Nukes Corp Australia carries on
https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/89854964/posts/4401845915 25 Nov 22
Several times in the months since voters blatantly defied Rupert Murdoch’s direction to return the government of Scott Morrison, News Crap Australia has demonstrated its willingness to continue campaigning for the Liberal and National parties.
Not long after voters got it so very wrong and dared to elect a Labor Party government, new Opposition Leader Peter Dutton floated the idea of Australia adding nuclear power to its energy mix.
……………. one thing is clear, on the nuclear issue Mr Dutton has – as usual – enjoyed the active support of the Coalition parties’ advertising agency of choice, News Crap Australia.
Further evidence of the Murdoch media’s handiwork on behalf of Mr Dutton and his nuclear campaign has been on show in the national broadshit The Australian in just the past few days. (below on original)
Given that a group of pro-nuclear scientists will present their case at an event in Canberra today, we’ll no doubt see more and more Liberal Party advertisements… sorry, we’ll no doubt see more news stories and commentary in News Crap Australia outlets right up to the next federal election
It is difficult to fathom the commercial logic behind the nuclear push by News Crap Australia.
Surely, as our MGH researchers argue, young Australians are likely to be the strongest advocates of action to tackle climate change through the wider embrace of renewable energies.
They are also likely to be the last to support nuclear power with its long-term problems of waste storage and disposal and its ability to impact the health of individuals when things go wrong. Just think Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima.
So does News Crap Australia really believe it will attract the next generation of news consumers to its side by peddling the nuclear option?
Or does its obligation to the Coalition parties outweigh even the long-term size of its subscriber base?
What caused the Anthony Albanese China change? Better advisors?
Pearls and Irritations, By Bruce HaighNov 23, 2022,
To say that the Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, has been poorly advised would be an understatement. For reasons best known to himself he picked up and ran with a posse of advisers from the corrupt and inept Morrison regime. A big mistake.
They ran with a strong anti-China pro-AUKUS line. They briefed and backgrounded the press accordingly. It was frustrating and disappointing to watch. They were in thrall to and in some instances being paid by the US Industrial/Military complex. Australian Strategic Policy Institute, (ASPI ), being a case in point. Through the Washington Post we learnt that Morrison had installed senior US defence officers and officials in the Australian department of defence. Their influence still pervades. They are credited with having wrecked the French submarine deal.
These influencers and the many other players combining to bring us the sum total of the US alliance have brought considerable pressure on the Australian government to adopt a hostile stance against China and to go all the way with AUKUS. As I write Australian taxpayer money is being poured into defence facilities in Australia to make them ready for US use, from nuclear submarines to B52’s and marines.
None of these preparations have been put to the Australian people. All are, for whatever reason, secret. No thought has been given to tabling details relating to AUKUS in the Australian Parliament.
Albanese has been swept along and until now has been prepared to go with these arrangements which fundamentally challenge Australian sovereignty and were designed to wreck our trading and diplomatic relations with China. All to advantage the United States. This orgy of self-destructiveness was overseen and orchestrated by so called think tanks, some university based, sympathetic public servants and defence officers whose careers have come to depend on following ‘the line’, even down to believing that the acquisition of nuclear submarines and the basing of B52’s is somehow beneficial to Australia. The media, particularly the Murdoch media, has been captive to this narrative. Some such as Sheridan, Hartcher and Grant have sought to lead it.
Albanese rattled the sabre, sometimes bizarrely. ………………………………..
In contrast, mostly behind the scenes, the Foreign Minister, Penny Wong, worked assiduously and with great intellectual rigour to build bridges to the Chinese. …………………………..
Albanese secured his meeting with Xi, I would say largely on the efforts of Wong whose advice was finally listened to. Faced with Prime Ministerial loss of face the hawks in Canberra buckled to the very sensible approach Wong and her advisers had taken toward China.
