Mining giant BHP pushes Albanese Government to remove hurdles to nuclear energy
The West Australian, Tue, 6 June 2023
Mining giant BHP has urged the Federal Government to remove its prohibition on nuclear energy to help meet the energy needs of transitioning to a low-carbon economy.
The company lobbied Treasury — ahead of the May 9 Budget — to make the move as it told the Albanese Government that more must be done to protect energy security, affordability and decarbonisation, The Australian reported…………….. (Subscribers only) https://thewest.com.au/business/mining-giant-bhp-pushes-albanese-government-to-remove-hurdles-to-nuclear-energy-c-10896013
Washington Post reported Ukraine conducted a test strike with HIMARS on the Kahovka dam last year
the Washington Post reported in December 2022 that Ukraine had previously carried out a test strike using American HIMARS (High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems) on a dam located on the Russian-held side of Ukraine along the Dnieper River in Kahovka. They cited Ukrainian Major-General Andriy Kovalchuk.
Human Events Media Group 06/06/2023
A dam on the Dnieper River was destroyed on Tuesday, flooding a substantial amount of the area where Ukrainian and Russian troops are engaged in fighting, after Ukraine launched their much-anticipated counter-offensive. The dam was in Russian control, and has been since shortly after the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine by Russia.
Ukraine claimed Russia blew up the Nova Kakhovka dam and said it was a war crime, while Russia has said that it was Ukraine who “sabotaged the dam, to distract attention from the launch of a major counteroffensive Moscow says is faltering,” Reuters reports.
Ukraine’s counter offensive has been in the works for some time, specifically targeting the Russian-held city of Kherson, and was just recently launched.
“Russian terrorists,” President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Telegram. “The destruction of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant dam only confirms for the whole world that they must be expelled from every corner of Ukrainian land.”
However, the Washington Post reported in December 2022 that Ukraine had previously carried out a test strike using American HIMARS (High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems) on a dam located on the Russian-held side of Ukraine along the Dnieper River in Kahovka. They cited Ukrainian Major-General Andriy Kovalchuk.
“Kovalchuk considered flooding the river,” the Washington Post reported. “The Ukrainians, he said, even conducted a test strike with a HIMARS launcher on one of the floodgates at the Nova Kakhovka dam, making three holes in the metal to see if the Dnieper’s water could be raised enough to stymie Russian crossings but not flood nearby villages. The test was a success, Kovalchuk said, but the step remained a last resort.”……………….. https://humanevents.com/2023/06/06/wapo-reported-ukraine-conducted-a-test-strike-with-himars-on-the-kahovka-dam-last-year
The Ukrainian “counter-offensive”: A new stage in the US-NATO war against Russia
Every aspect of the war, including the “counter-offensive,” is being directed by the Biden administration, the Pentagon and NATO. It is being led by forces trained by NATO and armed with NATO weapons, including depleted uranium shells supplied by the UK. Operationally, it is organized from Washington and the Pentagon. The masses of Ukrainians are being exploited as cannon fodder. Among the first divisions thrown into the battle, many are raw draftees with little or no training.
WSWS Joseph Kishore, David North, 5 June 2023
The US-NATO war against Russia over Ukraine is entering a new stage this week, with reports of a significant increase in fighting along a broad front Monday and enormous casualties.
The Russian Defense Ministry reported on its official Telegram channel that Russian forces countered a Ukrainian offensive on the Vremevka outpost in South Donetsk, which is currently controlled by Russia. It stated that over 1,500 Ukrainian soldiers were killed and that Russia seized 28 tanks, including eight German-made Leopard tanks.
Russia also reported an offensive of Ukrainian troops toward the south, against the territory along the coast of the Sea of Azov that connects Crimea and the Donbas, both held by Russia or pro-Russian forces since 2014. A Russian-appointed official in the city of Zaporizhzhia said that the fighting in the south involved extensive shelling and strikes by Ukraine using British-French Storm Shadow missiles.
