Are Iraq’s Oil Flows Through Kurdistan To Turkey Set To Resume?

By Simon Watkins - Nov 25, 2024,

Oil flows from Kurdistan to Turkey were halted due to legal disputes over unauthorized exports.

Russia's heavy involvement in Kurdistan's oil sector and Baghdad's push to integrate Kurdistan into a unified Iraq complicate the chances of a balanced resolution.

Baghdad appears intent on centralizing oil governance under a unified oil law, reducing Kurdistan's autonomy.



The resumption of oil exports from Iraq’s semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan through the Iraq-Turkey Pipeline (ITP) to the Turkish port of Ceyhan was discussed in detail last week by Iraqi Oil Minister Hayan Abdul-Ghani and the country’s Parliamentary Finance Committee, a senior energy sector source who works closely with the Oil Ministry told OilPrice.com. These flows were stopped on 25 March 2023 after the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) ordered Turkey to pay the Federal Government of Iraq (FGI) in Baghdad damages of US$1.5 billion for unauthorised oil exports organised by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Erbil. The ICC had ruled that Turkey had broken the terms of a 1973 agreement by allowing the oil exports from the Iraqi Kurdistan region without the consent of the FGI. “However, some big issues remain between the two sides [the FGI and the KRG], and restoring the oil flows [through Kurdistan to Turkey] depends on how these are dealt with in the coming days,” he added.

At the heart of any new agreement between the FGI and KRG is precisely the same basic trade-off that underpinned the original November 2014 deal struck between the two sides. This involved the Iraqi Kurdistan region effectively transferring oil produced in its region to the Iraqi government’s State Oil Marketing Organization (SOMO) for onward export as it saw fit, in exchange for which the Iraqi government would send the Iraqi Kurdistan a monthly dispersal of funds from the central Iraq government budget. Specifically, for the first year of the deal taking effect (2014), 17 percent of the FGI’s budget after sovereign expenses (around US$500 million at that time) was to be dispersed over the year on a monthly basis in exchange for the KRG organising the export up to 550,000 barrels per day (bpd) of oil from the Iraqi Kurdistan oil fields and Kirkuk to SOMO. This time around, the FGI Cabinet ordered the KRG on 5 November to immediately transfer its oil output to SOMO in one part of the new iteration of the old deal. On the other part of it, the Cabinet announced that it had approved a budget measure to pay the KRG for production and transport costs incurred in this process and had set a US$16 per barrel rate for international oil companies (IOCs) operating in Iraqi Kurdistan.

The devil is in such details and the scene is set for a repeat performance of the long-running saga of the failure of the previous deal of 2014. Barely three months into that agreement, and accusations began from both sides, with the KRG accusing the FGI of not paying the full amount promised, and the FGI accusing the KRG of not supplying the full amount of oil agreed. After that, matters between the two sides became progressively worse, and took a nosedive in 2017 after two seismic developments in the country. The first was the huge vote in favour of Kurdish independence in September, as analysed in full in my latest book on the new global oil market order. After this, the very basis of the deal became null and void when FGI and Iranian forces took back control of the oilfields in Kurdistan, including the major oil sites around Kirkuk. The FGI argued that the Kirkuk fields had been occupied illegally in the first place, having been under Kurdish control only since 2014 when the Iraqi army collapsed in the face of Islamic State. From that point onwards, the starting point of any negotiations for the FGI in Baghdad over budget disbursements to the KRG was that they should accord with the percentage share of the Kurdistan population in the overall population of Iraq. This, according to the FGI, was 12.67 percent – a long way from the 17 percent of the federal budget after sovereign expenses that had been the cornerstone assumption of the November 2014 deal.

The second huge event was Russia’s subsequent insertion of itself between the KRG and FGI, having effectively taking over Iraqi Kurdistan’s oil sector in late 2017 through three main means, as also detailed in my latest book. Russia provided the KRG with US$1.5 billion in financing through forward oil sales payable in the next three to five years. Second, it took an 80 percent working interest in five potentially major oil blocks in the region. And third, it established 60 percent ownership of the vital KRG pipeline by dint of a commitment to invest US$1.8 billion to increase its capacity to one million barrels per day. Consequently, Moscow considered itself well-placed at that point to leverage this presence into a similarly powerful position in the south of the country, particularly by striking new oil and gas field exploration and development deals with Baghdad as part of Russia’s role in intermediating in the perennial dispute over the November 2014 budget disbursements-for-oil deal. Russia not only challenged the percentage involved in the budget payments but also insisted through the KRG that oil flows that had been suspended in Iraqi Kurdistan following the September 2017 Referendum result would not restart fully until pipeline transit fees and pumping tariffs were paid to the Russian oil giant, Rosneft. By that time, the firm had a 60 percent stake in the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline. Moscow also wanted the FGI to look again at its decision to deem ‘invalid’ the assignment to Rosneft by the KRG of the five exploration blocks in Kurdish territory in which it had secured an 80 percent stake. These were estimated to have aggregate 3P reserves of 670 million barrels.

None of these key parameters for the 2014 were ever fully and finally agreed by both sides, which is one reason why the FGI looks to have definitively shifted its focus to a different resolution of its ‘Kurdish problem’ – removing its last vestige of independence and rolling into a unified Iraq as just another province. The other reason is that neither of Baghdad’s two key sponsors – Russia or China – want a fractious semi-independent region that had close ties to the West disrupting their plans for Iraq. Ultimately, these plans are to maintain a client state in the very heart of the Middle East that together with neighbouring Iraq has the world’s biggest oil and gas reserves and considerable influence over the Shia Islamic states of the globe. This is why so many of the key questions surrounding the possible new deal between the FGI and KRG remain unanswered, despite last week’s long meeting on the subject in Baghdad. The main concern for any who think a workable resolution to the current oil export impasse is likely any time soon is the wording of the amendment to the Budget Law announced on 5 November that deals with compensating the KRG. It states clearly that, “Production and transportation costs for each field will be estimated fairly by an internationally specialized consulting entity, as agreed upon by the Federal Ministry of Oil and the KRG’s Ministry of Natural Resources, within 60 days of the law’s enactment.” Crucially though, it adds, “If no agreement is reached within this period, the Iraqi cabinet will select an international consultancy party without returning to the Kurdish authorities.”

Ultimately, according to the Iraq source spoken to by OilPrice.com last week, the FGI has no interest whatsoever in agreeing to any deal that empowers Iraqi Kurdistan in any way at all. “On the one hand, independent oil sales by the region jeopardise the oil flows that are meant to be sent to Baghdad to sell, and there is no upside to that for the FGI,” he said. “On the other hand, Baghdad does not want to send money to the region either as this will delay its being rolled into a unified Iraq,” he added. This longer-term intention was more than hinted at on 3 August last year, when Iraqi Prime Minister, Mohammed Al-Sudani, clear stated that the new unified oil law -- run, in every way that matters, out of Baghdad -- will govern all oil and gas production and investments in both Iraq and the Kurdistan region and will constitute “a strong factor for Iraq’s unity”.

By Simon Watkins for Oilprice.com

Natural Gas Set To Win Big Under Trump

By Leonard Hyman & William Tilles 

- Nov 25, 2024,

The Trump administration is expected to curtail environmental regulations, allowing utilities to transition from coal to natural gas without offsets or restrictions.

