Monday, November 04, 2024

Fukushima: Stumbling Through Deconstruction of Reactor Meltdowns
November 2, 2024
Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.


Image by Fukushima Central Television.

Melted fuel still vexing test extraction methods

Thirteen years on from the catastrophic triple explosions and reactor meltdowns at Fukushima-Daiichi in NE Japan, emergency responders are still trying to observe and examine the melted fuel under the reactors (sometimes called “corium”). Contractors from Tokyo Electric Power Co. (Tepco) have repeatedly failed in attempts to robotically collect a mere three-grams (one 10th of an ounce) of the corium from reactor 2, a project that started three years ago.

The company Amentum [1] working for Mitzubishi Heavy Industries, has built some robotic machinery to try and retrieve a smidgeon of corium to find out what state the meltdown is in [2] because, as National Public Radio reported, “the exact nature of the debris is currently unknown.” [3]

Amentum is trying to build an extraction tool that can function in a radiation zone so fierce that it wrecks most machinery. A 2015 attempt to look inside Unit 1 with a device built by Hitachi-GE Nuclear failed after three hours.[4] Amentum’s first attempt in reactor 2 was stalled August 22 after the long pipe system was found to have been mis-assembled. Then Sept. 18, video problems halted the second try. The AP reported that the probe is “maneuvered remotely by operators at another building because of the fatally high radiation emitted by the melted debris.” [5]

Still, teams of workers have to do15-minute rotating shifts — to limit their exposure to the wreckage’s radioactivity level — preparing the probe for another attempt. Industry slang for the team members is “sponges.” Recovering a mere 3 grams is scheduled to take two weeks because the slow-moving robotic plucker tends to get stuck in the tangled debris and takes a tortured path past meltdown-produced obstacles.

The mission of the 3-gram retrieval program is to determine whether if it’s possible to eventually retrieve and containerize all 880 metric tonnes — 300 tonnes per reactor — of what the Associated Press called “fatally radioactive” wreckage, to keep it out of the environment for eons. Some critics have said decommissioning the whole site could take 100 years.

The idea of covering the whole radioactive malignancy with a roof — like the shed that was installed over the Chernobyl reactor site — is unpopular because of the area’s continuous earthquake activity and the risk of another major quake and tsunami.

Plutonium on the Wind

Nuclear reactors at Fukushima and everywhere smash apart uranium atoms creating a lot of heat to boil water. This atom smashing inside reactors produces radioactive poisons like cesium, iodine, strontium and dozens of others — including plutonium. In addition to this reactor-borne plutonium at Fukushima, about 6% of the fuel in reactor No. 3 was made of plutonium itself. [6]

Some of this plutonium from inside the three destroyed reactors was released to the environment by the meltdowns and explosions of March 2011. On Nov. 15, 2020, the Journal Science of the Total Environment published the report, “Particulate plutonium released from the Fukushima Daiichi meltdowns” noting that plutonium-239 was dispersed widely disaster.[7]

Plutonium, the most toxic substance known to science, was dispersed “up to 230 km away” (142 miles) from the reactor site, the researchers found.

Long-distance dispersion of plutonium was the result of micro-particles being blown by the wind. Five isotopes of plutonium were released including Pu-238, -239, -240, -241, and -242. Some plutonium persists environmentally and contaminates the food chain for 240,000 years.

In 2023, the journal Chemosphere reported a study’s findings of large amounts of highly radioactive cesium-rich micro-particles (CsMPs) in an abandoned school building close to the Fukushima Daiichi site. [8]

Plumes of the microparticles penetrated the building during the meltdowns of March 2011. Phys.org reports that the contamination poses “a threat to human health if inhaled. The study shows that indoor CsMPs should be considered in safety assessments and in building clean-up efforts.”

Long-term Effects of Dumping Unknown, Scientist Warns

Japan hosted the 10th Pacific Island Leaders Meeting in Tokyo last July, which was attended by most leaders of the18-member Pacific Islands Forum.

A hot topic was Japan’s dumping of tens of thousands of tons of contaminated Fukushima wastewater into the Pacific Ocean. The dumping was protested by Pacific rim countries and many, including China and Russia have banned imports of seafood products from the region’s waters. Some 60,000 tons of the wastewater has been discharged by August 2024.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida assured the island leaders gathering that the discharge of the wastewater was being done “in compliance with international safety standards and practices.” [9] Yet the controversial dumping continues to be criticized by scientists.

In Tokyo, director of the Kewalo Marine Laboratory at the University of Hawaii, Research Professor Robert Richmond, complained that questions remain regarding the effectiveness of the water filtration system, known as ALPS, and about the radioactive contents of the thousands of storage tanks of wastewater.

In October 2018, Tepco admitted that its wastewater filter system, had failed to remove dangerous elements and the company publicly apologized. [10] Tepco promising to re-filter the wastewater, noting that 84% of the 890,000 tonnes then held in tanks (today there are 1.3 million tonnes) still contained high concentrations of iodine-129, ruthenium-106, technetium-99, and cabon-14. Levels of strontium-90, a severe human health hazard, were detected in some tanks at 20,000 times the legal limit. Tepco for years has insisted, and most media still report, that its ALPS treatment process removes everything but tritium, including strontium and 61 other radioactive elements, from the contaminated water.

“The long-term effects of this discharge on Pacific marine ecosystems and those who depend on them are still unknown. Even small doses of radiation can cause cancer or genetic damage,” Prof. Richmond said in a statement to BenarNews after the gathering.

Richmond called Japan’s current radiation monitoring system as inadequate and poorly designed, and said it’s failing to protect ocean and human health.

“The discharge, planned to continue for decades, is irreversible. Radionuclides bioaccumulate in marine organisms and can be passed up the food web, affecting marine life and humans who consume affected seafood,” Richmond said.

The professor also raised concerns about additional hazards already harming the Pacific Ocean and marine life, such as pollution, overfishing, and climate change. He urged Japan to reconsider its approach. Building the contaminated water into cement structures like sea walls is one alternative.

You can hear Prof. Richardson explain the risks of tritium contamination in an NPR interview, here.

Water Treatment Leaves Highly Radioactive Sludge in Search of Containment

Tons of highly radioactive chemicals collected in the ALPS filters are collected as sludge and transferred to heavy plastic casks called “high integrity containers” or HICs, that moved to temporary storage.

The Japanese daily Asahi Shimbun, published a report on the wastewater August 24, 2024 that clearly outlines some problems with the sludge. [11] The end of article reads as follows:

In addition to the release of treated water, there are many other issues to be tackled.

The amount of highly radioactive sludge, or “slurry,” produced in the process of treating contaminated water continues to increase, but no effective treatment method has been decided upon.

The increasing amount of slurry is stored in tanks, but since there is still a risk of leakage when it is in liquid form, plans call for it to be dehydrated to reduce its volume and then process the substance into solid form.

In 2021, TEPCO filed an application to build a device for this purpose. But the Nuclear Regulation Authority pointed out the risk of radiation exposure to workers, and TEPCO was told to review the design.

As a result, the start of the dehydration process has been delayed from fiscal 2022 to fiscal 2026.

Furthermore, no concrete method has been decided on for solidifying the dehydrated slurry.

TEPCO is aiming to determine the solidification method by the end of fiscal 2025 and start solidification around fiscal 2035.

