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https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/14/world/americas/mexico-coca-cola-diabetes.amp.html

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In Town With Little Water, Coca-Cola Is Everywhere. So Is Diabetes. (Published 2018)

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Residents of one of Mexico’s rainiest regions often have no water to drink, so many hydrate with soda. The impact on public health has been devastating.

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The Snack Food and Corn Syrup Lobbyist Shaping Trump's Dietary Guidelines for Americans

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Ethics

By Filed under Laura Peterson | | investigation

A former snack food and corn syrup industries lobbyist appointed by the Trump Administration to set food policy at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is in close contact with her former employers on major and wide-ranging nutrition policies, emails obtained by the Project On Government Oversight through the Freedom of Information Act show.

Correspondence between three recent appointees and representatives from industry organizations, including the Corn Refiners Association and the Snack Food Association (now called SNAC International), show lobbyists proposing names of potential members for a federal advisory committee on sodium, producing talking points for Secretary of Agriculture George "Sonny" Perdue, and seeking intelligence on agency policy decisions.

Independent analysts say the emails POGO obtained demonstrate the close ties former industry lobbyists who become government officials maintain with the companies, industry associations, and lobbying firms they formerly worked for and with. This can create ethics concerns when those government officials are now in a position to affect the fortunes of their former employers and clients, potentially making decisions at odds with what's best for the public at large.

In the current Administration, there is no default bar on lobbyists serving as political appointees.

"Secretary Perdue seems to have installed an extra-large revolving door to usher in lobbyists and executives from giant corporations," said Karen Perry Stillerman, senior analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists' Food and Environment Program and author of a report tracking the myriad conflicts of interest at the Department of Agriculture under Secretary Perdue.

In July 2017, Perdue named Maggie Lyons, a former lobbyist for the National Grocers Association, as chief of staff to the acting deputy undersecretary of Food, Nutrition, and Consumer Services; and Kailee Tkacz, most recently food policy director at the Corn Refiners Association and previously a lobbyist for the Snack Food Association and National Grocers Association, as a policy advisor. (Perdue also tapped Brandon Lipps, a former counsel at the House Agricultural Committee under Rep. Frank Lucas (R-OK), as acting deputy undersecretary of Food, Nutrition, and Consumer Services.)

The Food and Nutrition Service is responsible for USDA's 15 food programs, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), National School Lunch Program, School Breakfast Program, Special Supplemental Program for Women and Children (WIC), and the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. The Service has sweeping influence over how tens of billions of taxpayer dollars are spent each year- roughly 70 percent of the Department's budget-on nutrition programs that are vital for many families. It also plays a central role in setting national nutrition policy, which can affect food labeling; inform food programs, for instance determining which products can be purchased through SNAP; and influence school nutrition standards, which were updated for the first time in 15 years in 2012.

The 2012 "standards have led to meals with more fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, with far less sodium, saturated fats, and added sugars. Sugary drinks, unhealthy snack foods, and trans fats have been removed as well," stated Dr. Richard Besser, head of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, in a January comment. The changes from the standards "are consistent with the 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans." Besser's comment was filed with the Department to oppose an interim rollback to the school nutrition standards that was announced in November. Among other changes, the rollback gave industry " more time to reduce sodium levels in school meals."

The Departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services produce dietary guidelines, which are supposed to be based on scientific evidence, every five years. The current guidelines were issued in 2015, and Agriculture and Health and Human Services have already launched the long and contentious process to formulate the 2020 guidelines.

POGO filed a Freedom of Information Act request with USDA requesting email correspondence between Tkacz, Lyons and Lipps and industry and their related trade associations. We received nearly 200 pages of emails demonstrating the close, collegial relationship the advisers maintained with their former employers at the Corn Refiners Association, SNAC International, National Grocers Association and lobbyists such as Michael Torrey, a former senior USDA staffer who lobbies for SNAC International and the American Beverage Association.

"Secretary Perdue seems to have installed an extra-large revolving door to usher in lobbyists and executives from giant corporations."

Karen Perry Stillerman, senior analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists' Food and Environment Program

While Washington may be built on such relationships, the correspondence reveals industry attempts to influence the scientific advice that undergirds government decisions about public health.

In September 2017, lobbyists from the Corn Refiners Association and the Sugar Association secured a meeting with Lyons and Lipps to discuss both the dietary guidelines and a potential Dietary Reference Intake for carbohydrates, such as fiber and sugar. A Dietary Reference Intake is a standard established by an expert committee convened by the National Academy of Medicine and sponsored by public agencies including USDA. The standards the committee establishes then inform other recommendations, such as nutrition labeling requirements and the dietary guidelines. The meeting demonstrates the degree to which these top USDA appointees were willing to meet with industry groups-one of which had recently employed their colleague, Tkacz.

The request came during a heated battle over sugar's health effects. The 2015 dietary guidelines were the first to recommend that sugar comprise no more than 10 percent of daily calories, consistent with the World Health Organization's guidance. Industry lobbyists such as the Sugar Association criticized the guidelines by claiming the science behind them was biased, a move advocates say is a standard tactic in industry's effort to cast doubt on nutrition science. The recommendation fueled the inclusion of an "added sugars" requirement in the FDA's 2016 update of nutrition labels, which Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb has since delayed by two years.

Corn syrup is used as a substitute for sugar in soda and snack foods and is also restricted by the 2015 dietary guidelines. A debate has raged in the public health community for years over the relative health merits of high-fructose corn syrup versus sugar.

In 2014, The New York Times reported on a lawsuit where reams of corporate documents show that major agribusiness corporations used the Corn Refiners Association "to rebut these studies and to persuade the Food and Drug Administration to declare its syrup 'natural' and allow a more approachable product name, like 'corn sugar.'" The Times wrote that the Association spent more than $30 million on a related public relations campaign between 2008 and 2014.

In 2016, Tkacz, as a representative for the corn syrup lobby, wrote that the "biggest loser" in the dietary guidelines issued in 2015 were "added sugars." These are not naturally occurring sugars-for example in fruit-but what a government factsheet calls "sugars and syrups that food manufacturers add to products like sodas," including corn syrup. She also wrote there was "No evidence to support a physiological or nutritional difference between added and naturally-occurring sugars."

Tkacz also lobbied Congress and the USDA on "Agriculture Appropriations Legislation as it relates to sodium" while at the Snack Food Association.

Tkacz, as a representative for the corn syrup lobby, wrote that the "biggest loser" in the dietary guidelines issued in 2015 were "added sugars."

The records POGO obtained show that, in February 2018, lobbyists from the Snack Food Association (now named SNAC International) and Food Directions-a food industry lobby firm that has represented the Snack Food Association- contacted Tkacz to recommend potential members for an existing Dietary Reference Intake committee on sodium. The committee's work will update sodium standards that have been in place since 2005. The members recommended to Tkacz "would bring more balanced perspectives to the DRI committee," according to Food Directions lobbyist Lindsay Yarabek Datlow, who also forwarded an opinion piece arguing the sodium levels recommended by the American Heart Association are too low. Two of the lobbyists' recommendations-David McCarron and Suzanne Oparil-have worked as industry consultants, McCarron for the Grocery Manufacturers of America and Oparil for the Salt Institute. Others authored studies that questioned sodium's effect on health. A USDA spokesperson said that USDA did not recommend anyone from the list, and nobody from the list joined the committee.

"It is beyond inappropriate for the salt industry to use backchannels with the Administration to try to stack the deck on scientific consideration of the health impacts of sodium," said Laura MacCleery, policy director for the non-profit Center for Science in the Public Interest. Reducing sodium in restaurant and processed foods has been a priority of the Center since its inception in 1971.

Like sugar and other sweeteners, sodium is a highly politicized food additive, prized by industry for its ability to make food taste good and feared by advocates for its effect on blood pressure and cardiac disease. The Obama Administration established voluntary standards for sodium in school lunches in 2010, which Perdue rolled back shortly after his April 2017 confirmation pending the DRI committee's recommendations. Meanwhile, 12 Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee sent a letter to the National Academy of Medicine in December 2017 questioning whether some of the scientists on the committee were biased against sodium.

Food industry influence on the USDA secretary's office flowed in both directions, emails show.

"It's really important that the committees giving nutrition advice are balanced and neutral," said Food and Water Watch policy director Patty Lovera. But, unlike those members of Congress, she expressed concern that industry associations through their former employees now in powerful government positions would try to install pro-corporate members on potentially influential advisory committees.

Food industry influence on the USDA secretary's office flowed in both directions, emails show. For example, Tkacz contacted a former colleague at SNAC International in January 2018 to say she was trying to get Perdue to visit facilities for Snyder's pretzels and Utz chips on an upcoming trip to Pennsylvania. The following month, Tkacz forwarded an email from the National Grocers Association's executive vice president to Perdue's speechwriter suggesting themes for an upcoming Perdue speech at an association event. Though USDA hasn't made the speech public, news accounts indicate that many of the suggested themes-such as the need for deregulation-were used.

Both Tkacz and Lyons received ethics waivers in August 2017 from White House Counsel Donald McGahn allowing Tkacz to work on the Dietary Guidelines for America and Lyons to work on SNAP (formerly known as the food stamps program) and the Special Supplemental Program for Women and Children. McGahn wrote that granting the waivers was "in the public interest" because of Tkacz and Lyons' expertise on the issues. The waivers lifted the requirements of a portion of the Trump White House ethics pledge, which states that previously registered lobbyists cannot discuss matters they lobbied on within two years of their appointment, or even work on the "specific issue area" the matter falls in.

The Union of Concerned Scientists wrote that Tkacz has "no training in science, public health, or nutrition." Tkacz lobbied on the dietary guidelines process in 2016 for the Corn Refiners Association, and Lyons lobbied on SNAP and WIC in 2017 for the National Grocers Association. The grocers association has historically worked to keep the largest array of products eligible for purchase under SNAP as possible. Lyons also owned nearly $50,000 worth of stock in the Coca Cola Company, Dr. Pepper Snapple Group, and the National Beverage Corporation, but sold it upon her government appointment, according to her financial disclosure.

A spokesperson for the Agriculture Department said, "As with all Trump Administration appointees, the ethics rules Kailee Tkacz operates under, with regard to an appointee's former employers, include a one-year look-back under the federal ethics rules, and a two-year look-back under the Administration's more stringent ethics pledge. Her employment with SNAC falls outside that two-year window, or 'cooling off period.' There is no conflict of interest."

The cases of Tkacz and Lyons are examples of how President Trump's ethics pledge for his appointees departs from his predecessor's, which had a harder and brighter line against the appointment of lobbyists to positions throughout the executive branch. As POGO wrote last year, "Under Obama, an appointee who was a former registered lobbyist had to get a waiver to join the administration." Now, in the current Administration, there is no default bar on lobbyists serving as political appointees-they do not need a waiver to be appointed. As POGO noted, "absent a waiver, they still are barred from working on certain matters and issue areas they worked on as lobbyists."

The Associated Press reported in March 2018 that in the first year of the Trump Administration the White House granted "at least 24 ethics waivers to key administration officials at the White House and executive branch agencies." In comparison, the AP wrote, "Nearly 70 waivers were issued to executive branch officials during Obama's eight years, though those were generally more narrowly focused and offered a fuller legal explanation for why the waiver was granted."

These are not the first political appointees to raise ethics concerns at USDA. For instance, Rebeckah Adcock heads the team responsible for finding regulations to roll back at the agency, in accordance with a February 2017 executive order. Adcock most recently worked for CropLife America, a trade group of pesticide producers, and earlier for the American Farm Bureau Federation, a federal conglomeration of state farm bureaus that regularly opposes environmental and agricultural regulations. Adcock was criticized by members of Congress for not turning over names of members on her deregulatory team, and also came under scrutiny in the press for holding meetings with her former employers and other companies from the agricultural and pesticide industry.

The food and beverage industry was largely supportive of Perdue's nomination. "CRA stands ready to work with Dr. Perdue on the many ways value added corn products can benefit American jobs and consumers," said the Corn Refiners Association's president and CEO John Bode in a March 30, 2017 statement. Bode previously served as Assistant Secretary of Agriculture for Food and Consumer Services during the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, and has since lobbied for multinational corporations such as Kraft Foods and trade groups such as the National Meat Association, according to his LinkedIn profile. The National Grocers Association, the Sweetener Users Association (representing "American food and beverage manufacturers who use sugar"), and other trade groups also backed Perdue's nomination and sent letters of support to the Senate.

"If the people generating [government] advice are working to advance the interest of a certain type of food or to downplay risks caused by some type of product, the public isn't going to get the unbiased advice they need to navigate a very confusing marketplace," said Food and Water Watch's Lovera.

Author

Laura Peterson was an investigator for the Project On Government Oversight.

Related Content

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The Snack Food and Corn Syrup Lobbyist Shaping Trump's Dietary Guidelines for Americans

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Ethics By Filed under Laura Peterson | | investigation A former snack food and corn syrup industries lobbyist appointed by the Trump Administration to set food policy at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is in close contact with her former employers on major and wide-ranging nutrition policies, emails obtained by the Project On Government Oversight through the Freedom of Information Act show.

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Food Lobbying in Action: The Corn Syrup Crusaders

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Two letters-from the Corn Refiners Association and two politicians-show just how amusingly overt food politics can be

It's fun to watch lobbying in action, especially when it is so overt. I've just been sent a copy of this "Dear Colleague" letter organized by the Corn Refiners Association. The letter comes from two members of Congress. It asks other members of Congress to write the FDA to change the name of High Fructose Corn Syrup to Corn Sugar.

From the Corn Refiners:

Dear [Member of Congress],

As your Member's district has a strong interest in corn or corn sweetener, I am sending you this Dear Colleague letter for your consideration. Representatives Tom Latham and Daniel Lipinksi are circulating the letter, pasted below, for your boss' consideration. The Corn Refiners Association, with support from the National Corn Growers Association has petitioned the FDA to allow use of the name 'corn sugar' as an alternative to High Fructose Corn Syrup on ingredient labels. This letter outlines our support for this petition.

From Representatives Tom Latham (Rep-Iowa) and Daniel Lipinski (Dem-Illinois):

Dear [FDA] Commissioner Margaret A. Hamburg,

We write to express our support for a petition to use "corn sugar" as an alternate name for high fructose corn syrup on ingredient labels that would help consumers avoid confusion about the foods they buy. We endorse prompt review and approval of petition FDA-2010-P-0491, which was submitted by the Corn Refiners Association.

The petition requests the term "corn sugar" be permitted as an optional name for high fructose corn syrup on ingredient labels to avoid customer misconceptions. Evidence suggests that current terminology encourages misunderstanding in the marketplace regarding the nutritional profile and composition of corn sweeteners, and the alternate name would help dispel some of the confusion. According to a recent nationwide MSR Group survey, around 70 percent of Americans surveyed could not correctly identify high fructose corn syrup when presented with the American Dietetic Association's definition. The same research found that "corn sugar" is a better alternative because it gives consumers a more accurate understanding of the product's fructose content, calories and sweetness.

The product used in most foods-including yogurts, baked goods, condiments, and salad dressings-actually has the lowest fructose content of any sweetener on the market. Despite this fact, MSR Group's research showed that most Americans believe high fructose corn syrup to be higher in fructose than table sugar; misinformation perpetuated by the substance's name.

High fructose corn syrup is made from corn grown here in the United States by a critical industry that provides Americans thousands of good jobs. Equally important, it enables American consumers greater choice and affordability at the grocery store. Unfortunately, significant misperceptions about this ingredient have circulated in the media, in large part due to its name.

The American Medical Association has indicated that sugar and high fructose corn syrup have similar compositions, while the American Dietetic Association has determined that these two sweeteners are nutritionally equivalent and indistinguishable to the human body. These facts are sometimes lost in the confusion surrounding the ingredient's name, and we believe that allowing use of the alternate term, "corn sugar," would allow consumers to make accurate decisions about added sugars in their diets.

We support expeditious review and approval of this petition.

If enough members of Congress write such letters, the FDA is likely to pay attention, no?
This post also appears on Food Politics.
Image: Shaun Best/Reuters

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Food Lobbying in Action: The Corn Syrup Crusaders

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Two letters-from the Corn Refiners Association and two politicians-show just how amusingly overt food politics can be It's fun to watch lobbying in action, especially when it is so overt. I've just been sent a copy of this "Dear Colleague" letter organized by the Corn Refiners Association.

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U.S. Big Corn goes after old foe, sugar, with new lobbying tactic

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CHICAGO (Reuters) - The powerful U.S. corn lobby is launching an unusual offensive against the country's sugar sector, an old foe in the lucrative sweetener market: seeking to overturn the controversial, near-century old U.S. sugar program.

The Corn Refiners Association, which represents high-fructose corn syrup producers, has hired Washington lobbyist firm, the Alpine Group, to challenge sugar's long-protected status, a spokesman for the organization said on Thursday.

The sugar program, which restricts imports, sets price floors and provides government-backed loans to cane and beet processors, is considered one of the most generous in the U.S. Farm Bill that passed a year ago.

"The sugar loan program is an embarrassment," Corn Refiners chief executive officer John Bode said in a statement. Its members include Archer Daniels Midland Co and Cargill Inc.

This is the first time corn refiners have publicly taken the fight to Washington by tackling sugar policy. Corn farmers also benefit from government support programs that keep a floor under prices.

Cane and beet farmers say they need subsidies to ensure the long-term health of industry, which employs thousands of workers across the Midwest and the South. Many also grow corn.

For years, the sugar and high-fructose corn syrup industries have jousted over their share of the massive sweetener market. Yet they also have been aligned in defending sweeteners from critics who say they cause obesity.

The corn lobby will most likely seek to introduce reforms through the Congressional appropriations process, now underway in the House. The Washington Post first reported on the lobbying effort on Thursday.

Phillip Hayes, spokesman for the American Sugar Alliance, which represents sugar growers, declined to comment on the move.

But he said it would be unfortunate if the agricultural sector tried to overhaul policy, aiding "opponents in their quest to gut the safety net on which all U.S. farmers depend."

Efforts in recent years to repeal sugar policy have failed.

The U.S. sugar industry is a small but powerful group that includes the politically connected Fanjul family, which owns Domino Sugar, C&H, and Florida Crystals.

The sugar sector accounts for a third of campaign donations from U.S. agriculture, while making up only 2 percent of farms, according to the Washington-based Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.

"All too often, it has been asserted that the corn industry backs sugar price supports. That is not true and to help get that point across, this year we are working for reform," Bode said.

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U.S. Big Corn goes after old foe, sugar, with new lobbying tactic

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CHICAGO (Reuters) - The powerful U.S. corn lobby is launching an unusual offensive against the country's sugar sector, an old foe in the lucrative sweetener market: seeking to overturn the controversial, near-century old U.S. sugar program.

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https://www.bio.org/blogs/fashion-month-learn-about-benefits-gmo-cotton

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Even as this year's New York Fashion Week comes to a close, it's important to remember that all of September is considered Fashion Month. After all, it IS called The September Issue!

And given that it is Fashion Month, it's a good time to learn about the benefits of one of the lesser talked about GMOs: cotton. Cotton provides more than just apparel and home furnishings, however. Every part of the cotton plant can be used. The long cotton fibers are used to make cloth, the short fibers provide cellulose for making plastics and can be used in the paper industry and processed into batting for padding mattresses, furniture, and car cushions. You can make oil, margarine, soap, cosmetics, rubbers, and more out of the seeds of the cotton plant. The leaves and stalks of the cotton plant are plowed into the ground to make the soil better. Cottonseed and cottonseed meal are used in feed for livestock, dairy cattle, and poultry.

GMO cotton is an insect-resistant transgenic crop designed to combat pests like the bollworm. This particular GMO was created by genetically altering the cotton genome to express a microbial protein from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis, better known as Bt. Bt is a natural, safe bacterium that attacks certain insect pests.  It is even approved as a pesticide in organic farming by the USDA Organic program.

With GMO cotton, it's all about designer genes.

By inserting Bt into the genetic makeup of cotton, it allows the plant to fight off pests while allowing farmers to use less pesticide on their fields.

Suzie Wilde, a cotton farmer in West Central Texas, explains the benefits of the genetic traits of the GM cotton she grows (herbicide and insect resistance).

According to Suzie:

“These two genetic traits [of GM cotton] have cleaned both the air I breathe and the water I drink and are preserving the soil that grows my beloved cotton. Cleaner air since the tractor can stay parked more often. Cleaner water since there is less herbicide on the surface to run off. Preserving the soil since tillage has been greatly reduced. A cleaner product since the insecticide is reduced or even eliminated in some years.”

GMO Answers and CropLife International worked together to create a video that shows just how important GMO cotton is to the fashion and fiber industry.  About 93% of cotton grown in the United States is GMO cotton, which makes it a more sustainable and eco-friendly choice for you and your family.

Check out our new video, and please share on social media.

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This Fashion Month, Learn About the Benefits of GMO Cotton | BIO

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Even as this year's New York Fashion Week comes to a close, it's important to remember that all of September is considered Fashion Month. After all, it IS called The September Issue! And given that it is Fashion Month, it's a good time to learn about the benefits of one of the lesser talked about GMOs: cotton.&nbsp...

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Example of genetically modified sugar beet (fodder beet)

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Example of genetically modified sugar beet (fodder beet)

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https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2910966/

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American sugar beet farmers produce half of our domestic refined sugar valued at over $3 billion per year ( APHIS, 2010). The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California (CA District Court) will soon determine whether U.S. farmers can continue to grow genetically modified (GM) sugar beet ( Beta vulgaris ssp vulgaris var altissima) in the case of Center for Food Safety v. Vilsack ( CFS v. Vilsack). The CA District Court is grappling with imposing an ambiguous and evolving legal standard on a scientific question of gene flow risks. It will analyze the likelihood of cross-pollination between genetically modified sugar beet and organic Swiss chard or table beet seed crops and determine whether this constitutes irreparable harm. The U.S. Supreme Court is also interested in biotechnology law this term and may overturn precedent that would normally guide the CA District Court. Here, we review the legal and scientific background of this issue and argue that the CA District Court should consider the scientific as well as the legal factors of this case and impose sensible geographic restrictions that will preserve coexistence among production methods.

