Europe’s Shameful Refugee Policy

Graham Peebles

This time of year Mediterranean beaches are the destinations of choice for many European holidaymakers; it’s also the beginning of the busiest time of year for the people smugglers based in Libya and elsewhere along the North African coast. July to October is their peak season — during this time in 2016 around 103,000 refugees were crammed into unsafe boats, often in the dead of night, and cast off into the Mediterranean Sea.

Some don’t survive the crossing. Whilst the number of migrants arriving at Europe’s back door may have decreased — from 205,858 in the first five months of 2016, down to 71,029 for the same period this year, the number of dead has dramatically increased, reaching a staggering 1,650. The mortality rate has increased from 1.2% to 2.3% (2016). In 2015, when Europe’s response was properly coordinated, and when Germany opened its doors to over a million refugees, the death rate was 0.37%.

Europe’s politicians seem indifferent to the growing number of fatalities, and with a reported 2.5 million people (according to a leaked German government document) waiting in countries around the Mediterranean, the death count is set to rise dramatically.

The German report states that one million people are holed up in Libya, which, thanks to western ‘intervention’ is now a lawless state without any credible government where refugees are imprisoned, sold as slaves and trafficked into prostitution. Another million are in Egypt, almost half a million are waiting in Algeria, there are 160,000 or so in Tunisia and hundreds of thousands sit patiently in transit countries such as Jordon where there are estimated to be 720,00.

This is in addition to the 3.3 million refugees in Turkey, who have been denied access to Europe by the European Union’s (EU) ‘One in One out’ Syrian migrant deal struck in 2016. A crude financial arrangement of convenience made with Turkish President Recep Erdogan – a quasi-dictator, in which Turkey accepted the return of irregular migrants arriving in Greece in exchange for six billion euros in financial aid, and the loosening of visa restrictions for Turks. The result: tens of thousands of refugees stranded in Greece, living in intolerable and insecure conditions.

It was bribery by any other name; the aim was to push the refugee issue out of sight, make them someone else’s problem. This remains the EU’s inadequate, irresponsible approach.

It’s easy to see the statistics and forget that the numbers refer to people, human beings trying to escape some form of danger or violent conflict: Syrian Mother, “there was a rocket launching pad right behind my house. For the children, this was the main reason that we left. They became sick, they would’t let me go… At night they’re asleep, they’d wake up crying. And the same thing happened to me. And my husband was not with us.” Others are fleeing persecution: Sudanese Mother, “There is racism in Sudan, between Muslims and Christians. The soldiers or the policemen come and they take half of what I earned, and they say: ‘that is for us’. But they don’t behave like this with everyone, only with Christians from Eritrea. If you try to say no, they will either kill or jail you.”

Ignoring root causes

Two main routes into Europe are used by refugees: the Aegean route via Turkey, Greece and the Balkans which is now virtually closed off, and the Mediterranean crossing from North Africa which is fraught with dangers.

Having travelled for months across unforgiving terrain, suffered abuse and exploitation en route, refugees arriving in Europe all too often find themselves in an unwelcoming, hostile environment, one in which the debilitating politics of fear, intolerance and division has increasingly influenced decisions on immigration generally and an approach to those seeking refuge.

Europe has sought to reduce the numbers making the journey by various short-term measures, none of which deal with the root causes of migration, and indeed the numbers have dropped — not because less people are leaving their troubled homelands, but because they are going somewhere else, or being held, imprisoned, in transit. The problem is not being resolved because the underlying causes have not been faced, those in need are simply being pushed elsewhere: it is a moral disgrace and a new approach is urgently needed.

To Europe’s utter shame there has been no collective response to what is euphemistically called the ‘refugee crisis’, but is actually a worldwide humanitarian issue partly caused by the aggressive foreign policies of America and her allies.

It’s not just war that people are fleeing; it’s a range of issues including human rights abuses and persecution by brutal regimes – Ethiopia, a key ally of the West for example, and Eritrea where people are fleeing military conscription and poverty. The driving impulses that make people leave home are fear and hope; fear of death and terrorist threats – in Nigeria for example where the largest numbers making it to Europe currently come from, fear of torture and violence, and the hope of a better life somewhere else; a peaceful life in a country where the rule of law is observed and human rights are respected.

Refugees make up a mere 0.4% of the total population of the EU (approximately 510 million), and on a global scale refugees represent only around 8% of all migrants, and roughly 85% of all refugees live in developing countries. There is no question that Europe could and should do more, could offer long-term support to more in need.

The sane suggestion of establishing equitable resettlement quotas for all EU states has been completely shunned by selfish, irresponsible national governments concerned not with meeting the fundamental needs of refugees, but by domestic politics. Britain has been at the forefront of isolationism and indifference, with the Conservative government under David Cameron’s leadership agreeing in 2015 to take a paltry 20,000 Syrian refugees over five years.

Manipulative, cowardly European politicians hide behind the outdated, unworkable Dublin Agreement, which states that refugees must be processed in the first country they set foot in and can be returned there if they dare to venture beyond its borders. This completely unfair scheme has placed colossal pressure on Italy and Greece – countries that most refugees simply wish to pass though en route to other European countries. In fact many refugees, according to a study by Warwick University, don’t even want to go to Europe. The report challenges the idea that, ‘destination Europe’, is the dream goal of millions, claiming it is traffickers who often ‘decide’ who goes where: Europe is the most expensive option and therefore the most profitable for the smugglers.

The in-depth report recommends that Europe’s refugee policy, which has focused on deterring people from seeking refuge must be changed to one that is “grounded in an appreciation of — and responsiveness to — the journeys and experiences, as well as the understandings, expectations, concerns and demands of people on the move.” It makes clear that the current approach, which connects aid payments to countries such as Ethiopia, Lebanon, Jordan, Mali, Niger, Nigeria and Senegal, to preventing migration, should be replaced with proper “interventions that address the diverse drivers of unauthorized movement”.