With abundant domestic supply, natural gas is positioned to dominate new power plant construction.  

(60% SUPPLIED BY ALBERTA BLENDED WITH US GAS FOR EXPORT)

High costs and the loss of environmental benefits as a selling point undercut the case for new nuclear plants.


Now that elections are over in the US, we thought it would be useful to review some of the broader policy implications of the changing administration for the electric utility industry. There are four themes we want to cover here: environment regulations, prospects for natural gas usage, power generation, new nuclear-powered generation.

The incoming Trump administration has made no secret of the fact that they believe climate change is a hoax or a non-issue. As a result we should assume that the mandate of the Environmental Protection Agency will be curtailed as much as possible. Obvious regulations heading for the chopping block include CO2 emissions standards and perhaps methane emissions remediation at gas wells. Our broader point here, regardless of one's personal views, is that this is not a radical departure from present policy. At present, utilities are beginning to experience record growth and they are ordering new gas fired power plants and considering life extensions for coal plants in addition to renewables. Our only question is whether or not we see a new coal fired plant built. This is what two large utilities, Duke and Southern Company, are doing so we can take it to be somewhat representative of the industry’s direction here. One caveat here is that Southern Company’s Georgia Power is experiencing extremely high demand growth from a cluster of planned data centers in the Atlanta metro area. Just to provide some orders of magnitude, the company’s Integrated Resource Plan for 2022 anticipated new power plant needs of 400 MWs. A year later this estimate was revised to 6,000 mws! And one respected analyst has suggested even this greatly revised figure is way low.

Our broader point here is that the US electric utility industry is getting the power plant transition it always wanted, from base load coal to base load natural gas unfettered by environmental regulations. The biggest difference to us is that the Biden administration permitted fossil fired new build with a lot of tut-tutting about offsets etc. Now the new build will continue, probably at an accelerated pace, but without the tut-tutting and without the environmental offsets.

Natural gas is clearly the big winner here as a prospective boiler fuel and for power plant builders. The US produces a lot of gas, especially from shale. We expect to see gas production ramp up, new pipelines will be considered, and new gas fired power plants ordered. The new administration has already promised to resurrect the Keystone Pipeline. But for the reasons cited above, that this expected growth was already happening, it’s hard to see how much incremental benefit the industry can get. The best we can say is that the industry benefits incrementally from regulatory benign neglect, kind of like the meatpacking industry.

Lastly, our ambivalence about the prospects for new nuclear development in the US should be understood in terms of the energy trilemma: nations want their electricity to have three principal characteristics—that it be affordable, secure (no Russian gas), and sustainable (no/low emissions). Once we eliminate environmental sustainability concerns from the mix, as we expect the incoming administration to do, then prospective power plants will be evaluated on the cost and security of domestic supply. This favors the construction of new gas-fired generation as we are beginning to see. Coal-fired plants would be a logical second choice. A new nuclear plant is about four times the cost of a new gas fired power station. If environmental benefits are considered irrelevant, why should anyone choose to build a new nuclear power station selling a commodity, electricity, produced at a very high price. If we think of a power plant as a factory selling widgets instead of energy, we should ask, why would anyone build a factory guaranteed to sell its product at a large loss? The question answers itself. They wouldn’t. This is the dilemma for new nuclear power plant construction. Economics is not on its side and never has been. And now their big selling point, zero carbon electricity, has been rendered irrelevant by the incoming administration. If we were advising the nuclear power industry, we would suggest they emphasize the security of supply in the context of heightened international tensions and forget about sustainability. Why? It’s the best argument they have.

In short, big spending, full steam ahead, and if we are right, spending more than the already big numbers the utilities now contemplate.

By Leonard Hyman and William Tilles for Oilprice.com

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M 

Singapore prosecutors say trader took $360 million in metal scam

Bloomberg News | November 27, 2024 |

Credit: Envy Motors

A Singapore businessman who convinced investors to put a total of S$1.5 billion ($1.1 billion) into a nickel trading scheme channeled a third of that into his own accounts, prosecutors said at the start of his trial.


Ng Yu Zhi, a former accountant, faces 42 charges including fraud, forgery and money laundering. He’s accused of leading investors in his Envy Group to believe they could profit from physical nickel trades, thanks to his purchases of discounted metal from an Australian mine. In reality, the scheme was “pure fiction,” the prosecution said in an opening statement

In fact, no cheap nickel was purchased, so there was none to sell. There was no agreement with the mine, and no forward contracts for the sale of the metal, prosecutors said.

“The Envy companies paid earlier investors not with returns generated from physical nickel trading, but with the moneys invested by other investors,” they said.

Over a period of six years, Ng’s companies received money from a total of 947 investors, including many high-profile figures in the city state, misappropriating nearly S$482 million to fund his lavish lifestyle and extravagant purchases from art and jewelry to high-end cars.

Ng faces 108 charges, but only 42 will proceed, and he pleaded not guilty to those on Tuesday. The prosecution plans to call on evidence from 58 witnesses.

The nickel scam is the latest in a series of scandals in the financial and commodities-trading hub, now working to restore a reputation for good governance.

Earlier this month, former oil tycoon Lim Oon Kuin, 82, was handed a 17-and-half year jail sentence for cheating HSBC Holdings Plc and instigating forgery. In October, S. Iswaran became the first ex-cabinet minister to be jailed in almost half a century, after pleading guilty to charges including obstruction of justice.

(By Yihui Xie)

Resolute Mining forks out further $50 million to Mali for detained employees

Reuters | November 28, 2024 

The Syama gold complex in Mali. (Photo by Philip Mostert | Resolute Mining.)

Australia’s Resolute Mining said on Friday it paid a further $50 million to Mali as part of negotiations to settle a tax dispute for the release of its CEO and two other executives who were detained by the government earlier this month.


Shares of the miner rose as much as 7.2% before paring some gains to trade at 5.4% higher, as of 0002 GMT.


The miner’s top boss Terence Holohan and two other employees were released by Mali government, the company had said in a statement on Nov. 21.

The executives had gone to the capital city of Bamako to hold discussions with the mining and tax authorities regarding general activities related to the company’s business practices in Mali.

After negotiating with the West African nation’s government, Resolute had agreed to pay $160 million to resolve the tax dispute, with $80 million being already paid, the company said in a statement on Nov. 18.

The Perth-headquartered company expects to pay the remaining $30 million by the end of this year, it said.

Resolute also said that operations at its Syama mine had not incurred any problems and continued as usual.

Syama gold mine – one of the company’s two operational mines – contributed nearly two-thirds of its annual sales of 329,061 ounces (9.33 metric tons) in 2023.

Resolute owns an 80% stake in the project, while Mali’s government holds the rest.

(By Rajasik Mukherjee; Editing by Rashmi Aich)

November 26, 2024

Barrick Confirms Arrest of Four Malian Employees, Reaffirms Commitment to Resolution of Disputes

Press Release Communiqué de presse

Toronto – Barrick Gold Corporation (NYSE:GOLD)(TSX:ABX) today confirmed that four employees of its Loulo-Gounkoto mining complex had been charged and detained pending trial. While Barrick refutes these charges, it said it would continue to engage with the Malian government to find an amicable dispute settlement that would ensure the long-term sustainability of the complex.

