Records Show Palantir Made $60 Million Contracting with ICE for Mobile App

Eric Draitser

Palantir, the secretive data company founded by billionaire Trump surrogate and well-known Silicon Valley techno-goblin Peter Thiel, has come under fire in recent months for its work with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other government agencies involved in implementing Trump’s racist anti-immigrant policies. Protests organized both from within the tech community and from immigrants’ rights organizations have highlighted the essential role that Palantir plays in keeping the wheels of ICE raids turning.

A critical July 2019 exposé from WNYC based on documents obtained via FOIA request shows how Palantir’s proprietary software, in this case the FALCON mobile app, is essential to the removal operations of ICE and related agencies. As WNYC explained, “FALCON mobile allows agents in the field to search through a fusion of law enforcement databases that include information on people’s immigration histories, family relationships, and past border crossings.”

But while the information contained in the WNYC story, as well as reporting from other news outlets, is important for what it reveals about how Palantir collaborates with the deportation machine, we have not yet had the financial side of the Palantir-ICE relationship come into focus. Until now.

CounterPunch has learned that since 2016, Palantir has made more than $60 million in contract awards from ICE for access to FALCON and for Operations & Maintenance (O&M) for the mobile application. This, of course, is solely for FALCON and related services, and likely just scratches the surface of the true scope of Palantir’s profits from collaboration with ICE, to say nothing of Palantir’s lucrative relations with other government agencies such as CIA, DoD, etc.

“We Just Provide the Tools”

Peter Thiel and his fellow ghoul, Palantir CEO Alexander Karp, are fond of describing Palantir’s mission as simply providing the US government and other clients with the best data aggregating tools available. Oh, Palantir isn’t responsible for any of the abuses of its technology, nor is it directly involved in their application to policies in violation of international law and human rights. No. Palantir simply develops the technology and sells it, right?

Well, that’s certainly the cover story that Thiel, Karp et al like to employ. But US Government financial records reveal a much more direct and intimate collaboration between Palantir and ICE, down to the individual user level. As the documents obtained by WNYC reveal:

In one email from April of last year, a Palantir staffer notifies an ICE agent that they should test out their FALCON mobile application because of his or her “possible involvement in an upcoming operation.” Another message, in April 2017, shows a Palantir support representative instructing an agent on how to classify a datapoint, so that Palantir’s Investigative Case Management [ICM] platform could properly ingest records of a cell phone seizure.

What these emails show in glimpses is a company that is much more than a mere third-party vendor. Rather, Palantir’s relationship with ICE is more that of an intimate partner involved in the day-to-day operations of the organization. Karp and Palantir are more than just “providing the tools,” they’re providing the brains. The speed and scope of ICE operations would be impossible were it nor for FALCON and Palantir’s hand-holding.

To be fair to Karp, Thiel, and their army of orcs in t-shirts and blazers, nothing that Palantir is doing today is out of step with the crimes it has previously been involved in.

Palantir: Thiel’s Own Totalitarian Collective

In his 2009 essay for the right-wing Cato Institute, Thiel wrote:

I remain committed to the faith of my teenage years: to authentic human freedom as a precondition for the highest good. I stand against confiscatory taxes, totalitarian collectives, and the ideology of the inevitability of the death of every individual. For all these reasons, I still call myself “libertarian.”

Interestingly, while Thiel was busily virtue-signaling his hatred of “totalitarian collectives” he was even busier expanding a company that rightly is seen as a primary node in the architecture of contemporary authoritarianism, and a linchpin of a totalitarian future.

In 2011, journalist Barrett Brown and his colleagues revealed a plot by a consortium of powerful private intelligence contractors intending to target activists, journalists, and those associated with WikiLeaks on behalf of its wealthy US private clients.

Called “Team Themis” the plan was to use Palantir, in collaboration with intelligence contractors HBGary and Berico, to gather information and intelligence on journalists like Glenn Greenwald (among others) and use that information for the purposes of infiltration, intimidation, and disruption of groups organizing against the financial interests of Team Themis’s clients. The tactics ranged from intelligence gathering and data analysis to outright targeting of activists, journalists, and their families.

While the Team Themis plot was exposed after an Anonymous hack of HBGary led to the publication of thousands of internal emails, the underlying strategic thinking behind such a plan remained in place. Essentially, Palantir was moving out of the realm of software development where it had styled itself a mere toolmaker and into the realm of corporate espionage. This early foray into the world of spies and intelligence work highlighted the increasingly broad, and truly dangerous, scope of Palantir’s capabilities.

The Many-Headed Hydra

Today Palantir is a world unto itself, with its fingers in just about every spook pie one could imagine. As Prof. Sarah Brayne, Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Texas-Austin wrote in her 2017 study Big Data Surveillance: The Case of Policing, Palantir has become something of a “secondary surveillance network,” able to track individuals and those in their personal and social networks without any crime being committed or even a specific query about a person. In effect, Palantir has become the Orwellian Big Brother we have feared for decades.

Palantir software can be found in the hands of LAPD and NYPD cops using Gotham and similar programs to track individuals with almost no information; just a license plate number and name can be used to track every movement of an individual associated with a vehicle, every email address and cell phone number is catalogued, every bank account and family relationship, etc.

It can be found in corporate headquarters where data analysts use Palantir products to generate actionable information about customers, markets, investments, and more. It can be found on every battlefield where the US military is engaged, and in most major cities.

It can even be found in the election of Donald Trump, as revealed by the Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Chris Wylie who told MPs in the UK that Palantir worked directly with SCL Group to harvest user data that was used directly in the election of Midtown Mussolini in 2016.

If there’s a data point, chances are Palantir has it stored or can access it.

In effect, Palantir’s products have transformed society into Bentham’s panopticon, a nightmarish vision from a Foucault fever dream. Sadly, this is our reality…and it’s monetized.

