Tapping Into Private Sector For India’s Climate Finance

Deepak John

Since 2011, the coal cess has been at the heart of India’s climate finance mobilization strategy. The recent reports suggest that National Clean Energy fund(NCEF), formed through coal cess accrual, had collected more than Rs 54,000 cr until early this year. NCEF was created with a mandate to fund research and innovative projects in clean energy technology.  It was symbolic of a financial promise to lead the nation to low carbon development pathway. But the news of this fund being diverted for GST(Goods & Services Tax) compensation and other budgetary shortages has cast serious shadows on the government’s commitment. It is highly doubtful that National clean energy fund would survive or even be revived in the following years. The Government has not been successful in devising a consistent climate finance policy.

The current circumstances call for exploring newer avenues for resource mobilization and address the challenges in the accessing these resources especially private finance. Developed nations have committed to mobilize $100B in climate finance per year by 2020. This is a humongous task. It is impractical to reason that the governments of the developed world alone will be able to conjure up this much. The UNFCCC had taken cognizance of the enormity of this effort by highlighting the support of the private finance in its charter. The Green Climate Fund(GCF) has designed a private sector facility to enhance private sector engagement. Report of Centre for Policy Research acknowledge private finance as the critical link to bridge the climate funding gap.

In India, the private finance route has considerable potential considering mature financial sector and enterprising corporate and industrial sector. Until 2015, around USD 34 billion has been invested in India to mobilise private climate finance, predominantly in renewable energy, energy efficiency and transport sector. However, there are limiting barriers to scaling up that have deterred them from entering this space. The private sector in India faces significant policy, financial, technical and behavioural barriers.

One of the significant barrier is the lack of policy clarity and loose engagement with private sector on climate change policy framework. There has been increasing focus on renewable energy (RE) generation due to various incentives like fiscal incentives and generation based incentives. It has been further supported by faster and transparent approvals. This reflects a policy bias toward Renewable Energy(RE) and Energy Efficiency(EE) sector. The government has not incentivized other climate-related fields with comparable enthusiasm. Also, another major factor is limited engagement with private sector for designing climate change plans and strategies. The private sector has restricted decision-making power in climate change policy process. The private stakeholdership in climate dialogues is limited to weighing in views and opinions. But more often than not, their engagement is impaired by the lack of technical understanding on subject matter itself. As Michael Bloomberg said, “It’s critical that industries and investors understand the risks posed by climate change, but currently there is too little transparency about those risks”.  No one really understands the risks it poses or impact it has.

The climate finance delivery cannot be complete without the engagement of Indian banks and Financial Institutions(FIs) as they form the primary conduit for climate investments. However, the financial landscape for climate-friendly investment is still in its nascent stages. The Indian banks have enough funds but they are apprehensive of foraying into these new sectors.  Currently, the loans granted have lower tenure with high interest rates, which raises the cost of capital considerably. Also, there is a need to integrate climate priorities in the various steps of credit appraisal, risk assessments, project implementation and monitoring. A lack of comprehensive project evaluation framework deters private finances. However, private banks like YES Bank have taken a proactive lead in including climate change and sustainability component in the project evaluation process. In 2015, it aimed to mobilize USD 5 billion from 2015 to 2020 for climate action through lending, investing and raising capital towards mitigation, adaptation and resilience.

Interestingly, a bright spot in India’s private finance setting is CDM financing, which is a creative market mechanism to fund projects. India is the second largest recipient of CDM projects after China, with a total of 563 projects till 2014, representing almost 33% of CDM projects in Asia and 22% of CDM projects worldwide as per Ministry of Finance(MoF).  CDM or clean development mechanism allows a country with emission reduction target under Kyoto protocol to implement emission reduction projects in developing countries. Implementing these projects helps developed nations to either offset emissions which were discharged above their stipulated quota or gain CERs (Certified Emission Reduction) that are tradeable in carbon markets. For the developing nations, this route provides for funding domestic projects. A win-win for both developing and developed countries under Kyoto framework. In India, it was found that CDM projects are concentrated in states that are more industrialised, such as Gujarat and Maharashtra. In contrast, poorer and less industrialised states generally implement fewer CDM projects. India needs to diversify its CDM investments with an overarching policy structure in place for all the implementing states.

Private finance route can amply supplement public finance if there is coherent and coordinated mechanism to set common priorities for climate action.This calls for a more proactive engagement with private sector. Thiswill alsolower behavioural attitude that assumes climate-borne compliance as just another burden.

Labor Pains 2017

Rosemarie Jackowski

We celebrate Labor Day by honoring workers – especially the forgotten workers.  Stay-at-home mothers who home school their children are often forgotten.  Other forgotten members of the labor force are those who work in school cafeterias,  those who empty bedpans in nursing homes, and ordinary local guys, like my plumber.  He is smart, honest, and he never over-charges.  These are just ordinary people. Most have no degrees – no fancy pieces of paper to frame and hang on their walls. These are the ‘good guys’ that keep our country and homes running.  They are the real backbone of our country.

There are also many others. Can anyone celebrate Labor Day without thinking about farm labor.  If you are too old to remember it, or too young to have ever heard of it, now is the time to crank up your computer and watch “Harvest of Shame”.  That is the amazing documentary made by Edward R. Murrow.  https://www.youtube.com  There is no labor more important for our existence and survival than farm labor. Often those who work in the field are the most overworked and under paid.  In Vermont we should be sensitive to the plight of workers on dairy farms. Often they live in sub standard housing. They live in fear of exposure if they lack the ‘right’ papers.  In Bennington we depend on the workers from the ‘islands’ who pick the apple crop every year.   One of our nation’s greatest scandals is the treatment of child farm workers who never seem to have the legal protections necessary. In California, who is looking out for the kids?  They often are exposed to dangerous chemicals while working long hours in the blazing sun.

Any examination of labor must also include those who are overpaid – corporate CEOs.  Corporations have the right to compensate administrators any way and in any amount the Board determines. BUT, the unfair distribution of wealth is taking a toll on the unity of our country.  It is time for voters to speak up. This widespread policy of excessive pay for Corporate CEOs can be easily fixed by changing the tax code.  Place a 100% tax on all income above $100,000 – or a 100% tax on all income that is more than five times the minimum wage.  Of course members of Congress are not willing to do that.  It is obvious why.  We know whose side they are on.

The most outrageous compensation scheme is often in the so-called ‘non-profits’.  Of all those, the health care business is no doubt the worse.  It is the most dangerous because it is, in part, responsible for lack of universal access to quality health care which can lead to death.   The US has the most expensive health care system on the planet – but it is not the best.  Quality of health care in Thailand and many other countries is far superior – so much so that many Americans have become medical tourists.  They will do anything to avoid the ‘assembly line’, dehumanized health care in the US.

Remember the good old days when we were patients. Then we became customers.  Now we are just algorithms.  Has your doctor made eye contact with you lately, or is your doctor focused on a computer screen during the entire length of your annual visit. This is not always the doctor’s fault. They did not design the system, but maybe they could fix it if they organized and at least tried.

Not all doctors are over paid. Some are under paid. The problem is that too much of the money goes to the top and too little to real health care providers at the bottom of the wage scale.  This has resulted in a loss of quality in health care and puts patients at risk.