Advocates Demand Stricter Limits on Nuclear Poisons

The Fukushima Fallout Awareness Network in Japan is an alliance of parents, concerned citizens, and affiliated organizations. The group writes:

“The U.S. FDA has set a potentially hazardous level of “allowable” radiation in food: 1,200 Becquerel (Bq) per kilogram (kg) of cesium-134 and cesium-137. “Bec-querels-per-kilogram” is a reference to the amount of highly radioactive cesium-137, which spewed in large quantities by the three burning reactor meltdowns and which persists in the environment for 300 years.

Alarmingly, this is merely a recommendation and holds no legal weight. Such a high threshold exposes a significant portion of the U.S. population, particularly children and women, to considerable health risks.

FFAN is urging the United States to lower its allowable cesium limit to five Bq/kg for food, nutritional supplements and pharmaceuticals, and that the government quickly institute widespread, transparent testing to ensure the limit. The demand aligns with a similar call by the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War in Germany, which promotes a European Union-wide standard of four to eight (4-to-8) Bq/kg. To sign FFAN’s petition see here.

Kimberly Roberson, Project Director for the Fukushima Fallout Awareness Network, commented on this scandal for Food Safety News, Sept. 4, 2024. [12]

Roberson wrote, “At 1,200 Becquerels per kilogram, FDA has among the highest DILs in the world.

“Standards limiting radiation in food in Japan are 12 times more protective for adults and 24 times more protective for children than U.S. standards. Food too radioactive to be sold to Japanese consumers is allowed to be sold to U.S. consumers and served to U.S. service members and their families on military bases overseas. FDA [limits] for radioactivity in food are non-binding and unenforceable.

“To confront and mitigate the growing public health threat of radioactive contamination in food, Congress should pass the Federal Food Administration Act, establish the FFA to focus like a laser beam on food safety, and empanel independent scientists and experts who understand radiation’s environmental and health effects to advise it.”

The IAEA: International Allowances for Environmental Assaults?

The International Atomic Energy Agency, which ignored its own guidelines in approving the dumping of Fukushima wastewater into the Pacific, has granted approval to Japan’s plan to use some of the 14 million tons of cesium-contaminated soil and debris collected after the Fukushima meltdowns in construction work. [13]

The government intends to get rid of roughly 75 percent of the radioactive soil — if it’s contaminated at or below 8,000 becquerels per kilogram — by using it in road embankments, railways, agricultural land, and land reclamation.

“We are extremely concerned. The IAEA has consistently stated in the past that radioactive waste should be stored centrally and we have supported that position,” said Hajime Matsukubo, the secretary general of the Nuclear Information Centre in Tokyo. He said the limit for soil contamination was previously set at just 100 becquerels per kilogram, and has now been lifted to 8,000 Bq/Kg. “But now they are going against their own recommendations,” he said, reported the South China Morning Post. “My fear is that once they relax this rule, they can then go on and ease all sorts of other rules,” he said.

Endnotes:

[1] Fukushima-MHI, Sep. 29, 2024

[2] The Register online, Sep. 11, 2024

[3] NPR, Mar. 16, 2011, “Plutonium In Fuel Rods: Cause For Concern?” March 16, 2011,

[4] The Guardian, Apr, 13, 2015

[5] Associated Press, Sept. 15, 2024,

[6] NPR, Mar. 16, 2011, “Plutonium in Fuel Rods: Cause For Concern?” March 16, 2011,

[7] “Particulate plutonium released from the Fukushima Daiichi meltdowns,” Science of The Total Environment, Vol. 743, Nov. 15, 2020; ; “Particulate plutonium released from the Fukushima Daiichi meltdowns,” July 14, 2020, by University of Helsinki,

[8] Physics.org, May 29, 2023,

[9] Radio New Zealand, RNZ Pacific, July 19, 2024,

[10] “Fukushima nuclear plant owner apologises for still-radioactive water”, Reuters, Oct. 11, 2018,

[11] “60,000 tons of treated water from nuclear site discharged so far,” The Asahi Shimbun, August 24, 2024,

[12] Food Safety News, Sept. 4, 2024,

[13] South China Morning Post, Sept. 12, 2024 -and- The Independent, Sept.12, 2024,


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John Laforge is Co-director of Nukewatch, a peace and environmental justice group in Wisconsin, and is co-editor with Arianne Peterson of Nuclear Heartland, Revised: A Guide to the 450 Land-Based Missiles of the United States.


 UN Unanimous Rejection of U.S. Economic Sanctions Against Cuba

The state of economic siege imposed by Washington for over six decades has once again been condemned by the international community.
November 2, 2024
Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.


cc. Guille Álvarez

On October 30, 2024, at the annual meeting of the United Nations General Assembly, and for the 32nd consecutive year, 187 countries demanded the lifting of unilateral U.S. economic sanctions that have been suffocating the Cuban population since 1960. As usual, only Israel aligned itself with Washington, opposing the resolution put forward by Havana. Moldova, for its part, chose to abstain.

Imposed by President Eisenhower with the aim of overthrowing Fidel Castro’s revolutionary government, the sanctions have been maintained and reinforced by various U.S. governments. They have extraterritorial characteristics – the Torricelli Act of 1992, for example – which means they apply beyond national borders, affecting every country in the world. For instance, any foreign ship that docks in a Cuban port is banned from entering the United States for six months. The aim of this legislation is to prevent the development of Cuba’s international trade with the rest of the world.

Sanctions are also retroactive under the 1996 Helms-Burton Act, which penalizes foreign companies investing in property in Cuba that belonged to U.S. citizens in the 1960s. This is a legal aberration, as a law cannot normally be applied to facts that predate its adoption. The aim of this legislation – which undermines Cuba’s sovereignty as well as that of countries wishing to maintain normal relations with Havana – is to deprive the island of foreign investment.

U.S. diplomatic rhetoric to justify the maintenance of a hostile policy towards Cuba has continued to evolve over time. In 1960, when Eisenhower imposed the first unilateral coercive measures, he justified his decision by referring to the nationalization of U.S. property. In 1962, when his successor, John F. Kennedy, enacted total sanctions against the island, he invoked the alliance with the Soviet Union. In the 1970s and 1980s, Washington explained that Havana’s support for revolutionary and independence movements around the world was an obstacle to policy change. Finally, since the collapse of the USSR, the United States has used the issue of democracy and human rights to prolong its economic war.

While a truce was observed during Barack Obama’s second term, the arrival of Donald Trump marked an upsurge in sanctions against the island. Over the course of his presidency, Trump imposed no fewer than 243 new coercive measures, including 50 during the Covid-19 pandemic – an average of one additional sanction per week for four years. Joe Biden, instead of returning to a more constructive approach, as in the 2014-2016 period when he was Vice President, chose to maintain the measures implemented by his predecessor.

More than 80% of the Cuban population was born under the sanctions imposed by Washington. These have cost the island a total of $164 billion, a sum that would cover the food basket for every Cuban family for 100 years! Under the Biden administration, economic sanctions have cost Cuba an average of $15 million a day, or almost $10,000 a minute. Each year, they represent a loss of more than $5 billion for the island.

Just days before the end of his term, Trump placed Cuba on the list of countries supporting terrorism. Since then, more than 1,000 international banks have refused to collaborate with the island, which is in crucial need of credit and foreign investment, for fear of reprisals.

