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Showing posts with label ENERGY CRISIS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ENERGY CRISIS. Show all posts
Friday, November 7, 2025
Tuesday, October 25, 2022
CC Newsletter 25 Oct- The West Must Stop Blocking Negotiations Between Ukraine and Russia
Dear Friend,
Ukrainians have been paying a terrible price for the failure of ensuring sensible and reasonable negotiations from 2014 to February 2022—which could have prevented the invasion by Russia in the first place, and once the war started, could have led to the end of this war. All wars end in negotiations, but these negotiations to end wars should be permitted to restart.
If you think the contents of this newsletter are critical for the dignified living and survival of humanity and other species on earth, please forward it to your friends and spread the word. It's time for humanity to come together as one family! You can subscribe to our newsletter here http://www.countercurrents.org/news-letter/.
In Solidarity
Binu Mathew
Editor
Countercurrents.org
The West Must Stop Blocking Negotiations Between Ukraine and Russia
by Vijay Prashad
Ukrainians have been
paying a terrible price for the failure of ensuring sensible and reasonable negotiations from 2014 to February 2022—which could have prevented the invasion by Russia in the first place, and once the war started, could have led to the end of this war. All wars end in negotiations, but these negotiations to end wars should be permitted to restart.
Thirty Progressive Democrats Break Rank, Calling for a Ceasefire in Ukraine
by Medea Benjamin and Marcy Winograd
In a dramatic break with the Biden administration on the eve of the midterm elections, 30 House Democrats sent a letter to President Biden urging him to engage in direct talks with Russian President Vladmir Putin to end the war in Ukraine. In addition to bilateral talks, signatories to the letter, initiated by Progressive Caucus Chair Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, urge the White House to support a mutual
ceasefire and diplomatic efforts to avoid a protracted war that threatens more human suffering and spiraling global inflation, as well as nuclear war through intention or miscalculation.
Peace and diplomacy between USA and Russia or more NATO empire-building?
by Irwin Jerome
Only This Time Around, if this new Western World Proxy War in Ukraine ends up becoming a prelude to nuclear world war it couldn’t be between a more predicable bunch of more-crazed adversaries, in a no more likely insane ‘Blood Feud’ killing field than Ukraine and Russia
Where it all will end this time, ‘only the Shadow knows!’
How Europe Has Navigated Its Energy Crises
by John P Ruehl
A multifaceted response from Europe has so far prevented its energy woes from creating widespread social
and economic destabilization. But with winter approaching, the crisis is far from over and risks are getting worse.
A multifaceted response from Europe has so far prevented its energy woes from creating widespread social and economic destabilization. But with winter approaching, the crisis is far from over and risks are getting worse.
A multifaceted response from Europe has so far prevented its energy woes from creating widespread social and economic destabilization. But with winter approaching, the crisis is far from over and risks are getting worse.
While European energy prices have eased slightly in recent months, stress continues to build across a continent that has long been dependent on access to cheap Russian energy.
Protests related to high energy costs have been held from Belgium to the Czech Republic in Europe. Fuel shortages have led to long queues to buy petrol at gas stations in France. The Don’t Pay UK movement has urged British citizens to enter a “bill strike” by refusing to pay energy bills until gas and electricity prices are reduced to an “affordable level.” Europe’s remarkably high energy prices have also fueled climate change protests across the continent.
European governments have resorted to diverse measures to manage the crisis. After the EU banned Russian coal imports, coal regulations were reduced in Poland, which has led to illegal coal mines being operated in the country. Aid packages, such as Austria’s 1.3 billion euro initiative, aim to help companies struggling with mounting energy costs. The UK “has capped the price of average household energy bills at 2,500 pounds ($2,770) a year for two years from October” and also announced a cap on energy per unit for businesses, charities, and NGOs in September.
Italy has shown considerable capability in diversifying its energy imports from Russia since the beginning of the year to reduce its dependence on the Kremlin. Under former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, Italy began to increase its reliance on Russian energy, a process that continued even after his election defeat in 2011 and Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.
This reliance came to an abrupt end after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Italy signed natural gas deals with Egypt and Algeria in April and held additional talks with the Republic of Congo and Angola regarding energy supplies as well. In June, Italy also purchased two additional liquefied natural gas (LNG) vessels, adding to the three LNG terminals it already operates, to further diversify its natural gas (gas for short) supplies.
Not all countries, however, have matched Italy’s success of diversifying their energy imports. France declared it would cap power and gas price increases for households at 15 percent in 2023. But since more than half of France’s 56 nuclear reactors have been shut down for maintenance (Europe’s summer drought also prevented the water-based cooling systems of the French nuclear plants from functioning), France will struggle with mounting energy costs as well as upholding its traditional role as an electricity exporter to other European countries.
Like other European countries, Germany chose to nationalize some of its major energy companies, such as Uniper in September. In October, the German government proposed a 200 billion euro energy subsidies initiative. With gas storage projected to reach 95 percent capacity by November, Germany has also provided itself with significant protection.
But Germany lacks LNG infrastructure and remains vulnerable if Russia cuts off gas through pipelines completely. Currently, Germany is at level two of the country’s three-tier emergency gas plan, with the last stage introducing direct government intervention in gas distribution and rationing.
Because Germany makes the largest contributions of funds to the EU, its economic vulnerability poses concerning implications for the rest of the bloc. And in addition to suffering from gas shortages, Central European countries will “also suffer from the effects of gas rationing in the German industrial sector, given their integration into German supply chains.” Such uncertainty has blunted investment in the region, further compounding Europe’s economic issues.
These issues have underlined the perception that while Russian coal has been relatively easy to ban in Europe and Russian oil is slowly being phased out, Russian natural gas remains too important for much of the continent’s energy mix to be shunned completely.