Has Albanese learnt anything from this? The lesson should be that he ceases to listen to adviser’s once close to Morrison. If the Labor party wishes to implement their ambitious and long overdue reforms, they can no longer afford to keep these people on board.
Home Affairs, Immigration, Defence all need a strong broom through them. Twenty five years of LNP immaturity, selfishness, greed, corruption and absence of an agenda that included the public good has wreaked havoc and urgently needs to be addressed.
Wong has a formidable mind, she is strong character, more people in the Labor Party should be heading her advice and accepting her judgement. https://johnmenadue.com/what-caused-the-anthony-albanese-china-change-better-advisors/
Australia’s debt to the world greater given our ‘real’ carbon emissions
New data revealing Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions are much higher than reported means pressure is on the Federal Government to go beyond current commitments toward global climate action, writes professor Jeremy Moss.
Independent Australia, 24 Nov 22, THE RECENT Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP27) meeting in Egypt must ultimately be judged a failure.
While the inclusion of loss and damage in the final deal was a step forward, we can’t ignore that after nearly 30 years of COP the world still can’t agree to phase out fossil fuels as part of the agreements.
The 636 representatives of the fossil fuel industry who attended would be pleased with this outcome. Representatives from the fossil fuel industry outnumbered some countries’ delegates ten to one.
Australia’s Federal Government will claim it as a success. However, new data revealing Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions are much higher than reported means pressure is on to go well beyond current commitments.
Despite praise by U.S. envoy John Kerry on Australia’s climate “u-turn” for the Albanese Government’s commitment to a 43 per cent emission reduction target by 2030, after ten years of inaction, much more will be expected of Australia to play our part in preventing global climate breakdown.
When we hear the Government talk up its climate credentials, we need to bear in mind new data released by ClimateTRACE this week which shows that Australia’s domestic emissions were likely to have been 620 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (Mt CO2-e) in 2021 — a figure more than 20 per cent higher than we reported to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) of 488 Mt CO2-e.
Climate Justice Project describes the tracker thus:
‘The new emissions tracker ClimateTRACE uses satellite monitoring of more than 70,000 sites worldwide to produce real-time, facility-level #globalemissions inventories. The tracker, produced by a non-profit coalition, was launched by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore at COP27 in Egypt.’
This discrepancy by Australia is equivalent to roughly twice the volume of emissions from the agriculture sector of 77 Mt CO2-e.
Worse still is the continued contribution made by the fossil fuel export industry. Being one of the world’s largest suppliers of cheap tax-payer-subsidised fossil fuels is a major contribution to climate change.
No amount of “arms dealer defences” from governments and big corporations can mask the fact that supplying fossil fuels is a crucial part of the carbon equation and ought to be allocated some share of the blame.
In Australia’s case, the emissions from exported fossil fuels are double our domestic emissions and they have been rising steadily over the last five years. Those emissions are bigger than the emissions of the UK.
So, where does this leave us?
Firstly, we need to properly measure and account for all of our actual domestic emissions to combat our contribution………………………….more https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/australias-debt-to-the-world-greater-given-our-real-carbon-emissions,16997#.Y38CW-u8BQQ.twitter
The consequences of nuclear imperialism and colonialism
Climate change and the war in Ukraine have cast a renewed spotlight on nuclear issues, say organisers of this weekend’s inaugural Nuclear Connections Across Oceania conference at the University of Otago
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/ideasroom/the-consequences-of-nuclear-imperialism-and-colonialism 23 Nov 22 What is nuclear imperialism and nuclear colonialism?
The war in Ukraine has heightened people’s awareness of the ongoing threat of nuclear war, which could be induced by a nuclear weapon or the destruction of other nuclear infrastructure.
Nuclear imperialism is our current geopolitical order, where states with access to uranium and the ability to develop nuclear weapons hold dominant power over everyone else. Examples of nuclear imperialism include Russia’s ongoing threat to deploy nuclear weapons in Ukraine, or the reckless testing of nuclear weapons and nuclear-capable munitions throughout Oceania and the Pacific by the United States, the United Kingdom, and France since the 1940s as a way to entrench their geopolitical dominance.
