Monday, September 27, 2021

Race to the bottom: the disastrous blindfolded rush to mine the deep sea

One of the largest mining operations ever seen on Earth aims to despoil an ocean we are only barely beginning to understand

“We have never entered a frontier and not fucked it up more.”

Cutting machines developed for deep-sea mining. Mining today is often from mega-pits so big they can be seen from space, but they are governed by laws drawn up 150 years ago in the era of picks and shovels. Photograph: Nautilus Minerals

LONG READ

by Jonathan Watts, global environment editor
Seascape: the state of our oceans is supported by


Mon 27 Sep 2021 



Ashort bureaucratic note from a brutally degraded microstate in the South Pacific to a little-known institution in the Caribbean is about to change the world. Few people are aware of its potential consequences, but the impacts are certain to be far-reaching. The only question is whether that change will be to the detriment of the global environment or the benefit of international governance.

In late June, the island republic of Nauru informed the International Seabed Authority (ISA) based in Kingston, Jamaica of its intention to start mining the seabed in two years’ time via a subsidiary of a Canadian firm, The Metals Company (TMC, until recently known as DeepGreen). Innocuous as it sounds, this note was a starting gun for a resource race on the planet’s last vast frontier: the abyssal plains that stretch between continental shelves deep below the oceans.

In the three months since it was fired, the sound of that shot has reverberated through government offices, conservation movements and scientific academies, and is now starting to reach a wider public, who are asking how the fate of the greatest of global commons can be decided by a sponsorship deal between a tiny island and a multinational mining corporation.

The risks are enormous. Oversight is almost impossible. Regulators admit humanity knows more about deep space than the deep ocean. The technology is unproven. Scientists are not even sure what lives in those profound ecosystems. State governments have yet to agree on a rulebook on how deep oceans can be exploited. No national ballot has ever included a vote on excavating the seabed. Conservationists, including David Attenborough and Chris Packham, argue it is reckless to go ahead with so much uncertainty and such potential devastation ahead.

Louisa Casson, an oceans campaigner at Greenpeace International, says the two-year deadline is “really dangerous”. Given the potential risks of fisheries disturbance, water contamination, sound pollution and habitat destruction for dumbo octopuses, sea pangolins and other species, she says no new licences should be approved. “This is now a test of governments who claim to want to protect the oceans,” she said. “They simply cannot allow these reckless companies to rush headlong into a race to the bottom, where little-known ecosystems will be ploughed up for profit, and the risks and liabilities will be pushed on to small island nations. We need an urgent deep-sea mining moratorium to protect the oceans.”

Mining companies also insist on urgency – to start exploration. They say the minerals – copper, cobalt, nickel and magnesium – are essential for a green transition. If the world wants to decarbonise and reach net-zero emissions by 2050, they say we must start extracting the resources for car batteries and wind turbines soon. They already have exploration permits for an expanse of international seabed as large as France and Germany combined, an area that is likely to expand rapidly. All they need now is a set of internationally agreed operating rules. The rulebook is being drawn up by the ISA, set up in 1994 by the United Nations to oversee sustainable seabed exploration for the benefit of all humanity. But progress is slower than mining companies and their investors would like.

That is why Nauru’s action is pivotal. By triggering the “two-year rule”, the island nation has in effect given regulators 24 months to finish the rulebook. At that point, it says TMC’s subsidiary Nauru Ocean Resources Inc (NORI), intends to apply for approval to begin mining in the Clarion-Clipperton zone, an expanse of the North Pacific between Hawaii and Mexico.

The deep ocean is the least known environment on Earth, a realm that still inspires awe and wonder. By one estimate, 90% of the species that researchers collect are new to science, including the pale “ghost” octopus that lays its eggs on sponge stalks anchored to manganese nodules or the single-celled, tennis-ball sized Xenophyophores. In the midnight, hadal and abyssal zones, fish and other creatures must make their own light. Biolumescent loosejaw and humpback blackdevils, a type of anglerfish, have evolved with in-built lanterns to seek out and draw in their prey. First-time human visitors often go expecting darkness and return filled with wonder at the undersea displays of living fireworks. Marine biologists believe there may be more bioluminescent creatures in the deep sea than there are species on land.
A dumbo octopus, just one of millions of barely understood deep-sea species
 at risk from mining. 
Photograph: NOAA

There is also thought to be a greater wealth of minerals such as copper, nickel, cobalt and rare earth elements such as yttrium, as well as substantial veins of gold, silver and platinum. Most are found near hydrothermal vents or in rock concretions known as polymetallic nodules that can be as big as a fist or as small as a fleck of skin. The challenge is gouging them out and lifting them up to the surface. When the first attempts were made to harvest nodules in the mid-1970s, the chief executive in charge of the operation exasperatedly described the task as like “standing on the top of the Empire State Building, trying to pick up small stones on the sidewalk using a long straw, at night”. Today’s technology has moved on, but scientists and conservationists doubt that it is ready and the environmental risks are fully understood. They would like more time. Nauru and TMC have given them less. The countdown clock now has 21 months left, and counting.

History does not offer much encouragement to the denizens of the deep that the issue will be resolved in their favour. Mining has provided the building blocks of civilisation. Without ore, humankind could not have had the iron age, the bronze age and certainly not the great cultures of ancient China, Nubia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, the Aztecs or Mayans. In modern times, particularly the great post-second world war acceleration of the past 70 years, more has probably been gouged from the Earth than in all of previous human history combined.

