made national headlines as the first suburb in South Africa to get residential fiber Internet.  Media outlets whitewashed the surveillance component.

The Parkhurst Village Residents and Business Owners Association fought for “Fibre to the Home” Internet.  Their primary motivation was “modern” digital surveillance only high-speed Internet could power, said the organization’s chair, Cheryl Labuschagne.  That residents now have fast Internet seems to be a secondary bonus.

A Vumatel employee, Giorgio Lovino, elaborates: the fiber “connects to the CCTV [surveillance] cameras…throughout the suburb and it transmits the video feed from those cameras…to a control point where their cameras can then be monitored off-site.  And it allows them to do number plate recognition, facial recognition, and all these types of surveillance activities.”  The CCTV system is being worked out so that it may be affordable to the community.

Parkhurst plans to install infrared and heat-source cameras to track body movements.  Labuschagne says they will use “GPS technology and so on to map where incidents occur” and determine “what movement is considered abnormal rather than typical movements in a neighborhood of people walking their dogs and so on.”

Labuschagne leaves unstated what constitutes “abnormal” movements.  However, iSentry, the CCTV software Parkhurst seeks, makes it explicit.  Their promotional video, titled “Unusual Behavior Detection”, depicts a young, black “beggar”, flagged by iSentry’s artificial intelligence-based video analytics.  Within moments, he and an accomplice are brought to the ground by a gang of cops, semi-automatic gun pointed.

The scene appears to be staged for promotional filming as a “typical scenario” for how the system should work.  That is to say, Parkhurst’s 21^st century policing system is advertised to target poor black people.

The iSentry system, deployed by CSS Tactical, has been installed in nearby suburbs, and is spreading to others.

Parkview Police Station Commander, Colonel Moodley, supports the “refreshing” initiative “wholeheartedly”.  Labuschagne proclaims she is “really really hopeful that what we’ve started is a revolution” in South Africa.

Smart Cities: Surveillance in the Shadows

A revolution is a number of years in the making.  In 2011, the City of Johannesburg announced a draft Growth and Development Strategy (GDS 2040) to convert Johannesburg into a “smart city” in cooperation with the private sector.  Digital technology would overhaul everything from public service delivery to crime management using “smart infrastructure” and “intelligent Video and Internet surveillance systems”.

Shortly thereafter, Johannesburg began implementing “smart policing” based on new surveillance cameras and centralized police data analytics.  Last year, then Mayor Parks Tau (ANC) attributed smart policing to a 22% crime reduction for 2014/15 in the wealthy central business district of Johannesburg – a whites-only area under apartheid.  Tau boasted his crime-fighting tools have “face recognition technologies, number plate recognition technologies and are able to detect or anticipate when a group of people are planning a smash and grab.”  The City of Cape Town is similarly following suit.

High-speed Internet is critical to smart video surveillance because it enables the transmission of high definition feeds.  Computers need richly detailed images to identify words, faces, and other attributes.  Blurry images will not do.  Thus where there is high-speed Internet, there can also be smart surveillance.

At the helm of South Africa’s high-speed Internet roll-out is Siyabonga Cwele, the former Minister of Intelligence (2008-09) and State Security (2009-14).  As SA’s former spy boss, Cwele supported the controversial Protection of State Information Bill which bolsters the protection of state secrets.

Cwele lists no formal credentials, industry experience or training in technology.  Nevertheless, President Jacob Zuma, himself a former intelligence chief, appointed Cwele as Minister of the Department of Telecommunications and Postal Services (DTPS).  This puts a former spy minister in charge of South Africa’s Internet.

Speaking in the Western Cape, Cwele told South Africans they “must adapt” to a “change [in] our notions of privacy”.  The “fourth industrial revolution” – a term coined by World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab – is coming to South Africa.

Smart Policing: United States, South Africa

Across the Atlantic, smart policing is well under way.  In 2016, a study published by ProPublica found that software commonly used in the United States to predict “future criminals” is “biased against blacks”.  Even though there were no racial categories programmed into the software, blacks were incorrectly ranked as “future criminals” at almost twice the rate of white defendants.  The racist ranking could not be explained by prior crimes or the type of crimes committed, the study found.

In US public spaces, aerial surveillance drones and smart sensors are being used for urban population control.  In 2015, the FBI disclosed it flew surveillance drones over Ferguson and Baltimore during BlackLivesMatter protests prompted by police murders of Michael Brown and Freddie Gray.  Published documents reveal the FBI was utilizing infrared and night-vision cameras and keeping recordings of aerial drone surveillance footage.

Cell phones are also targeted by cops.  In 2015, Baltimore residents discovered their city police department is systematically abusing “stingray” devices that trick cell phone owners into revealing their location.  Evidence shows the stingray devices are overwhelmingly concentrated in poor black neighborhoods, with disproportionate impact on people of color.  Half of all US adults are now in a law enforcement facial-recognition database.  One-fourth of the nation’s police departments have access to face-recognition databases.

