Is White Supremacism a Mental Illness?

Nick Pemberton

“The most noxious element of neoliberalism is the reduction of all social issues to personal responsibility.” —Henry A. Giroux

“Violence is one of the most fun things to watch.” — Quentin Tarantino

Have you ever wondered why we [women] are not just in armed combat against you? It’s not because there’s a shortage of kitchen knives in this country. It is because we believe in your humanity, against all the evidence.” —Andrea Dworkin

One has to take pause before writing upon another corporate media manipulated spectacle of violence. Even if one has a distinct thought, any reaction justifies the spectacle itself. Alas, we are here, and our thoughts are our thoughts. To grow up in America and live outside of violence would be impossible. One could be opposed to it, or support it, but it is too much a part of the fabric of America to truly develop a non-violent worldview.

Even in the midst of existential threats to life on earth under the umbrella of climate change, there remains an unparalleled drama to American violence. It is, perhaps, an element of society that the best of us lose interest in quickly. More pressing issues remain—chiefly the violence against the environment by the 1% that threatens life as we know it—and even life as we don’t yet know, but are about to learn.

It is in this context that so-called social issues gain new meaning—and one begins to understand their popular appeal despite their apparent pettiness. The right organizes three elements of white supremacism within a violent patriarchal structure: anti-immigration, pro-gun, and anti-reproductive rights. All three assume scarcity of resources and advocate for a white only state that gives these resources only to white men to distribute to their white families. None address the real reason for scarcity, which is the 1% hoarding of wealth.

Soon, if not right now, an additional scarcity will be added, which will be real. The present scarcity of resources remains mostly an organizational failing. The rich have too much power, and would rather keep their money then distribute resources equally. As a result, people are too poor to buy what they need (or want) despite the earth having the resources to provide it. Climate change will change all of this, and create scarcity that may be real, whether or not the 1% exist in its present form or not. The blame will still lie in the same place, but in this way, our future will be even more hopeless. Even a political revolution may not provide the necessities, but that is no reason not to try.

Such a mentality can easily get one down, and in this context it may be pleasant to remark upon the true miracle of life forming on this earth at all. Humans, while an overrated species, remain in many ways, quite remarkable in our capacity for civilization, even if almost all supposed advancements have been built on the backs of the poor and the environment. All that being said, this current time, while of tremendous peril and uncertainty, and unimaginable horror and grief, remains in many ways, a miraculous one, not because of the polluting technological machine of capitalism, but more so because of the development of the human mind, body and soul, as seen in medicine, art, and elsewhere. It is valuable then to remark on this, even if most of our daily lives are filled with unbearable, unjustified, and tragic suffering.

One has to wonder if the right wing doesn’t believe in climate change when one looks at their position on guns and violence. There must be an assumption that in the coming years, life will become like the apocalypse, and that they must prepare for it. In a way this has always been their position though, so maybe there is no connection with climate change. What it amounts to is a purely selfish world view that assumes that the world is not built on kindness, but on violence, and that when the world breaks down, we will not see radical compassion, but radical cruelty.

While the left is often smeared for green fascism, there is strong evidence to contradict this claim. It turns out that if one values the rights of the earth and animal kingdom and wishes peace upon them, a person would be far less likely to hurt other human beings. On the contrary, those downplaying the violence to our earth seem also to forget the humanity of others very quickly. Note Donald Trump claiming that the best way to stop gun violence is to expand the death penalty.

The paranoia of the right, while always present, becomes self-fulfilling as they promote corporate leaders who have the same values of survival of the fittest. The right may be best prepared for this world, but who on earth wants to live in it? Boris Johnson, upon his recent election said something revealing: the right understands human nature better than the left does. Human nature is a false concept. While there are evolutionary tendencies, it remains astounding how much humans can differ based on socialization, despite the similarities in genes. In that way, human nature can truly be created, at least mostly. So there remains no reason not to be truly optimistic about it, for practical purposes.

White nationalism, based on the assumptions of the right, is an organizing principle. Why race, and not something else? It simply remains the most obvious marker. Much like when sports teams wear different jerseys, race is an appealing marker because the rich can immediately notice who to save from the desert island. No need to ask the people waving for help any question. Simply look at the color of skin, and choose. The modern right loves suvival reality television too, with or without Trump.

In this way white nationalism, in practice, is not a result of mental illness, but of ideology, which could be described as insane, but from a clinical perspective, probably wouldn’t, unless it included personal capacity for violence. This is a mistake, and it says more about our white supremacist establishment then it does about mental illness, or lack thereof.

Donald Trump, and many others have used the phrase mental illness to try to understand mass shootings. As Jeffrey St. Clair observed: “I wonder if Trump will seek out advice from the Sackler Family and the other titans of Big Pharma for how to get those “mentally ill” mass shooters back on their meds. If you want to buy an AK-47, you need to show us your prescription. It’s a win-win, economically speaking. You can help keep the gun industry and the drug companies in business.”

A corrupt clock strikes right twice a day, and it is in this way that it is sort of sweet that the Republican Party has enough compassion for the violent killers that they want to explain their acts in this way, even if they would want to cut off these guys heads afterwards. But a closer look reveals that the myriad of excuses may only be because the Republican Party actually agrees with murder, and therefore seems to understand it. We’ll take compassion and understanding wherever we can get it, but with a boatful of salt when it is only applied for white supremacist killers.

Where is this level of compassion for immigrant families? Black youth? People on food stamps? Endangered Species? Rather than find some systematic problem to explain the everyday struggles of ordinary people, the right always finds a way to blame and judge, in order to punish, and extract. It seems the only way for the Republican Party to begin to feel any sympathy for you is to literally become a white supremacist that takes the ideology at face value, therefore enlisting some fatherly mix of pride, sympathy, and disavowal.

It is in this large moral gap—where Republicans only care about white supremacists—that the Democratic Party could step in and start to care about literally everyone else. Sadly it seems that at least a third of the country is white supremacist, but that still leaves the majority for Team Blue. Alas. the Democrats, rather than considering systematic explanations for the entire country, instead goes the other way and says that there can be no compassion for these people—or anyone else.

If the Republican strategy is to celebrate the powerful and bully the weak, the Democrat response could be the opposite. Instead it remains entrenched in false notions of equity, opportunity and nostalgia for the American Dream. Bernie Sanders may be the only figure who point blank believes in human rights, rather than humans needing to earn rights to be worthy of help from the state. Note that now the mentally ill have become a new category of “marginalized” people meant to be brought into the Democratic Party tent of austerity, war and liberal doctrine.

