In Solidarity with Gaza and the World’s Forgotten Millions

by Adam W. Parsons / June 18th, 2024

The moral burden lies with us all to express solidarity with the people of Palestine. And let’s not forget the other ‘silent’ conflicts and famines that are mounting across the world, which also demands a massive international response in the face of political apathy and indifference.

— Share The World’s Resources (STWR) 

Since Israel’s military response in Gaza to the 7 October attack by Hamas, hundreds of civil society organisations have supported the call for a ceasefire. Global humanitarian and human rights groups also demand that all UN member states immediately halt arms transfers to Israel and Palestinian armed groups in order to avert further humanitarian catastrophe and loss of life.

While sharing the outrage and condemnation for the horrific attacks by Hamas, it is important to acknowledge its causes in decades of state-sanctioned violence against Palestinians by Israel. Rights groups have long documented the shameful hallmarks of colonialism and apartheid in Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories. Gaza has endured unimaginable suffering as a result of the illegal blockades imposed since the 1990s, a form of collective punishment that has turned Gaza into an ‘open-air prison’. But over the past eight months, Israel has gravely violated international law with its unprecedented military assaults on the besieged territory, killing upwards of 35,000 people including over 15,000 children.

Strong evidence suggests that the Israeli government’s actions violate the Genocide Convention, meaning it has inflicted conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians. Up to 70 percent of homes in Gaza have been destroyed, and an entire civilian infrastructure decimated including hospitals, schools, universities, cultural sites and UN facilities.

The latest actions in Rafah—closing a critical border crossing and forcibly displacing an estimated 800,000 people with nowhere else to go—clearly flout a provisional ruling of the World Court, which ordered Israel to take ‘all measures within its power’ to prevent acts of genocide. Rather than upholding the order by immediately providing basic services and humanitarian assistance to Gazans, Israel is deliberately using hunger as a weapon of war and committing further grievous war crimes. Half of the population of Gaza are already facing catastrophic levels of hunger, with famine imminent in the north.

Complicity with genocide

What the Israel-Gaza war has painfully revealed is the complicity of North American and many European countries with Israel’s genocidal crimes. The major Western powers present themselves as the defenders of human rights and morality, yet give unwavering support to Israel as it defies international law with impunity. These governments have repeatedly vetoed or abstained from resolutions at the UN Security Council calling for a humanitarian ceasefire. They have thwarted diplomatic efforts to bring Israel’s offensive to an end. They have opposed South Africa’s genocide case at the World Court. They have shamelessly cut life-saving aid to the United Nations relief agency for Palestinians. And they continue to supply Israel with taxpayer-funded weapons transfers—particularly the United States that has worked with Congress to secure billions of dollars of additional military assistance.

The hypocrisy and duplicity of Western countries has been exposed like never before. The most powerful Western states treat the Palestinians as if they are not worthy of the universal human rights endorsed by the United Nations more than 70 years ago. Their support for genocide shames us all and risks fuelling an endless cycle of violence and hatred that may eventually endanger the whole of humanity.

In the absence of political leadership, the moral burden lies with ordinary citizens to speak out, march and express solidarity with the people of Palestine. It is up to us to take a stand and protest against a genocidal war and its systemic support from callous politicians and the mainstream media. Peaceful student protesters are showing us the way with Gaza solidarity encampments and hunger strikes, despite violent police crackdowns and their false portrayal in the media as being antisemitic. Their brave actions have already helped force the U.S. administration to take pause and tentatively oppose a major ground invasion in Rafah. Now it falls to the rest of us to enforce international law through citizen action, to support human rights for all and end this immoral and illegal war.

A wider crime against humanity

The Israel-Gaza war may be the gravest moral crisis of our time, the most visible genocide in history. But we mustn’t forget the other conflicts around the world that our governments are neglecting, in which millions of people also face violence and mass displacement. In Sudan, civil war risks triggering a severe famine, with half the population already requiring humanitarian assistance and protection. Human Rights Watch report that widespread war crimes and a genocide is likely to have been committed in the region, although it is seldom mentioned in the Western media.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, endemic violence has left nearly 7 million people internally displaced, and the country is suffering the world’s biggest child hunger crisis. In Yemen, more than half the population is dependent on food aid after years of war has destroyed much of the country’s infrastructure. Last year, Somalia was brought to the brink of famine as a result of unrelenting drought and flare-ups of conflict. Hunger is also skyrocketing in multiple other countries, including Burundi, Djibouti, Gambia, Haiti, Lebanon, Liberia, Senegal and Malawi.

