Antinuclear

Britain: Australian army trains Ukrainian “warfighters” to meet NATO standards — Anti-bellum

Defense PostFebruary 17, 2023 Australia Training Ukrainian Recruits’ Tactical, Survivability Skills in the UK The Australian Army is conducting tactical and survivability training for Ukrainian Armed Forces recruits in southern England. The exercise was launched as part of Operation Kudu, an Australian defense initiative to upskill Ukrainian warfighters…. Led by the Royal Australian Regiment 5th […]

Britain: Australian army trains Ukrainian “warfighters” to meet NATO standards — Anti-bellum

February 20, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Coalition and Labor promise billions to fast track NSW switch to wind, solar and storage — RenewEconomy

NSW Coalition promises an extra $323 million on storage, rooftop solar and small batteries, while Labor proposes new $1 billion state body modelled on CEFC. The post Coalition and Labor promise billions to fast track NSW switch to wind, solar and storage appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Coalition and Labor promise billions to fast track NSW switch to wind, solar and storage — RenewEconomy

February 20, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

The Horrifying Endgame in Ukraine

This entire scenario is a long slow march toward nuclear war or the complete disintegration of Ukraine.

The U.S. won’t end the weapons deliveries because Joe Biden is afraid of losing face and his closest advisors such as Victoria Nuland have an irrational hatred for Russia and are total warmongers.

BY JAMES RICKARDS, 14 Feb 23,  https://dailyreckoning.com/the-horrifying-endgame-in-ukraine/—

In yesterday’s issue, I addressed the biggest and most complex topic on the geopolitical landscape today — China.

But today I’m discussing what is by far the most alarming topic on the geopolitical landscape today. That’s the war in Ukraine and the dangers of escalation.

I’ve written extensively about two facets of the war in Ukraine that you don’t hear from legacy media in the United States or U.K. The first is that Russia is actually winning the war.

U.S. outlets such as The New York Times (a channel for the State Department) and The Washington Post (a channel for the CIA) report endlessly about how Russian plans have failed, about how incompetent they are about how the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) have pushed back Russians in the Donbass, and how NATO weapons such as U.S. Abrams tanks, U.K. Challenger tanks and German Leopard tanks will turn the tide against Russia soon.

This is all nonsense. None of it is true.

Reality Check

First off, the Ukrainian advances that took place in late summer were against lightly defended positions that the Russians quickly conceded to conserve forces. The Russians were willing to give up the land so that they wouldn’t lose valuable men and materiel.

The Russians withdrew to more defensible positions and have been badly mauling Ukrainian attacking forces ever since. Ukraine has wasted incredibly large amounts of men and equipment in these futile and ill-advised attacks.

In all, credible reports indicate that AFU casualties are nearing 500,000 and are increasing at an unsustainable rate. On the other hand, reports of 100,000 Russian dead are almost certainly wild exaggerations put out by Ukraine. The BBC attempted to verify these numbers and could only find about 20,000 confirmed Russian dead based on extensive searches on funeral notices, public records, etc.

Send in the Tanks — Eventually!

What about the tanks NATO is supposedly sending? Well, the tanks have not been delivered yet and most won’t be for months or longer. Our own M1 Abrams tanks might not even arrive for a year or more.

We actually have to custom build these tanks so that they don’t have the special armor and other advanced systems that our own M1s have. The Pentagon doesn’t want them falling into Russian hands if they’re destroyed or captured. Besides, we’re only sending 31 tanks anyway.

When the NATO tanks do arrive, they’ll likely quickly be destroyed by Russian artillery, anti-tank weapons and precision missiles. They’re good tanks, but far from invincible. For decades, the Russians have been developing powerful weapons specifically designed to destroy these NATO tank models. The Russians aren’t particularly worried about them.

Aside from that, tanks rely on effective air cover for protection, which Ukraine lacks. They’ll be sitting ducks on the battlefield. It doesn’t really make sense to send tanks to Ukraine unless you send combat aircraft to give them cover (more on that below).

