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Friday, October 28, 2022
Eric Schmidt: A Conflict of Interest
Ethics and Eric Schmidt are rare bedfellows. The former Google/Alphabet CEO/Chairman exudes a sense of predatory self-interest, always making the point that what he wants aligns with what is supposedly good for the United States.
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| SCHMIDT VISITED NK IN THE 2000'S |
He has splashed money on numerous projects, including such artificial intelligence outfits as Rebellion Defense, all the time maintaining uncomfortably close ties to the government advisory circuit. For years, he has been hectoring the Department of Defense to uncritically embrace AI, in other words, machine-learning technology. “You absolutely suck at machine learning,” Schmidt boldly told General Raymond Thomas in July 2016, head of US Special Operations Command. “If I got under your tent for a day, I could solve most of your problems.”
His efforts to get under that tent were already well underway. In the 2000s, Schmidt began shaping Google’s cloud computing and AI capabilities, readying it to be a recipient of DoD contracts. But the speed of such technological adoption proved infuriatingly slow. “I am bizarrely told by my military friends that they have moved incredibly fast, showing you the difference of time frames between the world I live in and the world they live in.”
During the Obama administration, he was highly placed on the regular guest list, and was even brought in to do some cleaning when the launch of the government’s healthcare.gov website was botched. (Since then, he has drummed the narrative that healthcare would also benefit from a “combination of cloud, deep neural networks”.)
Thanks to WikiLeaks, we also know how deeply involved Schmidt was in Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. “He’s ready to fund, advise [sic] recruit talent, etc.,” wrote Clinton’s excited confidante and advisor John Podesta in a 2014 email. Preferring to avoid the direct donations route, focus was instead placed upon the stealthy funding of start-ups packed with engineers and analysts crunching campaign data for advertising and voter-turnout operations.
As chair of the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI), a body formed in 2018 to advise both the White House and Congress, Schmidt formally entered the world of federal advisory committees, dubbed by the Project on Government Oversight the “fifth arm of government”. A 2010 bill passed in the House of Representatives prohibiting the appointments of commission members with conflicts of interest failed to get traction in the Senate.
A mere five months after his appointment to the NSCAI, an investment by Schmidt was made in the British start-up company Beacon, which combines chain finance with technology to identify, as the Financial Times puts it, “the most cost-effective shipping routes for cargo.” This also included contributions from Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Uber founder Travis Kalanick. The whole gang, it seemed, was in on the act.
Schmidt also found himself as chair of the Defense Innovation Board, created in 2016 to establish a bridge between Silicon Valley and the US military complex. Its more formal mission is to provide senior officials in defence “with independent advice and recommendations on innovative means to address future challenges through the prism of three focus areas: people and culture, technology and capabilities, and practices and operations.”
The Board did more than just build a bridge, beating and ultimately knocking down the doors of government in getting its way. The October 2019 recommendations by DIB on AI ethical principles were wholly adopted by the US Secretary of Defense, Mark T. Esper, in February 2020. In the words of the Pentagon, “These principles will apply to both combat and non-combat functions and assist the US military in upholding legal, ethical and policy commitments in the field of AI.”
Schmidt repaid the favour in a flattering statement of approval. “Secretary Esper’s leadership on AI and his decision to use AI Principles for the Department demonstrates not only to DoD, but to countries around the world, that the US and DoD are committed to ethics, and will play a leadership role in ensuring democracies adopt emerging technology responsibly.”
The Biden administration ensured that the Big Tech focus, and its entanglement with government, would continue unabated. Rebellion Defense, and for that matter the entire Schmidt investment universe, obtained plum positions of influence. Schmidt Futures is also intimately involved in the funding of office staff at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), an institutionally unacceptable state of affairs justified by the body’s chronic underfunding.
The nature of such arrangements, partly covered by the American Prospect last year, meant that Schmidt was essentially advising, and berating federal entities, to advance a cause central to his own entrepreneurial projects. Investments could be made in national security start-ups that could, in time, be sold back to the government, harmonious if you’ve got the gig, terrible if you are interested in transparent transactions.
As John Davisson, senior counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center, described it, “He’s got many, many financial incentives to ensure that the Department of Defense and other federal agencies adopt AI aggressively.”
For those who feel that accountable partitions should be maintained between big business and government, the tale of Schmidt’s investment activities is woefully unethical. Walter Shaub, a senior ethics fellow at the Project on Government Oversight makes the obvious point: “It’s absolutely a conflict of interest.”
For the cut and thrust go-getters who see little problem in advisors holding government advisory positions who make recommendations that only advance their causes and personal wealth, such conduct is admirable. Schmidt, an unelected official, essentially shaped the rules and regulations of an emerging industry he has a vast stake in.
