Fire in Chinese workers’ dormitory kills 22

Robert Campion

A recent fire in the city of Changshu in Jiangsu province has once again drawn attention to the poor and dangerous conditions endured by millions of China’s internal migrant workers.

The blaze broke out on July 14 in a two-storey residential building at 4.30 a.m. and quickly enveloped the structure. Around 71 firefighters and 13 fire engines were called and it was over an hour before the flames were extinguished. Tragically, the fire killed 22 people and injured another three.

There was little chance for residents to escape the blaze. Various reports, including the State Administration of Work Safety, have stated that the doors were locked from the outside and all the windows had security grills. Only six people managed to get out of the building.

The building was being rented out by a nearby restaurant for 29 of its staff. A fellow employee told the Chinese media that all of the victims were colleagues, including waiters, waitresses and chefs, and young, 25 years on average, and from all over China.

The police reportedly found traces of petrol at the scene and began an arson investigation. According to China News Service, a suspect was captured hours later hiding inside a water tank, and additional suspects were identified by surveillance footage.

Arson attacks have occurred in the past as a result of workplace disputes, in which the frustration has boiled over.

In 2012, a worker angry over unpaid wages of 3,000 yuan ($461), set an under-garment factory in Guangdong, southern China on fire. The blaze killed 14 female workers and left one seriously injured. All were young workers between the ages of 18 and 20, who were unable to escape because of barred windows.

The grievance over wages extended back three years after the worker quit the factory. He told the Guangdong TV broadcaster, “The whole time, I’ve been very impulsive, very angry about this… so I did these things.” When asked if he regretted the loss of life from the fire, he replied that he “didn’t think about these things.”

It is unclear whether last month’s fire was arson and, if it was, what provoked the attack. No motive was made public and the fire quickly dropped out of the news.

It is common for employers to provide accommodation for their staff, as many poorly-paid workers, particularly migrants, cannot afford to live in decent housing in the cities. Such houses and dormitories are typically fire traps with cramped conditions and lacking fire exits or fire extinguishers. Faulty wiring can start fires.

In Beijing, one of the most unaffordable cities in China, hundreds of workers were recently discovered living underneath a luxury apartment complex. More than 400 migrant workers were crammed into an old air raid shelter located under the spacious “Julong Gardens.” The shelter had been subdivided into dormitories with kitchens.

One resident expressed safety concerns to the media over the use of rice cookers and fridges, as well as a gas tank. One room was reserved for smokers. There were no windows for ventilation, and only one fire exit. According to one estimate, a million Chinese migrants are living in such underground bunkers and bomb shelters.

Employers are seldom prosecuted. Recently a landlord in Sanya, Hainan province, was jailed for 15 days over a fire at his flat which he had leased to 72 tenants, according to Hainan Daily. No casualties were reported in that fire.

China is currently in the midst of a speculative housing bubble. According to the Wall Street Journal, the real estate sector in 2007 accounted for 10 percent of China’s gross domestic product, but by 2017 it accounts for 30 percent driving up prices and rents.

A study in 2016 by the Global Cities Business Alliance also showed that employees in Beijing with average incomes, such as nurses, teachers and bus drivers, often paid rental rates of between 1.1 and 1.5 times their incomes.

Millions of migrant workers coming to the cities from rural areas simply cannot afford decent accommodation, compounding their oppressive conditions.

Internal migrants are still subject to what amounts to a hukou system, instituted under Mao in the 1950s, which makes them second-class citizens. Unlike urban residents, they do not have access to basic services including welfare, education, health, housing and pensions.

The system was designed to control the movement of people and the uneven development in a rapidly industrialising economy. Now, however, corporations rely on this underclass of poorly paid and highly exploited workers. There are currently 282 million people in China classified as rural migrants, constituting over a third of the labour force.

The poor conditions facing migrants means that many families are split between the city and the countryside for most of the year. Over 61 million “left behind children” are isolated from their parents in the country and suffer as a consequence. Cases have been reported of children dying of starvation and drowning due to neglect.

The profits extracted from rural migrant workers have led to the rapid growth of a super wealthy elite. Last year, Greater China accounted for five of the world’s “top 10 billionaire cities,” according to the Hurun Report. Beijing overtook New York as the city with the most billionaires, 100 to 95 respectively.

Venezuelan military claims suppression of attempted coup

Bill Van Auken 

Venezuela’s top military commanders claimed Sunday that the country’s armed forces had crushed an abortive coup staged by “terrorists” and “mercenaries” linked to the country’s right-wing opposition and foreign governments.

The reported coup attempt apparently involved little more than two dozen armed men who attempted to take over the strategic Paramacay military base of the 41st Armored Brigade in the central Venezuelan city of Valencia.

The alleged coup came a day after the newly convened constituent assembly voted to fire the country’s attorney general, Luisa Ortega, a long-time supporter of the ruling party who had publicly challenged the legitimacy of the election for the assembly held last Sunday.

Ortega had earlier prosecuted members of the security forces for acts of repression carried out during anti-government demonstrations organized by the right-wing opposition. Four months of protests have left over 100 dead, nearly 2,000 wounded and more than 500 detained. A significant number of those killed have been members of the security forces, as elements of the extreme right have employed increasingly violent methods.

After the constituent assembly voted for Ortega’s removal, armed members of the national guard surrounded her offices in downtown Caracas, blocking her when she tried to enter the building.

Ortega has charged that the real reason for her firing was that she was pursuing cases against members of President Nicolas Maduro’s ruling PSUV (United Socialist Party of Venezuela) for illicit links to the Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht. The company has admitted to paying $98 million worth of bribes to secure contracts in Venezuela, and Ortega had indicted the wife and mother of a former government minister last month in connection with these schemes.

In the same session in which the assembly voted for Ortega’s ouster, Diosdado Cabello, a powerful member of the PSUV’s leadership and former military officer, announced that the body would remain in session for two years. A constituent assembly called into session through a referendum convened by Maduro’s late predecessor, Hugo Chavez, had a life span of only four months.

The leader of the alleged coup attempt in Valencia was identified as Juan Carlos Caguaripano, a former captain in the national guard who was cashiered in 2014 after making public declarations against the government. He subsequently appeared on CNN’s Spanish language network denouncing Maduro and reportedly went into exile in the US.

Appearing Sunday in a YouTube video with about a dozen men in camouflage uniforms, some armed with automatic weapons, Caguaripano declared: “This is not a coup d’etat. This is a civic and military action to re-establish constitutional order. But more than that, it is to save the country from total destruction.”

Conflicting accounts of the military action included claims that elements within the armored brigade supported the action before it was put down by forces loyal to the government. The government claimed that the armed group was immediately suppressed by the troops.

