The Ukraine War is one of the most significant and sad events of our times. In the middle of several conflicting claims and counter claims, 11 facts regarding this war stand out as the most crucial
- With thousands dead and over four million displaced within a few weeks, this war has very high humanitarian costs.
- With each passing day the dangers of the war escalating and widening increase. Weapons of mass destruction (biological, chemical, nuclear) may be involved accidentally or intentionally, or their sites may get damaged, with most terrible consequences, and with much blame being exchanged.
- As the world faces many serious environmental problems, led by but not confined to climate change, amounting to almost a survival crisis, the divisions and accusations brought by this war make it all the more difficult to have the world cooperation needed to resolve these environmental issues. The war as well as the weapons race it escalates also involve serious increase of emissions and other ecological harm.
- The war and the sanctions related to this increase the economic and food deprivations of tens of millions of people in many countries of world. This has happened when people have not yet recovered from pandemic related serious problems. The economic problems of many countries, particularly poorer countries are accentuated further.
- At a regional level the risks for Europe increase greatly. As a part of strengthening anti-Russian forces within Ukraine, the extreme right wing and fascist forces here have been strengthened militarily and politically by the USA and its allies, and it is possible that fascist militants from neighborhoods are also facilitated to join them in fighting the Russians, somewhat along the lines of assembling jihadists from many countries to fight the Russian army in Afghanistan, although not on the same scale. However, as seen earlier, such dangerous tactics have Frankenstein like possibilities.
- Due to all these factors the Ukraine war and the Russian invasion should end as soon as possible, with adequate peace and stability efforts to follow.
- An important cause of this war goes back to over 30 years of US hostility against the Russian Federation. These include interference in Russia to make conditions there more amenable to big business, constant eastward expansion of NATO contradicting earlier assurances given to Russian leaders, repeated interference in Ukraine affairs to throw out or obstruct regimes which want peace with Russia, strengthening fascist, far-right, anti-Russian forces within Ukraine, even facilitating their attacks on Russian speaking people as well as their pressure tactics against elected leaders to make them avoid a path of peace and compromise with Russia.
- Despite these grave provocations and violations of its legitimate security concerns, the invasion by Russia was a wrong decision, and other options to mobilize worldwide public opinion in favor of its legitimate security concerns should have been explored better and more by Russia, building wider support base. The invasion should end as early as possible.
- The United Nations has failed to play a justice-based peace role in preventing the invasion, or ending it at an early stage, or in preventing the various provocative actions of the USA, including its interference in Ukraine affairs to overthrow elected leaders and strengthen fascist forces, or even to criticize such actions strongly enough.
- While outwardly this is a Russia-Ukraine war, at a deeper level this is a proxy war between the USA and Russia being fought in Ukraine, in instigating which the USA played a very important role and Russia worsened the situation by invading. Top leaders of both countries made very irresponsible and arrogant statements. The recent actions of the USA do not at all appear to be in conformity with the needs of ending the war as soon as possible.
- All this again re-emphasizes the need for a worldwide people’s movement based on peace, justice and environment protection which can lead to a future without wars and weapons race in which environmental issues can be resolved in a framework of justice and democracy before it is too late.
Bharat Dogra is Honorary Convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now. His recent books include Planet in Peril—People’s Movements the Way Forward, Protecting Earth for Children and Earth without Borders.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has brought immense suffering to the people of that land, while sparking calls for increased military spending in both the United States and Europe. Though that war may prove to be a tragedy for the world, one group is already benefiting from it: U.S. arms contractors.
Even before hostilities broke out, the CEOs of major weapons firms were talking about how tensions in Europe could pad their profits. In a January 2022 call with his company’s investors, Raytheon Technologies CEO Greg Hayes typically bragged that the prospect of conflict in Eastern Europe and other global hot spots would be good for business, adding that “we are seeing, I would say, opportunities for international sales… [T]he tensions in Eastern Europe, the tensions in the South China Sea, all of those things are putting pressure on some of the defense spending over there. So I fully expect we’re going to see some benefit from it.”
In late March, in an interview with the Harvard Business Review after the war in Ukraine had begun, Hayes defended the way his company would profit from that conflict:
“So I make no apology for that. I think again recognizing we are there to defend democracy and the fact is eventually we will see some benefit in the business over time. Everything that’s being shipped into Ukraine today, of course, is coming out of stockpiles, either at DoD [the Department of Defense] or from our NATO allies, and that’s all great news. Eventually we’ll have to replenish it and we will see a benefit to the business over the next coming years.”
Arms to Ukraine, Profits to Contractors
The war in Ukraine will indeed be a bonanza for the likes of Raytheon and Lockheed Martin. First of all, there will be the contracts to resupply weapons like Raytheon’s Stinger anti-aircraft missile and the Raytheon/Lockheed Martin-produced Javelin anti-tank missile that Washington has already provided to Ukraine by the thousands. The bigger stream of profits, however, will come from assured post-conflict increases in national-security spending here and in Europe justified, at least in part, by the Russian invasion and the disaster that’s followed.
Indeed, direct arms transfers to Ukraine already reflect only part of the extra money going to U.S. military contractors. This fiscal year alone, they are guaranteed to also reap significant benefits from the Pentagon’s Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI) and the State Department’s Foreign Military Financing (FMF) program, both of which finance the acquisition of American weaponry and other equipment, as well as military training. These have, in fact, been the two primary channels for military aid to Ukraine from the moment the Russians invaded and seized Crimea in 2014. Since then, the United States has committed around $5 billion in security assistance to that country.
