The Unending Human Tragedy in Syria

Saad Hafiz

The regime of President Bashar al-Assad is winning the decade-old civil war in Syria. With the help of like-minded allies Iran and Russia, Assad is ruthlessly mopping up his remaining opposition. After the defeat of the ISIS Caliphate, the West has no security interests or oil reserves to protect in Syria. Its authoritarian Arab neighbors wouldn’t like to see a democratic and free Syria either. The nations who earlier vociferously called for the removal of the regime have lost interest. Once in control of only 20% of its territory, the Assad dynasty has another lease on life as a hapless people suffer.

The Syrian conflict began in 2011 with peaceful pro-democracy protests against autocratic rule. The protests were part of the “Arab Spring” uprisings in the region. At first, the Assad regime made conciliatory gestures. It released political prisoners, dismissed the government, and lifted the 48-year-old state of emergency. But when the challenges to the regime grew, it sent in troops and tanks to crush the revolt.

The conflict mushroomed into a brutal civil and proxy war that drew in regional and global powers. The now nearly defeated opposition to the regime attracted regional and international support. But as the armed rebellion evolved, the Islamists and jihadists, whose brutal tactics caused global outrage, soon outnumbered the mostly Sunni secular leadership.

Periodic blood-letting and foreign interventions are part of Syria’s short tortured history. Syria fell in the French sphere of influence after the notorious Anglo-French Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916. The Agreement divided up the remains of the Ottoman empire. Once in charge, the French bombarded Damascus, changed rulers in the territory at will, and pacified it with martial law when needed. After independence in 1946, Syria went through twenty coups at an average of one a year, until Hafez al-Assad assumed power in 1970—in another coup. More and more repressive rule and fear held the country together.

But in the past ten years, conditions in Syria have hit a new low, with hundreds of thousands dead and millions of refugees. According to a UN commission of inquiry, all parties to the conflict have committed war crimes – including murder, torture, rape and enforced disappearances. Syria needs billions of dollars for humanitarian aid to the injured, the permanently disabled and internal refugees and to rebuild the country once the violence stops. Neighboring Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, and Europe have to cope with millions of Syrian refugees.

An Assad victory with the help of Russian air power and intelligence ensures that Syria will remain a client state of Russia. Russia (and the former Soviet Union) pumped in billions in economic and military aid to Syria since the 1960s. It maintained good relations with leaders from the Sunni majority and the Alawites minority who have ruled Syria.

The Syria-Russian equation is in line with the institutionalization of client-patron relationships which began with the British and the French. Notable others are Egypt and Jordan with the United States in the region. The post-colonial world is littered with examples of client states, whose governments enjoyed little popular support, beholden for survival to patrons like the USA and Russia.

The Iranian boots on the ground to support Assad reflect a commonality of interests against Western hegemony, Palestinian resistance against Israel, and Shiite Iran’s ambitions in the region versus rival Sunni Saudi Arabia. Otherwise, the secular Assad regime has little in common with Iran’s clerical rulers. Iran has spent billions of dollars to bolster the Assad dictatorship, furnished military advisers and subsidized weapons, and lines of credit and oil transfers.

Syria has always been a fragile country with only a veneer of statehood. There is no real national identity binding the people together. The permanent state of war with Israel and internal repression doesn’t allow the development of strong public institutions, a vocal civil society, and a stable economy. The scale of the current devastation shows that a viable and functioning Syrian state isn’t on the horizon soon.

The other challenge in Syria, as in other parts of the Middle East, is the dark hundred-year shadow of Sykes-Picot. It means living with artificially created borders, sectarian, and ethnic divides. There is also the ever-lurking issue of the undefined role of Islam in society and politics. The authoritarian system, imposed with external backing, can temporarily paper over the internal fissures. But it won’t be able to ensure that a sovereign Syria can provide lasting safety and security to its people. We can expect more innocent blood to flow as force and acts of bestiality settle internal conflicts, as they always have.

An amoral foreign policy

Farooque Chowdhury

A responsible voice from the US foreign affairs establishment now tells: US foreign policy is amoral. Ms. Marie Yovanovitch, former US ambassador to Ukraine, has made the observation.

She was speaking on February 12, 2020 at Georgetown University on receiving an award of excellence in diplomacy from the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy. The 33-year diplomatic veteran has worked under every US president since Reagan.

The former ambassador said:

“Right now, the State Department is in trouble. Senior leaders lack policy vision, moral clarity and leadership skills. The policy process has been replaced by the decisions emanating from the top with little discussion.”

“We need to be principled, consistent and trustworthy. To be blunt, an amoral, keep-‘em-guessing foreign policy that substitutes threats, fear and confusion for trust, cannot work over the long haul. At some point, the once unthinkable will become the soon inevitable, that our allies, who have as much right to act in their own self interest as we do, will seek out more reliable partners. [….]”

She said: “Truth matters.”

Other than the possibility of alienating allies, Ms. Yovanovitch discussed some other issues that included vacancies going unfilled, officers “increasingly wondering whether it is safe to express concerns about policy even behind closed doors”, “a competitive and complex time”.

It’s not an Empire-critic’s observation. It, thus, can’t be brushed out easily by the mainstream.

It’s, actually, not only a current-situation-assessment; and, not only a single leader-centric observation. To see foreign policy as limited to current situation and centering a single leader is erroneous. Because a single person doesn’t frame foreign policy overnight. Foreign policy comes out from an economy, the interests the economy tries to secure. It grows out of detailed exercises by an elaborate establishment.