LEGAL HISTORY

In 2005, after preparing a concise environmental assessment under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) unconditionally approved genetically modified glyphosate-tolerant sugar beet and found no significant environmental impact ( USDA/APHIS, 2005). U.S. farmers embraced Roundup Ready sugar beet (RR sugar beet) for its superior weed control and planted 95% of U.S. acreage in RR sugar beet by 2009 ( APHIS, 2010). Plaintiffs Center for Food Safety, Organic Seed Alliance, Sierra Club, and High Mowing Organic Seeds brought suit against APHIS (naming the Secretary of the USDA, Tom Vilsack) challenging its decision to deregulate RR sugar beet and asserting that APHIS violated NEPA. The CA District Court ruled in the first phase of CFS v. Vilsack in 2009 that APHIS violated NEPA because it should have prepared an environmental impact statement (EIS) assessing gene flow to related cultivated species ( Table 1 provides a list of this and other court cases mentioned in this article). Judge White based his decision on the socio-economic risk that RR sugar beet seed crops could cross-pollinate with conventional or organic Swiss chard or table beet seed crops in the Willamette Valley in Oregon ( Figure 1 ). In particular, he judged that APHIS failed to take into account that transgenic pollen flow would deprive conventional or organic seed farmers of their choice not to grow GM crops and consumers of their choice not to consume GM foods. While the CA District Court stated only one basis for finding a NEPA violation, Judge White also articulated in detail the potential for introgression of the glyphosate resistance gene into wild and hybrid weed beet species in the Imperial Valley, CA.

Table 1.

Case Name

Date

Citation

Court

In the second phase of this two-part decision, the CA District Court will hear oral arguments on July 9, 2010 to determine whether a permanent injunction should issue to halt all or a portion of RR sugar beet seed and root production pending preparation of the EIS. Monsanto Company, Betaseed, Syngenta Seeds, SES Vanderhave USA, and their allies in the sugar processing industry intervened in this second phase in defense of RR sugar beet production. The outcome of the injunction motion will have nationwide ramifications.

The CA District Court and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (Ninth Circuit) are the only American courts to have previously ruled on APHIS's deregulation of other genetically modified crops. The CA District Court in Geertson Seed Farms v. Johanns ( Geertson v. Johanns) issued an injunction in 2007 prohibiting the continued planting of glyphosate-tolerant alfalfa (RR alfalfa) pending preparation of an EIS, and the Ninth Circuit affirmed this decision in 2009. Farmers that planted RR alfalfa prior to March 30, 2007 may continue to harvest their fields subject to strict stewardship guidelines. Legal developments continue to affect RR alfalfa. APHIS released a draft EIS supporting the deregulation of RR alfalfa in November, 2009 and is still processing public comments. In the interim, Monsanto appealed the Ninth Circuit's decision to the Supreme Court ( Monsanto v. Geertson), and the decision is pending. Therefore, the future of RR sugar beet and RR alfalfa is uncertain.

ENVIRONMENTAL RISK AND BENEFIT OF RR SUGAR BEET CULTIVATION

Minnesota, Idaho, North Dakota, and Michigan together produced 82%, and California 3%, of the nation's sugar beet crop in 2009 ( Figure 1 ; http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/usda/current/CropProdSu/CropProdSu-01-12-2010.pdf). Sugar beet plants are biennial. In its first year, a sugar beet produces a rosette of leaves and a large storage root containing sucrose. During its second year, the sugar beet will flower if exposed to vernalizing temperatures and lengthening photoperiod ( Milford, 2006). Excluding California, the U.S. crop is planted in the spring and the roots are harvested in late fall. During production, <0.01% of plants flower and the plants do not survive winter ( APHIS, 2010). Farmers growing RR sugar beet contractually agree to remove any flowering plants in the year of production. Sugar beet plants are more likely to flower in California than in Midwestern and Pacific northwestern root production states ( Monsanto, 2003). California farmers plant sugar beet as a winter crop, and it may receive sufficient vernalization to flower. However, California farmers routinely cut the 1.5-m flowering stalk to prevent yield loss because it competes with the root for sucrose allocations and interferes with harvest. In contrast with root production, the vast majority of seed production of RR sugar beet takes place on 3000 to 5000 acres in the Willamette Valley, OR. The seed crop is planted in the fall, vernalized during the moderate winter, and allowed to flower the following year. Sugar beet seed crops share the Willamette Valley with closely related specialty seed crops such as Swiss chard and table beet. Most table beet and Swiss chard seed crops are grown in Washington and California. Therefore, gene flow among these three sexually compatible crops is a cause for environmental concern only in the Willamette Valley.

Weed pressure can significantly limit sugar beet root production ( USDA/APHIS, 2005). In fields of conventional sugar beet, weeds typically are partially controlled with micro rate applications of several herbicides ( May and Wilson, 2006). Satisfactory weed control often is elusive, and farmers typically supplement their herbicide use with cultivations and manual weed removal. The 2008 survey of Minnesota and North Dakota sugar beet weed control practices showed that RR sugar beet with glyphosate resulted in the highest weed control ratings in the history of the survey and also nearly eliminated mechanical and manual weeding ( http://www.sbreb.org/research/weed/weed08/surveyweedcontrol.pdf). The survey also showed that postemergence herbicide use was at its lowest level since 1991. In addition to limiting herbicide use, RR sugar beet cultivation may reduce energy use and ecotoxicity ( Bennett et al., 2004). The use of RR sugar beet may also lead to the adoption of more sustainable cultivation practices, including mulch systems, winter cover crops, and strip tilling ( May, 2003; Petersen and Röver, 2005; Overstreet, 2009). Strip tillage is now more feasible because farmers do not need to cultivate to control weeds in RR sugar beet fields.

Using glyphosate-tolerant (GT) crops increases the probability for development of resistant weeds ( Duke and Powles, 2009). If farmers were to plant two or three successive Roundup Ready crops (such as sugar beet, maize, and soybeans), this would further increase selection pressure for such weeds. Maintaining diversity in crop rotation (GT and non-GT crops) coupled with the use of herbicides with different modes of action is an important factor in lessening this risk ( Duke and Powles, 2009).

RISK OF GENE FLOW TO CULTIVATED AND WEEDY RELATIVES

Sugar beet, Swiss chard ( B. vulgaris ssp vulgaris var flavescens), table beet ( B. vulgaris ssp vulgaris var vulgaris), sea beet ( B. vulgaris ssp maritima), and Beta macrocarpa are interfertile ( OECD, 2001) and are predominantly wind-pollinated. The presence of wild beet species such as B. macrocarpa and B. vulgaris ssp maritima in close proximity to RR sugar beet poses concerns over transfer of the glyphosate resistance gene. Given the similarity in herbicide sensitivity, the presence of a glyphosate-resistant weed beet would be problematic to control. Numerous sugar beet pollen flow studies have been published with varied methodology and plant material. Wild beet species and hybrid weed beet are a serious problem in sugar beet production fields in western Europe ( Boudry et al., 1993). Hybrid weed beet differs from cultivated sugar beet in that it displays an annual life cycle that does not require vernalization. It appears to be the result of wild beet species such as Beta vulgaris ssp maritima pollinating cultivated male-sterile female sugar beet plants in seed production areas in Europe ( Boudry et al., 1993). Gene flow has been documented from GM sugar beet to hybrid weed beet in European fields at distances of 112 m ( Darmency et al., 2007) and 200 m ( Alibert et al., 2005). Since gene flow between weed beet populations has been documented up to 9.6 km ( Fénart et al., 2007), the potential exists for the creation of glyphosate-resistant weed beet ( Darmency et al., 2007). Sugar beet pollen was detected 1097 m from fields ( Dark, 1971) and at an altitude of 1524 m ( Meier and Artschwager, 1938). Outcrossing between GM sugar beet and conventional male sterile sugar beet plants occurred at distances up to 1000 m ( Alibert et al., 2005).

B. vulgaris ssp maritima and B. macrocarpa have been introduced into California, and B. macrocarpa is present in the Imperial Valley of California, an area of sugar beet root production ( Figure 1 ) ( http://ucjeps.berkeley.edu/interchange/index.html). There is evidence of limited introgression from sugar beet into B. macrocarpa in the Imperial Valley and evidence of hybridization between escaped table beet or Swiss chard and B. vulgaris ssp maritima in the San Francisco Bay area, a nonproduction area for sugar beet ( Bartsch and Ellstrand, 1999). Transmission of the glyphosate resistance gene into B. macrocarpa is possible if RR sugar beet is planted in the Imperial Valley because winter planted sugar beet is more likely to be vernalized and to flower. Introgression into B. vulgaris ssp maritima is less of a concern in other parts of California because its distribution is outside sugar beet production areas. If glyphosate-resistant B. macrocarpa becomes a reality and invades sugar beet fields, it would be a significant problem in production. RR sugar beet has not been grown in the Imperial Valley to date, but limited cultivar selection of RR sugar beet may be the predominant reason for California growers to abstain from its use, rather than concern over the potential transfer of glyphosate resistance to weedy relatives. The sugar beet industry in California is in decline, especially since the closure of seven out of eight sugar beet processing plants since 1992 ( http://www.sugarpub.com/event/article/id/53/).

In contrast with California, the rest of the U.S. does not face significant gene flow risks since flowering does not regularly occur in these areas. Furthermore, the distribution of B. vulgaris ssp maritima ( www.eFloras.org) is limited to California and New Jersey (a non-sugar beet-producing state). B. macrocarpa does not occur outside of California ( www.plants.usda.gov). It is possible that isolated hybrid weed beet populations exist outside California because sugar beet seed has been imported from European production areas in the past. However, they currently are not a problem and have not been documented. Thus, Midwestern and northwestern production and seed areas do not face the same risk of gene flow as does California or Europe.

Gene flow may occur from RR sugar beet to conventional and organic Swiss chard or table beet seed crops grown in the Willamette Valley, OR. Organic growers contend that cross-pollination may render seed unmarketable due to the zero or low tolerance for transgenic contamination. Furthermore, transgenic contamination may deprive organic consumers of their choice to consume nongenetically modified vegetables. However, production practices are already in place to limit gene flow among adjacent related crops. The Oregon Seed Certification standard isolation distance requires a minimum 2438 m isolation distance between sugar beet crops and Swiss chard or table beet ( http://seedcert.oregonstate.edu/sites/default/files/standards/sugar-beets-standards.pdf). A seed industry-established organization, Willamette Valley Specialty Seed Association (WVSSA), decided that the Oregon Seed Certification standards were not adequate and now requires an isolation distance of 4828 m between RR sugar beet and Swiss chard or table beet ( http://www.thewvssa.org/documents/WVSSA_Isolation_Guidelines.pdf). Although membership is voluntary, all Willamette Valley commercial specialty seed producers are members of the WVSSA and as such are obligated to comply with the specified isolation distances ( Dahmer, 2008). Betaseed exceeds the 4828 m isolation distance by requiring a 6437 m isolation distance ( Dahmer, 2008), and other companies may also voluntarily follow this isolation distance. The sugar beet seed industry understands the necessity for distance between related crops; therefore, court-mandated isolation distances may be an effective tool for preventing gene flow.

A requirement for isolation distances is based on the assumption that the glyphosate tolerance trait is carried in the pollen. However, the intervention of SESVanderhave USA, a sugar beet seed producer, in the second phase of CFS v. Vilsack highlights technologies that may limit inadvertent cross-pollination between sexually compatible crops. SESVanderHave and other seed companies produce RR sugar beet seed using conventional male pollinators that do not carry the glyphosate tolerance gene. Instead, the hybrid inherits glyphosate tolerance from the male-sterile female line from which seed is harvested. Thus, the risk of gene flow via pollen to conventional and organic crops is minimized; however, there is the possibility that an occasional female plant is not male sterile and gene flow could occur through seed escape. Recent court documents allege that 78% of the RR sugar beet crop is produced using conventional male pollinators. It is important that the CA District Court assess this method of seed production when weighing risk and benefit from RR sugar beet production.

THE SUPREME COURT INTERPRETS NEPA

Recent U.S. Supreme Court activity may influence the scope of injunctive relief against RR sugar beet and underscores the unsettled and evolving nature of NEPA law. The 2008 Supreme Court case Winter v. National Resources Defense Council ( Winter v. NRDC) clarified the legal standard for issuing injunctions in NEPA cases. This decision halted automatically imposed injunctions in NEPA violation cases and was openly critical of the Ninth Circuit's approach to injunctions. The Ninth Circuit is the appellate court that reviews the decisions of the Northern District of California.

In Winter v. NRDC, Plaintiffs NRDC and Jean Michael Cousteau challenged the U.S. Navy's use of sonar in detecting submarines during training exercises. Plaintiffs alleged that the Navy's use of sonar would harm beaked whales and other marine mammals and that the Navy should have prepared an EIS instead of an environmental assessment under NEPA. The lower court entered a preliminary injunction ordering the Navy to shut down its sonar when it detected a marine mammal. The Navy appealed these restrictions. The Ninth Circuit upheld the lower court's injunction in its entirety on the basis that an injunction may be ordered based on evidence showing the "possibility" of irreparable harm. In reversing the Ninth Circuit, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that an injunction is an extraordinary remedy that cannot be based upon the mere "possibility" of irreparable harm. Instead, a plaintiff requesting an injunction must demonstrate a "likelihood" of suffering irreparable harm. In addition, the lower court must weigh the respective environmental and economic burdens to the parties and consider whether the injunction is in the public's interest. Winter v. NRDC has broad relevance beyond its narrow set of facts, and a ripple effect has swept the country as lower courts have rushed to articulate the correct standard in injunctive proceedings. Dozens of federal cases ( Narodick, 2009) have cited the clarified standard for all types of federal injunctions, including the Ninth Circuit in Geertson v. Johanns on RR alfalfa.

Geertson v. Johanns might have had great precedential value for CFS v. Vilsack because it involved similar legal questions regarding RR alfalfa in the CA District Court. However, RR alfalfa's fate is uncertain due to the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to review the scope of the permanent injunction in Monsanto v. Geertson in 2010. The issues raised by Monsanto on appeal are whether the Ninth Circuit erred in (1) presuming irreparable harm as opposed to requiring plaintiffs to prove a likelihood of irreparable harm; (2) upholding the CA District Court's decision to enter a broad permanent injunction without requiring an evidentiary hearing; and (3) upholding the CA District Court's injunction that was entered prior to Winter v. NRDC and thus was based on the possibility as opposed to the likelihood of irreparable harm. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on April 27, 2010 and a decision is expected soon. Considering that the Supreme Court overturned four Ninth Circuit environmental cases during the last term, one may suspect that the Ninth Circuit's decision in Geertson v. Johanns may not be affirmed in its entirety.

It would be valuable if the Supreme Court in Monsanto v. Geertson defined "irreparable harm" in the biotechnology context because the phrase is fraught with ambiguity. What is the likelihood of irreparable harm in CFS v. Vilsack? The Ninth Circuit in Geertson v. Johanns in 2009 defined irreparable harm as any amount of transgenic cross-pollination of neighboring organic or conventional crops. The amount and probability of cross-pollination was irrelevant, and there was no tolerance for low levels of cross-pollination. Unfortunately, legal precedent has not defined "likelihood of irreparable harm" in scientific terms. All that is known is that the harm must not be speculative or improbable. Irreparable harm in this context might be defined by a likelihood of significant gene flow to wild species. Irreparable harm may also be defined as the likelihood of exceeding a low-level threshold for GMO material in organic crops. The threshold would need to balance a consumer's preference to consume predominantly organic food with the needs of RR sugar beet growers.

CONCLUSIONS AND APPROPRIATE INJUNCTIVE REMEDIES

The Plaintiffs in CFS v. Vilsack have moved for a permanent injunction banning the further planting, cultivation, or processing of RR sugar beet or its seed. Our opinion is that such a broad injunction is not justified based upon the distribution and biology of Beta species and upon Supreme Court precedent. The CA District Court must determine the likelihood of irreparable harm in assessing gene flow risks and not summarily presume harm solely based on a NEPA violation. Furthermore, the equitable nature of injunctions and the public interest requirement necessitate a balancing act by the CA District Court. The rights of organic farmers and consumers should not be ignored, but neither should the judicial system ignore the economic burden to farmers that have adopted RR sugar beet technology.

The CA District Court should evaluate the likelihood of irreparable harm and issue a tailored permanent injunction permitting the continued production of RR sugar beet crops subject to two geographic restrictions that greatly lessen the risk to organic and conventional Swiss chard and table beet industries. The first restriction should preserve coexistence between Swiss chard/table beet and RR sugar beet seed industries by mandating scientifically based isolation distances in the Willamette Valley, OR. Without sufficient isolation distances, the likelihood of irreparable harm or hybridization between adjacent crops is high. However, no study has confirmed cross-pollination from conventional or genetically modified sugar beet at a distance of 6437 m, the isolation distance voluntarily adopted by the RR sugar beet industry. Furthermore, the majority of the RR sugar beet industry produces seed in which the Roundup Ready gene is inherited through the male-sterile female plant, which further reduces the risk of gene flow through pollen drift. In light of the Supreme Court standard in Winter v. NRDC, the likelihood of irreparable harm becomes speculative and would seem no longer significant beyond this isolation distance. APHIS also supports this isolation distance ( APHIS, 2010). Therefore, with strong stewardship guidelines for field sanitation once the seed crop has been harvested, risk can be minimized.

The second geographic restriction should address the possibility of gene flow in the Imperial Valley, California, and any other California counties where sugar beet production coincides with wild beet distribution. To prevent the introgression of the glyphosate resistance gene into wild species, it is necessary to ban the planting of RR sugar beet in southern California. This restriction will pose minimal hardship because California sugar beet farmers have refrained from growing RR sugar beet to date. However, there is the potential for California farmers to adopt Roundup Ready technology while the EIS is prepared. This restriction would prevent this possibility.

With these two geographic restrictions in place, the CA District Court could permit the continued planting of RR sugar beet in root production areas outside California. There is negligible likelihood of irreparable harm in the sugar bowl states of the U.S. ( Figure 1 ). Sugar beet is harvested in the first year and flowering is minimal. This is not like RR alfalfa hay production where the plant routinely flowers in the first year if the hay is not harvested on time. Root production areas are distant from seed production in the Willamette Valley, OR, and wild beet species are limited to California and New Jersey.

For future cases, it is worth considering that APHIS could have prevented this litigation. As the Ninth Circuit stated in Geertson v. Johanns in 2009, APHIS has the authority to impose a few well-analyzed geographical restrictions on crops before deregulating them for commercial production. Federal agencies routinely avoid the time and cost of preparing an EIS by recognizing what constitutes the environmental threshold that requires an EIS and implementing mitigation factors that bring an agency project or decision below the threshold ( Karkkainen, 2002). APHIS could have recognized that its initial deregulatory decision failed to analyze the impact on the organic Swiss chard and table beet seed industry in Oregon. The CA District Court should consider the scientific and legal factors of this case and impose sensible geographic restrictions that will preserve coexistence between farming industries.

Acknowledgments

This work was funded by the University of Minnesota Interdisciplinary Doctoral Fellowship awarded to E.E.M. for a fellowship at the Consortium on Law and Values in Health, Environment, and the Life Sciences and the Microbial and Plant Genomics Institute. We thank J. Stachler, K. Hokanson, and S. Wolf for their critiques.

References

APHIS (2010). Defendants' Opposition to Plaintiffs' Motion for Permanent Injunction. Center for Food Safety v. Vilsack (Case No. C-08-00484 JSW), https://ecf.cand.uscourts.gov/cand/index.html (last accessed June 6, 2010)

Bartsch D., Ellstrand N.C. (1999). Genetic evidence for the origin of Californian wild beets (genus [Beta). Theor. Appl. Genet. 99: 1120-1130 Google Scholar]

Dahmer E.J. (2008). Declaration of E. Joe Dahmer. Center for Food Safety v. Vilsack (Case No. C-08-00484 JSW), https://ecf.cand.uscourts.gov/cand/index.html (last accessed June 6, 2010)

May M.J., Wilson R.G. (2006). Weeds and weed control. In Sugar Beet, Draycott A.P., (Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing; ), 359-386 [Google Scholar]

Milford G.F.J. (2006). Plant structure and crop physiology. In Sugar Beet, Draycott A.P., (Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing; ), 30-49 [Google Scholar]

Monsanto (2003). Petition for determination of nonregulated status for Roundup Ready® sugar beet event H7-1, http://www.aphis.usda.gov/brs/aphisdocs/03_32301p.pdf, (last accessed June 6, 2010)

Narodick B.I. (2009). [Winter v. National Resources Defense Council: Going into the belly of the whale of preliminary injunctions and environmental law. B.U. J. Sci. Tech. L. 15: 332-347 Google Scholar]

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (2001). Consensus Document on the Biology of [Beta vulgaris L. (Sugar Beet). (Paris: OECD Environmental Health and Safety Publications; ). Google Scholar]

USDA/APHIS (2005). Finding of no significant impact for determination of nonregulated status for Roundup Ready® sugar beet event H7-1 (http://www.aphis.usda.gov/brs/aphisdocs2/03_32301p_com.pdf)

Articles from The Plant Cell are provided here courtesy of Oxford University Press

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Sweet and Sour: A Scientific and Legal Look at Herbicide-Tolerant Sugar Beet

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American sugar beet farmers produce half of our domestic refined sugar valued at over $3 billion per year ( APHIS, 2010). The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California (CA District Court) will soon determine whether U.S.

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Pros and Cons of GMO foods

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Engineers design plants using genetically modified organisms (GMOs) to be tougher or more nutritious or to taste better. However, people have concerns over their safety, and there is much debate about the pros and cons of using GMOs.

Scientists create GMO foods by introducing genetic material, or DNA, from a different organism through genetic engineering.

Most of the currently available GMO foods are plants, such as fruit and vegetables.

In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulates all foods from genetically engineered plants. They must meet the same safety requirements as non-GMO foods.

GMO foods are likely to become a crucial tool in feeding the world's growing population, especially in areas with harsh climates. However, there have been concerns about possible risks.

In this article, we discuss the advantages and disadvantages of GMO crops, including their potential effects on human health and the environment.

Manufacturers use genetic modification to give foods desirable traits.

Potential advantages of GMO crops :

increased attractiveness to consumers, for example, apples and potatoes that are less likely to bruise or turn brown

enhanced flavor

longer shelf life and therefore less waste

greater resistance to viruses and other diseases, which could lead to less waste and increased food security

greater tolerance to herbicides, making it easier for farmers to control weeds

increased nutritional value, as in golden rice, which can boost the health of people with limited access to food

greater resistance to insects, allowing farmers to pesticide use

ability to thrive in a harsh climate, such as drought or heat

ability to grow in salty soil

Growing plants that are more resistant to diseases spread by insects or viruses will likely result in higher yields for farmers and a more attractive product.

All these factors contribute to lower costs for the consumer and can ensure that more people have access to quality food.

