Exploitation and abusive employment practices persist in the UK food industry according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF). The report describes grim practices that bind workers to employers but its conclusions do not seem especially groundbreaking.

The study concludes that competitive pressures throughout industry create the conditions for exploitation. It also finds exploitation is not a consequence of isolated criminal employers or agencies but a consequence of competitive pressures driving costs down.

It’s an interesting piece of work, but it is not clear cut.

No workers interviewed in this study were coerced into work. And the authors seem to classify exploitation and ‘forced labour’ as the same .

But the testimonies of the 62 workers interviewed by the JRF describe grim lives characterised by small incomes, poor health and poverty of aspiration.  And this is of interest. The interviews illustrate just how deep the divisions in Britain are – with those at the very bottom being worlds away from those in The Sunday Times Rich List.

And the report identifies some grim practices. One particular employer tactic is particularly noteworthy for its cold cynicism.

The Underwork Scam
The authors discovered the cruel ‘underwork scam’, where more than enough workers are taken on. Each individual is given just enough work and therefore money to stay alive and pay their debts. But they earn no spare money and cannot ‘escape their exploiters’.

According to the report fear of the authorities keeps workers deferent and compliant, regardless of their legal status. The authors say a recent crackdown on illegal workers by UK border authorities ‘appears to have worsened pay and conditions for migrants’ while strengthening the hand of employers.

Interestingly more than half of the interviewees had the equivalent of an A-level qualification. As many had a primary school standard education as were post-graduates. Evidently education is not necessarily a guard against working at the bottom.

You can read the full report here.

Sign up for email alerts from the Bureau here.

Two suspected US drone strikes killed up to 12 civilians in the south of Yemen on Tuesday.

Reports vary but between 14 and 15 people have been killed in a double air strike on the southern city of Jaar.  Of these, as many as a dozen are being reported as civilians. Up to 21 civilians have also been reported injured.

Witnesses said the first strike targeted alleged militants meeting in a house. Civilians who had flocked to the impact site were killed in a follow-up strike. Although the attack is unconfirmed, if accurate this tactic would echo the grim hallmarks of US drone tactics in Pakistan.

Earlier this year the Bureau exposed a CIA practice of ‘follow-up’ strikes in an investigation with the Sunday Times. On at least a dozen occasions twin strikes killed at least 50 civilians. The civilians died  when they rushed to help victims of an initial attack and were hit by a second, follow-up strike.

While the CIA alone is responsible for the American drone campaign in Pakistan both the Agency and US special forces launch attacks with pilotless aircraft in Yemen.

Two to three suspected ‘al Qaeda militants’ were killed in the double strike which Xinhua initially reported as ‘a botched air strike carried out by Yemeni warplanes.’ But three Yemeni security officials have since told CNN it was a drone strike.

This is the highest number of civilians killed in a strike in Yemen attributed to the US since 30 died on 14 July 2011 in a strike on a Mudiya police station.

These are the first civilian strike victims reported killed in Yemen since March 30. The Bureau has recorded up to 746 people killed in US strikes in the country since 2002. As many as 117 are civilians, 24 of them children.

EU Attack
In other developments, today the European Union anti-piracy armada off East Africa launched an attack on the coast of Somalia. Helicopters and ‘maritime aircraft’ attacked an alleged pirate base in a night-time raid that destroyed five fast-attack boats with no reported casualties.

An EU force has been deployed in the seas off Somalia since 2008. On March 23 this year the EU Council voted to expand the fleet’s mandate so it can attack pirate installations on shore.

The commander of the EU fleet Rear Admiral Duncan Potts said: ‘The EU Naval Force action against pirate supplies on the shoreline is merely an extension of the disruption actions carried out against pirate ships at sea.’

The fleet is made up of nine ships and five reconnaissance aircraft supplied by six EU member states including Germany, Spain and France. Fleet spokesman Timo Lange told the Bureau he could not reveal what forces took part in the raid.

This assault is also not the first time action has apparently been taken against pirates on land. On April 17 two reported fishermen were injured when two unidentified ‘warplanes’ fired on the coast of semi-autonomous Somali region of Puntland. Initial reports said the mystery jets fired missiles on a suspected pirate base.

