The Mass Grave We Call Collateral Damage

Robert Koehler

“Lot of killers. We’ve got a lot of killers. Boy, you think our country’s so innocent? You think our country’s so innocent?”

We have carnage and we have irony.

The speaker is the president, of course. It’s Super Bowl Sunday and here he is, generating another eyeball-popping headline as he dares to compare American collateral damage over the years with (as a chorus of shocked critics exclaimed) Vladimir Putin’s remorseless homicides. This happened during a pre-Super Bowl interview with Bill O’Reilly last Sunday, after O’Reilly had challenged Trump’s coziness with Russia and called Putin a killer.

Republican Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska summed up the outrage thus: “There is no moral equivalency between the United States of America, the greatest freedom-loving nation in the history of the world, and the murderous thugs that are in Putin’s defense of his cronyism.”

Too bad we can’t ask 8-year-old Nawar al-Awlaki for her opinion on whose killings are worse, America’s or Russia’s. She apparently bled to death from a neck wound a week before the Trump interview, during the disastrous U.S. raid on Yemen that left a Navy SEAL — and maybe 23 civilians — dead. This was a Trump authorized raid, the first of his presidency, but had been planned many months earlier. A newborn baby was also killed in the raid, according to the British humanitarian organization Reprieve, along with other women and children.

How many children have been buried thus far in the mass grave we call collateral damage? Nawar was the sister of Abdulrahman Awlaki, a 16-year-old boy killed in a 2011 drone strike, two weeks after the children’s father, an alleged al Qaeda leader (and U.S. citizen), was killed, also in a drone strike. “Why kill children?” Nawar’s grandfather asked after the girl’s death.

But the politics of our drone assassinations and our air strikes and our wars justify and soften the murders we commit. Even now, as consensus consigns the Iraq war to the status of “mistake,” we still refuse to take official responsibility for its consequences. The shattered country, the dead, the dislocated, the rise of terrorism — come on, cut us a little slack, OK? We were bringing democracy to Iraq.

The unpredictable Trump spews out a fragment of spur-of-the-moment truth in a Fox News interview — “you think our country’s so innocent?” — and the consensus critics can only writhe in outrage. “One can argue that’s the most anti-American statement ever made by the president of the United States,” retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey exclaimed on MSNBC, defending American exceptionalism as though it’s God.

What a strange game this president is playing. Fervid belief in this exceptionalism is the foundation of Trump’s support. The raw meat he throws to his supporters is fear and hatred and clearly defined enemies: Muslims, Mexicans, refugees and immigrants from everywhere (except Europe). His allegiance to white nationalism and corporatocracy and war, the unacknowledged beneficiaries of this exceptionalism, is serious, and reflected in his cabinet choices.

“Everyone on Trump’s national insecurity team seems to agree on one thing: the United States is in a global war to the death,” Ira Chernus writes at TomDispatch, for instance, quoting the crusading militarism of a number of his advisors and appointees, such as Deputy National Security Advisor K.T. McFarland.

“If we do not destroy the scourge of radical Islam, it will ultimately destroy Western civilization . . .  and the values we hold dear,” she has said.

“For her,” Chernus noted, “it’s an old story: civilization against the savages.”

And, indeed, Trump’s ascension to the presidency was cited by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists as the reason they set the Doomsday Clock — Planet Earth’s largest, most ominous metaphor — ahead by thirty seconds in January, to two and a half minutes tomidnight. The Bulletin’s Science and Security Board explained:

“This already-threatening world situation was the backdrop for a rise in strident nationalism worldwide in 2016, including in a U.S. presidential campaign during which the eventual victor, Donald Trump, made disturbing comments about the use and proliferation of nuclear weapons and expressed disbelief in the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change.”

I note all this in the context of Trump’s Fox News tease — that the United States is no more innocent in its wars and murders than Russia is — and his perplexing, perhaps business-related friendliness with Putin, which seems to address one of the major concerns of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. The Board, in its Doomsday Clock statement, noted with alarm: “The United States and Russia—which together possess more than 90 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons—remained at odds in a variety of theaters, from Syria to Ukraine to the borders of NATO.”

Trump is a walking maelstrom of racism, arrogance, greed, incompetence and political incorrectness. He approved the Navy SEAL raid in Yemen with a shrug, as he ate dinner. Children died. The smiling face of Nawar al-Awlaki now haunts the mission.

As Bonnie Kristian wrote recently at Business Insider: “President Trump promised real change in U.S. foreign policy, and in at least one clear regard he has already delivered: Where President Obama spent six years waging covert drone warfare in Yemen and nearly two years quietly supporting brutal Saudi intervention in the Gulf state’s civil war, Trump drew national outrage to this heretofore ignored conflict in nine days flat.”

In his own racism and hypocrisy, is Trump exposing the hypocrisy of the media and the military-industrial complex? Is the new president somehow holding hands with the children whose deaths he will continue to order?

Looming Climate Catastrophe: Extinction in Nine Years?

Dave Lindorff

Reports from the Arctic are getting pretty grim.

The latest, from a blog called Arctic News, warns that by 2026 — that’s just nine years from now — warming above the Arctic Circle could be so extreme that a massively disrupted and weakened jet stream could lead to global temperature rises so severe that a massive extinction event, including humans, could result.

This latest blog post, written by Arctic News editor Sam Carana, draws on research by a number of scientists (linked in his article), who report on various feedback loops that will result from a dramatically warmer north polar region. But the critical concern, he says, is methane already starting to be released in huge quantities from the shallow sea floor of the continental shelves north of Siberia and North America. That methane, produced by bacteria acting on biological material that sinks to the sea floor, for the most part, is currently lying frozen in a form of ice that is naturally created over millions of years by a mixing of methane and water, called a methane hydrate. Methane hydrate is a type of molecular structure called a clathrate. Clathrates are a kind of cage, in this case made of water ice, which traps another chemical, in this case methane. At normal temperatures, above the freezing temperature of water, these clathrates can only form under high pressures, such as a 500 meters or more under the ocean, and indeed such clathrates can be found under the sea floor even in places like the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, where the temperature is 8-10 degrees above freezing. But in colder waters, they can exist and remain stable at much shallower levels, such as a in a few hundred feet of water off the coast of Alaska or Siberia.

The concern is that if the Arctic Ocean waters, particularly nearer to shore, were to warm even slightly, as they will do as the ice cap vanishes in summer and becomes much thinner in winter, at some point the clathrates there will suddenly dissolve releasing tens of thousands of gigatons of methane in huge bursts. Already, scientists are reporting that portions of the ocean, as well as shallow lakes in the far north, look as though they are boiling, as released methane bubbles to the surface, sometimes in such concentrations that they can be lit on fire with a match as they surface.