The veteran diplomat’s observation exposes a chronic disease, which is a concern for the Empire, its allies and lackeys. The Empire can’t unburden its deeds. The allies have options to realign. But, for the lackeys? It’s a hopeless situation.

The issue – amoral foreign policy – needs no elaboration or referring to examples spanning decades and countries: Threat, coercion, conspiracy, espionage, assassination, coup, interference, civil disturbance, aggression. These are much documented and cited. An imperialist economy at its mature phase in an increasingly competitive world has to tread these back streets.

A few points Ms. Yovanovitch mentioned are special: lack of vision and skill, decisions emanating with little discussion, unsafe feeling. The special questions are: When and why do these happen? What’s its source? Is it due to a person or a system?

BBC Panorama exposes rising death toll on UK’s “smart motorways”

Paul Bond

The BBC’s documentary flagship Panorama, “Britain’s Killer Motorways?” revealed that 38 people have been killed on “smart motorways” in the last five years. This is the case although smart motorways account for just 200 miles of the British motorway system.

“Britain’s Killer Motorways?” produced by the BBC’s Panorama Investigative documentary series

This is the first time the death toll has been revealed, giving the lie to Highways England’s claim that smart motorways are as safe as conventional motorways.

In the words of Edmund King, President of the AA (Automobile Association) breakdown and rescue service, “Smart motorways are a scandal because, as we’ve been saying from the outset, they are dangerous, they’re not fit for purpose.”

“Britain’s Killer Motorways?” which aired on January 27, reported a huge rise in near miss incidents on smart motorways. A Freedom of Information request for information on a section of the M25—a major road encircling almost all of Greater London and one of the busiest motorways in the UK—revealed that there had been 72 such incidents in the five years before it was converted to a smart motorway. The five years after that conversion saw 1,485 near misses, a more than twentyfold rise.

“Britain’s Killer Motorways?”

A “near miss” is categorised as an incident with “the potential to cause injury or ill health.” Some of the near miss footage shown by Panorama in this section of the film was horrifying to watch as to the carnage that smart motorways are responsible for. Any one of these misses could have resulted in a tragic loss of life.

Smart motorways were introduced in a cost-cutting measure, as a means of easing congestion without expanding the existing road network—by turning the hard shoulder of conventional motorways into a live traffic lane.

The scheme was piloted by the Labour government in 2006 on the M42 near Birmingham. Following this test, the plan was signed off by the Conservative-led coalition government in 2010. Smart motorways have been introduced across 200 miles of motorway so far. However, Highways England, the government company “charged with operating, maintaining and improving England’s motorways and major A roads” plans to add more than 4,000 miles of extra capacity through smart motorways.

Without the emergency refuge of the hard shoulder, smart motorways depend solely on live control and monitoring technology to identify broken-down vehicles and close the affected lane. In the absence of a hard shoulder, drivers also need access to an Emergency Refuge Area (ERA) so they can get urgently get off the live motorway.

Provision of both is catastrophically inadequate, and many people are dying as a result.

The police say they were told the technology would be so advanced as to be instantaneous. In fact, as Panorama reveals, one M25 warning sign was out of action for 336 days, while the radar Stopped Vehicle Detection (SVD) technology promised for smart motorways has only been installed on about 6 percent of the smart motorway network—two sections of the M25. The response of Highways England to any criticism has been one of murderous complacency: they now pledge that radar will be installed “within three years.”

Highway England’s chief executive Jim O’Sullivan has acknowledged that radar technology could have saved lives. The organisation told a transport committee in 2016 that they would adopt it for subsequent schemes, but nothing has been done.

A Highways England report has admitted that CCTV operators take an average of 17 minutes to spot stranded vehicles and then another three minutes before the lane closure sign is activated. It then takes on average another 17 minutes for the vehicle to be recovered. Drivers, as Panorama stated, are left a “sitting duck for more than half an hour.”

The same report also found that drivers were three times more likely to break down in a live lane if there was no hard shoulder.

On the M42 test area, ERAs were around 600 metres apart. As the network has been rolled out, ERAs have been up to two-and-a-half miles apart. According to documents seen by the Times, greater distances between ERAs were adopted as a savings measure. The Department of Transport raised concerns that this might result in corporate manslaughter charges.

The hard shoulder is generally not as wide as a live lane in any case. In the process of conversion smart motorways gain an extra live lane by reducing the width of all lanes.

In the event of a breakdown, therefore, drivers and their passengers confront the terrifying and dangerous alternatives of staying in their vehicle in the hope that the obstruction will be recognised and the lane closed quickly enough to protect them, or of ending up in a narrow band of live motorway lane.

Both are extremely dangerous for those stranded and all motorway users. Panorama broadcast a harrowing 999 call made in December 2017 from a driver who had broken down on the M6 with his family in the vehicle. He is explaining that they are stranded in a lane of traffic when we hear him say, “Shit,” and then the terrible sound of a collision. BBC reporter and programme narrator Richard Bilton shows photographs of the crumpled vehicle that had been hit by a lorry at 50 mph. Miraculously, there were no fatalities.

Many others have died. In June last year, Jason Mercer, aged 44 and Alexandru Murgeanu, 22, were involved in a minor collision on a smart motorway section of the M1. They stopped to exchange the legally required insurance details, but there was no ERA for a mile.

Jason and Alexandru were trapped on the inside lane of an All Lanes Running (ALR) motorway. These have had the hard shoulder permanently removed and changed into a live lane.

Smart motorways depend on the flawed notion that stopped vehicles are noticed immediately and that lane closure follows instantaneously. Jason and Alexandru’s stopped vehicles were not noticed for more than six minutes. In Bilton’s words, “There was nowhere for them to go … all they could do was stay in this lane.”