Russia’s Winning on the Battlefield

Meanwhile, Russian forces have nearly encircled the city of Bakhmut, which is a major transportation and logistics hub, with several key roads and rail lines passing through it. It’ll probably fall to the Russians within weeks.

Losing Bakhmut will be a major blow to Ukraine, despite claims in the western media that it really isn’t very important. Ukraine’s entire 800-mile defensive line would probably begin to crumble, and they don’t have heavily fortified positions to fall back on. Ukrainian troops, while brave and competent soldiers, are exhausted and running out of supplies as it is.

On top of that, it appears likely that Russia is preparing a devastating offensive with massive amounts of men, tanks, armored personnel carriers, artillery, helicopters, drones and fixed-wing aircraft.

This Russian army is not the same army that invaded Ukraine a year ago. It’s much better trained, led and equipped. It’s learned from the mistakes it made during its initial invasion last February. Ukraine shouldn’t expect them to repeat those mistakes.

Does all this mean I’m cheering on a Russian victory in Ukraine? No, I’m just observing the facts on the ground and consolidating them to perform an objective analysis.

That analysis leads me to believe that Russia will win the war militarily. Western military assistance may prolong the fighting but won’t affect the ultimate outcome. It’ll just delay the inevitable and get a lot more people needlessly killed.

The Much Greater Risk

The second facet of this war not reported in the media, or at least downplayed, is the growing risk of nuclear war.

This risk increases with every escalatory step by both sides. The U.S. is the leader in reckless escalation by supplying long-range artillery, Patriot anti-missile batteries, intelligence, surveillance, and now the tanks. Russia responds at each step.

There’s a number of steps before the two sides arrive at the nuclear level, but neither shows a willingness to step back.

By the way, Russia has every legal right to attack those NATO countries supplying arms to Ukraine. By supplying arms to a party to the conflict, they’ve given up their neutrality and have become, in effect, combatants. Russia hasn’t done this because it doesn’t want to bring NATO directly into the fight. But legally, it can.

Gimme, Gimme, Gimme

Ukraine’s demands on the U.S., UK and the rest of NATO for advanced weapons to fight Russians know no limits. The West began by supplying Ukraine with cash, intelligence and anti-tank weapons such as the Javelin missile. Soon we were supplying long-range artillery, drones, and more cash.

As Russian advances continued, Zelensky demanded and got Patriot anti-missile batteries that can destroy incoming Russian missiles. The U.S. artillery was aimed at Russian Crimea. Several drones struck inside Russia at sensitive air bases with nuclear weapons nearby.

Gimme, Gimme, Gimme

Ukraine’s demands on the U.S., UK and the rest of NATO for advanced weapons to fight Russians know no limits. The West began by supplying Ukraine with cash, intelligence and anti-tank weapons such as the Javelin missile. Soon we were supplying long-range artillery, drones, and more cash.

As Russian advances continued, Zelensky demanded and got Patriot anti-missile batteries that can destroy incoming Russian missiles. The U.S. artillery was aimed at Russian Crimea. Several drones struck inside Russia at sensitive air bases with nuclear weapons nearby.

Once these advanced systems show they can’t help, what’s the Ukrainian’s next demand? Russia can escalate just as quickly and lethally as the U.S.

This entire scenario is a long slow march toward nuclear war or the complete disintegration of Ukraine.

Is Anyone Really Prepared for This?

The U.S. won’t end the weapons deliveries because Joe Biden is afraid of losing face and his closest advisors such as Victoria Nuland have an irrational hatred for Russia and are total warmongers.

Now, we can add a new danger, resulting from desperation. This is the fact that the U.S. itself may be the biggest loser in the war.

As Ukraine disappears under a massive Russian onslaught, the U.S. will grow increasingly desperate. Its credibility is on the line after committing so much money, materiel and moral weight to Ukraine’s defense.

The Biden administration has essentially turned the war in Ukraine into an existential crisis for the U.S. and NATO, when it never should have been. Ukraine has never been a vital U.S. interest. But the war is existential for Russia, and Russia won’t give up.