As Carana writes:

“As the temperature of the Arctic Ocean keeps rising, it seems inevitable that more and more methane will rise from its seafloor and enter the atmosphere, at first strongly warming up the atmosphere over the Arctic Ocean itself – thus causing further methane eruptions – and eventually warming up the atmosphere across the globe.”

That is scary enough, as a sufficient burst of methane, a global warming gas 86 times more powerful than CO2, could lead to a rapid rise in global temperatures by 3 degrees Celsius or more, enough to actually reverse the carbon cycle, so that plants would end up releasing more carbon into the atmosphere rather than absorbing it.

Is this scenario or a giant methane “burp” from the Arctic sea floor just a scare story?

Not according to many scientists who study the earth’s long history of global warming periods and of evolution and periodic mass extinction events.

As Harold Wanless, a Professor of Geology and a specialist in sea level rise at the University of Miami explains, prior warming periods have often proceeded in dramatic pulses, not smoothly over drawn-out periods.

“We don’t know how this period of warming is going to develop,” he said. “That’s the problem. The warming Arctic Ocean is just ice melting, but the melting permafrost in Siberia, and the methane hydrates under the shallow waters of the continental shelf can happen suddenly. Every model gets the trend, but they don’t give you the rate that it happens or when something sudden happens.”

Wanless, who has for some time been predicting ice melting rates and resulting sea level rises that are far in excess of what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been predicting — as much as 10 feet by 2050 and 15 or 20 feet by the end of this century, vs. just three feet for the IPCC — says, “Scientists tend to be pretty conservative. We don’t like to scare people, and we don’t like to step out of our little predictable boxes. But I suspect the situation is going to spin out of hand pretty quickly.” He says, “If you look at the history of warming periods, things can move pretty fast, and when that happens that’s when you get extinction events.”

He adds, “I would not discount the possibility that it could happen in the next ten years.”

Making matters worse, Wanless adds, is the fact that a large enough methane eruption in the arctic, besides contributing to accelerated global warming, could also lead to a significant reduction of the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere (currently about 21%). This is because methane in the atmosphere breaks down fairly quickly, over the course of a decade or so, into water vapor and CO2, but in doing do, it requires oxygen atoms, which it would pull out of the atmosphere. That reduction in oxygen would lead to reduced viability and growth rates of plants and animals, as well as to a significant reduction in crop productivity. This dire trend would be enhanced by a second threat to atmospheric oxygen, which is the oxygen-producing plankton in the ocean. If sea temperatures rise much, and increased acidification of the ocean continues apace as the oceans absorb more CO2, plankton, the earth’s main producers of new oxygen, could shut down that source of new free oxygen.

So there you have it my fellow humans: it’s at least possible that we could be looking at an epic extinction event, caused by ourselves, which could include exterminating our own species, or at least what we call “civilization,” in as little as nine years.

What is particularly galling, in thinking about this, is the prospect that eight of those last years might find us living in a country led by Donald Trump, a climate-change denier who seems hell-bent on promoting measures, like extracting more oil from the Canadian tar sands, the North Dakota Bakkan shale fields and the Arctic sea floor, as well as re-opening coal mines, that will just make such a dystopian future even more likely than it already is.

The only “bright side” to this picture is that it may not matter that much what Trump does, because we’ve already, during the last eight Obama years and the last eight Bush years before that, dithered away so much time that the carbon already in the atmosphere — about 405 ppm — has long since passed the 380 ppm level at which, during the last warming period of the earth, sea levels were 100 feet higher than they are today.

That is to say, we’re already past the point of no return and it’s just the lag being caused by the time it takes for ice sheets to melt and for the huge ocean heat sinks to warm in response to the higher carbon levels in the atmosphere that is saving us from facing this disaster right now.

It is at this stage of the game either too late to stop, or we should be embarking on a global crash program to reduce carbon emissions the likes of which humanity has never known or contemplated.

Hard to imagine that happening though, particularly here in a country where half the people don’t even think climate change is happening, or if they do notice things getting warmer, think that’s just a peachy thing that will reduce their heating bills.

Is Trump on the Path to Dictatorship?

ABOLHASSAN BANISADR

Dictators always need to justify the concentration of power within themselves.   Josef Stalin, for example, argued that because political power belonged to the Soviet proletariat and that the Communist Party was its manifestation, as leader of the Party, he manifested (and could exercise) its power himself.  This enabled him to establish a totalitarian regime. In Germany, Adolf Hitler argued that that political power belonged to a ‘superior’ Aryan race, and that its manifestation was the National Socialist party. Defining himself as the Führer, he declared himself its manifestation and assumed the right to exercise power on behalf of the ‘Aryan race’. In Iran, Khomeini also argued political power belonged to God and that God had conferred this power upon the prophets and Imams, and through them directly to him. He argued that he exercised power on behalf of God.

In his inauguration speech, Donal Trump also revealed this intention when he said: “Today’s ceremony…has very special meaning, because today, we are not merely transferring power from one administration to another or from one party to another, but we are transferring power from Washington, DC, and giving it back to you, the people.”

Unlike rights which everyone has, power needs to concentrate in one person or privileged group.  It was obvious that when Trump spoke about giving power back to the people, he was in fact saying “power belongs to me”.  This is why after leaving the inauguration he went directly to the Oval Office and started issuing executive orders.  He exercises power on their “behalf”.  Furthermore, when he spoke about the “special meaning” of this transfer, in effect he was saying that as he is the manifestation of people’s power the administration and the power of the state has to be at his personal service.  This is why when the acting US Attorney General disobeyed him he did not simply fire her but declared it an act of betrayal.  As a leader who seeks total power and demands total obedience, anything short of either is a betrayal.  Once, when Stalin was asked whether he demanded loyalty or obedience from Party members, he responded that as a dog is also loyal, he demanded obedience.

It also needs to be noticed that when someone gets a ticket to the White House through post-truth, it tells us that such language has become normalized for large numbers of people in American society.  His declaration of war against the media is aimed to solidify and the normalization of deception.

We must also pay attention to Trump’s slogans about putting ‘America first’ and ‘making America great again’.  The United States can only become ‘first’ in international politics if the rest of the world’s countries play a subservient role. This is unthinkable in the current state of affairs, and to attempt to ‘make America great again’ is in effect a the path to its demise that would inflict unimaginable destruction to both the US and the rest of the world.  The factors which elevated the US to a dominant position, both domestically and internationally, have fundamentally changed.  For example, when the US became a ‘superpower’, Asia was nowhere to be seen.  Now, many of these country, like China,  it is wealthier and more developed than the US, and without Chinese money the American budget deficit would sky rocket and inflict a body blow to the American economy (which is not the biggest debtor in the world). If Trump tries to reverse the situation with the use of military, it only can make things much worse.

