PAKISTAN

Whither justice?
Published December 3, 2021


JUSTICE FOR JANITORS

Zubeida Mustafa

‘JUSTICE and accountability’. These were, among others, the demands of the 150 or so demonstrators who gathered near the seaside in Karachi last Sunday. There is a paucity of both these principles in Pakistan but the worst hit are the poorest of the poor — the janitors. There are hundreds and thousands of them who live below the poverty line all over the country and do not even earn the remunerations fixed by law as the minimum wage. But what good wages alone cannot ensure is respect and dignity which only a culture of civility can bring.

Hence the walk-a-cause last Sunday organised by the citizens’ group calling itself Justice for Janitors must be commended. The fact is that sanitary workers have been thrown at the lowest rung of the socioeconomic ladder in Pakistan by society and the state. Not only are their wages low, their working conditions are also appalling. It seems that even their lives are not worth protecting from the hazards they are exposed to. They are treated as cheap commodities that are easily replaceable. But are they? Didn’t Vijjay who died of gas poisoning while cleaning the sewer in Shahdadkot recently have a family with whom he had human bonds?

Read more: Sanitation workers left underpaid, unprotected in pandemic: report

Only a callous and exploitative approach on the part of the employers (all of whom are various government agencies) can explain, but not justify, the horrendous working conditions of the janitors. Hence the demands of the group that demonstrated earlier this week for the immediate attention of the officials concerned.

In a nutshell, the government is being asked to regularise the sanitary workers’ jobs and pay them the minimum wages announced by their province. They should also be provided social security and the EOBI pension as laid down by the law.

It seems that the lives of sanitary workers are not worth protecting.

There is another demand, namely that of making working conditions safe for sanitary workers. This means providing janitors who are required to enter the gutters to clean the clogged ones safety kits (full body suits), safety harness, rescue ropes and breathing devices. As much of the work as possible should be mechanised.

It may not be easy to change public attitudes, especially of those who believe that by virtue of their birth and faith they are the ‘chosen ones’. At least the government can help by encouraging inclusivity. Instead, it is instrumental in inculcating a derogatory and discriminatory mindset vis-à-vis non-Muslims. If this were not so why would official advertisements inviting applications for janitorial posts carry the phrase ‘non-Muslims only’ as a condition for qualification for the candidate?

The driving force behind this and similar groups advocating justice for the downtrodden is Naeem Sadiq who does not fear taking up such causes that many others shun. His strategy is unique and since the group supporting him comprises like-minded members who are conscientious and hard-working, they often succeed.

Having first tried their hand at the right to information, the group learnt that knowledge and information are the strongest weapons to fight the government’s wrongdoings. The group which has gathered round Sadiq gives him strength. Before espousing a cause, the group does a lot of thinking, brainstorming and research to determine the causes of past failures and gather information on the processes and departments involved. Then comes the decision on the demands to be raised and the strategy it would adopt to act as an effective pressure group. Advocacy is multilayered, and Sunday’s protest was designed to enhance the visibility of the issue.

On account of its strategy, Justice for Janitors has made an impact in some ways. The Civil Aviation Authority has already raised its janitors’ wages to Rs25,000 per month. The 40 cantonments in Pakistan have made a promise to increase the wages of their sanitary workers. Last month, Islamabad’s CDA also enhanced its janitors’ wages to Rs20,000. But the various municipalities and solid waste management companies with whom the government has entered into agreements and their third-party contractors have remained where they are. The Sindh chief minister, however, keeps reiterating that the janitors’ wages will be raised. But action is still awaited.

Read more: Society: Sindh's forgotten sanitation workers

There are other issues where the citizens’ group has met with failure. The group could not get the government to regulate the licensing of arms and completely ban the public display of weapons. It could not have a ban imposed on the hunting of houbara bustards by Arab sheikhs. It could not get the government to take action against thousands of illegal and fake official number plates in use in Karachi.

But the group has not given up and seeks to keep these issues alive. One never knows how the dynamics of power work. These committed citizens are hopeful that sooner or later there will be a breakthrough on each of these issues, opening new doors for change and progress in Pakistan.

www.zubeidamustafa.com

Published in Dawn, December 3rd, 2021

Dealing with the Afghan crisis
Zahid Hussain

Published December 22, 2021

AFGHANISTAN needs more than just emergency humanitarian assistance. The war-ravaged state is on the brink of collapse that could push its entire population into poverty and starvation. The international community may have woken up to the unfolding tragedy yet it has failed so far to act decisively. Financial sanctions have not only made it extremely difficult for aid to reach the people, they could also hasten the looming destruction of the entire system in Afghanistan with catastrophic consequences for the region and beyond.

While Sunday’s extraordinary meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) highlighted the dire prospects of not acting in a timely fashion, the issue of the American financial sanctions has remained unresolved. The foreign ministers’ meeting had been convened to discuss and prepare a strategy for dealing with the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan. The conference saw over 50 members of the Muslim bloc agreeing to play a leading role in the delivery of humanitarian and development aid to the people of Afghanistan.

It also decided to set up a trust fund which is to be managed by the Islamic Development Bank and be made operational by March next year. It would function in collaboration with other international actors. But the pledge of funds alone cannot prevent the economic collapse of Taliban-administered Afghanistan. In the absence of a clear mechanism, the transfer of funds would remain a stumbling block for the delivery of aid.

