67 Countries Banned This Toxic Product but the EPA Says: “Go for it!”

by Robert Hunziker / February 16th, 2024

Sixty-seven (67) countries have banned paraquat, a toxic chemical used to control weeds that was discovered in the 1950s subsequently widely used throughout the world in agriculture. Despite a deadly toxic reputation, it’s still used throughout America. Moreover, it’s a cheap effective product used as a common pesticide by third-world countries that do not proactively regulate chemical products.

As of 2024, the US EPA, once again, reapproved paraquat in the face of stiff public opposition and criticism via a slew of negative scientific studies. With more than 60 major developed countries banning the product, why is the United States still onboard?

Syngenta is the manufacturer of paraquat. Syngenta was purchased by a state-owned Chinese company named ChemChina in 2017 for $43 billion. Revenues run $20B, and it’s very profitable. This is a prime example of Chinese Communist Party capitalism hard at work.

Astonishingly, and inexplicably, China prohibits paraquat use in its own backyard, eight (8) years ago the state government banned its use, but China shamelessly allows production of the chemical for export to third-world countries and the United States.

China banned paraquat, 2016.

China buys Syngenta in 2017 to produce and sell paraquat to the world outside of China.

The UK banned paraquat, 2007.

The EU banned paraquat, 2007.

Sixty-seven (67) countries have banned paraquat.

The US EPA reapproves paraquat, 2023-24.

The US EPA reapproval of the paraquat product Gramoxone is subject to further review. There’s plenty to review, for example:

Syngenta deliberately hid important scientific knowledge about possible serious health effects caused by paraquat, a product and herbicide banned in Europe because it is so toxic that a single sip can kill.” (“EU Lobby Profile: Syngenta, A Toxic ‘World Champion“, Corporate Europe Observatory, October 20, 2022.)

According to an article posted in the National Institutes of Health, National Library of Medicine, as of December 2019, entitled: “Paraquat: The Poison Potion”:

Paraquat, when ingested, is extremely toxic. It causes a spectrum of complications, including acute respiratory distress syndrome, renal failure, hepatotoxicity, and pulmonary fibrosis. The clinical course in paraquat poisoning is often protracted and there is no known antidote for this toxin.

Interestingly, this article is dedicated to various clinical treatment strategies that can be attempted when exposed to the highly toxic chemical. In short, whatever you do, don’t ingest it, don’t inhale it, stay away from it.

A significant study was completed well in advance of the recent EPA reapproval “Go for it!” which discusses much safer alternatives than paraquat poisoning, to wit:

A new study, led by Pesticide Action Network UK (PAN UK) and supported by the Centre for Pesticide Suicide Prevention, has shown that a highly hazardous pesticide can be banned without affecting agricultural productivity… Paraquat is highly toxic and fatal to humans when ingested. There is no effective treatment for paraquat poisoning. Banning paraquat is the most effective way to prevent exposure and deaths. More than sixty-seven countries have already banned its use; however, it is still widely used in many low and middle income countries. (“Deadly Pesticide Can be Replaced by Safer Alternatives, New Study Shows”, Centre for Pesticide Suicide Prevention, The University of Edinburgh, January 12, 2023.)

We already know that paraquat is a highly dangerous pesticide, responsible for many tens of thousands of deaths each year due to intentional and unintentional poisoning. There is no antidote for paraquat poisoning. Banning paraquat is the most effective way to prevent exposure and deaths… Pesticide bans may raise concerns from farmers, who worry that their crops will be adversely affected. This study clearly shows that there are many safer alternatives to paraquat that don’t affect agricultural productivity.” (Ibid.)

Regardless, America is gung-ho toxic paraquat weed killer in the face of incredible evidence against its use:

There is an incredibly overwhelming body of evidence on this that has been accepted by scientists across the globe, and the EPA’s decision really placed it at odds with the best available science, according to Jonathan Kalmuss-Katz, a senior attorney with Earthjustice, the suit’s lead plaintiff against the EPA. (“EPA Again OKs Use of Toxic Herbicide Linked to Parkinson’s Disease”, The Guardian, February 11, 2024.)

The Earthjustice suit against the EPA represents Petitioners: California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation, Farmworker Association of Florida, The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, Farmworker Justice, Alianza Nacional De Campesinas, Pesticide Action Network North America, Center for Biological Diversity, and Toxic Free North Carolina.

The science is clear that this highly lethal pesticide threatens all living things, including our country’s wildlife,” according to Nathan Donley, environmental health science director at the Center for Biological Diversity: The EPA should follow the lead of nearly every other major agricultural country in the world and ban this dangerous stuff for good. (“Controversial Herbicide Tied to Parkinson’s Gets Green Light from EPA for Continued Use”, The San Francisco Chronicle, January 31, 2024.)

America seemingly has a special bond and unique love affair with paraquat. Usage in America tripled over the past decade. Accordingly, 8,000,000 pounds of it is sprayed on grapes, almonds, soya beans, cotton, corn, wheat, garlic, strawberries, rice, potatoes, artichokes, and pears especially prevalent in California, Iowa, and the Mississippi River Valley. (US Geological Survey source)

Chronic exposure, even at low doses, can cause Parkinson’s disease… banned in the European Union (EU) since 2007, as well as Switzerland since 1998, on the grounds that it is too dangerous for European farmers even when wearing protective equipment. (“Banned in Europe: How the EU Exports Pesticides Too Dangerous for Use in Europe“, Public Eye, September 10, 2020.)

Even though the EPA publicly acknowledges high risks of toxicity of paraquat, it nevertheless has determined that human risks are far outweighed by the beneficial use of paraquat to kill weeds. Ergo, in a mindboggling exercise of reverse-humanism, weed killers take priority over human life.

Searching for answers as to how and why toxic chemicals remain in America (and there are thousands) the answer is agrochemical companies use undue influence on federal regulators.

Interviews with more than two dozen experts on pesticide regulation — including 14 who worked at the EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs, or OPP — described a federal environmental agency that is often unable to stand up to the intense pressures from powerful agrochemical companies, which spend tens of millions of dollars on lobbying each year and employ many former EPA scientists once they leave the agency. (“The Department of Yes, How Pesticide Companies Corrupted the EPA and Poisoned America”, The Intercept, June 30, 2021.)