As a rule, any country which constructs a “golden past” and tries to forcefully revive it will end up with bankruptcy and devastation.

Yet Trump has already started a war. Like any bully, he began by waging it on what he thinks are the easiest and are not able to fight back: the environment, the Mexicans, the American poor who benefit from the Affordable Health Care Act, immigrants and Muslims.  If he is not stopped he will try to go for the “big boys” and that will be a river of no return.

If fact, Trump and his team  present an existential threat not only to the US but to the world.  History tells us that the path to democracy is not a one-way ticket and can be reversed. Now American democracy is facing its strongest test since the Civil War.  It is not strong enough to protect itself against power partly because its bureaucracy is based on the principle of hierarchy.  Therefore, the task of defending democracy is left to American civil society.  If the parts of this society which it seem to have understood the danger, do not mobilize their forces to resist the fast-expanding power of it elected dictator, America’s demise will be accompanied by the demise of democracy and the post-democratic age in which, more than fifteen years, the academics are talking about will be solidified.

America’s Crisis and the Politics of Fear

David L. Altheide

America is in crisis fueled by the politics of fear and the expansive use of social media.  My research on propaganda and fear suggests that President Trump’s support and actions reflect the politics of fear, or decision makers’ promotion and use of audience beliefs and assumptions about danger, risk, and fear in order to achieve certain goals. The new President’s executive orders have compromised cherished American values of freedom of religion, welcoming of immigrants and political refugees, respect for international organizations (e.g., U. N.,NATO), and trade agreements. He proudly states his beliefs in matters that are factually incorrect, such as 3-5 million fraudulent votes in the 2016 election, the efficacy of torture, and denies the impact of human pollution on climate change. Nevertheless, he is actually fulfilling many of his pledges made in a vulgar and uncivil campaign.

There are three major contributors to our current politics of fear. First, while many voters claimed to be angry, anger is based on fear, and there have been several decades of fear promoted mainly by the entertainment oriented mass media and popular culture presenting non-stop fear about crime, violence, drugs, gangs, immigrants, and more recently, terrorism. And most of this has occurred during a time when the crime rate, especially violent crime, was declining. This still goes on; 25-40% of local TV news reports are about crime and violence. Second, the 9/11 attacks initiated an intense anti-terrorism propaganda campaign waged by the Bush and Obama administrations that expanded surveillance and heightened fear of terrorism linking it to crime, drug sales, and immigration. News reports and advertisements joined drug use with terrorism and helped shift drugs from criminal activity to unpatriotic action. A $10 million ad campaign that included a 2002 Super Bowl commercial stated that buying and using drugs supports terrorism, or, as President Bush put it, “If you quit drugs, you join the fight against terror in America.”

The development of the internet as well as Fox News and right wing talk-radio that were devoted to more conservative positions encouraged more fear, as well as anti-Obama screeds, including the Trump led “birther movement.” The major focus was the news media. As shown in Kathleen Hall Jamiesen and Joseph N. Capella’s book, Echo Chamber: Rush Limbaugh and the Conservative Media Establishment, the prevailing mantra was that most institutional news organs in the United States (e.g., NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, The New York Times), are liberal, biased, anti-Christian, and anti-American. Donald Trump’s campaign stoked fear about crime, minority groups, immigrants, Muslims, and terrorists, stressing that they threatened American safety and jobs. These became the targets of anger. The fear-based anger of the electorate was channeled through populist appeal with uncivil discourse attacking all opposition.

Social media was the third factor that channeled fear into personal feelings and perceptions. According to the Pew Research Internet Project, in 2000, about 46% of Americans had access to the internet, while over 87% did so in 2014. Cell phone usage increased from 53% to 90% during the same period. And smart phone ownership– quite rare in 2000—soared to nearly 60% in 2014. Communication became more personal, instantaneous, and visual with the development of social media, especially interactive smart phones. Individuals could focus on personal networks (e.g., Facebook) and not only share personal information, but more importantly, could share their own opinions and select information sources and content that they preferred, regardless of its veracity. Treating all facts as mere opinions promoted the development of “fake news,” or what a Trump advisor referred to recently as “alternative facts,” that appealed to the frightened voters. They voted and fear won. It usually does.

The Plight Of 18.8 Million War-Torn Yemenis

Abdus Sattar Ghazali

The United Nations and humanitarian organizations Wednesday (February 8) launched an international appeal for $2.1 billion to provide humanitarian assistance to 18.8 million Yemenis. This is more than two thirds of the total population of 27.4 million of the war-devastated Yemen. At least 12 million people in Yemen need life-saving assistance in 2017, the UN sources said.

“Two years of war have devastated Yemen… Without international support, they may face the threat of famine in the course of 2017 and I urge donors to sustain and increase their support to our collective response,” said UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Stephen O’Brien in a press release on the launch of the Humanitarian Response Plan for Yemen in Geneva.

“Humanitarian partners are ready to respond. But they need timely, unimpeded access, and adequate resources, to meet the humanitarian needs wherever they arise,” said Mr. O’Brien, who is also the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs.

He noted that since March 2015, violent conflict and disregard by all parties to the conflict for their responsibility to protect civilians have created a vast protection crisis in Yemen and millions of people face threats to their safety and basic human rights every day. In addition, deliberate war tactics are accelerating the collapse of key institutions and the economy, thereby exacerbating pre-existing vulnerabilities.

This has left an alarming 18.8 million people – more than two thirds of the population – in need of humanitarian assistance, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which also estimates that 10.3 million people are acutely affected and nearly 3.3 million people – including 2.1 million children – are acutely malnourished.

In 2016, 120 national and international partners including UN agencies and non-governmental organizations working out of humanitarian hubs in Aden, Al Hudaydah, Ibb, Sana’a, and Sa’ada assisted more than 5.6 million people with direct humanitarian aid, according to UN sources.

10,000 civilians killed in Yemen conflict

The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs’ Jamie McGoldrick said last month that the civilian death toll in the nearly two-year conflict has reached 10,000, with 40,000 others wounded.

This announcement marks the first time a U.N. official has confirmed such a high death toll in Yemen, the Arab world’s poorest nation. Earlier, the U.N. reported 4,200 civilians were killed in the war.

In addition, many more are indirect victims of the conflict, including those who suffer from chronic diseases, including high blood pressure and diabetes, and are unable to get treatment, McGoldrick said. For example, a cancer clinic in Sanaa that used to treat 30,000 patients has closed, he said. Inevitably, those suffering from chronic disease “will die sooner than they should,” he said.

The UN official  also noted that more than 400,000 children under the age of five suffer from malnutrition, raising serious concern about their development and Yemen’s future.

