It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Sunday, August 08, 2021
Drone footage of Greece’s second-largest island shows path of destruction wrought by massive wildfires
Greece continued to battle major wildfires on Saturday, with the flames coming dangerously close to the capital, Athens, and cutting the country’s second-largest island, Evia, in half, leaving the sea as the only escape route.
Dramatic drone footage of Evia from RT’s Ruptly video agency shows vast tracts of forest still engulfed in flames or burned to the ground. The blazes were so huge, they separated the two halves of the Aegean island, which has a population of 200,000.
Firefighters working throughout the night to save Istiaia, a town of some 7,000 in the north of Evia, and several nearby villages. They used bulldozers to open clear paths in the thick woods to act as a firebreak.
Six aircraft, four helicopters, 475 firefighters and 35 ground teams have been deployed on the island, according to Civil Protection Chief, Nikos Hardalias, with firefighters from Romania and Ukraine aiding their Greek counterparts. The military also sent 84 special forces troops to assist in tackling the blaze.
Some 1,400 people were taken off the island by boat on Friday, after the approaching wall of fire left them with no other means of escape. A flotilla of 10 vessels, including coastguard ships, ferries, and fishing boats, has now been assembled in case a second evacuation of residents is required, a coastguard spokeswoman told the AP news agency.
On the mainland, the wildfires, pushed by strong winds, have reached the suburbs of Athens, and a huge plume of black smoke hangs over the city. A special hotline has been set up in the city to offer advice to people suffering breathing problems.
The evacuation of residents was ordered in the nearby town of Thrakomakedones on Saturday, with video footage showing burnt homes and cars. Fires also raged on the southern Peloponnese peninsula, near Ancient Olympia, and in Fokida, in the center of the country.
Numerous wildfires took hold across Greece at the beginning of the week, as it endured its worst heatwave in decades, with temperatures reaching 45C (113F). The fires spurred large-scale evacuations, burnt forest land, and destroyed farms and homes. One volunteer firefighter died on Friday, and 20 people have required hospitalization.
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said his country was experiencing a “nightmarish summer.” He said providing aid to those affected by the disaster was his “first political priority” and promised that the affected areas would be restored.
Leftist groups call for volunteer effort, slam underfunding as wildfires spread across Turkey, Greece
Extreme weather conditions due to global warming and flawed preventive policies by the governments concerned are said to be the reasons for the extensive spreading of wildfires throughout the Mediterranean
Wildfires charged by protracted heat waves and strengthening winds have spread extensively throughout the Mediterranean regions of Turkey and adjacent parts of Greece this week, causing serious damage to forests, wildlife, people and property. The blaze, which started in the Manavgat and Antalya regions of Turkey last week, has now spread to other areas in the country, including Muğla, Adana, Osmaniye, Mersin and Kayseri. In Greece, fires are on in the outskirts of Athens, the southern Peloponnese region, Evia, and several Aegean islands. Major drives to extinguish the fires and evacuate people are underway in both countries. Parts of Sicily in Italy, North Macedonia and Albania have also experienced wildfires this season.
According to reports, extreme weather conditions characterized by a historic rise in temperature and dryness in the region has resulted in the extensive spreading of wildfires in the Mediterranean region of Turkey and adjacent areas in Greece. While wildfires are not new to the region, the extent and pace of the current spread is being regarded as the worst in the recent history of the region. Preliminary studies suggest that drastic changes in the climatic pattern have led to this catastrophe in this part of Europe while heavy rains and flash floods were experienced in other parts of Europe earlier in July.
Concerned sections in both Greece and Turkey claim that along with climate change, the lack of planning, underfunding of preventive mechanisms, flawed disaster management plans, and short sighted policies of governments in the region are also responsible for the extent of damage caused by the wildfires.
The Communist Party of Greece (KKE) stated that “extreme weather phenomena” and “climate change” are used as a convenient excuse and “protection” to hide the “long-standing shortcomings, under-staffing and underfunding of services, inadequate resources and infrastructure, and the lack of preventive measures.”
“Plans and measures for fire, flood and earthquake protection are not a luxury. They concern human life, the protection of the natural environment and the needs of the people, but they are not implemented because they are of no profit to the capitalists and the bourgeois state. It is the same policy that undermines the rights of workers and of the people as a whole. It is therefore necessary to demand a radically different development path that does not serve profit, but the needs of modern people,” said the KKE.
The KKE and the Communist Party of Turkey (TKP) have called on their cadres and members of their mass organizations to volunteer relief and rescue activities in the regions affected by the raging wildfire.
Photo: Wildfire blazes near the Greek town of Afidnes. (source: 902.gr)
This article was published on 6 August at Peoples Dispatch.
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Thousands flee Greek island as wildfires raze forest and homes
Firefighters tackle blazes on two fronts on Evia as heatwave-driven devastation across southern Europe continues
00:51 Sky glows red over ferry evacuating people from Greek island fire – video
Thousands of people have fled wildfires that are destroying vast swathes of pine forest and razing homes on Greece’s second-largest island, Evia, as devastating summer blazes rage from southern Europe to Siberia.
“We have ahead of us another difficult evening, another difficult night,” Greece’s deputy civil protection minister, Nikos Hardalias, said on Sunday, adding that nearly a week after the blazes started, strong winds were driving two major fire fronts in the north and south of the island.
Seventeen firefighting planes and helicopters were in action on the island, just north-east of the capital, Athens, where fires in a northern suburb and the nearby Peloponnese region were stable, although the risk of rekindling remained high.
Wildfires have devastated large areas in southern Europe for a fortnight as the region endures its most extreme heatwave in three decades. Ten have died in Greece and Turkey, with many admitted to hospital. Italy has also suffered million of euros of damage.
Huge fires also have been burning across Siberia in northern Russia for several weeks, forcing the evacuation on Saturday of a dozen villages. Wildfires have burned nearly 6m hectares (15m acres) of land this year in Russia, while hot, dry and windy conditions have also fuelled devastating blazes in California.
Rain eased the situation in Turkey over the weekend, but record temperatures, linked by experts to the climate crisis, continued unabated in Greece, where a helicopter airlifted an injured firefighter from Mount Parnitha, north of Athens, on Sunday.
The coastguard has evacuated more than 2,000 people by sea, including 349 on Sunday morning, from densely forested Evia, a popular summer holiday destination, and ferries stood by for more to be taken off as the inferno forced authorities to order residents to leave several dozen villages.
The Greek coastguard has evacuated more than 2,000 people from Evia by sea. Photograph: Petros Karadjias/AP
A further 23 people trapped on a beach were rescued by a Greek coast guard boat patrolling Evia’s shoreline late on Sunday. With temperatures as high as 45C (113F) and conditions bone dry, the coastguard said three patrol boats, four navy vessels, one ferry, two tour boats plus fishing and private craft were ready to evacuate more people from the northern seaside village of Pefki.
“I feel angry. I lost my home … nothing will be the same the next day,” Vasilikia, one resident, told local journalists onboard a rescue ferry. “It’s a disaster. It’s huge. Our villages are destroyed, there is nothing left from our homes, our properties, nothing.”
As 260 firefighters from Greece and 200 more from Ukraine and Romania battled the flames, young people carried old and infirm residents to safety across the sand. Others fled their villages on foot overnight amid apocalyptic scenes.
