Food Scandals and Agrochemicals: Time to Put Public Need Ahead of Private Greed

Colin Todhunter

Mad cow disease is a fatal epidemic neurological syndrome created by the agricultural industry, farmers and food processors explains Rosemary Mason in her new fully referenced report on pesticides and mad cow disease (it can be read here). 

In 1987, an epidemic of a fatal neurological disease in cows suddenly appeared in Britain. Cows became uncoordinated, staggered around, collapsed and finally died. The disease was called Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) because there were holes in the brain where prion protein cells became folded, had linked up and then split to cover the surface of the brain. There were more than 1,300 cases of BSE spread over 6,000 farms.

For at least 40 years, infected slaughterhouse carcasses had been rendered down and recycled into animal feed. Not wanting to waste anything, pressure cooking of the spinal cord and brain produced a sludge known as ‘mechanically-recovered meat’. The regulators allowed it to go into meat products. This processed meat and bone meal was turned into a coarse powder and was fed back to cows. Cows are herbivores and this way they were turned into cannibals.

By 1990, BSE had spread into 14 other species, including cats. Politicians, the food industry, media, the government, farmers and vets said BSE couldn’t jump species to affect humans and it was safe to eat beef. Advertisements were taken out in newspapers and politicians were shown eating steak tartare in the Houses of Parliament to boost the sales of beef. At an agricultural show, the Agriculture Minister John Gummer was seen offering a beef burger to his daughter.

In 1995, the first human under 40 contracted what became known as new variant Creutzfeldt-Jacob Disease (new vCJD, related to BSE and belonging to the same family of diseases). By March 1996, there were five cases and the government was forced to alter its advice. Kevin Maguire, a journalist, was lunching with someone in Westminster who said that scientists had discovered that ‘mad cow disease’ could jump species and had been found in humans.

Maguire said that it was a scandal in an effort to get every penny out of a carcass. His newspaper, ‘The  Mirror’, was the first to break the news to the public, saying that humans could catch mad cow disease from eating infected beef and that the government was about to do a U-turn by finally accepting that the brain wasting disease may have been passed to people. This U-turn by ministers – who for 10 years had insisted it was impossible – was a devastating indictment of the British government and probably one of the worst examples of government since the war.

During 1996, 10 more cases of new vCJD in people under 40 were diagnosed. All died within 13 months and there was no cure. In 2005, the authorities thought the disease was over, but in 2009, a case was discovered in a 30-year-old man. Another case appeared four years later. Today, people are living with uncertainty, not knowing if they are incubating new vCJD.

The parents of children who had died from new vCJD said “We trusted government advice.” Each Christmas one mother had sent an e-mail to those she thought responsible with a photograph of her daughter and said your actions have deprived me of my daughter. Another parent from Scotland who had lost his 30-year-old son to the disease had tattooed on his arm the name of his son followed by: ‘murdered by greed and corruption’.

In the documentary ‘Mad Cow Disease: The Great British Beef Scandal’, first broadcast on BBC 2 on 11 July 2019, Tim Lang, professor of food policy at City University London, said:

“New Variant CJD is not a natural disease. It is an epidemic we have created. If the agricultural industry hadn’t decided to feed cattle with meat and bone meal, if the food processors hadn’t decided to scrape every last bit of flesh off the carcass, and if MAFF [govt ministry] hadn’t prioritised farming over food safety, all of the people who died would still be alive. This is the tragedy.”

The following is taken from a publication compiled by the European Environment Agency, ‘Late lessons from early warnings’ (Patrick van Zwanenberg and Erik Millstone):

“Many of the UK policy makers who were directly responsible for taking policy decisions on bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) prior to March 1996 claim that, at the time, their approach exemplified the application of an ultra-precautionary approach and of rigorous science-based policy-making. We argue that these claims are not convincing because government policies were not genuinely precautionary and did not properly take into account the implications of the available scientific evidence.

“… It is, however, essential to appreciate that UK public policy making was handicapped by a fundamental tension. The department responsible for dealing with BSE has been the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF), and it was expected simultaneously to promote the economic interests of farmers and the food industry whilst also protecting public health from food-borne hazards. The evidence cited here suggests that because MAFF was expected simultaneously to meet two contradictory objectives it failed to meet either.”

The UK introduced legislation banning the use of contaminated ruminant protein for use in ruminant feed in 1988. By then, a million cows had entered the food chain. At the height of the scandal, British beef had lost around 60% of sales. Prior to the ban, microbiologist Stephen Dealler challenged the government’s claim over safety and was moved from his research lab.

However, Britain continued to export meat and bone meal to Europe. The European Commission asked the UK to introduce an export ban on feedstuffs, but the UK refused to do so. It was not until 1996 that the EC banned these exports.

From mad cows to GMOs and pesticides

Where glyphosate (and other agrochemicals) and genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are concerned, we again see commercial interests being prioritised and the public interest sidelined. Monsanto’s glyphosate-based Roundup was originally sprayed on crops in 1980 and on grazing land in 1985 (recommended by Monsanto scientists). GMOs entered the commercial market in the US in the 1990s. As shown in the report mentioned in the introduction to this article, the authorities did not heed the advice of key scientists and went ahead regardless.

Readers are urged to consult the report as it documents the duplicity that underpins the agrochemical/GMO agritech sector and describes how science and regulatory processes have been corrupted. In Britain, the government is saying that GM crops and Roundup are safe and intends to introduce these crops after Brexit. And in India too, the push to introduce GM food crops and their associated chemical inputs into the nation’s field is intensifying.

Of course, heavily compromised industry-funded scientists and other lobbyists say the science is decided on GM and that glyphosate is safe. They say anyone who rejects this is anti-science and doesn’t care about world hunger because we can only feed the world by rolling out more GM crops and more agrochemicals. But this is little more than propaganda and emotional blackmail, part of an industry strategy designed to tug at the heartstrings of public opinion and sway the policy agenda.

We need to turn to author Andre Leu who has outlined major deficiencies in pesticide safety protocols. He offers a more realistic appraisal:

“… it is a gross misrepresentation to say that any of the current published toxicology studies can be used to say that any of the thousands of pesticide products used in the world do not cause cancer or other diseases… there is no evidence that pesticides are safe.”

Washington State University researchers recently found a variety of diseases and other health problems in the second- and third-generation offspring of rats exposed to glyphosate. In the first study of its kind, the researchers saw descendants of exposed rats developing prostate, kidney and ovarian diseases, obesity and birth abnormalities. The study’s authors say:

“The ability of glyphosate and other environmental toxicants to impact our future generations needs to be considered and is potentially as important as the direct exposure toxicology done today for risk assessment.”

And where GMOs are concerned, they are little more than a flawed technological panacea that ignores the structural causes of malnutrition and hunger. GM food crops are regarded as the second coming of the Green Revolution. But just how successful was that?