“This once more underscores the need to resolve the situation in Yemen without any further delay,” U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said in New York. “There’s been a huge humanitarian cost.”

The Yemen conflict pits Houthis and allied forces against a Saudi-led coalition which is trying to re-install the government of Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi. The coalition began brutal air strikes in March 2015 to restore Hadi’s government that fled the country after Houthis seized the capital Sanaa in 2014.

US commando operation

The UN appeal for massive humanitarian assistance came days after a UN commando operation in Yemen in which one Navy SEAL was killed.

According to New York Post, the team was choppered in Saturday (Jan 28) to target a key al Qaeda headquarters in Yemen — the first U.S. strike in the region since 2014 — and ended up killing 14 militants, including senior leaders Abdulraoof al-Dhahab, Sultan al-Dhahab and Seif al-Nims, in an ensuing gun battle that lasted nearly an hour.

The SEAL’s famous Team 6 fled with a valuable cache — some of the militants’ laptops, cell phones and other material “that will likely provide insight into the planning of future terror plots,’’ US Central Command said.

Three American fighters were also wounded in the operation, including two when an Osprey, a tilt-rotor military aircraft, accidentally crash-landed during the raid.

The dead are said to include the 8-year-old daughter of Anwar al-Awlaki, the U.S.-born cleric who was killed in a 2011 U.S. drone strike, Washington Post said adding:

“The operation was launched under cover of darkness in the village of Yaklaa, a stronghold of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula that was defended with land mines and guarded by heavily armed militants. A fierce firefight erupted. Wounded SEALs were evacuated for pickup by Marines flying on MV-22 Osprey aircraft from the USS Makin Island, an amphibious assault ship. One of the Ospreys was damaged badly enough in the rescue operation that U.S. military officials elected to destroy it with a GPS-guided bomb to make sure al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula wasn’t able to exploit it.”

Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, and White House press secretary Sean Spicer disputed allegations, reported by Reuters and the New York Times, that the mission was poorly planned and had lost the element of surprise. The Times reported that the SEALs learned that their mission had been compromised after intercepting a transmission that showed the militants were preparing for their arrival. “We have nothing to suggest that this was compromised,” Davis said, adding that report “does not match with reality.”

Australia to bankroll 2018 APEC summit in Papua New Guinea

John Braddock

In a bid to stave off growing Chinese influence in the Pacific, the Australian government announced late last year that it will pay at least a third of the costs of Papua New Guinea’s hosting of next year’s APEC summit. The event is due to be held in Port Moresby in November 2018. APEC is a forum for 21 Pacific-rim member countries, including the US, Japan and China.

The state-owned Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) reported that Canberra’s commitments, including a two-year extension to the existing deployment of 73 Australian Federal Police officers, will exceed $100 million. Security, diplomatic support, advisory roles, intelligence services and immigration processes will be involved. The costs amount to one-fifth of Australia’s $558 million annual aid to PNG.

According to the ABC, security and foreign policy advisers warned that leaving the PNG government to fund the summit “would risk China filling the breach.” Following a state visit by PNG Prime Minister Peter O’Neill to China last July, President Xi Jinping stressed Beijing’s support for PNG hosting the event.

PNG, an Australian colony until 1975, is of vital economic and strategic importance to Washington and Canberra. In 2011, then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton highlighted the major $US17 billion ExxonMobil natural gas project, while accusing China of being “in there every day, in every way, trying to figure out how it’s going to come in behind us, come in under us.” The $US2.1 billion Ramu nickel mine, run since 2012 by Chinese firm Metallurgical Group Corporation, is among Beijing’s largest overseas direct investments.

The 2018 APEC summit, involving some 10,000 visitors and culminating in an official leaders’ meeting, is the first to be held in a Pacific nation. Port Moresby’s limited facilities will struggle to cope. Cruise and naval ships are likely to be brought in to accommodate international delegations.

The O’Neill government has allocated 800 million kina ($A330 million) for the summit, excluding the cost of the convention centre being built by gas producer Oil Search through a tax-credit scheme. The PNG economy, however, is in crisis, with the government reportedly printing money to fund its budget deficit. Questions are being raised about the event’s affordability, which O’Neill is promoting as a showcase national event.

A 2016 report by the International Monetary Fund, briefly suppressed by O’Neill, indicates the economy is in far worse condition than the government has admitted. The debt-to-GDP ratio is 33.5 percent for 2016 and 2017—above the 30 percent limit set under the PNG Fiscal Responsibility Act. The IMF is placing pressure on the government to carry out further drastic spending cuts.

Australian academic Michael Wesley said that if Canberra allowed PNG’s ambitious APEC plans to collapse Australia would suffer “reputational” damage. According to the ABC, any threats to the summit would be viewed “dimly” by the United States, as would the deepening of Chinese interests.

O’Neill’s visit to Beijing last year was aimed at securing financial and commercial support for the faltering economy. Bilateral agreements have since been announced covering trade, investment, agriculture, forestry, fishery, energy, tourism, study exchanges and mineral exploration. Beijing is advancing loan facilities for PNG’s National Submarine Fibre Cable Network and the Lae Tidal Basin Industrial Development projects. The 40th anniversary of formal diplomatic ties between the two countries was celebrated last September with the opening of a new convention centre in Port Moresby, funded by Beijing.

Of particular concern in Canberra and Washington will be strengthening strategic and military ties. The PNG Defence Force has opened an office within the PNG embassy in Beijing, intended to “help coordinate military activities” between the two countries. Following his state visit, O’Neill expressed his government’s “respect” for China’s “legitimate and lawful rights and interest” in the South China Sea. O’Neill also endorsed China’s “One Belt One Road” trade route system across the Asia-Pacific, designed to counter Washington’s aggressive efforts to isolate China.

Australia’s Defence White Paper (2016) identified “stability and prosperity” in PNG and other countries in the South Pacific as central to its own security. Despite PNG’s formal independence, Canberra has sought to direct economic and diplomatic policy in PNG and other Pacific states. Direct military interventions have been carried out in East Timor and the Solomon Islands to protect Australia’s corporate and strategic interests.

O’Neill’s predecessor in PNG, Michael Somare, was unlawfully ousted in 2011 with the backing of the Australian government because he was seen as too close to Beijing. O’Neill, who assumed office through an illegal parliamentary manoeuvre, rested on Canberra’s backing. He functioned as a servant of Australian imperialism, welcoming an expanded Australian police and “advisor” presence, while supporting Australia’s neo-colonial interests in the wider region.

