Political Violence in Honduras

Vijay Prashad

On March 3, assassins entered the home of Berta Caceres, leader of Honduras’ environmental and indigenous movement. They shot her friend Gustavo Castro Soto, the director of Friends of the Earth Mexico. He pretended to be dead, and so is the only witness of what came next. The assassins found Berta Caceres in another room and shot her in the chest, the stomach and the arms. When the assassins left the house, Castro went to Berta Caceres, who died in his arms.

Investigation into the death of Berta Caceres is unlikely to be conducted with seriousness. The Honduran government suggested swiftly that it was likely that Castro had killed Berta Caceres and made false statements about assassins. That he had no motive to kill his friend and political ally seemed irrelevant. Castro has taken refuge in the Mexican embassy in Honduras’ capital, Tegucigalpa. He continues to fear for his life.

Berta Caceres led the Popular and Indigenous Organisations of Honduras (COPINH), one of the most important critics of government and corporate power in her country. Most recently, she and COPINH had taken a strong stand against the construction of the Agua Zarca dam on a river sacred to the indigenous Lenca community. This dam had occupied her work. It was not merely a fight against an energy company, it was a fight against the entire Honduran elite.

Desarrollos Energeticos, SA (DESA) is owned by the Atala family, whose most famous member is Camilo Atala, who heads Honduras’ largest bank, Banco Ficohsa. By all indications, the Atala family is very close to the government. When the military moved against the democratically elected government of Manuel Zelaya Rosales in 2009, the Atala family, among others, supported the coup with their means. The Honduran sociologist Leticia Salomon listed this family among others as the enablers of the coup. They backed the conservative National Party, which now holds the reins of power alongside the military. Berta Caceres’ fight against the Agua Zarca dam, then, was not merely a fight against one dam. It was a battle against the entire Honduran oligarchy. Her assassination had, as her family contends, been long overdue.

Zelaya’s Honduras

Dario Euraque had been the Director of the Honduran Institute of Anthropology and History from June 2006 to the coup of September 2009. President Zelaya appointed Euraque with a clear mandate to change the culture of Honduras. He wanted to widen the cultural boundaries of the country to put the indigenous people at its centre and address their needs and ambitions. Euraque, a historian of Honduras, had already immersed himself in the world of the indigenous people. In his 2010 memoir of the coup, titled El golpe de Estado del 28 junio de 2009, Euraque explains that with encouragement from Zelaya he “advanced a more novel and democratic cultural policy” which “explicitly linked cultural heritage with strengthening the national identity of our country”.

“I met Berta [Caceres] in 1995 in La Esperanza, the city where she was murdered,” Euraque told this writer recently. “I interviewed her and her then husband, Salvador Zuniga, for a book about the ethnohistory of Honduras.” When Euraque took over the Honduran Institute, he “promoted cultural policies and projects that empowered Lenca people in the region where COPINH worked”.

Euraque and his team as well as Berta Caceres and COPINH faced harassment from the local opposition. “Our progressive policies of fomenting culture as social and political power,” said Euraque, “was part of a general commitment of President Zelaya to empower [the] Honduran people in ways that would transform the corrupt political culture and political system that [has] made Honduras one of the poorest countries in the Americas.”

As part of his commitment to the indigenous legacy of Honduras, Zelaya had halted most hydroelectric projects. This was one of the reasons why the Honduran business elite despised him. But it was not the only reason. Zelaya began his political career as a liberal, but as president he drifted closer and closer to the world view of leaders such as Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Raul Castro of Cuba and Evo Morales of Bolivia. Association with this Leftist movement in the Americas drove a humane agenda for Honduras. Zelaya’s government offered free education and school meals to children, provided subsidies to small farmers and free electricity to the poor, reduced interest rates and increased the minimum wage. This was a broad democratic process that earned Zelaya the love of his people, but the hatred of the elite and, consequently, the United States government.

Coup by oligarchy

The Business Council of Latin America and the Association of Honduran Manufacturers began an all-out war against Zelaya, who faced a hostile media as well as a hostile opposition in the Congress. Zelaya’s attempt to revise the conservative 1982 Constitution provided his enemies with an opportunity. On the pretext of legal irregularities, the military moved against Zelaya, arresting him on June 28, 2009. He was exiled to Costa Rica. His allies did not get the same courtesy. The military and the opposition went on a rampage against Zelaya’s base, hitting them hard with violence and prison.

The deaths came one after another: Vicky Herhandez Castillo, a transgender activist in San Pedro Sula; Mario Contreras, director of the Instituto Abelardo Fortin in Tegucigalpa; Antonio Levia, a Lenca leader of the National Front of Resistance in Santa Barbara; and a youth leader of the Resistance, Pedro Magdiel Munoz in Tegucigalpa. Euraque and his family fled to the U.S. Repressive laws came from above as the coup government provided amnesty for its forces. The coup government did what the Business Council and the Association of Honduran Manufacturers wanted. It removed Zelaya, repressed the popular movements, and handed Honduras over to the propertied elite.

U.S. Ambassador to Honduras Hugo Llorens wrote a cable shortly after the coup, in which he wrote that “there is no doubt” that Zelaya’s removal “constituted an illegal and unconstitutional coup”. He was ignored. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s long-time friend and ally Lanny Davis had been the Washington lobbyist of the Honduran business community. Through Davis, Hillary Clinton made contact with one of the conspirators of the coup, Roberto Micheletti. She would later write in her book, Hard Choices, that her government helped push the Honduran elite to give legitimacy to the new government through elections, “which would render the question of Zelaya moot”. The U.S., the main patron of the Honduran elite, backed the coup and increased military aid to the new government.

The historian Dana Frank has been a long-time critic of U.S. intervention in Honduras. She told this writer that the U.S. not only actively ensured that “the coup succeeded and stabilised” but that it continues to legitimise, “celebrate and shore up the post-coup regime devastating Honduras”. Dana Frank has hard words not only for Washington but also for Tegucigalpa. She said: “The U.S. bears direct responsibility for the terrifying crisis in Honduras today, in which Juan Orlando Hernandez’s U.S.-supported dictatorship runs roughshod over the rule of law, robs the public coffers blind, and allows security forces and death squads to kill human rights defenders and social justice activists with near-complete impunity.”

Berta Caceres’ mother, Austra Bertha Flores Lopez, released a public letter a month after her assassination. “I ask you to keep strongly supporting me to achieve justice,” she wrote, “and stop the impunity in a country so hard hit by oppressive political violence against people who work to construct a more just and humane society.”

COPINH members said that they had been under threat of violence and persecution for their work. The Honduran army, they said, had a hit list of critics of the regime. Berta Caceres had been on that list, as had many others killed over the past seven years. “Every human rights defender in Honduras knows he or she can be killed at any moment,” Dana Frank said.

What this culture of impunity has produced, according to Euraque, “is the complete destruction of the country’s social and cultural fabric, contributing to never-before-recorded deterioration of mental health problems, intra-family violence, all with the collusion of a corrupt judiciary and state.” It is not easy for Euraque to say these things. He is a patriot of his country, which is being murdered before his very eyes.