The lane was only closed after the two men had been hit and killed by a lorry.

The deaths of Jason and Alexandru meant that four people had died just on that stretch of motorway within the space of a year.

Claire Mercer, the widow of Jason, is interviewed by Bilson and says of smart motorways, “They don’t look that different. There is still that lane there. It’s still there. It’s just that nobody knows how to use it.”

Claire Mercer speaking to Panorama

The government’s own guidelines reflect the chaotic situation facing motorists as they advise using an emergency area “if you can reach one safely.” If it is possible to “leave your vehicle safely” they advise contacting Highways England via roadside emergency telephones. If you cannot reach an ERA but the vehicle can still be driven, “move it to the hard shoulder (where available) or as close as possible to the nearside (left hand) verge or other nearside boundary or slip road.”

This epitomises the confusion facing drivers—that Highways England are responsible for—about how to drive on smart motorways and what to do in a crisis situation. This can only worsen if Highways England achieve their ambition of more “dynamic hard shoulders”—that is a lane which is sometimes a hard shoulder and sometimes a live traffic lane.

Transport Minister Grant Shapps confirms to Bilton that the breakdown advice is “stay put,” but this, as the needless loss of life proves, is enormously dangerous if the lane remains open or emergency vehicles cannot access the site because there is no hard shoulder to use. The emergency vehicles sent after Jason Mercer and Alexandru Murgeanu were killed were delayed by lengthy traffic queues.

Meera Naran’s eight-year-old son Dev was killed on the M6 in May 2018 outside Birmingham. The car, driven by his grandfather, got into trouble on an elevated section of motorway where the hard shoulder was a live lane. The car had only been stopped 45 seconds when it was hit by a lorry.

The lorry driver, speaking anonymously on Panorama, and explaining that he had had no time to stop, said the accident happened because there was no hard shoulder. His pain at going back to the car and finding Dev was evident.

The Sunday Telegraph learned of an earlier fatality at the same spot. Jamil Ahmed’s broken-down car was not spotted, the lane was not closed, and he was hit and killed by a lorry. The coroner in that case announced a fear of future deaths report, but this was not issued owing to “administrative error.”

At the inquest, Jamil’s wife begged Highways England to stop scrapping hard shoulders because there would be more deaths. Dev died just months later.

Sir Mike Penning, the Tory Transport Minister responsible for agreeing the scheme in 2010, now heads an all-party parliamentary group on roadside rescue and recovery. This group has just called for further rollout of smart motorways to be halted. On screen Bilton tells Penning he “signed off on something that wasn’t delivered, and what was delivered is dangerous.” Penning responds that the present scheme “should never have happened.”

Highways England deny responsibility by shrugging that it had been “signed off by ministers.” The body have been criticised for their disingenuous presentation of statistics, blandly maintain that smart motorways are as safe as conventional motorways.

In calling for a suspension of further rollout, Penning accused Highways England of “a shocking degree of carelessness.” In an admission of government callousness that has cost dozens of lives, Penning insists ERAs must be built every 800 metres, in line with the M42 pilot: “smart motorways today do not resemble the designs I signed off.”

Last October, due to growing concern and media coverage of the number of deaths, the government was forced to launch a review into smart motorways. Shapps is seen squirming on Panorama as he tries to defend the indefensible—the continued existence of growing sections of the motorway network that are inherently unsafe.

A major weakness of the Panorama film is that it says nothing about the determined fightback underway against smart motorways. Claire Mercer, with the assistance of her family, launched the “Smart Motorways Kill” website and campaign last September which in a few months has done much to alert the public to how dangerous smart motorways are. The website publishes news and information regularly exposing the danger of smart motorways. It has also served to connect bereaved families together.

A leaflet produced by the campaign explains the three types of smart motorways. It states that “‘Budget restrictions’ mean these motorways have been forced on unsuspecting road users with no education on how to use them, with disastrous results. We have to settle for this option (i.e. unsafe roads) while the same government department has managed to increase the number of highly paid executives by 10 fold in just 6 years.”

The campaign has launched legal action in pursuit of a judicial review of the decision to allow smart motorways to be brought in. It has raised, through a crowdfunding appeal, £9,000 of the required £20,000 needed to take the case to court. Claire is also suing Highways England for corporate manslaughter with the aim of bringing criminal prosecutions against individuals.

Growth of fascistic attacks on refugees in Greece

George Gallanis

In the form of physical violence, state repression and ideological condemnation, refugees in Greece confront growing fascistic attacks. Reflecting an international process of a movement to the right by all capitalist governments, in Greece, the main entry point for refugees into Europe, this is taking a concentrated form in the brutal repression of refugees.

At the insistence of the Greek government, and backed by the European Union (EU), some 50,000 refugees, sealed off from the rest of Europe, live in festering conditions on camps on the Aegean islands of Greece. The brutal conditions and policies imposed upon refugees by the right-wing New Democracy (ND) Greek ruling party are directly linked to the policies and attacks on refugees by the previous pseudo-left Syriza (Coalition of the Radical Left) government. Syriza, brought into power posing as a left-wing, anti-austerity party, attacked workers by imposing brutal austerity measures and waged a deliberate campaign of repression on refugees.

Riot police attack refugee refugees with tear gas in Mytilini, Lesvos [Credit: Manolis Lagoutaris/InTime News via AP]

The growing attacks on refugees demonstrate that the defense of refugees, and of all workers, must be based on the Greek and international working class, against right-wing parties such as ND and pseudo-left groups like Syriza, whose interests reflect those of the upper middle class and the financial elite.

