USDA May Allow Genetically Modified Trees to be Released Into the Wild

Anne Petermann

On August 18, 2020, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) published a petition by researchers at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF) seeking federal approval to release their genetically engineered (GE) Darling 58 (D58) American chestnut tree into U.S. forests. Researchers claim the transgenic D58 tree will resist the fungal blight that, coupled with rampant overlogging, decimated the American chestnut population in the early 20th century. In fact, the GE American chestnut is a Trojan horse meant to open the doors to commercial GE trees designed for industrial plantations.

The D58 would be the first GE forest tree approved in the U.S. and the first GMO intended to spread in the wild. (GE canola plants were discovered in the wild in 2010 but that was unplanned.) “This is a project to rapidly domesticate a wild species through genetic engineering and accelerated breeding, and then to put it back into ecosystems to form self-perpetuating populations—an intentional evolutionary intervention that has never been attempted before with any species,” explain scientists at the Center for Food Safety (CFS) and International Center for Technology Assessment (ICTA), which are nonprofits based in Washington, D.C.

“The Southern U.S. is global ground zero for the forest products industry and we see genetically engineered chestnut trees as this industry’s sneaky way of opening the floodgates for ‘frankentrees’ that will harm forests, biodiversity and local communities across the region,” explains Scot Quaranda of Dogwood Alliance, a nonprofit based in North Carolina that works to protect Southern U.S. forests. “Our natural forests that support wildlife and the economic sovereignty of rural communities will rapidly be replaced with tree plantations for wood pellets, paper and more, leaving environmental and climate injustice in their wake.”

The GE American chestnut faces an uphill battle due to decades of opposition to GE trees by Indigenous peoples, scientists, students, activists, foresters and others, including a GE tree ban by the Forest Stewardship Council and a United Nations decision that warns countries of the dangers of GE trees and urges use of the precautionary principle while addressing the issue.

By October 19, 2020, the close of the public comment period on the petition, 109 organizations, representing millions of members, plus an additional 123,426 individuals had registered their opposition to the D58. The next step is the creation of a draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) by the USDA recommending action on the petition. The American Chestnut Foundation (TACF) estimates this could take up to a year to complete. Following this, another public comment period will be undertaken to review the draft EIS, after which the agency will develop a final EIS with a decision on the petition.

D58 Safety Studies ‘Invalid,’ Warn Scientists

While American chestnut trees are known to live hundreds of years, D58 trees have only been growing since 2017, calling into question the ESF petition assertion that “Darling 58 has been studied in detail and no plant pest or environmental risks have been observed.”

In a report on the GE American chestnut she co-wrote, Dr. Rachel Smolker from Biofuelwatch explains, “Given the long lifespan of trees and varying environmental conditions they face, we cannot extrapolate from tests done on very young trees under controlled lab and field conditions. How GE trees might behave in the diverse and changing context of natural forests over long periods of time is unknown and likely to remain unknown even after they are released.”

Scientists at CFS and ICTA warn of problems with the D58 safety studies, writing, “Given the young age of Darling 58 trees and corresponding dearth of tissue samples, conclusions from most of the animal experiments described in the Petition are too preliminary to depend upon.”

In studying ESF’s assessment of the impacts of inserting the blight-resistant oxalate oxidase (OxO) transgene into the chestnut genome, both CFS and ICTA further point out that some D58 studies did not, in fact, use material from transgenic D58 trees, rendering them invalid. “Petitioners did experiments to study how bumblebees might be affected by Darling 58, but did not have enough Darling 58 pollen for the experiments so used non-transgenic pollen instead, to which they added purified OxO from barley seeds. … Other important initial studies on animals reported in the Petition are of limited use because they involved feeding leaves from the Darling 4 instead of Darling 58… even though Darling 4 has much lower levels of OxO in leaves… again invalidating the conclusions for risk assessments.” The Darling 4 was an earlier version of the American chestnut genetically engineered with the OxO transgene.

While researchers have argued that a strict regulatory process will ensure the safety of the D58 GE tree, a 2019 report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine titled, “Forest Health and Biotechnology: Possibilities and Considerations,” raises flags: “Forest health is not accounted for in the regulations for the use of biotechnology or for other approaches to mitigating forest tree insect pests or pathogens. … There are no specific regulations or policies that those agencies apply to biotech trees.”

Profit Motive Trumping Morality?

Proponents argue that there can be no downside to releasing a tree engineered to resist an introduced blight. But like fire suppression, which has led to devastating wildfires due to an unnatural buildup of flammable materials in the forest, the future impacts of even a well-meaning action can become catastrophic, especially in combination with the unpredictable effects of climate change and extreme weather. Yet, researchers are engineering trees with the conviction that because they can, they should.

In her book Can Science Make Sense of Life?, Dr. Sheila Jasanoff, Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies at the Harvard Kennedy School, explains the implications of this arrogance. “For life scientists and their enthusiastic promoters, the arc of the technologically possible, often coincident with the promise of financial gain, increasingly… defines the boundaries of the morally permissible.”

Researcher William Powell, whose GE American chestnut research has received both financial and technical support from companies with a vested interest in the approval of the GE American chestnut—including Monsanto, ArborGen and Duke Energy—defends his approach. In an article in the Conversation, Powell says, “One of the key advantages of genetic engineering is that it’s far less disruptive to the original chestnut genome—and thus to its ecologically important characteristics. The trees remain more true to form with less chance of unforeseen and unwanted side effects. Once these genes are inserted, they become a normal part of the tree’s genome and are inherited just like any other gene.”

However, in a briefing paper published by the Federation of German Scientists, Dr. Ricarda Steinbrecher, a molecular geneticist, and Antje Lorch, a biologist, counter that the genetic engineering process is inherently risky. The paper states, “It is well documented that the processes of plant transformation give rise to many mutations throughout the plant genome as well as at the insertion site of the transgene. … Any robust risk assessment study needs to take several generations into account, for example to assess the stability and heritability of the transgene, unintended side effects and changes due to transformation impact.”

Why the American Chestnut?

The D58 American chestnut is the culmination of decades of effort to open the doors to GE trees in the U.S. by biotechnology and timber companies. In 1999, Monsanto joined with timber companies from the U.S. and New Zealand to form a “forestry biotechnology joint venture,” which later became ArborGen, one of the world’s leaders in GE tree research and development. GE tree research was originally focused on trees and traits valued by the forest products industry; trees like poplar, pine and eucalyptus, and traits like insect resistance, herbicide tolerance, faster growth or altered wood composition.

Other early associations—including the Tree Genetic Engineering Research Cooperative at Oregon State University, launched in 1994—brought together university researchers with timber and biotechnology giants as well as the U.S. Forest Service to develop genetically engineered trees for industrial timber plantations.