The United States, Britain and the European Union

Deepak Tripathi

On his farewell tour, President Barack Obama has stirred the pot ahead of the June referendum in Britain on whether the United Kingdom should stay in the European Union or leave. His warning to leavers that Britain cannot expect a trade agreement with the United States any time soon if it withdraws from the EU has infuriated leaders of the Brexit campaign, and delighted those who want to remain, including Prime Minister David Cameron. Obama’s message to Britain was that it should remain in the EU, and that it was in America’s interest, too.

Some of the comments made by leading Brexit figures in the governing Conservative Party in retaliation to Obama’s intervention have been described as borderline racist.

In a particularly outspoken jibe, London mayor and a member of the British cabinet, Boris Johnson, accused the American president of interfering in British politics. Johnson went on to say that after entering the House House Obama had ordered the removal a bust of the British wartime leader, Winston Churchill, from the Oval Office. Furthermore, he suggested that this might be because of Obama’s “part Kenyan ancestral dislike of the British empire.”

Other leading Brexit campaigners expressed similar sentiments. Nigel Farage, leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party, told the American president to “butt” out of intervening in Britain’s referendum on EU membership. Farage, too, asserted that Obama was influenced by his Kenyan family’s colonial view of Britain. The use of this type of language about an American president is unprecedented for the British political establishment – a country which claims a “special relationship” with the United States.

There are striking similarities between insinuations by American conservatives about Barack Obama’s Kenyan heritage and his Muslim father, and comments heard in Britain. Some members of the Brexit lobby have privately expressed fears that such direct attacks on him will backfire, and help the pro-EU campaign in a tight race. Jingoism and xenophobia live on both sides of the Atlantic. There are people ready and willing to whip up such sentiments.

Winston Churchill’s grandson, Nicholas Soames, a member of the British parliament and a supporter of remaining in the EU, has described Boris Johnson’s remarks as appalling, and said it was “inconceivable” that his grandfather would not have welcomed Obama’s views. It was, after all, Churchill who first suggested closer European unity in a famous speech in the Swiss city of Zurich in 1946.

From the ruins of the Second World War, Churchill spoke of his vision to recreate “the European family” with a structure under which it can “dwell in peace, in safety and freedom.” He described it as something like a United States of Europe. Today, his party is tearing itself apart over whether Britain should be part of that structure.

Why should President Obama have intervened so publicly in the EU debate during his visit to Britain? And why did opponents of the European Union react so furiously? These questions require understanding of how Britain’s relations with the United States and the rest of Europe, Germany in particular, have evolved in the last century.

The Second World War was a watershed which brought enormous global change. Hitler’s Nazi regime in Europe, and imperial Japan in Asia, were defeated. But Europe was quickly divided into rival blocs again – one dominated by America, the other by the Soviet Union.

At the same time, Europe’s colonial powers, Britain and France in particular, were so exhausted that they would have found it difficult to keep distant territories under their control. And the foremost superpower, the United States, was exerting pressure on the masters to let their colonies go. The Americans wanted to expand their markets worldwide, for which they were in competition with the Soviets.

Imperial Britain had to yield to imperial America – the coming inevitability which Churchill intensely disliked. There was, however, another option. Accept that the United States was paramount; stay close to Washington; and, whenever possible, use diplomacy to maneuver America in the direction in which Britain’s interests would be served.

The United States, too, was looking for close allies – in Europe, in the United Nations Security Council and other international organizations. Germany had been the main enemy in two world wars. France, at times, was too independent for Washington’s liking. Under President Charles de Gaulle’s leadership, France left NATO’s integrated military structure in 1966, asserting its independent nuclear deterrent and broader defense policy. Only in 2009 did President Sarkozy announce that France would rejoin the military structure of NATO once again.

In contrast, the United Kingdom has enjoyed the closest military and intelligence ties with the United States. “Special relationship” is a term often invoked in London. The dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the fall of the iron curtain, have paved the way for NATO and the European Union to expand. Today, both organizations perform similar functions, having incorporated countries that were once in the Soviet bloc. NATO and the EU both do the job of containing Russia, and of projecting American power beyond Europe. Brexit campaigners fail to get it.

Chernobyl’s Ongoing Toll: 40,000 More Cancer Deaths?

Ian Fairlie

In 1996, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) stated that Chernobyl was “the foremost nuclear catastrophe in human history”.

In 2005, the IAEA and World Health Organisation (WHO) set out their united view:

“The magnitude and scope of the disaster, the size of the affected population, and the long-term consequences make it, by far, the worst industrial disaster on record.

“Chernobyl unleashed a complex web of events and long-term difficulties, such as massive relocation, loss of economic stability, and long-term threats to health in current and, possibly, future generations.”

In 2006, the independent TORCH (The Other Report on Chernobyl) report examined the health evidence. However thousands of scientific articles have been published since then.

These are discussed in a new TORCH-2016 report commissioned by Friends of the Earth Austria and funded by the City Government of Vienna. It clearly indicates that the adverse effects from Chernobyl are continuing.

The accident had many consequences, including economic, ecological, social and political effects. TORCH-2016 focuses on the health effects, and clearly shows they were and are manifold, severe, widespread, and long-lasting. In a word, devastating, contrary to a recent article in Scientific American.

The new TORCH report finds

* 40,000 fatal cancers are predicted in Europe over the next 50 years
* 6,000 thyroid cancer cases to date, 16,000 more expected
* 5 million people in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia still live in highly contaminated areas (>40 kBq/sq.m)
* 400 million in less contaminated areas (>4 kBq/sq.m)
* 37% of Chernobyl’s fallout was deposited on western Europe;
* 42% of western Europe’s land area was contaminated
* increased radiogenic thyroid cancers expected in West European countries
* increased radiogenic leukemias, cardiovascular diseases, breast cancers confirmed
* new evidence of radiogenic birth defects, mental health effects and diabetes
* new evidence that children living in contaminated areas suffer radiogenic illnesses

Fallout from Chernobyl

The headline estimate of 40,000 future cancer deaths is derived from the collective dose estimate of 400,000 person sieverts by the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) in 2011.

This figure is multiplied in TORCH-2016 by the currently accepted risk of fatal cancer from radiation (10% per person sievert) to arrive at an expected 40,000 fatal cancers in future. This is a valid routinely-used estimation method using the official linear no-threshold (LNT) model of radiation risks. The 40,000 figure is the same order of magnitude as other academic estimates.

The accident contaminated over 40% of Europe as shown in the map of Cs-137 concentrations below. This included the UK: indeed food restriction orders were finally repealed in Wales only in 2012. Restrictions still exist in several other countries, especially on wild foods.

The problem with nuclear power is that it can be supremely unforgiving: when things go wrong – as at Chernobyl (and Fukushima in 2011) – they can go very, very wrong indeed. Contaminating over 40% of Europe plus an estimated 40,000 deaths are pretty disastrous effects.