Life-threatening levels of food insecurity affect a staggering 281 million people according to the latest global assessment, with those worst affected living in South Sudan, Burkina Faso, Somalia and Mali. Many of these hunger crises don’t make the news headlines. The majority are in conflict-affected areas that—similar to Gaza—leave vast numbers of people without shelter, medicine, food or clean water. At a time when humanitarian needs are soaring, all these crises are tragically underfunded. The humanitarian system is enduring the worst funding gap it has ever faced, described by UN officials as an obscene competition of suffering to receive emergency aid.

While speaking up for the neglected citizens of Palestine, we also need to hold our governments accountable for these wider crimes against humanity. The major Western powers must act to end the 16-year siege of Gaza, provide unlimited humanitarian support to the region and immediately broker a ceasefire. And they must act to mitigate the ‘silent’ conflicts and famines that are mounting across the world, which also demands a massive international response in the face of political apathy and indifference. So let’s extend the spirit of the Gaza protests into a global movement for abolishing the injustice of hunger, and call upon all governments to adequately fund our most basic human rights instead of fuelling more devastating wars.

Adam Parsons is the editor at Share The World's Resources (STWR), a London-based civil society organization campaigning for a fairer distribution of wealth, power, and resources within and between nations. STWR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 2003 with Consultative Status at the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations. He publishes and speaks regularly on global justice and environmental issues, focusing on food insecurity, urban poverty, and people’s movements. He is the author of Megaslums: A Journey Through Sub-Saharan Africa and The Seven Myths of Slums: Challenging Popular Prejudices about the World’s Urban Poor. Read other articles by Adam, or visit Adam's website.

 

Why Does the Government Borrow When It Can Print?

by Ellen Brown / June 19th, 2024

In the first seven months of Fiscal Year (FY) 2024, net interest (payments minus income) on the federal debt reached $514 billion, exceeding spending on both national defense ($498 billion) and Medicare ($465 billion). The interest tab also exceeded all the money spent on veterans, education, and transportation combined. Spending on interest is now the second largest line item in the federal budget after Social Security and the fastest growing part of the budget, on track to reach $870 billion by the end of 2024.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the federal budget deficit was $857 billion in the first seven months of fiscal year 2024. In effect, the government is borrowing at interest to pay the interest on its debt, compounding the debt. For the lender, it’s called “the miracle of compound interest” – interest on interest compounds exponentially. But for the debtor, it’s a curse, compounding like a cancer to the point of devouring assets while still growing the debt. As Daniel Amerman, a chartered financial analyst, writes in an article titled “Could A Compound Interest Wildfire Threaten U.S. Solvency?”:

[T]he greatest debt-related threat to the solvency of the United States government and the value of the dollar could be the fact that the U.S. isn’t actually making any net principal or interest payments on its debt.

That is, the U.S. government is borrowing money to make the interest payments, even as it borrows to roll over the principal payments – even as it borrows still more to fund the general spending which is in excess of taxes collected.

This creates the risk of a potential compounding and acceleration of interest payments on that debt. …

In other words, the US government is effectively insolvent, absent some major changes. Which is exactly why we need to anticipate that there will be major changes.

The Committee for a Responsible Budget similarly concludes, “Without reforms to reduce the debt and interest, interest costs will keep rising, crowd out spending on other priorities, and burden future generations.” In fact, we are that future generation. The chickens have come home to roost. According to USDebtClock.org, the debt is now $34.8 trillion. Estimates are that we would need to tax everyone at a rate of 40%, without deductions, to balance the budgets of our federal and local governments, an obvious nonstarter. Reforms are necessary, but of what sort?

Why Does the Government Borrow Its Own Currency?

This question was asked of economist Martin Armstrong, who responded:

The theory was that if you borrowed rather than printed money, you were NOT increasing the existing money supply, and therefore, in theory, it would not be inflationary.