Dozens of ships carrying LNG have been stuck off Europe’s coast, as the plants “that convert the seaborne fuel back to gas are operating at maximum limit.” High gas prices have meanwhile resulted in key industries across Europe that are reliant on the energy source to shut down, sparking fears of “uncontrolled deindustrialization.”
In addition to national strategies, European countries have pursued collective initiatives to confront the energy crisis. On September 27, Norway, Denmark, and Poland officially opened the Baltic Pipe to supply Poland with natural gas. On October 1, Greece and Bulgaria began commercial operation of the Interconnector Greece-Bulgaria (IGB) pipeline, which serves as another link in the Western-backed Southern Gas Corridor project to bring natural gas from Azerbaijan to Europe.
On October 13, France began sending Germany natural gas for the first time, based on an agreement that “Germany would generate more electricity to supply France during times of peak consumption.” The European Council stated on September 30 that EU states will implement “a voluntary overall reduction target of 10 percent of gross electricity consumption and a mandatory reduction target of 5 percent of the electricity consumption in peak hours.”
Additionally, the EU continues to debate imposing a price cap on Russian gas to the EU, and the G7 countries and its allies agreed on September 2 to implement a price cap on Russian crude oil and oil products in December 2022 and February 2023, respectively.
Germany, however, has led criticism over the “proposal to cap the price on all gas imports to the EU,” stating that the EU lacks the authority to do so, alongside expressing concerns that gas providers will simply sell gas to other countries. Norway, traditionally Europe’s second-largest gas provider after Russia, also indicated it would not accept a cap on gas, and Russia stated it would not sell oil or gas to countries doing so either. The resulting restrictions in energy supply would likely further raise prices.
European countries also remain bound by their own interests, further undermining multilateral cooperation. Croatia, for example, announced it would ban natural gas exports in September. Many European countries have criticized Germany’s planned 200 billion euro subsidies plan for fear that it “could trigger economic imbalances in the bloc.” Germany, meanwhile, declared it would not support a joint EU debt issuance on October 11, only later agreeing to the measures out of pressure from its European allies.
In September, the UK accused the EU of pushing British energy prices higher by severing energy cooperation following Brexit. The U.S. and Norway have also been singled out by EU members for profiting off the current energy crisis.
Varying levels of vulnerability have resulted in some European countries breaking with the continental norm and negotiating with Russia. Serbia, which is not in NATO or part of the EU, signed its own natural gas deal with Russia in May, while Hungary drew the ire of Western allies by signing its own gas deal with Russia in August. Hungary was among the first European countries to agree to purchase Russian natural gas in rubles, stabilizing the Russian currency as sanctions were placed on the Russian economy. If the crisis worsens considerably, other countries may follow suit.
As Europe’s energy crisis has continued, many countries across the world have become increasingly wary. European demand for LNG and a willingness to pay premiums has meant suppliers are increasingly rerouting gas to the continent.
Though rich competitors like South Korea and Japan have been able to contend with European competition for LNG, it has caused shortages elsewhere. Bangladesh and Pakistan, for example, have struggled to secure their traditional LNG imports since the beginning of the Russian invasion. Blackouts in these countries have increased, causing them to resort to more carbon-intensive energy alternatives and prompting renewed talks with Russia over LNG imports and developing pipeline networks to supply natural gas to Asia.
Europe’s decades-long exposure to Russian energy means that its current energy crisis will persist for years. Even with predictions for a relatively mild upcoming winter, overcoming this energy crisis will require cooperation and sacrifice among European states—particularly if the war in Ukraine escalates further. While the West’s solidarity will be put to the test, poorer, energy-vulnerable countries will continue to fall victim as a result of the fallout from the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
John P. Ruehl is an Australian-American journalist living in Washington, D.C. He is a contributing editor to Strategic Policy and a contributor to several other foreign affairs publications. He is currently finishing a book on Russia to be published in 2022.
This article was produced by Globetrotter.
Glory to God in the Lowest – Journeys to An Unholy Land
by Jim Miles
Wagner’s memoir, “Glory to God in the Lowest”, is a powerfully written work. It should be a bestseller, it should be on everyone’s shelf who has any interest in the Middle East. It is an intense work, motivating and compelling, inspirational for both Christians and non-Christians alike.
Silicosis Campaign in India Shows the Way Forward for Helping Victims of Occupational Diseases
by Bharat Dogra
Directions by the Supreme Court supported by earlier efforts of the National Human Rights Commission have given new hope to tens of thousands of
silicosis patients and other workers threatened by this occupational disease, and a lot of credit also goes to the activists as well as some sympathetic officials who worked with great commitment to take these benefits to workers toiling and living in remote places.
Agri Biotech Sector Motivated by Monopoly Control and Sacred GMO Cash Cow
by Colin Todhunter
Whether in India, Europe or elsewhere, the industry’s agenda is to use GE technology to secure intellectual property rights over all seeds (and chemical inputs) and thus gain total control over food and farming. And given what has been set out here – they seek to achieve this by all means necessary.
Solving the problem of hunger and unemployment should be given priority
by Vikas Parashram Meshram
Unemployment, inflation, health and poverty are our biggest problems today. To ignore them is to ignore ourselves. The way inflation is rising today is a dangerous situation. Inflation and unemployment are weakening the social fabric of the country. This situation should be improved. Just as sweeping garbage under the carpet does not make it clean, ignoring these problems will only increase the severity of the problem.
Contractors are vandalising public parks in the name of beautification
by Vidyadhar Date
The whole idea behind the so called beautification in different places in Mumbai is to actually to help the contractors and cement concrete lobby. Increasing greenery is of little benefit to racketeers while concretisation and steel and
chemicals help the contractors. A sad phenomenon and it is daily worsening.
Helping Laura
by Sally Dugman
While her father could not bear the pain of living, I will try to bring Laura joy in living. My knitting her a hat, a scarf a shopping bag, a pocketbook and a jumper is symbolic. It is a mere small gesture, but with a unmistakable simple message.