Deterrents do not work mainly because the situations people are escaping from are a great deal worse than anything that might happen to them when they arrive in a destination country.

The study makes the common-sense suggestion that opening “sufficient safe and legal routes to the EU for people who otherwise have to resort to precarious journeys,” should be a priority, together with investing in decent “reception facilities and improved access to key services,” such as health care and housing. In addition long-term national and regional resettlement programmes are needed, and more humanitarian aid provided to poor countries close to conflict zones that are coping with the majority of the world’s refugees, including Lebanon, Jordan, Ethiopia and Kenya.

Like the other major issues facing humanity — the environmental catastrophe, nuclear disarmament and ending armed conflict, economic injustice and terrorism — the displacement of people (currently numbering 65 million globally), of which refugees form a small part, is a worldwide problem and requires an international humane and coordinated response. Unified policies based on the recognition of collective responsibility and group need, not this fragmented nationalistic approach which is intensifying human suffering and does nothing to deal with the underlying causes.

Codex Alimentarius and Monsanto’s Toxic Relations

Colin Todhunter

“Our soils are sick from greed-based, irresponsible agricultural practices, pesticides, chemical fertilizers, erosion and mineral depletion, all of which stop or reduce adequate microbial activity in the soil, rendering them sick and/or dead and sterile. Sick soils make for sick plants and sick plants make for sick humans and animals.” Scott Tips, president of the National Health Federation, Crashing Monsanto’s Pesticide Party in Beijing  

In the area of food and agriculture, you may be aware of various reports and discussions about GMOs, pesticides and organics. You might also know about the power, influence, crimes and shameful lobbying practices of transnational agribusiness companies like Monsanto. And you might have also discovered what (GMO) chemical-intensive agriculture is doing to soils, rivers, biodiversity, human health and crops.

It’s all been well documented. But what you might find little mention of is Codex Alimentarius (Latin for ‘food code’), a collection of international food standards, guidelines and codes of practice that are supposed to contribute to the safety, quality and fairness of international food trade.

The Codex Alimentarius Commission is based in Rome and was created in 1963. An international organization jointly run by the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO), it has 27 different committees. Codex’s published goals are to develop and adopt uniform food standards for its member countries and to promote the free and unhindered international flow of food goods, thereby eliminating trade barriers to food and providing food safety.

Biotechnology, pesticides, food additives and contaminants are some of the issues discussed in Codex meetings. The FAO says: “Codex standards are based on the best available science assisted by independent international risk assessment bodies or ad-hoc consultations organized by FAO and WHO.”

Although Codex offers recommendations for voluntary application by members, Codex standards serve in many cases as a basis for national legislation. The reference made to Codex food safety standards in the WTO’s Agreement on Sanitary and Phytosanitary measures (SPS Agreement) means that Codex has far reaching implications for resolving trade disputes. WTO members that wish to apply stricter food safety measures than those set by Codex may be required to justify these measures scientifically.

Codex began in 1963 and seemingly got off on the right foot in terms of having some good intentions. However, consider that, among other things, Codex decides on minimum food residue levels for pesticides, allowable amounts of aluminum, lead and arsenic in food and which substances or products are dangerous. These decisions affect the products and markets of huge corporations that have hundreds of millions of dollars at stake.

Do you think the agrochemical companies, for instance, are going to sit back and do nothing? Or do you think they would, as is usually the case, get together and attempt to lobby away or discredit any potential decision that may affect their bottom line?

The National Health Federation

Established in 1955, the National Health Federation (NHF) is a health freedom organization that works to protect individuals’ rights to choose to consume healthy food, take supplements and use alternative therapies without government restrictions.

With consumer members all over the world and a board of governors and advisory board containing representatives from different countries, it is the only such organization with a seat at Codex Alimentarius. Moreover, it is one of only five consumer groups present at Codex meetings in a room of country and industry delegates whose motivations, according to NHF, “are often at odds with the best interest of the people of the world.”

The NHF has monitored meetings of the Codex Alimentarius Commission since the mid-1990s and has been present at these meetings since 2000. It obtained official Codex-recognised status as an international non-governmental organisation (INGO), which allows it the right to speak out in support of health freedom at these Codex meetings.

By having an official voice at Codex, the NHF can actively shape global policies for food, beverages and nutritional supplements. And by having an accredited seat at Codex, the NHF can submit scientific research and arguments about food standards and guidelines, speak out during the many meetings of delegates and influence the wording of final reports on all meetings that thNHF attends.

Over the last decade, the NHF has worked to keep steroids and dangerous antibiotics out of the global meat and honey supply, to reduce the allowable amounts of aluminum, lead and arsenic in food, to get aspartame declared a dangerous and harmful artificial sweetener and for standardised full-disclosure food labelling. Today, it continues to work against the harmful agendas of big agriculture/pharmaceuticals concerns.

The NHF reflects the widely held belief (based on a good deal of evidence; for example, see this, this, this and this) that a small elite has gained control of governmental agencies, not least the large agribusiness corporations. Attendees at Codex meetings are therefore regulatory bureaucrats who very often are unduly influenced by commercial interests.

Scott Tips, president of the NHF:

“What we see here all too often is that some government agencies are nothing more than regional field agencies for corporate interests.”

Tips contends that the Codex Alimentarius Commission is heavily influenced by the appointments it makes and its infiltration by powerful sectors: food, agricultural, biotech and pharmaceutical industries.

As a result, unhealthy guidelines are being established.

Codex and pesticides

Codex Alimentarius Commission answers to the WHO and FAO. The WTO is the enforcement arm of Codex on issues brought before it. In the absence of a trade dispute, each country that incorporates Codex standards and guidelines into its rules and regulations enforces them. In other words, Codex matters!

