Woman in Plomari freed from under the rubble after three hours.

If one can speak of “luck”, it was lucky that the earthquake didn’t trigger a tsunami and that only an estimated 10,000 people are living within a radius of 30 kilometers of the epicenter in areas where they could be affected.

The earthquake was one of the strongest in the immediate region since 1900. Some houses in the Plomari area – Greece – suffered structural damage.

A few of houses, mostly old brick buildings, on the Island of Lesbos collapsed or sustained structural damage. Some serious damage was also reported from Vrisa, Greece.

At about 14:30 local authorities in a number of Greek villages reported that the damage may be substantially worse than initially anticipated.

At about 14:41 local time initial reports told of about 10 injured on Greek islands. At 14:53 the mayor of Plomari, Manolis Armenakas, appeared on ERT television and said: “We have damage to several buildings, old and new”.

At 16:04 a woman who was buried under the rubble of a house in Plomari was finally liberated by rescue services. It took them more than 3 hours to get her into safety.

It was noted that especially the damage sustained to new buildings is somewhat strange as building codes are very strict in this area of the world and houses should be able to resist even bigger Magnitudes.

Tremors were also felt in western Turkey. Damage in Turkey was – as far as we are informed at the time of the writing of this article – very limited. A person from Izmir said the quake was felt for some 10 – 15 seconds and that there was no damage. A person from Istanbul reported slight shaking for about 10 seconds.

F/AK – nsnbc 12.06.2017

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Riot police (ESMA) in the capital Bogota cracked down against rallying teachers using water cannons, tear gas, and when protesters were isolated and removed from all-too-public view, batons and fists.

The crackdown came as the strike has lasted one month. Bogota’s Mayor Enrique Penalosa, on Friday, tried to mitigate the political consequences of the brutal crackdown – and some say he tried to save his political career – when he appeared to show understanding for the teachers but took a hard-liner approach with regard to protests when he said:

“I offer apologies in the name of the State to the teachers that left abused and hurt, but it is also important to clarify that we are not going to permit the blocking of public transit.”

On Saturday, the government published a decree that raised teachers salaries by 8.75%. However, the teachers union Fecode stressed that the problems aren’t only related to wages, and that they would remain on strike. The strikes started a month ago after the government and teachers failed to reach an agreement during negotiations in the first week of March.

Teachers and unions had been rather unwilling to engage in yet another compromise since many of the key promises that prompted them to end previous strikes still haven’t been kept. Besides higher salaries and bonuses that teachers’ union demanded more investment in education infrastructure. Among other demands there are calls for improvement of the quality of school meals, and not least, the recognition of previous agreements.

Education Minister Yaneth Giha denounced the teachers’ decision to strike “unjustified,” while Fecode President Carlos Rivas said “it doesn’t seem logical that there isn’t funding available for education when there’s money for corruption.” Speaking to the teachers strike earlier this month, President Santos said, “we can’t give [the teachers] what they want because we don’t have the resources.”

Slow recovery after the oil prices slumped in 2014, plus rampant tax evasion and systemic nepotism aggravated the situation. The government has struggled to balance its 2017 budget. According to data from the OECD, Colombia ranks poorly in educational outcome and second to last in educational funding with no more than $3,300 per student. 73.8% of Colombian high school graduates perform poorly in math. 51.4% fail to reach a proficient reading and writing level and 56.2% are insufficient in science. Overall, 43% of Colombian students failed to learn reach a proficient level of education compared to post-high school youth in other countries.

CH/L – nsnbc – nsnbc 12.06.2017

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File – Image By Palestine TV 2014

The report, entitled “Israel’s Aggression Against Occupied Palestine – Special Report: Highlighting Israeli Violations” was released by the PLO Negotiations Affairs Department on June 11, 2017. (Full Report Here).

This report summarizes what the PLO describes as the Israeli aggression against occupied Palestine since the beginning of 2017 and until May 31st and presents examples of ongoing Israeli violations of international law.

The report is aimed to provide an overview of what the PLO describes as Israel’s violations and crimes, committed by its occupying forces and settlers, against the Palestinian civilian population living under its belligerent military occupation.