We must look no further than the poisoning of Punjab (the cradle of the Green Revolution in India) and its sustained use of chemical pesticides, insecticides and fertilisers, which has continued unchecked; and despite claims about the Green Revolution having increasing productivity and saved countless lives, emerging evidence shows that in India it saved zero lives and that food productivity per capita showed no increase or actually went down.

An increasing number of prominent reports and voices are now arguing that we do not need toxic chemicals to feed the world and that if we maintain our economic and agricultural course we are headed for disaster. FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva recently called for healthier and more sustainable food systems and said agroecology can contribute to such a transformation.

Moreover, the new report from the UN  High Level Panel of Food Experts on Food Security and Nutrition – Agroecological and other innovative approaches for sustainable agriculture and food systems that enhance food security and nutrition – argues that food systems are at a crossroads and profound transformation is needed. Many high-profile reports and figures have been saying similar things for years.

Mad cow disease did not just suddenly appear from nowhere. It was created by humans, particularly the farming industry and food processors. The British government kept on maintaining that eating beef was perfectly safe. A scientist who spoke out was silenced. The interests of the beef industry were paramount.

Evidence suggests there could soon be a second wave of cases affecting humans. It will be among people with a genetic predisposition towards longer incubation periods than the first patients had. This genetic predisposition is shared by half the British population. Over 200 have contracted and died of vCJD.

But that number is dwarfed when it comes to the spiralling rates of certain diseases and conditions that we now see across the world. This too hasn’t happened for no reason. It is in large part a consequence of a globalised neoliberal food regime that relies on unhealthy food processing practices and inputs and a chemical-intensive model of farming that has seen a narrowing down of the range of crops consumed by humans.

It is disconcerting that various governments seem oblivious to the need of the hour and remain intent on pursuing an obsolete neoliberal, water-polluting, soil degrading, health destroying, unsustainable model of food and agriculture.

And all for what? Not to feed the public but to feed the profit motives of corporate interests.

Plastic waste from foreign nations dumped in East Java village

Owen Howell

Since last year a small rice farming village in East Java called Bangun has become a dumping ground for global waste. Piles of recyclable waste cover the streets and hide houses from view. Whole paddy fields are blanketed in huge heaps of rubbish which grow higher and wider each day as delivery trucks from Surabaya offload tonne after tonne of foreign shipments.

When China announced in January 2018 that it would no longer import the bulk of the world’s recyclable waste, developed nations began to look for other offshore dumping grounds. The government ban on imports of 24 types of waste material was prompted by noticeable pollution in water and air, due to the nature of the recycling process and poor residual waste management.

Several Western countries export recyclables as a cheap alternative to onshore processing, thus shoving the problem elsewhere at the economic and environmental expense of poorer nations. For years, they had relied on China’s recycling industry and were suddenly faced with a serious dilemma. The “solution” was to redirect the exports to South East Asia.

Channel News Asia reported that between 2016 and 2018 plastic waste imports in South East Asia grew by a staggering 171 percent. The Ocean Conservancy lobby revealed in a study that Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam were now among the top five countries in the world that were throwing plastic into the sea, with China at number one.

Because of laws in ASEAN nations prohibiting the importation of recyclable plastic, Western countries sent their unwanted plastic, along with other non-recyclable items, concealed within shipping containers of scrap paper. However, in recent months, local custom officials have cracked down and are examining these containers more closely on arrival. If discovered to be hiding illegal plastic materials, they are returned to their countries of origin.

Malaysia has promised to return 450 tonnes of contaminated paper waste and outlined a total ban on plastic imports to be put into effect within the next three years. At least 100 unregulated plastic recycling plants appeared across Malaysia in response to the enormous influx of nearly half a million tonnes of plastic in the first half of last year.

Last month the Philippines sent 69 shipping containers back to Canada after a long diplomatic row over violations of import rules. The containers were stored on the docks for five years before the Trudeau administration finally agreed to compromise with the Philippine government.

In answer to this growing catastrophe, the UN attempted in May to implement greater control over waste exports, by making an amendment to the Basel Convention. It was a treaty that controlled the movement of hazardous waste from one country to another and required exporters to gain the explicit consent of the importers. Without delay, 187 countries agreed to the new UN amendment.

The amendment, however, was soon proven to have little effect on the Western powers seeking to offload their plastic waste.

Indonesia received five containers from the US in June, contaminated with plastic and various other materials. Last Tuesday customs officials in Surabaya found that eight containers from Australia were concealing a range of plastics and household wastes including aluminium cans, plastic drink bottles, electronic devices and used nappies. In addition, the same Surabaya port is now investigating 58 containers from the US and Germany suspected to be holding plastic. Last week, customs officials on Batam Island announced their rejection of 49 containers from the US, Australia, France, Germany and Hong Kong.

Indonesia witnessed a massive rise in imported waste following the ban in China: from 10,000 tonnes per month in 2017 to 35,000 tonnes per month in 2018, according to the Jakarta Post. In Java, starting from last year, every day 40 to 50 trucks bring about 75 tonnes of waste to villages in Mojokerto Regency, of which Bangun is just one.

Bangun is an obvious destination for the dumping of this waste because it is home to four paper mills. The biggest, PT Pakerin, pays villagers to sort through the waste and separate paper from plastic. The factory workers come to collect the paper, while the villagers sell the plastic to tofu factories to be processed into industrial fuels. Any unwanted plastic is burnt on the banks of the Brantas River.

Previously impoverished peasants, most Bangun residents have sold their farms and currently work as waste collectors for the paper mills. The Indonesian government has allowed the flow of rubbish into the village to continue as locals are now dependent on waste sorting. On average they earn around 700,000 rupiah ($US50) a day, a large increase on their previous income.

One resident named Giman, 56, explained to Tribun Jatim reporters that the money made from plastic waste has fulfilled everyday necessities previously denied to him and his neighbours: “You can eat every day… you can enrol your children in school until S2 [Master’s degree].”

The villagers were dismayed to hear of the government’s decision to reject containers holding plastic waste. East Java governor Khofifah Indar Parawansa visited Bangun and declared that the provincial government “must provide a solution for the choice of new income options for residents.” This is nothing more than a token gesture.

The health impact of huge piles of plastic waste in Bangun is already becoming evident. The waste has already polluted the Brantas River, the source of drinking water for millions of Javanese people. Environmental research organisation Ecoton found that 80 percent of its fish are contaminated with microplastics. Further, it is widely known that plastic, when exposed to sunlight over time, can release gases that contribute to global warming.

Around 300 million tonnes of plastic are produced every year, much of it being dumped in landfills or the sea. The World Socialist Web Site wrote last year: “Plastics are wonderful, highly useful materials. Their reckless disposal, however, is a major factor in the environmental degradation and climate change that threaten devastating consequences for humanity and all life on Earth.”