These efforts were met with widespread opposition and sabotage, leading the industry to conclude that they needed a charismatic “test tree” to try to win over the public opinion relating to GE trees.

A 2007 published paper explains, “There is opposition to commercial application of trees, engineered specifically for fast growth and increased yields, by those whose stance is that the value accrues only to ‘big companies.’ It will remain for traits that have broad societal benefits, such as conservation… for acceptance to be gained.”

The D58 is seen as a positive example for the beleaguered biotechnology industry of the benefits of ‘biotechnology for conservation.’ Duke Energy also sees the American chestnut for its value as a greenwashing tool. Duke Energy invested millions into the GE American chestnut through the Forest Health Initiative. Its hope was to use the American chestnut to help “green” its devastated mountaintop removal mining lands.

Naturalist and author Bernd Heinrich has one such grove growing on his land in Maine. In a New York Times op-ed in 2013, he wrote, “I have been enjoying American chestnuts for several years now, harvested from some trees that are now part of my forest of 600 acres in western Maine. I planted four seedlings in the spring of 1982. Beyond all my expectations, the trees thrived, and some are now 35 feet tall. … In my small corner of western Maine, the American chestnut is now promising to again become a significant component of the ecosystem.”

Once dominant in Eastern U.S. forests, the American chestnut was highly valued for its beautiful and rot-resistant wood, and abundant nuts. While few actually remember the tree, which largely disappeared from the landscape by the 1920s, a public relations effort was launched in the early 2010s with articles appearing in numerous major publications heralding the return of this “mighty giant” through the wonders of genetic engineering. Millions of American chestnut stumps, meanwhile, continue to send up shoots that occasionally grow into trees large enough to produce nuts, and in some locations, wild American chestnuts are spreading on their own, showing at least some evolving blight tolerance.

Another decades-long program by the American Chestnut Cooperators’ Foundation is successfully breeding pure wild American chestnuts that are naturally blight-resistant.

In spite of examples like this, GE chestnut proponents have declared the American chestnut functionally extinct, and insist that its survival hinges on the release of unproven and risky genetic engineered American chestnut trees into forests. But Lois Breault-Melican, a former board member of the American Chestnut Foundation who publicly resigned from the TACF over the organization’s support for the GE American chestnut, points out that this argument ignores the risks posed to organic and other chestnut growers: “These growers are concerned about the potential GMO contamination of their orchards caused by the unregulated and unmonitored planting of genetically engineered American chestnut trees. If the USDA approves these GE American chestnuts, the integrity of chestnut orchards would be forever compromised.”

Indigenous Sovereignty Concerns

Indigenous peoples in the regions of proposed D58 releases have expressed concern that unregulated distribution of a GE tree would violate their sovereign right to keep their territories free from GMOs. They insist that Indigenous peoples be consulted in the process of reviewing the D58 American chestnut.

“Today, there remain large areas of traditional and treaty lands on which much is forested and managed as sovereign territory of many different Native American Peoples,” explains BJ McManama of the Indigenous Environmental Network. “These forests are not only a source of economic self-determination but hold great cultural significance to include sacred sites where trees are an element of sustenance, knowledge and familial identity. Every living being within the forests [is] related in some form and nothing within these lands lives in isolation; therefore, changing or altering the original instructions of any one or any part of these elements threatens the natural order established over millennia.”

The Eastern Band of Cherokee, members of the Lumbee Tribe of central North Carolina and Seminole Peoples from unceded Florida territory joined the Campaign to STOP GE Trees for an October 2014 gathering in the mountains of North Carolina to protest GE trees as a form of colonization. Their concerns were focused on the GE American chestnut trees.

Lisa Montelongo, a member of the Eastern Band of the Cherokee, explained, “I’m very concerned that GE trees would impact our future generations and their traditional uses of trees. Our basket makers, people that use wood for the natural colors of our clay work—there would be no natural life, no cycle of life in GE tree plantations.”

Following the camp, the Band’s Tribal Council passed a unanimous resolution prohibiting GE trees from their lands: Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indians (EBCI) Tribal Council Resolution No. 31 (2015): “We commit to rejecting biomass, genetically engineering the natural world, carbon trading, carbon offsets and carbon sequestration schemes as they are false solutions to the climate change.” Concerns were focused on the inability of the tribe to keep the GE American chestnut tree off of their lands if it were released into surrounding forests, which they describe as a violation of the Free, Prior and Informed Consent mandate under the UN’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Global Impact of the Genetically Engineered D58 American Chestnut Tree

In the end, the potential deregulation of the D58 is not about restoring a “mighty giant” to Eastern U.S. forests. Its approval is about paving the way for the deregulation of all GE trees, toward the creation of an oxymoronic future “bioeconomy” where biodiverse forests are replaced with specially engineered trees for the manufacture of fuels, chemicals, textiles, plastics and other goods in a “green” version of “business as usual.” Implicit in this scheme is a massive increase in the consumption of wood. This in turn will drive accelerated conversion of carbon-rich native forests, critical for climate regulation, and other ecosystems for conversion to fast-growing plantations that include GE trees with traits to expedite their use as feedstocks. Existing non-native plantations of eucalyptus, the most common plantation tree, are already notorious for their devastating social, ecological and climate change impacts. But new research out of Oregon State University is attempting to “green” these plantations with claims that eucalyptus trees can be genetically engineered to be infertile, through a process to “knock out LEAFY,” the gene believed to control flower formation. The research claims this would prevent eucalyptus trees from invading native ecosystems, though it does nothing to address the ability of eucalyptus to spread asexually through vegetative propagation.

This new technology also does nothing to address the serious problems caused by industrial plantations of eucalyptus. These impacts, outlined in detail by the World Rainforest Movement, include depletion of fresh water; forced displacement of Indigenous groups, rural communities and subsistence farmers; and catastrophic wildfires. In fact, the addition of GE trees to these plantations could exacerbate known impacts and/or lead to new, unknown and potentially irreversible problems.

Another attempt to “green” GE trees for the bioeconomy involves the development of trees specially engineered to store extra carbon as a supposed climate change mitigation tool. But a new article in Yale Environment 360 challenges schemes like this that focus on tree planting for climate mitigation. Echoing the findings of the World Rainforest Movement and others, the article reports “a growing number of scientists and environmentalists are challenging this narrative on tree-planting. They say that planting programs, especially those based on large numerical targets, can wreck natural ecosystems, dry up water supplies, damage agriculture, push people off their land—and even make global warming worse.” In addition, they say, “Tree planting can distract from the greater priorities of protecting existing forests and reducing fossil fuel use.”