01:59 ‘Greece has burned’: thousands flee Athens suburb as wildfire spreads – video
The heat was so intense that water evaporated before reaching the fires, witnesses said. The governor for central Greece, Fanis Spanos, said the situation in the north of the island had been “very difficult” for nearly a week.
“The fronts are huge, the area of burned land is huge,” Spanos said. More than 2,500 people have been accommodated in hotels and other shelters, he said. Greece has deployed the army to help battle the fires and 10 countries including France, Egypt, Switzerland, Spain and Britain have sent help including personnel and aircraft.
Hardalias said conditions on Evia were particularly tough for the firefighting planes and helicopters, whose pilots faced “great danger” with limited visibility, air turbulence and strong wind currents from the fire, he said.
On Sunday, Serbia announced it was sending 13 vehicles with 37 firefighters and three firefighting helicopters to Greece, where over the past 10 days 56,655 hectares of land have burned, compared with an average between 2008 and 2020 of 1,700 hectares.
The causes of the fires are being investigated, with several thought to have been started deliberately. A Greek police spokesman, Apostolos Skrekas, said 10 people, including a 71-year-old man in the Peloponnesean region of Messinia, had been arrested on suspicion of arson; a further nine were being questioned. Five hundred police had been sent to monitor areas where fires had been put out, he said.
Many villages on Evia had been saved only because young people had ignored evacuation orders and stayed behind to keep the fires away from their homes, Giorgos Tsapourniotis, the mayor of Mantoudi on Evia, told local media.
Many villagers criticised the authorities response. “The state is absent,” one village from the north of the island, Yannis Selimis, told Agence-France Presse. “For the next 40 years we will have no job, and in the winter we are going to drown from the floods without the forests that were protecting us.”
In Turkey, firefighters earlier described the herculean efforts many had put in. Günaydın Sözen, 48, of the Istanbul fire service, told the Guardian that he had been a firefighter for 21 years but had never been called to battle a wildfire before.
He said he and 24 departmental colleagues had helped fight a fire near the Kemerköy thermal plant in Muğla province for five days, “working day and night … the area of the fires is so big it’s created its own climate and the sea air makes more wind that actually makes it flare up even more”.
Sözen said the fire acts “in a different way, because of the olive trees. They are very oily, so hosing the bark is not enough – they burn on the inside, because of the oil, so we have to get close enough to run the water down the trunk from the top”.
Residents fight a wildfire in the village of Gouves on Evia.
Photograph: Angelos Tzortzinis/AFP/Getty Images
Local people had been “a massive help”, he said, bringing everything from food to cold water to clean shirts. But his team had “seen so many dead creatures, lizards, everything you can think of”, he said. “We saved a tortoise.”
Yusuf Doğan Gürer, 36, deputy head of the Avrupa Yakasi (European side) Istanbul fire department, said the firefighters had pushed their vehicles and their own bodies to the limit to try to get as close to the fires as possible.
“You need to be in good physical condition, much more than what we are used to in the city,” he said. “We had to evacuate the area three times – that has never happened before when we work anywhere else. Once, we got stuck inside the flames.”
The experience had been hard, he said, but had “taught us a lot. The way the flames move, and how fast they move, are things we need to adapt to. Phones are not working properly, so coordination is hard. We will stay here as long as we are needed.”
Agence-France Presse, Reuters and Associated Press contributed to this report
The fires were out of control over large swathes of Evia ANGELOS TZORTZINIS AFP
Gouves (Greece) (AFP)
A police car siren calls for the last residents of the village of Gouves on the Greek island of Evia to evacuate as fire rages down a mountainside and engulfs the first houses.
"I don't want to, I don't want to," repeats in sobs a woman on her porch who cannot find the strength to flee even as the approaching inferno turns the sky orange.
The fires remained out of control over large swathes of Evia island on Sunday, as evacuations were continuing, pushing hundreds of people towards the beach.
Many villagers joined the battle, and around 10 men were busy digging, cutting and pulling out branches in an effort to slow the raging fire despite the repeated urging of police to leave.
Forming a human chain, they unrolled water hoses fed by agricultural pick-ups, desperate to save their livelihood.
"If people leave, the villages will burn for sure," says Yannis Selimis, a young man from Gouves. "We are in the hands of God."
Tempers flared over a lack of government response.
"Which authorities? Which firefighters? Do you see anybody here?" exclaims one local.
"They burnt our paradise," says Triantafyllos Konstantinos, 46. "We are done," he sighs.
"It's tragic. We are all going to the sea," says Nikos Papaioannou as the fire steadily encroaches on residential areas near the island's northern coasts.
- Refugees in their own country -
At Gouves, cars pass through a vast cloud of smoke as they try to go towards the beach.
Some kilometres away, at the beach of Pefki, a ferry boat docked on the beach and a warship off the coast are waiting to rescue these people who have become refugees in their own country.
Many villagers joined the battle ANGELOS TZORTZINIS AFP
They wait without knowing whether they will reach the mainland Sunday evening.
"Evia is finished", says Cleopatra Plapouta. "People are fighting all by themselves. Not a single firefighter inside the villages," she complains, wearing a scarf and a mask against the thick smoke and ash.
"We are burning for a week now!" her husband exclaims. "The fire started 60 kilometres away! 60 kilometres!"
Shirtless, the greying man gesticulates with despair. "It's unbelievable! It was a heaven, they burnt it down!"
Maria Moushogianni, who owns a beach hotel where she is shelterin two families who have abandoned their homes, says that Sunday was the first day that airplanes appeared.
"They abandoned us, they lied to us! I'm going to close the hotel and leave," adds the 66-year-old woman, holding her white cat. "This evening if possible".
'Disaster movie' in Greece: Death and devastation as wildfires rage across the world
Fires rage across Greece, Italy and other southern European states, as California is in the grips of Dixie Fire, the worst single wildfire in the state's history.
From Greece to California, the summer has seen wildfires rage in several places around the world, with lives lost and thousands evacuated.
In Europe, where some officials have blamed climate change for the large number of fires, blazes have burned in several countries, from Italy to Greece and Turkey.
Massive fires also have been burning across Siberia in northern Russia for weeks, forcing the evacuation on Saturday of a dozen villages. In all, wildfires have burned nearly 15 million acres this year in Russia.
Thousands of people have fled wildfires burning out of control in Greece, including near the capital, Athens.
In dramatic scenes, residents and holidaymakers alike had to be ferried out of the island of Evia, the country's second-largest, as all other escapes were blocked.
The fire on Evia started on 3 August and cut across the popular summer destination from coast to coast, burning out of control for five days.
Patrol boats, navy vessels, a ferry and fishing and private boats are on standby to carry out more potential evacuations from the seaside village of Pefki, on Evia.
The conditions on the island were particularly tough for the water-dropping planes and helicopters, with pilots facing "great danger" with limited visibility, air turbulence and wind currents from the fire, said Civil Protection chief NIkos Hardalias.
Smoke spreads over the sea around Evia island. Pic: Ap
Elini Myrivili, chief heat officer in Athens, likened the fires raging in Greece to a "disaster movie". She welcomed the "wonderful" international support, as a team of British firefighters today arrived to help.
British firefighters are expected to land in Greece later Sunday to help battle the fires.