Last Monday, some 2,000 refugees demonstrated against the hellish conditions of the Moria detention camp on the Greek island of Lesbos. Described by a doctor from the Boat Refugee Foundation (BRF) as a place of “violence, deprivation, suffering and despair,” Moria was designed to house 3,100 but today houses nearly 20,000 refugees in and around the site of the camp. The camp was established under the auspices of Syriza, which created camps across the Aegean islands to detain refugees.

Refugees marched from Moria to Mytilini, the island’s capital, where they were met by armored police units. The police attacked them, administering tear gas among the crowd of men, women and children. As children and people fled for safety, away from the billowing clouds of tear gas, police arrested 40 people. Journalist Franziska Grillmeier described the event to Al Jazeera: “There were men holding their kids up, kids who were foaming at the mouth, kids having panic attacks and babies unable to breathe and dehydrating through the gas.”

Protests continued the following day on Tuesday. Refugees shouted “Freedom!” and “Stop the deportations!” and carried banners with similar slogans. Refugees also shouted, “Lesbos people, we are sorry,” expressing solidarity with the island’s residents.

The online newspaper Sto Nisi reported that a group of 15 to 20 masked neo-Nazis armed with clubs and helmets terrorized the streets of Mytilini and the area around Moria following the demonstrations, in search of foreigners and NGO workers and volunteers who work with refugees. According to eyewitnesses, they knocked on doors of houses in search of aid workers and even tried to break into a café.

An eyewitness told Sto Nisi that police were fully aware of the gang and turned a blind eye to them. “Five meters away [from the gang] was a parked police car which was there for around 20 minutes,” he said. “At that point they spotted me and started to shout abuse at me. I didn’t take any notice, but what struck me was the fact that the policeman in the car didn’t even make a pro forma attempt to stop them.”

He continued, “What I want to stress is that any action by the fascists was carried out with complete tolerance from the police. The police knew from early on who these guys were, where they were going and what they were capable of.”

There exists a large contingent of Greek police who support the fascist Golden Dawn party, who previously violently attacked refugees and whose members are accused of murdering leftist hip-hop musician Pavlos Fyssas. Videos surfaced in December of Greek police performing “pushbacks,” illegal deportations of refugees back into Turkey that stand in violation of international law and violate both the EU’s Charter of Fundamental Rights and the Geneva Convention.

Sto Nisi also reported of far-right posts on social media spreading lies about refugees raping women, defecating in churches, attempting to blow up a power plant, burning fields and houses.

One of the posts read: “In Mytilini we will take up arms! We are already sleeping with these! There are rumors that a group of locals is planning to blow up the Moria hot spot! There will be war! It’s no longer a question of racism. If this is true we will be with them. Yesterday [refugees] tried to blow up the PPC power plant. These invaders have taken over our islands!”

Last Thursday, prompted by growing pressure from refugees and workers, police on Lesbos arrested seven people on suspicion of planning attacks on refugees following last week’s demonstrations. The men, aged 17 to 24, were found with makeshift clubs and a metal rod.

Late January, protests were held across multiple Greek islands housing refugee detention centers. The headline speaker on the island of Lesbos was Costas Moutzouris, a previous member of the ruling ND party who ran for Northern Aegean Prefect as an independent. Using the language of fascists, Moutzouris placed the blame of the social crisis in Greece on refugees, “They are forcefully trying to impose a different way of life and religion on us,” he said. “We will not accept this.”

During his election campaign last summer for the post of prefect, Moutzouris was asked to comment on rumors that the fascist Golden Dawn party supported his campaign. Moutzouris replied, “If there was, is or will be any support from Golden Dawn then this is welcome.”

Amidst the backdrop of threats to refugees, there is a concerted effort by the Greek state and Greece’s bourgeois media to attack NGOs. This was similarly pursued under Syriza, which jailed professional swimmer Sara Mardini and three other members of the ERCI (Emergency Response Centre International) for helping refugees. Last week, on the insistence of ND, the Greek parliament passed a law restricting NGOs. Greece’s prime minister remarked the new law will prevent NGOs from operating “unchecked” and will be “strictly vetted.”

Without evidence, Giorgos Koumoutsakos, ND’s deputy migration minister, accused NGOs of inciting last week’s protests on Lesbos and of taking advantage of refugees for money. Koumoutsakos told Greece’s Proto Thema Radio that NGOs had appeared “like mushrooms after the rain” and “some behave like bloodsuckers.”

This has been echoed, without criticism, by Greece’s right-wing Kathimerini newspaper, which wrote on Monday, “NGOs that are operating in Greece without any accountability to the Greek state, with officials expressing fears that the groups might have shady agendas such as inciting migrants to protest or collaborating with traffickers.”

Such measures in fact only feed into the fascistic conspiracies being promoted by right-wing groups and academics, and seek to further chip away what little support refugees receive. Moreover, the NGOs serving refugees in Greece often consist of on-the-ground volunteer staff, comprised mostly of students and workers from around the world. The attacks on NGOs are a further attempt to dismantle the growing solidarity between workers internationally and the plight of refugees.

A thousand threads tie the fascistic thugs on the streets hunting down refugees to the ruling Greek capitalist party. The policies of New Democracy—state violence against refugees on a mass scale—express themselves in the individual acts of violence and terror by the fascistic thugs. Every capitalist party across the world seeks to divert the growing class struggle. In Greece, this is done by scapegoating desperate refugees, fleeing imperialist violence, for the social crisis for which Syriza and now ND are wholly responsible. As the class struggle continues to intensify, the attacks on refugees will only continue unless the Greek working class intervenes.