In January 2016, in a significant setback for Canberra, O’Neill peremptorily removed 15 Australian officials who were embedded as “advisors” in senior posts within the finance, treasury, transport and justice ministries. Australian Federal Police were exempted from the ban, O’Neill indicating he wanted them in front-line positions as well as training PNG police.

Throughout the Pacific, the emergence of China as a rival to the imperialist powers has upended traditional relationships. PNG’s strengthening ties with Beijing follows Fiji’s “Look North” policy, instituted by the Bainimarama military regime after the 2006 coup in response to attempts by Australia and New Zealand—which ultimately failed—to isolate it.

As the confrontation between the US and China rapidly intensifies, the weakness of Australia’s position is exposed. With the Trump administration escalating threats of war with China, it is drawing all its allies into the gathering storm. Every country in the region is coming under pressure to choose between their trade and economic reliance on China, and strategic ties with an increasingly bellicose US imperialism.

In the lead-up to APEC, PNG will find itself in the front line. The country has lucrative energy and mineral reserves, dominated by Australian and American transnational corporations. These include some of the world’s biggest untapped gold, silver and nickel deposits. It has the largest population and landmass of the Pacific states. PNG also occupies an important strategic position to Australia’s north and near the US territory of Guam, which is being upgraded into a massive military staging post for a potential attack on China.

Ramped-up measures to impose stability, “security” and social discipline at the behest of the imperialist powers and financial institutions will impact severely on the working class and rural poor. Widespread inequality and poverty are already fueling social tensions. Declining global commodity prices have resulted in severe austerity measures, prompting repeated strikes by public sector workers. Student protests last year, demanding the resignation of O’Neill over corruption allegations, were violently suppressed by armed police.

O’Neill is preparing for greater unrest amid the deepening economic crisis. Elections later this year will see large numbers of police and soldiers deployed across the country to counter growing opposition among workers and youth—an exercise certain to be repeated as APEC approaches.

Former diplomat admits India’s role in Sri Lankan communal war

Vijith Samarasinghe

A recent book by retired Indian diplomat Shivashankar Menon reveals New Delhi’s backing for the Colombo government during the final stage of the war against separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

Menon, a former foreign secretary and national security advisor to Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, was one of a handful of top officials involved in maintaining Indo-Sri Lanka ties during this period. He speaks for those sections of the Indian ruling class that advocate New Delhi’s alignment with Washington’s strategic interests in the region and economic and military encirclement of China.

Entitled Choices: Inside the making of India’s foreign policy, Menon’s book attempts to justify India’s policies regarding the US, China, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

Menon was instrumental in cultivating these policies during the India’s sharp turn toward US imperialism following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the 1990–91 economic crisis. These developments, he writes, “enabled India to break with domestic political and economic certainties.”

Menon’s account of the Sri Lankan civil war in Chapter 4 of the book is related to the Indian elite’s turn to the US. Endorsing Washington’s “pivot to Asia,” New Delhi intervened in various South Asian countries to undermine Beijing’s influence in the region.

Entitled “Force works: Sri Lanka Eliminates Tamil Tigers, 2009,” Chapter 4 sheds light on India’s role in the 30-year civil war. New Delhi coldly calculated that large-scale civilian casualties were justifiable as long as they assured the elimination of the LTTE and kept Colombo under India’s sway.

In early 2009, the WSWS pointed out that India was encouraging and materially supporting the Sri Lankan government’s renewed efforts to rout the LTTE in the island’s North and East. The book confirms this, admitting that “intelligence and interdiction” by the Indian Navy “starved the LTTE of supplies by the sea.”

Menon fondly remembers unpublicised regular midnight flights to Colombo with the then Indian foreign minister and current Indian President Pranab Mukherjee for briefings and discussion with President Mahinda Rajapakse and his army commander Sarath Fonseka. These visits occurred during the first five months of 2009, that is, until the military annihilation of the LTTE on May 18.

Menon justifies New Delhi’s support for Colombo’s brutal escalation of the communal war, purely on the grounds of India’s regional interests. He points out that Rajapakse had garnered political and military support for the war from China, Pakistan and “to an extent” the US. “If we stood aside,” he writes, “defending the killers of an Indian Prime Minister [Rajiv Gandhi]” it would have amounted to “abdicating a geopolitically strategic neighbour to other powers.”

Gandhi, Indian prime minister from 1984 to 1989 and then in the opposition, was killed in Tamil Nadu by an LTTE suicide bomber in 1991. Gandhi intervened in the Sri Lankan war when Sri Lankan President J. R. Jayawardene’s government suffered a series of military defeats at the hands of the LTTE and rural unrest in the south.

In July 1987, Gandhi signed the Indo-Lanka Accord, which provided limited powers to the Tamil elites in the North and East of Sri Lanka, and then sent the Indian army to disarm the LTTE. Gandhi’s assassination was revenge by the LTTE leadership.

Menon, with all the calculations of a ruthless strategist, refers to Sri Lanka as an “aircraft carrier parked fourteen miles off the Indian coast.” It was inevitable, he writes, that India had to keep Sri Lanka free of “antagonistic outside influences” and prevent the growth of Tamil separatism that could affect Tamil Nadu. In other words, the massive civilian casualties during the Sri Lankan war were acceptable, as long as the outcome politically benefitted India.

The book paints an entirely false picture of a speedy reconstruction of Sri Lanka’s North and East after the war. Attributing credit to Rajapakse’s regime, Menon declares: “Sri Lanka can claim to have rehabilitated and restored normalcy much faster than other countries that endured shorter civil wars.”

This is a gross lie. The North and East still remain effectively under military occupation. People live under grueling economic hardships, destroyed infrastructure and with no psycho-social support to recover from the traumas of war. Eight years since the war, most people in the Vanni district still live in make-shift houses.

Menon’s portrayal serves to justify Indian support for the Rajapakse regime’s war and to suggest that the bloody events—tens of thousands Tamil civilians were killed—have produced positive outcomes. Menon contends that Sri Lanka failed to find lasting peace because of Rajapakse’s personal lack of “political magnanimity towards the vanquished,” which, he suggests, only became evident after the war.

However, after 2009, New Delhi, like Washington, became increasingly concerned about Rajapakse’s relations with China. In an attempt to pressure the Rajapakse government to distance itself from Beijing, the US sponsored a series of resolutions in the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) calling for war crimes investigations.

When Rajapakse failed to respond, Washington moved a resolution in the UNHRC in March 2014 calling for an international investigation. This set the stage for the regime-change operation that culminated in the ousting of Rajapakse in the January 2015 presidential election. Maithripala Sirisena was installed with the help of then opposition leader and present Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and former President Chandrika Kumaratunga.