Genetically engineering foods is a relatively new practice, which means the long-term effects on safety are not yet clear.

Many concerns about the disadvantages relate to human health. Scientists have not yet shown that GMO foods are harmful to health, but research is ongoing.

Allergic reactions

There is a small risk that GMO foods can trigger an allergic reaction, but this will only happen if the genetic change triggers the production of an allergen.

For instance, if scientists combine a gene from a Brazil nut with a soybean, there is a slight chance that a person with a nut allergy could have an allergic reaction to products made with the soybean.

The World Health Organization (WHO) discourages genetic engineers from using DNA from allergens unless they can prove that the gene itself does not cause the problem.

Scientists assess the likelihood of GMO foods causing an allergic reaction in humans before a product reaches the market, and can prevent its launch if necessary.

Cancer

There have been concerns that eating GMO foods can contribute to the development of cancer by raising levels of potentially carcinogenic substances in the body.

The American Cancer Society states there is no evidence that currently available GMO foods either increase or reduce the risk of cancer.

While cancer rates have changed over time in the U.S., there is no evidence that these changes coincide with the introduction of GMO foods. If there is a link, it could take several more years before a trend emerges.

Antibacterial resistance

Some GMOs contain changes that make them resistant to certain antibiotics. In theory, the genes from these plants could enter humans or animals when they eat them. As a result, the person or animal could also develop antibiotic resistance.

The likelihood of this happening is very small, but the and other health authorities have guidelines in place to prevent it.

Changes in human DNA

In 2009, some food scientists noted that food DNA can survive as far as the gut, and there have been concerns that this could affect the immune system.

Some people have also raised fears that eating GMO food could lead to genetic changes in humans. However, most of the DNA in food - whether GMO or not - either is destroyed by cooking or breaks down before it reaches the large intestine.

Small fragments of DNA from food can and do enter the bloodstream and body organs, but there is no evidence that they have any impact on genetic makeup or human health.

Toxicity for body organs

In 2009, some researchers suggested that GMO foods might impact the liver, kidney, pancreas, and reproductive system. They did not have evidence to confirm this and called for further studies.

The use of GMO crops may even reduce the risk of toxicity from some substances, as farmers can avoid using pesticides that have been harmful in the past.

Climate change and severe weather events are disrupting food production and supply. GMO foods could help maintain supplies in the face of changing environmental conditions and a growing population.

Pros

Genetically modifying some foods could make them:

easier to store and transport

less prone to waste due to disease and aging

more likely to grow in areas with poor quality soil

higher in nutrients

Also, a suggests GMO foods could help slow climate change by reducing greenhouse gases.

Cons

Environmental concerns :

the risk of outcrossing, where genes from GMO foods pass into wild plants and other crops

a negative impact on insects and other species

reduction in other plant types, leading to a loss of biodiversity

The risks will vary depending on local conditions.

In the U.S., the does not require special labeling for GMO foods. This is because they must meet the same safety standards as other foods, and there should be no need for additional regulation.

However, a GMO food needs a special label if it is "materially different" from its conventional counterpart. For example:

a GMO canola oil with more lauric acid than traditional canola oil will be labeled "laurate canola oil"

a GMO soybean oil with more oleic acid than non-GMO soybean oil must be labeled "high oleic soybean oil"

a GMO soybean oil with a high level of stearidonic acid, which does not naturally occur in the oil, must be labeled "stearidonate soybean oil"

However, the 2018 National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standard states that all foods containing genetically engineered ingredients must now carry the label "derived from bioengineering" or "bioengineered." Specific symbols show whether a food has been bioengineered.

Foods that are bioengineered and products that contain bioengineered foods must carry a specific label. If a product does not have this kind of label, it does not contain bioengineered ingredients.

Foods that are likely to be GMO :

sugar beet, as 99.9% of sugar beet in the U.S. is GMO

canola products, as 95% of them are GMO in the U.S.

soybean products, since 94% of soybean in the U.S. is GMO

corn, as 92% of corn planted in the U.S. is GMO

cottonseed oil, since 94% of cotton is GMO

Many GMO crops also become ingredients in other foods, for example:

cornstarch in soups and sauces

corn syrup used as a sweetener

corn, canola, and soybean oils in mayonnaise, dressings, and bread

sugar derived from sugar beets

Genetic modification is when scientists insert new DNA into the gene pool of an existing plant.

For this to happen, the following needs to take place:

1. Scientists transfer new DNA into plant cells.

2. They grow the cells in tissue culture, and a plant develops.

3. The new plant produces seeds.

4. A person grows plants from the new seeds.

5. The new plants will have genetic features that make them, for example, more nutritious or resistant to pests, disease, or climate factors.

For thousands of years, people have used processes such as selective breeding or crossbreeding to produce more viable crops. However, changes took a long time to achieve, and it was hard to make specific changes.

In recent years, developments in genetic engineering have allowed scientists to make specific changes more quickly. The crops produced in this way are called GMO crops. The first GMO food to appear on the market was a tomato, in .

The following are the most common GMO crops produced and sold in the U.S.:

Derivatives of these foods, such as cornstarch and sugar, also feature in other manufactured foods. It is worth noting that of all sugar beet harvested in the U.S. is GMO, as well as over 90% of all canola, corn, soybean, and cotton.

Below, we answer some questions people often ask about GMO foods.

What common foods are GMO?

The likelihood that any food derived from corn, cottonseed, soybean, canola, or sugar beet will be GMO food in the U.S. is or higher.

Which GMO foods to avoid?

There is no specific GMO food to avoid. GMO foods undergo strict testing before they can be commercialized. Moreover, this could make them safer than other foods, which do not undergo testing.

Is GMO food safe?

Currently, there is no evidence that GMO foods cause cancer, allergies, or any other health conditions. However, research is ongoing.

What are the risks of GMO foods?

Health authorities vet all GMO and other foods for safety before manufacturers can sell them, and research is ongoing.

So far, scientists have found no evidence that commercially available GMO foods are dangerous for health. Environmental concerns the risk of altered genes entering wild species.

Genetic modification can make plants resistant to disease and tolerant of herbicides, and therefore, the process can increase the amount of food that farmers can grow. This in turn can reduce food prices and contribute to food security.

GMO crops are relatively new, and researchers are still investigating their long-term safety and health effects, but no evidence has yet emerged that currently available GMO foods are harmful to human health.

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Pros and cons of GMO foods: Health and environment

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Engineers design plants using genetically modified organisms (GMOs) to be tougher or more nutritious or to taste better. However, people have concerns over their safety, and there is much debate about the pros and cons of using GMOs. Scientists create GMO foods by introducing genetic material, or DNA, from a different organism through genetic engineering.

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Concepts Of The Underdevelopment And Dependencies Politics Essay

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Concepts Of The Underdevelopment And Dependencies Politics Essay

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Be warned, it's a tad excessive for Leaving Cert level, but def some relevant bits and possible quotes

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Basic explanation of problems with US tied aid- good for revision

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Split by region + time period

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World101 from the Council on Foreign Relations

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Where and why the United States gives foreign aid has changed over time.

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Chomsky discusses US exploitation of Latin America, with focus on Colombia

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Chomsky discusses US exploitation of Latin America, with focus on Colombia

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Noam Chomsky

In Juan Pablo Ordoñez, No Human Being Is Disposable, Columbia Human Rights Committee, Washington DC, 1995

Two facts about Colombia are crucial to bear in mind. The first is that Colombia has a horrendous human rights record, the worst in the hemisphere - not an easy prize to win. Political killings are variously estimated at 5 to 10 a day, mostly by the state security forces or their paramilitary associates. The second fact is that Colombia receives about half of U.S. military aid for the hemisphere, increasing under President Clinton, who turned to emergency overdrawing facilities when the Pentagon budget did not allow the increase.

State terror in Colombia has been appalling through the '80s, becoming even worse under the most recent ex-president, Cesar Gaviria. He has been a special favorite of the United States, so admired that the Clinton Administration rammed him through as Secretary General of the OAS, in a power play that was much resented in the hemisphere. Washington praised him particularly for his steps towards "building democratic institutions in a country where it was sometimes dangerous to do so."

That it is dangerous to enter the public arena in Colombia is not in doubt. Thousands of members of the one real opposition party - the two that share political power have been aptly designated by a former President as "two horses [with] the same owner" - could easily testify to the dangers, had they not been murdered, including presidential candidates, mayors, and many activists. President Gaviria helped substantially to maintain and expand these dangers.

No patterns are broken by the fact that the hemisphere's leading human rights violator is the prime recipient of military aid and other support, or that the fact passes without notice. That's par for the course. An important study of the topic was published in 1981 by the leading academic specialist on human rights in Latin America, Lars Schoultz. He investigated U.S. foreign aid and torture in Latin America, and found that they correlated closely. As he put it, U.S. aid "has tended to flow disproportionately to Latin American governments which torture their citizens, . . . to the hemisphere's relatively egregious violators of fundamental human rights." This continued right through the Carter years, including military aid uncorrelated with need.

These facts might lead a superficial observer to conclude that the U.S. government just likes torture. But causal connection can't be deduced from a correlation; we have to look further. This was done in a broader study carried out at the same time by an economist at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Edward Herman, published in a book we co-authored in 1979. Herman studied the relation between torture and foreign aid worldwide, finding that the same correlation held: states that engage in torture are more likely to receive U.S. aid. But Herman also did a second study which offers a plausible explanation for the correlation. He compared U.S. aid with the climate for business operations, finding that the two were closely correlated. That makes sense. Foreign aid, after all, is largely a device whereby the U.S. taxpayer subsidizes U.S. corporations via some other country, which may incidentally gain from the process. Resorting to this device increasingly as opportunities for profit improve is completely natural, given the sources of policy-making.

Why then should there be a correlation between U.S. aid and torture? That becomes clear when we ask how the climate for business operations is improved. The answer is straightforward and well known: by torturing union leaders and human rights activists, murdering priests who are trying to organize peasants, and so on. Putting all this together, we find a derivative correlation between U.S. aid and torture. The proper conclusion then, is not that U.S. leaders enjoy torture; rather, it is a matter of indifference. What they care about is profits for U.S. investors, which just happen to be correlated with torture. Hence torture is rewarded, indirectly. The phenomenon is global, and understandable.

The case of Colombia sharpens the conclusion. A fine way to maintain a favorable investment climate is to create a society with formal democracy, but equipped with devices to ensure that it doesn't function to impede what really matters: enriching the wealthy. Under those conditions aid can flow freely and profits are not reduced by such interferences with the market as unions and human rights. The Latin American Bureau in Britain once described Colombia as a "democracy without people," which is pretty much accurate. Such a "democra-tatorship," to borrow the term coined by Eduardo Galeano for Colombia, will naturally resort to torture, killing, "social cleansing," and other such procedures, so as to maintain an economic system in which half the children are hungry while the few live in luxury, along with foreign investors. That is what security forces are for. And it is the prime reason for military aid from the great power that has "assumed, out of self-interest, responsibility for the welfare of the world capitalist system," in the words of diplomatic historian Gerald Haines, senior historian of the CIA, discussing the U.S. takeover of Brazil in 1945.

The application of the general principles of world order to Colombia was explained lucidly by the president of the Colombian Permanent Committee on Human Rights, Alfredo Vasquez Carrizosa. He observed that Colombia has been progressing towards democracy not only since President Gaviria took over but since 1886, when its Constitution granted a wide range of rights, also instituting a state of siege that has persisted with little change so that "behind the facade of a constitutional regime we have a militarized society," with immense suffering and injustice.

It's not that Colombia is an impoverished society. It has enormous material resources, and might have undergone significant industrialization if the ruling business classes had not been so committed to free market policies. One of the small secrets about economic development, well known to economic historians, is that such policies impede development. Part of the reason why today's First and Third Worlds have diverged so radically since the 18th century is that the First World followed policies of protectionism and other state intervention, the U.S. often leading the way, while the Third World was subjected to market discipline, which was rammed down their throats. What possibilities there might have been for an industrial revolution in Colombia were aborted by its adherence to the rules taught by the IMF, the World Bank, and much of the academic profession.

The result is that Colombia is a rich country, but a very poor one for most of the population. Land is a big problem, not because it is in short supply, but because it's owned by a tiny number of people. Land reform legislation has been on the books since 1961, but it isn't implemented. The reason is that the country is run by the landowners and the army, which works for them and which is paid for by U.S. taxpayers. The current system was pretty well established by the Kennedy Administration, which in 1962 made a decision of immense significance for the hemisphere it controlled. It changed the mission of the Latin American military from hemispheric defense, a residue of World War II, to "internal security" - a code word that means: war against the population. The shift was implemented in planning, training, and material. It set off a plague of repression throughout the hemisphere beyond anything in its very bloody history. Some years later, the official in charge of counterinsurgency for the Kennedy and the early Johnson Administrations, Charles Maechling, described what happened clearly enough: the 1962 decision led to a change from toleration "of the rapacity and cruelty of the Latin American military" to "direct complicity" in "the methods of Heinrich Himmler's extermination squads."

The latter reference is appropriate. In his book Instruments of Statecraft, Michael McClintock describes how after World War II, Nazi specialists in counterinsurgency were brought to the United States to help develop the postwar manuals for training in counterinsurgency, modeled on the methods used by the Nazis to suppress the resistance. Maechling's reference to the neo-Nazi states, established throughout the hemisphere with the support of the Kennedy Administration and its successors, is more than metaphor.

The Kennedy intellectuals grasped the issues in their own ways. In internal communications in 1965, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara pointed out to National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy that U.S. military training had provided Latin American officers with "the understanding of, and orientation toward, U.S. objectives." That is important, he explained, because "in the Latin American cultural environment" it is recognized that the military must be prepared "to remove government leaders from office, whenever, in the judgment of the military, the conduct of these leaders is injurious to the welfare of the nation." He didn't say which nation he had in mind, but since they have the proper "understanding of and orientation toward U.S. objectives," I guess it really doesn't matter.

McNamara was doubtless thinking of the event described by Kennedy's Ambassador Lincoln Gordon as "the single most decisive victory of freedom in the mid-twentieth century," "a great victory for the free world" which should "create a greatly improved climate for private investment." Gordon was referring to the military coup in Brazil which overthrew the parliamentary regime and instituted the first of the neo-Nazi national security states of Latin America, with a domino effect that led to similar victories for "freedom" over much of the hemisphere.

Displaying their understanding of and orientation toward U.S. objectives, the Brazilian generals instituted an impressive wave of torture, murder, and other state terror. By these means, they created an "economic miracle." Brazil became "the Latin American darling of the business community," the business press exulted. Foreign investors did very nicely, as did a small sector of Brazilian society, some living in extraordinary luxury while much of the population was sinking to the conditions of Central Africa. That's virtually the definition of the technical term "economic miracle," as you discover if you look around the world, including Mexico, lauded as "an economic miracle" until December 19, 1994, when the bubble burst and the U.S. taxpayer was called on, as usual, to protect the rich from market discipline.

The effects of the new policy guidelines extended to Colombia. In the 1960s, Vasquez Carrizosa continues, violence was "exacerbated by external factors" as the Kennedy Administration "took great pains to transform [Latin American] regular armies into counterinsurgency brigades, accepting the new strategy of the death squads," and thus "ushered in what is known in Latin America as the National Security Doctrine, . . . not defense against an external enemy, but a way to make the military establishment the masters of the game . . . [with] the right to combat the internal enemy, as set forth in the Brazilian doctrine, the Argentine doctrine, the Uruguayan doctrine, and the Colombian doctrine: it is the right to fight and to exterminate social workers, trade unionists, men and women who are not supportive of the establishment, and who are assumed to be communist extremists." The military is able to carry out these tasks once they have gained a proper "understanding of and orientation towards" U.S. objectives, thanks to the training paid for by U.S. tax dollars along with the arms to do the job.

The Colombian Minister of Defense explained that the official apparatus of terror is designed for "total war in the political, economic, and social arenas." Officially the targets are guerrilla organizations. But as a high military official explained in 1987, these are of minor importance: "the real danger" is "what the insurgents have called the political and psychological war," the war "to control the popular elements" and "to manipulate the masses." The "subversives" hope to influence unions, universities, media, and so on. Therefore, "every individual who in one or another manner supports the goals of the enemy must be considered a traitor and treated in that manner." The last is a quote from a 1963 military manual provided under the guidance of the Kennedy instructors and the Nazi advisors.

As I write this, the current edition of The New York Times [13 march 1995] provides a rare window on the official doctrine, referring to Argentina in the late 1970s. It reports the remorse of a naval officer over his participation in torture, drugging, and throwing people out of airplanes - the "Argentine doctrine" that proceeded with U.S. support, which is placed in the shadow in today's news item.

Perhaps in 20 years we'll learn something about the "Colombian Doctrine" that is being implemented today. We can learn something right now if we like, even from official sources, which recently provided a unique window into how they operate: the report of a commission set up by the Colombian Government to investigate the Trujillo massacre of March 1990. It gives a graphic account of the "Colombian Doctrine," which is to say, U.S. doctrine. This 186-page report documents one atrocity, which by miraculous accident was investigated. The commission included members of the Colombian government, army, and police. It was established under pressure from the OAS (Organization of American States) and others. Its account is very much like what everyone can read in shocking detail in the regular reports of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch/Americas, and other inquiries that are constantly appearing but almost never reported.

After entering the region where the village is located, the Armed Forces and National Police compelled someone to state under torture that he had been associated with the guerrillas and to provide names. Then, the report says, "the horror began." People were "dragged out of their homes, tied up and taken to the luxurious hacienda" of a "well-known drug trafficker" and "shut into a fertilizer shed." Just after 7AM, the officer in charge, Major Urueña, arrived with an associate. "First, they had breakfast. Then, the Major and several members of the armed group went into the shed and demanded each person's identification papers and belongings." The people were then taken blindfolded, one by one, for interrogation, beginning with a 59-year-old woman. "A coffee sack was tied over the head of each victim and he was thrown onto the ground. Then Major Urueña took a water hose, turned it full force on the face of each victim - the mouth and nose - and began to interrogate them. When he finished, the victims were piled one on top of the other, and someone called for the blowtorch and the chain saw. Each victim was decapitated, cut into pieces with the chain saw and left to bleed. The heads and torsos were put into different sacks, and, later that night, loaded into a blue 1956 Ford truck, driven down to the Cauca river, and dumped into the water."

A month later, the headless body of Trujillo's parish priest was "fished out of the river," the 27th victim. By then, one of the participants, a civilian auxiliary to Major Urueña, had fled and reported what had happened to the Colombian judicial authorities. He was later "disappeared," and has not been heard from since. The authorities dismissed his charges, acquitting everyone implicated. The atrocities continued.

The story was reported by the Jesuit-based human rights group Justice and Peace (Justicia y Paz). Its director, Father Javier Giraldo, was able to interest the Human Rights Commission of the OAS, leading finally to this report. It concludes that the Colombian Army and police officers were directly responsible for the massacre and that the government and justice system were to blame for covering it up, specifically implicating Major Urueña. The Commission recommended criminal investigations, but expressed its "pessimism" that the pattern of impunity can be breached, and records the strong opposition of the Colombian government members to the "exploration" of international legal mechanisms, consistent with the norms of the "democra-tatorship" that is successfully "building democratic institutions in a country where it was sometimes dangerous to do so."

Justice and Peace reports over 350 other massacres since Trujillo, none of them investigated. This one exception, they point out, "gives insight into the moral fiber of former Colombian President Cesar Gaviria - now Secretary General of the O.A.S, who for four years turned a deaf ear" to requests for investigation of the massacre carried out during his term in office. And also into "the values and principles" of the army - but more important for us in the U.S., the values and principles of those who train and arm and instruct the army, along with others that follow similar doctrines.

To his credit, the new President, Ernesto Samper, on receiving the report accepted Colombian government responsibility - a historic first, I think. Urueña, who had been rewarded by promotion to Colonel, was removed from active service; that's his punishment. The army "rallied around the Colonel," Justice and Peace reports, and its commander dismissed the Commission's findings as "a farce." The report was presented to the OAS on February 7th with an agreement that in six months, Colombia must respond. The Justice and Peace report ends by saying: "The country is waiting." How long it waits depends in large measure on what we do in the United States.

That's the one case that the government officially concedes. Years after the events, the governments of Brazil and Argentina are conceding some of what happened after the historic 1962 change - not Chile, where the army is still granted impunity and substantial control. It's good to learn how U.S. tax money is spent in the "Latin American cultural environment." Possibly some day there'll be questions raised here about the "North American cultural environment," but we'll wait a long time for that unless we do something about it, while plenty of people continue to suffer.

Atrocities in the region reached their peak during the Reagan years. That's why the studies I mentioned about torture and aid have not been duplicated since 1980. No one bothers to prove that 2 and 2 is 4. And it's still going on, the worst human rights violator in the hemisphere being rewarded by the largest grant of U.S. military aid.

The 1980s saw "the consolidation of state terror in Colombia," a European- Latin American inquiry into State Terror concludes. Training of Colombian officers increased along with terror. In the 1980s Colombia benefited from the largest U.S. training program, with three times as many officers trained as El Salvador - which wasn't too pretty either. They have also had Israeli, German, and British instructors, who train not only the army but also assassins and paramilitary forces linked to the drug cartels. Colombian intelligence (DAS) reports further that "North American instructors" - that means U.S. instructors - have been "detected" at these training camps. This 1988 report has yet to be published here in the mainstream, as far as I know, and if it's been followed up, I haven't heard about it.

I won't say any more about the hideous record of state terror, easily accessible to anyone interested. The pretext for U.S. support for these atrocities is the drug war, which became a national obsession when it was launched by George Bush in September 1989; re-launched, one should say, since this is a regular event. A month before, the largest shipment of arms ever authorized under the emergency provisions of the Foreign Assistance Act was sent to the Colombian army, setting the stage, William Hartung reports, "for sending more U.S. weaponry to Colombia than it had received in the entire decade of the 1980s," which was plenty. They were sent to the army - helicopters, planes, and so on, useless for the drug war, as was pointed out at the time. About 90-95% of counter-narcotic operations are conducted by the National Police, but not with bombers and helicopters. These have other uses. Human rights groups soon reported bombings of villages, massacres, and other atrocities. The effects of the arms shipments might well have been to strengthen the links between the security forces and narcotraffickers, and the land owning classes associated with them.