The enormous corporate influence has weakened and, in some cases, shut down the meaningful regulation of pesticides in the U.S. and left the country’s residents exposed to levels of dangerous chemicals not tolerated in many other nations.” (Ibid.)

Scientists who identify toxic hazards face enormous pressure from within the Agency to overlook the risks they find.  One toxicologist who worked for the Agency’s pesticide department told The Intercept: “It is an unwritten rule that to get promotions, all pesticides need to pass.”

Additional pressure to approve questionable toxic chemicals comes from weak-kneed, easily bought, ignorant, stupid, greedy members of Congress who push what’s referred to as “Yes Packages,” forcing the Agency to approve quickly even with incomplete information about product safety.

America’s elected officials receipt of contributions from Syngenta Corp PAC for federal candidates for 2023-24: $26,000 to Democrats, $136,500 to Republicans. (Syngenta Corp PAC Contributions to Federal Candidates, opensecrets.org)  This analysis does not include “dark money,” when both the donor and lagniappe are not identified.

According to Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn):

The pesticide industry has brazenly exploited loopholes in federal law for years and strong safeguards are needed to protect the public and our environment from harmful and sometimes lethal pesticide exposure. (The Intercept)

Four years ago, in June of 2021 in response to The Intercept article, the EPA responded. EPA spokesperson Kenneth Labbe wrote in an email:

The agency is committed to ensuring our pesticide registration decisions are free from interference and that the agency’s scientific integrity policy, which is a bedrock principle for the Biden-Harris Administration, is upheld. EPA is home to world-class scientists. As it has in the past, the agency will continue to ensure their voices and the role of science will guide its decisions going forward.

Four years later and the referenced “science guidance used by the EPA” is still highly questionable and under legal attack by numerous sources but appears to be stuck swirling in the toilet, going nowhere fast.

Robert Hunziker (MA, economic history, DePaul University) is a freelance writer and environmental journalist whose articles have been translated into foreign languages and appeared in over 50 journals, magazines, and sites worldwide. He can be contacted at: rlhunziker@gmail.com. Read other articles by Robert.

Defusing the Derivatives Time Bomb: Some Proposed Solutions

by Ellen Brown / February 16th, 2024

The “protected class” is granted “safe harbor” only because their bets are so risky that to let them fail could crash the economy. But why let them bet at all?

This is a sequel to a January 15 article titled “Casino Capitalism and the Derivatives Market: Time for Another ‘Lehman Moment’?”, discussing the threat of a 2024 “black swan” event that could pop the derivatives bubble. That bubble is now over ten times the GDP of the world and is so interconnected and fragile that an unanticipated crisis could trigger the collapse not just of the bubble but of the economy. To avoid that result, in the event of the bankruptcy of a major financial institution, derivative claimants are put first in line to grab the assets — not just the deposits of customers but their stocks and bonds. This is made possible by the Uniform Commercial Code, under which all assets held by brokers, banks and “central clearing parties” have been “dematerialized” into fungible pools and are held in “street name.”

This article will consider several proposed alternatives for diffusing what Warren Buffett called a time bomb waiting to go off. That sort of bomb just detonated in the Chinese stock market, contributing to its fall; and the result could be much worse in the U.S., where the stock market plays a much larger role in the economy.

The Chinese Derivative Crisis

A January 30 article on Bloomberg News notes that “Chinese stocks’ brutal start to the year is being at least partly blamed on the impact of a relatively new financial derivative known as a snowball. The products are tied to indexes, and a key feature is that when the gauges fall below built-in levels, brokerages will sell their related futures positions.”

Further details are in a January 23rd  article titled “’Snowball’ Derivatives Feed China’s Stock Market Avalanche.” It states, “China’s plunging stock market is leading to losses on billions of dollars worth of derivatives linked to the country’s equity indexes, fuelling further selling as retail investors offload their positions…. Snowball products are similar to the index-linked products sold in the 2008 financial crisis, with investors betting that U.S. equities would not fall more than 25% or 30%,” which they did.

Chinese shares rose on February 6, as officials took measures to prop up the ailing market, including imposing new “zero tolerance” curbs for malicious short selling.

The Greater U.S. Threat

The Chinese stock market is much younger and smaller than that in the U.S., with a much smaller role in the economy. Thus China’s economy remains relatively protected from disruptive ups and downs in the stock market. Not so in the U.S., where speculating in the derivatives casino brought down international insurer AIG and investment bank Lehman Brothers in 2008, triggering the global financial crisis of 2008-09. AIG had to be bailed out by the taxpayers to prevent collapse of the too-big-to-fail derivative banks, and Lehman Brothers went through a messy bankruptcy that took years to resolve.

In a December 2010 article on Seeking Alpha titled “Derivatives: The Big Banks’ Quadrillion-Dollar Financial Casino,” attorney Michael Snyder wrote, “derivatives were at the heart of the financial crisis of 2007 and 2008, and whenever the next financial crisis happens, derivatives will undoubtedly play a huge role once again…. Today, the world financial system has been turned into a giant casino where bets are made on just about anything you can possibly imagine, and the major Wall Street banks make a ton of money from it. The system … is totally dominated by the big international banks.”

The Speculators Dominate the Regulators

In a 2009 Cornell Law Faculty publication titled How Deregulating Derivatives Led to Disaster, and Why Re-Regulating Them Can Prevent Another, Prof. Lynn Stout proposed stabilizing the market by returning to 20th century derivative rules. She noted that derivatives are basically wagers or bets, and that before 2000, the U.S. and U.K. regulated derivatives primarily by a common‐law rule known as the “rule against difference contracts.” She explained:

The rule against difference contracts did not stop you from wagering on anything you liked: sporting contests, wheat prices, interest rates. But if you wanted to go to a court to have your wager enforced, you had to demonstrate to a judge’s satisfaction that at least one of the parties to the wager had a real economic interest in the underlying and was using the derivative contract to hedge against a risk to that interest.… Using derivatives this way is truly hedging, and it serves a useful social purpose by reducing risk.