Publico reports Spanish intelligence facilitated 2017 Barcelona terror attack

Alex Lantier 

In an explosive report, the news site Publico alleges that Spain’s National Intelligence Center (CNI) intensively followed the Islamic State (IS) terror cell that carried out the August 17, 2017 Barcelona attacks, up to the day of the attack itself. Far from arresting the cell before it carried out the attacks, which left 21 dead and 130 wounded, the CNI let them proceed. Officials at CNI headquarters then tried to delete the file on cell leader Abdelbaki Es-Satty as investigations of the attack began.

The Publico report constitutes prima facie evidence of criminal behavior at top levels of the Spanish state—abetted by intelligence agencies of other NATO powers that launched the Islamist proxy war in Syria from which IS emerged. NATO governments and major US and European press outlets have reacted with deafening silence.

The Publico report, based on documents provided by the CNI to police officials investigating the attack and interviews with the police and CNI, begins by detailing how Es-Satty’s links to the CNI became known. The Barcelona attack was triggered unexpectedly, when Es-Satty accidentally blew himself up at a safe house in Alcanar where the cell was building bombs. Their cover blown, the cell’s survivors quickly decided to drive a truck over pedestrians on Barcelona’s La Rambla avenue. Several died later, in a shoot-out with security forces in Cambrils.

In the ruins of the Alcanar house, investigators found a sheet of paper with an email login, adamperez27177@gmail.com, and password, PEREJUAN18. According to Publico, “For investigators who discovered this message, there was no doubt that Es-Satty’s CNI handler had created an email address to communicate with him.”

The Gmail account, of which Publico provides screen captures, contained two draft emails “in perfect Spanish.” The first, dated May 24, 2017, says: “I see you were able to log in, you just have to leave me a message like this one as a draft and I will read it. You can already start writing things. Thank you my friend.” The second says: “Do you have nothing to write or is it that you cannot? Today is Monday, June 19.”

Es-Satty was known to the CNI, which confirmed three months after the Barcelona attacks that he was an informant. Born in Morocco in 1973, he had first travelled in 2002 to Spain, where he was detained on human-trafficking charges. He cooperated with Operation Chacal, an investigation of the 2004 Al Qaeda bombings in Madrid, and was later jailed from 2010 to 2014 for trafficking hashish. In prison, he shared a cell and reportedly established a “special friendship” with 2004 Madrid bomber Rachid Aglif.

NATO intelligence knew Es-Satty was linked with Al Qaeda activity at the highest levels. French intelligence and the CNI had jointly concluded after Operation Chacal that the 2004 Madrid attacks were carried out with explosives paid for with hashish. According to CNI documents provided to police investigators and cited by Publico, “Satty was seen by the Penitentiary Institutions (IP) as an Islamist, proving himself to be radical from the beginning of his term in the Castellon prison.”

Nonetheless, according to the Publico report, the CNI aggressively covered for Es-Satty. When he was brought before a judge for deportation after his prison term, his lawyers had documents that the judge considered proof that he was “firmly based” in Spain—even though much of his time in Spain had been spent in prison on drug trafficking charges. Publico states that its intelligence “sources maintain that the CNI fixed up the recommendations and authorizations that opened the doors for Es Satty to be admitted as an imam in Ripoll.”

While protecting Es-Satty, the CNI and other agencies on both sides of the Atlantic devoted massive resources to monitoring his cell. Perhaps the most remarkable documents revealed by Publico concern the CNI’s intensive surveillance of young, inexperienced members of the cell who went to France just before the attacks. French officials confirmed they were involved in this surveillance.

Publico says these documents “emerged due to an editing error of the secret services, revealing that on the eve of the Las Ramblas massacre, Spanish spies were monitoring and transcribing all the conversations (on their mobile phones) of the people who carried out the killings.”

Omar Hichamy and Younes Abouyaaquoub, the man who drove a vehicle through the crowds on Las Ramblas, travelled to Paris on August 11-12, 2017. The CNI noted the highways on which they travelled, and the times when they arrived in various Paris neighbourhoods and approached different monuments, including the Eiffel Tower. It notes that the two bought a camera for €129 at the Fnac-St. Lazare store. The two phone calls they made during the trip were analysed in detail.

A CNI document published by Publico reports, “The calls proceeded through the phone numbers linked to Omar and Younes (34600314111 and 34612526378), but they ended up being both times between Mohamed Hichamy and Younes Abouyaaquoub, who shortened his sentences in order not to reveal his concrete activities.”

Claims the CNI was unaware that these youth were involved in a terror plot do not hold water. The CNI devoted an extraordinary level of surveillance to these two youth, who had no criminal record. The CNI, Publico writes, was “listening to and transcribing all conversations between those young Muslims, who were not supposedly yet related to any jihadist plot—executing the most exhaustive possible intelligence controls, which require considerable material and human resources.”

A few days before, moreover, US agencies had given Madrid detailed reports that the cell was preparing attacks. On July 31, 2017, agents of Exeintel, a private US agency whose Twitter account says it provides “actionable intelligence” that will “only be accessible to law enforcement,” chatted online with Abouyaaquoub. They then sent a “red alert” notice to Madrid, reporting that he had clumsily bragged that his cell was preparing terrorist attacks.

The daily El Nacional posted screen captures of their internet chat with Abouyaaquoub, who wrote: “We must attack several small towns, when all the police come to us to move to another place and to move to another place and to attack it. They won’t be able to defend themselves from us.” Exeintel subsequently pulled the screen capture images from its website.

Nonetheless, the CNI simply kept monitoring the cell, even as it assembled chemicals and metal scrap to make bombs and then, after the Alcanar explosion, decided on a new attack. “The Spanish secret service continued watching and monitoring the terrorists until the very same day of the attacks on Las Ramblas,” Publico writes, adding, “It was not until the morning after the massacre that the Es-Satty file was deleted from the CNI’s central register.” Such a deletion, Publico reports, can only be done from central CNI headquarters in Madrid,

This account underscores the links between NATO agencies and Islamist terrorists, developed over the now eight-year war in Syria, underlying all the IS attacks in Europe. The Charlie Hebdo and November 13 attacks in 2015 in Paris, the March 22, 2016 bombings in Brussels, the Christmas 2016 attack in Berlin and the 2017 bombing in Manchester all were carried out by networks closely monitored by intelligence agencies.

These attacks were then used to justify far-reaching police-state measures. These ranged from the crackdown on the G20 protests in Hamburg and the lockdown of Brussels, to the intensification of police powers around the French state of emergency, which culminated in the deployment of the army against “yellow vests” protesting social inequality. The Spanish events underscore how these unpopular attacks on basic democratic and social rights proceeded based on state criminality.