There is not much that I can do for Laura except to extend myself in a loving way to her. I learned of her through a mutual friend and decided that I wanted to do something supportive of her since she has suffered a great deal. Therein I want to soften her suffering and try to be a little bit helpful to move her toward wholeness, and happiness by my actions.
Yet I realize that is so little that I can do to assuage her permanent grief. My effort is feeble and small. It is almost inconsequential. In any case, I knit for Laura, a complete stranger to me who I’ve never met and who lives in Holland — almost half way around the world from me since I reside in the USA.
Who is Laura? Why do I dedicate my time and efforts to serve this person who is basically unknown to me? It is because I’m not indifferent to her plight.
What is Laura’s scoop? Laura was the daughter of a farmer and his household wife. She had a typical childhood under the circumstances. She would help her kind mother in household tasks like fix meals for her family, go to school, help with planting and tending of vegetables and feed the animals on the farm in addition to cleaning up after them.
She would also walk down her road to go to friends’ homes to do pretty usual activities that are normal for young girls to share together. After all, they are exploring the ways to grow into womanhood and fit into the culture and society into which they were born. They, thus, are figuring out relationships, their own changing identities as they grow into puberty and beyond in the stages that we pretty much all experience as we reach advanced age and, eventually, diminish to the point of dying.
Dying is, though, a topic early-on in her life with which she was quite familiar. Yes, she knew death.
As a farmer’s daughter, she was use to watching animals be born, grown from infant-hood so as to be made as healthy and fat as possible. Then those animals, at an optimal weight and in thriving health, are carted off to the nearest butchery to be exchanged for money — so much per pound based on the animal’s weight, condition, gender and type. So she understood that her farm’s animals would die and be eaten such that she wasn’t suppose to become too personally familiar with them.
All considered, it is best not to love any animal in one’s care. Do not see its beauty or goodness. Do not enjoy its pretty looks and unique individual personality. Do not stare it into its gorgeous, aware and fully conscious eyes while communing with it by petting its fur, nor hugging it around the neck. Simply do not care as the animal was only a means to make money for the family to survive.
Yes, do not love — just be indifferent — as that animal is simply a means to an end. It, therefore, had to be othered — seen as an object that one coldly uses in a financial set up. (See “Wikipedia:Othering”.)
In short, do not love. Do not hate either. Simply look at the animals as mere objects employed to make your means for survival. They are nothing except for their roles as money making, biological machines.
Despite knowing this to be the case, Laura’s father had a problem with love. In fact, he, eventually, detested his role in destroying the lives of other conscience beings. He understood that they, wonderful creatures that they were, would, eventually, killed for their flesh to be consumed based on price per pound in a grocery store.
Then his sorrow overtook him because try as he might, he could not stop loving his animals. He could not be torn between using their flesh to stay alive by their slaughter and wishing them (simply and in the beauty that he saw of them) to stay alive.
He saw no way out of his deeply torn state. The feeling of the dilemma and it’s disparity grew stronger day by day in him to the point that he saw only one way out of his extreme pain.
As a result, he, in front of his child, pointed his pistol that he’d kept in bedroom dresser drawer at each farm animal’s head — sequentially one after another.
Then still in front of his young daughter, a teenager at the time, he calmly left the barn where all of the animals were lying in huge pools of blood. He then stepped, blank eyed onto the family house’s porch, looked coldly at his daughter and blew out his own brains.
Yes, he, robotically, stuck the gun at his throat, but angled toward his head and clicked the trigger to splatter pieces if his head out of the roof of his head. He found, after all, a means to avoid his overly sensitive, unendurable and deeply hurting situation of serving himself by brutally destroying other life forms the animals and plants that he grew. He simply ended the situation in entirety. He stopped it all by ending his experience.
In the aftermath, his wife, who had been upstairs napping before her plans to fold laundry and cook dinner, went into some type of psychotic state of shock. So she wound up adjudged to be mentally incompetent and became tended in a nursing home for the feeble minded for the rest of her life.
Laura, herself, had to handle the sale of the farm and wound up in a one room studio apartment where she lived except when at her job as a waitress where she, eventually, met a Dutchman, who she married after which she moved to Holland.
I know that I can’t fix the horrors that she faced and that will forever impact her memories. I can’t stop the destruction that is embedded in her as a central part of her being.
Yes, I am so little. I cannot fix her forever memory. Yet I can strive to show her caring. She can learn to resiliently overcome through support of others who want her to thrive. So I knit half a world away from her to show her in my own small way an uplift.
While her father could not bear the pain of living, I will try to bring Laura joy in living. My knitting her a hat, a scarf a shopping bag, a pocketbook and a jumper is symbolic. It is a mere small gesture, but with a unmistakable simple message.
It is that I, after all else is said and done, wish you well — a good experience — and here are some little things to bring you a smidgeon of joy as you move forward in your life. I always hope that I can bring uplift to her and others, especially after extreme hardships and horrors in their lives.
Sally Dugman is a writer from USA
Thursday, July 21, 2022
CC Newsletter 21 July - Popular Opposition To Wickremesinghe’s Election Could Spill Over Into Violence In Sri Lanka
Dear Friend,
Sri Lanka was braced for more unrest after newly appointed president Ranil Wickremesinghe vowed to crack down on the protests that toppled his predecessor, condemning them as “against the law”. Speaking after being MPs picked him as successor to Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Wickremesinghe made it clear he would not tolerate those he perceived to be stirring up violence.
If you think the contents of this newsletter are critical for the dignified living and survival of humanity and other species on earth, please forward it to your friends and spread the word. It's time for humanity to come together as one family! You can subscribe to our newsletter here http://www.countercurrents.org/news-letter/.