India tentatively supported some of Washington’s UNHRC resolutions, including that of March 2014. Its caution was on the grounds that more pressure could push Colombo closer to Beijing. Even though Rajapakse was “much more compliant with Chinese demands,” his brother and defence secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse was assuring India about the nature of the military relations with China, Menon writes. The defence secretary was “more sensitive to India’s concerns.” These assurances, Menon writes, were respected by the Rajapakses until May 2014.

Menon’s book does not explain why the situation changed in May 2014 for India. However, that month Rajapakse visited Beijing and for the second time voiced his support for China’s Maritime Silk Road (MSR) initiative. He also invited Chinese President Xi Jinping to visit Sri Lanka in September that year. The US and India were hostile to the MSR, saying it was part of China’s military initiatives in the Indian Ocean.

In May 2014, the Congress-led Indian government was defeated. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janatha Party (BJP)-led regime came to power and Ajit Doval became the new national security advisor. The new government backed the US initiated regime-change process in Sri Lanka.

Menon’s account shatters claims by the Sri Lankan Tamil elite, including the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), that New Delhi is concerned about the democratic rights of the Tamil minority in Sri Lanka. India’s policies were always determined by the ruling elite’s regional and global geo-political interests. Likewise, Sri Lanka’s Tamil nationalist parties back Indian and US geo-political interests in order to secure their own privileges.

As the WSWS has warned, the installation of the pro-US Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government in Sri Lanka has not resolved any of the issues that led to the brutal 30-year civil war. Instead, Colombo is attempting to impose a police-state style grip over the working class and the oppressed population.

Menon’s account does not cover the period after the Sri Lankan regime-change in 2015. He cynically ends his account, however, by claiming: “Sri Lanka today is a better place without the LTTE and the civil war and India contributed to making that outcome possible.”

Germany and Poland seek rapprochement

Clara Weiss

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s visit to Warsaw saw efforts on both sides improve bilateral relations after they had deteriorated sharply under the Polish PiS government. The German and Polish bourgeoisie were responding to the threatened breakup of the European Union (EU) and the American presidency of Donald Trump, whose policies are calling the foreign policy orientation of both countries into question.

Merkel first spoke with Polish President Andrzej Duda and Prime Minister Beata Szydło, before holding her most important discussion with PiS leader and the most influential politician in Poland, Jarosław Kaczyński. Following these discussions, Merkel met with representatives of the liberal opposition.

Over the past 14 months, the PiS government has largely done away with the division of powers and rapidly constructed an authoritarian regime. It sought to forge a close alliance with the US in its military build-up against Russia and to construct a right-wing alliance in eastern Europe, directed both against Russia and Germany.

Chiefly as a result of this foreign policy orientation, the German media and political parties sharply attacked Poland early last year under the guise of defending democratic rights. The extent of the hypocrisy involved is now clear, with the media, facing changed geopolitical conditions, having abandoned the phrases about “democracy” and emphasising the need to build close pragmatic relationships.

Merkel’s criticism of the Polish government was also incredibly restrained. She only referred indirectly to these questions by mentioning the Solidarity movement out of which PiS emerged, stating, “We know from that time how important plural societies are, how important an independent judiciary and media are, because then that was all absent.”

Prime Minister Beata Szydło, who last year banned any intervention by Brussels or Berlin into domestic Polish politics, did not even respond at first to this concealed rebuke.

Merkel indicated Berlin’s readiness to compromise on a number of formerly controversial issues. Above all, she revised the German government’s previous stance on the expansion of the Nord Stream gas pipeline, which is supposed to transport Russian gas direct to Germany and is vehemently opposed by Poland. To date, the German government maintained the position that the pipeline, in which two German companies are involved, was merely a “matter of private business.” However, now Merkel declared that the issue should be discussed in a bilateral working group.

This step is even more significant given that the Hungarian government of Viktor Orban, which collaborates closely with PiS, only recently declared its support for the pipeline project after a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The statement prompted considerable anger in the Polish press and strengthened the feeling of Poland’s growing isolation within Europe.

Die Zeit drily summarised the joint appearance: “The Chancellor noted the many areas of cooperation, while Szydło mostly nodded in agreement and did not contradict at any point.” On the continuation of Russian sanctions in particular, both politicians agreed.

Like many other German newspapers, Die Zeit welcomed the chancellor’s line in Warsaw and surmised that it would now be possible to maintain more-pragmatic relations with Poland.

The Süddeutsche Zeitung described the meeting with Kaczyński as a “quiet crisis meeting.” In the foreground was the crisis of the EU. Concrete details on this have yet to be released. Polish government circles indicated Kaczyński wanted to present plans to Merkel for a close military alliance and nuclear rearmament, as well as his ideas for a reform of the EU.

The evaluation by the Polish press of the visit was overwhelmingly positive, including both the conservative and liberal media. There is at least currently broad agreement on the need for rapprochement with Germany under conditions of an escalating European crisis and extreme uncertainty about US foreign policy.

The liberal Gazeta Wyborcza welcomed the friendly talks between Kaczyński and Merkel. The liberal opposition strongly criticised the deteriorating relations with Germany under PiS from the outset and pushed for a stronger orientation towards Berlin.

In its comment on the meeting, the newspaper, which has been in the lead in the political conflict between the liberal opposition and the government, wrote, “No, this is not a text that Jarosław Kaczyński and his government will attack. Because it is in everyone’s interest for Poland not to lose its valued friends and partners in this extremely uncertain world. Those like German Chancellor Angela Merkel.” In the current situation, Germany was “the only guarantee for stability in the EU and in Europe. … Tripping up Angela Merkel will not improve our security.”

Germany is by far Poland’s most important trading partner. But the attempts to improve relations on both sides are based above all on the changed international geopolitical situation.

With Donald Trump as president, Washington now openly questions NATO, is threatening trade wars with China, Mexico and Germany, and attacks German preeminence in the EU. The German bourgeoisie is responding to this with a military build-up to assert itself as a world power against the US. In this, the consolidation of the EU and its hegemony in it is of central importance. In this context, Poland plays an important role.

In Poland, the presidency of Trump and the breakdown of international relations within the framework that Warsaw has operated since 1989 have provoked extreme nervousness and even panic. Not only PiS, but also the liberal opposition fear a rapprochement between Washington and Moscow at the expense of the EU and eastern Europe in particular.

The influential conservative newspaper Rzeczpospolita wrote in January that the election of Trump posed Poland with a “tragic decision”: it must either orient towards Germany and Europe, or towards its traditional ally, the US. The newspaper suggested that given the threat of an alliance between Moscow and Washington, Germany would be the more important and reliable partner.

At the same time, the Polish bourgeoisie sees itself increasingly isolated due to the exit from the EU of one of its closest allies, Britain. The elections in France are also being followed with concern. The Gazeta Wyborcza warned in its comment on Merkel’s visit of an election victory for the far-right National Front under Marine Le Pen, who is backed by the Kremlin.