The CNI failed to stop the Es-Satty cell’s attacks as Madrid sought a justification to impose martial law before the Catalan independence referendum of October 1, 2017. State officials were dismayed when mass protests erupted in Barcelona, denouncing state complicity in the attack. The brutal police crackdown on the independence referendum was followed by a vast shift to the right in official politics: show trials of Catalan nationalist political prisoners, the rehabilitation of Spain’s 20th century fascist dictator, Francisco Franco, and the promotion of the pro-Francoite Vox party.

No credible explanation has been given until now for the CNI’s failure to act to halt the attacks. Last year, the PSOE and the right-wing Citizens and Popular Party vetoed calls for investigations of the CNI’s role in the attacks in the Spanish Congress. The question that is posed is whether the CNI and allied intelligence agencies allowed these attacks to proceed in order to provide, via criminal means, a pretext for attempts to impose a fascistic regime in Spain and across Europe.

UK intelligence agencies exonerated of responsibility in London Bridge terror attack

Simon Whelan & Robert Stevens

An inquest jury found this week that the three men who killed eight people in the June 2017 London Bridge terrorist attacks were lawfully shot dead by armed police officers.

On June 3, 2017, the three Islamists—Khuram Butt, Rachid Redouane and Youssef Zaghba—drove a van into pedestrians on London Bridge before exiting the vehicle and stabbing numerous people in a 10-minute rampage through the Borough Market area.

Given that evidence was presented showing that police gave them warnings before shooting, it was fairly clear that a “lawful killing” verdict would be the outcome of the inquest into the deaths of the three—who were confronting the police with 12-inch knives when they were killed.

The inquest into the deaths of the terrorists followed the inquest into the eight victims last month, which failed to answer many unexplained questions as to how and why the perpetrators were able to commit such atrocities unhindered.

What soon emerged after the London Bridge attacks is that the ringleader, Butt, was well known in advance to the intelligence agencies.

Once again, the main question posed by these legal processes is how close are Britain’s security services to Islamist terrorists, who have now carried out multiple attacks on innocent civilians in the UK?

Throughout the inquest, the bereaved families heard a litany of evidence of what is routinely termed by a compliant media only as “a string of errors” and “missed opportunities” by police and intelligence agencies—leaving Butt to plot the attack free from any interference by the state.

In the face of this damning evidence, the chief coroner of England and Wales, Mark Lucraft QC, said, “My finding is that the pre-attack investigations of MI5 and SO15 [the Metropolitan police’s Counter-Terrorism Command] were generally thorough and rigorous. On all the evidence … I am not persuaded that investigative opportunities were lost which could realistically have saved the lives of those who died.”

The families presented evidence before the inquest showing that the attacks could and should have been prevented. A barrister for six of the eight bereaved families accused both MI5 and the police of missing “opportunities galore” to identify the perpetrators and prevent the attack.

Butt had been investigated by MI5 since 2015 over concerns he wished to stage an attack. The inquest heard that investigators inexplicably “failed” to spot Butt’s association with his fellow attackers, nor the fact that Butt was working at a gym and an Islamic school that were both owned by another alleged Islamist extremist.

As Gareth Patterson QC told the Old Bailey court on behalf of the victims’ families, “Straightforward investigative work would have revealed these things.” He said there was a “fairly damning list” of failings, noting, “The attack planning was going on for some time and was there to be detected, it was eminently detectable and these eight tragic deaths did not need to happen.”

Patterson explained that preparations for the London plot over several months were missed repeatedly. In particular, “Evidence of attack planning can probably be dated to the meetings of 7 March 2017 and the purchase of the operational telephone on around 15–17 March 2017.”

“This means,” said Patterson, “that there was a period of months during which an attack could have been detected. It is submitted that there is a ‘substantial chance’ that a higher level of monitoring would have detected such planning. It is important that the paucity of actual evidence of attack planning, in the context of a failure to investigate, is not used to suggest that there was no evidence that might have been uncovered through proportionate investigative steps.

“The truth is that the eight people who died relied, as we all do, on the police and Security Service to keep them safe,” the barrister said. “Regrettably,” he continued, “they did not discharge their duty when dealing with this dangerous man, Khuram Butt. Insufficient steps were taken to prevent the attack.”

Refusing to accept that the authorities were in any way responsible for the attackers being able to fulfil their plans, the coroner sought to deflect culpability from them and criticised Butt’s family for supposedly failing to inform the authorities. But it is a matter of record, with the inquest hearing the evidence, that Butt’s brother-in-law did in fact call police to warn them of Butt’s intentions. But according to the official narrative, this information was supposedly “mishandled” and failed to reach the teams in the counterterrorism command and at MI5 investigating Butt.

Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu disputed claims that opportunities were missed. Citing the coroner’s findings, Basu told the press, “Even those closest to the attackers, and we have heard from them during the inquest, knew nothing of their murderous plans.” This is exactly the state defence Patterson argued was untenable. The state say they could not be expected to locate a plot because there was no evidence, while failing to explain why they refused to look in the first place!

After hearing the coroner’s conclusions, family members took to the steps of the court to insist that they believed the police and MI5 had failed in their collective duties.

Philippe Pigeard, father of victim Alexandre Pigeard, said “Many of Butt’s actions are unknown by the investigators, even though they were supposed to have him under investigation. The question is: could this attack have been prevented? The answer is really difficult—but yes, probably. I think they could have done a better job.”

Christine Delcros, the girlfriend of victim Xavier Thomas, said, “I believe this attack was preventable. I find it staggering that Butt, a well-known extremist, was allowed to work within the London transport network, to have access to and teach young children, and to rent and use a vehicle in a manner now too often encountered. I am dismayed SO15 did not pass this critical information to any of his employers.”

Just months after the London Bridge attacks, an investigation into that and three other terrorist attacks by the UK’s former independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, David Anderson QC, concluded that three of the six attackers were well-known to MI5.

One named by Anderson was Salman Abedi, who committed the Manchester Arena bombing, in which 22 people were killed just days before the London Bridge attacks. A mass of classified information was withheld from Anderson’s report, but it is widely known that not only Salman Abidi, but his entire family were implicated in the atrocity, including his parents and brother, Hashem Abedi.

Hashem Abedi was in Libya at the time of the Arena bombing but was detained shortly afterwards and this week was finally extradited to the UK to face charges in relation to the attack. He appeared in court Thursday after being charged with the murder of the 22 and denied any involvement.

Unlike many other perpetrators of terrorist attacks, Hashem Abedi—someone with intimate knowledge of the Manchester Arena bombing— is not dead as a result of it. Any ensuing trial has the potential to reveal the intimate relationship between the British state and those it has enlisted for years in Islamist circles to take part in proxy wars on its behalf.

Last year the Daily Mail published further damning information about these connections, revealing that Salman Abedi was a protected British intelligence asset before committing his heinous act. The newspaper reported that Abedi and his brother received British government assistance and fled Libya—in the midst of the Libyan civil war—on board a Royal Navy vessel, HMS Enterprise, in August 2014. This was less than three years before Salman Abedi bombed the Arena. The Mail reported that the Abedis’ presence aboard the ship was known to the highest levels of the British state, including in Downing Street.

All these events are a devastating condemnation of imperialism. The major imperialist powers created the conditions for the radicalisation of Islamist elements, on a right-wing basis, who were then used as foot soldiers in proxy-war operations. They have systematically worked with such forces, not as enemies but allies—in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria. In turn, these Frankenstein monsters invariably respond by launching savage attacks, with working people being the main victims.

Gulf between wealthy and poor widening in Australia

Mike Head 

Misleading headlines, such as “Australia a nation of millionaires for the first time in history,” last week greeted the latest official report on household wealth and income. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Household Income and Wealth Australia 2017–18 report actually shows that most households own substantially less than $1 million, and that social inequality has intensified since the 2008–09 global financial crisis.

“Average” wealth—a figure inflated by those at the very top—rose above $1 million, primarily because of soaring house prices. The median or middle figure, however, was $558,900. In other words, half the households had a net worth of less than half of $1 million. In fact, just as many households had less than $223,500 as had over $1 million.

The most revealing indicator of the social gulf is that the richest 20 percent of households increased their wealth by 67 percent in the 15 years between 2003–04 and 2017–18, to an average of $3.237 million, while the assets of the poorest 20 percent rose less than 3 percent to $35,200.

While those in the wealthiest quintile gained an average of $1.3 million, the average worth of the poorest quintile rose only $1,000 (after inflation). As a result, the top 20 percent now own 93 times more than the lowest.

Moreover, according to an analysis by the Guardian’s Greg Jericho, this wealth gap accelerated during the two years to 2017–18. During that most recent period, the top 25 percent saw their wealth increase by 17.7 percent, while the bottom 20 percent went backward.

Successive governments, both Liberal-National and Labor, have enriched the corporate elite via tax handouts and pro-business policies, at the expense of the working class, whose real wages, job security and basic public services have been cut.

The ABS’s data indicates that wealth inequality is at its highest level since these surveys began in 1993–94. By 2017–18, the wealthiest 20 percent of households held over 60 percent of all household wealth, while the lowest quintile had less than 1 percent.

Even these figures grossly underestimate the social divide. Statistical averages are distorted by the wealth of the super-rich. This masks the financial stress and social misery confronting millions of working-class people, due to stagnant wages, under-employment, poverty-line pension and welfare payments, and rising debt levels.

A recent “Cold and Lonely” report, for example, found that elderly poor people are suffering hypothermia inside their homes because they cannot afford to turn heating appliances on.

By presenting a breakdown only into quintiles, the ABS surveys also camouflage the vast gap between the top 1 percent and 10 percent, and the rest of society. According to the latest Australian Financial Review Rich List, the country’s 200 wealthiest individuals or families control wealth totaling $341.8 billion—up by 21 percent from last year. Some members of the “top 10” virtually doubled their fortunes in 12 months.

A significant report published in 2017 provided, for the first time, a breakdown of the wealth proportions held by the richest 1 percent, 5 percent and 10 percent of the population. The top 1 percent alone owned up to 20 percent of household wealth, accounting for the lion’s share of the 55 percent held by the richest 10 percent.

That report showed that Australia is one of the most unequal industrialised countries, while mirroring processes underway globally. While the richest 1 percent live in extreme luxury, and the remainder of the top 10 percent enjoyed lifestyles far out of reach of the everyone else, the bottom 40 percent are barely surviving.

According to last week’s ABS report, one factor in the widening gulf is the value of property, both owner-occupied and investment properties. For high-wealth households, average property values rose from $1.14 million to $1.85 million between 2003–04 and 2017–18. Households in the poorest 20 percent that owned property had much lower average growth of $10,100, to $18,100, over the 14 years. But only 5.5 percent of low-wealth households actually held property.

Home ownership is at a record low. In the 1995–96 survey, almost 43 percent of respondents owned their home outright and another 28.3 percent were paying off a mortgage. By 2017–18, outright home ownership had fallen below 30 percent for the first time since the surveys began, while 36.7 percent had mortgage debt. The other 32 percent were renting—a record high.

Because of decades of government cuts to public housing, renters were increasingly subjected to the private market. In 1994–95, 5.5 percent of people rented through a government agency, while 18.4 percent had a private landlord. By 2017–18, the state agencies rented to 3.1 percent, leaving a record 27.1 percent paying rent to private landlords.

On average, household debt burdens exceed what they earn in annual income for the first time, mainly due to huge mortgages. The ABS found that in 2017–18, the median debt-to-annual income ratio hit 110 percent.

This burden is born disproportionately by the most vulnerable households. More than 30 percent of the poorest households are carrying debts three times their income. A decade ago, that proportion was less than 23 percent.

Education is another source of inequality. Those in poorest quintile of households are carrying the highest levels of debt for university or vocational education. Between 2003–04 and 2017–18, their average study loan debts increased in real terms from $2,800 to $7,200. Those for high wealth households rose only from $1,300 to $4,800.

Income inequality is widening too. The sharpest indicator is in New South Wales, the most populous state. There, those in the lowest 20 percent of income earners actually suffered an average income fall in real terms after 2015–16, from $412 a week to just $397 a week. That is not enough to live on.

Another factor is that welfare cuts have stripped even sub-poverty entitlements from growing numbers of people, deliberately pushing more workers into low-paid and insecure jobs. By 2017–18, only 44 percent of households received more than 1 percent of their income from welfare payments, well below the 55 percent in 2000.

This redistribution of income and wealth from the poorest to the richest layers will accelerate as the Liberal-National government’s income tax package, passed by parliament this month with Labor’s backing, takes effect.

Over the next five years, billions of dollars will be handed to the top 5 percent of the population—those taxpayers receiving more than $200,000 a year—while the millions of low-paid workers, students and welfare recipients trying to live on less than $41,000 a year will get nothing in tax cuts.

Thousands protest in central China against proposed waste incinerator

Robert Campion

Thousands demonstrated in the central Chinese city of Wuhan recently in a week-long protest to denounce a planned garbage incinerator. The Chinese government mobilised police to quash the protests while, at the same time, mass demonstrations were continuing in Hong Kong.

The Wuhan protests began on June 28, triggered by local government plans to establish the waste incinerator in densely-populated Yangluo in the Xinzhou district. While authorities claimed that a location for the incinerator had not yet been approved, this did little to assuage the fears of residents. As many as 10,000 people marched that weekend to voice their opposition.

The suspected site is close to housing, surrounded by 300,000 residents and two universities within a three-kilometre radius. According to reports, the protest was violently broken up by over 1,000 police, who beat and arrested demonstrators, including the elderly. According to protesters, those detained were released a few days later.

Assurances from the local government that the incinerator would not be installed without further environmental studies and community approval were met with deep distrust. Smaller protests continued on July 1 and 2, then 10,000 demonstrators defiantly marched back onto the streets on July 3 for two days. Protesters chanted “give us back the green mountains and clear waters” and “garbage burning plant get lost from Yangluo.”

The local government forced businesses to close at 6 p.m. on July 4 in an effort to remove protesters from the streets. The mobile phone network was also disabled. According to reports, around 1,000 riot police returned, armed with helmets, shields and batons, as well as an armoured car, to disperse the demonstrations that night. Video footage posted onto Twitter and YouTube shows police riot squads violently suppressing residents in an effort to intimidate and disperse the movement.

On July 9, the state-owned Global Times reported that authorities “vowed the project would not begin without residents’ approval.” Protests seem to have stopped, but according to locals, a heavy police presence remains in the city.

Wuhan is a city of ten million people. The proposed plant stands to become the 6th such incinerator in the city. The Xinzhou district is also the site of a large landfill. Local residents complained that in summer months the air is so foul that they close their windows to get away from the smell, which still prevents them from getting sleep.

One 24-year-old protester in Yangluo told the South China Morning Post: “For years we had to put up with the disgusting smell of the garbage burial site, and we were all glad when we heard it would end next year.” He was referring to government announcements that the landfill would be replaced with a public park. “All of a sudden, the park is gone and a garbage burning site will be put there. Nobody can bear it.”

In addition, previous plants have produced toxic emissions that lead to lung disease, leukaemia and cancer. In 2013, China’s state broadcaster CCTV reported that the five existing incinerators in Wuhan were substandard and emitted dangerous pollutants.

A study in 2015 by the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health found that none of the incinerator plants operating in Wuhan passed an environmental impact assessment. This made it clear that the government had done nothing in the two years since the CCTV report in 2013. In similar fashion, incinerators have been placed near residential areas without public consultation, and routinely flout waste disposal standards.

Since the restoration of capitalism, beginning in the 1970s, China’s economic growth has come at the direct expense of safety and the environment, producing deep grievances in the working class. One waste management disaster in Shenzhen in 2015 led to the deaths of at least 73 people. A mountain of construction waste and debris collapsed near workers’ living quarters. In 2017, residents of Qingyuan, Guangdong province, protested against a proposed waste incinerator, forcing the government to halt its construction plans.

Caixin, a Chinese business journal, commented in January that “glaring falsifications and outright corruption persist in some of China’s fundamental environmental monitoring data.” It explained that the situation had been further compounded since 2015 by the privatisation of environmental testing operations, which “has since become an enormous and lucrative industry.” Testing is either not carried out, or poorly conducted, or companies simply offer bribes in order to pass safety checks they would otherwise fail.

Beijing is deeply fearful that social unrest will explode across China, much as it already has in Hong Kong. Throughout China, workers, peasants, and youth are facing similar attacks on social and working conditions. Hundreds of thousands in Hong Kong lack access to safe, affordable, and clean housing, much like in Wuhan. This is just one underlying factor in driving the intensity of the Hong Kong demonstrations.

The protests in Wuhan—and those of working people throughout China—pose the question of united working class opposition to the Stalinist Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in Beijing.

Posts related to the Wuhan protests became a “hot topic” viewed by 231 million users on Weibo, a Chinese social media platform equivalent to Twitter, in the space of three days, despite government censorship. Yet, Beijing is objectively incapable of addressing the social crisis in China, and discontent will only continue to grow.

The fight for democratic rights, including the right to live in a clean and safe environment, can be fought only through the unity of the entire Chinese working class to overturn the regime as part of the international struggle against capitalism.

United Nations report finds global hunger on the rise for third year in row

E.P. Milligan 

A report published this week by the United Nations (UN) shows that over 820 million people across the world suffered from hunger in 2018. The annual report cast doubt on the UN’s purported goal of ending world hunger by 2030, describing it as “an immense challenge.” Last year marked the third year in a row that hunger levels have risen with roughly one in every nine people globally going hungry.

The rise in hunger and food insecurity is inextricably linked to the rise of social inequality, the outbreak of new wars and conflicts and the disastrous effects of climate change. Contrary to the neo-Malthusian arguments that hunger, like environmental degradation, stems from “overpopulation,” any serious analysis of the report’s findings ultimately points to the crisis of capitalism and the irrational distribution of the world’s resources.

The authors themselves note dangerous economic trends, such as nationalist trade policies, which have contributed to world hunger and continue to threaten any ability to reverse such processes. “This dark outlook,” the report states, “reflects increasing risks related to rising trade tensions, weakening investments, increasing government and corporate debt, and rising borrowing costs.”

Such tragic figures point to a society and global economic system in retrograde. The growth of world hunger over the past three years, itself a departure from roughly a decade of so-called “progress” involving a pitifully marginal increase in world living standards, has arisen out of concrete historical conditions.

Such a phenomenon is only possible in a world where 26 billionaires control as much wealth as the poorest half of humanity. Increasingly bloody neocolonial proxy wars—such as the war in Yemen, named one of the greatest humanitarian disasters in human history—deprive millions of basic needs such as food, water and medical supplies. Climate change, a product of the capitalist mismanagement of the world’s resources, has led to increasingly extreme weather conditions such as droughts, floods and storms, all of which have produced famine conditions for millions more.

The report, titled “The State of Food Insecurity and Nutrition in the World: Safeguarding Against Economic Slowdowns and Downturns,” was organized by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. UN researchers produced the paper in tandem with the International Fund for Agricultural Development, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the World Food Programme and the World Health Organization.

A breakdown of statistics by region shows that hunger has risen almost 20 percent in Africa’s subregions. In Eastern Africa, close to one-third of the population (30.8 per cent) is undernourished. Although hunger levels in Latin America and the Caribbean still remain below seven percent, they are slowly increasing. In Asia, 11 percent of the population is undernourished.

The UN found that hunger is increasing primarily in countries where economic growth is lagging, particularly countries that rely heavily on the international trade of primary commodities—i.e., food, raw materials, fuels and base metals. It also found that income inequality is on the rise in many of these countries, a process which will serve to exacerbate the problem. “Income inequality increases the likelihood of severe food insecurity,” the report states.

In other words, the problem of hunger is most severe in countries most vulnerable to the predations of world imperialism. The report identifies “middle earning” countries as among the most affected by increases in hunger. These are nations with vast amounts of natural resources and platforms of cheap labor that are routinely exploited by the banks and major corporations of the centers of world imperialism—above all, of the United States and European powers.

For the first time since the creation of the yearly report, researchers chose to take a broader look at food insecurity. The report introduced a second indicator, distinct from hunger, which found that 17.2 percent of the world’s population—1.3 billion people—lack regular access to “nutritious and sufficient food.”

“Even if they were not necessarily suffering from hunger,” the report states, “they are at greater risk of various forms of malnutrition and poor health.” When these figures are combined with those suffering from hunger, the report estimates that 2 billion people are affected by moderate to severe food insecurity.

The report places special attention on the conditions of children, a measuring stick of the relative health of society as a whole. It found that since 2012, no progress has been made in reducing low birthweight. It also found that while the number of children under the age of five affected by stunted growth has decreased over the past six years, the pace of progress is far too slow to meet 2030 targets. In southern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, one in three children are stunted. Finally, overweight and obesity—themselves indicators of malnutrition—continue to increase globally, particularly among school-age children and adults. It points out that these problems will inevitably disrupt other developmental patterns across a wide array of indices.

Unsurprisingly, the report does not provide any realistic solutions to the crisis. Despite the far-reaching implications of the report’s findings, its authors remain at an impasse. “Our actions to tackle these troubling trends will have to be bolder,” the report declares. “We must foster pro-poor and inclusive structural transformation focusing on people and placing communities at the centre to reduce economic vulnerabilities and set ourselves on track to ending hunger, food insecurity and all forms of malnutrition.”

Unable to draw deeper conclusions about the failure of world capitalism, the report at best can only offer unrealistic proposals for reform. Above all, the authors of the report advise against any further cuts to social programs or trade policies that would threaten economic downturn. As the ruling classes of the world shift further and further to the right, however, they increasingly will base themselves upon these very policies in an attempt to offset the growing internal economic contradictions of their various nation-states.

French intelligence strategy document warns of “insurrectional violence”

Will Morrow

The French national intelligence and counterterrorism organization quietly released the first update to its five-year public strategy document on Monday. The report—which was uploaded to a ministerial website and not accompanied by any presidential press release—states that the role of France’s counterterrorism agencies is to fight “subversive movements” and the threat of “insurrectional violence” in the population.

The “National Intelligence Strategy” was published by the National Intelligence Coordination for the Fight Against Terrorism (CNRLT), an arm of the Élysée presidential palace. It advises the president and reports directly to the prime minister. The report was written in direct collaboration with the prime minister and personally approved by President Emmanuel Macron.

The strategy document “constitutes the road map for the intelligence agencies,” it states in the preface. A comparison with the first five-year “road map” makes clear the purposes of the update. The 2014 version identifies its five areas of operations as terrorism, espionage and economic interference, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, cyberattacks and organized crime.

This month’s report establishes a new category: “Anticipation of crises and the risk of major ruptures.” Under the headline “Violent subversion,” it states: “The growing strength of movements and networks of a subversive character constitutes a factor of crisis that is all the more preoccupying because they are aimed at weakening, and even destroying, the foundations of our democracy and the republican institutions through insurrectional violence.”

The document explains that by “subversive” movements, it means not only “violent actions against people or goods,” but “also the collection of traditional demands that these movements employ in order to infiltrate and radicalize them.”

This is a formula for the criminalization and violent suppression of any expression of social opposition in the population. Within this framework, so-called “traditional demands”—i.e., against layoffs, for higher wages, improved living standards, against war and for social equality—do not represent the legitimate demands of the population. They are merely “employed” by “subversive” forces whose aim is the destruction of democracy. This is the argument of a fascist police state.

“The radicalization of these modes of action calls for a heightened vigilance by the intelligence services in their function of anticipation and the defence of the state to prevent violence of all kinds and the destabilization of our institutions,” the report continues.

Under the headline “Crises of public order,” the report outlines the response of the intelligence agencies to the growth of social opposition in the working class. “The anticipation, analysis and monitoring of social movements and crises in society by the intelligence agencies constitute a double priority,” it states. “A knowledge of local life and the connection with its actors (elected officials, associations, media…) are important challenges for the different intelligence services.”

These policies, outlined by a leading “counterterrorism” agency in France, underscore the fact that the vast expansion of the police powers and the evisceration of democratic rights under the banner of the so-called “war on terror” over the past decade and a half has always been directed against social and political opposition in the working class, while promoting the neo-colonial operations of French imperialism in the Middle East and Africa.

In France, the build-up of a police state has been carried out under both The Republicans and the Socialist Party—from which Macron’s ruling Republic on the Move party emerged—with the support of the entire political establishment. Socialist Party President Francois Hollande utilized the November 2015 terror attacks as a pretext to declare—with the support of Jean-Luc Melenchon’s Left Front—a state of emergency that lasted almost two years.

The report constitutes a warning of the far advanced preparations for authoritarian rule in France and across Europe. The objective source of this universal process is the staggering growth in social inequality in every country, and the concentration of wealth in the hands of a tiny corporate and financial elite, which is determined to enrich itself by wiping away whatever gains remain of those won by the working class in bitter struggles throughout the 20th century.

The ruling class is turning toward police-state measures and the promotion of fascistic and far-right forces to suppress growing opposition in the working class to capitalist and rising support for socialism.

In Germany, the Verfassungschutz intelligence agency has placed the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei, the German section of the International Committee of the Fourth International, on a list of “left-wing extremist” organizations requiring surveillance—citing its opposition to militarism and capitalism, and its call for the building of a mass revolutionary socialist movement in the working class. At the same time, the political establishment promotes the neo-Nazi Alternative for Germany and covers for far-right terrorist networks inside the state apparatus.

In the United States, President Donald Trump, with his almost daily statements that “America will never be a socialist country,” speaks and acts ever more openly as a fascist seeking to build an extra-parliamentary movement based on anticommunism and violent anti-immigrant attacks.

Within France itself, the Macron administration has responded to mass “yellow vest” protests against social inequality over the past six months, not with concessions but escalating police violence, including mass arrests, rubber bullets, tear gas and the deployment of the military.

The advanced preparations for authoritarian rule in France were underscored by the government’s actions on Bastille Day on July 14.

Terrified that protests could erupt as thousands of soldiers marched through Paris for the Bastille Day parade in a humiliating setback to Macron, the security forces placed a blanket ban on anyone in political sympathy with the “yellow vests” from entering large areas of Paris around the parade area on the Champs-Elysées avenue.

Before the parade, the police rounded up hundreds of individuals identified as potential protest leaders. Leading “yellow vest” protesters including Eric Drouet, Maxime Nicolle and Jérôme Rodrigues were rounded up and detained until the end of the ceremony. Police then transported the detainees to a camp in Paris’ 18th Arondissement, near a police station surrounded by barbed wire fences in an area of abandoned warehouses.

