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Proponents of this nuclear technology argue that it can eliminate large stockpiles of nuclear waste and generate huge amounts of low-carbon electricity. But as the battle over a major fast-breeder reactor in the UK intensifies, skeptics warn that fast-breeders are neither safe nor cost-effective

Plutonium is the nuclear nightmare. A by-product of conventional power-station reactors, it is the key ingredient in nuclear weapons. And even when not made into bombs, it is a million-year radioactive waste legacy that is already costing the world billions of dollars a year to contain.

And yet, some scientists say, we have the technology to burn plutonium in a new generation of “fast” reactors. That could dispose of the waste problem, reducing the threat of radiation and nuclear proliferation, and at the same time generate vast amounts of low-carbon energy. It sounds too good to be true. So are the techno-optimists right — or should the conventional environmental revulsion at all things nuclear still hold?

Fast-breeder technology is almost as old as nuclear power. But after almost two decades in the wilderness, it could be poised to take off. The U.S. corporation GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy (GEH) is promoting a reactor design called the PRISM (for Power Reactor Innovative Small Modular) that its chief consulting engineer and fast-breeder guru, Eric Loewen, says is a safe and secure way to power the world using yesterday’s nuclear waste.

The company wants to try out the idea for the first time on the northwest coast of England, at the notorious nuclear dumping ground at Sellafield, which holds the world’s largest stock of civilian plutonium. At close to 120 tons, it stores more plutonium from reactors than the U.S. and Russia combined.

While most of the world’s civilian plutonium waste is still trapped inside highly radioactive spent fuel, much of that British plutonium is in the form of plutonium dioxide powder. It has been extracted from spent fuel with the intention of using it to power an earlier generation of fast reactors that were never built. This makes it much more vulnerable to theft and use in nuclear weapons than plutonium still held inside spent fuel, as most of the U.S. stockpile is.

The Royal Society, Britain’s equivalent of the National Academy of Sciences, reported last year that the plutonium powder, which is stored in drums, “poses a serious security risk” and “undermines the UK’s credibility in non-proliferation debates.”

Spent fuel, while less of an immediate proliferation risk, remains a major radiological hazard for thousands of years. The plutonium — the most ubiquitous and troublesome radioactive material inside spent fuel from nuclear reactors — has a half-life of 24,100 years. A typical 1,000-megawatt reactor produces 27 tons of spent fuel a year.

None of it yet has a home. If not used as a fuel, it will need to be kept isolated for thousands of years to protect humans and wildlife. Burial deep underground seems the obvious solution, but nobody has yet built a geological repository. Public opposition is high — as successive U.S. governments have discovered whenever the burial ground at Yucca Mountain in Nevada is discussed — and the cost of construction will be huge. So the idea of building fast reactors to eat up this waste is attractive — especially in Britain, but also elsewhere.

Theoretically at least, fast reactors can keep recycling their own fuel until all the plutonium is gone, generating electricity all the while. Britain’s huge plutonium stockpile makes it a vast energy resource. David MacKay, chief scientist at the Department of Energy and Climate Change, recently said British plutonium contains enough energy to run the country’s electricity grid for 500 years.

Fast reactors can be run in different ways, either to destroy plutonium, to maximise energy production, or to produce new plutonium. Under the PRISM proposal now being considered at Sellafield, plutonium destruction would be the priority. “We could deal with the plutonium stockpile in Britain in five years,” says Loewen. But equally, he says, it could generate energy, too. The proposed plant has a theoretical generating capacity of 600 megawatts.

Fast reactors could do the same for the U.S. Under the presidency of George W. Bush, the U.S. launched a Global Nuclear Energy Partnership aimed at developing technologies to consume plutonium in spent fuel. But President Obama drastically cut the partnership’s funding, while also halting work on the planned Yucca Mountain geological repository. “We are left with a million-year problem,” says Loewen. “Right now there isn’t a policy framework in the U.S. for solving this issue.”

He thinks Britain’s unique problem with its stockpile of purified plutonium dioxide could break the logjam. “The UK is our best opportunity,” he told me. “We need someone with the technical confidence to do this.”

The PRISM fast reactor is attracting friends among environmentalists formerly opposed to nuclear power. They include leading thinkers such as Stewart Brand and British columnist George Monbiot. And, despite the cold shoulder from the Obama administration, some U.S. government officials seem quietly keen to help the British experiment get under way. They have approved the export of the PRISM technology to Britain and the release of secret technical information from the old research program. And the U.S. Export-Import Bank is reportedly ready to provide financing.

Britain has not made up its mind yet, however. Having decided to try and re-use its stockpile of plutonium dioxide, its Nuclear Decommissioning Authority has embarked on a study to determine which re-use option to support. There is no firm date, but the decision, which will require government approval, should be reached within two years. Apart from a fast-breeder reactor, the main alternative is to blend the plutonium with other fuel to create a mixed-oxide fuel (mox) that will burn in conventional nuclear power plants.

Britain has a history of embarrassing failures with mox, including the closure last year of a $2 billion blending plant that spent 10 years producing a scant amount of fuel. And critics say that, even if it works properly, mox fuel is an expensive way of generating not much energy, while leaving most of the plutonium intact, albeit in a less dangerous form.

Only fast reactors can consume the plutonium. Many think that will ultimately be the UK choice. If so, the PRISM plant would take five years to license, five years to build, and could destroy probably the world’s most dangerous stockpile of plutonium by the end of the 2020s. GEH has not publicly put a cost on building the plant, but it says it will foot the bill, with the British government only paying by results, as the plutonium is destroyed.

The idea of fast breeders as the ultimate goal of nuclear power engineering goes back to the 1950s, when experts predicted that fast-breeders would generate all Britain’s electricity by the 1970s. But the Clinton administration eventually shut down the U.S.’s research program in 1994. Britain followed soon after, shutting its Dounreay fast-breeder reactor on the north coast of Scotland in 1995. Other countries have continued with fast-breeder research programs, including France, China, Japan, India, South Korea, and Russia, which has been running a plant at Sverdlovsk for 32 years.

But now climate change, with its urgency to reduce fossil fuel use, and growing plutonium stockpiles have changed perspectives once again. The researchers’ blueprints are being dusted off. The PRISM design is based on the Experimental Breeder Reactor No 2, which was switched on at the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois in 1965 and ran for three decades.

Here is how conventional and fast reactors differ. Conventional nuclear reactors bombard atoms of uranium fuel with neutrons. Under this bombardment, the atoms split, creating more neutrons and energy. The neutrons head off to split more atoms, creating a chain reaction. Meanwhile, the energy heats a coolant passing through the reactor, such as water, which then generates electricity in conventional turbines.

The problem is that in this process only around 1 percent of the potential energy in the uranium fuel is turned into electricity. The rest remains locked up in the fuel, much of it in the form of plutonium, the chief by-product of the once-through cycle. The idea of fast reactors is to grab more of this energy from the spent fuel of the conventional reactor. And it can do this by repeatedly recycling the fuel through the reactor.

The second difference is that in a conventional reactor, the speed of the neutrons has to be slowed down to ensure the chain reactions occur. In a typical pressurized-water reactor, the water itself acts as this moderator. But in a fast reactor, as the name suggests, the best results for generating energy from the plutonium fuel are achieved by bombarding the neutrons much faster. This is done by substituting the water moderator with a liquid metal such as sodium.

Proponents of fast reactors see them as the nuclear application of one of the totems of environmentalism: recycling. But many technologists, and most environmentalists, are more skeptical.

The skeptics include Adrian Simper, the strategy director of the UK’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, which will be among those organizations deciding whether to back the PRISM plan. Simper warned last November in an internal memorandum that fast reactors were “not credible” as a solution to Britain’s plutonium problem because they had “still to be demonstrated commercially” and could not be deployed within 25 years.

The technical challenges include the fact that it would require converting the plutonium powder into a metal alloy, with uranium and zirconium. This would be a large-scale industrial activity on its own that would create “a likely large amount of plutonium-contaminated salt waste,” Simper said.

Simper is also concerned that the plutonium metal, once prepared for the reactor, would be even more vulnerable to theft for making bombs than the powdered oxide. This view is shared by the Union of Concerned Scientists in the U.S., which argues that plutonium liberated from spent fuel in preparation for recycling “would be dangerously vulnerable to theft or misuse.”

GEH says Simper is mistaken and that the technology is largely proven. That view seems to be shared by MacKay, who oversees the activities of the decommissioning authority.

The argument about proliferation risk boils down to timescales. In the long term, burning up the plutonium obviously eliminates the risk. But in the short term, there would probably be greater security risks. Another criticism is the more general one that the nuclear industry has a track record of delivering late and wildly over budget — and often not delivering at all.

John Sauven, director of Greenpeace UK, and Paul Dorfman, British nuclear policy analyst at the University of Warwick, England, argued recently that this made all nuclear options a poor alternative to renewables in delivering low-carbon energy. “Even if these latest plans could be made to work, PRISM reactors do nothing to solve the main problems with nuclear: the industry’s repeated failure to build reactors on time and to budget,” they wrote in a letter to the Guardian newspaper. “We are being asked to wait while an industry that has a track record for very costly failures researches yet another much-hyped but still theoretical new technology.”

