The Paradox of Equal Justice

Ralph Nader

Almost every day, entertainment, sports, media, political and even some business organizations are jettisoning their top officials and incumbents after reported accusations of sexual harassment and sexual assaults of their subordinates. They’re not waiting for prosecutors, courts or regulators to take action. “Get out now” is the first punishing order. Then the work product of these asserted offenders—whether music, comedy shows, etc.—are often scrubbed, and recipients of political contributions are under pressure to give these sums to charity. In addition a wider arc of resignations by the heads and Boards of Directors, accused of lax monitoring is emerging.

The speed of punishment is unprecedented. One day millions of people watched Bill O’Reilly, Charlie Rose, Matt Lauer and others. The next day they were vanished. Although this is only the tip of the iceberg—and there is more to come—the velocity of expulsions coming from these accusations—even when they are denied—is unprecedented. (A major exception, however, are the escapades of Donald Trump over the years.)

What do the expellers know that spurs them to make these instant decisions often to the detriment of their own economic interest, such as Fox, PBS, NBC or NPR evicting their four, lucrative star performers?

Could it be that the media was quick to report these abuses and that more was coming to produce even more damaging publicity to their brand? Could it be that they wanted to avoid their companies being stigmatized as a perilous or toxic workplace for future talent considering careers there? Were they trying to avoid potential lawsuits? Could it be that some of these executives wanted to get rid of the spotlight that might reach their own transgressions, even though they think they were of lesser seriousness?

To all of these the answer is probably, “partly.” But it is also important for the media outlets, political parties, and Hollywood studios to react in the most responsible manner: that is, when abuses come to light, they may not need to wait for due process; they should react in order to protect their employees, who could become victims, as well as their reputation and their sizeable audience/constituency. While many of these organizations waited far too long to remove abusers, as in the case of Michigan State University and the United States Olympic Committee, the act of removing serial predators from their powerful positions signals a degree of belated resolve and compassion, and is in line with their responsibility to protect their workplace.

So why is it that when corporations and financial institutions commit broad-scale crimes that endanger or take the lives of millions of people, they receive absolute impunity? Indeed, their executives are rewarded for their own chronic, dangerous lawlessness. When their numerous crimes or criminogenic actions come to light, why are these bosses not immediately removed from their positions, in the manner of the many powerful men who have fallen as the #MeToo movement gains momentum?

Who knows? Time will tell perhaps. What is known is that corporations get away with very serious crimes—deaths, lifetime injuries, massive assaults on the economic necessities of millions of innocent people, the sickening of children and loss of their lives, the poisoning of water, air, land, food, perilous workplaces—all while paying off the political system that would have exacted punishment—and without appropriate sanctions.

None of the bailed-out Wall Street bosses who crashed the economy in 2008-2009 were prosecuted. These repeat-offenders took 8 million jobs away from the American people with their crimes, deceptions, cover-ups and rampant speculation with the very pensions and mutual funds that had been entrusted to them by their clients. Some Wall Street predators retired with huge severance packages—worth many millions of dollars—while others stayed put and resumed their roles as people of influential status and approbation.

Look at George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, who together initiated a criminal war of aggression that sent tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers to death, illness and permanent disability while destroying the lives of over a million Iraqis and leaving the country and its impoverished survivors devastated. They left public office in January 2009, above the laws they broke, and the Constitution they violated, to the accolades of Republicans and some Democrats. Lucrative speeches, book advances and other goodies flooded into their “retirements.”

People like Bill Clinton helped rehabilitate Mr. Bush with collaborative projects and joint appearances. The Bush Presidential library is thriving without mention of his and Mr. Cheney’s war crimes.

Over and over again, as reported in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and CBS’s Sixty Minutes, corporate crime, violence and fraud do not result in punishment. All too often the rewards and luxuries accorded to these powerful executives continue unabated.

Even when the Justice Department occasionally nails a big drug company for crimes costing thousands of lives and billions of dollars, “deferred prosecution agreements” let the bosses off and allow the companies themselves to get away with fines that appear large but are far less than the ill-gotten gains that finally caught the attention of the underfunded Department’s prosecutors.

In 2011 I filled a book titled Getting Steamed to Overcome Corporatism with dozens of documented corporate crimes that ultimately resulted in a little bad publicity, some fines and infrequent enforcement actions, but no real justice. But in all of the many egregious accounts detailed in Getting Steamed, did the business bosses lose their jobs, their retirement, even the esteem of their colleagues, as a result of their chronic predation? Very rarely.

With over 450,000 Americans dying every year from tobacco-related diseases and with documentation piling up on how these tobacco titans deliberately marketed cigarettes to youngsters to hook them for life, none of these company officials went to jail or were even personally fined. Remember the celebrated Congressional hearings when about a dozen tobacco executives, under oath, said they didn’t believe there was a connection between their heavily promoted products and disease? There was no prosecution for perjury then or later when it became abundantly clear these executives knew all about the health impacts from evidence inside the companies.

The same impunity and immunity attached to the asbestos and lead manufacturers whose bosses knew for decades of the lethal impacts on millions of their long suffering victims.
So why the difference? The sexual harassment reactions came because the perpetrators had done demonstrable damage—to their victims, to the cultures of their workplaces, to productivity, and, of course, to the public relations of the organizations writ large. Weren’t the companies that brought about the recession or criminally destroyed lives also afraid of losing sales and talent if they didn’t rid themselves of the culpable perpetrators?

One difference may be that the evicted sexual assaulters did their deeds personally and directly, unlike the more remote corporate bosses or even middle management, their crimes more abstract within the enormity of the bureaucratic machines that they’ve rigged to avoid accountability. The other difference is that the public outrage was more personal and intense over the high-profile victims in the Hollywood episodes, which set the level of high media visibility. But what are the other factors at work?

EU Imposes Anti-Union Law on Greece

Will Podmore

Under instructions from the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund, the Greek government pushed through the most anti-union legislation in Europe on Monday 15 January.