It also includes attacks against Palestinian property and lands in flagrant violation of Israel’s obligations, as the occupying power, under international law and international humanitarian law. The PLO also notes that this report, published 50 years after the 1967 war, documents what it describes as:

Israel’s culture of impunity over 50 years of colonization has allowed it to deny the people of Palestine the freedom to exercise their inalienable national and human rights, including the right to self-determination. Marking 50 years of Israel’s colonial occupation reflects the failure of the international community to take urgent and concrete measures to protect the Palestinian people and to hold Israel accountable for its systematic violations.

Damage to Al Quds campus in the Abu Deis suburb of Jerusalem following an October raid. Courtesy Mojama’a Alanshita, October 2015.

The report, covering the period from January 1 – May 31, 2017 provides details on a total of 28 killings, 700 injuries, 2,803 raids, 2,469 detentions, 334 temporary detentions, 2,452 flying checkpoints, 1,254 Israeli gunfire attacks, 74 demolition operations, and 220 incidents of settler violence or terrorism.

The report also details Israel’s violation of international laws and conventions by withholding the bodies of killed Palestinians. At the time of the publication of the report Israel has been holding the bodies of seven killed Palestinians for 409, 336, 310, 405, 235, 144, and 7 days, respectively.

“Dealing with the dead as political bargaining chips” is  morbid reality of the Palestinian – Israeli conflict, with both sides engaging in this practice in one form or the other, although the PLO’s “moral high-ground” could arguably based on two facts.

1) That Israel is the occupying power.

2) That the “deals” with the Israeli dead usually were conducted by Hamas, or Lebanon’s Hezbollah; Both of which are not members of the PLO.

The PLO stresses also that Israel continues to support the military occupation including armed settlers. The PLO noted that “the State of Palestine has formally requested that the United Nations take action to ensure protection of the Palestinian people”.

There have been numerous of such requests to the UN, and the UN General Assembly has passed numerous resolutions in that regard. However, it is unlikely that any of these will have any effect as long as the five – self-anointed – peent UN Security Council members fail at responding to Israeli aggression, wars and violations by using the same standards they apply in “more politically convenient and opportune” cases.

Tragically, the Al-Fatah / Fateh dominated Palestinian Authority (PA), failed repeatedly at ending its security cooperation with Israel. The security cooperation has consistently been denounced by PLO constituents like the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

The PFLP is the second-largest PLO member organization. The Al-Fatah (Fateh) dominated Palestinian Authority has, since the mid-1990s, consistently been accused of cooperating with the Israeli occupation and of using the so-called “security cooperation” with Israel to crack down on opposition parties, including the PFLP and other PLO member organizations.

Palestinian Authority forces crack down on Palestinian protesters. Here at a rally in Ramallah, December 2015.

The Palestinian Authority and Al-Fatah, for their part, have, since the mid-1990s, repeatedly announced that they would end the security cooperation.

Even a cursory review of the discourse allows for the identification of two situations in which the PA and Fateh usually “pay lip-service” to ending the security cooperation.

That is, during negotiations with Israel, and especially when it lacks popular support for its negotiation strategy, and in situations where oppression of dissent, security cooperation and years of fruitless negotiations with Israel send Fateh’s and the PA’s approval ratings plummeting to such lows that it’s dominant role in the PLO and PA could be challenged.

CH/L – nsnbc 12.06.2017

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Responding to earlier presidential pressure, the Federal Reserve is expected to raise interest rates this week for the third time since November, from a fed funds target of 1% to 1.25%.  But as noted in The Guardian in a March 2017 article titled “Trump Is Set to Win the Battle on Interest Rates, but US Economy Will Pay the Price”:

An increase in the base rate, however small, will tighten the screw on younger voters and some of the poorest communities who voted for him and rely on credit to get by.

More importantly for his economic programme, higher interest rates in the US will act like a honeypot for foreign investors . . . . [S]ucking in foreign cash has a price and that is an expensive dollar and worsening trade balance. . . . It might undermine his call for the repatriation of factories to the rust-belt states if goods cost 10% or 20% more to export.