Colombia gets arms from other countries too, though in part that is a cover for U.S. arms shipments. Israel, in particular, is one of the funnels through which the United States sends arms to favored clients. Recall that the U.S. alone provides half of all its military aid in Latin America to Colombia. When we add the indirect aid it provides through its clients, and the contributions of other members of Washington's international terror network (including Britain, Germany, Taiwan, Israel, and so on), the aid to Colombia is quite substantial. There's a lot of talk right now about the Omnibus Anti-Terrorism Bill, with an odd omission: the center of international terrorism, where the bill is being debated.

Apart from its role in maintaining the "democra-tatorship" and favorable investment climate, sale of arms to Colombia serves other needs. One of the leading monitors of international arms sales, William Hartung, points out in a recent book that the addiction to arms sales to the Third World is considerably more serious than drug addiction. The U.S. now has close to three-quarters of this market, making the term "addiction" more than appropriate. This is one of the ways to keep the Pentagon at approximately Cold War levels. True, the "Soviet threat" has substantially reduced, but without lessening the threat to our security, which the government now sees in "the technological sophistication of Third-World powers." For that threat to justify a big Pentagon budget, we have to make sure to send advanced armaments to the Third World. Otherwise, where will they obtain the technological sophistication that we have to find ways to protect ourselves from?

This is all explicit and frank in military journals and business propaganda. Thus you can read in Jane's Defense Weekly, the major international military journal, that U.S. tax dollars are now going to pay Lockheed-Martin to upgrade F-16s for sale to Third World countries with loans from the Export-Import Bank, a further gift from U.S. taxpayers. And plainly taxpayers now have to fund the corporation to produce F-22 advanced fighters to defend us from the upgraded F-16s that we're sending to potential enemies. The corporate headquarters happens to be in Cobb County Georgia, represented in Congress by a gentleman named Newt Gingrich, who has been able to bring home more federal subsidies than any suburban county in the country outside of Arlington Virginia (part of the federal government) and the Florida home of the Kennedy Space Center (another part).

The arms sale addiction is only a small piece of a much larger one, on which the economy heavily depends. Military spending has generally long served as a cover for distributing public funds to advanced industry, military or not. Sale of arms to Colombia helps marginally here too - another factor that contributes to the correlation between military aid and torture.

Let's turn finally to the drug war, the pretext for all of this. Colombia became a major producer of cocaine in the late 1970s. Why? In fact, why do peasants in Latin America even bother to produce coca, apart from their own use, as they've done forever? The reasons are rooted in the social and economic policies imposed on the Third World. The rules dictate that they have to stop producing for their own needs, and turn export. And unlike the rich Western countries, they have to open their markets, specifically, to subsidized U.S. agricultural exports, which undermine domestic production. The local farmers are to become "rational producers" in accord with the precepts of modern economics, producing crops for export. And being rational, as they are, they turn to the crops that make the most money. Accordingly, coca production has just shot out of sight, helping to undergird "economic miracles." Jeffrey Sachs of Harvard, who has more recently been plying his trade in Poland and Russia, won his fame by setting things in order in Bolivia in 1985. Bolivia was in real trouble, but he instructed them in the proper free-market theory, and pretty soon all was fine, with good macro-economic statistics, and so on. There were also some side effects. One was that the "miracle" was relying very heavily on coca exports. Much the same is true in Peru.

Similar reasons lie behind Colombia's turn towards narcotrafficking. There were others as well. In 1988, the U.S. compelled coffee producers to break an agreement that had kept prices at some reasonable level. The price of coffee, Colombia's main export crop, fell 40%. When coffee prices collapse and half the children are already starving, people are likely to turn to where there are opportunities, thanks to the North American drug market. One major impetus for the huge increase in the flow of drugs is the free-market policies imposed on the Third World.

A second reason, somewhat narrower, has to do with U.S. drug policies. Their design has driven people from relatively harmless marijuana to hard drugs like cocaine, in ever more lethal form. Colombia shifted from producing marijuana to far more profitable and easily transportable cocaine.

Another question that arises about the drug traffic has to do with its scale. A recent study by the OECD - the organization of the rich countries - estimates profits from the international drug traffic at almost half a trillion dollars a year, of which over half circulates through the U.S. financial system. That suggests a way to deal with the drug problem: look at the place that is handling more than half the profits, U.S. financial institutions. What about Colombia? According to the OECD report, it receives about six billion dollars, which is 2 to 3% of what remains in the United States. "The big business is therefore in that country," the United States. I'm quoting from a review of the study by a member of the Andean Commission of Jurists and the Latin American Association of Human Rights, published by the leading newspaper in Mexico, Excelsior, which published the report of the OECD study that tells us where the drug business is really going on.

What about the banks that are handling over 56% of the immense profits generated by narcotrafficking, according to the OECD? That's presumably illegal. In 1979 the government launched Operation Greenback, targeting banks that were handling drug money, which is apparently not too difficult to monitor. Huge sums of money were suddenly coming into Miami banks just as the cocaine racket was picking up steam, so the Justice Department went into action. But not for long. The operation was called off in 1982 by the drug czar of the Reagan Administration, vice-President George Bush. We therefore lack any further information about the estimated $260 billion a year of drug money that flows through the U.S. financial system.

Other places are easier to investigate, like Panama. Recall that right after the drug war was announced again with huge fanfare by then-President Bush, the U.S. invaded Panama to protect us from the evil Hispanic narcotraffickers led by the arch-fiend Noriega. The invasion placed back in power the European elite of bankers and narcotraffickers. The new Attorney General and Treasury Minister, for example, had been directors of the First Inter-Americas Bank, which had been closed by Noriega because it was implicated in drug trafficking. President Endara, installed by the U.S. Army, along with his law firm, were also involved in the racket, it was reported. Since the invasion, Panama has grown as a narcotrafficking center, with perhaps twice as many narcotics flowing through as before.

One part of the drug racket is banking; another is the chemical industry. In 1989, in the six months preceding the announcement of the drug war the Colombian police found 1.5 million gallons of chemicals used for cocaine production, many of them with U.S. corporate logos on them. The CIA had reported that U.S. exports of such chemicals to Latin America far exceed any legal uses, while the Congressional Research Service concluded that more than 90% of the chemicals used for drug production come from the United States. So that suggests another way to deal with the narcotrafficking problem, if the war against drugs is a war against drugs, not something else.

Any discussion of substance abuse is seriously distorted if it avoids the leading killer, tobacco. The former head of the U.S. Office of Drug Abuse Policy, Dr. Peter Bourne, pointed out that the number of Colombians who die every year from substances produced in the United States far exceeds the number of North Americans who die from cocaine. The same is true here. Furthermore, unlike tobacco, cocaine is not subsidized by the U.S. government, except for the support we provide to the military who are involved in the racket, and isn't publicly advertised. There's no cocaine counterpart to the Marlboro Man. And Colombia does not strong-arm the U.S. into permitting aggressive advertising and distribution of cocaine, imitating Washington's behavior in Asia in support of its favored lethal substance. That is a major story in itself, which adds needed perspective to the narcotrafficking discussion, but I won't go into it here.

What about President Gaviria, Washington's good friend? Under his rule, the human rights record got even worse, but he did destroy one of the two big cartels, the Medellin cartel - handing its business over to its main competitor, the Cali cartel. The same Justice and Peace group published a report on this recently. According to their account, the two cartels were different in nature. The Medellin Cartel had lower class origins. Pablo Escobar, who ran it, was from the slums, and many of those involved were peasants or lower middle class, or workers who'd entered the rackets. And apparently the Medellin Cartel, though very brutal, had a populist character, like some city bosses and mafia elements. They had gained popular support by building sports fields, helping poor people in need, and so on. The Cali cartel, in contrast, is strictly business, like the banks and chemical corporations. With the elimination of its Medellin rival, it now controls most of the drug trade in Colombia, according to the report.

The U.S. has tried to help now and then. In the 1980s, when the cocaine traffic was building up, the government of Colombia approached the United States for assistance in building a radar station to detect low-flying planes coming in from the main coca producing regions. The Reagan Administration was very enthusiastic about this idea, and did in fact construct a radar station for Colombia. The station was built on San Andres Island, which is as far as you can get on Colombian territory from the routes of the drug planes, but is off the coast of Nicaragua and therefore could be used to assist in Washington's terrorist war against Nicaragua.

In the same years, Costa Rica approached Washington with a similar request, and again help was offered. Costa Rica, however, turned to British experts for advice and analysis, and was informed that the station that the U.S. was planning to build would serve no drug purpose, but would be useful for aerial surveillance of Nicaragua. It could therefore help guide the U.S.-trained terrorists to attack "soft targets" like health clinics and agricultural cooperatives. Costa Rica didn't go along with the proposal, and this story too fell through the cracks.

The drug war serves several purposes. In part, it is a cover for counterinsurgency and sustaining the "democra-tatorship." It also makes a small contribution to the arms production addiction. And it provides valuable mechanisms for locking up the superfluous population at home, an important matter as a major effort is underway to turn the United States itself into a society with striking Third World characteristics. Here, we don't (yet) carry out social cleansing by the security forces, so other means are needed for dealing with people lacking human rights because they do not contribute to profit-making. Locking them up makes sense, also providing a Keynesian stimulus to the economy. For that, the drug war is ideal, and it is used substantially for that purpose.

A large part of the jail population is there for victimless crimes, which are carefully crafted. Take cocaine. The drug of choice in the ghettos is crack, and penalties for possession are very harsh; the drug of choice in the rich white suburbs is powder, with much lower penalties - typical class-based legislation.

All of this explains a good part of what the drug war is about, and also why the U.S. prison rate is zooming beyond any developed country, and expected to continue to rise.

The drug war is also useful for frightening the population. When social policies are designed to harm the large majority, the intended victims have to be kept from seeing what's happening to them. There are a few classic methods. One is to get them to fear one another. The drug war probably has that effect. It's hard to test the impact on the general population, but it is easier to see how it affects articulate intellectuals. For an example, a recent issue of the Harvard Magazine, the journal that goes to alumni, has a cover story on someone who has developed new leadership techniques that are considered quite sensational. They're teaching them in business schools, and so on. He gives examples of how these techniques work, and how they can improve leadership. The main example he gives is George Bush's announcement of the drug war. Bush made a mistake, he says, not following these new methods. He describes how Bush came into office at a time when great fear and concern about drugs was spreading all over the country, so he reacted by declaring the war on drugs and going after Noriega to try to stop narcotrafficking. But it didn't work, because those are not the right leadership techniques.

The only problem with this analysis of improper and proper leadership is that concern about drugs was very low when Bush entered office, and remained so until the drug war was announced. There was plenty of concern about the budget, jobs, and other matters, but drugs were very low on the list. When Bush announced the drug war and the media went into operation with a really massive propaganda offensive, the polls showed a dramatic change. Drugs became a major concern as the result of highly effective propaganda, following the leader. At least among intellectuals, the right message may well have been established, one that's the opposite of the facts. Not an untypical feature of the intellectual culture, I should say.

One last comment: Colombia's tragedy, and that is what it is, has indigenous roots. For us in the U.S., the external causes are the ones of greatest importance, because these we can influence. But the sources are internal as well. This century opened with a civil war in Colombia in which perhaps a hundred thousand people were killed. A populist leader was murdered in 1948, and shortly after, power fell into the hands of the first formal fascist to take power after the Second World War, a supporter of Franco, who received U.S. backing. These events were followed by a huge upsurge of violence in which hundreds of thousands of people were killed. The U.S. role really begins in a major way with the Kennedy Administration as part of its general plans for Latin America, and has been highly significant since.

There also are complex links to our own society, which merit thought as well. The basic point was made more clearly and effectively than I can express it in a letter I received recently from a friend who is a leading Colombian human rights activist, Cecilia Zarate-Laun. I'll just quote from her letter, hoping that she won't mind; this wasn't prepared for publication, just a casual letter.

She is discussing a meeting of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, one of the few groups in the world that actually does something for poor and suffering people. It has an American branch, which just came out with a document called "The Women's Peace and Justice Treaty of the Americas" - an excellent statement, in my opinion, well worth reading and implementing. I don't expect to see a front-page article about it soon, but you can obtain it, and I'd advise doing so. She writes: "I firmly believe that everything is interrelated, since the real culprit is the economic system, and it is very important that the American people start connecting issues abroad with their own reality, starting with its foreign policy, since things do not happen in a vacuum. I will use an example to make my point: the drug issue. The children of poor women, who in Colombia have no opportunities because the society has abandoned them, and are forced to be hitmen or to work in the cocaine laboratories to make cocaine, or that are recruited to be members of a death squad team - they are in the same situation as the children of poor women in the United States who are forced to sell cocaine on the corners of the streets, or to be lookouts for the salesmen, and so on, and for the same reasons. The only difference is that the ones speak Spanish and the others speak English. The tragedy is the same."

I think she's right, and the tragedy is being heightened in both countries by deliberate and self-conscious social policy. Meanwhile we in the United States watch, and so far do nothing. If that is our choice, it's not hard to imagine the prospects.

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Two facts about Colombia are crucial to bear in mind. The first is that Colombia has a horrendous human rights record, the worst in the hemisphere - not an easy prize to win. Political killings are variously estimated at 5 to 10 a day, mostly by the state security forces or their paramilitary associates.

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Interview with Chomsky on general US Foreign Policy

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Dependency Theory and Its Relevance Today: International Institutions in Telecommunications and Structural Power

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Dependency Theory and Its Relevance Today: International Institutions in Telecommunications and Structural Power

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Some specific modern examples of neocolonialism in action

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This will be of interest as we examine pillars of sustainable development in the Irish context

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The European Commission has proposed changes to the EU's onerous debt rules that would allow member states to negotiate their own debt reduction path, using the carrot of more flexibility if governments introduce reforms and investment.

The Irish Government is understood to be supportive of the measures.

The new measures will form part of the eagerly awaited overhaul of the EU's fiscal and debt rules.

Today's communication is seen as an acknowledgement that the austerity and debt rules associated with the financial and euro crises of ten years ago were no longer fit for purpose.

At the same time, average debt-to-GDP ratios have increased due to wholesale borrowing during the pandemic, meaning it will be almost impossible for member states to reduce their debt burdens according to the strictures of the existing rulebook.

The Commission proposal kicks off a process to reform the so-called Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), which aims to manage member states' debt and deficit situations.

Brussels wants a more tailored response to financial crises, as opposed to the one-size-fits-all approach which characterised the management of the fiscal shocks of 2009-2013.

The rules have been largely suspended in the past two years to allow EU countries to cope with the dramatic effect of the Covid pandemic and Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

There is an awareness that the rules must be reapplied, but they need reformed in the meantime.

National capitals have complained that the existing rules have been highly technical and difficult to follow, and that the Commission has not always enforced them.

The overhaul of the SGP comes following a consultation period involving national capitals, EU institutions, citizens groups and academics.

Under current rules, euro zone countries must cut debt each year by one twentieth of the excess above 60% of GDP, a target seen as near impossible for highly indebted countries like Italy and Greece.

Today's proposals would mean each country agreeing its own four-year debt reduction path with Brussels, while getting sign off from other EU finance ministers as the process unfolds.

The four years could be extended to seven, if the extra time was justified by investment and reforms.

Officials say that to balance the carrot of a more flexible debt reduction path, there would be the stick of limits to net, or primary, expenditure, meaning spending before interest on debt is taken into account.

The more indebted a country is, the tougher the primary expenditure limit would be.

Governments will still have to keep budget deficits below 3% of GDP as now, and there would still be disciplinary steps if they exceed that ceiling, with fines for breaches that are smaller, but more easily applied.

Officials say the existing rules contain little in terms of incentives for reform and investment and lack overall ownership by member states. They also have suffered from poor enforcement.

Today's communication, which is not yet a legislative proposal, would have "more ownership and is more realistic," one official said.

It would find "the right balance between debt sustainability and sustainable growth as these are two sides of the same coin."

The process to reform the SGP is likely to run into 2024, with a robust battle expected between the so-called northern "frugals" - namely the Netherlands, Germany, Austria and Sweden - and the southern countries led by Italy and France.

Frugal countries have long complained that the rules were not enforced by the Commission in that fines were not imposed when countries like France or Spain breached them.

Before the pandemic, average EU debt-to-GDP was around 75%. Today it stands closer to 90%, with six member states having a ratio of over 100%.

Ireland's debt to GDP level stands at below 60%.

However, because of the impact of the large multinational sector, economists say the GNI* measure - which strips out the multinationals factor - is a more accurate picture of the country's indebtedness. In Ireland's case this is just under 100%.

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Commission proposes changes to EU's debt rules

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The European Commission has proposed changes to the EU's onerous debt rules that would allow member states to negotiate their own debt reduction path, using the carrot of more flexibility if governments introduce reforms and investment. The Irish Government is understood to be supportive of the measures.

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Wages for Banana Workers in Ecuador and Colombia

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In the week of the Living Wage and Living Income Conference, 'The Only Way is Up', Fairtrade recognizes the crucial role of governments, unions and employers towards improving living conditions for workers. Following years of engaging and advocating for decent salaries, Fairtrade is delighted to see progress in the banana sectors and will continue to support these efforts in all banana producing countries.
Colombia and Ecuador lead the way
In Ecuador, the salario digno has been established by the government to ensure a just remuneration for workers and reduce poverty. All plantation workers, including those with the lowest salaries, receive at least the salario digno - a decent wage of $444.62 per month, which is higher than the country's minimum wage. Preliminary data shows that, on Fairtrade certified plantations, the lowest paid employee receives $570, plus an average premium of US$31 to contribute toward collective projects.

In the case of Colombia, strong collaboration between trade unions and plantation owners has played an important role in reaching collective bargaining agreements to increase salaries. In September 2019, SINTRAINAGRO, the Colombia's banana workers' union, and AUGURA, the employers' association, which represents the majority of bananas grown for export in Colombia, signed a new agreement to increase salaries by a further 5.5 percent. This increase also comes on top of a negotiated wage rate that exceeds the current minimum wage in the country.

"The cases of Ecuador and Colombia demonstrate the crucial role that governments, trade unions and employers play in ensuring decent wages can be paid, not just now but in the long-term. Without government regulation, proper enforcement and collective bargaining, it impossible to achieve this. Fairtrade's role is to actively support and complement their efforts by seeing to it that workers can exercise their fundamental rights and freedoms in certified plantations. Also, workers tell us that Fairtrade Premium makes a real difference on top of their wages. Besides that, we advocate for more commitment to the Fairtrade Minimum Price from all other actors in the supply chain, right up to the retailers," explains Wilbert Flinterman, Senior Advisor Workers' Rights and Trade Union Relations at Fairtrade International.
Sustainable pricing and Fairtrade Premium are key.
Fairtrade supports companies by ensuring a stable income for their bananas through the payment of a Fairtrade Minimum Price. In addition, for each box of Fairtrade bananas sold, the workers on Fairtrade certified plantations receive Premium funds which can be used to supplement the basic needs that are part of improved living conditions. For example, employees and their families have access to free education, but using the Fairtrade Premium they can pay for necessary school supplies such as uniforms, shoes and backpacks, and transport to and from school. Employees can access local health care, but the Premium allows them to bypass long waiting times, purchase good quality care and have access to maternal health services, dentists, and emergency care, for example.

"Employees and plantation owners need each other; we are a team," says Esteban Subia, owner of the Fairtrade certified banana plantation Finca El Remanso in Ecuador. "Employees can decide on how to use the Fairtrade Premium money. It took them a while to get used to, but after a year we have already seen a difference: better food, better education, more children in further education and personal development of employees. That is also important for me as the owner. My staff are so motivated and they never let me down."
The way forward: Fairtrade efforts to reach living wages in all Fairtrade banana origins
A living wage is a benchmark for the minimum pay that employees receive for a standard working week that allows them to enjoy a decent standard of living. It is a wage from which adequate and nutritious food, decent housing, clothing, education, health care, transport and a small buffer for unforeseen expenses can be paid. Local actors in Ecuador and Colombia have made great strides towards paying their workers a decent wage, and Fairtrade seeks to affirm their accomplishments with living wage benchmarks that demonstrate a concerted effort to alleviating poverty in the banana sectors in those countries.

However, other banana producing countries still have a long way to go. In some countries, legal minimum wage levels are inadequate for workers to meet their essential needs. Fairtrade is prioritizing work in banana-producing countries where living wage benchmarks have shown this gap to be significant.

In addition, Fairtrade is also ramping up its work with trade unions, plantations owners, governments, NGOs and other standard-setters to create the right conditions for paying a living wage. In several key Fairtrade banana origins such as the Dominican Republic, Ghana and Cameroon, Fairtrade is already helping to build bridges between workers, trade unions and employers.
Living wage conference
Along with organizations including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands and the Sustainable Trade Initiative (IDH), Fairtrade is organizing the living wage and living income conference, 'The Only Way is Up', on 5-6 November in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. The conference is being attended by companies, NGOs and government representatives with the aim of jointly investigating what next steps can be taken towards payment of a living wage in different agricultural sectors such as bananas, coffee and cocoa.

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Wages for Banana Workers in Ecuador and Colombia

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In the week of the Living Wage and Living Income Conference, 'The Only Way is Up', Fairtrade recognizes the crucial role of governments, unions and employers towards improving living conditions for workers. Following years of engaging and advocating for decent salaries, Fairtrade is delighted to see progress in the banana sectors and will continue to support these efforts in all banana producing countries.

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Comparing Dependency and World-Systems Theories

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Comparing Dependency and World-Systems Theories

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Includes commentary on the theory of Andre Gunder Frank, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Theotonio Dos Santos, Walter Rodney, Samir Amin, Arghiri Emmanuel, and Immanuel Wallerstein.

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The modernization theory outlines the ways in which a premodern society becomes modern. Through five stages, it hypothesizes how capitalistic drives and new technology can make a traditional society into a modern one.

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Neo-Marxist approach to development; alternative to Rostow

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Listen to the opening 8mins of Liz Truss' party conference speech. What ideological terms would you apply to what she says?

