People And Nature This is the third of three linked blog posts about housing in Nigeria by Tom Ackers It is based on chapters 8 and 11 of his pamphlet, Making Homes and Energy Transition in Nigeria, published today as a free, downloadable PDF on People & Nature. The other posts are here and here.

3-October-2024
Household energy consumption

Household operational energy comprises by far the largest share of Nigeria’s energy use, and most of it is the combustion of solid biomass for home cooking.

A 2023 report by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), compiled in collaboration with the Energy Commission of Nigeria, provides helpful data on energy consumption patterns.

Solar panels being installed. Photo by ISPI On Line

Of the final energy consumed in Nigeria (that is, energy in all forms, at the point of use, whether biomass, fossil fuels, electricity or commercially-produced heat) nearly 50% goes to residential buildings, followed by transport, industry and commercial uses of energy. (These are 2015 data, but the picture is unlikely to have changed significantly since then).

Agriculture uses a tiny 0.4% of final energy, which reflects very low levels of agricultural mechanisation.

The same report assesses Nigeria’s primary energy supply – that is, “raw” energy products, excluding exports and including imports, before e.g. fuel is burned to produce electricity or heat – as follows:

🔥 Forty-five per cent is from bioenergy, mainly wood collected from forests, charcoal, and animal dung for home cooking. Most of this biomass is collected by families themselves, outside the commercial energy system.

🔥 Forty per cent is from crude oil, 13% from natural gas, 1.2% from hydropower, and about 0.6% from other renewables.

In 2015, Nigeria had less than one gigawatt (GW) of installed solar energy capacity, according to the IRENA report.[1] There was no installed wind capacity. There was 1.9 GW of installed large-scale hydropower capacity, and 0.06 GW of small-scale hydro.

On a per-capita basis, Nigeria’s final energy consumption in 2015 worked out at about 11,700 megajoules (MJ) per person per year. That compares to a per-capita final energy consumption in the UK of about 89,500 MJ per person per year.[2] (These figures exclude the energy embodied in imported manufactured goods – very substantial in the case of the UK.)

For comparison, we can refer to the “contraction and convergence” low-energy development path proposed by Arnalf Grubler and his colleagues, that I have cited in the linked post, Nigeria: meeting the need for housing. The study estimates that worldwide, in 2020, final energy consumption was an average of 120,000 MJ per person per year across the global north, and 37,000 MJ per person per year across the global south, those averages obscuring enormous inequalities of energy consumption between and within countries.

Nigeria’s energy mix reflects a paucity of electricity infrastructure. Only about 60% of Nigeria’s population have access to electricity: 90 million people are without access.

Electricity generation for the Nigerian grid is from gasdominated by gas-fired power stations (86%), with large hydropower plants next in second place (14%).

The grid is highly unreliable. Installed on-grid generation capacity is about 13 GW, but peak generation generally “hovers around 4.5 GW”.

The unreliability is caused by failures in the grid network, which itself lacks the necessary capacity, primarily due to under-investment; by irregularities in the supply of gas, breakdowns of machinery, and seasonal water shortages that impact hydropower. Blackouts are a regular occurrence, lasting for several hours.

In consequence, households and businesses depend heavily on back-up generators using diesel and gasoline. This is why oil comprises such a big share of primary energy supply. Electricity is produced less by the national grid, and more by a distributed system of diesel and gas generators.

The IRENA estimate that about 1520 gigawatts (GW) of off-grid, fossil-based generator capacity was in place in 2015 (they give both values), although they quote another study putting it as high as 30.5 GW. They think that off-grid gasoline and diesel generators provided about 66 Terawatt hours (TWh) (237 petajoules (PJ)) of primary energy in 2015.

A 2021 Climate Change Policy document from the Nigerian government notes that, so long as the electricity infrastructure remains so unreliable, business growth in Nigeria is a double-edged sword. New businesses provide much-needed employment for a growing population, but they also exacerbate the growth in greenhouse gas emissions.

The same report forecast that greenhouse gas emissions from the industrial sector would rise from 4.2 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (Mt CO2e) in 2010 to perhaps 14.8 Mt CO2e in 2030, in the absence of measures to decarbonise the energy system or improve energy efficiency.