In its Global Financial Stability report in April, the International Monetary Fund issued another dire warning: projected interest rises could throw 22% of US corporations into default. As noted on Zero Hedge the same month, “perhaps it was this that Gary Cohn explained to Donald Trump ahead of the president’s recent interview with the WSJ in which he admitted that he suddenly prefers lower interest costs.”

But the Fed was undeterred and is going full steam ahead. Besides raising the fed funds rate to a target of 3.5% by 2020, it is planning to unwind its massive federal securities holdings beginning as early as September. Raising interest rates benefits financial institutions, due to a rise in interest on their excess reserves and net interest margins (the difference between what they charge and what they pay to depositors). But borrowing costs for everyone else will go up (rates on student loans are being raised in July), and the hardest hit will be the federal government itself. According to a report by Deloitte University Press republished in the Wall Street Journal in September 2016, the government’s interest bill is expected to triple, from $255 billion in 2016 to $830 billion in 2026.

The Fed returns the interest it receives to the Treasury after deducting its costs. That means that if, rather than dumping its federal securities onto the market, it were to use its quantitative easing tool to move the whole federal debt onto its own balance sheet, the government could save $830 billion in interest annually – nearly enough to fund the president’s trillion dollar infrastructure plan every year, without raising taxes or privatizing public assets.

That is not a pie-in-the-sky idea. Japan is actually doing it, without triggering inflation. As noted by fund manager Eric Lonergan in a February 2017 article, “The Bank of Japan is in the process of owning most of the outstanding government debt of Japan (it currently owns around 40%).” Forty percent of the US national debt would be $8 trillion, three times the amount of federal securities the Fed holds now as a result of quantitative easing. Yet the Bank of Japan, which is actually trying to generate some inflation, cannot get the CPI above 0.2 percent.

The Hazards of Operating on the Wrong Model

The Deloitte report asks:

Since the anticipated impact of higher interest rates is slower growth, the question becomes: why would the Fed purposely act to slow the economy? We see at least two reasons. First, the Fed needs to raise rates so that it has room to lower them when the next recession occurs. And second, by acting early, the Fed likely hopes to choke off inflationary pressure before it starts to build.

Rates need to be raised so that the recession this policy will trigger can be corrected by lowering them again – really? And what inflation? The Consumer Price Index has not even hit the Fed’s 2% target rate. Historically, when interest rates have been raised in periods of tepid growth, the result has been to trigger a recession. So why raise them? As observed in a June 2 editorial in The Financial Times titled “The Needless Urge for Higher Borrowing Costs”:

In this context, the apparent determination of the Fed in particular to press on with interest rate rises looks a little peculiar. Having created expectations that it was likely to tighten policy with three quarter-point increases over the course of 2017, the Fed is acting more like a party to a contract that feels the need to honour its terms, than a central bank that takes the data as it finds them. [Emphasis added.]

In the six months since President Trump was elected, the Fed has pressed on with two rate hikes and is proceeding with a third, evidently just because it said it would.  Impatient bond investors are complaining that it has found one excuse after another to postpone the “normalization” it promised when market conditions “stabilized;” and in his presidential campaign, Donald Trump attacked Janet Yellen personally for keeping rates low, putting her career in jeopardy. She has now gotten with the program, evidently to restore the Fed’s waning credibility and save her job. But the question is, why did the Fed promise these normalization measures in the first place? As then-Chairman Ben Bernanke explained its “exit strategy” in 2009:

At some point, . . . as economic recovery takes hold, we will need to tighten monetary policy to prevent the emergence of an inflation problem down the road. . . . [B]anks currently hold large amounts of excess reserves at the Federal Reserve. As the economy recovers, banks could find it profitable to be more aggressive in lending out their reserves, which in turn would produce faster growth in broader money and credit measures and, ultimately, lead to inflation pressures.

The Fed evidently believes that the central bank needs to tighten monetary policy (raise interest rates and sell its bond holdings back into the market) because the massive “excess reserves” held by the banks (currently ringing in at $2.2 trillion) will otherwise be lent into the economy, expanding the money supply and triggering hyperinflation. Which, as David Stockman puts it, shows just how clueless even the world’s most powerful central bankers can be in matters of banking and finance . . . .