A spokesman told AFP the EU ‘was not involved whatsoever.’ The French and British governments denied any involvement in this mystery strike and the US Department of Defense told the Bureau it was aware of reports of the strike but would not comment on operational details.

The United States is known to have at least two aircraft carriers in the region and is understood to have aircraft and unmanned drones stationed at an airbase in Djibouti, to the north of Somalia.

For the past five years the US military and intelligence services have been fighting a covert war against the al Qaeda-linked group al Shabaab.

The Bureau has identified at least ten US operations targeting militants. American air strikes by manned aircraft and unmanned drones as well as ground operations by special forces and a naval bombardment have killed between 58 and 169 people since 2007. Up to 57 were civilians, at least one of them a child.

The man from Del Monte is looking for gold on the London Stock Exchange.

It was reported yesterday that the South Africa tycoon, Vivian Imerman, who made a fortune selling a large stake in Del Monte, is planning to raise funds on London’s Alternative Investment Market. The money will be used to find a good investment, and he is particularly targeting mining and oil companies.

The new alchemists
Imerman is the latest in a long line of investors focused on the mining and oil industries seeking funds in London.

In the last six months, of the 54 companies that have  floated in London across both the main and alternative markets nearly 40% have been from the oil or mining industries. There are 329 extractive companies on the London stock market worth more than £915bn, nearly two thirds of Britain’s GDP.

The new listings and heady share prices come as concerns are mounting about some of the practices deployed by mining industries.

Last week Global Witness, a campaign group monitoring the extractive sector, called on shareholders of commodity giant Glencore to demand more transparency around its dealings in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The charity is concerned that some significant contract and financial information in its DRC operations are hidden through offshore vehicles. Global Witness claimed the company should provide more detail on what it said were ‘secret and possibly corrupt’ deals.

Glencore has denied any wrongdoing.

Taxing MPs
The issue of mining and taxes is one that is gaining traction. As many of the world’s minerals come from some of the poorest countries, these buried riches should be the path out of poverty. But this will only happen if those behind the new ‘gold rush’, fuelled by the developing world’s demand for commodities, act responsibily.

If countries are plundered disease, hunger, infant death- all will continue. But if companies exporting these resources pay appropriate taxes, then the countries where the mines are based should flourish.

Mindful of this opportunity, policymakers on both sides of the Atlantic are attempting to introduce new transparency measures for the extractive industry. In Brussels, a new directive forcing all quoted extractive companies located in Europe to disclose exactly how much tax they pay on every single project they operate could be law by the end of June. It is the subject of intense lobbying efforts from mining firms desperately trying to torpedo the agenda. And campaigners are concerned that the legislation is too limited.

In the US, a similar measure has already passed through the US Congress. But it is being controversially held up by the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

It is a situation that is also taxing British MPs. The International Development Committee has just finished hearing evidence for its inquiry into tax in developing countries. The focus for the select committee has been on mining companies in Africa.

‘Developing countries lose an estimated $160bn each year through tax avoidance by multinational companies (including those based in the UK). Of particular concern are the extractive industries where payments to governments are often not disclosed and may not contribute to development or poverty reduction,’ says the committee.

Of course it is not simply a matter of multinationals paying their taxes, as the committee recognises. Governments must also be helped to use the revenue streams to build services and enhance their countries rather than lose them to corruption. But this is a two-sided coin, and London investors can do their bit.

Trying to choose where to go on a budget holiday this year? Forget low-cost airlines, if you really want to save a fortune why not choose Luxembourg? It has it’s own type of champagne and sausage, is nestled in the heart of Europe, and, should you happen to run a big business, offers tiny tax rates that could save you a bundle.

Last night Panorama’s The Truth About Tax explored how one tiny country, with a population smaller than London, has become an impenetrable piggy-bank for some of the world’s biggest corporations.

Unprecedented raw detail

A major factor in the tax haven’s appeal is the secrecy that cloaks tax affairs there. Unlike the UK, companies are under no obligation to publish their accounts.