Hundreds of firefighters have been battling the blazes, fuelled by bone-dry conditions after the country's worst heatwave in decades, which sent temperatures soaring to 45C (113F).
At least 20 people have been treated in hospital for fire-related injuries, including two firefighters who were in intensive care. Turkey's worst fires in a decade
Fires in Turkey have killed at least eight people, including a volunteer who was carrying drinking water and other refreshments to firefighters in Marmaris.
The blazes have also killed countless animals, destroyed acres of forests near the country's favourite tourist destinations, and forced thousands of evacuations.
They have been described as the worst in at least a decade.
The fires in the country's southern and south-western coasts have been fuelled by a summer heatwave, low humidity and strong winds. Two killed in Italy as Sicily declares state of emergency
In Italy, two people were killed in the southern Calabria region, a 53-year-old woman and her 34-year-old nephew. They were reportedly trying to save their olive trees.
Sicily has declared a state of emergency to last six months as fires burn through the island.
Temperatures are expected to soar in coming days, and could reach 45C (113F) in parts of Italy.
Biggest single California wildfire engulfs Greenville
Greenville in California was devastated by the fires
Fuelled by strong winds and bone-dry vegetation, California's Dixie Fire has grown to become the largest single wildfire in the state's history.
The Gold Rush town of Greenville has been destroyed, with its estimated 800 residents told to evacuate before the blaze tore through the town.
Greenville is destroyed by fire, which has been raging for three weeks
The Dixie Fire, named after the road where it started in Sacramento, covered an area of 700 square miles (1,813 square kilometres) on Saturday night, with just 21% of it contained contained, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
The fire has taken lives since it broke out on 13 July.
Siberian villages evacuated
Volunteers at the scene of forest fire in Siberia. Pic: Ap
More than 150 active forest fires in Siberia are threatening a dozen villages, and two had to be evacuated at the weekend in a vast region of Siberia.
In recent years, Russia has recorded high temperatures that many scientists regard as a result of climate change. The hot weather - coupled with the neglect of fire safety rules - has caused an increasing number of fires.
Hundreds on Greek island of Evia flee homes as wildfires continue to rage
Hundreds of Greek islanders packed up their belongings and fled their homes on the Greek island of Evia on Sunday as wildfires continued to rage after a record heatwave.
Greece and neighbouring Turkey have been battling the devastating fires for nearly two weeks, with 10 people confirmed dead and dozens needing hospital treatment.
While rain brought some respite from the blazes in Turkey over the weekend, Greece continues to suffer a hot, dry summer.
The blazes have destroyed homes and reduced thousands of hectares of land to ash on Evia, Greece's second-largest island just northeast of the capital Athens.
Civil protection deputy minister Nikos Hardalias said a fire front in the north of Evia was being pushed by strong winds towards beach villages.
"We have ahead of us another difficult evening, another difficult night," he said, adding that 17 aircraft were helping to fight the fires on Evia.
However, fires in the southwestern Peloponnese region and in a northern suburb of Athens had abated, he added.
'In the hands of God'
The rugged landscape and dense pine forests on Evia that so appeal to tourists are helping to spread the flames and make the work of firefighters almost impossible.
Even waterbombing planes are struggling, with an official telling local media much of the water was evaporating before it reached the ground.
Hundreds of people have already fled the island and another 349 were taken to safety early on Sunday, the coast guard said.
In Pefki village, young people carried older and disabled people over the sand on to a ferry.
Elsewhere, villagers joined in the battle against the flames, helping firefighters.
"We are in the hands of God," 26-year-old Evia resident Yannis Selimis told AFP. "The state is absent. If people leave, the villages will burn for sure."
Local officials were critical of the efforts to control the fires, which erupted on the island on Tuesday.
"I have no more voice left to ask for more aircraft. I can't stand this situation," local mayor Giorgos Tsapourniotis told Skai TV on Saturday.
Many villages were saved only because young people ignored evacuation orders and stayed on to keep the fires away from their homes, he added.
Alexis Tsipras, leader of the main opposition Syriza party, said the government did not appear to be listening to local concerns about a lack of coordination and equipment.
"Is there a management plan? HOW LONG will this drama drag on?" he wrote in a tweet.
Local officials were struggling to shelter those forced to flee their homes.
Hardalias said on Saturday that provisional shelter had been provided to 2,000 people evacuated from the island.
'Trying times'
From July 29 to August 7, 56,655 hectares (140,000 acres) were burnt in Greece, according to the European Forest Fire Information System. The average area burnt over the same 10 summer days between 2008 and 2020 was 1,700 hectares.
Britain, France, Spain and other countries have answered Greece's appeal for help, and on Sunday, Serbia announced it was sending 13 vehicles with 37 firefighters and three firefighting helicopters.
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis thanked foreign countries for their help on Sunday.
"On behalf of the Greek people, I would like to express our heartfelt gratitude to all the countries that have sent assistance and resources to help fight the wildfires," he tweeted.
"We thank you for standing by Greece during these trying times."
Police said on Sunday they had arrested at least 10 people for arson, among them three young men in Pireaus for attempting to start a fire in nearby Perama.
(AFP)
Villagers become unsung heroes of Turkey's wildfires
They grabbed their rakes, shovels and axes, donned high-vis helmets and went off into the mountains, helping exhausted firefighters battling Turkey’s deadly blazes pick their way through unfamiliar terrain.
Residents of the rolling hills and pine forests hugging the Mediterranean and Aegean coasts have turned into the unsung heroes of Turkey’s battle against its deadliest and most destructive wildfires in generations.
“You see that little fire over there? We will intervene and put it out right away,” Mehmet Yesimoglu, a 50-year-old shopkeeper, said proudly while pointing to a worrying patch of blood-orange flames.
“If we don’t, then it will grow and then we will need helicopters or planes.”
Turks have been watching in horror as huge pockets of some of the country’s most fertile land goes up in flames, turning to ash fields and valleys which farmers rely on for subsistence.
At least eight people have died and dozens of villages have been evacuated. Few know what — if anything — they will be able to return to when the fires finally subside.
But instead of feeling helpless, many joined the frontlines.
“This is not something we knew how to do before,” Tanzer Bulut, 30, said as he walked toward the smoke blotting out the horizon.
“All we do is try to be logical. You look where the flames are going and try to get ahead of them. We do what we can even though we are not professionals.”
– ‘I trust his knowledge’ –
Some of the locals give the firefighters directions, showing the best way to thread their way through winding roads that are often blanketed in smoke in the daytime and lit up by threatening, red flames at night.
One man stood on the side of the road, shining a clear path with the flashlight in his helmet, waving fire engines through with a stick.
Food and water donations have been pouring in from across the country to the point that one local official pleaded for Turks to stop — there was simply no place to store it all.
Others are helping the firefighters pull long, thick heavy hoses on their shoulders to the edges of the flames.
“To get a bulldozer through, I was able to show a clear path to the top without a problem, even though it’s steep,” said Hayati Zorlu, 55, a local village head in the Mugla province, which is home to popular Aegean resorts.
“Because I know the terrain and I am the only one here. There are no other officials except for the village chief.”
Hakan Karabulut, who heads an Istanbul fire brigade dispatched to the disaster zone, ran out of fingers on his hand listing all the ways locals have been able to help.