President and chief executive Mark Bristow said that since September 30, the company had been actively seeking to finalize a Memorandum of Agreement that would guide Barrick’s partnership with the government in future, including the state’s share of the economic benefits generated by the complex and the legal framework under which this would be managed.

“Our attempts to find a mutually acceptable resolution have so far been unsuccessful, but we remain committed to engage with the government in order to resolve all the claims levied against the company and its employees and secure the early release of our unjustly imprisoned colleagues,” he said.

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M 

Fake Gibson Guitars Worth $18M Seized at Los Angeles/Long Beach Ports

CBP reported the seizure was worth $18 million if the guitars had been genuine Gibson products (CBP)

Published Nov 27, 2024 7:29 PM by The Maritime Executive

 

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) announced the seizure of the 3,000 guitars that were intercepted at the Los Angeles/Long Beach Seaport. The counterfeit Gibson electric guitars, which originated from Asia, would have been worth an estimated $18 million had they been genuine.

They were seized after authorities flagged suspect containers and represented one of the largest seizures of counterfeit musical instruments. CBP, which apprehended the fake guitars working in conjunction with Homeland Security Investigations, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, and Gibson representatives, did not reveal the country of origin or vessel that transported the suspect containers.

Gibson confirmed that the red, black, and orange electric guitars, including knockoffs of its famous Les Paul models, were counterfeit. The company confirmed to the authorities that its authentic guitars are only made in the U.S.

The seizure of the fake electric guitars comes as Gibson is celebrating its 130th anniversary this year. For the iconic brand that was founded in 1902 in Kalamazoo, Michigan, the seizure was a major win in determination to protect its legacy of quality and craftsmanship, legendary music partnerships with artists, and efforts to promote and create more musicians.

Cheryl M. Davies, CBP Director of Field Operations in Los Angeles, said the fake Gibson guitars could have ended in the hands of unsuspecting consumers through e-commerce, street markets, unauthorized retailers, and person-to-person transactions.

 

 

Ranked among the busiest container operations in the U.S., the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach continue to record significant seizures of counterfeit goods. China and Hong Kong are the key sources of fake goods, with seizures from the two Asian countries accounting for 46 percent of counterfeit seizures and 84 percent of the value of counterfeit seizures. CBP highlights that a record-breaking $1 billion worth of counterfeit products were seized in 2022. That compares with the total cargo worth about $300 billion that passed through at the twin ports last year.

“Counterfeit goods fund criminal enterprises that engage in forced labor, smuggling, drug trafficking, and other illicit activities,” said Africa R. Bell, LA/Long Beach seaport CBP Port Director. “Counterfeiters are only interested in making a profit – they do not care about you or your family’s well-being or the well-being of our economy.”

CBP said it has developed proactive, aggressive, and dynamic enforcement measures to deter the importation of illicit goods and protect U.S. consumers and businesses, the objective of which is to fight intellectual property thefts. This comes when the menace of counterfeits is worsening, with the agency seizing 19,724 shipments containing goods that violated Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) in the 2023 fiscal year. This equates to nearly 23 million counterfeit goods with a value of a staggering $2.7 billion if they were genuine.

New Hampshire's Port Director Fights Witness Tampering Charges

The harbor at Portsmouth, New Hampshire (Carol Highsmith / public domain)

Published Nov 27, 2024 10:46 PM by The Maritime Executive

 

The head of New Hampshire's port authority has pleaded not guilty to state charges of witness tampering and falsifying physical evidence, among other alleged offenses. 

Geno Marconi, 73, is head of New Hampshire’s Division of Ports and Harbors, which oversees the harbor at Portsmouth and the tidal section of the Piscataqua River. Among other facilities, the waterway is home to Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, one of the Navy's four nuclear-capable repair yards. 

Marconi stands accused of improperly obtaining motor vehicle records and giving them to an alleged co-conspirator, Bradley Joseph Cook, the chair of the division's advisory council. The documents were records for "N.L.," identified by New Hampshire public media as Neil Levesque, vice chairman of the Pease Development Authority (PDA), which oversees Marconi and the state ports division.

Marconi has also been charged with witness tampering (retaliation), falsifying physical evidence and obstructing government administration.

Cook, Marconi's colleague on the port advisory council, faces a separate charge of perjury. He allegedly made false statements to a grand jury about whether he had been in contact with Marconi about the "pier use permit of N.L. [Neil Levesque]." Prosecutors have declined to provide further details of the case for the time being. 

Marconi has been on leave from his post at the Division of Ports and Harbors since April. His wife, state supreme court justice Anna Hantz Marconi, stands accused of interfering in the investigation by allegedly asking Gov. Chris Sununu to intervene in her husband's case. 

Hantz Marconi faces one charge of "attempt to commit improper influence" for calling the governor to talk about the charges against Geno Marconi. According to prosecutors, she told Gov. Sununu that the investigation into her husband's activities was meritless and driven by petty, personal biases, and that it needed to be wrapped up quickly. Hantz Marconi is on leave from her post at the state's highest court and has said that she plans to fight the charge.

According to his official biography, Geno Marconi grew up on New Hampshire's working waterfront and has been employed at its seaports since 1975. He holds a 1600-Tonne Master license, and he captained tugs, small cruise ships and other vessels over the course of his career. He is a recipient of the International Association of Maritime and Port Executives' lifetime achievement award (2023), and served as chairman of New Hampshire's Advisory Committee on Marine Fisheries. 

Biden officials make last-ditch push for Greenland mining investment

Reuters | November 26, 2024 |

Stock image.

The outgoing administration of US President Joe Biden is making a last-ditch push for mining companies and others to invest in Greenland, a move aimed at cementing its critical minerals diplomacy and boosting Western supply of materials for the energy transition.


Before President-elect Donald Trump takes office in January, Biden and his staff have been taking multiple steps to shore up their legacy, including boosting aid to Ukraine and rushing to approve US mine permitting and financial incentives.

Jose Fernandez, the State Department’s under secretary for economic growth, energy and the environment, spent four days in Nuuk last week to meet with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Minerals Resource Authority.

Greenland, a semi-autonomous part of Denmark and host to one of the largest US Air Force bases, contains large deposits of most of the minerals considered critical by the US Geological Survey.

“That was my attempt to provide to investors a glimpse of what opportunities exist in Greenland,” Fernandez told Reuters. “Greenland wants to become the next mining frontier.”

Critical Metals licence for Greenland rare earths deposit extended

The visit culminated in an eight-hour conference call last Wednesday from Nuuk moderated by Fernandez between Greenland officials and more than 70 Japanese, European and US mining companies and other potential investors.

Diplomats from Australia, the United Kingdom and the European Union, as well as the US Export-Import Bank and the European Investment Bank, joined the call, which focused on seven projects, including a rare earths project from Neo Performance, a nickel project from Anglo American and a molybdenum project from Greenland Resources.

“In Greenland, we see the development of critical minerals as a shared global responsibility, where our country can take on a leading role,” said Naaja Nathanielsen, Greenland’s minister for industry, trade, minerals, justice and gender equality.

The US State Department has been offering permitting, mapping and other regulatory advice to Nuuk officials, as well as helping to draft a mining investment law, all aimed at prodding investment in Greenland at standards considered higher than Chinese-linked rivals.

“Yes, we want to get their critical minerals and use them in our economy, but we don’t want to do that at their expense,” said Fernandez.

Trump, who takes office in January, unsuccessfully tried to buy Greenland from Denmark during his first term.