In January, the ND government announced it would begin testing water barriers, an aquatic version of Trump’s border wall, along a 2.7-km stretch of the coast off the island of Lesbos to block refugees attempting to enter Greece by sea.

On Monday, Notis Mitarachi, ND’s minister for immigration and asylum, revealed plans to set up new closed camps for detaining refugees on Greece’s Aegean islands in March. The new camps are expected to open in the summer and are designed to house 20,000 refugees three months at a time. The camps will likely replace the current open-air camps, like Moria on Lesbos.

The centers will function as de facto jails that allow more control over the refugee population, completely closed off from the public eye. ND government spokesman Stelios Petsas said, “These closed facilities will be governed by strict rules and [limitations] for movement for the occupants.” He continued, “Occupants will receive exit cards for controlled leave, while the structures will remain closed at nighttime.”

US brings new charges against Chinese telecom giant Huawei

Nick Beams

The Trump administration has widened its war against the Chinese telecom giant Huawei with the announcement by the Department of Justice (DoJ) yesterday that it was bringing a series of new charges against the company.

The move follows decisions by both the British and German governments earlier this month not to specifically exclude Huawei from the setting up of their 5G networks in the face of US demands they do so.

[Credit: Flickr.com, A4-Nieuws]

The new indictments by the DoJ add to the charges already laid against Huawei by the US in 2019 accusing it of financial fraud in relation to the breaking of unilateral sanctions imposed by the US on Iran and the theft of technology from T-Mobile.

A statement issued by the DoJ said: “The new charges in this case relate to the alleged decades-long efforts by Huawei, and several of its subsidiaries, both in the US and in the People’s Republic of China, to misappropriate intellectual property, including from six US technology companies to grow and operate Huawei’s business.”

The bringing of the new charges underscores the distinctive approach taken by the US state towards what are in essence commercial disputes. The stealing or misappropriation of intellectual property is as old as capitalism itself and there is hardly a major firm in the US, Japan, South Korea or elsewhere that has not advantaged itself in this way.

In the recent period technology giants, including Apple, Qualcomm and Samsung have all been engaged in a series of lengthy court battles with each other over intellectual property theft.

However, in the case of Huawei, starting with the extradition proceedings against its chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou who is being held in Canada, as well as other Chinese firms, the US is using the DoJ to bring criminal charges. This is a key component of the broader US objective to stymie the industrial and technological development of China which it regards as existential threat to American economic and military dominance.

This campaign enjoys bipartisan support as indicated by a joint statement issued by Republican Senator Richard Burr, chairman of the Senate Select Committee on National Intelligence, and his vice chairman Democrat Senator Mark Warner on the DoJ decision.

“The indictment paints a damning portrait of an illegitimate organization that lacks any regard for the law,” they said.

Representatives of the Trump administration have been conducting a global campaign to have Huawei excluded from the installation of 5G networks above all by its so-called strategic allies, But apart from the exclusion of Huawei by Australia, this campaign has enjoyed little success, largely because the development of the new technology by Huawei is more advanced than its rivals and cheaper.

The latest decision is clearly a response to the major setbacks in its anti-Huawei campaign in Britain and Germany.

Earlier this month the Johnson Tory government in the UK announced it would allow Huawei to participate in the development of the country’s next generation cellular phone network despite strenuous opposition from senior members of the Trump administration claiming it would endanger “national security” and jeopardise the intelligence ties between the two allies.

The Financial Times reported last week that Trump vented “apoplectic” fury against Johnson in a phone call following the British decision, which was taken against opposition from senior figures in the Tory party.

A group of so-called Tory grandees have since written a letter to Johnson calling for a “better solution” to the development of the new network and insisting that the government exclude “high-tech from untrusted, high-risk vendors.”

The major problem is, however, as British officials have noted, that the US cannot propose a viable alternative to equipment from Huawei.

Their views have received confirmation from a somewhat unlikely source. Last week, US Attorney-General William Barr floated the possibility that US firms seek to obtain a controlling interest in the Scandinavian firms Nokia and Ericsson in order to compete with Huawei.

Barr said it was “all very well to tell our friends and allies they shouldn’t install Huawei’s, but whose infrastructure are they going to install?”

The same issue lies behind the German decision not to rule out participation by Huawei in the role out of the 5G network there. The fear in German ruling circles is that having been something of a laggard in the development of internet and communications technology, it will drop even further behind in the rollout of 5G technology if it falls in completely behind US demands.

This week, after a protracted dispute over whether to allow Huawei to participate, the Merkel government adopted a strategy paper that sought to strike a compromise between the pro- and anti-Huawei camps. It said the government would ban “untrustworthy” companies deemed to be subject to state influence from taking part. But Huawei was not excluded outright as had been demanded by the US.

The German government said companies would be considered “trustworthy” if they had a “clearly defined security catalogue” that excluded the possibility of a foreign state from exerting influence on the 5G network.

Huawei has consistently denied it is subject to directives by the Chinese government and that it is a private company, making the point that one of the reasons for the US opposition is that it has backdoors operating in the networks of US companies that would be more difficult to install in Huawei gear.

Those assertions received confirmation this week with the revelations that both the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the National Security Agency (NSA) had been spying for five decades on governments around the world through the CIA-ownership of a Swiss firm that supplied encryption technologies.

In 2015, WikiLeaks revealed that the NSA had spied on German government officials for many years and had tapped the phone of German Chancellor Angela Merkel as well as targeting the phones of 125 top government officials.

The issue has resurfaced in the conflict over US demands to ban Huawei. Last November, Germany’s economy minister, Peter Altmaier, told a TV talk show that Germany had “not imposed a boycott” on US firms after the spying on Merkel was revealed and the US demanded from its companies that they pass on information deemed necessary to combat terrorism.