According to a communique released by the defense minister, Vladimir Padrino López, the captured gunmen admitted to having been recruited by elements of the “Venezuelan extreme right” acting in conjunction with foreign governments.

There were also reports of a small number of civilian demonstrators coming out into the streets near the military base to support the uprising before they were driven off by security forces using tear gas and rubber bullets.

Others in Valencia, however, were quoted by the local media as expressing the opinion that the entire affair had been “staged” by the government to divert growing popular anger.

Similar reactions were expressed in late June when a former police captain and part-time movie actor seized a helicopter and dropped grenades on the Venezuela supreme court building.

Whatever the case, the Maduro government is extremely sensitive to the threat of unrest within the military, which has served as its principal pillar since Chavez, a former paratrooper colonel who led an unsuccessful coup, was first elected to power in 1999. Current and former officers fill roughly a third of the government’s cabinet posts and comprise nearly half of the country’s governors.

The latest developments unfolded as the White House is reportedly considering the imposition of more sweeping sanctions against the government of Maduro, whom members of the Trump cabinet have branded as a dictator. The US government has imposed sanctions against Maduro personally, making him only the fifth sitting head of state to receive such treatment. The other four include Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi—both assassinated—and Syria’s Bashar al-Assad and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un—both targeted for war and regime change.

While more sweeping economic sanctions had been proposed, the crisis and shake-up in the Trump White House have delayed the measures. White House chief of staff John Kelly, a recently retired Marine general and former head of the US Southern Command, which oversees US military operations in Latin America, reportedly wants to personally direct the escalation of US aggression against Venezuela.

The other issue is that the imposition of sanctions against Venezuelan oil, the main economic lever at hand for US imperialism, would be a two-edged sword. Last year, the US imported some $10 billion worth of Venezuela crude oil to feed American refineries. While a cutoff of these imports would likely force Venezuela’s state-owned oil company PDVSA into default and further sink the country’s already plummeting economy, it would also spell higher gasoline prices in the US itself.

The imposition of US economic sanctions would mean a further deterioration in the living standards of the Venezuelan working class. Lack of oil revenues would mean even less ability to import basic necessities like food and medicine. Seventy-five percent of Venezuelans reported losing an average of 19 pounds in 2016 due to widespread food scarcity, and the country’s infant and maternal mortality rates soared during the same year, by 30 and 65 percent respectively.

In the last year, the country’s currency, the bolivar, has lost 94 percent of its value on the exchange market, drastically reducing the real wages of Venezuelan workers, even as the so-called boliburguesia, the capitalist layer that, together with the military, forms the principal base of support for the Maduro government, has enriched itself off of currency speculation and manipulation.

Suicide rate among US teenage girls hit all-time high in 2015

Kate Randall 

A new analysis reveals that the suicide rate among teenage girls in the United States reached a 40-year high in 2015. Statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that between 2007 and 2015 the suicide rate among girls aged 15-19 doubled, while it tripled for younger girls, aged 12-14. The analysis was based on government records kept since 1975.

The rate of young women aged 15-19 taking their own lives was recorded at 2.9 in every 100,000 girls in 1975. While this rate increased to 3.7 by 1990, by 2007 it showed a decline, to 2.4. By 2015, however, it had doubled, reaching 5.1.

While not showing as dramatic an increase, the suicide rate among teenage boys rose by 30 percent between 2007 and 2015, according to the CDC. However, the rate of suicide among teenage boys has been historically much higher than among teenage girls. The rate of young men aged 15-19 stood at 18.1 in every 100,000 people in 2015, compared to 10.8 percent in 2007.

Suicide is the third leading cause of death for adolescents aged 15-19, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). In 2015, half of suicides of people of all ages were committed with firearms. The other leading methods were suffocation, including hanging, at 26.8 percent, and poisoning, 15.4 percent.

Behind these figures stand thousands of fractured families struggling to deal with the tragic deaths of their young family members. Teenagers committing suicide are likely to have a history of depression, a previous suicide attempt and a family history of psychiatric disorders. They are frequently suffering from substance abuse.

However, the reasons teenagers take the desperate action of suicide cannot simply be reduced to these very real mental health struggles. Factors driving young people to take their own lives must also be traced to the growing social and economic tensions in 21st century America.

The most obvious catalyst for the uptick in teen suicide between 2007 and 2015 was the global financial crisis that peaked in 2008. Tom Simon, an author of the CDC report, told CNN: “One of the factors that people have talked about as a potential contributor to the trend is the economic downturn that we saw in 2007-2009. As economic problems go up, suicide rates go up.”

The financial crisis, which the Obama administration declared over by mid-2009, has inflicted economic hardships on millions of US families that persist to this day. The effects on teenagers and their family members have been myriad: unemployment, poverty and hunger, student debt, unpaid medical bills, homelessness. These economic pressures are major factors contributing to mental distress among teens.

In the CDC’s suicide policy guidelines, violence is also regarded as one of the major factors leading to teen suicide: “Exposure to violence (e.g., child abuse and neglect, bullying, peer violence, dating violence, sexual violence, and intimate partner violence) is associated with increased risk of depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety, suicide, and suicide attempts. Women exposed to partner violence are nearly five times more likely to attempt suicide as women not exposed to partner violence.”

While social media is pointed to by suicide prevention advocates as a vehicle for promoting bullying, prompting suicide and other self-harm, what young people post on Facebook, Snapchat and other social media outlets is itself often a reflection of the brutal realities confronting youth today. As the CDC points out, social media could be used as a tool to fight bullying, and would be used in this way under different social conditions.

The violence of the US ruling elite must also be included in the experience of teenagers. Teens aged 12-19 today have never lived in a world when the US was not prosecuting a war of aggression. The list of countries the US was at war in between 2007 and 2015 include Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. If the actions of the US political establishment and its two big business parties are to serve as a model for US youth, the outlook is bleak indeed.

There is also the example of the thousands of young people who have been gunned down by police during this period. And there is the massive US prison system that incarcerates 2.4 million people, overwhelmingly poor and working class. From 2007 to 2015, the US states that continue to practice the death penalty have executed 365 death row prisoners.

AAP notes that psychosocial problems and stresses, “such as conflicts with parents, breakup of a relationship, school difficulties or failure, legal difficulties, social isolation, and physical ailments … commonly are reported or observed in young people who attempt suicide.” Gay, bisexual and transgendered adolescents also exhibit high rates of depression and “have been reported to have rates of suicidal ideation and attempts three times higher than other adolescents.”

