Resistance to Hydroelectric Dams in Mongolia ⁠— Toward Freedom

New article published with Toward Freedom, including interviews with Eugene Simonov (conservation scientist and coordinator of Rivers without Boundaries, Russia) and Sukhgerel Dugersuren (director of Mongolian research group Oyu Tolgoi). Excerpt:

In recent years, Mongolia has sought to expand its construction of hydroelectric dams in the northern provinces, where large watersheds connect Mongolia to the Buryat’ Republic in Siberia. Since the introduction of Mongolia’s Action Plan for Implementation of the Green Development Policy for the period of 2016–2030, the country has identified the river-systems in the northern provinces of Khövsgöl, Bulgan, Orkhon, and the Selenge as potential sources of hydroelectricity.[1]

These plans would have direct effects on the Selenge and Eg rivers, as well as the larger Baikal basin within Russia. The Green Development Policy also presents hydroelectric development as the next step for Mongolia to transition from fossil fuels. The country, however, has experienced a significant loss of rivers and lakes in the past 20 years, signaling to the dramatic effects of the extractive and agricultural industries on Mongolia’s water sources. Hydroelectric projects, as well as the central mining industry, continue to demonstrate a lack of transparency, accountability for transboundary environmental impacts, and a resistance toward meaningful consultation with impacted communities.

Read the full article on Toward Freedom: https://towardfreedom.org/archives/asia-archives/between-sacred-waters-and-natural-capital-resistance-to-hydroelectric-dams-in-mongolia/.

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Tripwire 15: from a flight of objects that seemed real

Tripwire 15 is out! Cover image is “Collapsing Liberty” by Omar Pimienta. Published are early excerpts from A Flight of Objects that Seemed Real.

three bits from the excerpts:

The artist from Turin says, I can’t repeat myself, I can’t talk about the same thing repeatedly. He consumes words with the luxury of exchanging topics like seasonal fashions, concerned at one moment with flights to San Francisco, and balancing work-life, and the Caiman Islands, and my thighs. Limp palmfuls pawing at my ass against a wall on an off-Chinatown market street, weakly cupping my thighs while condominiums rise on old graveyards. What do we become under each other’s hands but humiliation?

…

Bare little bird between my palms, you dissolve and I learn you more into my hands, your warmth cupping you into something tender and breakable, an intuitive stream of lip-trace over your shaking beak husks, winglike wraiths, that slip in your sleeping between my fingers, licking the dry shadows of their emptiness. Even as a shell-like, driftwood light-bearing shadow of voiceless language, you find every space in me. The rapidity of light that thinks over every pace, entering me, somnambulant. You never announced your arrival. Unnoticed in a deeper course of blood until the absence is unbearable and the material around is frighteningly delicate. You break against my ears every day. How many shards you have already left? I’m piecing them together, humming into them, a manic invocation into the laws of vibration and matter, improbable, telling sound how to behave so that you stand before me again.

…

Small profits are made out of the semantics of suicide. The elegance of theory allows another form of escape for radicals. Dissatisfaction is revolt. Unhappiness is essential rebellion. So refuse to be happy. Manufacture resistance, replicate sterilised poor-punk. Pushing purchased academpunk. Punkt. Punctum and the necessity to administer nodes of competence. The high-fidelity preservation systems of nonmilitantantinatalists. Vibrant material representatives of the Neuedemokratische and correct thinking. Warrior scholars, graduates of the fine art of impunity, waging class wars in the hills of Switzerland, on the warm beaches of Malta. Intellectual elite spooning warm oatmeal off of ultramarine tablecloths. The existence of tablecloths. And, sometimes, tables. “Our culture is suffering from ‘circulatory problems’: the waste is backing up”.

Decay of the Third Kingdom: translation in Coolloud: 錫安主義、殖民與以色列核武發展

A section of The Decay of the Third Kingdom has been translated by 岑建興 for 苦勞網特約翻譯 (lit. Coolloud, “hard work”), available here: https://www.coolloud.org.tw/node/92927/. The full series was originally published in Warscapes.

Editor’s note from this article:

【編按】自去年（2018）5月美國單方面撤出伊朗核協議並對德黑蘭祭出經濟制裁後，中東地區衝突持續升高。近日（5/25）美國總統川普更表示，將增添部署1,500名兵力至中東。當美國將伊朗軍隊指定為「恐怖主義組織」的同時，本文提醒讀者：自1967年六日戰爭以來，以色列在被佔領的巴勒斯坦土地上發展核武，並且獲得西方盟國的技術奧援，才是區域內真實存在的核武威脅。

本文是一系列檢視以色列於內蓋夫沙漠發展核能文章的首篇，作者蒐集FBI與CIA的解密報告、文件與新聞報導，描述以色列早期核子發展與錫安主義及對巴勒斯坦人民的驅逐如何產生關聯。全文刊載於獨立線上雜誌「Warscapes」，作者Lital Khaikin特別為苦勞網縮減篇幅，中文版即是根據較短版本編譯。

欲對此議題了解更多的讀者，以下是第「二」、「三」、「四」篇的連結。

da “alethe” | formavera

The Italian literary blog formavera has published some excerpts from alethe, a collection of older poems that were so kindly translated last year by Valerio Cianci. The full, original translations were published in a little e-book for Kipple. Here is formavera‘s selection of excerpts in Italian:

https://formavera.com/2019/05/20/valerio-cianci-traduzioni-da-lital-khaikin/

Pubblichiamo tre poesie di Lital Khaikin dalla raccolta alethe (Kipple officina libraria 2018), tradotta da Valerio Cianci.

e io continuerò a fingere una logica attorno a ciò che potresti essere
donandole fede perché possa nascondersi in un suono irrevocabile
dalla patetica espressione,
perché tu possa vestirti d’una forma primitiva, nell’ordine delle linee e dei loro inevitabili
valori, perché la nostra intersezione possa infine giungere a un punto

Decay of the Third Kingdom – Warscapes

My four-part series “The Decay of the Third Kingdom” is complete and published with Warscapes. “The Decay of the Third Kingdom” explores the history and contemporary context of nuclear development in Israel, and its implications in the apartheid conditions imposed on Occupied Palestine. Link to all four articles is available here.