Take a good look at the following numbers from IRS Form 990 reports.  Can they be justified?

Vermont Hospital CEO pay – 2016
•University of Vermont Medical Center: $2,186,275
•Dartmouth-Hitchcock: $1,494,669
•Southwestern Vermont Medical Center: $620,368
•Porter Medical Center: $612,877
•Rutland Regional Medical Center: $565,038
•Central Vermont Medical Center: $503,385
•Gifford Medical Center: $470,574
•Copley Hospital: $435,524
•North Country Hospital: $417,940
•Brattleboro Memorial Hospital: $390,731
•Northwestern Medical Center: $378,272
•Mt. Ascutney Hospital and Health Center: $374,660
•Northeastern Vermont Regional Hospital: $350,764
•Springfield Hospital: $264,563
•Grace Cottage Hospital: $124,800

Just one more fact. Recently Dartmouth Hitchcock hired a new CEO, Dr. Joanne M. Conroy. Her compensation is being kept secret.

Resting Sea Shepherd: A Pause In The Whale War Saga

Binoy Kampmark

What a colourful run this outfit has had. Branded in 2013 by Judge Alex Kozinski of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit as pirates, the Sea Shepherd crew will be hanging up their hooks while rethinking their whale protection strategy.  Their long designated enemy, the Japanese whaling fleet, will be given some respite this hunting season.

A crucial point here is evolution.  The environmental battle, spearheaded by the Southern Ocean Whale Defence campaign, had become more troublingly sophisticated. “Military” tactics, claimed founder Captain Paul Watson, were being used by Japan.  An already slippery adversary had raised the bar.

But Watson, in his announcement, was attempting to give some lustre to the long term efforts of the project.  Against absurdly gargantuan odds, a small organisation’s resources were mustered to save whale species from imminent extinction.

“In 2005 we set out to tackle the world’s largest and most destructive whaling fleet.” It was a destruction centred on targeting 1,035 whales, including an annual quota of 50 endangered Fin whales and 50 endangered Humpbacks.  The sceptics were to be found on all sides: they doomed the organisation’s mission to imminent, crestfallen failure.

The humble, worse for wear Farley Mowat was enlisted to harry Japanese whalers across the Southern Ocean.  But to it were added, over time, the Steve Irwin, the Bob Barker, the Sam Simon the Brigitte Bardot and the Ocean Warrior.

For Watson and his dedicated piratical crew, the law of environmental protection often lagged, while political action and matters of enforcement proved timid.  States with greater power and resources were simply not keen on ruffling Japanese feathers.  Statements if disapproval hardly counted.

Japanese whalers have faced the legal music in a range of venues, though as with everything, the might of the gavel doesn’t necessary restrain the might of a state, whether directly used or incidentally employed.  In November 2015, Kyodo Senpaku Kaisha was fined $1 million by the Australian Federal Court for hunting minke whales within an Australian sanctuary as defined by Australian environmental law. The whaling company cared not to turn up nor subsequently cough up.

Enter, then, the organisation’s insistence on the use of “innovative direct-action tactics”, thereby putting a premium on investigation, documentation and the taking of “action when necessary to expose and confront illegal activities on the high seas.”

Preventive tactics, such as those employed in 2013 in the Southern Ocean, would feature attempts to prevent Japanese ships from taking refuelling sustenance from a tanker.  On cue, both the crew of the Japanese vessels, and Sea Shepherd, would release material suggesting that the other had deliberately attempted to ram their ships.

On reaching the legal courts, the Sea Shepherd book of cetaceous protection tended to look more blotted.  The Japanese angle in these instances was to emphasise the danger posed to crews, the potentially lethal bravado of the Sea Shepherd warriors. To do so offered a sizeable distraction from the legitimacy of the hunting activities.

“When you,” directed a stern Judge Kozinski, “ram ships, hurl glass containers of acid, drag metal-reinforced ropes in the water to damage propellers and rudders, launch smoke bombs and flares with hooks; and point high-powered lasers at other ships, you are, without a doubt, a pirate.”

For years, the militant nature of the organisation brought various agents, and agencies, into play. It used guerrilla tactics of gumption and daring, though it was the sort of audaciousness that divided opinion, even in the environmental ranks.  Such methods may well been crude but few could dispute their effects. In 2012/3, Japanese whalers, according to Watson, returned with a meagre 10 percent of intended kills.

The strategy of the Japanese whaling fleet, as Watson reflects, has always been shape shifting, apologetics followed by bellicosity; the fictional narrative of science overlaying arguments of culture.  While still flouting legality, the number of intended whales has fallen to 333, a victory that can be, to a degree, chalked up to Sea Shepherd’s techniques of mass irritation and disruption.  But to this can be added a more expansive scope embraced by their adversary: wider killing grounds, more opportunities to gather their quarry.

By 2016/7, it was clear to Watson that the Japanese were still able to net their quota, albeit at greater expense in terms of time and cost.  That same hunting season also threw up a few new realities: the use by the Japanese of “military surveillance to watch Sea Shepherd movements in real time by satellite”. While the group, assisted by their helicopter, did get close to capture evidence of whaling, they “could not physically close the gap.” Hence the sombre admission by Watson: “We cannot compete with their military grade technology.”

Sea Shepherd’s mission remains, as outlined on its web site, “to end the destruction of habitat and slaughter of wildlife in the world’s oceans in order to conserve and protect ecosystems and species.” But more than a few in the Japanese whaling fleet will be pleased at the organisation’s absence this killing season.

Syria And Lebanon Defeating The ISIS Terrorists

Andre Vltchek

Whatever the West may think, and no matter what the Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri may say publicly, the Lebanese army, in clear coordination with Hezbollah (which is outlawed in many Western countries) as well as with the Syrian army, is now pounding the positions of deadly ISIS/Daesh, right at the border region.

The army began the operation on August 19, 2017, at 5 in the morning, by firingat the terrorists’ positions in Jaroud, RaasBa’albak and al-Qaa’ using rockets and heavy artillery. It all has an emotional twist: the army commanders declared that the operation was launched in honor of the country’s kidnapped military men and martyrs.

Apparently, Lebanon has finally decided: that, enough is enough! First Al-Nusra Front and now ISIS have to go.

Ignore the fact the Lebanese government went out of its way to say that the Lebanese army is actually not coordinating with Syrian forces, or with Hezbollah. After all, Mr. Hariri just recently returned from Washington, where he met the US President who is treating Syrian President Assad as his personal enemy, and Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. Personally, Mr. Hariri likes the West, and he is very close to its loyal ally, Saudi Arabia, where he was born.

But Mr. Hariri was never elected. Lebanon is using a complex and obscure “confession system”, ‘distributing political and institutional power proportionally among confessional communities’. President has to be a Maronite Christian; Speaker of the Parliament is Shi’a Muslim and Prime Minister has to be a Sunni Muslim.

Therefore, one thing is what Mr. Hariri says, and other what most of the people of Lebanon think or do.

Meanwhile, the Lebanese resistance, political and social movement Hezbollah has also declared a joint anti-Daesh (ISIS) offensive with the Syrian army, at the other side of the border. The gloves are suddenly off.