“I cannot forecast what the next administration will do, but the business case will not change,” Fernandez said. “The demand for critical minerals worldwide is increasing exponentially.”

(By Ernest Scheyder; Editing by Bill Berkrot)

Peru’s Congress removes energy and mines minister amid sector protests

Reuters | November 26, 2024 

Peruvian Minister of Energy and Mines, Rómulo Mucho. (Image by MINEM).

Peru’s Congress removed Energy and Mines minister Romulo Mucho from his post on Tuesday amid protests from small-scale miners in the Andean nation.


Peruvian small-scale miners have been demanding a two-year extension of a program that allows them to operate temporarily, which authorities say has expanded illegal mining.

President Dina Boluarte must accept Congress’ decision within 72 hours and appoint a new energy and mines minister, an important position in the world’s third-largest copper producer and a market segment key to the local economy.

The congressional panel which ruled on Mucho’s position was made up of nearly 80 legislators from both sides of the aisle. Of them, four voted against his removal and 13 lawmakers abstained from the vote.

A government bill sent to Congress last week gave small-scale miners a six-month period to formalize their activities after the current program expires on Dec. 31, but miners say that is not enough time.

(By Marco Aquino; Editing by Anthony Esposito and Kylie Madry)

Madagascar lifts suspension on Energy Fuels’ critical minerals project

Staff Writer | November 28, 2024 

The Toliara project in southwest Madagascar. Credit: Base Resources

Madagascar has lifted its suspension on Energy Fuels’ (NYSE: UUUU, TSX: EFR) 100%-owned Toliara critical minerals project, aiding the company’s diversification from uranium as it restarts development on what could be a “crown jewel” in the African nation’s economy.


The Madagascar government initially suspended the project back in November 2019, pending negotiations on its fiscal terms.

Energy Fuels’ CEO Mark Chalmers said the suspension lift represents a “very significant step” in the project’s development, as it allows the company to re-establish social programs and advance the technical, environmental and social activities necessary to achieve a financial investment decision, which it expects to make in early 2026.

The company acquired the Toliara project in April with its purchase of Australia’s Base Resources for A$375 million ($241 million). At the time, Chalmers said the project would provide a large portion of the raw materials needed for the company’s rapidly expanding REE (rare earth elements) oxide production facility in Utah.

“Having closely evaluated countless mining projects around the world during my 45-year career, I believe the Toliara project is truly a ‘generational’ mining project, having the potential to provide the US and the rest of the world with large quantities of critical minerals for many decades,” Chalmers said in Thursday’s news release.

Energy Fuels’ stock surged 7.1% to C$10.24 as of 2:00 p.m. ET following the announcement, taking the US-based uranium producer’s market capitalization to C$2.1 billion ($1.5bn).

Potential 38-year mine

The Toliara project currently holds a mining permit that allows production of titanium and zirconium minerals, including ilmenite, rutile and zircon. Following the suspension lift, Energy Fuels said it will look to add REE production to the existing mining permit.

According to a definitive feasibility study from 2021, the Toliara project, underpinned by Ranobe deposit, is estimated to contain 904 million tonnes in ore reserves at 6.1% heavy mineral, which are sufficient to support an initial 38-year mine life.

The study estimated an after-tax net present value of (10% discount rate) of $1 billion, an after-tax internal rate of return of 23.8%, undiscounted life-of-mine free cash flows of $5.9 billion, and initial capital expenditures of $520 million to achieve first production.

These results are based on the production of ilmenite and zircon alone. The Ranobe deposit also contains large quantities of monazite, a rich source of REEs used in magnets (neodymium and praseodymium, dysprosium and terbium), electric vehicles, and a variety of clean energy and advanced technologies.

Incorporating the monazite production, Base Resources released in 2023 a prefeasibility study that improved the economics: $2 billion after-tax NPV, 32.4% IRR and $10.7 billion cash flow. The initial capital cost was $591 million.

Supply for White Mesa mill

According to Energy Fuels, the Toliara project is expected to be a cornerstone source of monazite supply, providing a long-term and large-scale supply at 21,800 tonnes per annum to the White Mesa mill for processing into REE oxides and other advanced REE materials.

Processing monazite from Toliara will also add approximately 75,000 lb. of low-cost uranium production (at an incremental cost of approximately $8 per pound) per year at the mill, totaling approximately 3 million lb. of recovered U3O8 over the life of the project, according to company estimates.

As the monazite will be a very low-cost byproduct of Toliara’s primary ilmenite and zircon production, the total cost of production of REE oxides at the mill is expected to be low-cost and globally competitive, the company says.

Israel Fired on Journalists in Lebanon Just Hours After Ceasefire Began

Israel’s attack on the journalists marks the first violation of the ceasefire, a press group said.

By Sharon Zhang , 

Truthout

November 27, 2024

A picture shows the destruction and debris on Beirut's southern suburb of Haret Hreik on November 27, 2024, which was targeted by Israeli strikes hours before a Hezbollah-Israel ceasefire took effect.

AFP via Getty Images


Truthout is an indispensable resource for activists, movement leaders and workers everywhere. Please make this work possible with a quick donation.

Israeli forces fired on two locations in southern Lebanon just hours after a much-vaunted ceasefire agreement began on Wednesday morning, declaring that the southern region is still a military zone.

Lebanon’s news agency reported that Israeli forces opened fire on two journalists in the southern town of Khiam. Both journalists, one working for The Associated Press and the other for Sputnik, were wounded and have been hospitalized for their injuries.

The Syndicate of Lebanese Press Editors head Joseph al-Qassifi confirmed the attack and said that it marked the first violation of the ceasefire agreement.

“We saw people checking on their homes and, at the same time, we were hearing the sounds of tanks withdrawing,” said one of the wounded journalists, Abdelkader Bay, to Agence France-Presse (AFP).

“While we were filming, we realised there were Israeli soldiers in a building and suddenly they shot at us,” Bay said. “It was clear that we were journalists.”

Related Story

UNICEF: Over 200 Children Killed in Lebanon Amid Israel’s Assault
Israeli attacks on Lebanon have killed numerous children every single day in the past week, UNICEF said. By Sharon Zhang , Truthout November 19, 2024

Another journalist, Ali Hachicho, who was not wounded in the attack, said that Israeli soldiers began firing at the group as soon as the reporters began documenting their actions. “When I put the camera to my eye to film them, I started hearing the sound of bullets between our feet,” Hachicho told AFP.

Israeli forces also opened fire on vehicles in south Lebanon after the ceasefire began.

The Israeli military claimed it fired warning shots at the vehicles because they were approaching an area for Israeli military operation, saying that the shots were fired in defense.

According to Lebanon state media, however, Israeli forces actually fired five artillery shells at civilians trying to return to the village of Kfarkela, along the country’s southern border. No casualties were reported from the firing.

Over 1 million people displaced by Israel’s attacks have been flooding southern Lebanon after 14 months of intense Israeli bombings on the region and two months of a ground invasion, attempting to return to their homes — or what little is left of them after Israel has systematically worked to destroy whole towns in the region.

Lebanese and Israeli officials finalized the ceasefire agreement on Tuesday night, with the truce starting on Wednesday at 4 am local time. Since Israel escalated its aggression against Hezbollah, over 3,800 people have been killed in Lebanon, including over 200 children killed by Israel just over the past two months.