In Solidarity
Binu Mathew
Editor
Countercurrents.org
Popular Opposition To Wickremesinghe’s Election Could Spill Over Into Violence In Sri Lanka
by Countercurrents Collective
Sri Lanka was braced for more unrest after newly appointed president Ranil Wickremesinghe vowed to crack down on the protests that toppled his predecessor, condemning them as “against the law”. Speaking after being MPs picked him as successor to Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Wickremesinghe made it clear he would not tolerate those he perceived to be stirring up violence.
Sri Lanka’s ethnocratic political structures and history of atrocities, and thereby the root causes that ultimately led to the present crisis. This will only lead to further instability, violence and economic collapse.
There have been many moments in Sri Lanka’s history when governments have had the opportunity to change course and address the root causes of the island’s conflict, but each time they have fallen short.
Sri Lanka is in an economic crisis, and the blame is being laid squarely at the door of its president Gotabaya Rajapaksa. Last weekend, tens of thousands of protesters tore that door down and stormed his official residence. Since the beginning of this economic crisis, Sri Lankans have been quick to denounce his corruption and amassing of personal wealth. They picked apart his policies ranging from his tax cuts to his pledge to ban chemical fertilizers. Sri Lanka’s protestors, however, have been conspicuously silent about one of the state’s most significant policies that have brought the country to this predicament in the first place – the Sri Lankan military occupation of the Tamil North-East.
Although more than 13 years have passed since the end of the armed conflict, Sri Lanka’s military presence remains one of the largest per capita in the world, with military personnel as a percentage of the population estimated to be at 1.46% in 2018 alone. This military presence is most concentrated in the Tamil North-East, where a reported 14 of 21 army divisions are located. In March of 2021, the Oakland Institute detailed that for every six civilians, there was one military soldier. In 2017, a report released by the Adayalam Centre for Policy Research (ACPR) details that at least 60,000 Sri Lankan Army troops are currently stationed in the Mullaitivu District, which has 130,322 or approximately 0.6% of the Sri Lankan population. This means that there is one soldier for every two civilians in the district – in essence, a military occupation.
For the Tamil Nation, the Rajapaksas are much more than economically incapable and corrupt – Gotabaya Rajapaksa is the war criminal who oversaw the Sri Lankan military’s atrocity crimes, including genocide, at the end of the war. The cycles of violence Sri Lanka has experienced since independence are perpetuated by the same Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism that elected Rajapaksa with an overwhelming majority of Sinhala votes in 2019 – a war hero rather than a war criminal in the eyes of the South. Rajapaksa’s continuation of policies oppressing Tamil and Muslim communities was ignored or condoned by the majority electorate, and he was valorised as a protector of the Sinhala-Buddhist nation.
While the entire island is suffering from a scarcity of medicine, food and fuel, the state continues to prioritize structural violence against Tamils by allocating a substantial amount of its GDP to militarily occupying the Tamil-populated North-East. The military budget alone, according to Janes, accounts for 15% of total government expenditure for 2022, a 14% increase from the allocation of the state’s GDP in 2021. When compared to similar nations, Sri Lanka is spending an inordinate amount, with Sri Lanka (10.29%) being second to Israel (12.08%) with respect to military expenditure as a % of its government expenditure in 2020.
Since the culmination of the Tamil genocide in 2009, when the Sri Lankan military massacred as many as 169,796 Tamil civilians, the Sri Lankan military has systemically entrenched itself in every facet of civil society in the north-east, thereby being a constant source of trauma for Tamil genocide victim-survivors. Military-run schools, businesses, tourist resorts, farms and factories are ever-present across the North-East. Tamil survivors have consequently had to learn to live alongside the very perpetrators of mass atrocities and war crimes against their missing and dead loved ones. Amidst this deep sense of insecurity, fear, mistrust and trauma associated with the Sri Lankan military, the military nonetheless claims altruistic intentions behind its increasing penetration of Tamil-run civil institutions.
Eliminating and averting future economic crises on the island involves demilitarizing the North-East, defunding the military and ending state occupation of the Tamil homeland. It involves taking a critical look at the ethnocratic state’s policies and institutions that have been used to wage genocide on Tamils and dismantling every single one of them. The military as a state institution has been vital for the Rajapaksa regime to carry out genocidal atrocities against Tamils to protect their Sinhala Buddhist nation-building project: Sri Lanka. This has inevitably set the foundation for the island’s worst economic crisis to brew. Only with a return to some semblance of normalcy, where Tamils in the North-East are no longer forced to live amongst military personnel and under the state’s military occupation, can the island truly ever conceive of achieving economic stability.
The undersigned organizations, put forward this statement in good faith, in the hope that this time could be different.
Signatories:
Adayaalam Centre for Policy Research
Tamil Civil Society Forum
People for Equality and Relief in Lanka (PEARL) Tamil Heritage Forum Puzhuthi (Organization for Social Rights) Center for Justice and Change Priests and Religious for Justice and Peace, North-East.
- Draft a new constitution that genuinely restructures the state in a way that respects the secular and pluri-national nature of the island and the right to self-determination, and meaningfully devolves political, economic, land and security powers.
- Ratify the Rome Statute with retroactive effect, and support international prosecutions of atrocity crimes committed during and after the war.
- Demilitarize the North-East to support restructuring the economy by cutting the inflated defense budget, and reallocating spending for economic development.
- Address demands of long-standing protests by families of the disappeared and political prisoners from across the North-East including as a starting point by repealing the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA).
- Immediately cease land acquisitions by national authorities and security forces in the North-East.
Kumarathasan Rasingam, Secretary, Tamil Canadian Elders for Human Rights Org.
