Why Putin Is Hell-Bent on Capturing Ukraine’s Nuclear Reactors

The takeover of Ukraine’s nuclear facilities is a vital part of the Kremlin’s “fear and control” strategy in the war.

Photo Illustration by Kristen Hazzard/The Daily Beast/Getty

Jeremy Kryt
Published Mar. 13, 2022 8:47PM ET

The world watched in horror as shelling by Russian forces set fire to part of the Zaporizhzhya nuclear plant in southeastern Ukraine. Immediate catastrophe was averted when the flames were put out, but the plant—which is home to six separate reactors—was captured by the Kremlin’s forces on March 4.

Russia has also taken control of the nuclear facility at Chernobyl, which although inactive, still houses deadly radioactive materials. The situation at Chernobyl took a dramatic turn for the worse on March 9 when the power supply was cut off and the electricity-dependent cooling system for spent nuclear rods was endangered. A partial outage at Zaporizhzhya followed a day later.

Ukraine is home to three additional nuclear facilities totaling nine more reactors, and some observers have theorized those are also likely to be targeted as Russia seeks to gain control over the nation’s power supply.

“The Russians will want to secure the other three Ukrainian nuclear facilities as part of this strategy,” Dr. Robert J. Bunker, research director at the security consultancy ℅ Futures LLC, told The Daily Beast. Bunker hypothesized that an “airborne assault could be utilized as an early component of a ground force offensive drive” to seize one or more of the remaining plants. If or when Russian forces are able to regain the offensive, “the three reactors at the South Ukraine facility would be the next logical target in this regard.”


A satellite image shows military vehicles alongside Chernobyl nuclear power plant on Feb. 25, 2022.
BlackSky via Reuters

So what’s behind the Russians’ obsession with Ukraine's nuclear plants?

Let’s start with Russia’s own stated reason for going after the plants, which is that Kyiv had been using material at the sites to build a thermononuclear bomb.Those charges escalated on March 9, when Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharaova told Russian media that Ukraine intended to use its alleged nuclear arsenal against Russia.

The Foreign Ministry Twitter account recorded Zakharova as saying that Russia had occupied Chernobyl and Zaporizhzhya “exclusively to prevent any attempts to stage nuclear provocations, which is a risk that obviously exists.”

U.S. experts interviewed by The Daily Beast pushed back hard on those claims.

“That was a baseless invention by Moscow to justify its invasion and seizures of nuclear power plants,” said retired military intelligence officer Hal Kempfer.

Kempfer, who formerly directed a coalition task force that studied weapons of mass destruction [WMDs], accused Russian president Vladimir Putin of “creating information or ‘facts’ to fit an official narrative, no matter how fake, illogical, ridiculous, unsubstantiated or easily refuted they may be,” said Kempfer, who called the claim that Ukraine had intended to use WMDs “truly Orwellian.”

Fear is a very powerful weapon in warfare.

Bunker, a former professor at the U.S. Army War College, agreed.

“I think the Russian narrative is meant to obscure Putin's strategic objectives as well as use propaganda to make the Ukrainian defenders appear as aggressors and war criminals that must be stopped,” he said. “Also, if a radiological release or nuclear event took place the Russians might try to label it as part of a false flag Ukrainian or even NATO backed plot.”

There might not be a WMD plot afoot, but that doesn’t mean the reactors aren’t valuable targets, in particular because about 50 percent of Ukraine’s electricity is generated by nuclear power.

“There is strategic operation value in controlling energy and communication centers and choke points,” said retired Marine Colonel G.I. Wilson, whose writings originated the popular concept of Fourth Generation Warfare. “That aspect has considerable merit [for the Russians].”

According to Kempfer, part of that merit comes from the fact that such control over the electrical grid would allow the Kremlin to turn the lights off at will over vast swaths of Ukraine.

“Turning off the power nationwide—as [Russian force] have done on a smaller scale in Mariupol—in the middle of winter creates mass hardship and suffering for the Ukrainian population, and that is apparently a weapon Putin feels free to utilize,” Kempfer said.

Such a move could also have a chilling effect on the nation’s commerce.

“The industry and economy of Ukraine can’t function if 50 percent of its power generation capabilities are either controlled by Russian forces or disabled,” said Futures’ research director Bunker, who also pointed out that the reactors could serve as immense “bargaining chips” in any future ceasefire or peace negotiations.

The reactors are also positioned near major railheads that transport nuclear fuel. Those same shipping hubs could be easily repurposed by the Russians for moving armored vehicles and munitions to battlefields around Ukraine, especially since their tanks have been running short on gas.

The targeting of nuclear facilities—including the wanton shelling that set part of Zaporizhzhya ablaze and the ongoing power outages at the plants—also sends a deliberate message that this is a kind of no-holds-barred warfare in which even the risk of nuclear devastation can’t be ruled out.

“It’s a psychological weapon being used to terrorize the population,” said intelligence officer Kempfer. “They’re [targeting nuclear plants] as a way to put tremendous pressure on the Ukrainian government to capitulate. That’s their endgame.”

Kempfer also said the takeovers were a way to warn the U.S. and NATO and against their potential involvement in the conflict.