All in all, over 50 investments in AI companies were made as chairman of the federal commission on AI. For a person bothered about AI and its ethical frameworks, Schmidt has shown himself to be distinctly free of ethics in terms of corporate governance and accountability. “The ethics enforcement process in the executive branch is broken, it does not work,” a resigned Craig Holman of consumer advocacy organisation Public Citizen told CNBC. “And so the process itself is partly to blame here.” Well, only partly.
When Markets Cease to Control Human Economic Life
Our most important contribution is to have demonstrated concretely how to reconcile democratic planning with worker and consumer autonomy. We believe this was the Achilles’ heel of socialism during the twentieth century, which must be resolved if there is to be a future for socialism in the twenty-first century.
— Robin Hahnel speaking to the breakthrough that would be achieved in A Participatory Economy, 2022 (p 236-237)
In his book, A Participatory Economy, Robin Hahnel, a professor emeritus of economics at American University, begins by clarifying the goals of a participatory economy: economic freedom, economic justice, solidarity, efficiency, environmentally sustainable, and economic variety.
Economic justice is achieved by remunerating people based on their effort and sacrifice, how much of the burden one bears. Effort and sacrifice will be judged by colleagues in the workplace. Efficiency is the converse of wastefulness — that work performed is beneficial. Environmental sustainability means attaining intergenerational equity. Economic variety recognizes that people are different, have different tastes and wants; therefore, achieving an economy that produces a diversity of outcomes and lifestyles is sought.
Chapter 2 looks at different political-economic models and discusses why a participatory economy (parecon) is preferable and superior to capitalism, communism, and democratic socialism.
Hahnel shoots down the canard relentlessly propounded by adherents of capitalism that humans are motivated by greed. Hahnel writes, “The fallacy is in asserting that people will act in the same greedy and fearful ways in a system where they are given the opportunity to make their own decisions, are positively rewarded for embracing a fair distribution of the benefits and burdens of economic activity, and are rewarded, not punished, for acting in solidarity with others.” (p 32-33)
Perhaps the most controversial feature in a parecon is that there will be no private enterprise. This is because of the belief that “… only full social ownership of all productive resources is capable of achieving economic justice and distributive justice.” (p 40)
Markets are also eschewed for a variety of reasons, including their unfairness and subversion of democracy.
Instead of markets determining outcomes, people will get together and plan the economy. This is not a centralized command economy. A permanent top-down hierarchy has been eliminated. All workers and consumers are equally empowered in a parecon, although workers within a job complex will have greater input into their particular job complex than others outside that job complex.
There are many factors that go into protecting the environment (by, e.g., eliminating externalities), determining planning, creating balanced job complexes, determining effort, special needs, etc. Nonetheless, parecon and its planning are not pie-in-the-sky. Hahnel cites the promising results of computer simulations that support the feasibility and efficiency of annual planning. (see chapter 5)
A Participatory Economy also includes a chapter on reproductive labor. Thus labor, that has traditionally been heavily skewed to women (e.g., housework, child care), is recognized for its value to not only the family unit but society. Women’s equal participation in the workplace and economic life is a given in a parecon.
Parecon is a system in which fairness means fairness is across all ethnicities, genders, and whichever identifying features people choose for themselves. Application of the principles that underlie parecon must be accorded to all human distinctions with fairness. This is a sine qua non to be faithful to parecon’s principles.
Subsequent chapters examine participatory investment planning and long-run development planning.
But how does all the forgoing relate to international economic relations? Hahnel relates that a parecon rejects foreign direct investment in all forms because it is at odds with worker self-management. Private, for-profit business is not allowed in a parecon.
Foreign trade would take into account the level of economic development in a trade partner and seek to rectify long-standing economic injustices. Hahnel details a more-than-50-percent rule to greater benefit disadvantaged economies and respect a commitment to economic justice.
Parecon is not considered a finished product. Neither is it a process. It answers the question of what kind of economy and world do we desire once markets are supplanted and the masses of people have gained control of the resources, economy, and their futures.
A Participatory Economy is an eminently worthwhile read for people devoted to social justice and an economically just society. Seek answers to your questions and gain a deeper understanding of the principles and details of a promising people-oriented economic model that cannot be sufficiently covered in a book review.
World’s Premier Marine Ecosystem at Risk
The Southern Ocean is 10% of the world’s oceans. Yet, it is arguably the most significant ecosystem of the planet for marine sea life as well as regulation of CO2 and ocean heat, serving as a buffer to climate change and thereby benefiting the entire globe. It is the final frontier of life support for Earth.