This is fine, but not a radical response. In politically correct liberalism, words deemed as negative lose their meaning, even when they can be explanatory. Mentally ill is now one of those words. Rather than change the definition of who is mentally ill, the Democrats want to say that being ill is “ok”, naturally implying more pills for Big Pharma. It would be helpful for us to ask who is really mentally ill? Is it the people who do abnormal things under the unbearably alienating and vicious system of capitalism, or is the people who deny their humanity and simply go along with the rules—blaming all the disobedient people simply because they resent their freedom.

Donald Trump has been described as honest. Now he is a pathological liar, but this isn’t what is what people mean, when they call him honest, oddly enough. What Trump is honest about is that he does awful things, but he also is proud of it, and does it openly, even when he runs from responsibility for direct violence. In the same way the mass shooters are honest in their expression of white supremacy, more honest than all of us who rely on international trade and imperialism that keeps the global south poor, or those of us who built wealth on slavery, etc. Honesty then, with a world, this unjust, is not necessarily a positive. Instead, we should aim for irony. It is true that the only way to get a “zero” on true-false test would be to know every answer, but to choose the opposite. This is the sort of honesty we must aim for.

In this spirit we must take issue with both political parties. One who finds a spiritual connection with violent white supremacy as a natural expression of their white nationalist policies. And the other who operates in a purely negative sense, choosing to only negate the most awful elements of the other party, while never flipping their logic on its head.

Democrats should be admitting that yes, white supremacy is a mental illness, and should be addressed in a serious and comprehensive way. But they should also be acknowledging that the Republican Party is not interested in looking at mental illness in anyone but white supremacists.

Those suffering from mental illness are disproportionally poor, female, and people of color. Those suffering from trauma, alienation, and lack of self-worth are also these people. Those who have environmental causes of brain damage due to dirty air, water and food are also these people. Those lacking education are also these people.

To call examining mental illness a cover for white supremacy ignores that white supremacy causes mental illness. Could we do a serious examination of how the marginalized react to trauma in non-violent ways that still involve loads of self harm? Why do we only begin to pay attention to people when they kill others? Is this the only language we understand in America?

Bless Brother Trump for examining the role of video games in our culture of violence. But Andrea Dworkin made an important distinction in her speeches against pornography. She noted that that while most people assume she opposes porn because it causes rape, she saw it as the other way around. It is because we tolerate rape, that we celebrate violence against women on screen. And in this way Brother Trump has to cut deeper and look beyond narratives of personal responsibility that abstracts culture but fails to look at imperial violence.

On a cultural aside, Quentin Tarantino is back at it again, and this is another case where if he wasn’t so perfectly American, we’d be better just to ignore him. This movie looks even more problematic than most of his movies, besides the nazi one and the slavery one, both of which were infuriating. On the one hand, one has to like that someone has split the widening gap of film which seems to be this: Either make a genuine, artistic project that makes no money or make a regressive violent movie that makes lots of money. Now Tarantino is an artist but that’s not the reason he is popular. He is popular because of the violence, just like the rest of Hollywood. The fact that he is also an artist gives him a different crowd than Marvel, but there are a million directors just as talented who won’t get the acclaim. Just as there a lot of violent movies that are worse than his that will make more money, but won’t be taken seriously because they lack the art. In this way, he’s the perfect extreme centrist for our times.

This new movie bashes hippies, so not worth seeing I’m sure. But it could not be worse than Django Unchained which was just a fetish of black violence and extreme racism that could only be justified because the SJW arc of the story completely went against the content. Now if one wants to say the N-word a million times and script a violent thoughtless black guy you can’t do that unless it’s also anti-slavery. This is not to say that Tarantino isn’t engaging with several conflicting themes of American culture at once—this is why he’s interesting enough to write about. But he merely represents the academic side of white supremacy that is dangerous because it takes itself seriously.

As corporate as movies such as Avengers may be, when I went to see there was an old man crying next to me. Weird, maybe. But sweet and sincere. Like the movie was, despite its imbecile nature. Tarantino can’t go there. He very much operates on satire, and is completely post-modern in this way. Everything, ultimately is a joke, even the Holocaust and slavery, and murder. But he always tries to square things up with liberal underdog triumph despite making pornographic violence for two hours.

This is the same reason it was hard to get into Game of Thrones, the television show that is. It remained caught between its two ideals: the liberalism of the consuming educated class and the violence necessary to maintain this superior position in society. So it could give us all the horrible shit we wanted only to make us the good guy in the end once again. When it comes to establishment media though, HBO remains head and shoulders above most in thoughtful content, one has to say.

So, yes, America is suffering from mental illness and societal collapse. We should be investing resources in those poor and brown communities who are denied the services of wages, schools, hospitals, clean air, and stability and community that will help them avoid mental and spiritual collapse. Even the Democrats must begin to acknowledge their failure to think in an intersectional way that acknowledges that it is not only white supremacists who suffer pain, but everyone. Some choose violence and hate to express themselves, but why should we help these people only? Why not first look to those who suffer, but suffer with love, hope and peace in their hearts?

Joe Biden gaffes are informative because they tell us not only what he is thinking, but the thinking of the entire Democratic establishment. When he said that poor kids are just as talented as white kids he may have revealed something. Note that America has been getting poorer and more desperate for many decades but everyone said all was fine until middle class white men became dangerous and angry. It was only then that the establishment began to notice an America in decline. But we would be wise to remember that many of the problems undergoing Trump country: addiction, pollution, joblessness, loneliness, trauma, etc. are also happening elsewhere, and are far worse in these places.

The Democrats, a corporate party to the core, only like to talk about marginalized people in isolation, never wanting to connect people in a human sense and never wanting to focus on the greed of the rich until it effects the people with a voice in this country: the rich, the violent, the privileged. The truth is that most people cry and are unheard. Most people long for love, understanding and dignity but will never make the front page spectacle of violence and despair. There remains hope though: if the establishment can exit the neoliberal framework of personal responsibility for a white supremacist, perhaps one day it too will treat its victims with the same compassion.