Teenagers living through these problems will receive nothing but scorn and ridicule from the fascistic, misogynist psychopaths that currently occupy the White House. Treatment for young people suffering from mental illness is also woefully underfunded, while hundreds of billions are squandered on war. The CDC estimates that only 10 percent of those needing mental illness and substance abuse treatment receive it.

The staggering new figures on teen suicide must be viewed alongside declining life expectancy, rising infant and maternal mortality, epidemic levels of opioid addiction and other societal ills as an expression of the inability of the capitalist system to meet the social and economic needs of young people and workers in the United States.

Amid high tensions, UN votes for harsh sanctions on North Korea

Peter Symonds

Under heavy pressure from the Trump administration, the UN Security Council voted unanimously on Saturday for a resolution imposing punitive new sanctions on North Korea over its two long-range missile tests last month. The sanctions, which will hit North Korea hard, will compound the tense confrontation on the Korean Peninsula that threatens to descend into war.

Unlike previous UN resolutions which were narrowly targeted against Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programs, the latest is broadly aimed at economically crippling the North Korean economy. It imposes outright bans on North Korean exports of coal, iron, lead and seafood which is estimated will slash export income by about $1 billion or a third of the total.

The resolution also prohibits countries from hiring extra North Korean workers and bans new joint ventures with North Korea or any new investment in current joint enterprises. It adds nine individuals and four business entities to the UN’s blacklist for travel bans and asset freezes. This includes North Korea’s state-owned Foreign Trade Bank that functions as the country’s primary foreign exchange bank.

US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley bragged that the resolution imposed “the most stringent set of sanctions on any country in a generation,” telling Fox News later that “we basically gave them a kick in the gut … that they are going to begin to feel right away.”

Speaking at the UN, Haley praised China for supporting the resolution, but warned: “We should not fool ourselves into thinking we have solved the problem. Not even close. The North Korean threat has not left us, it is rapidly growing more dangerous. Further action is required.”

The US dramatically ramped up the pressure on China following North Korea’s launch of a long-range ballistic missile on July 28 that could potentially reach the American mainland. President Trump blasted Beijing for doing “nothing for us on North Korea” and warning that “we will not allow this to continue.”

The Pentagon carried out one show of military force after another—joint live fire exercises with South Korea, including launching missiles into the sea, were followed by despatch of two strategic B1 bombers over the Korean Peninsula. Last Wednesday, the US tested its own intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) over the Pacific—its fourth test launch this year.

The US threat of a war on China’s doorstep was compounded by leaks last week that the Trump administration was preparing trade war measures against China over the issue of intellectual property rights. US trade penalties against China now appear to have been put on hold.

Trump, who is currently on vacation, tweeted his approval of the UN resolution, declaring the sanctions will have a “very big financial impact” on North Korea. He also praised China and Russia for supporting the new sanctions.

Beijing, however, is continuing to push its own proposal for restarting talks with North Korea—a halt by Pyongyang of its nuclear and missile testing, and, in return, a freeze by the US and South Korea on their major joint military exercises. Washington has repeatedly rejected any halt to these drills, which amount to a rehearsal for war with North Korea.

China’s ambassador to the UN, Liu Jieyi, also reiterated Beijing’s opposition to the US deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) anti-ballistic missile system in South Korea. While nominally aimed against North Korea, the THAAD installation allows the US military to peer deep inside Chinese territory. Washington has ruled out any halt to the deployment.

China’s foreign minister Wang met with his North Korean counterpart, Ri Wong-ho, at the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) Regional Forum in Manila over the weekend. He told the media that he had warned Pyongyang: “Do not violate the UN’s decision or provoke the international community’s goodwill by conducting missile launching or nuclear tests.”

Wang, however, also urged “other parties like the US and South Korea to stop increasing tensions.” He said that sanctions were not an end in themselves, emphasising that “the goal is to bring the Korean peninsula nuclear issue back to the negotiation table and to seek a final solution through negotiation.”

At Beijing’s insistence, the UN resolution called for all sides to return to six-party talks involving the US, China, the two Koreas, Japan and Russia. But these negotiations have been effectively dead since US President George W. Bush undermined a 2007 agreement for North Korea to denuclearise by demanding extra inspections and safeguards. The Obama administration never moved for the resumption of the six-party talks sponsored by China.

Last week, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson suggested that the US might be prepared to negotiate with North Korea. “We do not seek a regime change, we do not seek the collapse of the [Pyongyang] regime, we do not seek an accelerated reunification of the peninsula, we do not seek an excuse to send our military north of the 38th parallel [dividing the two Koreas],” he told reporters.

At the same time, Tillerson made unmistakeably clear that talks would be possible only if North Korea was prepared to give up its nuclear weapons. Negotiations, he said, could “only be achieved by denuclearising, giving up their weapons of mass destruction,” and that “only then will we be prepared to engage them in talks.”

Tillerson, who is also in Manila, met with Wang as well as the South Korean and Japanese foreign ministers. But no official talks took place between American and North Korean representatives at the ASEAN summit. Indeed, the US made a failed attempt to have North Korea’s membership of the forum suspended.

As a result, the prospect for talks is slim. North Korea has declared itself to be a nuclear state and insists that it will continue to build a nuclear arsenal. A commentary in the state-owned Rodong Sinmun warned the US to give up its “hostile policy” and threatened to sink the US mainland in “an unimaginable sea of fire” if it attacked the country.

Such belligerent but empty threats play directly into Washington’s hands as it exploits the crisis on the Korean Peninsula to accelerate its military build-up in the Asia Pacific aimed not primarily against North Korea, but rather against China, which the US regards as the main challenge to its regional and global dominance.

In an MSNBC interview yesterday, Trump’s national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, stated that it was “impossible to overstate the danger” posed by North Korea and again declared that all options, including military strikes, were on the table. He acknowledged that it “would be a very costly war … [in] terms of the suffering of mainly the South Korean people,” but did not back off from the threat and noted that the US president had been “deeply briefed.”

Dhow Trade in the North Arabian Sea

Vijay Sakhuja

The half yearly report on global trends in sea piracy and armed robbery against ships for 2017, published by the International Maritime Bureau (IMB), presents a mixed bag of news: the good news is that 87 piracy incidents were recorded across the globe in the first six months, the lowest in five years for the same period. The bad news is that Somali pirates were once again active in the Gulf of Aden after a hiatus of nearly five years. The IMB has cautioned that the Somali pirates “still retain the skills and capacity to attack merchant ships far from coastal waters.” 