During April 2017, The Codex Alimentarius Committee on Pesticide Residues (CCPR) met in Beijing. Scott Tips attended the meeting and says of the giant agritech corporations:

“They have been running amok for years, unchallenged. The Codex Alimentarius Committee on Pesticide Residues (CCPR) is their playground and they know it. Monsanto, Syngenta, DuPont, Dow, Bayer, and other agrochemical companies – cozily snuggled together at Codex as the disarmingly named, front group CropLife – sent no fewer than 39 representatives to the 49th session of the CCPR meeting held in Beijing, China from April 24-29, 2017, to coerce, charm and bedazzle government regulators.”

Tips argues that the agrochemical companies tell us these compounds are safe and are ensuring adequate food production to feed the world, but the facts tell us another story. He adds that glyphosate tops the list of poisons applied every day to plants and soil that in turn destroy humans, animals, and our environment. Some 9.4 million tons of glyphosate have been spread on our fields. It is in our water table, our soil, crops, the food industry and over 90% of people in the West have it in their bodies and even breast milk.

Tips says:

“Glyphosate is poisoning our soil, destroying our gut biome, and laying the foundation for destroying our ability to produce healthy foods for future generations. Industry and regulators claim that glyphosate is safe for humans and animals because the means by which it kills weeds (the shikimate pathway) is not present in in humans and animals. However, the shikimate pathway is present in bacteria, which dominate human and animal gut biomes. The glyphosate preferentially destroys beneficial gut bacteria, thereby allowing disease and inflammation to take hold.”

In Beijing, a growing list of approved and soon-to-be-approved pesticides was before the Committee for its consideration, a list that included chlorpyrifos-methyl, buprofezin, teflubenzuron, saflufenacil, fluazifop-p-butyl, flupyrdifurone, and glyphosate. Figures representing the interests of the agrochemical companies were all present, but Tips spoke out over the four-day meeting against the pesticides listed above. Depending on the pesticide, NHF argued that they were carcinogenic, killed bees and other vital insects as well as aquatic life and damaged the environment, including the oceans in the case of glyphosate.

In addition, there was much debate about the maximum residue limits (MRLs) for numerous pesticides.

When attending Codex meetings, given the presence of the agritech giants and co-opted officials, Tips is often a lone voice. He says of the objections he raised in Beijing:

“These solitary objections in a roomful of hundreds of delegates reminded me of the same circumstances I had found myself in at the Food Additives Committee meeting in 2008 and the Contaminants Committee meeting in 2009 when I was the only one to speak against aluminum in food additives and melamine contamination levels in infant formula. A few years later and both committees had come around entirely to the NHF positions and adopted them.”

He adds:

“Of course, CropLife and its captured regulators in Australia and New Zealand did all that they could during the meeting to advance pesticide MRLs that fail to protect consumers but do protect worldwide sales.”

Scott Tips and his colleagues at the NHF are tireless in their efforts to roll back corporate influence at Codex. In the profit-motivated world of big business where bought science and scientists, shady lobbying, smear campaigns and corrupt politics are the norm, integrity doesn’t count for much.

In the world of Tips, however, integrity is everything.

He concludes:

“The fight rages on. There are victories, such as in the 55 lawsuits filed against Monsanto in Northern California, where the court recently ordered release of Monsanto e-mails and other documents showing probable collusion between the company and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.”

Venezuela Under Siege by U.S. Empire

DAVID W. PEAR

It is all about the oil. Whatever else one hears about Venezuela, it is all about the oil. That is what one needs to know first about why the U.S. Empire has Venezuela under siege. It is about the oil.

When President Trump says, “Venezuela is a mess; Venezuela is a mess, we will see what happens”, it is all about the oil. When the U.S. Empire imposes sanctions on Venezuela, it is all about the oil. When the mainstream corporate media (i.e. Fake News) cries crocodile tears about democracy, human rights and political prisoners in Venezuela, it is about the oil. When the U.S. calls into session emergency meeting of the United Nations and the Organization of American States, it is about oil.

Venezuela has the largest known reserve of oil in the world, and Venezuela controls its own oil, not international corporations; and it uses its oil for the benefit of its people. The U.S. Empire instead wants to control that oil and it wants the profits from the oil to go to U.S. oil corporations, especially ExxonMobil. Everything else one hears now about Venezuela is prologue or epilogue. The main plot is about the oil.

The first scene opens with protesters screaming and yelling in the streets of Caracas. Barricades are blazing, people are choking on the smoke, and their eyes are red from teargas. Traffic is backed up for miles. It is chaos. The streets are filled with anti-government protesters, and out of sight of the mainstream media cameras are pro-government supporters. Most of the violence one sees and hears about is from the anti-government protesters, but mums the word about that from the mainstream corporate media. The mainstream corporate media is the Fake News, it is the propaganda horn for the U.S. Empire and those that really control what happens in the world.

There is blood in the streets of Venezuela, and overhead the U.S. Empire regime change vultures are circling. In the United Nations, in the Organization of American States, in the Oval Office of the White House, on the floor of the U.S. Congress, and in the Fake News people are seen wringing their hands about human rights and democracy. Tucker Carlson on Fox News is reporting about the failure of Venezuela’s socialist government:

“”there is no toilet paper or meat there, the currency is worthless, the murder rate is perhaps the highest in the world, the Supreme Court has tried to abolish the entire legislature for daring to oppose a dictator who’s running the place into the ground, and you can go on and on and on, it is a disaster there in Venezuela.”

Behind Tucker there is a scene playing. It is showing young people, all of them anti-government protesters, many wearing masks one supposes to protect their identity from what we are supposed to believe are government thugs. The protesters are throwing rocks, one supposes at government security forces. A water cannon sprays the protesters and they disperse to get away from it. Groups of protester run back and forth in the street, it is chaos, smoke is everywhere. What is it all the chaos about? The Fake News says it is all about democracy, the economy and human rights violations from a tyrannical government. It isn’t.

It is all about the oil.