But this approach has two problems. First, climate change. Besides hydroelectricity, which has its own serious environmental problems, nuclear power is the only source of truly large-scale concentrated low-carbon energy currently available. However good renewables turn out to be, can we really afford to give up on nukes?

Second, we are where we are with nuclear power. The plutonium stockpiles have to be dealt with. The only viable alternative to re-use is burial, which carries its own risks, and continued storage, with vast expense and unknowable security hazards to present and countless future generations.

For me, whatever my qualms about the nuclear industry, the case for nuclear power as a component of a drive toward a low-carbon, climate-friendly economy is compelling. [A few months ago, I signed a letter with Monbiot and others to British Prime Minister David Cameron, arguing that environmentalists were dressing up their doctrinaire technophobic opposition to all things nuclear behind scaremongering and often threadbare arguments about cost. I stand by that view.]

Those who continue to oppose nuclear power have to explain how they would deal with those dangerous stockpiles of plutonium, whether in spent fuel or drums of plutonium dioxide. They have half-lives measured in tens of thousands of years. Ignoring them is not an option.

By Fred Pearce

01 August, 2012

@Yale Environment 360

Fred Pearce is a freelance author and journalist based in the UK. He serves as environmental consultant for New Scientist magazine and is the author of numerous books, including When The Rivers Run Dry and With Speed and Violence.

© 2008-2012 Yale University

The Rev. Daniel Berrigan, undaunted at 92 and full of the fire that makes him one of this nation’s most courageous voices for justice, stands in New York City’s Zuccotti Park. He is there, along with other clergy, to ask Trinity Church, which is the third-largest landowner in Manhattan, to drop charges against Occupy activists, including retired Episcopal Bishop George Packard, for occupying its empty lot on 6th Avenue and Canal Street on Dec. 17. The protesters, slated to go to court Monday, June 11, hoped to establish a new Liberty Square on the lot after being evicted by New York City police from Zuccotti in November. But Trinity had the demonstrators arrested. It chose to act like a real estate company, or the corporation it has become, rather than a church. And its steadfast refusal to drop the charges means that many of those arrested, including Packard, could spend as long as three months in jail.

“This is the only way to bring faith to the public and the public to the faith,” Berrigan said softly as we spoke before the demonstration in the park that was once the epicenter of Occupy Wall Street. “If faith does not touch the lives of others it has no point. Faith always starts with oneself. It means an overriding sense of responsibility for the universe, making sure that universe is left in good hands and the belief that things will finally turn out right if we remain faithful. But I underscore the word ‘faithful.’ This faith was embodied in the Occupy movement from the first day. The official churches remained slow. It is up to us to take the initiative and hope the churches catch up.”

There is one place, Berrigan says, where those who care about justice need to be—in the streets. The folly of electoral politics, the colossal waste of energy invested in the charade of the Wisconsin recall, which once again funneled hopes and passion back into a dead political system and a bankrupt Democratic Party, the failure by large numbers of citizens to carry out mass acts of civil disobedience, will only ensure that we remain hostages to corporate power.

Berrigan believes, as did Martin Luther King, that “the evils of capitalism are as real as the evils of militarism and the evils of racism.” And he has dedicated his life to fighting these evils. It is a life worth emulating.

Berrigan, a Jesuit priest, was ordained 70 years ago. He was a professor at Le Moyne College, Cornel University and Fordham University. His book of poems, “Time Without Number,” won the Lamont Poetry Prize. But it is as a religious radical that he gained national prominence, as well as numerous enemies within the Roman Catholic hierarchy. He and his brother Philip Berrigan, a Josephite priest and World War II combat veteran, along with the Trappist monk Thomas Merton, led some of the first protests against the Vietnam War. In 1967 Philip Berrigan was arrested for nonviolent civil disobedience and was sentenced to six years in prison. Philip’s sentence spurred Daniel to greater activism. He traveled to Hanoi with the historian Howard Zinn to bring back three American prisoners of war. And then he and eight other Catholic priests concocted homemade napalm and on May 17, 1968, used it to burn 378 draft files in the parking lot of the Catonsville, Md., draft board.

“Our apologies, good friends, for the fracture of good order, the burning of paper instead of children,” Berrigan wrote at the time of the destruction of draft files. “How many must die before our voices are heard, how many must be tortured, dislocated, starved, maddened? When, at what point, will you say no to this war?”

Berrigan was a fugitive for four months after being sentenced. He was apprehended by the FBI in the home of the writer William Stringfellow, whose decision to live and write out of Harlem in the 1950s and whose books “Dissenter in a Great Society” and “My People Is the Enemy” were instrumental in prompting me as a seminarian to live and work in Boston’s inner city, in the Roxbury neighborhood. Berrigan was sentenced to three years and released from the federal prison in Danbury, Conn., in 1972. But he did not stop. In 1980 he and Philip, along with six other protesters, illegally entered the General Electric nuclear missile facility in King of Prussia, Pa. They damaged nuclear warhead cones and poured blood onto documents. He was again sentenced and then paroled for time already served in prison. Philip, by the time he died in 2002, had spent more than a decade in prison for acts of civil disobedience. Philip Berrigan, Zinn said in eulogizing him, was “one of the great Americans of our time.”

In a culture that lacks many authentic heroes, that continues to preach that military service is the highest good, Berrigan is a potent reminder of what we must seek to become. His is a life of constant agitation, constant defiance, constant disobedience to systems of power, a life of radical obedience to God. His embrace of what has been called “Christian anarchism,” because of its persistent alienation and hostility to all forms of power, is the most effective form of resistance. And it is the clearest expression of the Christian Gospel. Berrigan has been arrested numerous times—“I don’t waste time counting,” he told me—for also protesting American intervention in Central America and the first Gulf War, as well as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has demonstrated against the death penalty, in support of LGBT rights and against abortion. And even in his 90s he is not finished.

“If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal,” he said to me, quoting Emma Goldman. He added his brother Phil’s reminder that “if enough Christians follow the Gospel, they can bring any state to its knees.”

“Some people today argue that equanimity achieved through inner spiritual work is a necessary condition for sustaining one’s ethical and political commitments,” Berrigan writes. “But to the prophets of the Bible, this would have been an absolutely foreign language and a foreign view of the human. The notion that one has to achieve peace of mind before stretching out one’s hand to one’s neighbor is a distortion of our human experience, and ultimately a dodge of our responsibility. Life is a rollercoaster, and one had better buckle one’s belt and take the trip. This focus on equanimity is actually a narrow-minded, selfish approach to reality dressed up within the language of spirituality.”

“I know that the prophetic vision is not popular today in some spiritual circles,” he goes on. “But our task is not to be popular or to be seen as having an impact, but to speak the deepest truths that we know. We need to live our lives in accord with the deepest truths we know, even if doing so does not produce immediate results in the world.”

Berrigan says he is sustained by his “invisible witnesses”: those he loves, such as the Catholic Worker founder Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton and his brother Philip, who, although all deceased, give him the power and the strength to continue to resist.

“They are not absent,” he said in our conversation. “Their presence is not erased. Their presence is purer and stronger. And their presence is victory over death. It is love. And in their presence I find strength.”

“But what of the price of peace?” Berrigan writes in his book “No Bars to Manhood.” “I think of the good, decent, peace-loving people I have known by the thousands, and I wonder. How many of them are so afflicted with the wasting disease of normalcy that, even as they declare for peace, their hands reach out with an instinctive spasm in the direction of their loved ones, in the direction of their comforts, their home, their security, their income, their future, their plans—that twenty-year plan of family growth and unity, that fifty-year plan of decent life and honorable natural demise. ‘Of course, let us have the peace,’ we cry, but at the same time let us have normalcy, let us lose nothing, let our lives stand intact, let us know neither prison nor ill repute nor disruption of ties.’ ”

Contrast Daniel Berrigan, who lives in a single room with a half dozen other retired priests in a parish house in lower Manhattan, with the imperious rector of Trinity Church, the Rev. Dr. James Cooper. Cooper earns $1.3 million a year, lives in a $5.5 million SoHo townhouse, receives a church allowance to maintain his Florida condo, dips into church funds to take his family on African safaris and oversees the church’s $1 billion in Manhattan real estate holdings from which the church receives as much as $30 million a year. He spent $5 million on a public relations campaign, nearly double the $2.7 million the church gave out in grants, in one year. Ten of the church’s 22-member vestry—its board of directors—have quit over Cooper’s authoritarianism and extravagance.

Cooper, like Berrigan, attended seminary and studied the Gospel, but he has modeled his life after Herod rather than Jesus. He has turned Trinity Church into a temple to greed. He is an appropriate priest for Wall Street. And on Monday, when activists appear in court because he and the other leaders of Trinity Church are determined to prosecute them, Cooper should consider removing the Christian cross from the sanctuary and replacing it with the true symbol he appears to worship—the dollar sign.

“All we have is one another to sustain us,” Berrigan told me. “Community is not magical. It means people are willing to be human beings together. And it means they are willing to pay the price for being human.”

By Chris Hedges

10 June, 2012

@ www.truthdig.com

I woke up at 4:20 this morning, ate four hard-boiled eggs and a blueberry bagel, swallowed down a cup of coffee, and sat down to pray.

And I haven’t eaten or had a drink since.

The clock reads 6:26 pm, and I still have over two hours to go.

This is the first day of Ramadan, the holiest month for Muslims around the world. For 30 days, Muslims fast from all food and drink from sunrise to sunset.