According to the UN, “fundamental human rights, including the right to food, health, education, economic and social rights, the right to life, and development, are suffering the consequences” of the anachronistic, cruel and illegal state of siege imposed by Washington on 10 million Cubans. The widespread blackout that hit the island in October 2024 is a direct consequence of U.S. coercive measures, which contravene the fundamental principles of international law and the UN Charter.

Economic sanctions illustrate the United States’ inability to recognize Cuba’s independence and accept that the island has chosen a different political system and socio-economic model. There is only one way out of this asymmetrical conflict between Washington and Havana: a respectful dialogue based on sovereign equality, reciprocity, and non-interference in internal affairs.


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Salim Lamrani holds a PhD in Iberian and Latin American Studies from Sorbonne University, and is Professor of Latin American History at the Université de La Réunion, specializing in relations between Cuba and the United States. 

 His latest book in English is Cuba, the Media and the Challenge of Impartiality: https://monthlyreview.org/product/cuba_the_media_and_the_challenge_of_impartiality/


Internationalism: Is It Dead or Dying?

It is difficult to think about Cuba without engaging emotionally. I couldn’t get back to sleep the other night, distressed over the tragic blackout of nearly the entire country with a hurricane approaching.

Yes, the genocide in Palestine and Lebanon evokes similar fits of emotion and sleeplessness; the actions of the Israeli government are obscenely bestial and criminal. Yet Cuba, because of its over six decades of defiance of US imperialism and its enormous sacrifices for other peoples, holds a special place for me.

No country with so little has done so much for others.

In the first half of the twentieth century, the example of the selfless support for the struggling Spanish Republic defined solidarity with others as well as internationalism. The Soviet Union sent weapons and advisors, defying the great-power blockade and confronting German Nazi and Italian Fascist support for the military insurrectionists. Tens of thousands of volunteers, largely organized by the Communist International, came to Spain clandestinely, overcoming closed borders, to defend the nascent Republic.

Millions rallied in support of the Republic– though it fell, in significant part because of the indifference and active hostility of the so-called democracies. How was it– many came to see for the first time– that democracies would not defend an emerging democracy?

For the last sixty years, tiny Cuba has been the beacon of solidarity and internationalism for later generations. Cuban internationalists have aided and fought alongside nearly every legitimate liberation movement, every movement for socialism in Asia, Africa, and South America. Cuban doctors and relief workers have rushed to disasters in uncountable countries. Wherever need arose, Cubans were the first to volunteer, including in the US (Hurricane Katrina), the country where the government has been most damaging to Cuba’s fate.

It was not so long ago that Cuba organized assistance to the Vietnamese freedom fighters.

Even more recently, we should remember, as well, those heroes sacrificing life and limb helping liberate the Portuguese colonies of Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau. Cubans heroically gave their lives fighting and defeating the racist military of Apartheid South Africa and the US’s surrogates, inflicting one of the most significant blows against US imperialism since the Vietnam war. The US ruling class has never forgotten this humiliating defeat.

Undoubtedly, Apartheid would have eventually fallen, but those tens of thousands of Cuban volunteers hastened that end by many, many years.

But Cubans were sacrificing for others’ freedom before that remarkable struggle and after. Paraphrasing the song about Joe Hill, wherever people were struggling, you would find Cuban internationalists — from Lumumba’s Congo to Allende’s Chile, from Bishop’s Grenada to Chavez’s Venezuela.

Some will remember that when Nelson Mandela was freed, he chose to first visit Cuba to thank the Cuban people for their contribution to African liberation.

Of course, Cuba alone lacked the material resources to confront the well-armed Apartheid military and their Western-armed African collaborators. Beside Cuba and behind Cuba was the material and military support of the Soviet Union. This legacy of Soviet internationalism, combined with the inspiring selflessness of Fidel’s Cuba, gave hope to many millions fighting to free themselves from the yoke of imperialism and capitalism.

Without a doubt, the overarching cause of Cuba’s ongoing pain is the United States and its closest allies. The great powers have never forgiven Cuba for mounting the first and only socialist revolution in the Americas, as they have never forgiven Haiti for showing that African slaves could rise and defeat a great power and free an enslaved people. The US blockade of Cuba has done irreparable harm to a people hoping to develop and follow an independent political course. Imperialism punishes a people that values its sovereignty with the same uncompromising integrity as it demonstrates with its passionate commitment to solidarity with others and its selfless internationalism.

Yet the Cuban people persevere. It does not go unnoticed by the plotters at the CIA and other nefarious agencies and the State Department that — even in its most weakened state, its most challenging moments — the Cuban people keep the torch lit that was passed on to them by Fidel. Despite the best efforts of the capitalist behemoth to the North, Cuban socialism endures.

In better times, the Soviet Union generously aided Cuba on its chosen development path. Lacking few industrially desirable resources and despite the stultifying effects of centuries of imperialist exploitation, Soviet aid enabled Cuba to integrate into the socialist community’s Council of Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) on an equal, even privileged, footing. The capitalist media often compared CMEA aid to Cuba to the US’s robust aid to Israel. Ironically, Cuba used the aid to become a force for global social justice, while Israel has used the US subsidy to make mischief, to become a force for genocidal campaigns to create a “greater” Israel.

But Soviet aid is gone.

It is a source of sorrow, and not a little shame, that no country avowing the socialist road or benefitting from Cuba’s sacrifices has stepped up to even partially fill the void. Sure, countries thought to be “friends” of Cuba have made strong statements condemning the blockade, have made “fraternal” gestures, and have sent token shipments of basic foodstuffs, but not nearly enough to allow Cuba to step away from the dire economic disaster that has been multiplied a hundred-fold by the US blockade.

Lands where Cuban internationalist fighters are buried in the soil, lands with abundant energy resources, lands with modern economies that dwarf the former Soviet economy, fail to remember Cuba’s selfless sacrifices with pledges to help or to organize help at this particularly difficult moment. It may be presumptuous to expect the recipients of Cuban friendship and solidarity to make similar sacrifices for Cuba– that is what makes the legacy of Fidelismo so special in the annals of socialism. But surely, those countries could individually or collectively repair and guarantee Cuba’s basic infrastructure without great sacrifice– to give Cuba the minimal means to survive the punishment that imperialism has imposed.

It must be said that “socialism with national characteristics” seems to exclude the internationalism so central to socialism in the twentieth century.

In truth, what kind of socialism fails to sacrifice little to aid a struggling socialist country strangling from a capitalist blockade?

On a personal note, I remember well passing back through Checkpoint Charlie– the famous portal between German socialism and German capitalism. Tourists and others from the West, seeking to visit East Berlin had to return via the checkpoint. They learned on their return that they could neither exchange nor keep remaining GDR currency used while in the German Democratic Republic. Guards helpfully offered the often-unhappy returnees an option. They pointed to a large vessel brimming with cash with a sign in several languages: “Help rebuild Vietnam.”

I felt pride in knowing that I was a small part of a global movement determined to help rebuild what imperialism had torn down.

I see that pledge to internationalism again honored in the refusal of workers to load ammunition bound for Israel in the port of Piraeus, Greece.

I can only hope that the socialism of the twenty-first century will restore the internationalism that was a signature of the socialism of the twentieth century.FacebookTwitterRedditEmail

Greg Godels writes on current events, political economy, and the Communist movement from a Marxist-Leninist perspective. Read other articles by Greg, or visit Greg's website.
UK

Keir Starmer Will Always Side With Capital Against Workers

A recent controversy involving DP World showed how keen Keir Starmer’s government is to prostrate itself before firms that trample over workers’ rights. 

