Mikael Book

[Wayne Hall]

blog.spinellisfootsteps.info/

Nuclear Power, Civil Society and Eastern Europe

"The nuclear weapons signify a rupture in the relations of force because the future of the human species is endangered. [...] Therefore, priority must be given to guaranteeing the existence of the species. The nuclear arms must be removed from the relation of forces. The search for a way to suppress the nuclear arms is the base on which any serious policy must rest" -- Maurice Kriegel-Valrimont

Act more consciously than hitherto to solve the problem of the unity of a movement where almost everybody is against nuclear weapons, but many have not yet been able to make up their minds about the civil nuclear energy (this does not necessarily mean that they are FOR it). Preoccupy your thoughts with the positive construction of the future European Union. Make up your mind: be in favour of the European Union, whereby I mean the political federation, and against ideas of absolute national or European (or American, etc.) sovereignty, which actually are used to legitimize, for instance, weapons of mass destruction.

The European Nuclear Disarmament movement (END), which is also a movement for the gradual dismantlement and substitution of the nuclear power stations, needs to forge a unity with the other social movements, for common solutions to the global problems, and against the ruling imperialists, technocrats and market fundamentalists. It must be linked to the international movement of the small farmers, for food sovereignty, and against Monsanto. Keep in mind the words of the Indian expert: "If they control seed they control food, they know it, it is more powerful than bombs, it is more powerful than guns, this is the best way to control the populations of the world" -- Vandana Shiva

The Social Forum forum is the open terrain where the meetings, the network-building and the the elaboration of the new END (European Nuclear Disarmament) movement should take place.

If you say that we can not have unity with people who are FOR the construction of new nuclear power plants, you are basically right. But in reality, those people tend to be the same criminal politicians, who are also formally responsible for the further construction and "modernisation" of the nuclear weapons systems of France, the UK and NATO. They are our adversaries.

But the many citizens and scientists who are not taking a general negative stand against the civil nuclear energy are certainly not to be considered our adversaries.

Everybody tends to be against new nuclear power plants for NIMBY-reasons (not-in-my-backyard), but to realize that the civil nuclear energy has been and is a general historical mistake that needs to be corrected, is a different and complicated matter. Therefore, our only possibility is to moderate, elaborate and explain our own positions on the civil nuclear energy and its alternatives. Our positions should be, as far as possible, guided by scientific research and technological know-how. (As everybody who has tried to study the issues know, this is difficult, because the researchers and scientists are often in strong disagreement between themselves.) Moderation is required by the simple fact that several Eastern and Western European countries are already heavily dependent on electricity produced by nuclear energy. And the final disposal of the radioactive waste is an enormous global problem anyway, which remains to be solved.

The Finnish politicians and authorities believe that they have solved the radwaste problem. You may want to disagree with a letter to the ministry of labor and the economy of Finland before July 25th, 2008.

The situation regarding the nuclear weapons systems is very different from the situation with nuclear energy, because those who opt in favour of such systems lack any scientific ground whatsoever. They build their case not on science or on wisdom, but on fear and self-interest, which are usually paired with some kind of fundamentalism and racism. They are already morally bankrupt, and utterly so, but they have yet to be defeated politically, so that they cannot continue to stay in power and impose their criminal policies. It is a complicated question of changing the political relations of power, because European Nuclear Disarmament will not happen as a result of lobbying only; it requires a historical bloc of social and political forces.

Mikael Book

[Wayne Hall]

The New European Peace Action

Earlier, I noted that The Social Forum forum is the open terrain where the meetings, the network-building and the the elaboration of the new END (European Nuclear Disarmament) movement ought to take place.

I should have written: is taking place. The European Social Forum in Malmö 17-21 September 2008 will have a workshop called "The Next European Peace Action Forum". This is one of a whole series of workshops, seminars and activities, which all remind me of END.