Oh, and me, too.

I decided to observe Ramadan this year, for a number of reasons which I will explain over the next thirty days. I plan to blog about the experience, too.

I have tried my hand at fasting in many different ways over my lifetime, most recently with a regular Friday fast from sunrise to 3 pm. Fasting has never come easy for me – that may be the point!? – but I have certainly come to value the spiritual rigor and discipline of abstaining from food for extended periods of time.

We American Christians aren’t really all that good at fasting; it’s never been high on our list of spiritual disciplines. Even in the one season of the church calendar in which we are supposed to fast, Lent, we manage to find ways to minimize and downplay the sacrificial aspect of the fast. We give up chocolate or soft drinks for an entire forty days – woohoo, that should bring us closer to Christ!

That’s why I’ve always been fascinated by the extreme fasting that most Muslims practice during Ramadan – no food or drink during daylight for thirty whole days!

Recently, I’ve felt a little stale, dry even, in my own spiritual life. I do the normal, daily things; I go through my regular routine of prayer and Bible reading. But it doesn’t seem as rich and as profound. I’ve found myself deeply distracted by things happening in the world, including the great hubbub in the North Texas Conference of the United Methodist Church, concerning the status of the denomination and the fate of our particular bishop.

I took a meeting with my good friend, Shaikh Yaseen, the imam (religious leader) of a mosque in Plano, Texas, part of the Islamic Association of Collin County. We have been friends for several years, and recently I attended the dedication of the new wing of the mosque.

When I told him that I was considering observing Ramadan, he grinned and said, “Brilliant!” in his British accent. “It’s intense, you know.”

I informed him that I was well aware of what such a commitment meant, but asked him to give me a deeper understanding of what it meant.

“Ramadan is a fast of the body, of course,” he said. “But even more importantly, it’s a fast of the hands and feet and eyes, and finally, of the mind. It’s a time to become very aware of God and to be completely obedient.”

I am intrigued by the fact that “Islam” means “submission,” and that, fundamentally, the Islamic faith is an attempt to practice submission to God’s will on a daily basis. This is not a foreign idea to Christians – this was Jesus’ stated approach, as well. He famously said, in the Garden of Gethsemane, “Not my will, but yours be done.” He also once said that whoever did the will of his Father in heaven, were his brother and sister and mother.

The core of both Islamic and Christian faith is the quest to know, and to live within, the will of the one God.

Yaseen went on to explain that, during Ramadan, Muslims read through the Quran, make special financial gifts for the needy, and attend prayer time at the mosque daily. It is, in fact, a month of searching, of devotion, of love of God and neighbor. It is a living symbol of one’s hunger and thirst for the true God.

That’s what appeals to me in my current spiritual tepidity. I feel as if I need a jolt to my senses. And I know that observing Ramadan will deliver a burst of hungering and thirsting for God – a God whom Muslims call “Allah,” and whom Christians call “Father.”

But there’s another reason that I have chosen to “act like a Muslim” over the next thirty days. I truly want to stand in solidarity with my friend, Yaseen, and his congregation in Plano. I want them to know that I do not resent their presence in my community and country. In fact, I am very glad that they are here.

Not only do I stand with the Plano Muslims, but I have also begun to make friends with Muslim refugees from Iraq, Somalia, and Sudan. I’ve previously blogged about Mohammed, a young Sudanese Muslim who often attends the New Day Christian community gatherings that I’m involved with. The last time I served him Communion, he asked if he could pray “for the food” first. After he prayed in Arabic, I happily offered him the bread and cup, symbol of Jesus’ love and sacrifice.

I get to return the favor now. By turning down food and drink during Ramadan, I begin to wear Mohammed’s shoes, live a small part of his life, and catch a glimpse of his own religious commitments and devotion. I don’t know if I can truly love Mohammed until I do this. I don’t believe that I can truly be Yaseen’s friend until, and unless, I attempt to enter into his story, into his life narrative. I must know what it is like to worship God as a Muslim. Perhaps then I will learn how to worship God … as a Christian. If I can just make it until 8:37 …

Editor’s note: The Rev. Wes Magruder wrote the piece below on the first day of Ramadan. He continues to post to his blog about observing the Muslim holiday.

By Wes Magruder

July 27, 2012

@ newmethofesto.com.

Mr. Magruder is associate pastor at First UMC in Rowlett, Texas, and was a UM missionary to Cameroon. Check his blog at newmethofesto.com.

For me , there was no surprise. From the very first day, I was convinced that Yasser Arafat had been poisoned by Ariel Sharon. I even wrote about it several times.

It was a simple logical conclusion.

First, a thorough medical examination in the French military hospital where he died did not find any cause for his sudden collapse and death. No traces of any life-threatening disease were found.

The rumors distributed by the Israeli propaganda machine that Arafat had AIDS were blatant lies. They were a continuation of the rumors spread by the same machine that he was gay – all part of the relentless demonization of the Palestinian leader, which went on daily for decades.

When there is no obvious cause of death, there must be a less obvious one.

Second, we know by now that several secret services possess poisons that leave no routinely detectable trace. These include the CIA, the Russian FSB (successor of the KGB), and the Mossad.

Third, opportunities were plentiful. Arafat’s security arrangements were decidedly lax. He would embrace perfect strangers who presented themselves as sympathizers of the Palestinian cause and often seated them next to himself at meals.

Fourth, there were plenty of people who aimed at killing him and had the means to do so. The most obvious one was our prime minister, Ariel Sharon. He had even talked about Arafat having “no insurance policy” in 2004.

WHAT WAS previously a logical probability has now become a certainty.

An examination of his belongings commissioned by Aljazeera TV and conducted by a highly respected Swiss scientific institute has confirmed that Arafat was poisoned with Polonium, a deadly radioactive substance that avoids detection unless one specifically looks for it.

Two years after Arafat’s death, the Russian dissident and former KGB/FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko was murdered in London by Russian agents using this poison. The cause was discovered by his doctors by accident. It took him three weeks to die.

Closer to home, in Amman, Hamas leader Khaled Mash’al was almost killed in 1997 by the Mossad, on orders of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. The means was a poison that kills within days after coming into contact with the skin. The assassination was bungled and the victim’s life was saved when the Mossad was compelled, after an ultimatum from King Hussein, to provide an antidote in time.

If Arafat’s widow, Suha, succeeds in getting his body exhumed from the mausoleum in the Mukata’a in Ramallah, where it has become a national symbol, the poison will undoubtably be found in his body.

ARAFAT’S LACK of proper security arrangements always astonished me. Israeli Prime Ministers are tenfold better protected.

I remonstrated with him several times. He shrugged it off. In this respect, he was a fatalist. After his life was miraculously preserved when his airplane made a crash landing in the Libyan Desert and the people around him were killed, he was convinced that Allah was protecting him.

(Though the head of a secular movement with a clear secular program, he himself was an observant Sunni Muslim, praying at the proper times and abstaining from alcohol. He did not impose his piety on his assistants.)

Once he was interviewed in my presence in Ramallah. The journalists asked him if he expected to see the creation of the Palestinian state in his lifetime. His answer: “Both I and Uri Avnery will see it in our life.” He was quite sure of this.

ARIEL SHARON’S determination to kill Arafat was well known. Already during the siege of Beirut in Lebanon War I, it was no secret that agents were combing West Beirut for his whereabouts. To Sharon’s great frustration, they did not find him.

Even after Oslo, when Arafat came back to Palestine, Sharon did not let up. When he became Prime Minister, my fear for Arafat’s life became acute. When our army attacked Ramallah during “Operation Defensive Shield” they broke into Arafat’s compound (Mukata’a is Arabic for compound) and came within 10 meters of his rooms. I saw them with my own eyes.

Twice during the siege of many months my friends and I went to stay at the Mukata’a for several days to serve as a human shield. When Sharon was asked why he did not kill Arafat, he answered that the presence of Israelis there made it impossible.

However, I believe that this was only a pretext. It was the US that forbade it. The Americans feared, quite rightly, that an open assassination would cause the whole Arab and Muslim world to explode in anti-American fury. I cannot prove it, but I am sure that Sharon was told by Washington: “On no condition are you allowed to kill him in a way that can be traced to you. If you can do it without leaving a trace, go ahead.”

(Just as the US Secretary of State told Sharon in 1982 that on no condition was he allowed to attack Lebanon, unless there was a clear and internationally recognized provocation. Which was promptly provided.)

In an eerie coincidence, Sharon himself was felled by a stroke soon after Arafat’s death, and has lived in a coma ever since.)

THE DAY Aljazeera’s conclusions were published this week happened to be the 30th anniversary of my first meeting with Arafat, which for him was the first meeting with an Israeli.

It was at the height of the battle of Beirut. To get to him, I had to cross the lines of four belligerents – the Israeli army, the Christian Lebanese Phalange militia, the Lebanese army and the PLO forces.

I spoke with Arafat for two hours. There, in the middle of a war, when he could expect to find his death at any moment, we talked about Israeli-Palestinian peace, and even a federation of Israel and Palestine, perhaps to be joined by Jordan.

The meeting, which was announced by Arafat’s office, caused a worldwide sensation. My account of the conversation was published in several leading newspapers.