The trickling in of international assistance is not enough to prevent the “free fall” — as described by the UN under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs — of the economy. A major challenge for the international agencies is how to support basic services such as health, education, electricity and livelihoods. With no access to foreign funding, there is also a problem of paying salaries to state-sector employees.

The Taliban’s own inflexibility is obstructing progress on international legitimacy for the regime.

For the OIC to deal with the crisis, Pakistan has proposed a six-point framework. It includes the creation of a financial vehicle for channelling aid, increasing investment in the people of Afghanistan, facilitating Afghanistan’s access to legitimate banking services and easing the liquidity challenge there, improving food security, building the capacity of Afghan institutions to counter terrorism and combat illicit trade in narcotics, and engaging with the Taliban with regard to global expectations of an inclusive Afghan set-up.

Indisputably, the proposal contains all the measurers that are needed to stabilise the situation in Afghanistan and ensure liquidity, enabling the relief agencies to respond and save lives. But for that it is essential that frozen Afghan assets of more than $9 billion be released by the US to an appropriate UN agency. More importantly, multilateral financial institutions must be allowed to resume aid to the country to avert an economic meltdown.

But the main question is whether the Joe Biden administration is willing to soften its position on the sanctions issue. Or will it choose to punish the Taliban administration? There seems a clear division between the White House and the State Department over dealing with the Afghan crisis. Although Washington maintains that humanitarian support is separate from politics and has pledged more than $400 million in humanitarian assistance to the Afghans, the financial sanctions have made the delivery of aid extremely problematic.

There is no indication yet that the American restrictions will be lifted — at least not in the immediate future. A major point of contention is that the lifting of sanctions could benefit the Taliban regime, which is unacceptable to the US administration. Then there is also the US law blocking any move to remove or even ease sanctions.

US officials, however, contend that assistance to the Afghan people can still be delivered via some mechanism without violating the sanctions regime. But such an instrument is quite cumbersome. Using this mechanism, the World Bank’s Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund has approved the transfer of $280m by the end of December to Unicef and the World Food Programme. However, it remains to be seen whether this system can be used for the large-scale delivery of assistance. It leaves the question of liquidity problems unanswered. The economic free fall could be equally catastrophic.

A major issue obstructing any move by the international community to legitimise the conservative regime is the Taliban’s own inflexibility in moderating their position on human and women’s rights. The regime’s ambiguous position on some terrorist groups operating from Afghan soil has been a cause of serious concern even among countries that favour a more positive approach towards the Taliban regime.

There is an emerging consensus in the international community on maintaining an active engagement with the Afghan regime. The OIC foreign ministers’ conference also emphasised the need for working closely with the de facto rulers of Kabul. But the Taliban’s resistance to women’s right to work and access education has been a major roadblock to the regime getting international legitimacy.

Editorial: OIC summit on Afghanistan is a good beginning to push for greater international engagement

The world will not accept their excuses on such grave violations of basic human rights. There is also growing international concern over the revenge killings of members of the former government, despite the announcement of amnesty. There have also been questions over the regime continuing to protect terrorist groups like the TTP operating from Afghan soil.

There is an expectation that the OIC could play a role in getting the Taliban regime to soften its hard-line position on social and human rights issues. The forum also provides Taliban officials an opportunity to explain their position. Surely such interactions are very important to convey the nature of international expectations to the Taliban.

Pakistan’s role in organising the extraordinary session of the OIC and highlighting the unfolding tragedy in Afghanistan has been extremely important. But the prime minister’s remarks on Pakhtun resistance to female education was shocking. He sounded like an apologist for the retrogressive worldview espoused by the Taliban. Such regressive viewpoints are also considered an insult to Pakhtuns living in Pakistan. The prime minister’s remarks at an international conference can only encourage the Afghan Taliban to stick to their hard-line positions. The Afghan Taliban regime will be equally responsible for Afghanistan’s tragedy.

The writer is the author of No-Win War — The Paradox of US-Pakistan Relations in Afghanistan’s Shadow.

zhussain100@yahoo.com
Twitter: @hidhussain

Published in Dawn, December 22nd, 2021

PAKISTAN
Cheap and clean energy

Ali Tauqeer Sheikh

Published December 23, 2021

The writer is an expert on climate change and development.


GLOBAL climate targets will not change if Pakistan commits to net zero emissions. But Pakistan’s economic growth may get a boost that present misplaced policies cannot deliver. Unless Pakistan redirects its energy investments, the energy crisis, circular debt and urban pollution will keep worsening. Renewable energy (RE) can bring down the cost of development remarkably, reduce pressure on foreign exchange, strengthen outreach to underserved communities, and reduce emissions for cleaner air in the cities.

Pakistan’s energy policy has gone in the opposite direction of global trends. Pakistan abandoned its earlier targets of 1,235 megawatts of wind and 430MW of solar, determined in the 2006 policy for development of RE for power generation. The Alternative & Renewable Energy (ARE) policy adopted by this government in 2019 reset the target for energy from renewable sources by 2030 to 30 per cent excluding hydropower. This target was reduced further to 12pc by the Indicative Generation Capacity Expansion Plan approved in 2021. IGCEP committed to the ‘least-cost option’; yet it has revisited the definition and included seasonally flowing hydropower in the RE category, that ARE had not. This change of heart has effectively elbowed solar and wind energy out of the equation and paved the way for foreign investments in hydropower instead of solar that can be commissioned at one-fourth the cost and time, mostly with domestic financing. It has also accentuated differences between the provinces who have more nuanced perspectives.