Starmer’s economic agenda relies heavily on “de-risking” private investment with public money.

November 1, 2024
Source: Jacobin


Keir Starmer, as Leader of the Opposition of the United Kingdom during the: Repowering the World Session at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2023 in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, 19 January.

When Keir Starmer’s Labour Party won office in July of this year, there was precious little in the party manifesto that offered hope that things were going to get better. Two promises that stood out amidst nearly 150 pages of vague platitudes were a commitment to rebuild Britain’s “crumbling” infrastructure and a range of reforms to workers’ rights.

Both pledges were thrust onto center stage in early October as Labour unveiled its “Make Work Pay” legislation. At the same time, Starmer prepared for an investment summit at which DP World, which describes itself as “a leading provider of smart logistics solutions,” was due to announce a £1 billion investment in its London Gateway port in Essex.

On October 9, Transport Secretary Louise Haigh denounced DP World’s subsidiary company P&O Ferries as a “rogue operator” for illegally firing 786 staff in 2022 and replacing them with agency workers on lower pay. Within days, DP World had decided to shelve the London Gateway announcement, leading to a flurry of corrections from government sources.

“Louise Haigh’s comments were her own personal view and don’t represent the view of the government,” was the comment from an official in Starmer’s office, while Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds told the BBC, “No, that is not the government’s position.” Starmer himself made a statement to that effect, leading DP World to issue the following statement:


Following constructive and positive discussions with the government, we have been given the clarity we need. We look forward to participating in Monday’s international investment summit.
Public Risk, Private Gain

Behind this rather farcical display of grandstanding and backtracking lies a serious contradiction. Labour has pegged its approach to the social crisis facing Britain to achieving higher levels of economic growth. They hope to do so through an expansion of infrastructural investment, ripping up current planning rules, and boosting labor productivity, which has stagnated since the economic crash of 2008.

Labour has announced a new National Wealth Fund to drive infrastructural investment. Yet the main source of investment will be the private sector. Instead of building nationalized infrastructure, the fund aims to attract £3 of private investment for every £1 of public money, with public funds de-risking the private investment. The economist Daniela Gabor has likened this approach to getting investment giant Blackrock to rebuild Britain, privatizing “housing, education, health, nature and green energy — with our taxpayer money as sweetener.”

At the same time, Labour claims to be committed to a major improvement in workers’ rights. Its case for labor market reform, according to Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves, draws upon “a mountain of economic evidence that fair pay and in-work security are crucial, not only to fairness and dignity but to our productivity too.” However, many of Labour’s pledges on this front have already been watered down, delayed, or subject to consultation with business before implementation.

Labour’s response to DP World’s bluff is indicative of which way the party will jump in government when faced with a clash between workers and big business. This is important because DP World has form as a “rogue operator” with regards to workers’ rights long predating the P&O debacle. The firm has nevertheless enjoyed state support because its infrastructural investments have been central to the growth plans of successive governments.
“A Massive Vote of Confidence”

While there is a widespread view that Britain has a “light touch” approach to the regulation of its privatized port system, in fact, the state intervened multiple times to assist the establishment of the London Gateway port. It received planning permission in May 2007, just over a year after DP World acquired P&O. The proposed port was a major element of New Labour’s Thames Gateway Regeneration Initiative. Then transport minister Gillian Merron hyped “the significant impacts that this major development will have in the growth area.”

One key area of concern when the port was announced was the potential traffic stress it would cause on junction 30 of the M25, the major motorway that forms a ring around London. Planning was granted on the condition that London Gateway’s owners would fund an upgrade to the roads that was expected to cost somewhere in the area of £100 million.

After DP World was exposed to the fallout of the 2008–9 economic crash, the company announced that the London Gateway development was “under review” and told the British government that it should provide approximately £100 million of investment required to improve roads as it was a matter “of national importance.” Regional public bodies tasked with ensuring growth in the Thames Gateway area lobbied the government to deliver the improvements. DP World subsequently negotiated an agreement that allowed the firm to fund a minor upgrade to the road instead, costing around £10 million.

Later in 2009, the East of England Regional Assembly and East of England Development Board secured a £12.7 million grant from the European Union toward the cost of dredging the Thames estuary. This was meant to increase the depth of channels and accommodate the large container ships London Gateway was hoping to attract.

A loan of £300 million from the European Investment Bank finally assured the project could go ahead. As building began, Labour prime minister Gordon Brown hailed London Gateway as


a massive vote of confidence in the UK’s economic recovery and in this region. UK Trade & Investment and other Government departments have worked closely with DP World over a number of years to make this project possible.

While the state had bent over backward to ensure the port could be opened, DP World was far less accommodating to the interests of dockworkers seeking to exercise their rights to union recognition when the port opened.
Choke Points

From the Great Dock Strike of 1889 to the unofficial action by rank-and-file trade unionists that secured the release of the Pentonville 5, dockworkers have a long history of union organization in Britain. In 1989, Margaret Thatcher’s Tory government targeted the dock workforce, and the subsequent strike was defeated. This resulted in the loss of over 80 percent of the dock labor force, and almost all of the trade union activists. It took years of organizing to rebuild a solid union presence on the docks.

When the London Gateway port opened in 2013, the trade union Unite, which represents most port workers in Britain, had hoped to reach an agreement with DP World to gain similar recognition status as prevailed in other ports. However, DP World gave them short shrift, saying that they would only recognize the union if staff decided to set up a union themselves, while refusing Unite access to the workers onsite. One logistics industry publication reported that the company wanted to employ dockers who were “untainted by bad practices at existing ports.”

Unite ran a long “leverage campaign” against DP World, protesting noisily outside the offices of DP World and its supply chain customers in the hope of pressuring them to accept recognition. By the time London Gateway welcomed its first ship in November 2013, there was no agreement in place. It took the intervention of rank-and-file dockers blockading the ship at its first port of call at Algeciras in Portugal to force DP World to allow Unite into the port.

Even after DP World formally granted access, Unite found their progress frustrated by union avoidance tactics. While I was researching their organizing drive, London Gateway workers told me that the firm resisted union recruitment on site, emailing and speaking to dockworkers to dissuade them from joining the union. They used “propaganda,” which included showing footage of union activists from other ports jumping on a car carrying Boris Johnson, who was then the mayor of London, while they were protesting the company’s anti-union stance.

Although the union eventually reached the legal threshold for recognition, the company still refused to deal with them. Unite had to apply to the independent statutory authority responsible for adjudicating union recognition to overcome DP World’s objections.

In 2018, frustrated by DP World’s failure to address several areas of concern the union had, dockers decided to take action one weekend by targeting “choke points” in the supply chain — slowing down the operation of the giant cranes that lifted containers from ships. As one union member at the port told me:


On that Monday, the ball started rolling with management. Suddenly they wanted to listen and talk to us. It literally changed the next day.

In the ten years since, the Unite branch at London Gateway has grown in strength and depth. They have spread organization to several other departments at the port, including outsourced dockworkers employed by a contractor on lesser terms and conditions than the core workforce.
“Difficult to Discern”

In the wake of Britain’s departure from the European Union, Boris Johnson’s Conservative government announced that it would create several freeports across the country. These freeports, modeled on special economic zones (SEZs), are spaces where the authorities suspend normal tax and customs rules in the interests of boosting growth and creating jobs.