The move was demanded, along with other draconian measures, as a condition of the latest tranche of what is called Greece’s bailout but which in reality is bailing out the European financial institutions which recklessly encouraged Greek borrowing.

The key concession required from the Syriza government was that industrial action would now require a yes vote from more than half of the total number of union members in a workplace, regardless of the actual turnout. This is even worse than the provisions in the Trade Union Act which came into law in the UK in March 2016.

Astonishingly – or perhaps not – there has been not one word about this from the TUC, which continues its scaremongering about the effect of Brexit on workers’ rights. While it prattles on, the European Union is turning the screw on the most fundamental of all workers’ rights, the right to strike, and using Greece as a test bed for policies it would like to see across all member states.

Without the right to take effective strike action, workers have no protection save the courts, and capitalist courts consistently favour the employers.

The European Court of Justice ruled (in the Laval case, 18 December 2007), that employers have the right to bring workers from a low-wage EU state to a higher-wage EU state on the wages payable in the cheaper country, regardless of any collective bargaining agreements in the higher-wage state. It has also ruled (in the Viking case, 11 December 2007) that effective industrial action to stop outsourcing to cheaper countries is illegal.

In the Alamo­–Herron case (18 July 2013), involving Unison members transferred out of local authority employment, it ruled that whatever their contracts said, benefits collectively negotiated for local authority workers could be ignored by their new employers. “This case is an appalling attack on collective bargaining and is at least as serious as Viking and Laval,” wrote Britain’s leading employment barrister, John Hendy.

Hendy went on to say, “The EU has become a disaster for the collective rights of workers and their unions.”

As we have consistently said, strong trade union organisation backed up by effective industrial action if need be is the only way to secure and defend advances in the workplace. The EU murmurs about “rights” while consistently attacking the basis of workplace organisation.

Not one line of the Trade Union Act introduced by the Cameron government, or the even worse White Paper that preceded it, was contrary to EU law. The sooner Britain leaves the EU, the better it will be for trade union members (though some so-called leaders will resent being kicked off the Brussels gravy train). At least then we will just have our own employers to deal with.

Tearing Down The Facade of Legitimacy: Industrial Agriculture And The Agrochemical Industry

Colin Todhunter

The chemical-intensive industrial model of agriculture has secured the status of ‘thick legitimacy’. This status stems from on an intricate web of processes successfully spun in the scientific, policy and political arenas. It status allows the model to persist and appear  normal and necessary. This perceived legitimacy derives from the lobbying, financial clout and political power of agribusiness conglomerates which, throughout the course of the last century (and continued today), set out to capture or shape government departments, public institutions, the agricultural research paradigm, international trade and the cultural narrative concerning food and agriculture.

Critics of this system are immediately attacked for being anti-science, for forwarding unrealistic alternatives, for endangering the lives of billions who would starve to death and for being driven by ideology and emotion. Strategically placed industry mouthpieces like Jon Entine, Owen Paterson and Henry Miller perpetuate such messages in the media and influential industry-backed bodies like the Science Media Centre feed journalists with agribusiness spin.

From Canada to the UK, governments work hand-in-glove with the industry to promote its technology over the heads of the public. A network of scientific bodies and regulatory agencies that supposedly serve the public interest have been subverted by the presence of key figures with industry links, while the powerful industry lobby hold sway over bureaucrats and politicians.

Monsanto played a key part in drafting the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights to create seed monopolies and the global food processing industry had a leading role in shaping the WTO Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (see this). From Codex, the Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture aimed at restructuring Indian agriculture to the proposed US-EU trade deal (TTIP), the powerful agribusiness lobby has secured privileged access to policy makers to ensure its preferred model of agriculture prevails.

In her numerous documents, Dr Rosemary Mason has highlighted high-level collusion and subterfuge that has served to keep glyphosate on the commercial market. Claire Robinson and Jonathan Latham have described how an industry-backed campaign set out to smear science and scientists which were critical of proprietary technology. And Carol Van Strum and Evaggelos Vallianatos have indicated fraud and corruption involving the US Environmental Protection Agency that have resulted in industry interests prevailing at the expense of public health and the environment.

On a wider more geopolitical level, Michel Chossudovsky has examined how transnational agribusiness working with USAID effectively dismantled indigenous agriculture in Ethiopia. Ukraine’s agriculture sector is being opened up to Monsanto. Iraq’s seed laws were changed to facilitate the entry of Monsanto. India’s edible oils sector was undermined to facilitate the entry of Cargill.

Whether it involves the effects of NAFTA in Mexico or the ongoing struggle against the Monsanto across South America, traditional methods of farming are being supplanted by globalised supply chains dominated by transnational companies policies and the imposition of corporate-controlled, chemical-intensive (monocrop) agriculture.

The ultimate coup d’tat by the transnational agribusiness conglomerates is that government officials, scientists and journalists take as given that profit-driven Fortune 500 corporations have a legitimate claim to be custodians of natural assets. These corporations have convinced so many that they have ultimate legitimacy to own and control what is essentially humanity’s common wealth. There is the premise that water, food, soil and agriculture should be handed over to powerful transnational corporations to milk for profit, under the pretence these entities are somehow serving the needs of humanity.

Tearing down the façade of legitimacy

In recent times, Dr Rosemary Mason has been campaigning against the effects of agrochemicals on human health and the environment. She has a nature reserve in South Wales and noticed that flora and fauna was becoming increasingly degraded to the point that the reserve now resembles little more than a dead zone in comparison to what it had once been.

In her dozens of carefully researched and fully-referenced letters to key officials in the UK, EU and US, Dr Mason has documented the effects agrochemicals on her nature reserve as well as on health and the environment not only in Wales but globally.

She has, moreover, gone to great lengths to describe the political links between industry and various government departments, regulatory agencies and key committees that have effectively ensured that ‘business as usual’ prevails.

Mason recently received a response from Public Health England (PHE) to this open letter she had sent to the four chief medical officers for England, Scotland Wales and Ireland. The PHE enquiries team which responded to Mason failed to answer any of her questions about the cosy relationship between the British government, the agrochemical corporations, the pharmaceutical industry and the corporate media.