However, thousands of pages of leaked documents, passed on to Panorama, now reveal the complex tax avoidance methods used by big business.

Richard Brooks, a former tax investigator and contributor to Private Eye, calls the leaked documents ‘unprecedented’. ‘I’ve never seen anything like this before, setting out in raw detail how a tax avoidance scheme works,’ he said.

However, to the untrained eye the complicated schemes and methods employed to ferry profits to tax havens are something of a puzzle. When Brooks’ attempt to explain using a whiteboard and marker leaves reporter Darragh MacIntyre confused, the programme employs some clever graphics to illustrate.

In a rather creative section combining magician’s slight of hand, and iPhone technology, we are told pharmaceutical giant GlaksoSmithKline (GSK) opened a branch in Luxembourg which then loaned £6.34bn to its UK office, according to the documents. In return the UK company paid nearly £124m in interest to the Luxembourg branch. That £124m was taxed in Luxembourg at less than 0.5%, compared to what would have then been 28% in the UK. A potential saving of £34m corporation tax for the company. A loss of £34m to the UK Treasury.

It is not just GSK that is involved. According to Action Aid just over half of the biggest 100 companies listed on the London Stock Exchange have subsidiaries in Luxembourg.

Wandering around the central European country reporter Darragh MacIntyre finds tiny offices, apparently housing some of the world’s biggest corporations. Northern & Shell, parent company of the Express newspapers and Channel 5, is seemingly housed in a small office above a stamp collectors’ shop.

The Bureau found a similar situation when we, along with Private Eye, investigated Vodafone’s dealings in Switzerland, another tax haven. Undercover filming revealed the communication giant’s staff in Switerland consisted of one part-time book keeper who indicated to our reporters that their main purpose was tax avoidance.

Read more about our Vodafone sting here. 

All the companies featured in the programme asserted that they were acting completely legally and by the book.

UK loses out

This kind of tax avoidance scheme is totally legal but is having serious consequences for the UK’s faltering economy. Last year companies in the UK paid over £42bn in corporation tax, making up 10% of the Exchequer’s total revenue but they could be paying more. According to Chair of the Public Accounts Committee Margaret Hodge, interviewed on the programme, the National Audit Office and HMRC say that up to £25bn in taxes could be owed from big businesses.

No wonder then that in his last budget speech George Osborne called tax avoidance ‘morally repugnant’.

However, despite the calls that ‘we are all in it together’, the government has made it easier than ever for companies to avoid taxation.

As well as slashing corporation tax in the UK the Treasury has also relaxed its controlled foreign company rules, making it easier for companies to create subsidiaries in tax havens, and thus protect their profits from UK tax.

The logic behind the Treasury’s actions is that, despite the lost corporation taxes, relaxing their systems could encourage companies to move their headquarters to the UK. ’If we’re really determined to see growth in this country we have to have a competitive tax system,’ David Gauke, Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury, tells Panorama.

BP’s Head of Tax seems to agree. He is interviewed saying that when it comes to the UK, ‘there is no better place from which to run a multi-national corporation in tax terms.’ It is, he says, the result of ten years long work from companies.

That work involved some concerted lobbying from the business world, although in some instances their opinions were actively sought out by the government. MacIntyre explains that both Vodafone and GSK were invited by the Treasury to consult on the new taxation rules.

So it seem this summer, if you happen to be a major, multi-national business, you can forget Disneyland, Luxembourg may well be the happiest place on earth. Meanwhile Osborne and the Treasury will be working away, hoping that in the future big business will choose a ‘staycation’.

Watch Panorama’s The Truth About Tax here.

Sign up for email alerts from the Bureau here.

Questions about the safety of taser stun guns used by police forces across the globe have been raging ever since the supposedly non-lethal weapons first came into use over a decade ago.

Amnesty International, the company’s most vocal critic, has compiled figures indicating that at least 500 people in the USA have died since 2001 after being shocked with Tasers, and according to more conservative, but no less shocking, figures published by the US Justice Department, 184 people have died since 1986 after being stunned by a taser.