That would be true if the debt were paid back, but today the government does not repay the debt but just keeps rolling it over, paying off old bonds as they come due with new bonds – currently at higher interest rates. Armstrong concludes:

We borrow, which is worse than printing because we have to pay interest on constantly rolling the debt. This year, we will spend about $1 trillion on interest, the total national debt when Reagan took office in 1981 .…

Had we printed the money instead of borrowing, it would have been less inflationary and the capital would have created more jobs instead of investing in government debt which has only funded the Neocons’ wildest dreams [which he explained as “establishing military bases everywhere”]. [Emphasis added.]

A report issued by the Grace Commission during the Reagan Administration concluded that at that time, most federal income tax revenues went just to pay the interest on the government’s burgeoning debt. A cover letter addressed to President Reagan stated that a third of all income taxes were consumed by waste and inefficiency in the federal government. Another third of any taxes actually paid went to make up for the taxes not paid by tax evaders and the growing underground economy, a phenomenon that had blossomed in direct proportion to tax increases. The report concluded:

With two-thirds of everyone’s personal income taxes wasted or not collected, 100 percent of what is collected is absorbed solely by interest on the Federal debt and by Federal Government contributions to transfer payments. In other words, all individual income tax revenues are gone before one nickel is spent on the services which taxpayers expect from their Government.

As Thomas Edison observed in 1921:

If our nation can issue a dollar bond, it can issue a dollar bill. The element that makes the bond good, makes the bill good, also. The difference between the bond and the bill is that the bond lets money brokers collect twice the amount of the bond and an additional 20%, whereas the currency pays nobody but those who contribute directly in some useful way.

It is absurd to say that our country can issue $30 million in bonds and not $30 million in currency. Both are promises to pay, but one promise fattens the usurers and the other helps the people.

It is cheaper to print money outright than to borrow money at interest that is never repaid. The Greenbackers who marched on Washington in 1897 were right. We should be printing the money – not for speculative ventures (“unearned income”) but for productive endeavors. The Greenbackers sought a return to the system in which Lincoln’s government issued U.S. Notes or Greenbacks directly, in order to avoid a crippling debt to British bankers. They were marching for the economic producers — the farmers and factory workers, represented by the Scarecrow and Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz, which took its plot from that first-ever march on Washington.

Won’t just printing the money result in hyperinflation? Not necessarily. Price inflation results from too much money chasing too few goods. When the money is used to create new goods and services, prices remain stable. This was demonstrated by the Chinese when they increased the money supply by a factor of 1800% (18 times) in the 23 years between 1996 and 2020. The new money went toward infrastructure and other forms of productivity, increasing GDP at the same rate; and price inflation remained consistently low during that period.

But hindsight is 20/20. What can be done now about the ballooning federal debt and interest bill?

Possible Treasury Solutions

Hypothetically, the Treasury could buy back its debt. But under our current system, this would have to be done with more debt, at even higher interest rates. In fact, the Treasury is doing that now, but in modest  proportions and for a different purpose. Its goal is to create a liquid market in long-term Treasuries, the sort of bonds that Silicon Valley Bank was forced to sell at a deep discount, generating insufficient funds to ward off the massive run on its deposits in March 2023. Nearly 200 banks were found to be in similar straits and equally vulnerable to runs. However, it would be counterproductive for the Treasury to buy back major portions of its debt with more debt at higher interest, which would just compound the debt and the interest burden.

Alternatively, it could issue 35 trillion-dollar coins.

The idea of minting large denomination coins to solve economic problems was evidently first suggested by a chairman of the Coinage Subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives in the early 1980s. He pointed out that the government could pay off its entire debt with some billion-dollar coins – effectively just “printing” or “coining” the money.  The Constitution gives Congress the power to coin money and regulate its value, and no limit is put on the value of the coins it creates. Of course, today these would need to be trillion dollar coins.

In legislation initiated in 1982, however, Congress chose to impose limits on the amounts and denominations of most coins. The one exception was the platinum coin, which a special provision allowed to be minted in any amount for commemorative purposes.

In 2013, an attorney named Carlos Mucha, blogging under the pseudonym Beowulf, proposed issuing a platinum coin to capitalize on this loophole; and with the endless gridlock in Congress over the debt ceiling, it got picked up by serious economists as a way to checkmate the deficit hawks. Philip Diehl, former head of the U.S. Mint and co-author of the platinum coin law, confirmed that the coin would be legal tender:

In minting the $1 trillion platinum coin, the Treasury Secretary would be exercising authority which Congress has granted routinely for more than 220 years … under power expressly granted to Congress in the Constitution (Article 1, Section 8).

