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Russian Anti-War Activist - Boris Kagarlitsky - Paul Jay (part 1\/2) Transcrip"} Talia Baroncelli and Paul Jay discuss Russian threats to use tactical nuclear weapons against Western Europe and what role China can play in solving the existential crisis of climate and threats of nuclear war—part 1 of 2. Russian Anti-War Activist – Boris Kagarlitsky – Paul Jay (part 1/2) .kt-post-loop_9cfd94-b8 .kadence-post-image{padding-top:0px;padding-right:0px;padding-bottom:0px;padding-left:0px;}.kt-post-loop_9cfd94-b8 .kt-post-grid-wrap{gap:30px 6px;}.kt-post-loop_9cfd94-b8 .kt-blocks-post-grid-item{border-top-width:0px;border-right-width:0px;border-bottom-width:0px;border-left-width:0px;border-top-left-radius:0px;border-top-right-radius:0px;border-bottom-right-radius:0px;border-bottom-left-radius:0px;}.kt-post-loop_9cfd94-b8 .kt-blocks-post-grid-item .kt-blocks-post-grid-item-inner{padding-top:10px;padding-right:25px;padding-bottom:25px;padding-left:9px;}.kt-post-loop_9cfd94-b8 .kt-blocks-post-grid-item header{padding-top:0px;padding-right:0px;padding-bottom:0px;padding-left:0px;margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0px;}.kt-post-loop_9cfd94-b8 .kt-blocks-post-grid-item .entry-title{padding-top:5px;padding-right:0px;padding-bottom:10px;padding-left:0px;margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0px;font-size:16px;line-height:17px;}.kt-post-loop_9cfd94-b8 .entry-content{padding-top:0px;padding-right:0px;padding-bottom:0px;padding-left:0px;margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0px;}.kt-post-loop_9cfd94-b8 .kt-blocks-post-footer{border-top-width:0px;border-right-width:0px;border-bottom-width:0px;border-left-width:0px;padding-top:0px;padding-right:0px;padding-bottom:0px;padding-left:0px;margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0px;}.kt-post-loop_9cfd94-b8 .entry-content:after{height:0px;}.kt-post-loop_9cfd94-b8 .kb-filter-item{border-top-width:0px;border-right-width:0px;border-bottom-width:2px;border-left-width:0px;padding-top:5px;padding-right:8px;padding-bottom:5px;padding-left:8px;margin-top:0px;margin-right:10px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0px;} U.S. and China Must Cooperate to Reduce Threat of Nuclear War and Deal With Climate Crisis Russian Anti-War Activist – Boris Kagarlitsky Arrested – Paul Jay How Will the War in Ukraine End? – Boris Kagarlitsky Russian Invasion a War of Aggression – Offer of Ukraine in NATO a Provocation – Paul Jay Class and the War in Ukraine – Paul Jay (pt 1/3) Chomsky und Ellsberg über die derzeitige Bedrohung (Ukraine & Taiwan) Nord Stream Pipeline Sabotage and One Year Since Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine – Larry Wilkerson The Ultimate Serial Killer is Nuclear War – Paul Jay How Will the War in Ukraine End? – Boris Kagarlitsky Ukraine: Compromise or War to the End – Paul Jay Ukraine: Zelenskyy’s Visit to Washington | With Colonel Wilkerson (Ret.) Debatte über den Krieg in der Ukraine mit preisgekrönten Journalisten Class and the War in Ukraine – Paul Jay pt 1/2 Retired US Army Colonel on Ukraine, Iran & the State of the US Empire Risking Nuclear War to Avoid Humiliation – Ellsberg (pt 1/2) Ukraine a Pawn in a Larger Struggle – Vijay Prashad pt 1 Putin’s War Crimes Follow in the Steps of American War Crimes – Denis Pilash pt 2/2 Transcript Listen Donate Subscribe Music This is an auto-generated version of the transcript. An edited version will be arriving shortly. Talia Baroncelli Hi, I’m Talia Baroncelli, and you’re watching theAnalysis.news. I’ll shortly be joined by your other host, Paul Jay, for part two of my discussion with him on the recent arrest of Russian anti-war thinker Boris Kagarlitsky. Hopefully, you’ve already watched part one and have enjoyed that content. If so, please consider donating to the show so that we can continue making these episodes. You can go to our website, theAnalysis.com.news, and hit the donate button at the top right corner of the screen and get onto our mailing list; that way, you won’t miss any future episodes. See you in a bit with Paul. Paul Jay So I don’t think China’s position is so socialistic, let’s put it that way. There’s a real mix of what I would say a kind of central planning rationality mixed with a nationalist, geopolitical, great nation mentality. If you compare Chinese decision-making to American decision-making, I think the Chinese are more rational when it comes to geopolitics, generally speaking. As a state-managed capitalism, it’s been brilliant in the way it’s accomplished its external commercial relationships. In terms of Chinese national interest, China is now the major trading partner of almost every country on Earth. The U.S. talks about competing with China. In many ways, China’s already won in terms of the trading relationships. It has. China, I believe, is the number one trading partner of the United States, never mind just about everybody else. It’s the number one trading partner of most of Western Europe, certainly most of Latin America, Africa, and there’s nothing the U.S. can do about it, and that’s part of the American quandary. That said, I don’t get why China isn’t more urgently dealing with climate. If you look at the heat maps, what the world looks like at two, three and then four degrees, China is already in record-breaking heat waves. This is just the beginning. We’re at 1.2 degrees warming. We’ll be at 1.5 within a decade, and some people think even faster. If you look at three and four degrees, there’s not much of China left. That said, there isn’t much of the U.S. left either in terms of agriculture, especially in the Midwest and the West Coast. I don’t get why China isn’t urgently screaming about this. I think the Chinese argument that the Americans are being completely hypocritical about this is very legitimate. I think the U.S. talks a lot more than it does. The lack of phasing out of fossil fuel is the critical issue, obviously, and it’s not happening. They keep talking about carbon sequestration and such, and that’s mostly nonsense. They don’t want to do what obviously needs to be done: nationalize the fossil fuel companies, America, and phase them out quickly. As quickly as that energy can be replaced, and it can be replaced quickly with a massive investment in sustainable energy sources. I don’t know what to say about nuclear. There are various people making the argument, even James Hansen, the climatologist that you can’t get out of this without nuclear. Others are arguing, well if that’s true, then maybe we have to reduce the size of the economy. Maybe, I don’t know if that’s politically possible. I do know we need as an absolute to phase out fossil fuel as quickly as possible and phase in forms of sustainable energy. We also have to figure out how to decarbonize. That’s going to take, I guess I said that already. There needs to be a massive, massive investment in a publicly run for the public interest, not some private sector boondoggle project to figure out what real effective decarbonization is. Not greenwashing. Not dangerous geoengineering that nobody even knows if it won’t do more damage. We do need to combine the phasing out of fossil fuel with decarbonizing the ocean and the growing of massive amount of trees, regenerative agriculture. We’re not putting much resources into any of that because it’s basically really being left up to the private sector in the marketplace with some government money to juice it. Even if we move more quickly to electric cars and such, okay, it’s something, it’s maybe better than nothing, but we’re still not transforming how electricity is produced. So that’s where our focus needs to be. Ukrainians, as difficult as it is, when you have soldiers, Russian soldiers, slaughtering your people, you got to see the bigger picture because there won’t be a Ukraine in the future. Do not believe that the West is going to rebuild you when the West is in such a crisis. I don’t know how much the West would rebuild Ukraine even if there wasn’t such a climate crisis. Maybe they would. Maybe it’d be like a South Korea, which is they want to show how wonderful Ukraine is rebuilt as a model to try to undermine Russia and try to prove to the Russian people. Talia Baroncelli They’re already giving out contracts to different companies for rebuilding. Paul Jay One way or another it’s going to be a boondoggle. Talia Baroncelli It’s not going to be rebuilding in a way which is sustainable. Paul Jay Yeah, without getting further on the climate thing and all the rest right now to get back to it. So that’s why I think there must be a settlement of this more or less along the lines of where things are. Without this war of attrition, Russia seems dug in. Even if a Ukrainian offensive has some success and I have no idea what’s really going on in the battlefield, I don’t know who to believe. Eric Schmidt, who used to run Google, is a scientific advisor to Biden. He was on TV the other day and his assessment was very pessimistic that the Ukrainians could breach the Russian defenses. He said maybe they could do something with hundreds of thousands of drones, which they don’t have. So it would mean the West would have to supply drones, and a ridiculous amount of drones. Who knows if the Russians wouldn’t figure out a way to fight that. A war of attrition that goes on for years is going to be devastating for the Ukrainian people, devastating for the Russians that are thrown wave after wave into this battle and devastating to the world. Never mind what it’s doing in terms of grain exports and how much that’s going to devastate parts of Africa, maybe Asia, and so on, but what it does to global politics. I hope China and the U.S., and I don’t know whether these recent meetings of [Antony] Blinken going and [Janet] Yellen and before them, maybe more importantly, the big tech leaders. [Bill] Gates was there, the head of Apple was there, and Larry Fink from BlackRock was there. The real power brokers of America, the leaders of the billionaire class, they went to China and they seemed to have sent the Biden administration a message to cool this thing down. This is getting nuts over Taiwan. Don’t you jeopardize this Chinese market for us. We know that Gates understands the threat of climate. We know Larry Fink gets it. They’re not doing much about it, but we know they get how serious it is. They know there’s no solution without a Chinese American collaboration. The Chinese are saying something interesting, which is not illegitimate. They said this to John Kerry, the American climate czar or whatever he is. Talia Baroncelli Czar. Paul Jay They said, okay, fine, let’s collaborate on climate. But how do we take him seriously? Number one, when the last president of the United States didn’t believe there was a climate crisis and we don’t know who’s next. So what if we make all these agreements with you and in 2024 we’re dealing with a climate denier? Two, you’re waging chip wars against us, trying to restrain our economy, and then you want to have a collaboration on climate. Three, you’re sanctioning the technology we have to make better batteries for dealing with the climate crisis to make better solar and wind power energy. The batteries are sort of the weak link in the chain there. The Chinese position isn’t illegitimate, and then they get caught up in the conflict over Taiwan, which is all nuts because it’s clear the Chinese don’t want to invade. But the more the Americans provoke them, the more the hawks in China. That’s the thing, we’re not dealing with some monolithic entity in China. There are a lot of splits and divisions, as there is in every country. The hawks in China are saying, okay, this has gone too far. You’re offending our national dignity. These elements of humiliation and national dignity are an important part of the narrative of how the elites in every country maintain control. So even though they’re objectively nonsensical, the issue of humiliation and national dignity have brought us to the brink of nuclear war many times. Right now we’re looking at it again. Why won’t Putin get the hell out of Ukraine? Why doesn’t he go back to the February 23 [boarder]? There’s no strategic reason. It’s got nothing to do with NATO. It’s clear Ukraine’s not getting into NATO. Why? Because it would be humiliating. There’s no other real reason for it. It would be humiliating. Why did [John F.] Kennedy blockade Cuba? Not because Cuba was any threat. The Soviet missiles in Cuba, they were no threat. [Robert] McNamara told Kennedy, this is a political problem for you domestically. There’s no objective strategic issue of these missiles. There’s nothing these missiles could do in Cuba that the Russian subs can’t already do. Kennedy risked nuclear war to avoid humiliation. The problem is, we live in that world, so you got to deal with it as a factor. So what’s the conclusion of all this? And this is where Boris and I disagree. The West, with China’s help, does need to give a way for the Putin state to get out of this without looking the fool. Talia Baroncelli Well, you were speaking about China’s reaction to the U.S.’s attempt to decouple its economy from the Chinese economy, which is incredibly difficult to do, given that they rely on each other’s markets for exports. Some analysts have said that this attempt to decouple the U.S. economy from China, if it goes too far and it antagonizes the Chinese and doesn’t have the desired effect, it could actually lead to China being emboldened to invade Taiwan. Paul Jay I don’t think the U.S. is serious about decoupling. They can’t. Are you giving up on a market of a billion and a half people? There’s no seriousness. What there is seriousness in is trying to strengthen American productive capacity to better compete with China in the global economy and not be so dependent on China for production. The issue of chips is a big issue because the chips that matter are made in Taiwan. Now, the company that’s the leading chip manufacturer is itself fairly integrated into China. Much of the Taiwanese chip production actually happens in China in plants designed by and run by the Taiwanese company. The guy that owns the major manufacturing chip company is actually for less antagonistic relations with China. One must understand, Taiwan is not monolithic on this issue of relationships with China. Much of Taiwan, both elites and the population, just want the status quo. They’re not looking for independence. There are sections of the Taiwanese elites and some of the population that are pushing full fledged independence. The far right of the United States is pushing it, too. Other than some crazy ideological motives which exist in the U.S. and maybe in Taiwan, it’s an almost war that really serves the military-industrial complex of the United States, and for that matter, Taiwan. For years, apparently, Taiwan has been buying these weapon systems, which cost Taiwan a fortune, because it’s not like some other place like Israel that gets all kinds of subsidies from the United states. Taiwan actually pays for these weapons. A lot of the weapon systems Taiwan was buying were ridiculous because they were so massive they couldn’t have been used against a Chinese invasion. It was like one paying tribute to the U.S. for protectionism. Ellsberg used to call NATO a protection racket. Well that’s to a large extent what the U.S. has going on with Taiwan. Also domestic players make a lot of money in these contracts, whether it’s through outright corruption and bribery or other ways getting local spin off contracts off the US military weapons purchases. So there’s a lot of money to be made in almost war, not actual war, an actual war most