A new scientific research paper is calling for immediate protection of the Southern Ocean: “Climate change and fishing present dual threats.” 1
Indeed, the Southern Ocean is key to sustaining life on the planet. It deserves special focus and must be protected to stop irreparable damage to a powerful yet fragile ecosystem.
According to the report:
Antarctic waters affect the Earth’s climate, moderate sea level, and play a strong role in global ocean circulation and nutrient cycling. The Southern Ocean disproportionately absorbs global carbon dioxide and heat, thus helping to regulate temperature and buffering global impacts of climate change. The Southern Ocean biosphere also contributes to climate regulation and oxygen production through its primary production of seasonal phytoplankton blooms. In addition, the Antarctic seafloor stores extensive amounts of carbon. Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba) play a critical role both as a central species in the Southern Ocean food web and in biogeochemical cycles, stimulating primary production and influencing the drawdown of atmospheric carbon to the deep sea. A host of seasonally migrating iconic marine mammals and birds depend on the Southern Ocean to supply their energetic needs. 2
In short, the entire Antarctic inclusive of the Southern Oean is critical for marine life support across the globe as well as serving as a critically powerful regulatory system of the world’s climate system. Life is simply not the same and probably impossible without it.
Of special concern, krill are the backbone of the Southern Ocean ecosystem as well as considered a “keystone” marine species. This ultra-sensitive food chain in the Southern Ocean is currently threatened by commercial fishing for Antarctic toothfish, served as Chilean Sea Bass at high-end restaurants and krill, which is used as fishmeal and oil supplements. Thus, the food chain is threatened at both the top and the bottom by unsustainable commercial fishing. According to the research team, continuation of present commercial practices will very likely jeopardize this one-of-a-kind ecosystem.
Scientists have appealed to the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCCAMLR) that commences its two-week annual meeting in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia starting October 24, 2022.
According to the scientific team:
Amid the ongoing climate crisis and given the growing evidence that fishing in its current form is jeopardizing the Southern Ocean ecosystems, CCAMLR has the incredible responsibility to take conservation action now.3
Global Warming Undercuts East Antarctica
As global warming and excessive fishing threaten the sanctity of the Southern Ocean (also known as the Antarctic Ocean) the continent of East Antarctica is acting up once again.
It was only six months ago that Conger Ice Shelf collapsed. It’s the first-ever ice shelf collapse on East Antarctica, which is the coldest and driest location on the planet. On March 14-16 Conger ice shelf suddenly disappeared from satellite photos. It had been there for over a thousand years. All it took was an unusual warm spell and more than a thousand years of solid ice collapsed within only a few days! Little wonder that scientists still remain shaken to this day. East Antarctica has always been considered invincible… until now.
Alas, more trouble has been discovered in the former land of solid ice. According to CSIRO researchers, led by senior scientist Esmee van Eijk:
The Denman ice shelf in East Antarctica is melting at a rate of 79.8B tons per year. Studies identified the potential of “unstable retreat.” 4
The Denman Glacier is a major drainage of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, containing an ice volume equivalent to 1.5m of global sea level rise.2
Denman is suffering from the same problem as identified by scientists for Greenland, Thwaites Glacier, Pine Island Glacier, and others, which is “warm modified Circumpolar Deep Water fills the bottom of a deep trough leading to beneath the glacier… warm water enters the cavity… carrying sufficient heat to drive high rates of basal melt.”
Conclusion: Because the oceans absorb 93% of the heat produced as a result of human-generated CO2 (burning fossil fuels) blanketing the atmosphere, in turn, warming/heating up the entire planet, Bingo! 93% is absorbed into the oceans. Result: Deep-water currents carry heated water to the base of major ice glaciers and melt the base where ice sheets extend from the land (basal melt). Over time, the ice sheets extending over water break away thereby causing the worst possible event as the entire glacier complex rapidly flows to the sea. End result: Miami under water.
The world’s two major ice sheets — Greenland and Antarctica — have been solid for thousands of years, until now. This is a tragedy unfolding right before everybody’s eyes, and scientists are reporting it as it happens. Why the world isn’t on alert to stop fossil fuels may be the most important question of the 21st century? (Instead, huge expansion of fossil fuels is scheduled thru 2030.) Why aren’t world leaders appointing scientists and engineers to an ad hoc special world commission to do whatever is required to stop a process that is destined to flood every one of the 136 port cities of the world, each with a population of over one million people? After all, the melting is already at an early stage, but it’s accelerating. “The rate is tripling right now.” 5
Honestly, the world is horribly distraught, messed up, and entangled in an absurd web of arbitrarily selected stupid political operatives motivated by self-aggrandizement! It’s the same stupid stuff that led to the end of the Roman Empire 1,700-years ago, to wit: (1) loss of traditional values (2) political instability (3) overexpansion and military overspending (4) the rise of opposing foreign forces (5) economic troubles (6) concentration of wealth wrapped around extremely disturbing levels of social inequality.