Below, please find a listing of ESF-workshops relating to the European Peace Action:
Planning a nonviolent action This workshop is part of the “Role of nonviolence in the antimilitarist movement” strand within European Peace Action Forum. www.esf2008.org/registrations/ofog-sweden/planning-a-nonviolent-action
Practical skills for direct action - This workshop is part of the “Globalising Nonviolent Direct Action” strand within European Peace Action Forum. - www.esf2008.org/registrations/ofog-sweden/practical-skills-for-direct-action
Partnership for Peace and New NATO Countries... without joining - This workshop is part of the “Growing Influence of NATO and the Militarisation of the EU” strand within European Peace Action Forum. ... www.esf2008.org/registrations/ofog-sweden/partnership-for-peace-and-new-nato-countries
Nonviolence tools for campaign development ... reach your campaign goals - This workshop is part of the “Role of nonviolence in the antimilitarist movement” strand within European Peace Action Forum. ... www.esf2008.org/registrations/ofog-sweden/nonviolence-tools-for-campaign-development
Campaigns Against War Profiteering ... against corporations profiteering from war - This workshop is part of the “Globalisation of Militarism” strand within European Peace Action Forum. ... www.esf2008.org/registrations/ofog-sweden/campaigns-against-war-profiteering -
US Nuclear Weapons in Europe and Resistance - This workshop is part of the “Nuclear Weapons” strand within European Peace Action Forum. - www.esf2008.org/registrations/ofog-sweden/us-nuclear-weapons-in-europe-and-resistance
Resistance Against US Missile Offence Installations in Europe ... - This is part of the “Militarisation of Space” strand within European Peace Action Forum... www.esf2008.org/registrations/ofog-sweden/resistance-against-us-missile-offence
Space Industry in Sweden and Around Europe - This workshop is part of the “Militarisation of Space” strand within European Peace Action Forum. Following an introduction to all the issues within this ... www.esf2008.org/registrations/ofog-sweden/space-industry-in-sweden-and-around-europe
Camping Against Nuclear Weapons and Tracking Nuclear Convoys ... - ... transportation of nuclear weapons on public roads This workshop is part of the “Nuclear Weapons” strand within European Peace Action Forum. ... www.esf2008.org/registrations/ofog-sweden/camping-against-nuclear-weapons-and-tracking
AND MORE
The initiative to the current European Peace Action, which is an emerging coalition of organisations and networks, was taken by the Swedish network of activists, which calls itself Ofog. Here is the explanation of the name, from the website of Ofog:

Ofog translates into ”mischief”. But ofog is also a play with words. “Foga” is a Swedish verb meaning to conform, to obey. But in Swedish, if you put an O before a word, you turn it into its opposite.
“Foga” also means, roughly, fixating things together in a decided and unchangeable form, so in this meaning of the word, when we put the O before, this is an allusion to our function as a flexible, dynamic network.

The over-reaching theme for the European peace forum in Malmö will be how to strengthen our resistance against militarisation. The forum will be focussed on direct action.

Without strong resistance and direct action the goals cannot be reached. The European Peace Action may be the best that has happened to the European peace movement in the last 20-25 years.

[Wayne Hall]

There Shall be No New Cold War

(This article is dedicated to the Russian political scientist Alla Glinchikova, who asked, recently, on the mailing list of the European Social Forum: what was done to break this tendency by all of us? Was it estimated as high priority not in words, but in actions? Is there a strategy of developing of civil diplomacy to enhance civil trust in Eastern Europe?)

Are the great powers returning to Cold War politics? If that is the case, "the war against terrorism" will perhaps be tuned down, which is good. The bad news is the return of the balance of terror. The US missile shield in Poland and the Czhech Republic is a clear reminder of the basic nuclear structure of the cold war, which has remained in place, as well as of the sad fact that the parties are seeking first strike capability.

NATO's expansion continues. A similar Eastern pact is probably underway. In 2001, Russia and China, plus Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, formed the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The military dimension of the SCO-cooperation might soon become its prime purpose. Other Eastern countries may also want to join the pact.

Therefore, a new division of the world into two antagonistic military blocs is again a possible scenario, in spite of the globalization of production, trade and finances. Unfortunately, the general economic development and the security policies of the states are still dominated by corporate and/or Nationalist military-industrial interests.

Much talk is heard in these days about the need for a re-assessment of the security policy. Do we need to increase the military budget and to modernize the existing systems for mass destruction on earth, in the seas and in outer space? In what sense will we be more secure if we decide to tie ourselves to military pacts between states, which threaten each other with weapons of mass destruction?

Judge for yourself what the gibberish of the security political parrots is worth and where it leads us.

Who is capable of breaking this situation, which in many ways resembles the period before the outbreak of the first world war in 1914?

Presidents, foreign ministers and diplomats should of course continue to do their best, but they hardly have the power to stop the alarming trend. They stand for an obsolete political world system, which is based on sovereign states, we are told, but can only regenerate hierarchically ordered military blocs.

The peoples of Europe, including the Russians, should therefore turn their backs to the security policies of their governments. And that is precisely what will happen. The peoples of the whole world already cooperate through, for instance, the social forum and the internet, in order to create a security, which is worth its name.