Smart policing is a controversial new component of the digital era.  Using smart surveillance, computers and sensors automatically detect and interpret video feeds and other data in real-time to facilitate ubiquitous policing.  As the cost of technology drops, corporate and state actors are littering cities with an array of sensors – microphones to detect gun-shots, hi-res video for face recognition, infrared and heat to evaluate bodily movements – and networking them with high-speed Internet to radically expand police power.

Utilizing advanced data analytics, those with access to the surveillance – corporations, police departments, private security firms, government spy agencies – sift through massive troves of data to hone in on groups and persons of interest.  Computer software is determining where to concentrate cops on patrol to prevent “future crime”, with potentially disastrous effects on civil rights.

The South African state is mirroring the US.  The government has “grabber” devices that pretend to be cell phone towers in order to “track [a] phone’s movements, pinpoint its location, intercept its calls, or eavesdrop on conversations” – without the cell phone owner ever knowing it.  Protesters, when gathered in large groups, are highly vulnerable to grabbers.

Drone surveillance has also begun.  The City of Cape Town is experimenting with aerial drones to watch over citizens.  Their website even calls the program “Big Brother”.  A Pretoria-based company, Desert Wolf, developed a drone that can spray tear gas and fire rubber bullets at protesters.  An unnamed mining company ordered 25 units.

As I reported at Counterpunch in January, South Africa-based R&D organization, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), has quietly developed Cmore.  A new “Jason Bourne” type surveillance system, Cmore aggregates and analyzes data from drone footage, CCTVs, cell phone data, and other inputs for maritime, park, and border policing.  The CSIR considered Cmore “for police” and subsequently partnered with the South African Police Service (SAPS).  Experiments include “crowd-control concept demonstrations”.

Meanwhile, Johannesburg’s Intelligence Operations Centre (IOC) is now outfitted with “100 existing high impact cameras” enabled for software-based “Intelligent Video Analytics as an input into Intelligent Law Enforcement”.  The new anti-immigrant mayor of Johannesburg, Herman Mashaba (DA),  endorsed predictive policing in April 2016, months before his election victory.

Five years prior, IBM, the major computer and surveillance partner to the apartheid state, partnered with the City of Johannesburg to define a roadmap which includes crime prevention and investigative analytics.

IBM Corporation: Apartheid Past and Present

In 2002, South Africans brought a law suit against US corporations alleging direct support for human rights violations committed by the apartheid regime.  IBM, SA plaintiffs claimed, provided technology used to implement the apartheid-era racial classification system.

The USA continuously provides technology to oppressive foreign regimes.  In years past, multiple US corporations played a treacherous role assisting South African apartheid.  IBM has been among the worst offenders.

Beginning in the 1930s, IBM New York, under the direction of its president, Thomas Watson, Sr., supplied Hollerith punch card systems to their IBM Germany subsidiary for use by the Third Reich.  IBM machines were customized for the Nazis to efficiently track and sort groups targeted for persecution and genocide.  Numbers tattooed on Auschwitz inmates began as IBM punch card system identification numbers.

During apartheid, with Thomas Watson, Jr. now president, IBM New York leased its IBM South Africa subsidiary with specialized technology tailored for the apartheid state.  In 1952, the apartheid regime ordered its first electronic tabulator to IBM South Africa.  There is ample evidence their technology was used to categorize, segregate and denationalize blacks.

In 1965, IBM lost a bid to produce passbooks targeting the black population.  However, they won the contract to build the eerie “Book of Life” issued after 1970 – a surveillance project covering additional races (e.g., coloureds, Indians, and whites).

Computer automation of the population register helped streamline the infamous “reference book” system.  The reference books (scorned as “dompas” or “dumb pass”) were designed to monitor and control blacks from a centralized location, the Central Reference Bureau in Pretoria.

As Keith Breckenridge’s Biometric State (2014) details, police desired the ability to swiftly identify and locate “Natives” by their national ID or fingerprints contained in the passbooks.  It was “a single, cost-effective tool that would allow the police to track elusive African suspects.”

But this form of centralized surveillance had weaknesses – people would lose or burn their dompas or rip out or forge pages.  An unwieldy registration backlog quickly ballooned out of control.  The dystopian dream of panoptic population control by an all-seeing state failed, but the consequences were brutal.  Apartheid cops used the passbook system to perpetrate mass violence and incarceration against blacks.

IBM New York, the central headquarters which provided technology and expertise to its SA subsidiary, has denied liability.  Last June, they successfully fought off the law suit brought to US courts by black South African plaintiffs representing victims of apartheid.  Plaintiffs included relatives of those tortured, raped, and murdered, in many instances in connection with passbook violations.

In 2011, the City of Johannesburg announced a partnership with IBM to conduct a “five-year public safety strategy in line with the city’s 2040 vision of a smart city”.  Unlike the “dumb” passbook system, IBM’s latest system is “smart”: it uses “integrated intelligence” for “crime prevention and investigation – including increased police presence and visibility, better coordination amongst agencies, and a data center with predictive analytics” as well as “intelligence sharing”.

IBM bases its innovations on its new “Watson” supercomputer system famous for surpassing humans in the quiz show Jeopardy.  Their Smart Vision Suite includes “moving object detection, tracking, object classification, color classification, and face tracking” as well as “large scale learning of vehicles and pedestrians”.  They have a ten-year partnership with South Africa’s Department of Science and Technology.