According to the State Department, the United States has provided such military aid to help Ukraine “preserve its territorial integrity, secure its borders, and improve interoperability with NATO.” So, when Russian troops began to mass on the Ukrainian border last year, Washington quickly upped the ante. On March 31, 2021, the U.S. European Command declared a “potential imminent crisis,” given the estimated 100,000 Russian troops already along that border and within Crimea. As last year ended, the Biden administration had committed $650 million in weaponry to Ukraine, including anti-aircraft and anti-armor equipment like the Raytheon/Lockheed Martin Javelin anti-tank missile.
Despite such elevated levels of American military assistance, Russian troops did indeed invade Ukraine in February. Since then, according to Pentagon reports, the U.S. has committed to giving approximately $2.6 billion in military aid to that country, bringing the Biden administration total to more than $3.2 billion and still rising.
Some of this assistance was included in a March emergency-spending package for Ukraine, which required the direct procurement of weapons from the defense industry, including drones, laser-guided rocket systems, machine guns, ammunition, and other supplies. The major military-industrial corporations will now seek Pentagon contracts to deliver that extra weaponry, even as they are gearing up to replenish Pentagon stocks already delivered to the Ukrainians.
On that front, in fact, military contractors have much to look forward to. More than half of the Pentagon’s $6.5 billion portion of the emergency-spending package for Ukraine is designated simply to replenish DoD inventories. In all, lawmakers allocated $3.5 billion to that effort, $1.75 billion more than the president even requested. They also boosted funding by $150 million for the State Department’s FMF program for Ukraine. And keep in mind that those figures don’t even include emergency financing for the Pentagon’s acquisition and maintenance costs, which are guaranteed to provide more revenue streams for the major weapons makers.
Better yet, from the viewpoint of such companies, there are many bites left to take from the apple of Ukrainian military aid. President Biden has already made it all too clear that “we’re going to give Ukraine the arms to fight and defend themselves through all the difficult days ahead.” One can only assume that more commitments are on the way.
Another positive side effect of the war for Lockheed, Raytheon, and other arms merchants like them is the push by House Armed Services Committee chair Adam Smith (D-WA) and ranking committee Republican Mike Rogers of Alabama to speed up production of a next-generation anti-aircraft missile to replace the Stinger. In his congressional confirmation hearing, William LaPlante, the latest nominee to head acquisition at the Pentagon, argued that America also needs more “hot production lines” for bombs, missiles, and drones. Consider that yet another benefit-in-waiting for the major weapons contractors.
The Pentagon Gold Mine
For U.S. arms makers, however, the greatest benefits of the war in Ukraine won’t be immediate weapons sales, large as they are, but the changing nature of the ongoing debate over Pentagon spending itself. Of course, the representatives of such companies were already plugging the long-term challenge posed by China, a greatly exaggerated threat, but the Russian invasion is nothing short of manna from heaven for them, the ultimate rallying cry for advocates of greater military outlays. Even before the war, the Pentagon was slated to receive at least $7.3 trillion over the next decade, more than four times the cost of President Biden’s $1.7 trillion domestic Build Back Better plan, already stymied by members of Congress who labeled it “too expensive” by far. And keep in mind that, given the current surge in Pentagon spending, that $7.3 trillion could prove a minimal figure.
Indeed, Pentagon officials like Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks promptly cited Ukraine as one of the rationales for the Biden administration’s proposed record national-security budget proposal of $813 billion, calling Russia’s invasion “an acute threat to the world order.” In another era that budget request for Fiscal Year 2023 would have been mind-boggling, since it’s higher than spending at the peaks of the conflicts in Korea and Vietnam and over $100 billion more than the Pentagon received annually at the height of the Cold War.
Despite its size, however, congressional Republicans — joined by a significant number of their Democratic colleagues — are already pushing for more. Forty Republican members of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees have, in fact, signed a letter to President Biden calling for 5% growth in military spending beyond inflation, which would potentially add up to $100 billion to that budget request. Typically enough, Representative Elaine Luria (D-VA), who represents the area near the Huntington Ingalls company’s Newport News military shipyard in Virginia, accused the administration of “gutting the Navy” because it contemplates decommissioning some older ships to make way for new ones. That complaint was lodged despite that service’s plan to spend a whopping $28 billion on new ships in FY 2023.
Who Benefits?
That planned increase in shipbuilding funds is part of a proposed pool of $276 billion for weapons procurement, as well as further research and development, contained in the new budget, which is where the top five weapons-producing contractors — Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, General Dynamics, and Northrop Grumman — make most of their money. Those firms already split more than $150 billion in Pentagon contracts annually, a figure that will skyrocket if the administration and Congress have their way. To put all of this in context, just one of those top five firms, Lockheed Martin, was awarded $75 billion in Pentagon contracts in fiscal year 2020 alone. That’s considerably more than the entire budget for the State Department, dramatic evidence of how skewed Washington’s priorities are, despite the Biden administration’s pledge to “put diplomacy first.”
The Pentagon’s weapons wish list for FY 2023 is a catalog of just how the big contractors will cash in. For example, the new Columbia Class ballistic missile submarine, built by General Dynamics Electric Boat plant in southeastern Connecticut, will see its proposed budget for FY 2023 grow from $5.0 billion to $6.2 billion. Spending on Northrop Grumman’s new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent, will increase by about one-third annually, to $3.6 billion. The category of “missile defense and defeat,” a specialty of Boeing, Raytheon, and Lockheed Martin, is slated to receive more than $24 billion. And space-based missile warning systems, a staple of the Trump administration-created Space Force, will jump from $2.5 billion in FY 2022 to $4.7 billion in this year’s proposed budget.