On my way home, I heard on the radio that four cabinet ministers were demanding that I be put on trial for treason. The government of Menachem Begin instructed the Attorney General to open a criminal investigation. However, after several weeks, the AG determined that I had not broken any law. (The law was duly changed soon afterwards.)

IN THE many meetings I held with Arafat since then, I became totally convinced that he was an effective and trustworthy partner for peace.

I slowly began to understand how this father of the modern Palestinian liberation movement, considered an arch-terrorist by Israel and the US, became the leader of the Palestinian peace effort. Few people in history have been privileged to lead two successive revolutions in their lifetime.

When Arafat started his work, Palestine had disappeared from the map and from world consciousness. By using the “armed struggle” (alias “terrorism”)’ he succeeded in putting Palestine back on the world’s agenda.

His change of orientation occurred right after the 1973 war. That war, it will be remembered, started with stunning Arab successes and ended with a rout of the Egyptian and Syrian armies. Arafat, an engineer by profession, drew the logical conclusion: if the Arabs could not win an armed confrontation even in such ideal circumstances, other means had to be found

His decision to start peace negotiations with Israel went totally against the grain of the Palestinian National Movement, which considered Israel as a foreign invader. It took Arafat a full 15 years to convince his own people to accept his line, using all his wiles, tactical deftness and powers of persuasion. In the 1988 meeting of the Palestinian parliament-in-exile, the National Council, his concept was adopted: a Palestinian state side-by-side with Israel in part of the country. This state, with its capital in East Jerusalem and its borders based on the Green Line has been, since then, the fixed and unchangeable goal; the legacy of Arafat to his successors.

Not by accident, my contacts with Arafat, first indirectly through his assistants and then directly, started at the same time: 1974. I helped him to establish contact with the Israeli leadership, and especially with Yitzhak Rabin. This led to the 1993 Oslo agreement – which was killed by the assassination of Rabin.

When asked if he had an Israeli friend, Arafat named me. This was based on his belief that I had risked my life when I went to see him in Beirut. On my part, I was grateful for his trust in me when he met me there, at a time when hundreds of Sharon’s agents were looking for him.

But beyond personal considerations, Arafat was the man who was able to make peace with Israel, willing to do so, and – more important – to get his people, including the Islamists, to accept it. This would have put an end to the settlement enterprise.

That’s why he was poisoned.

By Uri Avnery

07 July, 2012
Gush Shalom

Uri Avnery is an Israeli writer and founder of the Gush Shalom peace movement. Avnery sat in the Knesset from 1965–74 and 1979–81

The recent coup against Paraguay’s democratically elected president is not only a blow to democracy, but an attack against the working and poor population that supported and elected President Fernando Lugo, whom they see as a bulwark against the wealthy elite who’ve dominated the country for decades.

The U.S. mainstream media and politicians are not calling the events in Paraguay a coup, since the president is being “legally impeached” by the elite-dominated Paraguayan Congress. But as economist Mark Weisbrot explains in the Guardian:

“The Congress of Paraguay is trying to oust the president, Fernando Lugo, by means of an impeachment proceeding for which he was given less than 24 hours to prepare and only two hours to present a defense. It appears that a decision to convict him has already been written…The main trigger for the impeachment is an armed clash between peasants fighting for land rights with police…But this violent confrontation is merely a pretext, as it is clear that the president had no responsibility for what happened. Nor have Lugo’s opponents presented any evidence for their charges in today’s ‘trial.’ President Lugo proposed an investigation into the incident; the opposition was not interested, preferring their rigged judicial proceedings.”

What was the real reason the right-wing Paraguay Senate wanted to expel their democratically elected president? Another article by the Guardian makes this clear:

“The president was also tried on four other charges: that he improperly allowed leftist parties to hold a political meeting in an army base in 2009; that he allowed about 3,000 squatters [landless peasants] to illegally invade a large Brazilian-owned soybean farm; that his government failed to capture members of a [leftist] guerrilla group, the Paraguayan People’s Army… and that he signed an international [leftist] protocol without properly submitting it to congress for approval.”

The article adds that the president’s former political allies were “…upset after he gave a majority of cabinet ministry posts to leftist allies, and handed a minority to the moderates…The political split had become sharply clear as Lugo publicly acknowledged recently that he would support leftist candidates in future elections.”

It’s obvious that the President’s real crimes are that he chose to ally himself more closely with Paraguay’s left, which in reality means the working and poor masses of the country, who, like other Latin American countries, choose socialism as their form of political expression.

Although Paraguay’s elite lost control of the presidency when Lugo was elected, they used their stranglehold over the Senate to reverse the gains made by Paraguay’s poor. This is similar to the situation in Egypt: when the old regime of the wealthy elite lost their president/dictator, they used their control of the judiciary in an attempt to reverse the gains of the revolution.

Is it fair to blame the Obama administration for the recent coup in Paraguay? Yes, but it takes an introductory lesson on U.S. – Latin American relations to understand why. Paraguay’s right wing – a tiny wealthy elite – has a long-standing relationship with the United States, which has backed dictatorships for decades in the country – a common pattern in most Latin American countries.

The United States promotes the interests of the wealthy of these mostly-poor countries, and in turn, these elite-run countries are obedient to the pro-corporate foreign policy of the United States (The Open Veins of Latin America is an excellent book that outlines the history).

Paraguay’s elite is incapable of acting so boldly without first consulting the United States, since neighboring countries are overwhelmingly hostile to such an act because they fear a U.S.-backed coup in their own countries.

Paraguay’s elite has only the military for internal support, which for decades has been funded and trained by the United States. President Lugo did not fully sever the U.S. military’s links to his country. According to Wikipedia, “The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) provides technical assistance and training to help modernize and professionalize the [Paraguay]military…”

In short, it is not remotely possible for Paraguay’s elite to act without assurance from the United States that it would continue to receive U.S. political and financial support; the elite now needs a steady flow of guns and tanks to defend itself from the poor of Paraguay.

The Latin American countries surrounding Paraguay denounced the events as they unfolded and made an emergency trip to the country in an attempt to stop them. What was the Obama administration’s response? Business Week explains:

“As Paraguay’s Senate conducted the impeachment trial, the U.S. State Department had said that it was watching the situation closely.”

“We understand that Paraguay’s Senate has voted to impeach President Lugo,” said Darla Jordan, a spokeswoman for the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs…“We urge all Paraguayans to act peacefully, with calm and responsibility, in the spirit of Paraguay’s democratic principles.”

Obama might as well have said: “We support the right-wing coup against the elected president of Paraguay.” Watching a crime against democracy happen – even if it is “watched closely” – and failing to denounce it makes one complicit in the act. The State Department’s carefully crafted words are meant to give implicit support to the new illegal regime in Paraguay.

Obama acted as he did because Lugo turned left, away from corporate interests, towards Paraguay’s poor. Lugo had also more closely aligned himself with regional governments which had worked towards economic independence from the United States. Most importantly perhaps is that, in 2009, President Lugo forbid the building of a planned U.S. military base in Paraguay.

What was the response of Paraguay’s working and poor people to their new dictatorship? They amassed outside of the Congress and were attacked by riot police and water cannons. It is unlikely that they will sit on their hands during this episode, since President Lugo had raised their hopes of having a more humane existence.

President Lugo has unfortunately given his opponents an advantage by accepting the rulings that he himself called a coup, allowing himself to be replaced by a Senate-appointed president. But Paraguay’s working and poor people will act with more boldness, in line with the social movements across Latin America that have struck heavy blows against the power of their wealthy elite.

President Obama’s devious actions towards Paraguay reaffirm which side of the wealth divide he stands on. His first coup in Honduras sparked the outrage of the entire hemisphere; this one will confirm to Latin Americans that neither Republicans nor Democrats care anything about democracy.

By Shamus Cooke

24 June, 2012
Countercurrents.org

Shamus Cooke is a social service worker, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action (www.workerscompass.org) He can be reached at shamuscooke@gmail.com

Obama has now been condemned as a war criminal by the UN and by former President Jimmy Carter (backed by other former Democratic Party leaders), among others. The following article is in the current issue of EIR. For the op-ed by Jimmy Carter published in the NY Times, see:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/25/opinion/americas-shameful-human-rights-record.html?_r=1

Mike Billington

Hits ‘Kill, Not Capture’ Policy —

Obama Killer Drones Scored by UN Official

June 25—Anyone who still doubts the Nazi-like character of the Obama Administration needs to examine, closely, how the U.S. killer-drone program operates in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and other places. The Administration, using the CIA and the military’s Joint Special Operations Command, carries out targeted killings in countries with which it is not officially at war, using Reaper and predator drone aircraft, without any sort of accountability or oversight or even any explanation of the legal basis for this campaign.

Among its victims have been at least three American citizens, killed in Yemen, whom the Administration claimed were terrorist facilitators, without ever providing evidence of its claims, never mind any due process for the victims. The White House has refused to officially acknowledge the program, despite Congressional inquiries and Freedom of Information Act lawsuits. However, leaks known to have come from the White House bragged about how the perverse President takes personal responsibility for choosing targets and directing strikes.

Lyndon LaRouche minced no words in describing what the drone program is on June 23. “You know, when the people in the United States know they have a Hitler running the U.S. government, which is what they have—this drone business and similar processes, done personally by the dictator, der Führer—that is a big issue! That any one of you, anyone out there, can suddenly disappear—then it reminds me of a case in Germany, where the town, which was a quiet town, and there’s a big smokestack in a wooded area around that town, and occasionally great billows of smoke were coming out of that smokestack. And life went on otherwise.