Scene two of this deadly serious mini play opens in a boardroom behind closed doors, somewhere in Washington, D.C. Politicians, generals, spies, and oil company executives from ExxonMobil and Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson are meeting. They are talking in hushed voices about Venezuela. They are sharpening their axes and talking about oil. Venezuela has it? How do they get it? How can they control it? How do they keep others from controlling it? Who are the forces against them? Who are the forces for them? How can they create more chaos to destabilize the government of President Nicolas Maduro? How do they pull off a coup d’état? The plot thickens.

It is about the oil.

What we see happening in Venezuela is another tragedy unfolding on the world stage. There is bloodletting, and it will get much, much worse. Venezuela is approaching the edge of a civil war between the haves and the have-nots. It is class warfare. The rich and upper middle class want a regime change and an end to socialism for the poor. The rich want lower taxes, and ending social programs for the have-nots, and they want the privatization of vital government enterprises so that they can loot the country. And most of all, they want the privatization of the oil in their hands. They want to be billionaire oligarchs just like oligarchs in other oil-rich countries.

The have-nots support the government. They want the government to keep control of the oil for the benefit of the people, the have-nots. The have-nots are in the streets too, they are supporting the government, and they are being violently attacked by the hoodlums of the haves and the mercenaries for the U.S. Empire. The have-nots are being stoned, they are being shot down in the streets by anti-government rioters, they are being beaten with steel rods, and they are even being burned alive by anti-government protesters—let’s call them what they are, terrorists. We do not see or hear that from the Fake News. The have-nots want to keep their government provided healthcare, their government provided education, their government provided housing, their government provided mass transportation, their government provided food distribution centers, and all their government provided social services from the oil wealth.

The U.S. Empire wants a regime change in Venezuela. The Empire has been working on it for decades. We have seen their smoking guns before. Their guns now are smoking overtly and covertly behind the curtain, supporting the anti-government protesters and terrorists.

The Empire’s propaganda horn sounds off as if it is the government that is doing all the killing of peaceful protesters. Trump says Venezuela is a mess. The Empire has helped made it a mess; that is what the Empire wanted all along. The Empire’s Congress wants to impose more economic sanctions on a people that are already suffering. Congress wants more sanction on top of Obama’s sanctions. The U.S. is meddling, adding to Venezuela’s economic misery, trying to isolate Venezuela politically in Latin America, and trying to push Venezuela over the edge into civil war, if that is what it is going to take to get a regime change. Venezuela could turn into another human disaster like Syria, maybe even worse. Venezuela has twice the population of Syria and the largest proven oil reserves in the world. Venezuela could be on the cusp of a human catastrophe, a holocaust even.

The U.S. Empire has absolutely no concern about the population of Venezuela, any more than it is concerned about the people of Syria. Neither the Empire’s backing of terrorists in Syria, nor its backing of terrorists in Venezuela is about democracy, freedom, human rights, political prisoners, the economy and the thousands of people suffering and dying. The human suffering is of no importance or concern to the Empire’s foreign policy objectives. If one has any doubts about that, just ask Madeleine Albright:

Lesley Stahl: “We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?”

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price–we think the price is worth it, if it furthers U.S. foreign policy objectives.”

This was no slip of the tongue by Madame Albright, and notice she said “we”. She is talking about the “we” that is the Clinton Administration and everybody on his foreign policy team. This is how they really think, act and care-not in private.

The foreign policy objectives and thinking of the Empire do not chance from one presidential administration to another. It has not made any difference whether the administration is Clinton, Bush, Obama or Trump. A half million brown babies in Asia, Africa or Latin America is of no concern to them, especially when those babies get in the way of the Empire’s foreign policy objectives. One million dead babies is of no concern. Five million is of no concern. It is as cold as that, and if one is in doubt then take a look at what is happening in the Democratic Republic of the Congo with 8 million dead and increasing every day, with U.S. meddling and support of the killers.

What is of vital concern to the U.S. Empire is its foreign policy objectives. One important Empire foreign policy objective is the profits of corporations; not democracy and human rights. The Empire is not even that concerned about the best interests and welfare of U.S. citizens, not unless they are bigtime campaign contributors and bribers of politicians.

The corporate profits that the U.S. is concerned about could be for corporate owned banana plantations, cheap labor pools for sweatshops, opening foreign markets to U.S. corporations, or any natural resources below, on, or above the ground. Anything for corporate exploitation in game.

Of vital importance to the Empire is when its foreign policy objectives have to do with oil company profits and anything to do with oil, natural gas, and their shipping lanes, and the strategic pipeline routes for that oil and gas. Oil is vital to the Empire.

Oil has a special roll in U.S. foreign policy. Oil is the important driver of the American way of life (figuratively and literally); oil is important to keep the U.S. economy greased (figuratively and literally); oil is important to fuel the U.S. military which is literally the largest single consumer of oil; and it is of vital importance to control all the oil in the world, all the time. Oil is what the U.S. Empire wants to control for fueling the Empire, and to keep it from fueling potential enemies and their military. Control of oil is the Empire’s way of keeping friends in a straight line too.

Oil serves another vital purpose. It is what backs the U.S. dollar. Oil is literally black-gold. As long as all the oil in the world is transacted in U.S. dollars, then there will always be a demand for U.S. dollars, according to the Empire’s foreign policy thinking. As long as there is a demand for oil, then they think they can print all the U.S. dollars it wants.

The U.S. can seemingly print and create dollars out of thin air, and use those fiat dollars to pay for all the foreign trade deficits with every other country. If one understands how important oil is for the U.S. dollar, then one can understand why half a million dead babies is “worth it”; or a million dead babies, or ten million dead babies; especially if they are brown dead babies and as long as their mangled little corpses are kept out of sight. The corporate Fake News’s job is to keep those dead babies out of the media, and that is what they do unless it is of some propaganda advantage for the Empire to display them.