Banks Don’t Lend Their Reserves

There need be no fear that banks will dump their excess reserves into the market and create “inflation pressures,” because banks don’t lend their reserves to their commercial borrowers. They don’t because they can’t. The only thing that can be done with money in a bank’s reserve account is to clear checks or lend reserves to another bank. Reserves never leave the reserve system, which is simply a clearing mechanism set up by the central bank to facilitate trade among banks. Technically, dollars leave the system when a depositor pulls money out of the bank in cash; but as soon the money is spent and redeposited, these Federal Reserve Notes go back into the banking system and again become reserves.

Not only do banks not lend their reserves commercially, but they do not lend their deposits. Banks create deposits when they make loans. As researchers at the Bank of England have acknowledged, 97 percent of the UK money supply is created in this way; and US figures are similar. Banks do not need reserves or deposits to make loans; and since they are now flooded with reserves, they have little incentive to pay interest on the deposits of “savers.” If they do not have sufficient incoming deposits at the end of the business day to balance their outgoing checks, they can borrow overnight in the fed funds market, where banks lend reserves to each other.

At least they used to do this. But since the Fed began paying Interest on Excess Reserves (IOER) in 2008, they have largely quit lending their reserves to each other. They are just pocketing the IOER. If they need funds, they can borrow more cheaply from the shadow banking system – the Federal Home Loan Banks (which are not eligible for IOER) or the repo market.

So why is the Fed paying interest on excess reserves? Because with the system awash in $2.2 trillion in reserves, it can no longer manipulate its target fed funds rate by making reserves more scarce, pushing up their price. So now the Fed raises the fed funds rate by raising the interest it pays on reserves, setting a floor on the rate at which banks are willing to lend to each other – since why lend for less when you can get 1.25% from the Fed?

That is the theory, but the practical effect has been to kill the fed funds market. The Fed has therefore implemented a new policy tool: it is “selling” (actually lending) its securities short-term in the “reverse repo” market. The effect is to drive up the banks’ cost of borrowing in that market; and when this cost is passed on to commercial borrowers, market rates are driven up.

Meanwhile,  the Fed is paying 1% (soon to be 1.25%) on $2.2 trillion in excess reserves. At 1%, that works out to $22 billion annually. At 1.25%, it’s $27.5 billion; and at 3.5% by 2020, it will be $77 billion, most of it going to Wall Street megabanks. This tab is ultimately picked up by the taxpayers, since the Fed returns its profits to the government after deducting its costs, and IOER is included in its costs. Among other possibilities, an extra $22 billion annually accruing to the federal government would be enough to end homelessness in the United States. Instead, it has become welfare for those Wall Street banks that largely own the New York Fed, the largest and most powerful of the twelve branches of the Federal Reserve.

Paying IOER is totally unnecessary to prevent inflation, as evidenced again by the case of Japan, where the Bank of Japan is actually trying to fan inflation and is now charging banks 0.1% rather than paying them on their excess reserves. Yet the inflation rate refuses to rise above 0.2%.  

Banks cannot lend their reserves commercially and do not need to be induced not to lend them. The Fed’s decision to raise rates by increasing IOER just increases public and private sector borrowing costs, slows the economy, threatens to bankrupt businesses and consumers, and gives another massive subsidy to Wall Street.

Ellen H. Brown – Web of Debt

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The deadly incident happened on Saturday in the Achin district of Nangahar province. It was confirmed by provincial government spokesman Ataullah Khogyani who said the assailant was immediately gunned down after he opened fore on the U.S. troops. A spokesman for the U.S. military told the press that U.S. military officials are aware of the incident and “will release more information when appropriate”.

A Taliban spokesman allegedly took credit for “the insider attack”, allegedly claiming that the shooter had infiltrated the ranks of the Afghan forces to carry out such an attack. nsnbc could not independently verify the accuracy of this alleged claim or statement. The “claim” could, according to some analysts, as well be an attempt to either distract from the true motives of the assailant, an attempt to link the Taliban to the Islamic State to derail attempts to broker peace talks, or both of the above.

The incident was confirmed by a senior official at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. It is noteworthy that “the senior international diplomat” said Afghanistan’s authorities are looking into the possibility that the killings might be related to the earlier deaths of two Afghan policemen in what the U.S. called a ‘friendly fire incident’ in Helmand province.