And millions of people were killed, in the course of that, and the warfare, just because people didn’t notice what the smokestacks had meant, back then. “And that’s the same thing that’s going on in the United States, under der Führer, now! And people who are less old than I am—there’s only a million or fewer other people still around doing things—but we remember; and other people get the smell, which tells them what we remember.”

Obama Violates Human Rights

This brutal, targeted killing by the Obama Administration, with little regard for civilian casualties, has damaged the United States in more ways than one. Not only has the policy backfired in places like Pakistan and Yemen, where the killings have turned the local populations against the U.S., and increased sympathy for the enemies we’re supposed to be fighting, but it has also damaged our credibility in international fora. How can the U.S. claim to be concerned about human rights violations when it ignores human rights principles in its operations in other countries?

By former President Jimmy Carter’s count, as published in an op-ed in the June 24 New York Times, the Obama Administration’s counter-terrorism policy violates at least 10 of the 30 articles of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, including the one against “cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.” The killer-drone campaign has been the target of investigation by the UN Human Rights Council for some years, and the subject of a report, released last week by Christof Heyns, the UN’s Special Rapporteur for Extrajudicial Killings, Summary and Arbitrary Executions.

Heyns’ report noted that his predecessor had raised concerns about the program in 2008, but that the U.S. has done nothing to bring about improved transparency and accountability of the program since that time. Heyns said that the program not only threatens 60 years of international law, but that some attacks may even constitute war crimes. “Are we to accept major changes to the international legal system which has been in existence since World War II and survived nuclear threats?” he asked. Some states, he said, “find targeted killings immensely attractive. Others may do so in the future. Current targeting practices weaken the rule of law. Killings may be lawful in an armed conflict [such as in Afghanistan], but many targeted killings take place far from areas recognized as being an armed conflict.” He added that there have been reports of secondary drone strikes on rescuers helping the injured from the first drone strike, and if these reports are true, “those further attacks are a war crime.”

Heyns has put the questions of accountability and transparency to the Obama Administration’s representatives, but is not satisfied with the response. “I don’t think we have a full answer to the legal framework and we certainly don’t have the answer to the accountability issues,” he told reporters on June 20. “How are these decisions taken?” he asked. “Also the effect on citizens, civilians, how are these decisions taken in the first place and the numbers that are involved and also the effect in terms of accountability when civilians are also killed?

The standards, also if one looks at the recent newspaper reports that came out, how are the direct participants in hostilities, how are they identified, the legitimate targets as opposed to the civilians? Is it simply everybody who’s around someone who’s considered to be a legitimate target—those things are very worrying and certainly those are things that I will follow up on.”

The U.S. response to Heyns’ report was to say that most of the issues of concern are outside the purview of the Human Rights Council, and besides, the rationale and legal basis for the program has already been articulated, in public speeches by Deputy National Security Advisor John O. Brennan at Harvard Law School on Sept. 16, 2011, and at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars on April 30, 2012 (Brennan simply claimed that the use of drones passed every legal and “ethical” hurdle and called their use “wise” because no US lives are endangered); by Attorney General Eric Holder at Northwestern University School of Law on March 5, 2012 (Holder said that the “due process” required by the US Constitution did not mean “judicial” process – it is adequate that the President approves); and by Department of Defense General Counsel Jeh Johnson at Yale Law School on February 22, 2012 (Johnson said that the entire world is now our battlefield, and therefore any use of deadly force, anywhere, is legal).

Heyns ridiculed the U.S. argument that the drone killings are a legitimate response to 9/11. “It’s difficult to see how any killings carried out in 2012 can be justified as in response to events in 2001,” he said. “Some states seem to want to invent new laws to justify new practices.”

Obama Sets Killer Precedent

The Human Rights Council session opened on June 19 with Heyns presenting his written report, which followed up from the report of his predecessor in 2008, which had taken notice of the lack of a legal framework for drone killings and the lack of transparency into the policy behind them. “The Special Rapporteur reiterates his predecessor’s recommendation that the [U.S.] Government specify bases for decisions to kill rather than capture ‘human targets’ and whether the State in which the killing takes place has given consent,” Heyns wrote (emphasis added).

“It should also specify procedural safeguards in place to ensure in advance that targeted killings comply with international law, as well as the measures taken after such killing to ensure that its legal and factual analysis is accurate.” Heyns concludes that he “is seriously concerned that the practice of targeted killing could set a dangerous precedent, in that any government could, under the cover of counter-terrorism imperatives, decide to target and kill an individual on the territory of any state if it considers that said individual constitutes a threat.”

The figures Heyns reported were astounding. Citing the Pakistan Human Rights Commission, Heyns said U.S. drone strikes killed at least 957 people in Pakistan in 2010 alone. Thousands have been killed in 300 drone strikes there since 2004, 20% of whom are believed to be civilians.

“Although figures vary widely with regard to drone attack estimates, all studies concur on one important point: there has been a dramatic increase in their use over the past three years. While these attacks are directed at individuals believed to be leaders or active members of al Qaeda or the Taliban, in the context of armed conflict, in other instances, civilians have allegedly also perished in the attacks in regions where it is unclear whether there was an armed conflict or not,”Heyns said. Human rights law requires that every effort be made to arrest a suspect, in line with the “principles of necessity and proportionality on the use of force.”

There had been no official or satisfactory response to demands issued by Heyns’ predecessor, Heyns wrote. Heyns’ predecessor, New York University law professor Philip Alston, was also sharply critical of the U.S. killer drone program. In a September 2011 report after he left the UN, Alston wrote that the use of targeted killings by the Obama Administration “represents a fundamental regression in the evolution of both international law and United States domestic law.” Until 9/11, the trend on both international law and U.S. law had been away from targeted killings and assassinations, a trend reversed by the George W. Bush Administration and, even more aggressively, by the Obama Administration.

The complete lack of transparency and accountability of the program, Alston concluded, “means that the United States cannot possibly satisfy its obligations under international law for its use of lethal force” thereby undermining international law and setting precedents “which will inevitably come back to haunt the United States before long, when invoked by other states with highly problematic agendas.

‘The Public Does Not Have a Right To Know’

Not only did the Obama Administration representatives in Geneva refuse to provide satisfactory answers to Heyns’ questions, but back home, the Administration made clear that it has no intention of clarifying the legal basis for the killer-drone program, nor releasing any other pertinent information to the American public regarding the program. In response to an ACLU/New

York Times lawsuit, government lawyers told a Federal judge in New York on June 21 that: “Whether or not the CIA has the authority to be, or is in fact, directly involved in targeted lethal operations remains classified.” Furthermore, “Even to describe the numbers and details of most of these documents [that the suit seeks] would reveal information that could damage the governments counter-terrorism efforts.”

ACLU deputy legal director Jameel Jaffer ridiculed the government’s argument, noting that the drone program is an open secret and that the Administration has boasted about it to reporters. “The public is entitled to know more about the legal authority the administration is claiming and the war the administration is using it for,” Jaffer said in a statement. The ACLU is calling on Obama to reveal more information “about the process by which individuals, including American citizens, are added to government kill lists.”

by Carl Osgood

(BELFAST / Florida) – On 25 June 2012, Nobel Laureate Mairead Maguire issued the call for ‘NO to War in Syria’ and for an all inclusive dialogue to solve the conflict.

Her history proves “that a peaceful and just society can be achieved only through nonviolent means and that the path to peace lies in each of our hearts.”

A Little History of Mairead Corrigan Maguire:

In 1976, in Belfast, thousands of ordinary people throughout Northern Ireland, led by mostly women, demonstrated for an end to the killings known as “The Troubles” which began in 1969. By 1998, over thirty-four hundred people were killed in the crossfire of a brutal war against British colonial interests, revolutionary republicanism, and a revolt against the age-old, oppressive bigotry and fanaticism of religious ideologies.

On August 10, 1976, Máiread Corrigan Maguire’s two nephews and one of her nieces, all little children, were killed on a Belfast street corner.

“A British army patrol shot and killed an IRA gunman, Danny Lennon, whose car then plowed into the sidewalk, killing the children, and severely injuring Mairead’s sister Anne, who died several years later. In a land soaked with blood, their deaths came as a severe shock. Suddenly, thousands of people began to say, “Enough is enough. The killing and violence have to stop.”

Máiread, Betty Williams and Ciaran McKeown, organized weekly peace marches and demonstrations were attended by over half a million people throughout Ireland and England.

Máiread understands “that a peaceful and just society can be achieved only through nonviolent means and that the path to peace lies in each of our hearts.”

Fueled by her faith, Maried, a lone voice of wisdom, compassion and common sense stood on the streets of Belfast and said “No — No to the IRA, No to the UDA and LVF (the Ulster Defence Association and the Loyalist Volunteer Force, unionist/ loyalist paramilitaries), No to the British government’s emergency laws and interrogation centers and human rights abuses, No to injustice, bigotry, discrimination, No to any desecration of human life and dignity.’

In Belfast during the 1980’s and early 90’s, Máiread’s vision of non-violence was dismissed, ridiculed, and ignored, while those who called for retaliatory vengeance and violence were applauded. From the start, Maried understood that her dream had to reach beyond the narrow boundaries of North Ireland to embrace a non-violent future for all humanity.