DP World enthusiastically promotes its involvement in SEZs. Yet even the World Bank has reported that such zones are places where union rights are often “legally constrained or de facto discouraged.” DP World is owned by the Dubai government, and trade union organization is illegal in Dubai and across the United Arab Emirates.

DP World London Gateway is a major partner in the Thames Freeport, which will receive “up to £25 million seed funding from government and potentially hundreds of millions in locally retained business rates.” In late October, Starmer declared the government would expand the scheme, making five already designated freeports fully operational for tax and customs breaks. He also confirmed it would push ahead with an “investment zone” in the East Midlands previously announced by the Tory government. This is a region where much of Britain’s logistics infrastructure is concentrated as part of the so-called “Golden Triangle.”

While Starmer claims the expansion of the scheme is based on “Labour’s laser focus on growth,” the evidence for this is extremely weak. The Office for Budget Responsibility suggested in 2021 that tax breaks associated with the already existing freeports in England would cost the government £50 million every year, in return for such a small impact on GDP from the freeports that it would be “difficult to discern.” These freeports, subsidized by public money, will merely “shuffle jobs and activity around,” as James Meadway points out, rather than create new opportunities for working-class people.
Rogue Operators

Freeports are a symptom of a much wider malaise in global capitalism. The state’s retreat from public provision has led to a big increase in the role of capital in providing critical infrastructure, increasing its political power and sway. Indeed, as Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Neilson suggest, capital increasingly operates as a political actor, working with and through the state to produce territories such as SEZs and freeports “of its own accord.”

Two interconnected processes over the last half century have accompanied dramatic changes to global production and capitalist planning. The logistics revolution has greatly increased cargo mobility, while offshoring from the Global North to the Global South has led to a new international division of labor that relies on complex, dispersed production networks. Increasingly, infrastructural investment in the Global North is based on logistics — ports, distribution centers, roads, trains — to keep the flow of products moving through territories where manufacturing has diminished.

It is this shift that underpins the efforts of successive British governments to placate DP World’s demands, as the company’s big investment in logistics brings jobs and infrastructure. However, behind the summits and headline announcements, logistics firms are all too often “rogue operators,” as Haigh put it, when it comes to workers’ rights. Amazon is another prime example of union-busting tactics in the logistics sector.

In part, this stance is motivated by fear of how effectively workers could exercise power in the sector. Kim Moody has argued that supply chains rely on millions of workers to keep the wheels of profit turning, giving those workers tremendous potential structural power. As Katy Fox-Hodess has shown, to exercise such power, workers need to find ways of organizing effectively, building in the workplace as well as forming alliances with wider social movements.

Such alliances also strengthen movements. The global movement against Israel’s genocide in Gaza has sought to block infrastructural targets, such as train stations and factories. Recently, dockworkers in the Greek port of Piraeus refused to move ammunition bound for Israel. Activists could learn from the Block the Boat campaigns in Oakland how best to strategically target the Israeli war machine in collaboration with organized logistics workers.

Labour’s commitment to a new deal for workers rings hollow as the Starmer government rolls out the red carpet for private finance to reap the profits of new infrastructure. But the lesson from workers at London Gateway is that strategic thinking and tenacious organizing can win big gains, even in the face of multinational logistics corporations.

The Challenge and Reality of the Green Energy Transition: A Reply to Wetzel and Ongerth

November 2, 2024
Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.

Source: Lorie Shaull - A woman holds a Just Transition Now sign at a rally in Minneapolis, Minnesota



In their recent article, Tom Wetzel and Steve Ongerth reply to the “recent polemic against renewable energy” by Peter Gelderloos. While the critique of Gelderloos is valid, Wetzel and Ongerth have also not provided a realistic ‘strategy for achieving an ecologically viable future’.

Wetzel and Ongerth propose green syndicalism, “a self-organization strategy based on building grassroots unions and other kinds of social movement organizations among the working class and subordinated groups in society, to have organizations where the members are able to participate and control the decisions. These are organizations where there’s not an entrenched bureaucracy that can place limits on militant action.” This argument provides hope to many, who might otherwise give up even trying to fix the world, but unfortunately it falls short of being able to solve the problems created by capitalism. Like so many, it seems to take as a given Margaret Mead’s famous, but unfounded quote: “Never underestimate the power of a small group of committed people to change the world. In fact, it is the only thing that ever has.”

There is simply no evidence for this belief. Small groups of committed people have certainly changed parts of the world at times by building movements. However, as those changes are usually only temporary, and always limited in scope, this strategy will not solve global problems such as the climate emergency and the rise of fascism. It just won’t be able to scale up to include enough people to be effective. Every movement, simply by growing, will eventually develop “an entrenched bureaucracy that can place limits on militant action”. This is inevitable because movements are based on ideology. Maintaining the ‘correct’ ideology of a movement requires enforcement in some way. Without an ‘entrenched bureaucracy’ to do so, self-appointed ‘leaders’ tend to fill that role. Then cliques or factions develop, forcing the movement to either establish some sort of governing system (which some members will inevitably label “an entrenched bureaucracy”), or it will splinter into smaller groups. Either way, it’s just not possible for any movement to grow large enough to be effective while maintaining conditions in which “the members are able to participate and control the decisions”.

Humanity desperately needs a way to make decisions democratically and act collectively to solve global issues because currently, humanity’s collective decisions are being made by an invisible hand, based on the whims of individual capitalists as they choose where to invest their wealth to make the most profit. No nation state, and certainly not the United Nations, which is supposedly a global decision making body, has any real power over capitalism itself.

Wetzel and Ongerth go on to explain that “an essential part of the syndicalist strategy is encouraging collective forms of resistance and disruptive action such as strikes, land or building occupations, and militant mass marches. Through the building of self-managed mass organizations and mass actions, this builds confidence and a growing sense of “us versus them,” and an openness to ideas about transformation to a self-managed form of eco-socialism. And it builds the movement that has the power to ensure a democratic result in a revolutionary struggle.”

How does this actually help us solve the climate crisis though? I completely understand the frustrations leading to that way of thinking, having spent decades myself guided by the “sense of us versus them”, but have now come to the understanding that following such a strategy can ultimately only lead us to either an endless global civil war, or the extermination of all opposition by one side or the other. It sounds shocking to describe it this way, since it’s just common sense to organize with people we see eye to eye with, right? And yet, no movement has ever united all of humanity ideologically before, so why should we expect anything other than endless conflict will be the result now?

For Wetzel and Ongerth, “The potential of unionism as a force in the fight against the environmental devastation of the capitalist regime is the basis of the green syndicalist strategy.” Unionism is of course very much an ideological movement, but that’s not the same thing as how we actually organize a union. When we organize a workplace for the first time, thus creating a new union, we don’t expect ideological agreement on a mission statement—all workers are welcome and encouraged to join—then we work out the ideological issues democratically, after we’ve established the union. If the union movement had been demanding ideological agreement merely to join a union, very few unions would exist.

To solve global problems we will need to organize in that same way, without ideology in order to create a global union for all or at least the vast majority of humanity to be able to make decisions democratically and act collectively. We need to begin building an organization that all of humanity will feel welcome to join, eventually. So it can’t be based on ideology because that makes it exclusive by definition.