The materials for a built and manufactured environment are extracted at the expense of natural beauty, resilience and stability. For most of human history, this was considered a fair trade-off. The costs – cleared forests, scarred landscapes, polluted water, air filled with dust, carcinogens and greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere – were either unknown or deemed small compared with the gains. They rarely appeared on corporate or national balance sheets. Miners extracted oil, gas, coal, iron, gold, copper, lithium and other minerals, while leaving other species, remote communities and future generations to pay the price.
‘Any claim of not being environmentally damaging is meaningless, as we have no idea now what that environment is’ ... a grabber breaks off a section of hydrothermal vent. Photograph: Nautilus minerals


‘A throwback to the robber baron era’


Mining has often proved a trade based on imported resources and exported risk. In recent decades, this trade-off has come into question as scientific knowledge of the consequences has advanced. Environmental concerns have prompted calls for stricter regulation. But, oversight, if it exists at all, is often shaped by those who stand to benefit in the short term rather than those left to clean up the mess. And mines are moving further from power centres, which means less likelihood of Nimby protests, media coverage, challenges by conservationists or legal redress. Most of today’s mega-mines are in remote regions: the Carajás iron-ore complex and the Paragominas bauxite mine in the state of Pará, northern Brazil; the Oyu Tolgoi copper mine in Mongolia’s Gobi desert; Bingham Canyon copper mine in Utah’s Oquirrh Mountains; Chuquicamata copper mine in Chile’s Atacama desert; Mirny mine in Siberian Russia; or the many offshore oil and gas wells in the Gulf of Mexico, the North Sea, the Caribbean and elsewhere.


David Attenborough calls for ban on 'devastating' deep sea mining



If mining in the deep ocean is technologically challenging and expensive, then independent oversight is even tougher: beyond all national jurisdictions, too expensive for environmental organisations to reach, too inaccessible for all but invited journalists to visit, and totally free of people so no chance of hold-ups by protesters. Fish, crustaceans and microbes might suffer, but they cannot complain.

Just like almost every other mining project in history, TMC and other mining companies promise to maintain the highest environmental standards, and to operate within guidelines laid out by regulatory bodies. And just like almost every other mining project in history, it is in their interest to exert pressure on those same regulatory bodies to ensure projects go ahead quickly with environmental standards that do not sink their bottom line.

Payal Sampat, mining programme director at the Earthworks environmental charity, said the rushed approach to deep-sea mining was reminiscent of the wild-west prospectors of the 19th century. “This really is a throwback to the early robber baron era. Our global heritage is being decided in small backroom discussions. Most people are completely unaware that this enormous planet-changing decision is being made. It is very non-transparent.” She said the mining industry had never been properly regulated. Today’s mega-pits are so big they can be seen from space, but they are governed by laws drawn up 150 years ago in the era of picks and shovels. “Deep-sea mining really represents a continuation of that destructive extractivist mindset. It is all about looking at the next frontier rather than using the resources we already have much better.”
‘Nauru was once a tropical paradise. Now, thanks to human avarice and short-sightedness, our island is mostly a wasteland’ ... former minister of Nauru, which was scarred by phosphate mining. 
Photograph: Reuters

The wasteland

Nauru ought to provide a salutary reminder of the destructive spiral that follows when an ecosystem is sucked dry. Once described as a Pacific idyll, the island’s topsoil was stripped of phosphate first by the British, then the Germans, then New Zealanders and Australians. They wanted the deposits to fertilise gardens and farmland in their own countries, and promised to restore the landscape and fully compensate those affected by environmental damage. By the time of independence in 1968, enough phosphate was left to briefly make the country’s 12,000 inhabitants the second-richest people on Earth. As phosphate prices rose from $10 a ton to more than $65 in the 1970s, gross domestic product per capita topped $50,000, second only to Saudi Arabia.

But within two decades, the resource was virtually exhausted, leaving an inland moonscape of gnarled, spiky rock and an economy in tatters. Restitution funds were supposed to rehabilitate 400 hectares (1,000 acres), but they have been frittered away in the past 25 years with barely six hectares recovered.

The gutting of the topsoil has caused unforeseen problems to the local climate, vegetation and society. Loss of vegetation has prevented rain clouds from forming over the island and led to more droughts. Several endemic plant species are now endangered and food production has been affected. Locals have turned from healthy local produce, such as coconuts, to fatty and salty tinned goods, resulting in one of the highest levels of obesity, heart disease and diabetes in the world. As one former finance minister put it: “Nauru was once a tropical paradise, a rainforest hung with fruits and flowers, vines and orchids. Now, thanks to human avarice … and short-sightedness, our island is mostly a wasteland.”

The 12,000 inhabitants have resisted repeated attempts to relocate them to an island off Queensland and looked for new ways to make a living. After the economy collapsed, the desperate government turned to offshore banking. But with customers that included the Russian mafia and al-Qaida, the US Treasury blacklisted the island as a centre of money laundering and corruption. After that failure, the microstate rented itself out to Australia as a detention centre for asylum seekers, a business that now provides more than half of the state revenue. When that declined, Nauru began to eye up the surrounding seabed by teaming up with TMC, which is paying tens of millions of dollars a year in royalties for its fully owned NORI subsidiary.

At the ISA, Nauru is supposed to be a sponsor nation for TMC. In reality, the island acts more like a client state for the corporation, and a company executive can behave as its spokesperson. In 2019, as chairman of DeepGreen Metals, Gerard Barron, was listed as a member of the Nauru delegation and spoke from the island’s seat in the plenary meeting.

Gerard Barron says The Metals Company would halt production after the world has enough minerals for 2bn batteries, though critics are sceptical about this promise. Photograph: Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times/Shutterstock

Little wonder then that eyebrows were raised when this tiny nation, which constitutes just 0.00016% of the world’s population, took the initiative to open up the seabed. Few observers doubt that this was done at the behest of TMC.