The Biotech-Industrial Complex Gets Ready to Define What is Human

Stuart A. Newman

Fabricating part-human-part-nonhuman animals, with features of both, seemed like something out of Greek mythology until the late 20^th century. New research then on “geeps,” fully developed, viable mixtures of goats and sheep, showed that constructing such “chimeras” was a real possibility. Still, the warning by H.G. Wells, a century before, in his novel “The Island of Dr. Moreau,” that scientific experiments like this could go terribly awry, seemed fantastical. But this will soon change. At the end of July, it was reported that the biologist Juan Carlos Izpisúa Belmonte, director of a laboratory at the Salk Institute in California, produced fetal human-monkey chimeras. He did this in collaboration with researchers in China. And this month the Japanese government is expected to give the go-ahead to scientist Hiromitsu Nakauchi, leader of teams at the University of Tokyo and Stanford University in California, to conduct similar experiments with the goal of bringing human-pig chimeras to full term. These novel forms of life will soon be among us.

Dr. Nakauchi acknowledges that the concerns of Wells and later writers like Aldous Huxley, author of “Brave New World” (1932), which similarly envisioned technologically calibrating degrees of humanness, are not farfetched. The art of getting the human cells to the right places in the composite animals is worse than imperfect, as are most manipulations of embryos. Developmental biology is simply not the kind of science that can guide an engineering program. Will the resulting mice and pigs have human consciousness? How this will be ascertained is not clear, but if they do Dr. Nakauchi assures us he will destroy them and stop the experiments.

The newly approved human-animal chimera procedures are just some of a number of scientifically and ethically questionable techniques that are being soft-pedaled and normalized on a daily basis by panels of experts advised by financially motivated bioentrepreneurs. In 1997, I applied for a patent on such part-human creatures. I had no intention of producing a chimera. But as a biologist whose work requires close tracking of the relevant scientific literature, I knew that part-human organisms could eventually be produced and that we were quickly approaching an era of deconstruction, reconfiguration, and commodification of human biology. The public deserved a heads-up.

The announcement of the chimera patent application in 1998 was met with derision and accusations of bad faith by the then U.S. Patent Commissioner, and some biotechnology executives and scientists as well. The chair of genetics at Harvard Medical School, for example, asserted that “[t]he creation of chimeras is an outlandish undertaking. No one is trying to do it at present, certainly not involving human beings.” A little over two decades later, however, a once grotesque development has been normalized and approved by experts.

In fact, there are numerous cases in the past four decades of interested parties playing down individual risk and potential societal impact of medically related procedures while making inflated promises based on the claimed novelty of the same methods. Advocates from the entrepreneurial side will often advertise prospective cures with oversimplifications that attribute undue power and singular action to favored (often patented) genes. From the scientific side there have been corner cutting in qualifying patients for treatments and misleading characterizations of the nature of and uncertainties around techniques to alter prospective humans.

An egregious example was one motivated by the understandable desire to avoid propagation of mitochondrial disease. It involved the renaming of the methods for transferring one woman’s egg cell nucleus (containing about 20,000 genes) into a second woman’s egg, leading to embryos constructed from cells of three persons. What was, essentially, a type of cloning was rebranded as “replacement of mitochondria” (involving only 23 genes). This procedure was sold on these deceptive terms to the people of the U.K., where it was approved and is now under way.

The “CRISPR” gene modification of embryos is the latest development being dealt with by expert panels. They will be the arbiters of when the technologically inevitable will occur.  But any dispassionate consideration of the extreme nature of what these methodologies can produce should shake us into a realization that the public needs to be made aware of what is underway and have their voices heard on what will surely change our concept of human identity.

Unmasking the elitist interest of UBI

Partha Pratik Mukherjee

Basic income, also called Universal basic income (UBI), Citizen’s income (CI), Citizen basic income, Basic income guarantee, or Universal Demogrant in different countries or regions is a capitalist reform project, a proposed periodic cash payment delivered to all on an individual basis, without means test or work requirement.

The income will be (i) unconditional (ii) periodical (iii) non withdrawable i.e. basic income will remain unchanged irrespective of increase or decrease in income.(iv)  Individual, beyond the age of 18 years, not per house hold(v) as a right to every legal resident.  In some less developed countries basic income is directed to the poorest section of people, then they are called ‘Guaranteed minimum income system’.

It’s not a new idea, in fact it’s of medieval origin. The first Muslim Caliph, Abu Bakr (573-634 CE) introduced a guaranteed minimum income granting each man, woman and child ten Dirhams which later increased to twenty. The idea of state sponsored basic income was also proposed in” Utopia“by Sir Thomas More in early 16th century.

In this crises ridden capitalism, UBI has been projected as a panacea for the working class. Reasonably the proponents are billionaire oligarchs of capitalism but surprisingly some” left liberal” economists and intellectuals are also supporting the idea of basic income, some even claimed that it’s the beginning of post capitalist economy where human labour can be separated from the means of subsistence from the capitalist economy . What a ridiculous claim! Can the relation of capital and wage be replaced by maintaining the capitalist mode of production?It’s not a rocket science to understand the underlying planning of this project, it has been proposed by the minority ruling class so that it must be in the interest of that class to perpetuate the exploitative system of capitalism. We have to understand why they are so eager to hand over the working class and unemployed population a fixed amount of money without any strings attached.The reasons are multiple , most importantly the certainty of massive unemployment due to the recent development in the fields of automation, artificial intelligence and robotics is making the ruling elites worried off course not for the interest of the working class but from the fear of losing the potential buyers of their products. Already capitalism is suffering from the epidemic of over production, they need a working class population just capable of reproducing their physical and mental energy to serve as wage slaves and can act as consumers to sustain the system, moreover the other obvious interest is to reduce the discontent among the working class to tame the class war This is just another ploy to enslave the working class in exchange of the regular supply of payment checks. Being socialist in true sense we don’t advocate reforms of any kind as the capitalist system can’t be reformed to serve the interest of all. But we can tell certainly that it will be detrimental for the working class as UBI will certainly replace the existing social security programs.  In USA,for the proposed UBI for every adults 10,000 dollars per year would cost more than three trillion dollars, consuming more than three quarters of federal budget. This would require historical high taxation, yet we rarely hear wealthy UBI advocates calling for their taxes to be raised, they more likely advocate cutting existing social –welfare programs that benefit the most impoverished population.

It will also exert a huge downward pressure on wages and over time real wages would on an average fall by the amount of the “basic” income. In other words,   it would   essentially be a subsidy to the employers.

