Assange and the Australian government’s persecution of alleged Afghan war crimes whistleblower
McBride will be the first person to face court over the war crimes of the Australian military in Afghanistan, i.e., for allegedly revealing them, not perpetrating them.
Ominously, Albanese stated: “A solution needs to be found… and Mr Assange needs to be a part of that of course.” The only way that Assange could be “part of a solution” to his case, is if he were to concede guilt as part of some sort of plea deal arrangement. If the US were to drop the charges, Assange’s “part” would simply be to walk out of prison a free man.
WSWS, Oscar Grenfell @Oscar_Grenfell, 10 May 2023
Over the past week, several prominent members of the Australian Labor government have feigned sympathy for WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange. The most notable of these interventions was a statement made by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, while he was in Britain for the coronation of King Charles.
Albanese and other Labor representatives have reiterated the vague comment that “enough is enough” in relation to the Assange case, and it has “gone on for too long.” Assange has been detained in a British prison for more than four years, and faces extradition to the US where he could be jailed for 175 years for exposing American war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The essential position of Albanese is that he has made comments to the British and US governments along these lines and that is all he can do. As the WSWS has previously noted, this is the antithesis of an aggressive diplomatic and legal campaign aimed at securing the freedom of a persecuted Australian citizen.
The refusal to take any concrete measures to ensure Assange’s release is bound up with Labor’s complete commitment to the US alliance, including Washington’s escalating preparations for war with China.
But that is not the sole issue. A key component of this program of war, with Labor overseeing the country’s largest militarisation in 80 years, is the suppression of anti-war opposition. That is evident in the persecution of Assange, but it is also apparent in several draconian “national security” cases that the Labor government is directly presiding over in Australia.
The most significant is the prosecution of David McBride. A former army lawyer, he is accused of leaking information exposing Australian war crimes in Afghanistan and other violations of international law in that protracted neo-colonial occupation.
The documents that the state claims McBride leaked included details of the potentially unlawful killings of ten Afghan men and boys by Australian Special Forces soldiers.
In one instance, a man and his son were shot dead by Special Air Service Regiment in September, 2013. Official reports indicated that the man had pointed a weapon at the Australian personnel. The leaked documents said that the man and the boy were found shot dead in their beds, indicating that they may have been executed in their sleep.
Other cases also involved children. Some of the documents indicated that prisoners were being killed, execution style, and then posthumously being accused of attempting to seize a weapon.
Most explosively, the files indicated awareness in the military command of a “warrior culture” among special forces that had gotten out of control and threatened breaches of the laws of war.
The publication of details from the files, by the Sydney Morning Herald and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), triggered a series of inquiries into the actions of the defence forces in Afghanistan. This culminated in the 2020 release of an official Brereton Report, confirming “credible information” that the Special Forces had murdered 39 Afghan civilians and prisoners.
In other words, whoever leaked the documents in the years earlier provided the public with true information about war crimes that were being hidden from the population.
In June, 2019, the Australian Federal Police carried out an unprecedented raid on the Sydney office of the ABC, over its publication of the Afghan files. It was later revealed that one of the journalists involved in the story, Dan Oakes, had been threatened with national security charges, in what would have been an exact parallel to the Assange case.
That prosecution did not eventuate. But last month, a hearing of the Australian Capital Territory’s Supreme Court confirmed that McBride will stand trial in November. He is charged with “national security” offenses, including unauthorised disclosure of information, theft of commonwealth property and breaching the Defence Act. McBride has pleaded not guilty.
Confirmation that the case will proceed means that McBride will be the first person to face court over the war crimes of the Australian military in Afghanistan, i.e., for allegedly revealing them, not perpetrating them.
Only one soldier has been charged over the documented killings of civilians. He allegedly shot an unarmed Afghan boy at point blank range. That killing occurred in 2012. Footage of it was broadcast in early 2020 on national television, but the soldier was only charged last month. He will not be tried until next year and is out on bail.
Because McBride is charged with federal offenses, the Labor government and specifically its Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus can order an end to the prosecution.
McBride is an alleged whistleblower, whereas Assange is a publisher. But the essence of the case against both is that they should be imprisoned for decades for exposing war crimes. Labor claims it cannot free Assange, because he is subject to British “legal processes,” and is facing extradition to the US. Australia is “not a party” to those proceedings, they assert.
The McBride case gives the lie to these assertions. Labor could drop this prosecution whenever it wanted to. But, like the Biden administration with its pursuit of Assange, the Albanese government is intent on setting new precedents for the suppression of anti-war sentiment, amid an explosion of militarism and war.