SA in the 21^st Century: A Digital Police State

South Africa’s smart policing movement has escaped public conversation.  Media coverage has been mostly taken up by tech outlets that focus on individual technologies, and apparently see nothing wrong or even endorse this turn of events.

In March, hard-hitting investigative journalists at amaBhungane reported that the Free State issued and awarded a “One Stop ICT Fusion Centre” tender in violation of proper procurement procedures.  The fusion centre will apparently provide “an integrated ICT system for the entire provincial government”, including “security camera surveillance and traffic management” in a centralized control room.  Indian corporation Tech Mahindra is “the solutions partner”.

There is another story here, aside from the tender: what is Tech Mahindra up to?  According to a Tech Mahindra brochure, as a part of their “Smart City Solutions”, they provide “Smart Security Surveillance”, which includes license plate and facial recognition, behavior analysis, video analytics, and real-time monitoring.

Mahindra Defence Systems and US-based Cisco Systems have teamed up in Lucknow, India, to deploy 10,000 cameras.  In April 2015, the Uttar Pradesh government’s “state police demonstrated drones that can be used to shower pepper powder on an unruly mob”.  Five of these “crowd control” drones were to be launched that month; they have a range of up to 600 meters.  The surveillance “will be very useful in managing traffic violations” as well.

Mahindra is based in India.  However 21^st century models and technologies of repression are distinctly Western.

This is the current path for South Africa, already begun.

Perhaps it is worth recalling a bit of history.  In 2016, a former (now-deceased) CIA operative, Donald Rickard, happily admitted he provided intelligence which led to Nelson Mandela’s 1962 arrest.  Years later, Steve Biko was placed under a banning order by the state, which silenced his speech and restricted his movement.  Police detained and tortured him, leading to his tragic death.  Apartheid cops murdered untold numbers through riot control, the “prevention of unrest”, and the policing of “public disorder”.

SA universities are spending millions on surveillance to quell #FeesMustFall protests.  In 2016, CCTVs at Rhodes University mushroomed to provide what seems like blanket coverage, even extending inside buildings.  Management refuses to disclose details.  Earlier this year, Wits University added new CCTVs and announced considerations for drone surveillance and biometrics on campus.  And in March, eNCA’s Checkpoint reported that the University of Johannesburg appointed a private security company, Bold Heart Group, that spies on students.

Outside of student spaces, service delivery protests abound.  From Vuwani to Cape Town, people are active in the streets.  In response to Zuma’s latest cabinet re-shuffle, tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people amassed in public to exercise their constitutionally protected right to protest.

On April 20, amaBhungane launched a challenge to the constitutionality of the Regulation of Interception of Communications and Provision of Communication-Related Information Act (Rica).  The challenge focuses on bulk communications interceptions.  There could be no better time to also challenge the legality and ethics of smart policing.

It is essential to note that both major political parties – the ANC and the DA – are assembling the smart surveillance state.  It remains to be seen what smaller parties like the EFF and UDM have to say – and what the public will say itself.

Two decades after apartheid, half the population lives on $2 (R26) or less per day, while the majority are getting poorer.  Serious plans for large scale wealth redistribution remain off the table.  In the shadows, the state – and some wealthy citizens – are teaming up with corporations to unleash Western policing for population control.

Britain Must Break Free From The Agrochemical Cartel

Colin Todhunter

Agrochemical manufacturers are knowingly poisoning people and the environment in the name of profit and greed. 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 secured.

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. Money wields power and political influence.

In capitalism, a private corporation is compelled to secure control of assets (in agriculture – seeds, land, water, soil, chemical inputs, etc) and exploit them for a cash profit, while removing obstacles that might hinder this goal. Concerns about what is in the public interest or what is best for the environment lies beyond the scope of hard-headed business interests and is the remit of governments and civil organisations. The best case scenario for private capital is to have toothless, supine agencies or governments.

Rosemary Mason writes to the chair of the ECP

The UK Expert Committee on Pesticides (ECP) “provides independent, impartial advice to the government on matters relating to pesticides.”

William Cushley is a professor of molecular immunology and chair of the ECP. Environmentalist Dr Rosemary Mason has just written an open letter to the professor requesting that he acknowledges genuine independent evidence about the toxic impacts of pesticides – not the studies or data being pushed and prioritised by powerful transnational corporations – and breaks the silence over the devastation being caused.

Mason felt it necessary to write to Cushley because the financial and political clout of a group of powerful agrochemical corporations ensures that their interests are privileged ahead of public health and the environment to the detriment of both. There is in effect a deeply embedded collusion between powerful corporations and public bodies. The agrochemical industry has corrupted public institutions, government policies and decision making.

Mason draws Cushley’s attention to some of the outcomes. For instance, she notes independent research that recognises the extreme toxicity of low levels of systemic neonicotinoid insecticides, which have become widespread in the environment. They cause a virtually irreversible blockage of postsynaptic nicotinergic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs) in the central nervous system of insects (to which the human foetus is also exposed). The damage is cumulative: with more exposure, more receptors become blocked.