The agreement gives Israeli forces 60 days to withdraw from south Lebanon, while Hezbollah is slated to withdraw to north of the Litani River to be replaced by Lebanese soldiers.

Israeli forces have reportedly declared a curfew in southern Lebanon, saying that it is “absolutely forbidden” for people to travel in southern Lebanon starting from 5 pm on Wednesday to 7 am on Thursday. The army issued a threat to civilians, saying that doing so “exposes you to danger.”

Just before the ceasefire, Israeli forces majorly stepped up their attacks, dropping dozens of bombs on south and east Lebanon and Beirut as the deal was finalized — including an attack in which they bombed at least 20 places in two minutes in Beirut.

The Battle for Democracy in the US Must Take On the Military-Industrial Complex

Leftists have long had an understanding of “the deep state” that goes beyond Trump’s fearmongering conspiracy theory.

By Peter Handel , 

Truthout

November 28, 2024

For years, President-elect Donald Trump has portrayed himself as the central victim of the “deep state” — a phrase that now conjures up right-wing paranoia and anti-government fearmongering. But well before Trump held power, the term was used by leftists — and its meaning has played a critical role in its analysis of power.

In Who Owns Democracy?: The Real Deep State and the Struggle Over Class and Caste in America, Charles Derber and Yale R. Magrass reclaim this term and expose the deep state for what it is: a nexus of powerful corporate, military and governmental elites who undermine democracy to retain their wealth and power — sometimes overtly, but more often quietly. They also share a nuanced and historical perspective on how the deep state was born and the struggles and contradictions within it.

Charles Derber, professor of sociology at Boston College, has written 28 books on politics, democracy, fascism, corporations, capitalism, climate change, war, the culture wars and social change. His bestselling books include The Pursuit of Attention and The Wilding of America.

Yale Magrass is a chancellor professor of sociology at University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. He is the author/coauthor of nine books, most coauthored with Charles Derber, and 80 articles. His books include Bully Nation, Glorious Causes and Capitalism: Should You Buy It? The following transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Peter Handel: Can you explain the difference between Trump’s deep state and the one that the left has historically recognized?

Interview |
We Must Contest the Christian Right’s Agenda in Every Venue of Our Lives
“It is a self-replicating authoritarian system that has persisted over the course of generations,” says Talia Lavin.  By Kelly Hayes , Truthout  November 21, 2024

Charles Derber and Yale Magrass: Americans are told they live in a democracy where the common people rule and elect a government that is accountable to them. The left, at least since the time of Karl Marx, has challenged this, saying the state is really a tool of the bourgeoisie or the capitalist class, who own the overwhelming majority of corporate wealth. Often dubbed “the 1 percent,” they are the ruling class. As Marx put it, “The executive of the modern state is nothing but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.”

While not disputing the power of the capitalist class, 1950s sociologist C. Wright Mills introduced the term “power elite.” Mills described a triangle of power, in which corporate elites ally with the upper echelons of the civilian government bureaucracy and the military. He proposed that there is a convergence of interests among them, and they rule jointly at the expense of common people.

Ironically, there has long been an overlap between this left-wing analysis and the analysis of right-wing movements like the John Birch Society who see the United States as ruled by Wall Street in total disregard for the values or interests of ordinary citizens. Similar to the left analysis, the right also suggests that behind the official elected state is another state with the real power. Trump’s use of the “deep state” draws on this longstanding far right idea.

Trump’s deep state includes the unelected security apparatus within the elected state — including the Pentagon, the CIA, the FBI. This is the part of Trump’s deep state that we agree is part of the “real” deep state. It wields great power and is central to the military-industrial state that the left has long critiqued.

But Trump’s concept of the deep state, in most other ways, is deeply misleading. Trump focuses on the liberals in the social service agencies, academia and the media as central to his deep state. He argues they set policy with an agenda and values at odds with the people who he considers “real Americans,” mostly white, native-born, living outside the coasts and often lacking college education. His version of the deep state does not include the capitalist class. Indeed, he would consider leftists who oppose capitalism part of the deep state.

How does the deep state — the one Mills and you document — operate and can you expand on how it differs from Trump’s view?

The “military-industrial complex” is close to the core of the power elite and includes huge defense contractors like Lockheed Martin and Raytheon along with their allies in the Pentagon. They make policy without the knowledge of all but a tiny minority. In fact, most of what they do is classified.

In Who Owns Democracy, we show that the “real” deep state does not include most of the civil servants in the regulatory and social welfare government agencies that Trump targets. Rather, it is dominated by corporate capitalist elites, including the military-industrial complex. Trump sees them as part of the “people” and opposing his deep state. We show how the real deep state — the triangle melding private wealth, leaders of civilian government agencies and the national security establishment — came into being and gained control over the nation. The corporate elite that we see as central to the power elite and the real deep state is seen by Trump as champions of freedom and of the true people of America.

You take a deep dive into the history of the deep state and how it developed in the U.S. In fact, you show that the U.S. was formed by the union of two deep states. Tell us a bit more about this history, which is very much alive today.

From the very founding of the United States, there existed at least two deep states, a northern proto-capitalist one and a southern slave-based one that we call American proto-fascism. One was based on class power and one on caste power. While you theoretically can rise or fall in class, a caste is a state you are born in and keep for life. In order to gain the support of the majority, the two early deep states essentially obscured their mutual rule and presented themselves as democratic representatives of common people against the British crown, really British Parliament.

The founding of America was an uneasy marriage between the emerging northern and southern deep states. The two deep states united to gain independence from British control over taxes, trade and expansion across the continent. They shared economic interests in the slave trade and taking ownership of the Western territories.

But the honeymoon would fade rapidly as the differences between the class-based deep state and caste-based deep state began to drive very different northern and southern agendas. The South wanted an America embodying a feudal caste paradise of happy, white nobility presiding over slaves in an expanding agrarian society. It was proto-fascist because it eliminated large parts of the population from rights and citizenship because of their race or blood.

The North wanted to build a modern industrial state that would serve a growing capitalist class in a post-agrarian urban society based on manufacturing and finance. It also had authoritarian features based on class power by the rich, but it rejected proto-fascism based on race or biology; it was incompatible with the capitalist ideology that everyone had the right to rise and gain class power.

How did this marriage finally unravel and how did the northern and southern deep states evolve after the Civil War up until the present era?

The differences in the class and caste deep states were too deep for the founding marriage to survive. Less than 100 years after the revolutionary marriage, the two deep states divorced in a literal civil war. At first, the South controlled the federal government, but after the North crushed the South in the Civil War, it made the official elected state its tool. The surviving southern deep state never really forgave the northern victor, and vowed it would “rise again.” While the North would gain control of the new federal capitalist state, the Jim Crow regime would sustain the influence of American “fascist ghosts” in the South and much of the nation.

The post-Civil War federal capitalist deep state of robber barons like Carnegie, Morgan and Rockefeller used the federal government to crush labor unions, build infrastructure and make the world safe for American investment through military adventurism. As World War I approached, the American capitalist deep state was building an empire in competition with the British, French and German. Until World War I, the United States maintained a modest military, but in one year, it built the world’s largest. After the First World War, the United States reduced its military as the remaining British and French empires patrolled the world for American investment. During the Second World War, the United States again built the world’s largest military, but this time the American deep state realized there’s gold in them there wars, and transformed the United States into a permanent garrison state. The deep state’s military-industrial complex became a permanent fixture which dwarfed the deep state of the past.