There are other cases that Labor is presiding over……………………………………….
Labor is deepening an anti-democratic offensive targeting the civil liberties of the population, of which the US prosecution of Assange is an international focal point.
That underscores the fraud of claims that Labor is conducting “quiet diplomacy” on Assange’s behalf.
In the latest stage of this charade, members of a cross-party federal parliamentary grouping visited US ambassador to Australia Caroline Kennedy to discuss the Assange case. There is no indication that they came away with anything…….
Labor backbencher Julian Hill wrote on Twitter: “I thanked the Ambassador for her willingness to engage. Aside from the issues at stake in Julian Assange’s case, the delay in resolving it is an unwelcome distraction from AUKUS & our work with the US to confront the strategic challenges we face.”
Describing the 12-year state persecution of a journalist, which has brought him to the brink of death, as an “unwelcome distraction” is obscene. The reference to AUKUS is notable. Hill was speaking of the trilateral pact between Britain, the US and Australia, directed against China. The “strategic challenge,” is a veiled reference to the US confrontation with China.
In other words, Hill is arguing that the prosecution of Assange, an anti-war publisher, is a distraction from the US preparations for a new war. In reality, the two go hand-in-hand. One could not conceive of a more right-wing, warmongering argument, nominally in Assange’s defence.
In an interview with the ABC yesterday, Albanese restated his line of “enough is enough” in relation to Assange. He refused to indicate if the Labor government is even asking the Biden administration to end its prosecution of Assange.
Ominously, Albanese stated: “A solution needs to be found… and Mr Assange needs to be a part of that of course.” The only way that Assange could be “part of a solution” to his case, is if he were to concede guilt as part of some sort of plea deal arrangement. If the US were to drop the charges, Assange’s “part” would simply be to walk out of prison a free man.
The statements of Albanese and other Labor leaders are a transparent attempt by a government that has done nothing for his freedom to blunt the widespread public support for Assange. Most immediately, Assange’s plight is viewed as a “distraction,” to use Hill’s words, from the Quadrilateral Dialogue summit, to be held in Sydney later this month. Biden, together with the Indian and Japanese leaders, and Albanese, will gather to discuss the next stage of their preparation for war with China.
Only the naive and the credulous would believe that this warmongering cabal is about to extend a benevolent hand to someone who exposed their past crimes when they are preparing even greater ones. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/05/11/zljo-m11.html
Nuclear waste is a $476m problem even before AUKUS
Justin Hendry 11 May 23, https://www.innovationaus.com/nuclear-waste-is-a-476m-problem-even-before-aukus/?fbclid=IwAR2jeLiHd5k32VIsMOXxhGnAaIfIyFJUvtLblzvt3mbMFPrGCSnOLL3d8UU
A long-planned nuclear waste facility to store and dispose of radioactive material that has built up over decades has secured significant funding after the former Coalition government settled on a site for the facility.
More than $160 million will be spent on preparatory work for the National Radioactive Waste Management Facility, including “technical, design, regulatory and governance activities, and community engagement”.
But there is no indication when the facility – which has been on the cards in one form or another for 40 years – might be ready, with the funding provided in Tuesday’s federal Budget intended to stretch until 2030.
The facility will become the single location for the disposal of Australia’s low level nuclear waste and a temporary storage location for intermediate level waste which until now has resulted from scientific research and industrial, agricultural and medical applications. [Ed. They don’t here mention the waste generated by the Opal nuclear reactor itself !]
That is set to change from early 2030, when Defence is expected to begin acquiring up to five Virginia-class nuclear powered submarines from the US for delivery, before building a new squadron of nuclear submarines based on a British design for delivery in early 2040.
Existing radioactive waste is currently kept at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation’s (ANSTO) Lucas Heights reactor in Sydney, with another 100-plus locations across Australia also being used for storage.
In November 2021, the former Coalition government acquired a site near the town of Kimbra on Eyre Peninsula in South Australia to build the facility, which is opposed by the local Barngarla people.
By May last year, parts of the facility’s design and planning had already been outsourced, despite an ongoing legal challenge from Traditional Owners set to begin next month.
South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas has reportedly already ruled out the facility handling spent fuel rods from AUKUS submarines, although is lobbying the federal government for the rods to be stored in the state’s Woomera Prohibited Zone.
The funding for the National Radioactive Waste Management Facility is accompanied by further Budget measures to support the development of radioactive waste management, storage and disposal, including a $5.2 million project with Defence and the planned Australian Submarine Agency.