Sound familiar?
- Cassandra M. Brooks, et al, “Protect Global Values of the Southern Ocean Ecosystem”, Science, October 20, 2022. [
] - Ibid. [] []
- “Scientists Call for Setting Limits, Possible Moratorium on Fishing in Antarctica’s Southern Ocean”, University of Colorado at Boulder, PHYS.ORG, October 20, 2022. []
- Esmee M. van Wijk, et al, “Vulnerability of Denman Glacier to Ocean Heat Flux Revealed by Profiling Float Observations”, Geophysical Research Letters, October 2022. []
- John Englander, Expert on Sea Level Rise, Talks with US Harbors About Changing Coastal Waters, July 5, 2022. []
Agri Biotech Sector Motivated by Monopoly Control and Sacred GMO Cash Cow
We are currently seeing rising food prices due to a combination of an engineered food crisis for geopolitical reasons, financial speculation by hedge funds, pension funds and investment banks and profiteering by global grain trade conglomerates like Cargill, Louis Dreyfus, ADM and Bunge.
In addition, agri firms like Bayer, Syngenta (ChemChina) and Corteva cynically regard current circumstances as an opportunity to promote their agenda and seek commercialisation of unregulated and improperly tested genetically engineered (GE) technologies.
These companies have long promoted the false narrative that their hybrid seeds and their GE seeds, along with their agrichemicals, are essential for feeding a growing global population. This agenda is orchestrated by vested interests and career scientists – many of whom long ago sold their objectivity for biotech money – lobby groups and disgraced politicians and journalists.
Meanwhile, in an attempt to deflect and sway opinion, these industry shills also try to depict their critics as being Luddites and ideologically driven and for depriving the poor of (GE) food and farmers of technology.
This type of bombast disintegrates when confronted with the evidence of a failing GE project.
As well as this kind of emotional blackmail, prominent lobbyists like Mark Lynas – unable or unwilling to acknowledge that genuine food security and food sovereignty can be achieved without proprietary products – trot out other baseless and absurd claims that industry critics are Kremlin stooges, while displaying their ignorance of geopolitics.
Indeed, who would you turn to for an analysis of current US-Russia relations? An advocate for GE foods and pesticides who makes inaccurate claims from his perch at the Gates Foundation-funded Cornell Alliance for Science. Or a renowned academic like Professor Michael Hudson whose specialist field covers geopolitics.
But it would not be the first time that an industry activist like Lynas has ventured beyond his field of claimed expertise to try to score points.
However, dirty tricks and smears are par for the course because the agri biotech emperor has been shown to have no clothes time and again – GE is a failing, often detrimental technology in search of a problem. And if the problem does not exist, the reality of food insecurity will be twisted to serve the industry agenda, and regulatory bodies and institutions supposedly set up to serve the public interest will be placed under intense pressure or subverted.
The performance of GE crops has been a hotly contested issue and, as highlighted in a 2018 piece by PC Kesavan and MS Swaminathan in the journal Current Science, there is sufficiently strong evidence to question their efficacy and the devastating impacts on the environment, human health and food security, not least in places like Latin America.
A new report by Friends of the Earth (FoE) Europe shows that big global biotech corporations like Bayer and Corteva, which together already control 40% of the global commercial seed market, are now trying to cement complete dominance. Industry watchdog GMWatch notes these companies are seeking to increase their control over the future of food and farming by extensively patenting plants and developing a new generation of genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
These companies are moving to patent plant genetic information that can occur naturally or as a result of genetic modification. They claim all plants with those genetic traits as their “invention”. Such patents on plants would restrict farmers’ access to seeds and impede breeders from developing new plants as both would have to ask for consent and pay fees to the biotech companies.
Corteva has applied for some 1,430 patents on new GMOs, while Bayer has applications for 119 patents.
Mute Schimpf, food campaigner at Friends of the Earth Europe, says:
Big biotech’s strategy is to apply for wide patents that would also cover plants which naturally present the same genetic characteristics as the GMOs they engineered. They will be lining their pockets from farmers and plant breeders, who in turn will have a restricted access to what they can grow and work with.
For instance, GMWatch notes that Corteva holds a patent for a process modifying the genome of a cell using the CRISPR technique and claims the intellectual property rights to any cells, seeds and plants that include the same genetic information, whether in broccoli, maize, soy, rice, wheat, cotton, barley or sunflower.
