So now we know how to do it. After years of mysteries wrapped inside enigmas, we now know how any country, regardless of its international reputation, can lay its hands on nuclear energy for absolutely free… so long as the technology is used for “peaceful purposes” (for instance, "peacefully" blackmailing the entire world into giving whatever you want, whenever you want it).
And not just your nice, democratic countries, either. Oh no. Even a dyed-in-the-wool military dictatorship with no respect for (or even concept of) human rights – a country in which democratic opposition is banned by law, where free speech does not exist, and where torture and human rights violations are an undisguised, everyday fact of life… well, this is precisely the kind of country that gets rewarded with a nice memorandum of understanding, signed by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, for a nuclear reactor to power its national desalination programme.
Yes, indeed. I am talking about the Great People’s Arab Socialist Jamahariya of Libya here – you know, our friendly neighbours to the South, who very amicably sent a gunboat to stop us searching for oil in international waters in 1981, and a few years later (under the same leadership, in case you’ve all forgotten) drew a “line of death” across the Gulf of Sirte, threatening to declare instant war on all who dared cross it.
Ah, I hear you all say: but Libya has changed beyond recognition since then, hasn’t it? It’s no longer the maverick state it used to be in the 1980s. After all, it abandoned its weapons programme a couple of years ago; and besides, it also… um… erm… hang on…
OK, I give up. What exactly did Libya do, to suddenly enjoy the trust of European countries like France, while harmless little Malta evidently does not? (For let’s face it: the very least France could have done was consult us, before giving nuclear technology to the only country to have threatened us with military action since World War II…)
Apart from abandoning a programme to build nuclear weapons which none of us has ever seen – and which many believe did not exist, other than as a ruse to rid itself of its previous reputation as the pariah of the world – the answer appears to be "sweet FA".
With the possible exception of Tunisia, Libya is the only North African country not to have made even the tiniest concession to democracy since it was taken over by a military commander in a 1969 coup. Everywhere else, there has been at least some kind of devolution away from autocracy. Egypt held its first “free” multi-party elections in 2005. Admittedly it was a laughable affair, involving more rigging than the Marie Celeste, but at least it was a start. Elsewhere, Morocco has had a bi-cameral, multi-party legislative assembly since 1996 – a fact which makes the kingdom more democratic (technically, at least) than Malta.
Even Algeria’s 10-year civil war was precipitated by democratic forces, after general elections were cancelled in 1992. (Europe’s role in this sordid affair, by the way, makes for a very depressing footnote in the History of European Hypocrisy, Vol.XVIII. But that is another story…).
So make no mistake: of all the countries north of the Sahara, only Libya has so far resisted all notions of democracy. And to make matters worse, its human rights record is every bit as chilling as the many so-called African “failed states” at which horrify us so much. If you don’t believe me, you can look up the most recent country report on Libya compiled by Amnesty International. Word of advice, however: keep sleeping pills handy, they might come in useful over the next few weeks.
Actually, you needn’t bother with the AI reports. You can get a good idea of Libya’s human rights record simply by re-visiting the “negotiations” which landed Muammar with a nice new nuclear power station, courteously provided by his newfound buddy, Nicolas Sarkozy.
It went roughly like this:
1) Allow the standards of your health service to reach such a positively abysmal state that over 400 babies are infected with AIDS because of the unhygienic conditions at the Benghazi general hospital.
2) Concoct a bizarre and ludicrous conspiracy theory in order to blame the epidemic on the only foreign nurses and medics working at the same hospital (after all, the alternative would be to blame the Health Ministry, and consequently the government, and consequently Ghaddafi himself).
3) Imprison the foreign medics for eight years, during which time they raped, beaten and subjected to regular electric shock torture, until they sign a forced confession to multiple infanticide (note: the torture detail was kindly supplied by Muammar’s son, Seif Al Islam Ghaddafi, in a recent interview with Al Jazeera. Ghaddafi Junior also openly boasted about the technique he calls “political blackmail”… and rightly so, for it evidently works);
4) Sentence the Bulgarian nurses to death, and then play a game of cat-and-mouse with European interlocutors, until the release of the medics is finally secured in exchange for: a) a nice anti-missile and anti-tank system, neatly wrapped and with a card signed “T. Blair”, and; b) A shiny new nuclear reactor, complete with a small tag saying “Fond regards, Nicolas.”