“[The Kremlin] is able to raise the specter of radioactive calamity without ever introducing nuclear weapons. Putin is a calculating guy and he realizes that we get very concerned any time a nuclear plant is threatened. The world saw Chernobyl, the world saw Fukushima, and we don’t want to see that again.”

Kempfer likened the tactic of going after Ukraine’s nuclear plants to that of Rome sewing salt into Cartheginian soil at the end of the Punic Wars, so that nothing would ever grow there. “They’re saying [...] we might irradiate a big chunk of Ukraine so it’s dead earth and you can never use it again. That’s the implied threat. That they can turn all of Ukraine into one big Chernobyl.”

Ukraine: Putin Plotting False-Flag Chernobyl Terror Attack


Taking risks that could lead to a catastrophic accident might be intended to show Russia’s disregard for the consequences of radioactive fallout, but Bunker said there could also be an even darker, more deliberate motive for going after reactors.

“If the Putin regime wants to play ‘authoritarian hardball’ it can threaten to release radiological material into the atmosphere from the Zaporizhzhia facility under its control,” Bunker said. Such a move could be used to force Kyiv to accept Russian rule or “as a deterrence measure to inhibit Ukrainian forces from retaking the facility.”

Marine Colonel Wilson called such behavior “Russian brinkmanship” designed “to give the impression of upping the ante in a very high-stakes encounter” in which “everything is targetable and nothing is safe.”

“Fear,” Wilson said, “is a very powerful weapon in warfare.”

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for CHERNOBYL 

Noted business expert explains what America is teaching us about the willful ignorance of a failed state


Umair Haque, Dc Report @Rawstory
November 02, 2021

Alabama AG vows to revive law protecting Confederate monuments after it's struck down by judge
Confederate flag supporters rally in Alabama (screenshot/Twitter)

It's a peculiar pattern of history. Like the axis around which a cycle of ruin spins. Societies — even civilizations — don't see their own collapses coming. And not seeing them coming, they can hardly take steps to avert them. They're left like deer in the headlights. And you know what happens next. If anything, curiously, societies tend to lean into their collapses.

So why don't societies see their own collapses coming? Why do they accelerate and intensify them? It's an especially relevant question, because, well, look around. Things aren't exactly going too well for our civilization. We're threatened by everything from global warming to ecological implosion to mass extinction to the pandemics and poverty and fascisms they're already breeding.

If I think about it, four reasons jump out at me. In this little essay, I'll use the examples of everyone's favorite collapsing societies, America and Britain, to illustrate them.

The first reason's simple: entrenched elites want to preserve the status quo. Think about America. The average American's life is in freefall. Every single social indicator imaginable — from longevity to trust to happiness to income — is either flatlining or plummeting. Every single one. As a result, it's not too hard to see why Americans are turning to hatred, superstition, fanaticism and other assorted forms of stupidity. They're literally losing their minds as their lives fall apart.

And yet the really curious thing is that that's been going on for decades now — and the whole while, America's ruling classes have pretended that everything's OK. Which classes are those? Well, there are the political class, the intellectual class and the capitalist class. None of these three classes can even brook the idea that America is in serious, deep trouble, which adds up to a collapsing society.

Hence, American pundits will say, on cue, every quarter, that the "economy's roaring" and that "confidence is rising" and all the other flavors of canned doublespeak they're renowned for. Meanwhile, life keeps on falling apart.

The Soviet Union's laughing in its grave, because it's seen all this before. Why do entrenched elites want to preserve the status quo? You're right to say that it preserves their power. But in a subtler way than I think is often understood. To say that a society is collapsing would be for elites to admit they mismanaged them. They'd have to admit they were badly, badly wrong — ideologically, theoretically, paradigmatically. Who wants to do that? And that, of course, would probably cost them. Fancy sinecures and "consulting" contracts and high office and all the rest of it.

So entrenched elites go on pretending nothing's wrong — even in societies like America, where social collapse has reached breathtaking proportions. Kids shoot each other in schools, people just…die…because they can't afford insulin which is profiteered on…the average American lives and dies in debt, with little to no real freedoms or choices. And elites just whistle, shrug and walk away.

I have to give a special mention to intellectual elites. America's in a funny place. It thinks of itself as having the finest thinkers in the world — and yet practically none of these fine thinkers can see that America's collapsing, much less explain why, much less offer many ideas to stave it off. Intellectual elites, too, are complicit in the game of self-preservation, perhaps most of all so — because a collapsing society means their ideologies and theories were all badly wrong, too. Just ask the Soviets.

That brings me to the next reason that societies don't foresee their own collapses. If elites want to preserve the status quo, then why don't people…do something about those elites? Because elites in collapsing societies are entrenched. That means they're dug tight into impregnable bunkers — and nobody can force them out and regain control of a society's resources and decisions.

Corruption Run Rampant

Why can't elites be forced out? How do they end up entrenched? Well, again, take a hard look at America. It has probably the most openly corrupt set of elites since the Soviet Union. In Europe, if politicians took "donations" the way American politicians do, it'd be a scandal every hour for decades. But in America, it's just business as usual. The pervasive corruption of elites is another grand theme in collapsing societies. Who cares if Rome falls — as long as you've got your villa and your servants? That seems to be the feeling among elites when it comes to American collapse, too. Corruption saps incentives for elites to do anything but aggressively pursue self-preservation in the most antisocial and corrosive ways imaginable.