“First of all, they are our guides. Second, they show where to refuel with water. Third, they tell us where the fires are. Fourth, they provide us with logistical support, whether it’s food or drink. And fifth, they help us carry the fire hoses.”
But there was more, the fire chief said.
“We have youngsters here who are hunters and they know the territory very well. If I find him and I trust his knowledge, I don’t let him go.”
When the catastrophe destroys houses, fields and factories, throwingthe active population out of work, it undoubtedly destroys wealth. Butthis cannot be remedied by a transfusion of wealth from elsewhere, aswith the miserable operation of rummaging around for old jumble, wherethe advertising, collection and transport cost far more than the valueof the worn out clothes. The wealth that disappeared was th…
Today
Footnotes
Undoubtedly, the size of the disaster along the Po has been massive,and the estimated cost of the damage is still rising. Let us admit thatthe cultivated area of Italy lost one hundred thousand hectares or onethousand square kilometres, about one three hundredth or three perthousand of the total. One hundred thousand inhabitants have had toleave the area, which is not the most densely settled in Italy, or, inround figures, one five hu
Post-socialist angles of left political strategy
Considerations from the Baltic region about contemporary left
The latter half of the past decade saw an unexpected reinvigoration of political projects on the Euro-Atlantic left. Political movements like the Occupy Wall Street in the US and the public against austerity in the UK quite unexpectedly fused into party power. Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders were riding a wave of enthusiasm that suddenly opened up a space for ideas once deemed too radical to even vocalise. Yet the retreat of both figures has either inspired dejection and re-centring of the political ground or indeed novel theorisations about the appropriate strategies for the left in the present moment. The following essay is written in an effort to advance the latter.
It is partly inspired by recent theorisations undertaken by James Meadway and James Schneider. I find their contributions stimulating but they are written largely for the Euro-Atlantic left audience. This is not meant as a criticism since it would be the easiest thing in the world to point out the limits of their political context and thus the strategy they advocate. However, the struggle against the overweening and international power of capital necessarily assumes an accordingly international character which requires either modifications or even outright changes to the strategies articulated by the Euro-Atlantic left. My purpose here is to outline certain angles that contextualise leftist movements in post-socialist countries in Europe because they face very different challenges from the Euro-Atlantic left. They are still extremely marginal but their perspective may yield unforeseen insights in the way political questions and challenges are formulated. It is a region, after all, that has a direct experience with socialist projects and hosts 150 million people and could potentially have a decisive influence on the way the EU is structured. Its world-historic role then should not just be seen in the past tense.
To begin with, since I already made a point about a certain centricity (or limited applicability) in theorisations about strategy on the left in Britain and the US, I should make it clear that I am writing largely from a Latvian perspective which is by no means a paradigmatic case of post-socialist politics. There are considerable historical as well as contemporary differences between the Baltic States, the Visegrad group, the Balkans and places like Romania and Slovenia. The Baltic States do tend to stand out, though, thanks to their dogmatic embrace of neoliberalism. In Latvia this was partly a function of its geopolitical positioning that served as the basis of the economic vision dreamt up in the 90s whereby Latvia would become wealthy by providing financial along with transit services to the ‘West’ and the ‘East’. It financialized its economy from the get-go, introducing a flat income tax, letting capital roam freely, giving up on monetary sovereignty by pegging the currency and later by joining the Eurozone. Capitalism became truly hegemonic in a Gramscian sense. The other post-socialist countries followed a less dogmatic but still largely unquestioned capitalist trajectory. With the exception of Slovenia, social-democratic and leftist politics as well as movements became a rarity. Currently, many of these countries have become even more right-wing not just in the economic, but also social and cultural sense too. There are differences, no doubt, but aversion to anything that smacks of ‘socialism’ seems to unify the region because it is ultimately made synonymous with totalitarianism and Nazism.
Latvia’s love story with capitalism and the contemporary disdain for socialism, which exists in every strata of society, is all the more remarkable if one looks at a hundred year old history when Latvia was considered one of the ‘reddest’ regions in the world. A generation of socialists and anarchists was born and bred in this Baltic region and one can still see a monument commemorating the protests of the 1905 revolution in the Riga city centre. The most celebrated Latvian poet was a social democrat. The mystical protagonist of the Sydney Street Siege in London in 1911 – Peter the Painter – was a Latvian anarchist who emigrated after the 1905 events. When Latvia gained its independence in 1918, it passed a constitution that essentially copied the social-democratic Weimar constitution and restored its legitimacy in 1990 after seceding from the Soviet Union. The roots of the country are leftist in spirit as the idea of a national independent country was brought forward by waves of intelligentsia in the 19th century whose political affiliations were avowedly on the left. How to explain then, the unquestionable switch to hardcore financial capitalism that occurred after the restoration of independence? How to explain the capitalist nature of the country’s social policy that does not even pretend to be interested in preventing poverty or alleviating inequality?
The short and simple answer is nationalism. The categories of ‘nation’ and ‘class’ have a particular entwinement in post-socialist countries. The former is accorded with primary political importance: any politics is possible only if the condition of nationalism is satisfied. The hierarchical relationship between these political categories is obviously nothing new or unique. Most projects on the left are focused on reversing the hierarchy, calling for political education to demonstrate that what really divides and separates people is class rather than nationality and, personally, I wholeheartedly agree with it. Yet the intensity of the nationalist sentiment in Latvia is not something to be done away with through ‘education’. The nation-state, no matter how potentially oppressive or hostile, remains as the pre-condition of political freedom due to the geopolitical realities. The 19th century political activists spoke against a double oppression: the national culture and language was politically suppressed by the Russian Tsar whereas economically Latvians were under the yoke of Baltic-German nobility. It was precisely the ability of the emerging Latvian intelligentsia to formulate the economic demands in a way that supported the project of a national state that rendered left politics viable.
The hypocrisy of the Soviet Union which formally may have endorsed the freedom of nations to practice their culture while practically privileging the Russian language in all spheres of life has forever tainted the idea that such national rights are possible under socialism. It is even more so in Latvia where the nation is conceptualised in cultural terms through language, shared social memory and particular cultural rituals and folklore. The thinking goes that once there are no people speaking Latvian, remembering the violent history of the 20th century and participating in cultural festivals, the basis of an independent state disappears. Thus, the forced immigration of Russians in Latvia during the occupation was seen as an existential threat to any future political freedom and any contemporary immigration is seen in the same way. Of what use then is any social justice or progressive social policy if there are no Latvians left to enjoy it, many wonder? It is, of course, an entirely hypothetical question that cannot be reasoned with. But it does illustrate a clear fact: for any leftist project in the region to succeed it has to primarily engage the national question. This challenge is enormous because such a project has to remain principled on the political and practical equality of all people regardless of ethnicity or nationality. Latvia is home to a large share of Russian population that are still made to feel responsible for the actions of the Soviet regime. For many people, having a nation-state means precisely the ability to order other ethnicities around. The post-socialist left has to demonstrate that their project of economic democracy and justice sustains the national privileges while eradicating ethnic discrimination. No small feat and weaved with contradictions.