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Liz Truss' closing conference speech in full

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Bill entitled an Act to provide for the establishment of An Coimisiún Toghcháin; to confer on the Commission certain functions in relation to the preparation and maintenance of the Register of Political Parties; to provide that the Commission shall explain, to the public, the subject matter of referendums; to provide that the Commission shall provide information, to the public, on electoral processes and encourage participation, by the public, in the democratic processes of the State; to provide for the review, by the Commission, of constituencies for the election of members to Dáil Éireann and to the European Parliament; to provide for the review, by the Commission, of local authority electoral area boundaries; to confer on the Commission a policy, research and advisory function; to provide that the Commission shall oversee the electoral register; to confer on the Commission the power to set standards for registration authorities and make recommendations to registration authorities or to the Minister in relation to the registration of electors; to modernise the arrangements for the registration of electors; to provide for continuous registration on the basis of individual application; to provide for necessary and appropriate data sharing to assist registration authorities in updating and maintaining the register; to provide for annual reporting by registration authorities to the Commission; to provide for a designated registration authority to manage a shared database for registration authorities to use in the performance of their functions; to provide for anonymous registration in certain limited cases; to provide a specific registration process for persons with no fixed address; to provide for a pending electors list for persons aged 16 and 17; to provide for the extension of postal voter categories to include special voters in certain circumstances; to provide a framework for the regulation of online political advertising during election periods by the Commission; to provide for the labelling of online political advertisements; to provide for transparency notices for online political advertisements; to confer on the Commission the power to monitor compliance, carry out investigations and take enforcement action under this Act in so far as it relates to online political advertising; to facilitate elections during a pandemic or Covid-19; to provide for polling on the islands; to amend the Electoral Act 1997 to enhance transparency in relation to certain donations to political parties and to provide, inter alia, for the preparation by political parties of consolidated annual statements of accounts; to provide for the holding of fundraising lotteries by political parties; and to provide for related matters.

History of this Act

The Bill has been signed into law by the President.

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Act to provide for the establishment of An Coimisiún Toghcháin; to confer on the Commission certain functions in relation to the preparation and maintenance of the Register of Political Parties; to provide that the Commission shall explain, to the public, the subject matter of referendums; to provide that the Commission

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Pat Leahy: Three things which influence the way our politics takes shape

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Three things which influence the way our politics takes shape

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Three things which influence the way our politics takes shape

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This week we learned three important things that will strongly influence the way our politics takes shape in the coming weeks and months.

1 The politicians broke with the public health experts

In the early stage of the virus, the Government - almost certainly correctly - made a virtue of the fact that it would follow the public health advice. Politicians will not make these decisions, Simon Harris used to say. We will follow the public health advice. The result was Ireland's early, lengthy and largely successful lockdown.

But as it has become clear that society will have to learn to live with the virus for at least the medium-term future, so it has become appropriate that other elements become part of the Government's decision-making framework: the necessity to preserve economic activity, the mental health of people threatened by a protracted lockdown, the medical treatments and early interventions that don't take place in a lockdown, and so on. It's not that the public health advice on containing the virus isn't considered, of course; it's just that this isn't the only thing that is considered.

The personal elements - the return of Dr Tony Holohan, the clash with the leaders of the Government, the who-knew-what-when controversy that focussed on Stephen Donnelly - probably clouded the significance of this development. Personalities affect politics in profound and sometimes decisive ways and Irish political history is replete with examples. But the important thing was not that Dr Tony fell out with Leo and Micheál and Martin Fraser, the important thing is that the Government chose to reject the lockdown advice from the public health advisers.

If the Coalition collapses in disharmony, the voters won't conclude that just one of them is unfit for government; they'll decide they all are

That also constitutes a political gamble. Currently the rising rate of infections is producing far fewer hospital and ICU admissions than the first wave did. But if they catch up - and the health service becomes in danger of being overwhelmed - then there may be a very steep political price to pay.

There was one more aspect of this that I think is significant: the unity of the Government. After the story came apart a little, they stuck together. This is what happens to coalition governments - if they can manage to get over the inevitable early difficulties, events push them together. There is still a lot of private criticism of Fine Gael by Fianna Fáil and vice versa; but there is less than there used to be. Ultimately they will understand - I think - that they are in this together. If the Coalition collapses in disharmony, the voters won't conclude that just one of them is unfit for government; they'll decide they all are.

2 The growth of Sinn Féin continues

The remarkable result in this year's general election for Sinn Féin came late in the campaign and took everyone by surprise, including Sinn Féin. Remember that a week before the campaign started, the party was chucking people off tickets because it was afraid it was running too many candidates. But since February - and more especially since the formation of the current government, as the Irish Times/Ipsos MRBI poll demonstrated this week - the party has been not just consolidating that new support, but growing it.

In recent days, two senior civil servants observed to me that they found it hard to see any circumstances in which Sinn Féin was not the largest party after the next election. That's a helluva long-term prediction to be making at a time of such political volatility. But you can see where they're coming from. At some point over the coming years, the Civil Service will start to prepare for a Sinn Féin-led government.

Nearly 40 per cent of under 35s say they would vote for the party. By this time next year, it could be 50 per cent

A significant part of the Sinn Féin appeal has been "left populism" - the corrupt elite vs the virtuous people, insiders vs outsiders, golden circle vs those left behind - and its impressive message discipline ensures that there is hardly a speech or a press release that does not hammer home the point. To Sinn Féin's leaders, this is a political tactic; to many of its supporters, it is a world view. But it is certainly politically potent. Moreover, the political and economic conditions which make it so potent are unlikely to depart any time soon. With mass youth unemployment a real prospect for this year and next, there will be an eager audience for the party's message. Already nearly 40 per cent of under 35s say they would vote for the party. By this time next year, it could be 50 per cent.

3 The economy

For all the immediate pessimism about Covid, and its effects on our society and economy, recent economic assessments - including one by the Central Bank this week - strongly suggest that the economy will not be destroyed by the pandemic.

Parts of the economy will experience extreme distress and will emerge from the crisis considerably smaller. But at least some of that will be compensated by the multinational sector and others that are continuing to grow. This week, the Central Bank's forecast - following the Department of Finance projections the previous week - suggested that the hit from Covid will be significantly less than previously feared and that the economy could return to decent growth next year. The Department of Finance figures also show that tax receipts have not been monstered to the degree expected earlier this year.

All of this - along with the gargantuan public borrowing currently under way - gives the Government significant firepower to tackle the social and economic fallout from the pandemic. I expect we will see that deployed in what is likely to be a hugely expansionary budget on Tuesday. It also explains why the Government was unwilling to shut down the economy as a precautionary measure.

As it faces its first budget - always a huge test for a new administration - the Coalition faces a formidable array of political and economic forces ranged against it. This week was evidence enough of that. Strangely though, it also showed that this heretofore rickety government may be coming together - and that it has some strengths to call on.

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Pat Leahy: Three things which influence the way our politics takes shape

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This week we learned three important things that will strongly influence the way our politics takes shape in the coming weeks and months. 1 The politicians broke with the public health experts In the early stage of the virus, the Government - almost certainly correctly - made a virtue of the fact that it would follow the public health advice.

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Impact of social media giants on Irish elections needs to be policed

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Impact of social giants on Irish elections needs to be policed- Irish Times

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Impact of social giants on Irish elections needs to be policed- Irish Times

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Political elections are fought all over the world when candidates knock on doors to canvass, make speeches and debate issues with each other.

Elections are also fought when candidates spread messages about their manifestos on posters - for example, on bus shelters or billboards; and on radio or television.

In each of these the candidates can be challenged on what they say and voters get to form opinions based on what they see and hear.

Since the re-election of Barack Obama in 2012, elections are also now fought on social media, but this has been a much darker business. Cambridge Analytica helped target people on Facebook with personalised advertisements based on predicting personalities from online behaviour in both the US presidential election and the UK referendum on European Union membership.

Part of the reason for this new-found openness is to redress what we now know about what happened in the past

There is nothing actually wrong with what they did, except that the model used to predict personalities was based on data illegally gathered from user profiles of millions of users. That particular loophole has been addressed and in theory it should not happen again.

The upshot of this is that all kinds of elections and referendums now reflect the effectiveness of advertising on social media, because it can be highly personalised and targeted.

Advertising spend

Many have called for election candidates and parties to publicly declare their advertising spend on social media, just as they declare their spending on other outlets. In fact the social-media companies are already starting to do this for them. Since March, Facebook has had a publicly accessible and searchable report on all active advertisements, who is placing them and how much they are spending.

In Ireland, the biggest political spender on Facebook recently has been the Referendum Commission, spending €91,507 between March and June this year on 29 different targeted advertisements, most of them video adverts. For each of the adverts anybody can go to the Facebook report, play the advert, see approximately how many times it was viewed and how much money was spent on placing it online.

As a result of the Facebook report we now know that the Trump Make America Great Again committee, one of his re-election agencies, has been spending more than $1 million per week on Facebook alone with 129,740 different adverts, far more than any other candidate, and that was before his re-election campaign was officially launched last week.

One of these adverts was a 30-second video sent to Facebook users who had not up to that point sent the president an online happy birthday message on June 13th - offering them the chance to do so.

The way the BAI operates is to wait for complaints from citizens and then to investigate them

The active advertisements report is part of Facebook's efforts to increase transparency in advertising and, just like candidate debates or speeches or public advertisements, we now know what candidates are saying in those personalised, targeted Facebook advertisements.

Part of the reason for this new-found openness is to redress what we now know about what happened in the past. In November 2018, Facebook was forced to reveal a cache of adverts run on behalf of the Vote Leave, BrexitCentral/BeLeave and DUP Vote to Leave campaigns ahead of the UK's referendum on leaving the EU in 2016. These were submitted to a committee of the UK's digital media, culture and sports department, which was conducting an inquiry into fake news.

So when we hear calls for regulation to be brought into how social media is used in elections and referendums, it is not just about the amount of money they spend, or the mechanisms used to target people: it is about the content itself, the messages sent to individuals that nobody except the recipient would normally see.

So has the Facebook's active adverts report shone a light on to the darkness introduced by the use of social media during election and referendum campaigns, and will we ever have another scandal like Cambridge Analytica? Things are better now than they used to be in that we can see the adverts, but it is left to investigative journalists or concerned citizens to monitor them.

Is it possible to have regulation and enforcement in an area as quickly moving as online advertising? Should we even bother trying?

There is a proposal to the Government that the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI) will police video content on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter from September 2020. This would include enforcing EU rules similar to the way the Irish Data Protection Commissioner enforces EU rules on data privacy.

Complaints process

The way the BAI operates is to wait for complaints from citizens and then to investigate them. The problem here is that when people are shown toxic material on social media, personalised and targeted videos based on their personalities, demographics and what they want to hear, they are not inclined to lodge a complaint to the BAI or anyone else.

Having a robust complaints-resolution system just won't be good enough to catch the mild form of radicalisation that went on in recent elections and referendums, which will surely continue and increase in future ones.

Instead, the BAI needs to be proactive, to work with and to develop its own artificial intelligence in order to monitor the AI used in advertising on social media. Putting the onus on social-media companies to hire independent agents to investigate complaints from citizens, which is just a form of self-regulation, will not address how social media has been abused in elections and referendums in the past and will keep regulation at least one step behind, instead of ahead of, social-media companies.
Alan Smeaton is professor of computing at Dublin City University

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Impact of social media giants on Irish elections needs to be policed

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Political elections are fought all over the world when candidates knock on doors to canvass, make speeches and debate issues with each other. Elections are also fought when candidates spread messages about their manifestos on posters - for example, on bus shelters or billboards; and on radio or television.

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What is the role of social media in a general election campaign? A case study of the 2016 Irish General Election

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What is the role of social media in a general election campaign? A case study of the 2016 Irish General Election

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Ireland - Centre for Media Pluralism and Freedom

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Download the report in .pdf
The Media Pluralism Monitor (MPM) is a research tool that was designed to identify potential risks to media pluralism in the Member States of the European Union. This narrative report has been produced within the framework of the first pan-European implementation of the MPM. The implementation was conducted in 28 EU Member States, Montenegro and Turkey with the support of a grant awarded by the European Union to the Centre for Media Pluralism and Media Freedom (CMPF) at the European University Institute. The CMPF cooperated with experienced, independent national researchers to carry out the data collection and to author the narrative reports, except in the cases of Malta and Italy where data collection was carried out centrally by the CMPF team. The research was based on a standardised questionnaire and apposite guidelines that were developed by the CMPF. In Ireland, the CMPF partnered with Dr Roderick Flynn of the Fujo Media Research Institute, who conducted the data collection and commented the variables in the questionnaire and interviewed relevant experts. The report was reviewed by CMPF staff. Moreover, to ensure accurate and reliable findings, a group of national experts in each country reviewed the answers to particularly evaluative questions (see Annexe I for the list of experts). To gather the voices of multiple stakeholders, the Irish data collector organized a stakeholder meeting on May 24 2016 at the offices of the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland. An overview of this meeting and a summary of the key points of discussion appear in the Annexe 3. Risks to media pluralism are examined in four main thematic areas, which represent the main areas of risk for media pluralism and media freedom: Basic Protection, Market Plurality, Political Independence and Social Inclusiveness. The results are based on the assessment of 20 indicators - five per each thematic area:

Protection of freedom of expression Transparency of media ownership Political control over media outlets Access to media for minorities

Protection of right to information Media ownership concentration (horizontal)
Editorial autonomy
Access to media for local/regional communities and for community media

Journalistic profession, standards and protection Cross-media concentration of ownership and competition enforcement Media and democratic electoral process Access to media for people with disabilities

Independence and effectiveness of the media authority Commercial & owner influence over editorial content State regulation of resources and support to media sector
Access to media for women

Universal reach of traditional media and access to the Internet
Media viability
Independence of PSM governance and funding
Media literacy

The results for each area and indicator are presented on a scale from 0% to 100%. Scores between 0 and 33% are considered low risk, 34 to 66% are medium risk, while those between 67 and 100% are high risk. On the level of indicators, scores of 0 were rated 3% and scores of 100 were rated 97% by default, to avoid an assessment of total absence or certainty of risk.
Disclaimer: The content of the report does not necessarily reflect the views of the CMPF or the EC, but represents the views of the national country team that carried out the data collection and authored the report.

The Republic of Ireland occupies 84,000 square km of the island of Ireland which is shared with Northern Ireland. As of 2016, the population is just under 4.8m people of whom 1.3m live in the capital, Dublin. Although Ireland has two official languages - English and Irish - the latter is not commonly spoken and daily use is confined to fewer than 80,000 people. (Indeed Polish is now the second most spoken daily language in Ireland)

Notwithstanding increased immigration since 1990, Ireland remains culturally homogenous as compared with other Western European states. According to the 2016 census 92% of the population was White Irish or came from another White background while just 3.5% of the population were identified as coming from a Black or Asian ethnicity. The Irish Traveller community accounts for approximately 0.66% of the population but is not yet officially recognised as an ethnic minority.

A period of rapid economic growth from the 1990s (commonly referred to as "The Celtic Tiger") fuelled a property bubble which burst dramatically in 2008. In 2010 the state was forced to seek a €85bn bailout from the European Union, IMF and European Central Bank. The loan conditions lead to significant public expenditure cuts. Unemployment rose from 4% in 2006 to 15.2% in 2012 while average earnings fell consistently between 2008 and 2014. In December 2013 Ireland exited the bailout programme but though most key economic indicators have improved since then, the economy has not yet reached the peaks of the 2000s.

Two parties have dominated Irish politics. The Fianna Fail party consistently held the most parliamentary seats until the economic crash of 2008 but at the 2011 election the Fine Gael party moved into the ascendancy. Both parties are ideologically centrist: their main distinctions being positions adopted in 1922 regarding the nature of Irish independence. The post-2011 political environment has witnessed the emergence of more broadly leftwing blocs with the Irish parliament but these have yet to play a leading role in an administration.

Ireland's small population limits the scale of media markets whilst the country's Anglophone status has seen UK-based media in particular account for a share substantial of media audiences. UK papers account for one in four weekday and one in three Sunday newspapers sales. In television the combined market share of all Irish-based television station, public and private, is just 47.5%. By contrast radio remains overwhelmingly Irish in terms of ownership and content.

Irish print media and television consumption is in line with EU average. According to Eurobarometer figures from 2014, the average Irish adult spends 208 minutes a day watching television of which 90% is consumed "live". 83% of people watch television via a TV set everyday. 28% of the population watch television via online platforms 2-3 times a week which is slightly higher than the EU average. 76% of the population claim to read a newspaper at least 2-3 times a week although historically newspaper circulation per capita has been lower than the European average. By contrast the Irish use radio more than any other EU Member State barring Germany, with 68% of the population listening daily. With 67% of the population claiming to access the internet daily, Ireland is somewhat ahead of the EU28 average of 60%.

The internet has altered local news consumption patterns. According to the 2016 Reuters Digital News Report for Ireland,[2] 70% of Irish adults respondents identify online sources as a weekly source of news, though television remains the leading source with 73%. Furthermore Irish audiences are more likely to source news through social media (52%) on a weekly basis than they are through either radio (47%) or print (45%).

In addition to online viewing, television is accessed via satellite, cable and DTT. The late introduction of a state-run (via Radio Telifis Eireann, the public service broadcaster) DTT service to Ireland in 2011 means two international players, Sky and the Liberty Global dominate television distribution via, respectively their satellite and cable platforms. As of the end of 2016 just 11% of television homes exclusively rely on DTT for broadcast television although many more use it as a secondary platform along with cable or satellite.

Responsibility for media regulation is spread across a number of bodies including the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI), the Press Council of Ireland, the Internet Advisory Board and the Competition Authority. The role of the Press Council and the Advisory Board is limited to post-hoc medium-specific content regulation whilst the Competition Authority's role in relation to media is limited to assessing the market impact of media mergers. The role of the BAI is much broader: it not only licences independent radio and television stations, but administers content regulation codes (backed by the power to administer fines to broadcasters), operates the Broadcasting Complaints Commission and funds public service content production via the Sound and Vision Scheme. In addition, since the 2014 Competition and Consumer Protection Act, it plays a role in assessing the impact of media mergers on diversity and pluralism.

Public discourse in Ireland on media pluralism tend to focus on the increasing concentration of media ownership since the beginning of the 21 st century. In 2000, the print and broadcast sectors were dominated by Independent News and Media and the public service broadcaster RTE respectively. Although both remain leading players in their respective media sectors, they have been joined by a number of other entities - perhaps most notably Communicorp, News Corp/21 st Century Fox and Liberty Global - which have established prominent positions across the print, radio, television and broadcast distribution sectors.

However, the attention devoted to the question of how/whether to regulate ownership has overshadowed other features of the Irish media system which challenge the capacity of the Irish public sphere to reflect and represent the variety of perspectives and outlooks characteristic of a pluralist society.

As the report below summarises, the question of ownership concentration needs to be considered in light of the ongoing threats to the viability of legacy media. This raises the question of whether ownership consolidation is an acceptable price for keeping media outlets operational. The straitened finances of mainstream media institutions is also reflected in the increasingly precarious position of Irish media workers: if the social and political role of the mass media is considered important, should it be left to journalists working on freelance/short-term contracts and who face increasing productivity pressures?

The report also emphasizes the importance of examining who works in and appears on our pages and screens. Ireland in 2016 is a far more diverse place than a quarter of a century ago, but the failure to reflect this in our media content, raises questions as to how far pluralism really extends.

3.1 Basic protection (26% - low risk)
The Basic Protection indicators represent the regulatory backbone of the media sector in every contemporary democracy. They measure a number of potential areas of risk, including the existence and effectiveness of the implementation of regulatory safeguards for freedom of expression and the right to information; the status of journalists in each country, including their protection and ability to work; the independence and effectiveness of the national regulatory bodies that have competence to regulate the media sector; and the reach of traditional media and access to the Internet.
The indicator Protection of Freedom of expression scored as a low risk (25%). Section 40.6.i of the Constitution guarantees the "right of the citizens to express freely their convictions and opinions" but qualifies this by stating that 'organs of public opinion' (i.e. media outlets) may not be used 'to undermine public order or morality or the authority of the State' (without clearly defining what utterances might be regarded as having this effect). However, Ireland has signed both the ICCPR and European Convention on Human Rights, which include stronger commitments to freedom of speech. Ireland is also unusual in that blasphemy has been an offence since 2009. Furthermore Irish journalists have assert that libel law has a "chilling" effect on their work in the past not least because of the unpredictability of the scale of damages that may be awarded in a legal suit. The 2009 Defamation Act's introduction of a "public interest" defence for the publication of a defamatory statement has partially remedied this while the removal of the charge of criminal libel, effectively de-criminalised defamation.

The indicator Protection of Right to Information (3%) is at a very low risk level. Although the right to information is not recognised by the constitution the Freedom of Information Acts of 1997, 2003 and 2014 oblige government departments and other public bodies (universities, health boards, etc.) to publish information on their activities and to make available information they hold, including personal information available to citizens. Compliance with the Act is generally good and although the imposition of a fee for FOI requests following the 2003 Act diminished the number of requests, the fee was removed following the 2014 Act.

The indicator for Journalistic Profession, Standards and Protection scored a medium risk (38%). Although there are no legal impediments towards becoming a journalist in Ireland (e.g., no state licencing system), the scarcity of some groups within the profession - working classes, ethnic minorities and the disabled - points to the existence of less tangible barriers. Furthermore if secure employment is necessary to allow journalists to adopt watchdog role, this is clearly undermined by the increasing prevalence of freelance employment and casualization. Although the National Union of Journalists Code of Conduct (together with the parallel code operated by the Press Council and the BAI's codes on fairness and objectivity) offers some guarantees for professional standards, the declining rate of NUJ membership in particular is not encouraging in this regard. There is also clear evidence that journalists - and in particular crime journalists - have been subject to threats to both their physical but also their digital safety via use of the Communications (Retention of Data) Act 2011 as a means to survey journalists.

Regarding the Independence and effectiveness of the Media Authority, this indicator achieved a low risk level (19%). Although there is a high level of political involvement in appointing the members of the main media authority - the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland - it operates within clearly defined legal structures, and consistently acts in a manner which is both transparent and independent from political and/or commercial interference.

The Universal reach of traditional media and access to the internet is at medium risk level (50%). Given the near-universal availability of legacy broadcast media the medium risk recorded here may seem surprising. However, the findings for broadband availability are general considered to constitute a high risk. Eurostat data from 2013 suggests that although 2% of the overall population has no access to broadband, this rises to 7% in rural areas. Both figures are considered high-risk. However, as more recent figures for 2015 from the Irish Commission for Communications Regulation (Comreg). point to a higher level of household broadband penetration (83%) than Eurostat (75%) the reality of the situation is better than the MPM instrument suggests.

3.2 Market Plurality (47% - medium risk)
The Market Plurality indicators examine the existence and effectiveness of the implementation of transparency and disclosure provisions with regard to media ownership. In addition, they assess the existence and effectiveness of regulatory safeguards to prevent horizontal and cross-media concentration of ownership and the role of competition enforcement and State aid control in protecting media pluralism. Moreover, they seek to evaluate the viability of the media market under examination as well as whether and if so, to what extent commercial forces, including media owners and advertisers, influence editorial decision-making.
Transparency of media ownership scores a medium risk (50%). Although in practice the public may have some knowledge of which individuals or companies own media outlets operating in Ireland, Irish company law does not require any company, media-related or otherwise, to disclose who holds the beneficial interest in shares. The public may consult the contracts of those radio and television media outlets licenced by the BAI which include information relating to ownership structures. Such contracts are not available online and must be physically examined at the BAI offices limiting their accessibility. Furthermore Section 28 of the 2014 Competition and Consumer Protection Act states that in the case of any media merger/acquisition the undertakings involved must notify the Minister for Communications of the proposed merger including details relating to the ownership of those undertakings.