It’s actually a cheap reform, for those who are employed it is nothing but like a tax rebate up to the value of basic income. Anyone paid enough to pay more taxes than the basic income will then subsidize the unemployed. The state then abolishes all other welfare benefits, since the “basic income” gets declared as enough to live on. It then becomes a constant struggle for the ruling class to hold the basic income at or just below the level of subsistence, so people are forced to low wage work, another bounty for the employers. The capitalists and their states need us (working class) to be impoverished, indebted and UBI will also be framed within the logic of capitalism which will permit a reform which fits in the agenda of the employing class. It will definitely fail to satisfy the unfounded hopes and expectations of our fellow workers and if it can be done under the disguise of so called ‘socialism’ then the subsequent disillusionment and disappointment will not be with capitalism and owning class but with the term socialism and those recognized to be “socialist”.

The proposed UBI will make no good to the working class and is perfectly compatible with alienation and oppression of the working class.

So the only scientific way is abolition of wage slavery, production for social needs and a world of free access to all social wealth created by the working class.

India at 72

Vidya Bhushan Rawat

1. Caste system not only intact but strengthened.
2. People facing untouchability still a reality.
3. Manual scavenging still prevalent despite tall claims of swachh bharat
4. People dying of hunger
5. Children and girls still being trafficked.
6. Violence against women one of the dirtiest realities of our society
7. Honor killings are nothing but preservation of caste supremacy and to terrorise the lower castes
8. Superstition being promoted by the power elite to keep people subjugated and maintain their monopoly over us.
   9.A country where constitution is still second choice, first primarily is strengthening the caste pride.
9. Keezhavenmani massacre. Tamilnadu,1968
10. Shankar Bigha, Bihar.
11. Lakshmanpurbathe
12. Kumher, Rajasthan,
13. Tsunduru, Andhra
14. Karmchedu, Andhra,
15. Belchi,
16. Bathani Tola
17. Muradabad riots
18. Meerut 1989
19. Nellie, in Assam
20. Assault on Harmandir Saheb, June 1984
21. Delhi 1984
22. Babari masjid demolition
23. Mumbai 1993
24. Anti mandal agitation of 1990
25. The Kandhamal
26. Burning of Graham Stains and his children
27. Godhara massacre
28. Gujarat 2002
29. Massacre at Marchijhaapi in Bengal under the left regime unreported
30. Nandigram and Singur: Bengal’s elite brahmanical castes shift their loyalty from left to Trinamul of Mamta.
31. Loot of adivasi resources at various places
32. Violent world of Pocso and Vedanta
33. Tappal in Uttar Pradesh and Raigarh in Maharastra
34. Kudunkulan and aftermath
35. Terror in Chhattishgarh and loss of adivasi identity
36. Unlearning from massive Tsunami disaster
37. Man made devastation continued in Uttarakhand
38. Terror attack in Mumbai 2008
39. Attack on Indian Parliament 2001
40. Declaration of Emergency 1975
41. Murder of Gandhi by Nathu Ram Godse in 1948
42. Assassination of Indira Gandhi in 1984
43. Assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in 1991
44. Assassination of Harchand Singh Longowal
45. Assam Peace Accord
46. Mizo Peace Accord
47. Indian misadvanture in Srilanka through IPKF
48. Rajiv Gandhi’s attempt to muzzle press through defamation bill
    51.Boforse became voice of nation destroying Rajiv’s credibility
49. The Shahbano Judgement
50. Mujjaffarnagar violence against Muslims
51. The Anna nautanki kept the country to virtual ransom.
52. Nirbhaya opportunity for the Sangh Parivar
53. Congress continuous ideological crisis place India under Modi
54. Mob lynching encouraged and unabated. It become a new norm
55. Indian media now the biggest threat to democracy. It does not report but it cook up stories and is the biggest mob lyncher today.
56. Indian media now champion fake news, hide facts and use its vast illiterate troll army to bully the opponents.
57. The murder of Rohith Vemula
58. Murder of Dr Payal Tadvi
59. Murder of Akhlaq
60. Muder of Pehlu Khan
61. Rape and murder of Bakarwal girl in Kathua and how the Hindu rights opposed justice to her.
62. The brave girl of Unnao and our hypocrisy.
63. The Violence against Dalits in Saharanpur
64. The shameless thugs of Una
65. The brave Kaushalya from Tamilnadu who lost her husband as he belonged to Dalit community yet fought against her parents
66. The brave girl Amrutha virshini who lost her husband Pranay killed by her parents.
67. The betrayal of Kashmir
68. The communalisation of citizenship
69. The unseen horrors of NRC
70. Looking for Justice Krishna Iyer, Justice V M Tarkunde, Justice H R Khanna, Justice Rajinder Sachhar in these times who could stand up for people’s right to defend.

These were something that came in my mind. We dont have veterans in media who could warn the government or in the bar the lawyers who could file public interest litigation for civil liberties. Interestingly, with more and more fake news as being circulated by the corrupt and spineless in the media, we are just returning to emergency era when each word uttered by BBC became the gospel truth. The biggest help to all international media and channels is actually provided by our ultra nationalist channels who are criminally hiding facts and just paddling fakenews. Indian people were never under the threat so much as today, from these criminals masquerading as journalists. Nobody want to do any follow up on the issues I mentioned as today’s chest thumping media anchors are the new babas on the horizon who only need ‘bhakts’ and not awakened people. Watching all this shit would further take us into the dark ages so if we really want to enjoy our azadi enjoy meeting like minded people, make physical contacts, read good books, explore alternative media and read-watch credible international media organisations.

Offering Choice but Delivering Tyranny: The Corporate Capture of Agriculture

Colin Todhunter

Many lobbyists talk a lot about critics of genetic engineering technology denying choice to farmers. They say that farmers should have access to a range of tools and technologies to maximise choice and options. At the same time, somewhat ironically, they decry organic agriculture and proven agroecological approaches, presumably because these practices have no need for the proprietary inputs of the global agrochemical/agritech corporations they are in bed with. And presumably because agroecology represents liberation from the tyranny of these profiteering, environment-damaging global conglomerates.