It is vital that governments learn from the Chernobyl and Fukushima accidents. Many governments are phasing out their nuclear plants, but regrettably, a few governments – including the UK Government and even that of Belarus, which suffered the brunt of Chernobyl’s fallout – have decided to ignore the lessons of Chernobyl and Fukushima and are planning or constructing more nuclear power stations.

A question of trust

In 2005, the IAEA/WHO stated “What the Chernobyl disaster has clearly demonstrated is the central role of information and how it is communicated in the aftermath of radiation or toxicological incidents. Nuclear activities in Western countries have also tended to be shrouded in secrecy.

“The Chernobyl experience has raised the awareness among disaster planners and health authorities that the dissemination of timely and accurate information by trusted leaders is of the greatest importance.” While this is undoubtedly correct, it raises the vexed question of trust in governments which, for many people, has been eroded or does not exist after Chernobyl and Fukushima.

To re-establish that trust will be difficult. At a minimum, it will require the following steps. First, governments to make clear to their citizens that they will consider safer energy options that do not have the potential for another Chernobyl or Fukushima. Many such options exist.

Second, a dialogue to be set up between agencies such as IAEA, WHO and national governments on the one hand and various NGOs and health charities on the other for exchanges of views on radiation risks. Transparency is essential.

Third, WHO should no longer be required to have its reports on radiation matters vetted by the IAEA, as presently required under the 1959 agreement between the two UN agencies.

Fourth, UN agencies WHO, UNSCEAR, IAEA should be required to have independent scientists from NGOs and health charities as members of their main Committees. These agencies should also be required to consult on their draft reports, including the convening of meetings with environment NGOs and independent health charities.

Justin Trudeau Is A Climate Denying Monster

Bill Henderson

Canada's Prime Minister Trudeau thinks that you have to build pipelines to mitigate climate change; that you need to raise revenue by producing fossil fuels to pay for a transition to a renewable energy, post-carbon economy.

Canada is the worlds fifth largest producer of fossil fuels (and hence, climate change). During the Harper years (and during high fossil fuel prices) over half of Canada's wealth generated from exports were from fossil fuels. No wonder the Trudeau governments is in new climate denial - governing without these high levels of economic activity and income is impossible in our presently configured economy. Trudeau claims he has always advocated for new pipelines to get Canadian bitumen to tidewater: “I have been crystal clear for years now on pipelines. One of the fundamental responsibilities of any Canadian prime minister – and this goes back centuries, from grain on railroads to fish and fur – is to get Canadian resources to international markets”.

But times change. Climate change becomes far worse far faster. Canada's PM pretends to leadership on the world stage: 'Canada's back', and promises that his government is really serious about climate change: backing a global target of keeping emissions well below 2C, but then uses his governmental powers to try and facilitate an even larger expansion of fossil fuel production - this is Canada's PM sliding back to join Stephen Harper as a global climate criminal: continuing to subvert needed international action on a building catastrophe.

Climate change is becoming far worse, far faster. Since Paris both the global warming symptoms and the climate change science have changed for the worse. It is not just the unbelievable and terrifying spike in temperatures (partly associated with an El Nino event) or the melting Arctic or the bleaching coral. It is not just the rapidly melting icesheets and rising sea-levels, the increasing extreme weather and the famines and societal disruption as a consequence. The race to mitigate climate change effectively is getting increasingly desperate.

Last year McGlade and Ekins published a paper detailing which present fossil fuel reserves must stay in the ground in order for human caused warming to stay under the internationally agreed precautionary ceiling of a 2C rise from pre-industrial levels. In order to have just a 50/50 chance of staying under 2C, a third of oil reserves, half of natural gas and 80% of coal must remain in the ground. Canada's oilsands where singled out: production must be reduced to negligible levels after 2020.

McGlade and Ekins based their calculations on a global carbon budget of 1,100Gt that could still be burned without producing enough CO2 greenhouse gas (GHG) to exceed 2C. Recent advances in the carbon budget science over the past year has now shrunk this budget to now much less than 1000 Gt, to somewhere closer to 600-800Gt.

The Rogelj et el paper is the main paper quantifying this lower carbon budget but the budget is shrinking because the climate science is also getting much dire. A recent paper studying clouds strongly suggests that climate sensitivity has been underestimated which would shrink the carbon budget further. A new paper on terrestrial sinks will soon be published predicting that we must factor in increasing carbon going to the atmosphere. Not only does this mean that we can put less carbon into the atmosphere to stay relatively safe from humanity threatening 'dangerous climate change', but the shrinking carbon budget also means we have far less time to reduce our emissions. Whereas Canada's emission reduction target (the old Harper government target) is 30% below 2005 levels by 2030, the updated carbon budget target is now probably closer to 100% reduction of all emissions by 2030.

We now know that even a 1C rise in temperature may engender civilization or even humanity threatening consequences such as the drowning of the world's great coastal cities this century and that a 2C rise in temperature is deep into dangerous climate change. By any reasonable analysis climate change is now an emergency because action to effectively reduce emissions must happen faster than presently possible within our present political and economic systems.

The climate change emergency is by far the most critical problem of our time and this is why ratcheting up action post-Paris is so important. But this is the time that Prime Minister Trudeau is following his mentor President Obama and doing everything within his power to expand fossil fuel production in Canada.

Now this isn't just about meeting our international commitments - Canadians not meeting our international climate commitments is sadly our history and it looks like we are continuing to play this WTO-style game. But there are real climate change consequences building. This accidental byproduct of our use of fossil fuels has now become humanity threatening because we have failed repeatedly to take effective mitigating action. For example, if we would have begun the presently advocated carbon pricing - decarbonization mitigation strategy in the late 80s, early 90s, by now we would be well into a post carbon economy and emission reduction wouldn't be such a daunting problem. But we didn't and now our mitigation strategy must be much more draconian - if we are reasonable and responsible and want to do due diligence and protect future generations, if we want a future for all we love and care about.

If the PM lead in recognizing the climate dangers and recognized that climate is now an emergency requiring deep systemic change, and Canada actually did provide leadership at this critical time by forming an emergency, wartime-style coalition government, imposed restrictions on new fossil fuel infrastructure and a regulated schedule to wind down all fossil fuel production and use in accordance with the McGlade-Ekins framework but based upon a 600-800Gt budget, Canada at least would be doing what was necessary to stay safe under 2C. Most probably countries such as Russia and the Saudis wouldn't follow suite, but the pressure upon countries like the US, Australia and China, the EU countries, etc. would be immense and it would be hard for their governments to not take effective action. Hopefully, action would spur action, innovation and adaption, new political and economic structures where reducing emissions to stay at least under 2C became practical.

It might even be possible to save this very fortunate way of life that we now enjoy: democracy, wealth and increasing complexity, reasonable safety and room to grow, a path to a future like we grew up believing possible.

