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Dur­ing the sum­mer, Kedis­tan spent a bit of time leaf­ing through the top­ic of nuclear pow­er in Turkey, a sto­ry show­ing that when the nuclearized Euro­pean States decide on an ener­gy tran­si­tion , they use the oppor­tu­ni­ty to sell nuclear pow­er sta­tions at the same time.

Look at the fin­ger but not at the moon” would be a good way to define the nuclear industry’s world commerce.

Ever since bor­der guards demon­strat­ed that clouds turn back at the sight of fron­tiers, and despite the Japan­ese cat­a­stro­phes, investors in nuclear pow­er qui­et­ly car­ry on their busi­ness of fab­ri­cat­ing radioac­tive waste human­i­ty will not know what to do with, except, for some of them, in order to pro­duce more weapons.

In the same way as a Monsanto/Bayer announces that giv­en the absence of alter­na­tives, agri­cul­ture will have to set­tle for their pes­ti­cides, the nuclear indus­try uses the excuse of the delays of invest­ments in renew­able ener­gies, and mobi­lizes these so-called invest­ments in its radi­ant busi­ness. Schiz­o­phre­nia rules when it comes to polit­i­cal decisions.

But a clos­er look — and Turkey serves as con­fir­ma­tion — this schiz­o­phre­nia obeys sim­ple laws hav­ing to do with the devel­op­ment of one of capitalism’s finan­cial sec­tors, that of the famous con­tem­po­rary glob­al­iza­tion  — when­ev­er pos­si­ble at some else’s expense while repa­tri­at­ing the prof­its at home. In pass­ing, we are deal­ing here with States for which growth and prof­itable waste at a glob­al lev­el rep­re­sent a cult, and who move hap­pi­ly along the con­crete path like Scrooge McDuck himself.
Turkey and the mega­lo-mani­a­cal projects of its Pres­i­dent being one of those.

In sim­ple lan­guage, in order to light up the night in emp­ty offices of the large Turk­ish metrop­o­lis­es, thus giv­ing off the image of moder­ni­ty and pow­er that will soon radi­ate on the world in 2023, there is need for ener­gy to replace imports and coal. Just as Turkey is in dire need of giant air­ports in order to greet the whole world, and new bridges in order to sell new cars…

Up until now, mon­ey and inter­est rates were at bar­gain prices, and every­thing seemed on track for 2023

The update in this per­fect­ly ortho­dox eco­nom­ic func­tion­ing of the the­o­ry of Neo-lib­er­al­ism, with one of those mon­e­tary crises  for which glob­al cap­i­tal­ism is well known, slight­ly com­pli­cates mat­ters for the Turk­ish Reis. And in fact, the con­fir­ma­tion of the launch­ing of two con­struc­tion sites for nuclear reac­tors demon­strates that the head­long rush remains its first choice which, from the per­spec­tive of cap­i­tal­ist investors is not ter­ri­bly reassuring.

And although the con­tract with Rus­sia is based on a 80-year leas­ing , assort­ed with a gas con­tracts, and that the one with the French and the Japan­ese indus­tries is at an advanced stage, one can rea­son­ably pre­dict that these reac­tors will still be talked about  more in terms of their ris­ing costs, giv­en the polit­i­cal and finan­cial climate.

The social and demo­c­ra­t­ic response remains lim­it­ed to small groups at the moment, divid­ed in oppos­ing polit­i­cal factions.

The fun­da­men­tal ques­tions con­cern­ing the cap­i­tal­ist preda­to­ry approach to ter­ri­to­ries and the dan­gers to the plan­et remain con­fi­den­tial or reserved to a few resis­tors, when pop­u­la­tions are not direct­ly involved. Polit­i­cal oppres­sion deals with the rest.

Here again, it is tru­ly lam­en­ta­ble to see how in the Euro­pean sus­tain­able tran­si­tion  milieux, nobody gives the slight­est thought to the export of these ills to regions con­sid­ered as exot­ic. We might almost be tempt­ed to ask “and where will you go tomor­row to spend your low-cost hol­i­days?”, in order to jos­tle euro-cen­trists’ con­scious­ness somewhat.

As a con­clu­sion that isn’t one, even if we have seen some Euro­pean strug­gles around ZAD (zones in need of pro­tec­tion) attempt­ing transna­tion­al link-ups toward the Mid­dle East and Turkey, we are far from see­ing the same thing when it involves Euro­pean polit­i­cal greening.

And yet, when AREVA’s dis­ci­ples (the firm has been re-named and is now known as Ora­no) hatch nuclear pow­er sta­tions in Turkey, the fight should be the very same as when it involves obtain­ing the shut-down of domes­tic sta­tions in Europe and else­where… (Not about to hap­pen with a snap of the fin­gers, we are well aware of that).

And while we’re at it, we would move for­ward some­what in the under­stand­ing of the deep caus­es of wars in the region, if these same Euro-cen­tered greens took into account the way potable water is used as a prize and here, again, ener­gy serv­ing as a pre­text, destroy­ing entire liv­ing eco sys­tems, includ­ing humans.

A French Min­is­ter of Ecol­o­gy, con­vert­ed to green cap­i­tal­ism, quit­ting his job won’t help to clar­i­fy the matter.

For the time being, there is talk, as a min­i­mum, of stop­ping use­less and destruc­tive con­struc­tion sites, and of denounc­ing togeth­er these dan­ger­ous cap­i­tal­ist ven­tures pol­lut­ing the future…These strug­gles are inseparable.


Translation from French by Renée Lucie Bourges

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