German and Polish comments both noted that Berlin and Warsaw have an interest in retaining the EU for geopolitical and economic reasons.

Under these conditions, all factions of the Polish bourgeoisie would prefer a new term for Merkel as chancellor rather than a victory by Social Democrat Martin Schulz. In the winter of 2015-2016, as German-Polish relations sharply deteriorated, Schulz was among those who spoke out most aggressively.

At the same time, the Polish bourgeoisie fears that an SPD-led government, like that of Gerhard Schröder, would orient more towards Moscow. It has been no less unsettling to the Polish bourgeoisie that Schulz challenges Trump more directly than Merkel.

In an interview published by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung shortly before Merkel’s visit, Jarosław Kaczyński stated explicitly that he desired Merkel to continue as chancellor. Asked what would be “so bad” about Martin Schulz, Kaczyński answered, “First of all his stance on Russia.” Secondly, unlike Merkel, he had “expressed [very] anti-Polish” views and is “famous for being uncontrolled, for attacks, for an outcry.”

The PiS leader repeated his long-standing criticism of Germany’s predominant role in the EU and agreed with US President Donald Trump’s statement on this.

In the support of sanctions against Russia and the stationing of German army troops in eastern Europe, Kaczyński saw points of agreement for a German-Polish rapprochement. He sought to downplay the differences over the future organisation of the EU. Kaczyński said that Warsaw currently took the idea of “a two-speed Europe…not seriously.”

Kaczyński made more than clear that any alliance with Germany, which occupied Poland in two world wars, would be based on military rearmament. He appealed for Europe to be strengthened into a nuclear superpower so that the continent could prepare, independently from the US if necessary, to wage war on Russia. “A single nuclear power has to be able to compete with Russia. We are far away from that. But if there was something serious, I would be in favour. Europe would then become a superpower. I would welcome that,” he said.

UK: Family wins case against anti-democratic Prevent legislation

Tania Kent 

The family of two young children, aged five and seven, have won a discrimination case against Bedfordshire Council’s Local Education Authority—following the interrogation of their two young children at their school under the “Prevent Duty.”

The disturbing events confirm that the “Prevent” legislation, which is ostensibly aimed at countering the supposed threat of religious radicalisation, is centred on targeting the Muslim community and creating wider anti-Muslim sentiment.

The case was taken up by the human rights group Liberty, and revealed that the two siblings were isolated from other pupils and questioned by uniformed police officers for 90 minutes in March last year following a referral. The referral was a consequence of teachers’ duty under the Prevent counter-extremism strategy to monitor students “deemed to be at risk of being drawn into terrorism”.

The Bedfordshire school called police to question the two British Asian brothers about concerns they were at risk of radicalisation, after the older boy said they had been given toy guns as presents. Teachers also claimed the child had spoken Arabic and that one of the children had said that his father had taken him to a mosque.

Liberty said that neither of the boys, who come from a mixed Indian and Middle Eastern background, spoke Arabic nor had ever visited a mosque. Their father is a non-practising Muslim and their mother is a non-practising Hindu.

Following the incident, the boys’ mother said the children had become more guarded and reserved as a consequence of the incident and had both suffered nightmares. They have since moved schools.

According to the mother’s account, when she went to pick the boys up from school she was told that the police had been called because of an incident and that she was not allowed to see her children until police had spoken to them.

The boys were isolated in the school library for 90 minutes before being questioned by police officers who decided there was no matter to pursue.

“To this day, I cannot fathom why a teacher who has known my family for years would suspect terrorist activities based upon a plastic toy gun,” the mother said.

“Our only distinguishing feature is the colour of our skin. I was utterly humiliated by this experience—but more importantly my sons were confused and terrified.

Bedfordshire Local Education Authority admitted breaching the boys’ rights to a private and family life, freedom of religion and freedom of expression, which are protected under the UK’s Human Rights Act.

Last July, Rights Watch (UK) concluded that Prevent stifles free speech and should be abandoned in schools. Yasmine Ahmed, the director of the organisation, told the Middle East Eye that the case of the two brothers was “as unsurprising as it is shocking” and “emblematic of the inherent structural flaws of Prevent”.

“A strategy based on a dangerously vague definition of extremism, and implemented by teachers who receive inadequate training and guidance but are anxious to be seen to be complying with the statutory duty, can only lead to these outcomes,” said Ahmed.

The Prevent Strategy, costing £40 million was first introduced by the then-Labour government of Tony Blair, following the 2005 London terrorist bombings.

The Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition reviewed the Prevent Strategy in 2011.

In 2014, the Prevent Strategy led to the introduction of “British values” in the school curriculum. The inspection criteria of Ofsted— the body that inspects English Schools and Local Education Authorities—also entrenches these values. This includes the promotion of British “democracy” and the “rule of law,” under conditions in which civil liberties and democratic rights are being eviscerated in a sustained offensive.

The Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015 added “Prevent Duty” to the responsibility of schools, colleges, universities and health care professionals.

Since July 2015, teachers have been legally obliged to report any suspected “extremist” behaviour to police. This has turned teachers into a spying agency for the authorities, with children as young as four being referred to police, leading to great unease among teachers.

Two reports in the past year have exposed the thoroughly undemocratic character of the legislation, as calls for its scrapping by both teaching and health professionals, as well as human rights organisations, have increased.

Following a nine-month examination of the programme, the Open Society Justice Initiative recommended a major government rethink, particularly on its use in the education and health systems.

The US-based NGO studied 17 cases in which individuals had apparently fallen foul of the Prevent programme, or had been referred to a sister programme, called Channel.

They included instances in which information was apparently gathered from Muslim primary school children without their parents’ consent; Prevent being used to bypass disciplinary processes during the attempted dismissal of a school dinner lady; a 17-year-old referred to the police by his college authorities because he had become more religious; and the cancellation of university conferences on Islamophobia.

The Justice Initiative report, “Eroding Trust,” says, “The current Prevent strategy suffers from multiple, mutually reinforcing structural flaws, the foreseeable consequence of which is a serious risk of human rights violations.

“These violations include, most obviously, violations of the right against discrimination, as well the right to freedom of expression, among other rights. Prevent’s structural flaws include the targeting of ‘pre-criminality’, ‘non-violent extremism’, and opposition to ‘British values’.” This leads the government to interfere in everyday lawful discourse, the report says.

The report warns there is cause for serious concern about the treatment of children who come into contact with the Prevent programme, arguing that the best interests of the child are not always regarded as a primary consideration.

It notes that the statutory responsibility on public bodies to take steps to prevent radicalisation—introduced under the 2015 Counter-Terrorism and Security Act—jeopardises health bodies’ responsibility of confidentiality to their patients.