Among all the increases, there was a single surprise: a proposed reduction in purchases of the troubled Lockheed Martin F-35 combat aircraft, from 85 to 61 planes in FY 2023. The reason is clear enough. That plane has more than 800 identified design flaws and its production and performance problems have been little short of legendary. Luckily for Lockheed Martin, that drop in numbers has not been accompanied by a proportional reduction in funding. While newly produced planes may be reduced by one-third, the actual budget allocation for the F-35 will drop by less than 10%, from $12 billion to $11 billion, an amount that’s more than the complete discretionary budget of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Since Lockheed Martin won the F-35 contract, development costs have more than doubled, while production delays have set the aircraft back by nearly a decade. Nonetheless, the military services have purchased so many of those planes that manufacturers can’t keep up with the demand for spare parts. And yet the F-35 can’t even be properly tested for combat effectiveness because the simulation software required is not only unfinished, but without even an estimated completion date. So, the F-35 is many years away from the full production of planes that actually work as advertised, if that’s ever in the cards.
A number of the weapons systems which, in the Ukraine moment, are guaranteed to be showered with cash are so dangerous or dysfunctional that, like the F-35, they should actually be phased out. Take the new ICBM. Former Secretary of Defense William Perry has called ICBMs “some of the most dangerous weapons in the world” because a president would only have minutes to decide whether to launch them in a crisis, greatly increasing the risk of an accidental nuclear war based on a false alarm. Nor does it make sense to buy aircraft carriers at $13 billion a pop, especially since the latest version is having trouble even launching and landing aircraft — its primary function — and is increasingly vulnerable to attack by next-generation high-speed missiles.
The few positives in the new budget like the Navy’s decision to retire the unnecessary and unworkable Littoral Combat Ship — a sort of “F-35 of the sea” designed for multiple tasks none of which it does well — could easily be reversed by advocates from states and districts where those systems are built and maintained. The House of Representatives, for instance, has a powerful Joint Strike Fighter Caucus, which, in 2021, mustered more than one-third of all House members to press for more F-35s than the Pentagon and Air Force requested, as they will no doubt do again this year. A Shipbuilding Caucus, co-chaired by representatives Joe Courtney (D-CT) and Rob Wittman (R-VA), will fight against the Navy’s plan to retire old ships to buy new ones. (They would prefer that the Navy keep the old ones and buy new ones with more of your tax money up for grabs.) Similarly, the “ICBM Coalition,” made up of senators from states with either ICBM bases or production centers, has a near perfect record of staving off reductions in the deployment or funding of those weapons and will, in 2022, be hard at work defending its budgetary allocation.
Towards a New Policy
Coming up with a sensible, realistic, and affordable defense policy, always a challenge, will be even more so in the midst of the Ukrainian nightmare. Still, given where our taxpayer dollars go, it remains all too worthwhile. Such a new approach should include things like reducing the numbers of the Pentagon’s private contractors, hundreds of thousands of people, many of whom are engaged in thoroughly redundant jobs that could be done more cheaply by civilian government employees or simply eliminated. It’s estimated that cutting spending on contractors by 15% would save around $262 billion over 10 years.
The Pentagon’s three-decades-long near $2 trillion “modernization” plan to build a new generation of nuclear-armed bombers, missiles, and submarines, along with new warheads, should, for instance, simply be scrapped in keeping with the kind of “deterrence-only” nuclear strategy developed by the nuclear-policy organization Global Zero. And the staggering American global military footprint — an invitation to further conflict that includes more than 750 military bases scattered on every continent except Antarctica, and counterterror operations in 85 countries — should, at the very least, be sharply scaled back.
According to the Center for International Policy’s Sustainable Defense Task Force and a study of alternative approaches to defense carried out by the Congressional Budget Office, even a relatively minimalist strategic rethinking could save at least $1 trillion over the next decade, enough to make a healthy down payment on investments in public health, preventing or mitigating the worst potential impacts of climate change, or beginning the task of narrowing record levels of income inequality.
Of course, none of these changes can occur without challenging the power and influence of the military-industrial-congressional complex, a task as urgent as it is difficult in this moment of carnage in Europe. No matter how hard it may be, it’s a fight worth having, both for the security of the world and the future of the planet.
One thing is guaranteed: a new gold rush of “defense” spending is a disaster in the making for all of us not in that complex.
Tyranny did not Pause even on the Easter
Decades earlier recall what the US-Britain and NATO did in Iraq even on the Xmas Eve. Layla Anwar (“Come and see our overflowing morgues…..come and see the rubble of your surgical strikes”: An Arab Women Blues wrote in her website blog:
“Everyday, under the pretext of either al-Qaida, insurgents, militants or whatever imaginary name you coined, you have not ceased, not even for one day, slaughtering our innocents……for 4 years, you have not ceased for one single day, not during holiday periods, not during religious celebrations, not even during the day your so called God was born….if you have a God that is.”
We, the People witnessing a planned scheme of things to exterminate humanity with superior weapons hitting targeted civilian towns and daily bloodbath as a new normal. Have we not learned any lessons from the European nationalistic wars of First World War and the 2nd World War? We, the Humanity continue to argue if wars have become part of new normal – unknown and unthinkable to human civilizations and rational thinking. We, the People are entrapped and entrenched by dirty politics of the few. It needs a formidable challenge to rethink about the continuity of the current tragedy in Ukraine.