… Under the rule against difference contracts and its sister doctrine in insurance law (the requirement of “insurable interest”), derivative contracts that couldn’t be proved to hedge an economic interest in the underlying were deemed nothing more than legally unenforceable wagers.

… Hedge funds, for example, should really call themselves “speculation funds,” as it is quite clear they are using derivatives to try to reap profits at the other traders’ expense.

The rule against difference contracts died in 2000, when the US embraced wholesale deregulation with the passage of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act (CFMA):

The CFMA not only declared financial derivatives exempt from CFTC or SEC oversight, it also declared all financial derivatives legally enforceable. The CFMA thus eliminated, in one fell swoop, a legal constraint on derivatives speculation that dated back not just decades, but centuries. It was this change in the law—not some flash of genius on Wall Street—that created today’s $600 trillion financial derivatives market.

The Casino Gets Special Privileges

Not only are speculative derivatives now legally enforceable, but under the Bankruptcy Act of 2005, derivative securities enjoy special protections. Most creditors are “stayed” from enforcing their rights while a firm is in bankruptcy, but many derivative contracts are exempt from these stays. Similarly, under the Dodd Frank Act of 2010, derivative claimants have “super-priority” in the bankruptcy of a financial institution. They are privileged to claim collateral immediately without judicial review, before bankruptcy proceedings even begin. Depositors become “unsecured creditors” who can recover their funds only after derivative, repo and other secured claims, assuming there is anything left to recover, which in the event of a major derivative crisis would be unlikely.

That’s true not only of the deposits in a bankrupt bank but of stocks, bonds and money market funds held by a broker/dealer that goes bankrupt. Under the Bankruptcy Act of 2005 and Sections 8 and 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC), “safe harbor” is provided to entities described in court documents as “the protected class.” The customers who purchased the assets have only a “security entitlement,” a weak contractual claim to a pro rata share of a residual pool of fungible assets all held in the name of Cede & Co., the proxy of the Depository Trust and Clearing Corp. (DTCC). As Wall Street financial analyst John Rubino put it in a January 27 podcast:

What we used to think of as a bank bail-in where they take your deposit in order to support a failing bank, that is now spread across the entire financial economy where whatever you have in an account anywhere can just disappear, because they’re going to transfer ownership of it to these big dominant entities out there in the financial system that need those assets in order to keep from blowing up.

Derivative speculators are considered “secured” because they post a portion of what they could wind up owing as “margin,” but why that partial security is superior to the 100% security posted by the depositor or purchaser is not explained. The “protected class” is granted “safe harbor” only because their bets are so risky that to let them fail could crash the economy. But why let them bet at all?

The Solution of the Regulators

The fix of the G20 leaders following the global financial crisis, however, was to force banks to clear over-the-counter derivatives through central counterparties (CCPs), which stand between buyer and seller and protect either party if the other blows up. By March 2020, 60% of credit default swaps and 80% of interest rate swaps were centrally cleared. The problem, as noted in a December 2023 publication by the Bank for International Settlements, is that these measures taken to protect the system can actually amplify risk.

CCPs tend to ask for more collateral than banks did in the pre-crisis world; and when a CCP hikes its initial margin requirement to cover the risk of default, this applies to everyone in the market, meaning cash calls are synchronized. As explained in a May 2022 Reuters article:

It’s logical that CCPs ask for more collateral during a panic: that’s when defaults are most likely. The problem is that margin calls seem to have made things worse. In March 2020, for example, a so-called “dash for cash” saw investors liquidate even prime money-market funds and U.S. Treasury securities.

… [R]ampant margin calls have intensified a financial panic twice in as many years, with central banks effectively bailing out markets in 2020. That’s better than in 2008, when taxpayers had to step in. But the problem of margin calls remains unsolved.

… Central counterparty (CCP) clearing houses should consider asking clients for more collateral during good times to reduce the risk of destabilising margin calls during a financial panic, a Bank of England official said on May 19.

Yet all this, as Michael Snyder observes, is to allow the big international banks to run the largest derivatives casino that the world has ever seen. Why not just shut down the casino? Prof. Stout’s suggested solution is for Congress to return to the pre-2000 rule under which speculative derivative bets were not enforceable in court. That would include reversing the “superpriority” privileges in the Bankruptcy Act of 2005 and the Dodd-Frank Act. But it won’t be a quick fix, as Wall Street and our divided Congress can be expected to put up a protracted fight.

What If the DTCC Goes Bankrupt?

In a 2015 law review article titled “Failure of the Clearinghouse: Dodd-Frank’s Fatal Flaw?,” Prof. Stephen Lubben points to a more ominous risk from pushing all derivatives onto exchanges; and that concern is shared by former hedge fund manager David Rogers Webb in his 2024 book “The Great Taking.” The exchanges are supposed to be safer than private over-the-counter trades because the exchange steps in as market maker, accepting the risk for both sides of the trade. But in a general economic depression, the exchanges themselves could go bankrupt. No provision for that is made in the Dodd-Frank Act, which purports to decree “no more bailouts.” Still, reasons Prof. Lubben, the government would undoubtedly step in to save the market from collapse.

His proposed solution is for Congress to make legislative provision for nationalizing any bankrupt exchange, brokerage or Central Clearing Counterparty before it fails. This is something to which our gridlocked Congress might agree, since under current circumstances it would not involve any major changes, wealth confiscation or new tax burdens; and it could protect their own fortunes from confiscation if the DTCC were to go bankrupt.

Other Possible Federal Solutions

Another alternative that not only could work but could fix Congress’s budget problems at the same time is to impose a 0.1% tax on all financial transactions. See Scott Smith, A Tale of Two Economies: A New Financial Operating System, showing that U.S. financial transactions (the financialized economy) are over $7.6 quadrillion, more than 350 times the U.S. national income (the productive economy). See my earlier article summarizing all that here. On a financial transaction tax curbing speculation in derivatives, see also here, here and here.