One such attack involves an Indian dhow, the Gujarat based ‘Al-Kausar’, which was hijacked near Yemen's Socotra Island in April  2017. The vessel was on transit between Dubai and Biosaso, Somalia when the 10-member crew was taken hostage by the pirates. The dhow was marshalled to the port of Hobyo. India dispatched warships to the area and inter-government agencies maintained a close watch and effective coordination to end the crisis. After successful negotiations between the dhow’s agents and pirates, the crew was released.

The above incident merits attention from four perspectives. The first concerns the safety of crew against piracy and armed robbery, particularly those onboard dhows. These are poor people and easy targets for pirates; they surrender without putting up any resistance and are forced to pay hefty ransoms for release failing which they remain in captivity for long periods. This is not the first time an Indian dhow has been captured by Somali pirates. In 2009, Bhaktisagar, a Gujarat based dhow was hijacked by Somali pirates who demanded US$300,000 to release the crew. In another incident, a US Navy ship rescued an Indian dhow and the captured pirates were handed over to authorities for trial in a Kenyan court. In 2014, Somali pirates released Al Nasri, a dhow carrying 2,000 goats destined for Dubai considering it as fragile cargo. There are also other cases of Indian dhows being captured by pirates including Krishnajyot, al Kadri, al Ijaj, and Osmani. The fate of the vessels Nar Narayan, Sea Queen and Vishwa Kalyan is unknown. 

Notwithstanding these perilous voyages, Indian dhows have continued to sail between the Persian Gulf and Somalia. The Indian Directorate General of Shipping, through various advisories, has declared the east coast of Africa and Somalia as dangerous for shipping including for smaller craft such as dhows, and has strongly recommended avoiding areas west and south across the imaginary line between Salalah in Oman and Male in the Maldives. 

Second, the dhows which come under the control of pirates can potentially masquerade as trading vessels and used for attacks on unsuspecting ships, for drug smuggling and even for terrorism. The dhows are suspected to be used for drug trade and between 2013 and 2016 the Combined Maritime Forces (CMF) intercepted and seized over 9300kg of high purity heroin from these vessels. In 2015, a dhow named ‘Barooki’, with 12 crew members (seven Iranians and five Baluchs) was discovered off the Kerala coast raising fears that it may be engaged in subversive activities after “no fishing equipment like nets or other materials were found in the dhow.”

Third is the economics of dhow trade. In the Arabian Sea, dhow trade is centuries old and has been popular among the smaller Gujarati and Kerala traders in India and in the Persian Gulf. The dhows displace less than 1000 tons and carry a variety of cargo including iron, coal, steel, cement, grain, livestock and other low value items. These are not ‘just in time’ or ‘time-bound deliveries’ and the dhows can sometime take up to two to three weeks between India and the Gulf countries or to ports in East Africa.

Another significant role of the dhow trade concerns the supply of food to war-torn Yemen. These vessels ship nearly 14000 to 18000 tons of foodstuffs (cereals, rice, condiments, etc) every month to Yemen and each boat carries as much as 2000 tons of cargo. The voyage takes about five to eight days. The threat of Somali piracy and the ongoing civil war in Yemen has severely impacted on the food supply chains between the Gulf region and the Yemini ports of Hodeidah and Salif on the Red Sea, where all the large grain silos are located. 

The fourth issue about the dhows is traditional boat-building.  These boats are built in India, Iran, Oman and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The dhows in India are built in Gujrat and Kerala. Those built in Gujarat are towed to the Gulf countries for fitting of machinery, particularly engines and other navigation equipment. Apparently, under a barter deal, the supplier of engine and equipment becomes a ‘co-owner of the vessel and plies the services of the vessel for a number of ‘trade days’ in exchange for sponsoring the engine.’

In India, Baypore in Kerala is home to the art of Uru making, a wooden dhow that was part of the trading network with Mesopotamia. The dhow trade is popular along the Malabar Coast and these vessels call at small ports in Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka and Kerala. 

Given its economic versatility and traditional boat-building capability, dhow trade needs to be preserved. It is a good example where culture, trade, history and society blend and can be an agenda for soft power exchanges between India and the Gulf countries, particularly Oman, Iran and the UAE.

A Pug, a Terrier and the Doklam Stand Off

Vijay Shankar

William Moorcroft, a British veterinary surgeon of the East India Company, set off in 1816 on an expedition to the Kailas region of Tibet to search for that breed of Central Asian horses that would revitalise the blood stock of the Company’s cavalry. His quest took him to a Tibetan official, where to his astonishment he was greeted not by his fabled strain of mounts but by two familiar breed of dogs - one a Pug and the other a Terrier, both alien to the land. So where had they come from? The answer, took a while to sink in: Tsar Alexander’s army had got here before the British.

 

A shadowy war was underway for control of the strategic passes, plateaus and wastelands of Tibet and Central Asia that led to India. However, Russian intent on conquest then, seemed inconceivable to the Raj. It was not till the middle of the 19th Century when the Khanates along the route fell, that the curtains lifted on the ‘Great Game’. As the frontiers of the two empires loomed, it exposed the ill-surveyed and poorly guarded borders of Northern India. It took the British Empire four decades after Moorcroft’s ‘close encounter’ to fully appreciate the significance of the ‘Pug and the Terrier’.

The Great Game ended after two revolutions and another half century. Yet its legacy of where the Northern frontiers of India lay remained confused, as the British used little else than artful cartography and more of imperial disdain to redraw empire. The modern Indian state has yet to reconcile this dangerous historical equivocation. Early political leadership in India had a cavalier and sometimes Arcadian perspective of history. The absence of unprejudiced attempts at defining geography has left indistinct borderlands to this day that suppurate with disturbing regularity. The region of the Doklam plateau in the tri-junction of India, China and Bhutan is one such region. 

Doklam is situated roughly 15kms east of the Nathu La pass that separates India and China. On the western edge of the Doklam plateau is Doka La, which connects Sikkim with either Tibet (Chinese Government claim) or links Sikkim to western Bhutan. In June 2017, China attempted to extend a road southward across Yadong county, the wedge at the mouth of the Chumbi valley, leading to the thin edge. So, on 18 June 2017, Indian troops crossed into the territory to prevent construction of the road. China has criticised India for entering its "territory”. With Bhutan the dispute involves, a matter of 764sq kms of territory on the Doklam Plateau. The ‘Wedge’ has enormous strategic significance for China, Bhutan as well as India.

 

Recall in 1962, the real anxiety was that the thrust of China’s Army of Tibet would develop on a North-South axis from the Chumbi Valley to cut off the strategically vital Siliguri corridor (Chicken’s Neck). In 1965 again China in support of Pakistan, threatened to open this front. If China were to ever get hold of this territory, the Northeast would remain in a state of unremitting peril. The India-Bhutan Friendship Treaty of 2007, successor to the 1949 Treaty of ‘Perpetual Peace and Friendship’, pledges close 'cooperation on issues relating to national interests and security'. It mirrors Bhutanese trepidation of a Tibet encore.