In the Netherlands, the levels of imidacloprid in Dutch surface have been increasing since 2004 and such increases are correlated with a decline in invertebrates and in insect-feeding birds.

Mason then goes on to point out that in 2006 she set up a small nature reserve in Wales in response to the decline in birds and invertebrates such as bumblebees, butterflies, dragonflies and moths. However, even the reserve’s biodiversity soon began to witness a loss of biodiversity.

About that time, she received the article by US Scientists Anthony Samsel and Stephanie Seneff ‘Glyphosate, pathways to modern diseases’ and immediately suspected that Monsanto’s Roundup was destroying the reserve. That’s because for many years Monsanto’s contractors had been spraying Roundup on Japanese knotweed in the Swansea area where she lives, until it had become Roundup-resistant.

It was clear that the reserve was thus under threat from numerous agrochemicals, which have wide-ranging consequences, not least where human health is concerned.

In the UK, some farmers have been spraying glyphosate pre-harvest since 1980, and the US Center for Disease Control has found strong correlations between it and various diseases which have been increasing over the last 30 years. These include obesity, autism, type 2 diabetes, dementia, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, liver and kidney failure, hypercholesterolemia, stroke and various cancers such as kidney, liver, pancreas, thyroid, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, myeloma and leukaemia. In her previous documents, Mason has noted spiralling rates of illness in Wales and the UK in general and has indicated how they are linked to agrochemical use, especially glyphosate (as well as other toxins courtesy of Monsanto having used a quarry as a toxic dump).

Mason informs Cushley that detrimental health outcomes are caused by even small exposure to common chemicals like the ones found in pesticides as well as in plastics and air pollution. There are documented links between prenatal exposure to environmental chemicals, and adverse health outcomes span the life course and include impacts on fertility and pregnancy, neurodevelopment and cancer. The global health and economic burden related to toxic environmental chemicals is in excess of millions of deaths and billions of dollars every year.

The health problems are even greater for babies exposed in the womb, who face increased risks of cancer, reduced cognitive function and even miscarriage or stillbirth.

There has been a sharp increase over the past four decades in chemical manufacturing, which continues to grow by more than three per cent every year.

A system set up to serve corporate needs

As with all her numerous open letters and correspondence with various officials, Mason supplies Cushley with a lengthy fully-referenced document (Open Letter to the Chairman of the Expert Committee on Pesticides) that supports all the claims made and which sheds further light on the issues raised (readers should consult that document to access texts and links which are also relevant to the article you are now reading).

On this occasion, she outlines conflicts of interest within the UK’s Health and Safety Executive, the damning verdict of the judges of the International Monsanto Tribunal and a report presented to the UN Human Rights Council about the Right to Food. The disastrous effects of Roundup and neonicotinoids are also discussed along with the agrochemical industry’s hold on the UK government.

Mason’s evidence indicates the not-so-hidden hand of the agrochemical sector, including Bayer, Syngenta and Monsanto, has conspired to cover up the damaging effects of its products. The power of the industry – underpinned by its ability to fund and thus slant research, to lobby government officials effectively, to infiltrate and co-opt institutions and to push people through the revolving door into key positions – has corrupted science and decision making and destroyed any notion of objective and independent regulation and policy formulation.

Industry-backed research has been favoured ahead of independent studies, directives are ignored, court rulings are overturned in favour of the industry and public bodies act more as product promoting agencies than acting in the interests of the public.

Cushley is informed that the UK government is being directed by the pesticides industry. Mason tells Cushley that he, as Chairman of the ECP, has the responsibility for giving chemicals authorisation and should realise he is being fed industry information.

For instance, Mason argues that the industry had known – but has consistently denied – that neonicotinoid pesticides are harmful to bees. Tests and protocols that had allowed registration of the systemic pesticides were not adapted to assess potential hazard and risk from this type of pesticide. Despite knowing all this, protection agencies have allowed the pesticides industry to keep neonicotinoids on the market.

In discussing the International Monsanto Tribunal, Mason notes that Monsanto has violated human rights to food, health, a healthy environment and the freedom indispensable for independent scientific research. This corporation holds huge sway over governments and promotes a highly-profitable (but damaging and unnecessary) chemical-intensive model of farming.

To strengthen her case, Mason also presents Cushley with details concerning a report to UN Human Rights Council about the Right to Food. Global agricultural corporations (like Monsanto) are severely criticised by Hilal Elver the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food and co-author of the report, which is highly critical of the global corporations that manufacture pesticides, accusing them of the “systematic denial of harms”, “aggressive, unethical marketing tactics” and heavy lobbying of governments which has “obstructed reforms and paralysed global pesticide restrictions.”

The reports adds:

“It is time to create a global process to transition toward safer and healthier food and agricultural production.”

Elver says:

“Using more pesticides is nothing to do with getting rid of hunger. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, we are able to feed 9 billion people today. Production is definitely increasing, but the problem is poverty, inequality and distribution.”

Whilst spouting platitudes about feeding the world, the increasingly globalised system of agriculture being rolled out by the transnational agritech/agribusiness cartel was never designed to do that. Part of that design it to undermine alternative, credible approaches that could feed the world sustainably without being dependent on the agrochemical cartel and its dubious products.