The agri biotech sector is engaged in a corporate hijack of agriculture while attempting to portray itself as being involved in some kind of service to humanity.
And this is a global endeavour, which is also currently being played out in India.
GM mustard
A recent report on the Down to Earth website stated that the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC), India’s apex regulatory body, might approve the commercial cultivation of GM mustard. In response, concerned citizens have written to the government, objecting to the potential approval of unsafe, unneeded and unwanted GMOs.
The decision whether to allow the commercialisation of what would be the first GE food crop in India has been dragging on for years. COVID delayed the process, but a decision on GM mustard now appears to be close.
However, serious conflicts of interest, sleight of hand and regulatory delinquency – not to mention outright fraud – could mean the decision coming down in favour of commercialisation.
The bottom line is government collusion with global agribusiness, which is trying to hide in the background, despite much talk of Professor Pental and his team at Delhi University being independent developers of GM mustard (DMH 11).
GM mustard presents an opportunity to make various herbicide tolerant (HT) mustard hybrids using India’s best germ plasm, which would be an irresistible money spinner for the seed and chemical manufacturers.
In 2016, campaigner Aruna Rodrigues petitioned India’s Supreme Court seeking a moratorium on the release of any GMOs into the environment pending a comprehensive, transparent and rigorous biosafety protocol in the public domain conducted by agencies of independent expert bodies, the results of which are made public.
In her writ, Rodrigues stated:
In 2002, Proagro Seed Company (now Bayer), applied for commercial approval for exactly the same construct that Prof Pental and his team are now promoting as HT Mustard DMH 11. The reason today matches Bayer’s claim then of 20% better yield increase (than conventional mustard). Bayer was turned down because the ICAR [Indian Council of Agricultural Research] said that their field trials did not give evidence of superior yield.
The petition says that 14 years later invalid field trials and unremittingly fraudulent data now supposedly provide evidence of a superior yield of 25%.
Rodrigues continues:
HT DMH 11 is the same Bayer HT GMO construct – a herbicide tolerant GMO of three alien genes. It employs, like the Bayer construct, pollen sterilisation technology BARNASE, with the fertility restorer gene BARSTAR (B & B system) (modified from the original genes sourced from a soil bacterium) and the herbicidal bar gene in each GMO parental line. The employment of the B & B system is to facilitate the making of hybrids as mustard is largely a self-pollinating crop (but outcrosses at rates of up to 20%). There is no trait for yield. HT DMH 11 is straightforwardly an herbicide tolerant (HT) crop, though this aspect has been consistently marginalised by the developers over the last several years.
In order to produce a hybrid, two parent lines had to be genetically modified. Barnase and barstar technology was used in the parent lines. And the outcome is three GMOs: the two parents and the offspring, DMH 11, which will be ideal for working with glufosinate (Bayer’s ‘Liberty’ and ‘Basta’).
According to Rodrigues:
… the plan is that the official route for the first-time release of a HT crop and a food crop will be through HT DMH 11 and/or its two HT parental lines by stealth. Since the claimed YIELD superiority of HT DMH 11 through the B & B system over non-GMO varieties and hybrids is quite simply NOT TRUE…
In her numerous affidavits submitted to India’s Supreme Court, Rodrigues has set out in some detail why GE crops are a threat to human health and the environment and are unsuitable for India. She briefly communicated some of her concerns in a 2020 interview titled GMO Issue Reaches Boiling Point in India: Interview with Aruna Rodrigues.
Moreover, various high-level reports have advised against introducing GM food crops to India: The ‘Jairam Ramesh Report’ of February 2010, imposing an indefinite moratorium on Bt Brinjal; The ‘Sopory Committee Report’ (August 2012); The ‘Parliamentary Standing Committee’ (PSC) Report on GM crops (August 2012); and The ‘Technical Expert Committee (TEC) Final Report’ (June-July 2013).
These reports conclude that GM crops are unsuitable for India and that existing biosafety and regulatory procedures are inadequate. Appointed by the Supreme Court, the TEC was scathing about the regulatory system prevailing in India, highlighting its inadequacies and inherent serious conflicts of interest. The TEC recommended a 10-year moratorium on commercial release of GM crops. The PSC also arrived at similar conclusions.
According to eminent lawyer Prashant Bhushan, these official reports attest to just how negligent India’s regulators are and to a serious lack of expertise on GM issues within official circles.
Aruna Rodrigues long ago noted the abysmal state of GMO regulatory oversight in the country and the need for the precautionary principle to be applied without delay. But not much has changed and the regulatory position basically remains the same.