Matthew Gianni, co-founder of the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition, said: “This is all about money – money for DeepGreen [TMC] and its shareholders and money for Nauru – and the fear that if DeepGreen doesn’t get a licence soon, investors will walk away from the company and both DeepGreen and Nauru will lose out on any revenue.” He said the case showed the need to shake up international governance. “The ISA’s decision-making process is seriously flawed and needs to be fixed.”

In lieu of comment, The Metals Company referred questions to three external experts that it said specialised in deep-sea ecosystems and plume dynamics.

TMC is among a cluster of mining companies that argue seabed minerals are essential if the world is to make the transition from fossil fuels to renewables. Barron, its chief executive and chairman, is fond of stating that a single 75kW electric vehicle battery requires 56kg of nickel and 7kg each of manganese and cobalt, plus 85kg of copper for the vehicle’s wiring. To convert the world’s 1bn-plus combustion-engine cars to electric would require far more metal than is currently produced on land. Barron says tapping seabed resources would still not close the supply gap, but that it could accelerate the transition, reduce mining emissions and provide revenue for poorer countries. As a sign of TMC’s commitment to the environment, he says the company would halt production after the world has enough minerals for 2bn batteries, because that would be enough to allow full recycling.
Once you start, it'll be hard to stop. Mining needs 30 years to recoup investment. It’s not something you put back in the boxLisa Levin, Scripps Institution of Oceanography

But many battery-makers and industrial users are lining up with the conservationists rather than the miners. In April, BMW, Volvo, Google and Samsung joined a World Wildlife Fund (WWF) call for a moratorium on seabed mining. Scientists and campaigners say TMC is creating a false sense of urgency about the need for deep-sea minerals. They say existing mineral supplies are sufficient for the coming 10 years and after that much of the demand could be met by fast-improving recycling technology. Others are sceptical about the promise of a 2bn battery cap. Lisa Levin, a professor of biological oceanography at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, said: “Once you start up a new industry it won’t just be DeepGreen [TMC], it will be multiple countries. It will be very hard to stop. Mining needs to continue for 20 or 30 years to recoup investment. It’s not something you put back in the box.”

A 2015 meeting of the International Seabed Authority (ISA) in Kingston, Jamaica. Photograph: David McFadden/AP

Who are the ISA?

Many observers accept that deep-sea mining will go ahead at some point. But it needs to be done carefully, after the risks are fully assessed, the technology is perfected and oversight systems are made as robust as possible to ensure minimal impact on ocean ecosystems. The world might have more confidence that this was the case if the regulatory body was more open, more democratic, less focused on commercial gain and more attuned to environmental loss. As it is, however, the ISA is geared towards ploughing ahead.

It held its first meeting in Kingston, Jamaica, on 16-18 November 1994. The venue for this and subsequent gatherings was the Jamaica Conference Centre, which boasts of being “the Caribbean’s most sophisticated meeting place”. In the heat outside, angular concrete lines stand out between palm trees and fountains. Inside, the air-conditioned conference centre is decorated with bright hand-woven panels. This is a multinational world where you pay in dollars. ISA delegates roll up in diplomatic limousines, some with little flags on the bonnet, and congregate between meeting rooms, the marble lobby, and over cocktails in bars looking out across the Caribbean. In the evenings, delegates and contractors are invited to soirees hosted by the Jamaican government or dinner at the mansion of the ISA secretary general, Michael Lodge, high on the hill overlooking the harbour.

Lodge, a British lawyer, wants member states to agree on a rulebook that will set standards for mining practices and allow commercial operations to begin. Discussions on this topic have been under way since 2017, but have been snarled up over how to share future mining proceeds among nations. The ISA prefers to treat this as a technocratic problem. But, as the intervention of Nauru has shown, this is about much more fundamental issues of global governance and politics. Does the world want to be pushed into the final frontier of the global commons by a desperate microstate and a multinational mining company? Is it willing to take the risk that the ocean floor will end up like Nauru, a victim of over-exploitation and false promises of restoration?

Archive documents show corporations have tried to influence the ISA since its inception. In the 1980s, multinational corporations, such as Lockheed Martin and Sumitomo, were lobbying governments to ensure the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea “should contain a bias in favour of mining production”.

The UN general assembly subsequently approved the funding of the ISA in 1994, noting that the ocean floor and subsoil, beyond the limits of national jurisdiction, were the common heritage of humanity and should be dealt with in line with “the growing reliance on market principles”. Other species and ecosystems were an afterthought. To circumvent regulatory hold-ups, wealthy nations also pushed for a “two-year rule” that could be initiated by any country. Once that process begins, the onus shifts to the regulators to adopt exploitation regulations within 24 months.

In theory, every country in the world is involved in the ISA’s decision-making. In practice, power lies with a small group of experts that is weighted in favour of mining. There is no specialist environmental or science assessment group to vet applications for new contracts. Instead, new contracts are initially made by the ISA’s Legal and Technical Commission (LTC), which comprises just 30 members. Their decisions can only be overturned by a super-majority of two thirds of the full council, which comprises 36 states.

The commission has a 100% record of approving exploration applications, for which ISA charges a $500,000 (£365,000) processing fee. Membership of the LTC is skewed towards extraction rather than environmental oversight – a fifth of the members work directly for contractors with deep-sea mining projects. They include Nobuyuki Okamoto, who established Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation, which has started its own seafloor exploration, and Carsten Rühlemann, who works for Germany’s Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources, which holds exploration contracts in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Many others have a background in mining or oil and gas exploration. Among them are the chair of the commission, Harald Brekke, who is a senior geologist at the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate; Pakistan’s representative, Khalid Mehmood Awan, who has worked for offshore oil and gas companies; and an Australian geologist, Mark Alcock, who is listed as working previously in surveying for petroleum and minerals exploration. By comparison, only three members are obviously focused on marine ecosystems, such as Gordon Lindsay Paterson, a zoologist at the Natural History Museum in London.