The level of tensions over the Huawei issue was indicated by the furious response from the US ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell. He said the remarks were “an insult to the thousands of American troops who help ensure Germany’s security” and there was “no moral equivalency between China and the United States.”

The decision by the US to open new charges against Huawei indicates that, notwithstanding the “phase one” US-China trade deal signed last month, none of the underling conflicts have been resolved and that they are set to intensify.

Seven workers burned to death in Indian factory fire

Sakuna Jayawardana

Seven workers were killed on Saturday night when a fire erupted at the Nandan Denim garment plant in Ahmedabad, in the western Indian state of Gujarat. The company, which employs over 4,500 workers, manufactures jeans and other denim products for major global retailers. The fire is the latest in a series of similar factory fires in recent months. Last December, 43 garment workers died in factory blaze in New Delhi.

Five workers’ bodies—charred beyond recognition—were found after 55 fire fighters fought for 22 hours to extinguish the blaze in the two-storey building. Two more bodies were recovered from the debris on Sunday.

The deceased are Arvind Desai (36), Raunak Ben Rawal (38), Kunjalben Tiwari (45), Ganesh Patel (46), Lala Makwana (46), Govind Singh Kushwaha (22), and Sumitra Patel (47).

The distraught families of those killed were still waiting yesterday outside a hospital mortuary in Ahmedabad to take possession of their loved-ones’ bodies. They were told they would have to wait until today and the completion of DNA tests. Mahesh Patel, a relative of one of the deceased, told the Associated Press (AP): “We can’t even mourn our dead because we don’t know which one is ours.”

Zeel Makwana displays a photograph of her father Bhalabhai Makwana, one of the victims of Saturday’s fire at Nandan Denim garment factory, one of the largest denim suppliers in the world, in Ahmedabad, India [Credit: AP Photo/Ajit Solanki]

According to police and safety department officials, the fire started at around 6.30 p.m. in the factory’s shirt department. More than 60 workers were on the first floor, resting after long shifts in the plant. While many were able to escape, several workers were trapped. Eyewitness said they could hear the workers screaming for help inside the factory.

Rajesh Bhatt, a senior fire official, told the AP that the building only had one door, which could only be reached by climbing a steep ladder. “There were hardly any means of escape from the blaze,” he said.

While the cause of the fire is not yet known, it rapidly engulfed the factory, which was packed with highly flammable denim, fabric and textile dust. According to initial reports, there was no fire safety equipment, proper fire escapes or other basic emergency apparatus.

Preliminary police investigations have revealed that the factory violated multiple safety regulations. In other words, it was typical of the thousands of garment factories in Gujarat—and elsewhere in the country. India’s state and central governments turn a blind-eye to these exploitative and dangerous conditions, while offering tax concessions and other generous profit-boosting benefits to national and international investors.

Nandan Denim is owned by the Chiripal Group—a highly profitable corporation involved in garments, textiles, dyeing and petrochemicals and which employs over 20,000 people. Gujarat state produces 65 percent of all denim in India and is the third largest denim manufacturer in the world.

To divert the anger of the surviving workers and outraged people, police arrested Chiripal Group managing director Jyoti Chiripal, chief executive officer Deepak Chiripal and four others. Local health and safety authorities have called for the company’s license to be suspended. Nandan Denim, which last year earned $US218 million, has agreed to pay the families of those killed a pittance of just $14,000 each.

Indian laborers sit near burnt remains after the fire that broke out at Nandan Denim (AP Photo)

Survivors told AP about the harsh conditions they confront. The mainly women workers, who toil long hours, are only paid 35 US cents per hour. They have to stitch more than 400 pieces, forcing many of them “to work at a frantic pace.”

One worker said: “We work almost 14 hours a day. But do we have an option? Every once in a while, there is a fire in some factory or the other. Nobody cares and we keep on working.”

Nandan Denim exports to more than 20 countries, supplying global brands such as Target, Ann Taylor, Mango and Wrangler and giant retailers like Walmart and H&M, who all reap massive profits. As soon as news of the fire disaster hit the headlines, some of these retailers claimed that they did not purchase from Nandan Denim and washed their hands of any responsibility.

Neighbouring Bangladesh has experienced numerous factory fires and building collapses in recent years. In 2012, more than 112 garment workers were burned to death when a fire tore through the multi-floor Tazreen Fashion factory in the Ashulia district on Dhaka’s outskirts.

In 2013, the eight-storey Rana Plaza building near Dhaka, which housed five garment factories, collapsed. More than 1,200 people were killed, mainly garment workers, and thousands more were injured, in one of the world’s worst industrial disasters. Though cracks had been found in the building on previous day, the owners of the factories forced workers to attend the work next day regardless.

Africa Food Prize (Win up to USD100,000) 2020

Application Deadline: 1st June, 2020 

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: Countries in Africa

To be taken at (country):  The Prize will be awarded annually at the Africa Food Prize gala dinner in Kigali, Rwanda.

About the Award: The Africa Food Prize evolved from the Yara Prize, which was established in 2005. With agriculture emerging as Africa’s best bet for increasing food security and expanding economic opportunity,  a $100,000 award called the Africa Food Prize, has been created to inspire innovations in the field and the marketplace.
Today, in places like Ghana and elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa there are glimpses of the enormous progress African farmers can make when they have what they need to succeed, and how the food they produce and the income they earn can send good vibrations throughout the economy. But many challenges remain. In addition to a dearth of financing, millions of farmers lack understanding of good agricultural practices and they have limited or no access to high quality agricultural inputs, safe storage, and basic processing, which collude to stifle production and income opportunities.