Minting trillion dollar coins evokes images of million-mark notes filling wheelbarrows. But as economist Michael Hudson observes:

Every hyperinflation in history has been caused by foreign debt service collapsing the exchange rate. The problem almost always has resulted from wartime foreign currency strains, not domestic spending.

Prof. Randall Wray explained that the coin would not circulate but would be deposited in the government’s account at the Fed, so it could not inflate the circulating money supply. The budget would still need Congressional approval. To keep a lid on spending, Congress would just need to abide by some basic rules of economics. It could spend on goods and services up to full employment without creating price inflation (since supply and demand would rise together). After that, it would need to tax — not to fund the budget, but to shrink the circulating money supply and avoid driving up prices with excess demand.

If issuing 35  coins worth a trillion dollars each seems too radical, the Treasury could issue just one trillion-dollar coin annually, earmarked specifically to cover the interest. A similar hybrid approach worked for the Pennsylvania colonists when they formed their first government-owned bank in the early 18th century. Other colonies were issuing “Colonial scrip,” but it was easier to issue the scrip than to tax it back, and they typically issued too much, inflating the money supply and devaluing the currency. The Pennsylvania colonists formed a “land bank” and issued money as loans to the farmers at 5% interest. To cover the interest not created in the original loans, the government was able to issue paper scrip directly to fund its own budget. As a result, Pennsylvania became the most productive economy in the colonies.

What About Tapping Up the Federal Reserve?

The Fed is in a position to issue money interest-free, not as the bank-created deposits circulating as our M2 money supply, but as the reserves needed by banks to meet interbank transfers and withdrawals. When the Fed buys federal securities, it is mandated to return the interest to the Treasury after deducting its costs.

In 2011, Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul proposed dealing with the debt ceiling by simply voiding out the $1.7 trillion in federal securities then held by the Fed. As Stephen Gandel explained Paul’s solution in Time Magazine, the Treasury pays interest on the securities to the Fed, which returns 90% of these payments to the Treasury. Despite this shell game of payments, the $1.7 trillion in U.S. bonds owned by the Fed is still counted toward the debt ceiling.

Paul’s plan: “Get the Fed and the Treasury to rip up that debt. It’s fake debt anyway. And the Fed is legally allowed to return the debt to the Treasury to be destroyed.”

Congressman Alan Grayson, a Democrat, also endorsed this proposal.

But since June 2022, the Fed has not been buying securities but has been selling those it already has, reducing its balance sheet in an effort to fight price inflation by shrinking the money supply through “quantitative tightening.” The central bank is considered “independent” of Congress, but arguably Congress could revise the Federal Reserve Act to require the Fed to buy federal securities.

A Financial Transaction Tax

Barring those alternatives, another possibility is a very small financial transaction tax. In a 2023 book titled A Tale of Two Economies: A New Financial Operating System for the American Economy, Wall Street veteran Scott Smith argues that we are taxing the wrong things – income and physical sales. In fact, we have two economies – the material economy in which goods and services are bought and sold, and the monetary economy involving the trading of financial assets (stocks, bonds, currencies, etc.) – basically “money making money” without producing new goods or services.

Drawing on data from the Bank for International Settlements and the Federal Reserve, Smith shows that the monetary economy is hundreds of times larger than the physical economy. The budget gap could be closed by imposing a tax of a mere 0.1% on financial transactions, while eliminating not just income taxes but every other tax we pay today. For a financial transactions tax (FTT) of 0.25%, we could fund benefits we cannot afford today that would stimulate growth in the real economy, including not just infrastructure and development but free college, a universal basic income, and free healthcare for all. Smith contends we could even pay off the national debt in 10 years or less with a 0.25% FTT.

Are these proposals too radical? Perhaps, but existential crises call for radical solutions.

• This article was first posted as an original to ScheerPost.com.FacebooTwitter

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Ellen Brown is an attorney, co-chair of the Public Banking Institute, and author of thirteen books including Web of Debt, The Public Bank Solution, and Banking on the People: Democratizing Money in the Digital Age. She also co-hosts a radio program on PRN.FM called “It’s Our Money.” Her 400+ blog articles are posted at EllenBrown.com. Read other articles by Ellen.