It is fine to talk about ‘choice’ but we do not want to end up offering a false choice (rolling out technologies that have little value and only serve to benefit those who control the technology), to unleash an innovation that has an adverse impact on others or to manipulate a situation whereby only one option is available because other options have been deliberately removed. And we would certainly not wish to roll out a technology that traps farmers on a treadmill that they find difficult to get off.

Surely, a responsible approach for rolling out important (potentially transformative) technologies would have to consider associated risks, including social, economic and health impacts.

Take the impact of the Green Revolution in India, for instance. Sold on the promise that hybrid seeds and associated chemical inputs would enhance food security on the basis of higher productivity, agriculture was transformed, especially in Punjab. But to gain access to seeds and chemicals many farmers had to take out loans and debt became (and remains) a constant worry. Many became impoverished and social relations within rural communities were radically altered: previously, farmers would save and exchange seeds but now they became dependent on unscrupulous money lenders, banks and seed manufacturers and suppliers. Vandana Shiva in ‘The Violence of the Green Revolution‘ (1989) describes the social marginalisation and violence that accompanied the process.

On a macro level, the Green Revolution conveniently became tied to an international (neo-colonial) system of trade based on chemical-dependent agro-export mono-cropping linked to loans, sovereign debt repayment and World Bank/IMF structural adjustment (privatisation/deregulation) directives. Many countries in the Global South were deliberately turned into food deficit regions, dependent on (US) agricultural imports and strings-attached aid.

The process led to the massive displacement of the peasantry and, according to the academics Eric Holt-Giménez et al, (Food rebellions: Crisis and the hunger for Justice, 2009), the consolidation of the global agri-food oligopolies and a shift in the global flow of food: developing countries produced a billion-dollar yearly surplus in the 1970s; they were importing $11 billion a year by 2004.

And it’s not as though the Green Revolution delivered on its promises. In India, it merely led to more wheat in the diet, while food productivity per capita showed no increased or even actually decreased (see ‘New Histories of the Green Revolution' by Glenn Stone). And, as described by Bhaskar Save in his open letter (2006) to officials, it had dire consequences for diets, the environment, farming, health and rural communities.

The ethics of the Green Revolution – at least it was rolled out with little consideration for these impacts – leave much to be desired.

As the push to drive GM crops into India’s fields continues (the second coming of the green revolution – the gene revolution), we should therefore take heed. To date, the track record of GMOs is unimpressive, but the adverse effects on many smallholder farmers are already apparent (see ‘Hybrid Bt cotton: a stranglehold on subsistence farmers in India’ by A P Gutierrez).

Aside from looking at the consequences of technology roll outs, we should, when discussing choice, also account for the procedures and decisions that were made which resulted in technologies coming to market in the first place.

Steven Druker, in his book ‘Altered Genes, Twisted Truth’, argues that the decision to commercialise GM seeds and food in the US amounted to a subversion of processes put in place to serve the public interest. The result has been a technology roll out which could result (is resulting) in fundamental changes to the genetic core of the world’s food. This decision ultimately benefited Monsanto’s bottom line and helped the US gain further leverage over global agriculture.

We must therefore put glib talk of the denial of technology by critics to one side if we are to engage in a proper discussion of choice. Any such discussion would account for the nature of the global food system and the dynamics and policies that shape it. This would include looking at how global corporations have captured the policy agenda for agriculture, including key national and international policy-making bodies, and the role of the WTO and World Bank.

Choice is also about the options that could be made available, but which have been closed off or are not even considered. In Ethiopia, for example, agroecology has been scaled up across the entire Tigray region, partly due to enlightened political leaders and the commitment of key institutions.

However, in places where global agribusiness/agritech corporations have leveraged themselves into strategic positions, their interests prevail. From the false narrative that industrial agriculture is necessary to feed the world to providing lavish research grants and the capture of important policy-making institutions, these firms have secured a thick legitimacy within policymakers’ mindsets and mainstream discourse. As a result, agroecological approaches are marginalised and receive scant attention and support.

Monsanto had a leading role in drafting the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights to create seed monopolies. The global food processing industry wrote the WTO Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures. Whether it involves Codex or the US-India Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture aimed at restructuring (destroying) Indian agriculture, the powerful agribusiness/food lobby has secured privileged access to policy makers and sets the policy agenda.

From the World Bank’s ‘enabling the business of agriculture’ to the Gates Foundation’s role in opening up African agriculture to global food and agribusiness oligopolies, democratic procedures at sovereign state levels are being bypassed to impose seed monopolies and proprietary inputs on farmers and to incorporate them into a global supply chain dominated by powerful corporations.

We have the destruction of indigenous farming in Africa as well as the ongoing dismantling of Indian agriculture and the deliberate impoverishment of Indian farmers at the behest of transnational agribusiness. Where is the democratic ‘choice’? It has been usurped by corporate-driven Word Bank bondage (India is its biggest debtor in the bank’s history) and by a trade deal with the US that sacrificed Indian farmers for the sake of developing its nuclear sector.

Similarly, ‘aid’ packages for Ukraine – on the back of a US-supported coup – are contingent on Western corporations taking over strategic aspects of the economy. And agribusiness interests are at the forefront. Something which neoliberal apologists are silent on as they propagandise about choice, and democracy.

Ukraine’s agriculture sector is being opened up to Monsanto/Bayer. 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. And Bayer’s hand is possibly behind the ongoing strategy to commercialise GM mustard in India. Whether on the back of militarism, secretive trade deals or strings-attached loans, global food and agribusiness conglomerates secure their interests and have scant regard for choice or democracy.

The ongoing aim is to displace localised, indigenous methods of food production and allow transnational companies to take over, tying farmers and regions to a system of globalised production and supply chains dominated by large agribusiness and retail interests. Global corporations with the backing of their host states, are taking over food and agriculture nation by nation.

Many government officials, the media and opinion leaders take this process as a given. They also accept that (corrupt) profit-driven transnational corporations have a legitimate claim to be owners and custodians of natural assets (the ‘commons’). There is the premise that water, seeds, food, soil and agriculture should be handed over to these conglomerates to milk for profit, under the pretence these entities are somehow serving the needs of humanity.

Ripping land from peasants and displacing highly diverse and productive smallholder agriculture, rolling out very profitable but damaging technologies, externalising the huge social, environmental and health costs of the prevailing neoliberal food system and entire nations being subjected to the policies outlined above: how is any of it serving the needs of humanity?