By the way, we have an excellent example of citizens' diplomacy from the last Cold War, namely, the European Nuclear Disarmament movement of the 1980s, which joined together millions of people from the Atlantic to the Urals. Independent peace groups and movements grew like mushrooms not only in Western Europe, but also in Czhechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, GDR and the Soviet Union. And they managed to cooperate over the bloc borders against the insane nuclear militarism of the Russian (Soviet), Eastern European, Western European and American governments.

The people power generated by the END-movement caused Reagan and Gorbachev to sign the agreement on intermediate nuclear forces in 1987, whereafter a detente in the Cold War followed. However, when the Soviet Union collapsed, the END-movement's vision of a denuclearized Europe faded as quickly as if somebody had given the signal for "danger over"!

But the danger was not over, and it is time now as ever to continue the END-movement. There shall be no new Cold War but a non-militant federation called "The European Union", which includes Russia, Ukraine and Georgia, and bans all weapons of mass destruction from its territory, starting with the nukes of the present EU - the French and British ones.

Looking at the program of the next European Social Forum (17-21 September), the European Peace Action seems to be particularly well prepared for doing what needs to be done. ("The European Peace Action wants to create a Europe working together in peaceful solidarity through nonviolent direct action and popular mobilisation."). You may all want to sign the appeal for a nuclear-free EU, which was launched at the conference organized by the Action des Citoyens pour le Désarmement nucléaire at Saintes on 11 May, 2008 (The Saintes Appeal; www.acdn.net/). See you at the ESF in Malmö!

Mikael Book

[Wayne Hall]

There Shall be No New Cold War (part 2)

Russia is considering arming its Baltic fleet with nuclear warheads for the first time since the cold war, senior military sources warned last night / Sunday Times 17 August, 2008.

Just who really does control what are called "Russian" nuclear weapons, Wayne Hall asked. Wayne's concern is well-grounded. However, we should never fall for the illusion that Western governments, or the Chinese, Israeli, Indian and Pakistani governments, maintain full control of theirs. If the governments of the belligerent Nation-States and the leaders of their military blocs would really control the world, including the annihilation systems they have ordered, then we would perhaps have a lasting nuclear peace. But we would not have freedom, because the control would have to be total.

F. William Engdahl's analysis from July about President Medvedev's proposals, and his comments on the Georgian-Russian war for the internet-based Real News Network, are excellent. Except that I doubt that the political problem of the nuclear age can be solved by means of traditional, intergovernmental, diplomacy.

Nuclear disarmament equals a democratic revolution, because it changes the relations of force in favor of the peoples. It requires that the peoples turn their backs on their governments and conspire together to replace the system of nation-states and military blocs with a non-militant system of world governance.

Around 1930, H.G Wells, who already saw that the nuclear age was coming, called this non-governmental perspective The Open Conspiracy .

In some respects the conditions for a successful Open Conspiracy are more favorable today than at the time of Wells. The internet, in particular, gives a new point of departure for political thought and political praxis. With the internet, it may be possible, for the first time, to create a common human understanding ("an information"), which is not controlled and manipulated by Nationalist and military-industrial interests, or religious fanatics. Thus it may be possible to add a new dimension to the old Montesquieuan idea of a human liberty, based on the separation of state powers.

The public library without walls can become an Informational Power, which completes the constitutional triad of the Executive, Legislative and Judicial Powers of the modern Nation-States. The internet has indeed already begun to function like a cosmopolitan Informational Power. This is why we call it 'cyberspace', which means self-government. It is a kind of government, which "like scientific process, will be conducted by statement, criticism, and publication that will be capable of efficient translation" (Wells, H.G.: The Open Conspiracy. H.G. Wells on World Revolution. Edited and with a Critical Introduction by W. Warren Wagar. Praeger 2002, p. 70-71).

The traditional newspapers, radio stations and television channels, tend to serve serve only one party, one nation and one military bloc. They tend to create an atmosphere of war. The way the mass media handle the recent Georgian-Russian war is yet one example of this tendency of the mainstream press.

Public libraries and the internet, on the other hand, tend to serve the peoples and to create an atmosphere of peace.

[Wayne Hall]

There Shall be No New Cold War (Part 3)

''Mr. Backlash, Mr. Backlash
Just what do you think I got to lose
I'm gonna leave you
With the backlash blues
You're the one will have the blues
Not me, just wait and see''
- from Backlash Blues by Langston Hughes, Nina Simone

Mr Robert Cooper, who is the right hand of the High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy and the Secretary-General of both the Council of the European Union and the Western European Union, wrote:

"What is needed then is a new kind of imperialism, one acceptable to a world of human rights and cosmopolitan values. We can already discern its outline: an imperialism which, like all imperialism, aims to bring order and organisation but which rests today on the voluntary principle" (The Observer, 7 April, 2002).