Rodrigues asserts that the two parent lines and the hybrid DMH-11 require full independent testing, which has not occurred. And it has not occurred because of a conflict of interest and regulatory delinquency.
Rodrigues notes:
India is suddenly faced with the deregulation of GMOs. This is disastrous and alarming, without ethics and a scientific rationale.
GM mustard is said to out-yield India’s best cultivars by 25-30%. The choice of the correct ‘comparators’ is an absolute requirement for the testing of any GMO to establish whether it is required in the first place. But Rodrigues argues that the choice of deliberately poor ‘comparators’ is at the heart of the fraud.
In the absence of adequate and proper testing and sufficient data, no statistically valid conclusions of mean seed yield (MSY) of DMH 11 could be drawn anyhow. Yet they were drawn by both the regulators and developers who furthermore self-conducted and supervised the trials. Without valid data to justify it, DMH 11 was allowed in pre-commercial large scale field trials in 2014-15.
For an adequate basis for a comparative assessment of MSY, Rodrigues argues it was absolutely necessary for the comparison to include the cross (hybrid) between the non-modified parental lines (nearest isogenic line), at the very start of the risk assessment process and throughout the subsequent stages of field testing, in addition to other recommended ‘comparators’. None of this was done.
Deliberately poor non-GMO mustard varieties were chosen to promote prospects for DMH 11 as a superior yielding GMO hybrid, which then passed through ‘the system’ and was allowed by the regulators, a classic non-sequitur by both the regulators and Dr Pental.
The fraud continued, according to Rodrigues, by actively fudging yield data of DMH 11 by 15.2% to show higher MSY. In her various Supreme Court petitions, she has offered a good deal of evidence to show how it was done.
Rodrigues says:
It matters not a jot if HT DMH 11 is not approved. What does matter is that its two HT (GMO) parental lines are: HT Varuna-barnase and HT EH 2-barstar will be used ‘for introgressing the bar-barnase and bar- barstar genes into new set of parental line to develop next generation of hybrids with higher yields” (according to the developer and regulator).
She says this extraordinary admission confirms that the route to any number of ‘versions’ of HT mustard DMH 11 is invested in these two GMOs as parents – India will have hundreds of low-yielding HT mustard hybrids, using India’s best mustard cultivars at great harm to farmers and contaminating the country’s seeds and mustard germ plasm irreversibly.
In effect, according to Rodrigues, India faces a three-in-one regulatory jugglery in a brazen display of collusion to fraud the nation by regulatory institutions of governance.
Moreover, HT mustard DMH 11 will make no impact on the domestic production of mustard oil, which was a major reason why it was being pushed in the first place. The argument was that GM mustard would increase productivity and this would help reduce imports of edible oils.
Until the mid-1990s, India was virtually self-sufficient in edible oils. Then import tariffs were reduced, leading to an influx of cheap (subsidised) edible oil imports that domestic farmers could not compete with. This effectively devastated the home-grown edible oils sector and served the interests of palm oil growers and US grain and agriculture commodity company Cargill.
It came as little surprise that in 2013 India’s then Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar accused US companies of derailing the nation’s oil seeds production programme.
Whether in India, Europe or elsewhere, the industry’s agenda is to use GE technology to secure intellectual property rights over all seeds (and chemical inputs) and thus gain total control over food and farming. And given what has been set out here – they seek to achieve this by all means necessary.
Western Media Smear President Xi’s “Aggressive China” As CIA Front Holds Secessionist Summit in Taiwan
Beijing might be better taking Taiwan now – once and for all – before it festers anymore under American influence.
President Xi Jinping’s re-election for a record-breaking third term as China’s leader was promptly ambushed by Western media smears.
Xi becomes the first Chinese leader since Chairman Mao to hold three terms in office after he was re-elected by delegates at the 20th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing last weekend.
Western media rushed to predict that China would become more autocratic and repressive, without providing any substantiation for its lurid claims, and while ignoring the phenomenal economic and developmental successes of the People’s Republic under Xi during the past decade.
The U.S.-based Council on Foreign Relations cited the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace which predicted that China would become “more assertive and aggressive” in its foreign relations over the next five years.
The BBC ran a particularly scurrilous hit piece by its veteran anti-China apparatchik, Rupert Wingfield-Hayes, which alleged that President Xi’s policies are “creating the hostile world that he claims he is defending against”.
Quoting Susan Shirk, a “China expert” dredged up from the Bill Clinton administration in the 1990s, the BBC accused China of “self-encirclement”, “picking fights” with neighboring countries, “ramping up tensions with Taiwan” and “taking on America and trying to run it out of Asia”.