It is not. Food is becoming denutrified, unhealthy and poisoned with chemicals and diets are becoming less diverse. There is a loss of plant and insect diversity, which threatens food security, soils are being degraded, water tables polluted and depleted and millions of smallholder farmers, so vital to global food production, are being pushed into debt in places like India and squeezed off their land and out of farming.

It is time to place natural assets under local ownership and to develop them in the public interest according to agroecological principles. This involves looking beyond the industrial yield-output paradigm and adopting a systems approach to food and agriculture that accounts for local food security and sovereignty, cropping patterns to ensure diverse nutrition production per acre, water table stability and good soil structure. It also involves pushing back against the large corporations that hold sway over the global food system and more generally challenging the leverage that private capital has over all our lives.

That’s how you ensure liberation from tyranny and support genuine choice.

Researching the Unresearched: Left-Wing Extremism and the Future Rules of Governance

Bibhu Prasad Routray

In the last week of July 2019, a brother and sister pair, in a representation of the two principal adversaries in India’s left-wing extremism (LWE)-affected heartland, came face-to-face. In Chhattisgarh’s Sukma district, Vetti Rama, a member of the Chhattisgarh state police, was fired upon by a group of extremists that included his own sister, Vetti Kanni. Rama, himself an extremist until a year ago, has since surrendered and is now a part of the ‘eye and ear’ scheme of the state police. Kanni continues to be a member of the Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist). Both escaped unhurt in the encounter. Apart from being a human interest story, the incident can be seen as a coalescing of multiple issues that LWE, and the efforts to counter it, have laid bare. Each of these issues potentially is a subject of serious research. This article is an attempt to throw light on four of them.

First, the one and a half decades of intense conflict, beginning with the formation of the CPI-Maoist in 2004, has left tribal societies across the affected states deeply fractured. Tribals enlisted by the Maoists and the state have fought against each another, leaving villages burnt and deserted, agricultural fields untilled, and thriving self-sustaining economies of the rural belt in ruins. Schools, roads, and health care facilities have been rendered unusable. Kanni and Rama, in a way, represent this division, which has significant societal ramifications. Irrespective of the direction the weakened LWE takes in the coming months, either towards resolution or further weakening, the state will have to address such faultlines to restore normalcy. Somehow, this manmade disaster-in-waiting has escaped the attention of most researchers, barring perhaps the activists operating in the region.

Second, much has also been written about how the CPI-Maoist has lost strength and is mostly confined, in recent years, to only a few pockets in some states. The government's perception management strategy has emphasised real or imagined narratives of domination by higher caste leaders over tribal cadres within the Maoist movement; subjugation and sexual exploitation of women cadres within the organisation; and how the movement is in its dying stage. However, the decision of cadres like Kanni, a tribal woman, to continue being part of the CPI-Maoist, even when her own brother has left the organisation, adds an interesting subject to the scope of research. What motivates extremist cadres to be part of a ‘lost cause’? Kanni chided Rama for being a ‘coward’ in response to the latter's many letters asking her to surrender. Clearly, frameworks of criminality, exploitation, or intimidation are inadequate to explain this attachment to an extremist cause.

Third, in spite of enormous investment in augmenting its capacities, the state continues to fall back on former Maoists like Vetti Rama in its counter-insurgency (COIN) campaign. Close to 100 battalions of central forces are deployed in the LWE-affected states of the country, in support of an equally large state police force. Millions of rupees have been spent on projects intended to generate human as well as technical intelligence. The Supreme Court of India has disbanded the vigilante Salwa Judum movement in Chhattisgarh. And yet, the state cannot do away with the extracted services of former extremists. In September 2018, after surrendering to the police, Vetti Rama confessed that he was attracted by the state's rehabilitation policy that allows surrendered extremists to claim the entire head money. In Rama's case, it was eight lakh rupees. And yet, his 23 years of experience in the extremist organisation were too valuable for the Chhattisgarh police to allow him to gracefully retire into non-descript civilian life. He was roped into their ‘eye and ear’ informant team. Does this indicate the state’s persisting incapacity to generate adequate operational human intelligence? Does it point to its inability to win the trust of the tribals? Is the state, thus, erring in understanding the aspirations that keep the movement alive?

Finally, police insist that they will continue to make efforts to convince cadres like Kanni to surrender. Rama, reportedly, will continue writing to his sister in the hope of her surrender. In the days to come, he may succeed, or Kanni may be killed in an encounter with the security forces. The larger context in which such contestations need to be placed and analysed is about the future of the LWE-affected areas liberated by the state. Can researchers working on the subject assist in shaping it, and if yes, how? LWE has historically thrived in areas marked by the absence or retreat of governance. The government seeks to gain entry by unveiling and implementing a large number of development projects. Should some research on conflict be devoted to framing the rules of future governance in such liberated regions so that they do not lapse into extremism again?

The bulk of conflict-related research in India, unfortunately, has remained confined to the realm of security, examining the performance of the security forces and the operational loopholes. Critiques or appreciation of official COIN efforts, human rights issues, or short-lived attention to the below par implementation of development projects exhaust the entirety of the literature on the subject. This episode featuring Kanni and Rama begs for a broadening of the research horizon.

US farm equipment manufacturer John Deere calls for “organizational efficiency,” threatening jobs

George Gallanis

In a recent earnings meeting, farm equipment manufacturer giant John Deere called for the cutting down on costs and increase in profits through “organizational efficiency.” Bearing the cost of this “efficiency” will be Deere workers, who confront reduced hours and possible layoffs numbering in the hundreds, if not thousands.

Deere published a news release on August 16 citing decline of revenue in certain areas.

It reported global net sales and revenue, i.e., money earned through sales with customers before taxes, expenses etc. are taken out, decreased 3 percent, to $10.036 billion, for the third quarter of 2019. Net sales of the equipment operations were $8.969 billion for the same quarter compared with $9.286 billion last year.

Deere reduced its projected full-year net income, money left over after deducted expenses like payroll, to $3.2 billion and annual sales growth to 4 percent, from the previously expected $3.3 billion. Previously it projected annual sales growth of 5 percent.

Samuel R. Allen, Deere’s chairman and chief executive officer, stated "John Deere's third-quarter results reflected the high degree of uncertainty that continues to overshadow the agricultural sector” due in part to "concerns about export-market access, near-term demand for commodities such as soybeans, and overall crop conditions, have caused many farmers to postpone major equipment purchases.”