After a year of political negotiations, a breakthrough settlement was reached on Good Friday 1998, bringing Northern Ireland to an Easter dawn of peace.

Maried and Betty were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1977 for what had once been unimaginable became reality and Maried continues to envision the unimaginable: justice and peace in Israel Palestine.

It was during my November 2008 trip to Israel Palestine when I met Mairead Maguire:

Mairead Maguire’s 25 June 2012 statement:

People around the world are deeply concerned about the ongoing crisis in Syria.

While we are being presented with some perspective of what is occurring on the ground to the people of Syria, the door seems closed to others.

We search for voices we can trust, voices which point to a peaceful, lasting solution to the conflict. We search for truth because it is truth which will set the Syrian people free.

Truth is difficult to find, so through the haze of conflicting narratives we must inevitably hear the voices and wisdom of men and women of peace in Syria.

Many may believe that there is a fight going on in Syria for ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’.

We can be seduced into thinking there is a magic wand or instant formula to mix that will create a democratic country, but there are none.

If it is a democracy a people want they must strive for it in their own way.

It is said the Greek idea of democracy was that people would be equally valued.

This is something every society has to strive for at every point in its history; it itself is a ‘revolutionary’ concept and a nonviolent revolutionary action.

Strive to value everyone equally. It is an idea, a motivation for a better world that doesn’t require blood; it requires the hard work of people and the nurturing of a community spirit; a constant growing of peace and it starts within each human heart.

Who are the voices of peace in regard to the crisis in Syria?

Many of them we cannot hear from where we are standing. They are the mothers and father and children who want to leave their homes to walk to market or to school without fear. They are the people, who have been working hard for Syria, for the idea of Syria as a secular and modern country.

There are some Syrian voices that have been heard consistently since the beginning of the crisis. Many of them are anonymous and they speak to us about injustices and atrocities. Numbers are given and fingers are pointed. The blame may be apportioned correctly or it may not.

Everything is happening too quickly; commentators and politicians are making decisions with haste and looking only in one corner for support for their certainty. But in the heat of the madness of violent ethnic/political conflict we must listen and ask questions and hear and speak with some uncertainty because it is certainty that can take a people and a country in a rush to war.

The face of the Mufti of Syria is hardly known in the western world, but if we have learned anything from past conflict, it is the importance of all inclusive dialogue. He and many other Syrians who have peace in their hearts should be invited to sit with a council of elders from other countries, to tell of their stories and proposals for ways forward for the Syrian people.

The United Nations was not set up to provide an arena for the voices and games of the powerful; rather it should be a forum for such Syrian voices to be heard.

We need to put ourselves in the shoes of the Syrian people and find peaceful ways forward in order to stop this mad rush towards a war the mothers and fathers and children of Syria do not want and do not deserve.

We all know there are Imams, priests and nuns, fathers, mother, young people all over Syria crying out for peace and when the women in hijabs shout to the world after a bombing or a massacre in Syria ‘haram, haram’ let us hear and listen to them.

We are sure there are many heroes in Syria among them, Christian Patriarchs, Bishops, Priests, and religious.

A modern hero of peace, one whose name we do know and whose voice we have heard is Mother Agnes Mariam*.

In her community her voice has been clear, pure and loud. And it should be so in the West. Like many people in Syria she has been placed in life threatening situations, but for the sake of peace she has chosen to risk her own existence for the safety and security of others. She has spoken out against the lack of truth in our media regarding Syria and about the terror and chaos which a ‘third force’ seems to be spreading across the country.

Her words confront and challenge us because they do not mirror the picture of events in Syria we have built up in our minds over many months of reading our newspapers and watching the news on our televisions.

Much of the terror has been imported, we learn from her.

She can tell us about the thousands of Christian refugees, forced to flee their homes by an imported Islamist extreme. But Mother Agnes Mariam’s concerns, irrespective of religion, are for all the victims of the terror and conflict, as ours must be.

In all our hearts we know War is not the answer for Syria (Nor for Iran).

Intervention in Syria would only make things worse.

I believe all sides are committing war crimes and the provision of arms will only results in further death. The US/UK/NATO and all foreign governments should stay out of Syria and keep their funding and troops out of Syria.

We should support those Syrians who work for peace in Syria and who seek a way of helping the 22 million or so people of Syria to resolve their own conflict without furthering the chaos or violence.

*Mother Agnes Miriam of the Cross is a greek-Catholic (Melkite) nun of Lebanese / Palestinian descent and has lived and worked in Syria for 18 years. She restored the ancient ruined monastery of St. James the Mutilated at Qara, in Homs province where she founded an order which serves the local and wider community. In 2010 the monastery welcomed 25,000 visitors both Syrian and international. http://www.maryakub.org/index_en.html

-Mairead Maguire

The Peace People, 224 Lisburn Road, Belfast BT9 6GE, Northern IrelandPhone: 0044 (0) 28 9066 346 Email: info@peacepeople.com

www.peacepeople.com

By Eileen Fleming

28 June, 2012
wearewideawake.org

Eileen Fleming, Citizen of CONSCIENCE for House of Representatives 2012

Founder of WeAreWideAwake.org
Staff Member of Salem-news.com , A Feature Correspondent for Arabisto.com and Columnist forVeteranstoday.com

Producer “30 Minutes with Vanunu” and “13 Minutes with Vanunu”

Author of “Keep Hope Alive” and “Memoirs of a Nice Irish American ‘Girl’s’ Life in Occupied Territory” andBEYOND NUCLEAR: Mordechai Vanunu’s FREEDOM of SPEECH Trial and My Life as a Muckraker: 2005-2010

Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani’s ouster this week was more than merely a significant development for national politics, it was an unequivocal message to the people of Pakistan that ineptness, subservience, and corruption will not go unpunished. Though it is fashionable to conclude that Gilani was dismissed because of his failure to investigate charges against President Zardari – undoubtedly a major part of this story – the reality is that his ineffectiveness in dealing with a range of issues from energy policy to bilateral relations with the United States is what cost him the premiership.

Political power in Pakistan – always a complex issue – is now up for grabs.  The ruling Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) has lost its legitimacy in the eyes of the people while other parties struggle to establish a significant base of support. In the background, the military leadership, which has, since the early days of Pakistan’s independence, played a dominant role in the political establishment, grows ever stronger. With such doubt surrounding the nation’s political future, and Pakistan at the center of some of the most pressing global issues of our time, the one thing that is certain is that the eyes of the world are watching Islamabad closely.

Corruption and Contempt

The event, which directly precipitated Gilani’s ouster, was the contempt of court charge in relation to his refusal to investigate his close ally, President Zardari, and the outstanding corruption charges against him. Despite being ordered by the court to lead a probe into allegations of money laundering through Swiss bank accounts, Gilani refused and continued in his role as Prime Minister, thumbing his nose at the order issued by the Supreme Court. This week, this brazen disregard for the judiciary finally caught up with the Prime Minister.

Although Gilani defied the court order, this was not his only judicial transgression. As Pakistani journalist Atif K. Butt noted in an interview for StopImperialism.com, “Gilani and other members of the PPP continuously ridiculed the court publicly, in gatherings and on television.” This sort of blatant disrespect undoubtedly angered the Supreme Court Justices and fueled their desire to remove the Prime Minister.

Despite the personal animosity that exists between the PPP and the judiciary, this was merely the legal explanation for the Prime Minister’s removal.  The series of mistakes and sheer ineptitude of the PPP in dealing with the energy crisis, maintaining productive relations with the United States while protecting Pakistani sovereignty, and addressing the growing unrest in Balochistan and elsewhere, caused the people of Pakistan to be fed up with Gilani and, possibly, made the political decision a “no brainer” for the court.

PPP Loses the People

The recent rioting throughout the Punjab province is in direct response to the continued policies of “load-shedding” which are the result of Gilani and Zardari’s failure to address the energy crisis effectively. Pakistan, which suffers from a severe energy deficit, has been clamoring for practical solutions to the crisis while the PPP could only offer load-shedding – the policy of shutting off power for hours at a time – as a temporary solution. The people began to take to the streets and, as one might imagine, protests turned to riots in many cities. This sort of unrest on the streets contributed to the climate of anger and frustration directed toward the PPP for which, it seems, Gilani became the scapegoat and sacrificial lamb.

Although the energy crisis formed the immediate backdrop, perhaps the most critical issue for which the PPP was blamed is the continued degeneration of relations with the United States. In the wake of the repeated violations by the US of Pakistan’s sovereignty, the people held the ruling party responsible for having ineffectively dealt with the Americans. The raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound, the NATO air strike that killed 24 Pakistani military officers and subsequent NATO supply route closures, created tremendous animosity within the population. However, the indignation was not merely directed toward Washington. Instead, the people looked at the lack of leadership in Islamabad – the government’s inability to take a hardline position with the Obama administration – as a sign of both weakness and ineptitude. Journalist Atif K. Butt notes that, “The people of Pakistan want to have positive relations with the United States however they feel that, without taking a tough stance on the provocations, the PPP’s weakness only emboldened Washington and contributed to the breakdown of diplomatic relations.”