The response did not even acknowledge the warning given by the UN Human Rights Council about the dangers of pesticides in food and water and how this especially undermines the development and rights of children.

Not to put too fine a point on it, the PHE reply is along the lines of thanks, now move along because officialdom has everything covered.

Clearly, given the concerns raised by Mason, things are not ‘covered’. In a new letter to the chief medical officer for England, she spells out the unsatisfactory nature of the response received from PHE and also attaches this 45-page document that sets out why the response is both inadequate and wholly flawed. The contents of Mason’s document are below. Readers are urged to read the document in full as well as her initial open letter to PHE.

Where have all our insects and birds gone?	1
Widespread global contamination with pesticides	3
Emerging pathogens wipe out wildlife species	8
British Government in the hands of the pesticides industry	10
Farming with chemicals	14
UK ‘watchdogs’ are controlled by corporations	15
The science behind GMOs is fraudulent	22
We are eating food poisoned with pesticides	23
UN warns about the dangers of pesticides	25
Chemical damage to the brains of our children	27
Other diseases associated with glyphosate	28
The International Monsanto Tribunal in The Hague	36
The Monsanto Papers	39
Monsanto’s activities in Wales	41
Conflicts of interest in the European Commission	41
Evidence that the health of British people is deteriorating	43
US Scientists sound the alarm over global mass poisoning	44

Whether it concerns PHE or any of the other bodies Mason has written to over the years, any response she has received is usually quite dismissive of her concerns.

But is this any surprise? The corporations which promote industrial agriculture and the agrochemicals Mason campaigns against have embedded themselves deeply within the policy-making machinery on both national and international levels. The US government has indeed promoted an exploitative ‘stuffed and starved‘ strategy that weds consumers and farmers across the world to the needs of transnational agribusiness and its proprietary inputs.

From the overall narrative that industrial agriculture is necessary to feed the world to providing lavish research grants and the capture of important policy-making institutions, global agribusiness has secured a perceived thick legitimacy within policy makers’ mindsets and mainstream discourse.

If you – as a key figure in a public body – believe that your institution and society’s main institutions and the influence of corporations on them are basically sound, then you are probably not going to challenge or question the overall status quo. Once you have indicated an allegiance to these institutions – as such figures do by the very fact they are part of them and often receive good salaries as employees – it is ‘irrational’ to oppose their policies, the very ones you are there to promote.

And it becomes quite ‘natural’ to oppose with dogmatic-like zeal any research findings, analyses or questions which question the system and by implication your role in it. Little surprise therefore that Rosemary Mason appears to run into a brick wall each time she raises issues with key figures.

But once you realise and acknowledge that the integrity of society’s institutions have been eroded by corporate money, funding and influence – and once you are in a position to offer a credible alternative to corporate agriculture and all it entails based on authentic values that are diametrically opposed to those of corporate conglomerates – you can ask some very pertinent questions that strip away perceived legitimacy.

The questions being asked by Rosemary Mason and others are part of the wider process of stripping away the fabricated reality and perceived legitimacy that the whole system of industrial agriculture rests on.

Struggle For democracy: Problems With Plunderocracy And Imperialist Intervention

Farooque Chowdhury

The problems mentioned in this article are in view of recent developments in a number of countries including Iran. The questions appeared stark during the days imperialism was preparing ground for invasions/interventions in Iraq, Libya, Syria and a group of progressives from these countries effectively or indirectly lent support to imperial interventionists (2i).

All the banner bearers: Rightists, ultra-rightists, fascists, storm troopers of imperialist capital, propagandists and practitioners of medieval ideology and institutions, sectarian and divisive forces, dictators, camouflaged and uncovered imperialist organizations, banks and financial institutions, so-called rights-organizations/activists and juvenile organizations sponsored by imperialists, monarchists, a part of the mainstream media, imperial interventionists (2i), and other birds of reactionary feathers are engaged with the business of “democracy”. One faction of the 2i at the center of the world imperialist system is now a “steadfast” “democracy”-monger. Very often, 2i organize mobilizations in the name of democracy. Platform for invoking imperialist intervention including R2P (so-called Right to Protect) are organized with the appearance of “democracy” and “rights”.

A confusing reality: People regularly face a foxing reality in many countries while they try to organize struggle for democracy. Upholding the streamer of “democracy” by the 2i is a regular incident in many countries. Very often, people find their organizations and movements de-activated, subverted and demolished by the 2i and anti-people “democracy”-mongers.

At the same time, people occasionally find “hop-step-and-jump”-moves in the name of struggle for democracy. People also experience sporadic, disjointed and incoherent democracy-slogan-mongering by a group of leaders in the rank of people although the tasks of spreading political education among people and methodical preparation for struggle for democracy are completely neglected, which ultimately turn into thrusting knife into the back of people’s movement.

Capital’s tactics: Capitals in countries practice a number of tactics to subvert and/or suppress people’s struggle for democracy: dominating capital takes the posture of sentinel/defender of “democracy”, or, raises the slogan of “national”-interest, -security, -integrity and -sovereignty, or, begins hue and cry about the specter of 2i whenever people initiate their struggle for democracy. Sometimes, these tactics are lumped together into one, and at times, these are applied in compartmentalized style. The machine of repression is run with full force while the slogans of “national” interest, security, sovereignty, 2i, etc. are propagated by the dominating capital. Plunder of people’s wealth/resources including the commons, appropriation of surplus value and curtailment/negation of rights are carried on unabatedly under the umbrella of securing “democracy”, “national” interest and sovereignty, and “opposing” 2i.

The problems: This reality creates a number of immediate problems in the struggle for democracy:

1. Should the struggle for democracy be suspended or slowed down in the face of threat, actual or propagated, to “national” interest, etc., and/or in the face of 2i, actual or propagated?
2. Should not plunder of resources, appropriation of surplus value, negation of rights, and repression of people be opposed by the struggle for democracy while there’s actual threat of 2i, etc.?
3. Should the threat of 2i be ignored by the struggle for democracy while organizing/initiating the struggle for democracy or opposing/resisting plunder, repression, etc.?
4. Is there scope for alliance with proxies of imperialism/forces engaged to further 2i, and, should the proxies, etc. be allowed space in the struggle for democracy?
5. Is there no approach, which can simultaneously initiate the struggle for democracy, struggle to resist plunder, etc., and oppose/resist 2i and its proxies/hirelings?