The Department of Industry, Science and Resources will also receive $9.7 million over the next five years to develop a “pathway” for the long-term disposal of intermediate-level radioactive waste generated from non-defence activities.
In total, the Industry department has been allocated $476.4 million, the bulk of which will be used by the Australian Radioactive Waste Agency to continue managing a national inventory of radioactive waste and coordinate its disposal and storage.
Elsewhere in the Budget, the ANSTO has been funded with at least $84.4 million over three years to provide nuclear medicines, with the full 10-year funding package not-for-publication due to “commercial sensitivities”.
More than half of the funding will be used by the agency to manage the shutdown of its OPAL nuclear reactor for maintenance in March 2024, requiring medicines that would ordinarily be produced onshore to be imported.
During the shutdown, the reactor’s unique cold neutron source, which has been used since 2007, will be replaced, promising “increased scientific performance” well into the next decade, according to ANSTO.
The remaining $39.9 million in known funding set aside for ANSTO over the next three years will be used to wind-up ANSTO Nuclear Medicine by June 2024, with its operations, assets and liabilities to be transferred to ANSTO.
An undisclosed amount of funding will be used by ANSTO to build a new nuclear medicine manufacturing building and maintain its current facility, as well as develop a business case for a new facility to “support Australia’s sovereign nuclear security science capability”.
The agency will also receive $16.3 million as part of a $4.5 billion nuclear-powered submarine support package to provide “radiological baselining and monitoring, and provide advice on the safe implementation of nuclear technology”.
As previously announced by the government, a new Australian Submarine Agency will be created within Defence to manage the submarine program, with $7.9 million from that allocation to be used to establish the Australia-Nuclear Powered Submarine Safety Regulator
Do you know more? Contact James Riley via Email.
Helion and Microsoft Lead World Down Nuclear Fusion Rabbit Hole
manufacturing the lasers used at Livermore and creating other inputs to set up the fusion process require much more energy than is accounted for in the final equation.
there’s so much money in the system, and so much desire to have this technological solution, people are very excited — and totally ignoring the fact that there is no result that has any energy output to it.”
Gizmodo, Molly Taft, May 12, 2023
Are we closer to the “Holy Grail” of clean energy? Silicon Valley wants you to believe.
This week, nuclear fusion startup Helion announced that it had inked a first-of-its-kind deal with Microsoft to provide 50 megawatts of power from a yet-to-be built power plant, all within the next five years. Unlike nuclear fission, the process that powers all the nuclear power plants existing today, nuclear fusion could create potentially unlimited energy. It’s a dream that scientists and engineers have been chasing for decades, with little luck.
The announcement from Helion and Microsoft is historic — and raises a lot of thorny questions about fusion, the role of tech in promoting new energy sources, and whether all this talk about fusion is even doing any good for the planet.
What is nuclear fusion, and why has it been so difficult to achieve?
Nuclear fusion is, simply put, the same process that powers the Sun. The Sun turns matter into energy through the enormous pressures and high temperatures at its core.
“If you smash atoms together hard enough and in a hot enough and dense enough environment, you can get essentially free energy,” said Charles Seife, a journalism professor at NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute and the author of Sun in a Bottle: The Strange History of Fusion and the Science of Wishful Thinking. “It’s enormous amounts of energy from very little fuel,” he told Earther.
Physicists have been chasing the dream of replicating the fusion process since the 1940s, when research into building nuclear reactors began. It quickly became clear that the problem was not replicating fusion itself but rather creating conditions in which the process produces more energy than it takes in. Fusion needs an enormous amount of energy, and almost all of the demonstrations of fusion scientists have accomplished thus far have not been able to reach the point where the energy output is greater than the input.
Seife said that the Livermore announcement is significant but pointed out that manufacturing the lasers used at Livermore and creating other inputs to set up the fusion process require much more energy than is accounted for in the final equation. He’s less impressed by the numerous nuclear fusion startups that have cropped up in Silicon Valley and elsewhere in recent years.
“I think there’s been something of a hype cycle” around fusion recently, he said. “There’s been a lot of venture capital flowing, and people have gotten better and better at leveraging dumb money into hype. You’ve got a lot of startups blooming everywhere that are replicating stuff that we were able to do in the 1960s in small labs, and putting their own spin on it. Because there’s so much money in the system, and so much desire to have this technological solution, people are very excited — and totally ignoring the fact that there is no result that has any energy output to it.”