Palantir has made hundreds of millions of dollars collaborating with those elements of the military-industrial-intelligence complex that are paving the way for the true fascist state.

Or perhaps Thiel, Karp, and Palantir aren’t so much paving the way for the fascist state as announcing that it’s already here.

The Root Cause of Human Population Growth

Steven Earl Salmony

Homo sapiens is a creature of the earth. Understand that food is the tap root of life for the human species. There may be other factors that help sustain human life, but food is the ‘tap root’ for the growth of absolute human population numbers, just as is the case with other species of earth.

Our problem is a biological one. A positive feedback loop has been established in the food-population relationship because natural limiting factors to the unbridled growth of absolute human population numbers have been eliminated by human ingenuity. Human beings are unique creatures of earth. We are exceptional in many wondrous ways, but not in terms of population dynamics. Hence the recent ‘bloom’ of absolute global human population numbers that are primarily caused by spectacular increases in the food supply which is derived from greatly enhanced production and distribution capabilities.

The conundrum: increasing food production annually to meet the needs of growing population is fueling a human population explosion. With every passing year more people are being fed and more people are going hungry.

Perhaps we can agree to a desperate need for an adequate-enough explanation for ‘why’ we have ended up where are, in this global predicament. A growing body of unfalsified research has been ubiquitously denied and consequently not widely shared much less consensually validated by population experts of science as well as those professionals with appropriate expertise in the fields of demography and economics. Uncontested science makes it possible for us to answer the question posed now, here.

A new biological understanding is emerging from ongoing scientific research. It is simply this: as is the case with other species, human population numbers appear or not as a function of food availability; food is the independent, not the dependent, variable in the relationship between food and population numbers; and human population dynamics is essentially similar to, not different from, the population dynamics of other species.

Sound scientific research provides straightforward empirical data of a non-recursive biological problem that is independent of economic, political, ethical, social, legal, religious, and cultural considerations. This means human population dynamics is like the population dynamics of other species. It also means that global human population growth is a viciously cycling positive feedback loop, a relationship between food and population in which food availability drives population growth, and population growth fuels the false perception, the mistaken impression, the fatally flawed misconception that food production needs to be increased to meet the needs of a growing population.

With every passing year, as food production is increased leading to a population increase, millions go hungry. Why are those hungry millions not getting fed year after year after year… and future generations of poor people may not ever be fed? Every year the human population grows. All segments of it grow. More people with blue eyes and more with brown ones. More tall people and more short ones. All segments of the population grows. Every year there are also more people growing up well fed and more people growing up hungry. The hungry segment of the global population goes up just like all the other segments of the population. We are unexpectedly increasing the number of hungry people in the course of feeding more people. We are not bringing hunger to an end by increasing food production.

The skyrocketing increase of the human population in our time on a planet with the size, composition and ecology of Earth has caused a growing number of apparently unforeseen and exceedingly deleterious ecological occurrences. Among these potentially catastrophic, human-driven consequences is climate destabilization. What is fortunately becoming clearer to naked eyes, as we observe what is happening, is the manifold ways overproduction, overconsumption and overpopulation activities of the human species are occurring synergistically and simultaneously threatening life as we know it, environmental health, and future human well being. The spectacular increase of these distinctly human, overgrowth activities is causing the mass extirpation of earth’s biodiversity, the relentless dissipation of its limited natural resources, the unbridled degradation of its environs and the reckless threat to a good enough future for children everywhere.

For a moment let us carefully consider the remote possibility that the human community writ large pulls itself together on a war footing to fight climate change and wins that battle by reducing carbon emissions of all kinds to net zero in 2020, while the tap root cause of anthropogenic climate change continues to be denied. We may win a major Pyrrhic victory. That is certainly a good thing. And yet, if we do not accurately enough locate the foremost cause of the biological problem that is ailing humankind, the problem that is precipitating climate change, we could lose the prospects of a good enough future for life as we know it.

We have run out of time for population experts to remain reticent. They have to assume their responsibilities by examining data and reporting findings regarding the question, “Why are human population numbers exploding?” The time has come to disclose all of what we know — the whole truth — with regard to human creatureliness and human population growth, according to the best available science and ‘lights’ we possess.

After hundreds of thousands of years of relatively stable population numbers of H. sapiens, why has the total human population increased in size from 1 billion to 7.7 billion in the brief time that is framed by the past 225 years?

Unfalsified ecological science of human population dynamics indicates that the population dynamics of H. sapiens is essentially similar to, not different from, the population dynamics of other species, how are humans going to limit sensibly and effectively the current unbridled growth of their population numbers without beginning to limit “increases only” in the total production of food for human consumption? More attractive alternatives to this necessary step (e.g., educational/economic opportunities for females and contraception for males/females) represent useful proposals, that is certain. But these ‘interventions’ are patently insufficient to stabilize population numbers of the human species because human population numbers appear or not as a function of food supply. See articles by Hopfenberg, Pimentel, 2001 and Hopfenberg, 2003.

Take a moment to reflect upon the way in which a thoughtful, effective and systematic redistribution of the world’s abundant food resources, if implemented simultaneously with limits placed on total food production, would feed the human population and stabilize absolute human population numbers. That is to say, limiting increases only in the total supply of food for human consumption, when coupled with a sensible food redistribution program, will lead to population stabilization and starvation reduction.

Let the word go forth from this time and place. The unfalsified, willfully ignored, ecological science of human population dynamics that makes crystal clear to all that the UN mantra “food production must be increased annually to meet the needs of a growing population,” is a widely shared and consensually validated fool’s errand. If ever the human community is sensibly and meaningfully able to restrain the bacteria-like growth of absolute global human population numbers (recall that human population dynamics is essentially similar to the population dynamics of other species), limiting increases only in total food production for human consumption must be a part of any program of action. If superabundant harvests are also simultaneously and fairly redistributed so as to assure substantial baseline subsistence to people everywhere on the planet, such a program will lead to population stabilization initially and population reduction in the long term, all the while reducing human starvation.