But that’s the problem: these independent alternatives are a threat to the prevailing business models of companies such as Monsanto and Bayer, which resort to the practices Elver outlines.

Mason proceeds by discussing in some detail the well-documented disastrous effects on the environment of Roundup and neonicotinoids, in terms of the destruction of biodiversity, ecosystems, environmental degradation and human and animal health, etc. Evidence is provided that shows pesticide residues on British food are increasing annually, and statistics show a massive increase in glyphosate between 2012 and 2014

Mason quotes Robert van den Bosch, writing in 1978 in ‘The Pesticide Conspiracy’:

“If one considers how dangerous these chemicals are, one would suppose that it would be Government policy to minimize their use by every possible means. However the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution (RCEP) notes, ‘there is… no such policy in the UK, nor does the possible need for it appear to have been considered, notwithstanding the great increases in the use of these chemicals.”

However, the agrochemical industry, on the contrary, seems to be under the impression it is government policy to encourage the maximum use of pesticides.

Mason notes Theo Colborn’s crucial research in the early 1990s into endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) that were changing humans and the environment was ignored. In the 1996 book ‘Our Stolen Future: How Man-made Chemicals are Threatening our Fertility, Intelligence and Survival’, Colborn, Dumanoski and Peters revealed the full horror of what was happening to the world as a result of contamination with EDCs.

Mason concludes by stating:

“Britain will soon become a biological desert just as Craig Childs described in Apocalyptic Planet with reference to the fields of GM Roundup-Ready corn on a Farm in Iowa… “

“Few can avoid the pollution of water, soil and air by genotoxic and teratogenic herbicides, insecticides and other industrial chemicals. Governments and regulators only measure a small fraction of them. Human health depends on biodiversity. Food depends on natural pollinators.

“The devastating effects of these silent killers on us and our environment do not distinguish between farmers or city dwellers, the wealthy or the poor, between media moguls, editors or their reporters, Monsanto or Syngenta executives, prime ministers or presidents. Humans and the environment are being silently poisoned by thousands of untested and unmonitored chemicals.

“What will your grandchildren experience in the way of wildlife? Nothing. It will all have been poisoned by chemical biocides just to make money for the agrochemical corporations and the British government. They should be prosecuted in the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.”

Mason encourages Cushley to break the silence and inform people what is happening.

Politics, Not Religion, Is The Source Of Sunni-Shia Conflict

Nauman Sadiq

Lately, it has become a habit of Orientalist apologists of Western imperialism to offer reductive historical and theological explanations of Sunni-Shi’a conflict in the Middle East region in order to cover up the blowback of ill-conceived Western military interventions and proxy wars that have reignited the flames of the internecine conflict in the Islamic World.

Some self-anointed “Arabists” posit that the division goes all the way back to the founding of Islam, 1400 years ago, and contend that the conflict emerged during the reign of the fourth caliph, Ali bin Abi Talib, in the seventh century A.D. I wonder what would be the American-led war on terror’s explanation of such “erudite” historians of Islam – that the cause of “the clash of civilizations” can be found in the Crusades when Richard the Lionheart and Saladin were skirmishing in the Levant and exchanging courtesies at the same time?

In modern times, the Sunni-Shi’a conflict in the Middle East region is essentially a political conflict between the Gulf Arab autocrats and Iran for regional dominance which is being presented to lay Muslims in the veneer of religiosity. Saudi Arabia which has been vying for power as the leader of Sunni bloc against the Shi’a-dominated Iran in the regional geopolitics was staunchly against the invasion of Iraq by the Bush Administration in 2003.

The Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein constituted a Sunni Arab bulwark against Iran’s meddling in the Arab World. But after Saddam was ousted from power in 2003 and subsequently when elections were held in Iraq which were swept by Shi’a-dominated parties, Iraq has now been led by a Shi’a-majority government that has become a steadfast regional ally of Iran. Consequently, Iran’s sphere of influence now extends all the way from territorially-contiguous Iraq and Syria to Lebanon and the Mediterranean coast.

Moreover, during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Bush Administration took advantage of ethnic and sectarian divisions in Iraq and used the Kurds and Shi’as against the Sunni-led Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein. And during the occupation years, from 2003 to 2011, the once dominant Sunni minority was politically marginalized which further exacerbated the ethnic and sectarian divisions in Iraq.

The Saudi royal family was resentful of Iranian encroachment on the traditional Arab heartland. Therefore, when protests broke out against the Shi’a-dominated Assad regime in Syria in the wake of the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011, the Gulf Arab States along with their regional Sunni allies, Turkey and Jordan, and the Western patrons gradually militarized the protests to dismantle the Iranian axis.

According to reports, Syria’s pro-Assad militias are comprised of local militiamen as well as Shi’a foreign fighters from Lebanon, Iraq, Iran and even the Hazara Shi’as from as far away as Afghanistan and Pakistan. And similarly, Sunni jihadists from all over the region have also been flocking to the Syrian battlefield for the last six years. A full-scale Sunni-Shi’a war has been going on in Syria, Iraq and Yemen which will obviously have its repercussions all over the Islamic World where Sunni and Shi’a Muslims have coexisted in relative peace for centuries.