The attempts to greenwash genetically engineered trees with their unpredictable and irreversible impacts are being opposed globally by a broad coalition of scientists, Indigenous peoples, agronomists, peasant farmers, foresters, teachers and others, as well as organizations focused on protecting forests, human rights and climate justice. GE trees have no place in an ecologically and socially just future.

America’s Suffers Attack of Selective Islamophilia

Kweli Nzito

In SE Asia and the Middle East, millions of lives have been sacrificed. Fabrications – imperial deceits carefully reworked as truths, juxtaposed with the tired pretexts of spreading “democracy, freedom and human rights”, results of which are still pendant 17 years after the invasion and illegal military occupation of Iraq. Promoting “democracy” abroad that is desperately wanting in America itself is a reflection of the country’s infantile mien coupled with a ravenous domestic appetite for silver screen heroes tasked with saving humanity, from perishing at the hands of caped scoundrels or hideous looking extraterrestrial aliens. After the digital celebrities have pulled off their heroic, money spinning missions on the screen, America will resume normal service and turn on its own minorities at home along with the usual suspects abroad with unparalleled reckoning.

A truly authentic embodiment of evil in the post-WWII era, George W. Bush, had been quick to fabricate the term “axis of evil”. It provided the perfect cover and distraction from his own then impending genocidal blood lust which was to be let loose on Iraq, a year later. That this extreme misanthrope and regime changer at that, should be sick to the stomach at fellow aspiring domestic regime changers, albeit feeble ones, compared to his own insatiable blood thirst should carry a modicum of conscience, must surely stretch credulity.

As America’s digital demigods busy themselves with saving humanity from alien threats while raking in millions of dollars from braindead fans, “lesser” peoples are somberly reminded that despite their being occasional targets of America’s murderous foreign policies, their self-appointed patron remains a “force for good”, a well-worn cliché now repeated by the we-lie-we-cheat-we-steal pompous Pompeo himself. That deadly and grizzly pursuits should carry with them as much as a sliver of good for those on the receiving end of America’s endless wars is a species of logic understood solely by the perpetrators and their muddled devotees.

Now if you were to learn that countries like the US, Britain and France (who have collaborated in the wanton murder of nearly 2 million mostly Muslim civilians in unprovoked wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan) had a soft spot for Muslims, you would be forgiven for treating any such frail and hypocritical gestures with a hefty dose of cynicism. Not surprisingly, two countries that have taken an infamous lead in the genocide and dispossession of its native populations, Canada and the US, have now joined hands in declaring the treatment of Uighurs by China as genocide. Not a scintilla of evidence of such a nonsensical claim has been presented, going by the definition of genocide as the deliberate murder of a whole community or race (Collins Dictionary). Regardless, the concept of “it-takes-one-to-know-one” is being pushed to its absurd limits, where one side of the genocide equation is utterly peerless. When burdened with the guilt of your own history of genocide, you quickly succumb to the temptation of seeing others in similar wicked terms, that you employ as a self-placation tactic. Knowing full well that your genocidal history is indelible, you derive comfort from foisting an equivalent falsehood on others devoid of similar crimes. Little wonder, a Guardian op ed piece went on a feeding frenzy calling China’s treatment genocide. No mention of the fatalities count required to satisfy that definition, given Britain along with her US puppet master would easily qualify as genocidal nations having dispatched an estimated a million and a half Iraqis to their deaths, making both nations extreme Islamophobes.

Now the idea of China “reeducating” the Uighur Muslims is as repulsive as it is immoral and inexcusable because it involves force, bullying and coercion of a defenseless minority. It is a breach of a fundamental human right of the freedom of choice whether of expression, culture, religion or assembly. But genocide it is not. Citizens of all countries, minorities especially, must be guaranteed such a freedom and their governments ensure its enforcement as an inalienable right. Yet Zionist Israel is the only country shielded not only from criticism but criminalizing such criticism in the US and Western Europe. Constitutional guarantees in these countries are being wittingly undermined in order to appease Zionist power exempting them from censure, including the long overdue Israeli war crimes investigation by the ICC. This latter long overdue measure was roundly rejected by the British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, who by sheer coincidence happens to be half Jewish.

The granting and protection of inalienable rights should apply equally to China as it should to Britain, the US, Israel and France. Still, was there such an uproar in the West when millions of Chinese citizens were subjected to much more stringent reeducation measures during the cultural revolution of Mao Ze Dung? As long as America’s nemeses are in a self-destruct mode, Western fake human rights principles can be conveniently placed on hold, with the hopes their designated enemies would perish in an act of collective suicide. This would naturally create a vacuum to suck in America’s insatiable appetite for natural resources – all conveniently packaged in savior mode, obviously. Humans are only those persons in the good books of America and her cronies – including the homicidal medieval Saudi theocracy. The rest can wallow in their subhuman mud baths.

There is an intriguing parallel between a once pet leader of the West, Aung San Suu Kyi, an undeserving recipient of the Nobel Prize for Peace with fellow premature laureate and later anointed “drone king”, Barack Obama, who had ostensibly “nurtured” Suu Kyi. Aside from sharing ill-begotten awards, they both had acquired a ghoulish taste for Muslim blood. One through a genocidal regime against Myanmar’s Muslim minority, the Rohingya, the other through indiscriminate drone strikes in majority Muslim countries as far flung as Afghanistan, Syria, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. As noted above, the fact the US along with her Canadian lapdog and genocidal comrade-in-arms were quick to label China’s treatment of Uighur a genocide, without a shred of evidence, the US was hesitant to label an obvious Myanmar genocide as such, displaying the now all too familiar phenomenon of selective Islamophilia.

Another majority Muslim population in occupied Palestine is totally off limits to the Western press, in one of modern history’s most effective silencing measures: criticism of Israel. Palestinians are excluded from any benefits of residual Western Islamophilia, not even the selective variety. But this paradoxical coexistence of selective Islamophilia and its more favored and heinous antipode, Islamophobia, is a mind game intended for domestic consumption. Especially in the US, where the Main Stream Media produces gullible sheeple by the millions with unfailing regularity.