Taser International, the company that manufactures the 50,000 volt devices, has vehemently contested that the weapons are unsafe and has fought back in court when people say otherwise. Often the blame will fall back upon the victim’s drug abuse, weak heart or propensity to die suddenly from the debatable medical term known as ‘excited delirium’ – which Amnesty cites as a cause of death in 111 of 334 cases it has documented.

But there is a mounting tide of scientific proof that appears to question Taser’s claims. Since 2006 there have been a number of peer reviewed animal research studies demonstrating cardiac risk from the taser.

And earlier this month, Dr Douglas Zipes, one of the world’s most prominent cardiac electrophysiologists, published in the journal of the American Heart Association the first peer-reviewed human study demonstrating that darts in the chest can cause sudden death.

In an interview with ABC, Dr Zipes, of the Indiana University School of Medicine concluded: ‘It is absolutely unequivocal based on my understanding of how electricity works on the heart, based on good animal data and based on numerous clinical situations that the taser unquestionably can produce sudden cardiac arrest and death.’

Researchers analysed the records of eight people who went into cardiac arrest after being shocked with a taser, seven of whom died; concluding that the purportedly non-lethal weapon is anything but. They found that the electric shock through the body can cause irregular heartbeat and cardiac arrest, a condition in which the heart cannot properly contract.

Taser-related deaths
Leading US attorney John Burton who has represented the families of twenty taser-related death victims told the Bureau that, in light of the new research, the company needs to make its product safer and provide better training to those that use it.

‘Taser International released its products, the M26 and X26 electrical control devices without establishing their safety.

‘The Company needs to make the product safer and give its users better training and warnings. Agencies which persist in using this potentially lethal device need to make sure that officers understand the serious risks posed, and not continue to use tasers in trivial situations.

‘Following Dr Zipes’ report plaintiff’s lawyers now have powerful evidence to use in their cases. Unfortunately, Taser International remains in denial, and as a result there will no doubt be future victims.’

In the UK there have been three taser-related deaths since the stun-guns were first brought into widespread use in 2005. In one of the three, bodybuilder Dale Burns died after allegedly being shocked at least three times by officers from Cumbria Constabulary in August last year.

It is debatable whether the new research, which casts doubt over the safety of the taser, will filter across to these shores. A Channel Four investigation published in December, found that the frequency with which UK police officers are using their new kit is growing, highlighting that the number of taser discharges in the UK has risen collectively amongst forces by 70% from the previous year.

There have been a number of anecdotal reports of the weapons, which were first introduced as an alternative to fire-arms, being used in increasingly minor everyday policing incidents. Stun-guns were used to subdue protesters during the Dale Farm eviction process, and in February police wielded the weapons during a crown control situation on Oxford Street following the fatal stabbing of 18-year-old Seydou Diarrassouba. And just last week reports surfaced showing how 58-year-old Alzheimer’s sufferer Peter Russell was tasered three times by officers in his own home.

Multiple-tasering
Research by the Bureau also discovered that at least 158 people have been subjected to multiple-tasering – where repeated or prolonged electric shocks are used against an individual – since the weapons were rolled out across the UK, despite warnings about the dangers of the practice in the Home Office’s own taser safety guidance.

Consultant police psychologist and use of force expert Dr Mike Webster believes that the question marks surrounding the weapons thrown up by Dr Zipes’ research mean that international law enforcement agencies should put a moratorium on their use until the health and safety issues are properly and rigorously tested.

‘It’s no longer arguable that the wave form that the taser can produce does not cause cardiac electrical arrythmia and cardiac arrest,’ he said.

‘Previously it was all hypothesis and opinion by a number of very distinguished experts. What Dr Zipes has been able to do is prove this in an independent and rigorous study.’

He added: ‘We need to withdraw the weapons, get it independently tested and then decide what the  health and safety effects are.

‘Dr Zipes has shown that police are putting a question mark around their belt whenever they put a taser in their holster.’

It remains to be seen what influence the study will have on public policy, and the seemingly exponential rise of the taser as a mainstay in the arsenal of everyday policing in both the USA and the UK. But one thing is for sure, Dr Zipes’ research has raised the most difficult questions to date for Taser International about the safety of its product.