Unlike one month earlier, when Al-Nusra Front was almost totally wiped out by the same coalition but in the end its fighters were spared and offered a transfer to a  ‘safe zone’ inside Syria (Idlib), this time there is not going to be any preliminary negotiation with the most venomous of all terrorist groups in the region. The message is clear: either the unconditional or at least irreversible surrender of all ISIS terrorists, or their total destruction.

By the evening of August 20, the Lebanese army was already holding around 80 square kilometers (roughly 30%) of the area that was previously controlled by Daesh (ISIS).

*

Before I departed from the Lebanese capital for Cairo, Egypt, I drank a few cups of coffee with my good friend, an intellectual from Syria. We were sitting in the middle of Beirut’s Christian neighborhood, Achrafieh.

“Let’s take a ‘selfie’ together,” he said. I was surprised; before he was known to despise social media.

“We are winning,” he said, “and that’s great… But you never know what happens next… There will be, surely, some terrible retaliation. Who knows whether we’ll see each other again, you know… Something may happen to me, or to you, on the way to the airport.”

I knew what he was talking about, and I have written about the situation many times before. Lebanon,in someof the non-Muslim neighborhoods of Beirut,has been literally saturated with so-called “dormant cells”, of various terrorist organizations, particularly ISIS. At any moment they can get ‘activated’, destroying hundreds of lives in this beautiful but long-suffering city.

Beirut is nervous, edgy. Great victories in the mountains liberated tormented local people, and Lebanon is finally regaining its territories. But the terrorists will not disappear from the country overnight. They may be losing big territorial battles, but they are still capable of inflicting terrible casualties on the civilians and even the military.

But so far, everything is moving rapidly, in Lebanon and across the border. The once astonishing number of almost 2 million refugees on its territory has gradually been reduced to 1.5 million, and then adjusted further down to 1.2 million. Soon it may drop well under one million.

Syrians are going back, confident that peace is returning to their scarred land.

The Syrian forces, as well as Russians, Iranians and Hezbollah, are clearly determined to stop the insurgency of several terrorist groups on the Syrian territory, while China is now also playing an increasingly important and positive role.

Most of the terrorist armies are directly or indirectly supported by the West or by its close allies in the Gulf. Turkey is also playing dangerous and deadly games in the region.

*

Almost no one is talking about the final collapse of the Middle East, anymore. Entire nations have been damaged; some went up in flames. Implanted militant Islam served well both the West and much of the Gulf. But Syria survived; it fought bravely and determinedly, supported by its allies and at an enormous cost, it has managed to stop the imperialists and their brutal extremist local offshoots.

While no one is celebrating, yet, the mood in Syria, Lebanon and in several other part of the region is suddenly upbeat.

The West is now fully discredited, while Russia has gained great respect.

As Lebanese and Syrian armies are, with Hezbollah support, conducting offensive against the ISIS, Russian jets, it is reported, killed some 200 terrorists heading for a region of Deirez-Zur in Syria. In the same period of time, US-led strikes killed at least 17 civilians in Raqqah.

Mr. Assad has no illusions about the motives of the Western involvement in the region. As reported on August 20 by SANA Syrian Arab Agency, he recently gave a powerful speech:

“…This conflict is a valuable opportunity for the West to ‘settle the account’ with so many countries and subjugating countries which have refused to bow to the West’s hegemony during the past years or decades, including Syria, Iran, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Belarus among others, even Russia.”

President Assad continued:

“Today the West is facing an existential conflict….living in a state of hysteria whenever there is a state that wants to take part with it in the international decision-making in any field and in any place in the world”.

*

By August 27 2017, it was clear that Daesh (ISIS) fighters were cornered, if not completely defeated. The Lebanese Army agreed to a cease-fire in its offensive, after terrorists decided to lay down arms. Negotiations began. It appears that the ISIS may soon pull out of Lebanese territory to Syria, to a designated zone.

Victory came at a heavy price: the Lebanese Army helicopters were flying helicopters with body bags containing remains of the soldiers, over the capital – Beirut.

Across the border (as was reported by Press TV on August 27), helicopters were used for totally different goals:

“For the second time this week, a helicopter operating under the US-led coalition has transferred members of the Daesh terrorist group in Syria’s eastern Dayr al-Zawr Province, a UK-based monitoring group says… Syrian sources said that the operation was accompanied by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces’ artillery fire… The sources speculated that the airlift was possibly meant to transfer US mercenaries fighting alongside Daesh or the terror outfit’s ringleaders who sought to defect…”

*

Tiny Lebanon is tied to Syria with an umbilical cord. It is a rocky, often extremely complex relationship, but during the historic moments like this it is clear that both countries can and choose to act in unison.The Prime Minister of Lebanon may like to flirt with Donald Trump in Washington and with Saudi Arabia, but the armies of both countries are clearly together, fighting the same enemy. And so is Hezbollah.

To both the Syrian and Lebanese people, it is clear who the real enemies of the region are. And they are definitely not Hezbollah or President Assad.

Former Thai PM flees as junta intensifies crackdown

John Roberts & Peter Symonds

Former Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, who was removed by Thailand’s current military rulers in the May 2014 coup, fled the country on Friday. She was due to appear in the Supreme Court in Bangkok to hear its verdict on trumped-up charges that could have seen her jailed for 10 years. Yingluck is thought to be in Dubai.

Around 3,000 Yingluck supporters, including some who came from the north and northeast of the country, gathered outside the court to hear the verdict and were confronted with thousands of police and barricades. While the military junta allowed the gathering to take place under strict conditions, it previously threatened to arrest those who gathered at Yingluck’s last court appearance in July. Yingluck advised her supporters not to turn up last Friday.

The judges issued an arrest warrant for Yingluck, revoked her bail of 30 million baht or about $900,000 and ordered it be forfeited. The next court date is set for September 27.

Yingluck was charged over her government’s rice subsidy scheme—a measure designed to assist farmers, particularly in impoverished areas. The farmers were paid above market price and the rice was stored in the hope that world prices would rise. Instead prices fell, leaving rice rotting in warehouses and the government facing substantial losses.

The junta exploited the policy failure to bring criminal charges in an attempt to stamp out the influence of Yingluck, and her brother Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted as prime minister in the military coup of 2006, and their Pheu Thai party.

The military rulers represent the country’s traditional elites. They are deeply hostile to the Shinawatras, who built a base of support among the urban and rural poor through limited social reforms, including the rice scheme, a health program and village subsidies. Thaksin also alienated sections of less competitive Thai business by opening up the economy more widely to foreign investment.

The flimsy character of the charges against Yingluck over the rice scheme is underscored by the fact that the military introduced an almost identical subsidy program in November 2016 in order to avoid widespread mass unrest in rice growing areas. Farmers were paid to hold on to their crops for several months until market prices rose.

In addition to seeking a 10-year prison sentence for so-called criminal negligence over the rice scheme, the junta issued an administrative order imposing an unprecedented personal fine on Yingluck of $US1 billion, supposedly to partially cover the government’s losses. She is barred from politics until 2020 after being impeached by the military-appointed parliament in 2015.

Last Friday, the Supreme Court also imposed draconian sentences, ranging from 24 to 48 years in prison, on 20 others, including five former officials in Yingluck’s administration, for allegedly profiting from the rice subsidy program. Former Commerce Minister Boonsong Teriyapirom was sentenced to 42 years and his deputy 36 years.