Decay of the Third Kingdom – Part 4

Part 4, the final section, of my four-part series Decay of the Third Kingdom is published on Warscapes. Thank you to Michael Busch for his editorial work on this series. Link is here: http://www.warscapes.com/reportage/decay-third-kingdom-israeli-nuclear-development-and-future-negev-desert-part-four

Excerpt from Part 4:

Natural uranium is subject to safeguards observed by the IAEA, which regulate the production and trade of uranium for peaceful, non-military use. Uranium that is a by-product of other industrial or agricultural processes is derived from what are described as “unconventional sources.” Phosphates are one example—uranium can be extracted from phosphate rock in the process of making fertilizers. Israeli physicist Shelheveth Freier commented in 1987 on Israel’s policy on nuclear non-proliferation that the country had developed a method to “extract uranium and return the phosphates to the phosphate industry.”

Freier described a tripartite agreement reached between Israel, France and Britain on the production of heavy water. “The French Atomic Energy Commission came along,” he claimed. “They said, “You know what? We don’t know how long there’ll be reserves, rich reserves of uranium in the world. We’d like to buy your process of the extraction of uranium from phosphate and keep this plan in our drawer so that if we are hard put to we might begin extracting uranium say, from the phosphates in Algeria.””

IAEA safeguards do not sufficiently address uranium produced from these unconventional sources, whether as a by-product of mining or of ore processing. This allows governments to exploit trade agreements and import one material, only to divert the derivative products towards military purposes. According to the World Nuclear Association, current facilities for the recovery of uranium from phosphoric acid are located in “Canada, Spain, Belgium (for Moroccan phosphate), Israel, and Taiwan,” and Brazil is known to process uranium from phosphate from Santa Quiteria and Itataia mines.

Full article linked here.

Decay of the Third Kingdom – Part 3

Part 3 of my four-part series Decay of the Third Kingdom is published on Warscapes. Thank you to Michael Busch for his editorial work on this series. Link is here: http://www.warscapes.com/reportage/decay-third-kingdom-israeli-nuclear-development-and-future-negev-desert-part-three

Excerpt from Part 3:

It is already well known that Israel dumps sewage waste into West Bank aquifers, contaminating water with toxic elements like chloride, arsenic, cadmium, mercury, and lead. “A Seeping Time Bomb: Pollution of the Mountain Aquifer by Sewage” is a report from 2006 that examined the contamination of fresh water sources by pollutants, noting that the water in many wells and springs in the West Bank was “unfit for consumption” due to the presence of nitrates and fecal matter. The report indicated that one of the biggest impediments to proper sewage treatment was Israel’s withholding of permits and security clearance for donor infrastructure (largely from Germany) to construct proper infrastructure in Palestine.

Israel is able to exert control by imposing unsanitary conditions and economic dependency on Palestinians over a long term. In much the same way, Israel does not necessarily have to launch a nuclear bomb to suffer its toxic effects. Nuclear waste from the Dimona reactor contains high concentrations of Caesium-137, an element that does not occur naturally and is associated with spent nuclear fuel. In 2016, the Negev Nuclear Research Centre was looking for alternative dump sites for nuclear waste from plutonium processing at the Dimona reactor. Sites being considered were in the northeastern Negev—that is, once again, near the city of Hebron in the West Bank. Israel had already been accused by Syrian government officials in 2003 and 2009 of burying nuclear waste in tunnels dug by the IDF into Mount Hermon in the Golan Heights.

Elevated radiation levels and the presence of non-natural isotopes have been detected near the Palestinian city of Hebron, just north of the Negev Nuclear Research Facility. A report from 2008 by Jaber Al Tmaizy (Coordinator of the Farmer’s Union in the City of Hebron) documents the elevated presence of unnatural radioactive elements, higher than background levels of radiation, in the soil in Hebron. Another report by Dr. Mahmoud Sa’adeh, head of the Palestinian delegation for International Physicists for the Prevention of Nuclear War, indicated dramatic increases in cancer detected in residents of Hebron. High rates of cancer have also been detected in Palestinian towns of Yatta, Al-Samu’a and al-Daharieh, all near Hebron. Another dumping ground for Israeli nuclear waste is in the Gaza Strip, near Al Bereij refugee camp and the town of Deir El Balah.

Full article linked here.

sac exquis

contribution to Sac Exquis text by continent. for HKW | Lebensformen / Life Forms.

There’s a beautiful #LifeForms program booklet available for 2€ today at HKW – including this #SacExquis contribution by @_continent_ – Inspired by Ursula K. Le Guin‘s “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction”. Let it guide you! pic.twitter.com/ufRlAcV1Sx— HKW | Technosphere (@HKWtechnosphere) April 25, 2019