The potential of unionism will forever remain an unrealized potential, unless we can actually organize enough people to have an effect on how global decisions are made. Organizing based on ideological agreement automatically limits the growth of any movement, but in contrast to organizing ideologically, and requiring members to donate their time, energy and money to a specific cause, facebook has managed to organize the most people in human history simply by offering something that is useful and entertaining. The union movement can learn from this.

The internet is of course nothing more than a tool which can be used by us, or against us. It does however, provide new possibilities for organizing because it is a global, real-time communication system which has never before existed. Imagine then, if facebook had been originally created as a democratic platform cooperative instead of a profit seeking corporation. It might now have grown to be a global democratic organization of over 3 billion people, perhaps even able to demand from corporations and governments the changes we need for a better world. The problem though, that every internet platform must deal with, is anonymity.

Online ‘communities’ are not really communities at all because there is just no way to know and therefore trust each other. Our global community organization should be based on the real communities that each of us is already organized into. A simple requirement, of having to register a real community that we belong to—our workplace, school, religious or cultural community, neighbourhood… and many other possible real communities—would remove the element of anonymity from a cooperative internet platform. Each individual’s behaviour on such a platform would then be self-policing, as we all do within our communities, because they would have to explain themselves to their own community if they behave in an anti-social way on the platform. Access to the platform would require maintaining good standing in our registered community and each community in turn, must also maintain good standing with other neighbouring communities.

Obviously this could only be built in a gradual way, beginning with any programmers and other volunteers willing to offer their time to create and maintain an open source platform cooperative. The initial growth of this platform would have to take place in the same manner as any other movement for social change—by finding people who agree with the idea, but the platform must be designed in such a way that ideological agreement is not necessary for membership. In this way the platform would be capable of scaling up infinitely—something that movements are unable to do—eventually growing to include everyone. The requirement of registering a real community will prevent anonymity on the platform, making it a healthier online environment, but most importantly, it also would gradually bring grassroots communities from around the world into a global democratic network. This democratic network of communities would not automatically have the class consciousness of similar networks which have been created spontaneously in many revolutionary situations throughout history. That would have to be developed over time as the network grows and debates various ideologies.

Every revolutionary movement has failed to unseat capitalism because each has risen up alone against capitalism, isolated from the rest of the global working class. The capitalist class, unhindered by borders, has always been able to put them down. There is no shortcut to organizing the global working class, but following a flawed organizing strategy takes us in the wrong direction. If we continue to organize radical events which have no practical way of uniting globally, we remain the moles in a global game of ‘whac-a-mole’. Ending capitalism will require organizing ourselves without threatening capitalism until the organization is too large to be stopped.

This idea of course flies in the face of the long established strategic formula that has always been followed when organizing for change:

1—Develop an ideological theory.

2—Find the others.

3—Once the number of people reaches the ‘tipping point’, we can implement the desired change.

This is obviously a simplification, but the point is that while this method works quite well in achieving relatively small goals, it can’t scale up to allow us to change the whole world. It will never be possible to convince all of humanity to agree to one single ideology, which means that we cannot solve global problems with this method. However, reversing the order of the first two—organize first, then develop ideology—will allow us to organize enough people to be capable of actually changing the world, then together, democratically, humanity can decide how we will act collectively to change the world.
This Activist Group Chat Has Been Blocking A Weapons Shipment To Israel For Weeks

A South African WhatsApp group working with BDS has sparked a movement to block a ship carrying military explosives bound for Israel.

November 1, 2024
Source: Waging Nonviolence

The MV Kathrin is a cargo vessel carrying military explosives to Israel. (VesselFinder)



For a few hours between Oct. 17-18, a cargo ship called the MV Kathrin had “gone rogue” just outside of Malta’s territorial waters. To “go rogue,” in shipping terms, is to be without a flag — and in the case of the MV Kathrin, its flag had been revoked by the Portuguese government after it sat, “at anchor,” in the Mediterranean for 10 days, rejected from its destination port of Malta.

Why such drama on the high seas? To understand, you have to go back to the beginning of the MV Kathrin’s journey — back to July, when the ship embarked on its beleaguered journey out of Hai Phong, Vietnam. It was there that sympathetic members of a Vietnamese labor union alerted the international organizing committee of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, or BDS, that a ship carrying weapons bound for Israel was about to loop around the African continent.

As an American activist living in Johannesburg, South Africa, I have had a front row seat to the organizing that’s led to the Kathrin being rejected from nearly every port on its destination list. Even now, with a new German flag, the Kathrin’s status remains clouded in mystery, having unexpectedly docked in Albania sometime around Oct. 24.

When the tip came in from Vietnam, the BDS committee quickly put out a call to organizers and activists in South Africa: Does anyone know how to track the movement of a ship?

Lifelong climate and anti-apartheid activist Sunny Morgan answered the call. He uses an app called Marine Traffic in his business as a solar installer and supplier. He began to track the Kathrin. On Aug. 20, a BDS comrade (in South Africa, all activists call each other comrade) alerted a WhatsApp group chat titled “SA Energy Embargo” that a vessel potentially carrying ammunition to Israel was scheduled to dock in either Cape Town or Walvis Bay, Namibia on Aug. 22 or 25.

I am a member of that group chat, and I watched as the feed became a flurry of action — comrades reaching out to friends in the harbors, downloading other ship trackers like Marine Traffic, sending screenshots of the Kathrin’s movements, drafting letters to government officials and to port authorities, and then — crucially — someone suggested we get in touch with the Namibian justice minister. A handful of activists had just met her at the Global Anti-Apartheid Conference on Palestine, which was convened by the South African Anti-Apartheid Steering Committee and held in Johannesburg in May.

We had it on good authority that the Kathrin would pass Cape Town for Namibia, so BDS began a social media campaign calling on the Namibian Port Authority to reject MV Kathrin on the grounds that providing the ship with safe harbor is akin to complicity in genocide and not aligned with international law.

There is an African proverb: If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping in a closed room with a mosquito. This little group chat — and a handful of hyper-active activists in it — tracked the Kathrin day in and day out, exchanging information and calling everyone they knew who might have the power to stop it as the ship passed Port Elizabeth and Cape Town, setting its destination officially to Walvis Bay.
Screenshot from the Marine Traffic app showing the MV Kathrin languishing off the coast of Namibia.

Then, just in the nick of time, on Aug. 25, as it traveled at 20 knots towards its destination, we got word from our Namibian comrades: “Permission for vessel Kathrin to enter Namibian water was revoked. Our justice minister also wrote a letter to her colleagues and called on Namport [the Namibian Port Authority] not to allow the vessel to enter any Namibian port. This is a small but significant victory.”

We then saw, via her own statement, that Namibian Justice Minister Yvonne Dausab had indeed requested the relevant authorities not allow the ship to dock at Walvis Bay port, reminding them of Namibia’s international obligations, “not only under the Genocide Convention but also as articulated in the recent advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice.”

Minister Dausab’s stance aligns with Namibia’s public stance on the ongoing genocide in Gaza and reflects the country’s support for Palestine. But this bold, decisive and symbolic first public move against the Kathrin was the result of direct nonviolent organizing taken by the small and determined activists of BDS and the SA Energy Embargo WhatsApp group.
Energy embargo and BDS

The SA Energy Embargo WhatsApp group isn’t a group of cartographers or ocean logistics experts, it’s an online space for pro-Palestinian activists to gather and plan actions that push the South African government towards an energy embargo against Israel.