Justin Trudeau isn't the only Canadian politician ludicrously pushing fossil fuel expansion. BC's Premier Clark, who's government is desperately trying to build an LNG industry to expand natural gas production for export, and remarking about the onset of a severe forest fire outbreak caused by abnormally high winter and spring temperatures, told an audience that the way to fight BC forest fires was to sell LNG to Asia in order to replace coal in power plants. Clark is an expert in post-truth politics often channeling Sarah Palin in her self serving make believe. Alberta Premier Notley, who has been desperately lobbying for that mythical pipeline to tidewater and world prices as Alberta's economic savior, is going to Washington to tell legislators there that Alberta has a new climate plan that will keep emissions the same in 2030 as they are today. (???? Good work Premier Notley.)

But Justin Trudeau stands out claiming to take climate change seriously and lead, and now he is subverting needed action globally just like previous Canadian prime ministers. When you consider what is at stake, what has to happen so that innocents in the future, our kids and their kids, aren't victim of a climate catastrophe baked in today, when you consider Mr. Trudeau's actions in contrast to his words at this critical time, and you consider the consequences, our good looking, young and dynamic PM is just as much a monster as his climate action subverting predecessor Stephen Harper.

The Killing Field And The Incoherent Politics Of Bangladesh

Taj Hashmi

The latest killings of scores of freethinking writers by “Islamist” or “unknown” assailants are fast turning Bangladesh into a killing field. The latest killings of an atheist blogger, one university professor, and two LGBT activists in Bangladesh have stirred the world outside Bangladesh. Even the UN has demanded prompt probe into the latest killings in the country. However, what we hear from Bangladesh is bizarre, and unfortunate. While the Home Minister thinks people live in absolute safety, the police chief has asked people to make their own “security circles”. Some politicians have already “identified” the killers, said to be BNP-Jamaat activists! Surprisingly, while the Home Minister asserts there is no ISIS in Bangladesh, the Information Minister has confirmed – with absolute precision – there are 8,000 al Qaeda activists in the country.

Since human insecurity in a modern state is a political problem, only honest politicians can resolve it. I use Ghazzali’s famous book on the incoherence of philosophers metaphorically, to explain the incoherence of politicians in Bangladesh. In his classic The Incoherence of the Philosophers (Tahafut al-Falasifa), famous Muslim philosopher Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (1058-1111) – aka Imam Ghazzali – convincingly argues that philosophers had been consistently inconsistent, incoherently applying logic only to science and mathematics, not to metaphysical, and abstract thoughts and ideas. As politics is all about philosophy – even terrorism is philosophy-driven – so it’s time to look at the age-old incoherence in the realm of Bangladesh politics.

Imputing philosophers’ incoherence to his temporary loss of imaan or faith in Allah and Islam, considering philosophy dangerous, Ghazzali abandoned it altogether. Whether most Bangladeshis have abandoned politics altogether, considering it too dangerous to be associated with, is an important question. A depoliticized nation is like a terminally ill patient, who can’t breathe in any oxygen despite being connected to a cylinder full of oxygen. I think the prevalent “apathy” to politics in Bangladesh is fear-induced, what political thinker Anthony Downs calls “rational ignorance” of the underdogs. The average Bangladeshis are just too scared to open their mouth.

The way pro-BNP or anti-Awami League politicians, journalists, and civil society members are getting arrested and kept behind bars – without trial for indefinite periods – has terrorized would be dissidents. People get arrested, harassed and persecuted by pro-Government police and party activists even for writing critical things in social media, about the Prime Minister, her son, and her government, which came to power through farcical parliamentary elections in January 2014.

Interestingly, there are hardly any major ideological differences, between the various secular, nationalist, and Islamic parties in the country. The differences between the ruling Awami League (AL) and BNP, the main opposition party, are personal than ideological. While the AL promotes “Bangali Nationalism”, the BNP holds fast to “Bangladeshi Nationalism”; their differences are as phony as those between Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Again, both of them are: a) least democratic, and b) not transparent at all.

Ever since the Liberation, different sets of politicians have been telling the people what is more important to them than food, clothing, shelter, healthcare, and education. Politicians have their own versions of cry wolves to deceive the people. Sometimes they tell the people their freedom is at stake; and sometimes people hear about the conspiracies against Islam, hatched out by certain politicians. It’s unbelievable but true, as it appears in the Gulliver’s Travels, Lilliputians were at war against each other over the issue of which end of the egg they should break before making an omelette, many Bangladeshis are programmed to fight each other over the contentious issue if “Bangladeshi” or “Bangali” should be their national identity. Who are “pro-Liberation” and who are “opposed” to freedom is another bone of contention.

Bangladesh since the 1980s has virtually become Satyajit Roy’s Hirak Rajar Desh. And in this hedonistic kingdom of power and pleasure, politicians in power make and break rules, plunder, extort, and even kill with total impunity. Nothing seems immoral, impossible, disorderly, or surprising at all! The “winners take all” is the rule of the game. The opposition – the real ones, not some pseudo-opposition parties – isn’t even entitled to crumbs from the high table. However, there is a problem. All losers aren’t just sitting idle.

There’s, however, an almost invisible albeit not that powerful undercurrent of resistance to the superordinates, who have failed miserably to establish their hegemony among the bulk of the populace. The Bashkhali protest against coal-generated power plant, and mass rallies for the arrest of the killer of Tonu, are just sporadic examples in this regard. The ruling elites’ self-inflicted inability-cum-unwillingness to accept the reality – the existence of any resistance to their rule – has been the biggest incoherence in Bangladesh politics since day one of the emergence of this nation-state.

Ruling elites reject mass protests against massive corruption, injustice, and killing of innocent people as law and order problem, or as machinations by the ubiquitous opposition, “linked with” foreign agents or terrorism. In the past, we heard weird things from the government about the ten truckloads of arms captured by police in Chittagong; the grenade attacks on Sheikh Hasina’s rally; and the rise of Bangla Bhai and the JMB- and HUJI-led terror attacks across the country.

Politicians in power haven’t yet convincing explained scores of violent attacks on innocent people by political goons, law-enforcers or “unknown assailants”; extra-judicial killings by law-enforcers; the killing of 57 army officers at the BDR Headquarters; and the killing of pedestrians, bus and car drivers/passengers in 2013-2014. Last but not least, politicians in power and in the opposition have diametrically opposite stories about the ongoing selective killings of writers, bloggers, and LGBT activists quite for some time. Meanwhile, Bangladesh is fast becoming a safe haven for killing squads and terrorists, and a killing field for innocent victims.

History is replete with examples of rulers’ selling grand but useless objects to the people as symbols of their greatness, grandeur and virtue: the Colossus of Rhodes in ancient Greece; the Taj Mahal in Mughal India; and the Victoria Memorial in British India. The number of flyovers in over-congested Dhaka city for example, which don’t benefit more than five per cent of the population, may be mentioned in this regard. The flyovers are like what was once the “legendary” Kamalapur Railway Station in Dhaka during Ayub Khan’s “Decade of Development” – sold as the best of its kind in Asia.

The long and short of the story is that, instead of leading their followers politically, towards good governance, progress, and nation-building, politicians here mostly mislead people through lies, deceptions, and non-issues. Politicians here behave in the most unethical and unprofessional manner. During the last ten years alone, politicians defended, justified and collaborated with General Moeen Ahmed’s illegitimate regime. They play dubious roles by enacting controversial laws, and holding controversial elections – either boycotted en masse or rigged in the most unprecedented manner.

While innocent people, intellectuals and dissidents get arrested, harassed by law-enforcers, disappear and die, politicians are in a state of denial, and even worse, busy vilifying each other as killers and anti-state elements. Meanwhile, Bangladesh is virtually fast turning into a killing field, and a safe haven for politically well-connected bank defaulters, money launderers, and share-market scammers. Money launderers have so far sent more than 30 thousand crore (thirty billion) taka out of Bangladesh; share-scammers defrauded millions to the tune of several billion takas; and “unknown” criminals robbed more than $100 million from the Bangladesh Bank. Interestingly, the Finance Minister often rubbishes all criticisms of financial scams, and considers these crimes as growing pains of growth and development.

It’s time Bangladeshi politicians resolve their differences, hold credible elections, learn how to respect each other (without turning Donald Trump into their role model), and learn the art and science of governance. Let politics be a means to serve the people, not an end in itself. Bangladeshi politicians must realise, world leaders, various UN agencies, intellectuals, human rights activists, social media and global media as a whole don’t lie, and they have no agendas to harm Bangladesh. The Government should pay heed to what the Guardian has published on the rise of extremism in Bangladesh (26 April, 2016): “Bangladesh's pluralism is at risk if Sheikh Hasina does not stop extremists”.

As a recent Financial Times article “Bangladesh pays for bad politics in blood” (27 April 2016) suggests in the wake of the killings of two LGBT activists in Dhaka, there is no room for complacency for this regime. The article has also cited the latest Report on Bangladesh by the International Crisis Group, which believes that the Government’s “heavy-handed measures are damaging its own legitimacy and benefitting extremists”; and that: “There is no time to lose. If mainstream dissent remains closed, more and more government opponents may come to view violence and violent groups as their only recourse.” Sooner the Hasina Government realise there is no room for complacency, tribalism and rural factional politics or patron-client relationship in democracy, the better. Perpetual cry wolves, denial of the prevalent state of terror, anarchy, and corruption, and blaming the main opposition parties (the BNP and Jamaat-e-Islami) for corruption and terrorism – as this Government has been doing quite for sometime – will eventually backfire.

Kashmir: Truth Lost In Propaganda

Gowhar Geelani

Twirling his grey moustache General (retired) Bakshi said on NDTV’s programme Big Fight (Kashmir On The Edge: What's The Solution?) that the Indian army personnel opened fired on the civilians in north Kashmir’s frontier towns of Handwara and Kupwara only when the angry protesters set their bunker on fire and tried to attack the army. “Should our soldiers be bowing their head to say ‘come on, mob lynch us’ we will exercise restraint?” The audience gave him a rapturous round of applause.

The gullible Indian audience thought that the retired army general was speaking the gospel truth. But he was lying. It was a blatant lie. There was no one there to tell Mr. Bakshi or the seasoned anchor Mr. Vikram Chandra that the woman Raja Begum, who was one among the five civilians killed by the army, was attending her vegetable garden when she was hit by a bullet. She later succumbed to her injuries. She was not even part of the demonstrations. She was nowhere near the army bunker. Similarly, the young cricketer Nayeem, another boy who was mercilessly killed, was in the market to buy grocery when fired upon by the police. Yet another boy in Kupwara was killed when not a single stone was pelted. One more person Iqbal was the first one killed in cold blood in Handwara. That’s how blatant lies are spread by the army generals and Indian media.

That’s the propaganda: “Give a dog a bad name and hang him. Repeat a lie thousand times and it becomes truth.” That’s what India has been doing since 1947. Especially post 1989.

And now a new rabid poster boy of the Pandit community claims that Kashmiri Muslims are “Islamist goons”. This is how they have mastered the art of playing the victim card. Despite being the extensions of the mighty State their main contention is the narrative of victimhood to stay relevant in New Delhi. But relevance matters on the home turf. Their vicious propaganda and vitriolic commentary may pave way for them to get free ration, some temporary packages and sympathies in Delhi but they are losing the battle on the home soil: Kashmir.

Financial Truancy, “Economism” And Moral Ambiguity In Public Debate Today

Khaldun Malek

“No condition of life to which man cannot get accustomed, especially if he sees them accepted by everyone around him” –Tolstoy

The recent expose’ of the so-called “Panama Papers” brings to light again the morally troubling issue of tax havens and the flight of capital from taxation. The fallout from this, as is now widely known, has had serious political implications. There is already a major political casualty in the form of the former prime minister of Iceland, who resigned amidst allegations of financial impropriety by a member of his family. Politically, the issue remains a highly charged one; even David Cameron, who in recent times was one of the most vocal proponents of reforms to curb the excesses of the financial truancy of both rich corporations and individuals has not been entirely absolved from the scandal.

Some financial analysts have claimed that this is merely the tip of a very large iceberg. If true, the implications are staggering, because it gives pause to even the deeply worrying report recently published by Oxfam highlighting the global inequities of wealth which exists today. While economic inequality is a serious source of concern, it is merely a part of a larger pattern of discrimination and deprivation that afflicts all societies in the present. This question extends to far more than just economic ones; in fact, arguably the fixation on economic inequality is in danger of shifting attention away from more fundamental questions of social justice and fairness. It also gives an undue emphasis on an economic solution rather than a real one.

One of the key, though somewhat under-emphasised, aspect of Thomas Piketty’s global best-seller has not been to show the extent of the gaps between the rich and the poor but rather more pertinently how periods where the gaps have narrowed have been the rare exception rather than the rule. This in a sense gives us a more realistic appraisal of history. Seldom has the pursuit and agglomeration of wealth given pause to anything other than its own validation. If history is any guide, the impulse to accumulate wealth and power for its own sake is a universal drive that seems to transcend faith, cultures, language, politics and geography – as much as most faith and wisdom traditions counsel us against the deep spiritual and social ruin that will eventuate from such a pursuit. But in a global public culture dominated by a vain and arrogant, but more problematically, parochial ‘secularity’ promoted by the West and their allies, such discourses carry little weight.

Worryingly, even among the more visibly religious nations, there seems to be little enthusiasm to find alternative visions of progress and development.Even so called ‘alternatives’ to the dominant paradigms might not – on closer scrutiny – be so different. I think underneath the enthusiasms amongst Muslim nations, for example, over so called“Islamic” finance, the same ideological drives persist. Financial institutions no doubt understand its attractions as a marketing exercise; a more affluent, growing Muslim middle class enthusiastically embraces a means of increasing their wealth whilst palliating their ‘spiritual’ concerns!As global banks pursue this new wonderful marketing vehicle, we see hordes of both private and public conspirators – government agencies, university academics, financial consultants and so on – selling the public this new ‘product’!

