Nuclear news – week to 29 March
While the world struggles with the problems of virus and vaccines, the nuclear industry, along with many others, is in something of a stalemate. But, as with last week, the industry’s propaganda about small nukes and climate action goes on relentlessly. At the same time, a number of articles have contradicted this propaganda, stressing the long delay in getting nuclear reactors up and running, their costs, and unsoved waste problem.
What it will take to vaccinate the world against COVID-19.
Climate Change Must Be Tackled as a Global Security Risk.
AUSTRALIA. Why Boris Johnson rejected Scott Morrison as speaker at climate summit, to Morrison’s fury. Australian govt quietly dumps French submarine purchase plan. Australian-French submarine contract on verge of being abandoned.
INTERNATIONAL
Beyond the pandemic, the priority should be the elimination of nuclear weapons.
The nuclear weapons issue is a women’s issue. Facts on who has nuclear weapons, and who might have, now or in the future.
3 governments join in USA’s promotion of conflict with China.
Small nuclear power plants no use in climate crisis. Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) says advanced nuclear reactors are not a viable option to combat climate change, Nuclear power costs – from the CATO Institute – a reality check for those who imagine nuclear as a climate solution.
There is new hope for freedom for Julian Assange
| JULIAN ASSANGE COULD FINALLY WALK FREE—IF WE SEIZE THE MOMENT https://arena.org.au/julian-assange-could-finally-walk-free-if-we-seize-the-moment/ |
ARENA ONLINE, SCOTT LUDLAM, 27 MAR 2021
For the first time in more than a decade there’s cause for hope. The tortuous chain of cause and effect that saw Australian publisher Julian Assange go from global news sensation to a freezing cell in a London prison may at last be ended if the Biden administration decides to make a principled break with the fateful decisions of President Donald Trump.
Trump’s decision in 2019 to prosecute Assange for espionage placed Assange at risk of a maximum prison sentence of 175 years. It crossed a line that President Obama’s administration had been unwilling to step over—not through any love of WikiLeaks but for the simple reason that accusing publishers of espionage ran headfirst into the principle of press freedom enshrined in America’s First Amendment. The ‘New York Times’ problem, they called it: if Assange goes to jail then so should the editor of the New York Times. The leaks at the centre of the case led to dozens of public interest stories in the Times and other publications around the world, including this one.
In January 2021 there was an unexpected turn: a London Magistrate’s Court decided to reject Trump’s request to extradite Assange from the United Kingdom to the United States. The election result and the court’s decision provide the circuit breaker this terrible miscarriage of justice so desperately needs.
Trump, and his accomplices in the Department of Justice and Department of State, are gone. On their way out the door they filed an appeal in the UK courts—a matter of routine, according to most observers—and there the matter rests.
President Biden’s pick for US attorney general, Merrick Garland, told the Senate judiciary committee of his commitment to the protection of rights, to fair treatment of the press, and to the exercise of prosecutorial discretion. It is impossible to reconcile any of these priorities with the continuation of the former president’s dangerous conflation of journalism and espionage.
President Trump relished open hostility to the media, treating the press as ‘the enemy of the people’. He had an ally in Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who showed zero interest in stepping up to help an Australian citizen in trouble. But now, far from Canberra, the ground is shifting.
In the United States, moves are afoot across civil society, the press and the legal profession to bring this dangerous episode to a close. Organisations with global reach, including Amnesty International, Reporters Without Borders and Human Rights Watch, have recognised the threat of this prosecution and stepped up a lobbying campaign to ensure the Biden administration drops the case. There is renewed energy around the world, from the Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance—Assange’s union here in Australia—to the remarkable work the US-based Courage Foundation is doing to help focus the mind of the incoming attorney general. Now is the time to raise our voices, to demand lawmakers here urge their American counterparts to let Julian Assange walk free and reunite with his family after more than ten years.
‘Transparency in government remains a vital national interest in a democracy, Garland has said. On 29 March his justice department is due to publish more details on its grounds for appeal. That’s how long we have to ensure that these words mean something.
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Australian government, along with others, supports USA in promoting conflict with China
Biden, alongside Morrison, Modi and Suga, continues conflict with China, Independent Australia, By Vijay Prashad | 29 March 2021 The U.S. is determined to maintain its dominance over the world and is unlikely to forfeit that without a fight, writes Vijay Prashad.
ON MARCH 12, the heads of government of four countries, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga and the United States President Joe Biden, met for a virtual meeting of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, better known as the Quad.
Modi’s opening remarks illustrate the emptiness of the public agenda; he called the Quad “a force for global good” with no details beyond a list of areas of collaboration, which were “vaccines, climate change and emerging technologies”. There was no direct mention of China during the meeting.
n the details relating to the launching of “an ambitious new joint partnership that is going to boost vaccine manufacturing,” a more disturbing agenda revealed itself. The vaccines are meant for Southeast Asia, which is a core area of U.S. contest against China, and the “emerging technologies” refers to the U.S. desire to substitute products from its own high-tech firms and supplant the attractiveness of the Chinese high-tech industry.
The goal of the Quad is to deepen the military and economic pressure against China.
The Quad was created in the aftermath of the tsunami of 2004 and then deepened by President Barack Obama as central to his “pivot to Asia“. But it did not take off until the U.S. Administration of Donald Trump began to rely upon this grouping to tighten pressure on China. It is for that reason that in late 2020, Trump gave the heads of governments of Australia, Japan and India the highest U.S. military decoration, the Legion of Merit.
These three partners are key players in the U.S. Government’s pressure campaign against China.
U.S. primacy in the region
In early January 2021, the U.S. Government declassified a 2018 document prepared for the Trump Administration, called the ‘U.S. Strategic Framework for the Indo-Pacific’. The text clearly states that the U.S. objective in Asia is to:
‘Maintain U.S. primacy in the region.’
The idea of “primacy” has a long history in U.S. foreign policy, going back to the early days after World War II. The United States government, in a series of documents, stated that it would seek to be the leading power in the world and it would shape the creation of global institutions to benefit the United States above all else.
The drafters of the 2018 policy from the U.S. National Security Council noted that the “threat” from China was not from its military.
Rather, the United States worried about Chinese developments in:
‘… cutting-edge technologies, including artificial intelligence and bio-genetics.’
The U.S. Government’s objective, according to the document, was to maintain ‘American industry’s innovation edge vis-à-vis China,’ which does not mean only to enhance U.S. industry, but also to prevent China from getting access to technology and finance.
The war in the Pacific promoted by the U.S. is not irrational.
As this document further points out:
‘Loss of U.S. preeminence in the Indo-Pacific would weaken our ability to achieve U.S. interests globally.’
President Joe Biden’s Administration, which inherits this document, will not set it aside.
All signs show that Biden will continue to push the general line that the U.S. must undermine Chinese scientific and technological development; this goal will be achieved not by the encouragement of U.S. industry but by military threats and by the attempted use of U.S. alliances to exclude Chinese firms from doing business in other countries……… https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/biden-alongside-morrison-modi-and-suga-continue-conflict-with-china,14939
The folly of USA provoking war with China
| Dragon’s threat real or imagined, but nuclear war will be a folly! The Pioneer, Monday, 29 March 2021 | Gwynne Dyer After a prolonged absence, the tradition of raising a bogey is back, though now it’s a Chinese threat in the Pacific, not a Russian threat in the Caribbean. In the early decades of the Cold War, this was the season when the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) defence chiefs would announce their spending plans for the next year and they would almost always “discover” some new threat from the erstwhile Soviet Union to justify the money. In the US, for instance, the Intelligence services traditionally found a Soviet armoured brigade hiding in Cuba every February or March. After a prolonged absence, the tradition is back, though now it’s a Chinese threat in the Pacific rather than a Russian threat in the Caribbean. Last week, Admiral Philip Davidson of the US Navy told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the Chinese were getting ready to invade Taiwan within the next six years. “I worry that they’re accelerating their ambitions to supplant the US and our leadership role in the rules-based international order…by 2050,” said the Admiral. “Taiwan is one of their ambitions before that, and I think the threat is manifest during this decade — in fact, in the next six years.” Then, should we expect a war with China by the 2027? Since the US Navy could not stop a Chinese amphibious invasion of Taiwan by conventional weapons alone — it’s too far from the US, too close to China and Beijing has lots of ship-killing missiles — it would necessarily be a nuclear war, or else America would just have to abandon its not-quite-ally………………….. By the final stage of the Cold War the political and military establishments on both sides had sobered up and were very careful in their choice of words. They didn’t make idle threats, they stopped fabricating “spring surprises”, and they did not assume that the other side would know when they were just chest-thumping for domestic political purposes.That generation, which eventually managed to turn the monstrous doomsday machine off, is gone now. In their place is a generation of senior politicians and military officers who don’t truly fear major war. It hasn’t happened within living memory, and they do not really believe it still could. Their counterparts in China and Russia are less vocal, but almost certainly the same.Compared to those who held their jobs on both sides at the end of the Cold War, they are little boys at play, but it’s the same old game. War between nuclear-armed powers would be insane, but it is not impossible. And they are doing this in the midst of a global pandemic. Moreover, they are talking like this in the opening phase of a huge climate and environmental crisis that will require a high level of global cooperation to survive. There is a cycle of learning and forgetting again in both military and political affairs and we are hitting the “forgetting” phase at just the wrong time.Gwynne Dyer’s new book is ‘Growing Pains: The Future of Democracy and Work’. The views expressed are personal. https://www.dailypioneer.com/2021/columnists/dragon—s-threat-real-or-imagined–but-nuclear-war-will-be-a-folly-.html |
A ‘deluded imperial fantasy’ — Beyond Nuclear International
UK announces huge increase in nuclear missiles for “Global Britain”
A ‘deluded imperial fantasy’ — Beyond Nuclear International
Batteries and renewables will outmatch coal and gas for reliable and cheap power, experts say — RenewEconomy
Business model underpinning coal and gas is collapsing, and the good news is that batteries and renewable energy can step in and keep the grid secure. The post Batteries and renewables will outmatch coal and gas for reliable and cheap power, experts say appeared first on RenewEconomy.
Batteries and renewables will outmatch coal and gas for reliable and cheap power, experts say — RenewEconomy
Australia still addicted to coal despite huge growth in wind and solar — RenewEconomy
New report shows record fall in coal generation in 2020 across the world, as wind and solar grow. But Australia highlights why the pace of change is still not quick enough. The post Australia still addicted to coal despite huge growth in wind and solar appeared first on RenewEconomy.
Australia still addicted to coal despite huge growth in wind and solar — RenewEconomy
Gas led recovery? AEMO says gas use in grid may all but disappear in 20 years — RenewEconomy
Coalition’s gas-led recovery plans look increasingly tenuous after AEMO report shows gas use in grid may nearly disappear within 20 years. The post Gas led recovery? AEMO says gas use in grid may all but disappear in 20 years appeared first on RenewEconomy.
Gas led recovery? AEMO says gas use in grid may all but disappear in 20 years — RenewEconomy
March 28 Energy News — geoharvey
Opinion: ¶ “The Real Reason Humans Are The Dominant Species” • From the time early humans first made fire to the fossil fuels that drove the industrial revolution, energy has played a central role in our development as a species. But the way we power our societies has also created humanity’s biggest challenge. It’s one […]
March 28 Energy News — geoharvey
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 