There are other possible solutions to customer title concerns. There is no longer a need for the archaic practice of holding all securitized assets in the street name of Cede & Co. The digitization of stocks and bonds was a reasonable and efficient step in the 1970s, but today digital cryptography has gotten so sophisticated that “smart contracts” can be attached by blockchain-like distributed ledger technology (DLT) to digital assets, tracking participants, dates, terms and other contractual details. The states of Delaware and Wyoming have explored maintaining corporate lists of stockholders on a state-run blockchain; but predictably, the measures were opposed. The practice of holding assets in street name has proven very lucrative for the DTCC’s member brokers and banks, as it facilitates short selling and the “rehypothecation” of collateral.

In October 2023, the DTCC reported that it has been exploring adopting DLT; but the goal seems only to be speedier and safer trades. No mention was made of returning registered title to the purchasers of the traded assets, which could be done with distributed ledger technology.

South Dakota’s Innovative Solution

The most readily achievable solution is probably that in a South Dakota bill filed on Jan. 29.  The bill is detailed in a Feb. 2 article titled “You Could Lose Your Retirement Savings in the Next Financial Crash Unless Others Follow This State’s Lead”, which observes:

… [I]f your broker … were to go bankrupt, the broker’s secured creditors (the people to whom the broker owes money) would be empowered to take the investments that you paid for in order to settle outstanding debts….

To avoid a catastrophe in the future, a nationwide movement is desperately needed to alter the existing Uniform Commercial Code. Of course, that won’t be easy to accomplish, especially because bank lobbyists and other powerful financial interests will almost certainly fight kicking and screaming to stop policymakers from taking away their advantage over consumers.

The good news is, this “great taking” can be stopped at the state level. Americans don’t need to count on a divided Congress to get the job done. Because the UCC is state law, state lawmakers can take concrete steps to restore the property rights of their constituents and protect them in the event of a financial crisis.

On Monday, South Dakota legislators introduced a bill that would do just that. The legislation would ensure that individual investors have priority over securities held by brokerage firms and other intermediaries.

It would also alter jurisdictional provisions so that cases are determined in the state of the individual investor, rather than the state of the broker, custodian or clearing corporation. This would ensure that individual investors are able to rely on the laws of their local state.

Hopefully, other states will follow South Dakota’s lead. Tennessee, for one, is reported to have such a bill in the works.

• This article was first posted on ScheerPost.

Ellen Brown is an attorney, founder of the Public Banking Institute, and author of twelve books, including the best-selling Web of Debt, The Public Bank Solution, and Banking on the People: Democratizing Money in the Digital Age. She also co-hosts a radio program on PRN.FM called “It’s Our Money.” Her 400+ blog articles are posted at EllenBrown.com. This article was first published in Scheer Post. Read other articles by Ellen.

Here Come the Steroid Games

by Binoy Kampmark / February 16th, 2024

To attribute weighty moral codes to athletes has always been a silly pastime of the judging classes and flesh admiring voyeurs.  But sporting bodies, in a manner similar to the clergy, demand something called the level playing field.  Fairness and fair play imply that sports people will follow various principles and rules in competition.  They will, for instance, do nothing to unravel and disturb this understanding of détente between the supremely talented.  We are all gifted on Olympus; may the best athlete behave in accordance with accepted practices.  No need for superior sporting machinery, superior equipment, enhanced biceps, steroid-boosted bodies.  To do so would upset the balance.

The historical record suggests otherwise.  Spectators who barrack for an athlete or a team will not mind the odd tinkering with rules, a streak of sharp practice.  The same for those playing the sports.  The Fair Play principle, revered and cherished by officials and gatekeepers noisy about equitable performance on pitch and field, has become a ritualised and abused fetish, the comical effigy one salutes at big sporting carnivals even as it is being burned.

Organisations such as the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) exist to defend these principles through drug testing, but they operate unevenly and tyrannically.  They are also of questionable effect; in the undergrowth of performance is always the nagging suggestion that many athletes do participate undetected.  WADA’s own estimate is that anywhere up to 40% of athletes may have taken performance-enhancing substances at the Tokyo Summer Olympics in 2021.

Countries, seeing their sporting figures as extensions of the State and its values, have also been loose with their manipulation of fair play, subverting rules using their athletes as surrogates for national glory.  To win gold at the Olympics, for instance, is to win credit with the home audience and favour for politicians and grey officials.  All must therefore be done to get the result: doping, meddling, cheating.  It’s all a matter of degree.

With such standards of hypocrisy at play, it is little wonder that the concept of an Enhanced Games has taken so long to make it to the planning stage.  The figures involved should make participants wary, but PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel and its creator Aron D’Souza have expressed a desire to finance drug dabbling and experimentation, featuring heavily doped bipeds performing to the fullest of their juiced abilities.  Five events in Australia are planned to feature the body beautiful, and the body potentially ruined: swimming, gymnastics, weightlifting, track and field, and combat.

As the site hails, “Backed by the world’s top venture capitalists, the Enhanced Games is the Olympics of the future.  When 44% of athletes already use performance enhancements, it is time to safely celebrate science.”  The project is adamant in stating, tersely, that, “Sports can be safer without drug testing.”  That leaves the athletes free to partake in experimentation, where science can be used “for the pursuit of human excellence.”

D’Souza, a Australian, London-based lawyerly entrepreneur, knows what appeals.  He derides the organisers of the Olympics, the corrupted fat cats who bag huge salaries while most athletes participate for a barely manageable pittance.  “The IOC (International Olympic Committee) has effectively been a one-party state running the world of sport for 100 years,” he reasons.  “And now the opposition party is here.  We are ready for a fight.”  He suggests a profit-sharing model for drug taking participants, with cash incentives for those breaking records.

The games sound like a pharmaceutical free for all, lubricated by venture capital, and it is by no means clear how informed consent will work in this regard.  Keen to break records, and keen to avoid being institutionally excoriated and publicly shamed for doing so, is hardly a recipe for sober judgment.  This is despite D’Souza’s assertion that athletes are adults with “a right to do with their body what they wish – my body, my choice; your body, your choice.”  The one-party state becomes substituted by a cadre of investors, doctors and advisors, all keen on getting their results from the bodies on show.