And yet it's not just corruption that entrenches elites. That's necessary, but not sufficient. A deeper force is at play: the disempowerment of the demos, as in, the democratic unit that is "the people."

Think about that mouthful this way. The average American is completely disenchanted with their elites. Nobody much likes Biden or Pelosi or McConnell or any of the rest of them. But the problem is that Americans don't have the time or energy or spirit or willpower to do anything about their failed elites. The American demos has little to no power over its elites.

Why not? Because they're too busy just trying to survive. Just trying to make it through another day in America is a wearying affair. Life is an endless game of brutal competition, right down to death. Lose that job? Whoops, there goes everything, from health care to a home. So Americans, caught in the trap of capitalism, have to work every single day, to the bone, just to make ends meet. And even then, they can't. Remember, the average American dies in debt — "credit card debt," "medical debt," "mortgage debt" and so on.

Trapped in Debt

To a good economist, societies where the average person dies in debt are also societies incapable of forcing entrenched elites out — at least short of a grand revolution. That's the trap Americans are in. Elites have made sure they're indebted…to elites…so Americans, worn out, broken, defeated, having to fight each other every day, over and over again…to pay off those debts…don't have the energy or power left to dislodge those very entrenched elites.

Why don't Americans protest? At least the way, say, the French famously do? It's not just a cultural thing, though any proper Frenchman or woman is practically born waving a placard and shouting non! It's also, more to the point, a matter of political economy: the French have time and energy left over to protest, like Europe and Canada generally do. From an American point of view, those societies hardly work at all — Americans work twice as long and receive less in return. No wonder Americans are indebted — and don't have the energy left over to remove their entrenched yet failed elites from power.


If you're working 80 hours a week at some crap job — like many Americans are — what time or energy do you really have left over for serious reflection about your society? Protesting? Giving "voice," as political scientists, call it, to your discontents? Who's going to organize and coordinate and fund all that, anyway? Maybe you see the problem. America's ended up a democracy in name only, one without a demos exerting any real power over entrenched, failed elites.

Result? The grim, disheartening choice between Biden and Trump.

And yet there's an even starker, darker path to collapse. Often, there is someone who sees a society's in trouble, serious trouble, even beginning to collapse. The demagogue. The demagogue sees that a society's not doing well, that things are beginning to break and crumble and fall apart. But he or she then scapegoats the most powerless groups in society for those problems — instead of fixing them. The obvious result is that the problems afflicting a society only get worse, while people are incited to hate, and so the vicious cycle of collapse only accelerates, usually hard and fast. Societies like this lean into their collapse — baffling and bewildering those around them, usually, too.

Britain Turns on Europe

It's modern-day Britain that exemplifies this weird, sinister path to social collapse best. Britain was beset by problems after the financial crisis of the 2000s. But those problems came from a bungled bank bailout, which simply shifted costs to the public balance sheet, and led to a decade of austerity. In this vacuum, demagoguery arose — an entire generation of British leaders blamed Europe for Britain's woes. Europe had nothing — nothing whatsoever — to do with British austerity, which led to falling living standards. And yet this class of demagogues — expertly scapegoated Europe, to the point that you'd turn on the BBC, and see someone called an "economist" or "analyst," with no credentials whatsoever, just spouting folly, lies and hate…every day.

The catastrophic result was Brexit. And the consequences of Brexit, today, are as funny and absurd as they are shocking. Brits can't get food — they see cardboard cutouts of food at supermarkets. The country's running out of beer. Raw sewage is floating down waterways because the chemicals to treat it can't be found. All that stuff came from Europe. And now it doesn't come from anywhere.

Meanwhile, nobody in Britain, at least in a position of power, is allowed to say the word "Brexit." It's Voldemort, at idiot Hogwarts. Even the leader of the opposition, Keir Starmer, won't say the obvious, which is that Brits can't get food or fuel or, shortly, medicine, because it all used to come from Europe, and Britain is still busy picking fights with Europe, instead of trying to figure out how to supply itself with basic goods.

Meanwhile, Europe's baffled — and at this point, infuriated — with Britain. It has little appetite left to be scapegoated. Give Europe some credit — it took Britain's insults for five years, with grace and kindness, just out of friendship. Shortly, though, Europe's going to do things like stop supplying Britain with power and gas, because Britain keeps on provoking it, demonizing it, attacking it. And then the real chaos will begin.

In this form of social collapse — let's call it the Brexit Pattern — nobody sees collapse coming because they're too busy cheering it on. The demagogue's lies appeal to people because their lives really are hurting — and it's always easiest to blame it on a scapegoat. Hence, Britain became literally a "hostile" country to foreigners — as its own government puts it — and especially to Europeans.

But attacking and insulting and provoking Europeans didn't fix Britain's problems. It only created far, far bigger ones — ones that have led Britain squarely to the point of collapse. What else do you call a society where people are given…cardboard cutouts of food…raw sewage is floating down rivers…where the lights are likely going to go off in the winter…while the people who created this mess are riding higher in the polls than ever…because, still, idiotically, astonishingly, it's all someone else's fault? Britain's still so busy blaming Europe that it can't see it's collapsing because it began blaming Europe from the start.