 

Is the Reign of the Dollar Coming to an End?

The Twenty-Fifth Newsletter (2024)

by Vijay Prashad / June 20th, 2024

Jiang Tiefeng (China), Stone Forest, 1979.

In early June, a rumour began to circulate – which was widely reported in the Indian press as true – that the government of Saudi Arabia had allowed its petrodollar agreement with the United States to lapse. This agreement, made in 1974, is quite straight-forward and fulfills various needs of the US government: the US purchases oil from Saudi Arabia, and Saudi Arabia uses that money to buy military equipment from US arms manufacturers while holding the income from the oil sales in US Treasury Bills and in the Western financial system. This arrangement to recycle oil profits into the US economy and the Western banking world is known as the petrodollar system.

This non-exclusive arrangement between the two countries never required the Saudis to limit their oil sales to dollars or to recycle their oil profits exclusively in US Treasury Bills (of which it holds a considerable $135.9 billion) and Western banks. Indeed, the Saudis are free to sell oil in multiple currencies, such as the Euro, and participate in digital currency platforms such as mBridge, a trial initiative of the Bank of International Settlements and the central banks of China, Thailand, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).  Nonetheless, the rumour that this decades-long petrodollar agreement had come to an end reflects the widespread expectation that a seismic shift in the financial system will overturn the rule of the Dollar-Wall Street regime. It was a false rumour, but it carried within it a truth about the possibilities of a post-dollar or de-dollarised world.

Xu Lei (China), Map of the Mountains and Seas, 2003

The invitation extended to six countries to join the BRICS bloc last August was a further indication that such a shift is underway. Among these countries are Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, although Saudi Arabia has yet to finalise its membership. With its expanded membership, BRICS would include the two countries with the largest and second largest gas reserves in the world (Russia and Iran, respectively) and the two countries that accounted for nearly a quarter of global oil production (Russia and Saudi Arabia, all figures as of 2022). The political opening between Iran and Saudi Arabia, brokered by Beijing in March 2023, as well as the signs that the US allies UAE and Saudi Arabia seek to diversify their political linkages, demonstrate the possible end of the petrodollar system. That was at the heart of the rumour in early June.

However, this possibility should not be exaggerated, as the Dollar-Wall Street regime remains intact and significantly powerful. Data from the International Monetary Fund shows that, as of the last quarter of 2023, the US dollar accounted for 58.41% of allocated currency reserves, which is far more than the reserves held in euros (19.98%), Japanese yen (5.7%), British pound sterling (4.8%), and Chinese renminbi (short of 3%). Meanwhile, the US dollar remains the main invoicing currency in global trade, with 40% of international trade transactions in goods invoiced in dollars despite the fact that the US share of global trade is just 10%. While the dollar remains the key currency, it nonetheless faces challenges around the world, with the share of the US dollar in allocated currency reserves declining gradually but steadily over the last twenty years.

Three factors are driving de-dollarisation: the US economy’s lack of strength and potential that began with the Third Great Depression in 2008; the aggressive use of illegal sanctions – especially financial sanctions – by the United States and its Global North allies against one quarter of the countries in the world; and the development and strengthening of relations between countries of the Global South, especially through platforms such as BRICS. In 2015, BRICS created the New Development Bank (NDB), also known as the BRICS Bank, to navigate a post-Dollar-Wall Street regime and to produce facilities to further development rather than austerity. The creation of these BRICS institutions and the increased use of local currencies to pay for cross-border trade created an expectation of hastened de-dollarisation. At the 2023 BRICS summit in Johannesburg, Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva repeated the call to increase the use of local currencies and perhaps create a BRICS-denominated currency system.

There has been a vibrant debate about de-dollarisation amongst those who have worked in the BRICS institutions and in the large countries that are interested in de-dollarisation, such as China, about its necessity, prospects, and the difficulties of finding new ways to hold currency reserves and invoice global trade. The most recent issue of the international journal Wenhua Zongheng (文化纵横), a collaboration between Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and Dongsheng, is dedicated to this topic. In the introduction to ‘The BRICS and De-Dollarisation: Opportunities and Challenges’ (volume 2, issue no. 1, May 2024), Paulo Nogueira Batista Jr., the first vice president of the NDB (2015–2017), summarises his considerable reflections on the importance of moving away from the Dollar-Wall Street regime and on the political and technical difficulties of such a transition. BRICS, he correctly asserts, is a diverse group of countries with very different political forces in charge of the different states. The political agendas of its members – even with the new mood in the Global South – are particularly diverse when it comes to economic theory, with many of the BRICS states remaining committed to neoliberal formulas while others seek new development models. One of the most important points raised by Nogueira is that the United States ‘will in all likelihood use all the many instruments at its disposal to struggle against any attempt to dethrone the dollar from its status as linchpin of the international monetary system’. These instruments would include sanctions and diplomatic threats, all of which would dampen the confidence of governments that have weaker political commitments and are not backed by popular movements committed to a new world order.

Hung Liu, Sisters, 2000; Lithograph with chine collé on paper, 22 x 29 3/4 in.; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Gift of the Harry and Lea Gudelsky Foundation, Inc.; © Hung Liu

De-dollarisation was moving at a very slow pace until 2022, when the Global North countries began to confiscate Russian assets held in the Dollar-Wall Street financial system and anxiety spread across many countries about the safety of their assets in the North American and European banks. Though this confiscation was not new (the United States has done this before to Cuba and Afghanistan, for instance), the scale and severity of these confiscations operated as a ‘confidence-destroying’ measure, as Nogueira puts it.

Nogueira’s introduction is followed by three essays by leading Chinese analysts of the current shifts in the world order. In ‘What Is Driving the BRICS’ Debate on De-Dollarisation?’, Professor Ding Yifan (senior fellow at Beijing’s Taihe Institute) charts the reasons why many Global South countries now seek to trade in local currencies and to offload their reliance upon the Dollar-Wall Street regime. He emphasises two factors that put into question whether or not the dollar will be able to continue to serve as an anchor currency: first, the weakness of the US economy due to its reliance upon military spending over productive investment (the former of which accounts for 53.6% of total world military spending) and, second, the US’s history of breach of contract. At the close of his article, Ding reflects on the possibility of the Global South countries accepting the Chinese renminbi (RMB) as their reference currency, since China’s manufacturing capabilities make the RMB valuable as a way to buy Chinese goods.

Yet, in his essay ‘China’s Foreign Exchange Reserves: Past and Present Security Challenges’, Professor Yu Yongding (member of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences) is cautious about the possibility of the RMB supplanting the dollar. For the RMB to become an international reserve currency, Yu argues, ‘China must fulfill a series of preconditions, including establishing a sound capital market (especially a deep and highly liquid treasury bond market), a flexible exchange rate regime, free cross-border capital flows, and long-term credit in the market’. This would mean that China would have to eschew its capital controls and begin to offer RMB treasury bonds for international buyers. RMB internationalisation, Yu argues, ‘is a goal worth pursuing’, but it is not something that can take place in the short run. ‘Distant water’, he writes poetically, ‘will not quench immediate thirst’.

Xu De Qi (China), China Flower, 2007.

So, where do we go from here? In his article ‘From De-Risking to De-Dollarisation: The BRICS Currency and the Future of the International Financial Order’, Professor Gao Bai, who teaches at Duke University in the United States, concurs that there is a pressing need to overcome the Dollar-Wall Street regime and that there is no easy way forward at this time. Local currency use has expanded – such as between Russia and China as well as between Russia and India – but such bilateral arrangements are insufficient. Increasingly, as a recent report from the World Gold Council shows, central banks around the world have been buying up gold for their reserves and thereby driving up its price (the spot price for gold is over $2,300 per ounce, far above the $1,200 per ounce price where it hovered in 2015). If no immediate currency is available to supplant the US dollar, Gao argues, then the Global South countries should establish a ‘reference value for settlements in their local currencies and an exchange platform to support such settlements. The great demand for such a valuation provides an opportunity for the creation of a BRICS currency’.

The new issue of Wenhua Zongheng provides a clear and thoughtful assessment of the problems with the Dollar-Wall Street regime and the need for an alternative. The wide array of ideas that are on the table reflect the diversity of discussions taking place within policy circles around the world. We are keen to summarise these ideas and test their technical feasibility and their political viability.

Irene Chou (China), The Universe Is My Mind, 2002.