Is the U.S. just going to throw up its hands and concede Russian victory? NATO may actually disintegrate in the face of such spectacular failure. So, we’ll probably double down.

Maybe a desperate Biden orders troops into western Ukraine as a buffer against a complete Russian takeover of the country. You can imagine what could go wrong. That situation may quickly devolve into a direct war between the U.S. and Russia rather than the proxy war that it is now.

The American people and investors in particular are not prepared for any of this. They should be. It’s becoming increasingly likely.

February 20, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Betting on Ukraine victory was ‘suicidal’ – Seymour Hersh

 https://www.rt.com/russia/571690-hersh-ukraine-nato-corruption/ 18 Feb 23

The West didn’t even want Kiev in NATO because of corruption concerns, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist says.

The US and its allies should have attempted to reach an agreement with Moscow as their belief that Ukraine can win a conflict against Russia is “suicidal,” iconic American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh has argued.

Speaking in a YouTube interview with the Consortium News outlet on Friday, Hersh accused the Biden administration of making “so many bad mistakes,” adding that “it’s impossible to believe just how dumb this leadership was.” 

“It was suicidal to think you can win that war, that Ukraine can win the war [against Russia]. There’s just too much corruption. That was a very, very bad decision. We should have been pushing for peace, we should have made an agreement,” the former Pulitzer Prize winner insisted.

US President Joe Biden basically “blew off NATO in Europe” by telling allies that he is backing Ukraine with its “totally corrupt government,” Hersh added. The journalist also pointed out how Kiev glorifies Stepan Bandera, “the great pro-Nazi who killed Jews like crazy during World War II.” 

It’s just silly not to right away assure the Russian government that we weren’t interested in making Ukraine a member of NATO,” Hersh stated, referring to long-standing concerns in Moscow. “NATO didn’t want Ukraine anyway because of the corruption.” 

Hersh recently published a bombshell report which accused the US of sabotaging the Nord Stream pipelines last year. He cited an informed source as explaining that explosives were planted on the bottom of the Baltic Sea by US Navy divers under the guise of a NATO exercise back in June 2022. They were detonated in late September, rendering the pipelines, which were built to deliver Russian gas to Europe through Germany, inoperable.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, as well as Under Secretary for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, are all “very hawkish,” according to the journalist. The trio “pushed Biden very hard” to go ahead with the sabotage because “they have long-standing incredible hatred for [Russian President Vladimir] Putin. It’s almost personal, I would guess,” Hersh claimed.  

READ MORE: More Nord Stream ‘bombshells’ to come – Seymour Hersh

US National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson branded Hersh’s bombshell report “utterly false and complete fiction.” The journalist has promised even more revelations on how the pipelines were blown up.

February 20, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Microsoft Puts New Limits On Bing’s AI Chatbot After It Expressed Desire To Steal Nuclear Secrets

Forbes Matt Novak, Contributor, FOIA reporter and founder of Paleofuture.com, writing news and opinion on every aspect of technology. 20 Feb 23,

Microsoft announced it was placing new limits on its Bing chatbot following a week of users reporting some extremely disturbing conversations with the new AI tool. How disturbing? The chatbot expressed a desire to steal nuclear access codes and told one reporter it loved him. Repeatedly.

“Starting today, the chat experience will be capped at 50 chat turns per day and 5 chat turns per session. A turn is a conversation exchange which contains both a user question and a reply from Bing,” the company said in a blog post on Friday…………………………………………more https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattnovak/2023/02/18/microsoft-puts-new-limits-on-bings-ai-chatbot-after-it-expressed-desire-to-steal-nuclear-secrets/?sh=1aad6dab685c

February 20, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

War is a climate killer

Conflicts worsen military sector’s already enormous CO2 footprint

War is a climate killer — Beyond Nuclear International

The military already has the largest carbon footprint. Going to war makes it far worse

By Angelika Claussen

War brings death and destruction – not least to the environment and climate. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine offers a depressing reminder of that fact, and further increases the military sector’s already enormous global CO₂ footprint. In addition, the eastern Ukrainian cities where fighting is taking place are home to fossil fuel infrastructure such as chemical factories, oil refineries, and coal mines, the bombing of which produces a cocktail of toxic substances that has devastating environmental impacts. Efforts to arm the two sides, moreover, are consuming materials and resources that could otherwise go towards tackling the climate crisis.