Central to the current stand-off is the building of logistical infrastructure across the disputed plateau that would provide a spring board to drive across the Chicken’s neck. India along with Bhutan has stepped into the disputed area to block advancement of the road. So what has urged Beijing to incite this incident? There are three impulsions which have a bearing on the impasse: first, India’s maritime manoeuvres (‘Malabar’) in the northern Indian Ocean with the US and Japan underscore resolve to achieve cooperative security and control against an aggressive and revisionist China; second, India’s strategic disinclination to come on board on One Belt One Road (OBOR) for reasons of it being “long on politics and spare on economics” has not gone down well with China. Besides the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor is offensive as it passes through the disputed Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK); and last, the India-Bhutan security compact is abhorrent to China and needed to be put to test.

And what of an improbable escalation to a hot conflict? Clearly the Indian military is prepared. It is also clear that conflict will be waged on terms advantageous to India. In addition to operational manoeuvres undertaken to check China’s land forces, the superior deployable Indian Air Force will endeavour to assure a favourable situation in the skies to progress operations on the ground while the Indian Navy will strive to deny the northern Indian Ocean to the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) exertions as it exercises control over shipping in the busiest lanes of the world located in Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal, targeting hulls bound for China. Obviously these missions are neither small in scope nor will they come without losses; an eventuality that both nations must be sensitive to will be to the detriment of their larger development goals.

And all this ado for the indifference to misplaced Pugs and Terriers.

Bangladesh’s Governance Decay: A Case Of Leadership Betrayal?

M. Adil Khan

The sad thing about democracy is that every time you vote, a politician wins and for Bangladesh its tryst with ‘democracy’ its politicians have been anything but happy.

Most Bangladeshis feel that they have been betrayed by their politicians especially by their leaderships. They have witnessed how their leaders that sought votes and got themselves elected through democratic frameworks and thus were expected to govern through democratic norms trashed democracy as soon as they entrenched themselves in the seats of power and turned the system into autocracy or semi-autocracy, mainly to suit their own needs more than those of the people that voted them in. People also witnessed that almost every government that ruled the country since its inception in 1971 simply took turns to curtail  freedom, suppress and repress opposition and plunder and pillage the national coffer with such regularity that in the name of democracy all they got is a retinue of ‘rotating plundering governments’. Among these there was also one particular political leadership that went one step further and made what may be termed as,Luichchami(in the absence of proper Englishthis local term has been used to describe a rare form of one human behaviour that mixed pornography and lying with theft), as a governing philosophy.

Lately, even the language of political discourse has changed. Gone are the days when in spite of their differences leaders used to treat each other with respect and never ever strayed from decency and decorum and never departed from the accepted code of civility while criticising their political rivals. Not any more,these days obscenity and foul words are the norm and have become favoured and common epithets in political lexicon.

Notwithstandingits impressive economic and social accomplishments, some however, argue and with some justification that much of these such as reduction of poverty, improvements in education, gender equality, nutrition, sanitation etc.  are mainly due to contributions made by the creative and enterprising men and women of the private sector that have used the market forces to expand manufacturing; toils and tears of migrant workers that fill the national coffer with foreign exchange (only to be stolen by the government and its agents) and the empathizing NGOs that have successfully filled the void that have been left by most governments in social sector, current trend is gloomy and risks reversing the gains made so far. Indeed, Bangladesh is a classic case where progress has been made despite government and the predatory behaviour of the government has become so dangerous that the coterie is starting to eat out the very soul of the country. What is also quite worrying that in order to hide their failures and most importantly, their plundering acts and this is being done quite aggressively now, that the government has resorted to nationalistic rancour that has diverted attention of people to non-issues and at the same time, divided the very people the leadership is expected not just to represent but also to serve,equally. As a matter of fact, parliamentarians that grace the hallowed hall of the Sangsad Bhavan and warm its comfortable seats are anything but selfless crusaders of people’s cause. On the contrary, over the years these political elites have taken turns to rob the country and bully the opponents,while helping themselves and their cronies to become obscenely wealth and dangerously powerful so much so that the entire political system has now become a prisoner of these wealthy predators.

Things cannot and should not be allowed to go on like this forever. But, given its control on the system, is there a way out?

Indeed, there is a way out and it is within the very system that has betrayed the people of Bangladesh and made them powerless in the first place. The answer is in democracy itself – yes, in democracy but not in the democracy of the rich, the minority but in the democracy of the poor and the marginalized, the majority.

José ‘Pepe’ Mujica, a former armed revolutionary,who until recently has been the President of Uruguay,someone who never stayed at the presidential palace but in his small hut for he firmly believed that presidential palaces, red carpets, flagged cars etc. are all colonial legacies,that were deliberately introduced to separate the ruler from the ruled should have never been the norm in a democratic polity and someone who is also popularly known as ‘poor’ president for his frugal lifestyle who never used presidential plush state car and instead travelled in his beaten up beetle to conduct official business,who also donated 90 per cent of his presidential salary to charity firmly believes that democracy is not safe under rich people though rich per se are not the problem. Mujica believes that the rich are not the best people to represent the interest of the poor and this is because perspectives of the rich are very different from those of the poor and thus by linking democracy with lifestyle he once queried that if democracy is about representation and reflection of the majority “..should the heads of state not live like the majority and not like the minority.”

These days in Bangladesh, lifestyles of the political leaders –the president, the prime minister, the ministers, members of the parliament etc. etc. – and the way the potentates manner they conduct themselves resemble more like the Arab Shiekhs (in every bit of its vulgar sense) and not the majority and thus the rich men’s(who are also crooks) ‘democracy’ has corrupted the entire society and marginalized the majority ever so aggressively that at the present time notions of justice, fair play, morality, honesty etc. are an anathema where inequality is on the rise, corruption is rampant, critical conversations are ignored or crushed either through menacing threats or through deaths . A cloud of despair has descended upon Bangladesh where a sedating mix of ‘development’ rhetoric and evocation of false nationalism is used to grease a good proportion of the civil society that acquiesce the ruling elite of their acts of plunder and murder (literally), where democracy sounds more like a death warrant!

So what should the people of Bangladesh do to rescue democracy from the clutches of these wicked elites to make it work for the people again?

Mujica has a solution. He believes that only democracy can cure democracy and that suggests in conditions such those that have gripped Bangladesh the way to resurrect democracy for the people is for people to shun the wealthy (and by extension, crooks) in politics, change is inevitable and rewarding at the same time.