A spokesperson for the ISA said: “Members of the LTC are elected by the council from among the candidates nominated by states parties to UNCLOS [United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea]. States parties shall nominate candidates of the highest standards of competence and integrity with qualifications in relevant fields. The council shall endeavour to ensure that the membership of the LTC reflects all appropriate qualifications. In the election of members of the LTC, due account shall be taken of the need for equitable geographical distribution and the representation of special interests.”

It added that 31 contracts for exploration had been granted so far and the “evaluation by the LTC of an application for a plan of work for exploration is a rigorous process”.

Deep-sea mining off the Papua New Guinea coast. 
Photograph: Nautilus Minerals

Some members of the LTC privately recognise the need for change, so the risks to this vast new area of exploration can be properly evaluated. “We probably know more about outer space than we do about this [deep-sea] frontier,” said a delegate who asked to remain anonymous. “I have heard suggestions for more environmental oversight, and I cannot say I have a contrary view.”

It is not just small island states that are complicit. Seabed resources are supposed to benefit all of humanity and promote sustainable development, but just three companies from wealthy nations have a hand in eight of the 10 contracts to explore for minerals in the Pacific’s Clarion-Clipperton zone that have been awarded since 2010: the Canadian-registered TMC (formerly DeepGreen), the Belgian corporation Dredging Environmental and Marine Engineering (DEME), and UK Seabed Resources, a subsidiary of the US arms manufacturer Lockheed Martin.

The role of these companies is opaque. None of the parent companies are included by the ISA in its list of contractors. A common practice is to operate through subsidiaries or by taking shares in partners in small island states, often in conjunction with national governments. This leads to concerns about accountability in the event of an accident: the subsidiaries are often small, which could leave poor nations with huge liabilities.

The British government has fudged its response to Nauru pulling the two-year trigger. This seems appropriate for a former colonial power that is still struggling to match its claims for environmental leadership with actions that run against its continued dependence on exploiting overseas resources. In 2019, the House of Commons environmental audit committee, including the Tory MP Zac Goldsmith, now Lord Goldsmith and minister for Pacific and the environment, concluded that deep-sea mining would have “catastrophic impacts on the seafloor”; that the ISA benefiting from revenues from issuing mining licenses was “a clear conflict of interest” and that the case for deep-sea mining had not yet been made.

Any claim of not being environmentally damaging is meaningless, as we have no idea now what that environment is 
Will McCallum, Greenpeace

However, ties between the UK government and the deep-sea mining industry have been unhealthily cosy. A Cabinet Office official has moved to Lockheed Martin, which owns UK Seabed Resources, to head their government affairs department. The former prime minister David Cameron used Lockheed Martin’s estimates of the potential value of the deep-sea mining industry, rather than independent analysis. When Greenpeace was finally granted a freedom of information request for the deep-sea mining licences between the British government and UK Seabed Resources, it found it was “riddled with errors and inaccuracies”, that it was based on outdated legislation and that it extended for a duration beyond the limits permitted by UK law.

When asked a parliamentary question about Nauru and the two-year trigger, the then business minister Nadhim Zahawi refused to support a moratorium and said the UK’s position was to wait for sufficient scientific evidence and strong environmental regulations. Zahawi has a deeper background in mineral exploration than any other MP. Before he joined the government, he received more than £1m in salary and bonuses from Gulf Keystone Petroleum, worked as a consultant for the Canadian oil firm Talisman and declared shares in the oil firm Genel Energy and Gulf Keystone. There is no suggestion of wrongdoing but – like many members of the LTC – he may be predisposed towards the extractive industries, having made a living from them for so many years.

Activists say it is not too late to stop the clock; opposition is gaining momentum. The world congress of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature earlier this month voted overwhelmingly to ban deep-sea mining. Support for the motion came from government delegates as well as civil society. Although the vote is non-binding, it highlights the broad unease at the shotgun tactics of Nauru and TMC. There are also plans for an appeal to another UN body, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, against allowing deep-sea mining.

Hydrothermal vents in the Lau Basin, near Fiji. 
Photograph: Charles Fisher/Pennsylvania State University/
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute

Our common heritage

Few countries are outright opposed to the mining, but many would prefer to wait. Their motives differ widely. On one side are nations such as Costa Rica, Fiji and Germany that are wary about the environmental implications. On the other are nations such as Chile and many African countries, with strong terrestrial mining interests, that do not want to see more competition that could drive down prices for their minerals. The African Group of nations has come out strongly against Nauru’s move, saying it is “likely to weaken rather than facilitate the development of an effective regime fully embodying the common heritage of mankind principle”.

Academics and civil society groups believe TMC has overplayed its hand. They hope its premature move to set a deadline will spur reforms of the ISA. Pradeep Singh, an ISA observer and ocean expert at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies in Potsdam, Germany, said: “It does not say too much about the ISA decision-making process, to be honest, except that it is regrettable that the provision has been invoked. Perhaps the timing of the move to invoke the provision is less related to actually getting the process moving at the ISA but more related to increasing market confidence or value, and attracting investors to invest in the contractor.”