“It is a kind of self-encirclement that Chinese foreign policy has produced,” the so-called China expert obligingly commented for the BBC.
The negative focus on China’s government sounds absurdly misplaced coming from U.S. and British media whose own nations are assailed with political crises over governance. Polls show unprecedented numbers of American citizens losing faith in their political parties and election system. In Britain, the country is reeling from the sacking of a third prime minister in as many years.
But what’s asinine about the smears against Xi purportedly turning China into a more aggressive power is that they turn reality on its head.
This week sees the U.S.-based National Endowment for Democracy (NED) holding a summit for “world democracy” in Taiwan. The event is being attended by over 300 activists and policymakers from some 70 nations to “promote freedom” and other virtue-signaling causes.
The NED describes itself as a “non-governmental organization” even though it is bankrolled by the U.S. government and works closely with the Central Intelligence Agency. As American author, the late William Blum pointed out, the NED took over the CIA’s covert roles in the 1980s because it was more politically palatable given the agency’s notoriety for fomenting deadly coups and assassinations.
Taiwan is officially recognized under international law as an integral part of China, albeit having an estranged relationship since the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949. The One China Policy is recognized legally by the United Nations and by most governments including the United States since the late 1970s.
Washington nevertheless maintains a policy of “strategic ambiguity” whereby it proclaims to support Taiwan’s defense from China’s ambitions to incorporate the island territory under Beijing’s sovereign authority.
President Joe Biden has stretched this duplicity to breaking point by declaring on four occasions since he took office in January 2021 that the US would intervene militarily to defend Taiwan in the event of an invasion from the Chinese mainland. Despite subsequent White House denials, Biden’s utterances are a flagrant violation of the One China Policy and a brazen attack on Chinese sovereignty.
Since the strategic Pivot to Asia in 2011 taken by the Barack Obama administration, Washington has ramped up arms sales to Taiwan. The flow of arms and covert stationing of U.S. military trainers to Taiwan continued under Trump and now Biden.
The calculated signals from Washington are promoting a more secessionist political climate in Taiwan, which feels emboldened that it has America’s backing to declare independence from China. Beijing has repeatedly warned against U.S. incitement in its backyard.
When Democrat House of Representatives Leader Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in August, the incident infuriated Beijing to mount massive military exercises in the Taiwan Strait. For a few days, it looked as if an invasion could take place.
Since President Xi was first elected in 2013, he has strongly asserted China’s historic right to rule over Taiwan, preferably by peaceful means but also through force of arms if necessary. He repeated that aim during a keynote address to the 20th Congress.
Any reasonable observer can see that Beijing’s resolve is being cynically provoked by Washington’s interference in China’s internal affairs with regard to Taiwan’s sovereign status. Arming the island to the teeth with American missiles and thumbing noses at Beijing with pro-separatist political delegations would be not tolerated in the slightest if the shoe were on the other foot. Indeed, the U.S. would have gone to war against China already in a reverse scenario.
For the Western media to make out that Xi is taking China in a more aggressive direction is a ludicrous distortion that conceals who is the real aggressor – the United States and its NATO partners who relentlessly accuse Beijing of expansionism. The only “expansionism” China is engaging in is building mutual trade and commerce with other nations through its global Belt and Road Initiative.
The National Endowment for Democracy [read “Destabilization”], the CIA’s very own Trojan horse, is this week calling on “activists” in Taiwan to overthrow autocracy. It is a veritable call to arms by the CIA conducted on Chinese sovereign territory.
Not only that, the NED summit declares that Taiwan and Ukraine are “two major frontlines of the struggle for democracy”.
NED was a major driver of the coup d’état in Ukraine in 2014 which ushered in a fascist anti-Russia regime in Kiev and which led to the current war with Russia. The Americans are blatantly using the same playbook for Taiwan.
And yet China and President Xi are being smeared as the aggressors!
Beijing might be better taking Taiwan now – once and for all – before it festers anymore under American influence.
As Russia is finding out, to its cost, delaying the disease can lead to more fatal conditions
A Political Solution for Assange: Jennifer Robinson at the National Press Club
It was telling. Of the mainstream Australian press gallery, only David Crowe of the Sydney Morning Herald turned up to listen to Jennifer Robinson, lawyer extraordinaire who has spent years representing Julian Assange. Since 2019, that representation has taken an even more urgent note: to prevent the WikiLeaks founder from being extradited to the United States, where he faces 18 charges, 17 confected from the archaic Espionage Act of 1917.