In the Middle East, Iran, Yemen and Syria, all majority Muslim countries, have now taken pride of place in America’s ever burgeoning list of fabricated enemies, along with non-Muslim Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba. While these serve as examples of selective Islamophilia, the extreme version of this phenomenon – extreme American and Western Islamophilia, anoints the least democratic countries on the planet, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Bahrain who receive unqualified support from the US and her allies, because of their sinful affluence (Egypt excluded) and a seemingly endless supply of dollars waiting to be sucked in to the coffers of America’s Military Industrial Complex. Actually, Biden, in a reversal of Trump’s crude and frank Islamophobia, is indulging himself, tongue in cheek, in selective Islamophilia. He announced the temporary suspension of arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, including a massive $23 billion for the supply of 50 Lockheed-Martin F-35 stealth fighter jets to the UAE. It is tempting to predict that this brief spurt of selective Islamophilia targeting Yemen, will be short-lived since the sale of arms to the UAE is about to resume. Regardless, the crumbling British Empire, in dire need of cash will not follow suit. Nothing personal, just business. Yemenis can then continue where they left off – watch their children die of starvation, disease and lack of medicines, while lucrative arms deals are being negotiated to bring their Houthi defenders to their knees. We reiterate that patronizing of aggrieved groups with palliatives are integral to a culture of intolerance: they address the symptoms rather than attack causes of a malady.

Iran, Syria, Lebanon and non-Muslim Venezuela inhabit the other extreme in this spectrum: that of Islamophobia and homophobia. Iran is being placed in slow motion genocidal mode with devastating and starving sanctions. Western Europe helplessly stood by as Trump unilaterally withdrew from the JCPOA, an agreement signed by the US, China, Russia, Germany, Iran, the United Kingdom and the European Union. In a blatantly misleading description that places the blame on the victim, Iran, Google’s link to Wikipedia describes Iran’s nuclear position as “defected” and the American one as “withdrawn”, with Iran placed before the US, creating a false impression that it was Iran’s “defection” that led to America’s withdrawal from the agreement. In a blatant distortion of reality, Iran is now said to be in “breach” of JCPOA. The fact that Iran had scrupulously complied with the agreement and that Israel’s estimated 200 nuclear warheads are off limits in the Western press as is their disregard and opting out of any nuclear nonproliferation agreement is outside the limits of honest discourse in the Main Stream Media.

Israel, in lockstep with America has been busy “whacking” Iranian nuclear scientists, sabotaging their nuclear facilities and attacking Iranian commercial ships while Israel’s client, the US, has killed an Iranian general with a drone strike inside Iraq. Iran’s potential return to JCPOA is being sabotaged in plain view. The country is pitched against the combined might of US, Israel and Western Europe, the latter having done absolutely nothing to mitigate sanctions regimes imposed on them, despite their earlier hollow promises to Iran to help in sanctions relief. A mix of the habitual Islamophobic postures and racist nonchalance are being served on Iran with the beneficiaries of America’s selective Islamophilia happy to consort with America. But America’s wanton lies have become a staple in their Islamophobic and selective Islamophilic postures as a bedrock of their foreign policy in the Middle East. This phenomenon gets to the heart of the racist nature of the imperial project which began in earnest in America’s founding years, one that is shamelessly billed as a monumental historic achievement of the “Founding Fathers”.

The Fateful Choice: Nuclear Arms Race or Nuclear Weapons-Free World

Lawrence Wittner

The recent announcement by the British government that it plans a 40 percent increase in the number of nuclear weapons it possesses highlights the escalation of the exceptionally dangerous and costly nuclear arms race.

After decades of progress in reducing nuclear arsenals through arms control and disarmament agreements, all the nuclear powers are once again busily upgrading their nuclear weapons capabilities. For several years, the U.S. government has been engaged in a massive nuclear “modernization” program, designed to refurbish its production facilities, enhance existing weapons, and build new ones. The Russian government, too, is investing heavily in beefing up its nuclear forces, and in July 2020, President Vladimir Putin announced that the Russian navy would soon be armed with hypersonic nuclear weapons and underwater nuclear drones. Meanwhile, China, India, Pakistan, and North Korea are expanding the size of their nuclear arsenals, while Israel is building a new, secret nuclear weapons facility and France is modernizing its ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and missile-carrying submarines.

This nuclear buildup coincides with the scrapping of key nuclear arms control and disarmament agreements, including the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, the Iran nuclear agreement, and the Open Skies Treaty.

Like arms races of the past, the reviving nuclear arms race places the world in immense danger, for when nations engage in military conflict, they are inclined to use the most powerful weapons they have available. How long will it be before a nuclear-armed, aggressive government—or merely one threatened with military defeat or humiliation—resorts to nuclear war?

In addition to creating an enormous danger, a nuclear arms race also comes with a huge financial price—in this case, in the trillions of dollars. Military analysts have estimated that the U.S. government’s nuclear “modernization” program alone will cost about $1.5 trillion.

Of course, the nuclear arms control and disarmament process is not dead—at least not yet. One of U.S. President Joseph Biden’s first actions after taking office was to offer to extend the U.S.-Russia New Start Treaty, which significantly limits the number of U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear weapons. And the Russian government quickly accepted. In addition, efforts are underway to restore the Iran nuclear agreement. Most dramatically, the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which was adopted by 122 nations in 2017, secured sufficient ratifications to become international law in January 2021. The provisions of this landmark agreement, if adhered to, would create a nuclear weapons-free world.

Even so, when it comes to freeing the world from the danger of nuclear destruction, the situation is not promising. None of the nuclear powers has signed the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. And without their participation, a nuclear-free world will remain an aspiration rather than a reality. In fact, the most powerful nuclear nations remain in a state of high tension with one another, which only enhances the possibility of nuclear war. Assessing the situation at the beginning of 2020 and 2021, a panel appointed by the editors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists placed the hands of their famous “Doomsday Clock” at 100 seconds to midnight, the most dangerous setting in its history.

As a result, a fateful choice lies before the nuclear powers. They can plunge ahead with their nuclear arms race and face the terrible consequences. Or they can take the path of sanity in the nuclear age and join other nations in building a nuclear weapons-free world.

Why We Shouldn’t be Surprised Some Chinese-Americans Donated to the Proud Boys

Chris Orlet

News that nearly 1,000 Chinese Americans donated a total of $86,000 to the far right group the Proud Boys last December shouldn’t surprise anyone.

It should, however, worry Democrats.

Democrats have been counting heavily on shifting demographics with regard to their party’s future. Their hope is that as America diversifies and becomes a less white nation, elections will trend Democratic. However, news of large numbers of Chinese Americans supporting white nationalist groups demonstrates once again that demographics are not that simple.

While it may seem illogical that a large number of non-whites would support the far right, a deep dive into the data helps explain this counterintuitive trend.

Immigrants who came to the U.S. from communist countries—Cuba and China, foremost—are likely to be fervent anti-communists, and are thus tailor made for right-wing politics, including extreme far-right groups like the Proud Boys.

“You have to understand how we feel–we came from communist China and we managed to come here and we appreciate it here so much,” Rebecca Kwan, a Proud Boys donor told USA Today. “The Proud Boys are for Trump and they are fighting Antifa, and can you see anything good that Antifa did except destroy department stores and small businesses?”