Here, Mr. Cooper sounds like he would be living in the age of H.G. Wells and the British Empire, but at occasions he also speaks like a Cold War hawk:

Maybe we are going to use nuclear weapons before anyone else, but I'd be wary of saying it out loud

he stated to the Brussels Correspondent of ''The Guardian in January 2008.
Mr. Daniel Onyango, a young inhabitant of Korogocho, one of the slums of Nairobi, takes us back to the present realities :

Here is common that many young people are shot everyday on suspicion of been criminal's especially when the former minister of internal security who was there last year issued a shot to kill order to police to kill any person suspected to be a criminal. In fact immediately after my cousin was shot other two young people were shot by police just a few meter's from where we stay." ..."we are fine and doing well. Isaiah is doing well in the Piano, Simon also well in playing the guitar and we also have another young man who is playing for us too. Am also learning to play the percussion and other instruments." ..."we have found somebody who specialize in computer and willing to get for us one at a very cheap price, we have also contributed some few money among ourself so that we can be able to have one though the money is not yet enough.If you could know somebody from your country who might be coming to Nairobi you could also send him come with it if you may be able to find one. (Quoted with permission from Mr Onyango's recent email. You may also want to read his article Light in Korogocho.)

[Wayne Hall]

Dear Friends,

I have put the following answer to Mikael at his blog:

blog.spinellisfootsteps.info/post/2008/08/18/There-shall-be-no-new-cold-war#comments

On Saturday 23 August 2008, 07:56 by Wayne Hall

As a fellow-signatory with Mikael Book of the Saintes Appeal for a Nuclear-Free Europe I naturally agree with Mikael's proposal for the banning of all nuclear weapons from Europe, starting with the French and British ones.

But my vision of the territorial boundaries is different from the vision Mikael has outlined above of a Europe including Ukraine, Russia, Georgia, etc.

In Greece, where I live, the policy of the previous Socialist government was for inclusion of Turkey in the European Union. It is a policy that has been continued by the present conservative government and in my view it is a good policy.

There are many advantages to the existing polity of Turkey, and even moreso the polity that could be developed there. Turkey offers an alternative model for secularization of society to the "Western" model that has now been diverted into anti-Islamism.

Turkey's present government is the equivalent of a Western European Christian Democrat government of the more socially responsible, pre-neoliberal kind. Or it least it has tendencies in that direction which could and should be strengthened.

I would even say that it would be appropriate for Istanbul to become the PERMANENT seat of the European Social Forum and the centre of European Civil Society, a move paralleling Constantine's embrace of Christianity and shifting of the centre of the Roman Empire to the East.

There is an alternative, basically French, conception of European integration which embraces the Arab-speaking states of North Africa (also, of course, once part of the Roman Empire [and the Ottoman Empire]). This is an idea that has been instrumentalized by Sarkozy so as to fill the whole area up with French nuclear power stations, but it is shared by people in France and perhaps in North Africa who do not share Sarkozy's politics and priorities.

Another good aspect of this vision of European expansion into some of the Arab world is that it includes Israel.

How marvellous it would be if the denuclearization of Europe could also include the denuclearization of Israel.

So what about expansion to the East?? What about Russia and its former satellites?

Perhaps Russia has a different historical mission: to expand westward, "reconquering" Alaska (the Orthodox Church is strong among the indigenous peoples of Alaska, having successfully withstood the proselytzing of Protestant - and to a lesser extent Catholic - missionaries).

Perhaps Russia's mission is to help overcome the residual barbarism of the United States, to help bring a civilization there which can also embrace the ordinary people and not just an elite.

Georgia, and hopefully also Ukraine, should go in that direction too, along with the Russia to which they have had such strong historical links. That would be the preferable future in my opinion.

Already there are links between Russia and the American left that have no counterpart in Western Europe. Look at these recent article from Pravda, for example:

english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/22-08-2008/106172-september_11_attacks-0

Could you imagine anything like that coming out of the European Social Forum??

Europe and Russia are moving in different directions. That has been the process ever since the eighties, when both Mikael and I participated in a movement, the European Nuclear Disarmament movement, whose effect was to get Russia OUT of Europe. We must take responsibility for our own actions and what they achieved, and persist in the same logic today, so that we can finish what we started.

Later this year, all things being equal, Mikael and I will be collaborating in an initiative to take place in Aigina, Greece, that will highlight the contribution made to European integration by two great statesmen, Ioannis Capodistrias and Altiero Spinelli. Both of these historical figures started their careers in collaboration with Russia and both broke with Russia.