The games proposal, argue two University of Canberra academics in the often sterile columns of The Conversation, “does not set out how the increased risk to athletes exploited for commercial gain will be managed.  The games also propose to include events in which the burgeoning elite competitors are young and vulnerable, such as gymnastics and swimming, which may have serious implications for these children and their carers.”

Publicity for the events has already seen over 500 registered athletes, along with a sprinkling of Olympians.  Canadian bobsledder Christina Smith, who participated in the 2002 Winter games, is a member of the event’s Athlete Commission.

James Magnussen, an Australian swimmer, Olympian, and two-time world champion in the 100m freestyle has made a very public declaration that he will “juice up”. And why not?  His brain turned mushy after being told that he was the golden boy at the London Olympics in 2012.  Australian sporting commentators were convinced that the swimming events he participated in were his, absurdly declaring him victorious in advance of the events.  As things turned out, he was silvered and bronzed.

Formerly known as The Missile, Magnussen is keen to spend six months on a regime to “juice to the gills” in order to compete for A$1.5 million if he breaks the 50m world record.  Things are already starting to sound hazy for the aspirant: “I’m going to need one of those super suits to float me, because if I get unbelievably jacked, then I’ll sink.”

Some of the critics may sound like spoilsports (well, anti-doping ones), but the relevant dangers are substantial.  Are athletes in their right mind in saying yes to such a distorting diet, becoming, effectively taut assets of body and matter for venture capitalism?  Given the babbling from Magnussen, distinctly not.

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com. Read other articles by Binoy.

Anti-Imperialism in the US Today

What it is and is not

by Stansfield Smith / February 17th, 2024

Fidel Castro, who the world recognizes as a historic anti-imperialist figure, repeatedly warned that the main danger to humanity is US imperialism: “There is an enemy that can be called universal, an enemy whose attitude and whose actions…threaten the whole world, bully the whole world, that universal enemy is Yankee imperialism.” He fought to build a world united front against imperialism, of the world’s peoples and countries to oppose the barbarous actions of US imperialism. We see that anti-imperialist unity right now with United Nations votes and worldwide protests against the US-Israeli slaughters in Gaza, in what the New York Times in 2003 called “a second superpower.”

The US empire is opposed to not just revolutionary movements, but to any struggles that place national sovereignty above the interests of the US corporations. The US may pretend the issue is the defense of democracy and human rights, but its only concern is obedience to its dictates.

Imperialism uses human rights and democracy issues in countries it targets for “regime change” as a rationale for foreign interference. It cooks up human rights horror stories: killings of students in Nicaragua in 2018, Gaddafi’s plans for mass rape and murder in Libya, Hamas mass killing and rape of civilians on October 7, Chinese genocide in Xinjiang, Iran’s killing of Mahsa Amin in 2022, Evo Morales stealing an election in 2019, Cuba’s repression of mass protests in 2021, Russia’s “unprovoked” intervention into Ukraine, Syria’s Assad chemical weapons attack on his own people, Venezuela’s President Maduro fixing elections, Chavez’ supporters killing protestors in 2002, and on and on. The only truth is that the US corporate media constantly lie to us to win support for their interventions.

How Progressives Legitimize Imperialist “Regime Change” Propaganda 

Many progressive people swallow and even join in these disinformation campaigns in countries the US targets for regime change. They are not simply calling out human rights abuses “from the left,” but help legitimize US propaganda stories, becoming witting or unwitting conveyor belts for them into our movement. As a result, people come to believe that a country targeted for “regime change” may be unworthy of our solidarity against US aggression. Cast aside is the key issue: the US empire has no right to intervene in other countries, period.

In contrast, anti-imperialists focus on uncovering and bringing to light US disinformation and interference in the national sovereignty of other countries. For instance, what was sold as a popular uprising against Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega “dictatorship” was financed with hundreds of millions of US government dollars, or that the White Helmets, an alleged “humanitarian” group in the Syrian “revolution,” was funded by the British and US governments and its leader connected to British intelligence MI6.

Some progressives’ back-handed apologetics for imperialist regime change date back at least to Leon Trotsky, who proclaimed, for example, “I consider the main source of danger to the USSR in the present international situation to be Stalin and the oligarchy headed by him.” (Stalin After the Finnish Experience, March 13, 1940) Whatever your view on Stalin’s conduct in the 1930s, the world knew that Hitler planned to annihilate Soviet Russia, welcomed by imperial Britain, France, and the US, before, and even after the Soviet Union was a World War II ally. But to Trotsky, the main danger to Russia and the revolution was the dictatorship, not imperialism. This approach of criticizing leaderships of targeted countries, not imperialist aggression, and not organizing movements against it, is too common among progressives today. It portrays an elementary lack of anti-imperialist consciousness.

Anti-imperialists understand that no country can have any real democracy — whatever you imagine that is — because the US is constantly working to impose subservient governments throughout the world. The empire regards the world as its domain, possessing 800-900 military bases outside its own borders. US imperialism is ever vigilant looking for a chance to overturn a “disobedient” government. “History teaches too eloquently that those who forget this do not survive the error,” said Castro. When targeted countries live under this ever-present threat, how can freedom and democracy flourish? They are forced to take measures to protect their people’s human right to national sovereignty.

Do targeted countries commit actual abuses? How could peoples ruled for centuries by imperial overlords, who treated them as human animals, not commit abuses when suddenly they came to power and had to deal with constant imperial pressure to overthrow them again? Even with outstanding revolutionary leaders such as Cuba’s Fidel, or Russia under Lenin, abuses were committed. Anti-imperialists place the blame where it primarily belongs: not on targets of US imperialism, but on centuries of imperialist abuse of their peoples – which only continued once those peoples came to power. 

Many Progressives’ Failure to Grasp US Imperialism’s Tools for Intervention

The US uses many tools to interfere in countries, turning to military invasion as a last resort when all else fails. The world’s leaders constantly experience this US meddling. Yet US people, even progressives, have little grasp of its scope. Julian Assange, who remains imprisoned for his invaluable work, gave us some idea how the US rulers operate behind our backs.