In the wake of the restoration of independence in the early 90s, the one political decision that enjoyed complete consensus was joining the European Union and the NATO. It may seem paradoxical that the very first thing the country wanted to do after leaving one kind of Union to enjoy its independence was joining another Union straight away. Yet it was the perceived guarantee that the EU would not demand compromises on the national question and not invoke any supra-national or federal policy that would limit national privileges which made the decision straightforward. The way EU’s neoliberal policies have actually contributed to waves of emigration catering to the existential anxiety over the reproduction of the Latvian nation is not a link anyone’s ready to make. The EU is seen as a largely benevolent force which ensures rather than threatens Latvia’s sovereignty. It is also seen as an external check on the always-present threat of corruption and reckless fiscal policies. The latter is more mythological than actual, but formulating a critique of the EU is difficult precisely because any legitimate criticism of its economic policies will be underlain by these other considerations. By now, any meaningful policy initiative has to be affirmed by Brussels which creates another dilemma for any post-socialist left project: where to focus the political energy: on the national or European level? If the economic projects of the national left cannot be brought into being without the proactive support of European institutions, most notably, the European Central Bank, then does it even make sense to aim for national parliamentary seats? Or should the post-socialist left seek pan-European alliances that could ultimately re-structure the distribution of power and the mandates of European institutions to ensure a democratic control over the monetary system? It is clear that the answer is both, but for small political groups the balance between these tactics is decisive if they are to build successful decision-making and movement-making structures.
Theory of society
However, even if, at some distant future, the nationality question will cease to carry its political significance, the post-socialist left has to figure out what the meaning of ‘class’ is in their respective societies. Recently, Branko Milanovic suggested on his Twitter feed that the post-socialist countries have three distinct constituencies that have political representation: pensioners, nationalists and the mafia. To nationalists we have already alluded; pensioners are numerically significant and as elsewhere – vote actively – but the mafia is an outgrowth of the wild 90s, a transformation of the oligarchy that adjusts itself to the imperatives of the rule of law. The mafia may very well infiltrate itself in liberal as well as nationalist parties depending on their businesses. They have learned the political technologies of liberal democracies and parties end up being a front for business interests – in this sense, post-socialist countries have provided a foretaste of what happens when the government itself becomes privatized as happened in the 90s – a phenomenon currently underway in places like the UK. These three constituencies are not related to each other materially as the classical political economy tradition teaches. In fact, they often overlap and may even share the same ideology or agreement on key points. For example, at the moment, the government of Latvia is constituted by five parties: the nationalists, self-proclaimed liberals, self-proclaimed conservatives, an austerity party and another that simply has no ideology. You have the entire mix and somehow the motley collection of these political groups limps along squashing democratic debate for fear of internal dissolution.
This is an extreme version of Tariq Ali’s extreme centre. One would be hard-pressed to find meaningful differences between the parties. There is no representation along class lines as it simply is not clear what the actual material structure of the society is. You obviously have the mafia and the oligarchic strata that controls key infrastructures: oil transit, gas, construction, finance, real estate, communications, etc. There is a sizable segment of public administration which is itself internally stratified and public sector workers in education, health and social services that tend to be poorly remunerated. Naturally, there is a vibrant private sector in areas like timber and IT, but no clear class of rich entrepreneurs. And then there is a mass of people working for essentially subsistence wages without any meaningful unionisation and no class consciousness to speak of since the very term ‘class’ has been banished to an infernal realm never to be resurrected.
In my view, learning to read the material structure of the society is by far the biggest challenge for the post-socialist left. And it may turn out that the material aspect is not even that important from a strategic point of view and it is much more instrumental to rely on the kind of division suggested by Milanovic. Currently, the only prevalent relational opposition within the society that everybody could agree on would be one between the government and the rest of the society. There are discernible reasons for it: one, the historical privatization of the government which in many ways resembles the Soviet nomenklatura; second, the size and voice of the education and healthcare sector which has grown louder during the pandemic; third, the consistent inability of successive governments to do anything about poverty and inequality. Yet, the opposition is somewhat paradoxical and certainly not sustainable since having a national independent government was the basis of any political freedom as noted above. For the post-socialist left to reproduce this relational conflict would be self-defeating. Furthermore, the material structure is crisscrossed by ethnic elements: in the wake of independence, ethnic Russians moved to the private sector as the public sector jobs were mainly available only to Latvians. Taking into account these historical factors is important so as not to create a material mirror of the society which ends up demonising particular ethnic groups. Identifying the revolutionary unit – a seemingly central task to Marxist thought – may very well turn out to be a hopeless exercise in a society that remains generally poor and that is furthermore integrated in much larger political and military units. Shifting the opposition on a European level as the British right did so successfully is equally challenging for reasons mentioned above. But it is even clearer that simply vocalising progressive policies will be insufficient without a theory of society. Without such a theory any success will be short-lived and accidental.
The meaning of state power
In his recent series of articles on Novara Media James Schneider suggests a tripartite logic and sequence to socialist strategy: movements united by a party which then passes socialist policy. It reiterates the political dynamic at play during the last decade when activists positioned themselves against the very structures of government itself, questioning the legitimacy of the official decision-making structures as a whole which subsequently propelled support for particular politicians who endorsed the views of these various movements. The alliance between a parliamentary force engaged in political manoeuvring and extra-parliamentary entities focused on the grassroots and direct democracy forms makes intuitive sense: it generated and sustained support for particular political candidates which then symbolised the entire effort thus also exposing the weak link of the strategy: as these candidates were side-lined, so was the strategy. Yet the issue I take with this formulation is not its schematic logic but rather the unchanged meaning of state power which is conceptualised as something to be sought and then exercised. This approach is likely to splinter the movements and the party and reproduce existing hierarchies rather than subvert them. It is precisely on this kind of logic that the 19th century split between reformists and revolutionaries unfolded – an outcome lamented by James Meadow as something that should not have happened. I do not question the necessity of needing to assume control over public institutions. However, the way this control will be exercised is equally important. Here, socialists would do well to learn from anarchists. Because – what really is state power? It is not just the ability to pass policy: it is also the way it is implemented, administered and made real.
The ideology of civil servants and the public administration has received less consideration than it merits. However, in the post-socialist Latvia the size of this sector is notable and accordingly so is its power. It is among civil servants that much of public policy is written; they enjoy a sort of situational power able to determine the nuances of particular strategies. They have an embodied knowledge of the way the government actually works, what lines of communication are open for what purposes, what language has to be used, how the circulation of documents happens, what the procedural and legal processes are. If some policy turns out to work well and responds to real needs, it is likely thanks to the work of some hard-working and dedicated civil servants rather than an elected politician. However, the opposite is also the case. To be clear, I do not question the fact that civil servants take their cue from the politicians. But there is a lot of leeway in the actual everyday policy-making process. For example, Latvia is currently working out its first real housing strategy since the restoration of independence. Housing policy is multi-dimensional. If the Ministry of Economy, under which housing policy falls in Latvia, does not actively collaborate with the Ministry of Welfare to design an effective homelessness policy which, furthermore, requires a close cooperation with all the municipalities, then the policy will remain simply rhetorical. And since in a post-socialist context, the government consists of various political groups that exercise their influence through their Ministries rather than through the government as a whole, such coordination and collaboration is not a given.