But after the failure of Reconstruction in 1876, southern caste power in the form of Jim Crow resurrected itself in many southern and western state governments and economies. The southern caste deep state did, indeed, rise again and sustained a form of American neofascist authoritarianism born in the Confederate South. The American fascist ghosts literally cloaked themselves in the white sheets of the Ku Klux Klan and the racial codes of the Jim Crow. Hitler was fascinated by American proto-fascism and told German scientists to study American racial theories and social practices. American fascism actually helped to give rise to European fascism.

Trump is today’s leader of American fascism, seeking to restore racial caste power and integrate it again with the class power of the corporate class he grew up in. The Democrats reject the Jim Crow fascist ghosts but are largely allies with the militarized corporate deep state that has ruled the nation since the Civil War and the Gilded Age’s robber barons. Class and caste power still hold deep control over both parties and the nation.

You say that both Democrats and Republicans have cynically used the legitimate concerns raised by identity politics to undermine the kind of class solidarity required to take on ruling elites. How so?

The Reagan “revolution” sought to dismantle the New Deal restraints on unfettered corporate power. President Ronald Reagan saw that if he could divide the working classes by race or caste — through culture wars and white Christian nationalism — the corporate deep state could regain unfettered national control. Trumpism is the latest stage of the Reagan backlash, but Trump has been more aggressive in uniting class and caste in his new version of American fascism.

When President Bill Clinton and Barack Obama abandoned the New Deal, they helped turn the Democratic Party toward identity politics and an embrace of caste reform rather than class politics. This turn to race and gender helped solidify Reagan’s resurrection of the corporate deep state. The Democratic embrace of corporate power and the military-industrial complex is a fatal flaw morally and politically.

Who Owns Democracy? concludes with a chapter on how leftist movements can resist the deep state and the attacks on democracy. How do you think activists can most effectively challenge antidemocratic forces?

Throughout Who Owns Democracy? we show that class and caste elites in the two deep states have long owned U.S. democracy. But ordinary working people have always risen to challenge both forms of power. Anti-caste movements have included antebellum abolitionism, the 1960s civil rights movements and feminism. Populist movements in the 1890s Gilded Age began to challenge early corporate class power. Labor movements, especially in the 1930s New Deal and Great Society, rose more recently to challenge class power, as did Occupy Wall Street about a decade ago and progressives like Sen. Bernie Sanders today.

As the gap between the 1 percent (or perhaps the 1 percent of the 1 percent) and ordinary citizens grows, mainstream liberals and Democrats have done little to address the needs of people feeling left behind. They have focused on race and gender while neglecting the real grievances of the white working class, and in fact many people of color, who face a deteriorating standard of living and an uncertain future. Trump successfully presented himself as their “voice” and laid the blame for their anxiety on “bleeding heart liberals” in the deep state and immigrants who should not be living with “true Americans.” To resist Trump and win power, the left must show it offers solutions that will produce a better life for all working people. This requires resurrecting a class politics that topples the militarized corporate deep state to create deep democracy in the economy as well as in the political system. We desperately need now a left populism aiming to destroy the militarized neofascist capitalism embodied in Trumpism.


This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.


Peter Handel is a freelance writer in the San Francisco Bay area.

Excerpt

“A Time Before Fear”: Notes From a Black Panther Who Spent 41 Years Behind Bars


Russell Shoatz’s posthumously published autobiography documents a lifetime of fighting for Black liberation.

By Kanya D’Almeida & Russell Shoatz , 

Truthout/BoldTypeBooks

November 29, 2024

Cover image for I Am Maroon: The True Story of an American Political Prisoner (2024).Bold Type Books

Among those familiar with his life story, the name Russell “Maroon” Shoatz is synonymous with freedom.

His childhood and early adulthood were spent on the streets of Philadelphia, where he transformed himself from a gang member into a dedicated community organizer at the height of the city’s struggle for Black liberation.

Arrested in connection with an attack on a park guard in Philly’s Fairmount Park in 1970, he spent two years underground with various chapters of the Black Panther Party until he was arrested and sentenced to life in prison.

For four decades he served time in one penitentiary after another across the state of Pennsylvania. He earned the title “Maroon” after escaping from two of these prisons. The title — a revered honorific among Black freedom fighters — draws upon the long history of Black and Indigenous slaves breaking free from plantations to form autonomous, liberated zones across the Americas and the Caribbean.

Following his second and final recapture, Maroon began a period of deep self-study, which rapidly drew in scores of other politically conscious prisoners dedicated to organizing and uplifting themselves in the face of institutional racism and brutality. Incensed by his success at mobilizing his fellow prisoners, the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections threw him in solitary confinement. He survived nearly 22 years of no-touch torture before finally winning his release into the general prison population in 2015.

Related Story

Interview |
What Can the Black Freedom Struggle and Palestinian Liberation Teach Each Other?
“Solidarity is a rejection of a depoliticized pessimism, a pessimism engulfed by one’s suffering,” says Zahi Zalloua.  By George Yancy , Truthout  September 8, 2024

His first book, a collection of essays entitled Maroon the Implacable, charts his political evolution from a mere “foot solider” in the Black Liberation Army to a sharp theoretician on matters of economics, armed conflicts and ecosocialism.

His recently published autobiography — the result of a 10-year collaboration with me (Sri Lankan journalist Kanya D’Almeida) — tells a different story: not the history of the Panthers, or even of the Maroons, but of a young boy’s journey from city streets to the depths of incarceration. This memoir is the story of how a person goes from being a freedom fighter, to an escaped prisoner, to a free man; a story of finding freedom in confinement and isolation; and a blueprint for how to get — and stay — free.

Shoatz died in December 2021, two months after he was granted compassionate release from prison after 41 years behind bars. The following is an excerpt from his posthumously published memoir, I Am Maroon: The True Story of an American Political Prisoner (Copyright © 2024), which we brought into being together. It is available from Bold Type Books, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
When We Were Free

By Russell Shoatz

Before he was assassinated in the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem in 1965, Malcolm X warned of a global race war. He did not hesitate to name the cause of the prevailing situation: a long history of white racism, colonialism, and empire, against which the colored minorities of the world were now rising. He described America as a powder keg, and her Black population as the fuse capable of lighting the explosive substance within and pretty much setting the whole damn world on fire. He prophesied a total revolution — not a polite tussle over “civil rights” but a full-blown battle for the basis of emancipation, which is to say, for land.

Long before most Black people got on board with his message, the federal government took Malcolm X’s words to heart. Under the leadership of J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI began to systematically search for and catalog the most capable individuals and organizations dedicated to Black liberation in America. Not for a minute did the agency underestimate the threat posed by dedicated and disciplined groups of Black freedom fighters and their white comrades. The bureau’s archives, which have now largely been made public, include everything from training manuals to correspondence to propaganda materials created by these groups.

The Black Panthers accounted for the FBI’s largest file and was the target of the bulk of the agency’s efforts and resources, including informants, detectives, spies, and a range of other undercover agents and operatives. To this day I believe this was due to the party’s clarity of vision. They had a thorough grasp of capitalism and fascism that came from a lived experience of Blackness, and that enabled them to reach and unify masses of people who had previously been lost, apathetic, or afraid.

