Assange’s Return to Australia: The Resentment of the Hacks

by Binoy Kampmark / June 30th, 2024

Julian Assange of WikiLeaks fame is now back in the country of his birth, having endured conditions of captivity ranging from cramped digs in London’s Ecuadorian embassy to the maximum-security facilities of Belmarsh Prison.  His return to Australia after striking a plea deal with the US Department of Justice sees him in a state with some of the most onerous secrecy provisions of any in the Western world.

As of January 2023, according to the Attorney-General’s Department, the Australian Commonwealth had 11 general secrecy offences in Part 5.6 of the Criminal Code, 542 specific secrecy offences across 178 Commonwealth laws and 296 non-disclosure duties spanning 107 Commonwealth laws criminalising unauthorised disclosure of information by current and former employees of the Commonwealth.

In November 2023, the Albanese Government agreed to 11 recommendations advanced by the final report of the review of secrecy provisions.  While aspiring to thin back the excessive overgrowth of secrecy, old habits die hard.  Suggested protections regarding press freedom and individuals providing information to Royal Commissions will hardly instil confidence.

With that background, it is unsurprising that Assange’s return, while delighting his family, supporters and free press advocates, has stirred the seething resentment of the national security establishment, Fourth Estate crawlers, and any number of journalistic sellouts.  Damn it all, such attitudes seem to say: he transformed journalism, stole away our self-censorship, exposed readers to the original classified text, and let the public decide for itself how to react to disclosures revealing the abuse of power.   Minimal editorialising; maximum textual interpretation through the eyes of the universal citizenry, a terrifying prospect for those in government.

Given that the Australian press establishment is distastefully comfortable with politicians – the national broadcaster, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, for instance, has a central reporting bureau in Canberra’s Parliament House – Assange’s return has brought much agitation.  The Canberra press corps earn their crust in a perversely symbiotic, and often uncritical relationship, with the political establishment that furnishes them with rationed morsels of information.  The last thing they want is an active Assange scuppering such a neat understanding, a radical transparency warrior keenly upsetting conventions of hypocrisy long respected.

Let’s wade through the venom.  Press gallery scribbler Phillip Coorey of the Australian Financial Review proved provincially ignorant, his mind ill-temperedly confused about WikiLeaks.  “I have never been able to make up my mind about Assange.”  Given that his profession benefits from leaks, whistleblowing and the exposure of abuses, one wonders what he is doing in it.  Assange has, after all, been convicted under the US Espionage Act of 1917 for engaging in that very activity, a matter that should give Coorey pause for outrage.

For the veteran journalist, another parallel was more appropriate, something rather distant from any notions of public interest journalism that had effectively been criminalised by the US Republic.  “The release of Julian Assange has closer parallels to that of David Hicks 17 years ago, who like Assange, was deemed to have broken American law while not in that country, and which eventually involved a US president cutting a favour for an Australian prime minister.”

The case of Hicks remains a ghastly reminder of Australian diplomatic and legal cowardice.  Coorey is only right to assume that both cases feature tormented flights of fancy by the US imperium keen on breaking a few skulls in their quest to make the world safe for Washington. The military commissions, of which Hicks was a victim, were created during the madly named Global War on Terror pursuant to presidential military order.  Intended to try non-US citizens suspected of terrorism held at the Guantánamo Bay detention facility, they were farcical exercises of executive power, a fact pointed out by the US Supreme Court in 2006.  It took Congressional authorisation via the Military Commissions Act in 2009 to spare them.

Coorey’s colleague and international editor of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, Peter Hartcher, was similarly uninterested in what Assange exposed, babbling about the publisher’s return as the moment “Assangeism came into plain view”.  He had no stomach for “the cult” which seemed to have infected Canberra’s cold weather.  He also wondered whether Assange could constructively “use his global celebrity status to campaign for public interest journalism and human rights”.  To do so – and here, teacher’s pet of the political establishment, beater of the war drum for the United States – Assange would have to “fundamentally” alter “his ways to advance the cause”.

All this was a prelude for Hartcher to take the hatchet to the journalistic exploits of a man more decorated with journalism awards that many in the Canberra gallery combined.  The claim that he is “a journalist is hotly contested by actual journalists.”  Despite the US government conceding that the disclosures by WikiLeaks had not resulted in harm to US sources, “there were many other victims of Assange’s project.”  The returned publisher was only in Australia “on probation”, a signal reminder that the media establishment will be attempting to badger him into treacherous conformity.