Based on the global CO₂ budget, humanity has less than eight years to ensure it still hits its 1.5-degree warming target. To do so, we need to urgently implement reforms in all areas, to bring about “systemic change,” as the IPCC report from early April puts it. The military sector barely gets a mention in this almost 3,000-page document, however, with the word “military” coming up just six times. You might thus conclude that the sector is of little relevance to the climate emergency.

The reality is rather different. Using military hardware results in huge quantities of emissions. In the war in Ukraine, 36 Russian attacks on fossil fuel infrastructure were recorded in the first five weeks alone, leading to prolonged fires that released soot particulates, methane and CO₂ into the atmosphere, while oil infrastructure has been ablaze on the Russian side too. The oil fields that were set on fire in 1991 during the second Gulf War contributed two per cent of global emissions for that year.

While greenhouse gas emissions are one of the most significant impacts of war, the quantity emitted depends on the duration of the conflict and on what tanks, trucks, and planes are used. Another is the contamination of ecosystems that sequester CO₂. Staff from Ukraine’s environment inspectorate are currently collecting water and soil samples in the areas around shelled industrial facilities.

Military emissions

The ramifications for the climate can be catastrophic in scale. According to a study by the organisation Oil Change International, the Iraq War was responsible for 141 million tonnes of CO₂ equivalent emissions between its outbreak in 2003 and the report’s publication in 2008. By way of comparison: some 21 EU member states emitted less CO₂ equivalent in 2019, with only six states topping that figure…………………………………………………..

As the war in Ukraine goes on, the biggest challenge of the 21st century – the climate crisis – has slipped down the agenda. We mustn’t forget, though, that efforts to tackle that crisis can only succeed if all countries – including Russia – work together. The immediate demand is for a ceasefire, followed by measures to build trust, such as international disarmament treaties. Moreover, Russia will need outside help if it is to transition to a climate-friendly energy industry. What’s required is a fundamental socio-ecological transformation, with policy-making dictated by the needs of all. That may seem inconceivable at present, but what’s the alternative? Unchecked global warming would be catastrophic for the planet’s entire population.  https://wordpress.com/post/nuclear-news.net/221967

February 20, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Despite massive losses of nuclear company EDF, and reactor corrosions, France plans to build a new fleet of EPR reactors.

Despite corrosion leaving nearly half of French atomic power fleet idle
last year and huge cost overruns at new construction, state-backed power
comapny insists on building even more reactors.

A plunge in nuclear power
output related mostly to inspections and repairs for stress corrosion that
left nearly half of France’s atomic generation fleet idled for much of last
year has cost EDF €29.1bn ($30.99bn), pushing the embattled state-owned
utility into a massive loss.

Forty-three of the company’s 56 reactors are
currently operational again, up from only 30 at the beginning of November
2022. But last year’s decline in nuclear output – which the company had to
compensate for with power purchases at a time when market prices were very
high – linked to the impact of price caps for French consumers last year,
triggered a loss in generation and supply segment earnings before interest,
taxes, depreciation and amortisation (Ebitda) of €23.14bn.

Gains in other
areas, such as regulated activities or renewables were not able to
compensate for the nuclear drain on finances. That was the main cause of a
€17.94bn net loss for the entire group, compared to a €5.11bn net
profit in 2021.

Despite the massive losses at EDF, as well as dozens of
billions in cost overruns and decade-long delays at the construction of a
new EPR (European Pressurised Reactor) at Flamanville, French President
Emmanuel Macron last year launched a programme to build six further EPRs in
France, with the option for eight more at later stage.

Recharge 17th Feb 2023

https://www.rechargenews.com/energy-transition/embattled-edf-stuck-with-30bn-bill-from-ailing-nuclear-fleet-as-utility-makes-massive-loss/2-1-1406062

February 20, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment