SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC SINN FEIN

Irish Nationalists eye power as N.Ireland holds 'seismic' election

In a historic first, Sinn Fein's Michelle O'Neill hopes to become Northern Ireland's first minister in elections on Thursday

 (AFP/PAUL FAITH)


Callum PATON and Jitendra JOSHI in London
Sun, May 1, 2022, 8:38 PM·4 min read

A century after its fraught foundation, Northern Ireland looks set for a constitutional earthquake this week with the pro-Irish party Sinn Fein on course to win regional elections.

Apart from periods of direct rule by London, pro-UK unionists have monopolised power ever since Britain carved out a Protestant-majority statelet in 1921, when the rest of Ireland achieved self-rule.

But pollsters expect victory on Thursday for Sinn Fein, which was once the political arm of the paramilitary IRA, in polls for the devolved assembly in Belfast.

The party took the deputy leadership in a power-sharing deal with unionists when Northern Ireland achieved peace in 1998, after three decades of sectarian bloodshed.

Across the province, high streets and junctions are festooned with election posters. In Newry, near the border with Ireland, a Sinn Fein billboard says that "Irish unity" is "the solution to Brexit".

"There has been a seismic change in society, particularly in the aftermath of Brexit, something that we didn't vote for, but which has been foisted upon us," said Sinn Fein leader Michelle O'Neill.

But the party is downplaying the prospect of a united Ireland anytime soon, wary of alienating centrist voters and moderate unionists whose focus is on healthcare, education and a UK-wide cost-of-living crisis.

Sinn Fein is averaging a poll lead of six to seven points over the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which puts the republican party on track to take the post of first minister in the devolved government.

But the administration cannot function unless the second-ranked party agrees to share power -- and it remains to be seen if the DUP will commit to a once-unthinkable step for the Protestant unionist camp.

- Losing our identity -

In DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson's Lagan Valley constituency, the unionist's face beams out from the red, white and blue of the UK flag.

A red "number one" urges voters to pick Donaldson as their first choice under Northern Ireland's voting rules, which give voters the chance to rank candidates in order of preference.

The DUP has been agitating for London to scrap a trade protocol with the European Union, afraid that Northern Ireland's status in the UK is being eroded by the post-Brexit arrangements and by Sinn Fein's rise.

The party walked out of the assembly this year in protest at the "Northern Ireland Protocol", and the UK government says it is ready to scrap the pact unless Brussels agrees changes.

The DUP, riven by infighting and watching warily an even more hardline party to its right, has been striking ever-more strident warnings that the protocol poses an existential threat for the union.

"When is the government and my prime minister going to restore our place in the United Kingdom?" DUP lawmaker Jim Shannon asked Boris Johnson in parliament last week.

Brexit -- which a majority in Northern Ireland voted against -- has frayed the carefully stitched compromises that were integral to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.

The peace deal saw London and Dublin agree to hold a cross-border referendum on whether all of Ireland should reunite, if there was popular support for one.

But how to define popular support was left deliberately vague -- and whether a Sinn Fein victory this week reaches the threshold is unclear. The DUP argues the threat exists, as it tries to rally its base.

- 'End the pantomime' -

Sinn Fein is also riding high south of the border and hopes to break the historic grip on power of Ireland's two biggest parties at the next general election, which is due by 2025 but could come sooner.

While Northern Ireland's unionist and nationalist camps square off, polls suggest the unaligned centre ground is also set for significant gains on Thursday.

Alliance Party leader Naomi Long said "the days of designations are over", arguing: "It is time that this pantomime around the first and deputy first minister office was brought to an end."

Alliance and two other small parties collectively held 11 of the 90 seats in the outgoing assembly.

"If they come back with 16, 17, 18 MLAs (Members of the Legislative Assembly), that could provoke a fundamental renegotiation of the Good Friday Agreement," David McCann, a commentator for the political website Slugger O'Toole, told AFP.

Jacqueline Hirst, a lifelong unionist voter living in the port town of Larne, said she was voting Alliance for the first time.

The 52-year-old civil servant said she was concerned about the EU protocol's impact on trade, after noticing "a lot of things in the supermarket disappear already".

But these concerns were secondary to dysfunction at Stormont sparked by long-running feuds between Sinn Fein and the DUP.

"We have to talk, and that's the only way we're going to get any further," Hirst said.

csp-jit/phz/har

 

Bill Gates calls for global pandemic task force

The world must arm itself against future health crises, the billionaire said

FILE PHOTO ©  Getty Images / AFP / David Ryder

The World Health Organization is currently the only body that can create and manage a “top-notch” multi-domain team of health experts to detect, prevent and battle future pandemics, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates said, bemoaning its underfunding despite being the top donor.

With over 6.2 million people estimated to have died from or with Covid-19 over the course of the pandemic, it is possible that the world has yet to see the worst, Gates warned in an interview with the Financial Times published on Sunday, just days before his new book, ‘How to Prevent the Next Pandemic’, is set to hit the shelves.

“We’re still at risk of this pandemic generating a variant that would be even more transmissive and even more fatal,” Gates warned. While saying he doesn’t want to be the “voice of doom and gloom,” Gates estimated the risk that “we haven’t even seen the worst” of the pandemic at “way above a 5 percent,” and emphasized the need to develop new longer-lasting vaccines.

READ MORE: WHO chief promotes Bill Gates’ book on ‘next pandemic’

The deep-pocketed philanthropist reiterated his call to establish a global emergency response team operating under GERM (Global Epidemic Response and Mobilization), with an annual budget of at least $1 billion. Gates said the amount of money needed for the initiative is “very small compared to the benefit,” and called it a test of world leaders’ ability to “take on new responsibilities.”

Last month, he gave a TED Talk in Vancouver to elaborate on the idea, also described in his book, saying he expects the group to consist of at least 3,000 doctors, epidemiologists, policy and communications experts, and diplomats operating under the direction of the WHO.

Gates’ book received praise from WHO Director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who fully agreed with his insistence that “we must act on Covid-19’s lessons and innovate so that we can deliver swift, equitable health solutions to prevent the next pandemic.”

READ MORE: Bill Gates discusses cooperation with Pakistani general

While Gates is not a certified medical expert and did not finish college, his massive wealth has allowed him to effectively dominate global health policy via the Gates Foundation as the largest private contributor to the global health body, behind only the US government in terms of funding.

Gates has become a common name in discussions about Covid-19 not only thanks to the millions his foundation has poured into the development and distribution of vaccines, but also because of another TED Talk from 2015, in which the tech mogul first warned that the world was unprepared for an “inevitable” global pandemic.

'Lungs of the Mediterranean' at risk

By Agence France-Presse
May 2, 2022

Tunisian marine biologist Yassine Ramzi Sghaier inspects a marine plant, from the Posidonia genus, in the capital Tunis on March 14, 2022. AFP PHOTO

MONASTIR, Tunisia: Under the Mediterranean waters off Tunisia, gently waving green seagrass meadows provide vital marine habitats for the fishing fleets and an erosion buffer for the beaches the tourism industry depends on.

Even more importantly, seagrass is such a key store of carbon and producer of oxygen — critical to slowing the devastating impacts of climate change — that the Mediterranean Wetlands Initiative (MedWet) calls it "the lungs" of the sea.

But, just as human actions elsewhere are devastating forests of trees on land, scientists warn that human activity is driving the grass under the sea to destruction at speed — with dire environmental and economic impacts.


Named Posidonia oceanica after the Greek god of the sea Poseidon, seagrass spans the Mediterranean seabed from Cyprus to Spain, sucking in carbon and curbing water acidity.

"Posidonia oceanica... is one of the most important sources of oxygen provided to coastal waters," MedWet, a 27-member regional intergovernmental network, says.

Tunisia, on the North African coastline, "has the largest meadows" of all — spreading over 10,000 square kilometres (3,900 square miles), marine ecologist Rym Zakhama-Sraieb said, pointing to its key carbon-capture role.

The underwater flowering plants absorb three times more blue carbon — the term used to describe the removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by the ocean and coastal ecosystems — than a forest, and they can store it for thousands of years, she said.

"We need Posidonia to capture a maximum of carbon," Zakhama-Sraieb said.

But a dangerous cocktail of rampant pollution, illegal fishing using bottom trawling nets that rip up the seagrass, and a failure by people to appreciate its life-giving importance is spelling its demise.


A fisherman displays a marine plant, from the Posidonia genus, on a beach in Monastir on March 21, 2022. AFP PHOTO


'Sea has been destroyed'

Growing at a depth of up to 50 meters (165 feet), seagrass provides shelter for fish and slows the erosion of coastlines by breaking wave swells that would otherwise damage the sandy beaches that tourists like.

Fuel-laden ship sinks off Tunisia coast

Tunisian marine biologist Yassine Ramzi Sghaier said the grass is crucial for a country already gripped by a grinding economic crisis.

"All of Tunisia's economic activity depends on Posidonia," Sghaier said.

"It is the largest provider of jobs," he claimed, noting that at least 150,000 people are directly employed in fishing and tens of thousands in the tourism industry.


Destruction has been swift, and replacement slow. The aquatic plant, also known as Neptune grass, grows less than five centimetres a year.

Areas of seagrass meadows have been slashed by more than half in the Gulf of Gabes, a vast area on Tunisia's eastern coast, Sghaier said, with a 2010 study blaming excessive fishing and pollution.

Once Posidonia and a wealth of marine species thrived there, but since the 1970s, phosphate factories have poured chemicals into the sea, causing more damage to the ecosystem.

Seagrass serves as a vital shelter for fish to breed, feed and shelter.

Fishing makes up 13 percent of Tunisia's GDP, and nearly 40 percent of it is done around seagrass meadows -- and fisherman describe plummeting stocks.

"The sea has been destroyed," said Mazen Magdiche, who casts his nets from the port of Monastir. "Chemicals are dumped everywhere."

Magdiche calculates his catch is three times less than what it was 25 years ago, but said he had little alternative income.

"There are fewer and fewer fish," he said.

"You are not looking out for the interests of the sea, but to feed your children," he added.


Students attend a class at the Faculty of Sciences in the capital Tunis on March 17, 2022. 

AFP PHOTO

'Catastrophe'

Nearly 70 percent of the Tunisian population lives on 1,400 kilometers (nearly 900 miles) of coastline, and for many Posidonia is considered mere rubbish.

When seagrass is washed up onshore, it mixes with sand to form large banks, that protect the coastline from swells and waves, experts say.

But sometimes bulldozers are used to "clean" the beaches, contributing to the acceleration of coastal erosion, with some 44 percent of beaches already at risk of being washed away.

"We are helping to make beaches disappear by removing the (seagrass) banks," said Ahmed Ben Hmida, of Tunisia's Coastal Protection and Development Agency.

Beaches are a key asset for tourism, which provided Tunisia with a record 14 percent of GDP in 2019, and a living for up to two million people — a sixth of the population.

The aquatic plant also improves the quality of water, making the beaches more attractive for tourists, said Zakhama-Sraieb.

Ben Hmida said the creation of four protected marine zones could help Posidonia, but that action was needed on a far wider scale.

'Alarming': The foul-smelling seaweed-like algae causing a big stink in Mexico

MARK STEVENSON

May 02 2022

EDUARDO VERDUGO/AP
With more algae spotted floating out at sea, experts fear that 2022 could be as bad or worse than the catastrophic year of 2018, the biggest sargassum wave to date.

Mexican authorities say the problem of foul-smelling seaweed-like algae on the country's Caribbean coast beaches is “alarming”.

The arrival of heaps of brown sargassum on the coast's normally pristine white sand beaches comes just as tourism is recovering to pre-pandemic levels, though job recovery in the country's top tourist destination has been slower.

With more algae spotted floating out at sea, experts fear that 2022 could be as bad or worse than the catastrophic year of 2018, the biggest sargassum wave to date.



“We can say the current situation is alarming,” said Navy Secretary José Ojeda, who has been entrusted with the apparently hopeless task of trying to gather sargassum at sea, before it hits the beaches.

Caribbean struggles with smelly seaweed invasion

Officials in Mexico’s Quintana Roo state, home to the white sandy beaches of Cancun and Tulum, and across the Caribbean have launched clean-up operations to rid seaweed - known as sargassum - from rich tourist areas. When the plant washes ashore, it

READ MORE:
* Stinking 'seaweed island' heads for Mexico
* Mexico struggles to understand, solve, seaweed invasion
* Mexico's prized beaches threatened by smelly algae invasion

The Navy currently has 11 sargassum-collecting boats operating in the area. But the Navy's own figures show that the portion they have been able to collect before it hits the beach has been falling.

In 2020, the Navy collected 4% of sargassum at sea, while 96% was raked off beaches. But that figure fell to 3% in 2021 and about 1% so far in 2022.

Allowing the algae to reach the beaches creates not only a problem for tourists, but for the environment, said Rosa Rodríguez Martínez, a biologist in the beachside town of Puerto Morelos who studies reefs and coastal ecosystems for Mexico’s National Autonomous University.

So much algae is reaching the beaches that hotels and local authorities are using bulldozers and backhoes, because the normal teams of rakes, shovels and wheelbarrows are no longer enough.

“The heavy machinery, when it picks it (sargassum) up, takes a large amount of sand with it,” contributing to beach erosion, Rodriguez Martinez said. “There is so much sargassum that you can't use small-scale equipment anymore, you have to use the heavy stuff, and when the excavators come in, they remove more sand.”

Rodríguez Martinez worries that 2022 could be worse than the previous peak year. “In the last few days there have been amounts washing up, and in places, that I didn't see even in 2018,” she said.

However, the University of South Florida Optical Oceanography Lab said in a report that “2022 is likely going to be another moderate or major sargassum year,” with observable amounts in all waters lower than in 2018 and 2021.

But given the vagaries of ocean currents, it may just be a very bad year for Mexico. Rodríguez Martinez is already suffering the effects herself, at her beachside offices.

“Where I am, I'm about 50 metres from the beach and the smell is very unpleasant,” she said. “Right now my head is hurting and another friend said her head hurts, and I said it must be the (hydrogen) sulphide gas from the sargassum, no?”

The problem comes just as resorts like Cancun, Playa del Carmen and Tulm are recovering from the brutal two-year drop in tourism caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Not all beaches have been hit equally; many in Cancun and Isla Mujeres are often free of much sargassum, but much of the Riveria Maya has been hit hard.

Carlos Joaquin, governor of the coastal state of Quintana Roo, said the number of tourists arriving by air so far this year – some 3.54 million travellers – is 1.27% above 2019 levels, before the pandemic. But Joaquin said that only about 83% of the 98,000 jobs lost during the pandemic have returned.

Sergio León, the former head of the state's employers' federation, said the seaweed invasion “has definitely affected us, it has affected our image on the domestic and international level. Obviously, not just visually, but in term of environmental damage and pain.”

“The Navy is making an effort, but it needs more, it isn't enough,” said León. “The ideal thing would be to gather it before it gets to our beaches.”

Rodriguez Martinez said that, given the limited number of Navy boats and funds, the best solution might be to hang floating offshore barriers and collect the sargassum in waters closer to the shore.

But she notes another problem: what to do with the thousands of tons of stinking algae collected each year, mainly by private hotel owners. Some have simply been tossing the mounds collected from the beach into disused limestone quarries, where the salt and minerals collected in the ocean can leech into groundwater.

Other simply toss into woodlands or mangrove swamps, which is equally as bad.

“The algae has a lot of salt ... so that is not good, even for palm trees, which are pretty salt resistant,” she noted.

While some have tried to use sargassum to create bricks or fertilizer, the lack of official policies and long term plans make it hard to obtain big investments for such plans.

Initial reports in the 2010s suggested the masses of seaweed came from an area of the Atlantic off the northern coast of Brazil, near the mouth of the Amazon River. Increased nutrient flows from deforestation or fertilizer runoff could be feeding the algae bloom.

But other causes may contribute, like nutrient flows from the Congo River, increased upwelling of nutrient-laden deeper ocean water in the tropical Atlantic and dust blowing in from Africa.

Murals bring ‘joy’ to Baghdad concrete jungle

•  AFP
•  May 2, 2022

Perched on a scaffold at a busy intersection, 49-year-old Wijdan al-Majed adds final touches to a Baghdad mural dedicated to celebrated Iraqi poet Muzzafar al-Nawab

Baghdad – Iraqi artist Wijdan al-Majed is transforming Baghdad’s concrete jungle into a colour-filled city with murals depicting well-known figures from the war-scarred country and abroad.

Perched on a scaffold at a busy intersection, the 49-year-old artist and instructor at the Baghdad College of Fine Arts is adding final touches to a mural dedicated to celebrated Iraqi poet Muzzafar al-Nawab.

Peasant women in traditional dress adorn the background of the mural, commissioned by Baghdad mayor Alaa Maan.

He launched the initiative nine months ago in a bid to “bring beauty to the city and move art to the streets to get rid of the grey and dusty colours” that hang over Baghdad.

Majed, an artist more accustomed to exhibiting her work in the cosy and reflective settings of galleries, at first had helpers to create the street art.

But she has turned to working alone, undaunted by the “huge challenges” she faces as a woman in a largely conservative, male-dominated society.

“Sometimes I work late into the night,” said Majed, wearing jeans and shoes splattered with paint.

“The street is scary at night, and it’s not easy for a woman to be out so late,” she said.

Motorists and passers-by often slow down or stop to watch the woman on her scaffold, paintbrush in hand and hard at work.

– ‘Iraqis accepted me’ –

Disparaging comments are sometimes fired her way.

“I learn to live with it and ignore them,” she said.

“People have become used to seeing a woman paint. Iraqi society has accepted me.”

Many Iraqis are happily surprised by the transformation of their capital.

“This is the most beautiful Muzaffar,” a motorist shouted as he drove past Majed while she touched up the poet’s mural.

Nicknamed the “revolutionary poet”, Muzaffar al-Nawab, who spent years in jail for writing about successive repressive regimes in Iraq, holds a special place in the hearts of many Iraqis.

At least 16 murals have been painted across Baghdad, with one devoted to Jawad Salim, considered the father of Iraqi modern art and a celebrated sculptor, and another to the late, world-famous Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid.

German sociologist Max Weber and Catholic saint Mother Teresa are among the foreigners celebrated on Baghdad’s new murals.

Maan, the mayor and an architect by profession, chooses the subjects which Majed paints in vivid colours — a jarring contrast with the rest of the city.

– ‘Bringing joy’ to the city –

Baghdad’s infrastructure was laid to waste by a 13-year international embargo against the regime of late dictator Saddam Hussein, the 2003 US-led invasion that toppled him and the subsequent years of sectarian violence, culminating in the rise and fall of the Islamic State jihadist group.

Maan acknowledges that much needs to be done to rehabilitate the city, which once stood as a beacon of Arab culture but now struggles like most of Iraq with corruption and mismanagement.

“The city is the first victim: any problem elsewhere in the country is reflected here,” Maan said.

“When unemployment soars, you will see street vendors… and when the housing crisis flares, slums emerge.”

Graffiti covers many buildings and facades in Baghdad — including political messages dating back to bloody anti-government protests that rocked the country for months from late 2019.

Cables from private electricity generators — desperately needed to make up for chronic power cuts — add to the disfigurement of the capital.

For Majed, painting murals “brings joy” across the city of nine million people.

In the teeming Al-Sadriya neighbourhood, known for its popular market, a mural depicting two men selling watermelons has won hearts.

“This is a slice of Baghdad’s heritage,” said textile merchant Fadel Abu Ali, 63.

The mural is a reproduction of a work by late artist Hafidh al-Droubi, who often portrayed Baghdad daily life.

Iraq engulfed by dust storm, leaving dozens hospitalised and flights grounded

Thick sheet of orange shrouds country as experts say phenomenon to become more frequent due to drought and declining rainfall

Dust settled across streets and vehicles and seeped into homes in Iraq's capital Baghdad as the storm hit on Sunday. 

Photograph: Ahmad Al-Rubaye/AFP/Getty Images


Agence France-Presse

Mon 2 May 2022 

Iraq was yet again covered in a thick sheet of orange on Sunday as it suffered the latest in a series of dust storms that have become increasingly common.

Dozens were hospitalised with respiratory problems in the centre and the west of the country.
A thick layer of orange dust settled across streets and vehicles, seeping into people’s homes in the capital Baghdad.


Iraq’s ancient buildings are being destroyed by climate change


Flights were grounded because of poor visibility at airports serving Baghdad and the Shiite holy city of Najaf, with the phenomenon expected to continue into Monday, according to the weather service.

“Flights have been interrupted at the airports of Baghdad and Najaf due to the dust storm,” the spokesperson for the civil aviation authority, Jihad al-Diwan, said.

Drivers switched on their headlights because of low visibility during the storm in Baghdad.

 Photograph: Ahmad Al-Rubaye/AFP/Getty Images

Visibility was cited at less than 500 metres, with flights expected to resume once weather improves.

Hospitals in Najaf received 63 people suffering from respiratory problems as a result of the storm, a health official said, adding that the majority had left after receiving appropriate treatment.

Another 30 hospitalisations were reported in the mostly desert province of Anbar in the west of the country.

Iraq was hammered by a series of such storms in April, grounding flights in Baghdad, Najaf and Arbil and leaving dozens hospitalised.

Iraqis walk past street stores in Karada district in central Baghdad on Sunday. Photograph: Ahmed Jalil/EPA

Amer al-Jabri, of Iraq’s meteorological office, previously said the weather phenomenon is expected to become increasingly frequent “due to drought, desertification and declining rainfall”.

Iraq is particularly vulnerable to climate change, having already witnessed record low rainfall and high temperatures in recent years.

Experts have said these factors threaten to bring social and economic disaster in the war-scarred country.

The sky was orange over the Al-Khilani square in central Baghdad. 

Photograph: Ahmed Jalil/EPA

In November, the World Bank warned that Iraq could suffer a 20% drop in water resources by 2050 due to climate change.

In early April, Issa al-Fayad, an environment ministry official, had warned that Iraq could face “272 days of dust” a year in coming decades, according to the state news agency INA.

The ministry said the weather phenomenon could be addressed by “increasing vegetation cover and creating forests that act as windbreaks”.

Israeli Researchers Show Sea Urchins Lived on Earth 300 Million Years Ago
by Sharon Wrobel


The phylum echinodermata (‘echino’ meaning spiny and ‘derm’ meaning skin) are key to the study of evolution, as they are located at a junction where invertebrates and vertebrate diverged. 

Photo: Dr. Omri Bronstein / Tel Aviv University

An international study involving Tel Aviv University researchers suggests that types of marine animals including starfish and sea cucumbers lived in oceans about 50 million years earlier than previously thought.

The findings of the study, published in the peer-reviewed journal eLife, shed new light on dating the evolutionary development of echinoids — marine animals that live on the seabed, including sea urchins, starfish, sea cucumbers and their “spiny-skinned relatives.”

“Our work shows that modern echinoids emerged approximately 300 million years ago, and many of them survived the Permo-Triassic mass extinction event that occurred about 252 million years ago — the most severe biodiversity crisis in Earth’s history — and rapidly diversified in its aftermath,” stated Dr. Omri Bronstein of Tel Aviv University’s School of Zoology, one of authors of the study. “Our findings have great significance for the study of evolution in general, not just for that of sea urchins. They suggest that even when we have an abundance of fossils and very extensive research on a group, as in the case of sea urchins, estimates are likely to err by tens of millions of years.”

The Permo-Triassic mass extinction wiped out over 80% of the species on earth, more than 150 million years before the event that wiped out the dinosaurs.

“This is another reminder that there is still more that is unknown than known in the fascinating study of evolution,” Bronstein added.

Researchers from top institutes in the United States, England, Chile and Austria combined a phylogenetic analysis of the genomes of 54 different species, including 18 that have not yet been mapped, with paleontological dating of sea urchin fossils from around the world. They then integrated the genetic findings with fossil-based dating, in order to map the evolutionary history of the echinoids as accurately as possible.

“The findings were very surprising, as they indicate significant errors in the conventional dating of the divergence times (species differentiation points) on the evolutionary tree,” the researchers said.

There are about 1,000 living species of echinoids, including sea urchins, heart urchins, sand dollars and starfish, which live across different ocean environments. The phylum is particularly important in the study of evolution, Bronstein explained, because their place on the evolutionary tree appears where invertebrates and vertebrate diverged.

“Today we are also in the midst of a widespread extinction event, only this time human activity seems to be the main driver,” Bronstein noted. “An in-depth study of past extinction events, the reasons that led to their occurrence, and the species that managed to survive them, may help us deal with the current extinction.”

Pacific Elders Voice: Statement on Climate Security

 Toda Peace Institute
2 May 2022

Former Pacific leaders say the growing military tension in the region created by China, U.S and its allies are doing little to address the impacts of climate change in the Pacific

The Pacific Elders’ Voice reiterates that the primary security threat to the Pacific is climate change. This fact is clearly articulated in the Boe Declaration on Regional Security which states: “We affirm that climate change remains the single greatest threat to the livelihoods, security and wellbeing of the peoples of the Pacific and our commitments to progress the implementation of the Paris Agreement.”

This was preceded and guided by the Biketawa Declaration on the vulnerability of Pacific Island countries to the threats to their security.

The growing military tension in the Pacific region created by both China and the United States and its allies, including Australia, does little to address the real threat to the region caused by climate change. These nations have done very little to address their own greenhouse gas emissions, despite statements of intent by the nations.

Little has been done to address the impacts of climate change in the Pacific caused by their respective greenhouse gas emissions. Adequate funding for loss and damage caused by climate change needs to be addressed by Australia, China and the U.S in their engagement with the Pacific.

We are concerned that major powers, including the U.S, Japan and Australia, are developing strategies and policies for the ‘Indo-Pacific’ with little if any, consultation with Pacific Island countries. The Pacific Island region (commonly referred to by Pacific Islanders as the Moana) has its own set of unique challenges. The security and future of the Pacific must be determined primarily by Pacific Island countries and not by external powers competing over strategic interests within our region.

We are suffering from many insecurities in our region. It is time that the international community focus on these insecurities, particularly in the context of climate change.

We call on all nations to respect the sovereignty of all Pacific Island countries and the right of Pacific peoples to develop and implement their own security strategies without undue coercion from outsiders.

At the 50th Pacific Islands Forum meeting in 2019, Leaders agreed to build on their Blue Pacific’s Call for Urgent Global Climate Change Action through the Kainaki II Declaration for Urgent Climate Action Now. The Pacific Elders’ Voice emphasises this call to our regional partners, particularly Australia, to undertake credible and urgent actions on climate change, to demonstrate their genuine commitment and empathy for this biggest security threat to the Pacific Island state.

This statement was originally published at PEV on 29 April 2022 and reposted via PACNEWS.

New Tactical Nuclear Weapons? Just Say No.

ARMS CONTROL TODAY
May 2022
By Daryl G. Kimball

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s brutal war on Ukraine, along with his implied threats of nuclear weapons use against any who would interfere, has raised the specter of nuclear conflict. Last month, CIA Director William Burns said that although there is no sign that Russia is preparing to do so, “none of us can take lightly the threat posed by a potential resort to tactical nuclear weapons or low-yield nuclear weapons."


A Tomahawk cruise missile launches from the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Shoup (DDG 86) during a live-fire exercise, during Valiant Shield 2018 in the Philippine Sea September 18, 2018. (U.S. Navy photo)

As the war drags on, it is vital that Russian, NATO, and U.S. leaders maintain lines of communication to prevent direct conflict and avoid rhetoric and actions that increase the risk of nuclear escalation. Provocations could include deploying tactical nuclear weapons or developing new types of nuclear weapons designed for fighting and “winning” a regional nuclear war.

For these and other reasons, U.S. President Joe Biden was smart to announce in March that he will cancel a proposal by the Trump administration for a new nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile (SLCM), a weapon last deployed in 1991.

Before President Donald Trump, two Democratic and two Republican administrations had agreed that nuclear-armed cruise missiles on Navy ships were redundant and destabilizing and detract from higher-priority conventional missions. Moreover, renuclearizing the fleet would create serious operational burdens. In 2019, Biden called this weapon a “bad idea” and said there is no need for new nuclear weapons. He was right then and is right to cancel the system now.

Nevertheless, some in Congress are pushing to restore funding for a nuclear SLCM to fill what they say is a “deterrence gap” against Russia’s tactical nuclear weapons arsenal and to provide a future president with “more credible” nuclear options in a future war with Russia in Europe or with China over Taiwan. A fight over the project, which would cost at least $9 billion through the end of the decade, is all but certain.

The arguments for reviving the nuclear SLCM program are as flimsy as they are dangerous. Serious policymakers all agree that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. But deploying nuclear-armed cruise missiles at sea would undoubtedly increase the possibility of nuclear war through miscalculation.

By deploying both conventional and nuclear-armed cruise missiles at sea, any launch of a conventional cruise missile inherently would send a nuclear signal and increase the potential for unintended nuclear use in a conflict with a nuclear-armed adversary because the adversary would have no way of knowing if the missile was nuclear or conventional.

Furthermore, even if Russia’s stockpile of 1,000 to 2,000 short-range nuclear warheads is larger in number than the U.S. stockpile of 320, there is no meaningful gap in capabilities. Superficial numerical comparisons ignore the fact that both sides already possess excess tactical nuclear destructive capacity, including multiple options for air and missile delivery of lower-yield nuclear warheads. Both also store their tactical warheads separately from the delivery systems, meaning preparations for potential use would be detectable in advance.

If one president authorized the use of these weapons under “extreme” circumstances in a conventional war, as the policies of both countries allow, neither side would need or want to use more than a handful of these highly destructive weapons. Although tactical nuclear bombs may produce relatively smaller explosive yields, from less than 1 kiloton TNT equivalent to 20 kilotons or more, their blast, heat, and radiation effects would be unlike anything seen in warfare since the 21-kiloton-yield atomic bomb that destroyed Nagasaki.

Proponents of the nuclear SLCM claim that if Putin used a tactical nuclear weapon to try to gain a military advantage or simply to intimidate, the U.S. president must have additional options to strike back with tactical nuclear weapons. They further argue that he should strike back even if that results in nuclear devastation within NATO and Russian territory.

Theories that nuclear war can be “limited” are extremely dangerous and ignore the unimaginable human suffering nuclear detonations would produce. In practice, once nuclear weapons are used by nuclear-armed adversaries, there is no guarantee the conflict would not quickly escalate to a catastrophic exchange involving the thousands of long-range strategic nuclear weapons in the U.S. and Russian arsenals.

As Gen. John Hyten, head of U.S. Strategic Command, said in 2018 after the annual Global Thunder wargame, “It ends bad. And the bad, meaning, it ends with global nuclear war.” As the supercomputer in the 1983 movie War Games ultimately calculated, “The only winning move is not to play.”

Adding a new type of tactical nuclear weapon to the U.S. arsenal will not enhance deterrence so much as it would increase the risk of nuclear war, mimic irresponsible Russian nuclear signaling, and prompt Russia and China to build their own sea- or land-based nuclear cruise missile systems. Biden made the right decision to cancel Trump’s proposed nuclear SLCM, and now Congress needs to back the president up.

An Enduring Injustice

Blown to Hell: America’s Deadly Betrayal of the Marshall Islanders


ARMS CONTROL TODAY
May 2022

Blown to Hell: America’s Deadly Betrayal of the Marshall Islanders
Walter Pincus
Diversion Books
November 2021

Reviewed by Desmond Narain Doulatram

Many researchers have written extensively on the nuclear history of the Marshall Islands, but these publications have not benefited the indigenous Marshallese population justly. Ultimately, it is the Marshallese, not outsiders, who live with the consequences of these circulated narratives, which focus on the environmental and human impact of more than 60 nuclear tests conducted by the United States in their region from 1946 to 1958.1

“The Marshallese people and land [are] often violently exploited by outsiders who use the Marshall Islands to advance their own interests, careers, learning, or power” at the expense of the indigenous community, according to the Marshall Islands National Nuclear Commission. The situation is made worse when such a small community is dependent on an indigenous, extended family network where camaraderie and cooperation is essential to ensuring its overall sustainable development. As the commission has observed, unidimensional depictions of Marshallese people as victims detract from their admirable story of resilience and self-reliance.

Even the title of Walter Pincus’ book, Blown to Hell: America’s Deadly Betrayal of the Marshall Islanders, ironically showcases that this betrayal is not always attributed only to U.S. military operations and U.S. governmental negligence, but also to careless researchers and writers involved in the mass media who are misled into believing that they are conveying moral intelligence. This is because even well-intentioned publications can be invasive and create more hardship for the communities in question where researchers are literally privileged memory-makers, given the power of the written text to inscribe identity and ascribe memories. So one question to ponder is, Did Pincus fall victim to this unfortunate trap?

Implicit Biases Expand Divisions

The author widely references written documents and circulated narratives that drown out indigenous voices in favor of a Western framework bordering on a victimhood mentality. He reveals the atrocities of nuclear weapons by attempting to shine a light from the receiving end, where the common man perspective takes root in the conversation and where indigenous tribal cultural traditions displayed by the Kabua kin, from which Marshall Islands President David Kabua descends, are demonized and individuals are accused of self-interest. Americans have not always been kind to indigenous tribal monarchs as their illegal overthrow of Hawaii’s Queen Lili‘uokalani in 1893 demonstrated, so one should not be surprised that Pincus makes it known how he feels about the Kabua family. He goes so far as to accuse the Marshall Islands’ founding father, Amata Kabua, who spearheaded the nation’s independence, of being a self-interested politician.