Building on the work of Indigenous feminists such as Ojibwe environmentalist Winona LaDuke, nuclear colonialism has been described by the academic Danielle Endres as “a system of domination through which governments and corporations target Indigenous peoples and their lands to maintain the nuclear production process”.
Examples of nuclear colonialism include Canada’s decision to mine uranium on the ancestral lands of First Nations peoples; the United States’ decision to test nuclear weapons and depleted uranium munitions on the ancestral lands of Native Hawaiians, Native Americans and the Marshallese; France’s decision to test nuclear weapons in Ma’ohi Nui (French-occupied Polynesia); the United Kingdom’s decision to test nuclear weapons on the ancestral lands of Aboriginal peoples; Australia’s decisions to mine for uranium on the ancestral lands of Aboriginal peoples; Japan’s 1979 plan to dump nuclear waste in the Northern Marianas; Japan’s planned nuclear waste storage facility on Ainu ancestral land; Japan’s plan to discharge tritiated water from TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi into the Pacific Ocean in 2023 against the wishes of Indigenous peoples of the Pacific; and New Zealand’s decision to dump nuclear waste into the ocean until 1976; among many others.
Connecting nuclear justice and climate justice
While the nuclear industry has been aggressively framing nuclear energy as the answer to climate change, the material consequences of nuclear imperialism and nuclear colonialism mean that Indigenous communities around the world continue to suffer from the past and present harms of uranium-derived nuclear pollution. This, in turn, has set a precarious foundation for achieving climate justice.
The convergence of nuclear justice and climate justice are perhaps most evident in the Pacific. After decades of their lands, waters and bodies being used as the “nuclear playground” for many imperial nations, Pacific peoples unwittingly now find themselves at the front line of climate change.
This is through no fault of their own, as Pacific peoples are globally among the lowest contributors to anthropogenic climate change, according to estimates of CO2 emissions. Indigenous activists activists, who have long been fighting for a nuclear-free and independent Pacific are now struggling to tackle the existential threats of climate change and exploitative seabed mining.
In an unsurprising repeat of history, the same nuclear imperial nations continue to exacerbate the damaging consequences of climate change as they restrict the abilities of Pacific peoples to respond and impede the provision of a ‘Loss and Damage’ fund.
What is Nuclear Connections Across Oceania?
The Nuclear Connections Across Oceania conference emerged from conversations among five students and one staff member at the University of Otago’s Te Ao O Rongomaraeroa National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies and Kā Rakahau o Te Ao Tūroa Centre for Sustainability.
It provides the public with an opportunity to hear from key activists, artists, researchers, and community members on the material consequences of the nuclear military and industrial complex.
The core organising team of five locally based and international settlers of European descent and one Aotearoa New Zealand-born Sāmoan, had shared expertise and interests in questions related to uranium-derived nuclear pollution, nuclear colonialism, nuclear imperialism, nuclear non-proliferation, and climate justice.
They also knew that addressing the historical and ongoing harms of nuclear imperialism and nuclear colonialism would necessitate centring the experiences, needs, and voices of Indigenous peoples and others on the front lines working for nuclear and climate justice.
Cultivating a space to (re)connect
The conference draws inspiration from a genealogy of resistance in Oceania, and recognises a notable anniversary in the regional movement for nuclear justice. November 2022 marks 40 years since Māori hosted the first Te Hui Oranga o Te Moana Nui a Kiwa.
These hui brought Pacific activists to Aotearoa as part of the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific Movement, a grassroots coalition of Indigenous rights, environmental, peace and trade union groups opposing nuclear colonialism.