In addressing the Australian National Press Club, Robinson’s address, titled “Julian Assange, Free Speech and Democracy”, was a grand recapitulation of the political case against the WikiLeaks founder. Followers of this ever darkening situation would not have found anything new. The shock, rather, was how ignorant many remain about the chapters in this scandalous episode of persecution.
Robinson’s address noted those blackening statements from media organisations and governments that Assange was paranoid and could leave the Ecuadorian embassy, his abode for seven years, at his own leisure. Many were subsequently “surprised when Julian was served with a US extradition request.” But this was exactly what WikiLeaks had been warning about for some ten years.
In the Belmarsh maximum security prison, where he has resided for 3.5 years, Assange’s health has declined further. “Then last year, during a stressful court appeal hearing, Julian had a mini stroke.” His ailing state did not convince a venal prosecution, tasked with “deriding the medical evidence of Julian’s severe depression and suicidal ideation”.
The matter of health plays into the issue of lengthy proceedings. Should the High Court not grant leave to hear an appeal against the June decision by Home Secretary Priti Patel to order his extradition, processes through the UK Supreme Court and possibly the European Court of Human Rights could be activated.
The latter appeal, should it be required, would depend on the government of the day keeping Britain within the court’s jurisdiction. “If our appeal fails, Julian will be extradited to the US – where his prison conditions will be at the whim of intelligence agencies which plotted to kill him.” An unfair trial would follow, and any legal process citing the First Amendment culminating in a hearing before the US Supreme Court would take years.
The teeth in Robinson’s address lay in the urgency of political action. Assange is suffering a form of legal and bureaucratic assassination, his life gradually quashed by briefs, reviews, bureaucrats and protocols. “This case needs an urgent political solution. Julian does not have another decade to wait for a legal fix.”
Acknowledging that her reference to the political avenue was unusual for a lawyer, Robinson noted how the language of due process and the rule of law had become ghoulish caricatures in what amounts to a form of punishment. The law has been fashioned in an abusive way that sees a person being prosecuted for journalism in a hideously pioneering way. Despite the UK-US Extradition Treaty’s prohibition of extradition for political offences, the US prosecution was making much of the Espionage Act. “Espionage,” stated Robinson, “is a political offence.”
The list of abuses in the prosecution is biblically lengthy. Robinson gave her audience a summary of them: the fabrication of evidence via the Icelandic informant and convicted embezzler and paedophile Sigurdur “Siggi” Thordarson; the deliberate distortion of facts; the unlawful surveillance of Assange and his legal team and matters of medical treatment; “and the seizure of legally privileged material.”
Much ignorance about Assange and the implications of his persecution is no doubt willed. Robinson’s reference to Nils Melzer, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, was apt. Here was a man initially sceptical about the torture complaint made by Assange and his team. He had been convinced by the libel against the publisher’s reputation. “But in 2019, he agreed to read our complaint. And what he read shocked him and forced him to confront his own prejudice.”
Melzer would subsequently observe that, in the course of two decades working “with victims of war, violence and political persecution, I have never seen a group of democratic States ganging up to deliberately isolate, demonise and abuse a single individual for such a long time and with so little regard for human dignity and the rule of law”.
The concern these days among the press darlings is not press freedoms closer to home, whether they be in Australia itself, or among its allies. The egregious misconduct by Russian forces in the Ukraine War or China’s human rights record in Xinjiang are what counts. Villainy lies elsewhere.
The obscene conduct by US authorities, whose officials contemplated abducting and murdering a publisher, is an inconvenient smudge of history best ignored for consumers of news down under. The Albanese government, which has continued to extol the glory of the AUKUS security pact and swoon at prospects of a globalised NATO, has shelved any “political solution” regarding Assange, at least in any public context. The US-Australian alliance is a shrine to worship at with reverential delusion, rather than question with informed scepticism. The WikiLeaks founder did, after all, spoil the party.
On a cheerier note, those listening to Robinson’s address reflected a healthy political awareness about the tribulations facing a fellow Australian citizen. The federal member for the seat of Kooyong, Dr. Monique Ryan, was present, as were Senators Peter Whish Wilson and David Shoebridge. As Ryan subsequently tweeted, “An Australian punished by foreign states for acts of journalism? Time for our government to act.”
Others were those who have been or continue to be targets of the national security state. The long-suffering figure and target of the Australian security establishment, Bernard Collaery, put in an appearance, as did David McBride, who awaits trial for having exposed alleged atrocities of Australian special service personnel in Afghanistan.
Such individuals have made vital, oxygenating contributions to democratic accountability, of which WikiLeaks stands proud. But any journalism that, as Robinson puts it, subjects “power to scrutiny, and holding it accountable”, is bound to incite the fury of the national security state. Regarding Assange, will that fury win out?
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