We, the People, We, the Humanity claim to be a “moral being”, yet our action defy the logic of our claims as moral beings. Easter had moral, spiritual and humanitarian significance to be at peace and united to worship God, the Creator of All (known and unknown), and Lord of the worlds. The Orthodox Christians and other Christian denominations populating Russia, Ukraine, Europe, Asia and Africa would visualize as an inner world of soul and body to celebrate the Easter, but bombing, shelling and missiles continued to victimize the innocent civilians and anarchy of violence and barbarism followed by human beings against other humans across Ukraine. The consequential killings and destruction in Kyiv, Khariv and Mariupol appear far worse than the imagination of despotism.
Loss of Morality and War against All
Canons of rationality should unfold rationality of leadership in Russia, Ukraine, America, NATO and all over the globe for immediate concerns about lost sense of moral humanity. What Russian ‘Military Operation’ is doing in Ukraine, American, British and other Europeans have practiced the Hobbesion formula: “war of all against all.” The conflict in Ukraine calls for an immediate ceasefire and rethinking and how the great cause of humanity for peace and harmony could end up in catastrophic challenges for a sustainable future. Did President Putin not know that war kill people and destroy the habitats? Surely, he knew first-hand how George Bush, Tony Blair and Obama had inflicted insanity of war on the people of Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria – and millions and millions were brutally massacred, displaced and children made orphans for generation to come. Why should intelligent and responsible leaders ignore the lessons of history? If Bush, Blair and Obama were wrong and misfit for responsible leadership, Putin does not have to be immoral, tyrannical and ruthless to wage war against his own people – former entity of the USSR – Ukraine- people have enjoin common ethnicity, culture, religion and lot more as peace loving people of this planet.
The wars are declared by the few and not the majority masses. The small ruling elite who plans and wages war is often afraid of citizenry reaction and refusal to accept the rationality of a war. Throughout history, European nationalism institutionalized the doctrine of war as a necessary means to promote national interest and racial superiority over “the other”. Most proponents of wars have used “fear” as one of the major instruments of propaganda and manipulation to perpetuate allegiance from the ordinary folks to the elite warmongers in a crisis situation.
President Putin in Search of a Navigational Change
Effective leaders must know their strength and weaknesses and assess the competence of their immediate advisors and people around them to determine whether they make rational decisions/actions or negating the logic of humanity by crossing over the limits of insanity. Russian culture has immense relationship to ethnicity, language and culture of Ukraine. Why would an intelligent leader bent on destroying his own people and culture for some transitory military gains?
In an age of enlightenment of the 21st century, could we imagine the growth of human civilizations out of moral mire, military conquest, hypersonic bombing and imperial domination? What went wrong with human thinking that has brought us to this onslaught of continued insanity, shelling and killings even on the Easter? We imagine that Orthodox Christians hold Easter as vital and spiritually important as other Christians across the world. But there was no critical challenge emerging to the leadership in Moscow from the Russian religious establishment to halt the bombing or pause for the civilians to be evacuated across the charcoaled buildings in Khariv and Mariupol.
If the Orthodox Church (Russia) claimed moral values, then surely there seems to be contrast between politics and human morality. Undoubtedly, killings and bombing of civilian habitats cannot be related to ideas and ideals of Easter festivity and splendor. Violence against fellow human beings are the outgrowth of madness, cruelty and sheer indifference to human basic values and perhaps Russia would not like to be part of malignity and tyranny. It would be logical to understand that President Putin would realize – what went wrong with his assumptions of immediate victory over helpless Ukraine and to stop the dreadful and unavoidable calamity of war and should rush to make a navigational change for the good of the people of Russia and Ukraine and the larger global humanity. The war on Ukraine has unleashed unthinkable socio-economic, political and humanitarian calamities on the rest of mankind. One would imagine that President Putin would listen to voices of REASON for a navigational change and would not bankrupt Russia as did Bush and Obama: This author noted the same in: “How the United States and Britain Lost the Bogus Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.” Global Research: 10/22/2010.
It is undeniable that the US is “bankrupt” because of the on-going wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. David M. Walker Comptroller General of the US and Head of the Government Accountability Office (December 2007). reported that “In everyday language, the US Government cannot pass an audit.
Time and Reason call for an immediate Ceasefire and Peace-Making between Russia and Ukraine
We, the People, We, the Humanity must rise against the evil to exploit, tyrannize and demoralize the people across the globe. Those echoing voices of “Crimes against Humanity” in Khariv and Bucha and Mariupol must know that it is a slippery trail of myth and one cannot imagine to expect ICC ( The Hague) to prosecute any superpowers. There were many formal complaints against America, Britain and NATO but none were translated into actions against these powerful monsters for crimes committed against the civilian population in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen and Syria.
To stop the war in Ukraine, the US, the EU, NATO should have a direct face to face communication with President Putin. It could be facilitated under the G20 auspices. It is logical when people of diversity and opposing ideals come to talk directly, tensions and evil mongering is reduced to reason and mutual interest. This has not happened except military options for weapon supplies and enlargement of the scope of regional conflict. Time and history will not forgive nor forget any of the leaders if they failed to agree to an immediate ceasefire and peace deal.
Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja specializes in international affairs-global security, peace and conflict resolution with keen interests in Islamic-Western comparative cultures and civilizations, and author of several publications including the latest: One Humanity and the Remaking of Global Peace, Security and Conflict Resolution. Lambert Academic Publications, Germany, 12/2019.