All this was happening at a time when solar power had become the cheapest electricity in history — cheaper than coal and gas in most major countries. The cost of electricity from solar photovoltaic (PV) panels has decreased by 90pc since 2009, according to the annual World Energy Outlook 2020, by the International Energy Agency. Instead of following the economic logic, Pakistan looked the other way. Our neighbours, India and China, followed the economic imperatives.

During this period, India attained the fourth global position in wind power and fifth in solar installed capacity. Their renewable power generation capacity has recorded an annual growth rate of over 17pc. The Indian government had an initial target of 20 gigawatt capacity for 2022 and that was achieved four years ahead of schedule. This quick success was enabled by importing PV panels from China while the 1,000MW Quaid-i-Azam solar park floundered and languished. In China, likewise, the RE capacity reached an estimated 40pc of the total installed capacity, and about 26pc of total power generation. India and China are now both leading Asia on green energy and have achieved an accelerated economic growth rate by reducing the cost of development.

Pakistan’s energy policy has gone in the opposite direction of global trends.

The market for RE is created by the high costs and pollution levels of coal as a source of energy. Its global pipeline has collapsed by 76pc since the Paris Agreement. Forty-five countries have already committed to no new coal power plants. Pakistan announced it would shelve two coal plants producing only 2,600MW whereas, at the same time, Bangladesh declared the cancellation of 10 such planned plants of 8,711MW. Pakistan’s announcements lacked both courage and homework.

No wonder the country has backtracked from the commitment made by Prime Minister Imran Khan at the Climate Action Summit in December 2020, where he had declared: “We will not have any more power based on coal.” It has since been changed to no more ‘imported’ coal. He had also committed to liquification and gasification of indigenous coal. No plans for nine operating and another five almost completed projects have so far been announced. As it is a new romance that just started a few years ago, Pakistan has not yet consigned coal to history.

It is against this background that coal imports have been growing at an annual rate of 19.26pc. While the coal power plants were justified on the basis of low-grade Thar coal, in reality, the energy wheel is run by importing high-grade South African coal. In addition to the use for energy, coal is also imported for our fast-expanding cement industry, now propelled to fuel the housing construction to turn around the economic growth rate.

Once the cheapest source of energy, hydropower has now been superseded by solar and wind despite their intrinsic limitations of time of the day and wind velocity, particularly because of the breakthroughs in long-term energy storage batteries. Except for the Tarbela and Mangla dams, all other public-sector hydropower projects have witnessed delays and cost overruns. The average per unit cost at the 969MW Neelum Jhelum Hydroelectric Project, for example, has escalated to 16-18¢ kilowatt per hour, compared to 4-5¢/kWh from solar power plants. In the absence of any financial closing before starting construction, the envisioned large dams (Diamer-Bhasha, Mohmand) and ‘run-of-the-river’ ones (Dasu, Kohala, Suki Kinari, Karot, Azad Pattan) will face similar cost overruns. Their pricing structure will be multiple times more expensive. Clearly, water storage needs must be separated from energy needs. Solar plants can be installed within months and the State Bank can help further reduce their prices by cutting financing costs through simply extending the longer tenure of loans to say 20 years, instead of the present seven to 10 years.

While we have excess electricity production, the government does not always acknowledge that 61 million people still have no access to electricity or suffer from poor quality of access. Almost 46pc of our rural population is living without electricity. It is estimated that $20 billion is required to upgrade the transmission network by 2040. Off-grid solutions can help reach the underserved areas rather than waiting decades for the upgradation of transmission lines.

Electricity can be provisioned through solar mini or micro-grids to bring light to their lives. In addition to getting urban population off-grid through solar home systems, solar energy can also be supplied to schools, health facilities, SMEs, etc. through microfinance facilities and models of rural energy entrepreneurship. The National Electric Vehicles Policy will become more meaningful if the charging infrastructure for the emerging EV market is supported by hybrid solar systems. It is imperative that Pakistan adopts pro-poor approaches to energy production and supply to reduce the cost of economic development. After all, reliable, cheap and clean energy is a right of all citizens.

The writer is an expert on climate change and development.

Published in Dawn, December 23rd, 2021

A new paradigm: U.S. should follow the trend to drop zero-sum thinking
Keith Lamb

Editor's note: This is the third article of the "2021 Year in Review" series on "New Crises, New Orders and New Paradigms." Keith Lamb is a University of Oxford graduate with an MSc degree in Contemporary Chinese Studies. His primary research interests are China's international relations and "socialism with Chinese characteristics." The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

The world is transitioning from unipolarity, dominated by the U.S., to a multipolar order characterized by the relative diffusion of power to other countries, like Russia and China. These countries are adapting to this new situation faster than others, as expressed in the virtual meeting between their Presidents Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, where they both reaffirmed joint cooperation.