The mismanagement of the relationship with the US, in light of the fact that Pakistan has sacrificed more than any other country to actively contribute to the so-called War on Terror, was too much for the people to bear.  This feeling of distrust, coupled with the anger caused by the continued energy crisis, likely played a significant role in motivating the judiciary to act and to remove Gilani now, rather than later. As in the United States and elsewhere, everything in Pakistan is political and, like any other politicians, the Supreme Court acted in their own political interests and ousted Gilani.

Who Will Lead?

The question of Pakistan’s political future is a complex one. There are some who see this moment as the opportunity for yet another military takeover of the government as has happened numerous times in the country’s history. There are other analysts who believe that there will be new elections held and that another party may emerge to lead the formation of a coalition government. Regardless of who rises to take the reins of leadership, they will face a very difficult challenge.

The demise of the PPP has opened the door for other parties to establish themselves as significant players on the political scene. Among these parties are the conservative Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) and the fast-growing Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) led by national sports hero turned politician Imran Khan. The PTI, which is still in the infant stages of development into a major political force, represents a possible change on the political horizon. As a party representing a progressive agenda, Khan and his allies might be poised to win a significant proportion of seats in the parliament and establish themselves as legitimate political force.

Despite the range of options in terms of the civilian government, there is always the looming possibility of a military takeover. Army General Kayani leads a military faction that wields considerable power both in terms of the people of Pakistan and foreign policy and diplomacy. They are very close with the Chinese, generally distrustful of the United States, and much more rigidly represent what could be called a hardline approach to diplomacy. For these reasons, their reputation among the people is generally positive and, though most Pakistanis do not want a return of military rule, there is a significant portion of the population that would not see it as an entirely negative development.

The Challenges of the Future

However the next government is constituted, it will undoubtedly face very complex challenges the moment it takes over. The energy crisis looms large in the public mind, as does the issue of Pakistani-US and Pakistani-Chinese relations. In addition, the myriad development projects and other forms of economic investment both nationally and internationally will have to be evaluated along with addressing the unrest in Balochistan and militancy along the border with Afghanistan.

Pakistan finds itself facing a severe energy deficit that must be dealt with by the incoming government. A number of international investments, some in progress with others still in the planning stages, are designed to address this. The most significant, both economically and geopolitically, is the controversial Iran-Pakistan pipeline. This project, designed to provide Pakistan with immense amounts of energy from neighboring Iran, has undergone intense scrutiny in light of the economic warfare in the form of sanctions and other extreme measures initiated against Iran by the United States. This pipeline, dubbed the “Peace Pipeline,” is an essential part of any long-term solution to Pakistan’s energy woes. In addition to this project, the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline is also a critical artery for the energy future of the country. Likewise, the CASA-1000 will bring significant amounts of electricity to Pakistan from the former Soviet republics of Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. All of these projects represent a viable economic and energy future for the nation, the kind of future that seems to have become impossible with PPP at the helm.

Aside from energy-related issues, the new government faces difficult challenges with regard to relations with both the United States and China. While the US relationship seems to become more adversarial by the day, Pakistan’s ties with China, though strong as ever, also face significant obstacles. China looks to Islamabad to develop the infrastructure connecting the Chinese-funded Port of Gwadar to the rest of the country, thereby allowing the Chinese to utilize the port to its full potential, providing a critical land-based entry point for Chinese imports coming from Africa and the Middle East. There is, of course, the potential too that some of the pipeline projects could, in the future, be extended into China, completely altering the face of the Asian economic region. In addition, China and Pakistan must cooperate on eradicating the terrorist group known as the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), also referred to as the “Chinese Taliban” which uses the Waziri region as a base of operations. For these reasons, along with desire of Islamabad to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the new government must be quick to establish a positive working relationship with China while, on the other hand, working to mend fences with the Americans.

Domestic security concerns will also dominate the agenda. The new government must address the militant separatist movement in Balochistan, which seeks to destabilize Pakistan through terrorism, kidnapping, and other means. This conflict is understood as being fomented by outside intelligence agencies and will require a very delicate touch. Separately, the new government must work to carve out its place in a post-occupation Afghanistan – a nation that will be vital to Pakistan and the region’s future.

The ouster of PM Gilani and the fall of the PPP create more questions than answers. Pakistan’s future depends on a recognition of the failures of elected officials and the inadequacies of Pakistani development. However, at the same time, Pakistan is a nation of potential prosperity. If the new government can reconcile a broken political system with the tremendous economic, political and diplomatic potential, Pakistan is poised to become a regional power able to exercise leadership and promote peace on the world stage.

By Eric Draitser

Myanmar has been gripped by abhorrent ethnic violence in recent weeks – violence which has begun to cast doubt on the democratic future of the country. The sectarian and religious bloodletting between the Buddhist Rakhine people and the Muslim minority known as the Rohingya, has led to an international outcry and a swift military response from the government. This sort of violence, something which is not entirely new in the region, threatens to tarnish the reforms made by the nation in the last twelve months.

However, with the eyes of the world focused on the Southeast Asian country, a much more significant and covert war is taking shape: a proxy war in which the United States and its allies use a variety of violent and non-violent means in their quest to block Chinese economic investment and development in Myanmar.  It is against this backdrop that the recent changes, ranging from the ascension of Aung San Suu Kyi to the current ethnic strife in Sittwe, must be understood.

Violent Conflict and Chinese Interests

The armed conflicts in Myanmar correspond directly to large-scale Chinese development projects throughout the country.  Essentially, long-standing ethnic and sectarian conflicts are being fomented by international forces, which seek to destabilize the country, thereby loosening the grip of Chinese economic investment in the region. This is not to say that the conflicts are entirely fabricated but, as in Syria, Libya, and countless other examples around the world, the issue is spun by corporate-controlled media to obscure the reality that the issue is being manipulated from behind the scenes by the forces of Western imperialism.

The violence that has erupted among the Rakhine and Rohingya groups has shocked the world. However, seen from a more objective, less emotional perspective, the recent violence serves a vital geopolitical function for the United States. The center of the recent violence has been the city of Sittwe, capital of the Rakhine State on the northwestern coast of the country. This city is at the center of one of China’s most crucial international investments, the Sittwe port and pipeline project. This project, a twin oil and gas pipeline, which would traverse Myanmar to link China’s southwestern Yunnan province with the Indian Ocean would, consequently, provide the Chinese land-based access to energy imports from Africa and the Middle East. Because of US naval dominance, not being completely reliant on commercial shipping is an integral aspect of the overall Chinese strategy.

The pipeline itself is not the only issue for the Chinese. Sittwe is the site of the major Chinese-funded port, which, aside from being the starting point of the pipeline, is a vital access point to Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent. Imports such as minerals and other raw materials from Africa as well as oil from the Middle East would be shipped through this port (along with the Pakistani port of Gwadar) for sale on the Chinese market. It is for this reason that Sittwe is of crucial significance to Chinese economic development. Naturally, as Sittwe and the rest of the Rakhine state descends into chaos and the international community clamors for some form of intervention, the port, pipeline and other projects cannot continue as planned.

Sittwe and the Rakhine region are not the only flashpoint in this proxy war against Chinese economic development. The Kachin province in northern Myanmar has seen its own share of violent conflict. The Kachin rebels, fighting the central government, have only recently stepped up their guerilla war against the government. This increased violence is understood to be a serious threat to the stability of the region and, consequently, the viability and security of the Chinese pipeline which must travel through Kachin before terminating in Southwest China. In fact, the Chinese are reportedly paying Burmese soldiers in the North to provide additional security for the project in light of the recent violence. This fact indicates not only the strategic necessity of the project for the Chinese but also their understanding that the violence in the region is aimed as much at them as it is at the government of Myanmar.

Aside from the pipeline, the Chinese are heavily invested in a number of hydroelectric dam projects, none bigger or more economically significant than the Myitsone Dam Project, a large scale investment estimated at upwards of $4 billion. The dam, which would provide power primarily for Southwest China but also for Myanmar to a lesser extent, is part of a development plan by the Chinese to address the vital issue of energy generation, particularly for interior China. However, due to the violence in the region as well as environmental concerns raised by local residents (as well as the possibility of Western arm-twisting), the project was recently put on hold. Naturally, this is a source of tremendous irritation for Beijing, which sees this as yet another example of Western meddling in the affairs of Chinese economic development.

The armed conflicts throughout the country have made the investment climate in Myanmar very difficult for the Chinese. In spite of this however, the Chinese are still determined to reassert their influence. They remain close allies of the government, which, despite recent overtures to the United States and the West more generally, still remains somewhat skeptical of the motivations of Washington.

Western “Soft Power” to Block the Chinese

One might ask how the United States actually fits into these various conflicts in Myanmar. It is true that there are no “boots on the ground” as far as anyone knows’, nor is Washington directly intervening in the country. Instead, as with so many other strategically crucial regions of the world, the US employs soft power to achieve its strategic aims. One prime example of this sort of power-projection comes in the form of NGOs operating inside Myanmar with funding from the US government. Additionally, we see India, and other nations traditionally at odds with China, being used as a wedge to pry Myanmar out of the Chinese sphere of influence. However, there is no better example of the use of soft power in Myanmar than the rise of Aung San Suu Kyi to international superstardom.

It would not be fair to argue that Aung San Suu Kyi and the pro-democracy movement in Myanmar is entirely a tool of the West. It certainly has merits and has evolved out of a genuine desire of much of the population to see democratic reforms and the liberalization of their country. However, it would be intellectually dishonest not to point out the obvious connections between the policies of the US State Department, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and the pro-democracy movement embodied by the Nobel Prize winner and darling of the West, Suu Kyi.