It's hard to unpack and unpick the layers of stupidity and irony therein, so many abound.

Five Decades of Decline

America took about half a century to collapse. Incomes began stagnating in the '70s, social mobility began to stall in the '80s, living standards began to flatline in the '90s, by the end of the '00s, America's famed middle class was a minority and an underclass. That was the point at which debt, drugs and despair began to ravage (even white) America in earnest. That's a pretty standard form of social collapse — it took the Soviet Union about three decades of stagnation and falling living standards to come undone.

Britain, though, is something closer to Weimar Germany. It took Weimar Germany a decade, maybe 15 years, depending on how you count it, to really implode into Nazi Germany. Britain's much closer to that pattern, that form of collapse. Just 20 years ago, it was the envy of the world, with one of the world's highest living standards, finest healthcare system, most renowned public broadcaster. Today? All that's in tatters, precisely because Britain leaned into collapse even harder than America did.

In that respect, Britain and America teach us different lessons about how societies collapse. America teaches us that time, neglect, ignorance and poverty can slowly crumble the foundations of even the mightiest empires until they totter and fall. Britain teaches us an even darker lesson: Give a society a crisis, a demagogue and a scapegoat — and it takes just a decade or two of stupidity and anger to turn into hate and venom to the point of total and utter self-destruction.

America teaches us that small amounts of the social poisons of greed and indifference and inequality can add up to a very big collapse, in the end, given time. But Britain teaches us that societies can implode with lightning quickness, too; that even wise and gentle people like the British are not immune to the Big Lies of hate and nationalism and intolerance and unkindness, that anyone can be seduced by a demagogue offering a nation growing poorer a convenient scapegoat for its ills.

Does that get us a little closer to understanding why societies don't see their own collapses coming? Perhaps it does — you'll have to tell me. In the end, the answer may be as simple as this. Societies don't see their own collapses coming because they grow weak, blind, dull, defeated in the spirit, corroded in the heart, hubristic in the mind. They've been warned, time and again, that it can't happen here — and left too weary to fight it much, anyways. That's America's case. But that's the kind case. Even more revealing, some societies, like Nazi Germany, end up leaning aggressively into their own collapse, cheering it all on in a frenzy, attacking every scapegoat in sight, provoking newly made enemies, instead of fixing their own problems. A weird Orwellian freedom-is-slavery perversion of reality takes place. That's Britain's case right about now.

Which one, I wonder, will hit which nation next?

Umair Haque is a London-based consultant. He is director of Havas Media Lab, founder of Bubblegeneration and frequent tweeter and contributor to the online Harvard Business Review. Haque's initial training was in neuroscience. He studied at McGill University in Canada, went on to do an MBA at London Business School and is the author of The New Capitalist Manifesto: Building a Disruptively Better Business (2011).

PAKISTAN

Harassing journalists

DAWN
Editorial 

Published May 24, 2023

THE state has cast a wide dragnet to haul up all those allegedly involved in the May 9 rioting, while also using the opportunity to weaken the PTI. However, there can be no excuse for the hundreds of journalists that have been hounded by police just for carrying out their professional duties on the day of the mayhem.

Sadly, the methods are straight out of the colonial playbook; the state has used these tactics for decades to teach all those who have come in its way a lesson. According to the Lahore Press Club president, around 250 journalists and other media workers have complained of police harassment post-May 9.

It is likely that the media personnel were identified through geo-fencing when they were in the field covering the protests in key areas of Lahore after Imran Khan’s arrest. Particularly disturbing is the fact that family members of some media workers have also been picked up. The Lahore High Court has been petitioned to stop this flagrant abuse of authority, while the caretaker Punjab administration has also formed a committee to look into the matter.

While the wholesale crackdown on all PTI sympathisers cannot be condoned, the targeting of journalists who were simply doing their jobs has no justification whatsoever. The federal energy minister has described the ongoing actions as the “process of filtering the criminals from the onlookers”.

This cannot be used as an excuse to harass journalists and media workers. As it is, the media fraternity faces a difficult working environment in Pakistan, and journalists often put their lives on the line in the course of discharging their duties.

Using the anti-PTI crackdown as a cover to threaten journalists is not to be tolerated, and the Punjab government must stop this campaign of fear. The administration must also reveal the whereabouts of anchorperson Imran Riaz Khan, who has been missing for the last two weeks.

RSF, Amnesty ask Pakistan to find pro-Khan anchor Imran Riaz

The prominent journalist and supporter of ex-PM Imran Khan was detained by the Pakistani police, but the authorities then failed to present him in court.

Haroon Janjua in Islamabad | Darko Janjevic
DW

May 23, 2023

Imran Riaz, a well-known TV anchor and YouTuber, was among thousands of Imran Khan supporters who were detained following the former premier's arrest and violent protests in Pakistan earlier this month. The journalist was reportedly taken into custody from the airport at the eastern city of Sialkot on May 11 on suspicion of inciting violence. He was due to appear before court in Lahore this Monday.

But then, the story took an an usual turn — authorities failed to present Riaz during the hearing, and Punjab police chief Usman Anwar told the court he was "clueless" about his whereabouts.