South Africa is rich in coal. Until recently, we oscillated back and forth with Russia as Israel’s second and third largest coal supplier. That changed in June, when Colombian President Gustavo Petro issued a ban on his country’s coal exports to Israel. South Africa then became Israel’s number one supplier, powering daily life in that country — a daily life that includes weapons manufacturing, military bases, spyware and Israeli settlers illegally expanding settlements in occupied Palestine. In short, South African coal powers an apartheid state.

In joining the organizing of SA Energy Embargo, I was able to unite my climate activism with Palestinian solidarity. “Keeping the coal in the hole,” as we say, is an environmental win, as well as a local energy win for South Africans. Cutting Israel’s supply of coal would significantly hinder its ability to expand settlements, organize its military actions and further its apartheid and genocide.Scenes from an Energy Embargo action at Glencore mining headquarters in Johannesburg, South Africa. (WNV/Madison Bannon)

The SA Energy Embargo initiative was born of a call from South Africa’s BDS chapter to further a divestment, boycott and sanctions strategy that isolates Israel economically. The South African BDS movement is grounded in a rich legacy of organizing and a deeply personal understanding of the power of sanctions and boycotts — one that dates back to South Africa’s own journey in the 1960s.

In 1962, two years after the African National Congress was banned, exiled Chief Albert Luthuli gave a speech addressing the United Nations, saying “We appeal to the United Nations to support us to impose sanctions on the apartheid state and to put an end to this unjust system. … It is only when international pressure for the abandonment of apartheid becomes irresistible that the people of South Africa will have peace, security and equal rights.”

From there, an international movement of boycotting and sanctions on apartheid South Africa was born — with the goal of isolating the apartheid government economically and politically. The movement grew over the next 20 years.

In 1985, a small group of business leaders involved in mining and banking initiated a secret meeting in Lusaka, Zambia, with the exiled ANC to negotiate a peace deal. South African companies were having a hard time finding international markets and the economic situation had become untenable. Those business leaders were swayed, not because they came to recognize apartheid’s moral corruption, but because the economy was collapsing. They felt that a peaceful transition of power would stabilize the economy and reintegrate South Africa into the global marketplace. It was a pragmatic response to a boycott and sanctions movement that built a bridge between the white government and the ANC.

For me, learning this history was a turning point in my understanding of BDS. As an American, BDS was introduced to me as a radical antisemitic movement aimed at hurting Jews and Jewish businesses. The more I learned about the plight of the Palestinian people, the more sympathetic I became. At the same time, the more I learned about activist strategy and theory, the more my mind opened to BDS. Still, as someone with many Jewish friends, I felt that BDS was someone else’s call-to-action, not mine.

In the wake of the genocide in a post-Oct. 7 world — and becoming a South African “comrade” with that rich legacy of activist history — I’ve shifted my view entirely. I now understand the power the boycott and sanctions movement had to end South African apartheid. I also understand the corporate targets of the BDS movement: coal, weapons, insurance companies that back the coal and the weapons, and major corporate backers of Israel’s military. As a result, I am committed to the power and necessity of a movement like BDS, whose work entails campaigns like #BlockTheBoat, in which the MV Kathrin is just one of many ships.A Marine Traffic screenshot showing all of the ships around the world. It was “like finding a needle in a haystack,” said Sunny Morgan.

While the Kathrin lingered off the Namibian coast, authorities investigated the ship and found that it carries eight tons of an explosive material called RDX, which had been sold by Vietnam to Israeli Military Industries Ltd. The anti-personnel mines made with RDX explode and send a spray of metal ball bearings that act like bullets, shredding everyone and everything around them. Put simply: It’s a weapon of indiscriminate and maximum harm for use in the furtherance of a genocide.

However, eight tons of explosives — listed as “general cargo” on the MV Kathrin — is only a drop in the blood-filled bucket for a war that has seen 75,000 tons of bombardment, directly killing more than 43,000 men, women and children. A further 144,000 — conservatively estimated by the Lancet — have been killed through disease, starvation and a decimated health infrastructure. Those eight tons on the Kathrin are also only a small amount of the ship’s cargo, which is carrying 7,138 tons of all manner of products from Vietnam and Singapore to states all over Europe and the Mediterranean.

Nevertheless, the charge of this small group of committed activists has sparked a #BlockTheBoat movement that has connected activists across Southern Africa, the Mediterranean, Asia and Europe. The Kathrin has been denied harbor in Namibia, Angola, Montenegro, Croatia and Malta. Its Portuguese flag was revoked. Its journey has been delayed by weeks costing an unfathomable amount of money to all parties involved in its logistics, whether relating to the materials, the insurance or the ocean liner management. Even with a German flag, the Kathrin continued to languish outside of Malta for days before docking unexpectedly in Albania last week (in what is still a developing story).

If a handful of activists under a strategic BDS banner can ignite a global movement to block this boat, what is the potential of organized activism the world over? Could we hold the entire shipping industry to account? Could we change the way we do maritime logistics to stop arms transfers? Being able to ask those questions in a year of unfathomable loss, is a win.
Legal implications

The port of discharge for the eight containers of explosive material on the Kathrin was supposed to be Koper, Slovenia, where the German company Lubeca Marine was hired to transport the material on to Israel. Germany is one of Israel’s most vocal backers — so much so that Nicaragua took Germany to the top U.N. court in April for “aiding genocide” through arms and equipment sales.

That case contributes to a mounting body of Palestinian support at the U.N., which was kicked off in December 2023, when South Africa convened its case against Israel at the ICJ. After two days of public hearings in January, the court concluded that Israel’s actions in Gaza could amount to plausible genocide and issued provisional measures to ensure aid was flowing into Gaza and civilian lives were protected. Israel has ignored them, along with all subsequent ICJ rulings and U.N. resolutions — instead choosing only to escalate its war.

On June 20, the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner issued a call for an arms embargo stating: “These companies, by sending weapons, parts, components and ammunition to Israeli forces, risk being complicit in serious violations of international human rights and international humanitarian laws.”

To provide safe harbor and passage for a ship well documented to be carrying explosives that intentionally create maximum damage and death to a government plausibly committing genocide is in contravention to the Genocide Convention to which 153 states are party (including Germany and Vietnam) and 41 are signatories (including Israel and the United States).

Germany alleged in its ICJ case that 98 percent of its arms exports “were general equipment like vests, helmets and binoculars. And of four cases where war weapons exports were approved, three concerned arms unsuitable for use in combat and meant for training.”

The body of evidence now published widely about MV Kathrin, her contents, her destination and her supporters contradicts Germany’s attempt to distance itself from the genocide. Specifically, the German company Lubeca Marine is known to be the company providing logistics for the arms transfer — and the German government is known to put its flag on the Kathrin despite knowledge of its contents and new reputation as a geopolitical pariah.
Banning UNRWA Is A New Way To Kill Children, Aid Groups Warn

November 1, 2024
Source: The Electronic Intifada


Secretary Blinken Meets With UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini.



Palestinian human rights groups say that new Israeli legislation banning a UN agency from providing services to Palestinians under occupation “aligns with a broader pattern of Israel’s genocidal intent.”

On Monday, Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, passed into law – with near unanimity – two bills that would effectively ban UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestine refugees, from operating in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

One of the laws bars state authorities from having any contact with UNRWA, which provides health, education and other basic services to millions of Palestinian refugees in the occupied Palestinian territories as well as Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.