The US also intervenes through CIA-involved coups – at least 27 operations just in Latin America in the 21st century, almost all unknown to the public. The CIA and military spy agencies possess a publicly admitted budget of $100 billion for coups, assassinations, and other undercover terrorist actions against countries the corporate media lambasts as “human rights violators”.

US corporations bribe foreign government figures to sell out their people’s well-being to US interests. We know very little about how they constantly squeeze and blackmail governments, though Confessions of an Economic Hitman provides examples.

Few progressives understand how the US rulers weaponize their control of the international banking and trade system to wreck other economies. They have the power to shut down a country’s foreign trade and foreign funding. The US blockades countries, and forces other nations to comply – North Korea since 1950, Cuba since 1962. It blockades Syria, Iran, Russia, and Venezuela, even kidnapping their businesspeople as “money launderers” for engaging in legal trade. It employs economic warfare on 30 more countries, causing genuine human rights problems. Clearly, no country fighting to survive under these conditions can permit unrestricted freedom and democracy. That was first brought home by the benevolence and democracy of the Paris Commune, which enabled its enemies to crush it, slaughtering over 30,000 Communards.

The US uses its domination of the world media to paint targeted governments as nefarious actors. It controls nine of the top ten media companies, along with the internet and social media, such as Google, Twitter, and Facebook. Worldwide, they spread disinformation packaged as “news,” often a more effective weapon than US military might. Caitlin Johnstone noted, “Before they launch missiles, they launch propaganda campaigns. Before they roll out tanks, they roll out narratives.” These form an integral part of war campaigns, softening up our opposition to interventions, often so skillfully that they garner support for intervention among anti-war forces – witness the Libya, Syria, and Ukraine wars.

We know little of their use of US and foreign NGOs, both government and corporate funded ones, to influence a targeted nation’s community and popular organizations, as it did with environmental and indigenous groups seeking to overthrow Ecuador’s Rafael Correa and Bolivia’s Evo Morales. Even the “Arab Spring” of 2011 was manipulated to impose pro-imperialist regimes.

We know even less of this government and corporate funding and manipulation of alternative and progressive media outlets in our own country.

The proper work of anti-imperialists is uncovering and educating other working people about US coup attempts and terrorist actions, corporate arm-twisting of foreign figures, the weaponizing of international banking and finance through the dollar’s continued dominance, and the use of NGOs as regime change tools. This is authentic anti-imperialist work, not critiquing victimized countries’ real or concocted human rights abuses or their responses to US aggression.

The Rulers tell us in Advance who they Plan to “Regime Change” 

It is no mystery for progressive people who the US empire will target for “regime change” – ­it is typically well-publicized in advance with media propaganda onslaughts about abuses in some country. Or we are given direct statements, as when Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman interviewed General Wesley Clark in 2007, who revealed the US had planned in 2001 not just to attack Afghanistan, but seven other countries: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran, which it then did. Or, in 2008, Congress publicly approved President Bush’s request for $400 million “to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran.” A year later, the anti-government Green Movement broke out, followed by US-backed protests in 2017-19 and 2022. In 2012, Ron Paul detailed in Congress military plans to overthrow the Syrian government. Oliver Stone’s widely viewed 2016 film Ukraine on Fire examined the US-instigated coup by anti-Russian fascists, which overthrew a neutral government and installed a pro-NATO government threatening Russia.

Yet those public forewarnings did not stop many in the movement from supporting wars on these countries, including Amy Goodman herself. They often disguised both the US role and their support, even adapting the language of the empire itself: not as imperial wars against “disobedient” countries, but as popular democratic movements against dictatorship. In fact, many who declare themselves sworn enemies of the US empire nevertheless oppose the same governments as our imperial overlords: Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Russia, China, Iran, Syria, North Korea. Building a united world front against imperialist brutality seems alien to them.

These progressive people’s approach to imperial war: initial opposition to imperial warmongering, then later support as the war propaganda heightens, camouflaging US-backed intervention as democracy and self-determination movements, harkens back to Marxist parties’ conduct a century ago, when they opposed imperial war until it broke out in 1914. They then squirreled around creating justifications for their betrayal.

While this illustrates the lack of anti-imperialist consciousness of many First World progressives, it also highlights corporate media’s power to sway peace advocates to support US imperial regime change – even while believing they are not. It shows the ease US rulers can still manipulate anti-war sentiment.

Anti-Imperialists must be vigilant in defending National Sovereignty against US Empire’s Operations 

Anti-imperialists oppose US meddling in the national sovereignty of other countries. It is the business of the peoples of other lands to solve their own problems, their fundamental democratic right to decide their country’s future by themselves. We must forever demand that the US leave them alone, so they can carry out their task. That is the most effective way we can defend their human rights.

Our task is building a movement that moves the Pentagon’s now over one trillion dollar budget from wrecking other countries to ending homelessness and hunger here, providing free national health care, affordable housing, and free education through university, often human rights enjoyed by the peoples in countries the US seeks to overthrow.

The anti-imperialist, anti-war, and human rights movement here would be much more developed, more powerful, more tied to world revolutionary struggles if the time progressives spent on the defects of countries the US targets were instead devoted to exposing US interference in those peoples’ lives. We need to explain to our fellow working people the methods the US rulers use behind our backs for “regime change,” and for manipulating progressive and working class movements here at home.

We see an inkling of a world united front against imperialism with the movement against the US-Israeli barbarity in Gaza, one which also exposes the habitual deceit of corporate media. The $18 billion the US provided to maintain Israeli apartheid in 2023 was almost the $20 billion needed to end homelessness here. The $111 billion spent just since 2022 for Ukraine war, which many progressives did support  – with Biden wanting $60 billion more – could make public university free ($79 billion a year) and end hunger ($25 billion as of 2016). UN climate scientists say $300 billion a year would stop the rise in greenhouse gases, a mere quarter of the US military budget. We can never achieve these humanitarian goals while the US rulers know they can sway progressives with their regime change propaganda. But we can achieve them by developing an anti-imperialist stand of unconditionally opposing all US empire’s schemes for “regime change.”