Even this language was too mild for another Australian hack, Michael Ware, who had previously worked for Time Magazine and CNN.  With pathological inventiveness,  he thought Assange “a traitor in the sense that, during a time of war, when we had American, British and Australian troops in the field, under fire, Julian Assange published troves of unredacted documents”.  Never mind truth to power; in Ware’s world, veracity is subordinate to it, even in an illegal war. What he calls “methods” and “methodology” cannot be exposed.

Such gutter journalism has its necessary cognate in gutter politics.  All regard information was threatening unless appropriately handled, its more potent effects for change stilled.  Leader of the opposition in the Senate, Simon Birmingham, found it “completely unnecessary and totally inappropriate for Julian Assange to be greeted like some homecoming hero by the Australian Prime Minister.” Chorusing with hacks Coorey, Hartcher and Ware, Birmingham bleated about the publication by Assange of half a million documents “without having read them, curated them, checked to see if there was anything that could be damaging or risking the lives of others there.”  Keep the distortions flying, Senator.

Dennis Richardson, former domestic intelligence chief and revolving door specialist (public servant becomes private profiteer with ease in Canberra), similarly found it inexplicable that the PM contacted Assange with a note of congratulation, or even showed any public interest in his release from a system that was killing him.  “I can think of no other reason why a prime minister would ring Assange on his return to Australia except for purposes relating to politics,” moaned Richardson to the Guardian Australia.

For Richardson, Assange had been legitimately convicted, even if it was achieved via that most notorious of mechanisms, the plea deal.  The inconvenient aside that Assange had been spied upon by CIA sponsored operatives, considered a possible object of abduction, rendition or assassination never clouds his uncluttered mind.

Sharp eyes will be trained on Assange in Australia, however long he wishes to stay.  He is in the bosom of the Five Eyes Alliance, permanently threatened by the prospect of recall and renewed interest by Washington.  And there are dozens of journalists, indifferent to the dangers the entire effort against the publisher augurs for their own craft, wishing that to be the case.

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com. Read other articles by Binoy.

 

Realism and Ipse Dixit

by Kim Petersen / July 4th, 2024

In a 3 July interview, judge Andrew Napolitano asked the University of Chicago political scientist, John Mearsheimer: “Why would the United States be putting missiles in the Philippines but to be provocative toward China?”

Mearsheimer: “I don’t think that the United States is trying to be provocative. I think what the United States is interested to do, doing is improving its deterrence capability in East Asia. The fact is that if you put the United States up against China in East Asia, and if you include the United States’ allies with the United States, right, you are up against a very formidable adversary. China is effectively a giant aircraft carrier. It has thousands and thousands of missiles, and the United States feels that it is at something of a disadvantage, and for that reason it is increasing its missile capability and other capabilities in Asia as well.”

If China were to put missiles in Cuba and Mexico, then that is not provocative? The US should have no problem because China is only improving its deterrence, yes? What is good for the goose is also good for the gander, no?

And why does Mearsheimer resort to using US government propaganda by referring to China as an “adversary”? Does China call the US an adversary? Is China looking for confrontation with the US?

If China is “effectively a giant aircraft carrier,” then is not the US also effectively a giant aircraft carrier? It is obvious that Mearsheimer is taking a page from the US propaganda booklet on the threat of China, in this case a militaristic threat. Mearsheimer, however, avoids referring to China as a “threat.”

From the FBI website: “Chinese Government Poses ‘Broad and Unrelenting’ Threat to U.S. Critical Infrastructure, FBI Director Says.” The drumbeat is effective. According to a 2023 Pew Research Center survey, half of Americans name China as the US’s greatest threat.

The question raised by Mearsheimer and left unanswered is whether China is a militaristic adversary? China, for its part, publicly eschews militarism and seeks peaceful relations.

Mearsheimer: “We pushed the Russians and the Chinese closer together which makes no sense at all.”

Even if there were no United States, it is extremely rational for Russia and China to form a friendly and close relationship. They are neighbors. They are well suited to be trade partners. It is a win-win relationship that China and Russia seek from trading partners. No push was needed from the US, although US belligerence assuredly was another point in favor of a deepening Russia-China rapprochement.

Mearsheimer: I am one of a number of people who would defend Taiwan if China attacked it because I think Taiwan is of great strategic importance.

Isn’t the US aircraft carrier known as Israel considered of great strategic importance because of its location amid the Middle Eastern oil patch? Yet Mearsheimer says there is no geopolitical benefit from US support of Israel. In fact, the professor says Israel is an albatross around the US neck. What, then, is the great strategic importance Mearsheimer sees in Taiwan? It hardly seems sufficient to just state that his view is realist. In Mearsheimer’s mind moralism does not factor in.