Charges against Australian “terror” suspects only raise new questions

Mike Head

After being detained for five days without charge over an alleged plot to bring down a passenger plane, two Sydney men were charged on Thursday night with two vague counts of acts done in preparation for, or planning “a” terrorist act.

The laying of charges came as the federal government was increasingly under pressure to justify the detentions and the turmoil created over the past week in Australian airports by the alleged terror plot to bring down an aircraft.

The authorities now say there were two separate plans, one to blow up a plane and another to kill people using rotten egg gas.

The charges were laid two days after the release, without charge, of another man arrested when police raided six homes across Sydney last Saturday. A fourth man remains detained without charge under investigation and interrogation powers handed to the police as part of the “war on terror.”

For political purposes, the government and the police are feeding what appear to be fantastic claims to the population, via a complicit media, prejudicing any chance the two men ever had of a fair trial.

“This is one of the most sophisticated plots that has ever been attempted on Australian soil,” Australian Federal Police (AFP) Deputy Commissioner Mike Phelan told a press conference.

At his own media gathering, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull congratulated “our intelligence, security and police services for their outstanding work in disrupting the terrorist plot to bring down an aeroplane.”

Justice Minister Michael Keenan, who is responsible for the AFP, said the seriousness of the charges laid against the two men “cannot be underestimated.”

With their help, the media has been full of headlines such as “ISIS sent bomb parts for terror plot” and “Terror at the terminal.”

The new details, however, only raise many more questions about the alleged plots, the surveillance the men were under, and the timing of the police operation.

The charges themselves are nebulous. Khaled Mahmoud Khayat, 49, and Mahmoud Khayat, 32, are being prosecuted under section 101.6 of the federal Criminal Code. This provision makes it an offence to do “any act in preparation for, or planning, a terrorist act,” even if no terrorist act occurs and “the person’s act is not done in preparation for, or planning, a specific terrorist act [emphasis added].”

The two brothers can be convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment without the police having to present evidence of any specific plot or its location, target, method or timing. “Preparation” or “planning” can mean nothing more than discussing “a” possible terrorist act.

The two defendants were denied bail and are not due to face court until November 14.

The first alleged plot is that the men attempted to smuggle an improvised bomb, encased in a metal meat grinder, onto a July 15 Etihad flight from Sydney to the Middle East. Supposedly the bomb was made from “military grade explosive” sent by “a senior Islamic State operative” in Syria, via the post using an air cargo flight from Turkey.

Exactly how or why the men and their “sophisticated” ISIS handlers thought they could get a metal meat grinder through routine airport security metal detection has not been explained.

Deputy Commissioner Phelan said it was a matter of “conjecture” why this plan was aborted. For unknown reasons, he said, luggage containing the bomb was not loaded aboard the Etihad plane, although the man taking the luggage—allegedly another Khayat brother—was permitted to board the flight and leave the country.

Phelan said the moment police found out about the plot they constructed a replica of the weapon and tried to smuggle it aboard a plane to test security. He said there had been a “100 percent success rate,” suggesting the device would never have made it onto the plane. This only underscores the implausibility of the meat grinder plan.

The second plot seems just as far-fetched. According to the police, after the men “failed” in the first plot a controller directed them to construct an “improvised chemical dispersion device” designed to release “highly toxic hydrogen sulphide.”

Better known as rotten egg gas, this compound is an unlikely terrorist weapon, and there is no record of it ever being used for that purpose. Relatively easily made and commonly produced in high school laboratory experiments, hydrogen sulphide can be lethal, but only in very high concentrations in small enclosed locations, not aircraft.

One of the academic security experts cited in the media, Professor Greg Barton, said: “Releasing hydrogen sulphide in an aircraft cabin wouldn’t render everyone unconscious.”

Commissioner Phelan declared that the gas plan was in its early stages. “I want to make it quite clear that we were a long way from a functional device,” he said. “There is no evidence at all that that device was completed.”

This only points to further questions about the nature and timing of the police operation. If the meat grinder plot “failed” and the rotten egg gas “bomb” was nowhere near completion, why were the raids and arrests conducted last Saturday, and why were they accompanied by escalated security measures that threw airports into chaos for days?

Questions about timing go back further. According to today’s Australiannewspaper, Khaled Khayat first came to the attention of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) some years ago when another brother, Tarek, went to Syria to join ISIS.

The Australian said Khaled was “of no interest to security authorities” after that, but reported that the “plot” began back in April when Khaled started communicating with Tarek and an ISIS “controller” via text and encrypted app messages.

It now appears that, as with so many “terrorist plots,” the participants were under surveillance. According to the Australian, “a foreign intelligence agency believed to be Britain’s” knew about the failed July 15 plot but waited until July 26 to tell Australian authorities. If this is true, it raises obvious questions: how and when did the overseas agency know about the plan?

If the agency knew about the plot before it took place, why were Australian police and intelligence agencies not informed? If it only knew after the failed attempt, why wait for days to alert its Australian counterparts? And why did Australian police wait for another three days to act after they were allegedly told?

All of these details should be treated with healthy suspicion. Increasingly it appears that the police raids were timed to create a terror scare right at the point that the Turnbull government was seeking to justify a revamping and expansion of the federal intelligence agencies and police.

How this operation is being exploited politically can be seen from Turnbull’s media event yesterday. He again declared that the “terrorist plot” proved the need for the far-reaching restructuring of the police and intelligence apparatus that he unveiled the previous week, and for ongoing “relentless” measures to bolster the “security” powers and agencies.

This restructuring includes the creation of a Home Affairs super-ministry to take centralised control over a range of police and spy agencies, including ASIO, the AFP, the Border Force, and a parallel centralisation of all the civilian and military intelligence agencies under a new Office of National Intelligence in the prime minister’s office.

Further plans are now being mooted, including more intrusive security measures at airports and an extension of ASIO’s detention and interrogation powers.

None of this has anything to do with ensuring the safety of the population. Instead, terrorism scares are being exploited to try to divert attention from the deepening crisis of Turnbull’s badly divided government and of the political establishment as a whole.

At the same time, as last week’s intelligence review report indicated, a police-state framework is being established to monitor and suppress rising social and political discontent, and intensifying popular concern about Australia’s close involvement in plans for escalating US-led wars, including against North Korea and China.

Rome sends warships into Libyan waters to block refugees

Alex Lantier 

On August 3, the Italians government sent the frigate Commandante Borsini into Libyan territorial waters to stop refugees fleeing Libya for Europe. This violation of the sovereignty of Libya, a former Italian colony, aims to destroy refugee vessels and force refugees back into Libya, where the militias that have controlled the country ever since the devastating NATO war against Libya in 2011 detain them in appalling conditions.