What is Helion, and what is it promising?
Speaking of startups: enter Helion. Helion was founded in 2013 and was helped along by an infusion of cash from startup accelerator Y Combinator in 2014. That year, its CEO claimed that Helion could get a fusion reactor up and running in three years; two years ago, he said that the company would be able to generate fusion power and “go after commercially installed power generation” by 2024.
Despite the repeated misses on the timeline, Helion broke ground on its first reactor site in 2021, thanks in part to a $US375 million investment from Silicon Valley entrepreneur Sam Altman. It has now become the first fusion company to ink an actual power purchasing agreement for its services, and says that it will start supplying power to Microsoft in 2028 — more than 10 years after it initially said its reactor would be built.
Earther reached out to Helion to ask about its confidence in the timeline given its past misses. The recent results of its sixth prototype of a fusion reactor, a spokesperson wrote in an email, “give us great confidence that our timeline is realistic and that we can build the first fusion power plant by 2028.”
Can they actually do it?
Despite the company’s cheery outlook, there’s a lot of scepticism from experts around the Helion and Microsoft announcement, particularly the truncated timeline — including from Seife, who nevertheless says that he understands the hype.
“It’s so beautiful on paper,” Seife said. “That’s the appeal of it.”
Beyond Helion’s ability to perfect a process in five years that decades of research hasn’t yet gotten us to, there’s also a marked difference between advancing the science of fusion itself — which would alone be an incredible feat — and harnessing fusion for energy. A lot of the funding behind nuclear fusion in recent years in the U.S. has focused on achieving ignition, without an additional focus on creating usable energy from fusion; it’s a whole separate ballgame to actually put energy on the grid with the process. (Building a power plant alone is already a big infrastructure project that can take a couple years at best.)
“The classic joke is, ok, if you can produce energy, make me a cup of tea,” Seife said. “Once you make me a cup of tea, I will consider paying you money to do something, but first, make me a goddamn cup of tea.”
Is banking on fusion good for the planet?
A spokesperson for Helion told Earther in an email that the details of its power purchasing agreement with Microsoft won’t be made public. “That said, this is a real PPA, with commitments and obligations as well as penalties for failing to meet them,” the spokesperson said.
There are many questions left unanswered — has Microsoft paid Helion any money up-front? What are those commitments, obligations, and penalties, specifically? And, perhaps most importantly from a climate perspective, how much is Microsoft banking on this carbon-free fusion power?
………………………….. we don’t have much time to make the big changes we need. Creating plans that rely on technologies that haven’t been fully tested — and listening to Silicon Valley technocrats who keep making big promises and aren’t held to account when they don’t deliver — wastes valuable time, energy, and money that we could be spending on the clean energy technologies that we have today or are much nearer to deployment…… https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2023/05/helion-and-microsoft-lead-world-down-nuclear-fusion-rabbit-hole/
Campaigners against UK nuclear waste dump plan claim victory in local elections
Nuclear storage dump campaigners claim victory in local elections
Call for government to honour wishes
By Daniel Jaines Local Democracy Reporter, The Lincolnite, 11 May 23
Anti-nuclear campaigners have claimed victory in Theddlethorpe after last week’s district and parish council elections.
Opposition councillors, including independent Trais Hesketh, gained a majority of seats with a high voter turnout.
The campaign’s success saw voters “overwhelmingly reject” Nuclear Waste Service’s proposal to build a Geological Disposal Facility beneath the former Conoco gas terminal.
Prior to the election, anti-dump candidates were elected unopposed for eight of the ten available seats on Theddlethorpe Parish Council.
The Guardians of the East Coast campaigners have also claimed support from neighbouring towns such as Mablethorpe, Sutton on Sea, and Trusthorpe.
Ken Smith, chairperson for GOTEC, praised the residents for protesting through the ballot box.
“We now call upon Lincolnshire County Council and East Linsey District Council to honour the people’s decision by withdrawing from the so-called community partnership,” he said.
The Nuclear Free Local Authorities group has also backed the campaigners. Councillor David Blackburn said, “When it comes to a GDF, Mablethorpe, Theddlethorpe, and Sutton on Sea do not represent the ‘willing community’ that the government and nuclear industry say they are looking for to host the dump – instead voters there have clearly said ‘No’.”
………….An NWS spokesperson stated that the GDF would only be built where there was the consent of a willing community.
………………………………………………….. Concerns raised around seismic blasting
There have recently been concerns over the impact of seismic blasting in other areas of the UK as part of exploratory works carried out by NWS ahead of geophysical survey works.