In contrast, the U.S., as demonstrated by its determination to insert its will into every region of the world from China's Taiwan to Ukraine, doesn't seem to recognize when to leave, or at least share, the stage gracefully.

Certain sections of Western propaganda boil the complexities of international relations down into a simplistic quasi-religious battle between "good" and "evil," where, coincidently, non-liberal states and those who vote the wrong way always play the role of "evil." Under this order you might just assume good relations between China and Russia to be pre-ordained. As ridiculous as this assumption is, nothing could be further from the truth.

For example, there were predictions that the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) would clash in Central Asia. However, with all members of BRI and EAEU possessing a shared vision of integration, potential rivalry has been turned into a source for mutual cooperation.

Furthermore, the USSR and China, despite shared Marxist-Leninist ideology, opposed each other during the Cold War and China cooperated with the U.S. However, today socialist China and capitalist Russia seek win-win solutions.

In essence, if China and Russia can cooperate now, and China and the U.S. cooperated in the past, then there is no overwhelming ideological reason why the U.S. can't also find common ground today. The key is not imposing its own will on the world but rather finding what commonalities can serve as the basis to bring all parties together.

This sentiment was recently reaffirmed by Wang Yi, China's State Councillor and Foreign Minister, in his keynote speech delivered at the opening ceremony of the Symposium on the International Situation and China's Foreign Relations in 2021 when he said "the most distinct banner is building a community with a shared future for mankind." Clearly, for China and the rest of the world, a common shared value is the advancement of peaceful development.

China's State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi addresses the opening ceremony of the Symposium on the International Situation and China's Foreign Relations in 2021 in Beijing, China, December 20, 2021. /Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China.

To achieve a real consensus and real peaceful development, no country can stand above another. There needs to be real multilateralism through the UN rather than applying some vague notion of a "rules-based order" where the rules of the mighty rule over the weak and legitimate state actors are only those determined as "democracies" by the whims of the powerful.

Real international democracy considers the developmental needs of the Global South and does not pressure them to cut themselves off from one of the clearest examples of development and poverty alleviation – China. Yet, judging by the "debt-trap diplomacy" propaganda arising from the West and the U.S.'s attitude of "you're either with us or against us", this is precisely what the Global South is expected to do.

Take a recent BBC interview with the Prime Minister of Barbados Mia Mottley, who was criticized for having a good relationship with China, which is investing in Barbados. She was asked if she was "swapping one colonial power for another." Mottley responded adroitly, saying "we are capable of being friends of all and satellites of none" … the fact that you are asking this question shows that… "we are seen as pawns rather than equals with the capacity to determine our own destiny."

The Global South doesn't need lecturing from Britain or the U.S., and it doesn't need to be gaslighted about what colonialism is, when they have suffered it first-hand. Simply put, Western propaganda doesn't tally with the historical record or current material reality, and the current U.S. cold-war mentality, along with its associated propaganda, is merely a desperate attempt to maintain a fictitious world that will justify any violent action needed to maintain unipolarity. This in fact goes against the democratic will of the world, which is to achieve peaceful development.

This unipolar zero-sum mindset will only have a detrimental effect on the U.S. and its allies because in believing their own flawed narrative they will make serious strategic errors. Secondly, as other global actors see the Western-led U.S. order as either disingenuous or, by losing touch with reality, psychotic, they will increasingly move away from the irrationality emanating from the U.S.

Just like China and Russia, whose trade in the first three quarters of 2021 has risen to over $100 billion, the rest of the Global South is under no illusion that multi-polarity is the only way forward as unipolarity will only bring more of the same – poverty.

This is because the U.S., only possessing 4 percent of the global population, must repress total global development to maintain primacy. I suggest this zero-sum thinking represents the real "evil" in international relations.

The U.S. needs to do some soul searching and transform its zero-sum winner takes all mindset into a win-win mindset. The growth of China proves that as the rest of the world develops there will be bountiful markets and more opportunities for the U.S.

Thus, the faster the U.S. can drop its zero-sum thinking, the faster it will be able to reposition itself advantageously towards a flourishing global future for all.

#KASHMIR IS #INDIA'S #GAZA

UN experts call for release of Kashmiri rights activist

The Newspaper's Correspondent

Published December 23, 2021 - 

A file photo of Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society Programme

Coordinator Khurram Parvez. — Photo via Twitter


WASHINGTON: Authorities in India must stop targeting prominent Kashmiri activist Khurram Parvez, a group of independent UN human rights experts said on Wednesday, while calling for his immediate release from detention.

Mr Parvez has documented serious human rights violations in the occupied Jammu and Kashmir, including enforced disappearances and unlawful killings and has faced reprisals reportedly for sharing information with the UN. The Indian National Investigation Agency (NIA) arrested him in November on charges related to conspiracy and terrorism.

The rights experts, appointed by the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, issued the statement after reviewing available information about the case.

A UN news report also quoted the experts as urging Indian authorities to repeal the laws that target Kashmiri civilians and human rights activists.

“We are concerned that one month after Mr Parvez’s arrest, he is still deprived of liberty in what appears to be a new incident of retaliation for his legitimate activities as a human rights defender and because he has spoken out about violations,” the rights experts said.

“In view of this context of previous reprisals, we call on the Indian authorities to immediately release him and ensure his rights to liberty and security.”