Te Hui Oranga allowed for anti-nuclear work on Indigenous terms, outside the predominantly Pākehā (European settler) peace movement where racism and universalism had, at times, hindered introspection. These aspects of the nuclear-free legacy in Aotearoa are often obscured in the popular imagination by images of yachts (like those being re-popularised in Heineken ads) and David Lange’s Oxford Union speeches.
Through grounding the conference in Indigenous-led anti-colonial and anti-imperial movements, we want to use this occasion as an opportunity to remind people that an Indigenous-led regional movement that refused to sever the link between nuclearism and colonialism had immense power.
In refusing warship visits or protesting nuclear testing and the dumping of nuclear wastes into our oceans, the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific movement advanced a vision for Pacific regionalism outside of superpower domination.
This benefited tangata o te moana (Pacific peoples) as well as tangata whenua (Māori), who saw the value in sensitising domestic movements to regional struggles. In the words of the first hui’s report: “our manuhiri [guests] have strengthened us”.
What to expect at the conference
The free and hybrid conference was designed as a gathering place for people across Oceania and the globe to learn from each other, collaboratively imagine what anti-colonial and anti-imperial nuclear futures might look like, and critically strategise how we might get there together.
It follows several major nuclear events, including the Tenth Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons in August 2022.
We invite anyone with a curiosity about nuclear and climate justice to join us on November 25-26 (NZDT). Recordings of some of the conference talks will be available on our website for those unable to join on the day, so we invite you to engage in whatever way works best for you. For more information and to register, please visit the conference webpage: https://nuclear-connections.mailchimpsites.com/.
Author/contributors:
Dr Karly Burch (conference co-organiser and speaker) grew up as a settler in Hawaiʻi and is a research fellow studying the material politics of nuclear pollution, artificially intelligent robotics in agriculture, and collaborative research for sustainable technofutures, at the University of Otago’s Centre for Sustainability.
Marco de Jong (conference speaker) is a New Zealand-born Samoan, and is completing his PhD on the history of the environmental movement in the Pacific, at the University of Oxford.
Mino Cleverley (conference co-organiser) is a New Zealand-born Samoan, and is completing his PhD on Indigenous responses to climate change and forced retreat due to sea level rise, at the University of Otago’s Centre for Sustainability.
Bedi Racule (conference speaker) is a climate and nuclear justice advocate from the Marshall Islands/Federated States of Micronesia and recent graduate in development studies from the University of the South Pacific.
Tomoki Fukui (conference speaker) is an agenderflux Nikkei anthropologist, and is completing their PhD on how Japanese nuclear reconstruction uses patriarchy and ableism to further Japanese capitalism, at Columbia University.
NuScam’s Utah small nuclear reactor project in doubt – needs $billions of tax-payer support
Want to buy into a nuclear power project? This Utah group would like to talk.
UAMPS is still looking at small reactors in Idaho, but cost estimates are climbing and they need more partners.
After seven years, the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems is still pursuing a series of small nuclear reactors at the Idaho National Laboratory as their clean-power solution.
And, after seven years, they still need more company.
UAMPS, which has 50 members that coordinate on buying and delivering electricity, will soon be updating the 27 entities that have opted into the “Carbon-Free Power Project,” and the price is going up.
The CFPP, a partnership between UAMPS and NuScale Power, an Oregon company developing small nuclear reactors, had given the members an earlier estimate of about $58 per megawatt-hour for power from the project, which was well above what they’re currently paying for power. And now it’s looking closer to be in the $80 to $100 per megawatt-hour by the time it would come online in 2029.
Meanwhile, the UAMPS members who have committed to the project would only take about a quarter of the CFPP’s planned 462-megawatt capacity. UAMPS’ incoming CEO Mason Baker acknowledges that isn’t enough…………..
Baker said they are looking for partners both inside and outside UAMPS. There were originally 36 interested members, but concerns over costs and risks were enough for Logan, Bountiful and others to withdraw in 2020…………………………………………
Is it a too-risky business?