When I and other BUC [Black Unity Council] members first visited the Panther offices located on Nineteenth and Columbia Avenue in North Philadelphia, we were largely ignorant of the level of government surveillance of their activities. It was only gradually, as our link with the party deepened, that we would come to understand the lengths to which the state was prepared to go to not only eviscerate the Panthers, but bury all trace of them forever. It was only after we had joined forces with the BPP [Black Panther Party] that we came to fully comprehend what it meant to be blacklisted by the United States government, and to feel the deadly weight of its so-called national security apparatus.

Our first point of contact, in the year 1969, was a dude named Mitch Edwards, a defense captain of the party’s chapter in Philly. He must have been close to my age, mid-twenties, and he was responsible for training and leading a platoon of teenaged Panthers stationed at several offices throughout the city. Given the Black Unity Council’s status as a prominent and respected local group, that initial meeting was one of equals. However, it quickly became clear that the Panthers had a whole lot going for them that was beyond our scope or ability.

For a start, they were a national organization. They had a newspaper, a tool the BUC had never even considered, which allowed them to educate a much wider audience on their programs and ideas. Most crucially they had a fully functional free breakfast program for kids, which earned them tremendous goodwill in the neighborhoods and also served as a model for a community-based form of independent government.

As far as we were concerned, the Panthers had one weakness: They had not dedicated sufficient time and resources to developing a comprehensive military strategy, which forced them to suffer humiliating defeats and unnecessary casualties at the hands of the police. In December 1969, Chicago police officers staged a raid on the party’s headquarters, killing Fred Hampton, the 21-year-old chairman of the Illinois chapter of the BPP, and 22-year-old Mark Clark, an active party member. Police also severely wounded several others, including a female Panther who was in the advanced stages of a pregnancy. We watched this news with growing frustration that the party’s top leadership wasn’t willing to take the steps necessary to protect their own cadres from death and incarceration.

Then, in a sudden but welcome change of direction, Huey P. Newton issued the following directive: “Our organization has received serious threats . . . We draw the line at the threshold of our doors. It is therefore mandated as a general order to all members of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense that all members must acquire the technical equipment to defend their homes . . . Any member of the Party having such technical equipment who fails to defend his threshold shall be expelled from the Party for Life.”

Now we were on the same page! This newly stated position, combined with the dissemination of official Panther pamphlets entitled “Forming Self-Defense Groups,” was the green light for many members of the BUC to give themselves wholly to the Panthers’ cause. These pamphlets served as a set of uniform guidelines for rank-and-file Panthers to recruit, organize, and train thousands of grassroots community volunteers into militias that would serve the Black community. It was exactly the kind of program the BUC had undertaken a couple of years earlier, but on a massive, nationwide scale. This change of direction was sufficient to put us completely in the service of the Black Panther Party.

We began to sell the Panther newspapers and help out with their breakfast program. We flocked to their political education, or PE, classes. It was expected that BUC members would not only attend all Panther rallies, but in many cases provide the necessary security during these functions, a task we were only too happy to fulfill despite the repeated objections of our female members. What we saw as the party’s genuine concern over police repression and surveillance, Asani and the other women in the BUC called “Panther Paranoia.” They believed many of the male leaders and activists were prone to hysteria, often jumping to conclusions or overreacting to perceived security threats.

One evening I was on duty at a political discussion when a couple of unidentified vehicles began circling the neighborhood. When we decided we needed some heavier artillery, I was sent home to pick up shotguns, rifles, and one of my metal ammunition carriers. It was dark when I got to our place, and Asani was alone with the kids. She tried to stop me from leaving, first with verbal pleas and finally by physically blocking my path. When I went to get around her, she grabbed a hold of the shotgun I had in one hand. She had fire in her eyes! She told me to stop acting crazy, to call off the discussion for the time being and reconvene when things had cooled down. It was a struggle to wrench the gun away from her, and as I turned my back on her and the kids, I realized that the question of armed struggle was becoming more than a disagreement — it was widening into a gulf, eating away at the complete trust and honesty that had once existed between us.

But there was no stopping the train. The city had caught the revolution virus and it was spreading to the most unlikely people and places. Up in North Philly, a priest named Father Paul Washington opened the doors of his Church of the Advocate for various Panther activities, and we packed the pews with local supporters whenever a Panther Central Committee member was in town to give a talk. Panther offices had sprung up all over: on Nineteenth and Columbia, Twenty-Nineth and Susquehanna Avenue; at Thirty-Sixth and Wallace Street; at Forty-Seventh and Walnut. There was also a facility in Germantown, and others would eventually find spaces in West and South Philly. A handful of loyal party members ran these operations, capable and dedicated men and women who, it seemed, worked round the clock in the service of the movement.

The first Panther activity that I participated in was a mass rally in front of the State Office Building on North Broad Street in support of a nationwide effort to win the release of Huey P. Newton. He had been arrested in 1967 in connection with the murder of an Oakland police officer named John Frey, and a huge coalition of Black and white liberation groups had been demanding his freedom. The words “Free Huey!” had become a kind of rallying cry for the whole movement, and these protests generally drew hundreds or even thousands of people. Mitch Edwards led the Philadelphia rally — we marched around the building, listened to speeches, and sang liberation songs.

Shortly after that, I drove a bunch of Panthers and Black Unity Council members to New York City to attend a similar rally demanding the release of the Panther 21 — the largest single group of Black Panthers imprisoned anywhere in the country. These New York–based Panthers stood accused of coordinating a major attack on two police stations in New York City. Their arrest represented just the tip of the iceberg of the government’s attempts to neutralize Black revolutionaries. The Panther Party leadership at the time devised the ingenious tactic of turning their members’ legal trials into high-profile media spectacles. This effectively transformed any arrested or detained Panthers into living martyrs, people who had sacrificed their freedom for the cause. It put the authorities in a terrible dilemma because it turned their own weapon—the courts and the courthouses — against them! They were trapped between the options of releasing revolutionaries back into the community or dealing with a torrent of negative publicity around these controversial trials, including in the international press.

When we arrived in the city for the Panther 21 trial, we assembled at the courthouse in downtown Manhattan alongside hundreds of protesters. As we marched we sang, and the song went something like this:


Free the twenty-one! Free the twenty-one, you fascist pigs! Free the twenty-one, we need our warriors beside us!

Uniformed New York City policemen, mounted on horseback, followed us around the block. We listened to a speech by Don Cox, the West Coast field marshal for the Black Panthers, who was at that time probably the third or fourth in command of the entire party.

But rallies were just one square on the chessboard. Before too long, the local Panther cadre in Philadelphia had informed their West Coast leadership about the Black Unity Council’s hardcore training in self-defense. Shortly thereafter, we received a request to share our military hardware with the top brass of the Panther Party.

Until then, we had been laboring under the impression that the Panthers, being a coordinated national movement, possessed their own arsenal. To learn that a small local outfit like the BUC could be called upon to beef up their supplies was a serious wake-up call to guys like me and Sharp. But we quickly shook off our disappointment and put out a call among our female membership for a volunteer to transport a number of hand grenades in her personal luggage on a flight to California — a task she undertook despite the women’s opposition to our armed activities, and with hardly any fanfare for her courage.


It was, in a way, a time before fear. We were audacious. We did not ask if something could be done; we asked only what needed to be done.