The chief justice of the Lahore High Court warned the authorities that "no one will be spared if anything happened" to the 47-year-old reporter.

Riaz's wife Arbab Imran told DW she is worried for her husband's safety.

"The arrest of my husband is deeply troubling. He raised voices for the vulnerable people and for the truth. My four children are concerned about him and we don't know the whereabouts of him. He was taken off air many times and I demand from authorities for his immediate release," she said.

Imran Khan granted bail and protection in Pakistan  02:01

 

RSF points to Pakistan's military intelligence

Pakistan is going through a deep political crisis marked by a power struggle between Imran Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party and the current government led by Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif, with the military and the judiciary also being affected. Khan has recently stepped up his attacks on the military, accusing it of working against him. Riaz is a wellknown media figure among Khan's supporters.

On Tuesday, Reporters Without Border (RSF) representative Daniel Bastard said it was "clearly Pakistan's military intelligence agencies that abducted Imran Riaz," after the Punjabi inspector spoke of unspecified "agencies" during the court hearing.

"According to confidential diplomatic sources consulted by RSF, the government's silence about the TV anchor's fate suggests that he may have fared badly since his abduction and may even have died in detention," the watchdog organization said.

Separately, Amnesty International called for Riaz's immediate recovery.

"On 22 May, the police told the Lahore High Court that there is no trace of him in any police department in the province."

The organization said the events amount to "an enforced disappearance" under international law.

"Punishing dissenting voices using enforced disappearance has been a worrying trend in Pakistan for many years and must be ended," Amnesty said.
Riaz missing, Sharif killed in exile

Riaz's lawyer Azhar Siddique says that the arrest is a "blatant violation of freedom of expression."

Riaz has decried Imran Khan's ouster from power in April last year, linking it to "regime change" and amplifying Khan's claims that the military was involved in ending his government. The anchor was already arrested twice, in July 2022 and in February 2023. The latter saw Pakistan's Federal Investigation Agency suspect him of hate speech and criticism of the military.

Exclusive: Imran Khan speaks to DW from his besieged home

07:46

The disappearance of Riaz prompted some in Pakistan to draw parallels with the killing of veteran reporter Arshad Sharif last October. Sharif was well-known for criticizing the Pakistani military and was forced to flee Pakistan in August 2022 to avoid arrest. He was killed in Kenya in what a team of Pakistani investigators described to be a "targeted assassination." The background of the murder remains unclear.
Bad optics for freedom of speech?

With the country on edge, a disappearance of a prominent journalist is sure to chill other reporters in the country. Journalist Javeria Siddique, the widow of late Sharif, told DW that Riaz's arrest was "really alarming and a bad optic for freedom of speech in Pakistan."

"The government is arresting journalists over their stories and being vocal," she said, pointing to her husband's killing in Kenya. "Then we have seen the same pattern for Imran Riaz," she added.

"I am requesting from the authorities that they should immediately and unconditionally release the journalist Imran Riaz Khan. Criticizing the ruling elite of Pakistan is not something which falls in hate speech," Siddique added.

Legal expert Osama Malik notes that the freedom of information and the freedom of expression are guaranteed by the Pakistani constitution.

"Imran Riaz's brand of journalism may not be palatable to everyone, but that is certainly not a reason for the state to spirit him away," he told DW. "It is highly condemnable that despite the province's highest court asking about his whereabouts, the law enforcement agencies are unable or unwilling to present Imran Riaz in court or divulge his location."

Edited by: Shamil Shams

‘Orwellian doublespeak’: Journalists, rights activists call out Marriyum Aurangzeb for remarks on Imran Riaz’s disappearance

Following backlash, the minister claims she did not justify enforced disappearances and had categorically condemned the issue of missing persons.

Dawn.com 

Published May 23, 2023 

Journalists and human rights activists have strongly criticised Information Minister Marriyum Aurangzeb’s comments regarding the case of anchorperson Imran Riaz Khan, who has been missing for more than a week after his arrest.

Riaz was among those apprehended in the wake of the protests that erupted following the arrest of PTI Chairman Imran Khan. Later, his lawyer had told Dawn.com that a writ petition was filed on May 12 over the anchorperson’s arrest and the Lahore High Court had directed the attorney general to present the anchor before the court the same day. But, after its orders were not followed, Sialkot police were given a 48-hour deadline to recover Riaz.

A day ago, Punjab Inspector General Dr Usman Anwar revealed there was no trace of the journalist at any police department across the country.

Separately, journalist Secunder Kermani, a Channel4 News foreign correspondent, had shared a video of an exchange with the information minister about the missing anchorperson.




He questioned Aurangzeb about journalists going missing and being detained, adding that these were the same issues that the PML-N had raised as matters of concern when in opposition during the previous PTI government.

In response, Aurangzeb asked Kermani to name even a single journalist who was missing. When Kermani mentioned Riaz, the minister responded, “Imran Riaz is a political party spokesperson now. You really have to draw [a] distinction.”

She further said, “You have to differentiate between journalists and the journalists who have joined political parties. Once they have joined political parties, they are inciting violence, they are spokespersons of that political parties.”