analysts think goes nuclear pretty fast or if it stays conventional, the Chinese win. So there’s a conflict of economic forces. Like I’ve said this before, Boeing is a good example and Taiwan is an important purchaser of Boeing weapon systems and military aircraft. Maybe. I think Taiwan might be in the top 20 purchasers of Boeing military stuff. But China at least till recently and I think still because one of the things China is not as advanced in is commercial aircraft. China was and I think still is one of the biggest purchasers of Boeing commercial aircraft. So in one company, one part of the company wants less tension with China and sell more commercial aircraft. And another arm of the company wants more tension over Taiwan so they can sell more arms. The system is not rational. It’s filled with these contradictory interests and the policy reflects that. The foreign policy and especially Americans don’t know what the hell to do. But to get back to your question, the only country place in the world right now that’s really well positioned to try to bring Ukraine war to an end is China. Will they do it? I don’t know. Maybe they’re making some noises that way. When one of the senior people in the Chinese Foreign Ministry was asked, why don’t you come right out and condemn the invasion? When you say you support the UN charter and the issue of sovereignty, his answer was, well somebody’s got to be able to be able to mediate this thing. Well if that’s the reason, they won’t come out and condemn it. And I don’t think that’s the only reason. I think right now Russia’s being turned into practically a satellite of China. So there’s know from a pure nationalist interest, there’s geopolitical interest to have let it carried on this long. But I think that interest is coming to an end. The longer this stalemate goes on, the weaker and more bled Russia becomes, the more desperate it becomes. And we were going to talk about this and we might as well now some of the voices in Russia leading foreign policy voices are calling for using tactical nuclear weapons against Poland, not against Ukraine, because they still want to act as if Ukraine are our brothers. And all this as they slaughter tens of thousands, but against Poland, because the only real threat Russia has here, the only real weapon, is the nuclear threat. And nobody, they’re saying, will really take it seriously if you don’t do a it’s part of the Russian military doctrine. It’s called escalate to de escalate. And it actually, I was just being this was explained to me yesterday by an expert in Soviet and Russian nuclear planning. It was at a time when the NATO forces were far weaker, conventional NATO forces were weaker than Russian. The NATO always had as an option, if we started losing on a conventional battleground, we would go nuke to balance things. And the threat of going nuke made up for our weakness conventionally. Well, now things are flipped around the other way. Western Europe, the NATO forces in Europe are conventionally much stronger than Russia. If it was a straight conventional fight without nukes, the west would win. I’m told by everybody knows these things we can see right now they can’t even win. Russians aren’t even winning in Ukraine, never mind against the whole of NATO, including the US. So the Russian are doing what NATO said. If we start to lose conventionally, we will have to prove we’re willing to use nukes. And the way to prove it is to do it. And there’s voices in Russia that are saying, if this thing goes on for years, it SAPS our ability. There’s only so long we can sustain war of attrition in Ukraine. And if we start to lose, the only answer we’re going to have is give up the collapse of the Russian state, which means the resignation of whether it’s Putin or whoever’s next with Putinism after Putin. And that’s the most likely thing right now that follows Putin is another Putin or even someone more hawkish or use nukes. And they’re saying, if that’s where this ends up, we might as well do it now, right? Talia Baroncelli To give some context to our viewers, the expert or analyst you’re speaking of is Sergey Karaganov from the Russian equivalent of the Council on Foreign Relations. And I believe at the beginning of June, he published a piece called Difficult but Necessary Decision, which sparked a huge debate among other policy thinkers in Russia. He was essentially arguing that the threshold for using nuclear weapons should be lowered because the west is no longer really scared or fearsome of Russian saber rattling, so to speak, and that some sort of preemptive attack would essentially be the way to go if the US. And Europe were to continue supporting Ukraine. And I think that did spark a debate. There were some people and other policy circles in Russia which condemned this position and said that there would never be an instance in which a preemptive strike would be justified, because that would just spell the end of Russia and Europe, obviously. And in response to that, he actually wrote another piece called there is no Choice. Russia will have to launch a nuclear strike on Europe. So he even doubled down on that position. And so I do think he represents a certain segment of Russian debates, and it’s pretty insane, but the person who actually has the nuclear codes is President Putin. And we don’t really know what he’s thinking. In the Russian state policy documents from 2020, it does say that a nuclear or a tactical nuclear attack or the use of nuclear weapons could be justified if the existence of this state were to be put into jeopardy. And that’s a really tricky categorization, because what does that mean? If the regime is put into jeopardy? If Putin’s regime is put into jeopardy, does that then justify a strike? Or does that doctrine just refer to the Russian state? If the Russian state is put into jeopardy, so we don’t know how he’s. Paul Jay Yeah, what you’re referring to is very important. What’s this guy’s name again? Talia Baroncelli Karaganov. Paul Jay Karaganov is not a nobody. This equivalent of the Council on Foreign Relations goes back into Soviet days. It is the assembly of the leading foreign policy thinkers of Russia. When they have their annual conferences, Putin speaks there sometimes. The most recent one, Lavrov spoke there. They are a very serious body. And this guy, Kraginoff is the chairman of the Presidium. So he’s like the leader of this thing. He’s a serious foreign policy voice. And I’ve talked to people that know him, and he’s been a hawk since Soviet days, hawk in the Soviet and then Russian terms, which means the way to deal with the west is with the most aggressive posture possible. And of course, the west has given lots of reasons to think that. So the congress that happened just after he wrote those pieces, when Lavros spoke, Lavros didn’t say what he said, but he also didn’t say anything against what he said. But what they did say at this congress and this is where the issue of what does it mean, the Russian states at threat. They define what’s happening now in Ukraine as a war with the west. This is not a war against Ukraine. Now, the Ukrainians, of course, don’t agree with that. And when this is called a proxy war in the west by some Westerners and people of the south, that’s only partly true. You can’t discount the agency and right of the Ukrainian people to resist this. But the Vietnam War was the same. Know, the Vietnamese waged a national liberation war, and this was their war. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t a form of proxy war. This was for the United States. They didn’t really care what the hell happened in Vietnam. This was all about national liberation movements moving towards socialism. And thus an alliance was what people thought was socialist Soviet Union. I mean, you can debate whether it really was or wasn’t, but that doesn’t matter. It was going to take vietnam and then other national liberation movements out of the Western sphere of capitalism. And that was the reason for the war. And that’s the reason for the Ukraine war. The Russians do not want Ukraine to be part of the Western sphere of capitalism. They want Ukraine part of the Russian sphere of capitalism. And why is there a separate Russian sphere of capitalism? Because the west didn’t want Russia in the EU. Because they didn’t want to have to deal with the potential. Talia Baroncelli They didn’t want Ukraine in the EU? Paul Jay No. Didn’t want Russia. The west? No. The west. Talia Baroncelli Oh, I see. You mean? Paul Jay Yeah. The west wants Ukraine and the EU. They want to extend the Western sphere of capitalism, but they didn’t want Russia because they didn’t think they could control Russia. The history, the culture, the size of the country, the size of the armed forces, the fact it was a know, an equal nuclear power. They didn’t want that in the EU because the EU would have become such a rival of the United States that it may have really become its own sphere of capitalism rather than the EU being part of the American sphere. And the West European elites didn’t want it either. They didn’t know for historic reasons and more contemporary reasons, they didn’t trust how powerful Russia would get within the EU and then all the other EU and even the Germans to some extent. But imagine if there’d been a German Russian alliance in the mean leading the EU. What would that do American hegemony? So the reason Russia is fighting for a Russian sphere of capitalism, because they were excluded. The west wanted Russia to be an oil producing rump state. And that was okay with the Russian oligarchs for quite a while because they were cashing in, they had their yachts and this and that. But as time went on, the Russian state became stronger. And now we’re at a stage where I’m quoting, more or less from this recent congress of this foreign policy group, where they’re calling Russia a state civilization, which is the Russian nation, the Russian people, the Russian language, the russian religion. The Russian values which they stress over and over again means family values between a man like, marriages between men and women, like, it’s very homophobic. The values are toxic and not very different than American Christian nationalism. In fact, it really is a form of Russian Christian nationalism. I think they’re very similar phenomena. So within that context, they’re saying there being these foreign policy, russian foreign policy elites, a long, drawn out battle in Ukraine might lead to such a weakening of the Russian economy and this government. But this government means the Russian state, which means Russian civilization. They identify the state. And Putin not like a political party in the west. Like, if Biden goes down, somebody else comes. Know which party comes to power in the United States doesn’t threaten the state. At least it never has. So far, the state is much stronger than any particular one leader or particular party. But in Russia, that doesn’t seem to be the case. The Putin and the bureaucracy around him, the military around him, they’re too and anyway, the analysis seems to be, if I’m understanding it correctly, long drawn out war in Ukraine is a threat to the Russian state civilization. If it’s a threat to the state civilization under this doctrine, there’s justification for the use of a tactical nuclear weapon to prove to NATO and the west that we’re willing to do anything to defend this state civilization. Now, China has actually warned about know, I read this thing, Global Times all the time, which is essentially an English language website run by the Chinese party, and they have said, be careful what you wish for, west. If Putin gets desperate enough, if they think this is going to be the downfall of this Russian state, and then, to use the Russian terminology, state civilization, you don’t know what might happen. Meaning nukes are not out of the question. So we’re in a very, very dangerous moment. I just talked to Nikolai Sokov, who worked in the Soviet and for a couple of years under Putin, under Yeltsin, in the Soviet arms negotiations. He was a top negotiator with the US. He knows Soviet thinking and Russian thinking very well. He says he has never, ever in his life, 40 years involved in this, heard public statements about using tactical nuclear weapons. He says sometimes privately, there were conversations like that that may come to this. He’s never heard about it, that such things could be declared at such senior levels. So then the argument goes, well, you can’t submit to Russian black nuclear blackmail. Why not? Somebody has a gun to your head. You don’t submit to the blackmail with getting shot. Mad I would of course, it’s up to the Ukrainians. They don’t want to submit to it, okay. That’s their right to keep fighting, but we don’t have to risk it. And more importantly, as I said, the climate issues are even more threatening than the rhetoric coming out on nuclear weapons, but it shouldn’t be taken so unseriously. So in the final analysis, what does it mean? I think, and this is where I go back to boris didn’t agree with me on this. Boris’s thinking was, if this war goes on long enough, sections of the Russian military will overthrow Putin. There’s sections of the oligarchs that want this war over. And thus he thought Ukraine should keep fighting because it will lead to the downfall of Putin and what do they call it, the nomenclature, the bureaucracy around Putin, and will create an opening for more revolutionary politics in Russia. I can’t say he’s wrong. Obviously, he knows domestic politics way better than I do. I mean, Russian domestic politics. I only know this, I should just say, as a Russian revolutionary, which is what he is, his perspective, his frame, he looks at this in is how to advance revolutionary politics in Russia. And he thinks the victory success of Ukrainian war leads to the downfall of Putin. I don’t know, it’s a hell of a risky know, lots of people who analyze this, including Russians who are against the war, are not so sure what follows Putin isn’t worse right now. Sokov is telling me Putin’s main battle is not with the Kardalisky’s, it’s not with the left, it’s not with the liberals. His actual main battle is with the hawks who want an even more aggressive approach to the war in Ukraine. I think Putin’s calculation is that the Russian population doesn’t want more bodies coming home. And he’s got a fine line there about how many lives he can risk. And digging in is the better strategy, which is what he seems to be doing. But the right in Russia apparently is very strong. So I think as a progressive living in North America, I advocate, for whatever it’s worth, not that that many people care what I advocate anyway, that no further arms should go to Ukraine without being late to an insistence on negotiations. Two, those negotiations need to include referendum, UN run referendums. There should be like an immediate ceasefire and immediately, as quickly as possible, organized referendums. There may be other steps that have to be taken. But let me address one thing, this issue of war crimes. And Zelensky has said no negotiations with Putin. He should be charged with war crimes and all this. Yeah, of course Putin should be charged with war crimes, but by who has the legitimacy and credibility to charge and try Putin for war crimes? The only way to do it is that the United States would arrest George Bush and Dick Cheney and put them on trial for war crimes in Iraq, for launching the Iraq war. And you might even consider arresting Barack Obama because under international law, as I understand it, he actually had an obligation to pursue, investigate and charge Bush Cheney for war crimes, that