However, at its centre nothing changes, and the practices of the past (profiteering for its own sake, the continued hegemony of the institutional structure of the present financial system, the ongoing valorisation of liberal capitalist values et al) continues. The terms of the process are now couched in a different language but the functioning and logical aims of the exercises remain the same. Moreover, the way in which global society speaks of the problem today – the way it has been conceived and what has been perceived as its effects is quite removed from similar episodes of social and economic distress in the past. I’ll come back to this later.

I’d wager that even the Wall Street Sit-In, applauded globally as a powerful indictment of the failures of a financial system run amok (a dubious pyramid scheme dressed under the sanctimony of the world’s most respectable financial institutions), symptomatizes the widespread moral vacuum surrounding the issue. Exemplified as a serious mass movement critique of developments which eventually led to the financial crisis of 2008, what it truly reflects is a reaction against the symptoms of failure rather than an outright questioning of the moral validity of its causes. In other words, one cannot help but wonder whether many of those who came would have bothered to do so if they had not themselves been affected by the fallout. If the prevailing system had continued to lavish the same returns it had done prior, would have there been a call to re-examine its principles or values? And what exactly are the majority angry about? The failure of the system? Or of the principles which underpin them? Then why is there a lacuna of serious attempts to frame these issues in broader terms? If we do not take the time to think within the context of the kinds of society we are trying to build, then to paraphrase Santayana, we are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past in an unending vicious cycle.

One thing is clear. History tells us that the cycles of boom and bust is a natural part of the economic order. However, what is peculiar to the current malaise, is a seeming inability to articulate the problem(s) within any kind of moral compass. The way we talk about economic activity is disconnected to any view of how this is an intrinsic part of how we imagine the kinds of societies we wish to have. Even when we are angry about disparities between the rich and poor, this is seen and discussed in isolation from thinking about wider morality. It has not always been so. Even in the most celebrated totem of free-market thinking, Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations”, published more than two centuries ago, the idea of free enterprise and the freedom of exchange, was an attempt to augment a liberalism and individual autonomy thought in the best interests of an Enlightenment morality. Free trade was seen as a critical element in the flourishing of a ‘good’ society. It was grounded on a moral claim (what Smith terms as “moral sentiments”), not the kind of vacuous argument put forward today by economists talking about “efficiencies”.

This laxity, described so vividly by Tony Judt, as ‘economism’ (“the invocation of economics in all discussions of public affairs”) is frankly, intellectually lazy. He asks a deeply pertinent question, “why do we have such difficulty even imagining a different sort of society from the one whose dysfunctions and inequalities troubles us so?”. Why is it we no longer seem to have the wherewithal to question the present in fundamental ways? Why is it so difficult to conceive “a different set of arrangements to our common advantage”? And perhaps most worryingly, we appear to lack a sufficient vocabulary to enter a public discourse without need for an arbitrative reference to profit and loss, or what Judt refers to as an “etiolated economic vocabulary”.

These questions are, of course, not new. Decades before the publication of his report which became in 1942, the foundation of the British welfare state, William Beveridge had given a lecture in Oxford in which he bemoaned the dangers of obscuring proper political philosophy with classical economics in public debates. In some ways anticipating the intellectual malaise we face in the present, he warned of the deleterious effects of restricting public policy considerations to mere economic calculus.

We seem to live in an age where the functioning of society is seen in almost purely instrumental terms. The economic and commercial, the pursuit of leisure, securing justice and fairness, political participation and the fulfilment of spiritual needs and religious obligations are almost always discussed and seen as separate realms of values and conduct – microcosmic and through separate flows of life seemingly unconnected with one another. This is of course, a false depiction of the human condition. Under such conditions, it is extremely difficult – if not downright impossible – to speak of ‘society’ in a collective and holistic sense. All things are judged in their own terms and in their own sense; it is almost as if the kind of Thatcherite verbiage (“there is no such thing as society, merely individuals” and so on) we thought we had left behind in the 80s, has quietly subsumed the principles of public debate over everything from education, health, transport, housing and so on.

Over two centuries ago, one of the key figures of the European Enlightenment, and perhaps its keenest observer of the emergence of commercial capitalism, Marquis de Condorcet, anticipated the dire prospects that “liberty will be no more in the eyes of an avid nation, than the necessary condition for the security of financial operations”. For many of us today, this may actually sound too familiar for comfort.

Just Say No To Corporate Rule

Ron Forthofer

In May 2014, Senator Elizabeth Warren talked about the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement. "From what I hear, Wall Street, pharmaceuticals, telecom, big polluters and outsourcers are all salivating at the chance to rig the deal in the upcoming trade talks. So the question is: Why are the trade talks secret? You’ll love this answer. Boy, the things you learn on Capitol Hill. I actually have had supporters of the deal say to me, 'They have to be secret, because if the American people knew what was actually in them, they would be opposed.'"

In May 2012, Senator Ron Wyden, Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee’s Subcommittee on International Trade, Customs, and Global Competitiveness, said: “Yet, the majority of Congress is being kept in the dark as to the substance of the TPP negotiations, while representatives of U.S. corporations—like Halliburton, Chevron, PHRMA, Comcast, and the Motion Picture Association of America—are being consulted and made privy to details of the agreement.”

A May 2012 letter to the US Trade Representative from 30 law professors in a few of the countries that are involved with the TPP negotiations also pointed out that: “There is no representation on this committee for consumers, libraries, students, health advocacy or patient groups, or others users of intellectual property, and minimal representation of other affected businesses, such as generic drug manufacturers or internet service providers. We would never create US law or regulation through such a biased and closed process.”

If you aren't already concerned about a deal being negotiated on behalf of giant corporations at the public's expense, consider the following. One chapter in the deal, the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) system, threatens democracy and the sovereignty of governments.

For example, Joseph Stiglitz, former chief economist at the World Bank and recipient of the 'Nobel Prize for Economics' in 2001, addressed this issue regarding NAFTA in January 2004. He said: “But hidden in NAFTA was a new set of rights -- for business -- that potentially weakened democracy throughout North America. Under NAFTA, if foreign investors believe they are being harmed by regulations (no matter how well justified), they may sue for damages in special tribunals without the transparency afforded by normal judicial proceedings. If successful, they receive direct compensation from the federal government....

In an October 2015 article, Stiglitz and Adam Hersh added: "Imagine what would have happened if these provisions had been in place when the lethal effects of asbestos were discovered. Rather than shutting down manufacturers and forcing them to compensate those who had been harmed, under ISDS, governments would have had to pay the manufacturers not to kill their citizens. Taxpayers would have been hit twice — first to pay for the health damage caused by asbestos, and then to compensate manufacturers for their lost profits when the government stepped in to regulate a dangerous product."