In a brief back and forth between the two, Aurangzeb mentioned former prime minister Imran being termed a “media predator” during his tenure and asserted that press freedom in Pakistan had improved by “seven points” during the past year.

When asked again about the issue of a person being missing despite his political leanings, she said she condemned anyone being missing, whether it was herself or Riaz.

Aurangzeb’s response elicited severe criticism from several journalists and rights activists, who reminded the minister that a person’s disappearance was an issue of basic human rights irrespective of what political party they favoured.

Lawyer and social activist Jibran Nasir said that Aurangzeb believed Riaz “should be seen as a supporter of PTI and hence considered a sub-human who deserves the treatment being meted out to them.

“Now just imagine the plight of ordinary citizens suffering military trials,” he added.







Pakistan Initiative at Atlantic Council’s South Asia Centre Director Uzair Younus said Riaz’s status as a journalist or not should not matter.

He said that Riaz had fundamental constitutional rights granted to him on account of his Pakistani citizenship.

“Stop violating his rights and those of countless others. These disappearances are heinous!” he tweeted.







Senior anchorperson Maria Memon pointed out the lack of an “honest answer”.







Journalist Roohan Ahmed tweeted: “It doesn’t matter if Imran Riaz Khan is a journalist or a ‘propagandist’, as Information Minister Aurangzeb calls him. What matters is that a Pakistani citizen is missing and being denied the right to defend himself in the court of law.”







Journalist Mehreen Zahra Malik called the information minister’s response “Orwellian doublespeak”, adding that it was “unacceptable” and that the government must answer for the missing anchor’s whereabouts.







Senior journalist Raza Ahmad Rumi commented that Riaz’s status as a journalist or party activist did not matter and that his being denied due process was a violation of the law.







Researcher Abdul Basit analysed much the same, saying that “under no circumstances you can arrest a person extrajudicially and refuse to produce him before a court of law. This is an affront against democracy and the rule of law.”







Journalist Murtaza Solangi, while expressing his differences with Riaz, also said: “A human being, a Pakistani citizen is missing and that is and should be a cause of concern. Regardless of the circumstances of his disappearance, it is the job of the state to find him and tell the people about the circumstances of his disappearance. Period.”





Meanwhile, journalist Matiullah Jan — who was himself abducted in Islamabad in July 2020 — said it was a “disappointing response” from a politician and spokesperson of the government, adding that it was “shameful to justify a possible enforced disappearance on the basis of someone not being a journalist.”

His harsh rebuke prompted a reply from the information minister who said she had not justified enforced disappearances and had condemned them.

“I have categorically stated that if a person is missing, any person, whether that person is me or Imran Riaz, I condemn that,” she said.

Live Updates: Live Pakistan - DAWN.COM

APEC Is Not Kyoto

Todays Headlines.

Made In Canada APEC Climate Accord.

More Hot Air in Sydney Declaration.

And, Harper gets his wish.

So if Kyoto is a failure for Australia, Canada, and the United States they get to scuttle the whole deal with their Sydney Declaration on Climate Change

Which Harper can further use as evidence that Kyoto doesn't work. Abroad or at home. Canada will then set its own targets regardless of Kyoto. Which was his agenda all along. That and killing bill C-3o.

Note that the mutually agreed upon target date is the Tories target date of 2050.

Orwellian speak abounds in and around the APEC Anti-Kyoto statement. And that is all it is. An attempt to justify Canada's target date versus that of the rest of the G8 which has set more rapid targets.

"No one meeting, no one agreement is going to fix this issue," Howard said of human-caused climate change. "Kyoto didn't fix it. The Canadian prime minister made the comment about Kyoto that it was really an agreement that produced two groups of countries, those countries that didn't have any targets to meet, and those countries that have failed to meet the targets that were set."

But Harper said Howard was taking his comments out of context, and even messed up the punch line of his joke.

"The quip I think I said in a (previous international) leaders' meeting was that Kyoto divided the world into two groups: those that would have no targets and those that would reach no targets. It's, as I say, just a quip, but I think there's a fair amount of truth to it."

The Sidney Declaration is a self fulfilling prophecy for Harper and Howard.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper says it premature to be demanding climate-change goals of other countries, but he hopes that the participants at this weekend's APEC conference can at least agree those goals must be set.

"We haven't reached the point where we can dictate targets to the rest of the world," the Prime Minister told a late afternoon press conference on Friday.

Mr. Harper pointed out that the reduction targets set out in the Kyoto Accord — targets that his government rejects as being too costly to the environment — were never approved by countries that produce two third's of the world's emissions. And he said he believes that a G8 meeting held last June in Berlin produced the most reasonable approach to cutting the production of the gases that have been linked to global warming.

"Canada, Japan and others have articulated a specific goal that we would like to see which is a reduction of emissions by half by the year 2050. Not everybody even in the G8 yet subscribes to that," said Mr. Harper.

The 1997 Kyoto treaty – aimed at halting the speed of global warming – treats developing countries differently. It puts the burden of mandatory emissions cuts squarely on the shoulders of wealthy countries.

Harper, Howard and U.S. President George W. Bush are critical of that deal, with Harper suggesting yesterday it offered developing countries an escape hatch.