Type: Contest, Entrepreneurship

Eligibility:

• The Africa Food Prize can be awarded to any individual or identifiable group of individuals, as well as to established institutions, associations, organizations or government bodies with a formal and recognized judicial and organizational structure contributing to the overall objectives of the Prize.
• The Prize can be awarded to any qualified candidate, irrespective of nationality, profession or location, whose work, and contributions deriving from the work, has had a clear impact on the African situation, nationally, regionally or for the continent.
• The Prize can be awarded with reference to a specific contribution or achievement, or a series of efforts and results in the recent past, preferably within the last few years. Current or recent members of the Africa Food Prize Committee, or an institution/ organization headed by such a member, are ineligible for the Prize.
• The Prize cannot be awarded to a person already deceased, but will be presented in the event a Prize winner dies before receiving the Prize. The Prize can be awarded to more than one winner, but not more than two.
• If shared, each winner will receive equal prize money (USD 100 000 divided in two), a diploma and a trophy.

Selection Criteria:

• Contribution to reducing poverty and hunger and/or improving food and nutrition security in measurable terms
• Contribution to providing a vital source of income and/or employment in measurable terms
• Potential for transformative change through scalability, replication, and sustainability
• Increased awareness and cooperation among African audiences and organizations
• Proven leadership potential of the individual or organization, specifically the ability of the to persevere desp

Number of Awardees: One (1). The Africa Food Prize Committee chooses the Africa Food Prize winner by unanimous vote. The Prize Committee has absolute authority and its decisions cannot be overruled or appealed.

Value of Award: $100,000, a diploma and a trophy.

How to Apply: Please fill the nomination form, attach the supporting documents and submit it online.

Visit Program Webpage for details

Living in Inequality, Dying in Despair

Sam Pizzigati 

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released some welcome news late last month: Americans are living a tiny bit longer. In 2018, the federal health agency reported, U.S. life expectancy at birth inched up about a month, from 78.6 to 78.7 years.

The Trump administration, predictably, claimed credit for the increase, the first since 2014.

“This has not happened through coincidence,” White House spokesperson Kellyanne Conway pronounced. “It’s owing in large part to a whole-of-government approach to treat the whole person led by President Trump, first lady Melania Trump, and really the entire administration.”

In fact, the modest uptick in life expectancy owes next to nothing to the Trump administration. Americans are living slightly longer, a Washington Post analysis points out, “despite the Trump administration’s health-care policies.”

From day one in office, the Trump team has worked to undermine the federal programs expanding access to the addiction treatment that prevents drug-overdose deaths. These overdose tragedies have been the single most deadly driver of America’s recent —and unprecedented — life-expectancy declines.

The Trump administration’s inadequate budget commitment to fighting the opioid crisis hasn’t helped much either. The administration has offered up only about $6 billion so far. People deep into on-the-ground efforts to relieve the opioid crisis consider that sum dangerously deficient.

Some moral context on the budget front: The Sackler family — the wealthy clan whose drug company triggered the opioid crisis by flooding the nation with addictive painkillers — has pocketed somewhere between $11 and $12 billion from its profiteering off pain.

That profiteering has eased off somewhat. Legal challenges and regulatory changes have narrowed the Big Pharma capacity to addict struggling Americans. Overdose deaths dropped 4.1 percent in 2018.

So have we turned the corner? Can we now stop worrying about life expectancy in America?

Only at our national peril. Yes, the string of three consecutive annual declines in U.S. life expectancy has now ended. But even with the 2018 lifespan uptick, American lives last no longer on average today than they did back in 2010. In effect, we’ve gone a decade without any appreciable increase in life expectancy.

Think about that for a moment. Over recent years, we’ve seen major breakthroughs in cancer treatment. We’ve seen more and more Americans paying close attention to the impact their daily choices make on their health. Yet Americans, on the whole, are living no longer.

The even more troubling reality: Americans are living nowhere near as long as people elsewhere in the developed world.

The latest evidence: A new study from the New York-based Commonwealth Fund, released about the same time as the new U.S. lifespan stats, shows that life expectancy in the United States lags significantly behind life expectancy in ten comparable developed nations: Germany, Britain, Canada, Australia, France, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland.

All these nations, to add insult to injury, spend significantly less on health care than the United States.

“We live sicker and die younger than our counterparts around the world,” notes Roosa Tikkanen, a Commonwealth Fund research associate. “We can do better.”

Why aren’t we doing better? Over recent years, analysts have begun to point the finger at “the social determinants of health,” the conditions people face in their everyday lives. These conditions, if dire enough, can create what economists Angus Deaton and Anne Case have labeled “deaths of despair,” everything from drug overdoses to suicides.

The numbers of these “deaths of despair” have increased far more in the United States than in other developed nations. In 2017 alone, Americans experienced 158,000 deaths of despair, “the equivalent of three fully loaded Boeing 737 MAX jets falling out of the sky every day for a year.”

Deaton and Case link America’s “deaths of despair” epidemic to the “falling wages and “dearth of good jobs” that typify the nation’s old industrial heartlands, and they trace the origins of this despair back to the early 1970s “when economic growth in the United States slowed, inequality began to rise” and “younger workers realized that they would never do as well as their parents had done.”

But not just struggling working families have suffered from America’s growing economic inequality. American middle-income families overall have shorter, less healthy lives than their middle-income counterparts in other developed nations. Inequality itself seems to be a killer.