U.S. and Afghan commando units are currently carrying out operations against the Afghan franchise of the self-proclaimed Islamic State in the mountains of Achin where insurgents have established a number of positions and bases.

U.S. President Donald Trump was briefed on the death of the U.S. troops while he was at his golf club in Bedminister, New Jersey, for the weekend. National Security Adviser Rick Waddell is reportedly keeping Trump briefed on developments in this incident and on Afghanistan in general. So-called insider attacks in Afghanistan are relatively frequent occurrences. In March, another Afghan soldier shot and wounded three U.S. soldiers in Helmand province before he was killed.

It is worth noting that this latest, alleged insider attack in Nangahar province, happened only hours after the U.S. military confirmed that overnight joint counter-Taliban operations in the southern province of Helmand have killed and wounded an unspecified number of members of Afghan security forces.

The confirmation followed local media reports that said airstrikes conducted late Friday in the insurgent-held Nad Ali district killed at least eight local forces and wounded many more. An investigation is underway to determine circumstances that led to the “unfortunate” incident,” said the American military’s public affairs office in Kabul. “During an ANDSF [Afghan National Defense and Security Forces] and U.S. partnered operation, fires resulted in the deaths and injuries to members of the Afghan Border Police,” it noted.

A spokesman for the Islamist insurgency claimed Afghan forces “dressed like Taliban” had taken up positions in the Loe Bagh area of the district to ambush Taliban insurgents when jet planes “bombed and killed tens of them.” Helmand is Afghanistan’s largest province and most of it is under the control or influence of the Taliban. The district where Friday night’s airstrikes took place is located on the edge of Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital.

A group of roughly 300 U.S. Marines arrived in the province in April to support Afghan forces there. The Taliban has extended its control and influence to swathes of Afghanistan and intensified battlefield attacks across the country since launching its so-called yearly spring offensive in late April, killing scores of Afghan security forces.

CH/L – nsnbc 12.06.2017

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Said Islam Qaddafi in Zintan, 2016 (archives)

Al-Ajmal Al-Atiri, the commander of Abubakr Al-Siddiq brigade in Zintan, reportedly confirmed that Saif Islam Qaddafi has been released. nsnbc has not yet been able to independently verify his release. Said has been held as prisoner by the Abubakr Al-Siddiq brigade since he was captured in 2011.

However, the brigade also provided a degree of protection for Saif, who was both wanted by the government and court in Tripoli, by Islamists, as well as by the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The brigade could have released Saif as a response to a call by the House of Representatives (HoR) to release political prisoners and for courts to adhere to human rights. So far, however, it needs to be stressed that nsnbc could not independently verify that he was released.

Until his whereabouts can be verified, he could either still be in Zintan, free or in captivity, or elsewhere. Given the fact that security for Saif has been and remains a concern, it is unlikely that he, or those who may be holding or protecting him now, would carelessly reveal his whereabouts.

Saif attending a Tripoli court session via video link (2014 archives)

In May 2016 the Zintan military council dismissed as completely false claims by the International Criminal Court Chief Prosecutor Fateh Bensouda that Saif had survived an assassination attempt and that he had been handed over to it by Al-Atiri’s brigade.

At the end of the month Saif was reportedly visited by the Beida government’s under-secretary for justice, Eisa Alsaghir who insisted that Saif he was already a free man. The statement is consistent with reports nsnbc has received in 2016, according to which Saif was released and could move “relatively freely” in Zintan. Alsaghir said that in the view of the Thinni government Saif  was at liberty to go where he wanted.

Saif was born in Tripoli in 1972 as the second son to Col Muammar Qaddafi. Saif was known for his work in Libyan foreign policy and Libya’s foreign economic affairs. During the so-called Arab Spring in 2011 the ICC issued a warrant for his arrest.

He left the capital Tripoli as the city fell into the hands of  Islamist “rebels” including the Al-Qaeda-linked Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), led by Abdelhakim Belhadj, and with the support of NATO and GCC members’ air forces and special forces.

It is worth recalling that Libya, prior to the clearly foreign-backed “Arab Spring” and developments since then that have turned Libya into a failed states, ranked first among African countries on the UN’s social development index.