The Italian parliament has approved a law allowing the Italian navy to trespass into Libyan waters under the pretext that they are helping the Libyan coast guard to arrest refugees. Italian Defense Minister Roberta Pinotti even declared that the goal was to “reinforce Libyan sovereignty.” A large majority in parliament voted for the intervention, 328 to 113 in the lower house and 191 to 47 in the upper house.

The law provoked outrage on Libyan social media and protests in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, with banners bearing pictures of Omar al-Mukhtar, the “Lion of the Desert” who led the resistance to Italian colonial rule in the early 20th century, and the slogan “No to a return to colonialism.” Rome reacted by cutting the number of vessels deployed off Libya from six to two.

Human rights groups denounced the Italian naval operation. “The Italian Navy deployment in Libyan waters could effectively lead to arbitrary detention of people in abusive conditions,” said Human Rights Watch official Judith Sunderland. “Italy is preparing to help Libyan forces who are known to detain people in conditions that expose them to a real risk of torture, sexual violence, and forced labour.”

The Italian Navy also seized the Iuventa, the ship of the German Jugend Rettet (“Youth Rescue”) NGO, which tries to save refugees on the dangerous central Mediterranean passage from western Libya to Italy. The NGO had refused to sign a “code of conduct” dictated by the European Union (EU) that would have limited the number of refugees it could save on the high seas.

“If NGOs do not sign [the code of conduct], it is hard to see how they can continue their work,” Italian Interior Minister Marco Minniti told La Stampa.

The Italian naval mission points to the rising danger of a new imperialist intervention in Libya by competing European powers. Paris has already called for the installation of camps where French and Libyan officials would imprison, inspect, and render judgment on refugees seeking to escape Libya to Europe. Now, Rome is proposing its own intervention amid escalating rivalries between French and Italian imperialism in North Africa.

The Italian operation provoked a loud condemnation from Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, a former Libyan general and CIA asset who now controls much of eastern Libya around Benghazi and is being groomed as a proxy for French imperialism.

Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA) declared in a communiqué that it would “confront any naval vessel that enters national waters without permission from the army.” It called the Italian operation a “violation of sovereignty” of Libya by Italy; which was aiming to “export the illegal immigration crisis from its territory to Libya’s.” The LNA claimed that its forces in Benghazi, Tobruk, and Ras Lanouf, in the eastern part of Libya, as well as in Tripoli in the west, would confront Italian vessels.

This is only a political maneuver, however, in that the LNA only has forces in eastern Libya, whereas refugees travel along sea lanes going from western Libya to Italy. This is where Rome is sending its warships.

It is plainly evident that Haftar, like the other militia leaders in Libya, is hostile to the anti-imperialist sentiment that is rising among the Libyan workers and masses. He has no fundamental differences from the militias in Misrata and elsewhere in western Libya currently working with Rome. He plans to use the LNA’s control of eastern Libya’s vast petroleum reserves and of the Ras Lanouf refineries to develop ties with other imperialist powers, including France, as well as with the Russian, Algerian, and Egyptian regimes.

These conflicts expose yet again the utterly reactionary character of the 2011 NATO war in Libya. With the assistance of petty-bourgeois academics and political groups like France’s New Anti-capitalist Party, the media and governments shamelessly promoted a war of imperialist plunder, in which NATO coordinated its actions with Islamist and tribal militias, as a “humanitarian” war to defend a democratic revolution. NATO’s overthrow of the Libyan regime only created a disaster for Libya’s inhabitants, as well as for hundreds of thousands of refugees in the country.

Nearly 2,500 refugees have drowned in the Mediterranean in the first seven months of 2017, putting 2017 on track to be the deadliest year yet for refugees trying to cross the Mediterranean. A total of 94,000 refugees traveled from Libya to Italy.

The civil war is also sharpening tensions between the major powers, and in particular among the NATO countries. As Washington threatens Russia and China with war, and rivalries grow between Washington and a Berlin-Paris axis that aims to develop an “independent” defense policy from the United States, a diffuse coalition of countries is backing Haftar.

In January, a military officer from neighboring Algeria spoke to Middle East Eyeto underscore growing ties between Moscow, Algiers, and Haftar: “We will not wait forever for the various Libyan political forces to reach a settlement. Libya needs the law to be applied across its territory and, above all, a strong army that is capable of guaranteeing security all the way to the border. And with the Russians, we see eye to eye.”

According to another Algerian source, Moscow and Beijing both hope Haftar will fight members of the Islamic State (IS) militia that, they fear, could return via Libya to Central Asia or to Xinjiang in China, to carry out attacks there: “In a certain measure, the Russians also want to secure this area. For they fear that after the defeat of IS in Syria and Iraq, Russian or Chinese terrorists in East Turkestan sympathetic to Jabhat Fatah al-Sham [ex-Al Nusra, the Syrian wing of Al Qaeda], that is 2,000 to 3,000 men, could also flee to Libya.”

After Haftar was invited onto the Russian aircraft carrier Kuznetsov in the Mediterranean in January, the commander of US forces in Africa, General Thomas Waldhauser, said the ties between Moscow and Haftar are “undeniable.” Waldhauser added, “They are on the ground, they are trying to influence the action, we watch what they do with great concern and you know in addition to the military side of this, we've seen some recent activity in business ventures.” He indicated that Washington planned to continue working with the Tripoli regime.

Paris has oriented to Haftar, however, since the election of President Emmanuel Macron in May, inviting Haftar to a summit in Paris, as Franco-Italian tensions continued to grow on several issues. Not only is Paris refusing to accept refugees who have arrived in Europe via Italy, citing the EU’s Dublin Accords, but Macron has nationalized the STX naval shipyards in Saint Nazaire to block an Italian firm, Fincantieri, from acquiring them.

This provoked an angry comment from the Italian paper Il Fatto Quotidiano on the Berlin-Paris axis in the EU: “European ideals mask nationalist interests. French President Emmanuel Macron has just decided to nationalize STX, the largest French shipyard, to keep it from falling into Italian hands … In Libya, Macron is playing without Europe and against Italy on petroleum and on immigration: the goal is to take over the petroleum to benefit French [energy] firm Total. France is acting in line with its interests, like Germany.”

Second fire at Dubai skyscraper underscores safety failures at Grenfell Tower

Chris Marsden

Dubai’s Torch Tower was engulfed in flames early Friday morning for the second time since 2015. According to Dubai officials, the blaze damaged 64 of the building's 86-storeys.