Growing trade tensions between China and the United States have stymied export incomes of American farmers. According to the American Farm Bureau, in 2018, China imported $9.1 billion of U.S. farm produce, down from $19.5 billion in 2017.

US shipments of soybeans to China fell to a 16-year low last year as China bought soybeans mostly from Brazil.

Meanwhile, a record-setting wet spring destroyed crop yields for large sections of the American farm belt. Heavy rains led to flooding, which delayed and prevented planting, and was made worse by hot and dry summer weather, which decreased corn and soybean yields.

According to the US Department of Agriculture, across the country some 19.4 million insured acres went unplanted due to the rains, the highest amount ever since the government started tracking it in 2007.

Illinois, the leading US state for soybean exports, has seen 15 major farm bankruptcies over the last 12 months, up from 10 the year before. At the start of August, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) declared an agricultural disaster in all 102 Illinois counties because of flooding. Due to retaliatory measures by China in response to Trump’s trade war measures, agricultural exports from Illinois to China fell 77 percent last year. Across the United States, there were a total of 535 Chapter 12 bankruptcy filings, a spike of 13 percent, or 60 bankruptcies, in the past 12 months, the highest since 2012.

Speaking to the Chicago Tribune, Caroline Bartz, whose family operates a farm in central Illinois, said, “I tell ya, it’s a nightmare. In 50 years of farming, I have never seen anything like this year—never.”

These factors have led to decreased equipment sales, affecting Deere’s fiscal bottom line.

Deere is responding to the growing trade war, decreased farm equipment sales combined with the looming threat of recession by seeking to impose this crisis on workers. In a Deere earnings call on August 16, 2019, attended by Deere’s shareholders and executives, Ryan D. Campbell, a senior vice-president & Chief Financial Officer at Deere, foreshadowed the company’s plans:

“As these challenges persist, we are now beginning more aggressive actions on our cost structure to create a more efficient and nimble organization. These actions, which will involve organizational efficiency, a footprint assessment and an increased focus on investments with the most opportunity for differentiation, are in support of our aspiration to achieve 15 percent structural operating profits by 2022 and will position us to capitalize upon the resumption of replacement demand growth.”

Campbell’s call to increase operating profits, money earned from core business operations like equipment sales, by 15 percent means the amassment of hundreds of millions of dollars on top of their current total. According to macrotrends.net, as of July 31, 2019 the current operating profit margin for Deere is 8.27 percent. A 15 percent margin means almost doubling the current figure.

Germany: Plans to break up ThyssenKrupp take shape

Dietmar Gaisenkersting

The ThyssenKrupp Group is accelerating its offensive against its approximately 160,000-strong workforce. On August 8, CEO Guido Kerkhoff announced that a number of the company’s divisions were “to be put to the test” because they were allegedly uncompetitive. About 9,600 workers are directly affected, mainly those employed in the auto parts business and in the heavy plate mill in Duisburg-Hüttenheim.

On August 8, Kerkhoff cited the concern’s latest quarterly figures. Orders received by the company were slightly in excess of the same period of the previous year and sales had also risen slightly, but in the first three quarters, the group recorded a net loss of €207 million. ThyssenKrupp now expects a profit of around €800 million for the entire financial year—€300–400 million less than planned. Former head financial officer Kerkhoff has revised the company’s earnings forecast downwards for the third time in his one-year term as CEO.

The background to the drop in profits is above all the decline in production in the auto industry, upon which several divisions of the company depend. In addition, the prices of raw materials, especially iron ore, have risen. “Global trade conflicts make the situation even more difficult,” Kerkhoff said.

The company’s three divisions—heavy plate (800 employees), springs and stabilizers (3,600 employees) and system engineering (construction of production facilities for the auto industry, 4,700 employees)—“represent 4 percent of Group sales, but account for a quarter of the negative cash flow expected in the current financial year” a press release stated.

Despite the poor quarterly figures, the company share price—currently at its lowest level for 16 years—rose after Kerkhoff made clear that the group was to be fundamentally restructured.

“Either we succeed now with restructuring, or we must seriously ask whether we can continue these businesses within the concern,” Kerkhoff said. There are opportunities for further development, “but not necessarily under the roof of ThyssenKrupp.”

Kerkhoff, who receives up to €9 million a year as CEO, said, “What will no longer happen is that divisions are allowed to permanently burn money without any clear perspective, thereby destroying value generated by other areas.”

The latest reviews are part of the plan already announced by Kerkhoff in May to transform the concern into a type of holding company and break it up in the long term.

According to this plan, the most profitable segment, the elevator division with around 50,000 employees, will be listed on the stock exchange next financial year (i.e., October 2020 at the latest). But, Kerkhoff added, a sale is possible to competitors such as Kone or, according to Reuters, financial investors such as KKR, Advent or CVC.

Kerkhoff has announced the slashing of 6,000 jobs over the next three years, including 4,000 redundancies in Germany, with 2,000 of these in the steel sector. Administrative costs in the company’s headquarters in Essen are to be almost halved next year from the current level of €380 million.

Kerkhoff claims that his plans will place steel production and materials trading at the heart of the concern’s activities, but these are currently the sectors making losses. In the first three quarters of last year, the company’s steel mills made an operating profit of €597 million. Now, in the same period of the current financial year, they recorded a loss of €75 million.

It was precisely due to such fluctuations that ThyssenKrupp originally planned to form a joint venture with its competitor Tata Steel. But the fusion failed following a decision by the European Commission that the resulting company would have monopoly status.

The plans for cuts announced in May were developed in liaison with the hedge funds that have been buying into ThyssenKrupp in recent years. These financial vultures are eager to break up and exploit the company.

The central role in the offensive against ThyssenKrupp workers is played by the IG Metall trade union and its works councils. With 10 representatives, IGM make up half the membership of the company supervisory board. They have been working closely with management and shareholders for years behind the backs of the workforce.

The merger with Tata Steel and the planned division of the two companies—now obsolete—were worked out by IG Metall and the works council in consultation with investors. A key role has been played by IG Metall Secretary Markus Grolms, deputy chairman of ThyssenKrupp’s supervisory board. He works closely with the former state head of the IG Metall, Oliver Burkhard, who in 2013 moved directly from the union into the board of directors, where he receives up to €4.5 million a year as personnel director.