In the first testimony about the Israeli massacres that took places in the Palestinian refugee camp Burj el Shimali in south Lebanon , I
Said earlier that the Palestinian refugee camp was in ruins in every sense of the word due to the indiscriminating Israeli air raids. But despite all that, the young men of the camp rushed to the camp’s border to confront the Israeli tanks with individual weapons. Despite the massive difference in the balance of power, the youths succeeded in setting the aggressors back.
The situation was tragic in the camp on these heavy days in June 1982. The camp is only a few kilometers away from the city of Tyr. Its residents were displaced in 1948 from the villages of the Galilee region in northern Palestine, by Jewish terrorist gangs that came from the ghettos of Eastern Europe under the protection of Britain.
The League of Nations tasks Britain to supervise Palestine until it manages its affairs independently. But Britain betrayed this resolution. The majority of the camp’s residents are Sunni, Shiite Muslims, and Christians, and most of the camp’s resident’s work as agricultural workers in the neighboring fields.
Ironically, Israel called the invasion (operation Safety of the Galilee). The target was to kill the native inhabitants of Galilee uprooted in 1948 who fled to Lebanon.
In the first article I talked about the massacre of the shelter of the Hula Club. But there were other massacres inside the camp, including a massacre in a cave where the residents took refuge to hide from the Israeli planes bombing.
No journalist was covering this bombing. The Zionists are usually afraid, especially of the presence of Western journalists, because they want to commit crimes without anyone knowing. This helped them to bomb and kill without limits.
The Zionists consider the journalists’ camera an enemy because it exposes their crimes, which explains the killing of dozens of Palestinian journalists to obliterate the facts.
During these hard days, a man came to see me from the neighborhood. He told me that his wife had been killed under the rubble. And that she had around her hands some gold which eastern women usually keep as a precaution for challenging circumstances. He said that he needs the gold for his kids. And asked my help to contact the Red Cross to help him.
I apologized to him and told him that I could not go to the Red Cross since the telephone service was destroyed. And the camp is surrounded and bombarded from all directions. The man went back to his home, and two days later, he was killed while he was at home. I did not know what happened with his kids, but I heard later from someone that they were safe. The bombing did not stop all the time, especially on the fifth day of the invasion. I thought that no one would come out alive from the bombing to this extent.
I told my family to put themselves in several shelters to avoid the death of all if they all together. Meanwhile, I saw my mother for the first time. She was sitting in the corner of the shelter, and fear was evident on her face. I felt outraged and pain in my heart.
Many years have passed since all this happened. But the killing of Palestinians never stops. Israel continues murdering and stealing the land of native Palestinians .while the UN issues one resolution after the other. But all this never punishes Israel because they know that the west protects them, and all the UN resolutions are just paper.
They are right because the history of the conflict has shown that Israel has a free hand to do whatever atrocity they want knowing in advance that they escape sanctions. But despite the culture of death that Zionists brought to Palestine, they could not break the will of Palestinians.
Ps. I devote this article to Abu kasim who was the captain of our football teams when we were boys. He was killed with 12 members of his family in the Hula shelter.
Salim Nazzal is a Palestinian Norwegian researcher, lecturer playwright and poet, wrote more than 17 books such as Perspectives on thought, culture and political sociology, in thought, culture and ideology, the road to Baghdad. Palestine in heart
Former Monsanto Chairman and CEO Hugh Grant is currently in the news. He is trying to avoid appearing in court to be questioned by lawyers on behalf of a cancer patient in the case of Allan Shelton v Monsanto.
Shelton has non-Hodgkin lymphoma and is one of the 100,000-plus people in the US claiming in lawsuits that exposure to Monsanto’s Roundup weed killer and its other brands containing the chemical glyphosate caused their cancer.
According to investigative journalist Carey Gillam, Shelton’s lawyers have argued that Grant was an active participant and decision maker in the company’s Roundup business and should be made to testify at the trial.
But Grant says in the court filings that the effort to put him on the stand in front of a jury is “wholly unnecessary and serves only to harass and burden” him.
His lawyers state that Grant does not have “any expertise in the studies and tests that have been done related to Roundup generally, including those related to Roundup safety”.
Gillam notes that the court filings state that Grant’s testimony “would be of little value” because he is not a toxicologist, an epidemiologist, or a regulatory expert and “did not work in the areas of toxicology or epidemiology while employed by Monsanto”.
Bayer acquired Monsanto in 2018 and Grant received an estimated $77 million post-sale payoff. Bloomberg reported in 2017 that Monsanto had increased Grant’s salary to $19.5 million for that fiscal year.
Even by 2009, Roundup-related products, which include genetically modified seeds developed to withstand glyphosate-based applications, represented about half of Monsanto’s gross margin. It is reasonable to say that Roundup was integral to Monsanto’s business model and Grant’s enormous income and final payoff.
But the cancer lawsuits in the US are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the damage done by glyphosate-based products and many other biocides.
Silent killer
June 2022 marks 60 years since the publication of Rachel Carson’s iconic book Silent Spring. It was published just two years before her death at age 56.
Carson documented the adverse impacts on the environment of the indiscriminate use of pesticides, which she said were ‘biocides’, killing much more than the pests that were targeted. Silent Spring also described some of the deleterious effects of these chemicals on human health.
She accused the agrochemical industry of spreading disinformation and public officials of accepting the industry’s marketing claims without question. An accusation that is still very much relevant today.
Silent Spring was a landmark book, inspiring many scientists and campaigners over the years to carry on the work of Carson, flagging up the effects of agrochemicals and the role of the industry in distorting the narrative surrounding its proprietary chemicals and its influence on policy making.
In 2012, the American Chemical Society designated Silent Spring a National Historic Chemical Landmark because of its importance for the modern environmental movement.