It is important to note that two of the BRICS countries have elected new governments this year. In India, the far-right government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi returns to power, but with a much-reduced mandate. Given that the Modi government has put forward a policy of ‘national interest’, it is likely that it will continue to play a role in the BRICS process and to use local currencies to buy goods such as Russian oil. Meanwhile, South Africa’s ruling alliance, led by the African National Congress (ANC), has formed a government with the right-wing Democratic Alliance, which is committed to US imperialism and is not keen on the BRICS agenda. With the likely entry of Nigeria into the BRICS bloc, BRICS’ centre of gravity on the African continent might shift northward.

During the hard years of struggle against the apartheid government in South Africa, ANC member Lindiwe Mabuza (known as Sono Molefe) began to collect poems written by women in the ANC camps. Guerrilla fighters, teachers, nurses, and others sent in poems that she published in a volume called Malibongwe (‘Be Praised’), which referred to the 1956 Women’s March in Pretoria. In her introductory essay, Mabuza (1938–2021) wrote that in struggle ‘there is no romance’; there is ‘only pounding reality’. That phrase, ‘pounding reality’, merits reflection today. Nothing comes from nothing. You have to pound reality to make something, whether a new political opening in places such as India and South Africa or a new financial architecture beyond the Dollar-Wall Street regime.

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian and journalist. Prashad is the author of twenty-five books, including The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World and The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South. Read other articles by Vijay, or visit Vijay's website.

ITER's proposed new timeline - initial phase of operations in 2035

FUSION IS SCI-FI-TEK 70 YRS IN THE MAKING

20 June 2024

The revamped project plan for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) aims for "a scientifically and technically robust initial phase of operations, including deuterium-deuterium fusion operation in 2035 followed by full magnetic energy and plasma current operation".

The giant ITER construction site in September 2023 (Image: ITER/EJF Riche)

The ITER Organisation has been working on what Director General Pietro Barabaschi described as a "realistic" project timeline, since he took up the role two years ago. The previous baseline, established in 2016, was for first plasma in 2025 at the giant international collaborative project which is taking shape in the south of France.

At the 34th meeting of the ITER Council on Wednesday and Thursday this week, there were presentations on progress made in construction as well as the proposed update of the project baseline which would "prioritise the start of substantial research operations as rapidly as possible. This would be achieved by consolidating tokamak assembly stages, enhancing pre-assembly testing, and reducing machine assembly and commissioning risks. Throughout this phase of assembly, the project will continually progress through critical technical milestones that will be relevant to the global fusion innovation programme".

A statement issued after the ITER Council meeting said that the director general would give more details at a press conference in July of the updated proposal "which leads to a scientifically and technically robust initial phase of operations, including deuterium-deuterium fusion operation in 2035 followed by full magnetic energy and plasma current operation. Achieving these goals will enable progression to full fusion power in the deuterium-tritium phase. The proposed baseline will be further evaluated and validated, including the increased cost and the schedule implications driven by this new approach, and recommendations will be shared with the ITER Council for consideration".

The 2016 baseline had the start of deuterium-tritium operation set for 2035. Although the new baseline means a considerable delay compared with the previous one, the reform of the programme means they cannot be directly compared, ITER says. The 2016 baseline was for first plasma to be a brief low-energy machine-test at 100 kiloamperes followed by substantial assembly and incremental operation, whereas the new baseline's start of research operation is for operation at 15 megaamperes, which would require installation of components that would not have been needed for that part of the previous baseline.

ITER at a glance

ITER is a major international project to build a tokamak fusion device designed to prove the feasibility of fusion as a large-scale and carbon-free source of energy. The goal of ITER is to operate at 500 MW (for at least 400 seconds continuously) with 50 MW of plasma heating power input. It appears that an additional 300 MW of electricity input may be required in operation. No electricity will be generated at ITER, and as well as what will be learned when it begins operations, as a first-of-a-kind project it is providing lessons and benefits for the international fusion industry throughout its construction.

Thirty-three nations are collaborating to build ITER - the European Union is contributing almost half of the cost of its construction, while the other six members (China, India, Japan, South Korea, Russia and the USA) are contributing equally to the rest. Construction began in 2010. The ITER Council members reaffirmed their support for the project, saying "the fusion operations pursued by ITER remain strongly relevant for global fusion research and development and the national fusion programmes of the ITER Members".

What has caused the delays?