The Trump administration effectively gave the green light for this judicial witch-hunt in early August when US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson became the most senior American official to visit Thailand since the 2014 coup. Former army chief Prayuth Chan-o-cha, the coup leader and prime minister, has been invited to Washington in October to meet with Trump.

Tillerson held discussions with Prayuth and Foreign Minister Don Pramudwinai. He reportedly pressed the regime to further isolate North Korea and discussed security and trade matters but made no comment on the junta’s repressive police-state measures. Tillerson later made perfunctory remarks at the US embassy, saying he hoped elections would go ahead in 2018.

The junta exploited the death of the King Bhumibol Adulyadej last October to postpone national elections for the third time, until sometime in 2018. Bhumibol was key to the coups against elected pro-Thaksin governments. The junta is less than enthusiastic about his son, Maha Vajirlongkorn, now due for coronation in November.

The chief concern, however, is that even with the military’s highly restrictive constitution an election could result in a pro-Thaksin victory in the lower house of a new parliament. Pro-Thaksin parties have won every election for more than a decade, in spite of the military’s efforts to prevent that outcome.

The military junta has sweeping powers under section 44 of its interim constitution to stop “any act which undermines public peace and order or national security, the monarchy, national economics or administration of state affairs.” The section has been invoked more than 150 times. Other measures include a ban on gatherings of more than five people, censorship of Internet activity and trials of civilians in military courts on sedition charges.

More than 100 people have been arrested under the country’s reactionary lèse-majesté laws for supposedly insulting or offending the royal family. King Bhumibol was the linchpin of the state apparatus and the country’s ruling elites, including the military, state bureaucracy, the courts and sections of business. His death is compounding the political crisis facing the junta, which fears that rising social tensions will lead to mass unrest.

According to the Asian Development Bank, the Thai economy is expected to grow by just 3.5 percent this year, down from around 5 percent a decade ago. A 2017 report by Credit Suisse said Thailand became the third most unequal country in the world in 2016, with 1 percent of the population owning 58.0 percent of national wealth, beating India into second place. The highest concentration of poverty is in the rural areas.

The junta is well aware that it is sitting atop a social time bomb and is determined to suppress all opposition. On July 29, ten armed men in black balaclavas physically abducted a vocal opponent of the military, Wuthipong Kochathamakun, from his home in the Laotian capital Vientiane, where he was living in self-imposed exile.

Wuthipong is regarded as one of the more radical members of the Thaksin-affiliated United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship (UDD). The UDD led the mass demonstrations in Bangkok in 2010 against what amounted to a judicial coup that removed a pro-Thaksin government in 2008. The army brutally suppressed the protests, killing more than 80 people, but was eventually forced to concede elections that led to Yingluck’s victory in 2011.

UK: 228 high-rise buildings fail mock-up fire tests post-Grenfell

Steve James 

Tests on the fire resistance of aluminium cladding systems in England currently suggest that at least 228 high-rise buildings, over 18 metres in height, are potential death traps.

The tests, carried out on behalf of the British government by the British Research Establishment (BRE), are the latest in a hastily arranged series following the catastrophic June 14 fire at Grenfell Tower in North Kensington, London, which killed at least 80 people.

The tests involved a large-scale test fire on an aluminium composite material (ACM) filled with retardant polyethylene installed with phenolic foam board insulation. Twenty-two buildings are known to use this specific type of cladding, adding to the 206 buildings clad with ACM using differing types of filler and insulation. So far, of systems installed, only those with fire retardant ACM and mineral wool insulation have passed the tests.

No complete list of the buildings involved has been publicly provided, but all are likely residential tower blocks, each housing hundreds of working people and run either by housing associations or local authorities. The government is reported as having informed the buildings’ owners and recommended remedial measures. If the experience of evacuated residents in London’s Chalcots Estate is a guide, emergency measures amounted to improving fire doors and installing fire stopping measures between flats and floors, and unblocking stairwell ventilation. An unknown number of low-rise and private sector buildings may use the same dangerous combinations of materials.

The current set of tests is the second conducted on ACM cladding. In the days following the disaster, Conservative Communities and Local Government Secretary Sajid Javid offered free testing of ACM samples to landlords. Initially as many as 530 buildings were thought to have ACM cladding, but early investigations reduced the number to 259, including 240 public sector residential blocks. Landlords were encouraged to submit two 250 x 250 mm ACM samples for testing by the BRE. Of samples eventually submitted, all failed. The test that generated the extraordinary 100 percent failure rate was authenticated as sound by the Sweden Research Institute.

In July, Javid told Parliament that thus far only the core of the ACM panel was being tested. In response, housing authorities and fire safety commentators demanded supposedly more representative test methods in which a mock-up of a full cladding installation, including the ACM panel, the insulation and fire stopping, should be used. Concerns were raised that potentially safe systems were in danger of being removed from buildings.

Hoping, no doubt, for a meaningful reduction in the number of dangerous buildings, Javid called for the new tests, of which six of seven have now been completed by the BRE. But only 13 of 241 buildings covered by the more realistic test have passed, arguably a more devastating outcome than the initial tests, and exposing a regulatory collapse of unprecedented proportions.

Every single one of the cladding systems now being exposed as deadly had previously been signed off as safe. How can this be?

Responsibility lies with all the major political parties, and successive governments, who over the last three decades have embraced deregulation and privatisation and the subordination of public health and safety to private profit. There are many aspects of this revealed by Grenfell.

In England now, following years of erosion, there is no unified regime of building inspection run by local authorities retaining any degree of independence from the building companies. Nor is there an arm of government tasked with overseeing building standards.

Rather, building contractors themselves can hire an “Approved Inspector,” whose job is not to ensure adherence to a strict set of “prescriptive” standards but to follow looser “functional” guidelines assumed to be needed for building safety. A host of private and semi-private organisations, such as the Building Control Alliance (BCA), have sprung up to exploit the regulatory vagueness and loopholes regarding the materials that can be used in any given set of circumstances.

The BCA advised on three mechanisms whereby a cladding system could be approved, in line with building regulations which stated that external insulation should be of “limited combustibility,” defined as “A2.” Option 1 stipulated that all the component materials could simply be of A2 combustibility resistance or better. Option 2 proposed a fire test be set up, that could include inferior products, but if the fire test was deemed safe all was well. Option 3, clearly the easiest, involved a “desktop” study where cladding materials could be deemed safe without any tests and without any specified combustibility standards merely on the basis of considering similar scenarios. No records of these studies were required to be kept.

Even more reckless were guidelines issued, now withdrawn, by the National House Building Council (NHBC), another private body, closely tied to the building industry, which issues insurance to house builders and offers building inspection advice. According to the BBC, the NHBC simply decided that sub-A2 materials were acceptable based on a review of a “significant quantity of data from a range of tests and desktop assessments.”

Perhaps most seriously, the BRE, the organisation most directly responsible for fire testing and providing fire safety advice, has itself been compromised. The BRE was established in 1921 as an arm of the civil service tasked with improving house quality. Over the years, the organisation established itself as a reputable, state-funded source of building and fire safety advice, with a degree of independence from the building materials and construction companies. Privatised in 1997, the BRE has subsequently sought to establish itself as a global brand for sale of fire safety advice, drawing in revenue from the very organisations whose products and operations it should be policing.