Nonetheless, masses of people booed and jeered Macron as his motorcade passed down the Champs-Élysées during the Bastille Day parade.

The French government is now giving a green light for a further escalation of police violence. This week, the news web site Médiapart revealed that the Macron government had bestowed a “yellow vest” award to more than 9,000 police officers last month as recognition for their role in violently repressing the protests.

Those who received medals included Grégoire Chassaing, the police commissioner in charge of the police raid on a music festival in Nantes on June 22 that caused the disappearance and presumed drowning of 24-year-old Steve Caniço; Rabah Souchi, who led the police charge that nearly killed the peaceful, 73-year-old “yellow vest” protester Geneviève Legay in Nice; and Bruno Félix, the leader of the riot police unit implicated in the death of Zinab Redouane in Marseille.

Drug companies poured 76 billion opioid pills into US neighborhoods in just six years

Genevieve Leigh

Previously undisclosed drug company data released by the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has provided the most comprehensive look to date at the nation’s opioid crisis. The database, which traces the path of every single narcotic sold in America—from manufacturer to distributor to pharmacy from 2006 to 2012—has been analyzed in a report by the Washington Post.

The data, along with the history of its delayed release, is remarkable in many ways. First, it confirms in the most concrete terms the criminal role played by drug companies in creating the deadly opioid epidemic that now kills 70,000 people a year in the US. The prescription opioid epidemic alone resulted in nearly 100,000 deaths from 2006 through 2012.

According to the database, throughout the documented six-year period in which the drug epidemic was beginning to spin out of control, drug companies poured 76 billion oxycodone and hydrocodone pain pills into US neighborhoods.

This almost incomprehensible number meant that during these years, the companies distributed enough pills to supply every adult and child in the country with 36 pills each per year.

However, the distribution of the pills was not uniform from state to state or from city to city. The state of Kentucky, for example, was flooded with enough pills to give every person 63.3 pills each per year; South Carolina, 58; and Tennessee, 57.7.

West Virginia, the state with the highest opioid death rate during this period, received enough pills to give every person 66.5 pills each year.

Rural areas hard hit

Rural areas were among the hardest hit. In Norton, Virginia, there were enough pills to provide 306 pills per person a year; Martinsville, Virginia, 242; Mingo County, West Virginia, 203.

During the years covered by the database, 2006 to 2012, annual opioid deaths rose from under 18,000 a year to more than 23,000, with prescription drugs cited as factors in almost half the deaths. The volume of the pills handled by the companies also skyrocketed as the epidemic surged, increasing about 51 percent from 8.4 billion in 2006 to 12.6 billion in 2012.

Since then, overall opioid deaths in the US have skyrocketed. The flooding of markets with prescription drugs, especially in economically depressed areas, spawned increased heroin use and ultimately, along with a number of other factors, led to the current fentanyl crisis that added more than 67,000 to the death toll from 2013 to 2017.

There is no doubt that the top drug manufacturers and distributors are guilty a thousand times over for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people; for the incalculable pain and suffering on the part of those addicted, their children, and their families; for the economic and social devastation the crisis has brought to large swaths of rural America. It has placed an immense strain on healthcare systems, social services, and the foster care system. These companies made billions of dollars off of human suffering.

Complicity of the political establishment

However, the insidious character of this massive operation extends well beyond the drug manufacturers and drug distributors. The drug manufacturers and distributors were able to carry out this operation only because of critical structural support they received from the highest level of the political establishment.

The data revealed Monday comes from an exclusive database controlled and viewable only by the DEA, a government-controlled body supposedly meant to oversee and police these companies. The information to which this body had access is highly detailed, including the name, DEA registration number, address and business activity of every seller and buyer of a controlled substance in the United States. The database also includes drug codes, transaction dates, and total dosage units and grams of narcotics sold.

It is not only the drug companies who have been fighting to keep this database secret, but the DEA along with the US Department of Justice. The database was only unveiled after a yearlong battle for access to the documents waged by the Washington Post and HD Media. What accounts for this secrecy?

The truth is, as with every major industry, the drug corporations routinely buy off politicians to secure ideal business conditions. The DEA exemplifies the fact that the federal agencies supposedly tasked with policing big business—the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Food and Drug Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration—are under the thumb of the corporations and run political interference for them.

Innumerable facts support this claim. First, despite access to this overwhelming data, over the course of this entire crisis the DEA has taken only the most limited action against these companies, which has resulted in many of them paying a pittance in fees for their crimes.

The Obama administration’s role

However, even this minimal oversight was too much for the companies and their counterparts in Washington. As the opioid crisis was erupting, the US Congress was working to eviscerate the oversight powers of the DEA, starting in 2014 and culminating in the Ensuring Patient Access and Effective Drug Enforcement Act of 2016, which passed by overwhelming votes in Congress and was signed into law by then-President Barack Obama.

The main purpose of the legislation was to stop the DEA’s Office of Diversion Control from halting drug shipments for unusually large and unexplained sales. For example, when several Walgreens pharmacies in Florida sold more than 1 million opioid pills in a year, compared to a nationwide average of 74,000, the Office of Diversion Control could impose fines and suspend distribution, preventing the drugs from reaching the streets pending the results of an investigation.

The 2016 law effectively ended the ability of the DEA to suspend such orders. Political action committees representing the pharmaceutical industry contributed at least $1.5 million to the 23 lawmakers who sponsored or co-sponsored four versions of the bill. Overall, the drug industry spent $102 million lobbying Congress on the bill and related legislation between 2014 and 2016.

At least 46 investigators and attorneys from the DEA, including 32 directly from the Office of Diversion Control, were hired by the pharmaceutical companies after scrutiny of the drug distributors began in 2014.

The intimate connection between these gigantic corporate monopolies and the institutions of state power revealed in the case of opioid drug distributors is the relationship that prevails across-the-board throughout the capitalist system internationally.

Over the course of the last three years, various lawsuits have been brought against different drug companies. Some have been successful in bringing attention to the issues involved and in securing some monetary retribution from the companies. There are currently dozens of drug companies being sued in federal court in Cleveland by nearly 2,000 cities, towns and counties alleging that they conspired to flood the nation with opioids.

While these efforts rightfully target many of the guilty parties involved in the creation of this crisis, the results of the lawsuits, however “successful,” will ultimately do little to repair the damage done by the drug epidemic over the course of the last decade, let alone make whole the families who have suffered the trauma of losing loved ones.

More fundamental than the individuals involved in these crimes is the social system that produces them. The subordination of the political establishment to the private interests of corporations is not a feature of life that will be changed through lawsuits. Rather, the solution to the opioid crisis lies in the mobilization of the working class to take ownership of the for-profit pharmaceutical companies, drug distributors and the entire healthcare industry in order to provide medical care in the interest of human need, not private profit.