Once one internalizes just how absolutely vital oil is strategically, militarily and economically to the U.S. Empire, then one can make sense out of U.S. foreign policy objectives. It is absolutely vital for the U.S. Empire to control oil, all of it, all of the time; to control the corporations that explore, refine and market oil; and to control the countries and governments that have the oil in their ground; and to control the countries and the governments that have the transportation routes for that oil (and natural gas). And oil is used to control its friends as well as enemies that vitally need the oil too.

Any country that has oil or the pipeline routes, and a government that is in noncompliance with the U.S. Empire oil policies, then that government is a marked government for regime change. It really does not matter to the Empire’s foreign policy objectives if that marked country is capitalist, fascist, totalitarian, or theocratic; an oligarchy, monarchy or a democracy. Nor do the human rights record of any country matter to U.S. foreign policy objectives.

Any government that uses its oil wealth for the benefit of its own people will sooner or later become a marked government for regime change. Any government that decides to sell its oil in other than U.S. dollars will be a marked government by the Empire. By definition any oil rich socialist government will be marked. Venezuela has a socialist government that controls its own oil, uses that oil for the benefit of its own people and does not sell that oil exclusively in U.S. dollars. Its government is marked for regime change, it has been for a long time and it is under siege now by the Empire.

Looking at U.S. oil policy one realizes that there is no Empire foreign policy contradictions. It does not matters to the Empire if the country is Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Nigeria, Mexico or Canada. The policy is the same and there is no squawking about democracy and human rights as long as a foreign government stays compliant. That is why there is no contradiction for the Empire if a marked government for regime change is a democratically elected governments such as Syria in 1949, Iranian in 1953, Guatemalan in 1954, Chile 1973, Haiti 1991, and Honduras 2009.

A democratically elected socialist government of an oil rich nation that uses its oil for social programs and sells that oil in other than U.S. dollars will definitely be on the Empires hit list. That is why the U.S. Empire has Venezuela in its crosshairs, under siege, and is using overt and covert forces to overthrow the government of Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro.

The form of government and human rights only enters the Empire’s foreign policy equation when it is dealing with a marked government for regime change. A marked government will never be democratic-enough, and their human rights will always have the spotlight shined on it and criticized. Democracy and human rights are only important if they serve a propaganda purpose, no matter how democratic the government is or what its human rights record. The Fake News is the Empire’s best and faithful propaganda horn that will toot that the marked country is not democratic-enough and violates it peoples human rights.

Once U.S. foreign policy objectives are understood vis-a-vis oil, then one can have a rational understanding of why Venezuela and its oil is so important to the U.S. Empire. It is not about democracy and human rights. Get that straight in your mind.

The only reason the Empire has Venezuela under siege is because of the oil. Are there any questions?

The Murder of Muslims

Farzana Versey

In India today, nationalism has a religion. Hinduism. We may pussyfoot around it and refer to it as Hindutva, saffronisation or, what the ruling rightwing Bhartiya Janata Party calls “fringe elements”, but the discourse is clearly embedded in the faith of the majority community.

Slurs against Muslims have become commonplace. A country that wants to declare the cow as the mother of the nation and where minorities have to prove their patriotism not by allegiance to the flag but to the political party in power is bound to descend into chaos.

Two years ago, a mob brandishing hockey sticks and knives barged into Mohammed Akhlaq’s house in Dadri in north India and assaulted all the family members before killing him because they suspected there was beef in their fridge. The meat was sent to the forensic lab and it was found to be lamb.

When one of his killers died (of natural causes), he was given a martyr’s funeral; his coffin was draped in the national flag and there were speeches by leaders from Hindu organisations that have direct access to the government.

Last month towards the end of Ramadan when Junaid boarded the train to return home with his Eid shopping bags, he might not have imagined that the elderly man whom he offered the seat to would egg on a mob punching him and his friends. Abuses flew. “Beef eater”, “antinational”, “mullah”. They pulled at their skull caps and newly-sprouted beards. Knives came out telling them to go to Pakistan. They were bleeding. Nobody came to their rescue. Junaid was stabbed. He died. He was 16.
At the stations en route some of the lynch mob got off, enough to let the cops shrug about little evidence.

A scuffle for seats got transformed into a fight for political and religious space. Or, perhaps, religious assertiveness is seeking out reasons.

Meat trader Alimuddin Ansari was beaten up by a mob and his van, ostensibly with cattle meat, was set on fire in Jharkhand. There seemed to have been a dispute with some people who were extorting money from him. Such excuses have become the norm where the victim is invariably Muslim, for it was not a spontaneous act. His movements were tracked for hours before he was murdered.

Mohammad Majloom and Inayatullah Khan of Latehar were taking their cattle to a fair many miles away. Five men with a mission waylaid them. After they killed the 35 and 13 year old, they tied a noose around their necks and hung them from a tree.

“Prima facie it appears to have been a case of a gang attempting to loot cattle,” the cops said. For those in a hurry to rob and make a quick escape with the cattle to profit from it, they seemed to have relished in committing the murders. Not only did they kill the two, they hanged them. The hanging was a message. To shame. To hold them up as an example. How dare they not respect their gau mata, the cow mother, their religion?

It is disconcerting that mobs are using cow protection as the higher cause even to settle petty disputes. The shaming has got a further boost because the videos are uploaded and shared. The message gets more traction. What is so evident in these viral videos is that the so-called ‘jihadi mentality’ that Muslims are accused of does not respond in kind. The victims are just overwhelmed by the suddenness of the attack; in some instances they are pleading, in one the man does not even have the energy or presence of mind to protest as they grab his hair and kick him. He just takes it like a stoic who has become accustomed to lie on a bed of nails.

***

Narendra Modi, the prime minister of India, has not uttered a word condoling any of these deaths. He tweets mourning for the loss of lives in a fire in Portugal, but makes no attempt to reach out to the families of those killed by men purportedly supporting his party’s Hindutva dream, a dream to reclaim ancient India and transform the country into a Hindu nation.