if you don’t pursue them, you become implicated. And Obama may have other blood. We know he has other blood on his hands in terms of journal warfare and, you know, certainly not the British government who was hogged in in the Iraq war. And in terms of history, nobody has more blood on their hands than the British Empire. I mean, go on. Where exactly is it that has some credibility? Because even some of the countries that weren’t so involved in the to Canada really wasn’t much involved, but is a complete collaborator with the US and every other kinds of wars and war crimes. So any serious talk, no negotiations without charging Putin, all it’s complete nonsense. It’s only said because to avoid any negotiations or as a propaganda. Talia Baroncelli Yeah, I’ve discussed this also with Colonel Larry Wilkerson in the past too, that John Bolton was the one who. Negotiated certain deals with other countries so that they wouldn’t be held liable for war crimes or for other crimes they had committed before the International Criminal Court. So essentially, the International Criminal Court has no jurisdiction anymore to try American war crimes and hostilities. Paul Jay Yeah, and the US never signed the agreement to be in the So, as did Israel and such. Anyway, it is beyond stupidity to have that kind of rhetoric. Maybe Zelensky has to go before these negotiations can take place. I don’t know hagiography about Zelensky. I mean, he could have taken NATO off the table and maybe this wouldn’t have happened. So to turn him into this great hero, the Ukrainian people are fighting a heroic fight, there’s no doubt, and they have a right to. Talia Baroncelli But the thing is, though, is Zelensky would probably be the only one with legitimacy if he actually did decide to negotiate with Russia and to say that there should be some sort of ceasefire. I feel like probably more people would follow him. Paul Jay But the Americans are saying, we won’t do it if the Ukrainians don’t want to. And there’s no reason why the US. Can’t say, well, fine, don’t negotiate if you don’t want to, but we don’t have to give you arms if we don’t want to. So obviously the US has enormous leverage, but so does the know. The Chinese can say, listen, you negotiate or we’re going to find our fossil fuel somewhere else. Talia Baroncelli And to a certain extent, Turkey as well. I mean turkey under President erdogan, for example. They were the ones who negotiated the Black Sea grain deal. And some argue that Russia pulled out of the deal because they were upset with, you know, giving back five Azov fighters who were fighting in Mariupol for giving them back to Ukraine instead of to what? I mean, initially they agreed that they would keep them in Turkey until the end of the war, and that allegedly upset the Russians. And so I don’t know who has more leverage in their relationship in Turkey and Russia’s relationship, but potentially Turkey can emerge as also negotiating some sort of ceasefire. But it seems like they’re also, for Ukraine joining NATO. Paul Jay Well, all things nuts, because Russia’s pissed Turkey off with canceling this grain deal because Turkey was making a lot of money out of this grain now. So in some ways, Russia’s pushing Turkey closer into NATO. Of course, Turkey’s already in NATO, but anyway, the whole thing is nuts. But to go to the very beginning of all this, I hope people do watch the Kardelitsky interviews. Actually, we’ll put them all up on one page. And let’s not forget, Boris right now is sitting in jail somewhere in Russia. They moved him to somewhere in the outskirts, and it’s very possible he’s looking at seven years and maybe more. His daughter said in the interview. That’s just the beginning, not the charges. They can come up with a lot more charges. So Morris could be looking at quite a bit of jail time here. Talia Baroncelli Well, thanks, Paul, for joining me to speak about Boris’s arrest and the war in Ukraine. We obviously hope that Boris will be released as soon as possible and our thoughts are with his family. If you enjoy this content and you enjoyed watching Boris Kagarlitsky’s interviews that Paul has done with him in the past, then please go to our website, theAnalysis.news. 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Paul Jay and Talia Baroncelli discuss the recent arrest of Russian anti-war sociologist and Marxist Boris Yulyevich Kagarlitsky. Boris was interviewed several times on theAnalysis.news. Talia and Paul dig into what a long-term stalemate and threats of nuclear war might mean for Ukraine, Russia, and the world—part 1 of 2.

This interview was originally published on February 23, 2023. Boris Kagarlitsky talks about the mood of the Russian people and the possibility that the Russian military leadership might insist on ending the war.

Oppenheimer is a creative tour de force that sparks a necessary debate about today’s nuclear weapons. U.S. media still defends the false justification for a nuclear attack on Japan and the “first strike” underpinnings of U.S. policy. Peter Kuznick in discussion with Paul Jay.

Yasser Louati, political analyst and Head of the Committee for Justice and Liberties, highlights the brutal practices of the French police, as well as the proximity of the police unions to Marine Le Pen’s right-wing ideology. He discusses how French secularism, or laïcité, has been instrumentalized against racialized groups and minorities. Furthermore, he argues that France is at a crossroads; as seen in the anti-pension reform protests, different groups from the fringes of French society are uniting to protest the neoliberal state, as well as its policies which sustain religious and racial discrimination and the increased alienation of the poorer classes. Will French society keep fighting for justice and rise up against the regime, as it has done in various movements in the past?

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I’m Lynn Fries producer of Global Political Economy or GPEnewsdocs. I’m delighted to be here with guest Jayati Ghosh. We will be talking about her OPED The Fertilizer Conundrum. A renowned development economist, Jayati Ghosh is currently Professor of Economics at University of Massachusetts Amherst. Prior to that she held a longstanding professorship at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. She is Founding Member of IDEAs, the International Development Economists Association. She is a prolific author and high level consultant to international organizations and served as high level member of international boards and commissions. Among her numerous distinctions, Jayati Ghosh has been named the 2023 recipient of the Galbraith Award by the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association. Welcome, Jayati. JAYATI GHOSH: Thank you. FRIES: A thread running through the argument you put forward in the The Fertilizer Conundrum is that governments should shift away from policy making that incentivizes chemical farming. And to instead incentivize farming without chemicals, so agro-ecological farming. The larger argument being that when it comes to the production, distribution, and consumption of food there needs to be a major paradigm shift from decade’s long practices that favor industrial food and agriculture. To give viewers a quick take on why, I will briefly cite some opening lines from your OPED <to quote>: The global food system is broken. Largely dominated by multinational corporations, it enables and encourages unsustainable and unhealthy production and consumption patterns and generates enormous waste across all stages of production and distribution. The global food system also produces massive greenhouse-gas emissions, thereby inflicting substantial ecological damage, and deprives small-scale farmers in many countries of secure and viable livelihoods. Perhaps worst of all, food access remains profoundly unequal, causing extreme hunger to increase rather than decline. FRIES: Start by talking about corporate concentration in the food system and what has happened as a result of that. GHOSH: Actually, what we don’t realize often is that food is one of the most concentrated industries in the world. And it’s concentrated at two different levels. It’s horizontally concentrated. That is to say every sub-sector has got a few players who dominate that industry, but it’s also vertically concentrated. That is to say literally from farm to table. It is often one company that is organizing the entire thing. And reaping benefits and profits out of every segment of that production or distribution. So whether it is from the inputs that enable cultivation or even the farm credit that is required for cultivation onto the process of cultivation, the storage, the initial processing, the transport, the distribution and finally the supermarkets and the retail. You find that major agribusinesses dominate this industry. Which ever part of the food system you’re talking about, you will find that there is a role somewhere for these very large agribusinesses. And particularly what I call the big four: ABCD. That is Archer Daniels Midlands, Bunge, Cargill, and Louis Dreyfus who dominate the industry. And they dominate all the different segments of it. So whether you are a farmer, a small cultivator in some particular part of the world or you are a final consumer in a different part of the world completely, you are somehow dependent on these corporations. One of the things that has happened as a result of this immense concentration is a real breakdown of the way in which people used to think traditionally about food. And that’s especially in the rich countries, which is to say that we would think about food as being seasonal. Certain crops and certain fruit and vegetables would be available at particular times of the year. We would think of freshness as being a dominant concern. We would think of the availability, not just in terms of year-round access and all the different types of food, but you would think of it in terms of local varieties. Now that’s no longer the case, especially in the advanced economies. Consumers are accustomed to strawberries year-round. They’re accustomed to fish from every part of the world. And animal products from every part of the world. And vegetables of all kinds and fruit of all kinds available whenever they want. Now, there’s something that is unnatural about this, and the way this is done is not only through massive storage and transport facilities. Which are of course, you know, hugely carbon emitting. But also through ultimately undesirable ways of storing and encouraging particular types of consumption that often turn out to be quite unhealthy.   So we are encouraging and in fact it’s partly marketing by the major retailers as well, we are encouraging much more processed food consumption, which is much more unhealthy. We are encouraging the uses of additives, of preservatives, of different kinds of chemicals. That are required to transport food over long distances, including fish and seafood and things like that. We are encouraging a lot more meat consumption than in the past. And especially meat that requires huge amounts of land just simply to enable the grain that will feed them. And so in many, many different ways, we’re encouraging unsustainable consumption. But then we’re also encouraging unsustainable production. Because we are trying to maximize the productivity of the land no matter what it does in terms of the chemical additives that we are using. We use chemical fertilizers, we use chemical pesticides. We use various kinds of additional inputs. We know that this has an impact on soil quality. We know that this can even have an impact on the product, on the crop, and can affect how healthy. Those are, but we keep doing more and more of that because we want to maximize the yield. And we are increasingly getting into genetic modifications. Which are designed not only to sometimes avoid the chemicals, but more often to give you the perfect crop: the perfectly round red tomato, the perfectly shaped potato, the perfect egg and so on and so forth. We’re looking at different types of genetic modifications. That are designed to appeal to a very standardized consumer. And to enable much greater preservation over long distances of transport. So all of these add up to really quite an unhealthy system of production and consumption. But it’s also deeply unsustainable from the point of view of the planet. So it’s unhealthy for both people and planet. Because of course it’s massively carbon emitting, but it also erodes the soil. It also leads to lots of other kinds of concerns about the ecologies in which these plants are grown. FRIES: To give viewers a picture worth a thousand words, I am going to put up a visual on corporate concentration in the food system. This graphic shows different sectors of the agri-food chain. And the percentage of the world market that the top firms control. From seeds, to agrochemicals, to fertilizers that we are talking about today, to farm machinery, animal pharmaceuticals, the global grain traders so the Big Four ABCD firms you just mentioned, to the food processors and last but not least retailers. In making the case the global food system is broken, in this OPED, why did you focus on fertilizers? GHOSH: Actually, I was concerned about fertilizers, of course, because of the fact that, you know, the recent increase in prices has been largely driven by profits as in so many of the major commodities in the world over the last two years. But also because to me it represents a dilemma that is at the heart of so many of our policy decisions over the last couple of years. Which is the dilemma between what we need to do in the medium and long term, and what is the immediate short term kind of policy response. And in the case of fertilizers, we’ve had a dramatic increase in prices over the last few years.Which is of course bad news because it affects especially small cultivators all over the world. Many of them are now finding it unaffordable to use fertilizers. And if you don’t use them, that will affect yields that will affect local food supply. So it’s not just the livelihoods of farmers, but it’s also the ability of many developing countries to produce the food that they need. All of that is affected. So how do you respond? And the immediate attempt is to respond by somehow reducing these prices or subsidizing fertilizers when countries can afford that. That’s in a way counterproductive. Because as I’ve said, fertilizers are part of a chemical input dependence,which is not really healthy. And where we really do need to be thinking of alternatives and we have alternatives. It’s just that those alternatives will take time. They will be more expensive. We need to invest a lot more in them. And instead of doing that, we quickly try and somehow manage the big increase in fertilizer prices. FRIES: Your OPED cited a study on profit driven price increases in fertilizers. Aptly titled A Corporate Cartel Fertilises Food Inflation published by GRAIN and the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy May 2023 as an update to an earlier report The Fertiliser Trap published in 2022. A graph in that study shows the total profits of the big nine fertilizer companies over the past five years. So 2018 to 2022. According to this study, these profits exponentially grew from an average of around US$14 billion before the COVID-19 pandemic to US$28 billion in 2021. And then to an astounding US$49 billion last year. Give us some context on this dramatic rise in fertilizers. GHOSH: Yes. I think, you know, the evidence is now mounting across the world that so many price increases of the last two years have been