Newsweek suggested that the donors could be “radicalized Chinese expats or ‘deeply conservative’ Chinese Americans who support the misogyny and racism of far-right movements.”

Most immigrants who come to the United States come from traditional, conservative, and extremely religious nations, while nations that are considered secular and progressive, such as European countries, Japan, South Korea and Australia, send few if any immigrants to the U.S.

Latin Americans make up the majority of immigrants to the United States. Democrats have been continually surprised that, considering the countless right-wing racist attacks they have endured (including candidate Donald Trump calling Mexicans who sought to come to the United States drug users and rapists), that they do not form a solid Democratic block. They don’t. In fact, some 32 percent of Hispanics say their political views are “very conservative” or “conservative.” This percentage is about in line with American adults in general.

In Texas, a quarter of Latinos voted for Ted Cruz over Beto O’Rourke in the 2016 U.S. Senate race. Without that Latino support, Cruz would have lost his senate bid in a landslide.

As for Sub-Saharan African immigrants, they tend to be conservative and extremely religious. Many find Western culture to be hopelessly decadent. Kevin Thomas, professor of African American and African diaspora studies at The University of Texas at Austin, notes that, in terms of political ideology, Black immigrants tend to lean more on the conservative side than the liberal side. This is in contrast to native-born Blacks who most often describe themselves as moderate Democrats.

One self-described moderate Republican Nigerian immigrant sounded like he was channeling your average white Trump voter when he recently told PRI, “Trump’s not a politician, and he speaks his mind. Does things the way he believes [things] should be done. Nigerians prefer strong leaders.”

Interesting, and perhaps unexpectedly, the one exception seems to be U.S. Muslims. While most American Muslims hail from very traditional, very religious nations, both U.S.-born and immigrant Muslims are most likely (66 percent) to lean toward the Democratic Party and to call themselves moderates. The most obvious reason for this is the way they have been demonized for decades by conservatives and the last Republican administration. Indeed, a recent New America poll found 71 percent of Republicans surveyed said they don’t believe Islam is compatible with U.S. values. Obviously it is hard to join a party where nearly three out four people don’t want you there.

Ironically, then President Trump longed for more northern Europeans to immigrate to the U.S., seemingly oblivious to the point that most northern Europeans are secular and liberal. Meanwhile he worked to block brown-skinned religious conservative immigrants from coming here.

Fortunately Democrats have time on their side. Much of that traditional conservatism and religiosity seems to dissipate among second and third generation immigrants.

Right wingers, meanwhile, will continue to demonize religious, conservative immigrants. And most immigrants will continue to vote for their demonizers.

The Structure of Wealth and the Global Money-Making Apparatus

Thomas Klikauer & Norman Simms

Some years ago the British Ministry of Defense asked its strategic military institute about conflicts that the world will face in thirty years. The rather surprising result was that the UK military was afraid of the rise of neo-Marxists in the global middle class. Their rather bleak vision also included the warning that by 2037 more than 60% of the world’s people will be squeezed into urban sprawls – The Planet of Slums. This will be accompanied by increasing hardship, unemployment and mass infuriation leading to a social explosion.

British military strategists feared that the middle classes could become a revolutionary class and assume the role that Marx intended for the proletariat. Torn between growing social impoverishment, on the one hand. and the shameless life of the super-rich, on the other, the global knowledge, working, and service elites could unite to form a powerful alliance of interests. This new class would then fight for their own interests against capitalism and the super-rich.

These super-rich signify wealth concentrations. Over the period of neoliberalism, the rich have become richer and richer. Secondly, there is a also class problem and the question of whether a new ruling class has been formed on the basis of these accumulation processes. Thirdly, this is also a question of whether in our time neoliberalism has turbo-charged the process of a new kind of wealth-structure. This new super-rich ruling class is based on a network, a network best described as the new Global Money Making Apparatus or GMMA. In Europe – and elsewhere – it consists of five groups with similar interests:

1) a dynastic elite based on wealth inherited over generations;

2) a European nobility still end owed with inherited wealth;

3) a new accumulation wealth based on technical, financial and consumption-strategic innovations;

4) the oligarchs raised by corrupt privatization practices; and finally,

5) the mafia billionaires.

In the background lurks the question of which capitalism we are actually still talking about. The US model of capitalism that dominates the world has undergone two changes. First, the state-regulated stakeholder capitalism introduced by the New Deal was replaced by a new model of corporate capitalism under the ideology of neoliberalism. Secondly, this model is no longer about the well-being of employees. Instead, it is about increasing the value of shareholders in the short term.

This has direct consequences engineered through the constant pressure to cut workers’ wages and other entitlements. In some cases, this has let to the theft of pensions and other so-called white collar or corporate crimes as well as corporate lobbying in favor of lowering taxes that severely restricts governments in their public functions, a phenomenon recently shown in the health crisis during the Coronavirus pandemic.

Whatever income figures are used as empirical evidence, we are dealing with rising inequalities. Since the 1990s, the increased ownership private wealth has assumed dizzying dimensions in Europe and elsewhere. While in 1982 the hundred richest Europeans were worth an average of $230 million each, their average wealth in 2005 was ten times that, namely $2.6 billion. Since 2005, the gap has widened. Merrill Lynch’s World Wealth Report tells the story. Its report divides the rich into two groups:

1) High Net Worth Individuals (HNWIs) and the

2) Ultra High Net Worth Individuals (UHNWIs).

By the year 1996, there were about 4.5 million HNWIs with $16 trillion of individual wealth. By 2019, there were five-times as many – twenty million – HNWIs with $74 trillion of individual wealth. At the same time, the World Bank reports that “more than 40% of the world’s population – almost 3.3 billion people – live below the $5.50 a day [poverty] line”. This is what President Biden’s speech to the joint-session of Congress in early May 2021 attempted to address – but he was only concerned with the super-duper rich corporations and individuals paying their fair share, not with dismantling a whole international conglomerate of capital.

The conclusion from all this is frighteningly simple: under the banner of neoliberalism, a new GMMA has emerged. It features entrepreneurial property; generational income from all possible sources (especially the financial markets); inheritance but also plain daylight robbery, corruption, bribery, fraud, etc. It brings all these into a coordinated network-like connection – the GMMA. In it, traditional business assets in the form of small and large companies are engaged in transactions with liquefied business assets generating large revenues.

The structural basis of these financial assets and liquefied operating assets must be secured. For this reason, the importance of utility in the luxury segment is growing for the layers of the super-rich. Luxury consumption serves to secure a socio-cultural status. Conspicuous consumption describes the power and domination of certain lifestyles. Especially in Europe, the agglomeration of luxury properties in certain districts and in certain areas (coasts, islands, micro-states such as Monaco, etc.) can be illustrated well and over historically long distances.