Because that’s how it was back then. It was a time of doing, a time of sacrifice. It was, in a way, a time before fear. We were audacious. We did not ask if something could be done; we asked only what needed to be done. There were no limits to our demands because we were demanding things first and foremost from ourselves. No more holding a begging bowl out to our oppressors. Instead, we had identified the needs of our people and drafted the terms and conditions under which we would struggle for them. The Panther Party’s training manuals included strict instructions on how to transform from civilians into soldiers: rise early, develop physical strength, discipline our minds and bodies. Every day was boot camp, right there in the heart of the city, in broad daylight. It was a time of regimented militancy, but you could also say it was the time when we were most free.

Panthers were hijacking planes to foreign countries where they could seek asylum, mainly Cuba but also a few with sympathetic governments in Africa, including Algeria and Tanzania. By this time Eldridge Cleaver had established a kind of Black Panther government-in-exile in Algiers, and he personally received those who managed to escape death and incarceration on American shores.

As for the authorities, the only thing worse in their minds than the flight of wanted Panthers was the exodus of white people into the arms of revolutionary formations.

Groups like the Weather Underground, whose membership was entirely white, became a thorn in the side of the establishment, undertaking some of the most daring attacks on the state and even breaking their members out of jail. On college and university campuses things were reaching a fevered pitch, spurred on by students who were opposed to the outmoded, authoritarian, and racist school administrators. This, coupled with vehement anti–Vietnam War sentiment among the student body, brought white, Black, Latino, and Asian students together in huge numbers to demand sweeping changes in the education system. They clamored for a dismantling of the old colonial curriculum, to be replaced with programs that taught them the true histories of their own people: Black studies, Latino studies, Native American studies, Asian studies. In all of these movements, it was Black students who led their peers into the most militant forms of protest, occupying buildings or organizing sit-ins until their demands were met. Sometimes these actions turned violent, with students taking up arms in self-defense, and that was big news because people felt that if privileged college and university students were resorting to such extreme measures, it meant unrest had reached new heights. Panicked authorities called in the pigs and turned their campuses into active shooting galleries, riot police versus unarmed students. But of course it was the massacre of four white students by the National Guard at Kent State University in Ohio that stole most of the headlines.

By now the notion that we were embroiled in a full-scale conflict was no longer in dispute. This awakening, the awareness of ourselves as combatants against a hostile government, connected us to much larger, and much deadlier, armed uprisings around the world. For some years Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale had been reproducing and distributing the writings of the Chinese revolutionary Mao Tse-tung, who taught us that “political power grows from the barrel of a gun.” For many of us it was a new sensation to learn that Black people’s quest for emancipation in the United States bore such a strong resemblance to the plight of brown and yellow people around the world, many of whom believed that the oppressed must turn to guerrilla warfare to win their freedom. We familiarized ourselves with the works of the Afro-Caribbean revolutionary Frantz Fanon and the Argentine-Cuban guerrilla leader Che Guevara. We read Marcus Garvey and Ho Chi Minh.

In 1967, Muhammad Ali famously answered a young white reporter’s questions on his draft refusal by saying: “If I’m going to die, I’ll die right here fighting you. You my enemy, not Viet Congs or Chinese or Japanese. You my opposer when I want freedom, you my opposer when I want justice, you my opposer when I want equality. Want me to go somewhere and fight for you? You won’t even stand up for me right here in America.”

A couple of years later another Black man made headlines for taking an equally bold stand. But he would pay for it with his life.

Jonathan Jackson was only 17 years old when he stormed the Marin County Courthouse in California with several semiautomatic weapons. He proceeded to free three Black prisoners from San Quentin prison, one of whom was standing trial while the two others had been brought as witnesses. Together, the four young men took a white judge, prosecutor, and three jurors hostage, demanding, in exchange for their release, freedom for the famous Soledad Brothers. This was a group of Black prisoners including Jonathan’s brother, George Jackson, who would soon be facing trial for the killing of a white guard at San Quentin prison — a charge that all three accused denied. During the courthouse raid, neither Jonathan nor any of his accomplices fired a single shot from any of their weapons. They used piano wire to bind their hostages, and verbal commands to usher them from the courtroom. When they were accosted by a bevy of newspaper reporters and cameramen on the courthouse steps, Jackson and the three men he’d liberated allowed themselves to be photographed, while reiterating their demand for freedom for the Soledad Brothers. Finally they bundled their hostages into an escape van destined for a nearby radio station, where they intended to transmit their message to a national audience. The whole thing was a brilliantly maneuvered, bloodless operation — until local police fired on the van, killing Jackson, two of the prisoners he had liberated from the courthouse, and the white judge.

When I walked into a friend’s house that evening and saw the pictures from that courthouse splashed across the front page of the newspapers, I froze. I couldn’t take my eyes off the image of Jonathan Jackson, assault rifle in one hand, disarming cowing sheriffs, while in the background the three liberated Black prisoners stood guard over their bewildered-looking captives. Before I could even pick up the paper to read the whole story, I began to cry. I had seen Jonathan’s face in the papers many times before, always in connection with his brother George and their revolutionary ideas, but seeing him now as a martyr was a new sensation. It made me feel that we had a true leader, someone who was urging us through his own actions to intensify our struggle for liberation. It was not a feeling of sorrow — more of a renewed conviction that all three young men had died a glorious death, one that their oppressed kinfolk could not only understand, but actually envy.

I took the newspaper out to my car and sat alone for a while, trying to collect myself. But only one thought was flashing through my mind: The shit was on. All doubts, restraints, and equivocations were things of the past. Those of us who had committed to this fight were going all in to either win our freedom or perish in the attempt.

I wasn’t alone. In the coming days just about everyone I encountered seemed to be in a state of delirium, enthused, energized, and just plain ready. It felt like a huge wheel had been shifted from a rut, pushed with great difficulty to the edge of a slope, and was about to be sent rolling. Once it got going it would gather too much speed to stop, so we either had to keep up or get crushed beneath it. Pictures of Jonathan Jackson and the Marin County hostage crisis circulated far and wide: they were reproduced in the Panther papers, and penetrated every home in America through television screens.

They also set in motion a train of events that would culminate in the August 29, 1970, attack on the Philadelphia Fairmount Park Guard Station.

I will not jeopardize any party’s freedom or safety by revealing what I know about that attack, but I must state for the record that it was carried out in accord with, and at the behest of, the leadership of the Black Panther Party. It was an attack that would cost me everything but my life; since that fateful summer day, I have been a fugitive and a prisoner for 47 years and counting.


Note: This article has been excerpted from "I Am Maroon: The True Story of an American Political Prisoner" by Russell Shoatz and Kanya D’Almeida. Copyright © 2024. Available from Bold Type Books, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

Kanya D’Almeida


Kanya D’Almeida won the 2021 Commonwealth Short Story Prize, becoming the first Sri Lankan and only the second Asian writer to hold the honor. She was awarded the Society of Authors’ annual short story award in 2022. Her journalism has appeared in Al Jazeera, Truthout and The Margins, and her fiction has appeared in Granta. She holds an MFA from Columbia University, where she studied under Victor LaValle.

Russell Shoatz


Russell “Maroon” Shoatz was a dedicated community activist, founding member of the Black Unity Council, former member of the Black Panther Party and soldier in the Black Liberation Army.