Working questions: These all are functional questions, which are being faced by all responsible leadership in the struggle for democracy in countries experiencing plunder, repression, and 2i; and there’s no scope to avoid the task of finding out functional solutions to these problems. The reason is: democracy can’t be organized and people’s life can’t be improved by ignoring imperialism and plunder, etc. Democracy and imperialism are opposed to each other as democracy strives to secure people’s interest while imperialism shackles and loots people. The same is the case of democracy and plunder as democracy empowers people while plunder’s function is its opposite: snatch away people’s resources, and thwart people’s control over resources. People’s control over resources is one of the fundamental material conditions for building up democracy for people. The opposing positions of these three – democracy, and imperialism and plunder – are well-defined by their characters and roles: democracy upholds people’s interest while imperialism, plunder, etc. demolishes the interest.

Thence, the problems in the struggle for democracy assume definite shape and character:

1. No scope for ignoring 2i and plunder, and lending space to imperialists and its proxies/hirelings while organizing the struggle for democracy. So, the stand is: oppose 2i and plunder, and don’t deactivate the march to democracy.
2. No scope to get enveloped with proxies/hirelings and anti-democratic forces while widening alliance in the struggle for democracy.

How: The problems mentioned above jointly raise a single question: how? How to organize/carry on the two tasks simultaneously? Failure in simultaneously organizing/carrying on these tasks leads either to:

1. accommodating imperialists and its proxies, and paving path to 2i; or
2. accommodating plunder, etc.

Any of the failures hurt people, and their struggle for democracy. So, “how”, as mentioned above, is a crucial question with the power of determining the path of the struggle for democracy: success or failure.

Groups of “progressives” in a number of countries have already stepped into one of these booby traps: either suspend struggle for democracy in the face of 2i or ignore/accommodate 2i while waging struggle for democracy. Implications of getting ensnared into these traps are people’s suffering, living in non-democracy, having a shackled and undignified life, having no access to prosperity, thwarted development, no scope to develop productive forces, having no space to furthering struggle for equity and equality. And, expecting to achieve people’s democracy, liberty and rights with imperialist patronage and backing, and by working as proxy of imperialism is nothing but bibere venenum in auro, to drink poison from a cup of gold, as imperialism never stands for people, as interest of imperialism is opposed to interest of people, as imperialism is ally of class enemies of people, as the economy imperialism depends on and defends exploits and robs people.

“Big Sugar” and metabolic syndrome, killers of millions annually worldwide

Gary Joad

As reported in a WSWS article last November, the Public Library of Science (PLOS) has published a major exposé of the sugar industry’s “manipulation of science” for its “commercial advantage.” This involved the suppression of findings and defunding of projects that were adding to a growing body of evidence in the 1950s and 1960s about the role of sugar consumption in the causation of coronary heart disease (CHD) and bladder cancer.

Internal documents dating from 1965, reviewed by Cristin E. Kearns, Dorie Apollonio, and Stanton A. Glantz, revealed that the Sugar Research Foundation (SRF) secretly funded research in the United Kingdom that demonstrated that sugar (or sucrose, composed of one molecule of fructose and one molecule of glucose) in rats significantly raised triglyceride lipids linked to heart disease and heart attacks. The study also demonstrated the association of sucrose consumption with elevated levels of urinary beta-glucuronidase, an enzyme previously linked to human bladder cancers.

After the SRF examined the preliminary findings that were very likely to become commercially disadvantageous, the industry cut off funding for the completion and confirmation of the first results at Birmingham University. The findings were never published and were buried for subsequent decades until the recent unearthing of industry documents.

In November 2016, the Journal of the American Medical Association Internal Medicine division (JAMA/IM) published a Special Communication titled, “Sugar Industry and Coronary Heart Disease Research, A Historical Analysis of Internal Industry Documents” by Kearns, Laura A. Schmidt, and Glantz. Previously, Dr. Glantz was involved in the exposure of the tobacco industry’s decades-long disinformation campaign to conceal the human toll from cancer and heart disease wrought by cigarette smoking.

World Cat, a global catalogue of library collections, was used to search for documents of the aforementioned refined sugar trade group SRF, subsequently changed to the Sugar Association (SA), as well as documents of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), the National Research Council, the US Public Health Service, American Heart Association (AHA), and the American Medical Association, among others.

The JAMA/IM investigators also found documents from the 1950s and 1960s archived at Harvard University and the University of Illinois, and other academic institutions, exhuming communications between nervous post-World War II sugar industry executives and academics regarding the findings that had already emerged in Europe and in North America as to the probable role of sucrose in the causation of CHD and heart attacks, which today retains first place in human mortality.

Prior to World War II and well into the 1950s, health authorities and nutrition scientists worldwide insisted that the rising consumption of refined sugars, along with starch and refined carbohydrates such as potatoes, rice and breads, contributed significantly to human obesity. Increasingly, European and American researchers began connecting CHD, diabetes, and strokes to heavy sugar consumption, which was on the rise with the postwar soft drink, snack and confectionery industries.

The campaign to exonerate sugar

In a strategic move to protect and increase market share and to counter the emerging scientific evidence unfavorable to sucrose consumption, Big Sugar launched a campaign in 1954 to dispute the adverse scientific findings and resulting publicity.

The main target was John Yudkin, professor of nutrition at Queen Elizabeth College, University of London, who later, in 1972, published a review of his research group’s studies titled Pure, White And Deadly, How Sugar Is Killing Us And What We Can Do to Stop It.