The indicator on Media ownership concentration scores a high risk (97%). This is largely accounted for by the absence of specific upper limits on media ownership. The 2014 Competition and Consumer Protection Act, section 4 of which is entirely devoted to media mergers, does not specify quantitative thresholds which would automatically prevent an increase in media ownership concentration. Section 25 of the Broadcasting Act 2009 requires the BAI to maintain open, pluralistic and diverse, but again does not specify limits on ownership thresholds. In it's 2012 Ownership and Control Document the BAI argues that, since there is no obvious practical matrix for determining what constitutes a reasonable share of media markets, media acquisitions and mergers should be assessed on a case-by-case basis. Despite this, the high risk figure perhaps overstates the extent of concentration in Ireland where, in any case, some cognizance of the impact of small market size should be acknowledged. Although the 84% C4 score (measuring the market share of the top four players) for the newspaper sector is considered as high, the figures for radio (67%) and television (51%) would be regarded as constituting medium levels of concentration.

By contrast with the previous indicator, the low risk (29%) recorded for Cross-media concentration of ownership and competition enforcement (29%), possibly understates the real level of risk. Part of the difficulty with this indicator is its reliance on data not readily available for the Irish market, namely the market share of the top four cross-media owners in Ireland and the market share of the top four internet content providers.

At a regulatory level the 2014 Competition and Consumer Protection Act outlines a multi-stage process which can prevent high levels of media concentration involving the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources and - in some cases - the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland. Inevitably, answering the question of whether these processes have been used effectively involves a degree of subjectivity. It is unquestionably the case that the BAI's adoption of a new "lighter touch" code on media ownership in 2001 (supported by the Competition Authority) was followed by a marked increase in the degree of concentration in Irish media markets. However, the BAI have argued that pluralism is better served by ensuring the existence of the greatest possible number of media outlets, even if this is only possible by permitting ownership consolidation. Furthermore, the BAI have not always permitted media acquisitions to proceed, most notably blocking Communicorp's acquisition of FM104 in 2007. More recent practice, however, on the part of successive Ministers for Communication points to a de facto policy of supporting viability through economies of scale. Since 2015, all three commercial television stations - TV3, UTV Ireland and Setanta - in Ireland have been acquired by existing large communications groups, namely Liberty Global (TV3 and UTV Ireland) and Eir (Setanta). In summer 2016 News UK acquired the Wireless Radio Group and in Autumn 2016, Independent News and Media bid to acquire the Celtic Media Group. At the time of writing (December 2016) only the last of these has been subjected to a second stage analysis under the 2014 Act.

By contrast, since the passage of the 2009 Broadcasting Act, there has been a robust regime in place to ensure that, in keeping with EU competition law, that public funding to public service broadcasters does not exceed the amount necessary to fulfill their public service remit. RTE and TG4 must submit annual budgets to the BAI with detailed plans for public service content production and broadcast. The BAI uses these to make annual recommendations to the Minister for Communications as to the level of public funding required by RTE and TG4.

Although the 2003 European Communities (Protection Of Employees On Transfer Of Undertakings) Directive ensures a new employer must continue to observe the terms and conditions of pre-existing their ownership, this does not specifically afford protections to journalists in the event of a change of media ownership or editorial line. Nor does any other Irish legislation afford such protection. That journalists are occasionally subjected to unfair dismissal by Irish media outlets seems supported by a number of high profile legal cases taken since 2001. This is reflected in the indicator on Commercial & owner influence over editorial content which scored a medium risk (50%).

By contrast there are regulatory measures obliging Irish journalists to avoid commercial influence - Article 10 of the NUJ's Code of Conduct and Section 2.3 of the Press Council Code of Practice warn against endorsing commercial products or allowing undisclosed interests to influence editorial content. There is one potentially grey area in this regard, however: "Advertiser Funded Programming" is a mechanism which permits broadcasters to charge "guests" on, for example lifestyle programming, to promote their brand. If the broadcaster displays a product placement graphic in advance of such segments, such practices are not considered as breaches of the BAI's General Communications Code.

With regard to owner influence, there have repeated public assertions - to our knowledge not legally challenged - suggesting that media owners have sought to directly intervene in editorial content. However, such overt interference does not appear to be extensive and, in any case, it is not clear it directly leads to an actual change of content. By definition it is much harder to establish the extent to which the simple fact of media ownership can indirectly shape editorial content by creating a context where journalists may avoid adopting lines which they believe to run counter to the interests or preferences of their owners.

The apparently low risk score of Media viability (8%) is problematic in the Irish context because - as per the MPM Instrument - it is based on very recent media revenue trends. Spending on radio, television, print and especially online advertising in Ireland has increased - slightly - since 2013. However, 2013 probably represented the nadir of a five year revenue decline and 2015 and 2016 revenues remain well below their mid-2000s peak levels. In practice, there remain substantial doubts over the viability of even high profile Irish media outlets.

3.3 Political independence (39% - medium risk)
The Political Independence indicators assess the existence and effectiveness of regulatory safeguards against political bias and political control over the media outlets, news agencies and distribution networks. They are also concerned with the existence and effectiveness of self-regulation in ensuring editorial independence. Moreover, they seek to evaluate the influence of the State (and, more generally, of political power) over the functioning of the media market and the independence of public service media.
The indicator on Political control over media outlets scores a 50% risk. Despite the medium risk recorded here there is little evidence of political control over public or private media in Ireland. Serving politicians are barred from sitting on the board of both state-owned broadcasters - RTE and TG4 - and the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland. Furthermore, since the closure of the Irish Press Group in 1995 there has been no "party press" in Ireland. Nonetheless, the medium risk score is based on the fact that there is no absolute prohibition on an individual simultaneously holding political office ad owning media outlets in Ireland.

As regards Editorial autonomy Ireland scores a 38% risk. Again the medium risk recorded reflects the absence of regulatory safeguards guaranteeing autonomy from political interference when appointing senior editorial staff to media outlets. However, given the nature of Irish media, it would be hard to imagine how the state or a political party could effect such influence, given the absence of party media in Ireland. More broadly, with regard to political influence on editorial content, it might be argued that the reliance of Irish news media on "official sources" complicates efforts to remain independent of political influence, but it is hard to imagine a national news ecology where this is not the case. Furthermore, although some media groups have adopted editorial lines which are consistently negative towards specific political parties, there is no evidence to suggest that this occurs as a result of influence from other political parties.

The indicator on Media and democratic electoral process scores the lowest risk in the area of Political Independence (15%). The 2009 Broadcasting Act strongly asserts the need for fair representation of viewpoint in broadcast coverage. Article 39 states that all broadcasters must ensure that "the broadcast treatment of current affairs, including matters which are either of public controversy or the subject of current public debate, is fair to all interests concerned and that the broadcast matter is presented in an objective and impartial manner and without any expression of his or her own views". Furthermore the BAI has actively defended this principle via a series of decisions taken in the context of its Broadcasting Complaints process. However, although BAI rules imply that competing political parties should be able to access broadcast media on an equitable basis, there is no overt obligation on either public service or private broadcasters to facilitate such access. Furthermore political advertising is banned outright in Ireland. In practice, RTE routinely offer airtime for party political broadcasts in the run-up to elections though this is less common on private channels. Furthermore, the question of which factors to take into account in allocating airtime (proportion of parliamentary representation, opinion poll performance etc.) is not defined by the BAI and thus remains contested. More generally since the regulator does not actively monitor the extent and nature of how different political actors are represented - relying instead on complaints from the public (including political parties) to draw attention to disproportionate representation - there is a lack of objective data which could be used to definitely assess the fairness of political representation.

State regulation of resources and support to media sector scores a low (33%) risk, but borders on the medium risk band. Ireland lacks the kind of direct state media supports to private media found in, for example France and some Scandinavian countries. However, the state is a significant advertiser in its own right, spending €47m in 2015, raising the question of what criteria are used when choosing media outlets for such advertising. The answer is not entirely clear. Any public body seeking to place an advert in Irish print media must do so via an intermediary (usually an ad agency) appointed via a public tender process. This intermediary places print ads on behalf of public bodies as per the instructions of the latter. In other words, it appears that the public body should determine where the advertising is placed. A study of the placement of state-ads in Irish newspapers between 2010 and 2012 suggests that circulation is a primary determinant - the best-selling Irish daily, the Irish Independent secured more state advertising than any other single paper - but other, less clear, factors also seem to play a role.

Finally, the indicator on Independence of PSM governance and funding records the highest risk to political independence although at 58% it remains in the medium risk band. This reflects the fact that six of RTE's 12 Board members are directly appointed by the Minister for Communications - subject to a consultation cross-party Joint Oireachtas (Parliament) Committee. That committee nominates a further four candidates as directors although the Minister is not absolutely required to accept them. As such, there is clear political influence involved in these appointments. Furthermore, although the Director-General of RTE is chosen by the RTE Board, the appointment is subject to the consent of the government. The determination of the level of public funding for public service media in Ireland is less subject to political influence than in the past. However, the Minister for Communications remains the final arbiter of the licence fee. Section 124 of the 2009 Broadcasting Act outlines a mechanism which relates increases in the fee to the Consumer Price Index subject to annual BAI reviews of the adequacy of RTE and TG4's funding. Although CPI increases since 2008 have been small, the BAI has recommended concomitant increases in the level of the licences in several years. However, as of 2016, the government has consistently refused to do so. In effect then, a political decision (probably motivated by a wish to avoid public anger at another perceived "tax" increase) has denied RTE access to funding which the regulator has acknowledged as being required.

3.4 Social inclusiveness (51% - medium risk)
The Social Inclusiveness indicators are concerned with access to media by various groups in society The indicators assess regulatory and policy safeguards for community media, and for access to media by minorities, local and regional communities, women and people with disabilities. In addition to access to media by specific groups, the media literacy context is important for the state of media pluralism. The Social Inclusiveness area therefore also examines the country's media literacy environment, as well as the digital skills of the overall population.
The indicator on Access to media for minorities scores a very high risk (97%). Although in general terms the Broadcasting Act of 2009 provides for the access of different social and cultural groups to broadcast media, this is less an obligation and more an aspiration. Thus, with the exception of Irish-language communities, Irish media face no specific requirements to provide access to minority groups, however defined. Although the mid-2000s saw the emergence of some media addressing "new Irish" audiences and the inclusion of "multicultural" programming on radio and television, these were not sustained and are now largely confined to community media and one show on a commercial radio broadcaster.

Irish language audiences are served by a number of dedicated state-owned and "community of interest" broadcasters, including RTE's Raidió na Gaeltachta, the second public service television broadcaster TG4, and the Dublin-based Raidio na Life community radio station. Reflecting the low level of Irish-language use in everyday life, audiences for these stations tend to be small: even the most successful (TG4) rarely surpasses a 2% market share.

The indicator Access to media for local/regional communities and for community media scores low risk (31%). Although there is no strict legal obligation for it to do so, the PSM RTE maintains eight regional offices (with associated correspondents) which broadly cover the entire island of Ireland. Local and community media in Ireland are mainly constituted by independent radio stations and have been a feature of the Irish broadcasting landscape since the 1988 Radio and Television Act. The 2009 Broadcasting Act requires broadcast network providers to allocate space for any BAI-licenced broadcast service: at present the BAI licences 22 community/community of interest stations (or which two are television) and 32 local or regional commercial broadcasters. Although commercial broadcasters rely on advertising revenue, community stations are restricted in this regard and tend to rely on short-term - and thus unpredictable - funding from a variety of state bodies such as the Community Services Project, an initiative funded by the Department of Social Protection.

The indicator Access to media for people with disabilities scores medium risk (38%). Although active regulatory and practical efforts are underway to facilitate access to broadcast and print content for people with disabilities, these do not yet constitute a well-developed policy. The 2009 Broadcasting Act requires the BAI to draw up "Access Rules" laying down requirements for the provision of subtitling, captioning, audio description and Irish sign language. In practice the extent of these varies according to the specific access method and the nature of the broadcaster. Thus while subtitling obligations are quite significant, the provision of audio description is very limited. Furthermore public service media face more stringent obligations in this regard than their commercial counterparts.

The indicator Access to media for women scores medium risk (44%).This indicator is mainly assessed by reference to public service media. RTE is subject to the 1998 Employment Equality Act which prohibit discriminatory treatment on the basis of gender and though RTE's Staff Manual refers to a gender equality policy this is very brief. At a senior level the RTE Authority currently has a 50/50 gender balance although secondary data from the Global Media Monitoring Project suggests that women are significantly underrepresented amongst both news reporters and as subjects/sources for news.

The indicator Media literacy scores medium risk (44%). Although efforts to mainstream media literacy as part of the primary and secondary level education curricula go back to the 1980s, the state has only recently adopted media literacy as an overt policy objective. Although a new National Literacy and Numeracy Strategy in 2011 expanded the definition of literacy to include media literacy and the introduction of a new Junior Cycle (typically 13-15 year old students) in 2014 has further integrated some media literacy courses into the curriculum, universal access to media literacy activities is currently limited to primary school students. Access at second level education is patchy and at third level, it is limited to those who have actively chosen to study the subject. Outside formal education, although organisations like the Irish Film Institute offer some evening classes these tend more towards a film appreciation-style than a media literacy approach.

Although the report finds that Ireland exhibits a medium or high risk in 12 out the 20 indicators described above, it should be emphasized that in some of these cases, the risk is potential rather than present. Thus under the political indicators, although political influence clearly plays a role in appointments to public service media and to regulatory bodies and in setting the precise level of the licence fee, there is limited evidence that such power is substantially abused.

Nonetheless there are clearly issues to be addressed. In outlining policy recommendations below the report has sought to identify means to address the following key issues:

the financial precarity of both media entities and those who work for them

the lack of diversity amongst both those who oversee/regulate media and those who work within them

Recommendation One - The Minister for Justice should consider a redraft of the 2009 Defamation (already under consideration) to place a maximum cap on the level of financial damages to be awarded in libel cases. The main objective of libel law is to protect the reputation of the libelled party, not to enrich them. Protection of reputation can arguably be achieved through high-profile public acknowledgement of this when a media outlet is found to have libelled an individual. This suggests capping financial damages at a level which while retaining their power as a disincentive avoids reaching levels which can potentially put a media outlet out of business.

Recommendation Two - The Department of Communications and/or the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland should maintain a publicly accessible online database of media ownership in Ireland. (Disclosure - the current author has already put such a proposal to the BAI but feels that, regardless of who takes on the task, it should be carried out.)

Recommendation Three - The television licence fee should be replaced by a Household Broadcasting Charge - as has been proposed for some years - immediately. This would circumvent ongoing levels of revenue losses through broadcast licence fee evasion. The Department of Communication should explore whether the additional funding raised might be used to support a broader range of public service media production conceptualised as referring not just to RTE output or even to broadcast content also to public service content production by private or community-based entities operating in non-broadcast media (print/online etc.)

Recommendation Four - The Department of Communication should consider a new mechanism for appointing RTE and BAI authorities to broaden the range of individuals considered for such boards. This might be done by drawing on advice/nominations from what might broadly be termed social partnership groups (e.g. trade unions, employer bodies, universities, migrant groups, the charity sector, churches, environmental groups, sporting bodies etc.)

Recommendation Five - The BAI should promote a public debate to identify mechanisms to bring a greater diversity of ethnicities, social classes and physical/mental abilities to the fore within Irish media organisations. The range of measure may include, redrafting those sections of the 2009 Broadcasting Act which (indirectly) refer to minority groups, promotion of minority media education within third level institutions, more emphasis on minority personnel /content within broadcast schedules, adoption of codes of best practice within media organisations, etc.)

Finally, given that the report clearly identifies concentration of media ownership as a very high risk, it might reasonably be asked why this is not addressed in the recommendations above. The main reason for this is that the report finds that the existing legislative structure regulating media ownership - the 2014 Competition and Consumer Protection Act - already offers sufficient powers to the Minister for Communications to restrict further concentration if and when it threatens to undermine media pluralism and diversity. If there is a recommendation, however, it is to encourage the relevant Minister to consider whether, given the relatively high levels of concentration already evident in some Irish media markets, the initial assumption when assessing future mergers is that they will lessen diversity and pluralism. In other words that the onus would be on the parties to a merger to demonstrate that it does not have such an impact rather than on the Department of Communications and/or BAI to assert that it would.

Annexe 1. Country Team

Annexe 2. Group of Experts

Any country-specific deviation from the standard Group of Experts procedure should be briefly explained here.

Annexe 3. Summary of the stakeholders meeting

24 May 2016

Offices of the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland, 2-5 Warrington Place, Dublin 2.

All seven experts then attached to the research were invited but only four were able to attend. These were:

Dara McMahon (Newsbrands Ireland)

Lisa Ni Choisdealbha (Independent Broadcasters of Ireland)

Ciaran Kissane (Broadcasting Authority of Ireland)

Ailbhe O'Neill (School of Law, Trinity College Dublin)

The discussion ranged over the overall methodology or the Monitor to specific issues with some of the conclusion arrived at. In terms of methodology the experts emphasized the importance of distinguishing between theoretical and actually present risks. (Particular emphasis in this regard was laid upon state advertising indicator which though recorded as a very high risk in the Monitor because of a lack of data was not regarded by the experts as constituting a genuine risk to pluralism.)

There was also some debate as to how the views of the experts could be used to inform the final report conclusions. A particular concern was raised as to how the research accommodated contrasting assessments coming from different experts. It was agreed that it would be preferable for the final report to reflect the variety of perspectives offered rather than attempting to present them in aggregate form.

Finally, the experts expressed a desire to see the full content of the MPM platform to better understand the basis on which ome conclusions - in areas where their feedback was not sought - were arrived at.

-

For more information on MPM methodology, see the CMPF report "Monitoring Media Pluralism in Europe: Application of the Media Pluralism Monitor 2016 in EU-28, Montenegro and Turkey", https://monitor.cmpf.eui.eu/

[2] See https://www.digitalnewsreport.org/survey/2016/ireland-2016/.

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Ireland - Centre for Media Pluralism and Freedom

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Download the report in .pdf The Media Pluralism Monitor (MPM) is a research tool that was designed to identify potential risks to media pluralism in the Member States of the European Union. This narrative report has been produced within the framework of the first pan-European implementation of the MPM.

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How Irish Political Parties are Using Social Networking Sites to Reach Generation Z: an Insight into a New Online Social Network in a Small Democracy

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How Irish Political Parties are Using Social Networking Sites to Reach Generation Z: an Insight into a New Online Social Network in a Small Democracy

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Depictions of Beauty on Cosmopolitan Magazine: Content Analysis of Covers (1959-2014)

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Depictions of Beauty on Cosmopolitan Magazine: Content Analysis of Covers (1959-2014)

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POST-FEMINISM AND SPECIALIZED MEDIA: A CONTENT ANALYSIS OF COSMOPOLITAN HEADLINES

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POST-FEMINISM AND SPECIALIZED MEDIA: A CONTENT ANALYSIS OF COSMOPOLITAN HEADLINES

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21 Pages Posted: 24 Sep 2014

Date Written: July 1, 2013

Abstract

The perspectives on contemporary forms of feminism are often diffuse and lead to various controversies. In the present paper I will approach the differences between the third wave of feminism and post-feminism (and their relation with other 'post' concepts like postmodernism and post-structuralism), also taking into account the first and second wave. The main focus of the article is to identify the trends that post-feminist media promotes as the new values of today's women. In doing so I chose to analyze the contingency of the terms found on the covers of Cosmopolitan magazine, the best selling women's magazine in the world. The selected units were the issues dating from January 2008 until March 2013 and I have deepened the analysis of two main elements promoted by post-feminism (also found in a significant amount in the magazine according to the data obtained): the beauty and fashion complex and the independent woman. Both come from the postmodern tendency regarding individualization as a primary objective for the individual. This construction of the self is made through economic freedom and this also correlates with the choice to shape one's self through looks and body. On the basis of the two elements mentioned above, the study will try to see in what amount the two hypotheses confirm: 1. the magazine over-promotes beauty and 2. Cosmopolitan magazine also promotes the independent woman (the career woman) and thereby puts on a second place the traditional roles of women (of mothers and wives). Also, two other elements tend to intersect with beauty and independence: pop culture and sex life.

Keywords: post-feminism, Cosmopolitan magazine, backlash, the beauty complex, the independent woman

Crusmac, Oana, Post-Feminism and Specialized Media: A Content Analysis of Cosmopolitan Headlines (July 1, 2013). Analize - Journal of Gender and Feminist Studies, Issue No. 1 (15), 2013, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2499838

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post-feminism and specialized media: a content analysis of cosmopolitan headlines

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Post-Feminism and Specialized Media: A Content Analysis of Cosmopolitan Headlines

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21 Pages Posted: 24 Sep 2014 Date Written: July 1, 2013 The perspectives on contemporary forms of feminism are often diffuse and lead to various controversies. In the present paper I will approach the differences between the third wave of feminism and post-feminism (and their relation with other 'post' concepts like postmodernism and post-structuralism), also taking into account the first and second wave.

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In the aftermath of the putative independence referendum in Catalonia, on October 1, 2017, John Dorney looks at some of the parallels between that region's (or is it a nation?)'s history and that of Ireland.
Ireland's struggle for independence was, and to a degree is, keenly observed by other small nationalities with ambitions for statehood.

In late 1920, at the time when the War of Independence was raging in Ireland, nationalist activist Maire Ni Bhrian arrived in Barcelona as part of a Europe-wide tour to publicise the cause of Irish independence. It was shortly after the death of Terence MacSwiney the Lord Mayor of Cork, who had died on hunger strike in London, in protest at this arrest by British forces.

Ni Bhrian recalled,

'In Barcelona and in Catalonia generally there was the deepest sympathy for Ireland and when Terence died the papers there were full of articles about him and masses were offered for him in many churches which were crowded to the door... The university students and shop assistants all wore green buttons. There was a huge meeting in the beautiful club hall of the shop assistants with the [Irish] tricolour at the end of the hall facing the platform... The Catalans always cherish the desire for separation from Spain and their aspiration for independence is the bond between them and us.'