Stansfield Smith, Chicago ALBA Solidarity, is a long time Latin America solidarity activist, and presently puts out the AFGJ Venezuela Weekly. He is also the Senior Research Fellow at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs. Read other articles by Stansfield.

A Word Like Peace Is Faster Than the Bullet of War

by Vijay Prashad / February 17th, 2024

Erik Bulatov (USSR), Horizon, 1971–72.

On 26 January, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) announced the start of a massive military exercise called Steadfast Defender 2024 that will continue until the end of May. Over 90,000 troops from NATO countries (and one partner country, Sweden), including fifty naval groups and more than eighty air platforms, will deploy in thirteen countries to demonstrate the alliance’s capacity and ‘send a robust message about its readiness to protect all Allies in the face of emerging threats’. Of the thirty-one NATO member states, six share borders with Russia (Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Norway). This NATO exercise comes just as the European Union announced that it will provide Ukraine with €50 billion in financial support between now and 2027, a reduction compared to the North Atlantic support over the past two years. As public support for the war in Ukraine declines in the Global North states, governments have decided to ramp up tensions along the Russian border through NATO.

Following the announcement of the Steadfast Defender 2024 exercise, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg travelled to the United States and met US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin at the Pentagon. Interestingly, their public comments did not express a shred of concern for the Ukrainian people. Stoltenberg referred instead to the Global North’s anxiety about Russia and China, saying that support for Ukraine is ‘an investment in our own security because the world will become more dangerous if President Putin wins in Ukraine’, warning that the result of this conflict ‘is also closely watched in China’. So, it is not the Ukrainians and their wellbeing that matters but the geostrategic necessity for the Global North to see Russia (and by implication, China) ‘weakened’, as Austin said in Kyiv two years earlier.

To shed light on this conflict, its global implications, and the possibility of peace, the rest of this newsletter is dedicated to No Cold War’s briefing no. 12: The War in Ukraine Must End.

Two years ago, on 24 February 2022, Russian forces entered Ukraine. This act was not the start of the war in Ukraine. Rather, it was the acceleration of a conflict that dates back to at least 2014. That year, at the behest of the United States, a new government was imposed on Ukraine, aiming to bring the country closer to the European Union. This initiated the sustained persecution of the country’s Russian-speaking population. The conflict moved swiftly, with Crimea de facto becoming part of Russia once again and the Donbass region of Ukraine becoming a frontline in the conflict between Ukrainian far-right nationalists and Russian speakers. In May 2019, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy took office and pledged to end the battle in the Donbass. Instead, due to pressure from NATO, the conflict intensified, eventually leading to the Russian intervention three years later. It is imperative for the people of Ukraine, Russia, and the world that the war be halted and that the issues be transferred from the battlefield to the negotiating table.

Tuyo (Germany), Elephant, 2021.

What has been the impact of the war?

In any conflict, casualty figures become a matter of dispute. However, there is little disagreement that over 500,000 Ukrainian and Russian soldiers have died or been injured in this war, that over six million Ukrainians have fled the country, and that over seven million Ukrainians have been internally displaced (out of a pre-war population of nearly 44 million). If the war is not brought to a halt, tens of thousands more will be killed and tens of millions more will suffer.

Ukraine’s economy has been devastated, shrinking by 29% in 2022 alone, according to the World Bank. The impact of the war ricocheted across the globe, causing wheat prices to rise by 21% and some fertilisers to rise by 40% within the first month of the conflict. Global South countries were hit particularly hard by sharp increases in food and energy prices in many regions while the European economy inches towards a recession. In other countries, astronomic amounts of resources have been diverted to the war which instead could have been used for social and economic spending. The US and Europe have already spent well over $200 billion on the war. In December 2023, the head of the Ukrainian armed forces asked US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin for a further $350–400 billion to pursue ‘victory’.

In reality, no amount of money will lead to a military triumph. It is clear, particularly after the failure of the Ukrainian ‘counter-offensive’, that there has been no significant change in the military situation, nor is there a credible prospect of one. The continued payment of such huge human and economic costs would be purposeless.

Alexey Kryukov (Russia), Безмолвие. Саур-Могила (‘Silence – Saur-Mogila’), 2017.

What issues need to be resolved?

1) The position of Ukraine regarding military blocs. At the end of the Cold War, Europe had an opportunity to pursue peaceful economic development. A coherent and balanced economy with enormous potential could have been formed by reducing military spending while combining Western Europe’s high value-added manufacturing and service industries with the former Soviet Union’s energy, raw materials, agriculture, and high-technology industries such as space. In East Asia, which overcame a period of even greater Cold War division and conflict (as seen in the Korean and successive Vietnam and Indochina wars), a focus on mutually beneficial economic development and an avoidance of military and political blocs led it to become the world’s most rapidly growing economic region. This is evidenced by the fact that, since 1990, the GDP of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations has grown by more than 400%. However, in Europe, the US insisted that such policies not be followed and that, instead, the region was to expand the NATO military bloc into Eastern Europe, breaking the commitment it had made at the time of German reunification that NATO would not advance ‘one inch eastward’ towards Russia. The US was fully aware that NATO’s expansion would greatly inflame tensions with Russia and across Europe. Of particular sensitivity was the possibility of Ukraine’s entry into NATO, which would bring the nuclear-armed bloc within immediate striking range of Moscow. Numerous experts on Eastern Europe and Russia strongly and repeatedly advised against such expansion of NATO. Most famously, George Kennan, the original architect of US Cold War policy, predicted in 1997 that, ‘expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era’. In December 2021, Russia proposed an agreement that Ukraine would not become a NATO member. In negotiations in March 2022, Ukraine proposed adopting a neutral status in exchange for security guarantees, inspired by NATO’s collective defence clause, which could have involved Poland, Israel, Turkey, and Canada as guarantors. This was blocked by NATO, directly conveyed by way of an urgent visit from British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to Ukraine in May 2022, thereby preventing a rapid end of the war.