delivered by increasing profit margins. I mean, even the IMF has come up with the study now that more or less confirms this. When my colleague Isabella Weber mentioned this way back about two years ago, she was pilloried for making this argument. But now it’s actually become accepted wisdom. That the recent period is not one where supply shortages were the dominant reason for price increases. It’s really that the news about possible supply shortages -whether because of COVID related transport constraints or because of the Ukraine war and the impact this might have on Russian and Ukrainian exports – was used by multinational corporations in energy and in grains. It was used by them to jack up their prices, basically increase their profit margins. So Russia is a major exporter of fertilizer. And even though it wasn’t really that Russian supply was affected. It turns out now we have the evidence it wasn’t affected – but major fertilizer companies could simply use this. And say: oh look, fertilizer is bound to be affected.So clearly the price is going up. And so they increased their profit margins from about, I think, 22% to as much as 36%. Dramatic increases in profits over sales. FRIES: Explain more about the issue of government responses to this increase in the price of chemical fertilizers. GHOSH: I think there are two issues here. And one is the fact that, as I mentioned, there’s this contradiction between the short term response and the long term response. But the other is that, you know, also you should be seeing these rising prices as a way of shifting production and consumption away from something that is essentially not desirable. And that is true of fossil fuels. And it is also true of fertilizers. In fact, as you know, a lot of fertilizers come out of fossil fuel. So there’s a strong interdependence between the two. So in the immediate case, what do you do? Well, I think there is a very strong case to do a windfall profits tax. And the windfall profits tax should be so high as to discourage attempts to just raise prices. Because you think you can get away with it. Which is what’s been happening over the past couple of years. Really for both the fossil fuel companies and fertilizer companies and a bunch of other corporations, really. But also a strong case in certain countries for price regulation. For saying: well, no, you can’t really increase these prices because it’s not justified by your cost increases. This is something that’s been done. Not just in socialist countries but it’s been done in the United States in the wartime. I’ve been reading about Galbraith’s price controls during and after the Second World War, for example. So it’s possible to exercise price controls in sectors that are seen to be strategic, important, and essential. But that leaves pending the larger question. Now, how do we then convert this broader problem into a possible opportunity. And you see here is where agroecology…Now there is so much scientific evidence that it is viable. It is doable. It is sustainable. It is desirable. In other words, there’s really no good reason for not subsidizing and pushing and promoting agro ecological techniques. What are those? Well, those are really techniques that rely much more on natural farming. Not necessarily all organic, but certainly much more natural. So natural fertilizers, natural pesticides. Much more local products. Not things that are necessarily out of season or requiring special efforts to grow in particular areas. Things that can be produced seasonally and consumed as far as possible locally. And not have to rely on being transported vast distances for export. Now these techniques are to begin with more expensive. Why? Simply because they haven’t benefited from all the massive subsidies that fossil fuels and fertilizers have got. So, you know, when people say: oh, that’s too expensive. They leave out the fact that both oil and fertilizer have benefited from decades of massive subsidies. And when I say massive. The official estimate of subsidies in 2020 before the Ukraine War and all of that, by the IMF was about $700 billion is the total amount of subsidies. Just going into fossil fuels. But if you take the indirect subsidies as well, it was $5.8 trillion. That’s nearly $6 trillion. Can you imagine going into subsidies for fossil fuels? And of course, those subsidies make fertilizers cheaper as well. And in addition, many countries then further subsidize fertilizer. So we are actually making it much cheaper than it is. And then we are saying: oh, agroecology is too expensive. Whereas if we shift some of those subsidies away from fossil fuel and fertilizer to agro- ecological techniques, we will get healthier outcomes and more sustainable outcomes. FRIES: It is not so hard to understand how decades of massive subsidies for fossil fuel and the related industrial agriculture with its chemical fertilizers has resulted in a global food system where so many of the world’s farmers and countries are dependent on chemical inputs. Comment more on the challenge for those who want to shift away from that path. GHOSH: So the shift away from chemical agriculture cannot be abrupt. It can’t be something that you just do like that. It has to be a much more thought out, careful, sensitive transition. So, for example, in Sri Lanka in 2021, they did this massive rejection of chemical fertilizer imports. And that proved to be a complete disaster for the farmers in the country, for agricultural harvests in the country, for the economy. You know, you can’t do this kind of thing, which will dramatically affect farmers’ ability to produce their yields and their incomes without providing some compensation. And without easing it over a longer period. So this has to be a transition which you begin now. So the point is not to say: well, we will do this at some point in the future. And we’ll just suddenly do a big dramatic shift. No, the point is to say: we start this year. We start this year by providing farmers with special subsidies if they’re going to engage in agro-ecological practices. FRIES: Give us a bit of a glimpse of the situation of India in all this. GHOSH: India is a subcontinent that is full of all kinds of cultivation practices and farmers.So we have everything. We have farmers who are completely dependent on chemical agriculture and want to continue that dependence. And we have those who are interested in agroecology and doing alternative farming techniques. We have women farmers groups who are not even recognized as farmers in the official data.We have many different kinds of groups who have all remarkably come together Now in their demands, they have a huge list of demands, some of them are in fact contradictory. Because of the nature of that very disparate movement. Some are saying continue subsidizing the chemical agriculture. Some are saying shift those subsidies to more sustainable practices and techniques. But all of them are saying that you have to keep farmers in mind when you’re formulating policies about food. You cannot design policies for food consulting only with corporations. You have to talk to those who are actually producing the food. And I think it’s that central point which governments miss, and even international organizations miss. FRIES: You link the need for this shift in production from chemical agriculture to a more natural agriculture to a shift in patterns of consumption. Expand on that. GHOSH: What we have today, as I mentioned, why is our global food system broken? Because we have a pattern of consumption encouraged by this heavily concentrated agribusiness. That as I mentioned which is deeply inequalizing but it’s also ridiculous because it encourages malnutrition. And malnutrition of kinds, undernutrition and excess nutrition. That is to say over consumption, obesity, and all the illnesses that come with obesity. And that type of food consumption is being pushed by retailers. Who are parts of the same big nexus of agribusiness that I’ve mentioned even in the developing world. So we now have crises of obesity, let’s say, in countries like South Africa. Often in the same household, you will find undernutrition and malnutrition because of obesity in the same household. Because the poor are underfeeding themselves or they’re overfeeding on junk food and unprocessed foods which are deeply unhealthy. In some of the Pacific Islands you have diseases, heart disease, diabetes. All kinds of things coming from the consumption of processed foods. From particular types of very fatty meat products that are pushed and encouraged and advertised by these global marketing agencies. And so you get all kinds of new illnesses coming. Because there is a push towards certain kind of food consumption that is not just unhealthy it doesn’t really help in giving you better nutrition. But at the same time, it’s very important for the profits of these major corporations. The rich in the developed world are now very conscious of this. And they eat healthy. And they eat organic. And they eat local. And they eat slow food. And they’ve got all of that. The poor in the US on the other hand eat more and more of the processed food. And they eat excessively large portions. Which are again pushed by lobbies. And they eat much more fat and sugar-based processed foods. Which are made cheaper than natural healthier foods. FRIES: As I noted earlier, in this OPED you say that perhaps worst of all the things wrong with our global food system is this point you just made that food access remains profoundly unequal. Comment briefly on that, so effectively, the political economy of food. GHOSH: Food has always bees,  at one level it’scentral to human existence. At another level, it is deeply indicative of all the divisions of society and economy. So access to food is not something that is necessarily universal and access to different types of food. It’s critically dependent on not just the total production or availability in any one country or globally.It’s very much determined by class, by income, by the pattern of livelihood, by the kinds of social discrimination that enable access or lack of it.   So the broader political economy of food actually reflects the broader global political economy of everything. Of all the different power relations that are determining how our economies are evolving. So the fact of extreme inequalities of income and assets… which we know have ballooned in the last decade, for example. Or extreme inequalities of health and so on.All of these are also directly reflected in inequalities in access to food. And inequalities in outcomes with respect to food. So as I’ve mentioned, whether it is malnutrition because of undernutrition or malnutrition because of nutrition of the wrong kind, which gives you different kinds of diseases. All of these are very much reflective of the broader tendencies of inequality in our economies. FRIES: So this kind of commentary is conspicuously absent in mainstream media.Instead agribusiness – whether chemical fertilizers and pesticides, GMO or next generation products like gene editing – is presented as the solution for feeding the world. GHOSH: I think there’s a real problem in the way in which agribusiness and global media have worked together. To sort of make people feel that there is no alternative. That we have to have this pattern of production and consumption of food because that’s the only way in which people will be fed. We now know that the food problem is ultimately one of distribution. And that, you know, there are surplus and excess and wastage. Forty percent of the food in the world is wasted. While huge amounts of people, billions of people in the world, are going hungry. And they’re going hungry not just because of failure of global supply. They’re going hungry because of local supply failures. And because their livelihoods are not enough for them to be able to afford food. In the poorer countries which are affected. You know, food importing countries which are affected by exchange rate changes and economic distress and lack of employment. So we know that the causes of hunger are different. And yet we persist in thinking it’s a problem of aggregate supply. It’s not. Even today the attempt to reform agriculture in Africa is unfortunately going in the wrong direction. It’s led by an initiative called the Alliance for Green Revolution in Africa, AGRA. Which is really something driven by the major foundations and the Gates Foundation in particular but have got the support of the World Food Summit. And AGRA is really pushing this chemical agriculture that I have been talking about. FRIES: I will just jump in here to note there is tremendoustremendous opposition to the decade’s long initiative driven by the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa. One such example, The Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa has called upon AGRA donors to end support for green revolution programs in Africa. This in a letter that critiqued the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa as an unequivocal failure. And AFSA is the biggest civil society movement in Africa. And unlike Western philanthropists like Bill Gates, what they want is a transition to agroecology as the dominant farming and food system in Africa. GHOSH: In fact, AGRA’s own assessments and independent evaluations that they have commissioned all indicate that they haven’t been successful. They haven’t achieved their goals. That the so-called successes they have achieved, the minor increases in yields in a few countries and so on, are nowhere near their stated ambitions. And that in many cases they’ve actually made things worse, if not stagnant. So to push a chemical model of agriculture at this point in humanity when we know that there are better alternatives available is not just irresponsible, I think it’s really counterproductive. And it’s going in absolutely the wrong way. The point about chemical fertilizers is not just that they are bad from the point of view of say, CO2 emissions. Which they are. I think they contribute about 2.4% of global emissions at the moment. They are very strongly related to the fossil fuel industry. A lot of the nitrogen fertilizers come out as a by product of fossil fuel production. So again, it’s very closely related to the whole carbon emission problem. But they also have a terrible impact in terms of farming itself. They lead to soil erosion. They lead to the degradation of the quality of the soil. They have implications for the quality of the output and the crops. And even for the health of the crops. So chemical agriculture is bad for the ecology. That is, it’s bad for the local area, the land, the nature around it. And it’s bad for human health. And of course it’s also then bad for the planet in terms of carbon emissions. We have to recognize this and then think of ways to ease ourselves out of this dependence on chemical agriculture. We embraced it across the world because it provided higher and higher yields. And we thought that that was essential for solving the food problem. We now know that it’s not essential. That you can solve the food problem with sustainable yields using ecological techniques. But because we are subsidizing chemical agriculture and chemical inputs so heavily ecological techniques are not seen as profitable. Or even competitive. So we have to shift, we have to shift our subsidies away from chemical agriculture towards more natural agriculture. FRIES: Talk more about power relations. That as you commented earlier are determining how our economies and more specifically food systems are evolving. GHOSH:One of the tragedies of our times is the extent to which multilateral fora have been