More to the point, the Islamic State, al-Nusra Front and the majority of Syrian militant groups are also basically anti-Shi’a sectarian outfits. Though the Islamic State has carried out a few acts of terrorism against the Western countries, such as the high profile Paris and Brussels attacks, but if we look at the pattern of its subversive activities, especially in the Middle East, it generally targets Shi’a Muslims in Syria and Iraq. A few acts of terrorism that it has carried out in the Gulf Arab States were also directed against Shi’a Muslims in the Eastern province of Saudi Arabia and Shi’a mosques in Yemen and Kuwait.

Regarding the Syrian opposition, a small fraction of it has been comprised of defected Syrian soldiers who go by the name of Free Syria Army, but the vast majority has been comprised of Sunni Arab jihadists and armed tribesmen who have been generously funded, trained, armed and internationally legitimized by their regional and international patrons.

The Islamic State is nothing more than one of numerous Syrian militant outfits, others being: al Nusra Front, Ahrar al-Sham, al-Tawhid brigade, Jaysh al Islam etc. All the Sunni Arab militant groups that are operating in Syria are just as fanatical and brutal as the Islamic State. The only feature that differentiates the Islamic State from the rest is that it is more ideological and independent-minded.

The reason why the US has turned against the Islamic State is that all other Syrian militant outfits have only local ambitions that are limited to fighting the Assad regime in Syria, while the Islamic State has established a global network of transnational terrorists that includes hundreds of Western citizens who can later become a national security risk to the Western countries.

Notwithstanding, in order to create a semblance of objectivity and fairness, the American policymakers and analysts are always willing to accept the blame for the mistakes of the distant past that have no bearing on their present policy, however, any fact that impinges on their present policy is conveniently brushed aside.

In the case of the formation of Islamic State, for instance, the US policy analysts are willing to concede that invading Iraq back in 2003 was a mistake that radicalized the Iraqi society, exacerbated sectarian divisions and gave birth to an unrelenting Sunni insurgency against the heavy handed and discriminatory policies of the Shi’a-dominated Iraqi government.

Similarly, the “war on terror” era political commentators also “generously” accept that the Cold War era policy of nurturing al-Qaeda, Taliban and myriads of other Afghan so-called “freedom fighters” against the erstwhile Soviet Union was a mistake, because all those fait accompli have no bearing on their present policy.

The mainstream media’s spin-doctors conveniently forget, however, that the formation of the Islamic State and myriads of other Sunni Arab jihadist groups in Syria and Iraq has as much to do with the unilateral invasion of Iraq back in 2003 under the Bush Administration as it has been the legacy of the Obama Administration that funded, armed, trained and internationally legitimized the Sunni militants against the Syrian regime since 2011-onward in the wake of the Arab Spring uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa region.

In fact, the proximate cause behind the rise of the Islamic State, al Nusra Front, Ahrar al-Sham, Jaysh al-Islam and numerous other Sunni jihadist groups in Syria and Iraq has been the Obama Administration’s policy of intervention through proxies in Syria.

Apart from Syria and Iraq, two other flashpoints of Sunni-Shi’a conflict in the Middle East region are Bahrain and Yemen. When peaceful protests began against the Sunni monarchy in Bahrain by the Shi’a majority population in the wake of the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011, Saudi Arabia sent thousands of its own troops across the border to quell the demonstrations.

Similarly, when the Iran-backed Houthis, which is an offshoot of Shi’a Islam, overran Sana’a in September 2014, Saudi Arabia and UAE mounted another ill-conceived Sunni offensive against the Houthi militia. The nature of the conflict in Yemen is sectarian to an extent that recently, the Yemeni branch of al-Qaeda’s leader, Qasim al-Raymi, has claimed that al-Qaeda has been fighting hand in hand with the Saudi-led alliance against the Iran-backed rebels for the last couple of years.

The revelation does not comes as a surprise, however, because after all al-Qaeda’s official franchise in Syria, al-Nusra Front, has also been fighting hand in glove with the Syrian opposition against the Assad regime for the last six years of the Syrian civil war.

Now when the fire of inter-sectarian strife is burning on four different fronts in the Middle East and the Sunni and Shi’a communities are witnessing a merciless slaughter of their brethren in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Bahrain, then what kind of an Orientalist shill would have the time and luxury to look for the cause of the conflict in theology and history? If the Sunni and Shi’a Muslims have been so thirsty for each other’s blood since the founding of Islam, then how come they managed to survive as distinct sectarian groups for 1400 years?

Fact of the matter is that in modern times, the phenomena of Islamic radicalism, jihadism and the consequent Sunni-Shi’a conflict are only as old as the Soviet-Afghan jihad during the late seventies and eighties when the Western powers with the help of Saudi money and Pakistan’s intelligence agencies trained and armed Afghan jihadists to battle the Soviet troops in Afghanistan.