2) The position of the Russian-speaking minority in the territory of the Ukrainian state (as it was formed in 1991). A 2001 census found that nearly 30% of Ukraine’s population considered Russian to be their native language. States with large linguistic and ethnic minority populations can only maintain their unity if the rights of such minorities are respected. The policies of the Ukrainian government after 2014, which included suppressing the official use of the Russian language in numerous spheres, were therefore bound to lead to an explosive crisis within the Ukrainian state. As the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission, which certainly cannot be accused of being pro-Russian, stated: ‘the current Law on National Minorities is far from providing adequate guarantees for the protection of minorities… many other provisions which restrict the use of minority languages have already been in force since 16 July 2019’. There are only two ways to resolve this situation: restoration of the full linguistic and other rights of the Russian-speaking minority within the borders of the old Ukrainian state or the secession of these regions from Ukraine. Which outcome is realised will be a key subject of the negotiations. Nonetheless, it is clear that any attempt to maintain the Russian-speaking minority within the Ukrainian state while continuing to deprive them of their rights will not succeed, nor will any attempt by Russia to impose another state on the Ukrainian-speaking population of western and northern Ukraine.

All efforts to resolve these issues by military means will continue to be futile and will only result in further intense suffering, above all for the Ukrainian people. These realities will become increasingly obvious if the war continues – which is why it must be brought to a halt as rapidly as possible and negotiations must commence.

Mahamoudou Zinkone ‘Babs’ (Burkina Faso), Maquis Las Palmas, 2015.

In 1961, the Soviet poet Volodymyr Mikolayovich Sosiura wrote a song on the power of words. Sosiura was born in Debaltseve (which is today in Donetsk) in 1898 within the Tsarist empire and died as a member of the communist party in Kyiv in 1965. He wrote several poems that oscillated between his patriotic love for Ukraine and his commitment to the Soviet Union and to the communist struggle. Above all else, Sosiura – who fought in World War I in Bakhmut and then later joined the Red Army – had a great disdain for war. He recognised the importance of the war against the Nazis, but – like many of his generation – bemoaned the terrible loss of life incurred by this war, such as the 27 million Soviet citizens who died in the fight to defeat the Nazi armies, amongst them 19 million civilians. This was the context of Sosiura’s beautiful poem about words:

I know the power of the word.
It is sharper than a bayonet
and faster than even a bullet,
Faster than an airplane.

…

Oh, weapon of happiness: word!
I am used to living beside you.
You are a flower in love,
you are a bayonet in hate.

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian and journalist. Prashad is the author of twenty-five books, including The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World and The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South. Read other articles by Vijay, or visit Vijay's website.

'Virgin' stingray expecting offspring in small-town US aquarium

Washington (AFP) – A stingray housed in a small-town aquarium in the United States is expecting offspring without ever having shared a tank with a male of her kind, making her not just a local sensation but a scientific curiosity.


Issued on: 16/02/2024 

Charlotte, who has been at the Aquarium & Shark Lab in Henderson, North Carolina for more than eight years started showing an unusual growth on her body around late November, and staff were initially worried she might have a tumor 

© HANDOUT / Aquarium & Shark Lab by Team ECCO/AFP

Charlotte, who has been at the Aquarium & Shark Lab in Henderson, North Carolina for more than eight years, started showing an unusual growth on her body around late November. Staff were initially worried she might have a tumor.

"Her hump just started growing and growing, and we thought that it could be potentially cancer," Kinsley Boyette, the aquarium's assistant director and Charlotte's longtime caregiver, told AFP. Such cysts are known to sometimes form in the reproductive organs of rays when they don't mate.

The team performed an ultrasound and sent the results to scientists, who confirmed that Charlotte was carrying eggs. Subsequent scans even revealed tiny flapping tails.

Charlotte, a California round stingray thought to be 12- to 14-years-old, could give birth to her "pups" any day now (such virgin births being exceedingly rare, the gestation period might vary from the normal three to four months).

In any case, anticipation has been building in the local community.

After lengthy renovations, the aquarium reopened on Thursday, "and just about everybody coming through our door wanted to see Miss Charlotte -- it's very, very exciting," said Boyette.

'Loves the attention'

Beyond her unusual pregnancy, Charlotte, who's around the size of a dinner plate and lives alongside five small sharks, charms members of the public with her winsome personality.

Beyond her unusual pregnancy, Charlotte, who's around the size of a dinner plate and lives alongside five small sharks, charms members of the public with her winsome personality 

© HANDOUT / Aquarium & Shark Lab by Team ECCO/AFP

"I got in the tank with her this morning and she was just doing laps -- she was doing circles because we had a class here of kiddos and she absolutely loves the attention," said Boyette.

She said Charlotte would come up to the glass if approached and, when her favorite people enter the tank, enjoys cuddles.

She also loves crawfish -- an occasional treat -- along with her regular diet of shrimp, oysters and scallops.

"She's just a silly girl, she's very sweet," Boyette said.

Round stingrays hatch their eggs internally before giving birth to anywhere from one to four pups.

The odds of health issues and death rise in virgin births, experts say.

Charlotte now lives in a 2,200-gallon tank (8,300 liters) -- roughly the size of a small dumpster -- but since she is thought to be carrying up to four offspring, the aquarium hopes to be able to double the size of her tank if all goes well.
Asexual reproduction

The ability of breeding species to reproduce without male genetic contributions was long considered exceedingly rare, but in recent years has been documented in many vertebrates including birds, reptiles and fish -- though not mammals.

"To quote Jurassic Park, life finds a way," Bryan Legare, manager of the shark ecology program at the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown, Massachusetts told AFP.

Reproductively viable animals prevented from mating in captivity will sometimes undergo a process called parthenogenesis, he explained.

This means that small cells called "polar bodies," formed at the same time as eggs that normally disintegrate, instead go on to re-merge with the egg, providing the genetic material needed to create a viable embryo.

It's not clear how often it happens, Legare added: a case involving sharks or rays in aquariums gets reported every year or two. It may also happen in the wild, though this could not be confirmed without genetic testing.

Scientists note that while sexual reproduction is beneficial for evolution, it comes at the cost of first having to find a mate.

"With parthenogenesis, you see the advantage, you can be single on Valentine's Day," said Legare.

© 2024 AFP