F/AK – nsnbc 11.06.2017

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(archives)

Abella mede the clarifying statement on Sunday, after sensationalized reports in certain Middle Eastern and Russian media had misrepresented the role of the United States in sensationalized or outright false reports. Addressing reporters, Abella said

“We have standing protocols which are already in place under the Mutual Defense Board-Security Engagement Board with the US under the purview of the PHL-US Mutual Defense Treaty of 1951. It does not involve any boots on the ground nor is there any direct participation in combat operations, a matter prohibited by law”.

Abella added that the fight against terrorism is not only the concern of the Philippines or the United States but it is a concern of many nations around the world. “The Philippines is open to assistance from other countries if they offer it,” he added. Still on Marawi, Abella said the Palace was deeply saddened by the news on the 13 Marines killed in action during a firefight in Marawi City.

“This incident, albeit unfortunate, gives us greater impetus to clear Marawi of lawless elements, save the trapped civilians, and restore order, security and normalcy to the city and its residents,” he stressed. He went on to enjoin every one to continue showing strong support to our “courageous and heroic men and women in uniform fighting for Marawi and defending the Republic”.

nsnbc editor-in-chief Christof Lehmann, in a phone call on Sunday, commented on Abella’s statement saying that Abella and the presidency are right when they state that fighting terrorism – like the Islamic State franchise in the Philippines – is an international matter.

Lehmann added that it is therefore the more appalling to see inaccurate or outright fraudulent reports and propaganda in certain media, apparently aimed at denouncing the U.S. role as anti-Muslim or imperialist, while “glorifying” the role of Russia, China and certain Middle Eastern countries in the region. Such propaganda creates terrorism instead of contributing to countering it with solid information and ethical journalism, he said.

Lehmann added that another dimension that is rarely being discussed, is that the certain countries like the USA and Norway, have a military presence in Syria without a mandate from the Syrian government, the UN Security Council or another valid legal justification. He noted that one might want to keep this in mind while one observes developments in the Philippines.

F/AK – nsnbc 11.06.2017

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Belgium’s plagued Tihange NPP

Responding to an inquiry from the parliamentary group of Belgium’s Green Party, Interior Minister Jan Jambon admitted that experts discovered 70 more cracks in the pressure vessel of reactor two at the Tihange nuclear power plant (NPP) than during a previous inspection in 2014. However, Jambon claimed that the discovery of these additional cracks had no impact on the operational safety of the reactor at all.

Jambon stated that the additional 70 cracks had been discovered because the ultra-sound probes used to inspect  the reactor vesselhad been placed at different locations than during inspections in 2014. Previously discovered cracks were no longer considered as damage or as posing a risk to operational security — The results of the latest inspection, in their entirety, prompted Belgium’s nuclear safety agency to state that it has no reason to oppose the operation of the reactor, said Interior Minister Jambon.

In 2015 Belgium’s Federal Nuclear Agency (FANC) registered a total of 3,149 reports about damages and incidents at reactor 2 at the Tihange NPP. This number had risen by 2.2 percent to 3,219 after the latest inspection, noted the NGO Nucléaire Stop. The NGO as well as experts from neighboring municipalities stress that it is no longer safe to operate the aging reactor.

Neighboring communities in Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands have long criticized the Belgian government for extending the life-span of the reactors at Tihange and Doel beyond their design limits. On June 25 concerned citizens and grassroots movements from Germany will travel to Tihange to create a human-chain around the Tihange NPP. Activists and critics have begun describing the Tihange NPP as “The Mummy”, stressing that a disaster that could force Belgium to build a Chernobyl-style “Sarcophagus” could happen any time.

Green Party (Ecolo) MP Jean-Marc Nollet, who had styled the questions about the reactor to Jambon stressed that it was disturbing that the Interior Minister had not, on his own volition, provided information about the number of cracks and the size of the cracks in the reactor vessel.

Moreover, reactor two is not the only one at Tihange that is causing gravest concerns. Reactor 1 was shut down in September 2016 and was scheduled for re-start in early 2017. The re-start of the reactor was originally scheduled for February 15 but was then delayed to February 28, 2016. According to latest information the restart has again been delayed until the end of March 2017.