The US has signed on to the One China Policy. Ergo, realistically, Taiwan is de jure a province of one China.

*****

When coming across analysis expressed by personalities, whether they be professors, news anchors, or lay persons consider how these persons support their views.

Ipse Dixit refers to the logical fallacy of making unsubstantiated assertions. It is arguably more difficult to substantiate one’s arguments in an interview, but to merely state that something is realist is hardly compelling, especially when that realism seems rooted in opinion. Question everything.

Kim Petersen is an independent writer. He can be emailed at: kimohp at gmail.com. Read other articles by Kim.

 

The Problems with Purism and Reformism (not reforms)

by Ted Glick / July 5th, 2024

Over 20 years ago I wrote one of these columns examining the issue of “purism” versus “pragmatism” when it comes to organizing for systemic and desperately needed change in this world. I wrote about two essential ingredients that are sometimes in conflict.

One essential is conscious political organization motivated by principles and a genuine desire and plan for improving the lives of the disenfranchised and downtrodden, ending militarism and war, and stopping and reversing environmental devastation. But this alone won’t bring about change.

As a once-great revolutionary once said, “the masses make history.” It is only when large numbers of people identify with a movement for fundamental change and support it, verbally or actively, that we have any hope of winning political power and transforming society. In the USA that means not tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands, or even millions, but tens of millions of people.

Is this possible? Yes. One big example is the 15 million votes independent socialist Bernie Sanders got in 2016. Another is the NY Times report that 16-25 million people all over the country took demonstrative action in the spring of 2021 after George Floyd was murdered.

We need to go about our organizing work in a way which doesn’t undercut either, which avoids the temptation to be so committed to being principled that one becomes purist and narrow, on the one hand, or to be so committed to being with and interacting with “the masses” that problematic positions are taken and political relationships are built that end up deflecting energies into reformist and dead-end approaches to change. We need reforms, yes, but our broader objective must be to build upon successful struggles for major reforms in a way that leads to truly revolutionary, justice-grounded, social and economic transformation.

Purism versus reformism—the twin dangers of serious efforts to bring about the kind of change that is so, so needed today.

What can be done to lessen these dangers, to increase the possibilities that more of us will keep our eyes, minds and hearts on the prize?

One is the building of independent and progressive organizations that are truly democratic in the fullest sense of the term. As difficult as the process of democracy sometimes is, it is also a way to keep the group as a whole and the individuals within it centered on the stated objectives. Democratic process, sooner or later, frustrates individual power plays on the part of any person in leadership who lets power go to his/her/their head and who becomes either purist or reformist as a result. These things have happened much too much historically, but in this third decade of the 21st century, there is a growing consciousness of this danger increasingly expressed in how more and more of us are going about our organization-building.

Another necessity is an explicit commitment to the testing out of theories and ideas in practice and a process of constant evaluation based upon input from the people the ideas are being tried out on. If an independent candidate is running for office, for example, and has what they think is a great platform but the vote totals are very low, perhaps the problem is that the issues being addressed, or the way they’re being expressed, don’t connect with peoples’ understandings. Since just about any issue can be addressed from a progressive standpoint, a much better approach is to identify what the issues are to speak about because of day-to-day listening to and communicating with working-class people and people of the global majority.

The same with forms of direct action. It may feel good and righteous to some to stand up to the police during an action, but if that is done in a way which makes it easier for the government and the corporate-dominated press to call us violent, that will not generate sympathy for our cause among the wider public. Expressing our sense of urgency and anger is a good thing, if done wisely. Expressing it without political consideration of an action’s impacts is not a good thing.

Ultimately, our ability as a movement to navigate between the dangers of purism and reformism comes down to how each of us live our lives. Do we live in such a way that, on a day to day basis, we are in touch with working class people, regular folks, those in need of change? Do those of us who are white ensure that, in some way, we have regular communication and interaction with people of color so that we are constantly reminded about racism and its pernicious effects? Do we make time for meditation, allow our conscience to make itself heard over the daily demands on our time and energies? Do we interact with others in a way which prioritizes listening and objective consideration? Do we struggle to keep from responding defensively when others make constructive, or not so constructive, criticisms of us?

In the words of the late Rev. Paul Mayer, “What history is calling for is nothing less than the creation of a new human being. We must literally reinvent ourselves through the alchemy of the Spirit or perish. We are being divinely summoned to climb another rung on the evolutionary ladder, to another level of human consciousness.”

Ted Glick works with Beyond Extreme Energy and is president of 350NJ-Rockland. Past writings and other information, including about Burglar for Peace and 21st Century Revolution, two books published by him in 2020 and 2021, can be found at https://tedglick.com. He can be followed on Twitter at twitter.com/jtglick. Read other articles by Ted.