The scenes filmed were a chilling echo of London’s Grenfell Tower inferno, with reports of burning cladding raining down from 40 to 50 floors high. Two cars in the parking lot were set alight by falling debris from the tower. So far, no official explanation has been given for the latest blaze in the building, one of the world’s tallest.

The earlier blaze in the United Arab Emirates’ largest city was attributed to the same type of cladding and insulation later used on Grenfell Tower, where a June 14 fire claimed over 80 lives.

No lives were lost yesterday at Torch Tower, or in the 2015 blaze that engulfed 60 floors—primarily because, unlike Grenfell Tower, the building’s luxury flats are fitted with sophisticated internal fire safety features. A two-bedroom flat starts at $500,000.

Friday's fire at the 337-metre skyscraper began around 1 a.m. on the ninth floor. It was fought by firefighters from four stations who had it under control by 3:30 a.m.

The building is the fifth tallest residential tower in the world as well as the 40th tallest structure. But firefighters were able to fight the inferno from inside the building, while residents could flee via smoke-free, fire-free safety zones enabling officials to successfully evacuate the 337-metre building’s 676 apartments.

Yorkshire-born resident Lucy told the Daily Mail that she was woken by fire alarms at around 1 a.m. in her apartment on the 40th floor. In addition, the tower's security team triggered a system which “gave an automated call, email and text to all residents within minutes of the fire starting.”

Samia Badani, chairman of the resident’s association at Bramley House, next to Grenfell Tower, told the newspaper, “They clearly took their duty to protect the safety of residents seriously and were organised.” The Mail reported that Badani “believed Grenfell residents were let down because of their social status and because they were poor and that local authorities were only interested in making the building look nice from the outside rather than being safe for those living inside.”

The second blaze at The Torch underscores the inherent danger in the widespread cladding of high-rise buildings. UAE authorities have acknowledged that at least 30,000 buildings across the country were clad in a manner that could cause fire to spread rapidly. Most of Dubai's 250 high-rise buildings have cladding panels with thermoplastic cores.

Cladding contributed to other major fires in Dubai - most notably the 2012 blaze started by a discarded cigarette that gutted the 34-storey Tamweel Tower and at a 63-storey luxury hotel on New Year's Eve in 2016.

In 2012, Dubai introduced legislation that outlawed foamed plastic insulation and required cladding for new buildings to be fire retardant. In 2013, it imposed restrictions on cladding new buildings over nine storeys tall, requiring owners of high-rise buildings with flammable cladding to install external sprinklers and a ring of fire retardant panels every three floors.

However, the rules were not applied to existing structures to protect the commercial interests involved. This exemption led to the latest fire at The Torch that struck before remedial work on the last fire was even completed.

US Court of Appeals throws out Blackwater murder conviction

Matthew MacEgan

On Friday, a US appeals court threw out the first-degree murder conviction of Nicholas A. Slatten, one of the four former Blackwater security guards who massacred 14 unarmed Iraqis in September 2007 while working for the US State Department. Slatten had been sentenced to life in prison in 2015, and the other three former guards each received sentences of 30 years. The court also ruled that the three other men be resentenced.

In a statement, the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit panel ruled that the trial court which sentenced the four guards “abused its discretion” by not allowing Slatten to be tried separately from his three co-defendants. He was the only one who faced a murder charge since he was found to have fired the first shots as well as shooting dead the driver of a white Kia car that had stopped at a traffic circle.

The other three defendants, Paul Slough, Evan Liberty, and Dustin Heard, were found to have violated the constitutional prohibition against “cruel and unusual punishment” for their part in the massacre. Thirty-year sentences were issued based on their use of military firearms while committing a felony, a charge that was used for the first time against security contractors who were provided weapons by the US government. All four men were convicted of first-degree murder and manslaughter by a federal jury in October 2014.

On September 16, 2007, the four men were part of a convoy which opened fire with automatic weapons on a civilian intersection in Baghdad’s Nisour Square. One member of the team did not stop firing his automatic assault rifle, even when he was ordered to cease fire. Helicopters were also used to fire into the intersection from overhead. In total, 14 unarmed Iraqis, including children, were killed and 17 more were wounded.

The guards say that they acted in self-defense after coming under AK-47 gunfire, but during the 10-week trial in 2014, no witness testified to such a circumstance nor was evidence found that any AK-47 rifles were carried by Iraqi insurgents at that time. After their conviction, the defendants had vowed to appeal what one of them called a “perversion of justice.” All four men were US military veterans.

The two US circuit judges responsible for Friday’s ruling, Karen LeCraft Henderson and Janice Rogers Brown, wrote, “we by no means intend to minimize the carnage attributable to Slough, Heard, and Liberty’s actions. Their poor judgments resulted in the deaths of many innocent people.”

Despite this, Henderson and Brown ruled that the sentencing judge should have given the men more “nuanced” penalties tailored to each defendant, rather than using a “sledgehammer” across the board. They also argued that the legislation used for the sentencing was originally aimed at violent drug traffickers and should not be applied to US contractors with no prior criminal record.

When the sentences were handed down two years ago, US District Court Judge Royce Lamberth ruled that, “Based on the seriousness of the crimes, I find the penalty is not excessive.” Assistant US Attorney T. Patrick Martin, who prosecuted the four men, argued for the lengthy sentences stating, “You are entrusted to do a job with deadly weapons, but you must use them only when necessary, and their use must be justified. You can’t just shoot first and seek justification later.”

Blackwater has changed names twice, first to Xe Services and then to Academi. The company’s CEO Erik Prince, the brother of current Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, resigned from Blackwater in 2009. He went on to form a private mercenary force for the United Arab Emirates and is currently lobbying the Trump administration to expand the role of mercenaries in the US war in the Afghanistan.

The 2007 incident was notable for its brutality even in a city where a bitter sectarian war was taking place. It significantly raised the profile of the private security contractors which the US government has increasingly relied on in waging its imperialist wars in the Middle East and Central Asia.

At the time of this writing, there had been no word on whether Slatten will be retried. Spokespeople for the US Justice Department and US Attorney Channing D. Phillips, said that the latter is “reviewing the opinion and has no further comment at this time.” The sentencing that took place in 2015 was the conclusion of a years-long process which wound its way through the federal court system.

Friday’s court action may have similar effects to the lack of prosecutions and criminal convictions against police officers who kill without prejudice in the United States. The decision sends the message that these actions are acceptable and that soldiers and military contractors can get away with using unwarranted deadly force. This is particularly important to note as geopolitical tensions continue to ramp up around the globe and the Trump administration determines its strategy for the war in Afghanistan.