The UN agency reported that Mr Parvez was detained at the Rohini Jail Complex in Delhi, which the experts described as among “the most overcrowded and unsanitary prisons in the country, posing immediate risk to his health and safety, in particular from Covid-19.

Mr Parvez was arrested on Nov 22 under Indian counter-terrorism legislation, the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA).

Introduced in July 2019, the Act allows the authorities to designate any individual as a terrorist without the requirement of establishing membership or association with banned groups. The rights experts said the UAPA has resulted in a “worrisome rise” in the number of arrests in India, and especially in the occupied Jammu and Kashmir, the UN news agency reported.

“We regret that the government continues to use the UAPA as a means of coercion to restrict civil society, the media and human rights defenders (and their) fundamental freedoms,” the experts said.

“We therefore once again urge the government to bring this legislation in line with India’s international legal obligations under human rights law.”

Indian authorities produced Mr Parvez in a court in Delhi on Nov 30 and Dec 4 when it was decided to transfer him from NIA to judicial custody. The NIA Special Court is meeting on Thursday to decide on another extension of his detention for a further 90 days. If convicted, he could face up to 14 years in prison, or even the death penalty.

Published in Dawn, December 23rd, 2021

Lawmakers criticize Meta for its part in fomenting violent division in the US

DECEMBER 22 2021

POLICY


BY JAMES FARRELL

A group of Democratic senators has sent a letter to Meta Platforms Inc. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg to express their concern about his company’s seeming inability to stop misinformation from spreading on his platform – especially when tensions run high in America.

The letter, dated Dec. 21, was signed by 13 senators in total, and included regular critics of big tech such as senators Amy Klobuchar, Richard Blumenthal and Mark R. Warner. Together they expressed dismay regarding how Meta deals with “divisive, hateful, and violent online activity” during elections.

This was their main bone of contention: “The false claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen fueled a violent and deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. The misinformation and disinformation that led to insurrection as well as planning for the insurrection took place largely on online platforms, including Facebook.”

They also mentioned the whistleblower Frances Haugen, who perhaps said something that everyone else thinks, and that was that Meta, then Facebook Inc., focuses more on growth than it does on ethical matters. Haugen said a lot of condemnatory things about Meta, with one of them being that Meta helped fan discontent prior to Jan. 6 by removing misinformation safeguards that had been there before.

“While efforts to delegitimize election results and undermine our democracy continued and even intensified following Election Day, reports indicate that Facebook turned off election-related safeguards because the company was concerned that they could be limiting the growth of the platform,” said the letter.

The senators concluded that Meta is not doing enough right now to stop the spread of dangerous misinformation and that the company doesn’t listen to recommendations from its Oversight Board, which has resulted in a new kind of American turmoil.

“The spread of misinformation and disinformation about the election resulted in an unprecedented rise of violent threats against election officials, workers, and volunteers,” said the letter. “Driven by election disinformation, Facebook users sent hate speech, death threats, and bomb threats to those responsible for administering elections.”

The senators left seven questions for Meta to respond to, all regarding what happened and how things will be improved.

Photo: Marco Verch/Flickr

Ask not what the war cost the US, but who profited from the war


After twenty years and trillions flowing through the Pentagon’s war chest, the real winners were thousands of private military contractors that profited immensely.

The Taliban’s stunning takeover of Afghanistan in the aftermath of a bungling US departure has led many to conclude the war in Afghanistan ended in failure. But it is unlikely to be a view shared by many in the US military.

For them, the twenty-year-long conflict has been a massive success.

When discussing the politics of war, a central premise is often put forward: Cui bono? Who benefits? John Boyd, a former Air Force fighter pilot famously expounded on a theory where there was no contradiction between the military’s stated mission and disregard for combat success:

“People say the Pentagon does not have a strategy,” he said. “They are wrong. The Pentagon does have a strategy. It is ‘Don’t interrupt the money flow, add to it.’”

And add to it they did.

Since the Authorization for Use of Military Force in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks was signed on September 18, 2001 by president George W Bush, the US spent $2.26 trillion on the war in Afghanistan, or $300 million a day. Roughly $800 billion was funneled into direct war-fighting costs and $85 billion to train the now vanquished Afghan army.

The war effort in Afghanistan was effectively a privatised endeavor, with the US military relying on private security contractors to power the logistics of America’s “forever war”. (Many foreign contractors are now stranded in places like Dubai following the rapid US withdrawal.)

It was a profiteering exercise that stretched till the very end. Amid news of the US-announced withdrawal by the end of August, a parting $450 million deal for 37 UH-60 helicopters was shortly struck. UH-60s are manufactured by Sikorsky, a Lockheed Martin-owned firm.

As Alexander Cockburn wrote last month, such a deal was yet another “reminder of the war’s real, squalid history, so tragic for so many Afghans, so profitable for some Americans.”

Contractor economy

The world’s largest defence spender by a wide margin, American companies account for almost 60 percent of total arms sales by the world’s 100 largest defence contractors.

Many of them have been cashing in on huge checks from the Pentagon’s war budget for years, with a majority of the near $5 trillion spent on the wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq transferred to military contractors, whose workers outnumbered soldiers in Afghanistan three to one.