In 2016, the BRE issued a report, “External Fire Spread,” following studies commissioned by Javid’s Department of Communities and Local Government into the dangers of cladding fires.

The report, clearly intended to silence growing alarm, is cynical and complacent. The authors complained that high-rise flat fires are “visually impressive, high-profile and attract media attention.” To avoid the fuss, unsuitable cladding materials should be dealt with “as part of the fire safety risk assessment carried out under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 [12] ...”

This order, passed under the Labour government of Tony Blair, removed fire safety responsibly from the Fire Service and allowed anyone to set themselves up as a fire risk assessor, regardless of skills, experience or qualifications. In 2010, fire assessor Carl Stokes won the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chealsea fire assessment contract, including Grenfell Tower, by undercutting rivals Salvus Consulting. Stokes was praised at the time for his willingness to “challenge the Fire Brigade … if he considered their requirements to be excessive.”

Part one of the BRE report concludes with the assertion: “With the exception of one or two unfortunate but rare cases, there is currently no evidence from these investigations to suggest that the current recommendations, to limit vertical fire spread up the exterior of high-rise buildings, are failing in their purpose.”

Tanker makes solo voyage through melting Arctic Sea

Daniel de Vries

A Russian liquefied natural gas tanker completed its maiden voyage through the waters of the Arctic Sea last week without the use of an icebreaker, ushering in a new step in the exploitation of the dramatically warming polar region.

The specially constructed 300-meter tanker Christophe de Margerie became the first tanker to complete the Northern Sea Route voyage unassisted. The ship sailed from Norway to South Korea in just 19 days, 30 percent faster than the usual route through the Suez Canal. The Northern Sea Route tracks the northern coast of Siberia, which may provide an efficient alternative for trade between northern Europe and east Asia as climatic conditions change.

And those conditions are changing rapidly. The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the global average. As a result, both the extent and volume of sea ice is decreasing. The area of the Arctic Sea covered by ice in September has fallen by half compared to the average of recent decades. Likewise the average thickness of what remains has declined by 1.8 meters.

Scientists expect these observed trends to continue and even accelerate. Some scenarios envision largely ice-free polar seas during summertime as soon as the 2030s. While ice will continue to lock up the waterways during winter, the length of shipping seasons will grow. By the end of the century most of the Arctic may be open water half the year or longer.

The retreating ice is not only expected to open up shipping lanes, but also unlock more areas for oil and gas drilling. The Arctic holds perhaps an eighth of the world’s undiscovered oil reserves and up to a third of its gas reserves.

The voyage completed last week coincides with the development of the massive South-Tambeyskoye natural gasfield in northern Siberia. The field holds an estimated 926 billion cubic meters of untapped gas. Russian natural gas giant Novatek and major Chinese and French firms have formed a joint venture to extract, liquefy and transport up to 16.5 million tons of the liquefied gas each year.

The Christophe de Margerie is the first of 15 tankers planned to haul the massive payloads to markets in Europe and Asia. The new fleet will have reinforced hulls capable of cutting through two meters of ice. With the decreasing thickness of the sea ice, the ships are expected to operate nearly year-round on portions of the Arctic Sea.

The prospects for Arctic oil and gas development and open sailing are not limited to the Northern Sea Route and Russia. The Northwest Passage through the Canadian archipelago has seen a significant growth this decade in commercial and tourist activity, including a 1,600-passenger luxury cruise ship this summer making its second excursion along the Passage.

The warming temperatures and declining sea ice have brought with them intensified conflict over claims of sovereignty and expansion of military activity. The United States, Canada, Denmark, Norway and Russia all claim significant tracts of the Arctic, much of which is disputed. The US insists the shipping lanes are international passages, and a December 2016 Department of Defense Arctic strategy report highlighted the necessity to conduct “Freedom of Navigation operations to challenge excessive maritime claims when and where necessary.”

The US Air Force’s Alaska Command in May led the most recent joint military exercise with 6,000 personnel, 200 aircraft and several ships to simulate combat in the Arctic. Russia recently reorganized its Arctic Command and renovated Cold War-era Arctic bases.

Yet even as competition in the Arctic heats up, the variability of the weather has kept the risk high and reliability low. While container ships, oil tankers and cruise ships are now all active in the Arctic, the traffic relative to southern routes remains minute. Ice blockages during summer months are common. Ice flows and melting vary significantly from year to year and month to month. Shipping companies with regular schedules and tight deadlines are in no rush to reroute vessels north, a situation that analysts predict will persist for some time.

Compounding the extreme weather risk is a lack of infrastructure, which could prove catastrophic when disasters strike. Much of the Arctic is still poorly charted, with distances of hundreds of kilometers between ports, putting ships many days away from help if they encounter difficulty. Groundings or collisions could result in ships sinking or spilling its cargo. The danger is far from theoretical. In December of 2015, a Russian tanker carrying 200,000 gallons of oil ran aground in the North Pacific. The most well-known oil spill in the northern latitudes, the Exxon Valdez spill of 11 million gallons, is still impacting the Alaskan environment more than a quarter century later.

Massive fire in Rostov, Russia destroys 123 houses

Clara Weiss

On Monday, August 21, a massive fire erupted in the historic centre of the southern Russian city Rostov-On-Don. It quickly spread to 10,000 square metres and destroyed 123 residential houses. One pensioner died in the fire, and dozens of people were injured. Survivors of the fire and Rostov residents widely believe that the fire was started intentionally by construction companies that have sought for months to buy the houses in this very district.

The outbreak of the fire was reported at 12:52 p.m. It reportedly started in an abandoned house on the Theatre Square in the city centre, and quickly spread to other houses and streets, partially due to a strong wind. Dozens of people immediately had to leave their houses, with many of the young helping elderly people to flee. Numerous gas pipelines exploded (For footage of the fire click here). One hundred twenty-three residential houses, many of which were made of wood, burned down before the fire was extinguished by firefighters.

One pensioner who was not able to leave his house in time, died in the fire. According to local officials, 58 people were injured. At least 218 families were affected by the fire, many of which lost all of their property and belongings (For footage of the devastation in the aftermath of the fire click here). In total, some 1,500 people are expected to ask for government support in the wake of the fire.

The Kremlin has promised some 600 million roubles (a little over US$10 million) to help the victims of the fire, but has a poor record in terms of providing the material help promised in cases of disasters. Moreover, the local administration and the Kremlin in Moscow have a sinister record in covering up the real causes and consequences of disasters such as this fire. So far, the Investigative Committee, a federal body, has only levelled charges of negligence at local services over the fire.

Even though issues such as the massive cutbacks in fire fighting stations in Russia in the past quarter century and the extremely decrepit housing infrastructure have contributed to this disaster, evidence strongly suggests that the fire was in fact instigated with the aim of making the houses and their residents disappear from this area.

The district is one of the poorest in the city, with many streets going without pavement, sewerage and running water. The slum-like district was separated from the rest of the centre by a large fence. However, the land here is the most valuable in the city and, according to local online news source donnews.ru, has been hotly contested among construction companies. Just 200 metres away, the Teatralny Square in the city centre will be used in 2018 for a fan zone and live screening of the 2018 FIFA World Cup which will take place in the nearby city of Sochi. High-ranking government officials and FIFA representatives are expected to come to Rostov for this occasion.