The Lakes Against Nuclear Dump/Radiation Free Lakeland groups fear marine deaths in the Irish Sea and Allerdale’s Solway Firth area as part of Copeland exploration were a result of the seismic tests and have called for them to halt while investigations take place……… https://thelincolnite.co.uk/2023/05/nuclear-storage-dump-campaigners-claim-victory-in-local-elections
Germany’s Nuclear Energy Phase-Out, Explained
NIRS, May 8, 2023
On April 15, 2023 utilities in Germany shut down the country’s three
last remaining nuclear power plants. These closures mark the successful
planned phase-out of German nuclear energy from the nation’s grid. What does this mean for Germany? What lessons should the U.S. take away from the
German energy transition?
Germany’s Energiewende (“energytransition”) is an overarching policy commitment to achieve a low-carbon, nuclear-free economy and transition to renewable energy. While the recently completed phase-out of nuclear power is a major milestone for Germany’s energy transition, it was by no means a perfect process nor is the current
energy system in Germany a perfect example to follow.
But, Germany’s transition shows that an energy policy grounded in environmental values works – and the earlier climate policy is implemented, the sooner the
climate policy goals can be realized. Above all, the German energy
transition shows the tremendous power of active citizenry, organized social
movements, and activism to transform policy and successfully demand change.
more https://www.nirs.org/germanys-nuclear-energy-phase-out-explained/
Nuclear Free Local Authorities issue appeal to King over Lincolnshire Nuke Dump
Save our sceptred isle: NFLAs issue appeal to King over Lincolnshire Nuke Dump. https://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/save-our-sceptred-isle-nflas-issue-appeal-to-king-over-lincolnshire-nuke-dump/ 11 May 23
Just days after the Coronation, the English Nuclear Free Local Authorities (NFLAs) have written to the nation’s new Sovereign to ask His Majesty King Charles III to intercede over the plan to locate a nuclear waste dump in East Lincolnshire right next to the first Royal nature reserve.
The East Lincolnshire coast has been selected as the first of the ‘King’s Series of National Nature Reserves’ to mark the commencement of His Majesty’s Reign. A formal announcement by Natural England is expected in the summer.
The ‘Lincolnshire Coronation Coast Nature Reserve’ will cover some 21 square miles, centred upon existing protected areas at Theddlethorpe and Saltfleetby comprising mud flats, salt- and freshwater marshes and sand dunes, which support a diverse variety of wintering and breeding birds, natter jack toads, insects, and plants. The establishment of the reserve would enhance the area’s existing offer to visitors, many of whom flock to adjoining Mablethorpe to enjoy the beautiful Blue Flag award winning beaches.
So it was with regret that Councillor David Blackburn, Chair of the English Forum of the NFLAs had to sound a note of caution in his letter to His Majesty that Nuclear Waste Services has plans to locate a Geological Disposal Facility, a nuclear waste dump, right next to the reserve.
This would be the destination for Britain’s high-level, heat emitting radioactive waste, including its huge stockpile of plutonium. This waste has either already been generated through the UK’s military and civil nuclear programmes over the last 70 years or will be generated in the future through their continuance.
The GDF would comprise a surface facility approximately 1 square KM, which would most likely be located on the site of the former Conoco gas terminal in Theddlethorpe. This would be the railhead receiving regular shipments of nuclear waste. This waste would be transported below ground and out through tunnels beneath the North Sea. As nuclear waste is transported by rail, and there is no current infrastructure in place, there would be a necessity to construct a new rail line to serve the location.
The process of selecting a site for this facility could take between 15 and 20 years after which the construction and operation of such a facility would last more than 100 years.
In his letter, Councillor Blackburn contends that the project is ‘of such an immense size and in (such) a wholly inappropriate location’ that it would be ‘massively disruptive and harmful’ to the flora and fauna of the local environment, including that of the Royal Reserve, and to local people, as well as ‘massively ruinous’ to the local tourist and agrarian economy. Councillor Blackburn ends by appealing to the King on behalf of ‘His Majesty’s many loyal and anxious subjects in the affected area to intercede with relevant Ministers of the Crown to end this folly ‘.
Commenting Cllr Blackburn said: “The creation of this Royal Reserve is a wonderful idea and wholly in keeping with His Majesty the King’s known love for the natural environment. I can only hope that by drawing the Sovereign’s attention to the government’s lunatic plan to locate a nuclear waste dump next to the reserve that the King might be able to intervene to end the threat of it.”
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 