 

Confronting NATO’s War Summit in Washington

by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies / July 2nd, 2024

Anti-NATO protest in Chicago, 2012. Photo credit: Julie Dermansky.

After NATO’s catastrophic, illegal invasions of Yugoslavia, Libya and Afghanistan, on July 9th NATO plans to invade Washington DC. The good news is that it only plans to occupy Washington for three days. The British will not burn down the U.S. Capitol as they did in 1814, and the Germans are still meekly pretending that they don’t know who blew up their Nord Stream gas pipelines. So expect smiling photo-ops and an overblown orgy of mutual congratulation.

The details of NATO’s agenda for the Washington summit were revealed at a NATO foreign ministers’ meeting in Prague at the end of May. NATO will drag its members into the U.S. Cold War with China by accusing it of supplying dual-use weapons technology to Russia, and it will unveil new NATO initiatives to spend our tax dollars on a mysterious “drone wall” in the Baltics and an expensive-sounding “integrated air defense system” across Europe.

But the main feature of the summit will be a superficial show of unity to try to convince the public that NATO and Ukraine can defeat Russia and that negotiating with Russia would be tantamount to surrender.

On the face of it, that should be a hard sell. The one thing that most Americans agree on about the war in Ukraine is that they support a negotiated peace. When asked in a November 2023 Economist/YouGov poll “Would you support or oppose Ukraine and Russia agreeing to a ceasefire now?,” 68% said “support,” and only 8% said “oppose,” while 24% said they were not sure.

However, while President Biden and NATO leaders hold endless debates over different ways to escalate the war, they have repeatedly rejected negotiations, notably in April 2022, November 2022 and January 2024, even as their failed war plans leave Ukraine in an ever worsening negotiating position.

The endgame of this non-strategy is that Ukraine will only be allowed to negotiate with Russia once it is facing total defeat and has nothing left to negotiate with – exactly the surrender NATO says it wants to avoid.

As other countries have pointed out at the UN General Assembly, the U.S.and NATO’s rejection of negotiation and diplomacy in favor of a long war they hope will eventually “weaken” Russia is a flagrant violation of the “Pacific Settlement of Disputes” that all UN members are legally committed to under Chapter VI of the UN Charter. As it says in Article 33(1),

The parties to any dispute, the continuance of which is likely to endanger the maintenance of international peace and security, shall, first of all, seek a solution by negotiation, enquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement, resort to regional agencies or arrangements, or other peaceful means of their own choice.

But NATO’s leaders are not coming to Washington to work out how they can comply with their international obligations and negotiate peace in Ukraine. On the contrary. At a June meeting in preparation for the Summit, NATO defense ministers approved a plan to put NATO’s military support to Ukraine “on a firmer footing for years to come.”

The effort will be headquartered at a U.S. military base in Wiesbaden, Germany, and involve almost 700 staff. It has been described as a way to “Trump proof” NATO backing for Ukraine, in case Trump wins the election and tries to draw down U.S. support.

At the Summit, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg wants NATO leaders to commit to providing Ukraine with $43 billion worth of equipment each year, indefinitely. Echoing George Orwell’s doublethink that “war is peace”, Stoltenberg said, “The paradox is that the longer we plan, and the longer we commit [to war], the sooner Ukraine can have peace.”

The Summit will also discuss how to bring Ukraine closer to NATO membership, a move that guarantees the war will continue, since Ukrainian neutrality is Russia’s principal war aim.

As Ian Davis of NATO Watch reported, NATO’s rhetoric echoes the same lines he heard throughout twenty years of war in Afghanistan: “The Taliban (now Russia) can’t wait us out.” But this vague hope that the other side will eventually give up is not a strategy.

There is no evidence that Ukraine will be different from Afghanistan. The U.S. and NATO are making the same assumptions, which will lead to the same result. The underlying assumption is that NATO’s greater GDP, extravagant and corrupt military budgets and fetish for expensive weapons technology must somehow, magically, lead Ukraine to victory over Russia.

When the U.S. and NATO finally admitted defeat in Afghanistan, it was the Afghans who had paid in blood for the West’s folly, while the US-NATO war machine simply moved on to its next “challenge,” learning nothing and making political hay out of abject denial.

Less than three years after the rout in Afghanistan, US Defense Secretary Austin recently called NATO “the most powerful and successful alliance in history.” It is a promising sign for the future of Ukraine that most Ukrainians are reluctant to throw away their lives in NATO’s dumpster-fire.

In  an article titled “The New Theory of Ukrainian Victory Is the Same as the Old,” the Quincy Institute’s Mark Episkopos wrote, “Western planning continues to be strategically backwards. Aiding Kyiv has become an end in itself, divorced from a coherent strategy for bringing the war to a close”.

Episkopos concluded that “the key to wielding [the West’s] influence effectively is to finally abandon a zero-sum framing of victory…”

We would add that this was a trap set by the United States and the United Kingdom, not just for Ukraine, but for their NATO allies too. By refusing to support Ukraine at the negotiating table in April 2022, and instead demanding this “zero-sum framing of victory” as the condition for NATO’s support, the U.S. and U.K. escalated what could have been a very short war into a protracted, potentially nuclear, war between NATO and Russia.

Turkish leaders and diplomats complained at how their American and British allies undermined their peacemaking, while France, Italy and Germany squirmed for a month or two but soon surrendered to the war camp.

When NATO leaders meet in Washington, what they should be doing, apart from figuring out how to comply with Article 33(1) of the UN Charter, is conducting a clear-eyed review of how this organization that claims to be a force for peace keeps escalating unwinnable wars and leaving countries in ruins.

The fundamental question is whether NATO can ever be a force for peace or whether it can never be anything but a dangerous, subservient extension of the U.S. war machine.

We believe that NATO is an anachronism in today’s multipolar world: an aggressive, expansionist military alliance whose inherent institutional myopia and blinkered, self-serving threat assessments condemn us all to endless war and potential nuclear annihilation.

We suggest that the only way NATO could be a real force for peace would be to declare that, by this time next year, it will take the same steps that its counterpart, the Warsaw Pact, took in 1991, and finally dissolve what Secretary Austin would have been wiser to call “the most dangerous military alliance in history.”

However, the world’s population that is suffering under the yoke of militarism cannot afford to wait for NATO to give up and go away of its own accord. Our fellow citizens and political leaders need to hear from us all about the dangers posed by this unaccountable, nuclear-armed war machine, and we hope you will join us—in person or online—in using the occasion of this NATO summit to sound the alarm loudly.

Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies are the authors of War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict, published by OR Books, November 2022. Medea Benjamin is the cofounder of CODEPINK for PEACE, and the author of several books, including Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Nicolas J. S. Davies is an independent journalist, a researcher for CODEPINK and the author of Blood on our Hands: The American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq. Read other articles by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies.

The NATO Summit Is on July 9, but Zelensky Is Already Angry

by Ted Snider Posted on July 05, 2024

Another year of war and another NATO summit, but Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is still not going to get the NATO membership Ukrainians are fighting and dying for.

At last year’s NATO summit, Zelensky was offered only “an invitation to Ukraine to join the Alliance when Allies agree and conditions are met.” “Ukraine isn’t ready for NATO membership,” U.S. President Joe Biden said because, as he told CNN, there are “qualifications that need to be met, including democratization.”

Zelensky was outraged: “It’s unprecedented and absurd when time frame is not set neither for the invitation nor for Ukraine’s membership. While at the same time vague wording about ‘conditions’ is added even for inviting Ukraine.”

At this year’s NATO summit, to be held in Washington from July 9-11, corruption reform will be added to democratic reform. Ukraine will neither be offered membership in NATO nor a timeline to membership. Instead, they will be told that they are still too corrupt to join NATO.

According to a senior official in the State Department, although the U.S. has to “applaud everything that Ukraine has done in the name of reforms over the last two-plus years… we want to talk about additional steps that need to be taken, particularly in the area of anti-corruption.” In a recent interview with TIME, Biden cited “significant corruption” for not being “prepared to support the NATOization of Ukraine.”

Instead of being given membership, Ukraine will be given “a list of reforms it will be expected to carry out before its membership ambitions can be realized.”

As a consolation, Ukraine will be offered a headquarters in Germany “to give something solid to Kyiv at the summit even as they maintain the time is not right for Ukraine to join.” The mission, to be called NATO Security Assistance and Training for Ukraine, will match the weapons the West sends to Ukrainian needs and coordinate training of Ukrainian troops without NATO itself providing that training. NATO will also offer Ukraine a senior civilian official to be stationed in Kiev who will oversee Ukraine’s “longer-term military- modernization requirements and nonmilitary support.”

NATO leaders at this year’s summit will attempt the sleight of hand of making the same old offer being made to Ukraine look shiny and new. Though what is being promised Ukraine won’t change, the wording of the promise will. Ukraine won’t be offered membership in NATO, but they will be offered “a bridge to their membership inside the alliance.” They will be offered a “path” to membership, though NATO is “very sceptical about bringing Ukraine any further along the path to full Nato membership this year.”

In an attempt to mollify Ukraine, NATO is considering labelling the path to NATO membership as an “irreversible” path. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has used that language, promising that “[t]he work we are undertaking now puts you on an irreversible path towards NATO membership so that when the time is right, Ukraine can become a NATO member straightaway.” But Ukraine might not even get that. The U.S. and Germany have reportedly stymied even that concession, favoring replacing “irreversible path” with “well-lit bridge.”

In order to avoid the debacle of last year’s offer of an invitation to NATO when NATO is ready and Zelensky’s angry reaction, NATO officials have engaged in “expectation management,” muting NATO members supportive of Ukraine accession, while warning Zelensky not to demand the “impossible.” NATO officials have asked Zelensky not to pressure NATO members to publicly support a timetable to NATO membership this time. “The hope,” The New York Times reports, “is that the mission and the commitment it represents will satisfy Mr. Zelensky and lead to a smoother summit than the last one, a year ago in Vilnius.. where he made his unhappiness clear.”

It didn’t work. Zelensky is already publicly stating his frustration and anger. “We understand that the White House is not ready to give us the invitation,” Zelensky said in a June 30 interview with The Philadelphia Inquirer. He castigated the U.S. for being “afraid to annoy Putin,” saying “this is the reason why we are not invited.” Zelensky criticized U.S. policy, saying, “I don’t think this is the policy of world leaders. These are the very cautious steps of my de-miners in the minefield.” He added in resignation that “If NATO is not ready to protect us, and to take us into the alliance, then we ask NATO to give us everything so we can protect ourselves.”

Unless something changes between now and the convening of the NATO summit on July 9, Ukraine will, again, not be given what it has been led to believe it is fighting for, and Zelensky will, again, loudly express his anger.

Ted Snider is a regular columnist on U.S. foreign policy and history at Antiwar.com and The Libertarian Institute. He is also a frequent contributor to Responsible Statecraft and The American Conservative as well as other outlets. To support his work or for media or virtual presentation requests, contact him at tedsnider@bell.net.

SNAFU

Singapore Backlog Continues as Nearly All Boxships Arrive Off Schedule

Singapore added another berth at its massive Tuas complex to address containership congestion and delays (MPA)

PUBLISHED JUL 4, 2024 12:54 PM BY THE MARITIME EXECUTIVE

 

 

Singapore’s Minister for Transport outlined to the Parliament steps being taken to address the continuing problems in the port resulting in increased waiting time for containerships. The growing backlogs came to light earlier this year as a result of vessels diverting from their normal routes through the Red Sea.

“About 90 percent of container vessels are arriving off-schedule, compared to an average of about 77 percent for 2023,” Minister Chee Hong Tat writes to Parliament. He highlights that the ships are also arriving in a short window of time which has resulted in “vessel bunching” at the port. 

Emphasizing the challenges, the Ministry reports in the first five months of 2024, the port has handled 16.9 million TEU. That was a 7.7 percent increase compared to the January through May 2023 period. 

In addition to the challenges of vessels arriving off-schedule, the minister highlights that carriers are increasingly using Singapore as a transshipment port. Carriers he says are turning vessels around at Singapore instead of continuing to Asia in an effort to address the longer sailing times and the impact on schedules in Europe. 

As a result, he writes that the complexity of container handling has increased and vessels are spending more time on dock. Container lines are also using their time in Singapore to rearrange containers on the vessels to facilitate improved operations at downstream ports.

The Ministry warns that these conditions are likely to continue while saying it is working with its partners including terminal operators to take steps to improve the situation. They have reactivated some of the berths and yard space at both the Keppel and Tanjong Pagar Terminal which had previously been closed as the port begins a transition to the new Tuas facility. Long-term, Singapore plans to relocate operations to Tuas, which when completed will have a capacity for 65 million TEU. 

Starting July 1, a new berth was opened at Tuas. They also plan to open another new berth in October and a third in December. If the increase in demand is sustained, they report PSA will also expedite the development of additional capacity. They are also committing to keeping the Pasir Panjang Terminal in operation until at least 2040 to provide for additional capacity overall as Tuas proceeds with developing additional capabilities.

Additionally, Singapore is also looking to the carriers noting that the time at anchorage should be used for bunkering and resupply. They are also working with the carriers to optimize vessel arrival times.

Hong Kong-based market intelligence firm Linerlytica reported at the end of May, that as many as 450,000 TEU were in the queue in Singapore. They warned that the wait was up to seven days in some cases for a berth in Singapore and that it was causing ships to hold off, sometimes at distance anchorages, due to a lack of berth space. While the backlog has come down from the peaks last month, Linerlytica currently shows nearly 200,000 TEU on 21 vessels in the anchorage at Singapore. 

Linerlytica’s leaderboard of port congestion however shows that Port Klang in Malaysia and Shanghai/Ningbo in China have an even higher ratio of queue to berth. Asia remains the hotspot for port congestion.

 

France Secures $11B EU Financing to Accelerate Offshore Wind Development

Fécamp offshore wind farm was commissioned in May as the first in Normandy (EDF Renewables)

PUBLISHED JUL 4, 2024 2:59 PM BY THE MARITIME EXECUTIVE

 

 

Construction of two offshore wind farms in France is set to proceed following the securing of a €10.8 billion ($11.6 billion) financing package from the European Commission. As part of its net-zero energy transition ambitions and determination to reduce dependence on Russia’s oil and gas, France will now proceed with the construction and operationalization of two bottom-fixed offshore wind farms.

The first project to benefit from the financing is a South Atlantic wind farm which is expected to have a capacity of 1,000 to 1,200 MW and to generate at least 3.9 TWh of renewable electricity per year. The second is a Normandy wind farm that will have a capacity of 1,400 to 1,600 MW to generate at least 6.1 TWh of electricity annually.

The European Commission financial package was approved as part of the French scheme that was set up under the State aid Temporary Crisis and Transition Framework (TCTF) adopted by the Commission in March last year. The financing is intended to support renewable offshore wind energy in France to foster the transition towards a net-zero economy. The scheme will run for 20 years.

“With this €10.82 billion scheme, France can deploy offshore wind capacities faster, in line with the EU Strategy on Offshore Renewable Energy. It will also help France reduce its dependence on Russian fossil fuels while ensuring that any potential competition distortions are kept to the minimum,” said Margrethe Vestager, Executive Vice-President in charge of competition policy.

Securing financing for the two wind farms comes at a time when France is facing criticism over sluggishness in the deployment of offshore wind compared to some of its European neighbors. The United Kingdom and Germany, so far, have led Europe with the largest deployment of offshore wind farms. Despite France’s advantageous geography with over 3,500 km of coastline and one of the best wind resources in Europe, auction rounds have been limited and slow to launch.

In May this year, the French government sought to accelerate the deployment of offshore wind by publishing a new auction schedule that clarifies timelines, identifies new sites, and extends existing ones. The schedule also set out simplification measures that would drastically reduce the overall time to build wind farms.

The country has a target of achieving an installed offshore wind power capacity (both bottom-fixed and floating) of 18 GW by 2035 and 45 GW by 2050. France currently has three operational offshore wind farms, after the May 2024 commissioning of the project off the coast of Fécamp with a capacity of 497 MW, marking the first wind farm in Normandy. The earlier farms include one of 480 MW off the coast of Saint-Nazaire and one of 496 MW in Saint-Brieuc Bay. 

According to the European Commission, the aid will take the form of a monthly variable premium under a two-way contract for difference (CfD), which will be calculated by comparing a reference price with the market price for electricity. When the market price is above the reference price, the developer will have to pay the difference between the two prices to the French authorities.

This is the second time France is receiving financial aid under the TCTF scheme. Last year the Commission approved $4.4 billion to support the construction and operation of two floating offshore wind farms in the Golfe du Lion, each with a capacity of 230 to 280 MW, and could generate 1.1TWh of electricity per year.

 

Italy Detains “Banksy” Migrant Rescue Boat for Second Time

Louise Michel (note the Banksy artwork behind the pilot house window) was ordered detained for the second time by Italian authorities (Louise Michel)

PUBLISHED JUL 4, 2024 2:24 PM BY THE MARITIME EXECUTIVE

 

 

Italian authorities for the second time in a little over a year have issued a detention order to a German-operated rescue boat that became famous because of its funding by British street artist “Banksy.” The group’s vessel Louse Michel had just returned to sea after a long maintenance period and completing the rescue of 36 individuals before running afoul of the Italian regulations.

Starting in February 2023, Italy enacted new regulations controlling the operations of the fleet of NGO rescue vessels combing the Mediterranean. Among the rules, the Coast Guard has the right to designate the port destination for the returning rescue vessels and failure to follow the instructions will result in being detained for 20 days.

According to the German NGO Louise Michel, rescue vessels were detained by the Italian authorities 13 times in 2023. Its vessel of the same name was detained in March 2023, and yesterday they reported the second detention order for the vessel. The group is “demanding the immediate withdrawal of the detention,” citing the continuing danger to migrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean.

The group Louise Michel reports that so far this year over 1,000 deaths or people gone missing have been recorded in the Mediterranean. For all of 2023, they report over 2,100 people lost their lives while it is expected that many others went missing and were never found. They assert over 53,000 people have been turned back to Libya or Tunisia in the ongoing crisis.

The well-known street artist Banksy reportedly approached the group in 2019 saying that he wanted to donate the proceeds from art done about the migrant crisis. The group used the funds to purchase a surplus 31-meter (102-foot) French patrol boat formerly used by the Customs Authority. It was renamed Louise Michel after a French anarchist. Banksy provided an artwork of a girl in a life vest holding a safety buoy and to make the vessel unique it was painted pink before starting its missions in 2020.

While the vessel is one of the smaller ships in the NGO flotilla, it is also reported to be one of the fastest. It is capable of reaching 27 knots, a speed that lets it outrun the Libyan Coast Guard.

The group reports the vessel conducted 18 rescue operations in 2023 with five volunteer crews. They assisted 923 people. At the end of 2023, the Louise Michel headed to a shipyard in Spain for a much-needed overhaul of the 30-plus-year-old vessel. They worked on the hull and the engines were removed for an overhaul.

The Louise Michel responded to Mayday relays from the EU Coast Guard Frontex on July 1 but only found an empty rubber raft. However, hours later into their mission, they found 36 people, including 17 unaccompanied minors in what the group says was an “unseaworthy rubber boat in distress.” The people were taken aboard the Louise Michel and given water, blankets, and medical care. The group reports that the Italian Coast Guard instructed them to sail to the port of Pozzallo, Sicily to disembark the rescued individuals. 

“As the weather on the route was predicted to be too bad for a safe journey, our crew decided to seek shelter closer to Lampedusa where, during the night, we then got permission to disembark all survivors,” the group writes. Hours later, the group was served with a 20-day detention for the vessel for not following the order to disembark in Sicily.

 

Floating Solar Pilot Launched in Dutch North Sea to Test Technology

Tow out of the six platforms to begin the two year test of floating solar panels (SolarDuck)

PUBLISHED JUL 4, 2024 4:59 PM BY THE MARITIME EXECUTIVE

 

 

The Merganser project has been successfully installed in the Dutch North Sea as the first step toward testing and demonstrating the technology. Developed by the Dutch-Norwegian company SolarDuck with the support of RWE, they plan to monitor the performance while exploring the possibilities of integrating solar power into offshore wind farms.

German energy giant RWE announced two years ago that it would be exploring integrating floating solar technology into offshore wind farms to create more efficient use of ocean space for energy generation. The company said it was attracted to the concept both as a means to address increasing land scarcity for the generation of renewable energy and as an alternative in locations where wind is less suited for power generation.

“Standalone or also in combination with offshore wind farms, offshore floating solar could open up further offshore renewable energy opportunities – especially for countries with lower average wind speeds but lots of sunlight,” said Sven Utermohlen, CEO of RWE Offshore Wind.

RWE in 2022 won a Dutch auction for the Hollandse Kust (west) Wind Farm Zone. As part of the project, the company proposed integrating SolarDuck’s solution to meet the requirements of the solicitation. SolarDuck was commissioned to develop the demonstration system while other options in the auction include incorporating batteries into offshore wind farms and using space in the sites for offshore hydrogen production.

Merganser has a capacity of 0.5 megawatt peak. The project which consists of six interconnected platforms was towed into its location approximately 7.5 miles off the coast of Scheveningen. The floating platforms were successfully connected to the mooring system at a water depth of 20 meters (65 feet).

One of the key challenges is to develop a platform that can withstand rough offshore conditions. The North Sea is well known for its strong wind and high sea conditions. SolarDuck´s triangular-shaped platform is designed to float several meters above the water. According to the company, the design will be able to keep critical components dry, clean, and stable, as well as secure the structural integrity of the semi-submersible floating structure. The design received recently the world’s first certification for OFPV by Bureau Veritas.

Over the coming two years, Merganser will be monitored remotely with more than 180 sensors fitted to report structural loads, connector and mooring loads, and electrical performance. The companies said this test will provide critical information for the development and commercialization of the technology.

The Hollandse Kust (west) Wind Farm Zone calls for two projects, one to be developed by RWE, and the other was awarded to a consortium of Shell and Eneco. The zone is located approximately 30 miles off the west coast of the Netherlands. It will accommodate around 1,400 MW, split between the two projects, and has a target date to start operating by the end of 2026.