Yudkin demonstrated that the worldwide rise in the incidence of heart disease tracked very closely the rise of refined sugar consumption globally. Similar associations of sucrose consumption and heart attack rates were published by “the Iowa (US) group,” Alfredo Lopez, Robert Hodges and Willard Krehl. Articles appeared in the Annals of Internal Medicine in June 1965 linking sugar to CHD, reporting population studies that strongly suggested blood glucose levels were superior predictors for future heart attacks than serum cholesterol and high blood pressure. Another article suggested provocatively (as far as the sugar monopolies were concerned) that “perhaps fructose, a constituent of sugar … was the agent mainly responsible (for heart disease).” An editorial appearing at the same time remarked, “sucrose must be atherogenic (causative of hardening and thickening of arteries).”

On July 11, 1965, the New York Herald Tribune ran a full-page article about the Annals of Internal Medicine findings, concluding that new research strengthened the argument that sucrose was responsible for the rise in heart attacks.

Enlisting Harvard and the FDA

Investigators’ examination of the archived documents show that the sugar industry enlisted Fredrick Stare, chair of Harvard University’s School of Public Health Nutrition Department, to join the Sugar Advisory Board (SAB) that year. Stare had solicited funds from the food industries for his department since 1943 and consulted for the NAS, the National Heart Institute and the AHA. The SA and its vice-president John Hickson launched Project 226 and hired Stare and two other researchers at Harvard, D. Mark Hegsted and Robert McGandy, to author a series of articles favorable to Big Sugar.

The researchers were paid $6,500 ($48,900 in 2016 dollars) for the eventual appearance in July and August, 1967 of two articles in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) that effectively shifted the blame for CHD from sucrose consumption to the ingestion of saturated fats. The payment by Big Sugar for the findings was not disclosed at the time of the NEJM publication.

Stare’s department at Harvard had broken ground in 1960 on a $5 million new building with donations from General Foods, maker of Kool-Aid and Tang. In the early 1970s, the SA ranked him amongst its most reliable academic allies, while his department collected funds from Coca-Cola, Gerber, Kellogg and Carnation.

The 1967 NEJM articles declared there was “no doubt” that the only dietary intervention required to arrest the rising onslaught of heart attacks and to prevent CHD was to reduce dietary cholesterol and substitute polyunsaturated fat for saturated fat in the American diet.

In the fall 2016 publication of the JAMA/IM investigation, Marion Nestle, professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University, commented in an accompanying editorial that the documents provided “compelling evidence (that Big Sugar had initiated research) expressly to exonerate sugar as a major risk factor for coronary heart disease. I think it’s appalling.”

According to a Mother Jones article in November, 2012, the SA went on to establish its Food and Nutrition Advisory Council in the 1970s, funding it with $60,000 a year, and comprised of six physicians and two dentists who agreed to defend sugar’s place in a healthy diet. The group wrote an 88-page paper titled “Sugar in the Diet of Man,” which the SA printed 25,000 copies of to be distributed to mass media outlets nationwide. The accompanying press release prominently declared, “Scientists dispel sugar fears.”

The SA concocted plans for the broadcast of three-minute radio spots by Stare extolling sugar’s virtues by hundreds of radio stations, until he was exposed in 1976 by the Center for Science in the Public Interest in an article titled “Professors on the Take.”

Big Sugar cast Stare aside and moved on to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which formed a committee to vet the safety of processed food substances and additives, or what was termed “generally regarded as safe (GRAS).” Sufficient numbers of the committee were advocates for Big Sugar to yield industry-favorable decisions by the FDA. The GRAS committee ran into trouble briefly from the USDA’s Carbohydrate Nutrition Laboratory, which reported “abundant evidence that sucrose is one of the dietary factors responsible for obesity, diabetes and heart disease.” But the committee’s sugar section won out, reporting in January 1976 that, while sugar might cause tooth decay, it was not a “hazard to the public,” and dismissing the link to diabetes and heart disease as “less than clear” and “circumstantial.”

The SA immediately blasted the American media with headlined ads, “Sugar is Safe!”, explaining it “does not cause death-dealing diseases … there is no substantiated scientific evidence indicating that sugar causes diabetes, heart disease or any other malady,” and accusing all opposition of being either “discredited” Yudkin followers or liars.

At the University of Minnesota, Ancel Keys, a nutritionist who had accepted funds from Big Sugar since the early 1940s, stepped forward in the 1960s and 1970s as the chief US proponent of the hypothesis of fat as the primary driver of CHD. The SA also recruited Edwin Bierman of the University of Washington as its top diabetes expert, who insisted that diabetics did not need to pay seriously strict attention to sugar intake, and who joined Keys in declaring that dietary fat caused heart disease.

All of this drove federal health and nutrition guidelines policy regards sucrose safety for the ensuing decades.

In 1980, per-person sugar consumption in the US stood at 120 lbs annually, and by 2010 had seen an increase to 132 lbs. The percent of adults termed obese in 1980 was 15 percent, and by 2010 it had risen to 35.7 percent. The percent of obese children in 1980 stood at 5.5 percent, and by 2010 it had tripled to 16.9 percent, in large measure because of the soft drink industry. The percentage of Americans with diabetes in 1980 was 2.5 percent, which tripled by 2010 to 6.8 percent. So-called adult onset diabetes was diagnosed for the first time in adolescents and children.

Metabolic syndrome

Despite the SA and soft drink makers buying findings at major institutions, the tide of scientific facts has been relentless, given the burden of disease linked to sugar consumption and the emergence of metabolic syndrome (MS), an umbrella term referring to the hormonal and biologic dysfunction in a human being consuming excessive amounts of sugar and its chemical relative, high fructose corn syrup. The human being’s digestive systems treat the two compounds identically, and it is apparently the fructose portion of sucrose and high fructose corn syrup that uniquely affects humans.

Metabolic syndrome includes an obesity that involves “visceral” fat deposition, most prominently around the waistline, fat which is also infiltrating internal organs, especially the liver, rising blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, elevations in triglycerides, and so-called insulin resistance. Insulin resistance refers to the human being’s cells becoming insensitive to insulin’s vital regulation of blood sugar. The blood sugar then keeps rising, and the pancreas keeps pouring out more and more insulin, which in turn provokes more eating and more weight gain, and further ramps up blood pressure.