Islanders from Rongelap Atoll in The Marshall Islands, which was damaged by U.S. nuclear testing, march while holding banners marking the 60th anniversary of the Bravo hydrogen bomb test at Bikini Atoll in Majuro on March 1, 2014. The Marshallese have long called on the United States to resolve the "unfinished business" of its nuclear testing legacy in the western Pacific nation.
(Photo by Isaac Marty/AFP via Getty Images)

In fact, Amata Kabua was fighting for his people in the same way that Lili‘uokalani did when she was branded a dictator, a defamation that was only corrected when the U.S. Congress passed the “Apology Resolution” in 2009 during the Clinton administration. It is offensive to indigenous Marshallese that outsiders would even think that way without hearing an indigenous perspective, but there is a long history of being ignored. For example, as early as 1953, Amata Kabua’s mother, Dorothy Kabua, known as the queen (Leroij) of Majuro, the capital of the Marshall Islands, saw the danger of nuclear testing and urged the United States to stop. No one listened to her.2

Many negative perspectives advanced by outside researchers and writers have impacted public viewpoints and discourses about the Marshall Islands. This reality was a key point of discontent, for instance, when U.S. Representative Aumua Amata Coleman Radewagen (R-American Samoa) testified last year during a congressional oversight hearing chaired by Representative Katie Porter (D-Calif.) on the U.S. nuclear dump site in the Marshall Islands.3 Radewagen said,

The Marshall Islands are dear to my heart and like a second home to me. Former President Amata Kabua was close to my father and was like an uncle to me and his mother Dorothy named my sister Limanman. So, it’s a personal as well as official concern when U.S. officials insist known legal claims settled in 1986 mean we can wash our hands of the nuclear test legacy. I wish [the] State Department was here today to be reminded of U.S. obligations under the 1986 settlement for cooperation and justice based on human needs
and harm not fully understood back in 1986.4

Even within his narrative, Pincus perpetuates the notion that Judah, the leader of Bikinians and a commoner, was the actual king whereas archived evidence points otherwise, showcasing that Amata Kabua’s grandfather, Jeimata Kabua, was the real indigenous Marshallese king of Bikini Atoll.5

Book Triumphs in Other Ways

Despite the book’s flaws, Pincus succeeds in leaving readers with the impression that an incredible debt is still owed to the people of the Marshall Islands because the United States still has not complied with the financial assistance provision in the Compact of Free Association that it signed with the Marshall Islands and Micronesia. The agreement allows the Marshallese and the Micronesians to live and work in the United States and gives the U.S. military exclusive access to their territories, but the compact is due to end in 2023, leaving Washington little time to fulfill this economic self-sufficiency commitment. Pincus utilizes a narrative framework that has divided and inflamed political tensions in the Marshall Islands in ways similar to 2013, when Julianne Walsh’s Marshallese History textbook, carrying the Marshallese seal, was suspended from being taught in the public school system until factual corrections were made. Nevertheless, Pincus, like Walsh, has expanded access to archived material in a single textbook, a notable and praiseworthy feature of his work.

Another strength of Pincus’ narrative is how he holds the United States accountable to the UN trusteeship agreement of 1947. He writes that the United States was obligated to “protect the health of the inhabitants as well as promote the economic advancement and self-sufficiency of the inhabitants, and to this end…protect the inhabitants against the loss of their lands and resources.” Further, he stressed that, as “the world’s richest nation at the time and the most scientifically advanced, and most powerful democracy,” the United States pledged to care for and educate its inhabitants toward self-government. Despite these obligations, U.S. officials treated the Marshallese as pawns and guinea pigs by “withholding key information about the possible radioactivity threat from their environment, while closely keeping track of any signs that their health was being affected,” Pincus adds.

The author also underscores the grave U.S. failure to acknowledge the “changed circumstances petition”6 in light of the pressures of climate change on these nuclear communities, specifically the people of Bikini Atoll. This topic receives considerable attention toward the end of the book, particularly the last two chapters and epilogue, where Pincus updates readers on the current situation of the Bikini people and the Rongelap people. He asserts that they continue to be victims of failed leadership from their local governments and from the U.S. government, particularly the Trump administration, which relaxed funding oversight of Bikini’s trust fund.

Nuclear Justice Remains Uncertain

President Kabua announced in March on Nuclear Victims Remembrance Day in the Marshall Islands that he will not sign or renew the Compact of Free Association, known as Compact III, if the nuclear justice issue is not settled once and for all. That would include the United States changed circumstances petition submitted to Congress in 2000, which showcases greater nuclear testing-related damage to the Marshall Islands than was previously understood or acknowledged. The petition requests additional compensation for personal injuries and property damages and restoration costs, medical care programs, health services infrastructure and training, and radiological monitoring. After a long hiatus of no substantive engagement on Compact negotiations since the end of the Trump administration in January 2021, President Joe Biden, seeking to counter Chinese influence in the Pacific, finally chose Joseph Yun as his special envoy to lead the negotiations, but it is uncertain whether the nuclear justice issue will be put on the table. The concept of nuclear justice asserts that the United States should acknowledge the full scope of the damages from its nuclear testing in the Pacific by enacting the changed circumstances petition along with financial assistance to cover intergenerational and incidental damages. This compensation should include the safe resettlement of displaced human populations and the restoration of economic productivity of affected areas given Marshall Islands unique indigenous land economy and its associated blue economy.7