Beneath the blue: dive into a dazzling ocean under threat – interactive


The case raises still deeper questions about humanity’s treatment of the Earth, particularly the dangerous gap between caring for our immediate local environment while turning a blind eye to what happens in the planet’s more remote corners. The French philosopher Bruno Latour traces this back to colonial thinking, which continues in present-day neoliberal capitalism. “Every state delineated by its borders is obliged, by definition, to lie about what allows it to exist since, if it is wealthy and developed, it has to expand over other territories on the quiet, though without seeing itself as being responsible for those territories in any way,” he writes in his new book After Lockdown: A Metamorphosis. “That’s a basic hypocrisy that creates a disconnect between, on the one hand, the world I live in as a citizen of a developed country, and, on the other, the world I live off, as a consumer of the same country. As if every state was coupled with a shadow state that never stopped haunting it, a doppelganger that provides for it on the one hand and is devoured by it, on the other.”

A pithier argument is made by Will McCallum, head of oceans at Greenpeace UK, who fears the deep sea will suffer like all other newly opened territories. “Any claim of not being environmentally damaging is meaningless, as we have no idea now what that environment is,” he said.

“We have never entered a frontier and not fucked it up more.”


‘Beyond the pale’: Americans horrified by report that CIA under Trump discussed assassinating Julian Assange

Journalists, political analysts, and press organizations expressed shock on Sunday over a report that claimed members of former president Donald Trump’s administration had plotted to assassinate WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Yahoo News interviewed more than 30 former Trump administration officials for its article revealing that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) under Trump’s then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo had discussed assassinating or kidnapping Assange while he took refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.

The report also claimed that the Trump administration, in partnership with the UK government, was preparing to potentially engage in dangerous street conflict with any Russian operatives, should they attempt to help Assange escape from the country.


Following the release of the report, the Freedom of the Press Foundation issued a statement calling the CIA 

“a disgrace,” adding, “The fact that it contemplated and engaged in so many illegal acts against WikiLeaks, its associates, and even other award-winning journalists is an outright scandal that should be investigated by Congress and the Justice Department.”

The foundation also called on President Joe Biden and his administration to immediately drop all charges against Assange, describing the CIA’s alleged plans as “beyond the pale.”

Horrified journalists, political commentators, and analysts from around the world also expressed shock at the details contained in the report.

“You cannot extradite somebody you plotted to assassinate,” reacted The Intercept’s Washington DC Bureau chief Ryan Grim, while journalist Glenn Greenwald tweeted, “Behavior like this from the CIA and now from the Biden DOJ is what *real press freedom attacks* look like.”

Tommy Vietor, a former spokesperson for President Barack Obama, called on House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff and Senate Intel Committee Chairman Mark Warner to hold hearings on the CIA’s alleged plot.

Others used the report to discredit public figures such as Bureau of Investigative Journalism editor James Ball, who had argued – while the CIA were discussing assassinating Assange – that the WikiLeaks founder would be safe if he left the Ecuadorian Embassy and was “unlikely to face prosecution in the US.”

Assange was forcibly removed from the embassy in 2019 by London’s Metropolitan Police and incarcerated in the maximum-security Belmarsh prison, where he remains to this day as the US government attempts to extradite him to face charges, including violating the Espionage Act, despite the fact he is an Australian citizen.


US government, CIA plotted to kidnap or


assassinate Assange in London


Oscar Grenfell
WSWS.ORG

An explosive investigative report by Yahoo News has revealed plans at the highest levels of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Trump administration to illegally kidnap or even assassinate WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange when he was an internationally recognised political refugee in Ecuador’s London embassy.

Based on discussions with more than 30 former US officials, the report alleges conduct on the part of former President Donald Trump, then CIA director Mike Pompeo and other senior administration officials amounting to a criminal conspiracy to abduct and murder a journalist. The breadth and intensity of the discussions about “extreme measures” against Assange, however, implicate the top levels of the entire state apparatus, the leadership of the Democratic Party and US allies, including Britain and Australia.


The report is confirmation that the current US attempt to extradite Assange from Britain and prosecute him is a pseudo-legal fig leaf for an extraordinary rendition operation. Their CIA killers having failed to snatch or “take out” the WikiLeaks founder, the US government is seeking to accomplish the same ends through an unprecedented Espionage Act prosecution, charging Assange with the “crime” of exposing illegal wars, mass surveillance and global diplomatic intrigues.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange [Credit: AP Photo/Matt Dunham]

That the prosecution was initiated under Trump and is being continued by the Biden administration demonstrates the unanimity of the ruling elite in the campaign to destroy Assange and WikiLeaks, and establish a major precedent for the suppression of social and political opposition.

Significantly, the report notes that intensive intelligence activity against Assange began under the Obama administration.

By 2012, the Democratic Party government’s threats to prosecute the WikiLeaks founder, and its orchestration of provocations against WikiLeaks, had forced Assange to seek asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy. The campaign was stepped up in 2013, after Edward Snowden exposed illegal mass surveillance by the US National Security Agency and found asylum in Russia. In that year, the Obama administration developed a plan with the British government to prevent Assange leaving the embassy and securing freedom abroad.

In 2016, WikiLeaks published documents from the Democratic National Committee exposing political corruption, including the sabotage of Bernie Sanders' candidacy in favour of Hillary Clinton, the handpicked representative of Wall Street and the Intelligence Agencies.

According to Yahoo, the Obama administration responded by labelling WikiLeaks and its associates as “valid targets for various types of spying, including close-in technical collection—such as bugs—sometimes enabled by in-person espionage, and “remote operations,” meaning, among other things, the hacking of WikiLeaks' members’ devices from afar…”

The Yahoo News report confirms Assange’s own assessment that WikiLeaks' publication of Vault 7, a vast tranche of material exposing CIA spying activities, was a decisive factor in the increasingly frenzied efforts of the US state to obliterate the organisation through any means. Released beginning in March 2017, the documents exposed the offensive hacking operations of the CIA internationally, branding it as one of the biggest purveyors of malware in the world.