Varman Samuel, who studies diabetes and insulin resistance at the Yale School of Medicine, told the New York Times Magazine in 2011 that “when you deposit fat in the liver, that’s when you become insulin-resistant.” As Gary Taubes put it for New York Times Magazine, the body’s cells begin ignoring insulin, even to the point of pancreatic exhaustion of insulin manufacture, which is when blood sugar control is lost completely.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated in 2012 that 75 million Americans have metabolic syndrome, and that for heart attack victims, more likely than not, MS is the root cause. An estimated 100,000 Americans are dying with complications of MS a year. MS has also been linked to declining cognitive function, where brain cells “ignore” insulin, and neurons degenerate for lack of glucose derived energy.

Another New York Times Magazine article in 2002, again by Taubes, and headlined, “What If It’s All Been A Big Fat Lie?,” observed that “calorie for calorie, (processed starches and refined carbohydrates) are the cheapest nutrients for the food industry to produce, and they can be sold at the highest profit.”

Metabolic syndrome has also become associated with the rise in global cancer rates, according a 2007 report by the World Cancer Research Fund and the American Institute for Cancer Research, titled “Food, Nutrition, Physical Activity and the Prevention of Cancer.” Researchers at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York told Taubes that the effects of insulin resistance spur the output of more insulin and at least another insulin-like hormone that promotes tumor growth, and also that pre-malignant cells utilize the elevated insulin growth factors to mutate in the setting of MS, obesity, and diabetes. Craig Thompson at Sloan-Kettering told Taubes that he believes numerous pre-cancer cells would never undergo life-threatening changes without the hyper-insulin levels and related growth factors driven by MS.

Thompson and Lewis Cantley at the Cancer Center at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center at Harvard Medical School make the case that if sugar is causing insulin resistance, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that sugar causes cancer, in at least some cases. Cantley leads a scientific team working on a specific insulin-signaling gene, PI3K, that is said to drive breast and some other women’s tumors. On a personal note, they both explained that this is why they avoid eating sugar.

Nature Magazine published an article in February 2012, titled “The Toxic Truth About Sugar,” by Robert Lustig, MD, Laura Schmidt and Claire Brindis. Lustig (a self-described Yudkin disciple) is professor of pediatric endocrinology at the University of California at San Francisco and author of Fat Chance, published in 2012, in which he describes MS as “the new scourge.” The Nature article reported that CHD, diabetes and cancers claim 35 million lives annually worldwide, for the first time in history outstripping infectious disease as a killer.

Demands for US intervention against “Russian meddling” in Mexico’s presidential election

Alex González 

Leading US politicians, sections of the United States and Mexican media and elements of Mexico’s political establishment are reviving a campaign over alleged Russian interference in the upcoming Mexican presidential elections. In what is now a well-rehearsed theme, Russia is accused of using social media to “sow divisions,” this time to favor the candidacy of Andrés Manuel López Obrador of the “left” National Regeneration Movement (Morena).

In what amounts to a demand for direct US intervention in Mexico’s July presidential election, a bipartisan group of three US senators addressed a letter to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on the eve of his departure for Mexico Thursday on the first leg of a Latin American tour.

Democratic Senators Robert Menendez and Tim Kaine, along with Republican Marco Rubio--all members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere--repeated unsubstantiated charges of Russian “meddling” in Mexico’s election, adding that this was “simply the latest chapter of Russia’s malign influence throughout Latin America that threatens to destabilize the region.”

In response, the three urged Tillerson to strengthen “democracy and governance” programs run by the USAID, an agency that has repeatedly intervened in the region to promote politicians and parties aligned with Washington, performing overtly the kind of operations previously carried out by the CIA.

Claims of Russian interference in Mexico were initially aired last year as a way of preparing public opinion for war against Russia. The campaign is being rekindled under conditions in which López Obrador continues to be the presidential frontrunner, with a recent poll showing him with twice the support of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) candidate, former finance minister José Antonio Meade Kuribreña.

As with allegations of Russian interference in the US presidential election, the Brexit referendum and Catalonia’s independence vote, the claims are entirely unsubstantiated and rest largely on the unquestioned word of intelligence agencies. In a video initially posted by the Mexican newspaper Reforma in early January, US National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster said that there were “initial signs” of a Russian campaign to influence Mexico’s presidential election. The fact that McMaster did not offer any concrete evidence did not prevent the US and Mexican media from parroting claims that Russia is seeking to “exploit divisions” to swing the election in favor of López Obrador.

In a recent article titled “A Mexican presidential candidate is getting an unexpected boost from Trump—and Putin,” the Washington Post writes: “Mexicans don’t need Russian social-media manipulators to tell them that their democracy is flawed and their politicians are prone to corruption…But in an election that could turn out to be close (much like the United States), a little help from Russians amplifying the message on social media could end up making a decisive difference.”

A Bloomberg piece, titled “Don’t Let Mexico’s Elections Become Putin’s Next Target,” openly calls for Mexican authorities to take steps to monitor and censor the Internet, particularly social media. “Mexico remains extremely vulnerable to the Russian interference that occurred in the 2016 US election,” writes Bloomberg. “Facebook, Twitter and Google are important sources of information for many Mexicans…Mexico needs to learn from the US experience and safeguard its electoral process from outside tampering.”

Several articles have focused on the role that RT (formerly known as Russia Today) has played in allegedly promoting the López Obrador campaign. Reports point to RT’s critical coverage of the Mexican government and airtime given to John Ackerman, a researcher at Mexico’s National Autonomous University (UNAM) and supporter of López Obrador. López Obrador has said that he would tap Ackerman’s wife, Irma Sandoval, for the post of Secretariat of the Civil Service if he were to win.

“That a future cabinet member of the presidential campaign frontrunner is married to a close collaborator of Russia Today is a dilemma that would alarm any country in the world during our times,” complains the newspaper El Universal , in what amounts to a neo-McCarthyite smear.