According to Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, the TPP ISDS "tribunals are staffed by private lawyers who are not accountable to any electorate, system of legal precedent or meaningful conflict of interest rules. Their rulings cannot be appealed on the merits. Many ISDS lawyers rotate between roles – serving both as “judges” and suing governments for corporations, creating an inherent conflict of interest."

Allowing trade lawyers to have the final say on cases that threaten our health and well being as well as the health of the ecosystem and its ability to support all life forms is insane! This disastrous settlement process tramples democracy and sovereignty and prioritizes profit over our health and well being as well as our ecosystem and its ability to support life. An old Cree prophecy seems relevant:

Only after the last river has been poisoned,
Only after the last fish has been caught,
Only then will you find money cannot be eaten.

If this corporate-designed settlement process doesn't convince you to oppose the TPP, consider its rules for financial services. According to Public Citizen, these rules were written under the advisement of giant banks and work to undercut legislation meant to re-regulate Wall Street. Thus the TPP would expand the reach of failed policies that played a major role in creating the disastrous 2008 financial crisis. The TPP rules would also prevent nations from protecting their currencies in time of crisis. It's as if the 2008 crisis didn't happen.

Paul Krugman, another 'Nobel Prize winner in Economics' and a supporter of NAFTA, said it well in his March 9th column. "But it’s also true that much of the elite defense of globalization is basically dishonest: false claims of inevitability, scare tactics (protectionism causes depressions!), vastly exaggerated claims for the benefits of trade liberalization and the costs of protection, hand-waving away the large distributional effects that are what standard models actually predict."

Krugman concluded: "So the elite case for ever-freer trade is largely a scam, which voters probably sense even if they don’t know exactly what form it’s taking."

The TPP and other deals such as the currently being negotiated Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership will, if enacted, transfer more wealth to the top from the rest of us while further threatening our ecosystem. These deals must be stopped -- our lives and the lives of future generations depend on us stopping it now!

Bangladesh: The Wages Of A Noxious Mix

Fazal M. Kamal

Regardless of whatever entertaining but ineffectual verbiage administration leaders may spew and regardless of the incredibly inane—and entertaining too—stuff law enforcement honchos may regurgitate, the dreadful reality in Bangladesh is that nothing that they declare is of any consequence in stemming the trend of random murders that seems to persist unrelentingly.

As recent times have been worse than before, with more being killed almost at will in various parts of the country, it appears, that in spite of a whole lot of revelations (if prevarication can be euphemistically called that) and repeated assurances, the powers that be have been unable to substantiate their aural pronouncements with tangible results. Like actually getting the murderers.

That purported law enforcement personnel across the world have some rotten apples among them, isn’t anything surprising. That in many countries—both advanced and not-so-advanced—rogue elements in the police forces are known to engage in atrocious behavior sometimes leading to torture and death of innocent persons, is also not an unknown or unheard of fact of life in the real world replete with human flaws.

Given that backdrop, the inefficiency, a lack of discipline, an obvious absence of appropriate training mingled with politicization and avarice can and in fact do create both a toxic environment and brutal modus operandi for law enforcement entities which often lead to offensive declarations (to state it mildly) that can only be described as unbridled hubris. Consequently, the benefits from such noxious bodies are barely discernible, if at all.

In the Bangladesh instance, it’ll be most inadvisable to ignore the very recent uptick in mayhem and murder especially given the perception that anything’s possible in this country, and that it’s easy to, literally, get away with murder. And in view of the facts it’s, at the very least, difficult to deflect these and similar beliefs plainly because over the years murders, rape, torture, et al have received indulgent passes, astounding the citizenry.

As Prof. Ali Riaz of Illinois State University stated: “The official explanations for these incidents have been quite confusing and somewhat contradictory. On the one hand, the government has insisted that these are unrelated incidents and that they do not pose any challenge to the security of the country; on the other hand, it has claimed that these are ‘homegrown’ militants who are engaged in these heinous acts. While the country's home minister does not see any cause for concern for the safety of citizens, the chief of police has asked the citizens to create their own ‘security circle.’”[!!! -- Couldn’t help adding those exclamation marks given the contents of official statements.]

Simultaneously, compounding the confusion, administration leaders have often—and within hours of a murderous incident—declared that these are the handiwork of the political opposition. This has by now become an extremely predictable ploy with clockwork regulatory but comprehensively failing to convince anyone except only the author of these bizarre contentions themselves.

Here, then, is one reaction to this game plan: “The government is increasingly targeting the opposition and closing off its legitimate political activity, but it’s precisely that polarized political environment and limiting of the opposition’s space to participate in the political process that is creating new space for the extremists,” observed Lisa Curtis, a South Asia expert at the Heritage Foundation’s Asian Studies Center in Washington.

And in an opinion piece London journalist Gwynne Dyer asserted: “She [Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina] also insisted that these murders were the work of the main opposition party, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), or more precisely of its political ally, the Jamaat-e-Islami, the country's largest Islamist party. She firmly denied that foreign extremist forces such as Islamic State or al Qaeda (which would certainly approve of the killings) were active in the country.”

Having stated that background Dyer concludes, “This probably seems to Ms Hasina to be sound, practical politics, in a country where 90% of the population is Muslim. … It's also good politics for her to blame the violence exclusively on the opposition parties, since admitting that foreign Islamists are involved would mean that she was failing in her duty to defend the country. But the result of her pragmatism and passivity has been a rapid expansion in the range of targets that are coming under attack by the extremists.”

Of course, it’s a known fact that not all the victims were “atheist bloggers” or “irreligious thinkers” because some of those murdered, in reality, had absolutely nothing in common with “atheists” or “bloggers” but were law-abiding and God-fearing individuals who were simply going about their business. And then, there are the yet-unsolved (and possibly never-to-be-solved) cases of young women raped and killed.

But that’s a whole other story.

In the meantime, let’s be clear here: To the honorable members of the Cabinet: No, these cannot by any stretch of anyone’s imagination be isolated episodes; they’ve been occurring with shockingly tragic frequency. And to the law enforcement kahunas: The people of the country expect salubrious effects from your actions and words; not pontification in any shape, size or color primarily because that isn’t any segment of your mandate.

Carnage In Syria

Mary Scully

Just so we're clear on what supporting the Assad regime & foreign military intervention in Syria means:

Making a sarcasm out of the ceasefire, Syrian airstrikes in Aleppo for the past six days have killed over 200 people. The bombing is targeting residential areas & according to witnesses, no neighborhood of the city has not been hit. That death toll is expected to rise. Wednesday they bombed a hospital operated by Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF/Doctors Without Borders), killing 27 people including children & three doctors. One of the doctors killed was the city's last pediatrician.

The Syrian military denies bombing the hospital & claims it has not been in residential areas where air raids were reported. Putin made a great display in March of ordering Russian warplanes out of Syria & has previously denied bombing civilian targets. The Russian defense ministry has not been available for interrogation about the current bombing, including of the hospital, even though it is reported that Russian warplanes are involved. So again, it isn't immediately clear whether the bombing is done by Syrian bombers or allied Russian bombers. But since they work in concert, is there an operative useful distinction?