When he does speak, it is evasive: “All (state) governments should take stringent action against those who are violating law in the name of cow protection.”

How will this happen when some state governments are handing out expensive beef detection kits to the cops to smell for trouble, effectively converting the police force into cow protectors too? The very fact that there are several cow protection groups is worrying, for they aren’t animal rights activists but soldiers of the faith.

“Bolo Jai Shri Ram” (Hail Lord Rama), is the war cry. People are stopped in the streets and asked to owe allegiance to their god. A mentally unstable woman was slapped and forced to utter the words; a cleric was pummelled just outside the mosque by a group insisting he chant the phrase; journalist Munne Bharti was driving with his elderly parents. Suddenly, their car was surrounded by a group. They threatened to set the car on fire if they did not chant “Jai Shri Ram”. They did. An adult was frightened, for himself and his aged parents.

***

How is this not about religion, then?

It was always about religion, perhaps by a few skewed minds. 25 years ago Bal Thackeray, the leader of the militant Shiv Sena, had asked for the disenfranchisement of Muslims. He would address huge rallies at an open ground referring to Muslims as “katuas”, the cut ones without a foreskin. After the Babri Masjid was demolished in Ayodhya, on the instructions of these political parties, and the riots reached what was then Bombay, the men in the streets would point at the crotches of Muslim men and snigger, “katua”. They were stopped and asked to strip for a random check by random people. Unlike the Sikhs after the riots in 1984 who discarded their turbans and shaved off their hair to protect themselves, Muslims could not get back their foreskin.

At the All-India Hindu Convention held last month in Goa, for 4 days all the cars at the venue were sprayed with cow urine to purify them. “Their car needs shuddhi karan. We do it to all objects — watches, clothes, sometimes even handbags. It’s a spiritual exercise.”

How people choose to practise their faith is a personal matter. But when you have a cow piss soda, cow dung and urine being made a part of ayurvedic medicines and astrologers treating people in hospital OPDs, then it becomes obvious that the cow and beef are incidental here. They are only the more potent batons to beat the minorities. There is also the commercial angle. Giving a charlatan guru called Ramdev land and business rights to run an empire ostensibly selling indigenous products is a strategy to bring the devil close to your home.

Young Hindu women are training in self-defence to protect them from “love jihad”, a bogey created by the rightwing suggesting that Muslim men are luring them to fall in love to later convert them.

In May last year, there was a report about a camp in Uttar Pradesh training the youth wing of militant Hindu organisations to protect the country from terrorists. In the video images they are aiming their air guns and sticks at men wearing skull caps. The governor had justified the drill: “Those who cannot defend themselves, cannot ultimately defend the country and there is nothing wrong if some youths are getting arms-training purely for self defence.”

That instead of urging these fit youth to join the army, they are being brainwashed to target a particular group makes the intention clear.
How is this not about religion?

***

The fallout of such brainwashing is not restricted to the extremist Hindutva proponents alone. There is a not-so-subtle attempt to deflect from the Hinduness of the terror by liberals too. An academic who has taken it upon himself to explain India to Indians on social media from his perch in the US has written about the global Muslim victimhood industry by playing victim: “One cannot use the term ‘Muslim terror’ (but Hindu or Christian or Left terror is fine) or even Islamic terror without worry of being termed communal, bigoted, or Islamophobic. The appropriate phrase is ‘Islamist terror,’ which, we are expected to clarify, has nothing to do with Islam.”

Some commentators have begun to call India Lynchistan, the land of lynching. We do not seem to realise that mobs thrive on notoriety. They are not seeking a popular mandate, because they already are the popular mandate. Paper tiger responses only embolden their cause. The truth is that nobody in mainstream media or in activism or with an outsider’s perspective, like Dr. Amartya Sen, has had the courage or the will to call these planned lynchings as Hindu terrorism.

Is such nomenclature important? It is. Because it is a systematic attempt to annihilate the minorities, specifically Muslims. (Quite different from Islamist terrorism whose victims are mainly Muslim and, in some cases like the ISIS’s victims, also people who are liberal enough to support Muslims.)

Muslims immediately distance themselves from any jihad violence, even though that does not assuage their neighbours from seeing them as potential suspects. Hindus are not doing so in large enough numbers, and they are chary of admitting the faith angle because they believe that Hinduism is not a monotheistic faith with allegiance to one book and one god. It is amorphous and therefore fluid, they reason.

The caste system and its treatment of Dalits and the backward castes certainly reveals ‘fluidity’. All the government-engineered riots have been masterminded by a vile intellect that outsources the war to the police and army and pumps up the trading class to decimate minority businesses. The murder of minorities is only a more violent assertion of this sheltered ghettoisation of the elite majority.

There are many who use their internet liberalism to rationalise their own subtle bigotry. That many of them also have a stake in steak does lend weight to their public “I’m not too Hindu” utterances.

In one such recent piece, the headline flashed about how Hindu victimhood is a manufactured cry. In the first para itself, though, the writer gave a clean chit to Muslims quoting, of all people, George Bush: “India is a country which does not have a single al-Qaida member in a population of 150 million Muslims.” Hindus do not have to prove whether they have allegiance to any extremist organisation, even if they elect them to power.

The usage of Islamist phrases like fatwa and jihad to explain Hindu terror acts and suggest they are only “mimicking” reeks of another version of Islamophobia and projects violence by Hindu extremists as a reaction to centuries of abuse by Muslim rulers. This historic narrative pushes the ‘tolerate Muslims despite their past’ idea, the moral compass revealing who considers itself the superior side.

These recent attempts to call out Hindu extremists is not organic. They are a response to some of us wondering why we did not link the Hindu word with terrorism. We have woken up or, in good old Hindu speak, and in deference to many of us being converts from the ancient religion, our third eye has been awakened.