In November, the US Justice Department forced RT America to register as a “foreign agent” because of its alleged intervention in the 2016 elections.

Leading members of the PRI, including the president of the PRI National Executive Committee, Enrique Ochoa Reza, have taken up these unsubstantiated allegations in an effort to discredit López Obrador. Ochoa Reza has admitted that the PRI does not have any data, nor has it conducted any independent investigations. Instead, basing itself solely on what has been published by the Washington Post, the party has urged the National Electoral Institute (INE) to open an investigation.

In an escalation of the campaign to link López Obrador to Moscow, last week thousands of residents in the state of Puebla received anonymous calls ahead of the candidate’s state tour. The calls played a pre-recorded message claiming that López Obrador wanted to dismantle the Peña Nieto administration’s energy “reform” in order to deliver Mexico’s oil to Russia.

López Obrador has reacted to the campaign by openly mocking it. He created a video on social media with him looking out to the sea in Veracruz. “I am waiting for the Russian submarine with gold from Moscow,” he says jokingly. “I am now Andres Manuelovich.”

In a country that has been under the thumb of US imperialism for over a century, claims of “Russian meddling” strike a particularly desperate and false note. As media outlets openly acknowledge, Mexico’s social crisis was not fabricated by Moscow. Rather, the entrenched inequality in the country is the product of the capitalist system’s subordination of the needs of the working class—whether it be jobs, education, health care, retirement or cultural life— to the enrichment of a tiny layer of the population.

By whipping up fears of the Russian bogeyman, the US government is in fact guilty of the very actions that Russia is being demonized for: interfering in the election of another country to push an outcome that is more suitable to its own interests.

Morena’s program will do nothing to address the root cause of Mexico’s social ills. However, dominant sections of the US and Mexican bourgeoise are vehemently opposed even to their tepid and cosmetic proposals and to the possibility that, despite López Obrador’s best efforts, the working class could quickly escape Morena’s grip and seek more radical measures to guarantee its social rights.

The July Mexican presidential elections promise to be an explosive event. Faced with an unpopular candidate, the PRI may seize on allegations of “Russian meddling” to cripple Morena’s electoral rights, or even to overturn the elections.

European Union skeptic wins Czech presidential election

Markus Salzmann

Acting President of the Czech Republic Milos Zeman narrowly won the second round of the presidential election last Friday and Saturday with around 51 percent of the vote. His opponent, chemistry professor Jiri Drahos, received 49 percent.

In the first round of voting two weeks ago Zeman secured first place with 38.6 percent, in front of Drahos. The politically non-affiliated Drahos had been nominated by two ultra-conservative parties KDU-CSL and STAN and many observers still considered Drahos the likely winner of the second round. After the first round of voting, the three main candidates not to make it to the second round had called upon their supporters to support Drahos. Zeman’s lead was just over 156,000 votes.

In particular older rural-based voters voted for Zeman, while younger voters in the cities supported Drahos. Voter turnout was slightly higher than in the first round.

The election was significant both at home and abroad. Zeman stands for an anti-European Union (EU) policy and an end to sanctions against Russia. For his part, Drahos emphasized in the election campaign his pro-European orientation and hostility to the Kremlin. “The president will continue his unfriendly rhetoric towards the EU and continue trying to orient Czech foreign policy towards Russia and China,” political scientist Jiri Pehe told the news magazine Spiegel.

During Zeman’s first term, the Chinese president came to the Czech Republic for a three-day state visit for the first time in history. Earlier, Zeman said in an interview with Chinese state television that the Czech Republic could “learn a lot from China’s cohesion.”

In addition to governments in Poland and Hungary, an EU-critical alliance is now in power in the Czech Republic in the figures of Zeman and Prime Minister Andrej Babis. Right-wing forces have welcomed the result. The Hungarian government blog PestiSrácok.hu praised the defeat of the “liberal intellectual” who stood against the “son of the people” and concluded: “Zeman’s victory is a blow to Brussels.”

The dominant theme of the election was refugee policy. Ex-prime minister and former social democrat Zeman was notorious for his right-wing, racist views before the elections. Although there are virtually no refugees in the Czech Republic, the Zeman camp launched ads with the text: “Stop Drahos, stop the migrants! This land belongs to us!”

Although Drahos posed as cosmopolitan and liberal, the differences between the candidates, especially on the issue of immigration, were minimal. Drahos, like Zeman, spoke out against compulsory quotas for the distribution of refugees in the EU and for more security on the EU’s external borders. His position became clear when he accused Zeman of having taken in thousands of Muslim refugees from the Balkans during his period as prime minister in the late 1990s.

Domestically, Zeman’s election victory means that billionaire Babis and his far-right “Action of Dissatisfied Citizens” (ANO) are likely to hold on to power. ANO won the parliamentary election last fall, but has no overall governing majority. In the Czech Republic, the president appoints the prime minister and entrusts him with the formation of a government. Zeman had already appointed Babis head of government last December, but Babis had to resign a few days ago after losing a vote in parliament. Zeman immediately entrusted him with forming a new government.

Zeman can maintain the existing ANO minority government in office for a prolonged period of time because the constitution does not oblige the president to adhere to deadlines when forming a government or calling new elections.

Babis is currently seeking to forge a coalition with the Communist Party (KSCM) and the far-right party “Freedom and Direct Democracy” (SPD). While Babis defends a free-market policy that benefits greatly from EU subsidies, he also advocates an anti-refugee policy and massive domestic rearmament. On these issues he is in line with the KSCM and the SPD.

KSCM Chairman Vojtech Filip declared that Zeman’s victory was a victory for “common sense”. Filip, head of the successor organisation to the former Stalinist state party, lined up behind the notoriously right-wing president during the election campaign.

At Zeman’s victory speech in Prague, he was accompanied by both SPD party leader Tomio Okamura and the provisional Czech Social Democratic Party (CSSD) leader Milan Chovanec. Observers see this as an indication of possible CSSD involvement in the right-wing government. The Social Democrats show signs of disintegration after the last parliamentary elections and are fighting for their political survival.

Why are a million Puerto Ricans still in the dark?