This photo of people, including many infants & children, being rescued from bombed out buildings or people fleeing the bombing is played out all over Aleppo. Those rescuing them are of course civil defense volunteers, not Assad first responders.

Many people hold stubbornly to support for the Assad regime because it is (at least ostensibly) opposed by the US. The proof of Assad's political criminality is in the bombing which has gone on for at least five years, killed an estimated 470,000 people, & created one of the most massive refugee crises in the world.

No military intervention in Syria & Iraq! Stop the bombing, including by Syrian & Russian warplanes!

Unsafe Edinburgh schools expose scandal of privatisation

Steve James

In January, Storm Gertrude blew down a wall at Oxgangs Primary School in Edinburgh, Scotland. No one was injured and the school opened after a few days, but in March investigations into the collapse revealed “serious defects” in the 10-year-old building’s construction.

Thereafter, 17 schools across the city were closed when Edinburgh Schools Partnership (ESP), the private consortium that built and manages the schools, was unable to offer assurances that the buildings were safe. Over 8,000 pupils were told their schools could be closed indefinitely.

At the time of writing, 16 of the schools remain closed; their pupils bussed around the city to alternate schools and temporary classrooms. ESP has still not completed a survey of affected buildings.

Faults so far revealed focus on the metal ties holding the inner and outer brick walls together. These appear to have been either too short to safely strengthen the outer wall, despite being embedded in mortar, or, in the case of “header” ties that should be placed at the top of the walls, missing altogether. That such elementary faults should only come to light because of a collapse testifies to extraordinary incompetence, dangerous short-cutting and a complete lack of independent oversight of the buildings’ construction.

ESP’s inability to provide any reassurances regarding the remaining schools indicates a possibility that all 16 schools are suffering from the same fault. Some reports suggest they may all need to be pulled down and rebuilt.

All 17 schools were part of a £360 million deal between Edinburgh City Council and ESP under the then Public Private Partnership (PPP) scheme launched in 2001 by the Labour government of Tony Blair. ESP effectively built and owned the schools, renting them back to the city council under a lucrative long-term contract. ESP originally included Miller Construction and Amey Asset Services. Finance was provided by the Bank of Scotland and the European Investment Bank.

Similar arrangements were used across the UK.

Scotland saw a rash of school and public building contracts. Glasgow City Council, for example, demolished and rebuilt as many as 29 schools, many of them unnecessarily, under a £1.2 billion project run by the 3ED consortium that included the lender Halifax, Hewlett Packard and, again, Miller Construction. In the light of the Edinburgh fiasco, Glasgow has been forced to survey many of its recently built schools, as have Fife and Stirling. Many other authorities, including NHS Grampian and Aberdeen, have raised concerns about other buildings constructed by Miller.

Commenting on the experience, leading Edinburgh architect Malcolm Fraser told the press, “Everyone realised these buildings were shoddy ... and in terms of quality of the environment made for children and financially they were unbelievably expensive.”

Fraser, who resigned in 2007 from an architectural advisory panel to the Scottish Executive, said of the lack of scrutiny, “Contractors are entrusted to police themselves, so in cases like this there is no independent engineer, no independent architect tasked to stand outside the process, inspect the work and ensure these sort of things don’t happen.”

Fraser implied other problems might be waiting to be discovered: “When everything is covered up it’s very hard to tell where these other problems might lie. You almost need to take a school to bits to find out that these issues are there. You don’t really understand there is a problem until something catastrophic goes wrong...”

According to the Scotsman, untangling corporate responsibility for the disintegrating Edinburgh schools will be difficult. While Miller Construction has now been purchased by FTSE 250 construction group Galliford Try, as many as six other firms were involved in the construction work and nine offered professional advice, design and planning.

But the Oxgangs collapse has exposed more than shoddy construction. The missing ties, which could easily have caused fatalities, express an extraordinary transformation, in which social spending under successive Scottish governments has been subordinated to a complex tangle of financiers and offshore infrastructure funds.

Started under the Conservative’s Private Finance Initiative, extended by Labour’s Public Private Partnership, the process has continued under the Scottish National Party (SNP) and its funding vehicle the Scottish Futures Trust.

Shareholders, for example, in ESP’s parent company, ESP (Holdings) Ltd, include Luxembourg-based Palio (No 19) Limited, PFI Infrastructure Finance Limited is owned by Jersey-based 3i, while Semperian PPP Investment Partners No 2 Limited is also controlled by a Jersey-based group. Aberdeen Infrastructure (No 3) Limited’s registered office is in Canary Wharf, London.

Reselling of interests in the Special Purpose Vehicles set up for each project has resulted in a host of investment outfits holding stakes in schools, hospitals, community centres and other public buildings, deriving guaranteed revenue streams from them. 3i, for example, in addition to its share in Edinburgh’s schools, has a stake in Angus schools, Gartnavel Royal Hospital, an elderly care centre in Edinburgh, and Midlothian Community Hospital. The PFI scheme for East Dunbartonshire is 50 percent controlled by Inisfree Nominees Ltd, which is owned by Coutts and Co Trustees (Jersey). Coutts is in turn part of RBS. Semperian PPP Holdings owns the other 50 percent of the East Dunbartonshire project.

Over a period of many decades, this bewildering range of companies are set to profit hugely from ongoing PPP and PFI projects. Over the lifetime of the Edinburgh schools project alone, for example, some £532 million is expected to be handed over by Edinburgh City Council for buildings whose total capital value is only £129 million. The Guardian reported that, in total, as of April 2013 Scottish local authorities alone owed £12.5 billion in PFI-related payments that will peak in 2025 at £550 million a year, and will not be cleared until 2041.

A raft of new projects are being organised under the auspices of the Scottish Futures Trust (SFT). Presented by the SNP as a “non-profit” model of financing public projects, the SFT, chaired by Sir Angus Grossart who also chairs Noble Grossart merchant bank, is nothing of the sort. In comparison with the PFI and PPP schemes, there appears to be somewhat more oversight of spending plans, but the basic arrangement is the same. Private consortiums mobilised by the SFT carry the upfront costs for new buildings and infrastructure. In return, they are guaranteed decades of repayments and maintenance costs.

The Guardian reported that Aberdeen’s new western peripheral road will cost £469 million to build. But, via the SFT, contractors will recoup £1.45 billion over a 30-year contract. Taken together, the legacy of PPP and PFI obligations, combined with new SFT contracts, means that the Scottish government is likely to have run up £50 billion of debts by 2020, compared with an annual budget of £30 billion. Scottish local authorities carry an additional £14.8 billion of debt.

The consequences are predictable: An ever increasing pressure on already stressed public finances to maintain expensive, unsupervised and often unnecessary contracts will result in endless demands for the further evisceration of social spending on services to the most vulnerable. None of this has featured in the Scottish general election, to be held May 5. Since all the parties are implicated in the private finance schemes, none has the slightest interest in highlighting, let alone opposing, their consequences.