"Let's remember . . . if we can get an international protocol, this is a big, big step. It will be the first time the world has done this. In the Kyoto protocol, nations representing two-thirds of emissions essentially opted out. So we have to do a better job next time."

But Graham Saul, of Climate Action Network Canada, said in a telephone interview from Ottawa that Harper's statement is "outrageous" and "a total misrepresentation" of Kyoto's premise of "common but differentiated responsibilities."

"Kyoto is based on the principle that the rich countries are disproportionately responsible for the problem and so bear disproportionately the responsibility for solving it, and poor countries like India, where 500 million people don't even have light bulbs in their homes, shouldn't be forced to accept binding targets."

Until a global deal is reached, Harper also told reporters Canada would do well to join a group like the Asia Pacific Partnership, or AP-6, a six-member group co-founded by the U.S. and Australia that opposes binding targets on governments. Rather, it endorses a voluntary approach to greenhouse gas cuts, leaving governments to establish their own best methods of reaching goals.

Environmentalists have dismissed the climate-change declaration signed Saturday by the leaders of 21 Pacific Rim countries, including Canada.

The deal, announced in Sydney by Australian Prime Minister John Howard, includes the intention to set aspirational — voluntary — emissions reductions targets, and other green initiatives.

"We agree to work to achieve a common understanding on a long-term aspirational global emissions reduction goal," said the Sydney Declaration, issued after the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders meeting.

Canada was given credit Saturday for helping the leaders set the targets. "We appreciate the efforts of Japan and Canada in proposing a long-term global goal," the declaration said.

Howard said that it "does transcend a number of international divisions. In particular I note that it is the first such gathering that has included both the United States and China in coming together regarding the aspirational goal."

Even a member of Howard’s cabinet had harsh words about aspirational targets in April. In a lecture at Monash University, Australia’s Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said aspirational targets are “code for ‘a political stunt.’ An aspirational target is not a real target at all.”

This appears to be part of the increasingly popular attempt by resistant governments to SAY they are taking climate change seriously while doing nothing serious about it. Australia's "principles" on climate change were clear enough when it helped to create the anti-Kyoto Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate: it seemed largely a matter of making the world safe for unrestrained coal exports.

Now, we have the prospect of the more formal and influential APEC organization joining this campaign to set a "long-term aspirationial goal."

It's instructive in these circumstances to listen closely to what people are actually saying. A goal, traditionally, is something that you want to achieve. A "long-term aspirational goal," on the other hand, sounds very like something that you would like to put off, or perhaps merely enshrine in a declaration while continuing to undermine the single international agreement (Kyoto) that has real and measurable climate change "goals."

There has been real movement in the last year on this issue. U.S. President George Bush, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Australia's Prime Minister Howard no longer try to deny the science of climate change.

But their new tactic - nodding enthusiastically to a worried electorate while continuing to block international action - is still just so much spin. Until the world's largest energy producers (including coal countries like the U.S. and Australia) stop talking "aspirations" and start committing to measurable targets, there is no reason to take their declarations as anything more than public relations in its most poverty stricken form.

And again we have Alberta/Canada writ into the Sidney declaration, with reference to intensity targets.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard, host of the APEC summit, nevertheless says the leaders have agreed on three "important and very specific things."Firstly, the need for a long-term aspirational global emissions reduction goal. And that is enshrined in the Sydney Declaration," he said. "Secondly, the need for all nations, no matter what their stage of development, to contribute accordingly to their own capacities and their own circumstances to reducing greenhouse gases. Thirdly, we have agreed on specific APEC goals on energy intensity and forestry, and we've also agreed on the important role of clean coal technologies." "Energy intensity" is a measure of energy efficiency. The declaration said members should aim for a 25 percent reduction in energy intensity by the year 2030.

Ironically it is the Chinese who are demanding these three countries meet their Kyoto obligations as the basis for China coming into the second round of the Kyoto accord. Something that won't happen as long as Harper says we can't.

THE Prime Minister, John Howard, compromised on his Sydney climate change declaration to accommodate the tough stance of the Chinese President, Hu Jintao, supporting the United Nations and the Kyoto Protocol. The protocol includes binding targets for developed countries to cut emissions.

At the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum leaders' meeting on Saturday, shortly before the release of the declaration, Mr Hu bluntly told Mr Howard that the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change "and its Kyoto Protocol" was the legal basis for any international co-operation on climate change.

He also told Mr Howard the framework and the Kyoto Protocol were "the most authoritative, universal and comprehensive international framework" for tackling climate change.

"Developed countries should face their historical responsibility and their high per-capita emissions," Mr Hu insisted, saying the countries should "strictly abide by their emission reduction targets set forth in the Kyoto Protocol". His remarks were circulated by Chinese officials after the APEC leaders' meeting and before the final Sydney declaration was released.

So it goes back to the old cyclical argument; China is not in, the United States and Australia haven't signed on yet, and Canada can't meet its targets, so Kyoto is a failure. But that is just an excuse, and one that won't last through the next election.

But the program adopted by the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit set precedents that the United States, Japan and Australia say are important as the world grapples with climate change. Chiefly, China, which if not already the biggest polluter will be soon, agreed to a goal that also applies to rich countries.