Super-rich mobility has also always been a field of conspicuous consumption. It came via horse-pulled carriages to shiny Bentleys to arrive at the private jet. In addition to the countless Gulfstream jets, there are about fifty private Boeing 747s and 777s owners. This is an aircraft that normally carries four hundred passengers. Mega-motor yachts are experiencing an unprecedented construction boom, their size is increasing rapidly, acquisition costs, consumption and mooring fees are astronomical and so is the prestige effect and the possibility of generating network and dependency effects on board.

The art market also plays a special and especially subtle role in the field of conspicuous consumption. Today, an inconspicuous private man, never seen before in these circles (e.g., a Russian oligarch) at a Sotheby auction can sell a Picasso for $95.2 million, a Monet for $5 million and then quickly flogs off a Chagall for a mere $2.5 million dollars. Behind all this is a wealth culture existing in an environment of the digital GMMA. Cultural capital, in the sense of Pierre Bourdieu, has become functionalized for the expansion of GMMA.

Meanwhile, elite universities are reserved for the children of the rich. At the same time, some are told to get hold of one of the sparsely sown scholarships eventually to take up a mid-level service positions supporting GMMA. The rest who want to learn have to get into debt. American university graduates are now leaving their university with hefty debts. The same is true of the UK and Australia. In all three countries the specter of debt has prompt young people to abandon higher education, seen as an unaffordable luxury good. This is what the ideology of neoliberalism and its entourage of politicians set out to achieve. And they have.

Ultimately, however, the importance and function of cultural capital for the moneyed elite is not expressed in individual educational careers. Really great wealth is created by networks of culture and money. Some of these networks are reminiscent of the courtly societies of feudalism. Today, cultural capital also reappears in the form of an entourage of educated, cultivated, scientifically specialized advisors, etc.

At the same time, formal and informal educational assets have become asset-effective only when they lead to the cultivation of GMMA as a whole. This is the new wealth culture. Virtually, the same applies to the social capital of the moneyed elite. Undoubtedly, an individual habitus acquired in familial and trans-familial milieux plays an important role in the self-organization of the cash-based elite. For an occupational leadership positions in the economy (e.g., a CEO), is not, as is repeatedly emphasized, their performance that counts; but instead, the class-specific habitus of a candidate aspiring to such a role.

On the other hand, such social competence does not necessarily have to be concentrated directly in a person or family. Rather, it is a feature of a new class – a class that represents the Global Money Making Apparatus or GMMA. Many who can afford social trainers, image consultants or even just bodyguards have the social capital to become part of GMMA. These are the agents of money power. They are the moneyed elite followed by their entourage of servants.

They are part of a system that has liberated itself from the old commodity form of factories, machinery, etc. Modern accumulation takes place primarily in the form of financial deals. This phase of financial expansion of capitalism has been greatly supported by science (algorithms, etc.) and computerization. Its power has further enhanced techniques of domination. Much of this was previously unknown.

Today extremely cheap computing capacities and statistical techniques allow the processing of large amounts of economic, consumer and social data and thus a screen of a society for the specific economic interests of GMMA. This gives an entire new context to the old talk of the rule of technocrats. Yet the centralization of power and the extreme shortening of the time horizons in corporate management has led to an increase in the number and importance of the experts.

Today’s communication and information experts have become a new class adjacent to the moneyed elite but always in support of GMMA. The moneyed elite in the current cycle of financial expansion embodies the liberation of large amounts of money from the commodity form. The new monetary elite is able to bequeath monetary values in a variety of ways. This is basically a process based on the fact that money can be used not only to make more money, but also to do everything.

The 26-year-old Karl Marx described the power of money in his Philosophical and Economic Manuscripts of 1844. In this respect, super wealth creates a completely detached but very capable social stratum which puts all the means into the hands of the knowledge and information society in order to establish itself as a new center. Their power base is GMMA. And its essence is a new form of sovereignty. Around this new center are further groups and layers which are arranged like rings. These work towards the power of money while simultaneously also depending on it.

The group and financial elites, the top managers of the various economic sectors, are certainly the closest to the much-moneyed elite. These groups act as specialists in the utilization of capital and the safeguarding and expansion of accumulation possibilities. Some of them rise into the real moneyed elite themselves. In terms of their financial circumstances, they definitely belong to the previously mentioned HNWIs. Their rank, however, depends on their loyalty to their respective masters. These are the big investors, hedge funds manipulators and shareholders. Despite this, they do not necessarily have a unified strategic consciousness.

That small difference separates them ideologically from the traditional capitalist class. What unites the people of the GMMA is the maxim of short-term profit increases on the basis of the neoliberal ideology. Each sector circles our planet as the rings of Saturn do far away the solar system. The next functional Saturn-like ring is formed from the specialists in the distribution of wealth – the political élites. From the point of view of GMMA, all parliaments, all governments, all social and economic institutions, as well as the corporate mass media, have the single important function of supporting the distribution of wealth from bottom to top. This is exactly what we see and this is exactly what signifies the new GMMA – the global money making apparatus.

Horn of Africa: Poor News Analyses Undermines Potential for Understanding

Bana Negusse

The Tigray People’s Liberation Front’s (TPLF) launch of a massive attack on the Ethiopian Northern Command in early November last year has entailed considerable humanitarian ramifications, even if the worst case scenario has been avoided through swift and effective countermeasures that have thwarted its sinister designs. Prevailing challenges must indeed be gauged against the intractable quagmire that would have enveloped the region had the TPLF’s “blitzkrieg” succeeded.

Be that as it may, the fallouts of the conflict have, and continue to compound, an already complex situation for the Horn of Africa. The host of challenges afflicting the region include the COVID-19 pandemic, long-running regional disagreements and tensions related to the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (Ethiopia’s mega-dam on the Nile), and one of the worst locust outbreaks in decades (which has raised the dark specter of hunger, unemployment, and poverty for millions).

What has also been a leading, prominent dimension of the situation that has unfolded over the past several months has been the relentless barrage of disinformation, mainly concocted, planted, and disseminated by TPLF remnants and their well-remunerated external networks and sympathizers, as well as a steady stream of poor analyses, commentary, and general reporting.

For instance, it can only be described as mind-boggling and perplexing how some so-called experts and corporate, mainstream media outlets have unceasingly been claiming and reporting, without any credible evidence or investigative scrutiny, that Eritrea, is actually masterminding everything unfolding across the Horn as it slowly and craftily implements its “secretly hatched plans for a grand regional empire” (Foreign Policy Magazine; Al Jazeera). According to the lines of the plot that has been so aggressively spread on, one day Eritrea is “managing and controlling Ethiopia; then next the Sudan; and still the following one it is overseeing and running Somalia”. This is one school of thought in the milieu of detractors. The other complementary school of thought dubs – without a shred of evidence or cogent arguments – that “Eritrea’s role is invariably negative and can only exacerbate the problems in Ethiopia”.