Just two weeks before the fire, donnews.ru published an investigative report, detailing how numerous local residents had received visits from murky representatives of construction companies who were eager to buy their property and threatened to torch their houses.

Valentina Livshits, 62, who lived in a house on the Teatralny Prospekt before the fire, told the newspaper that two men in sun glasses appeared at her house on August 4, declaring that she would have to soon leave it. “They resembled the gangsters of the ’90s,” Livshits said. One of them told her that he had to report to the head of Rostov’s city administration, Kushnaryov, that she was ready to leave her house on their conditions. He then told her: “I’ve already bought everything else in this area and will build something here.” The two men reportedly declined to name the company they were working for and offered her 2.4 million roubles for her property (approximately US$41,000).

“I told them that the property was worth twice as much and that I would never be able to buy something in the centre for 2.4 million roubles,” Livshits continued. In response, the men threatened her that a court would rule to have her thrown out.

Another resident, who was also visited by “men in black,” was told: “If you won’t give it to us for the price we offer, the property will be confiscated by the mayor’s office for the needs of the city.”

Another resident, Nina Reshetnik, indicated that some 70 percent of the people previously living here have already left the district. Reshetnik told donnews.ru: “A month ago some people came to those who live in the most dilapidated houses of the district. They offered the inhabitants between 100 and 600,000 roubles for one-hundredth of a hectare of land. But when they were told that you can’t buy anything on this kind of money, they responded: ‘Then it’s easier to torch you than to pay anything.’”

After this, a series of fires started in the neighbourhood. One resident told donnews.ru that he witnessed two fires at his house within two months. “The second time I was sleeping and my landlady managed to wake me up in time, otherwise everything would have ended in tragedy. Before this, there were never fires at my house, even though I have been living here for a very long time and have already seen hotter summers.”

No less than five houses went up in flames on August 5. On August 7, three houses started burning at the Chuvashsky corner. The residents of one of the affected houses had been previously told to leave their home, and neighbours reportedly spotted someone who set the fire. All of these houses were also all affected by the latest massive fire on August 21.

The fire in Rostov has sparked enormous outrage throughout the country, some of which is reflected in angry comments on social media and in articles such as the one quoted above. In an indication of extreme hostility and distrust among the working class and broader sections of the population toward the state and corporations, almost no one believes that this fire was an accident.

A petition started in the wake of the fire, which urges the city administration to cancel a celebration in the city center for a local holiday, just near the site of the disaster, and to instead use these funds for the needs of the hundreds of displaced families, has gathered over 120,000 signatures within just a few days.

It is significant that many residents and commentators on the internet felt reminded of the 1990s, a period which most Russians remember as deeply traumatic, as the most thuggish and criminal methods were employed to plunder the population and whatever had remained of the Soviet economy.

For millions of workers, intellectuals, and youth, it becomes ever more clear that the restoration of capitalism in the USSR has resulted in a seemingly unending nightmare. Social inequality in Russia is higher than in any other major economy of the world. The top decile of the population now owns a stunning 89 percent of total wealth in Russia, more even than in the United States where the top decile of the populations owns 78 percent of all wealth. Russia has the third-highest number of billionaires in the world (96) and some 79,000 US-dollar millionaires. Meanwhile, some 56 percent of Russian workers make less than 31,000 rubles ($531) a month.

The economic and social crisis has further been aggravated by the sanctions of the US and EU against Russia. With all the anti-Putin propaganda in the Western media, the truth is that the brunt of the sanctions is borne not by Putin and his cronies, but by the Russian working class which has seen its living standards further decline as the government has cut social spending while safeguarding and increasing the fortunes of the oligarchs as much as it could.

In the final analysis, the extreme criminality of the ruling class that has emerged out of capitalist restoration in the USSR is only a particularly acute expression of the decay of the world capitalist system. As the Grenfell Fire in London earlier this summer has shown, workers throughout the world are increasingly confronted with an ever more criminal ruling class, and ever more open assaults on their very social and physical existence. It is in them that workers in Russia will find their allies in fighting their own deeply corrupt and degenerate bourgeoisie.

Chief of French anti-narcotics police indicted on drug-trafficking charges

Francis Dubois

The indictment on August 25 of France’s top anti-drug police officer casts a sharp light on the police forces, who have had virtually unchecked powers since the imposition of the state of emergency by the Socialist Party (PS) government of former President François Hollande in November 2015.

François Thierry—the former head of the Central Office for the Repression of Illicit Drug Trafficking (OCRTIS), already placed in preventive detention this March in the context of an investigation of the General Inspection of the National Police (IGPN)—was indicted on charges of “complicity in the holding, transport, and acquisition of narcotics and complicity in the exportation of narcotics in an organized gang.”

Thierry was nonetheless left at liberty by the investigating magistrates overseeing the case. He will remain in service at the Anti-terrorist Sub-Directorate (SDAT) of the judicial police, where he was sent in May 2016 after one of his former informants accused him of drug trafficking. According to press reports, Thierry still has the confidence and support of his superiors in the anti-terror police. He is, however, facing three different judicial investigations.

The Paris prosecutor’s office indicted him after a two-year investigation, triggered when the National Directorate of Customs Intelligence and Investigations (DNRED) seized seven tons of cannabis resin, on October 17, 2015. These were located in several vans parked on Boulevard Exelmans in the wealthy 16th district of Paris, just outside the luxury apartment of Sofiane Hambli, one of Europe’s main drug traffickers.

This shipment was, according to Libération, part of a convoy transporting 40 tons of cannabis that was split up between Vénissieux, Mulhouse, Nantes and Paris and traveling under the control of the OCRTIS, which responded by accusing customs officials of torpedoing one of their operations.

In this matter, Hambli functioned as one of the principal informants of the anti-narcotics police. According to Le Figaro, “At age 42, he is seen as one of the key figures importing drugs to Europe, but also as one of the most important informants ever to have worked with the drugs office.”

In May 2016, in article titled “Revelations on state trafficking,” Libérationaccused the OCRTIS outright of organizing drug trafficking in France itself. The investigation that led to the current indictment is concentrated on the “methods” used by the OCRTIS leadership that are now being denounced by the judicial machine, that is to say the close collaboration between anti-drugs police and the major drug traffickers.

For a long time, such “special methods” were hailed as particularly effective in the struggle against drug abuse, and police and the media presented Thierry as a past master of these methods.

According to an August 23 article in Libération, Hambli helped police with the “identification of several dozen high-level criminals, the arrest of around 100 people, and even the transmission of information regarding radicalized Islamists.”

Thierry is accused of having overseen “deliveries under surveillance” operations, ostensibly aimed at infiltrating drug trafficking circles, that above all allowed Hambli to eliminate his competitors on the French illegal drug market. This allowed him, according to Libération, to “set himself up as France’s biggest trafficker thanks to the protection of the former head of French counter-narcotics.”

?The judges are not accusing Thierry of having used these methods for personal enrichment, but of not having informed the legal system of the enormous quantities of drugs that were being delivered in these operations. Thierry insists that the relevant judges were always completely informed.