Both Laurie Mangum, energy services director for St. George City. and Dennis Bott, mayor of Brigham City said they would like to see more financial participation from the federal government to lower the risk. The Department of Energy has committed $1.4 billion to the project. “I’d like to see them double or triple that,” Bott said.
UAMPS spokesman LaVarr Webb said completion of the latest cost estimates will trigger an “off-ramp” opportunity for the 27 participants. And if the price estimate exceeds a certain level, UAMPS will have the option to walk away with most of its costs recouped. If they do proceed, UAMPS will issue bonds to pay for the project, and power ratepayers in those cities will pay back the bonds through their monthly bills……………………….
The environmental watchdog group HEAL Utah has opposed the project since its inception, and Executive Director Lexi Tuddenham said CFPP can’t gain enough participants because of the open-ended financial risk of nuclear energy. She pointed to nuclear projects in South Carolina and Georgia that have seen large cost overruns.
“Baseload is important, but nuclear is certainly not the only way to meet that need — in addition to demand-side management, efficiency upgrades, and smart grids,” she said. “Battery storage technology of many types is at a stage where it can provide the reliable and dispatchable energy needed to pair with intermittent sources like wind and solar. In fact it is better and far more efficient at load-following than nuclear, which becomes even less cost effective when it is switched on and off.”………………………………
Still, what about nuclear waste?
From NuScale’s standpoint, the project is still full-speed ahead.
“We have issued the long-lead material specifications for the upper reactor pressure vessel, and the UAMPS project remains on track to start delivering safe and reliable carbon-free energy by the end of this decade,” said Diane Hughes, Vice President of NuScale’s Marketing and Communications. She said UAMPS’ license application is on schedule to be submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2024. The NRC review is expected to completed in 2026, and construction is planned for later that year. NuScale declined to comment on whether the project needed more participation to proceed.
For all of its safety refinements, the CFPP still relies on the fission of uranium, and with that process comes high level nuclear waste that takes up to 250,000 years to decay to a safe level. The U.S. government has never come up with a permanent solution for the waste, which is still stored near the plants that produced it. Like all nuclear power plants, the CFPP will be paying into a federal fund aimed at developing a solution………… https://www.sltrib.com/renewable-energy/2022/11/24/want-buy-into-nuclear-power/
Confusion over nuclear wastes from small modular reactors
Managing NuScale, other SMR waste will be ‘roughly comparable’ with conventional reactors, DOE labs find Utility Dive Stephen Singer, 23 Nov 22
Dive Brief:
- Two studies differ over how much nuclear waste would be a factor with small modular reactors, or SMRs, such as those planned by NuScale and TerraPower.
- The Argonne and Idaho national laboratories say managing waste from SMRs would have few challenges compared with traditional light water reactors. Spent fuel is thermally hot and highly radioactive, requiring remote handling and shielding.
- A study led by Stanford University and the University of British Columbia says SMRs will generate more radioactive waste than conventional nuclear power plants…………………………… more https://www.utilitydive.com/news/smr-modular-reactor-nuclear-waste-doe-stanford-0
Lawmaker says Filipinos will be ‘guinea pigs’ in nuclear pact with US
ABS-CBN News Nov 24 2022
MANILA — House Deputy Minority Leader France Castro is against negotiations for a civilian nuclear pact between the United States and the Philippines, saying it poses threat to the health and safety of Filipinos.
According to the ACT Teachers party-list representative, the Filipinos will become “guinea pigs” in this nuclear energy cooperation deal known as “123 agreement”.
The pact, among initiatives announced during US Vice President Kamala Harris’s recent trip to the Philippines, can lead to the future sale of US nuclear reactors to Manila.
“The US and the Philippines agreed to have a… testing of what we call the nuclear equipment here in the Philippines,” Castro told ANC’s “Headstart” Thursday.
“So, we are being made as guinea pigs in this experiment. This would affect our health, of course, our safety and the environment,” she added.
The Makabayan bloc, led by Castro, has filed House Resolution 582 to investigate the “123 agreement”.
The group said modular or microreactor nuclear power plants are still at an experimental stage and are only legally being made in US bases…………………… https://news.abs-cbn.com/video/news/11/24/22/filipinos-will-be-guinea-pigs-in-nuclear-pact-with-us-solon
SCOTT RITTER: The Back Channel
Burns’ job is only to keep what will be a major escalation of the war from spinning out of control – to keep it from going nuclear. That has been his job from the start.
The conditions for a settlement on U.S. and Ukrainian terms — such as Russia withdrawing from the four territories it recently annexed as well as Crimea, paying reparations and turning over senior military and civilian leaders for prosecution as war criminals — have almost no chance of happening.
Such thinking only underscores the hubris-laced fantasy world Washington has crafted for itself. The notion that Russia is somehow losing its military conflict with NATO-backed Ukraine, and its economic war with the West, is belied by the increasing desperation inherent in the growing calls for a negotiated settlement by senior U.S. officials.
Communications between the U.S. and Russia are essential for preventing an out-of-control crisis and a conduit exists for ongoing, high-level dialogue. But what is it really for?
By Scott Ritter, Consortium News 22 No 22,
According to The Wall Street Journal, White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan has been involved with a secretive “back channel” line of communication with top Russian officials as part of an effort by the U.S. and Russia to prevent the war in Ukraine from escalating into a nuclear conflict.
Among the officials named as representing the Russian conduit for this “back channel” are Yuri Ushakov, a senior foreign policy adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Nikolai Patrushev, the head of Russia’s security council.
…………………….. the key to who might be taking the lead in the current Russian “back channel” lies with the man who headed up the March 2013 delegation in Oman — William Burns, a career diplomat who at the time served as deputy secretary of state and is now director of Central Intelligence.
His name is synonymous with “back channel.”
It was Burns who, based on these secret Oman meetings, hammered out the initial draft of the JCPOA. The background story, described by Burns in his autobiography, aptly titled The Back Channel, is what made the long-time diplomat an attractive choice for Biden to head the C.I.A.
When the Biden administration wanted to discuss the escalating crisis surrounding Ukraine in the fall of 2021, it was Burns who was dispatched. In addition to meeting with Patrushev, Ushakov and other senior Russian security officials (including his Russian counterpart, Sergei Naryshkin, the director of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, or SVR) Burns had a conversation with Putin by telephone.
This kind of high-level access is what makes Burns the ideal conduit for a substantive “back channel” between the U.S. and Russia……………………………………………
‘Only About Nukes’
Significantly, senior Biden administration officials quickly quashed any notion that Burns was engaged in “back channel” diplomacy regarding an end to the Ukraine conflict…………………….
The U.S. mainstream media had been enthralled with the narrative of a Sullivan-run back channel seeking an early end to the conflict.
Russia will not negotiate a settlement on U.S./Ukrainian terms, only Russian terms. Russian terms will be dictated by the arrival of 220,000 fresh troops, organized into 10-15 divisions, starting next month.
Burns’ job is only to keep what will be a major escalation of the war from spinning out of control – to keep it from going nuclear. That has been his job from the start…………..
the notion of a separate Sullivan-run “back channel,” one focused on finding a diplomatic off-ramp to the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, lingers, promoted in part by the self-serving attitude of a Biden administration that believes itself somehow in control of events in Ukraine.
The conditions for a settlement on U.S. and Ukrainian terms — such as Russia withdrawing from the four territories it recently annexed as well as Crimea, paying reparations and turning over senior military and civilian leaders for prosecution as war criminals — have almost no chance of happening.
General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has argued that now is the time for negotiations, given the fact that, according to him, there is neither a way for Russia to win nor for Ukraine to regain its lost territory. “So, if there’s a slowdown in the tactical fighting, that may become a window — possibly, it may not — for a political solution, or at least the beginnings, for talks to initiate a political solution,” Milley said.