The 9% lie: industrial food and climate change

Ronnie Cummins

The Climate Emergency is finally getting the attention of the media and the U.S. (and world) body politic, as well as a growing number of politicians, activists and even U.S. farmers.

This great awakening has arrived just in time, given the record-breaking temperatures, violent weather, crop failures and massive waves of forced migration that are quickly becoming the norm. Global scientists have dropped their customary caution. They now warn us that we have to drastically reduce global emissions – by at least 45 percent – over the next decade. Otherwise, we’ll pass the point of no return – defined as reaching 450 ppm or more of CO2 in the atmosphere sometime between 2030 and 2050 – when our climate crisis will morph into a climate catastrophe. That’s when the melting polar ice and Arctic permafrost will trigger catastrophic sea rise, fueling deadly forest fires, climate chaos, crop failures, famine and the widespread disintegration of society as we know it.

Most people now understand that we must quickly move to renewable forms of energy, such as wind and solar, and reduce our fossil fuel emissions as much as possible. But it’s far less widely understood that energy conservation and renewables can’t do the job alone.

Alongside the massive political and economic campaign to move to 100% (or nearly 100%) renewable energy as soon as possible, we must put an end to the massive emissions of our corporate-dominated food and farming system and start drawing down and sequestering in our soils and forests billions of tons of “legacy” CO2 from the atmosphere, utilizing the enhanced photosynthesis of regenerative farming, reforestation and land restoration.

“Regenerative Agriculture” refers to farming and grazing practices that, among other benefits, reverse climate change by rebuilding soil organic matter and restoring degraded soil biodiversity. This results in both carbon drawdown and improved water infiltration and storage in soils. Regenerative practices include:

• Reduction/elimination of tillage and use of synthetic chemicals.

• The use of cover crops, crop rotations, compost, and animal manures.

• Integrating animals with perennial and annual plants to create a biologically diverse ecosystem on the farm.

• Grazing and pasturing animals on grass, and more specifically using a planned multi-paddock rotation system.

• Raising animals in conditions that mimic their natural habitat.

If regenerative food, farming and land use – which is essentially moving to the next stage of organic farming, free-range livestock grazing and eco-system restoration – are just as essential to our survival as moving beyond fossil fuels, why aren’t more people talking about this? Why is it that moving beyond industrial agriculture, factory farms, agro-exports and highly-processed junk food to regenerating soils and forests and drawing down enough excess carbon from the atmosphere to re-stabilize our climate is getting so little attention from the media, politicians and the general public?

The International Food Information Council Foundation released a poll on May 22, 2019, that found that “22 percent [of Americans] had heard of regenerative agriculture and 55 percent said they had not heard of it but were interested in learning more.”

Why don’t more people know about the incredible potential of regenerative agriculture, or more precisely regenerative food, farming and land-use practices, to fix our climate, restore the environment, improve the livelihoods of farmers and rural communities and produce more nutritious food? Why is it that the U.S. and global climate movement until recently has focused almost exclusively on reducing emissions through renewable energy?

Our collective ignorance on this crucial topic may have something to do with the fact that we never learned about these things in school, or even college, and until recently there was very little discussion of regeneration in the mass media, or even the alternative media.

But there’s another reason regeneration as a climate solution doesn’t get its due in Congress or in the media: powerful corporations in the food, farming and forestry sector, along with their indentured politicians, don’t want to admit that their current degenerate, climate-destabilizing, “profit-at-any-cost” production practices and business priorities are threatening our very survival.

And government agencies are right there, helping corporate agribusiness and Big Food bury the evidence that these industries’ energy-intensive, chemical-intensive industrial agricultural and food production practices contribute more to global warming than the fossil fuel industry.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) repeatedly claim that industrial agriculture is responsible for a mere 9 percent of our nation’s greenhouse gas emissions. As the EPA explains, GHG “emissions from agriculture come from livestock such as cows, agricultural soils and rice production.”

After hearing this 9-percent figure regurgitated over and over again in the media, most people draw the conclusion that food and farming aren’t that important of a factor in global warming, especially when compared with transportation, electricity generation, manufacturing and heating and cooling our buildings.

What the EPA, USDA, Big Ag, chemical, and food corporations are conveniently hiding from the public is that there’s no way to separate “U.S. agriculture” from our “food system” as a whole. Their faulty math (i.e. concealing food and farming emissions under the categories of transportation, manufacturing, etc.) is nothing but a smokescreen to hide the massive fossil fuel use and emissions currently belched out by our enormously wasteful, environmentally destructive, climate-destabilizing (and globalized) food system.

USDA and EPA’s nine-percent figure is ridiculous. What about the massive use of petroleum products and fossil fuels to power U.S. tractors and farm equipment, and to manufacture the billions of pounds of pesticides and chemical fertilizers that are dumped and sprayed on farmlands?

What about the ethanol industry that eats up 40 percent of our chemical- and energy-intensive GMO corn production? Among other environmental crimes, the ethanol industry incentivizes farmers to drain wetlands and damage fragile lands. Taking the entire process into account, corn production for ethanol produces more emissions than it supposedly saves when burned in our cars and trucks.

What about the massive release of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide from factory farms and the GMO, monocrop industrial grain farms that supply these feedlots and CAFOs with animal feed?

What about the methane emissions from the fracking wells that produce the natural gas that is used in prodigious amounts to manufacture the nitrogen fertilizer dumped on farmlands – fertilizer that then pollutes our waterways and creates oceanic dead zones as well as releasing massive amounts of nitrous oxide (300 percent more damaging than even CO2) into our already over-saturated atmosphere?

What about the 15-20 percent of global fossil fuel emissions that come from processing, packaging (most often non-recycled plastic), refrigerating and transporting our highly processed (mainly junk) food and agricultural commodities on the average 1,500 miles before they reach the consumer?

What about the enormous amounts of GHG emissions, deforestation and ecosystem destruction in the international supply chain enabling Big Box stores, supermarket chains and junk food purveyors to sell imported cheap food, in many cases “food-like substances” from China and overseas to undernourished and supersized U.S. consumers?

What about the enormous emissions from U.S. landfills where wasted food (30-50 percent of our entire production) rots and releases methane, when it could be used to produce compost to replace synthetic fertilizers?

A more accurate estimate of GHG emissions from U.S. and international food, farming and land use is 44-57 percent, not the 9 percent, as the EPA and USDA suggest.

We’re never going to reach net zero emissions in the U.S. by 2030, as the Green New Deal calls for, without a profound change, in fact a revolution, in our food, farming, and land use practices.

Shifting Sands: Chinese encroachment in Central Asia and challenges to US supremacy in the Gulf

James M. Dorsey

China and Russia are as much allies as they are rivals.

A joint Tajik-Chinese military exercise in a Tajik region bordering on China’s troubled north-western region of Xinjiang suggests that increased Chinese-Russian military cooperation has not eroded gradually mounting rivalry in Central Asia, long viewed by Moscow as its backyard.

The exercise, the second in three years, coupled with the building by China of border guard posts and a training centre as well as the creation of a Chinese security facility along the 1,300 kilometre long Tajik Afghan Border, Chinese dominance of the Tajik economy, and the hand over of Tajik territory almost two decades ago, challenges Russian-Chinese arrangements in the region.

The informal arrangement involved a division of labour under which China would expand economically in Central Asia while Russia would guarantee the region’s security.

The exercise comes days after China and Russia operated their first joint air patrol and months after Tajik and Russian forces exercised jointly.

The “exercise represents a next step in China’s overall encroachment upon Russia’s self-proclaimed ‘sphere of influence’ in Central Asia,” said Russia expert Stephen Blank.

“Moscow has given remarkably little consideration to the possibility that China will build on its soft power in Central Asia to establish security relationships or even bases and thus accelerate the decline of Russian influence there,” added Eurasia scholar Paul Goble.

The perceived encroachment is but the latest sign that Russia is seeking to balance its determination to ally itself with China in trying to limit US power with the fact the Chinese and Russian interests may be diverging.

The limitations of Russian Chinese cooperation have long been evident.

China, for example, has refrained from recognizing Russian-inspired declarations of independence in 2008 of two regions of Georgia, Abkhazia and South Ossetia that recently sparked anti-government protests in Tbilisi.

China similarly abstained in a 2014 United Nations Security Council vote on a resolution that condemned Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

Meanwhile, Chinese dependence on Russian military technology is diminishing, potentially threatening a key Russian export market. China in 2017 rolled out its fifth generation Chengdu J-20 fighter that is believed to be technologically superior to Russia SU-57E.

Perhaps most fundamentally, Chinese president Xi Jinping opted in 2013 to unveil his Belt and Road initiative in the Kazakh capital of Astana rather than Moscow.

By doing so and by so far refusing to invest in railroads and roads that would turn Russia into a transportation hub, Mr. Xi effectively relegated Russia to the status of second fiddle, at least as far as the Belt and Road’s core transportation infrastructure pillar is concerned.

China’s recently published latest defense white paper nonetheless praised the continued development of a “high level” military relationship with Russia that is “enriching the China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination for a new era and playing a significant role in maintaining global strategic stability.”

In a bid to ensure Russia remains a key player on the international stage and exploit mounting tension in the Gulf, Russian deputy foreign minister and special representative to the Middle East and Africa Mikhail Bogdanov this week proposed a collective security concept that would replace the Gulf’s US defense umbrella and position Russia as a power broker alongside the United States.

The concept would entail creation of a “counter-terrorism coalition (of) all stakeholders” that would be the motor for resolution of conflicts across the region and promote mutual security guarantees. It would involve the removal of the “permanent deployment of troops of extra-regional states in the territories of states of the Gulf,” a reference to US, British and French forces and bases.

Mr. Bogdanov’s proposal called for a “universal and comprehensive” security system that would take into account “the interests of all regional and other parties involved, in all spheres of security, including its military, economic and energy dimensions” and ensure the provision of humanitarian assistance.

The coalition to include the Gulf states, Russia, China, the US, the European Union and India as well as other stakeholders, a likely reference to Iran, would be launched at an international conference on security and cooperation in the Gulf.

It was not clear how feuding Gulf states like Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arb Emirates and Iran would be persuaded to sit at one table. The proposal suggested that Russia’s advantage was that it maintained good relations with all parties.

“Russia’s contributions to the fight against Islamic terrorist networks and the liberation of parts of Syria and Iraq can be regarded as a kind of test for the role of sheriff in a Greater Eurasia” that would include the Middle East, said political scientist Dmitry Yefremenko.

Mr. Putin this week asserted himself as sheriff by signalling his support for embattled former Kyrgyz president Almazbek Atambayev, a Putin crony who has been charged with corruption. Following a meeting in Moscow, Mr. Putin urged Mr Atembayev’s nemesis. president Sooronbai Jeenbekov, not to press charges.

At the same time, Mr. Putin, building on his visit to Kyrgyzstan in March, offered Mr. Jeenbekov a carrot.

Kyrgyzstan “needs political stability. Everybody needs to unite around the current president and to help him develop the state. We have many plans for cooperation with Kyrgyzstan and we are absolutely determined to work together with the current leadership to fulfill these plans,” Mr. Putin said.

Russia and Kyrgyzstan signed an agreement during the visit to expand by 60 hectares the Kant Air Base 20 kilometres east of the capital Bishkek that is used by the Russian Air Force and increase the rent Russia pays.

Mr. Putin further lavished his Kyrgyz hosts with US$6 billion in deals ranging from power, mineral resources and hydrocarbons to industry and agriculture.

Mr. Putin also allocated US$200 million for the upgrading of customs infrastructure and border equipment to put an end to the back-up of dozens of trucks on the Kazakh-Kyrgyz border because Kyrgyzstan has so far been unable to comply with the technical requirements of the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU).

Uzbek president Shavkat Mirziyaev last month gave the EEU, that groups Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan Belarus, and Armenia, a boost by declaring that Uzbekistan would need to join the trade bloc to ensure access to its export markets.

EEU members account for 70 percent of Uzbek exports.

Said Russia and Eurasia scholar Paul Stronski: “China’s deft diplomacy towards Russia — along with both states’ desires to keep the West out of their common backyard — has kept tensions behind closed doors. But with China now recognising it may need to strengthen its security posture in the region, it is unclear how long this stability will last.”

Poisoned for Profit: Whether in the UK or India, We Are Not the Agrochemical Industry’s Guinea Pigs

Colin Todhunter

Environmentalist Dr Rosemary Mason has just written to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), the Department for Food, Environment and Rural Affairs (Defra) and the Chemicals Regulation Division (HSE) in the UK claiming that the glyphosate-based weed killer Roundup has poisoned her nature reserve in South Wales and is also poisoning people across the UK (she includes herself here, as she struggles with a neurodegenerative condition). She notes that the widespread spraying of glyphosate went against the advice of directive 2009/128/EC of the European parliament but was carried out at the behest of the agrochemicals industry.

Mason has sent a 24-page fully referenced document with her letter in support of her claims. It can be accessed in full here. What follows is a brief summary of just a few of the take-home points. There is a lot more in Mason’s document, much of which touches on issues she has previously covered but which nonetheless remain relevant.

The thrust of her open letter to these agencies is that glyphosate is a major contributory factor in spiralling rates of disease and conditions affecting the UK population. She also makes it clear that official narratives – pushed by the pesticides industry, the media and various key agencies – have deliberately downplayed or ignored the role of agrochemicals in this. Instead, the focus has been on the role of alcohol use and obesity, conveniently placing the blame on individual behaviour and the failure of people to opt for ‘healthy lifestyle’ choices.

Mason argues that Monsanto emails released into the public domain have revealed that Roundup was kept on the market by capturing regulatory agencies, corrupting public officials, bribing scientists and engaging in scientific fraud. In addition, she notes that documents show that the European Commission bowed to the demands of pesticide lobbies. Former PM David Cameron, Defra, the European Food Safety Authority, the European Commission and the European Chemicals Agency all ignored the warnings that GM crops and Roundup were hazardous to human health and the environment.

In the run-up to the relicensing of glyphosate in the EU, Mason states that in its analysis the Glyphosate Task Force omitted key studies from South America (where herbicide-tolerant GM crops are grown) that associate Roundup with cancer, birth defects, infertility, DNA damage and neurotoxicity. She refers to many studies in support of her claim that glyphosate is deleterious to human health and the environment. It is worth noting that the European Chemicals Agency has classified glyphosate as a substance causing serious eye damage and toxic to aquatic life with long-lasting effects.

Mason reserves a special place for Cancer Research UK (CRUK) in her letter, saying that the agency has been hi-jacked by the pesticides industry and has persuaded key figures in the medical establishment to repeat certain claims: that alcohol, cigarette smoking and obesity are the main causes of cancer. She argues that Monsanto and the US EPA have known for a long time that Roundup is carcinogenic.

CRUK recently made a bold statement about its vision to bring forward the day when all cancers are cured. However, Mason asserts this is fantasy for public consumption. She argues there are a huge number of cancers in the UK and their prevalence is increasing each year in tandem with the rising use of glyphosate and other agrochemicals.

Mason provides the statistics:

“In the UK, there were 13,605 new cases of Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma in 2015 (and 4,920 deaths in 2016): there were 41,804 new cases of bowel cancer in 2015 (and 16,384 deaths in 2016); 12,547 new cases of kidney cancer in 2015 (and 4,619 deaths in 2016); 5,736 new cases of liver cancer in 2015 (5,417 deaths in 2016); 15,906 new cases of melanoma in 2015 (2,285 deaths in 2016); 3,528 new cases of thyroid cancer in 2015 (382 deaths in 2016); 10,171 new cases of bladder cancer in 2015 (5,383 deaths in 2016); 8,984 new cases of uterine cancer in 2015 (2,360 deaths in 2016); 7,270 cases of ovarian cancer in 2015 (4,227 deaths in 2016); 9,900 new cases of leukaemia in 2015 (4,712 deaths in 2016); 55,122 new cases of invasive breast cancer in 2015 (11,563 deaths in 2016); 47,151 new cases of prostate cancer in 2015 (11,631 deaths in 2016); 9,211 new cases of oesophageal cancer in 2015 (8,004 deaths in 2016); and 5,540 new cases of myeloma in 2015 (3,079 deaths in 2016); 2,288 new cases of testicular cancer in 2015 (57 deaths in 2016); 9,921 new cases of pancreatic cancer in 2015 (9,263 deaths in 2016); 11,432 new cases of brain cancer in 2015 (5,250 deaths in 2016); 46,388 new cases of lung cancer in 2015 (and 35,620 deaths in 2016). In the US in 2014 there were 24,050 new cases of myeloma.”

Arguing that UK farmers are “drowning” their crops in pesticides, Mason notes that it is therefore not surprising that Pesticide Action Network UK’s analysis of the last 12 years of residue data (published by the Expert Committee on Pesticide Residues in Food) shows there are unacceptable levels of pesticides present in the food provided through the Department of Health’s (DoH) School Fruit and Vegetable Scheme (SFVS).

Residues of 123 different pesticides were found, some of which are linked to serious health problems such as cancer and disruption of the hormone system. Moreover, residues contained on SFVS produce were higher than those in produce tested under the national residue testing scheme (mainstream produce found on supermarket shelves). However, Mason says that when PAN-UK sent its findings to the DOH, the agency was told that pesticides are not the concern of the DoH.

Perhaps they should be, given what Baskut Tuncak, the UN’s special rapporteur on human rights and hazardous substances and wastes, stated in 2017:

“Our children are growing up exposed to a toxic cocktail of weed killers, insecticides and fungicides. It’s on their food and in their water, and it’s even doused over their parks and playgrounds. Many governments insist that our standards of protection from these pesticides are strong enough. But as a scientist and a lawyer who specialises in chemicals and their potential impact on people’s fundamental rights, I beg to differ.”

He added:

“Paediatricians have referred to childhood exposure to pesticides as creating a ‘silent pandemic’ of disease and disability. Exposure in pregnancy and childhood is linked to birth defects, diabetes, and cancer. Because a child’s developing body is more sensitive to exposure than adults and takes in more of everything – relative to their size, children eat, breathe, and drink much more than adults – they are particularly vulnerable to these toxic chemicals. Increasing evidence shows that even at ‘low’ doses of childhood exposure, irreversible health impacts can result.”

Tuncak says that most victims cannot prove the cause of their disability or disease and this limits our ability to hold those responsible to account. But this is changing. The public is becoming increasingly aware of the industry’s criminal strategy for keeping Roundup on the market, thanks to the various high-profile litigations in the US. Maybe it’s time for the (taxpayer-funded) agencies Rosemary Mason has continually written to over the years to finally act in the public interest. Or would that be too much to expect?

In finishing, we should take note of the current orchestrated campaign (cheer-led by those outside of India with industry links) to get herbicide-tolerant seeds planted in India. Aside from Bt cotton, GM crops are not allowed in the country. This cynical campaign is aimed at increasing GM seed, glyphosate and other toxic agrochemical sales. Given increasingly saturated markets elsewhere, the global GM seed and herbicide industry regards India as a massive potential money spinner.

However, Punjab took the lead in 2018 and banned glyphosate. Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana have since followed. But there is still no nationwide ban. With this in mind, author and academic Ashwani Mahajan has started a petition campaign (here) to stop the use of glyphosate in India.

He says that pesticide companies are taking advantage of farmers’ ignorance about the deadly risks associated with glyphosate. Mahajan notes that industry is sending its agents to approach farmers directly and trap them with attractive promotional offers. This is part of a wider strategy to get farmers to break with effective traditional practices and lure them onto agrochemical (and GMO) treadmills as described in the 2017 paper The Ox Fall Down: Path Breaking and Technology Treadmills in Indian Cotton Agriculture (Glenn Stone and Andrew Flachs).

Farmers are being subjected to slick PR and lured because they are told this herbicide is a cost-effective method to kill weeds quickly. What they are not told is that its effectiveness is limited, that it’s a health and environmental hazard and that it’s a risk to their lives. But it’s not just farmers’ lives that are at risk. We just need to look at the statistics provided earlier in this article to realise the risk to the wider public health.

Bangladesh: The Myth of Economic Growth

R Chowdhury

The government of Bangladesh under Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wazed keeps rattling the growth at 8-9% over the past few years, but the statistics do not tally with the global benchmarks, which find the actual number lower by up to 2 points. The lower figure may still look impressive, but the existence of glaring discrepancies in the development calculations rarely meet the eye, much less the outside observers. High stake corruptions in the administration and in Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League flatten whatever little progress the country makes, mostly through its private sector initiatives.

The Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS), a government agency, produces the inflated rates as per directives of the political leadership. If the BBS officials fail to comply, they are at risk of losing their jobs or facing other punitive consequences.

Where is the Remaining 2%?

Why these drummed up numbers? Because the rulers want to fake a “role model of progress” for Bangladesh, irrespective of the ground reality. In other words, it is their campaign to shield their many illegal acts and political wrongdoings. In their greed of staying in power, no concession is allowed in this ugly crusade. It is like charging a 98% scoring son about why he missed the 2 points. Given the sorry state of the opposition, thanks to the fascist practices imposed on the men and women on the other side of the fence, many observers believed that the ruling coalition would have won the December 2018 election comfortably. But the regime, which illegally held on to power through a managed election on December 29, 2008 and a farcical drama on January 5, 2014, was not willing to grant any concession to the opposition this time also. With the help of loyal administration, the police and party thugs, they made all possible illegal moves to keep the opposition candidates, activists and voters away from the election. Yet, a “midnight coup” (stuffing ballot boxes of its own candidates in the dark the previous night) had to be staged to ensure an almost 100% victory. And yet, the infuriated ruling ruffians gang-raped women in front of their family members for voting for the non-Awami candidates. That is the role model of progress in Sheikh Hasina’s rule!

The economic numbers, whatever they are, mean little to the lower strata of society, which continue to groan under the heavy hands of authoritarian misrule. Former US President John F Kennedy said, “Economic growth without social progress lets the great majority of the people remain in poverty, while a privileged few reap the benefits of rising abundance.” That is exactly what is happening in Bangladesh today.

Amidst the administration’s drumming of high development, few outsiders notice the yawning gap between the rich few and the poor multitude in Bangladesh. It is like not seeing the wood for the trees.

Failing to Meet the Aspiration of Millions?

A former Planning Minister of Bangladesh puts it nicely when he questioned: “At this point in time in Bangladesh, when democracy is brutally crucified, opposition successfully persecuted and crushed, good governance purposefully abandoned, corruption flying rampant, rule of law gleefully eliminated,” how this predicament relates to the drummed-up excessive growth rater? The minister did not talk in the vacuum. To support his assertions, he cited extensive references from government figures and reports from various international sources including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Economist, the Washington Post, the New York Times, as well as the reports of The World Bank, The Asian Development Bank and The International Monetary Fund.

He also does not agree with the slogan of development before democracy. “Sorry, this is not acceptable in a civilized world,” he says, further asserting, “Democracy and development go hand in hand.”

After touching an elephant, various blind men describe the mammoth animal differently, from pillar to a wall to a giant leech to a large flapping fan. Similarly, the citizens of Bangladesh see the “progress” differently. To a beneficiary of ill-gotten money–through corrupt practices– the growth is phenomenal. A poor person in the street and in the rural villages has not known it. To an opposition member, it is a torture cell. To the women who refused to obey the ruling thugs, it is hell!

The government obviously crows the voice of the “filthy rich”, who are mostly aligned with the governing coterie. The rest, who form 90% of the population, do not figure in its consideration. People in this vast majority live on less than $2 a day and over 30% of them are below the poverty level. There are three million unemployed and frustrated youths. Many poor rice farmers are forced to burn the results of their year-long toil for not getting what they invested. Hundreds of thousands attempt to escape the gloomy lives at home and venture out searching for a better future abroad, only to end up in various concentration camps if not already dead in the high seas.

“Averages are no consolation to those who have been left behind,” says Angus Deaton in his article, The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality. So, what good is that so-called development which does not match with the aspirations of the millions?

The bigger question is: Where is democracy, freedom, human rights, rule of law and a harmonious development in this official bragging of “high development?”

People are tired of hearing the government’s slogan of “Development First, Democracy Later,” perhaps borrowing the theme from Pakistani President Ayub Khan’s “Decade of Development” campaign in the late 1960s. It did not work for Ayub Khan. Will it for Sheikh Hasina, the Prime Minister of Bangladesh? Only time will tell.

High Stake Corruption Drains the Progress

Moreover, whatever development the country achieves is drained by limitless, high stake corruption, mostly in collusion with top levels of leadership.

A little peek at the real picture: The Daily Star, a government affiliated paper, reported recently that bank loan defaults stand at more than $12 billion, much beyond the limit of the size of the national economy. Yet, another $2 billion of tax payers money was infused to keep these failed banks afloat. Needless to say, these financial institutions belong to most of the 300 bank defaulters made public recently. But, “Mr. Justice” cannot touch them because they roam the corridors of power that be!

Bangladesh Bank, the central bank of the country, lost about $1 billion in an inside electronic scandal a few years back, and the stolen money, though traced, is all but lost to the public exchequer. In addition to the bank officials, people close to the top political leadership were suspected to have been involved in this heist.

Another fairy tale episode reported in 2018 in the Bangladesh Bank. Lied the touch of a magic wand, a large deposit of gold reserve turned to copper! Black magic indeed!

The infamous Stock Market scams siphoned off billions of dollars from small time investors, many of whom were totally ruined. The perpetrators of this con works were well known yet they could not be touched because of their high political connections with the ruling authority. What is strange, the main character of the swindle advises the Prime Minister in her monetary investment policy, reminding us of the story of leasing the chicken to the jackal.

A little-known fact is that very high and disproportionate credit lines awarded to various projects landed Bangladesh with a public debt of $80 billion, registering a per capita debt increase by 250% in the past decade or so. Nigeria, Venezuela and Sri Lanka are some of the once rich countries embarked on undertaking large prestige projects taking huge, high stake foreign loans, only to sink in debt and bankruptcy soon. More than a century ago, my grandfather acquired two wives and had 20 children. He could afford even more, given his financial standing and social status in his time. Today, most of his grand kids and great-grand kids are paupers, if not on the streets. Economists fear a similar future for Bangladesh.

Much of the showy projects like the Padma Bridge, Metrorail, Monorail, over-bridges, skyscrapers, underwater passageway, which, though necessary, are largely undertaken to benefit the government contractors and its brokers, who slice away a large chunk of the pie. These prestigious projects bring little benefit to 90% of the people who live far away from them.

The Prothom Alo, a Bengali daily, recently reported a sensational news about the “Nuclear Pillow.” For the residents of a proposed nuclear power plant, ordinary sleeping pillows were procured each costing Taka 6800 ($85) a piece that included a carrying cost of Taka 800 from the ground to the room. The real cost would not have been more than $3 if similar pillows were bought locally. In the same vein, we can’t wait to see the cost of a nut for the Padma Bridge when completed. It may run well into hundreds of dollars. In Bangladesh, the making of one mile of a road costs 10 times higher than any other South Asian country, and five times more than in Europe. According to Singapore’s The Business Insider 2019, Bangladeshis have to cope with the highest cost of living with a lower per capita income in South Asia.

A Role Mode Indeed!

“When government agencies can be bribed,” writes Sabria Chowdhury Balland in the South Asia Journal on April 16, 2019,  “when there are no safety measures in construction, when roads are broken and congested with bumper to bumper traffic nearly all day, when unemployment soars with no vision of how to create jobs, when millions of youths do not have any guidance for their future, when the percentage of rapes skyrocket with no measures from lawmakers to hold the perpetrators accountable, etc. the big question remains: where is the progress?”

The pampered administration, which include the police and military, are allowed lucrative massive perks for their “services” to the regime, such as conducting fraudulent elections and crushing any sign of dissent, to help it continue to stay in power.