For this reason, the purpose of a marriage between a party (or parties) and movements should not be defined as solely capturing state power in order to pass policy. Parties and movements should converge to transform the very meaning of state power. The function of movements is not just the exercise of grassroots direct democracy. Movements should also become sites of experimenting with civil administration, of implementing policy through their potentially enormous networks of people. If policy remains the prerogative of a party which marches into the government and begins passing policy after policy, a whole lot of trust is given to the civil administration that ultimately consists of people that also have ideologies and a political belief system. Their institutional ability to impede certain decisions or alter nuances so as to render the policy much less effective cannot be discounted. However, if policy-making becomes the domain of both the party and its movements, and the latter are empowered with making policy real and tailored to local needs, then the way we understand the state – as the expression of public purpose and not as the institutionalised site of violence – might very well change as well.
If the post-socialist context is anything to go by, as I am trying to suggest it is, then it might be useful to look at the role of the non-government sector as one such arena of movement-public administration nexus. In Latvia, the NGO sector is the practical political opposition, the extra-parliamentary opposition if you will. As the parliament and the government consists of political forces that ultimately share the same normative understanding of reality and largely function to further particular material interests, the NGOs tend to be the uncomfortable voices trying to disrupt the political consensus. However, they do not perceive themselves as explicitly political entities instead seeing their role as furthering the interests of particular social groups that are least protected and most at risk. While there is clear effort to unify the sector, it is still disorganised and fragmented. Furthermore, NGOs do not have a theory of economy. They do not analyse or define the situation of their ‘constituents’ as an outcome of capitalist processes. Capitalist realism reigns supreme. This is another instance of the extreme manifestation of the extreme centre. So if political education is to have a role in the post-socialist strategy of the left, then it is probably within this group. They might very well become the revolutionary unit, however if they do not perceive their work as primarily political and if they do not have a theory of economy, then their ‘class consciousness’ will not emerge. For this reason, one of the main tasks of the post-socialist party of the left is to create and cultivate alliances with the NGO sector. There is a clear overlap of ideas and goals between the two and I would argue that neither can attain their purpose without the other. It may very well mean that this is the central alliance which will determine the possible success of the post-socialist left.
While on the topic of alliances, what socialist strategies tend to lack or overlook is the role of the private sector in their plans. This is especially striking if one considers the magnitude of plans in the Green New Deal and the inevitably significant role private companies will play in it. If socialist strategies continue to perceive the private sector as something to be policed and repressed, then the outcome will be resentment. Furthermore, to even suggest that the private sector is the source of social injustice is political suicide in the post-socialist context. For this reason, it seems much more agreeable to form strategic alliances with key private sector representatives and companies. If they are left out of the picture, they will not hesitate to mobilise resources in generating moral panics over the second coming of communism. Inviting them to the table early is a form of stakeholder management that any post-socialist left strategy should regard as a key objective. Designing appropriate public procurement procedures to ensure the standards of workplace democracy and adherence to social and ecological goals is one side of the coin; the other is ongoing dialogue and partnership based on something resembling an alliance.
Post-socialist language
Finally, some remarks on the post-socialist left discourse used to communicate ideas and define political worldviews. If there is one stark difference between the Euro-Atlantic left and the post-socialist left, then it is to be found in the very word ‘socialism’. In September 2019 I was visiting Brighton where the Labour party held its annual conference alongside ‘The World Transformed’ festival. It was a memorable experience to witness the political enthusiasm pervading the city which seemed like a culmination of a momentum that had been gathering behind Jeremy Corbyn for the last couple of years. There was a sense of a prospective revolution in the air that was immediately felt by an outsider like me. As it turned out, it was probably the high point of Corbyn’s project. Nevertheless, the level of political engagement, the knowledge of participants, the vibrant sociality made clear to me the far road ahead for societies like Latvia where the same kind of enthusiasm is confined to extremely small and almost marginal political circles. What surprised me the most though was the way the word ‘socialism’ was used and embraced: people openly and proudly calling themselves socialist is virtually unthinkable in Latvia or for that matter the entire Eastern Europe. Anyone doing that would not be taken seriously and quickly brushed aside to the deepest corners of the political space.
So now, whenever I see progressive voices in the ‘West’ identifying themselves as socialist and using words like ‘comrade’ I shudder. There is no surer way of alienating an entire region from any future alliance than by invoking a word which is almost synonymous with Nazism. It is a gross ignorance of history which complicates the work of left-leaning political activists in the region. Moreover, even the most radical contemporary socialists that I have read imagine some role for the private sector rendering the use of the term questionable in the first place. If a mixed economy that puts greater weight on state involvement in areas like banking, energy, communications and transport, not to mention education and healthcare is what we are realistically looking at – why call it socialist? Words like ‘public sector’ instead of ‘state’, ‘a balanced economy’ instead of ‘state involvement’ tend to elicit a lot more receptive ears than the emotionally and historically loaded words like ‘socialism’. It makes a great deal of sense then to find new words that accord with our new situations.
Yet on an even more urgent level, it is necessary to find an appropriate language of fiscal and monetary policy. Taxing the rich and making them pay for a recovery is simply not a viable proposal in a country where there’s not too many rich people and where similar calls inevitably invoke the spectre of totalitarianism. Furthermore, taxes on capital is a difficult national subject due to the privatisation programmes of the 90s whereby 80% of the population became homeowners inclining them to support capital-friendly tax regimes. The good news are that the insights from the Modern Monetary Theory tell us that we do not actually have to tax in order to spend – the days of sound finance socialism are over. Taxing and spending are two separate, while linked, courses of policy. Governments can fund infrastructure development and social policies without having to rely on the benevolence of the private sector to lend or the state capacity to tax. This is not to suggest that high-earners or capital should not be taxed. The levels of inequality in the post-socialist countries cannot be adequately dealt with if the tax system does not prevent, by design, immoral stratification. It is rather to say that the conversations on state spending should be decoupled from conversations on tax policy in their current form. MMT offers a promising terrain to be fully explored and made use of by the post-socialist left as the choice between the welfare of the private sector and the welfare of the public is a false one. At the same time, the post-socialist left has to seriously engage with the public sentiment which views any state economic activity as suspicious – a result of the wild 90s.
What should be especially alarming for the post-socialist left is the way most governments have given away their monetary sovereignty and for all practical purposes their fiscal policy too. While they can formally set their own national tax rates, these are measures to be always coordinated with Brussels. This presents a conundrum in terms of strategy and the linguistic framing of it too. Should the sovereignty over money be retrieved? Or is it possible to alter the European monetary space and its institutions to accord with the values and political ideals of the post-socialist left? If the choice falls on the latter – how to communicate this effectively? The intricacies of the Eurozone, the operations of the European Central Bank, the dependence of national governments in the Eurozone on private financial institutions cannot be elegantly captured in a single phrase, especially if the same discursive frame should call for some kind of action too. ‘Change the charter of the ECB!’ is not a very exciting policy idea and neither is ‘let the governments borrow more’ because the conservative fearmongering over the unpayable debt our grandchildren will suffer from evokes a lot more intuitive understanding on behalf of the general public. The issue appears to be three-fold: first, there is no shared understanding between the European left movements and parties about the desired institutional setup of the money system. Second, provided there was such a plan, it would also need to suggest the political level on which a new institutional setup would be agreed upon – national or inter-national? Would the current institutions of the EU be used for decision-making or completely new alternative structures devised? Third, what is going to be the language of these plans that is both – credible and politically engaging? These are discussions the post-socialist left should be having now because the answers are far from clear. If it does not offer a reading and a theory of macro-economy and macro-finance then it will forever remain marginal and easily discreditable as a movement that only knows how to moralise the illiberal and conservative segments of the political society.