“The legislation also terminates the 1967 agreement between Israel and UNRWA with immediate effect,” according to three prominent Palestinian human rights groups: Al-Haq, Al Mezan and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights.

The second law bans the agency from operating in so-called Israeli territory and “will go into effect three months after the passing of the laws – approximately by the end of January 2025,” the rights groups said.

If enacted, the new laws will shutter UNRWA’s headquarters in eastern Jerusalem, which Israel has unlawfully occupied since 1967 and annexed in violation of international law. UNRWA’s Jerusalem headquarters are the administrative hub for its operations across the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

According to media reports, Israel plans to build settlements on the site of UNRWA’s headquarters, which state authorities ordered vacated in May.

Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, has the authority to block the legislation. But he is unlikely to do so, despite international pressure, especially after his foreign minister declared António Guterres, the UN secretary-general, persona non grata.

Israel’s unbridled hostility toward the United Nations will only escalate with every attempt towards accountability through the world body’s organs.

On Wednesday, the UN Security Council issued a statement declaring its support for UNRWA and warning “against any attempts to dismantle or diminish UNRWA’s operations and mandate.”
“Criminalization of humanitarian aid”

Three prominent Palestinian human rights groups – Al-Haq, Al Mezan and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights – said that the passage of the laws is part of a “calculated, decades-long campaign to dismantle UNRWA and undermine the inalienable right of return” of Palestinian refugees.

“Now more than ever, amid Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, UNRWA’s role is not only essential but irreplaceable,” the groups added.

The new legislation “amounts to the criminalization of humanitarian aid and will worsen an already catastrophic humanitarian crisis,” Agnès Callamard, the head of Amnesty International, said on Tuesday.

Joyce Msuya, the acting UN relief chief, said “this decision is dangerous and outrageous.”

“If UNRWA is unable to operate, it’ll likely see the collapse of the humanitarian system in Gaza,” warned James Elder, spokesperson for the UN children’s agency UNICEF. “So a decision such as this suddenly means that a new way has been found to kill children.”

UN officials say the decision to ban UNRWA amounts to collective punishment – a war crime – for the alleged involvement of a handful of agency staff in the 7 October 2023 attack on Israeli military bases and colonies along Gaza’s periphery.

“The implementation of the laws could have devastating consequences for Palestine refugees” in the West Bank, including eastern Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, according to the UN secretary-general.

National legislation cannot alter Israel’s obligations under the UN charter and international law, Guterres added.

UNRWA is the agency with the largest humanitarian footprint in the West Bank and Gaza and one of the largest employers in the occupied Palestinian territories.

“Dismantling UNRWA will have a catastrophic impact on the international response to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza,” Philippe Lazzarini, the head of UNRWA, told the president of the General Assembly in a letter on Tuesday. “It will also sabotage any chance of recovery.”

In the absence of any other entity to provide government-like services, the effective ban on UNRWA will leave more than 660,000 children in Gaza without an education. “An entire generation of children will be sacrificed,” Lazzarini said.

The Palestinian rights groups observe that 2.4 million Palestinian refugees in the West Bank and Gaza “will be deprived of essential services – particularly education and healthcare – that only UNRWA has the mandate and capacity to deliver.”
UNRWA staff killed and tortured

Addressing Israel’s allegations, Lazzarini said that UNRWA provided Israel with a list of its staff on an annual basis for 15 years. Personnel that Israel never raised concerns over are now included in its lists of alleged fighters, he said.

Repeated requests to the Israeli government appealing for evidence regarding its allegations against UNRWA staff have gone without a reply, he added.

“UNRWA is therefore in the invidious position of being unable to address allegations for which it has no evidence, while these allegations continue to be used to undermine the agency,” Lazzarini said.

He added that at least 237 UNRWA staff have been killed in Gaza and more than 200 of its facilities have been damaged or destroyed in attacks that have killed more than 560 people “seeking UN protection.” Meanwhile, “dozens of UNRWA staff have been detained and report being tortured,” Lazzarini said.

Israel has abused UNRWA employees detained in Gaza in order to extract forced confessions incriminating the agency.

Israel’s attacks on UNRWA “are an integral part” of the crumbling of “the rules-based international order … in a repetition of the horrors that led to the establishment of the United Nations,” Lazzarini added.

Passage of the bills, strongly opposed and viewed as extreme even by Tel Aviv’s allies, will increase international pressure on Israel.

In March, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to “ensure, without delay, in full cooperation with the United Nations, the unhindered provision at scale … of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance.”

The Palestinian research group Badil has said that instead of adhering to the orders of the UN court, western colonial states were abetting “Israel’s aim to oust UNRWA” from the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

“The demise of UNRWA is a strategic goal that serves Israel’s colonial-apartheid aspirations to eliminate the Palestinian refugee issue,” Badil added.

The group has called on governments around the world to “freeze Israel’s membership in the United Nations in view of its failure to fulfill its membership obligations.”
Right of return

This includes Israel’s failure to implement UN General Assembly resolution 194 of 1948.

Around 800,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homeland during the Zionist conquest of hundreds of towns and villages ahead of the declaration of the state of Israel.

Resolution 194 calls for those refugees to be allowed to return to their homes “at the earliest practicable date” and for compensation for loss of property.

Israel’s admittance to the UN was conditioned on recognition of the right of return of Palestine refugees.

According to international law expert Shahd Hammouri, denial of that right “is perplexingly at the heart of the Israeli state’s ideology despite being a condition of its membership.”

Adalah, a group that advocates for the rights of Palestinians in Israel, said that the laws banning UNRWA “violate the provisional measures ordered by the [International Court of Justice] and may also breach the Genocide Convention and the [International Criminal Court’s] Rome Statute.”

The US secretaries of state and defense warned Israel earlier this month that there would be potential consequences including the suspension of military assistance if Israel didn’t allow a surge of aid into Gaza.

International monitors warn of a persistent risk of famine across all of Gaza. With winter approaching, and after more than a year of Israel using food and water as weapons of war, “the lives of two million Palestinians are already in grave danger,” the three Palestinian human rights groups said.

Disruption of UNRWA’s operations “would have devastating consequences and inevitably contribute to imposing conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians in Gaza,” the groups added.

The US and some European countries have reportedly warned Israel that the ban on UNRWA could undermine the state’s defense at the International Court of Justice, where it stands accused of genocide.

The International Criminal Court also appears to be particularly focused on Israel’s restrictions on humanitarian aid in its investigation into suspected war crimes in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Norway has already initiated a UN resolution requesting an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice on the legality of Israel’s “systematic obstacles” that prevent the provision of humanitarian assistance to Palestinians under occupation.

In a statement published on Tuesday, Norway stated that the ban on UNRWA “will have severe consequences for millions of civilians already living in the most dire of circumstances.”

“It also undermines the stability of the entire Middle East,” the Norwegian statement added.

An unnamed diplomat whose comments were paraphrased by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz said that international courts may rule against the state and its leaders if there are further decreases in aid, “making it more difficult for Israel’s allies to defend the country.”

At the time that Israel’s Knesset voted to ban UNRWA, some 100,000 Palestinians were under siege in the northern Gaza areas of Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahiya and Jabaliya refugee camp without food, water or medical supplies.

“The entire population of north Gaza is at risk of dying,” Joyce Msuya, the acting UN relief chief, stated two days before the vote.