taken over. Or manipulated or dominated by private commercial interests. And particularly by large multinational corporations. Who have not just lobbying power but they have the ability to shall we say infiltrate many of these organizations. I think it’s a tragedy in many sectors but it’s particularly a tragedy in the world food system. And the fact that even the World Food Summit relied heavily on sponsors who were private food corporations. And that so many of the big initiatives for changing agriculture rely on direct or indirect sponsorship from big corporations. I think that’s very unfortunate. And of course it makes it much harder for, shall we say, the voice of sanity to prevail. Because the voice of sanity would say: don’t do this. Don’t make mistakes which you don’t need to make when you know that there are other options available. But the voice of profit is saying: well, go ahead and do this. And we’ll worry about the impact later. Because right now you’ll get some benefits and we will get even bigger benefits. So countering that voice of profit is a tough call. But I do believe that there are more and more voices around this. There are many people in different food sovereignty and farmer sovereignty movements around the world. Who are trying to make themselves heard. And there are many new initiatives coming up. But I do also believe that eventually these problems will become so severe. And so telling that humanity will have no choice but to take the sensible path. FRIES: Do you see this as something of an inflection point? I noted that in the closing lines of your OPED, in referring to the fertilizer price inflation of the last few years, you wrote <to quote>: By reducing our reliance on chemical fertilizers, we could turn the current food crisis into a genuine opportunity. GHOSH: The price inflation in food could also be an inflection point if governments respond in the right way. If they don’t, it will just lead to greater hunger, greater distress, and you know, terrible circumstances. But if governments, even a few significant important governments can respond in the correct way. It could be a very promising route to an alternative trajectory for all of us. FRIES: Jayati Ghosh, thank you. GHOSH: Thank you. FRIES: And from Geneva, Switzerland thank you for viewing this segment of GPEnewsdocs. With guest Jayati Ghosh discussing her OPED The Fertilizer Conundrum.  Select one or choose any amount to donate whatever you like any amount $5 $15 $25 $50 $100 $500 $1,000 Custom Amount $ Make this donation each month (optional) User my donation to help support the upcoming documentary "How to stop a nuclear war" (optional) Donate with Credit Card var gform;gform||(document.addEventListener("gform_main_scripts_loaded",function(){gform.scriptsLoaded=!0}),window.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded",function(){gform.domLoaded=!0}),gform={domLoaded:!1,scriptsLoaded:!1,initializeOnLoaded:function(o){gform.domLoaded&&gform.scriptsLoaded?o():!gform.domLoaded&&gform.scriptsLoaded?window.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded",o):document.addEventListener("gform_main_scripts_loaded",o)},hooks:{action:{},filter:{}},addAction:function(o,n,r,t){gform.addHook("action",o,n,r,t)},addFilter:function(o,n,r,t){gform.addHook("filter",o,n,r,t)},doAction:function(o){gform.doHook("action",o,arguments)},applyFilters:function(o){return gform.doHook("filter",o,arguments)},removeAction:function(o,n){gform.removeHook("action",o,n)},removeFilter:function(o,n,r){gform.removeHook("filter",o,n,r)},addHook:function(o,n,r,t,i){null==gform.hooks[o][n]&&(gform.hooks[o][n]=[]);var e=gform.hooks[o][n];null==i&&(i=n+"_"+e.length),gform.hooks[o][n].push({tag:i,callable:r,priority:t=null==t?10:t})},doHook:function(n,o,r){var t;if(r=Array.prototype.slice.call(r,1),null!=gform.hooks[n][o]&&((o=gform.hooks[n][o]).sort(function(o,n){return o.priority-n.priority}),o.forEach(function(o){"function"!=typeof(t=o.callable)&&(t=window[t]),"action"==n?t.apply(null,r):r[0]=t.apply(null,r)})),"filter"==n)return r[0]},removeHook:function(o,n,t,i){var r;null!=gform.hooks[o][n]&&(r=(r=gform.hooks[o][n]).filter(function(o,n,r){return!!(null!=i&&i!=o.tag||null!=t&&t!=o.priority)}),gform.hooks[o][n]=r)}}); Never miss another story Subscribe to theAnalysis.news – Newsletter Email(Required) Name(Required) First Last Δdocument.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); gform.initializeOnLoaded( function() {gformInitSpinner( 10, 'https://theanalysis.news/wp-content/plugins/gravityforms/images/spinner.svg', true );jQuery('#gform_ajax_frame_10').on('load',function(){var contents = jQuery(this).contents().find('*').html();var is_postback = contents.indexOf('GF_AJAX_POSTBACK') >= 0;if(!is_postback){return;}var form_content = jQuery(this).contents().find('#gform_wrapper_10');var is_confirmation = jQuery(this).contents().find('#gform_confirmation_wrapper_10').length > 0;var is_redirect = contents.indexOf('gformRedirect(){') >= 0;var is_form = form_content.length > 0 && ! is_redirect && ! is_confirmation;var mt = parseInt(jQuery('html').css('margin-top'), 10) + parseInt(jQuery('body').css('margin-top'), 10) + 100;if(is_form){jQuery('#gform_wrapper_10').html(form_content.html());if(form_content.hasClass('gform_validation_error')){jQuery('#gform_wrapper_10').addClass('gform_validation_error');} else {jQuery('#gform_wrapper_10').removeClass('gform_validation_error');}setTimeout( function() { /* delay the scroll by 50 milliseconds to fix a bug in chrome */ }, 50 );if(window['gformInitDatepicker']) {gformInitDatepicker();}if(window['gformInitPriceFields']) {gformInitPriceFields();}var current_page = jQuery('#gform_source_page_number_10').val();gformInitSpinner( 10, 'https://theanalysis.news/wp-content/plugins/gravityforms/images/spinner.svg', true );jQuery(document).trigger('gform_page_loaded', [10, current_page]);window['gf_submitting_10'] = false;}else if(!is_redirect){var confirmation_content = jQuery(this).contents().find('.GF_AJAX_POSTBACK').html();if(!confirmation_content){confirmation_content = contents;}setTimeout(function(){jQuery('#gform_wrapper_10').replaceWith(confirmation_content);jQuery(document).trigger('gform_confirmation_loaded', [10]);window['gf_submitting_10'] = false;wp.a11y.speak(jQuery('#gform_confirmation_message_10').text());}, 50);}else{jQuery('#gform_10').append(contents);if(window['gformRedirect']) {gformRedirect();}}jQuery(document).trigger('gform_post_render', [10, current_page]);gform.utils.trigger({ event: 'gform/postRender', native: false, data: { formId: 10, currentPage: current_page } });} );} ); Jayati Ghosh is a Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She was previously a Professor of Economics and Chairperson of the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. She has authored and/or edited 20 books and more than 200 scholarly articles. She was the Executive Secretary of International Development Economics Associates (www.networkideas.org), an international network of heterodox development economists, from 2002 to 2021. She has advised governments and served as a consultant for international organizations. She is a member of several international boards and commissions, including the UN High-Level Advisory Board on Economic and Social Affairs, the Commission on Global Economic Transformation of INET, and the International Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation (ICRICT). In 2021 she was appointed to the WHO Council on the Economics of Health for All, chaired by Mariana Mazzucato. In March 2022, she was appointed to the UN Secretary General’s High-Level Advisory Board on Effective Multilateralism. She received the 2023 Galbraith Award from the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association. theAnalysis.news theme music written by Slim Williams for Paul Jay’s documentary film “Never-Endum-Referendum“.   Never-Endum-Referendum Artist Website Paul Jay’s Documentaries

Éric Pineault, professor of ecological economics at the Institute of Environmental Sciences at the University of Quebec in Montreal, explains how the fires raging in Canada are a corollary of the paradigm termed Extreme Oil. He discusses various oil and gas projects across North America, as well as the Canadian government's support for the Trans Mountain Pipeline project, and how terms such as "net zero" and "carbon neutral" are misleading and conveniently serve Big Oil's aims.  His recent book A Social Ecology of Capital presents an empirical analysis of capitalist societies, which both builds on and enhances Marxist theories by accounting for the energy extraction and colonization of ecosystems, a characteristic of what he terms our "fossil-industrial" society. His conception of capitalist metabolism outlines extractivism, production, consumption, and waste dissipation, which leads to an absorption of surplus energy, capital accumulation, and profit maximization. Most importantly, how is this understanding of social ecology useful for furthering a project of emancipation?

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The JCPOA, or Iran nuclear deal, which was a legacy of the Obama administration, seems to be a thing of the past; yet de-"} Trita Parsi, Executive Vice President of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, discusses reported negotiations between the U.S. and Iran to agree to an unwritten deal. The JCPOA, or Iran nuclear deal, which was a legacy of the Obama administration, seems to be a thing of the past; yet de-escalation and an agreement on a smaller range of issues would be advantageous to both the U.S. and Iranian administrations. As in the case of Saudi-Iranian rapprochement, the role of China, Oman, and Iraq in facilitating these discussions is politically noteworthy. 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Israeli Intel. Chief Says Palestinian Israeli Conflict Greater Risk than Nuclear Iran Pt 2/4 Vietnam War Created Middle East Activist – Phyllis Bennis on Reality Asserts Itself Pt 1/4 Syria’s Six Wars and Humanitarian Catastrophe – Phyllis Bennis on Reality Asserts Itself Pt 3/4 Did Bush Cheney Create a Culture of Not Wanting to Know – Sen. Bob Graham on RAI Pt 7/7 Revealing 9/11 Conspiracy Would Undo U.S. Saudi Alliance – Sen. Bob Graham on RAI Pt 5/7 Saudi Government’s 9/11 Connection and the Path to Disillusionment – Sen. Bob Graham on RAI Pt 4/7 Transcript Listen Donate Subscribe Guest Music Talia Baroncelli Hi, I’m Talia Baroncelli, and you’re watching theAnalysis.news. I’ll shortly be joined by Trita Parsi to speak about a potential unwritten deal between the U.S. and Iran. If you enjoy this content, please go to our website, theAnalysis.news, hit the donate button at the top right corner of the screen, and also get onto our mailing list; that way, you’re notified every time there’s a new episode. You can also go to our YouTube channel, theAnalysis-news, and hit the bell; that way, you’ll be notified whenever a new episode is published and like and subscribe to the channel. See you in a bit with Trita Parsi. Joining me now is Trita Parsi. He is the Executive Vice President at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. Thank you so much for joining me again, Trita. Trita Parsi Thank you for having me. It’s great to be back with you. Talia Baroncelli Great to have you. So Iran and the U.S. are reportedly negotiating an unwritten deal which would unfreeze at least $7 billion worth of Iranian assets in exchange for the release of U.S. prisoners. Iran would also have to commit to stopping uranium enrichment beyond 60%. What else is at stake here? Trita Parsi Well, what’s at stake here is that for the last almost two years now, there’s been growing escalation on both sides. The Iranians have been enriching uranium at higher levels. They’ve gone above 60% as well. That seems to have not been necessarily deliberate but nevertheless amassed a tremendous amount of enrichment. This means that if they decide to make a bomb, they will have the material in just a few days. Whereas as long as the JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action] was in place, it was a minimum of one year before anyone would have the material, forget about having the bomb. To a certain extent, as long as the escalation was not too fast or too aggressive, there was some sort of a very uncomfortable, but nevertheless stable status quo. I call it the zombie state in the sense that the JCPOA was not really alive, but no one dared to declare it dead because the minute you say it’s dead, then you have a crisis. If you pretend it’s alive, then you can pretend as if you don’t have a crisis. That only works as long as the escalation is not too aggressive. We were reaching a point in which it was becoming increasingly difficult to sustain that status quo. You saw the United States was essentially committing piracy– taking Iranian ships or ships with Iranian oil on the high sea, saying that they’re circumventing American sanctions. Well, American sanctions are American sanctions. They don’t apply to international water. It’s a different thing if there was a UN Security Council resolution behind this, but there isn’t. So the Iranians started retaliating by taking ships that were associated with the U.S. In one case, I think the ship was actually taking oil to Houston. This is getting very tense. Then we have the tense situation in Syria in which militias aligned with Iran were attacking American bases. At one point, they killed one American contractor. It was really risking a major military confrontation. So under those circumstances, the two sides slowly and carefully started talking directly again. They can’t go for a formal agreement for political reasons. On the American side, they want a bigger agreement. They were willing to go with the JCPOA with the amendments. The Iranians said no to that specific proposal in August. That same draft right now the Iranians wanted. The U.S. and the Europeans are saying no to their own draft because they rightfully point out that the circumstances on the ground have changed. Iran has escalated their nuclear program since August of last year. The Americans would be okay with a smaller deal, which means that they would do some sort of a freeze, formally. The Iranians will not go for that because they see that as devaluing their leverage. It would essentially mean that they would give up a lot of their leverage, but they actually won’t get real sanctions. There’s another aspect on the American side, which is any agreement formal or centered on the [inaudible 00:04:42] deal would kick in what is called [inaudible 00:04:45]. It’s a law in the United States that says that anything of that kind has to go to Congress. Congress doesn’t have to approve it, they just have to fail to disapprove it. That’s a huge fight in Congress that would take a lot of political capital. The White House is not really in the mood for that. Most of their allies on Capitol Hill, the Democrats, are also not in the mood. It seems like an informal agreement, one that can be smaller than the JCPOA without activating the concern the Iranians have of devaluing their leverage. At the same time avoiding a congressional battle is the most that can be achieved at this point because of a lack of political will on both sides. At the same time sufficient to make sure that this status quo that was starting to be destabilized can be stabilized again. It doesn’t resolve anything, but perhaps there can be another year and a half or whatever in which we won’t see a very dangerous escalation take place. Talia Baroncelli Well, since 2018, when the U.S. withdrew from the JCPOA, there hasn’t been much progress on this front, especially since September 2022. I do feel like an unwritten agreement and an informal interim deal would be cause for celebration. One of my concerns would be how do you enforce such a deal? In international law, there are certain regulations and standards that need to be upheld. The U.S. did not uphold their part of the bargain when they withdrew from the deal. So how do you manage or enforce such an unwritten agreement? Trita Parsi It’s a great question, and that’s one of the main problems and one of the reasons why these type of informal understandings are not necessarily terribly common, because the enforcement, the ability to trust it is very limited. Again, it comes down to political will. If you want all of those things, the enforcements, guarantee, etc., then you have to go for a bigger deal. At this point, there’s no bigger deal that the two sides seem to be able to agree on, but there can be a smaller informal deal that they can agree on, potentially. It’s not done yet, but that can prevent an escalation. If any one of them violates it, well, then it does fall apart and then they’re back to where they are right now, if not a worse situation. The difference is that with the JCPOA, the U.S. could cheat, the U.S. could betray it. the U.S. could walk out of it, and the only sides that would be paying a price for it was maybe Iran and then all of the others. The Europeans lost a lot of business when the U.S. pulled out of the agreement. The U.S. itself hardly paid a cost. So it was very asymmetric in that sense. This informal agreement is more symmetric in the sense that if you withdraw, you pay a price, and the other side pays a price. It’s not such that, for instance, on the Iranian side, they would have given up a significant amount of leverage or the U.S. aren’t going to spend any political capital on this, they’re not going to lift any sanctions, etc.  