An agreement on the additional delay was reportedly reached in cooperation between FANC and the Tihange NPP operator Engie Electrabel after the FANC found that Engie’s case for re-staring reactor 1 prior to additional tests have been completed wasn’t sufficiently strong.  The Tihange Reactor 1 was shut down in September 2016 after Engie Elecrabel reported that damage was done during work at the site.

Engie Electrabel did at hat time not specify what damage was done but noted that the damage occurred in the non-nuclear part of the plant that hosts auxiliary pumps. In other words, in a part of the plant that is related to heat exchange and cooling, as in the case of the catastrophic incident at Fukushima in 2011. The reactor was shut down as a security precaution said Genie Electrabel. The company then added that the situation “is said to” have no consequences for the employees, local residents or the environment.

This “incident” was merely one of a cohort of incidents in the Belgian Doel and Tihange nuclear power plants. Incidents and safety concerns have grown so much that Dutch municipalities, in August 2016, went to the European Commission to demand the closure of the NPP at Doel.

Doel NPP

The municipalities of Bergen op Zoom, Steenbergen and Tholen in the Netherlands took the issue about the troubled Doel Nuclear Power Pant (NPP) in Belgium to the European Commission. Bergen op Zoom Mayor Fran Petter stressed that taking the case to the European level brings us the greatest chance of success. The Doel NPP is located near the city of Antwerp, just across the Belgian border. The municipalities maintain that they have standing because they would also be affected if anything should go wrong at the Doel NPP.

Both the government of the Netherlands and the government of Germany have, over the past years, repeatedly stressed that they have lost any confidence in Belgian nuclear power plants, its operators and Belgian regulatory authorities after repeated problems at the NPPs in Doel and Tihange.

The Doel 1 and 2 reactors went on the grid in 1975 and were built with an expected lifetime of about 40 years. The Belgian government, however, extended their lifetime with 10 years to 2025, against stern opposition from neighboring EU member States and against a previous decision not to extend the license. he three Dutch communities also stress that they should have a say about the Doel 3 and 4 reactors which are slightly younger, but nonetheless also troubled by repeated problems which prompt grave concerns about their safety.

In 2014 the Belgian nuclear regulator ordered the reactors closed down after discovering indications of the above mentioned cracks in the core tanks of the 1,008 megawatt Tihange 2 and the 1,006 megawatt Doel 3 reactor. The decision was later reversed. Both the Doel and the Tihange nuclear facilities have had several incidents before that. The two reactors were restarted in May 2013, but were shut down again in March 2014 to allow for further tests and inspections, especially with regards to the integrity, strength and safety of the tanks.

Interim results of these inspections had shown that the tanks have been weakened to such a degree that it is necessary to keep the facility off the grid until the spring of 2015, and maybe, to take them off the grid altogether. In 2014 the Doel facility’s Doel 4 reactor was also taken off the grid due to an incident with one of its turbines.

The plants’ operator, Electrabel, insists that it is safe to keep the reactors online, also with their extended lifespan. Earlier in 2016 Belgium attracted international attention when the government started providing iodine pills to Belgian households, claiming it was not related to the risk posed by the reactors but to the potential risk that terrorists could use a “dirty bomb”.

The Belgian government has, in 2016, distributed iodine pills to the population “just in case something should happen” while claiming “the risk of terrorism” to be the main reason for concerns. Municipalities in the Netherlands as well as in the German federal state North-Rhine Westphalia also distributed iodine – while citing poor safety at Belgium’s NPPs as reason.

CH/L – nsnbc 11.06.2017

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Security services of the Palestinian Authority seized youth activist Nasar Jaradat in Ramallah four days ago. The PFLP stresses that his arrest comes in the context of the suppression of freedom of expression in the Palestinian discourse that directly supports the Israeli occupation.

The PFLP, the second-largest constituent organization of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), stresses that it holds the Palestinian Authority responsible for the continued detention of Jaradat.

The PFLP underpins that this includes the risk of being arrested by the occupation through what the Front describes as the “revolving door policy”, which over the time has led to the arrest and death of a number of young activists and resistance strugglers.

The PFLP stresses that the arrest of Jaradat by Palestinian Authority security services, for his writing in social media, shows “disregard for the sentiments of the Palestinian people”.