City big guns are lobbying hard in Europe to thwart moves aimed at curbing annual bonuses.

The Association for Financial Markets in Europe (AFME), one of the City’s most powerful financial lobby groups, is against capping bankers’ bonuses. It has written to members of  the European Parliament to vote against rules that would drastically limit them.

The European Parliament’s economics and monetary affairs committee is due to vote today on amendments to the Capital Requirements Directive (CRD). The amendments could impose a fixed one-to-one ratio between a banker’s salary and bonus. But many bonuses in the City far surpass this salary ratio.

It is perhaps hardly surprising that the City wants to block these restrictions, but a glimpse at the level of lobbying occurring was provided by a story reported in the Sunday Telegraph. According to the newspaper the industry group wrote to Members of the European Parliament this weekend. The letter, seen by the Sunday Telegraph, was signed by Simon Lewis, chief executive of AFME. Lewis warns that amending the CRD to include a cap on bankers bonuses could result in banks simply raising basic salaries.

Lewis goes on to state, ’we believe that if decisions are taken in the very limited time that has been available for reflection and debate, there is a risk of material unintended consequences for the European economy.’

Should the resolution fail to pass today, there is a separate tabled resolution which would limit bonuses to 0.75 times annual salary.

The AFME is made up of over 190 members including all pan-EU and global banks, key regional banks, brokers, law firms, investors and other financial market participants.

City AM has previously reported on AFME consulting with lawyers Clifford Chance over suing the EU if Brussels imposed such restrictions.

The Bureau has been looking into the issues around lobbying in the financial sector. Stay tuned for more. 

Sign up for email alerts from the Bureau here.

Everyone in Britain knows about the News of the World phone hacking scandal, and most people know that at its heart is a collection of documents and computer files assembled by the private investigator Glenn Mulcaire. Buried by police in 2007, these records have been laboriously dragged to the surface by journalists and lawyers, and they have revealed outrageous illegal behaviour. The Mulcaire files, in other words, have done untold damage to Rupert Murdoch’s organisation.

What if there was another such collection of records, compiled by another private investigator, containing records of potentially illegal activities not only by News International newspapers, but also by the Daily Mail, the Mirror, the Express – indeed most of Fleet Street? That would surely be political dynamite.

Remarkably, such a collection exists and it is indeed dynamite, but even more remarkably it remains largely buried by a combination of official secrecy and press industry cover-up. Even though Britain has an Information Commissioner tasked with protecting the public from the abuse of our data and even though it has a public inquiry under Lord Justice Leveson dedicated to investigating press misconduct, these files remain closed.

They are called the Operation Motorman files, a cache of documents seized in 2003 in a raid by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) on the offices and home of the private investigator Steve Whittamore.

For years, Whittamore and a small group of associates had provided newspaper clients with a range of services from entirely innocent research into public databases such as the electoral rolls to illegally accessing the Police National Computer with the assistance of corrupt officials.

Whittamore kept reasonably good records. For each transaction he logged the date, the name of the newspaper and the journalist who commissioned him, the target individual, the kind of information required and (sometimes) the fee charged. These – at least 17,500 of them – the ICO copied into computer spreadsheets, in separate files known as the Blue Book (mostly News International), the Red Book (Mirror Group) and the Yellow and Green books (including the Mail and the Mail on Sunday, the Express Group, the Observer and a number of magazines)….

Whittamore and some of his associates were convicted in 2005, but none of the journalists who had commissioned the work ever faced charges. Could they have done so? Undoubtedly yes. It is illegal to hire a private eye to acquire data from, for example, the Police National Computer, the car registration (DVLA) database, and the British Telecom database of people’s ‘Friends & Family’ (or most-dialled) numbers, and we know that the Motorman files show many such transactions.

The law states that journalists who pay for this kind of information do not break the law if they show that the action was justified in the public interest. Exactly what that means may be subject to some argument, but it emphatically does not include acquiring information in the pursuit of stories about the private lives of celebrities, their relatives or the victims of crime and their families.