As with the 2004 Compact of Free Association, when the Bush administration rejected the changed circumstances petition, the future remains uncertain as to whether the long-term health and environmental damages of U.S. nuclear testing, predicted by the first Marshallese president on May 1, 1979,8 and recapitulated by Pincus in his epilogue, will finally be resolved. On a positive note, in marking Nuclear Victims Day of Bravo, a congressional resolution was introduced in March 2021 that would apologize to the Marshallese people for the effects of the U.S. nuclear testing program. Sponsored by Senators Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Representative Porter, and co-sponsored by Representative Radewagen, the resolution calls attention to what transpired in the Marshall Islands during the nuclear testing period and raises awareness on the need to undo existing and expected long-term harm.9

Equally worth noting is that the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) entered into force on January 22, 2021, and is the first treaty of its kind drawing serious attention to the humanitarian horrors of these weapons. The Marshall Islands has not ratified the treaty because of concerns that the “provisions on responsibility for addressing nuclear testing impacts have an ineffective and inappropriate shift of the primary burden from the states which have undertaken such testing, to the host nation where such testing occurred.” The Marshallese support the treaty’s moral call and believe it has placed a well-deserved focus on the suffering of victims.10 Nevertheless, the government remains unconvinced of the TPNW’s ultimate value given how the UN system has failed the nation before, specifically in the 1950s when the Marshallese petitioned to end the nuclear testing program.11 That story is missing from Pincus’ narrative, and its inclusion would have been the simplest way to turn the book into a clear winner. Stories of Marshallese resilience remain underappreciated and rarely mentioned in the book where “epistemological silencing”12 is evident.

Given the years of insufficient visibility on the nuclear legacy, Pincus is worth applauding for using his platform as a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter to highlight a neglected part of U.S. history that was largely driven by nuclear colonialism and environmental racism.13 As he notes, “In telling of these people, I hoped to show how much is owed to Marshall Islanders.” His book is a well-intentioned effort to educate the American public on its moral responsibility to the Marshallese people, a promise yet to be fulfilled.

Still, it is crucial that white male authors with positions of privilege not remove “indigenous agency,” and thereby inadvertently promote “institutional racism” and “pedagogical silencing” under the classic “white savior syndrome” that “encourages individual dependency rather than long-term community building or long-term community self-sufficiency.”14 That is where the author should have dedicated his efforts. By reframing the Marshallese story as one of survivors15 rather than victims, Pincus would have granted the indigenous population a greater voice and would have granted his book more authenticity.

ENDNOTES

1. Jane Dibblin, Day of Two Suns: U.S. Nuclear Testing and the Pacific Islanders (New York: New Amsterdam Books, 1998), p. 34.

2. Peace Boat (NGOピースボート) (@peace_boat), “Desmond Doulatram of @REACH_MI16 in the #MarshallIslands speaks on the nuclear legacy, including efforts of Marshallese to petition the international community…” Twitter, December 2, 2021, 8:48 p.m., https://twitter.com/peace_boat/status/1466690870712090628.

3. Susanne Rust, “Rep. Katie Porter Presses Biden Team on Marshall Islands Nuclear Waste, Gets Few Answers,” Los Angeles Times, October 22, 2021.

4. House Natural Resources Committee Democrats, “Runit Dome and the U.S. Nuclear Legacy in the Marshall Islands,” YouTube, October 22, 2021, 2:28:40, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUrTu7Z0Q1E.

5. Desmond Narain Doulatram, “Marshallese Downwinders and a Shared Nuclear Legacy of Global Proportions,” https://static1.squarespace.com/static/58bd8808e3df28ba498d7569/t/5f980e8f2171b96b663ece70/1603800720503/Desmond+Dulatram+presentation.pdf (paper presented at the Physicians for Social Responsibility/International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War conference “Human Rights, Future Generations & Crimes in the Nuclear Age,” Basel, September 14–17, 2017) (hereafter Doulatram paper).

6. Thomas Lum et al., “Republic of the Marshall Islands Changed Circumstances Petition to Congress,” CRS Report for Congress, RL 32811, March 14, 2005.

7. Arms Control Association, “75 Years After the Trinity: The Taboo Against Nuclear Testing and the Legacy of Past Nuclear Tests,” YouTube, September 6, 2020, 1:29:03, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5oUN1iOoxw&t=48s.

8. Doulatram paper.

9. “Amata Cosponsors Resolution to Formally Apologize for U.S. Nuclear Legacy in the Marshall Islands,” press release, March 4, 2022, https://radewagen.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/amata-cosponsors-resolution-formally-apologize-us-nuclear-legacy; Anita Hofschneider, “Resolution Would Apologize to Marshall Islands for Nuclear Testing,” Honolulu Civil Beat, March 1, 2022, https://www.civilbeat.org/beat/resolution-would-apologize-to-marshall-islands-for-nuclear-testing/.

10. Eriko Noguchi, “Marshall Islands Grapple With Consequences of Superpowers’ Actions,” The Japan Times, February 28, 2022.

11. Peace Boat, “[Part 2-2] World Nuclear Survivors Forum 2021,” YouTube, December 3, 2021, 1:30:15, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTJE4WA178g&t=2467s (hereafter Peace Boat video).

12. Ibid.

13. ICAN (@nuclearban), “‘This is an issue of institutional racism that stems from nuclearcolonialism.’ Desmond Narain Doulatram of REACH-MI speaks about how #nuclearcolonialism is one…” Twitter, December 3, 2021, 8:59 p.m., https://twitter.com/nuclearban/status/1466693491082285060.

14. Colleen Murphy, “What Is White Savior Complex, and Why Is It Harmful? Here’s What Experts Say,” Health.com, September 20, 2021, https://www.health.com/mind-body/health-diversity-inclusion/white-savior-complex.

15. Peace Boat video.


Desmond Narain Doulatram is a social science instructor at the College of the Marshall Islands Liberal Arts Department, a member of the National Board of Education of the Marshall Islands, and a co-founder of two nongovernmental organizations, one dealing with environmental issues, JO-JiKuM, and the other, nuclear issues, REACH-MI.