The Thierry affair is not the only one to have shaken French law enforcement in recent months. In May 2017, the entire national investigation service of the customs office was decapitated, as numerous top officials in this service were fired due to “grave events,” according to the customs office. One official was indicted in April for “complicity in the importing and holding of counterfeit merchandise in an organized gang.”

According to Médiapart, the customs office is “hit by a half-dozen investigations that discredit its methods.” One investigation involved among other subjects “the seizure of Kalachnikov rifles at a Reims toll booth in November 2013,” in which the customs office of Le Havre was implicated. Some €800,000 were seized and a customs official committed suicide on January 5, 2017.

In May, another “top cop,” the number two of the Lyon judicial police, Michel Neyret, was accused of protecting and maintaining close relations with high-ranking organized crime figures. He was sentenced to two and a half years in prison without parole.

Independently of the motivations of the rival factions of the judiciary and of the police apparatus, these affairs partially lift the veil on the deep collusion in France between police and a wide variety of traffickers. It underscores the essential hostility to legal and democratic rights of police forces who have extraordinary, virtually unchecked powers under France’s state of emergency.

Whereas in French suburbs, police impose brutal and humiliating searches based only on suspicions that individuals could be drug dealers, the top layers of the same police force are coordinating with gangsters the wholesale supply of drugs to the same suburbs.

The Thierry affair raises many serious questions. If the counter-narcotics police chiefs personally supervised the proper functioning of these “special operations” drug deliveries—Thierry’s top assistant, former anti-terror prosecutor Patrick Laberche, travelled to Morocco—and they did not enrich themselves with the proceeds, what were the profits then used to do?

And why was Thierry, the former chief of OCRTIS (who was previously tasked from 2006 to 2010 with leading the anti-narcotics section on infiltrations) promoted directly in May to the Anti-Terrorist Sub-Directorate of the judicial police where he is currently the number three official?

Islamist networks responsible for terror attacks are often linked to drug-trafficking, and terrorists are often recruited from those who have served prison time on drugs charges. One example is Moroccan imam Abdelbaki Es-Satty, the alleged leader of the terror cell that carried out the recent Barcelona attack, who was imprisoned on drugs charges from 2010 to 2014. On this basis, it is legitimate to ask whether there was a link between Hambli’s collaboration with the state, whether as a trafficker or an informant on Islamist terror circles, and terrorist acts in France, Spain and beyond.

EU holds Paris conference to set up detention camps for migrants in Libya

Alex Lantier

Yesterday, heads of state of Germany, France, Italy, and Spain and of the African states of Niger and Chad, together with UN-backed Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj of Libya attended a summit on immigration hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris.

The purpose of the summit stamped it with a politically criminal character. It discussed how to deny the right of asylum to hundreds of thousands of refugees and block their travel through Africa north to Libya and across the Mediterranean to Europe. The conference, attended by European Union (EU) foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, discussed using the armed forces of the African regimes to detain refugees and send them back toward the countries they had fled, thus keeping them in Africa and deterring further migration.

The conference was an attempt above all to deal with the disastrous consequences of the 2011 NATO war in Libya, which destroyed the regime of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi and unleashed a bloody civil war that rages to this day. The summit also tried to contain escalating tensions among the European powers over which armed factions to support inside Libya.

Last week, the UN released a devastating report highlighting the horrific fate of vast numbers of refugees trapped in the civil war conditions of post-2011 Libya and exposing the forces that the EU is proposing to rely on to police refugees.

The UN reported, “Migrants continued to be subjected by smugglers, traffickers, members of armed groups and security forces to extreme violence; torture and other ill-treatment; forced labour; arbitrary deprivation of liberty; rape; and other sexual violence and exploitation. On 11 April 2017, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) denounced the presence of slave markets in Libya, where sub-Saharan migrants were bought and sold and women were traded as sex slaves.”

Based on reports from the UN Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL), the UN painted a portrait of conditions in detention camps set up for migrants in Libya to halt and deter migration. The UN found that victims of brutal conduct from the various warring militias that rule post-Gaddafi Libya “had little avenue for redress, due to a general state of lawlessness and the weakness of judicial institutions.”

It wrote, “UNSMIL visited detention centres under the control of the Department for Combatting Illegal Migration in Gharyan, Tripoli, Misrata and Surman, where thousands of migrants have been held arbitrarily for prolonged periods of time with no possibility to challenge the legality of their detention. UNSMIL had documented cases of torture, ill-treatment, rape and other forms of sexual violence. Detention centres remained overcrowded, and detainees were often malnourished, living in poor hygienic conditions and with limited or no access to medical care.”

The UN also documented the brutal conduct of EU-backed armed forces in Libya, who try to catch refugees to return them to these detention camps. Its report noted, “UNSMIL received numerous reports of dangerous, life-threatening interceptions by armed men believed to be from the Libyan Coast Guard. UNSMIL has been reviewing its support to the Libyan Coast Guard in line with the United Nations human rights due diligence policy.”

The conference issued a brief resolution late last night, calling for the EU to bring “particularly vulnerable” migrants from Libya to Europe, while relying on the armed forces of Niger and Chad and the various militias in Libya to keep refugees from reaching the Mediterranean. The conference also proposed to provide more equipment to the Libyan Coast Guard for its anti-refugee missions.

Macron said he wanted to “identify” which migrants are true refugees in Niger and Chad, before they could reach Libya on their journey north, so that others could be turned back. He blamed the terrible conditions that exist for refugees in Africa on people smugglers, declaring: “Certain trafficking groups that traffic in weapons, in human lives, and in drugs, and groups linked to terrorism have turned the desert in Africa and the Mediterranean into a graveyard. These same people are profoundly linked to terrorism.”

These are political lies, designed to falsely present a brutal EU policy of denying asylum rights to refugees based on outright armed repression as respecting human rights. It is not people smugglers or refugees that are responsible for civil war conditions in Libya, but the NATO powers, which bombed Libya and armed various Islamist militias in a war for regime change. As in imperialist wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, Libyan society rapidly disintegrated.

Wars across the Middle East and Africa have now produced the greatest refugee crisis since World War II, with over 60 million people displaced from their homes. The reaction of the imperialist powers is not to halt the war drive or to seek to address the military conflicts and the poverty that is driving tens of millions to abandon their homes. Rather, they aim to work more closely with military dictatorships and irregular militias to prevent this unprecedented wave of migrants from reaching Europe.

Despite the European powers’ criticisms of US President Donald Trump, including his call to build a wall to block Mexican immigration north into the United States, their own policy towards African refugees is equally ruthless and brutal. As thousands of refugees crossed in the Mediterranean, EU officials sought to limit rescue operations, hoping news of refugees drowning at sea would deter migrants from trying to reach Europe.

Rescue operations encourage migration, one British diplomat explained, and “create an unintended ‘pull factor’ thereby leading to more tragic and unnecessary deaths.” The solution was to eliminate the “pull factor” created by rescue measures and discourage migration by allowing refugees to drown. Since then, thousands of innocent refugees have drowned in the Mediterranean—2,400 in the first eight months of 2017 alone.

Under these conditions, the EU’s claim that it will bring “particularly vulnerable” migrants to Europe is another utterly cynical gesture. Any refugee in Libya is vulnerable due to the civil war conditions in the country, and promises to bring those that are “particularly vulnerable” only amounts to giving EU authorities the right to cherry-pick which refugees they will grant asylum.