Focusing again on the residential sector, the main user of energy, the illustration above shows how household energy consumption breaks down according to fuel and according to use.

About 65% of household energy consumption goes to cooking, and a similar proportion comes from biomass combustion.

About 10% of household energy consumption goes to water heating, and about another 10% to lighting. That comparatively high last figure reflects the low penetration of modern LED and energy-saving bulbs in Nigeria; most households use incandescent bulbs. The authors further note that most home appliances are very old and inefficient – some of them recycled cast-offs from rich countries.

Only a very small total amount of energy is consumed by households for space conditioning (i.e. heating and cooling): about 2 PJ a year for the whole country, which is barely visible in the graph.

There is considerable spatial heterogeneity in residential energy use across Nigeria. Specifically, there is a large gap in the scale and nature of energy consumption between rural and urban settings.

So, while 60% of Nigeria’s population as a whole has access to electricity, IRENA estimates rural access to electricity at between 25% and 46%, and levels of urban electricity connection at 84% to 90%. Put another way, 54-75% of rural households and 10-16% of urban households lack access to electricity.

The IEA estimates that only about 10% of people in Nigeria have access to clean cooking, i.e. do not rely on biomass fuels and have access to LPG or electricity for cooking. The IRENA cites alternative estimates of 15% (WHO, World Bank) and 18% (Nigerian National Bureau of Statistics). Only about 6% of the rural population have access to clean cooking, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.
Final energy consumption in residential buildings. Source: IRENA (2023)

Biomass cooking is extremely damaging to health. According to the IEA, almost 500,000 people died prematurely in Sub-Saharan Africa in 2018 because of cooking with solid biofuels – “a figure that equals the combined death toll of malaria, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS”.

Biomass combustion is also incredibly inefficient. And it is an even more potent source of greenhouse gas emissions than oil. For example, per unit energy released, even well-dried wood releases more CO2 combustion emissions than coal.

A large part of the biomass used in cooking comes from forest wood collection, which also carries a large environmental impact in the form of deforestation and desertification. Additional drivers of deforestation in Nigeria include expansions in agricultural land and commercial logging.

Economically, according to the IEA, cooking with solid biomass further “incurs a considerable cost in terms of time and income”. On average, globally, for those households that use solid biomass fuels, the household dedicates “1.4 hours a day to collecting fuel, a burden borne primarily by women and children”. (See also here.)

The use of solid biofuels for cooking is rising in absolute terms along with Nigeria’s population, even though the proportion of homes dependent on solid biofuels is falling.

The dominance of biomass cooking in Nigeria is clearly an enormous public health problem – and it is the major spur to electrification.

The fact that 60% of people have access to electricity, while only 10% have access to clean cooking, suggests that the barriers to clean cooking – aside the spatial heterogeneities – are more about economic pressures than just inadequate access to electricity, and the poor reliability of the electricity grid.

Recent findings on the toxicity of gas stoves are important – and they make gas cooking less of an appealing alternative. Nevertheless, those harms pale in comparison to the harms of cooking with biomass.

Nigeria’s energy future

Decarbonising Nigeria’s energy system and its built environment go hand in hand.

However, Nigeria’s energy system is not simply a matter of local interest. Nor is Nigeria likely to be able to source domestically all of the materials, productive capacity, and technological know-how for an energy transition. It will need assistance from abroad.

The previous government of Muhammadu Buhari introduced a “National Climate Change Policy for Nigeria 2021-2030” (revised June 2021), which called for climate change mitigation measures “that will promote low carbon as well as sustainable and high economic growth”.

The transition away from fossil fuels will change the entire form of the Nigerian economy. It means remaking the built environment, the energy system, agriculture, and all forms of production and consumption, on a low-carbon basis – while also ensuring climate resiliency for the future.

It means reconfiguring Nigeria’s built stocks, so as to enable a future with only no-emissions operational flows.


Yet Nigeria’s fossil fuel sector is currently expanding, both in terms of production and domestic consumption.

Two arguments made in favour of this are that it facilitates efficient industrial and economic growth, chiefly by providing foreign capital, and that it frees up natural gas as an alternative to dirty biomass fuels in homes.