The common thread in both camps that portrays Eritrea as an omnipotent and omnipresent regional player is in sharp contrast with the stifling and disparaging narrative throughout the past decades that depicted the country as “crisis-ridden and on the verge of internal implosion”, (as often proclaimed by the ICG and others).

Furthermore, we also should be in total awe and wonderment of the amazing imagery of the TPLF that has been regularly presented and projected across recent weeks and months. These remarkable portrayals, which are truly masterpieces, have regularly depicted the TPLF as having been an innocent, honest party and a longtime “force for good”. We are encouraged to believe that the TPLF has always been genuinely committed to peace and dialogue.

Of course, this is all dishonest and deluded. Nothing could be further from the truth. In stark contrast to the portrayals and imagery being spread across the media, the indelible facts are that the TPLF ignited the developments of the past several months. It is the TPLF that has been preparing for war, stockpiling weapons, and training militias for years (utilizing funds that were actually destined for development in the Tigray Region). And it is the TPLF that has been the obstacle to peace and the central cause of so much of the tension, violence, and instability that have unfolded over the past several months and years.

The misguided, dishonest, images and portrayals are also a sharp, bitter insult to the tens of millions of people in Ethiopia, Eritrea, and across the rest of the Horn of Africa who have been the unfortunate recipients of the TPLF’s so-called “deep and genuine commitment to peace and dialogue”.

Here, it is also interesting to note the absolute hypocrisy that has been routinely flaunted by certain commentators, and even countries, in the criticisms raised about the response taken against the TPLF’s crimes.

Last November, the TPLF launched a massive attack on all contingents of Ethiopia’s Northern Command. Its objectives – which it openly boasted of – were to take control of the Northern Command (which possessed 80% of Ethiopia’s entire weaponry) and then march to Addis Ababa in order to topple the Federal Government. The plan also involved the goal of invading Eritrea to implement “regime change” and incorporate large swathes of sovereign Eritrean territory into Tigray. Contrary to its planning and expectations, the TPLF failed. However, was Ethiopia – and the broader Horn of Africa – supposed to sit idly as the TPLF launched acts of war, terror, and sedition? Can Ethiopia and the region now really be expected to accommodate the group’s remnants?

For context, did Abraham Lincoln, one of the most revered figures from all of US history, remain idle or negotiate with the South Carolina militia leaders that attacked Fort Sumter in 1861? Or, more recently, consider how Spanish authorities duly responded to the unauthorized referendum on Catalan independence in October 2017. Not only was there a crackdown by police, with considerable violence and what was then described as an “excessive and unnecessary use of force”, many of the leaders and organizers of the Catalan movement were arrested and sentenced to lengthy prison terms for their seditious activities. Recently, the European Parliament even voted to waive the immunity of Catalonia’s former regional Head of Government and two former cabinet members, who have been in exile and subject to European arrest warrants issued by Spain for sedition and “misuse of public funds”. How would have Spain and the EU responded if these leaders went beyond organizing an election and instead carried out a massive military attack on the country’s largest military headquarters that led to countless deaths, injuries, and damages?

Obviously, the question raised is rhetorical and the correct response requires little deep thought; it quickly answers itself.

Finally, it is remarkable that we continue to see so many commentators and so-called experts imploring the West to “do something” or to intervene. However, the notion that the West has been failing to intervene in this region or ongoing events is not only mistaken, it is a complete and total inversion of the truth. Do pause for a moment to consider just how the TPLF, was able to purchase vast amounts of military hardware and arms worth billions of dollars. The simple, undeniable fact is that the certain powers have actually been massively involved and played an important role in many of the events and developments that have led us to this point.

Based on the belief that the TPLF-led Ethiopian government was vital to protecting their geostrategic interests and foreign policy aims, the various countries provided it with unlimited military, economic, and diplomatic cover. This was despite the fact that the TPLF’s nearly 30-years long reign over Ethiopia was marked by massive levels of corruption, harsh and violent crackdowns on its perceived internal opponents, the illegal invasion and military occupation of several neighboring countries, the exclusion and marginalization of several of Ethiopia’s major ethno linguistic and religious groups from political and economic life, the denial of humanitarian and food aid from “disloyal” segments of the country, and counterinsurgencies involving war crimes and crimes against humanity (including executions, rape, torture, arbitrary arrests, and various other abuses).

Again, it is indisputable that the situation that has unfolded in recent months in Tigray Region of Ethiopia, as well as some other parts of the Horn of Africa, is challenging. These developments indeed raise serious points of concern. Unfortunately, the incessant spread of disinformation, poor analyses, and shoddy commentary will do little to help in truly understanding the situation or expediting enduring remedies.

Motherhood is a Choice Not compulsion

Ritu

Mothers are most important person of everyone’s life. To appreciate her efforts and love, Mother’s Day is celebrated throughout the world on second Sunday of May. On this day, we   can see that social media is flooded with several posts in praise of mothers. Celebrating motherhood on Mother’s Day take us to a very important social issue.  We hardly care about this issue that all mothers of world became mothers by their choice? It seems unusual question, perhaps it should not be asked in patriarchal society.

It is assumed that all the women want to become mother, but do we know that there are women who do not want to become mothers. We have women in our society who wants to become mothers without marriage. There are women who want to be a mother of adopted child. But these things are not easily accepted in our society.

Though there are women who became single mother and in fact before their marriage. But these kinds of examples are found in upper strata of the society. In India, one should have a marriage certificate to become mother.

Women can’t decide their maternity

I often ask this question to my mother sometimes, she smiles on this question and sometimes she answers with irritation, ‘ye bhi koi puchne wali bat hai?’ (Is this thing to ask about). she always says that Motherhood is the best feeling but it always comes with lots of sacrifices.

Being a rural girl, I can see the helplessness of young women married at young age and they are forced to reproduce child. In the last lockdown I was talking to my neighbour, she was barely 19–20-year-old girl and mother of two-year-old baby.  She was pregnant for her second baby. When I asked her why you reproduce child so early? She says what can I do? I don’t have any rights on this, I cannot decide such things. She told me that her husband does not use any precaution to control the birth and she does not have access for birth controlling pills.

I talked to another lady of my neighbourhood, at the age of 32 she was mother of four children. I asked her the same question that why you have reproducing children at very young age? Firstly, she was offended with my question. Then she replied we women can’t decide that how many children we can reproduce. When I asked her about birth control precaution, she was totally unaware about it.

I talked to an Aangadwadi worker related to this topic she says this question does not exist for women especially rural and uneducated women. She is in touch with several women who are pregnant at very early age or multiple times pregnant. These women do not have their say in their own pregnancy. She told me that many women compromise with their dreams to become mother. Many leave their studies and jobs, and this thing is not limited to rural areas only, many dream-oriented women gave up their jobs, studies to attain motherhood.

Our Indian society also decides that which gender a woman has to reproduce? If she reproduces a baby girl, she has to keep reproducing babies until she become a mother of baby boy.  Economic Survey 2019, points out the same thing that Indian families has tendency to reproduce child until they get a baby boy.

Our society forgets that the early age pregnancy or multiple times pregnancy makes a woman weak and as a result we can see high maternal mortality rate in India.  According to report of Unicef India and World Bank, 2019, around 45,000 women die every year mean after every 12 minute a pregnant woman dies.

After talking and observing several women and reading various reports, newspaper articles I realised, In Indian society women are forced to become mothers. We can see the stigmatization of a woman who is unable to reproduce a child, our society gives her different names.  Many of the rape survivors became pregnant and they have to keep the child into their stomach they cannot abort it by their choice.

Need of the hour

First of all, this notion needs to be changed that its duty of every woman to become mother. Let the women decide for their motherhood.

Secondly, our patriarchal society needs to understand that a woman has her physical capacity, she can’t be pregnant multiple times. Don’t torture her to become mother of male child.

Thirdly, motherhood should not bound by marriage, anyone can become mother of their choice.

We all need to understand that a woman has more say to embrace motherhood because she is the one who has to go through mental and physical difficulties.

Monster Mosquito–Why the Technology of Genetically Modified Mosquitoes is Dangerous and Should Be Stopped Worldwide

Bharat Dogra

After sparking controversy in other countries including India, the technology of genetically engineered mosquitoes is now leading to widespread protests in Florida USA. Here the  biotechnology giant company Oxitec in collaboration with local officialdom is moving ahead with a pilot project to release millions of genetically engineered mosquitoes in Monroe County over a period of two years or so. The stated aim is to control the population of Aedes aegypti, a species that can carry both the dengue and the yellow fever virus. The idea is for genetically altered male, non-biting  mosquitoes to mate with local , biting females , producing offspring that die at larval stage.

Pointing out the inherent dangers of such technologies a spokesperson of Florida Key Environmental Coalition said that everyone should be writing to the White House to stop the release, at least until regulations to protect people are in place. Friends of the Earth has commented—scientists have raised concerns that genetically engineered mosquitoes could create hybrid wild mosquitoes  which could worsen the spread of mosquito borne diseases and could be more resistant to insecticides than the original wild mosquitoes.

This debate in Florida should not be seen in isolation but in combination with similar controversies that have been sparked in several other countries as well by this technology.  There were recent media reports that trials of   technology of Genetically Modified Mosquitoes took place in Maharashtra and attempts for bigger trials were being made. In fact many such trials have been organized even with secrecy in several parts of the world , even though serious hazards associated with such trials have been exposed time and again.

Dr. Helen Wallace , Director of GeneWatch UK  has written , “ The benefits of releasing billions of genetically engineered  mosquitoes into the environment have been exaggerated and the risks have been downgraded. One concern is that releasing genetically engineered mosquitoes could even make the dengue situation worse, perhaps by reducing immunity to the more serious form of the disease. Panamanin researchers have warned that a competitor species , the Asian tiger mosquito, which also transmits dengue and chikungunya, could move in and be harder to eradicate. Disease transmission by this might increase in future. The use of tetracycline to feed genetically engineered mosquitoes in Oxitec’s ( Oxitec is a British firm involved in spreading this technology) mosquito factory risks introducing  antibiotic resistance bacteria into the environment, posing a risk to human health.”

Earlier a press release by Friends of the Earth USA informed , “ A confidential internal document obtained by civil society groups shows genetically modified mosquitoes described by their manufacturer , UK company Oxitec, as sterile are in fact not sterile and their offspring have a 15 per cent survival rate in the presence of the common antibiotic tetracycline.”

Eric Hoffman of Friends of the Earth said while commenting on this that the credibility of the company involved has been undermined as it has been hiding data from the public. He said that trials of its mosquitoes should not move further in the absence of comprehensive and impartial review of environmental hazards and human health risks.

A Reuters report dated 30 January 2016 and titled ‘GMO Mosquitoes could be cause of Zika outbreak, critics say’ said, “ Oxitec critics also suggest that in the absence of studies into the potential knock-out effects of this in these mutated mosquitoes it is possible that they thrive in the wild with unknown mutations taking place in the genetically modified mosquitoes , which in turn could worsen the spread of Zika virus.”

This technology followed in the Genetic Control of Mosquitoes Unit project in India had been indicted for its biological warfare implications by the Public Accounts Committee of the Indian Parliament.

According  to  media reports, small-scale trials of  release of genetically modified mosquitoes were conducted in Maharashtra and it is likely that preparations may be made for bigger field trials.

Although it is pushed in the name of disease control by powerful interests it may actually lead to a worsening of diseases, as pointed out in recent years by several public interest campaigns in several countries.

In India these efforts were first seen in the form of the Genetic Control of Mosquitoes Unit Project during the 1970s and this project was strongly criticized in the media for its various hazards and even biological warfare implications. The Public Accounts Committee of the the Indian Parliament also supported this criticism in its 167th Report. The hazardous implications of the project were exposed by C. Raghavan in Mainstream ( May 17 1975) and by the brilliant PTI reporter Dr. K.S. Jayaraman. While a lot of damage was done by this project , the large-scale release of dangerous mosquitoes in the crowded city of Sonipat in Haryana, near Delhi,  could be stopped at the last minute.

Since then several aspects of genetically modified mosquitoes, including their release by a firm Oxitec, have been the subject of much controversy and criticism in various parts of world, one reason being that some of the releases have taken place in conditions of secrecy. A Reuters report dated   30 January 2016 titled ‘GMO mosquito could be cause of Zika outbreak, critics say’ attracted a lot of attention , as did papers by Dr. Helen Wallace regarding many potential hazards of this technology.

In a recent comprehensive review of this technology titled Mosquito in the Ointment ( see Frontline February 16 2018)a senior Indian scientist Dr. P.K.Rajagopalan , former director of the Vector Control Research Centre has exposed many-sided problems and hazards of this technology. He has concluded after examining a lot of evidence from various parts of world , including India, “It is obvious that the release of genetically manipulated vector mosquitoes not only is ineffective but also poses a great danger to society.”

Hence any further trial of this dangerous technology should be stopped immediately.