For her efforts, Carson had to endure vicious, baseless smears and attacks on her personal life, integrity, scientific credentials and political affiliations. Tactics that the agrochemicals sector and its supporters have used ever since to try to shut down prominent scientists and campaigners who challenge industry claims, practices and products.
Although Carson was not calling for a ban on all pesticides, at the time Monsanto hit back by publishing 5,000 copies of ‘The Desolate Year’ which projected a world of famine and disease if pesticides were to be banned.
A message the sector continues to churn out even as evidence stacks up against the deleterious impacts of its practices and products and the increasing body of research which indicates the world could feed itself by shifting to agroecological/organic practices (see the online article Living in Epoch-Defining Times: Food, Agriculture and the New World Order, January 2022).
The title of Carson’s book was a metaphor, warning of a bleak future for the natural environment. So all these years later, what has become of humanity’s ‘silent spring’?
In 2017, research conducted in Germany showed the abundance of flying insects had plunged by three-quarters over the past 25 years. The research data was gathered in nature reserves across Germany and has implications for all landscapes dominated by agriculture as it seems likely that the widespread use of pesticides is an important factor.
Prof Dave Goulson of Sussex University in the UK was part of the team behind the study and said that vast tracts of land are becoming inhospitable to most forms of life: if we lose the insects then everything is going to collapse.
Flying insects are vital because they pollinate flowers and many, not least bees, are important for pollinating key food crops. Most fruit crops are insect-pollinated and insects also provide food for lots of animals, including birds, bats, some mammals, fish, reptiles and amphibians.
Flies, beetles and wasps are also predators and important decomposers, breaking down dead plants and animals. And insects form the base of thousands of food chains; their disappearance is a principal reason Britain’s farmland birds have more than halved in number since 1970.
Is this one aspect of the silence Carson warned of – that joyous season of renewal and awakening void of birdsong (and much else)? Truly a silent spring.
The 2016 State of Nature Report found that one in 10 UK wildlife species is threatened with extinction, with numbers of certain creatures having plummeted by two thirds since 1970. The study showed the abundance of flying insects had plunged by three-quarters over a 25-year period.
Campaigner Dr Rosemary Mason has written to public officials on numerous occasions noting that agrochemicals, especially Monsanto’s glyphosate-based Roundup, have devastated the natural environment and have also led to spiralling rates of illness and disease.
She indicates how the widespread use on agricultural crops of neonicotinoid insecticides and the herbicide glyphosate, both of which cause immune suppression, make species vulnerable to emerging infectious pathogens, driving large-scale wildlife extinctions, including essential pollinators.
Providing evidence to show how human disease patterns correlate remarkably well with the rate of glyphosate usage on corn, soy and wheat crops, which has increased due to ‘Roundup Ready’ seeds, Mason argues that over-reliance on chemicals in agriculture is causing irreparable harm to all beings on the planet.
In 2015, writer Carol Van Strum said the US Environmental Protection Agency has been routinely lying about the safety of pesticides since it took over pesticide registrations in 1970.
She has described how faked data and fraudulent tests led to many highly toxic agrochemicals reaching the market and they still remain in use, regardless of the devastating impacts on wildlife and human health.
The research from Germany mentioned above followed a warning by a chief scientific adviser to the UK government, Prof Ian Boyd, who claimed that regulators around the world have falsely assumed that it is safe to use pesticides at industrial scales across landscapes and the “effects of dosing whole landscapes with chemicals have been largely ignored.”
Prior to that particular warning, there was a report delivered to the UN Human Rights Council saying that pesticides have catastrophic impacts on the environment, human health and society as a whole.
Authored by Hilal Elver, the then special rapporteur on the right to food, and Baskut Tuncak, who was at the time special rapporteur on toxics, the report states:
“Chronic exposure to pesticides has been linked to cancer, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, hormone disruption, developmental disorders and sterility.”
Elver says that the power of the corporations over governments and the scientific community is extremely important: if you want to deal with pesticides, you have to deal with the companies which deny the damage inflicted by their chemicals as they continue to aggressively market their products
While these corporations falsely claim their products are essential for feeding a burgeoning global population, they also mouth platitudes about choice and democracy, while curtailing both as they infiltrate and subvert regulatory agencies and government machinery.
Whether it is the well-documented harm to the environment or tales of illness and disease in Latin America and elsewhere, the devastating impacts of chemical-intensive agriculture which the agribusiness-agritech corporations rollout is clear to see.
Corporate criminals
Post-1945 the nutritional value of what we eat has been depleted due to reliance on a narrower range of crops, the side-lining of traditional seeds which produced nutrient-dense plants and modern ‘cost-effective’ food-processing methods that strip out vital micronutrients and insert a cocktail of chemical additives.
Fuelling these trends has been a network of interests, including the Rockefeller Foundation and its acolytes in the US government, giant agribusiness conglomerates like Cargill, the financial-industrial complex and its globalisation agenda (which effectively further undermined localised, indigenous food systems) and the giant food corporations and the influential groups they fund, such as the International Life Sciences Institute.
Included here in this network is the agrochemical-agritech sector which promotes its proprietary chemicals and (genetically-engineered) seeds through a well-developed complex of scientists, politicians, journalists, lobbyists, PR companies and front groups.
Consider what Carey Gillam says:
“US Roundup litigation began in 2015 after the International Agency for Research on Cancer classified glyphosate as a probable human carcinogen. Internal Monsanto documents dating back decades show that the company was aware of scientific research linking its weed killer to cancer but instead of warning consumers, the company worked to suppress the information and manipulate scientific literature.”