The Biotech Industry is Taking Over the Regulation of GMOs From the Inside

Jonathan Latham

The Spain-based non-profit GRAIN recently revealed the agribusiness takeover of Conabia, the National Advisory Committee on Agricultural Biotechnology of Argentina. Conabia is the GMO assessment body of Argentina. According to GRAIN, 26 of 34 its members were either agribusiness company employees or had major conflicts of interest.

Packing a regulatory agency with conflicted individuals is one way to ensure speedy GMO approvals and Conabia has certainly delivered that. A much more subtle, but ultimately more powerful, way is to bake approval into the structure of the GMO assessment process itself. It is easier than you might think.

I recently attended the latest international conference of GMO regulators, called ISBGMO14, held in Guadalajara, Mexico (June 4-8, 2017). ISBGMO is run by the International Society for Biosafety Research (ISBR). When I first went to this biennial series of conferences, in 2007, just one presentation in the whole four days was by a company. ISBR had some aspirations towards scientific independence from agribusiness.

I went for a second time in 2011, to the ISBGMO held in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Company researchers and executives were frequent speakers and the conference had become an opportunity for agribusiness to present talking points and regulatory initiatives as if they had the blessing of science. This year, in Guadalajara, companies were now on the conference organising committee and even conferring conference travel scholarships from the podium. A former conference organiser and ISBR board member told me that the previous ISBGMO (St. Louis, USA, in 2015) had been almost entirely paid for by Monsanto.

Spreading the industry message

In Guadalajara, industry speakers were clearly working from a scripted list. That list translates as the key regulatory objectives of the biotech industry.

Prominent on that list was “data transportability”. Data transportability is the idea that regulators from different jurisdictions, say India, or the EU, should accept identical biosafety applications. Implementation of data transportability would mean that although each country has unique ecosystems and species, applicants ought not to have to provide studies tailored to each. For example, when it comes to assessing effects on non-target organisms, for example of a GMO crop producing an insecticide, regulators in Australia should accept tests on European ladybird species or earthworms as showing that a GMO cotton can safely be grown there.

The appeal of data transportability for an applicant is clear enough—less cost and less risk of their GMO failing a risk assessment. Not once did I hear mention of an obvious downside to data transportability. The fewer tests to which a novel GMO is subjected the less research there is to detect a significant problem if one exists.

A second standard corporate line was “need to know versus nice to know”. In other words do not ask applicants for more data than they wish to supply. The downsides to this are identical to data transportability. Less data is less testing and less science.

Modernising risk assessment?

Another major theme of the meeting was ‘modernization’ of regulation. In this scheme the most ‘advanced’ nation was proposed to be Canada. Canada has adopted what it calls “trait-based GMO regulation”. In trait-based regulation the method of development (i.e. whether the crop was genetically engineered or not) is considered irrelevant. The trait is the sole focus. So if a GMO crop contains an insecticide it is assessed for risk against non-target organisms. If a GMO improves flavour or nutrition then, since there is presumably no risk from flavours or nutrients, then the crop receives what amounts to a free pass.

The Canadian approach sounds harmless, but it has the crucial property that it hands control of risk assessment to the applicant, because under such a system everything depends on what the applicant chooses to call their trait. Imagine you were asked to review the safety of an aircraft, but the manufacturer wouldn’t tell you if it was propeller-driven or a jet; likewise, if a submarine was diesel or nuclear powered.

The Canadian approach therefore, by just asking what the crop is supposed to do, effectively places outside of regulation most of the standard considerations of risk and hazard. Once upon a time, risk assessment was supposed to be about what a product is not supposed to do. For proposing non-regulation over regulation, Canadian biosafety officials were given more prominent speaking opportunities at ISBGMO14 than any other national regulator.

Tiered risk assessment

An equivalently unscientific innovation, which seems widely accepted, is called tiered risk assessment. Imagine a company presents to regulators an insect-resistant GMO crop. An obvious question arises. How is a regulator to know, since the crops produces an insecticide, if it will kill beneficial organisms such as the bees that feed on its flowers?

In tiered risk assessment this question is answered by feeding the purified GMO insecticide to a bee species. If no harm is observed the crop is assumed safe. No further tests are required. If the bees are harmed then a larger scale test, presumptively more realistic, is conducted. If harm is not observed the crop is assumed safe and no further tests are required. If harm is shown then an outdoor or larger-level test will be conducted.

Monsanto presented a lengthy exposition, in a plenary session, of the ‘soundness’ and ‘logic’ of this tiered approach. Tiered risk assessment has been the subject of little scientific debate (though see Lang et al., 2007), but the implications of the tiered approach are profound. It is an asymmetrical system in which passing any test leads to approval whereas failing that test does not result in disapproval.

Consider the comparison with pharmaceuticals. Currently, all pharmaceutical drugs must pass through three phases of clinical trials; first animal tests, then small scale human trials, then large scale human trials. Failure at any stage is considered terminal. Without wishing to give them any ideas, suppose the FDA were to replace this three-phase system with one under which approval in phase I (animal tests) allowed the developer to go straight to market. There would be, for good reason, an uproar, followed by an avalanche of dangerous medications on the market. But that is precisely the logic of tiered GMO testing.

Tiered testing is therefore a system in which failure is an unacceptable answer. In the scientific review paper that first proposed tiered risk assessment, there is no provision for rejecting the crop in the main figure, which diagrams the proposed decision tree (See Figure 1 of Romeis et al., 2008). Approvals are guaranteed. Agribusiness knows this perfectly well because many of the principal authors of Romeis et al are from the major seed and biotech companies.

The so-called logical innovations presented at ISBGMO14, such as data transportability, trait-based regulation, and tiered risk assessment, are thus intended as regulatory bypasses. They make it all but impossible for a regulator to turn down a GMO application, or even to collect sufficient information. No wonder the biotech industry likes to refer to risk assessment procedures as approval systems.