And the conflict has been further exacerbated in the wake of the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011 when the Western powers and their regional client states once again took advantage of the opportunity and nurtured militants against the Arab nationalist Qaddafi regime in Libya and the anti-Zionist Assad regime in Syria.

New study details correlation between tornado deaths and social inequality

Eric London

A new study published by the Regional Science and Urban Economics journal reveals the degree to which social inequality and poverty determine the likelihood of being killed by a tornado.

The study, titled “Double danger in the double wide: Dimensions of poverty, housing quality and tornado impacts,” is written by Michigan State University academics Jungmin Lim, Scott Loveridge, Robert Shupp and Mark Skidmore.

It was published in April, as tornado season begins in the United States. Last weekend, tornadoes and floods left at least 15 dead, including many children, across impoverished parts of East Texas, Missouri, Arkansas, and Tennessee.

The number of people crushed to death or swept up and killed by tornadoes is staggering. Between 1980 and 2014, 2,718 people were killed and 39,635 injured by tornadoes in the world’s wealthiest country. In a three-day period in April 2011, 351 tornadoes killed 316 people.

The study’s authors explain, “While it is clear that some places are simply more prone to tornadoes due to climatic reasons, this does not fully explain the difference in fatalities across the region.”

The report notes that “poor people tend to cluster in high tornado risk areas” across the Midwest and South. For the most part, the wealthiest Americans live in major coastal cities where tornadoes do not occur. Those who remain in “tornado alley” do so in part because the risk of tornado is factored into the lower cost of living. A 2016 study revealed that half of Americans cannot afford the cost of a $400 emergency expense like travel, hotel and meal expenses during a storm evacuation.

But this “does not fully explain the differences in fatalities across the regions,” the study says, because “the areas with relatively high tornado fatalities do not necessarily match up with the areas with the highest tornado intensities.” The study’s conclusion is that areas with higher poverty and inequality are more vulnerable to deaths during tornadoes due to a large number of people living in mobile homes and a lack of infrastructure and government programs.

Poor and working class residents of tornado-prone areas are less likely to evacuate in the face of tornado warnings, “mostly due to constraints placed by a lack of transportation and affordable refuge options,” the study’s authors write, citing an earlier study. In addition, even if families had money saved to evacuate, many workers simply cannot afford to take time off work, even to escape a tornado.

Even after controlling for the likelihood that residents of areas with a history of tornadoes are more likely to be prepared, the report notes that for each one percent increase in the poverty rate, the number of tornado fatalities increases by two percent.

Further, the report notes: “people living in mobile homes are more vulnerable to natural events such as tornadoes because mobile homes typically have no foundation or basement and can be more easily destroyed” and “the rate of death from tornadoes in mobile homes is about 20 times higher than in site-built homes.”

Controlling for other factors, a one percentage point increase in the proportion of mobile home owners to total housing units leads to a five percent increase in tornado fatalities. Roughly one-half of all tornado deaths from 1996 to 2000 were in mobile homes. Particularly concerning is the fact that “more households are choosing this type of housing arrangement over time and thus vulnerability may be increasing.”

Lower levels of local government spending on public safety and welfare had a “significant” impact on tornado fatalities, increasing the likelihood of death. Counties with less educated residents and more female-headed households were also more likely to experience fatalities when tornadoes strike. Only in Minnesota and a small number of individual counties in other states are mobile home park owners required to provide storm shelters for residents.

Perhaps most notable is the correlation between social inequality and tornado-induced deaths. The study found that a 1 percent increase in the share of income controlled by a county’s wealthiest 10 percent increased the average deaths from tornadoes by 14.8 people over a five-year period.

“Holding other factors constant including per capita income and the poverty rate, a higher top ten percentile income level means a larger lower-middle income group, which indicates wider income disparity in the community. Our estimates suggest that greater income inequality tends to exacerbate the impacts of disasters.”

This key fact underscores the disastrous impact of social inequality on elements of social life that may not initially appear to be directly impacted by social relations. Those areas most affected by tornadoes are the rural and semi-rural towns spread out across the American South and Midwest where infrastructure is collapsing, social services are limited and poverty is widespread.

Though storms do not select their victims, capitalism does. The few wealthy people who live in these regions own mansions with large basements and storm shelters. There is little question whom the police and National Guard will rescue first in the event of a natural disaster, while public shelters are largely unavailable. Over 60 percent of Oklahoma’s public schools have no storm shelter, for example.

But the majority of people in these parts of “tornado alley” either work low-wage jobs at grocery stores, fast food restaurants and other service sectors, or they join the military or National Guard. Ten to 30 percent of people live in mobile homes because they cannot afford to buy homes. Healthcare costs and opioid abuse are on the rise, while life expectancy for middle-aged white men is declining. Local, state and federal government propose new budget cuts that axe emergency relief programs.

One professional estimate shows that the cost of installing a 700-person storm shelter at a public school would be $1 million. Constructing the 25,000 large shelters capable of housing the entire 17 million population of “tornado alley” would cost $25 billion. This equals just 1.25 percent of the wealth of the 400 richest Americans, valued at about $2 trillion.