Among the explosive revelations was confirmation that the agency could hack into computer systems and leave “tell-tale” signs that the intrusions were the work of a hostile power, such as Russia or Iran. This cast doubt over the incessant and unsubstantiated claims of Russian and other state hacking, including in the 2016 American elections, as they were being used to ramp-up US militarist threats and provocations. The CIA was also seeking to hack into the computer systems of modern cars, a capability that could be used for assassinations, and was spying on people through their televisions and smartphones.

The response was immediate. The intelligence agencies had been unable to prove the bogus claims that WikiLeaks was acting in concert with the Russian state. As one former official told Yahoo: “There was a lot of legal debate on: Are they operating as a Russian agent? It wasn’t clear they were, so the question was, can it be reframed on them being a hostile entity.”

The new doctrine was unveiled in a speech by Pompeo at CIA headquarters in April 2017. In a diatribe over the publication of Vault 7, the CIA director branded WikiLeaks as “hostile non-state intelligence service.”

Citing unnamed former Trump administration officials, Yahoo explained that in using that description Pompeo was “neither speaking off the cuff nor repeating a phrase concocted by a CIA speechwriter.” Instead, he was outlining a pseudo-legal rationale for directing the murderous methods employed by the US in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere against WikiLeaks. In the words of a former CIA official, WikiLeaks would go from a “target of collection to a target of disruption” for the intelligence agencies.

According to Yahoo:

Soon after the speech, Pompeo asked a small group of senior CIA officers to figure out “the art of the possible” when it came to WikiLeaks, said another former senior CIA official. “He said, ‘Nothing’s off limits, don’t self-censor yourself. I need operational ideas from you. I’ll worry about the lawyers in Washington.’”

CIA stations around the world were instructed to intensify their activities against WikiLeaks. This included active measures, such as seeking to provoke discord within the organisation. The Yahoo report also suggests the agency may have conducted break-ins and other illegal surveillance actions in European states, especially Germany and Britain. They developed “pattern of life” surveillance against WikiLeaks staff and associates.

Yahoo added:


At meetings between senior Trump administration officials after WikiLeaks started publishing the Vault 7 materials, Pompeo began discussing kidnapping Assange, according to four former officials. While the notion of kidnapping Assange preceded Pompeo’s arrival at Langley, the new director championed the proposals, according to former officials.

The discussions, however, went further:


U.S. officials had also considered killing Assange, according to three former officials. One of those officials said he was briefed on a spring 2017 meeting in which the president asked whether the CIA could assassinate Assange and provide him “options” for how to do so.

Trump has denied the claim, while others interviewed by Yahoo sought to downplay it as “spitballing.” The agency, however, requested and received plans for how such an assassination could be conducted, as well as how other members of WikiLeaks in Europe could be murdered.

Previous reports, moreover, have made clear that the CIA had gone beyond discussions in Langley, Virginia. Former employees of UC Global, the private security company hired by the Ecuadorian government to provide security to its London embassy, have testified under oath that the firm was functioning as a proxy for the CIA. Audio and video recordings of Assange, including his private meetings with lawyers, were surreptitiously carried out by the company. Its employees, who effectively controlled Assange’s physical environment, were also asked to consider means by which he could be killed, possibly through poison, or kidnapped.

As the US campaign intensified, the Ecuadorian authorities reportedly made plans to evacuate Assange from the embassy by providing him with a diplomatic post. A plan, confirmed by Fidel Navaez, a former senior diplomat at the embassy and supporter of Assange, was developed to transfer the WikiLeaks founder to Russia in late 2017. When informed of it by Ecuadorian officials, Assange rejected the suggestion of travelling to Moscow, and raised the need to find another third country.

US intelligence agencies became aware of these discussions, likely through the activities of UC Global. According to Yahoo, they discussed unhinged counter-measures, including crashing into any car carrying Assange through the streets of London and shooting out the tyres of any plane he would travel in. The British authorities also declared that they would not recognise any diplomatic protection provided to Assange.

The report makes clear that to the extent the kidnapping and assassination plans were scuttled, it was not the result of any principled opposition from within the state apparatus. Instead, some officials from the Justice Department and administration lawyers warned that the actions being contemplated would be a gross breach of international law that would undermine US imperialism in Europe and internationally. As one told Yahoo, the plots of murder and kidnapping were “something we’d do in Afghanistan, but not in the U.K.”

The article demonstrates the deep connection between the CIA’s dirty tricks campaign and the pseudo-legal attempt to prosecute Assange. The latter emerged out of the former. As Yahoo writes: “Concerned the CIA’s plans would derail a potential criminal case, the Justice Department expedited the drafting of charges against Assange to ensure that they were in place if he were brought to the United States.”

The latest revelations confirm the criminal character of the pursuit of Assange, and all of those forces involved in it, from the US state, the Democratic and Republican parties, to the governments and official parties of Britain, Australia and other alliance nations.

They underscore that in the pursuit of Assange, governments are seeking to establish precedents for sweeping attacks on dissident journalists and political activists, above all targeting mounting opposition from the working class. The activities detailed in the Yahoo report recall the spying operations conducted by the CIA, the FBI and other agencies against socialist and left-wing organisations, and alternative publications, during the last period of revolutionary upheavals in the 1960s and 70s.

Critical lessons must be drawn. The perspective of appealing to the Trump administration, or to Biden, promoted by the official Don’t Extradite Assange campaign and similar organisations, is utterly bankrupt. In practice, it amounts to pathetic moral pleas to those plotting to destroy WikiLeaks and to kill Assange.

An independent political movement of the working class must be built to secure Assange’s freedom and to defend democratic rights. It is to the millions of workers and young people who are entering into struggle against the very governments persecuting Assange, that defenders of civil liberties must turn.