Given the lack of objection to these approaches at ISBGMO14, the biotech industry ought now to feel confident that the regulation of biotechnology is largely in their hands, but still it wants more.

In the coming years, an upsurge is expected in the GMO pipeline as new applications and new approaches become possible. This pipeline is predicted to include GMO algae, animal biotechnology, gene drives, and so forth. Many of these opportunities the industry knows will be controversial. A pacified regulatory environment is for them a necessity before that can happen.

This is more than a shame. When a comprehensive evaluation of the weaknesses and inherent limitations of scientific risk assessment is urgently needed to cope with these challenges, the chemical and biotech industries are forcing those assessment systems in the opposite direction.

Saudi Arabia: the Kingdom Whose Name We Dare Not Speak At All

Robert Fisk 

Theresa May has oddly declined to comment on the reported arrest of the mini-skirted lass who was videotaped cavorting through an ancient Najd village this week, provoking unexpected roars of animalistic male fury in a kingdom known for its judicial leniency, political moderation, gender equality and fraternal love for its Muslim neighbours.

May should, surely, have drawn the attention of the rulers of this normally magnanimous state to the extraordinarily uncharacteristic behaviour of the so-called religious police – hitherto regarded as extras in the very same kingdom’s growing tourism industry which is supported by its newly appointed peace-loving and forward-thinking young Crown Prince.

But of course, since May cannot possibly believe that a single person in this particular national entity would give even a riyal or a halfpenny to “terrorists” – of the kind who have been tearing young British lives apart in Manchester and London – she’s hardly likely to endanger the “national security” of said state by condemning the arrest of the aforementioned young lady. In any event, a woman so proper that she would not risk soiling her hands by greeting the distraught survivors of the Grenfell Tower fire has no business shedding even a “little tear” for middle class girls who upset what we must now call The Kingdom Whose Name We Dare Not Speak At All.

Or at least, we do not dare to speak its name. It’s now a week since this extraordinary woman – our beloved May, not the cutie of Najd – declined to publish perhaps the most important, revelatory document in the history of modern “terrorism” on the grounds that to identify the men who are funding the killers running Isis, al-Qaeda, al-Nusrah and sundry other chaps, would endanger “national security”. Note that Amber Rudd, May’s amanuensis, intriguingly declined to specify whose “national security” was at risk. Ours? Or that of The Kingdom Whose Name We Dare Not Speak At All – henceforth, for brevity’s sake, the KSA – which must surely be well aware which of its illustrious citizens (peace-loving, moderate, gender-equalised, etc) have been sending their lolly to the Isis lads.

Was it not, after all, Lord Blair who ten years ago also closed down the Serious Fraud Office’s enquiry into a bribery scandal allegedly involving BAE Systems and The Kingdom Whose Name We Dare Not Speak At All? On that occasion, I seem to recall, our “national interest” prevented us knowing what was going on because this might result in the end of “security cooperation” between us and the KSA. Blair talked of “extremely difficult and delicate issues” in the bribery enquiry.

So let me try and get this right. In 2006 and 2007, we were not allowed to know anything about potential bribery between BAE and the KSA because of our “national interest” – and the danger to our “security”. But now we’re not to know who is funding the Isis boys and girls because this too would damage our “national security” – even though the funders apparently came from among the people whose “security cooperation” was so important to us ten years ago. I trust those in the UK who have survived the knife-wielding, suicide-bombing cultists of Isis can follow this tomfoolery.

It’s not just a question of Aunty Amber scribbling on her piece of paper to get a man to ring a bell and then switch off a microphone to stop us hearing a fatal reference to the KSA – though this widely circulated snatch of video is highly instructive. What gets me is the whole idolisation of political secrecy that now surrounds The Kingdom Whose Name We Dare Not Speak At All. Her Majesty’s Opposition, after much waffling about the hypocrisy of the Government, appear to have now accepted that the access of Privy Councillors – keeping everything secret from the public but not from themselves – salvages the matter for now.

In a real world of responsibility, of course, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner would be asking why dark and criminal deeds cannot be fully exposed with all the rigour now being promised on the Grenfell deaths. But no, Commissioner Cressida Dick will be taking no such action – even though she was mightily involved in anti-terrorism in the aftermath of the 2005 London bombings when she was commander of the police control room in the operation in which poor and very innocent Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes was slaughtered by the cops after being wrongly identified as a potential suicide bomber. The inquest jury exonerated Dick from this disaster. But doesn’t she have a few duties when Lady May and Aunty Amber are covering up a document that fingers those who fund the real suicide bombers?

But no. The Kingdom Whose Name We Dare Not Speak At All is now as sacred as Israel used to be; that is, largely inoculated from all criticism. Once, we all feared to condemn Israel for its war crimes in Gaza for fear that we would be accused – falsely, as usual – of anti-Semitism. Now we must fear to condemn or even mention the KSA lest we be accused of endangering our national interest. It’s a real dog’s breakfast, this closing of national debate. Why soon, we will be afraid to ask why Israel strategically bombs the Syrians, Hezbollah and the Iranians – but never Isis – in the Syrian civil war.

Yet one moment, ladies and gentlemen. In less than three months from now, our beloved Prime Minister – perhaps or perhaps not still May – will travel to Jerusalem to commemorate jointly with the Israelis the hundredth anniversary of the Balfour Declaration. This manual for refugeedom which the Government now extols as such a fine document, one in which the British – for heaven’s sake – will feel “pride”, according to May, is the same wretched paper (a single sentence) which effectively created the Palestinian refugee tragedy that remains with us to this day.

Now there’s a document to suppress in the “national interest”. There’s a statement of disgrace and hypocrisy that might well be deleted by our Government on the grounds of “national security”. Or at least quietly forgotten. But no, in the orgy of secrecy in which we are invited to share, it is that for which we should be most ashamed that is to be praised – and that which we should read which is to be hidden from us.