In 2005-6 the ICO took the view that they could have prosecuted many journalists but didn’t have the money for the fight. (There has also been a claim that it backed off because it feared the press, though this has been hotly disputed.) Instead it fired two shots across the bows of the press in the form of reports entitled What Price Privacy? and What Price Privacy Now?

These reports laid down the law and warned newspapers to stop breaking it. The second report also contained a list of the leading users of Whittamore’s services. The Daily Mail was at the top with 952 transactions commissioned by 58 journalists. The Mirror papers were also big users and the list also included Express and News International titles, the Observer and a number of magazines.

Needless to say the reports were barely reported in the papers themselves, but the ICO believes that they had the desired effect: it says it has no evidence that the illegal practices continue today.  And the press industry desperately wants us to believe that too.

But it doesn’t end there. The hacking scandal has raised many new questions about the Motorman files. When the hacking scandal came to light it was natural to ask not only whether other newspapers have been involved in hacking voicemails, but also what other illegal information gathering had been going on. Newspaper proprietors and executives outside News International were quick to tell us that their hands were clean.

But the ICO left little doubt that their hands were dirty. Its 2006 report showed 305 journalists commissioning more than 3,000 inquiries from Whittamore and the Information Commissioner of the time, Richard Thomas, declared: “I have not seen a whiff of public interest.” Thomas has also argued that some of these offences were at least as serious as phone hacking, not less so.

Moreover, the ICO made clear that there were many, many victims of these offences, often blameless people caught in the media war against personal privacy and often people who lost control of precious personal information without even knowing it.

At the Leveson inquiry, however, the newspapers – the Mail, Express, Mirror etc – have so far got away with it. They have not been asked in detail whether they could justify all those known, potentially illegal transactions, so they are still able to say that nobody has proved anything against them. And worse, the Motorman files themselves – shared between lawyers, editors and newspaper executives – were not disclosed to the public so that we could judge these matters for ourselves.

Nor, of course, have the national press exposed the story. The papers splurged the evidence of MPs’ expenses abuse, but they hide their own wrongdoings.

The press argues that disclosure would not be fair, and that Motorman is all in the past, yet Motorman is no more historic than hacking. Indeed there are surely grounds to wonder whether the mobile phone numbers that Whittamore was so often asked to collect were then used for hacking.

And even after Whittamore was convicted in 2005, long after Operation Motorman, newspapers continued to use his services. The Mail has admitted employing him in 2007, and the Express employed him as recently as July 2010.

Motorman is the press scandal that is still being covered up.

This article was first published in OpenDemocracy.

A wrestler squares up to his opponent, stares him straight in the eye and aggressively pushes him in the chest, sending his foe flying backwards. A common sight in any wrestling ring, but this particular exchange took place in the Congolese parliament.

Tonight’s Unreported World explores professional wrestling in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Beyond the excitement and theatrics of the ring, reporter Seyi Rhodes uncovers a world of menace, political bullying and black magic.

Wrestling is hugely popular in the DRC and the sportsmen involved are superstars. The programme opens on a fight in the capital Kinshasa which, other than the out door setting, bears many of the traits of professional wrestling from the US. Masked figures, creatively constructed characters and a blend of theatrics and actual violence – this could be straight out of a World Wrestling Entertainment show. That is until one wrestler pulls out his signature move: bringing a live chicken into the ring and pulling its head off in a black magic ritual. Hulk Hogan never went that far.

However it is not the black magic rituals featured in the programme which really shocks. Instead it is the alleged use of professional fighters by politicians to quell opposition.

Rhodes claims that some wrestlers are involved in gangs, or ‘kulunas’, which have been accused of terrorising the city. Champion wrestler Nanga Styve tells Rhodes that many of his fellow sports stars are embroiled in some very real violence. ‘When you go around wielding a machete then you’re nothing but gangsters,’ Styve explains.

Later in the programme Rhodes attends a protest march only to find the turnout lacking. One protestor stops him on the street to explain that the authorities had sent kuluna armed with machetes and rocks to disperse protestors.

Politicians do not deny courting support from these fighters, but denies they are used to suppress opposition. The MP responsible for the ruling party’s youth wing tells the programme, ‘just because you’re a sportsman it doesn’t mean you can’t campaign for a political party. We’ve actually shown restraint considering the force we’ve had at our disposal.’

That restraint seems lacking in footage viewed by Rhodes of a vote in the Congolese parliament. There we see an opposition MP scrabbling to get on to the stage to register his opposition to legislation affecting the national constitution. His path is repeatedly blocked by bulky men, supposedly professional wrestlers, who push him back and to the ground.

However this is the only real glimpse the viewer gets of the alleged use of professional sports stars by politicians. Rhodes and his team come under fire during the protest they attend but this is from the police, not kaluna. We never really get the killer punch, actual evidence of these wrestlers partaking in criminal violence, or being paid to intimidate by politicians.

Without wanting to talk ill of the dead, there is also the possibility that this is a ‘chicken and egg’ scenario. We see bodyguards of a famous pop star practicing their wrestling moves. What is to say politicians’ bodyguards are not enjoying wrestling as a sideline, rather than the other way around?

Unreported World delivers another interesting insight into a sub-culture, bringing out the questions and complexities along the way. It is definitely worth a watch. But in terms of exposing political corruption, one can’t help but feel the wrestlers, and their alleged crooked employers, are never fully unmasked.

Watch Unreported World on 4oD here.

Sign up for email alerts from the Bureau here.

g

Sunday’s death of Fahd al-Quso in a CIA drone strike was a significant US success. The admitted al Qaeda bomber had long been sought for his role in the deadly attack on the US navy ship the  USS Cole back in 2000.

At the Bureau we logged al-Quso’s name – along with his nephew Fahed Salem al-Akdam – in our Yemen database. Another two names added to the many hundreds we’ve now recorded for the US covert war in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.

A day earlier, a CIA strike in Pakistan also killed around ten people. Here the information was less clear, with reports vague about who had died. While most claimed that a militant training camp had been struck, a single source claimed those killed were ‘local tribesmen.’ This clearly needs further investigation.

Although we’re not alone in recording US covert drone strikes, the Bureau also tries to identify by name all of those killed – both civilian and militants. And those names – which the Bureau recently presented at a Washington DC drone summit – reveal some startling truths about the US drone campaign.

To date in Pakistan, we have been able to identify 170 named militants killed by the CIA in more than 300 drone strikes. Among them are many senior figures, including Baitullah Mehsud, leader of the Pakistan Taliban; Ilyas Kashmiri, an al-Qaeda linked strategist; and Nek Mohammed, once a militant thorn in Pakistan’s side.

Certainly these drone strikes have severely affected the ability of militants to operate openly in Pakistan’s tribal areas. The recently-declassified ‘bin Laden papers’ talk of the impact of the CIA’s attacks, with the Taliban ‘frankly exhausted from the enemy’s air bombardments.’

Yet there’s a darker side to this coin. The Bureau has also been able to name 317 civilians killed in US attacks in Pakistan. Between 170 and 500 further civilians have yet to be identified.

On October 30 2011, for example, we know that the CIA killed four chromite miners in Waziristan – foreman Saeedur Rahman, and miners Khastar Gul, Mamrud Khan and Noorzal Khan. And on July 12 last year, field researchers working for the Bureau found that drones returned to attack rescuers, killing four Taliban and four civilians we named as Shabbir, Kalam, Waqas and Bashir.

US Lists
We’re not alone in keeping lists of the covert war dead. Just a few days ago, the Washington Post reported that ‘U.S. officials have said that more than 2,000 militants and civilians have been killed in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere since Obama took office in 2009.’

The Bureau’s data indicates that between 2,300 and 3,290 people have died in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia strikes under Obama.

Given that the Bureau’s base estimate for the total killed in Pakistan drone strikes is close to the CIA’s own, what clearly irks the US intelligence community is the light we continue to shine on civilians reported killed.

Since we began publishing our reports on civilian deaths from drone strikes, the US intelligence community has aggressively sought to attack our findings. Our media partners have been leaned on. The CIA claimed that we were getting our information from a ‘Pakistani spy’ (a barrister representing drone strike victims). And when we definitively showed, with the Sunday Times, that the CIA had been bombing rescuers and funeral-goers, it was suggested that we were ‘helping al Qaeda.’