Final angles
I have written these arguments mainly because there appears to be a lack of strategizing happening among the post-socialist left parties and movements about their political reality and the important questions that have to be addressed. While the Euro-Atlantic left has seen a surge in left enthusiasm over the last decade and respective theorising about the political possibilities before them, the post-socialist left seems either stuck on short-term goals or indulges in dreamy projects that are completely divorced from their context. This is incredibly unfortunate because not that long ago, the region produced some of the most original leftist thinkers and texts that are now actively read by the Euro-Atlantic activists. So what is to be done? The burning strategic questions that should be on the agenda concern the link between class and nationalism. Namely, re-introducing class into the political vocabulary cannot evoke associations that threaten the nationalist sentiment. This is obviously an enormous challenge if the left continues to be faithful to the principle of a fundamental equality of all peoples. Next, because the leftist movements in post-socialist countries remain small and marginal, their political energies should be expended wisely. Forming alliances with NGOs as well as the private sector in a grand informal coalition of the left is one step to be considered. However, alliances and partnerships on a European level also need to enter the picture if only to be clear about the appropriate level of political action. Finally, the nexus between movements, parties and the state has to be re-imagined to account for the uniformity of the political ideas that characterize the public discourse. The administration of policy cannot reproduce the current political order; it cannot reproduce the perception of a division between the state and the society. It is the substance and meaning of state power which has to be re-imagined if past mistakes are not to be repeated. Only then will the post-socialist left have global relevance, a role to play and contributions to make to fellow activists around the world.
The Barricade is an independent platform, which is supported financially by its readers. If you have enjoyed reading this article, support The Barricade’s existence! See how you can help – here!
Andris Šuvajevs is a Latvian author writing about macroeconomic policy and political economy.
He has received a Masters degree in Social Anthropology and teaches anthropology of money
at Riga Stradins University. He publishes regularly on various Latvian media outlets and is
generally interested in the political strategy of left-wing movements.
Protests held in Serbia against large scale mining bid by Rio Tinto
Resident collectives, environment and progressive political groups intensified protests against the mining giant Rio Tinto for large scale mining of lithium-rich jadarite.
Residents of the Serbian town of Loznica intensified protests against the proposed opening of a Lithium mine by the Anglo-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto in the Jadar and Drina rivers in Serbia. On July 29, Thursday, hundreds of residents of Loznica and several environmental rights groups including Ne davimo Beograd, Protect Jadar and Radjevina, the Coalition for Sustainable Mining in Serbia, Podrinje Anti-Corruption Team (PAKT), Ne damo Jadar and Kreni Pokreni protested in front of the City Assembly where the implementation of the mining project was discussed. The protesters alleged that for the imagined financial benefits from the mining project, the authorities are neglecting the likely impact on the lives of the people and their right to clean water, as well as the degradation of the environment.
According to reports, Rio Tinto — the second largest metal and mining corporation in the world — had announced its intent to make investments in mining in Serbia following the discovery of jadarite ore which has high concentrations of Lithium and Boronin. The group also signed an MoU in 2017 with the Serbian government for the development of world-class lithium deposits in the villages of Jadra — Brezjak, Slatina, Stupnica and Nedeljice. Following the deal, the government issued several permits for mining across the country and bids are underway to dilute the laws on mining, water conservation, spatial plans and environmental regulation among others to ensure hassle-free mining activity.
Various environmental rights groups, progressive political groups, academic community and residents of the towns of proposed mining sites have come together to protest and campaign against the plans. Earlier in the wake of protests, the Serbian president hinted at the possibility of a public referendum on the large-scale mining. The Ro Tinto group has maintained a defiant attitude towards the protests.
During the protest on Thursday, Radomir Lazović from the movement, Let’s Not Drown Belgrade, stated that mining in Jadar and Drina rivers will leave the investors with profit and the citizens to face the consequences, primarily diseases and ecological migration.
According to a Masina report, Podrinje Anti-Corruption Team (PAKT) accused Rio Tinto of having a notorious track record of anti-people, anti environment activities in many places such as Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Madagascar and Western Australia.
The global pursuit of “green transport” to reduce the carbon footprint and thereby to control climate change has resulted in large-scale demand for lithium, which is essential for the production of lithium-ion batteries used in electric cars and other electric vehicles.
This article was initially published at People’s Dispatch on 31 July 2021.
Photo: Protest in Loznica, Serbia (source: Ne davimo Beograd)
The Barricade is an independent platform, which is supported financially by its readers. If you have enjoyed reading this article, support The Barricade’s existence! See how you can help – here!
CAPITALI$M IN SPACE
China’s space station emerges as competitor to commercial ventures
The CEO of Nanoracks, a company that hosts payloads on and launches satellites from the International Space Station, said he lost a customer to China's space station. Credit: China Manned Space Agency
WASHINGTON — Companies involved with commercial activities on the International Space Station or planning their own space stations may face a new competitor in China’s new space station.
During a presentation at the ISS Research and Development Conference Aug. 4, Jeff Manber, chief executive of Nanoracks, said his company has already lost business to China and its space station.
“I lost a customer, my first customer that I lost going to the Chinese space station,” he said. “We’re in a competition now.”
He did not identify the customer or what they had planned to do. Nanoracks has several lines of business on the ISS today, from hosting experiments and external payloads to using the station as a platform for launching small satellites.
Chinese officials have said they are open to cooperating with other countries regarding use of the station. Ji Qiming, assistant director of the China Manned Space Agency, told China Daily in June that it had selected nine scientific projects from 17 countries to fly on the station, and was working with the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs to identify others. That could also include flying astronauts from other countries to the station.
Manber said that was a reminder for the need of U.S. leadership to attract international users of the ISS. “There should be no question that these are important ways that we keep not only that soft leadership, American leadership, but how we learn and how capital flows,” he said. “If we don’t, we open the door to other to come in and take leadership.”
“We’re doubling down on the International Space Station, and yet at the same time we’re beginning to look at a new era of commercial space stations,” he said. “We have to start planning as to what happens as the ISS begins to retire at the end of this decade.”
That “doubling down” on the ISS includes Bishop, a commercial airlock module that Nanoracks developed and installed on the station last December, allowing the company to launch more satellites and install external payloads. He cautioned, though, that NASA might be focusing too much on new hardware as it seeks to support commercialization efforts.
“NASA has not met new hardware that it doesn’t like,” he said. “Everybody’s fascinated with the hardware and they’re not focused on the demand side.” That approach, he said, can reduce use of existing hardware and thus their economic returns for the companies and their investors. “If the investors don’t see good returns, they’re not as interested in promoting other ideas on the demand side.”
Eventually, Manber said he expects the ISS to be replaced by several commercial platforms, optimized for specific applications ranging from tourism to research. Those facilities will be designed from the beginning for commercial use, something that is not the case of the ISS today.
“The ISS was a political station as well as a technical marvel, but the rules and regulations that have to be in place do limit the market of what you can do,” he said. “I believe there will be market niches that allows you to specialize and encourage in-space transportation and development.”