In addition to giants like Lockheed Martin, DynCorp, Academi (formerly Blackwater), Black & Veatch – and oil companies like ExxonMobil which shipped the fuel on which the army runs – are just some to have profited immensely from Washington’s lucrative contracts.

To understand the sheer scale of the contractor economy across three theatres where their footprint is most prominent – Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria – the US Department of Defense confirmed using the services of over 27,000 contractors as of the fourth fiscal quarter of 2020.

Furthermore, the Pentagon’s “revolving door” between the security establishment, Congress and Corporate America only perpetuated the war machine, allowing a multitude of parties to feed at the Pentagon’s bloated war chest trough.

An investigation by the watchdog Project on Government Oversight found that between 2008-2018 around 380 high-ranking officials and officers had become government lobbyists, defence contractor consultants, or board members and executives within two years of leaving the military.

In the 2005 documentary Why We Fight, retired Air Force lieutenant colonel Karen Kwiatkowski said: “American people who have a son or a daughter that’s going to be deployed…they look at the cost-benefit, and they go ‘I don’t think that’s good.’ But when politicians who understand contracts, future contracts, when they look at war, they have a different cost-benefit analysis.”

To put this war profiteering into perspective, if one had purchased $10,000 of stocks and evenly divided among those top five defence contractors – Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics – it would now be worth almost $100,000, a greater return than the rest of the S&P over the last two decades.
Source: TRT World

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M
US military landlord pleads guilty to fraud

One of the US military's largest private landlords has pleaded guilty to a major fraud and agreed to pay over $65 million in fines and restitution.

Balfour Beatty Communities lied about the repairs to pocket millions of dollars in performance bonuses. (Reuters)

The US Justice Department has said it resolved probes into Balfour Beatty Communities, one of the US military's largest private landlords, after it pleaded guilty to one count of major fraud and agreed to pay over $65 million in fines and restitution.

US District Judge Emmet Sullivan accepted the company's guilty plea on Wednesday and sentenced it to pay over $65 million, serve three years of probation, and engage an independent compliance monitor for a period of three years.

Balfour Beatty, which was being investigated for defrauding the US Air Force, Army and Navy, was not immediately available for comment.

The company is a unit of British infrastructure conglomerate Balfour Beatty Plc.

"Instead of promptly repairing housing for US service members as required, Balfour Beatty Communities lied about the repairs to pocket millions of dollars in performance bonuses," said Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco.

"This pervasive fraud was a consequence of Balfour Beatty Communities' broken corporate culture".

Manipulating records

Stacy Cabrera, a former housing manager at Texas’s Lackland Air Force Base who told Reuters she felt pressure to manipulate records to meet the bonus goals, pleaded guilty to major fraud in April.

Rick Cunefare, a former Balfour Beatty regional manager who oversaw bases in Oklahoma, Texas and other states, pleaded guilty earlier this year to major fraud.

In 2019, Reuters reports described how Balfour Beatty employees falsified maintenance documents at Air Force bases to help the company qualify for incentive fee payments, citing five former employees who said they falsified records, company emails and internal Air Force communications.

Service members and their families were exposed to asbestos, vermin, mold and raw sewage.

The reports prompted an investigation by the Air Force Office of Special Investigations and the Inspector General’s Defense Criminal Investigative Service.

Coming Soon: The Internet of Military Things

But it is only in the early stage of development.

by Peter Suciu

The term “Internet of Things” originated before most Americans had ever heard of the Internet. In a speech to the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation 15th Annual Legislative Weekend in Washington, DC in September 1985, Peter Lewis told attendees, “The Internet of Things, or IoT, is the integration of people, processes and technology with connectable devices and sensors to enable remote monitoring, status, manipulation and evaluation of trends of such devices.” Lewis was the co-founder of the first U.S. cellular telephone company, Cellular One. 

Today, IoT is largely about making people live and work smarter—from smart home devices to self-driving cars. IoT has also become crucial to the business as it can improve the performance of machinery to help supply chain and logistics operations. It may not just be civilians at home or in the business world that benefit from IoT—it could have innumerable applications for the military.   

The Internet of Military Things 

There have been countless military innovations that have trickled down to the civilian world—from radar to jet aircraft—but the Internet of Military Things (IoMT) is one where technology developed for civilian applications could, in turn, be militarized. 

IoMT is in an early stage of development, however, its ability to speed up and increase the efficiency of the “observe, orient, decide, act” (OODA) loop could make it an invaluable tool in the hands of advanced militaries, suggested researchers at data and analytics company GlobalData.   

Soldiers and decisionmakers can now be thousands of miles away, but as modern warfare has become increasingly information-based there needs to be a continual flow of up-to-date information to quickly provide the data to make the best decisions possible. 

“Information always has been, and always will be, at the center of warfare and to maintain and increase competitive advantage in war, forces must understand and exploit the vast and constant streams of data collected on an array of connected things. The insights that can be derived from IoMT have the potential to transform warfare and serve as a force multiplier," explained Dr. Lil Read, thematic analyst at GlobalData, via an email. 

GlobalData’s new report, the Internet of Military Things–Thematic Research, shows that advanced military forces have invested in command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR) systems and infrastructure to collect, analyze, and disseminate data. 