"This is the first occasion ever that China ... has agreed to any notion of targets at all for developing countries as well as developed countries," Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer told local television on Sunday. "That is, by the way, an enormous diplomatic breakthrough."

Although Chinese President Hu Jintao agreed to the climate-change pact, he argued that developing nations like China have a lesser role to play. In remarks to fellow leaders Saturday, Hu said rich countries have polluted for longer and thus must take the lead in cutting emissions and providing money and technology to help developing countries clean up.

"In tackling climate change, helping others is helping oneself," Hu said.

China, Indonesia and other poorer APEC members like Kyoto because it holds richer countries to this higher standard and exempts developing countries from emissions targets. Even though Kyoto supporters Canada, New Zealand and Japan have failed to meet their targets, experts say the agreement has had a positive effect.

"It's not simply whether any one particular country actually achieved its target or not, it's the overall impact of the protocol which has had an effect of bringing down emissions from what they would have been," said Graeme Pearson, who was the climate director of Australia's main scientific research body from 1992-2002.

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The US just quietly challenged China on something Beijing promised to go to war over
Alex Lockie


Jon Woo/Reuters

The US military recently called Taiwan a country, something that China routinely threatens to go to war over.

China thinks of Taiwan as a renegade province with a democratic government that's an existential threat to the Communist party.

No US president for decades has been so supportive of Taiwan, and the US and China now find themselves in uncharted territory.

President Donald Trump has engaged China in a trade war that has global markets holding their breath, but his administration recently challenged Beijing on an issue Chinese officials have promised to go to war over.

The US military's recent Indo-Pacific Strategy paper, published on June 1, goes further than perhaps any US document ever issued in potentially provoking China's rage over what it sees as the most sensitive issue.

Buried in the paper, which charts China's efforts to build up a military fortress in the South China Sea and use its growing naval might to coerce its neighbors, is a reference to Taiwan as a "country."

"As democracies in the Indo-Pacific, Singapore, Taiwan, New Zealand, and Mongolia are reliable, capable, and natural partners of the United States. All four countries contribute to US missions around the world and are actively taking steps to uphold a free and open international order," the strategy reads.

China views Taiwan as a breakaway island province that has its own, democratic government. Beijing sees this as an existential threat and the factor most likely to upset the Communist Party's absolute hold on power in the mainland.

In July 2018, China threatened to blacklist airlines that referred to Taiwan as a country. US airlines fell in line, but the White House protested the strong-arm tactic as " Orwellian nonsense."

But now the US itself has clearly said it: Taiwan is a country, and the US will treat it as such.
"The Chinese military has no choice but to fight at all costs"

US President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with senior military leaders at the White House in Washington, DC, on April 9, 2018.

 NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images

In another unprecedented step, a high-ranking Taiwanese minister was allowed to meet with Trump's national security adviser, John Bolton, in May. This move predictably enraged China.

At the Shangri La Dialogue, the top defense summit in Asia, Chinese Defense Minister Gen. Wei Fenghe made clear the stakes of China's Taiwan problem.

"Any interference in the Taiwan question is doomed to failure. If anyone dares to split Taiwan from China, the Chinese military has no choice but to fight at all costs," Wei said, according to Channel Asia News.

Taiwan is "the hot-button issue" in US-China relations, John Hemmings, the director of the Asia Studies Centre at the Henry Jackson Society, told Business Insider.

China has always maintained that it would prefer to reunify with Taiwan peacefully but will do so by force if needed. Additionally, China's navy has increasingly patrolled the waters around the island and flown nuclear-capable bombers nearby.

But the US has also sailed warships through the narrow strait separating China and Taiwan and has gotten allies to pitch in.

The arms are already movingA US Marine Corps M1A1 Abrams tank from 2nd Tank Battalion, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force, during Arrow 2019 at the Pohjankangas Training Area near Niinisalo, Finland, May 12, 2019. US Marine Corps/Lance Cpl. Scott Jenkins

The US's rhetorical escalation follows the Trump administration normalizing arms sales to Taiwan and the news that it will sell $2 billion in tanks, anti-tank weapons, and air defenses to the island.

According to Hemmings, these weapons have a clear purpose: To fight back against a Chinese invasion of the island.

Bonnie Glaser, a senior adviser for Asia and the director of the China Power Project at Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Business Insider that the US had now entered "uncharted territory" by acknowledging Taiwan.

The US under Trump has been the most pro-Taiwan administration in decades, Hemmings said. Trump demonstrated this when he had a call with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-Wen before Trump even took office.

Women soldiers from an artillery unit during the live-fire Han Kuang military exercise, which simulates China's People's Liberation Army invading the island, in Pingtung, Taiwan, May 30, 2019. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu

For years, China has slowly stepped up pressure on the US in areas like forcing companies to transfer technology, building up military sites on artificial islands in the South China Sea, and naval challenges.

Hemmings referenced a popular anecdote in China, where a frog is cooked by putting it in a pot of cold water and then slowly turning up the heat. The frog doesn't realize it's getting cooked until it's too late. China's gradual pressure campaign against the US has been compared to this practice.

With the US now quietly acknowledging Taiwan in a strategy document, it may have found its own small way to turn up the heat on Beijing.