Daniel de Vries

When Puerto Rico’s governor Ricardo Rosselló announced last week his plan to privatize the nation’s largest electric utility, he justified the move as a remedy to the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe being inflicted upon the population. “The Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) has become a heavy burden on our people, who are now hostage to its poor service and high costs,” he said. “What we know today as [PREPA] does not work and cannot continue to operate like this.”

The present electrical blackout in Puerto Rico is without precedent in modern American history. More than four months after hurricane Maria triggered the collapse of the already failing grid, over 30 percent of residential and commercial customers remain without power—equivalent to approximately a million people. Even where power has been nominally restored, the system remains extremely unstable and subject to outages at any time.

The initial goal set by governor Rosselló of 95 percent restoration by December 15, which even if achieved would have been extraordinarily slow, quietly passed with restoration rates half that. The current assessments expect large scale outages to continue for months into the future.

US Army Corps of Engineers Col. John Lloyd, who is overseeing power restoration for the federal government, recently told PBS Newshour, “I think by the middle of March, end of March, we’re going to see the majority of customers with power.” Governor Rosselló acknowledged some areas may remain off the grid for an additional four months.

The impact on the residents has been devastating, particularly for working class Puerto Ricans, who have discovered through experience the innumerable aspects of modern life that depend on access to power, including health care services, basic sanitation, transportation, communication, education and employment.

Those without power have been thrown back a century, with simple tasks like storing perishable foods, accessing drinking water and maintaining contact with loved ones a daily struggle. Generators and rigged car batteries have become the temporary power suppliers, at least for those who can afford the high cost of gasoline. Hundreds of thousands have simply fled the island, seeking refuge on the mainland, in no small part because of the lack of power and other basic necessities of contemporary life.

The official response to the catastrophe has been a collective shrug. President Trump uttered but a single contemptuous reference to Puerto Rico during his State of the Union address Tuesday, professing love for those still struggling to recover. Trump’s silence has been matched by the Democrats, who refuse to make an issue of the continuing humanitarian crisis, and instead focus their political energies on seeking to damage Trump with an anti-Russia campaign and whipping up a sexual harassment hysteria.

The US Army Corps of Engineers, the federal agency responsible for the re-electrification of the island, has blamed the slow return of service on a supposed shortage of materials and logistical challenges. The damage is extensive; FEMA estimated Hurricane Maria damaged 80 percent of the power grid, which consists of 2400 miles of transmission lines, 30,000 miles of distribution wire and 300 electrical substations.

Nonetheless, the logistical capacity and resources of the US are potentially immense, yet directed elsewhere. Over the past 25 years the American government has organized massive deployments of hundreds of thousands of soldiers and bureaucrats to invade and occupy countries on the other side of the globe. The government’s inability to organize the distribution of equipment and workers just 1,000 miles off the coast of Florida reflect political, rather than technical or logistical, motivations.

These political motivations have come into sharper focus this week with the announcement by Governor Rosselló of the impending privatization of PREPA. The utility is $9 billion in debt, accounting for the largest share of the territory’s $70 billion obligation.

PREPA’s course toward privatization has been long planned. Four of seven Obama appointees to the Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico, which is granted broad powers to seize public assets and break pension obligations, advocated the utility’s privatization in an article in the Wall Street Journal three months before the hurricane hit. “We believe that only privatization will enable PREPA to attract the investments it needs to lower costs and provide more reliable power throughout the island,” they wrote.

More recently, the board’s general counsel, Jaime El Koury, suggested at a New York Bar Association event last week, that Latin American governments in the 1980s should be used as models for the current debt crisis in Puerto Rico. “In the ’80s Latin America did something about it,” he said. “It was very difficult. It extracted a lot of sacrifice from the population but they did something about it.” El Koury specifically mentioned Chile, which was led by the brutal dictator Augusto Pinochet, who carried out a wave of privatizations following the bloody repression of political opponents.

The situation in Puerto Rico has deteriorated sharply in the past decade, with regards to both the electrical infrastructure and the economy as a whole. The territory’s economy has always been dictated by the needs of US imperialism, which most recently translated into the development of a manufacturing base for pharmaceuticals and other goods. Relatively cheap labor and tax exemptions for US companies generated profits for a time, while much of the population remained poor.

However, by the mid-2000s, with American companies well established at even cheaper offshore locations, the tax exemptions were repealed. Investors responded by simply withdrawing from Puerto Rico. By 2016 investment dropped to 7.9 percent of the island’s GDP from 20.7 percent in 1999. Unemployment reached double the rate as the mainland US. Poverty rates rose to near 50 percent, and a mass exodus ensued.

Faced with a shrinking and impoverished consumer base, increasingly unable to afford what are among the highest electrical rates in the country, PREPA took on more and more debt. The agency deferred its own investments, allowing the generating stations and grid to decay. Over the past five years they reduced the workforce by 30 percent, mainly through attrition.

By the time Maria approached, major outages had become commonplace, including a major three-day outage in September 2016. An independent report to the Puerto Rico Energy Commission published in November 2016 noted that PREPA records show outages at rates five times higher than the norm for the country.

PREPA was deliberately run into the ground, starved of resources, and allowed to mire in corruption. Meanwhile American capital, abstaining from investment in the productive forces of Puerto Rico, instead offered indebtedness, fully conscious that this would lead toward default and set the stage for the looting of public property.

The combined disasters of bankruptcy and Maria have provided the pretext the ruling class has been seeking to implement a wholesale restructuring of social relations to benefit powerful corporate and financial interests. The precedent was set in places like New Orleans following Katrina and Detroit with the municipal bankruptcy, and internationally in countries such as Greece.

The working class needs its own response. The privatization of the electrical system must be stopped and instead brought under the democratic control of the working class. Access to power is a fundamental social right—it should not be a source of profit for the hedge funds and bankers who dictate the course of economic policy and investment. This right can only be asserted as part of a common struggle together with the millions of workers throughout the United States and internationally, independent of all the capitalist political parties, to bring the levers of the economy under the command of the working class.