The Front stresses that the Palestinian Authority should be holding accountable and arresting those who disregard and undermine the fundamental rights of the Palestinian people, not those who criticize the policy of security coordination and the Palestinian Authority’s political direction and leadership.

The PFLP also urged human rights organizations to act quickly for the release of Jaradat as well as all other political detainees held by the Palestinian Authority. The Front stressed that the PA’s continued repression is unacceptable.

The Al-Fatah (Fateh) dominated Palestinian Authority ha, since the mid-1990s, consistently been accused of cooperating with the Israeli occupation and of using the so-called “security cooperation” with Israel to crack down on opposition parties, including the PFLP and other PLO member organizations.

The Palestinian Authority and Al-Fatah, for their part, have, since the mid-1990s, repeatedly announced that they would end the security cooperation. Even a cursory review of the discourse allows for the identification of two situations in which the PA and Fateh usually “pay lip-service” to ending the security cooperation.

That is, during negotiations with Israel, and especially when it lacks popular support for its negotiation strategy, and in situations where oppression of dissent, security cooperation and years of fruitless negotiations with Israel send Fateh’s and the PA’s approval ratings plummeting to such lows that it’s dominant role in the PLO and PA could be challenged.

F/AK & CH/L  – nsnbc 11.06.2017

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May called an early election, hoping to bolster her and the Conservative’s majority in parliament to stand stronger during negotiations with the European Union. Instead, May saw her majority blown away and seeing her hanging by a thread as Brexit negotiations are scheduled to start in 10 days.

May insisted that she would stick to the Brexit timetable, but she was forced into an alliance with a small DUP in Northern Ireland just to stay in power.

May said her Conservatives and the Democratic Unionist Party would work together to “provide certainty and lead Britain forward at this critical time.” It’ definitely won’t buy her many sympathies with Northern Ireland’s Sinn Fein.

However, “This government will guide the country through the crucial Brexit talks … and deliver on the will of the British people by taking the United Kingdom out of the European Union,” she said after seeking Queen Elizabeth II’s approval.

Courtesy of Laurent Dubrule

May’s snap election call was the second time that a Conservative poker game on the issue of Britain’s relations with the EU backfired. Her predecessor, David Cameron, first asked British voters to decide in 2016 whether to leave the EU.

Cameron, gambling that Britons wouldn’t want to sever their network of ties with the continent, had promised the Brexit referendum during a 2015 election campaign that gave Conservatives a surprise Parliamentary majority. When voters stunned him and Europe by voting to leave, he resigned, leaving May to deal with the mess, and May, now, for the second time in a situation where she has to manage the Conservatives’ MAYDAY.

With 649 of 650 seats in the House of Commons declared, May’s battered Conservatives had 318 — short of the 326 they needed for an outright majority and well down from the 330 seats they had before May’s roll of the electoral dice. However, rather than resign, May grabbed the lifeline of an undefined alliance with the DUP, which won 10 seats.

However, even that arrangement seemed shaky. After May went through the largely symbolic process of seeking the queen’s approval for the new government, DUP leader Arlene Foster said the two parties were in discussions, but offered no details. In May’s camp, recriminations were immediate. “This is a very bad moment for the Conservative Party, and we need to take stock,” Conservative lawmaker Anna Soubry said. “Our leader needs to take stock as well.”

One of the victors  was Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. Labour’s increase in seats from 229 to 261, with one seat still undecided, confounded expectations that his left-wing views made him electorally toxic. It also confirmed that Corbyn has managed to consolidate his position within the party. Corbyn piled on pressure for May to resign, saying Friday morning that people have had enough of austerity politics and cuts in public spending. He ruled out the potential for deals or pacts with other progressive parties in Parliament.

“The arguments the Conservative Party put forward in this election have lost, and we need to change,” he said. Initially blind-sided by May’s snap election call, and written off by many pollsters, Labour surged in the final weeks of the campaign. It drew strong support from young people, who appeared to have turned out to vote in bigger-than-expected numbers, lured by the promise of the elimination of tuition fees, the hope of better jobs and a chance to own property.

F/AK – nsnbc 09.06.2017

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