According to initial reports, European officials at the conference summarily dismissed arguments by African heads of state that migration would continue so long as large parts of Africa are very poor. “The problem is poverty,” Mogherini said, but she ruled out launching “a new Marshall Plan” to devote substantial funding to create jobs in Africa. European officials are reportedly thinking of spending €6 million initially on poverty programmes, or up to €50 million in the long term—a drop in the bucket in a poverty-stricken region inhabited by hundreds of millions of people.

The summit not only reflected the EU’s militaristic and anti-refugee policy, but featured growing rivalries among the European powers over who would set the agenda and announce more ambitious plans to limit immigration to Europe. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is seeking re-election and trying to burnish her anti-immigrant credentials, announced yesterday a deal with the bloody Egyptian military dictatorship of General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to limit migration to Europe.

Macron was compelled to abandon his plan to build French “hot spot” detention centres in Libya, presented in July amid sharp tensions with Italy, the former colonial power in Libya, as Paris and Rome backed rival armed forces inside Libya, led by General Khalifa Haftar and the Misrata militias, respectively.

India, China pull back from clash over Himalayan ridge

Keith Jones

India and China moved yesterday to defuse their ten-week-old dispute over control of the Doklam or Donglang Plateau—a dispute that brought the nuclear-armed rivals and world’s two most populous countries closer to a military clash than any time since they fought a month-long border war in 1962.

In choreographed steps, India’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement at midday yesterday announcing that an “expeditious disengagement of border personnel … at Doklam has been agreed to and is ongoing.” Approximately ninety minutes later, a Chinese government spokeswoman said Beijing had confirmed “trespassing Indian personnel have all pulled backed to the Indian side of the boundary.” “In accordance” with “the changes of the situation on the ground,” China “will make necessary adjustments” in its deployments, added Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying.

For the preceding two-and-a-half months, hundreds of Indian and Chinese troops had faced off “eye-ball to eye-ball,” separated by little more than a hundred meters, on the Doklam, a remote Himalayan ridge at the tri-junction of the borders of India, China and Bhutan.

Even more ominously, New Delhi and Beijing traded bellicose threats and taunts, poured thousands of troops into the eastern sector of their almost 3500-kilometer disputed border, and otherwise took steps to prepare, and demonstrate their readiness, for armed conflict.

What India is terming the “Doklam Disengagement Understanding” was reached one week before Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is slated to travel to China for the September 3-5 BRICS heads of government summit in Xiamen.

No text of this “Understanding” has been released by either government, nor is any expected to be.

Underscoring that none of the underlying issued that led to the tense military standoff has been resolved, India and China are each suggesting that it was the other that ultimately gave way.

Beijing is emphasizing the withdrawal of all Indian troops from the Doklam to nearby positions in the Indian state of Sikkim. Throughout the stand-off, Beijing demanded an unconditional withdrawal of the Indian forces. It insisted that India’s intervention was unprecedentedly provocative, since New Delhi makes no claim to ownership over the remote ridge, but rather intervened in the name of Bhutan, a small Himalayan state that for decades New Delhi has treated like a protectorate.

At yesterday’s press conference, Hua said China will continue to exercise its “territorial sovereignty” over the Doklam, including through patrols by Chinese border troops.

For its part, New Delhi has emphasized the sequential character of the de-escalation, with China indicating it will reduce its deployments in the disputed area.

Nothing has been said about the issue that prompted India to send troops onto the Doklam on June 18: China’s plans to expand a road on the ridge which it currently controls but Bhutan also claims. India charges Beijing’s road-building violated an agreement with Bhutan to maintain the status quo in all disputed areas pending final delineation of the Bhutan-China border.

For weeks, both the Indian and Chinese press have been full of discussion about the possibility that the Doklam dispute could spark an armed clash.

Various Chinese analysts, cited in that country’s state-owned press, expressed confidence such a conflict could be confined to a short, border war. Indian commentators frequently begged to differ.

As the impasse continued, both the US and Japan intervened to demonstrate their support for India, which they view as a pivotal ally in thwarting China’s “rise.”

Indeed, the principal factor in the deterioration of Indo-Chinese relations of which the Doklam conflict has been both an expression and an accelerant is India’s integration into Washington’s military-strategic offensive against China.

Under Modi’s three-year-old government, India has been transformed into a veritable frontline state of American imperialism’s war drive against China. The Modi government has parroted the provocative US positions on the South China Sea and North Korea disputes, thrown open India’s airbases and ports to routine use by US warplanes and warships, and dramatically expanded strategic cooperation with Washington’s principal Asia-Pacific allies, Japan and Australia.

In response, China has deepened its decades-long alliance with India’s arch-rival, Pakistan. China’s support for Pakistan, including its plans to make it a pivot of its Belt and Road Eurasian infrastructure building scheme, has further exacerbated tensions with New Delhi.

Earlier this month Japan explicitly endorsed India’s stance on the Doklam dispute and compared it to its own territorial disputes with China. Tokyo also let it be known that increased military-security ties with India will be at the top of the agenda when Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visits New Delhi next month

Publicly the Trump administration maintained a position of neutrality on the Doklam dispute, but it took a whole series of actions in recent weeks aimed at highlighting the strength of the Indo-US “global strategic partnership.” In an Indian Independence Day phone call, Trump and Modi agreed to establish a new strategic dialogue involving their countries’ respective foreign and defence ministers. And in his address last week outlining US plans to intensify the Afghan War, Trump supported Indian ambitions to play a greater role in Afghanistan while putting Pakistan on notice that if it doesn’t do America’s bidding it will be punished with cuts in arms sales and military aid.

The US is above all anxious to expand military cooperation with New Delhi in the Indian Ocean, whose sea lanes serve as the conduit for 80 percent of the oil that fuels China’s economy, as well as much of its export trade to Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

In mid-August, in remarks touting America’s eagerness to assist in the modernization of India’s military, the head of the US Pacific Fleet, Admiral Harry Harris, repeated his call for India to join the Pentagon in joint naval patrols in both the Indian and Pacific Oceans.

While India has not yet agreed to that step, it has initiated plans, according to India Today, to “spread its influence and further strengthen its grip” in the Indian Ocean in response to the Doklam war crisis. These include reviving the dormant Indian Ocean Naval Symposium and using it as a platform to develop military cooperation with “friendly” countries, beginning with a major naval exercise in the Bay of Bengal, and expanding naval training for officers from other South Asian and Indian Ocean states.

Most significantly, the Indian Navy will henceforth permanently deploy Indian warships at the western entrance to the Malacca Straits, the most important potential Indian/Pacific Ocean chokepoint and long a key focus of US plans to impose an economic blockade on China in the event of a war or war crisis.

Whilst India and China appear to have stepped back from the brink over the Doklam, the recent crisis has only served to highlight the extent to which South Asia and the Indian Ocean region have been swept into the maelstrom of great power and imperialist conflict.

Significantly and no doubt with the foreknowledge that an agreement to defuse the Doklam crisis was imminent, the head of India’s army, General Bipin Rawat, warned in a public lecture last Saturday that there will be further military crises with China. “Let us say this standoff is resolved,” said Rewat, “our troops should not feel it cannot happen again … So my message to troops is do not let your guard down.”