Over the years, Monsanto mounted a deceitful defence of its health- and environment-damaging Roundup and its genetically engineered crops and orchestrated toxic smear campaigns against anyone – scientist or campaigner – who threatened its interests.
In 2016, Rosemary Mason wrote an open letter to European Chemicals Agency Executive Director Geert Dancet: Open Letter to the ECHA about Scientific Fraud and Ecocide. More of an in-depth report than a letter, it can be accessed on the academia.edu site.
In it, she explained how current EU legislation was originally set up to protect the pesticides industry and Monsanto and other agrochemical corporations helped the EU design the regulatory systems for their own products.
She also drew Dancet’s attention to the journal Critical Reviews in Toxicology and how, in 2016 Volume 46, Monsanto commissioned five reviews published in a supplement to the journal. Monsanto also funded them. Mason argues the aim was to cast serious doubts about the adverse effects of glyphosate by using junk science. Straight out of the Big Tobacco playbook.
Mason told Dancet:
“CEO Hugh Grant and the US EPA knew that glyphosate caused all of these problems. The corporation concealed the carcinogenic effects of PCBs on humans and animals for seven years. They have no plans to protect you and your families from the tsunami of sickness that is affecting us all in the UK and the US.”
Meanwhile, on the US Right to Know site, the article Roundup Cancer Cases – Key Documents and Analysis sets out just why more than 100,000 cancer sufferers are attempting to hold Monsanto to account in US courts.
In a just (and sane) world, CEOs would be held personally responsible for the products they peddle and earn millions from. But no doubt they would do their utmost to dodge culpability.
After all, they were ‘just doing their job’ – and they would not want to feel harassed or burdened, would they?
Colin Todhunter specialises in food, agriculture and development. He receives no payment from any media outlet or organisation for his writing and relies on the generosity of readers. If you appreciated this article, please consider sending a few coins his way: colintodhunter@outlook.com
‘The development of India may require mining, but are we (the adivasis) not a part of india? We don’t even know who has the mine, or how they acquired it”,
-Indu Netam, the convenor of Adivasi Jan Van Adhikar Manch and a member of Mineral Inheritors Rights Association (MIRA)
Understanding Mining in India
The mining industry in India has constantly been in the spotlight for violations of many kind, ranging from environmental degredation, to labor violation and cases of child labour.Yet mining continues to be practiced on a massive scale. India is one of the largest contributors of mineral resources in the world, contributing to one quarter of the world’s mineral wealth. As of 2022, the government of India states that India has 1531 operational mines, producing 95 varieties of minerals, which includes 4 fuels, 10 metallic minerals, non metallic minerals, 3 atomic minerals and 55 minor minerals. The GDP from mining in India has averaged 773.49 billion rupees from 2011 until 2020 as per records from the government. The Press Bureau of India estimates that this contributes to nearly 2.6% of India’s GDP (Press Bureau of India, 2011). The mineral sector is also the second largest employer in the country following the agrarian sector engaging 11.49 lakh of people which is equivalent to 7.06% of the total employment share across the country
India is the second largest producer of coal across the globe and aims at reaching a production rate of 1.2 billion tonnes by 2023-2021. India is also the second largest producer of as well as consumer of steel across the globe. India produced 76.04 MT of steel in the year 2020, of which 9.4 MT was given for production. The index of the mining and quarrying sector has also increased to 124.7MT which is 2.8% higher than the previous year. The latest statistics by the Indian Bureau of Mines (IBM) states that there has been a 14.2 percent increase in production in the year 2021. Energy demands in the country increased by 700% in the last four decades. The production of coal is also steadily increasing over the years, barring 2020 when coal production dropped drastically as an outcome of the COVID-19 pandemic. The government of India continues to import coal to meet its fuel demands.
In 2021, coal comprised 4.5% of India’s imports. In 2020, the central government introduced the Mineral Laws (Amendment) Bill as a means to increase the energy production in the country thereby boosting economic growth. This comes at a period when the demand for global energy is expected to surge by 4.6% as stated in a report by the International Energy Agency. “The Mineral Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2020, will open a new era in the Indian coal & mining sector specially to promote ease of Doing Business.” said Union Coal & Mines Minister Sh. Pralhad Joshi “This Bill will transform the mining sector in the country, boosting coal production and reducing dependence on imports.” The Mineral Laws (Amendment) Bill 2020 was fast tracked through civil processes and signed by President Kovind
What does the New Mineral Amendment Bill 2020 mean?
The fast tracking of the coal amendment bills without due process has been critiqued by several parties. “The decision is discretionary, has no basis in law, and is against the principles of natural justice. At the very basic level, the EIA notification does not provide for exemptions based on standards such as ‘five-star rating’ as is being directed through an office memorandum. The law embraces the need for a free, fair, and transparent public hearing ensuring maximum participation. Limiting the public consultation to only written responses is discriminatory and may not hold up if put to a constitutional review,” said Kanchi Kohli, who works as a legal researcher at the Centre for Policy Research.
The passing of the new mineral amendment bill will open 500 potential mines, which were previously inaccessible. In an article in the Financial Express, Palhad Joshi the Union Minister for Coal and Mines estimates that the deregulation of the mining sector will increase the contribution of mining from 1.75% of the GDP to 2.5% of the GDP and National production output is expected to grow by 200%. Mining is the second largest sector in terms of gaining employment in the country supporting 5.5 crore people and proponents of the bill argue that it has been underperforming for decades because of the strict mining regulations present in the country. Since the mining industry supports other industries, a growth in mining would equate to a growth in allied sectors such as steel, aluminum, commercial vehicles, transportation etc.