Fall of Panjshir

Masud Ahmad Khan

September 27, 2021

A valley runs along the Panjshir River about North East of Kabul. It is 76 kilometers long, 15 kilometers wide and at places, it narrows down considerably. Panjshir is not just one valley but 21 sub-valleys connected with the main valley located in the Hindukush range. The population of the valley is around two lacs. The Khawak Pass connects it with the Baghlan province and the Anjuman Pass connects it to the Badakhshan province. Jabal Siraj connects Panjshir valley with Bagram and Kabul.


The rugged nature of the terrain and high grounds are difficult to overcome which gives defenders a dominating position. Panjshir is also important because of opportunities to mine emeralds, silver and other minerals. The major towns in Panjshir are Anawa at the South and Anjuman guarding the North. In Afghanistan, the largest ethnic majority after the Pashtuns is theTajiks who are 26 percent of the population. They are of Iranian descent as majority are Sunni Muslims and some are Ismaili Muslims. They have an ethno-linguistic affinity with Central Asian Republic of Tajikistan.

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In 1975, Panjshir came to prominence when an abortive coup took place against Daud under Gulbandin Hikmatyar and Commander Ahmad Shah Massoud. After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Panjshir valley became a center of anti-communist resistance and Ahmad Shah Massoud became a prominent leader. Soviet and Afghan forces launched several attacks but were unable to defeat the resistance forces under their charismatic leader. The Mujahideen leader, Ahmad Shah Massoud, fought the former Soviet troops from 1979 to 1989 and later resisted Taliban from 1996 to 2001. He formed the Northern Alliance against Taliban and held out Panjshir valley and other provinces. He was assassinated in September 9, 2001 reportedly by Al-Qaeda.

In 2001 Panjshir was made the smallest province of Afghanistan. The Taliban were not able to capture the Panjshir valley because all ethnic communities fought them with foreign support. It was India which gathered Hazaras, Uzbeks and Tajiks under the banner of the Northern Alliance. Tajikistan allowed India to run a field hospital at Farkhor and under this garb, Tajikistan became a logistic base for RAW’s covert operations. India’s ambassador to Tajikistan, Muthu Kumar, was the chief coordinator for the supply of weapons, ammunition and logistics to Northern Alliance. Kabul fell to the Taliban’s forces on August 15 this year without a fight and the Afghan government collapsed in 11 days. They captured all of Afghanistan, less Panjshir valley. Panjshir was last bastion against the Taliban.

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This time, Panjshir became a symbol of resistance. A force was raised and named the National Resistance Force (NRF). The NRF comprised of Ahmad Shah Massoud’s forces, around 12,000 active soldiers, thousands of deserted soldiers of the Afghan National Army (ANA) and 3000 soldiers claimed by Amrullah Saleh.

In the past, the Taliban were unable to control and capture the Panjshir valley. This time, they adopted a different strategy by going for district headquarters, border crossings and later started capturing provincial capitals. They had already captured the province bordering Panjshir to include Badakhshan, Takhar and Baghlan. The Taliban were controlling all exits and entries to the valley, thereby cutting all the supplies. They continued with their advance towards the capital Bazarak. This time, the NRF was unable to put up a resistance against the onslaught of the advancing Taliban. Moreover, this time there was no foreign support, therefore the NRF fled to mountains and Tajikistan after defeat.



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The fall of Panjshir took many by surprise, especially India. Its media was quick to accuse Pakistan and claimed that our special forces backed by tanks, APCs, armed helicopters and drones were actively supporting the Taliban. TV channels showed fake footage of Pakistan drones attacking Panjshir. Afghanistan rejected these called claims of outside help in the fall of Panjshir and called them completely baseless and a propaganda.

According to a recent article published in New York Times by Jim Huylebroek who rejected the Indian claims regarding Pakistan’s involvement in Panjshir battle, there is a state of mourning in India as Indian influence and terrorist camps have been eliminated from Afghanistan. However, Pakistan has to remain vigilant as India will not remain quite nor refrain from using its proxies like the ISKP, TTP, Jamaat-ul-Ahrar (JuH) and East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM) against Pakistan and Afghanistan.



 

Indian farmers stage nationwide protests against reforms

Protest against the farms laws, in Sonipat

NEW DELHI (Reuters) -Indian farmers opposed to reforms they say threaten their livelihoods renewed their push against the changes with nationwide protests on Monday, a year after laws on the liberalisation of the sector were introduced.

For 10 months, tens of thousands of farmers have camped out on major highways around the capital, New Delhi, to oppose the laws in the longest-running growers’ protest against Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government.

“Thousands of farmers have spread out to different districts to ensure a complete nationwide strike aimed at reminding the government to repeal the laws introduced to favour large private corporations,” Rakesh Tikait, a prominent farmers’ leader, told Reuters.

In Noida, a New Delhi satellite town, farmers confronted police and pushed past them to break through barricades. There were no immediate reports of any injuries or arrests.

In Gurgaon – another satellite town near the capital’s main airport – farmers thronged onto a road and blocked traffic, while protesters stormed into a railway station in the northern outskirts of New Delhi, a Reuters witness said.

Nearly a dozen opposition parties have supported the farmers’ protest to step up pressure on Modi’s administration to repeal the laws..

The legislation, introduced in September last year, deregulates the agriculture sector and allows farmers to sell produce to buyers beyond government-regulated wholesale markets, where growers are assured of a minimum price.

Small farmers say the changes make them vulnerable to competition from big business, and that they could eventually lose price supports for staples such as wheat and rice.

The government says the reforms mean new opportunities and better prices for farmers.

Farming sustains almost half of India’s more than 1.3 billion people and accounts for about 15% of the $2.7 trillion economy.

Farmer union leaders say their protests did not disrupt emergency services.