On the other hand, Nigerian environmental activists and non-governmental organisations argue that most new investment should go to renewably-produced electricity, and development of the electrical grid, in order to directly address the lack of energy access in the country, and turn the tide against fossil fuels.

The writer and campaigner Nnimmo Bassey, along with other environmental activists and civil society organisations, organised a forum to discuss environmental issues in the run-up to the last general election, in February 2023. Bassey says the meeting was, “shunned by the front-running political candidates” – and that, judging from their public statements, “the parties are all enamoured with rent-seeking from the murky oil and gas sector”.

Primary energy supply (top), and final energy consumption (above), in 2015. Source: IRENA (2023)

At COP26 in 2021, the Buhari government committed to “carbon neutrality” by 2060. Nigeria’s Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) commits to reduce fugitive methane emissions from oil and gas operations 60% by 2031. According to the IEA, Nigeria’s NDC “includes objectives” consistent with limiting global mean temperature increases to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels, and with limiting the increase to 1.5°C.

The Climate Tracker website gives Nigeria an overall rating of “almost sufficient”, citing continued “mixed messages on energy priorities”. They think Nigeria’s policies and targets “represent a fair contribution to limiting global warming with its own resources”. But to reduce emissions to a level actually consistent with 1.5ºC, “it needs to decarbonise its economy and will require international support to do so”.

The Paris Agreement and its NDCs are based on territorial emissions, and they focus on greenhouse gas reductions to the exclusion of other environmental indices. In Nigeria, so long as fossil fuel extraction remains, so too will ongoing environmental and social catastrophes – regardless of where those fossil fuels are finally combusted, and regardless of what comes next in the way of a domestic green transition.

Nigeria’s NDC objectives were developed in the Energy Transition Plan (ETP), launched by the Buhari government in November 2022.[3] Parallel to the ETP is a “Nigeria Integrated Energy Plan” (NIEP, January 2022), outlining electrification and clean cooking pathways to 2030.

The ETP website makes a clear case for the 2060 carbon neutrality goal: “Desertification in the north, floods in the centre, pollution and erosion on the coast and the associated socio-economic consequences all allude to the reality and grave impacts of climate change. Consequently, bold action to limit the impacts of climate change must be undertaken urgently.”

The Plan’s main objectives are: lifting 100 million Nigerians out of poverty; economic growth; bringing universal access to “modern energy services”, with universal access to electricity by 2030; managed decline of the oil sector, while retaining natural gas as a “transitionary fuel”; “fair, inclusive and equitable energy transition” across Africa; and streamlining all domestic energy transition initiatives.

Access to electricity is front and centre. The 2030 goal means massively extending, and strengthening, the present electricity infrastructure, and the scale of electricity generation, and doing so very rapidly.

The Plan seeks to replace 75% of traditional firewood stoves by 2030, with 50% of households on natural gas instead. In 2050, it sees 65% of households with electric or biogas cookstoves, rising to 100% by 2060 – across urban and rural locations.

Recent analysis by the Africa Policy Research Institute characterises this as the previous government’s “elaborate climate and energy transition architecture”. But it concludes that it is “hamstrung by internal inconsistencies and competition among line agencies for control over different policy aspects.”

The current president, Bola Tinúbú, appears to remain onboard with the ETP – at least formally – but he chooses to emphasise the continued role for the oil and gas sectors within the ETP.

Alarmingly, Tinúbú’s oil minister, Heineken Lokpobiri, recently declared that the Nigerian government only wanted an energy transition on the basis of an enlarged fossil fuel sector:

Africa, including Nigeria, cannot hastily transition with aid or grants. What we need is a strategic investment in our fossil fuels sector to bolster our economy and ensure energy security. 

He said that “Nigeria recognises the need to rely on its fossil fuels to finance this transition.”

The Carbon Tracker website notes: “the energy transition by Nigeria’s executive branch remain ambiguous with a strong focus on continuing oil and gas development after the election of President Bola Tinúbú.”

The arguments about Nigeria’s strategies for energy supply to households pit powerful interests in government and corporations, who emphasise the role of fossil gas, against environmentalists and social movements who point to the urgent need to invest in the electricity network, in order to realise the tremendous potential of solar power and other renewable energy sources.

For much more on those arguments, see Making Homes and Energy Transition in Nigeria, by Tom Ackers (a free, downloadable PDF), and linked posts: Nigeria: meeting the need for housing and Nigeria: towards sustainable homes for all.

References.

[1] Analysis by Bloomberg points to a rapid expansion of solar power capacity in the next few years.

[2] Author’s calculation based on Energy Consumption in the UK data and UN DESA’s population estimate for 2015.

[3] An outline of the Plan on the government’s website, and a prospectus for investors, seems to be all that is publicly available.

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Nigeria 🏘 Bringing Energy To Homes

Ten links to a diverse range of opinion that might be of interest to TPQ readers. They are selected not to invite agreement but curiosity. Readers can submit links to pieces they find thought provoking.


Lynx By Ten To The Power Of One Thousand Three Hundred And Sixty Six

Dr John Coulter ✍ This past weekend has always been very special in our family circle as we remember those who served and sacrificed during the various conflicts of the 20th and 21st centuries.


Today is Armistice Day - 11th November - the day on which in 1918 on the 11th day of the 11th month at the 11th hour, the guns fell silent marking the end of the Great War (1914-18) in which millions were slaughtered or maimed.

Yesterday, Sunday 10th November, was Remembrance Sunday, when I laid a simple wooden cross with a red Poppy on it to remember family loved ones who served, but are no longer with us.

This year, I laid the cross at the war memorial in the north coast town of Castlerock as I accompanied fellow Boys’ Brigade colleagues in laying the BB wreath.

My little cross bears the names of seven family members. They are:

  • William Ferris, my wife’s grandfather, who served with the British Army in the Second World War.
  • Robert Coulter, my dad, who served as a chaplain to the Ulster Special Constabulary Association.
  • John Coulter, my grandfather on my dad’s side after whom I am named, who served with the Royal Flying Corps in the Great War.
  • Arthur Henderson, my cousin on my dad’s side, Royal Ulster Constabulary Reserve, who was murdered in the 1970s in Tyrone by the IRA whilst on duty.
  • Ricky Coulter, my great uncle on my dad’s side, Royal Air Force, who was killed in action when his bomber was shot down during World War Two and has no known grave.
  • William Holmes, my great uncle on my mother’s side, British Army, who was killed at the Battle of Cambrai in 1917 and has no known grave.
  • Billy Coulter, my great uncle on my dad’s side, who served with the Northumberland Fusiliers in the Great War and the Home Guard in the Second World War.

In recent years, the Poppy symbol has become a subject of much debate. For me, there is just the original red Poppy. Folk have tried to introduce various different coloured Poppies to represent their individual campaigns.

Over the years, too, there has been a debate about folk who choose not to wear a Poppy. They have that choice because of the service and sacrifice who gave their lives so that our generation could enjoy that freedom of choice.

Watching all the documentaries about the Great War and how it started, I have reached the conclusion that had many of the inbred royals who headed up their respective nations decided on a family get-together, the slaughter of World War One could have been avoided.

Then again, had it not been for the outbreak of the Great War in 1914, would the looming Irish Civil War have been between the Ulster Volunteers from Unionism and nationalism’s Irish Volunteers and Irish Citizens Army, rather than in the 1920s between the pro and anti-Treaty republican factions?

In short, just as Irish folk died or were wounded in their tens of thousands on the Western Front or at sea with nationalist and unionist being killed side by side, would that same slaughter have occurred on the island of Ireland between unionist and nationalist?

One of the bloodiest battles of the Great War was the Somme in 1916. Those German shells and bullets did not distinguish between Catholic or Protestant, unionist or nationalist.

Perhaps those who choose not to wear the Poppy, or malign its significance, may wish to ponder what would have happened if Kaiser Bill had won the Great War or Hitler had won World War Two. In the former, we would all now have to wear the notorious Iron Cross; in the latter case, all would have to wear the swastika - no choice; wear it or be shot!

There are so many freedoms in 2024 which the woke society and liberal elite take for granted. Again, this year marked the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings, a military operation which also marked the Allies gaining a serious foothold in Europe and the beginning of the end of Hitler’s notorious Nazi Third Reich.

During those landings in Normandy, the Americans suffered horrendous losses at Omaha Beach.

I simply ask the woke community - what if those landings had been a military disaster and Hitler had used that disaster as a springboard to invade the United Kingdom? Would a woke community ever exist in Hitler’s Nazi world?

Whether you decide to mark Armistice Day today or not, just remember that a new Axis of Evil is being formed between Russia, North Korea and China and that the freedoms to wear or not wear a Poppy may again soon be in jeopardy.

As we the generation living in 2024 use today to mark the freedoms of our Western democracy, do we harbour the same fears that people felt by the generations who lived in 1914 as the Great War unleashed its horrors across the globe? In short, is history about to repeat itself?
 
Follow Dr John Coulter on Twitter @JohnAHCoulter
John is a Director for Belfast’s Christian radio station, Sunshine 1049 FM. 

Choices On Poppy Wearing Came At Great Cost

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of One Thousand Three Hundred And Sixty Five

 

A Morning Thought @ 2331

Gearóid Ó Loingsigh ☭ writing in Substack on 21-October-2024


.
A number of years ago I read Ta-Nehisi Coates’ book We Were Eight Years in Power, which was a eulogy to the Obama era and people like himself who had done well out of that period in the US. It was a terrible book, rightly slated by many and led to black academic and activist Cornel West describing him as the neoliberal wing of the black freedom struggle.[1] The book was so bad, I barely got half way through it and put it down never to pick it up again. I never thought I would read another of his books, though I have read some articles of his. Then came his new book The Message and the criticism from the Right on his comments on Palestine. So, I surrendered and read it. This time in its entirety. It is an easy well written read.

As with all his books, this is very much about him. His preferred pronouns are definitely I and My (yes, I know My is not a pronoun, but none of this pronoun nonsense obeys the rules of grammar in any case). It deals with three trips he made and how he felt about them and the issues that arose. Given the CBS interview I fully expected to find some hard critique of the US, Israel and Apartheid, though that is not his style. Instead, he relates stories about his experiences in Palestine, talking to Palestinians and also to Israeli settlers. That is it. 

The Israelis obviously do not come out well in the book. How could they? Coates likens his experiences in Palestine to Jim Crow in the US and Apartheid in South Africa. They are the comments and observations on what he saw, and pretty much middle of the road. He is no Norman Finkelstein with his searing condemnations of Israeli massacres and Apartheid. It says more about the US media that Coates, interesting, but in no way extreme comments, have provoked such fury.

This part of the book, is partly a Mea Culpa for previous articles he had written in which he praises Israel, chief among them, apparently, is his essay published in The Atlantic, 'The Case for Reparations.'  In the essay, he liberally and uncritically quotes terrorists and murderers such as David Ben-Gurion and Menachem Begin.[2] He has much to apologise for in that essay. The essay starts off with a biblical epigraph from the book of Deuteronomy and also an anonymous quote from 1861:

By our unpaid labor and suffering, we have earned the right to the soil, many times over and over, and now we are determined to have it.

Except the land in question, that which Lincoln promised to give to freed slaves was land that had or would be stolen from native American Indians, who do not figure in his case for reparations, just like Palestinians didn’t exist for him. It is a thoroughly vile, though well researched piece, that I have criticised previously in an essay entitled Repar✔️onsWithout Talking About Capitalism[3] and won’t go into again here.

He now says that he is ashamed of some of the things he said in that essay which he mentions in his book. He does not mention an earlier essay which leaves no doubt as to where his loyalty and politics lies. The Negro Sings of Zionism.[4] In it he compares Zionism to Black Nationalism, Theodore Herzl the founder of the Zionist movement to Huey Newton and even Malcolm X! This essay was written only months before Obama, his hero, came to power and was in the throes of his election campaign. Obama was and, like Kamala Harris, still is an ardent supporter of Israeli atrocity. Coates was not going to challenge Obama on this point, ever. And even now in the midst of the genocide in Gaza he has publicly called for people to vote for Kamala Harris, saying that sometimes the choices are bad.[5] And further, he says a Kamala presidency which supports “apartheid and genocide” would be nightmare scenario “of being the first Black woman president and having 2,000-pound bombs with your name on them dropping on Gaza.”[6] Except it is not. It is business as usual.

The only nightmare is for the Palestinians, not for him or the rest of the liberals who will vote for Harris. Under Obama, the US bombed at least six countries, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, where the Houthis are actually challenging both the US and Israel and of course Libya where the toppling of Gaddafi led to the reintroduction of open-air slave markets where black Africans were once again for sale. Not a minor point you would think for a black identitarian. In 2016 alone, Obama in his final year of his presidency dropped a staggering 26,171 bombs i.e. three bombs every hour, every day of the year.[7] Meanwhile Coates was waxing lyrical about how he and others like him had spent eight years in power. He should own it! That was on Coates as well. He doesn’t get to wash his hands now.

Sometimes the choices are bad, he claims. But would he tolerate a white person voting for a racist politician on the grounds that they had good positions on other issues, such as abortion? I think not. His arrogance leads him to think he and Harris deserve a pass on this now. He doesn’t, nobody does. Neither does the hypothetical white voter who wants to vote for some racist who has good positions on other issues.


The level of ignorance that Coates claims for himself is hard to fathom and even harder to believe. He claims to not be sure when exactly in his visit to Palestine he first heard the term Nakba. He also states that:

For as sure as my ancestors were born into a country where none of them was the equal of any white man, Israel was revealing itself to be a country where no Palestinian is ever the equal of any Jewish person anywhere.

Revealing itself? Under which rock had Coates been hiding? Had he not heard of Operation Cast Lead? It was launched in the same year he sang his hymn to Zionism. It resulted in around 1,500 Palestinian deaths, mainly civilians and the displacement of 100,000 people. Did he never hear of the Goldstone Report on that operation? And the scandal when Goldstone was forced to recant? It was one of many such assaults on Gaza. All of this and other incursions have been well documented.

Writers write. Everyone knows that, it is their art, their trade. But more than write, they read. All writers read, even the bads ones have to read something occasionally. Coates’ ignorance is not credible. When he researched his essays praising Zionism, did he not come across a single solitary article to give him some pause for thought? Any piece by Finkelstein, Ilán Pappé, Chomsky, anyone at all? His feigned ignorance is not plausible.

In his song to Zionism, Coates looked at the conflict through his identitarian eyes, and chose a side that he thought was closest to his own identity. His “repentance” is a similar process. He now sees the Palestinians through those eyes. We have no idea how far he will go with this and when he will backtrack. Like many writers he can read the room and probably feels now is a good moment to be on the Palestinian side. But his repentance only goes so far. If Harris wins the election, he will at some point write Another Eight Years in Power. Or if she loses The Land of Milk and Honey We Were Deprived of.

He states early on his book that “we could never practice writing solely for the craft itself, but must necessarily believe our practice to be in service of that larger emancipatory mandate.” Like Gandhi said of British civilisation, it would be a good idea. But what is that mandate? Abortion rights in the US, but genocide in Palestine?

He has little understanding or willingness to deal with issues of capitalism, imperialism, or his own role in it all. The book will through its anecdotes prove interesting to many and he has an easy-to-read style. You could read this book in one sitting. Just don’t expect any deep analysis or understanding, there isn’t any. I have said nothing of the other two parts to the book, which almost deserve a critique of their own, though it would be more favourable than I have been thus far on his coverage of Palestine. Borrow it, don’t buy it. Money is hard to come by, Coates is not short of a bob or two and there are better things to spend your money on.

References

[1] The Guardian (17/12/2017) Ta-Nehisi Coates is the neoliberal face of the black freedom struggle. Cornel West. 

[2] The Atlantic (06/2014) The Case For Reparations. Ta-Nehisi Coates. 

[3] Ó Loingsigh, G. (18/08/2020) Reparaons Without Talking About Capitalism. 

[4] The Atlantic (13/05/2008) The Negro Sings of Zionism. Ta-Nehisi Coates. 

[5] Des Moines Register (15/10/2024) Ta-Nehisi Coates says he'll likely vote for Kamala Harris. 'Sometimes, the choices are bad'. F. Amanda Tugade. 

[6] Forward (10/10/2024) Ta-Nehisi Coates says Harris funding Gaza war as first Black female president would be ‘nightmare’. 

[7] The Guardian (09/01/2024) America dropped 26,171 bombs in 2016. What a bloody end to Obama's reign. Medea Benjamin.

⏩ Gearóid Ó Loingsigh
 is a political and human rights activist with extensive experience in Latin America.

Ta-Nehisi Coates 🪶A Zionist Repents

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of One Thousand Three Hundred And Sixty Four

Counterpunch Written by Alfred de Zayas.

31-October-2024

The Kazan Declaration of 23 October 2024, adopted at the 16th BRICS Summit hosted by Russia in the city of Kazan on the Volga river from 22 to 24 October and attended by 36 countries constitutes a pivotal moment for humanity. There is hope in the air, a certain optimism that we can gradually change the paradigm, marshal the world disorder, move away from bloc-mentality, abandon confrontational politics, phase out dependence on the US-dollar, and craft a coherent policy to enhance trade, social and cultural exchange in tandem with the Purposes and Principles of the UN Charter and in the spirit of the UNESCO Constitution.

True enough, US and NATO provocations and war-mongering are not likely to disappear anytime soon. In fact, judging by what we read in the mainstream media, there is a surge in bellicose rhetoric in the West and a real danger that continued escalation will drive humanity to Apocalypse — in which case the UN Charter and the Kazan Declaration will not matter, because we will no longer inhabit planet Earth. Civilizations are not eternal. The Assyrian, Persian, Etruscan, Maya civilizations all went under. We could wake up dead tomorrow – if we do not prevent a nuclear confrontation. As John Lennon sang, “War is over – if you want it”.

While tensions will persist for years, the very existence of BRICS and the future-oriented Kazan Summit offer an alternative to Western nihilism. BRICS has just added 13 new members, and there are dozens more who want to join. This is eloquent proof that the world is changing and will continue to evolve away from US hegemonic fantasies. Indeed, BRICS is far more representative of global realities than the EU or the G-7. The thirteen new members are Algeria, Belarus, Bolivia, Cuba, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand, Turkey, Uganda, Uzbekistan and Vietnam – a panorama that encompasses all continents.

Continue reading @ Counterpunch.

The BRICS Summit In Kazan 🪶 A Manifesto for a Rational World Order

Right Wing Watch 👀 In an article published Friday in “The Stream,” a religious-right platform founded by televangelist James Robison, senior editor John Zmirak and co-author Jason Jones called for thousands of Trump opponents to “pay a brutal price” for what they claimed has been the unjust persecution of Jan. 6, 2021 protesters and “those who reported the facts about the 2020 election”.


  • Courageous attorneys like Sidney Powell, Rudolph Giuliani and John Eastman — whose careers and finances have been devasted by vicious, incessant lawfare.
  • Honest election workers such as Tina Peters, who faced vicious prosecution for doing their jobs.
  • Truthtellers such as Eric Metaxas, Naomi Wolf, Dinesh D’Souza, David Clements, Mike Lindell, Steve Bannon, Peter Navarro, Gen. Mike Flynn, Emerald Robinson, Gregory Stenstrom, Leah Hoopes, and countless others — who faced vindictive lawsuits by billion-dollar corporations, lost jobs and income, boycotts, debanking, and in some cases lawless prosecution by our corrupted institutions.
Jones and Zmirak wrote:

It’s not just that these good people need to get their good names and livelihoods back. Those who persecuted them must pay a brutal price. Thousands in the FBI and DOJ must lose their jobs, be stripped of their pensions, and in some cases face prison terms. 

Continue reading @ Right Wing Watch.

Religious-Right Activists Want To ‘Decontaminate’ U.S. 🪶 Make Trump Opponents Pay ‘Brutal Price’

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of One Thousand Three Hundred And Sixty Three

 

A Morning Thought @ 2330

Tommy McKearney If the political entity known as Northern Ireland were a hospital patient, above its bed would hang a notice reading “do not resuscitate”. 

9-October-2024

So dire is that area’s performance across a range of issues, from the political to the economic, that only those blinded by outdated prejudice can argue for its continuation. Should anyone question this assessment, stop for a moment and consider some pertinent facts that have made the Six Counties the incurable basket-case it has become.