The individual elements of C4ISR provide situational awareness, communication and planning, while IoMT can be the tools and devices to bring all that information together into a single ecosystem. IoMT could employ multiple sensors deployed across various domains to acquire full situational awareness and control over diverse conflict zones and battle areas. 

“There are multiple barriers and challenges to the widescale adoption of IoMT, even by advanced forces with large budgets,” added Read. “Tradeoffs in successful IoMT implementation will exist between interoperability, seamless information sharing, decision-making, and opening up the cybersecurity threat landscape.” 

Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer who has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers and websites. He regularly writes about military small arms, and is the author of several books on military headgear including A Gallery of Military Headdress, which is available on Amazon.com. 

Must-read WaPo: “Inside the nonstop pressure campaign by Trump allies to get election officials to revisit the 2020 vote”

December 22, 2021, 
RICK HASEN

WaPo:

More than a year after Donald Trump lost the presidency, election officials across the country are facing a growing barrage of claims that the vote was not secure and demands to investigate or decertify the outcome, efforts that are eating up hundreds of hours of government time and spreading distrust in elections.

The ongoing attack on the vote is being driven in part by well-funded Trump associates, who have gained audiences with top state officials and are pushing to inspect protected machines and urging them to conduct audits or sign on to a lawsuit seeking to overturn the 2020 results. And the campaign is being bolstered by grass-roots energy, as local residents who have absorbed baseless allegations of ballot fraud are now forcing election administrators to address the false claims.

The fallout has spread from the six states where Trump sought to overturn the outcome in 2020 to deep-red places such as Idaho, where officials recently hand-recounted ballots in three counties to refute claims of vote-flipping, and Oklahoma, where state officials commissioned an investigation to counter allegations that voting machines were hacked.

State and local officials said no one has presented actual evidence that rampant fraud tainted the 2020 election, and numerous ballot reviews and legal proceedings have affirmed that the vote was secure. Yet they and their staffs have been forced into a high-stakes game of whack-a-mole, debunking a steady stream of false allegations only to see similar claims emerge again from other groups or in other states.

Among those leading the efforts against the 2020 presidential election are MyPillow founder Mike Lindell — who said in an interview this week that he has spent $25 million promoting claims of election fraud — and one of his associates, Douglas Frank, a longtime math and science teacher in Ohio who claims to have discovered secret algorithms used to rig the 2020 election.

Throughout the year, the two men have been pressing their case with state and local election officials around the country and gaining meetings with many of them, according to people familiar with their activities.

In Ohio, Frank met for more than two hours in May with the senior staff of Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose (R), presenting unsubstantiated claims that voting machines are connected to the Internet and have been hacked, according to a recording of the meeting obtained by The Washington Post. Frank warned that he planned to pursue multiple legal actions around the country and said there could be consequences if LaRose’s office did not cooperate

“I’m warning you that I’ve been going around the country. We’re starting lawsuits everywhere,” Frank said, according to the recording. “And I want you guys to be allies, not opponents. I want to be on your team, and I’m warning you.”

After the meeting, LaRose posted a video on Facebook reiterating that under state law, no voting machines are connected to any network.

The doubts that Lindell, Frank and other Trump allies have whipped up about the vote have taken root across the country….

On social media, Frank recently began calling for prison or “firing squads” for those found guilty of “treason,” stating in one post that “history will not look kindly on state officials who turned a blind eye to the massive election fraud that took place in 2020.” On Saturday, he wrote that Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat who has refused to entertain his claims, should face a jury “capable of dispensing capital punishment.”

In an interview this week, Benson said she views the latest escalation as an assault on democracy. She said she intends to spend next year fighting back, and urging Americans to do the same.

Benson called the pressure on election officials “a political strategy to break down our democracy and put people in charge of our states who are unaccountable and will act in a way that doesn’t reflect the will of the people.”

Asked Tuesday about his comments, Frank said that after he and others who share his view about 2020 “win the war,” election officials such as Benson should face trial — adding that federal law calls for traitors to be subject to capital punishment.

“After the Nuremberg trials, there were hangings and firing squads,” Frank wrote in an email, referring to the military tribunals that tried Nazi leaders after World War II. In an interview, he added that he believes it is critical for officials to investigate elections to restore faith in their outcome: “I firmly believe they are not fair and free. I believe they are being manipulated.”

Trump Thinks He’s Still President: What Is the Evidence?

by Roger D. Harris / December 22nd, 2021

Donald Trump thinks he’s still president according to no more reliable a source than Rachel Maddow on her February 5^th show. This was confirmed in May by Vanity Fair.  Right-wing conspiracy theorists echo this analysis as recently as this month. Left-liberals are smugly confident that Kamala Harris’s running mate is in the White House, snoozing in the presidential bedroom. Inquiring minds ask what is the evidence nearly a year into the alleged Biden presidency that there has been a change of guard in Washington?

+The Obama-Biden union card check proposal was not on Mr. Trump’s political horizon, nor is it on that of the current occupant in the White House.

+The current occupant is ramping up Trump’s unhinged Sino-phobic hallucinations, sanctioning 34 Chinese entities for development of “brain-control weaponry.” Not that the Chinese have been angels. In an egregious suppression of freedom of information, the inscrutable Orientals have made it more difficult for US spies to operate in their country.