Gotabaya’s ascent and descent in power as the President of Sri Lanka
by Thambu Kanagasabai
Gotabaya’s election as the President of Sri Lanka in December 2019 is unique as it exposes and endorses the underlying political ills of Sri Lanka namely racism, communalism, majoritarianism and Sinhala/Buddhist hegemony. His victory has cemented the paths of polarization and created separatist
and segregating tendencies among the usual peaceful Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslim communities. This article briefly mentions the contributions of President Gotabaya to these communities during the past 30 months of his rule:
Sri Lanka will never prosper without addressing the ethnic problem of Eelam Tamils
by Kumarathasan Rasingam
Sri Lanka’s ethnocratic political structures and history of atrocities, and thereby the root causes that ultimately led to the present crisis. This will only lead to further instability, violence and economic collapse. There have been many moments in Sri Lanka’s history when governments have had the opportunity to change course and address the root causes of the island’s conflict, but each time they have fallen short.
South Africa’s Energy Crisis Escalates
by Brian Kamanzi
Behind rolling power cuts loom deep-seated socioeconomic issues worsened by the rich countries of the world.
On the morning of June 27, 2022, National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) shop steward David Fankomo joined his fellow members at the picket line outside Eskom’s Emalahleni office in the heart of South Africa’s coal belt. Workers at Eskom, the nation’s state-owned electricity utility, have been embattled in four rounds of wage negotiations with the executives since April 2022. South Africa is rich in energy but is in the midst of cascading energy shortages. Fankomo’s union is at the heart of this crisis: the workers bring the coal out of the ground but live with barely enough of its energy.
On June 28, Eskom announced that it was going to implement “Stage 6 load shedding” due to “unlawful industrial action.” “Load shedding” is defined as a rationing measure to reduce the demand for electrical energy by imposing rotational power outages when the supply from power plants is severely constrained. South Africa’s load shedding schedule ranges from stage 1 to 8. Stage 8 represents a full-scale collapse of the grid. Stage 6 has left parts of the country with no power, in the middle of winter, for up to eight hours a day. Load shedding has become part of the everyday vocabulary and one of the defining symptoms of post-Apartheid state decay and political dysfunction.
Gearing Up for a Collapse
Eskom’s crisis offers insight into the failures and trajectory of the ruling African National Congress’ National Democratic Revolution. The 1996 implementation of GEAR (Growth, Employment and Redistribution), a macroeconomic framework adopted by former President Thabo Mbeki, laid the groundwork for the expansion of public-private partnerships as a model for service delivery. This policy spurred reforms that initiated a mass rollout of prepaid electricity meters as a more aggressive means to collect residential electricity payments. These changes were forced even with steadily rising electricity costs, which compounded to introduce new barriers to access for working-class users. In response, resistance came from labor and civil society, both of whom demanded an end to privatization.
Since GEAR, there has been a chronic lack of investment in new public generation capacity, leaving Eskom reliant on aging and poorly maintained coal-fired power stations.
The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA)’s spokesperson Phakamile Hlubi-Majola told me that her union holds “Eskom accountable for the rampant waste of taxpayer money spent on bloat coal costs, diesel and Independent Power Producers, while attempting to cut workers’ benefits.” Hlubi-Majola has insisted that workers at Eskom have yet to receive a meaningful wage increase in four years, but in the same period, primary energy costs have sharply risen. As the negotiations reached a deadlock at the end of June 2022, a number of workers embarked on protest action, independent of a union sanction, to communicate their anger and dissatisfaction.
No Lights at Home
South Africa’s government reports that more than one in three workers are now unemployed. This comes at a time of skyrocketing fuel and energy prices. “Electricity is going off at times when workers are coming home,” says Kashiefa Achmat, chairperson of the Housing Assembly, a local civil society organization leading a campaign for “decent housing for all.” She adds, “Even the food we have bought goes off very quickly. Where we live, when the cuts are at night, it’s very dark and dangerous to walk around, especially for women. Gangsters are waiting for these opportunities; even cables are being stolen. Our phone networks also become slow when load shedding happens.”
The use of wood and paraffin in urban households is common due to high costs of electricity or a lack of electrical connection altogether. This is particularly prevalent in townships due to a lack of secure land tenure of recently expanded informal settlements.
Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the April 2020 lockdowns, South Africa has been defined by hundreds of land occupations and service delivery strikes. Working-class communities have taken to the streets in continued efforts to force the government to deliver on its basic mandate, only to be faced with police repression and opportunistic use of special pandemic-related regulations to evade engagement.
Robbing Peter to Pay Paul
Under the existing financing model for local government, municipalities are forced to generate profits off the provision of basic services to fund their operations, invest in new infrastructure and pay off existing debt. As of 2021, outstanding municipal debt owed to Eskom stood at over R35 billion, with at least 20 municipalities defaulting on payments. This trend is largely a byproduct of the flawed system of municipal financing and not the result of individualized instances of bad behavior from users.
Eskom’s own debt levels have skyrocketed to about R400 billion. In a study produced in support of the trade union movement, Eskom Transformed, the roots of the debt were sourced from three key areas. Predatory loans granted by the World Bank and IMF for the mega-coal projects Medupi and Kusile both incurred irregular expenditure and overruns. Increases in the cost of primary energy came largely due to shifts to purchase expensive energy from private generators. The debt levels also came from dramatic increases due to the cost of coal from local suppliers.
Just Transition
Against the backdrop of this crisis, South Africa’s energy transition plans have caught international headlines in the wake of the 2021 UN climate summit in Glasgow. The UK, France, Germany, and the United States have proposed a Just Energy Transition Partnership agreement with South Africa valued at $8.5 billion, consisting of a still-to-be-negotiated blend of grants and loans. The financing plan, supported by the World Bank and the IMF, is aimed at accelerating the closure of South Africa’s coal fleet and developing enabling infrastructure for rapid deployment of renewable energy systems. The plan has been closely tied to another round of aggressive reforms aiming to restructure the national energy system enabling increased use of private power plants. These projects are already dominated by multinational energy utilities, together with shareholdings by private equity holdings, both largely located in Europe.
Komati power station, a 1960s-era coal plant based in Mpumalanga, is the first generator due for decommissioning under the proposed plans. The station has been earmarked to be repowered to make use of solar photovoltaic arrays, gas turbines and battery storage. NUM’s Fankomo, based on this very site, has issued concerns to the media over a lack of worker consultation and uncertainty about the future ownership of the plant despite the imminent closure date of September 2022.
Two paths lie ahead. One is that liberal technocrats will provide a market-driven solution, whose efforts have failed for the past quarter-century. The other is that the unions can channel the building discontent to force a new social compact. The unions have called for the building toward a mass campaign for a general strike demanding an end to privatization alongside a broad list of historical demands to bring the economy under shared ownership and control.
Brian Kamanzi is an engineer based in Cape Town, South Africa. He is the author of “The Crisis in South Africa’s Energy Sector” (Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, 2021).
This article was produced by Globetrotter.
The Kremlin Seeks to Exploit Growing Wariness Over Refugees in Europe
by John P Ruehl
Instability and rising living costs have caused significant growth in refugee and other migrant numbers globally. The opportunity to exploit the crisis will not be missed by other countries, most notably Russia.
Since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, more than 7 million Ukrainian refugees have left the country till mid-June. While some 1.5 million ended up in Russia, the rest have mostly entered the European Union, where they have been granted the right to live and work for up to three years, in addition to receiving welfare, education, housing, food, and medical assistance.
The EU has spent more than €6 billion in aid to Ukraine since the start of the conflict, and its support for Ukrainian refugees could cost tens of billions of euros this year. Brussels and various EU countries will spend billions more before the war is over, and to help with reconstruction efforts in the country afterward.
However, with rising living costs since the pandemic that have accelerated since the launch of Russia’s invasion, European governments are sensitive to perceptions that they are not doing enough to secure the well-being of their own citizens. And even with the substantial aid so far, the millions of Ukrainian refugees have begun to strain European social services, particularly in Poland, where almost 5 million Ukrainian refugees have traveled to or passed through.
Resentment toward refugees can build quickly, even in countries with seemingly similar cultures. In Turkey, for example, 72 percent of the population showed support for refugees from neighboring Syria in 2016, while by 2019, 80 percent indicated that they preferred for Syrian refugees to be repatriated.
The tension between Turkish citizens and refugees from Syria, as well as those from Afghanistan and other countries, has been documented for years in Turkey. The presence of these refugees continues to be a major source of political and social agitation in the country.
Poland and Ukraine, meanwhile, have their own historical disputes, and political criticism has risen against Ukrainian refugees in Poland and in other European countries. Russian media outlets have also spread disinformation to fan the flames of anti-Ukrainian sentiment across the continent.
Roughly 1.5 million Ukrainian refugees have returned to their native country since the outbreak of the conflict. But more than 7 million Ukrainians remain internally displaced, and vulnerable to another military escalation in the war. The Biden administration’s offer to take 100,000 Ukrainian refugees will do little to help solve this concern, and Ukrainians are unlikely to find many other places outside Europe where they can travel to in large numbers.
The Ukrainian refugee crisis has also coincided with a growing number of displaced people worldwide over the last decade. From 2011-2021, their numbers ballooned from 38.5 million to 89 million. Weeks into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, announced that the number of people forcibly displaced had exceeded 100 million for the first time.
The 2015 European migrant crisis revealed how instability in surrounding regions could rapidly increase people’s flows to the continent. That year, 1.3 million people applied for asylum in the EU, roughly half of them fleeing violence in Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Additionally, other refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants came from Kosovo, Albania, Pakistan, Eritrea, Nigeria, Iran, and dozens of other countries.
Across the EU, there was significant disapproval toward the institution’s handling of the refugee crisis. It resulted in a rise of reactionary right-wing political sentiment and strengthened policies against refugee and migrant intake. Frontex, the EU’s border and coastal guard protection agency, also massively increased its powers, budget, and personnel numbers.
But the crisis was also exacerbated by countries seeking to more openly test the EU’s vulnerability to migration. As a primary route for migrants to Europe, Turkey leveraged refugee and migrant flows to gain monetary and political concessions from the EU. In 2017, migration to Spain from Morocco, another important transit country to Europe, spiked as the Moroccan government was locked in a dispute with the EU over a free trade deal.
Having seen the effects of violence and Libyan wars on migration, the Kremlin also understood its intervention in the Syrian civil war would cause another surge of people to Europe. Supporting the political and social instability across the continent as a result of the refugee crisis fits neatly into Russia’s attempts to challenge the West.
But despite being far off the beaten path of usual immigration to Europe, the Kremlin has also had a hand in directly assisting migrant and refugee flows.
In 2015, Finnish and Norwegian border authorities accused the Kremlin of involvement in the arrival of hundreds of migrants from the Middle East who crossed their borders from Russia. Both Finland and Norway are bound by stricter refugee and migrant acceptance laws than Russia and could do little as Russian border guards refused to take them back.
Russia’s attempts to bring refugees into Europe have continued for years. But in 2021, the Kremlin expanded its efforts considerably with the help of Belarus. Having faced increasing tensions over sanctions from the EU, Belarus also began sending migrants into the Schengen Area through its borders with Poland, Latvia, and Lithuania, with Russian assistance.
Renatas Požela, former commander of the Lithuanian border guards, declared in 2017 that Russia plays a major role in moving migrants from Russia and Belarus into Lithuania. However, their numbers were relatively small, with 104 people detained in 2018, 46 in 2019, and 81 in 2020. But in 2021, Lithuania alone detained more than 4,100 “illegal migrants, mostly from Syria and Iraq.”
The ongoing crises have eroded the EU’s commitment to upholding laws on refugee and migrant rights, and Brussels has faced growing criticism over its policies from human rights organizations in recent years.
But the Kremlin’s tactics have expanded from simply attempting to undermine European social and political stability. As with energy and food, refugee and migrant flows will be utilized by Russia to weaken Western support for Ukraine and its war effort.
Around the world, conflict and rising living costs have caused great instability. In Europe’s periphery, the people from Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Afghanistan, Eritrea, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Syria, and Yemen are noted as being particularly vulnerable to forcible displacement due to the circumstances in these countries.
Meanwhile, across the Middle East, which receives a substantial part of its grain from Russia and Ukraine, the effects of the war have also worsened food insecurity and could further increase refugee and migrant flows.
The leader of Italy’s League party and former Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini said on June 6 that food insecurity and economic instability, as a result of the war in Ukraine, could lead to half a billion refugees and migrants heading to Europe. While it is difficult to put an exact number on how many people will travel to Europe, growing instability will clearly increase migrant flows from nearby regions.
European countries, and the EU itself, have hastily turned to offshore processing centers to resettle migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees outside the continent in the last few years. But the underdevelopment of these systems, as well as the limitations of Frontex, means Europe will again be incapable of stemming a significant increase in flows of migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers.
Additionally, Turkey already hosts the world’s largest population of refugees and asylum seekers, and Ankara is unexpected to take many more. The world has also seen how Europe was able to absorb millions of Ukrainians relatively quickly, and there will be pressure on the EU to also accept non-European migrants and refugees.
Western sanctions and other measures to punish Russia for invading Ukraine have in turn exacerbated the situation being felt in global energy and food markets, while much of the ongoing violence across the Middle East has partly stemmed from the foreign policies of Western countries since the turn of the century.
Since the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Europe has endured rising inflation, growing food and energy costs, and an influx of refugees. But the effects of the war are amplifying these forces globally, and the Kremlin will do all it can to add to the refugee crisis in Europe and pressure the EU to end its support for Ukraine.
John P. Ruehl is an Australian-American journalist living in Washington, D.C. He is a contributing editor to Strategic Policy and a contributor to several other foreign affairs publications. He is currently finishing a book on Russia to be published in 2022.
This article was produced by Globetrotter.
Russia, Iran and Turkey Hold Tehran Summit While the Paranoid West Views it Suspiciously
by Dr Mahboob A Khawaja
“Intellectuals must be seated in chosen assemblies and systems of public governance to overt individualistic insanity against the people.” German philosopher Immanuel Kant (“Perpetual Peace”, 1795).
Western Leaders Skeptical of Tehran Summit
Most Western leaders enjoin lingering suspicion if President Putin, President Ebrahim Raisi and President Erdogan will meet or could produce any tangible outcomes of Tehran Summit. Despite political discards, they met and shared their differences to cooperate for change and future-making. Why can’t the US, NATO and the EU do the same to end the military confrontations and agree to a ceasefire in Ukraine? The Teheran summit demonstrated that Putin and Raisi could engage with the West in dialogue to stop the acceleration of military conquests and perpetuated political animosities.
Historically, Teheran Conference reminds us of Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin (1943) Teheran Conference planning to invade Southern France to dismantle Germany Nazi occupation and seeking freedom movement for the rest of Europe. Ironically, this time Teheran Summit on July19, 2022, President Putin, President Ebrahim Raisi and President Erdogan met to talk about peace in Syria and how best to coordinate their policies and practices to strengthen their futuristic relationships. This appears to be in sharp contrast to what Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin had in mind – a collective offensive action to challenge the Nazi German occupation of Europe and its continuous military strength against the US and its European allies victims of German aggression.
Come to understand the contemporary issues of the 21st century’s Russian-American and European discard over Ukraine, Syria, Iran and the future of oil and gas supplies, grain exports and economic relationships all under scrutiny between those who once stood united against foreign aggression and killings of fellow human beings . There is amassed collection of fear, ambiguity and distrust that spells out the prevalent reality of current global affairs. There is no corresponding communications and dialogues between the superpowers to change the horrible present into a sustainable and peace future for the humanity populating this planet. All that is happening or could happen will be interpreted paradoxically befitting to their own self-interest or national policies and practices carved out by senior civil servants aligned to their masters. The perplexed statistic of weapons and money to aid Ukraine represents a shaky scenario of encountering the military onslaught, it is an elite obsession embodying the decision-making at NATO and the EU. Victory is not in sight for the five months old proxy war.
The Trilateral Tehran Summit with a Reason for Change
Comparatively analyzing the recent visit by President Joe Biden to the Middle East and self-repeating the myriad of support for Israel and more oil production in Saudi Arabia and opposition to Iran’s nuclear deal, Russia, Iran and Turkey have organized a trilateral summit at a critical time in history and were able to listen and learn to each other without any tragic fallout against any enemies. The summit acquired a reasonable cooperation and credibility to facilitate meeting between many political odds, yet without any regrets they did reach a political understanding on Syria and to enhance their collaborative efforts to resolve more serious issues at future gatherings in Astana and Istanbul. The unchallenging truth arising out of the Teheran Summit clarifies the scenarios that leaders with divergent opinions and rational choices could meet, cooperate, agree to disagree and try to sort out their differences with reason and sense of moral responsibility. Not so, for the US, NATO or the EU leadership, they are allergic to meeting with President Putin and Iran’s President Raisi to discuss the political problems or the revival of the Iran’s nuclear agreement including the Ukraine crisis or stalled natural gas or diminishing oil supplies to Western Europe. These leaders live in conflicting time zones as if Russia, Iran and Turkey are just symbolic entities to be pushed aside or not worth listening to and are treated as people of the primitive past. This characterization injects history into a negative direction that once there was Russian Empire, Persian Empire and Ottoman Empire dominating the Middle East – European hemisphere. The Western leaders try to belittle the leaders of Russia, Iran and Turkey in their hollow laughters and after dinner jokes, yet these nations are equally credible, sincere and vital to global interest, peace and security across the world.