5) Final note: If you followed the above instructions to the letter, you will find a long queue of European countries outside your tent, all desperately falling over each other in the mad scramble for lucrative deals with the Mediterranean’s last remaining full-time dictator.
Naturally, this is all part of Europe’s strategy to promote human rights and respect for human dignity around the world.
In a few words, what the French government has just done is trumpet the message that it is perfectly OK to detain and torture foreign nationals for no apparent reason, other than to openly blackmail the world into giving in to all your whims. Not only that: France has also provided an incentive for human rights violations, by rewarding torture with a technology which is actively denied to other countries.
This brings me to the remarkable double standards Europe employs when it comes to nuclear energy and nuclear proliferation. Can Iran have nuclear energy? No way. It’s a “rogue state”. Never mind that, regardless of its somewhat primitive policy regarding Israel, Iran is also a parliamentary democracy in its own right. Never mind that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, unlike Muammar Ghaddafi, was democratically elected, and could be democratically booted out tomorrow. These are all incidental trivialities. In practice, the dictator gets all the goodies, while the elected representative gets threatened with invasion and usurpation. Why? I have no idea. But it is certainly not because of any greater trustworthiness on the part of Libya. Far from it.
Which, of course, forms the other serious argument against Libya being granted nuclear power: a point which so far has been raised locally only by Alternattiva Demokratika.
Safety.
Incredibly for an island so replete with environmentalist organisations, no one outside the Green Party appears even remotely concerned about a nuclear power plant which will be used for desalination purposes less than 300 miles away. Any nuclear accident – and nuclear accidents do happen, although not always on the scale of Chernobyl in 1985 – will result in radiation contamination of the sea around Malta, which in turn would be an environmental disaster of unimaginable proportions. But this, it seems, is simply not a concern for Malta’s environmental groups. Nor for the Government, nor for that matter our equally lame Opposition. After all, Malta has long taken its rightful place in the queue for the Great Libyan Jamahariya’s Victory Kitchen.
The bottom line is that Malta is officially unconcerned with the health and safety of its own citizens. Fine. I’m not going to bother with this argument because, a) Malta has never cared for the health and safety of its citizens anyway – look under “construction” and “fireworks” for further details, and b) There are other nuclear reactors in the Mediterranean, which means we are already at risk anyway… although in this case the dangers are greater because of sheer proximity.
But there is one safety issue I would like to raise. When asked for the specific details of his nuclear agreement with Ghaddafi, Nicolas Sarkozy explained that his government will not be providing Libya with the technology to enrich uranium (which only proves that Sarko, while rash, is not completely insane). Instead, France will provide the enriched uranium itself, and also the technical experts to administer the reactor.
Oh, jolly good. And what guarantees do we have that Libya will not confiscate their passports, and then use them as economic hostages to wrest even more goodies out of an increasingly gullible and naïve Europe? After all, the five Bulgarian nurses (and one Palestinian doctor, whom we all seem to constantly overlook) were voluntary aides on the medical equivalent of missionary work in Benghazi. As we have already seen, they were arrested, detained, tortured and ultimately traded for a nuclear reactor.
This is the exact tactic Libya had used in its “mad dog” days, which just goes to show how little the country has changed since then. Some 20 years ago, expats working in the oil industry (mostly British) had their passports confiscated for no apparent reason. They were prevented from leaving the country, in some cases for years, while the Leader of the Revolution “negotiated” their release. One of them, an Irishman by the name of Adrian Keane, eventually escaped to Crete by means of a rickety sailing boat, and went on to write a book about the experience called “Walking on Water”.
Perhaps Sarkozy might want to add it to his Amazon shopping cart for future bedtime reading. If it’s out of print, I could always lend him my own copy (but please note: il s’appelle ‘retourner’)
In any case: we are clearly talking about a country with a long and proven track record of using anything or anyone that falls within its grasp as instant bargaining chips in an ongoing poker game with the West. And guess what? Sarkozy’s just gone and given them nuclear technology.
Now honestly: am I the only one in the entire Mediterranean basin to think that this is the mother of all fundamentally bad ideas? Don’t all speak at once...