Much of the ill-gotten money find its way to personal accounts in off shore banks. Family members of the beneficiaries enjoy their lives in luxury in places like Canada, USA, Australia and Singapore and Malaysia whereas, the poor tax payers routinely face batons and bullets, jails and torture, death and disappearance at home. A role model, indeed!

However, Bangladesh is a role model on many other counts. It is a role model where no opposition politics is allowed. It is a role model in which a three- time prime minister is left to die in a solitary cell after being clamped with a 17-year jail term on a nondescript, non-existent false case. It is a role model where the administration that includes the law enforcement agencies function as organs of the ruling party. It is a model where the Election Commission Anti-Corruption Commission and even the Judiciary follow the dictates of the political leadership. Or else…! Chief Justice S.K. Sinha is a case in point.

Ayub Khan, Saddam Hussain, Moammar Gaddafi and many other dictators could not save themselves by the slogans of development before democracy. Can Hasina? We can wait for her fatal fall from the dangerously galloping tiger she is riding!

Feminism – The real Human rights fight in India

Sunny Rajak

Earlier to the mid-nineteenth century, the government influenced the powers delegated and was quite opaque and transgressing towards the rights of women. Only when the men began to speak up against the evil, oppressing practices to be followed by the women of India, like “Sati”, started the First-wave of The Feminist Movement in India. It was later joined by the women. It focused on abortion of evil practices in the name of caste and religion, forbiddance of child marriage and reduction of illiteracy. The Second-wave began in 1915, which involved the emergence of many independent women’s organizations during the Quit India Movement. The Third-wave of Feminism began post-Independence and focused on the fair treatment of women at home after marriage, in the workforce and right to political parity. And not to repudiate that a lot has changed and improved since its inception, still as we move closer to India’s 73 rd Independence this year on the August 15th – I have realized that the women in India have not yet completely achieved the objective and must introspect and re-asses its goals as we enter a new epoch and while we await the fourth-wave.

The wave of Feminism-21 st Century

The achievements of the movement are undeniably immense. Merriam-Webster’s Word of the year 2017 was ‘feminism’, increased by 70% compared to 2016. The meaning and quality of the term have been evolving compared to the 1990s. Many political campaigns and protests have been held over the years and are still vibrant. Starting from the Blank Noise Project (2003)- against eve-teasing, the Pink Chaddi (2009)- underwear movement against moral policing, Slutwalk (2011)- against victim-blaming; the rage was fueled further when the fatal assault of a 23-year old girl in South Delhi, known as the Nirbhaya Rape Case took place and then led to the Criminal Law Amendment Act 2013.

The recent- legally two more incidents which have proven significant for feminism are the “Triple Talaq” and the “Sabarimala verdict” wherein the former was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court against patriarchy masquerading as religion and the latter hailed victory against gender-discrimination which was restricting the women to shrine. The second wave of #MeTooMovement shook India as the women voiced the sexual harassment that they had to face, forced by the men in power both in the workplace and elsewhere. Many predators faced consequences for their behavior. Closer home, the women in Kerala won their right to sit and work; whereas, earlier they were not even allowed for nature’s call during the long working hours. The women won en masse when the 12% GST on Sanitary Napkins was dropped and made tax-exempt; thus, allowing each and every woman the right and access to the necessary hygiene, irrespective of status or religion.

Multi-Layered Struggle

Although there have been many achievements on the part of women, the feminist movement is quite a multi-layered struggle. Though women of India realized that seeking Gender equality, Right to equal wages, Equal political rights and raising a voice against the patriarchal culture were the few injustices worth struggling for, yet there are many layers still waiting to be unraveled. The whole significance of the movement is quite vivacious and complex at the same time. It is said- “Human Issues are Feminist Issues, Feminist Issues should be Human Issues too.” So, if we expand the understanding of what should constitute as “feminist issues” apart from including freedom of choice, consent, bodily autonomy, and sexual freedom, we must combine freedom of sexual oppression with freedom from Caste, Ethnic and Religion oppression. It should broaden its horizons and take a graceful shift from the existing void towards the redistribution of efforts and power in equal shares among all of the aforementioned factors.

Fight against Systems of Oppression

Kyriarchy is a social system or set of connecting social systems built around domination, oppression, and submission. It keeps all the intersecting oppressions in place. Therefore, the fight should not be just against patriarchal culture, it should be against all systems of oppression. Indian feminism should move from only representing the concerns of the upper caste women and start representing the interests and concerns of Indian women as a whole. Marxists and socialist feminists too have pointed out the systemic and structural inequalities are among the many factors that are disadvantageous to the women. Ignorance towards the oppressive systems by one makes one an oppressor- which is completely un-feminist. Also, it is rightly said- “A woman is not free until each and every woman is- even if her shackles are very different and diverse.

The Battle is far from Over The recent refusal by the Supreme Court to recognize “Marital Rape”- proved to be a setback for the movement, making India one of the 36 countries that still haven’t criminalized the same. Also, The Right to Abortion after 20 weeks in cases of risks to the health of a woman is still an area of improvement considering the difficult and tedious norms set by the Supreme Court. Besides the already discussed issues that are relevant to the movement, one more issue that the feminists of India needs to address and soon is- Feminism in India is deeply misunderstood by both women and men. It is high time we realized that there is a difference between feminism and pseudo-feminism. The ubiquity of this problem is another barrier as there are many women out there calling themselves feminists and arguing for laws which will favor them but in turn be discriminatory among men. Hence, the whole concept of feminism which is- Equality, gets lost.

Taking the leaf from history and encapsulating the essence, The Feminist Movement is expected to represent impressive levels of inclusivity and maturity and be self-effacing. And we hope it saves the world from reducing to fragments and rubble.