Most all of us can readily understand how sheer poverty can adversely affect health. But how can higher levels of economic inequality affect the health of people with above-poverty incomes, people who have adequate access to health care? Many epidemiologists — the social scientists who study the health of populations — see stress as the prime villain here.

“The greater the material differences between us, the more important status and money become,” as the British epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett explain. “The more unequal the society, the more people feel anxiety about status and how they are seen and judged. These effects are seen across all income groups — from the poorest to the richest tenth of the population.”

Greater inequality, greater anxiety, greater stress. And that stress pounds daily on our immune systems, leaving us ever weaker and more susceptible to disease, ever more despairing and addicted to whatever may bring us momentary relief, be that doing drugs or bingeing on booze — or devouring comfort foods stuffed with empty calories. Obesity levels in the United States far outpace the rest of the developed world.

In the middle of the 20th century, the developed world had no huge life expectancy gap between the United States and its peer nations. The United States, back then, also rated as a relatively equal nation. But that has all changed over the last half-century. The United States has now become the world’s most unequal major developed nation. And the more unequal the United States has become, the further behind the United States has fallen in the developed world’s life expectancy rankings.

That leaves us with a simple prescription for longer life: If we Americans want to have a healthier society, we need to figure out how to fashion a healthier distribution of income and wealth.

Challenges in maintaining the quality of milk

Amit Kumar Singh, Dhawal Kant Yadav & Manmohan Singh Rajput

Introduction

Milk may be considered as a complete food by the virtue of its nutritional properties. But, it’s hard to believe that most of the raw milk and various milk products are not up to quality parameters as per many reports. Furthermore, recently World Health Organization (WHO) has estimated that in India adulteration is prevailing in milk and milk products and they have prophesized that if the same is prolonged and no prompt action is taken then 87% citizens may be on the verge of suffering from serious diseases by 2025 which may be as severe as cancer. Adulterants occur in the form of thickening materials which comprise of detergents, urea, starch, formalin and glucose are added to make more money. Merely adulteration is not responsible for inferior quality milk but also the sub standard milk is one of the important causes which may have high somatic cells in it leading to poorer shelf life. In addition to it poor handling, inefficient milk storage and transportation also adds to this. Notwithstanding this there may be many easy and economical steps through which the quality of milk can be maintained and prediction about the quality of milk can be done under homestead and farm or plant conditions. Considering above points, this article aims to throw light on easy and efficient ways to enhance and meet the quality milk and milk products.

Ensuring quality of milk

The procedure of milk production and reaching ultimately to the consumers occur through various steps. Firstly and foremost milk is produced, followed by handling, storing and then it reaches to the consumers through various marketing channels. In order to ensure good quality of milk the concept of clean milk production should be taken into consideration.

Clean milk production

Hygiene of farmer, farm and the animals are necessary for clean milk production. Clean milk starts right from the healthy condition of animal as well as milker. Both, the hands of milker and teats of cows should be sanitized before and after milking process. Udder and teats of dairy animals could be washed using 1% KMnO4. If machine milking is followed then it should be cleaned on a regular basis. Milking area, also, should be kept into consideration for cleaning and drying. Milker is advised to have turban. Properly sanitized and less edged milking utensils should be taken into consideration.

Proper handling of milk

A large part of the milk gets utilised into many processing industries and only small amount of market milk reaches to the consumers directly. Most of the milk quantity is taken for storage followed by processing. Milk is transported, generally, in small containers by Dudhwala usually under non- insulated conditions. While transportation, time taken and surrounding temperature directly affects the quality and shelf life of milk. Use of insulated and temperature controlled containers should be encouraged and followed. This step may help in increasing the shelf life of milk. In cooperative type of milk collection system milk is collected then utilized in pool of milk after rapid platform tests to check the quality of milk.

Proper storage of milk

Market milk is stored in refrigerated (5-7 degree centigrade) condition which is advised to maintain milk till it reaches safely to the consumer so that the quality of milk can be maintained. Shelf life of such milk is generally acceptably for 6 days.  Pouched milk is good than one kept in open container. Modern packaging innovations like Tetra packaging have taken milk shelf life and quality to the next level. It is a better method. Consumers are advised to take a note, very carefully, of expiry dates issued by selling companies before they consume milk as “it is better to throw it outside than throwing it inside” if the milk is of bad quality.

Efficient and economic methods to predict the soundness of milk

There are several methods, both lab and farm methods, to predict the quality of milk. Laboratory methods are costly and can’t be practiced in every condition. The methods should be quick and accurate, efficient and economical which can be adopted under home conditions. These methods include:

 Modified California mastitis test (MCMT) in which milk is taken in attached four cups of milk paddle and then freshly pre made few drops of Sodium laurel sulfate is added to each quarter (cup) and quality of milk is estimated in form of good milk having free flow and poor milk having variable viscosity.

Surf filled mastitis test (SFMT) in which 3% detergent is added in milk in 1:1. Poor quality milk is judged by gel like formation. More the jelly like formation more poor is the milk quality.

Lactometer can be well used for this purpose.

Government’s role

Government role becomes important to maintain the quality of milk for safe consumption of its people. Various central and state government labs should be extended to more in number to check the quality of milk at regular period of time. Governments should formulate the policies that may give a great priority to milk in food security.

Conclusions

Maintaining the milk quality standards is still a great challenge for India.  Concept of clean milk production should be considered important. Clean milk production may help to obtain good quality milk. Adulterated milk is a great threat to the well being of whole human society. Consumers should also take care about milk quality and its source. The above mentioned steps could be beneficial to them in this regard. Prompt corrective actions should be taken through government bodies and the role of producers is also equally important in this regard.