Milley’s pro-negotiation stance, however, is opposed by many of America’s European partners, whose position is perhaps best captured by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who on Nov. 14, while speaking to the heads of the foreign and defense ministries of the Netherlands, declared:
“The only way to achieve a solution to the Russian-Ukrainian conflict is on the battlefield. Many conflicts are resolved at the negotiating table, but this is not the case, and Ukraine must win, so we will support it for as long as it takes.”
Russia, it appears, fully agrees — this conflict will be settled on the battlefield. At the moment, Russia is shutting down the Ukrainian economy and Ukrainian society by destroying large sectors of Ukraine’s electrical power grid, throwing much of Ukraine into a cold darkness just as winter sets in.
Russia has stabilized the battlefield, withdrawing from untenable terrain while pouring 87,000 recently mobilized troops into the front lines to solidify its defenses. Meanwhile, it continues to undertake offensive operations in the Donbass, destroying Ukrainian forces while capturing territory that is part of the Donetsk.
Ukrainian casualties have been horrific, and overwhelmingly lop-sided — in the month of October alone, in the Kherson front, Ukraine lost some 12,000 men, while Russian casualties were around 1,500, according to the Russian Defense Ministry. Ukraine has released no figures, but the U.S. says 100,000 soldiers on both sides have been killed in the conflict, a figure impossible to verify.
Over the horizon, in combat training centers throughout Russia, more than 200,000 additional troops are finalizing their combat training and preparations. Sometime next month they will begin arriving on the battlefield, organized into 10-15 division equivalents.
When they arrive, Ukraine will have no response, having squandered its NATO-trained and equipped forces on pyrrhic political victories. The photo opportunities on the city square in Kherson will fade into memory once Russia unleashes this new force.
And there’s nothing either NATO or Ukraine can do to stop them.
While Russia engaged in negotiations with Ukraine at the beginning of the war and offered a deal to Kiev, which was stopped by the West, the facts on the ground have since changed.
Anyone attempting to breathe life into the concept of a Sullivan-driven “back channel” designed to bring Russia to the negotiating table must first discount Russia’s improving military posture. Russia simply will not be drawn to a negotiation designed to negate the advantages it has been accruing on the battlefield and beyond.
The Sullivan “back channel” is little more than the collective West negotiating with itself.
Russia’s negotiation will be on the battlefield.
Scott Ritter is a former U.S. Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD. His most recent book is Disarmament in the Time of Perestroika, published by Clarity Press. https://consortiumnews.com/2022/11/22/scott-ritter-the-back-channel/
Victoria’s election is a referendum on fossil fuels vs deflationary renewables — RenewEconomy
Labor’s climate and renewables targets are world-leading, while the Coalition’s gas plan relies on the fossil industry behind the crisis that is smashing us right now. The post Victoria’s election is a referendum on fossil fuels vs deflationary renewables appeared first on RenewEconomy.
Victoria’s election is a referendum on fossil fuels vs deflationary renewables — RenewEconomy
Why Australia’s biggest gas kettle never stood a chance against wind and solar — RenewEconomy
Torrens Island B gas generator is just a giant kettle, the gas equivalent of the dirty Latrobe Valley coal burners, and equally useless to a grid transitioning to renewables. The post Why Australia’s biggest gas kettle never stood a chance against wind and solar appeared first on RenewEconomy.
Why Australia’s biggest gas kettle never stood a chance against wind and solar — RenewEconomy
November 24 Energy News — geoharvey
Opinion: ¶ “Ignoring Climate Change Is Getting Really, Really Expensive” • The message from COP27 is loud and clear: Climate change is no longer tomorrow’s problem. It’s happening now, with serious impact to our infrastructure, and it is going to get worse before it gets better. We can’t afford to continue building things the way […]
November 24 Energy News — geoharvey
Antinuclear 