Take the health situation for a start. Recent figures produced by the British Medical Association (1) record that 26% of the North’s population is waiting for a first consultation. Approximately 545,000 people are waiting for elective care, making this the highest recorded number since the database began in June 2008. Bear in mind the population of the 6-Counties is still less than 2 million.

Consider then the housing question. In light of the fact that this issue was a major factor in sparking the civil rights movement and the subsequent years of conflict, one might be forgiven for thinking this matter would have been resolved many decades ago. Well, one would be mistaken. According to a recent BBC report there is approximately 47,000 households on the social housing waiting list, with 75% of those experiencing stress. Moreover, the official homeless statistics for the North calculated in June stood at 55,000 people, including 4,500 children.

Reflecting on those dismal statistics may cause residents of the region to pour themselves a cool glass of water. Should they do so, let them be careful not to draw refreshments from the largest fresh-water lake in Ireland. We are referring here to Lough Neagh, source of drinking water for 40% of the North’s population, and currently polluted by widespread – and health endangering – green algae.

Lough Neagh’s contamination is caused in large part by discharges from the agricultural sector, yet even such a basic issue as fresh water appears beyond the ability of the local devolved administration to remedy. A failing entirely in keeping with a body that took seven months to produce a programme for government, resulting in a document accurately described by Brian O’Neill, writing for the Slugger O’Toole website, as “88 pages of vacuous waffle” (2).

Nor was O’Neill alone in expressing disappointment. Many commentators highlighted the Executive’s failure to specify a timeframe for any of its aspirations or an ability to provide a suitable allocation of funding to see its programme implemented.

It is undeniable that many of the above mentioned problems are not unique to the North. Housing and health deficiencies are also major problems in the Republic. Nevertheless, there exists a huge and significant difference in that south of the border: citizens have the ability to change government policy. Arguably, the Republic’s electorate has been too tolerant of defective administrations, yet initiatives such as the anti-water tax protests demonstrate that its people have the power to exercise influence on those in office.

Residents of the Six Counties enjoy no similar ability to impact upon the centre of power that indisputably resides with Westminster. Because, notwithstanding the technical designation of Northern Ireland as being an integral part of the United Kingdom, the North has always been viewed and treated by governments in London as a place apart.

Rather than being “as British as Finchley”, the area is treated in practice as a colony. For the first 50 years of the northern state’s history it, alone within the UK, had its own parliament to which Westminster granted a measure of autonomy. However, when this arrangement was threatened by instability in the late 1960s/early 1970s, the British response was informative.

Treating the situation as a colonial uprising rather than a grievous democratic aberration, London dispatched troops. Those soldiers were fresh from Britain’s imperial conflict zones and invariably led by so-called “counter-insurgency experts” such as the infamous Frank Kitson. Supporting the military in the 1970s were a number of appointees to head up the RUC, men with service in colonial conflict zones. (3)

Although the sharp militaristic edge is no longer visible, in practice the designation has remained. The Six Counties is governed from London as if it were a colony. The local devolved administration has little power or influence. With no fiscal authority, it depends for funding on a block grant decided on exclusively by Whitehall. A British cabinet minister, referred to as a “Secretary of State”, is assigned to act as viceroy.

It is this office that exercises real power in the North, as evidenced most lately by the current incumbent’s decree to axe funding for Casement Park and pause financing for two city deals for the Mid South-West and the Causeway Coast and Glens councils. More notable still was Viceroy Benn’s decision to overlook a stark high court criticism of the controversial Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery (ICRIR) and deny a public enquiry into Troubles-related deaths. Moreover, at last month’s Labour Party conference, the British Prime Minister never once uttered the words Northern Ireland during his key-note address.

In light of all this, it is surely well beyond time to draw down the curtain on Britain’s first colony by calling an end to the zombie political entity that is Northern Ireland.

References.

1/ “NHS under pressure”, Northern Ireland BMA website
2/ O’Neill, B (2024) “Stormont. Frig away off with your ‘consultations’ and do something!”, Slugger O’Toole website.
3/ “Legacy of Colonialism”, Pat Finucane Centre website.

Tommy McKearney is a left wing and trade union activist. 
Follow on Twitter @Tommymckearney

The Zombie Political Entity In The North

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of One Thousand Three Hundred And Sixty Two