There are a variety of reasons which have been given for the delays to the project. As well as general first-of-a-kind type issues there has also been the COVID-19 pandemic and the emergence of problems in the vacuum vessel sector's welding joint region and corrosion-induced cracks in thermal shield piping. Barabaschi, speaking in October 2023, said that even without those issues the 2025 first plasma deadline was not going to be met.

In the update report, the council noted the progress made on repairs and also the completion of manufacturing of all toroidal field coils, judged to be one of the most technically challenging components. Manufacturing of all the poloidal field coils has also been completed and "are examples of the critical milestones the project will accomplish throughout the assembly phase".

In the ITER statement it was also stressed that "council members re-emphasised the strong value of the ITER mission and resolved to work together to find solutions to facilitate ITER’s success ... and noted the ongoing challenges facing the project and expressed appreciation that all ITER Members are continuing to meet their in-kind and in-cash commitments to support project success".

Researched and written by World Nuclear News

SPACE

William Anders: The astronaut who led the NRC

21 June 2024

As an Apollo 8 astronaut, Bill Anders took the first colour photograph of the Earth as seen from the Moon - a photo credited with helping inspire the modern environmental movement. But his career went far beyond that: Anders went on to become the first ever chairman of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Bill Anders (centre) with Apollo 8 crew members Frank Borman (on the left) and James Lovell. The 1968 mission was the first manned Apollo mission launched aboard the Saturn V and first manned Apollo craft to enter lunar orbit. (Image: NASA)

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) was among the many voices that have paid tribute to Anders following his death on 7 June when the vintage plane he was flying crashed into the San Juan Channel near Jones Island, north of Seattle.

Willam A Anders - Bill - was born on 17 October 1933 in Hong Kong. He was commissioned in the US Air Force after graduating from the Naval Academy with a Bachelor Of Science degree and served as a fighter pilot before joining NASA. He was also responsible for technical management of nuclear power reactor shielding and radiation effects programmes while at the Air Force Weapons Laboratory in New Mexico.

In 1964, Anders was selected by Nasa as an astronaut with responsibilities for dosimetry, radiation effects and environmental controls. He was the backup pilot for the Gemini XI, Apollo 11 flights, and was lunar module pilot for Apollo 8 which became the first crewed mission to orbit the moon in December 1968.

It was during the Apollo 8 mission that Anders took the first colour photograph of the Earth as seen from the Moon.

After Apollo 8, Anders served as Executive Secretary for the National Aeronautics and Space Council until 1973, when he was appointed to the five-member US Atomic Energy Commission. There, he was lead commissioner for all nuclear and non-nuclear power R&D. He was also the US chairman of the joint US/USSR technology exchange programme for nuclear fission and fusion power.

In January 1975, following the reorganisation of the US nuclear regulatory sector, he became the first chairman of the newly established NRC. He completed his term as NRC chairman in 1976, after which he became the US Ambassador to Norway.

"Chairman Anders had an illustrious career far beyond taking one of the most widely seen photos from space," NRC Chair Christopher Hanson said. "He was the only person to serve as Commissioner on both the Atomic Energy Commission and NRC and he served as the new agency's first Chairman, providing institutional continuity while unambiguously committing the agency to serve as an unbiased, independent, and open regulator. We are saddened by his death and extend our condolences to his family."

Anders' iconic photograph became known as 'Earthrise' (Image: NASA)

Earthrise legacy

"In 1968, as a member of the Apollo 8 crew, as one of the first three people to travel beyond the reach of our Earth and orbit the Moon, Bill Anders gave to humanity among the deepest of gifts an explorer and an astronaut can give," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said. "Along with the Apollo 8 crew, Bill was the first to show us, through looking back at the Earth from the threshold of the Moon, that stunning image - the first of its kind - of the Earth suspended in space, illuminated in light and hidden in darkness: the Earthrise.

"As Bill put it so well after the conclusion of the Apollo 8 mission, 'We came all this way to explore the Moon, and the most important thing is that we discovered the Earth'."

Earthrise was named one of the top photographs of the 20th century by Life Magazine. But according to NASA, Earthrise - and other photographs of Earth taken during the Apollo missions - helped spark the idea for a dedicated Earth-observing satellite programme leading to the Landsat programme of earth-observing satellite missions which has provided the longest continuous space-based record of Earth’s land in existence. Landsat data is used worldwide for research, business, education, and other activities.

Researched and written by World Nuclear News