On the flip side, there has been a lot of resistance by activists to the establishment of the new Mineral Laws (Amendment) Bill 2020. The current functioning of India’s mining industry has already been controversial. Before the Mineral Laws (Amendment) Bill 2020, the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) (MMDR) was in place.The MMDR was established to regulate mining activities in India using “scientific methods.” The act provides the overarching framework for mining practice in India, from planning, processes, type of technology used, eligibility criteria for mining leasing. (MINES AND MINERALS (DEVELOPMENT AND REGULATION) ACT, 1957) However a loophole in the mining policy which was reported about by the organization Dhaatri in their report is that the policy does not give any reference to which the practice of mining should occur from a social context. The Act simply provides broad guidelines in terms of environment, rehabilitation and social impacts which can easily be misrepresented to the advantage of larger mining corporations.
The observations made by Dhaatri is further substantiated by a report by the Human Rights Watch done in Goa and Karnataka in 2009. A local home ministry official stated that more than half of the mining activities in Goa were illegal, but continued to remain in action because of corruption and lack of inspection by the respective authorities. The state of affairs is reflective of mining policies at the national level. Foreign companies choose to invest in mining activities in the country because of the lackadaisical implementation of legal provisions and policies. In the background of the COVID-19 pandemic, the state has introduced the new Mineral Law Amendment, which allows for an auctioning off of 500 potential mining leases to public and private investors.
The opening up of mining to the private sector has been coupled with deregulation of mining practice, and extension of the mining leases. The new amendments have also liberalized the mining sector by opening it completely for foreign investment. The crux of the argument is that the new mineral policy which calls for the commercialisation of tribal lands has shifted the management of natural resources from Adivasi communities to industrial groups. This act is also in violation of the Fifth Amendment and the Sixth Schedule of the Indian Constitution and disempowers the Adivasi communities by removing their rights over their lands. It is also more likely to increase already existing social and ecological inequalities that are an outcome of the mining industry in India.
How do International Entities influence our Policy?
The World Bank and The International Monetary Fund (1944) was instituted in 1944 with the mission to rebuild the world economy in the aftermath of the Second World War. Presently, the main goals of the World Bank have been “eliminating extreme poverty by 2030 and boosting shared prosperity.” There are many ways in which the World Bank works towards the achievement of this goal such as supporting government projects or large scale development projects which provide employability, facilitating international trade and giving policy advice. Following the Washington Consensus, the Bank and IMF encouraged a certain kind of macroeconomic policy which includes aspects such as labor flexibilization and privatizing the social sector. It is important to recognise the role that international actors and businesses play in the development of policies.
From the period of 2014-2019, India has taken loans up to 21,750 million dollars from the World Bank for various projects by the central government and individual state governments. India is the third largest lendee of the World Bank. This money has been used for the development of infrastructure such as electric power plants, transport, communication and the steel industry. Owing to this, the country has to comply with the larger mandates of the World Bank. The World Bank has largely been critiqued as exporting the US version of capitalism to the rest of the globe.
This has been reflected in India’s energy policy. In their paper, contesting women’s land rights, researchers Bhandari Kullari and Seema Mundoli noted the roles that International Multinational Corporates play in the formulation of policy in the state through deliberate arm-twisting of governments to remove or dilute the mineral policy.
In the current system, there is very little accountability demanded of these corporate entities for the human rights violations that occur in spaces such as mining. In his book “Rocks and Hard Places: The Globalization of Mining,” Roger Moody highlights the fact that in spite of objections from its own members and committees, the World Bank continued investment in mining companies which accounted for 56% of its returns as per a report by its International Finance Corporation (IFC). The World Bank continued to work with its charade that it was contributing to its mission of uplifting the poor, by only investing in mining corporations which supported the upliftment of marginalized communities. However the pushing for privatization of mines and over dependence on mineral resources in countries like Peru and Zambia by the World Bank very obviously contradicts the claim.
Many projects which have been funded by the World Bank are directly in violation of several internationally mandated human rights laws. These projects cause issues such as mass evictions, destructions of forests, violations of the rights of indigenous people and human rights violations such as child labour and forced labour. In spite of the development of toolkits on how to do mining while protecting the rights of communities and safeguarding the environment, the bank themselves have acknowledged that their projects contribute to gendered violence, sexual abuse and the spread of diseases such as HIV/AIDS. In an interview with Alan Beattie, Amar Bhattacharya who is a former official of the world bank and a doctorate for the group of 24, a caucus of developing countries said that “We don’t see the World Bank as being just for the very poorest countries or the very poorest people, but playing a primary role in poverty reduction and growth throughout the developing world.” He further added that the bank cannot address newer problems such as climate change while continuing to be involved in the development of infrastructure. “India is going to triple its usage of coal in the next 20 years,” he said in the interview. “The only question is: does it do it cleanly or dirtily?”
It is important that this question is further evaluated when designing and implementing policy. There can be no denying the fact that presently mining is a necessity for us to meet our energy requirements. It also plays an integral role in the economic development of the country in terms of providing jobs, and meeting our energy requirements. However it is important to recognise the fact that mining goes hand in hand with ecological degradation, human rights and labor violations. In the process mining also forces displacement and destruction of agrarian land. The two important questions to ask is who reaps the benefits of mining and who bears the costs of mining?
Nikita Chatterjee is part of the Smitu Kothari Fellowship with the Centre for Financial Accountability
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