'All the speeches made that evening, she remembered, though they had to be translated from Catalan into French for her, 'were in praise of Ireland and expressed sympathy for our objects in our fight for freedom'.[1]

On the whole however, such admiration as has existed has largely been one sided. Whereas Irish Republicans have had long-standing links to Basque nationalists further west along the Pyrenees (as explored in this 2010 Irish Story article), there have never been such close ties between Irish and Catalan separatists.

While IRA leader Ernie O'Malley met some Catalan nationalists in 1924-25 and while Sinn Fein's Eoin O Broin was invited to observe the 2017 referendum, such explicit contacts have been few and far between.

Divergent histories

If one accepts the nationalist narrative of both Ireland and Catalonia, they are both (or have both been) oppressed small nations, each with its own distinctive language and culture, ever seeking to break away from, respectively, Britain and Spain.

In some respects Catalonia's history has more in common with Scotland than Ireland.

However, in truth, the Irish case and that of Catalonia differ in many ways. To start with, Catalonia's incorporation into the Spanish monarchy in 1492 was not as a result of conquest, but as a result of the union of the Crowns of Castille and Aragon. In this respect, it has more in common with Scotland, joined to England in the person of the Scottish King James I in 1603, than Ireland, which was effectively conquered by English monarchs who proclaimed themselves Kings of Ireland.

Moreover, whereas Ireland was colonised with Protestant, English speaking, settlers, nothing of the kind occurred in Catalonia. And while both countries have a 'rebel' tradition dating back, at least, to the 17 th century, they are in some respects, quite different.

For instance, both Catalonia and Catholic Ireland rebelled against Madrid and London respectively in the 1640s. Both were part of a Europe wide series of civil wars and revolutions in the middle of the seventeenth century. In Ireland the rebellion was a bloody revolt against English and Protestant domination, sparking a short lived Catholic 'Confederate' government before its final defeat at the hands of Cromwell's New Model Army in the 1650s.

In the case of Catalonia, revolt, known as the 'Reapers' War' was caused by King Phillip IV's extension of taxation and conscription, to fund his wars with France, to Catalonia, which had previously been exempt under the terms of its self-governing laws.

One royal report on Catalonia from 1640 has an oddly contemporary feel about it;

'It contains a villainous populace, which can easily be excited to violence and the more it is pressed, the harder it resists... [so repression] only succeeds in exasperating the inhabitants of this province and in making them insist more stubbornly on the observance of their laws.'[2]

Like the Irish Catholics, the Catalans sought aid from outside powers, France in their case, and briefly declared a Catalan Republic before going down to defeat, also in the 1650s, when Spanish armies, including as it happens, Irish Catholic troops, were redeployed from northern Europe to crush them.

Whereas the causes of Ireland's rebellion was largely religious and ethnic, in Catalonia, language and culture played a role, but the driving force was economic and defence of their existing governing institutions.

There are further parallels however. In the 1690s Irish Catholics took up arms in defence of the Catholic King of England James II and were defeated, in return being punished with the 'Penal Laws' designed to suppress Catholicism and dispossess Catholics in Ireland.

Similarly in the War of Spanish Succession (1702-1714) the Catalans fought for the last Habsburg claimant to the throne of Spain. He was defeated by the Bourbon King Phillip V, who, on conquering Barcelona after a siege in 1714, abolished Catalan and Aragonese autonomy and abolished the use of Catalan as an administrative language. It was a defeat Catalan nationalists still remember today, much as Irish nationalists once used to rue the surrender of the Jacobites at Limerick in 1691. [3]

In summary, while both Catalonia and Ireland could both recall bitterly the defeats of the 17 th and 18 th centuries, there were important differences. The religious and social chasm that existed in Ireland between conqueror and coloniser was not present in Catalonia. While Ireland was a poor adjunct to a much richer Kingdom in England, Catalonia was the opposite, from the start, a rich region that resented subsidising the government in Madrid.

Finally, while the Catalan language took a blow as a result of political and military defeats in the eighteenth century, it remained the dominant language, including of the upper classes, whereas the Irish language throughout the 18 th and 19 th centuries, with its native aristocracy banished, dispossessed or assimilated, became largely a peasant language.

National rebirths

All of this mattered a great deal when both countries began to develop modern political nationalism in the late 19 th century.

Language and economics has always been at the core of Catalan nationalism, less so the tradition of armed rebellion so prevalent in Irish history.

Whereas Irish language and culture formed a central part of Irish nationalist discourse at the dawn of the twentieth century, most Irish nationalists and Republicans were English speakers who had to learn Irish as adults. What was more, over the second half of the nineteenth century, especially after the Great Famine, the Irish language retreated rapidly so that by1900 it had only footholds, mostly along the western coast.

Catalan nationalists by contrast not only spoke the language but could count, certainly on the more rural population, for whom it was also their first language, for support.

And again, whereas Irish nationalists certainly made economic arguments in favour of independence, it was never the core of their case, which was based more on a sense of Irish Catholic communal injustice as well as colonial-style rule by 'Dublin Castle'.

In Catalonia, by contrast, while Catalan nationalists of the renaixenca (Catalan renaissance) certainly wrote poems about the beauty of their country and its language and fulminated against its suppression by 'Madrid', there was always a powerful economic element, a sense that wealthy Catalonia was being bled dry by a spendthrift Madrid.

Another striking distinction was that Catalonia became one of Spain's industrial centres in the late 19 th century (the other was the Basque Country). As a result many workers migrated there from the rest of Spain, so while the proletariat in early 20 th century Catalonia was largely Spanish speaking, its bourgeoisie was Catalan - a situation that had no parallel in Ireland.

It has been suggested that the fact that Catalonia was in many ways a self-confident, powerful nationalism meant that it preferred gradual, reformist politics rather than cult of armed struggle and martyrdom that so marked Irish nationalist (and not only Irish) history.

Civil War

Catalonia had a rebel tradition in the early 20th century, but it was not nationalist. Barcelona in particular was known for its militant labour and anarchist politics.

In 1909, left wing workers rioted against the imposition of conscription for a war in Morocco, burning churches and sacking businesses, in what almost amounted to an insurrection. Hundreds died in the subsequent military repression that became known as 'Tragic Week'. However this was an anarchist, anti-clerical affair, not an expression of Catalan nationalism. [4]

Today, many Catalan nationalists appear to wish to re-write the history of the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939 as democratic Catalonia being attacked by a fascistic Spain. But this is a major over-simplification.

The Spanish Republic granted Catalonia autonomy for the first time in 1932 and certainly this was indeed abolished with the victory of the right wing authoritarian forces under Francisco Franco in 1939. Luis Companys, the wartime president of Catalonia and a Catalan nationalist, was executed by the Francoist forces.

In between however, it was the Spanish Republic, under government of the right party CEDA, that suppressed a self declared independent Catalan state (with some, though not great, violence) in 1934.

The actual Civil War of 1936-39,was far more a battle between right and left, including within Catalonia, than a struggle between Barcelona and Madrid.

When the right wing military uprising, aimed at toppling the Spanish Republic and the leftist Popular Front government, erupted in July 1936, it was not Catalan nationalists who defeated it in Barcelona, but armed workers, largely Spanish speaking and belonging to the anarchist CNT union or the Socialist and Communist parties. Thereafter, it was they, the left wing militias, who bore the brunt of the fighting and in the chaos of civil war, also turned their guns on each other at times.[5]

The Spanish Civil War was more a battle between left and right wing as between Madrid and Catalonia.

Some Irish Republicans fought in Catalonia in the Civil War but they did so as Republicans or socialists, not in solidarity with Catalan nationalists.

Moreover, while under Franco's dictatorship (1939-1976), the Catalan language was banned and Catalan nationalists persecuted, Franco also had the tacit support of many Catalan industrialists, who were not displeased to see the militant workers' movement broken.[6]

Whether for this or other reasons, there was no real Catalan equivalent of the Basque armed group ETA, which, from the 1950s until very recently used armed force against the Spanish state, both in its Francoist and democratic periods.

There was a short-lived Catalan militant group named Terra Lliure (Free Land) that operated in the 1980s and 1990s but it was responsible for only one death, as opposed to over 800 deaths that ETA is held to be responsible for. And both conflicts fall well under the figure of 3,500 people who died in Northern Ireland in the same period. So when militant Irish Republicans, especially from the 1970s onwards, looked for fellow thinkers within Spain, they naturally gravitated more to the Basques than to the Catalans.

Today

Since Catalonia was again granted autonomy after the return of democracy to Spain, and in particular after the passing of the constitution of 1978, it has been governed autonomously by its own government the Generalitat. Catalan has been made the compulsory first language in all state education and today is spoken by most residents of Catalonia.

Catalan nationalism therefore historically differs in many respects from its Irish counterpart. The principle difference being essentially that Catalonia is historically a rich and economically powerful region whereas Ireland, certainly under the Union with Britain was relatively poor and marginal.

This means that Catalan resentment at being 'robbed' by the rest of Spain has always and continues to be, a central part of Catalan nationalist thought that has no real equivalent in Ireland.

The refusal of the Madrid government to negotiate further autonomy has resulted in the Catalan nationalists' calling a unilateral referendum, with dangerous consequences.

Secondly, while culturally, the cases appear to be similar, language is actually a far more important part of Catalan nationalism than Irish. Paradoxically this is probably because Catalan is far closer to Castilian Spanish than Irish is to English, meaning that it is relatively easy for a Spanish speaking migrant to learn. Thus many Catalans whose ancestors came from elsewhere are today Catalanistas themselves.

Thirdly, Catalan nationalism largely does not have the modern tradition of 'armed struggle' and 'blood sacrifice' that sustains militant Irish nationalism. Not up to now in any case.

The crisis of 2017 is largely the result of the refusal of the central government in Madrid to concede more autonomy to the Generalitat in Barcelona, in particular further control over its own taxation. In 2006 the then Socialist government of Jose Luis Zapatero negotiated a deal on further autonomy with the Catalans but this was blocked by the Spanish courts as unconstitutional after a move by the right wing centralist Partido Popular (PP).

With the PP in government further negotiation has proved futile, leading the Catalan nationalists to run a 'consultative referendum' on independence in 2014, and to declare a binding referendum on separation in October 2017.

The response of both the Madrid government and the Courts system both in Spain and in Catalonia has been to declare the referendum and the planned unilateral declaration of independence illegal. The dispatch of riot police to prevent the referendum, though producing some arresting scenes of violence, was largely a failure.[7]

The Catalan police, the Mossos d'Esquadra, in most cases did not impede the vote - contrary to orders from Madrid - with the result that over 2 million votes (though still only about 38% of the Catalan electorate) were counted for independence. Carles Puigdemont the president of the Generalitat has promised to unilaterally declare independence.

If, in most of this piece, I have suggested that there are few direct parallels between Ireland's history and Catalonia's, to Irish eyes, one obvious similarity stands out. In 1918 most of Ireland voted for the Sinn Fein party (though only about 40% of the electorate). They went on to declare an Irish Republic to be in existence. The British declared their parliament to be an illegal assembly. There followed four years of guerrilla war and the partition of the country.

While in Ireland we now tend to celebrate these events they actually highlight the terrible dangers implicit in the current standoff in Catalonia.

For when two states claim sovereignty over the same territory at the same time, the next recourse is force.

References

[1] Maire Ni Bhrian BMH WS 363

[2] Geoffrey Parker, The Global Crisis, p267

[3] See Michael Eaude, Catalonia, a Cultural History, p 61

[4] See Euade, Catalonia a Cultural History, p226-230

[5] See, Casilda Guell, The Failure of Catalanist Opposition to Franco (1939-1950), p48-50

[7] For a good summary see veteran Irish reporter Paddy Woodworth's piece in the Irish Times, https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/paddy-woodworth-rajoy-has-played-into-the-hands-of-catalan-nationalism-1.3240965

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In the aftermath of the putative independence referendum in Catalonia, on October 1, 2017, John Dorney looks at some of the parallels between that region's (or is it a nation?)'s history and that of Ireland. Ireland's struggle for independence was, and to a degree is, keenly observed by other small nationalities with ambitions for statehood.

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Why one Spanish region stormed the British Consul General during Irish War of Independence

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Catalonian connection to Irish independence 

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Catalonian connection to Irish independence 

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It was 100 years ago when the Irish Parliament (Dáil Éireann) was established and it was 100 years ago when it came under severe suppression when it was deemed illegal by Britain.

On Sept 10, 1919, Dáil Éireann was declared a dangerous association and was prohibited.

Following the December 1918 general election in Britain and Ireland, the Irish independence movement, Sinn Féin, won 73 of the 105 seats available for Irish Members of Parliament in Britain's House of Commons. Rather than taking up seats in the London Parliament, Sinn Féin followed through with what they had promised in their manifesto and set up an Irish Parliament in Dublin, called Dáil Éireann.

On Jan 21, 1919, Ireland's parliament was established in Dublin city. A cabinet was selected, courts set up, a constitution drawn, and a declaration of independence following an address to the free nations of the world.

The British response to the Irish Parliament was brutal. Members of the Irish Parliament were hounded and arrested. Those who evaded arrest tried to continue the work of parliament albeit in an underground fashion. The suppression of the Dáil in 1919 can mirror what is going on in Catalonia today and during Ireland's fight for independence, Catalans stood in solidarity with the Irish.

Catalans and the Easter Rising

The 1916 Easter Rising was an event that caught the attention of Catalans fighting their own battle for Independence. In the years following 1916 Catalans grew closer to the struggle in Ireland and followed it with great interest. They found in Ireland a kinship in the struggle against oppression.

After Dáil Éireann was outlawed in 1919,  that very same outlawed government in Dublin received a letter from staff at a Catalan newspaper, La Veu de Catalunya, informing the Irish how their struggle gave Catalans the  "courage to pursue the fight and recover the freedom and the personality of Catalonia politically as well as socially."

In the late 1920s, a Catalan political movement emerged under the name Nosaltres Sols which translates to We Ourselves/ Ourselves Alone. It was a direct link to the influence of the Irish struggle and Sinn Féin which also translates to Ourselves Alone.

Inspiring Irish propaganda

During the years of the War of Independence in Ireland, the Irish Parliament strove for international recognition. Sean T O'Kelly, a future president of Ireland, was one of many delegates cast across the globe in search of international respect for the small nation seeking Independence from Britain.

In 1921 during a speech in Paris O'Kelly added Catalonia to the swelling number of small nations in search of Independence stating  how they were "copying Irish methods and utilizing Irish propaganda for inspiring their own men."

Catalonia's support

Máire NÍ Bhriain was the Irish representative in Catalonia during 1920 and she wrote how when 18-year-old medical student and IRA volunteer Kevin Barry was executed by the British, students at Barcelona University held a special mass attended by hundreds of people and then had a wreath made of waxed flowers and sent it to Dublin. While in Barcelona Máire also managed to raise funds for the Irish prisoners' dependents fund and £120 was generously sent from the Catalans to the Irish.

Máire also detailed how when the Sinn Féin Lord Mayor of Cork Terence MacSwiney was arrested and sent to an English prison, his plight was carefully watched by the Catalans. When MacSwiney went on a hunger strike and subsequently died, his death resulted in outpourings of grief in Catalonia.

Marie wrote, "university students and shop assistants all wore green ribbons on their buttons holes......the Catalans always cherish their desire for separation from Spain and their desire for independence is a common bond of sympathy between them and us."

During MacSwiney's hunger strike daily updates filled Catalan newspapers while masses were said for the Corkman and public demonstrations filled the streets there. When news of MacSwiney's death reached Catalonia a state of mourning kicked in. Women wore black, flags were flown at half-mast and on Oct 27 grief turned into protest when up to 500 Catalans marched on the British Consulate in Barcelona.

Waving a tri-color Irish flag, the crowd marched to the British consulate while chanting 'Viva Irlanda, muera Inglaterra!' (Long live Ireland, death to England!)

The consulate had closed its doors as the Consul General was not in and when the marchers reached the closed building they flung stones and broke all the windows. The angry protesters dispersed when the heavy-handed Guardia Civil arrived on the scene.

Days later the Consul General wrote to London to divulge his utter disgust at how Catalans sided with the cause of Irish freedom. He informed London how the consulate in Barcelona was "now guarded by a strong force of police and Guardia Civil who shall remain until the local excitement over the so-called martyrdom of MacSwiney has subsided."

But the 'local excitement' did not subside because just days later a mass rally in support of the martyred MacSwiney was held in the Catalan capital.

On Nov 1, 1920, thousands attended a rally in Barcelona to show their support for Irish independence and their grief for MacSwiney.  It was organized by the trade union CADCI ( Central Autonomista de Dependents del Comerc i la Industrial) and the guest of honor was Máire Ní Bhriain.

Town council's across Catalonia passed motions of condolence to MacSwiney's family and expressions of support for the Irish Republican movement. The town council in Figueres passed a motion of 'admiration of the glorious death of the Lord Mayor of Cork and other patriotic Irishmen who have died in English prison, that our adhesion to the liberty of people and the inviolable rules of justice may be proclaimed.'

The mayor of Villafranca del Panades sent a letter to 10 Downing Street condemning the occupants there for the death of MacSwiney.  The British replied by requesting the Spanish government punish local authorities across Catalonia who publicly supported Irish Republicans.

Apart from letters to the British PM and public displays of support, Catalonia also sent condolences directly to the MacSwiney family in Cork. A letter of condolence was sent to MacSwiney's widow from the Directive Council of Nostra Parla in Barcelona. The message of condolence dated Dec 1, 1920, to Mrs. MacSwiney informed her that her husband's 'martyrdom will be an example for all people that, so as ours, feel a foreign domination.'

MacSwiney's two-year-old daughter was also in the thoughts of Catalans and they sent her a doll dressed in traditional Catalan attire which is now displayed at the Cork Public Museum in Fitzgerald's Park.

The Irish Parliament in 1919 was seen as an affront to the British empire, a threat to its hold on Ireland's will for independence, so it was suppressed. The British response to the will of the Irish people in 1919 can be clearly identified in the response of the Spanish to the will of the Catalan people today.

Read more: Where did Michael Collins hide his gun while riding on Dublin’s trams?

This article was submitted to the IrishCentral contributors network by a member of the global Irish community. To become an IrishCentral contributor click here.

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Why one Spanish region stormed the British Consul General during Irish War of Independence

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It was 100 years ago when the Irish Parliament (Dail Eireann) was established and it was 100 years ago when it came under severe suppression when it was deemed illegal by Britain.

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Noam Chomsky in New Delhi, 2001, Q and A (Part 3)

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Noam Chomsky in New Delhi, 2001, Q and A (Part 3)

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These are dark times for cosmopolitans. Discontent with globalization and resentment towards minorities, immigrants, and intellectuals have fueled the rise of nationalism in Europe and the United States. Dressed in faux-neutral neologisms like "post-truth" and "alt-right," propaganda, racism, and xenophobia have elbowed their way back into the mainstream. And cosmopolitans are being portrayed as a detached and indulgent elite.

Cosmopolitanism-the aspiration to become a citizen of the world-has become a tainted luxury good.

It might seem prudent, in this climate, to take distance from cosmopolitanism. That choice, however, leaves a distorted image of cosmopolitanism unchallenged and lets it become a casualty in the clash between nationalism and globalization. We must do better than that. If we want to fend off the globalization of ultra-nationalism, now is the time to take a stand for cosmopolitanism-extricating its broadminded attitude from its elitist parody, and putting it to work to temper nationalism and humanize globalization.

Taking such stand begins with remembering where contemporary cosmopolitanism came from and acknowledging how it lost its way.
How We Became Cosmopolitans
I became a cosmopolitan on August 5 th, 1943, three decades before I was born. That afternoon, the Allies entered my hometown in southern Italy. The city was on its knees, but the children were jubilant. The war was beginning to end, and freedom had the taste of American chocolate bars. Soldiers threw them to the kids on the roadside as they rode their jeeps through town. My mother never forgot the one she caught.

Wartime stories like that were common when I was growing up, but they felt distant from my world and my life. It took me decades to realize how much they shaped both. Like many middle-class Europeans of their generation, my parents-who had both been first in their families to go to high school, who spent their whole adult lives in the same place, who never spoke a foreign language-insisted that I learn English and travel.

My parents embodied a distinction that the sociologist Robert Merton made in the 1950s studying a small American town. The town's influential members, he found, were either "locals" or "cosmopolitans." The locals' influence rested on strong ties to the town and relationships within it. The cosmopolitans' rested on their knowledge and expertise. If locals could not imagine a life elsewhere, cosmopolitans seemed to be always preparing for it. Neither, however, left much and the town benefited from the contribution of both. That was back then. My generation's cosmopolitans were urged to be more mobile.

So, at age 14, I found myself living and studying for a month with a small crowd of Spanish, French, and Germans in a small town in the north of England. It was the first time I felt at home in a place where I did not belong-or more precisely, that I felt like I belonged in a place I had not come from. That is how I began becoming a European. A few years later, when the Berlin Wall fell, it was glorious to be coming of age as one. The promise of cosmopolitanism as a way to a better life might have been at its zenith, but it seemed only dawn. For a moment, it really felt as if we were ending history, in Francis Fukuyama's famous words, ushering the triumph of liberal democracy worldwide.

Big cities all over the world were swelling up with first-generation cosmopolitans like me, fleeing provincial worldviews. We flocked to places that promised not to put us in our place. We were curious invaders of each other's countries. A peaceful army sent to dismantle nationalism by elders who'd been hurt by it.

My parents' generation blessed, if ambivalently, our cosmopolitanism because it was an insurance policy as much as an aspiration. Born out of the rubble of nationalism, it was primarily a humanistic project-not an economic one. It emphasized commonality of experience and tolerance of differences. It should make us realize people unlike us were humans just like us, and replace superstition and suspicion-the pillars of tribalism-with curiosity and compassion. If we would study, dine, and make out with peers from other countries, we would be less likely to bomb each other in the future. When the European Union received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2012, I felt that my mum and dad should get a piece of it-and keep it next to the chip of Berlin Wall I had brought home two decades before.

By then, I was married to a woman born 15 miles from that first English town I lived in. Our parents did not share a language but had similar values. We taught in an academic institution that helps people live working lives across borders. Our children gave complicated answers to the simple question, "Where are you from?" and felt at home in a country that neither of us grew up in. And we had become alert to the skepticism about, and hostility towards, our way of life. Over the past few years, those have only grown.

Having spent my life trying to become an educated cosmopolitan, I now fear that my generation has failed at cosmopolitanism, or worse, that we have failed cosmopolitanism.
Foot Soldiers of Globalization
The animosity between locals and cosmopolitans is nothing new. It has shaped Western civilization since Ancient Greece. Up to Merton's time, however, locals and cosmopolitans, remained strange bedfellows. Now, it seems, they have split up, amplifying their differences and becoming locals in different tribes- a nationalist and a globalist one. Cosmopolitans have built their own tribe. A tribe of people unfit for tribalism, I once wrote. An inclusive, dispersed tribe-if such a thing exists-connected by unlimited international data plans and cheap airfare. But a tribe nonetheless. We commandeered big cities and settled tolerant enclaves like coffee shops, universities, and most of all, multinational corporations that let us make a living as we moved around.

While its origin was political, cosmopolitanism made us unfit for national government. Our lives were too mobile, our allegiances too unclear, our relationship to the state too ambivalent for us to be its trustworthy standard bearers. A cosmopolitan attitude comes with suspicion of people and politicians too tied to nation states, and makes us look suspicious to them in turn. But if politics could not pin us down, business set us up.

When globalization took off, we were ready. We had the mindset and skills needed to deal with and, let us face it, profit from the opening up of global markets. Cosmopolitan enthusiasm was redirected from a humanistic project to an economic one. We stopped taking marching orders from John Lennon and started taking them from Jack Welch. If most political leaders found imagining no countries very hard to do, it seemed almost too easy for corporate leaders to do so. Thus we became foot soldiers of globalization, setting out to turn the world into one of our cities. In hindsight, that was not just overreach. It was a betrayal of the very essence of cosmopolitanism: being a citizen of a varied world.

The wave of nationalism sweeping through the globe has been framed as a rejection of and a reaction to globalization. Some analysts focus on the economic devastation that globalization has brought to Western middle classes. Others focus on the threat that it poses to local social hierarchies and worldviews. Seen that way, nationalism is a blunt tool for those hurt by the cultural and economic blows of globalization to strike back. A blunt old tool, it must be noted, familiar to the kind of provincial masculinity that has held power for centuries, and resents how a changing world imperils its local status.
What Is To Be Done?
Where does that leave cosmopolitans? Caught between the exhortation to empathize with nationalists, out of guilt for having left them behind, and the temptation to double down on globalization and build up de facto city-states out of comfort and fear.

Personally, I don't lack empathy for angry nationalists. I count many among my family and friends. What I lack is sympathy for their prejudices and faith in the economic benefits of isolationism. Similarly, I have little sympathy for the evangelism and isolationism of worried globalists, many of whom I also count as family and friends.

Given where I come from and where I have got to, however, it is hard for me to choose a side. And I believe that choosing one, if one can choose at all, will not do anyone much good. Tribes seldom coexist peacefully and never for long-and picking a tribe gives cosmopolitanism away just when we need it most.

While they might sound similar, cosmopolitanism is not the same as globalization. One is a fragile personal attitude, the other is a relentless socio-economic force. One strives to humanize the different, the other to homogenize it. One celebrates curiosity, the other convenience. (Curiosity is often inconvenient.) One is embracing, the other expansive. One is easy to lose, the other hard to stop. Nationalism and globalization are more similar to each other than to cosmopolitanism, that way. And cosmopolitanism is what might help us counter nationalism and humanize globalization, pushing it to be a vehicle of freedom and opportunity for most, not just a privileged few.

A cosmopolitan tribe, however, preoccupied with protecting hard-earned cultural advances and economic advantages, will only make things worse. There is neither an undo button for globalization, nor a wall high enough to keep it at bay. But the challenge to humanize globalization is more urgent than ever-and it is both cultural and economic. Doing so requires doubling down on cosmopolitanism, reclaiming its humanistic roots and acknowledging that its promise is far from fulfilled. There is more work to do.
Make Cosmopolitanism Good Again
One November morning last year, I found myself asking my mum about her childhood in the war. The night before, a terrorist attack had devastated a cosmopolitan neighborhood in Paris, not far from where I live. Watching the news, I learned that the German football team had not been able to leave the stadium where they were playing France when the terrorists hit. The French team had spent the night in the locker room too, in solidarity.

For some reason, that image stayed with me. When she called to ask if we were safe, I asked my mother if she could have ever imagined such camaraderie between French and German athletes when she was a child. "Of course I couldn't have," she replied. "Neither could I have imagined the freedoms you have enjoyed for decades, nor your way of life."

I seldom think of my mother as daring, but I did then. Her generation dared to dream the unimaginable for mine and set us on a path to make it real.

It also struck me that, in many ways, our cosmopolitan enclaves are like that locker room in Paris. It took good people the best part of a century to build them. We will lose them if we just guard them. If we regard them as safe bubbles and do not have the courage to venture out and work on building many more-easier to get into, fairer, and roomier too.

In short, instead of just being welcoming, cosmopolitans must keep reaching out. Welcoming without reaching out, or expecting to be always welcome, is what cosmopolitans do when they get lazy or entitled. It's time to stop being either.

Cosmopolitanism thrives outside bubbles. Inside any bubble, it soon dies. And if we let cosmopolitanism become a casualty of the conflict between nationalism and globalization, we will have betrayed the dreams and wasted the work of two generations. Our humanity, if not humanity-our worlds, if not the world-are at stake.

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These are dark times for cosmopolitans. Discontent with globalization and resentment towards minorities, immigrants, and intellectuals have fueled the rise of nationalism in Europe and the United States. Dressed in faux-neutral neologisms like "post-truth" and "alt-right," propaganda, racism, and xenophobia have elbowed their way back into the mainstream.

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Sinn Féin launches Stormont election campaign

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Sinn Féin has launched its Stormont Assembly election campaign, describing the 5 May poll as the "most important in a generation".

The result could see the party become the largest in Northern Ireland for the first time, and in line to take the post of First Minister.

The party had 27 candidates elected in 2017, just one fewer than the DUP.

Sinn Féin is fielding 34 candidates, just over half of them women, across the 18 constituencies.

A series of recent opinion polls suggest it has a chance to become the largest party this time around.

Several hundred Sinn Féin members packed into the ballroom of the Europa Hotel in Belfast city centre for the launch event.

"The facts are that the balance of power at Stormont has shifted irreversibly and political unionism must come to terms with the fact the world is moving on fast," the party's leader in Northern Ireland Michelle O'Neill told them.

"Sinn Féin will be defending, not renegotiating the Good Friday Agreement now, or in the time ahead.

"We will not be shifting any goalposts to satisfy unionism before, or after elections."

She strongly criticised DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson, describing his decision to collapse the Stormont Executive by removing Paul Givan as First Minister as "political vandalism".

He has also refused to be drawn on whether his party will go back into power-sharing if Sinn Féin is the largest party and is entitled to the First Minister post.

"This is heard by those of us within nationalism as unionism doing democracy on only unionism's terms," she said.

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This is about much more than Stormont for Sinn Féin.

A good result, topping the poll, would boost its drive to become the largest party across the island and to lead governments on both sides of the border. A poor result would seriously dent those ambitions.

The significance was signposted at the end of Michelle O'Neill's speech.

"On fifth May, this election has the potential to bring about an historic and seismic shift in the political landscape," she said.

"Huge change is on the horizon."

The event was also addressed by Sinn Féin president Mary Lou McDonald, who said the success of the next Stormont administration would be based on delivery.

"We don't have to agree on everything, but we must agree that we are committed to the Assembly and the Executive," she said.

"We must agree that we will deliver for the people who elect us. We must agree that we are willing to roll up our sleeves and get on with the business of government."

The party leaders were highly critical of the British government on a day when a long running dispute over the Irish language resurfaced.

Northern Secretary Brandon Lewis has failed to deliver on a promise to Sinn Féin to introduce an Irish language act in Northern Ireland if Stormont did not agree to do so by last October.

He has now confirmed that there will not be any movement before the election, a move Sinn Féin has described as a clear breach of faith.

Ms Lou McDonald's criticism included a reference to her fellow Trinity College graduate Edward Carson, regarded as the founding father of Ulster Unionism after he felt betrayed by the Conservative government in 1921.

Both of them, she said, shared "a healthy scepticism of Tory governments, born of lengthy experience."

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Sinn Féin launches Stormont election campaign

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Sinn Féin has launched its Stormont Assembly election campaign, describing the 5 May poll as the "most important in a generation". The result could see the party become the largest in Northern Ireland for the first time, and in line to take the post of First Minister.

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NI election 2022: Which MLAs are standing down from Stormont?

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By Jayne McCormack
BBC News NI political correspondent

But a few familiar faces will be missing from the election posters.

Some have chosen to retire or to move on to other things, while others were not selected for another election campaign.

BBC News NI looks at those who will shortly be removing the nameplate from their office door and ending their time as assembly members (MLAs)

It was a surprise to some commentators when the 41-year-old announced he would not run again, but he insisted he wanted to move on to new challenges.

It's not yet known what he plans to do next.

His main role has been as chairman of Stormont's education committee, which met frequently during the coronavirus pandemic to discuss the situation with the virus in schools.

Democratic Unionist Party

Ms Bradley, who was first elected to Stormont in 2011, has decided to step away to care for her mother.

She had already worked in a number of other fields before elected politics, first in the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) as a part-time reserve when she was 22, and for a time as a social care assistant for the Northern Health Trust.

Most recently the North Belfast MLA had chaired Stormont's communities committee - a role she enjoyed.

In her final speech in the assembly she also paid tribute to the many women "inside and outside" the chamber who, she said, had helped her along the way - MLAs who are newer to Stormont say she returned the favour for many of them.

Mr Humphrey is another DUP Belfast North MLA who is stepping down after more than a decade at Stormont, citing personal reasons.

He was a councillor prior to that and served as deputy lord mayor of Belfast.

In the 2021 New Year Honours he was made an MBE for public service, particularly during the Covid-19 response.

He has served on several Stormont committees during his time as an MLA, most recently as the chairman of the Public Accounts Committee.

George Robinson is another DUP stalwart who is stepping down from Stormont.

The Limavady man has represented the East Londonderry constituency at Stormont since 2003, and joked that given he was now 79, it was an appropriate time to retire.

The 76-year-old was not selected to run again, so he is retiring from Stormont.

He has been an MLA for Belfast East since 2003 and served as junior minister from 2009 until 2011.

But it was his tenure as assembly Speaker in 2016 until 2017 that saw him put in the spotlight.

Mr Newton has always rejected the suggestion.

He did not stand again as a candidate for Speaker once the assembly returned in 2020.

Not to be confused with the celebrity chef, it would be odd not to mention Mr Rankin since he will technically be stepping down and not running in the assembly election.

He will soon go down in the history books as Stormont's shortest-serving MLA.

One of Stormont's most recognisable faces, Jim Wells, is now stepping down - though in a manner not of his making.

But the outspoken MLA more than once found himself drawn into controversy over his views or for comments he had made.

He stepped down soon after, saying he wanted to help his wife, Grace, who was seriously ill.

He later had the whip withdrawn by the DUP after he criticised the party, claiming it had promised to reinstate him as minister.

After the 2017 assembly election he gained the title of father of the house - Stormont's longest-serving MLA - and at times he proved a thorn in the side of the DUP, able to cast his vote without being tied to party policy.

After many decades on the front line, the Sinn Féin politician - and former boxer - is hanging up his political sparring gloves.

After Stormont returned two years ago, he was nominated to become the Speaker, chairing debates and overseeing proceedings - a role he recently described as a "privilege".

In 2002 he was the first member of Sinn Féin to serve as the lord mayor of Belfast, and has represented Belfast South and Belfast West at various times during his career.

In more recent times he had argued in favour of greater civility in the chamber and for an electronic voting system to be set up at Stormont.

Ms Rogan was co-opted by Sinn Féin to join the assembly in 2017, to represent South Down.

However, her tenure as an MLA has been short.

Social Democratic and Labour Party

She has only been an MLA for six years but said she would not be running for re-election in 2022.

Politics runs deep in her family, as her late father PJ Bradley represented the same constituency of South Down from 1998 to 2011.

She had also helped run his election campaigns prior to getting involved herself.

During her term as an MLA she had been both the economy and health spokesperson for the SDLP.

Mr Lunn has been a well-known face in Lagan Valley since becoming an MLA in 2007.

For many of those years he was an Alliance member, but cut ties with the party in 2020, citing "internal difficulties".

He previously described himself as a soft unionist, but has said discussions need to take place about the debate on a united Ireland.

Search below to see which elections you can vote in.

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NI election 2022: Which MLAs are standing down from Stormont?

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By Jayne McCormack BBC News NI political correspondent But a few familiar faces will be missing from the election posters. Some have chosen to retire or to move on to other things, while others were not selected for another election campaign.

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Laughland, John. “European Integration: A Marxist Utopia?” The Monist, vol. 92, no. 2, Oxford University Press, 2009, pp. 213–29, http://www.jstor.org/stable/27904119.

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Bring back mandatory mask-wearing indoors, says INMO

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Bring back mandatory mask-wearing indoors, says INMO

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Chile's new President Boric signs Escazu environmental treaty

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President Boric signs Escazu environmental treaty

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President Boric signs Escazu environmental treaty

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Chile's new President Boric signs Escazu environmental treaty

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Gabriel Boric, who took office last week, pledged to take strong stance on climate change and environmental regulation.

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Possible Outcomes of the Russo-Ukrainian War and China's Choice - U.S.-China Perception Monitor

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Possible Outcomes of the Russo-Ukrainian War and China's Choice - U.S.-China Perception Monitor

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Possible Outcomes of the Russo-Ukrainian War and China's Choice - U.S.-China Perception Monitor

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The Russo-Ukrainian War is the most severe geopolitical conflict since World War II and will result in far greater global consequences than September 11 attacks. At this critical moment, China needs to accurately analyze and assess the direction of the war and its potential impact on the international landscape. At the same time, in order to strive for a relatively favorable external environment, China needs to respond flexibly and make strategic choices that conform to its long-term interests.

Russia's 'special military operation' against Ukraine has caused great controvsery in China, with its supporters and opponents being divided into two implacably opposing sides. This article does not represent any party and, for the judgment and reference of the highest decision-making level in China, this article conducts an objective analysis on the possible war consequences along with their corresponding countermeasure options.
I. Predicting the Future of the Russo-Ukrainian War
1. Vladimir Putin may be unable to achieve his expected goals, which puts Russia in a tight spot. The purpose of Putin's attack was to completely solve the Ukrainian problem and divert attention from Russia's domestic crisis by defeating Ukraine with a blitzkrieg, replacing its leadership, and cultivating a pro-Russian government. However, the blitzkrieg failed, and Russia is unable to support a protracted war and its associated high costs. Launching a nuclear war would put Russia on the opposite side of the whole world and is therefore unwinnable. The situations both at home and abroad are also increasingly unfavorable. Even if the Russian army were to occupy Ukraine's capital Kyiv and set up a puppet government at a high cost, this would not mean final victory. At this point, Putin's best option is to end the war decently through peace talks, which requires Ukraine to make substantial concessions. However, what is not attainable on the battlefield is also difficult to obtain at the negotiating table. In any case, this military action constitutes an irreversible mistake.

2. The conflict may escalate further, and the West's eventual involvement in the war cannot be ruled out. While the escalation of the war would be costly, there is a high probability that Putin will not give up easily given his character and power. The Russo-Ukrainian war may escalate beyond the scope and region of Ukraine, and may even include the possibility of a nuclear strike. Once this happens, the U.S. and Europe cannot stay aloof from the conflict, thus triggering a world war or even a nuclear war. The result would be a catastrophe for humanity and a showdown between the United States and Russia. This final confrontation, given that Russia's military power is no match for NATO's, would be even worse for Putin.

3. Even if Russia manages to seize Ukraine in a desperate gamble, it is still a political hot potato. Russia would thereafter carry a heavy burden and become overwhelmed. Under such circumstances, no matter whether Volodymyr Zelensky is alive or not, Ukraine will most likely set up a government-in-exile to confront Russia in the long term. Russia will be subject both to Western sanctions and rebellion within the territory of Ukraine. The battle lines will be drawn very long. The domestic economy will be unsustainable and will eventually be dragged down. This period will not exceed a few years.

4. The political situation in Russia may change or be disintegrated at the hands of the West. After Putin's blitzkrieg failed, the hope of Russia's victory is slim and Western sanctions have reached an unprecedented degree. As people's livelihoods are severely affected and as anti-war and anti-Putin forces gather, the possibility of a political mutiny in Russia cannot be ruled out. With Russia's economy on the verge of collapse, it would be difficult for Putin to prop up the perilous situation even without the loss of the Russo-Ukrainian war. If Putin were to be ousted from power due to civil strife, coup d'état, or another reason, Russia would be even less likely to confront the West. It would surely succumb to the West, or even be further dismembered, and Russia's status as a great power would come to an end.
II. Analysis of the Impact of Russo-Ukrainian war On International Landscape
1. The United States would regain leadership in the Western world, and the West would become more united. At present, public opinion believes that the Ukrainian war signifies a complete collapse of U.S. hegemony, but the war would in fact bring France and Germany, both of which wanted to break away from the U.S., back into the NATO defense framework, destroying Europe's dream to achieve independent diplomacy and self-defense. Germany would greatly increase its military budget; Switzerland, Sweden, and other countries would abandon their neutrality. With Nord Stream 2 put on hold indefinitely, Europe's reliance on US natural gas will inevitably increase. The US and Europe would form a closer community of shared future, and American leadership in the Western world will rebound.

2. The "Iron Curtain" would fall again not only from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea, but also to the final confrontation between the Western-dominated camp and its competitors. The West will draw the line between democracies and authoritarian states, defining the divide with Russia as a struggle between democracy and dictatorship. The new Iron Curtain will no longer be drawn between the two camps of socialism and capitalism, nor will it be confined to the Cold War. It will be a life-and-death battle between those for and against Western democracy. The unity of the Western world under the Iron Curtain will have a siphon effect on other countries: the U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy will be consolidated, and other countries like Japan will stick even closer to the U.S., which will form an unprecedentedly broad democratic united front.

3. The power of the West will grow significantly, NATO will continue to expand, and U.S. influence in the non-Western world will increase. After the Russo-Ukrainian War, no matter how Russia achieves its political transformation, it will greatly weaken the anti-Western forces in the world. The scene after the 1991 Soviet and Eastern upheavals may repeat itself: theories on "the end of ideology" may reappear, the resurgence of the third wave of democratization will lose momentum, and more third world countries will embrace the West. The West will possess more "hegemony" both in terms of military power and in terms of values and institutions, its hard power and soft power will reach new heights.

4. China will become more isolated under the established framework. For the above reasons, if China does not take proactive measures to respond, it will encounter further containment from the US and the West. Once Putin falls, the U.S. will no longer face two strategic competitors but only have to lock China in strategic containment. Europe will further cut itself off from China; Japan will become the anti-China vanguard; South Korea will further fall to the U.S.; Taiwan will join the anti-China chorus, and the rest of the world will have to choose sides under herd mentality. China will not only be militarily encircled by the U.S., NATO, the QUAD, and AUKUS, but also be challenged by Western values and systems.
III. China's Strategic Choice
1. China cannot be tied to Putin and needs to be cut off as soon as possible. In the sense that an escalation of conflict between Russia and the West helps divert U.S. attention from China, China should rejoice with and even support Putin, but only if Russia does not fall. Being in the same boat with Putin will impact China should he lose power. Unless Putin can secure victory with China's backing, a prospect which looks bleak at the moment, China does not have the clout to back Russia. The law of international politics says that there are "no eternal allies nor perpetual enemies," but "our interests are eternal and perpetual." Under current international circumstances, China can only proceed by safeguarding its own best interests, choosing the lesser of two evils, and unloading the burden of Russia as soon as possible. At present, it is estimated that there is still a window period of one or two weeks before China loses its wiggle room. China must act decisively.

2. China should avoid playing both sides in the same boat, give up being neutral, and choose the mainstream position in the world. At present, China has tried not to offend either side and walked a middle ground in its international statements and choices, including abstaining from the UN Security Council and the UN General Assembly votes. However, this position does not meet Russia's needs, and it has infuriated Ukraine and its supporters as well as sympathizers, putting China on the wrong side of much of the world. In some cases, apparent neutrality is a sensible choice, but it does not apply to this war, where China has nothing to gain. Given that China has always advocated respect for national sovereignty and territorial integrity, it can avoid further isolation only by standing with the majority of the countries in the world. This position is also conducive to the settlement of the Taiwan issue.

3. China should achieve the greatest possible strategic breakthrough and not be further isolated by the West. Cutting off from Putin and giving up neutrality will help build China's international image and ease its relations with the U.S. and the West. Though difficult and requiring great wisdom, it is the best option for the future. The view that a geopolitical tussle in Europe triggered by the war in Ukraine will significantly delay the U.S. strategic shift from Europe to the Indo-Pacific region cannot be treated with excessive optimism. There are already voices in the U.S. that Europe is important, but China is more so, and the primary goal of the U.S. is to contain China from becoming the dominant power in the Indo-Pacific region. Under such circumstances, China's top priority is to make appropriate strategic adjustments accordingly, to change the hostile American attitudes towards China, and to save itself from isolation. The bottom line is to prevent the U.S. and the West from imposing joint sanctions on China.

4. China should prevent the outbreak of world wars and nuclear wars and make irreplaceable contributions to world peace. As Putin has explicitly requested Russia's strategic deterrent forces to enter a state of special combat readiness, the Russo-Ukrainian war may spiral out of control. A just cause attracts much support; an unjust one finds little. If Russia instigates a world war or even a nuclear war, it will surely risk the world's turmoil. To demonstrate China's role as a responsible major power, China not only cannot stand with Putin, but also should take concrete actions to prevent Putin's possible adventures. China is the only country in the world with this capability, and it must give full play to this unique advantage. Putin's departure from China's support will most likely end the war, or at least not dare to escalate the war. As a result, China will surely win widespread international praise for maintaining world peace, which may help China prevent isolation but also find an opportunity to improve its relations with the United States and the West.

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Possible Outcomes of the Russo-Ukrainian War and China's Choice | U.S.-China Perception Monitor

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Hu Wei is the vice-chairman of the Public Policy Research Center of the Counselor's Office of the State Council, the chairman of Shanghai Public Policy Research Association, the chairman of the Academic Committee of the Chahar Institute, a professor, and a doctoral supervisor.

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List of 17 candidates announced for upcoming Seanad by-election

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The Seanad by-election is taking place to fill the vacancy caused by Labour Senator Ivana Bacik's election to the Dáil.

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The Irish Times view on the future of the Seanad: In dire need of a revamp

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