Mystery surrounds Chinese private rocket launch attempt
Liftoff in July 2019 of the successful first Hyperbola-1 launch from Jiuquan. Credit: iSpace
Updated 1:53 p.m. following confirmation of launch failure.
Updated Aug. 4 with the cause of failure from iSpace.
HELSINKI — Chinese private firm iSpace conducted a launch of a Hyperbola-1 solid rocket early Tuesday but status of the mission remained unclear for hours after liftoff.
The Hyperbola-1 four-stage solid rocket lifted off from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert at around 3:50 a.m. Eastern (15:50 local time) August 3.
The launch was tacitly revealed ahead of time via airspace closure notices. The first signs of an issue with the launch came with the early deletion of amateur footage from Chinese social media platform Sina Weibo.
A successful launch to a sun-synchronous orbit would normally be reported within an hour of launch. Neither the firm nor Chinese state media had issued a report on the situation by 8:00 a.m. Eastern. Chinese state media later confirmed that the satellite “did not enter orbit as scheduled.”
The next day iSpace revealed that the payload fairing had failed to separate properly resulting in the single satellite being unable to reach its intended orbit. While the rocket and staging performed well, the issue apparently prevented the spacecraft from reaching orbital velocity.
The failure is the second loss in a row for iSpace, which is one of China’s first and most financially backed commercial launch companies. Last year the company raised $173 million in series B round funding for new launcher series. However a planned IPO has not materialized.
The first Hyperbola-1 rocket successfully sent a satellite into orbit in July 2019, making iSpace the first private Chinese launch company to achieve orbit. The second launch, in February this year, ended in failure. Falling foam insulation was quickly isolated as the cause of the loss of the mission. Images of the first and second Hyperbola-1 rockets suggest significant changes in design between the two earlier launches.
Amid the setback, Beijing-based iSpace is meanwhile also working towards hop tests using a test stage for the reusable Hyperbola-2 methane-liquid oxygen launch vehicle. In April iSpace conducted lengthy variable thrust hot fire tests of its Jiaodian-1 engine.
The firm late last month also carried out tests on grid fins for the launcher. The 28-meter-tall, 3.35-meter-diameter liquid Hyperbola-2 is designed to be capable of delivering over 1,100 kilograms of payload into a 500-kilometer Sun-synchronous orbit, or 800 kilograms when the first stage is to be recovered and reused. A larger Hyperbola-3 series, including plans for an asymmetrical launcher variant, recently progressed from a from design to model development phase.
A second failure could have consequences in an uncertain, nascent yet crowded Chinese light solid rocket launch market. Galactic Energy, which became only the second Chinese company to deliver a payload into orbit in November, is currently preparing for two launches of its Ceres-1 solid rocket in the coming months, placing it in a position to demonstrate a measure of reliability.
To date, four Chinese private companies—excluding Expace, a spinoff from state-owned giant CASIC—have made six attempts to reach orbit with solid rockets. Two launches, from iSpace and Galactic Energy, have been successful. Landspace and Onespace suffered failures in October 2018 and March 2019 respectively.
Expace has successfully delivered numerous satellites into orbit with its Kuaizhou-1A solid rocket. The Kuaizhou-1A and Kuaizhou-11 had been grounded following failures of both launchers in 2020, but Expace today announced the final assembly of both a Kuaizhou-1A and a Kuaizhou-11 was underway.
China Rocket, a CASC spinoff, has developed and successfully launched the Jielong-1 solid rocket, but it has not flown since August 2019. The larger Jielong-3 is planned to have its test flight in 2022. Chinese Academy of Sciences spinoff CAS Space said earlier in the year that it aims for a first launch of the ZK-1A solid rocket capable of lifting 1.5 tons to LEO around September.
Chinese firms are also working on more complex liquid propellant launch vehicles, some of which are also aiming to achieve first stage reusability.
Others such as Spacetrek, Galactic Energy, Space Transportation, Rocket Pi and more are also developing liquid launch vehicles. State-owned spinoffs CAS Space and China Rocket are also working towards their own orbital liquid launchers.
China’s central government made a decision to open up launch and other sectors of the space industry to private capital in late 2014. The move is seen as a reaction to developments in the U.S. and the emergence of highly innovative and much more agile companies.
Boeing's CST-100 Starliner spacecraft, seen here atop its Atlas 5 rocket, scrubbed an Aug. 3 launch attempt because of a technical issue with its propulsion system. Credit: NASA/Aubrey Gemignani
WASHINGTON — Boeing is continuing its investigation into the thruster issue that delayed the launch of its CST-100 Starliner commercial crew vehicle but could soon run into schedule conflicts on both the International Space Station and with its launch vehicle.
In an Aug. 6 statement, Boeing said it was continuing to study why several valves in the propulsion system of the spacecraft were unexpectedly in the closed position during the countdown to the Aug. 3 launch attempt of the Orbital Flight Test (OFT) 2 mission, an uncrewed test flight. Boeing scrubbed the launch about three hours before the scheduled liftoff because of the problem.
The Starliner, atop its Atlas 5 rocket, is back in the Vertical Integration Facility (VIF) at Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral, allowing engineers access to the spacecraft. They were able to open some valves by issuing a new set of commands.
“Cautiously optimistic is a good way to describe how the team is feeling,” John Vollmer, Boeing vice president and commercial crew program manager, said in a statement.
What caused the valves to malfunction isn’t clear, although Boeing said in an earlier statement that they had ruled out software problems. One possibility is damage such as water intrusion during a severe thunderstorm shortly after the rocket was rolled out to the pad Aug. 2.
Neither NASA nor Boeing have set a new launch date for the OFT-2 mission. Boeing said in its statement that it is “assessing multiple launch opportunities for Starliner in August” and will work with NASA and United Launch Alliance to determine an appropriate launch date.
NASA, in its own statement Aug. 6, said it and Boeing “will continue to evaluate schedules based on where the troubleshooting efforts take them before deciding when the next official launch for the OFT-2 mission will take place.”
A combination of factors could force an extended delay if the OFT-2 mission does not launch by late August. A Falcon 9 is scheduled to launch the CRS-23 cargo mission to the ISS Aug. 28. It will use the same docking port as Starliner will for OFT-2, meaning that if OFT-2 does not complete its mission by late August, NASA will either have to postpone CRS-23 or wait until that mission is done, likely no earlier than late September.
By that point, however, ULA will need to focus on preparations for its next Atlas 5 launch, NASA’s Lucy asteroid mission. That mission has a three-week launch window that opens in mid-October. The Atlas 5 for OFT-2 would have to be “de-stacked” and the one for Lucy assembled in the VIF, with the spacecraft then installed and tested. Given the narrow window for Lucy, additional testing of the vehicle is likely to find any problems well ahead of the opening of the launch window.
An additional complication is that this will be taking place during the height of the tropical weather season, with the potential for tropical storms and hurricanes delaying launches or launch preparations by days.
If OFT-2 does not launch by the time its Atlas 5 needs to be de-stacked to prepare for the Lucy mission, the next opportunity may not be until November, after the SpaceX Crew Dragon Crew-3 mission launches at the end of October and the Crew-2 mission returns home, freeing up a docking port for Starliner.