+The current occupant nominally withdrew US troops from Afghanistan as negotiated by Mr. Trump, presumably reducing overall military costs. Yet, he continues the Trump-trajectory of lavishing billions of dollars more on the military than even the Pentagon requests.

+Given his priority to feed the war machine, the new occupant is having a hard time finding sufficient funds for Biden-promised student debt forgiveness. Ditto for making two years of community college tuition-free.

+ President Trump slashed the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%; candidate Biden vowed to raise it to 28%; the current occupant proposed a further cut to 15%.

Biden, while campaigning in 2019, pledged to wealthy donors that “nothing would fundamentally change” if he’s elected. And nothing has changed despite recent drama in the Senate over Build Back Better. Trump’s $4.5 trillion corporate-investor tax cut still appears secure.

+Raising the federal minimum wage to $15-an-hour from $7.25, where it has languished since 2009, was a big selling point for the Biden campaign. Now it is on hold, while billionaire fortunes balloon, leaving the working class broke but woke under the current administration.

+The Obama-Biden nuclear deal with Iran was gutted by Trump. The current occupant, contrary to Biden’s campaign utterances, has not returned to the conditions of the JCPOA. Rather, he has continued Trump’s “maximum pressure” policy against Iran.

+Candidate Biden, calling for a foreign policy based on diplomacy, criticized Trump’s dangerous and erratic war mongering. Yet only a month after his inauguration, the new president capriciously bombed “Iranian-backed militias” in Syria who were fighting ISIS terrorists and posed no threat to the US.

The new president went on to authorize further “air strikes” on “targets” around the world such as Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Now, the undiscriminating reader might think these are acts of war. But war, according to the “rules-based order” of the new occupant, is best understood as a conflict where US lives are lost rather than those of seemingly more expendable swarthy-skinned foreigners.

+The Obama-Biden normalization of relations with Cuba and easing of restrictions were reversed by Trump. Presidential candidate Biden had signaled a return, but the current occupant has instead intensified the US hybrid war against Cuba.

+Candidate Biden pledged to review Trump’s policy of US sanctions against a third of humanity. The presumptive intention of the review was to ameliorate the human suffering caused by these unilateral coercive measures. Sanctions are a form of collective punishment considered illegal under international law. Following the review, the current occupant has instead tightened the screws, more effectively weaponizing the COVID crisis against countries such as Nicaragua, Cuba, and Venezuela, while adding Ethiopia and Cambodia to the growing list of those sanctioned.

+Among Trump’s most ridiculous foreign policy stunts (and it’s a competitive field) was the recognition of Juan Guaidó as president of Venezuela in 2019. The then 35-year-old US security asset had never run for a nationwide office and was unknown to over 80% of the Venezuelans. Contrary to campaign trail inuendoes that Biden would dialogue with the democratically elected president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, the new guy in the White House has continued the embarrassing Guaidó charade.

+The current White House occupant has also continued and expanded on some of the worse anti-immigrant policies of the xenophobe who preceded him. Asylum seekers from Haiti and Central America – fleeing conditions in large part created by US interventions in their countries – have been sent packing. Within a month of assuming the presidency, migrant detention facilities for children were employed, contradicting statements made by candidate Biden who had deplored locking kids in cages.

+President Trump was a shameless global warming denier. Candidate Biden was a refreshing true believer, boldly calling for a ban on new oil and natural gas leasing on public land and water. But whoever is now in the Oval Office opened more than 80 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico for fossil fuel drilling.

Perhaps the strongest evidence that Trump is practically still in office is the political practice of his left-liberal detractors who solemnly promised to “first dump Trump, then battle Biden.” However, these left-liberals are still obsessing about dumping Trump. Instead of battling Biden, they are fanning the dying embers of the fear of another January 6 insurrection, giving the Democrats a pass.

Of course, the Democrats occupy the executive branch along with holding majorities and both houses of Congress. Yet, despite campaign pledges and spin, the continuity from one administration to the next is overarching as the preceding quick review documented.

The partisan infighting theatrics of the “dysfunctional Congress” is in part a distraction from an underlying bedrock bipartisan consensus. Congress is dysfunctional by design on matters of social welfare for working Americans. It is ruthlessly functional for matters of concern for the ruling elites, such as the military spending, bank bailouts, corporate welfare, and an expansive surveillance state.

The Democrats offer an empty “we are not Trump” alternative. The bankrupt left-liberals no longer stand for substantial improvements to the living conditions of working people, a “peace dividend,” or respite from war without end. Instead, they use the scare tactic that they are the bulwark against a right popular insurgency; an insurgency fueled in the first place by the failure of the two-party system to speak to the material needs of its constituents.

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Roger D. Harris is on the state central committee of the Peace and Freedom Party the only ballot-qualified socialist party in California. Read other articles by Roger D..

This article was posted on Wednesday, December 22nd, 2021 at 7:31pm and is filed under Build Back Better (BBB) Legislation, China, Corporate Media, Crimes against Humanity, Cuba, Democrats, Deportation, Donald Trump, Environment, Gulf of Mexico (drilling), Immigration, Joe Biden, Juan Guaidó, Minimum Wage, Propaganda, Racism, Student Loans, Tax Breaks for the Rich, The Pentagon, Unemployment, US Congress, US Hegemony, US Sanctions, US Senate, Venezuela, War Crimes.