Among the case studies in the report is that of a four-year-old who drew a picture of a cucumber while at nursery, and then told staff it was a “cuker-bum”. The staff, believing he was referring to something called a cooker bomb, told the child’s mother that he was being referred to Channel, and might be taken away from her.

The Royal College of Psychiatrists produced a report in which it argued that Prevent was based on questionable science. The College demanded the Home Office be transparent about its Prevent policy and publish the evidence that underpins a key plank of it—for “peer review and scientific scrutiny.”

In a new Counter-terrorism and Psychiatry report, leading doctors warn that government policy could be traumatising refugees fleeing the horrors of groups like ISIS in Syria and Iraq because it is identifying them as potential terrorists in need of de-radicalisation. The concerns centre on the Channel part of the scheme, which has already drawn criticism from Muslim communities. Under the scheme thousands of mostly Muslim men have been flagged up as “at risk” and sent on “de-radicalisation” courses.

The report says, “Those fleeing war-torn parts of the world have a high risk of psychological distress, and many are escaping terrorist violence in their country of origin. The College is concerned that there should not be a system that overly identifies them with the terrorism from which they have fled, as this could add to their trauma.”

Latest figures show a sharp jump in referrals to Channel after the government placed a statutory duty on teachers, doctors and social workers to pass on the names of those they believe are vulnerable to radicalisation. Some 8,000 referrals have been made thus far.

In response, the government announced that Prevent is to be toughened rather than scaled back. The Home Office confirmed that a secret Whitehall internal review of Prevent, ordered last year by Prime Minister Theresa May when she was home secretary, concludes that the programme “should be strengthened, not undermined” and has put forward 12 suggestions on how to reinforce it.

Flamanville nuclear plant explosion exposes crisis in French nuclear industry

Anthony Torres

An explosion in the machine shop of the Flamanville nuclear plant in Normandy, France on Thursday morning started a blaze that firefighters were able to bring under control only after midday. The increase in incidents in different plants in the last days, and the problems encountered in building the new EPR reactors, expose the growing crisis in the French nuclear industry.

Olivier Marmion, the spokesman for the local prefecture, told AFP: “It was a significant technical event but it was not a nuclear accident,” as the explosion occurred “outside the nuclear zone.” Five people are ill from smoke inhalation. According to initial information released by the Préfecture, the explosion, which was heard all around the site, was caused by a short-circuit of a ventilator underneath an alternator in the main machine room in the “non-nuclear” part of the site.

Reactor N°1 automatically cut itself off from the French Electricity Board’s (EDF) national grid following the incident, as did the Reactor N°2. The Nuclear Security Agency, which controls the security rules and procedures that all nuclear sites comply with, was not able to provide any further details on the incident other than those that had been relayed by the Préfecture.

For the moment, the extent of the damage caused by the fire has not been reported. According to the Association Get out of Nuclear (Sortir du Nucléaire), “the consequences of this event are not limited to the fire starting. Reactor N°1 had to undergo an emergency shutdown at 9:47 am. Not only does the residual heat still need to be evacuated but an emergency shutdown is never good for nuclear equipment, especially if it is already fragile… the Nuclear Security Agency (NSA) warns against brusque variations in temperature.”

Greenpeace, which also opposes the use of nuclear energy, commented: “With two recent fires at the Catternom nuclear plant in Moselle this is the third fire at a nuclear plant in the last ten days.” According to Greenpeace: “The NSA itself declared that the state of Nuclear Security in France gives grounds for concern.” On the NSA web site, 12 more or less dangerous incidents in French nuclear plants were recorded for the months of December and January.

This is not the first technical incident at the Flamanville plant. The most important was the discharge of non-radioactive smoke in August 2015 from Reactor N°2. This incident provoked the triggering of an Emergency Plan for a number of hours.

Between the end of 2015 and the beginning of 2016, Reactor N°2 had to be shut down for five weeks after the breakdown of a transformer that consequently had to be replaced. In October 2015, the EDF had declared a level 1 incident (the highest of 7 levels) after having discovered that wrong joints had been used in “a few” places on the both Reactor N°1 and N°2.

According to the newspaper 20 Minutes, at the end of 2016, 21 reactors out of the 58 installed in France had been shut down, that is more than one-third. Another 15 were stopped for “planned maintenance.” However, seven were being tested because of potentially defective steam generators. Since flaws had been detected in generators built in the Areva factory in Creusot, the NSA has imposed inspections of the 18 reactors equipped with generators from this factory.

The incident at Flamanville, even though fortunately not causing a nuclear catastrophe, underlines the critical state of the nuclear installations in France. The number of reactors that are coming up to or have already gone over 40 years of service, which EDF considers the maximum, is increasing. With the aging of the reactors, the cost of modernization before they can be replaced by a new generation of EPR reactors is increasing considerably.

The EPR reactors that are being built at the moment, notably at Flamanville and Hinckley Point in Britain, have put the Areva group in great difficulties, with long delays in completing implementation due to many hundreds of flaws discovered on the building sites. In order to save Areva, EDF has agreed to pay 2.5 billion Euros for each active reactor.

Confronted with the difficulties of the new generation of nuclear reactors, EDF is ignoring the risks and the security of the population in order to avoid a further aggravation of the crisis of the French nuclear industry.

As Challenges points out, “There remains the accumulated debt of Flamanville. The responsibility of authorizing the vessel of the EPR reactor, which contains too much segregated carbon, lies with the NSA. Last November, Xavier Ursat, the executive director of EDF engineering, indicated undiplomatically that he did not envisage the eventuality of a rejection by the NSA.

“‘We are not in such a scenario. We have never made so many tests on a vessel as this one. The NSA has validated our test program. There can’t be any surprises,’” Ursat said. Challenges added, “The NSA is now under pressure. We would not like to be the shoes of NSA President Pierre-Franck Chevet. Whatever conclusions he renders in the coming months will be scrutinized very closely. The future of the first EPR reactor will depend on his decision. Furthermore, the EPRs in Britain the first of which is Hinckley Point (which itself depends on the successful launching of Flamanville) and finally the entire French nuclear power industry.”

The nuclear industry is a strategic question for French capitalism in order to insure its energy independence. This industry has also served to give France a dominant political role on the continent through nuclear weapons under De Gaulle to counteract German economic dominance.

The growing number of incidents in nuclear reactors and the difficulties with EPR expose the bankruptcy of a national strategy based on financial interests that are incapable of insuring the safe development of nuclear energy. The catastrophe of Fukushima in 2011, as well as the incident Thursday morning, are warnings about the nature and the operation of this industry by the French and international bourgeoisie.