The protests have been generally peaceful but police and farmers clashed in New Delhi in January during a tractor procession and one protester was killed and more than 80 police were injured.

(Reporting by Mayank Bhardwaj; additional reporting by Anushree FadnavisEditing by Robert Birsel)

UK

Hospitality businesses to be banned from taking a cut of staff tips

24 September 2021 by 
Hospitality businesses to be banned from taking a cut of staff tips

Hospitality businesses are to be banned from taking a cut of staff tips or service charge under new laws.

The government is to make it illegal for operators to withhold any part of tips in a move it said would benefit around two million people working in the hospitality, leisure and services sectors.

Labour markets minister Paul Scully said the law would reassure customers their money was going to "those who deserve it".

Workers will be given rights to request information relating to an employer's tipping record and take them to an employment tribunal to seek compensation if they break the rules.

A statutory code of practice is to be introduced setting out how tips should be distributed to ensure it is done so fairly.

The move comes six years after restaurant chains including PizzaExpress, Café Rouge and Bella Italia made headlines for deducting an administration fee on staff tips paid on credit card. The companies later axed the charges.

However, this led to then business secretary Said Javid leading a consultation into tips, service charges and troncs.

The government said a move towards cashless payments had made it easier for businesses to withhold funds, with 80% of tips now paid by card. Cash tips are legally the property of staff, but currently operators can choose whether to pass card tips onto employees.

UKHospitality chief executive Kate Nicholls said ensuring staff received tips would help the industry's ability to create jobs.

However, she added: "For hospitality businesses, though, customers tipping with a card incurs bank charges for the business, and many also employ external partners to ensure tips are fairly distributed among staff.

"With restaurants, pubs and other venues struggling to get back on their feet, facing mounting costs and accrued debts, we urge the government to continue to work closely with the sector as it introduces this legislation to ensure this works for businesses and employees."

Image: Kamil Macniak/Shutterstock.com

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

Patisserie Valerie auditor fined £2.34m

27 September 2021 by 
Patisserie Valerie auditor fined £2.34m

Patisserie Valerie auditor Grant Thornton UK has been fined £2.34m following the high-profile collapse of the chain in 2019, which saw the closure of 70 stores and more than 900 job losses.

Grant Thornton acted as statutory auditor for Patisserie Holdings, Patisserie Valerie's holding company, since 2007 and signed off clean audit opinions for its 2015, 2016 and 2017 financial statements.

In October 2018, Patisserie Holdings announced that its board had been notified of potentially fraudulent accounting irregularities and the company subsequently entered administration.

The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) has imposed sanctions against Grant Thornton and audit engagement partner David Newstead that include reporting to the FRC annually for three years on the impact of its remedial actions (including a root cause analysis) on audit quality; a review of the audit practice's culture relating to challenge; and additional monitoring in relation to bank and cash audit work. Grant Thornton will also pay the FRC's costs of the investigation.

Newstead has also been fined £87,750 and banned from carrying out statutory audits and signing statutory audit reports for three years.

Grant Thornton and Newstead accepted failures in their audit work relating to revenue, cash, journals and fixed asset additions.

In each of the three years, the FRC found the audit work included serious breaches which were "often repeated year on year", revealing "a pattern of serious lapses in professional judgement, failures to exercise professional scepticism, failures to obtain sufficient appropriate audit evidence and/or to prepare sufficient audit documentation".

Claudia Mortimore, deputy executive counsel to the FRC, said: "This decision notice sets out numerous breaches of relevant requirements across three separate audit years, evidencing a serious lack of competence in conducting the audit work.

"The audit of Patisserie Holdings Plc's revenue and cash in particular involved missed red flags, a failure to obtain sufficient audit evidence and a failure to stand back and question information provided by management.

"As a result of this investigation, GT has taken remedial actions to improve its processes and to prevent a recurrence of these types of breaches. The package of financial and non-financial sanctions should also help to improve the quality of future audits."

Patisserie Valerie was sold to Causeway Capital Partners in 2019.

Heathrow junction blocked by Insulate Britain protesters

Persistent climate campaigners defy injunction to blockade London ring road for sixth time

UK police detain a protester from Insulate Britain occupying a road leading to Heathrow Airport. The activists want the government to insulate and retrofit homes to cut climate emissions. All photos: PA
Tim Kiek

Sep 27, 2021

Climate protesters on Monday blocked a major UK motorway at a road leading to London's Heathrow Airport.

It is the sixth time that the M25, London's ring road, has been targeted by Insulate Britain campaigners in just over a week.

The activists, who are demanding that the UK take action on home insulation, defied an injunction won by the government last week preventing them from occupying roads.

The interim ruling gave police the authority to imprison Insulate Britain's protesters after the authorities were criticised for being soft on earlier protests.

A similar injunction was granted on Saturday, prohibiting the occupation of the A20 and other arterial roads linked to the Port of Dover. It came after Insulate Britain protesters blockaded the area on Friday.

The group's tactics have made it something of a pariah in the UK, yet spokeswoman Tracey Mulligan said its all-publicity-is-good-publicity strategy had "certainly got everybody talking about insulation".

"We have got people considering that our government is legally failing in their duty to protect us and I think we're showing that [UK Home Secretary] Priti Patel, unfortunately, is trying to scare us with an injunction and that shows her lack of character, not ours," she told LBC radio.

"You can't put an injunction on hunger, you can't put an injunction on physics, and we are terrified for our children's future and sick of over 8,000 people dying each year from the choice of heating or eating."

She admitted that the group was not happy about the injunction but highlighted what she called "the bigger context".

"We are tired of over seven million people having to choose between heating or eating and we know that's going to get worse with the energy crisis that we're facing now."