Redefining ‘civilian’
At stake may be the very definition of a ‘civilian’ in the modern battlefield. ABC’s George Stephanopoulos recently pressed US chief counter terrorism adviser John Brennan on his remarkable claim in June 2011 that the CIA had not killed ‘a single non-combatant in almost a year.’

In reply, Brennan said that ‘over a period of time before my public remarks [that] we had no information about a single civilian, a noncombatant being killed.’

Even a cursory examination of credible media reports between June 1st 2010 and June 29 2011 (when Brennan made his original claim) shows that dozens of civilians were reported killed in that period. Among those who died were more than 40 tribal elders and villagers in a single disastrous CIA strike in March 2011. That attack led to public protests from Pakistan’s president, prime minister and army chief.

Perhaps the CIA’s own human intelligence-gathering abilities are so poor in Pakistan that it can no longer identify civilians killed on the ground. Perhaps the Agency has been misleading Congress and the President about the true extent of civilian deaths. Alternatively, the very definition of civilian may have been radically changed. If the latter is true – and it seems the most likely scenario – then this has worrying implications.

New phase
The covert drone war appears to be entering a new phase. Until recently, strikes were carried out with the tacit co-operation of host governments. But now Islamabad is saying no. Recent CIA strikes in Pakistan have been publicly condemned by the government as being ‘in total contravention of international law.’ The strikes are carrying on regardless.

Yemen’s new president appears more pliant. Yet in a little-reported comment, the nation’s prime minister Muhammad Salem Basindwa recently told a local newspaper: ’The government has never asked the US to carry out drone attacks on the Yemeni soil because there should not be external meddling in Yemen’s own affairs.’

Part of the justification for the US carrying out drone strikes without consent is their reported success. And naming those militants killed is key to that process. Al Qaeda bomber Fahd al-Quso’s death was widely celebrated.

Yet how many newspapers also registered the death of Mohamed Saleh Al-Suna,  a civilian caught up and killed in a US strike in Yemen on March 30?

By showing only one side of the coin, we risk presenting a distorted picture of this new form of warfare. There is an obligation to identify all of those killed – not just the bad guys.

Follow @chrisjwoods on Twitter

Lord Bell’s Chime Communications reported a surprise slump in trading in its public relations business, including Bell Pottinger.

The profit warning follows a stream of negative press after a Bureau sting exposed the firms ‘dark arts’ lobbying tactics and its willingness to act for authoritarian regimes.

The Financial Times reports that Chime chairman Lord Bell admitted the coverage of the Bureau’s undercover investigation in the Independent newspaper ‘had a deleterious effect on the morale of my people and on relationships with clients’.

The firm also lost a major US Department of Defense contract last year.

Sir Martin Sorrell, a Chime shareholder and head of PR and advertising giant WPP, is quoted in The Independent saying: ‘We note with interest the ‘sudden’ decline in PR revenues in the UK.’ Sorrell said WPP had not experienced the same slow down.

PR Week reported in March that Rolls Royce was ending its contract with Bell Pottinger after nine years, although a spokesman for the company denied the move was down to negative press. The Telegraph has also suggested that Bell Pottinger failed to win several pitches in the New Year.

At Chime’s AGM on May 9, more than a third of shareholders voted against or abstained from voting on the re-election of Lord Bell, fellow PR man Piers Pottinger and other directors.

Lord Bell is heading a management buyout of Bell Pottinger. The move is being fiercely opposed by other Chime shareholders, such as Sir Martin, but it is expected to be agreed by the end of June.

The peer told the AGM: ‘Significant progress has been made on this potential buyout with the main terms being agreed involving the following businesses: Bell Pottinger Sans Frontières, Bell Pottinger Public Relations, Bell Pottinger Middle East, Bell Pottinger Public Affairs, Chime’s 60% and the 40% management stake in Pelham Bell Pottinger together with various Group central costs.  Chime would retain a 25% minority stake.’