Neither side would be in the red in that sense. You’re absolutely right. The only thing that keeps this together is the confidence that both of them actually want to avoid crisis, a direct crisis. That’s the only thing that keeps it together. There’s no other mechanism. Talia Baroncelli How much of this is actually influenced by this view toward the 2024 presidential elections? Is this the White House or White House diplomats setting up this deal? Is Biden in any way shape or form behind this? Trita Parsi I think it actually goes both ways. First of all, the elections are definitely a big part of this. I mean, there’s a reason why they want to have calm on the Iran front for the next year and a half. They’re too busy with Ukraine. Secondly, with Taiwan, they don’t have bandwidth for Iran. Anything with Iran is very domestically and politically costly. So if you actually get something, you have to go to Congress. No U.S. politicians would like to have to deal with an Iran issue in an election year. It’s the same thing on the Iranian side. The Iranians have been told over and over again by the United States that the Biden administration cannot guarantee what the next president of the United States does. Any agreement that would cause the Iranians to give up significant leverage or sanctions relief, well, if the next president comes in, in a year and a half from now and reverses it just like Trump did, then the Iranians have made a huge loss. So it seems like the Iranians too are coming to the belief that perhaps better not to have anything right now because who knows who the president is going to be in 2024. At the same time, it is definitely better not to have a crisis either. The Iranians need to have a degree of calm on the U.S. Iran front in order to be able to proceed with a regional [inaudible 00:10:03] that they’re having with Saudi Arabia and the regional states. There’s a limit to how far they can go with that unless tensions between the U.S. and Iran comes down. So they have an incentive to make sure that this happens. Not a full deal, but making sure that there’s no crisis. Talia Baroncelli The Europeans were very much involved in the JCPOA, in the negotiations of the JCPOA. I haven’t really seen them be present in negotiating this unwritten deal or even saying anything which would try to calm the waters. They’ve been a bit more adversarial towards Iran. What is going on there? Trita Parsi The Europeans are not playing any significant role in this; that’s absolutely clear. In fact, Europe has lost a tremendous amount of leverage vis à vis the United States. Europe is so dependent on the United States today after Ukraine and it’s in the process of making itself even more dependent on the United States. The failure of the Europeans in earlier rounds were that when Trump pulled out, the Europeans were not strong enough to be able to pursue an independent policy. They objected to Trump, but they abided by every sanction that they imposed, even though they said that those sanctions were illegitimate and illegal. Back then, there were talks. The Germans were talking about a degree of autonomy from the United States being able to do things on their own instead of being so dependent. Now they’re actively, as ECFR put it in an article they published yesterday in the process of self vacillation, they’re turning themselves into actively a vassal of the United States. At the same time they are losing significant influence in the middle east. Their ability to deliver the U.S. from an Iranian perspective is more or less gone. How the Europeans handled the protest in Iran is something, of course, that the Iranians are now in some ways retaliating against the Europeans on and it has further reduced their role. What you’re seeing is that it’s actually regional powers that are at the center of these mediation efforts. Qatar and Oman are playing a very important role in all of this. Then of course, China has come in and played a significant role with the Saudis and Iranians. In many ways I think one can say ultimately this movement towards stability, resolution of conflicts are good for the Europeans as well. But it is at the same time happening within the process of Europe losing significant influence here. Talia Baroncelli Well, unlike the Europeans, the Chinese have been filling this diplomatic vacuum left behind by the Americans. How does the U.S. see China’s success, diplomatic success in the region? Do they view it more as being at odds with their interests in the region, or perhaps being a boon because they’ve just failed recently at trying to make any negotiations actually be successful? Trita Parsi So I think it’s a great question, and I think there are several layers. The initial reaction of the United States was not a particularly a cheerful one. They were first of all, taken completely by surprise, even though the Chinese, within 24 hours, came to the White House and briefed the White House on what had happened and showed complete transparency. They were not briefing the U.S. in the midst of the talks but that’s rather normal. For that to work, you need to first make sure that it’s completed. In fact, take a look at this. The United States has been having some conversations with the Iranians through the Omanis and the Qataris. The Chinese have not been briefed on that. Now, of course, it’s not led to completion, but that’s my point. Up until the point of completion, there cannot be any real expectation of that. In fact, to the best of my knowledge, the U.S. did not fully brief the Europeans either. In 2012 and 2013, when the U.S.. and Iran negotiated secretly in Oman, the Europeans knew nothing about it. Once they found out, they were actually very, very upset. One can be upset at the United States for it, but had the United States shared that information, there’s also significant likelihood that they would never have been able to be successful. At first it was negative and because of the optics, the optics are problematic for the United States because it shows that the U.S. is no longer an indispensable power in the Middle East. It showed that the Saudis were very pleased to snub the American side and to essentially humiliate the United States a little bit. If you take a look at it in the sense of the policy outcome, I think there’s positives and negatives. The positives are overwhelming in my view. If you have greater stability in the region, it reduces the security burden on the United States. It actually helps the United States leave the region militarily, which is what presidents have said over and over again that they want to do, and it’s certainly what the American public wants to do. It is not helpful to the U.S.’s Iran policy currently, because if the policy is to pressure Iran and tighten sanctions and isolate it, well, then having normalization between Saudi Arabia and Iran through China is a clear count against any success in isolating and containing Iran. In my view, that was not going to be successful anyways. The United States has tried to contain Iran for 40 years; it’s not worked. It’s only made matters worse. So I would still put it as an invalid negative point. It’s mostly the office. Here I think the calculation on the American side has been highly problematic because it was constantly this fear that the Chinese were going to come in and fill the military vacuum if the United States left the region militarily. That’s not what they did. They didn’t bribe the Saudis and Iranians with arms deals and ask them to open military bases on their territory or offer security guarantees, all the stuff that the U.S. always does. Instead, they came in and they helped facilitate, and they are acting as the guarantors of this deal. They filled the diplomatic vacuum that the United States had left because of its miniaturized foreign policy. That’s where the Chinese were coming in. We weren’t even looking at that space because we felt that they had no interest in playing that role. Talia Baroncelli Well, you say that the U.S.’s policy over the past 40 years towards Iran has been unsuccessful. I wonder if the Carter Doctrine, though Jimmy Carter was the president of the U.S. during the Iranian Revolution in ’79, and I guess it was maybe in 1980 where he proclaimed the Carter Doctrine, meaning that the U.S. would be very interested in defending their military interests in the Persian Gulf and in the region. I wonder if this unwritten deal, if it doesn’t actually contribute to deescalation and if there is some sort of military conflict with Iran, if this would reinforce that Carter Doctrine or where does that stand? Trita Parsi Well, first of all, it is not clear that it is a military benefit for the United States in terms of a conflict with Iran by having so many bases in the region, because that means that there would be targets that the Iranians could attack. The Iranians have the capacity through missiles, thousands of them, to rain down on all of these different bases. If the United States were to have an off the horizon, over the horizon posture in which it would have military assets out in the seas, but the ability to move them in, it would still be able to take on Iran militarily, not a full scale invasion perhaps, but without Iranians having the same ability to retaliate. So if the point actually is that Iran is a threat and there’s a build up for that, it’s not clear to me that it actually makes much sense to have all of these bases that the Iranians easily can target. I think the Carter Doctrine and the Reagan Doctrine, the essence of it was that the United States would not allow any other power, external or internal, gain hegemony in the region or disrupt the oil flow. To a certain extent, some of that essence is still there. That doesn’t necessarily mean, however, that the United States needs to have a constant military presence in the Middle East. When the Carter Doctrine was put in place, the U.S. didn’t have bases in the Middle East. In fact, most of the bases that the United States have in the Middle East are coming after the mid 1990s, and even more so after 2003. We’re sometimes talking about this as if the United States has had military bases in the region throughout all of its history. It’s absolutely not the case. When these things were put in place, even when it was revised and extended by President Reagan, the U.S. still did not have anything near the military presence. Talia Baroncelli Well, why don’t we speak about Israel. Israel is obviously a huge player and has always been opposed to the JCPOA and to any sort of rapprochement or agreement between the U.S. and Iran. Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu has been under a lot of pressure recently with all the different investigations into bribery and corruption. He hasn’t really been able to visit the U.S. on any official means or purposes. What is his stance toward the development of an unwritten deal between Iran and the U.S.? Trita Parsi Netanyahu is completely opposed to it. I think the key reason as to why we even know about this taking place right now is because the Israelis leaked this information, and they leaked it with the purpose of sabotaging it. The Israelis have been leaking a lot of different things about these negotiations throughout the years for the purpose of sabotaging it. In fact, there was a moment during the negotiations of the JCPOA in which the American side were briefing the Israelis even before the negotiators returned to Washington DC. Then U.S. intelligence picked up that these Israelis were actively manipulating that information and leaking it in a selective strategic way to sabotage the bonds. That’s when the U.S. side stopped those briefings. There is a report now that Jake Sullivan, the National Security Advisor, talked to the Israelis and were very upset that they had leaked this. So a mystery to me as to why the administration wants to share this type of information so generously with these Israelis when the pattern of leaking is so clear and so extensive. The Israelis are opposed to this. The problem with the Israelis is that they’re opposed to the JCPOA. They’re opposed to a bigger JCPOA. They’re opposed to a smaller JCPOA. They’re opposed to an unwritten JCPOA. They’re opposed to having no deal at all. So it’s not really clear what on earth they’re in favor of except war, I guess. It’s a mystery to me why the Biden administration has not figured out quiet yet that if they want a nuclear deal with Iran, they’re going to have to have some level of managed unhappiness in Israel. There’s no way around this. If they’re trying to please Israelis and still get a JCPOA, then they’re going to be exactly in the situation they are in right now in which they have neither. Talia Baroncelli One of the priorities of Supreme Leader Khamenei as well as President Raisi has been sanctions relief. As part of these unwritten deal negotiations, they’ve been trying to get Iranian assets unfrozen. So $7 billion worth of Iranian assets. I was wondering if these assets could benefit the Iranian people or if they would just get siphoned off to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps or potentially to other elite in the country. Trita Parsi So first of all, as this deal is structured, the money would actually not go back to Iran. It is Iran’s money, but it wouldn’t go back to Iran. It would stay in a couple of banks and the Iranians would be able to use that money to buy food and medicine. The argument that is being used is that oh, if you give them more money, it would be used for wrong things or bad things. There’s a certain element of truth in that, in the sense that some of the stuff that the Iranian government would buy is probably not particularly good, probably not to the benefit of the Iranian people. But if you let that be the guiding star