At least 23 dead, dozens trapped in Iranian coal mine disaster

Oscar Grenfell 

An explosion yesterday at an Iranian coal mine in Golestan Province, in the country’s north, has killed at least 23 workers and injured many others. While initial reports are scanty, it appears that dozens remain trapped in the mine, prompting fears that the death toll will rise dramatically in coming days.

The disaster reportedly occurred during a shift change at around 12:45pm, at the Zemestan-Yurt mine, close to the town of Azadshahr. As many as 500 workers are employed at the site, located in a region heavily dependent on coal mining, which is needed for the country’s industrial production, including steel manufacturing.

Accounts by Iran’s Fars news agency and other media reports indicate the blast may have been triggered by the jump-starting of a locomotive that ignited a gas leak. The explosion rapidly tore through the mine.

Most of the 23 workers whose bodies have been recovered died while attempting to rescue their trapped colleagues from the mine. They were hit by a series of tunnel collapses.

Images published online showed badly burned, semiconscious miners covered in coal dust being carried from the site by health workers and colleagues. Some were treated for the effects of gas inhalation. As many as 69 workers are thought to have been injured, with limited information on the severity of their conditions.

It is unclear how many workers are still in the mine. State authorities released contradictory estimates throughout Wednesday afternoon. Initial reports indicated as many as 80 workers, aside from those who perished, were unaccounted for. That figure was later scaled down to 50, and then 26.

However, no reason was provided for the changed toll, and there were no reports of additional rescues later in the day. Those who remain in the mine are reportedly up to 1.3 kilometres underground. They are imperilled by noxious and volatile gases and the prospect of further tunnel collapses at the unstable site.

Local officials and mine authorities claim to have cleared a section of the mine, and are reportedly digging a tunnel to gain access to the trapped miners. Rescue workers, along with ambulances, helicopters and members of the Red Crescent organisation, have been dispatched to the scene.

There are already reports of anger over the official response to the tragedy, with some describing it as slow and inadequate. Many questions remain over the conditions that led to the disaster.

The government fears the accident could become a focal point for wider anger over dangerous industrial conditions and a deepening social crisis afflicting the working class. President Hassan Rouhani yesterday sent the labour minister, Ali Rabiei, to the site to personally oversee the official response.

The accident occurred two weeks before presidential elections, slated for May 19. All the major candidates have adopted a posture of concern over industrial accidents and deaths.

On January 19, the 17-storey Plasco Building in the capital Tehran was engulfed in flames before collapsing. The disaster killed more than 20 fire fighters and injured up to 194 people.

The historic building was owned by a foundation with close ties to state authorities. Its offices had been transformed into sweatshops for clothing manufacture.

According to Tehran municipal authorities, the building’s owners had ignored up to 30 warnings over safety breaches. Jalal Malekias, a fire brigade official, told the press: “Even in the stairwells, a lot of clothing is stored and this is against safety standards. The managers didn’t pay attention to the warnings.”

The accident prompted a social media campaign calling for the resignation of Tehran mayor, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, and widespread denunciations of the authorities for not enforcing safety standards.

Mine accidents are no less politically sensitive, due to the importance of resource extraction for the Iranian economy, and widespread knowledge of the dire conditions confronting coal miners. Like their counterparts internationally, they are forced to work in dangerous environments, with exposure to coal dust and gases and the constant risk of accidents.

Iranian mines produced 1.68 million tonnes of coal in 2016, a substantial increase over the previous year. Much of that went to domestic consumption, including for steel manufacture and other industry.

While mining has expanded in recent years, little has been done by authorities to boost safety standards. Mining accidents in 2009 killed around 20 workers, while in 2013, 11 workers died in two separate incidents.

A 2012 survey of the safety of Iranian mines, published in the International Journal of Injury Control and Safety Promotion, found an increase in mining accidents over the previous year.

According to figures cited in the report, the number of active mines in Iran increased from 4,974 to 5,246 between 2011 and 2012. Over the same period, the annual injury rate rose from 106 per 10,000 workers in 2011, to 164 of 10,000 miners in 2012. Coal mines were among the most prone to fatal and injury-causing accidents.

In 2011, just 12 percent of mines had health and safety departments. In 2012, the percentage decreased to 10 percent of sites. According to the report, only 7 percent of accidents took place at sites with a health and safety department.

The plight of Iranian coal miners is paralleled by that of workers internationally. Dozens of coal workers have died in accidents in recent months. Among the disasters are:

● In December 2016, 23 workers were killed at the state-run Lalmatia mine in Jarkhand, in east India. Workers said that they warned managers of the imminent danger that the mine would collapse, but were ordered back to work.

● In March 2017, 17 Chinese miners were killed when the lift in which they were travelling fell at a state-owned mine in Heilongjiang province in the country’s northeast. Two welders were scapegoated for safety violations that caused the accident. A disaster in the same province in December 2016 claimed 32 lives.

● In March 2017, a blast at a coal mine in eastern Ukraine killed eight and injured others. The accident was ascribed to outdated equipment and lax safety measures.

● This year, three coal miners have died in accidents in the US, two of them in the impoverished state of West Virginia.

In other words, the subordination of workers’ safety to the dictates of major coal producers is leading to an expanding tally of dead and injured miners.