Ashok Leyland autoworkers in India strike to demand higher bonuses

Deepal Jayasekera

About 1,800 autoworkers at the Ashok Leyland plant in Ennore, Chennai, the capital of the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, are conducting a sit-in strike to demand higher bonuses. The action, which began last Friday, is part of the growing resistance of autoworkers to a rolling wave of plant closings and mass layoffs throughout the global auto industry amid falling sales and signs of another worldwide economic downturn.

Workers are demanding a 10 percent increase in bonuses and have rejected the company’s offer of 5 percent, which does not come close to matching higher cost of living expenses. After the collapse of talks last Wednesday, the Ashok Leyland Employees Union (ALEU) was forced to call the action in an effort to appease the anger of rank-and-file workers.

Chennai-based Ashok Leyland is the second largest heavy commercial vehicle maker in India. During the 2018-19 fiscal year the company saw its profits rise by 21 percent to 21.95 billion rupees ($US309 million) from 18.14 billion rupees ($255 million) the previous fiscal year.

The strike takes place as transnational corporations are seeking to force autoworkers to pay for the growing crisis of the auto industry in India and around the world. Having faced the worst sales drop in a decade, car companies in India have destroyed about 350,000 jobs in recent months and have threatened to wipe out one third of the current 3 million assembly and auto components job. The country’s largest car manufacturer, Maruti Suzuki, has halved its production targets, and two days ago the company announced that it would not renew the contracts of 3,000 temporary workers at its factories.

“This is a part of the business; when demand soars, more contract workers are hired and reduced in case of low demand,” Maruti chairman R. C. Bhargava declared to TV news channels.

This is a part of a global jobs massacre being implemented in auto plants throughout the world, including those in the US, Canada, China, Mexico, Germany and India.

Autoworkers in China, South Korea, the US, Brazil, Mexico, Germany, the UK, Romania, Turkey and Hungary as well as in India have fought pitched battles over the past decade to defend their jobs and conditions against the assaults of companies. Thousands of workers at the Maruti Suzuki car assembly plant at Manesar, Gurgaon in the northern Indian state of Haryana waged a series of militant struggles, including strikes, protests and occupations against sweatshop labor conditions and the contract labor system, in 2011. They have been subjected to a brutal company-government vendetta, which resulted in the life imprisonment of 13 workers on framed-up murder charges.

In order to defend the profit interests of crisis-ridden auto companies, the Tamil Nadu state government led by All India Anna Dravida Munnethra Kazhagam (AIADMK), declared in late June that the auto component industry was a “public utility service,” effectively banning strikes in the sector. Tamil Nadu is a major location of auto component industries—with Chennai known as “India’s Detroit”—and accounts for more than 30 percent of auto parts exports from India. Facing widespread opposition from workers to this blatantly anti-democratic measure, the Madras (Chennai) High Court issued an interim order on August 1 temporarily halting the implementation of the state government’s decision. A petition to stay the decision had been filed by Pricol Thozhilaler Otrumai Sangam, the union at auto parts maker Pricol in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu. However, the court has set August 29 for a further hearing in the case.

Although its profits rose sharply last year, Ashok Leyland has begun experiencing a decline in sales and profits. In the quarter that ended in June, its volume declined by 6 percent. The company’s sales, revenue and EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) are expected to decline by 7.5 percent, 5-7 percent and 19 percent respectively from the same quarter last year.

Trump administration calls for permanent restoration of bulk phone communications surveillance

Kevin Reed 

In a declassified letter to Congressional leaders, the outgoing Director of National Intelligence Daniel R. Coats called for the “permanent reauthorization of the provisions of the USA Freedom Act of 2015 that are currently set to expire in December.” The top Trump administration intelligence official wrote that among these provisions are the National Security Agency’s (NSA) officially suspended bulk collection of “telephone records from US telecommunications providers.”

Coats’ letter was addressed to the Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Richard Burr (Republican, North Carolina) and Vice Chairman Mark Warner (Democrat, Virginia) and the Chairman of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary Lindsay Graham (Republican, South Carolina) and Ranking Committee Member Dianne Feinstein (Democrat, California). The day after his letter was declassified on August 14, Coats departed the White House following his formal resignation as Director of National Intelligence on July 29.

Writing on behalf of the Intelligence Community (IC) and the White House, Coats said—in addition to requesting restoration of bulk phone data collection—there are three key “long-standing national security authorities” contained in the USA Freedom Act that are “common sense” and “have no history of abuse after more than 18 years, and should be reauthorized without sunset.”

These three authorizations are: the “business records” provision that permits federal law enforcement to seize tangible items like business papers and documents in a FISA court approved foreign intelligence investigation; the “roving wiretap” provision that permits national security agencies to tap calls from telephone numbers not specifically authorized by the FISA court; and the “lone wolf” provision that permits national security agencies to identify someone as a terrorist without having to show that they are an “agent of a foreign power” as required by other laws.

The USA Freedom Act was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama on June 2, 2015. The act restored several provisions of the USA Patriot Act such as the roving wiretap and lone wolf authorizations that had expired. At that time, the act was fraudulently packaged by the Obama administration and the corporate media as a “reform” of intelligence practices following the revelations by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden that the government was carrying out secret bulk collection of telephone records of the entire population.

As explained at the time on the World Socialist Web Site, the 2015 USA Freedom Act is a fig leaf behind which the vast electronic illegal surveillance activities of the NSA was continued and expanded with explicit Congressional approval. The passage of the act is an object lesson in the complicity of the entire American government and its two-party system in ever-deepening attacks on democratic rights.

A phony debate between Congressional Democrats and Republicans, along with bromides from Obama about the importance of “the safety of the American people” were played up in the media as an effort to “strike a balance” between national security and privacy rights. In the end, the legislation was signed into law and it enabled the resumption of the NSA’s bulk data operations contained in the expired USA Patriot Act by adding a step whereby the telecom companies had to collect and hold the data.

Coats wrote in his letter that the NSA “has suspended the call detail records program” that was authorized by the USA Freedom Act and deleted all of the data that was gathered under its authorization.

This decision was widely reported in June when it was revealed that the NSA had been “improperly” collecting phone records as far back as October 2018 outside the provisions of the 2015 law. Basically, what had been revealed was that the NSA had not modified its practice and, after this fact came to light, the agency said it was deleting three years of data going back to 2015, some 685 million phone call records.