of how you do policy, it means you actually have to starve the entire country. You have to starve all of them until you manage to get to the political elite. That’s what we’ve done in Cuba, in Venezuela, in Iraq, and it never works. You make a population absolutely miserable for the sake of not making sure that the regime makes it miserable, you’re making it miserable instead. These regimes tend to survive. They tends to become worse and the repression tends to become worse. It’s part of the problem of trying to approach these things solely from some sort of a misguided moral dimension or direction. It ends up actually backfiring tremendously. We know that once the JCPOA took place, according to U.S. intelligence monitoring how the Iranians were using money, the vast majority of the money that the Iranians made during those short two and a half years that the JCPOA was being implemented actually went back to internal investments and the rebuilding of the country. This is what the U.S. intelligence testified to us in the U.S. Senate. But facts are not particularly exciting, drawing out all kinds of misinformation, however it tends to be far more effective. Talia Baroncelli Well, one last final question. Do you think that if this unwritten deal is successful and the money goes back to the Iranian people, that we’ll see more protests on the part of Iranians in the future because they’ll actually have the money to maybe even stop working and to go out on the streets, some form of general strike? Trita Parsi Well, $7 billion is not going to create that situation, but it’s going to take a step in that direction. If you actually had a significant improvement of the economy and a strengthening of society vis a vis the state, and a greater desire to not just be so focused on economic circumstances but also your political rights, then that is a trend that we have seen. That’s where countries are moving towards seeking greater political openness. When you’re starving and you are fighting day to day to just make ends meet, political rights is not your priority. That pattern has been very clear in Iran as well. The economic pressure that sanctions brings about increases the likelihood of protests. It may also increase the frequency of protest, but it also dramatically reduces the likelihood of success in the protests. To be able to change things such as giving women in Iran their basic human rights on these issues, that’s not a three month fight, that’s a lengthy fight. Peak populations that are starving and that are at such short, limited margins economically cannot sustain that fight. They need to have some degree of economic well being to be able to sustain that fight. That’s one aspect. When it comes to other things with the process, lack of leadership and things of that nature also were, of course, huge challenges that they did not manage to truly overcome. I was fascinated to see, I heard of myself from people, but fascinated to see, I think it was the Wall Street Journal that quoted one person who said, “I’m still angry, I still want to protest, but I also cannot risk being killed because my family will starve.” So again, there is a desire in some elements just to punish you. The fact that it punishes the rest of the population, they either cognitively just manage to ignore or they justify one way or another. But in reality you have almost no examples in history in which a strategy like this has been successful in a country with the specific context that Iran has. Talia Baroncelli Well, we can’t ignore the realities on the ground and how the brutal sanctions and U.S. policy towards Iran have shaped Iranian society and socioeconomic issues. Thank you so much Trita for joining theAnalysis. Trita Parsi Thank you so much. Great pleasure being with you. Talk to you soon. Talia Baroncelli Thank you so much Trita, for joining theAnalysis. It was great to have you.Thank you for watching theAnalysis.news. If you’re able to donate to the show, please go to theAnalysis.news and hit the donate button at the top right corner of the screen. You can also get onto our mailing list and subscribe and like our YouTube channel, theAnalysis-news. See you next time. 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{"@context":"http:\/\/schema.org\/","@id":"https:\/\/theanalysis.news\/practical-radicalism-community-wealth-building-with-neil-mcinroy\/#arve-youtube-bs_a-oeonm8649db3dea51fe495633118","type":"VideoObject","embedURL":"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/bs_a-OEONm8?feature=oembed&enablejsapi=1&origin=https%3A%2F%2Ftheanalysis.news&iv_load_policy=3&modestbranding=1&rel=0&autohide=1&playsinline=0&autoplay=1","name":"Practical Radicalism: Community Wealth Building with Neil McInroy","thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/theanalysis.news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/Neil-Mcinroy-1.jpg","uploadDate":"2023-06-29T12:39:05+00:00","author":"theAnalysis-news","description":"One of the few working-class movements scoring victories, democratizing ownership, and gaining momentum is the method of economic development called Community Wealth Building (CWB). Colin Bruce Anthes interviews Neil McInroy of the Democracy Collaborative on how CWB works, what it has accomplished s"} One of the few working-class movements scoring victories, democratizing ownership, and gaining momentum is the method of economic development called Community Wealth Building (CWB). Colin Bruce Anthes interviews Neil McInroy of the Democracy Collaborative on how CWB works, what it has accomplished so far, and its potential to lead a “new common sense” movement beyond neoliberal capitalism. .kt-post-loop_59f49f-07 .kadence-post-image{padding-top:0px;padding-right:0px;padding-bottom:0px;padding-left:0px;}.kt-post-loop_59f49f-07 .kt-post-grid-wrap{gap:30px 6px;}.kt-post-loop_59f49f-07 .kt-blocks-post-grid-item{border-top-width:0px;border-right-width:0px;border-bottom-width:0px;border-left-width:0px;border-top-left-radius:0px;border-top-right-radius:0px;border-bottom-right-radius:0px;border-bottom-left-radius:0px;}.kt-post-loop_59f49f-07 .kt-blocks-post-grid-item .kt-blocks-post-grid-item-inner{padding-top:10px;padding-right:25px;padding-bottom:25px;padding-left:9px;}.kt-post-loop_59f49f-07 .kt-blocks-post-grid-item header{padding-top:0px;padding-right:0px;padding-bottom:0px;padding-left:0px;margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0px;}.kt-post-loop_59f49f-07 .kt-blocks-post-grid-item .entry-title{padding-top:5px;padding-right:0px;padding-bottom:10px;padding-left:0px;margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0px;font-size:16px;line-height:17px;}.kt-post-loop_59f49f-07 .entry-content{padding-top:0px;padding-right:0px;padding-bottom:0px;padding-left:0px;margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0px;}.kt-post-loop_59f49f-07 .kt-blocks-post-footer{border-top-width:0px;border-right-width:0px;border-bottom-width:0px;border-left-width:0px;padding-top:0px;padding-right:0px;padding-bottom:0px;padding-left:0px;margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0px;}.kt-post-loop_59f49f-07 .entry-content:after{height:0px;}.kt-post-loop_59f49f-07 .kb-filter-item{border-top-width:0px;border-right-width:0px;border-bottom-width:2px;border-left-width:0px;padding-top:5px;padding-right:8px;padding-bottom:5px;padding-left:8px;margin-top:0px;margin-right:10px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0px;} Practical Radicalism: Community Wealth Building with Neil McInroy Paul Jay and Freddie deBoer Discuss Independent Media, Censorship, and Hate Speech Laws Debt Ceiling Theater and the Trump Parallel Universe Honest Government Ad | Reserve Bank of Australia Debt and the Collapse of Antiquity – Michael Hudson (pt 1/2) Detroiters Fight to Reclaim Their City From Real Estate Vultures – Linda Campbell Bill Black on SVB: A Bipartisan Clown Car Crash Federal Reserve is Throwing Workers Out of Work to Save the Rich Exposing Apocalyptic Economics with Steve Keen No Evidence to Support FED 2% Inflation Target – Robert Pollin  50 Years After Allende at the UN: A Corporate Triumph Named Multistakeholderism Time Bomb in Global Finance – Rob Johnson Monopoly Power vs Democracy – Matt Stoller  Real Climate Solutions are No Mystery – Pollin How to Fight Inflation Without Attacking Workers – Pollin Worker’s Wages & Leverage are the Real Targets – Ferguson Repairing a Fractured World Economy? The Fed Attacks the Working Class – Robert Pollin Capitalism’s Structural Crisis and the Global Revolt Biden’s Bill has Significant Funding for Climate but 10% of What’s Needed – Bob Pollin No Bosses: A New Economy for a Better World (pt 1/3) No Bosses: A New Economy for a Better World (pt 2/3) No Bosses: A New Economy for a Better World (pt 3/3) Progressive Running Against a Corp Dem in Boeing Country Organizing in West Virginia  Get Organized to Win! – Jane McAlevey pt 1/8 25,000 Gather for Moral March on Washington Rising Interest Rates Intended to Create Unemployment – Bob Pollin The Story Behind “The Con” The Power of the Strike – Jane McAlevey pt 8/8 Power Analysis and Whole-Worker Charting – Jane McAlevey pt 7/8 To Win We Need Strong Militant Unions – Jane McAlevey pt 6/8 Is China’s Trade Predatory or for Mutual Benefit? – Hudson and Bond pt 2/2 Mobilizing is Not Organizing – Jane McAlevey pt 5/8 Nationalize Fossil Fuel to Fight Climate Change and Inflation – Bob Pollin In 2020, Trump Propped Up His Rural Vote with Massive Subsidies to Agribusiness – Tom Ferguson Pt 4/4 Fossil Fuel and Private Equity Love Trump – Thomas Ferguson Pt 3/4 theAnalysis.news in 2022 – Paul Jay In 2020, Elites Bailed on Trump, Not on Republican Party – Tom Ferguson Pt 2/4 The Making of Global Capitalism with Leo Panitch Risking Apocalypse for the Spoils of War – Andrew Cockburn pt 1/2 Is the U$A a Democracy? with Tom Ferguson Hard Bargaining in Las Vegas Hospitals – Jane McAlevey pt 4/8 Organizing for Power – Jane McAlevey pt 3/8 Respecting the Genius of Ordinary People – Jane McAlevey pt 2/8 Get Organized to Win! – Jane McAlevey pt 1/8 Stop Subsidizing Wall St., Start Subsidizing Workers for High Energy Costs – Bob Pollin Why the Media Doesn’t Understand Control Fraud Biden Heads to COP 26 Throttled by Manchin and Trumpists – with Bob Pollin Michael Hudson: Biden Between BlackRock and a Hard Place Imperialism Then and Now: Wealth, Unemployment, and Insufficient Demand- Pt 1/3 Prabhat Patnaik Imperialism Then and Now: Capital Relocation, Inequality, Encroachment and Protracted Crisis -Pt 3/3 Imperialism Then and Now: Drain of Wealth, Depression, Role of the State and Globalization-Pt 2/3 Bill Black pt 9/9 — The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One To Get Us Out of Poverty, We Need a Massive Infrastructure Plan – Ann Morrison / Wisconsin How Billionaires Pay Millions to Hide Trillions – Chuck Collins Bill Black pt 8/9 — The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One Bill Black pt 7/9 -The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One Bill Black pt 6/9 – The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One Bill Black pt 5/9 – The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One Bill Black pt 4/9 – The Best Way to Rob a Bank is To Own One Bill Black pt 3/9 – The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One Modest Inflation is Good for Workers – Bob Pollin Why Biden Won’t Cancel Student Debt – Michael Hudson E.U. is Split Over “Strategic Autonomy,” China and U.S. Hegemony – with Mark Blyth Mark Blyth – An Inflated Fear of Inflation? Bill Black pt 2/9 – Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One Bill Black pt 1/9 – The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One Can You Destroy $20 Billion in Wealth Without Committing a Crime? – Bill Black Workers and Communities vs Amazon Polarization, Then a Crash: Michael Hudson on the Rentier Economy Democrats Stuck Between “BlackRock and a Hard Place” – Rana Foroohar and Mark Blyth Peoples’ Lives vs. Profits of Pharmaceutical Monopolies – GPE Newsdocs What is to be Done to Save the Planet – Robert Pollin Financialization and Deindustrialization – Michael Hudson Is Trump the Tip of a More Coherent Fascist Spear? How Deep Will the Depression Get? – Rana Foroohar and Mark Blyth Regenerative Agriculture and Massive Planting of Trees is Our Only Hope – Earl Katz Stabilizing an Unstable Economy – Jan Kregel on Hyman Minsky Will Unions Respond to the Pandemic Moment? Bill Black: Cities Face Catastrophe; Finance a Cancer on Real Economy FED’s $10 Trillion Defends Assets of the Rich – Michael Hudson The Irrationality of the System Has Been Fully Revealed – Leo Panitch Thomas Ferguson: Big Business Takes Cash as Workers Laid Off, States and Cities Go Bust Artificial Intelligence in Whose Interests? – RAI with Rana Foroohar Pt 6/6 The Rich Have an Escape Plan – RAI with Rana Foroohar Pt 5/6 Sociopaths Rise to the Top RAI with Rana Foroohar Pt 4/6 Clinton’s ‘Committee to Save the World’ Unleashes Wall Street – RAI with Rana Foroohar Pt 3/6 Apple, Market Manipulation and the Cult of Personal Finance – RAI with Rana Foroohar Pt 2/6 The Rise of Finance and the Fall of American Business – RAI with Rana Foroohar Pt 1/6 Capitalism Will Hit the Wall Again, Hard – Heiner Flassbeck on RAI Pt 5/5 The Necessity for Higher Wages – Heiner Flassbeck on RAI Pt 4/5 The U.S. Dollar and the Search for a Reasonable Capitalist – Heiner Flassbeck on RAI Pt 3/5 Racing to a Dead End – Heiner Flassbeck on Reality Asserts Itself Pt 2/5 Reaganism and Thatcherism were Intellectually Dishonest – Heiner Flassbeck on RAI Pt 1/5 Transcript Listen Donate Subscribe Guest Music Colin Bruce Anthes Welcome to theAnalysis.news. I’m Colin Bruce Anthes. In a minute, we’ll be discussing the growth of community wealth building and its potential moving forward with Neil McInroy from the Democracy Collaborative. Please remember to like, subscribe, ring that bell so you get notifications, and consider hitting the donate button to support our work. Back in a flash. The last 40-plus years of neoliberalism have seen precious few victories for the working class. The most affluent countries are now regularly characterized by economic crashes, intergenerational wealth gaps, high rates of suicide and depression, stagnating and even declining life expectancies, with the threat of global climate change thrown in as a bonus. But just under the radar, there actually has been a working class movement that has scored some impressive victories and gathered a surprising amount of momentum. Community wealth building is a highly replicable method of economic development that brings together local procurement strategies with inclusive models of ownership for land and enterprise. It was first used to pull people out of poverty in a very poor part of Cleveland, Ohio. A larger version was then taken across the pond to the city of Preston, England, and Preston went on to be named the most improved city in the United Kingdom by PricewaterhouseCoopers. Since then, it’s gone a bit viral as an international movement. Community wealth-building initiatives now pop up around the world, from small towns to major cities like Denver, Chicago, London, and Amsterdam. National governments are starting to pay attention as well. It’s made its way onto the $68 billion strategic plan for the U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department. It’s influenced the way the CHIPS Act on semiconductors was rolled out, while the Scottish government created the new position of a Minister for Community Wealth Building. So how does community wealth building work? What challenges does it face as it looks to continue its expansion? Could it finally offer a path out of neoliberalism? To discuss this, we have one of its leading practitioners, Neil McInroy. Neil is a former CEO of CLES, the Center for Local Economic Strategy. He’s been an adviser to the Scottish Government on community wealth building, and he serves as the global lead for community wealth building for the “think and do tank,” the Democracy Collaborative. Neil, welcome to theAnalysis. Neil McInroy Nice to be here. Colin Bruce Anthes Let’s begin with Margaret Thatcher’s most haunting phrase. “Tina, there is no alternative.” I think a lot of people feel that over the past few decades, it hasn’t much mattered who they voted for. They’ve always ended up with some form of neoliberalism on the other side. Can you begin by speaking about how community wealth building offers a viable alternative to neoliberal methods of economic development? Neil McInroy Great question. Look, the fundamental woes that the world faces is down simply to wealth and power. Who has wealth? Where does it go? And how that wealth controls the very nature of how many of us, where we work, what we do, and how we nurture the planet with that wealth. In simple terms, community wealth building is a correction to wealth and power. It’s not just a concept. It actually fundamentally seeks to rewire wealth and power through practical things we can actually do. We could start now, and we are starting now, so it’s practical. It’s step-by-step. It’s got a big attack on wealth and power, but we do it in practical ways. Chipping away. And that’s, I think, its strength. Many other great concepts that are alternatives, but community wealth building is a concept, but also a practical way of chipping away at neoliberalism and the questions of power and wealth. Colin Bruce Anthes Can you talk about some of the component parts? You talk about how there are different ways of chipping away, and we can get started very quickly. I think one of the things that make it something that can speedily be accessed is this element of procurement and talking about how procurement can play a role in changing the game in a local community very quickly. Can you talk a little bit about some of those component parts? Neil McInroy Yeah. It’s worth just mentioning that from my own experience working 30 years in economic development, I also shared that consciousness with millions and billions across the world– things are getting worse. We’re not dealing with the climate crisis, poverty, and so forth. The way that community wealth building practically does things is to think about wealth, the different pillars, and the dimensions of wealth. I devised a simple way of basketing up wealth, land, a huge source of wealth, finance, capital, if you like, huge sources of wealth, wages, and workforce, a huge source of wealth. Thinking about institutions, different types of enterprises, they’re a huge source of wealth. Also, of course, procurement and public spending. Now, that is not these five pillars: workforce, finance, inclusive and democratic enterprises, work, and procurement. Now, the interesting thing about procurement, it’s not preeminently important; it’s one of the five. Procurement, particularly public procurement, that’s our money. That’s democratic money. It’s hard to influence commercial, private individuals, or private corporations’ money, but we can influence taxation. We can influence public money. Of course, that represents roughly 30% of the economy, which comes from that public money. So what institutions, local government, national government, universities, colleges, hospitals, public institutions, how they spend their money is a particularly important feature. It’s particularly important to how we might change how the economy works and where wealth goes. So progressive procurement looks to start using that public resource. If a local government is buying a good or service, their question is then, “Well, how do I see that as starting to turn the dial on wealth and who gets that wealth?” Looking at local procurement, looking at firms who are not just extracting the surplus into the ether of the global economy, but nurturing the place, the environment, and also in terms of having ownership forms where wealth is locked in, employee ownership and co-ops. So procurement, because it’s a democratically overseen part of wealth, it has an important leverage position in trying to see how we can shift the local economy through progressive procurement practice.  Colin Bruce Anthes I want to talk about some of those other structures that you were talking about. In some ways, these may seem like common sense points once they’re made, but a lot of the time, when the economy is discussed by mainstream pundits, there’s the discussion of capitalism and government. So you have these corporations with a few owners, and then there’s government over here that owns other things. There’s hardly any discussion of anything in between. There are lots of other kinds of structures than just a capitalist corporation and government ownership. That comes in, in a very important way, in this, does it not? Neil McInroy What we need to do is democratize our economy. That doesn’t just mean the state controlled. It means control partly by the state. In certain instances, it might be fit for purpose; this could deal with railways or whatever it may be. But it’s also that wider democratization of ownership, that plural forms of democratization. Increasingly, certain sectors in different parts of the world, you can see it lend itself to particular forms of democratic ownership, either railways or perhaps state-owned railways. When it comes to things like childcare or some forms of everyday retail, this might lend itself to workers’ co-op or other forms of democratic ownership. Community wealth building supports effervescence, a flourishing of those democratic forms because, by their very nature, they are not wealth extracting; they are wealth-generating in terms of the people who own those forms. So we should not see this as capitalism versus government, rather than capitalism versus democracy and democratization of the economy. Colin Bruce Anthes I think that there is some room here potentially to bring together different kinds of coalitions by bringing in those different options. There was a poll by the University of Chicago in, I think, 2019, and they asked 1,500 Americans what they would prefer to work for, a state-owned enterprise, an enterprise owned by outside investors, or a worker-owned enterprise. The results were pretty staggering– 72% of Americans said they would rather work for a company that was owned by its employees. But it wasn’t just that a huge number said that they would rather work for that. It was the demographics. It included 74% of Democrats, 72% of Republicans, 67% of independents, and a clear majority of black, white, gay, straight male and female participants. We live in this incredibly polarized world where we see different political camps constantly at each other’s throats. Then in comes this other form of inclusive ownership that suddenly has very, very widespread appeal across the political spectrum. That opens up some doors. Neil McInroy Yes, absolutely. I think what you touched upon there is that, you said before, common sense. We all know, as citizens and as workers, that when we have more of a stake in something, a genuine stake, then it’s better for us. It makes us feel better. Also, in terms of cooperatives, we know that with a genuine stake, there are no distant shareholders. We are the shareholders, and we act in the interests of both making a viable, strong, growing concern but also mindful of the wider impact of that firm, that enterprise. This is a common sense understanding. The thing is, though, is that I think the powers that be in neoliberalism don’t want these alternatives. There’s an intentional desire to squash them because it breaks the link between these corporations, excessive profits, and excessive shareholder dividends. So there is almost a natural bubbling up, as your figure has shown, of how people think employee ownership and worker ownership are a good thing. But there is a reaction, I believe, from political forces and from power and wealth and neoliberalism, who do not actually wish to see these things grow because it threatens their own power and wealth. There’s a political tussle in community wealth building, which I think is an important dimension. Whilst I’ve said community wealth building is practical and you can get on and do things, there is also a political dimension if we’re really going to bring this to scale. Colin Bruce Anthes Yeah. We’ll touch a little bit more on some of the challenges that are faced in order to keep this movement expanding. Let’s go through a little bit more of the core practices. Then we’ll go into some examples of how this has operated in hands-on practice so far. We’ve talked about employee ownership and cooperatives. We talked about local procurement. Then there starts to become this element in which these start to play together a little bit. You get more local investment happening in companies where the profits go into the hands of lots of local people. Then we’re talking about really seriously changing some trends. Do you want to talk a little bit about how these different pieces start to build into a complex?

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I’m Lynn Fries, producer of Global Political Economy or GPEnewsdocs. In this segment, guest Laurent Gaberell will discuss the new Public Eye investigative report that puts the crucial role of pollination and the global threat to biodiversity and food security posed by bee killing pesticides in the spotlight. A report that for the first time reveals the full scale of the European Union export trade in bee killing pesticides. The report sheds light on the double standard that’s been at play as the EU continues to export huge quantities of this pesticide despite having banned the use of these chemicals in their own fields. Our guest, Laurent Gaberell, joins us from Public Eye in Lausanne where he’s an agriculture and food expert on the research and policy team. Public Eye is a Swiss not-for-profit organization with a longstanding record of fighting against injustice that has a significant link to Switzerland. Welcome, Laurent. LAURENT GABERELL: Hello. FRIES: So Laurent, we’ll be talking about key findings of this new Public Eye report. Start briefly by first telling us something about Public Eye and also your own area of expertise on the research and policy team. And from there, the collaboration between Public Eye and Unearthed in investigating Europe’s export trade in banned pesticides. Which I understand this report is the most recent collaboration. GABERELL: Yes, indeed. So you summarized it pretty well. Public Eye is a Swiss NGO acting as a watchdog. Looking at what Swiss multinational companies and in general Swiss politics are doing abroad mainly in poor countries of the Global South. We look at all the sectors, the economic sectors that are key in Switzerland such as the banking sector, the trading sector, the pharmaceutical companies and pesticides because in Switzerland we have the number one in the market which is called Syngenta. This is the reason why we are interested in the topic of pesticides. It’s because in Switzerland we have the number one of the market. I’m the food and agriculture expert at Public Eye dealing with this topic of pesticides, looking at Syngenta and its activities in developing countries. We’ve been looking now for several years at the topic of banned pesticides being sold abroad by Swiss companies or banned pesticides being exported from Switzerland or the European Union to poor countries. This new investigation on the export of banned neonicotinoids from Europe is the latest in a series of investigations that we’ve done as a collaboration with Unearthed, which is the investigative unit of Greenpeace UK, looking at the export of banned pesticides from Europe. FRIES: So this banned pesticide that we’re talking about, I understand, is chemically related to nicotine. And you get a clue of that from the name. Is that right? GABERELL: Completely right. Yeah. It’s from the same family. So we’re talking about neonicotinoids derived from the same family as nicotine. But in this case developed to act as insecticides to protect crops. FRIES: This new investigation has for the first time revealed the full scale of the European Union’s export trade in neonicotinoids or neonics for short. Start by talking about what has been called out as the double standard in the EU export trade of these neonics and from there we’ll get into key findings of your investigation GABERELL: This case of the neonics is really the strongest example of the double standard at play when it comes to regulating dangerous pesticides in the EU. Those insecticides were banned from all outdoor users in the Union <European Union> in 2018. And then they were finally taken out of the market in 2020 because of the danger they pose to pollinators and bees. There was like huge evidence, overwhelming evidence of the impact that they can have on bees and pollinators. So, the European Union decided to take them out of the market a few years ago already. But they keep allowing companies to produce those chemicals in Europe to export them to third countries. It’s really the classic example of this double standard where you ban dangerous pesticides in your own country because you consider it too dangerous but you keep exporting it to other countries. That’s the double standard at play. But, I was saying this is the strongest example of this double standard because in this specific case of the neonicotinoids, the European Commission considered them such a threat to pollinators worldwide and to food security that they even decided to act on the import of food made with those chemicals. So in February this year, the European Commission decided to ban, to lower down to zero the residue limits for neonicotinoids in food. And what does that mean? It means basically that you’re not allowed anymore to export to the European Union foods that contain residue of neonicotinoids. And the European Commission in its own decision to ban those residues said that there’s a big problem with the decline of pollinators worldwide. That the decline of pollinators represents a threat to food security. Because they’re pollinating crops and that there’s large evidence that neonicotinoids play a key role in the decline of bees and pollinators worldwide. And so the European Union needs to take action and it’s not enough to ban those pesticides in the Union, the European Union. The threat is so big that the Union needs also to act on the import to make sure that no food that is consumed in the European Union was made with those bee-killing pesticides. So that was quite a strong decision that was made by the European Commission in February this year (2023). It shows you how big a threat those neonics represent in the view of the Commission. But at the same time, what we are showing in this investigation is that the European Union keeps exporting those pesticides to third countries. So they ban the use of those pesticides in the Union to protect bees. They even ban the import of foods made with those pesticides to protect bees and pollinators but they keep allowing their export from the European Union to other countries. FRIES: Laurent, what kind of volume are we are talking about here? And what companies and countries have you identified as involved in this EU export of banned bee killing pesticides. GABERELL: What we found is that in 2021, the European Union approved the export of more than 13,000 tons of ban