For more than a decade, the National Endowment for Democracy has been active inside the country, ostensibly supporting the pro-democracy movement. However, considering the fact that that the NED and its various subsidiary organizations are directly funded by the US State Department, it is logical, and indeed correct, to conclude that the groups receiving their funding and support are aligned with US interests. In fact, we’ve seen this as recently as this week, when Suu Kyi made her public remarks warning against investment with Chinese firms while supporting dealing with Western oil companies such as Chevron and Total. This is a prime example of the way in which Suu Kyi and her supporters represent the interests of the United States as much as they represent those of the people of Myanmar.

Beyond just Suu Kyi and her political influence in the country, the National Endowment for Democracy has a strong grassroots presence in the country, helping to shape discourse by funding dozens of “educational institutions”; naturally these institutions are amenable to US interests in the country. Additionally, the NED uses innocuous phrases such as “freedom of Information”, “transparency”, and “NGO strengthening” to describe the multitude of activities in which it is engaged. Here, it should be noted that I am not arguing that all of these initiatives are bad. On the contrary, some of them empower local people in various fields or help raise important issues. However, the overall scope of the engagement illustrates not just an interest in the future of Myanmar, but an active participation in shaping the next generation of leaders who will look away from China and towards Washington.

It is important to note that the NED has been active in the Rakhine region for years, working precisely with the Rohingya population now embroiled in this violent conflict. In fact, in a 2006 report funded by the NED, we see clearly the way in which the United States uses the cover of human rights and the rights of children to undermine and otherwise subvert the government.  This should not be taken as suggesting that this ethnic minority is irrelevant or that their struggle is without some merit.  Rather, it is simply to point out the way in which the US, under the auspices of human rights and children, is able to entrench itself inside the country and its institutions.

As Myanmar undergoes the transition to a more open, democratic society, so too does it open itself to the dangers and fruits of international engagement. While the country has the opportunity to enrich itself and bring economic and social benefits to the people, it also runs the risk of allowing itself to be part of the global strategy of the United States to contain China and prevent its economic expansion. As its geographical location indicates, Myanmar finds itself at the center of a geopolitical and economic proxy war. As the imperialist ruling class of the West desperately clings to power in hopes of extending their hegemony for another century, so too does China seek to gain the status of superpower on the world stage. For Myanmar, this could be an economic boom: the chance for wealth and prosperity for a people who have suffered under the yoke of imperialist domination for the last three centuries. However, equally important, will be the decisions made in the next few years, which will have serious implications for Myanmar’s present and its future.

By Eric Draitser

As public interest in African affairs briefly found a place in mainstream talking points following a controversial viral video campaign about Ugandan rebel group, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), both the United States and the African Union are mobilizing military forces to Central Africa to counter further threats to civilian safety posed by the group. Following the US deployment of one hundred military personnel to Uganda in 2011, the African Union has recently deployed a 5,000-solider brigade to LRA affected areas, tasked with pursuing the group and its leader, Joseph Kony. In the United States, a new bill co-authored by U.S. Representative Edward Royce has been introduced to the Congress calling for the further expansion of regional military forces into the nations of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Central African Republic and the newly formed South Sudan.

Although the Lord’s Resistance Army has been accused of recruiting child soldiers and conducting crimes against humanity throughout its two-decade campaign for greater autonomy against the Ugandan government, the group is presently comprised of less than two hundred soldiers and remains a questionable threat. Meanwhile, China’s deepening economic engagement in Africa and its crucial role in developing the mining and industrial sectors of several nations is reportedly creating “deep nervousness” in the West, according to David Shinn, former US ambassador to Burkina Faso and Ethiopia. As the Obama administration claims to welcome the peaceful rise of China on the world stage, recent policy shifts toward an increased US military presence in several alleged LRA hotspots threaten deepening Chinese commercial activity in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, widely considered the world’s most resource rich nation.

As China maintains its record of consistently strong economic performance, Washington is crusading against China’s export restrictions on minerals that are crucial components in the production of consumer electronics such as flat-screen televisions, smart phones, laptop batteries, and a host of other products. As the United States, European Union and Japan project international pressure on the World Trade Organization and the World Bank to block financing for China’s extensive mining projects, US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton’s irresponsible accusations of China perpetuating a creeping “new colonialism” of the African continent remain rather telling. As China is predicted to formally emerge as the world’s largest economy in 2016, the successful aggregation of African resources remains a key component to its ongoing rivalry with the United States.

The villainous branding of Joseph Kony may well be deserved, however it cannot be overstated that the LRA threat is wholly misrepresented in recent pro-intervention US legislation. The vast majority of LRA attacks have reportedly taken place in the northeastern Bangadi region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, located on the foot of a tri-border expanse between the Central African Republic and South Sudan. However, the small number of deaths reported by official sources in recent times relies on unconfirmed reports, where LRA activity is “presumed” and “suspected”. Considering the Congo’s extreme instability after decades of foreign invasion, falsely crediting the LRA with the region’s longstanding cases of violence for political gain becomes relatively simple for those looking to gain enormous contracts for Congolese resources.

In a 2010 white paper entitled “Critical Raw Materials for the EU,” the European Commission cites the immediate need for reserve supplies of tantalum, cobalt, niobium, and tungsten among others; the US Department of Energy 2010 white paper “Critical Mineral Strategy” also acknowledged the strategic importance of these key components. In 1980, Pentagon experts acknowledged dire shortages of cobalt, titanium, chromium, tantalum, beryllium, and nickel, eluding that rebel insurgencies in the Congo inflated the cost of such materials. Additionally, the US Congressional Budget Office’s 1982 report “Cobalt: Policy Options for a Strategic Mineral” notes that cobalt alloys are critical to the aerospace and weapons industries and that 64% of the world’s cobalt reserves lay in the Katanga Copper Belt, running from southeastern Congo into northern Zambia.

During the Congo Wars of the 1996 to 2003, the United States provided training and arms to Tutsi Rwandan and Ugandan militias who later invaded the Congo’s mineral rich eastern provinces to pursue extremist Hutu militias following the Rwandan genocide. Although over six million deaths were attributed to the conflict in the Congo, findings of the United Nations suggest that neighboring regimes in Ugandan, Rwanda and Burundi benefitted immensely from illegally harvested conflict minerals, later sold to various multinational corporations for use in consumer goods. The US defense industry relies on high quality metallic alloys indigenous to the region, used primarily in the construction of high-performance jet engines. The sole piece of legislation authored by President Obama during his time as a Senator was S.B. 2125, the Democratic Republic of the Congo Relief, Security, and Democracy Promotion Act of 2006; Section 201(6) of the bill specifically calls for the protection of natural resources in the troubled regions of eastern Congo.

The Congo maintains the second lowest GDP per capita despite having an estimated $24 trillion in untapped raw minerals deposits; it holds more than 30% of the world’s diamond reserves and 80% of the world’s coltan, the majority of which is exported to China for processing into electronic-grade tantalum powder and wiring. The control of strategic resources in the eastern Congo is a vital element of the ongoing US-China rivalry, as Chinese commercial activities in the DRC continue to increase in the fields of mining and telecommunications. The Congo exported $1.4 billion worth of cobalt to China between 2007 and 2008, while the majority of Congolese raw materials like cobalt, copper ore and a variety of hard woods are exported to China for further processing; 90% of the processing plants in resource rich southeastern Katanga province are owned by Chinese nationals.

In 2008, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) blocked a trade deal between a consortium of Chinese companies, who were granted the rights to mining operations in Katanga in exchange for US$6 billion in infrastructure investments, including the construction of two hospitals, four universities and a hydroelectric power project. The framework of the deal allocated an additional $3 million to develop cobalt and copper mining operations in Katanga, but the IMF argued that the agreement between China and the DRC violated the foreign debt relief program for so-called HIPC (Highly Indebted Poor Countries) nations. The marginalization of China by financial regulatory bodies is a strong indication of its throttling rivalry with American and European corporate communities, many of who fear being diluted in China’s increasing economic orbit.

While subtle economic warfare rages between partnered superpowers, the increasing western military presence in the Congo is part of a larger program to expand AFRICOM, the United States Africa Command, through a proposed archipelago of American military bases in the region. In 2007, US State Department advisor Dr. J. Peter Pham offered the following on AFRICOM and its strategic objectives of “protecting access to hydrocarbons and other strategic resources which Africa has in abundance, a task which includes ensuring against the vulnerability of those natural riches and ensuring that no other interested third parties, such as China, India, Japan, or Russia, obtain monopolies or preferential treatment.” The push into Africa has more to do with destabilizing the deeply troubled Democratic Republic of the Congo and capturing its strategic reserves of cobalt, tantalum, gold and diamonds. More accurately, the US is poised to employ a scorched-earth policy by creating dangerous war-like conditions in the Congo, prompting the mass exodus of Chinese investors. Similarly to the Libyan conflict, the Chinese returned after the fall of Gaddafi to find a proxy government only willing to do business with the western nations who helped it into power. The European Union’s recently offered contribution of $12 million to joint military operations against the ailing Lord’s Resistance Army suggests signs of a coming resource war in Central Africa.

By Nile Bowie