Are the leaders of America, NATO and the EU living in stunned embarrassed silence to watch Putin, Raisi and Erdogan having concluding a successful conference? At the Tehran summit, their differences on Syria and its future were noticeable but they discuss their rationales and agree to disagree on Syria and its future course of peace and nation-building. Turkey explains its opposition to the authoritarian rule of Bashar al Assad and the operations of several terrorist groups launching attacks against Turkey. Russia keeps considerable military presence in support of the Al-Assad and helps him to avoid the end-game; and so does Iran to provide continuous military support to the dictator for almost 11 years. There is no end in sight of the Syrian prolonged war but the leaders were open to discuss it. Perhaps in time and future context, if they continued to manage the differences, the besieged people of Syria could see the light at the end of the tunnel for peace and normalization of life. Russia and Iran do not host Syrian refugees but Turkey and Germany have the largest number of several millions displaced Syrian refugees without any imagination of peaceful return to their homeland. In sharp contrast to Ukrainian refugees, Europeans other than Germany and France have not shown any interest to accommodate Arab refugees in their socio-religious midst.
Global Leaders must be Realist, Not Opportunist
Would the acrimonious debates for peace and ceasefire in Ukraine stick in mud across America, NATO and the EU? Politically and logically reflecting on current global affairs, the US and its Western allies will sooner or later hold meetings with Russian and Ukrainian leaders to imagine a peace deal. Why to waste time and opportunities and extend unpredictability and unthinkable frightening trends to future-making and start the dialogue right now for an immediate ceasefire and peace-making?
At the threshold of the 21st century, America, NATO and its European allies appear to have lost the moral and intellectual capacity necessary to visualize the vision and phenomenon of realism to serve the interest of people – the larger humanity for peace and security. This scenario of realism demands urgency in current affairs for rational approach to conflict resolution and peace-making. Hans Morgenthau (Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, 1978): the legendry theorists of the 20th century points out that:
“Realism, believing as it does in the objectivity of the laws of politics…politics must be subjected to the dual test of reason and experience…..for realism, theory consists in ascertaining facts and giving them meaning through reason….If we want to know the moral and political qualities of his (politician) actions, we must know them, not his motives.”
Viewing the catastrophic war and daily human causalities in Ukraine, the political realism demands urgent consideration to stop the tragic tension of history and try to cease a moment for navigational change overpowering the individualistic absurdities of Western national interest and NATO’s agenda for increased influence across the world. Naïve egoism shrouds the strategic mystery as to why the US, NATO and the EU failed to stop the war in Ukraine. The hilarious impersonation of enemies in Russia and Iran dwells into unthinkable consequences for the whole of mankind. America or NATO are not the sole leaders of collective security of Planet Earth. It is the shared responsibility of all nations – a collective proactive vision to be at peace on this fast track moving Earth. The sense of mystery and mortal danger to the interest and security of mankind must not be allowed to become an agenda item of political intrigues and global cataclysm in–waiting, be it the gas–oil supplies, be it the grain export and above all realism of morality to be One Humanity living in con-existence on One Earth. Otherwise, the prevalent political and hypocritical ignorance and arrogance could lead to a Third World War. The equality of human beings and states sovereignty synthesizes an equal consideration and treatment of all involved in this warfare. The global awakening of human soul and consciousness demands an immediate ceasefire and return to face to face negation between Russia, Ukraine, NATO and the EU. If they reject, surely, a debacle could swept unthinkable catastrophic consequences and ends for all on this planet. Immanuel Kant advice that “intellectuals must be seated in assemblies” to ensure rational policies and practices is a timely reminder to all the leaders in America, Russia and Europe.
Isn’t true that intelligent leaders and people always readily accept reasoned advice?
The Brotherhood of Truth is one in all ages
It is narrow men who create divides- sects
Let them not think that the goods of this world can shield them from evil or its consequences
God’s Truth and His Messengers can be known to all: for He in His Mercy
Has given us faculties and judgment, if we would but use them
The Message is not New: all Creation proclaims it: High above all is the Lord of Glory Supreme.
(The Qur’an: 23: condensed narrative: 51-92).
Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja specializes in international affairs-global security, peace and conflict resolution with keen interests in Islamic-Western comparative cultures and civilizations, and author of several publications including the latest: One Humanity and the Remaking of Global Peace, Security and Conflict Resolution. Lambert Academic Publications, Germany, 12/2019.
Amendment of Biodiversity Law Will Weaken Protection Efforts and Rights of People
by Bharat Dogra
Instead of further strengthening biodiversity protection, it appears that the government has started acting more under the influence of these narrow interests some of whom have become very powerful and influential in recent times. This trend is also visible in the efforts for amending the biological diversity legislation of 2002. The Biological Diversity (Amendment) bill 2021 was prepared last year and has been referred to a Parliamentary Committee.
Rent Seeking Hindutva Government in India
by Bhabani Shankar
Nayak
High inflation, growing unemployment and depreciating rupee are three fundamental issues faced by Indian economy today. The educational and health infrastructure is falling apart. Human development is in the bottom of the nadir. Modi government has no plans to take responsibility to navigate Indian economy away from these crises. It is passing its responsibility on Indian people by reckless hiking of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) on food and other essential items. This nationwide rent seeking activities in terms of high taxation on goods and services that are part of the rent-seeking process
CESTA’s order in favour of some Adani Group companies in a case being pursued by the DRI
by E A S Sarma
(CESTAT) has pronounced an order in favour of the Adani Group in a case
being investigated by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) on alleged over invoicing of power equipment by some companies belonging to that group.
Urgent Need to Support Goba System of Ladakh
Press Release
Five civil society organisations are encouraging the UT Administration and the Hill Council, along with Ladakhi society, to recognise and strengthen the goba (or nambardar) system.
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