It is apparent that Monday’s operations mark the beginning of the long anticipated “summer counter-offensive.” While there is, at present, limited information, one thing can be said with certainty: The fighting will result in a vast increase in the number of deaths, both Ukrainian and Russian.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal Sunday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky acknowledged that “a large number of soldiers are going to die,” but “we are going to do it.” Reliable estimates place the death toll of Ukrainians in the war so far at 300,000.
Every aspect of the war, including the “counter-offensive,” is being directed by the Biden administration, the Pentagon and NATO. It is being led by forces trained by NATO and armed with NATO weapons, including depleted uranium shells supplied by the UK. Operationally, it is organized from Washington and the Pentagon. The masses of Ukrainians are being exploited as cannon fodder. Among the first divisions thrown into the battle, many are raw draftees with little or no training.
The US and the NATO powers are determined to inflict a Russian defeat, with dreams of a military parade of NATO troops in the streets of Moscow. The Financial Times wrote on Monday that “there has been a notable change of tone among senior western officials, who have appeared increasingly skeptical about Russian military capabilities. Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, last week made a clear case for an outright Ukrainian victory based on ‘territorial integrity’ [that is, retaking all territory presently controlled by Russia] in a speech that also disparaged Russia’s military ‘as the second-strongest in Ukraine.’”
The FT also cited comments by Ben Wallace, the UK defense secretary, that Ukraine could take back Crimea as part of the offensive. “What we’ve seen on the battlefield is that, if you punch Russian forces in the wrong place, they’ll actually collapse,” he said.
Such statements combine propaganda with self-delusion. The Ukrainian military has been bled white over the past 15 months. It is entirely reliant on the US and NATO, not only to provide training and weaponry, but increasingly the manpower necessary for escalating the war.
The operations in Ukraine are only one part of a barely disguised, undeclared war between NATO and Russia, which is expanding in intensity and geographical scope.
Developments on the ground in Ukraine have been timed to coincide with a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Oslo, Norway late last week. This meeting itself was to prepare a full NATO war summit next month in Vilnius, Lithuania, only a short drive from the Russian border. Behind closed doors, the leaders of the NATO powers are discussing and implementing the next stage in the escalation.
Already, Ukraine, operating under the direction of the US, has launched drone strikes targeting Moscow, begun shelling Russian cities, and organized incursions into Russian territory, using vehicles and equipment provided by the US and its NATO allies. Poland has become directly involved in the conflict, with members of the so-called “Polish Volunteer Corps” of Polish citizens participating in cross-border raids from Ukraine into Russia.
An article in the Washington Post (“Defend ‘every inch’ of NATO territory? New strategy is a work in progress”), published Monday, opens with a description of French paratroopers being dropped into Estonia, which borders Russia and is only 150 km from St. Petersburg. The Post notes that the French war exercises in Estonia are “part of a stepped-up rehearsal of what it would take to reinforce a [NATO] battle group” in the country.
Speaking of what can only be described as a massive military mobilization, the newspaper writes, “NATO has bolstered its eastern flank in part by establishing battle groups in four additional countries: Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia,” with 10,000 troops across eight battle groups. Dozens of ships and hundreds of planes, along with ground-based air defense, have been sent to countries on Russia’s border, particularly the Baltic countries of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.
War games are taking place currently throughout Europe, including the massive “Defender Europe 2023” exercise, which began on April 22 and involves 26,000 troops from the US and its allies. The final component of the operations, “Saber Guardian 23,” began last week and is centered on the Black Sea, to the south of Ukraine. It involves soldiers and sailors from Albania, Bulgaria, Belgium, France, Greece, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Romania, Slovenia and the United States.
Given the statements of leading US and NATO officials that they are committed to the military defeat of Russia, the Putin government will be compelled to interpret all these actions as possible preparations for NATO incursions into Russian territory. The purpose of all these operations is to support the Ukrainian offensive by distracting Russian military commanders from exclusive focus on the Ukrainian front and compelling them to divert forces to other border regions.
In the capitals of the NATO powers, a mood of reckless hysteria prevails. Over the weekend, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, confronted by protesters at a gathering of his Social Democratic Party outside of Berlin, unleashed a Hitlerian rant against Russia and denounced Putin as a “murderer” and a “warmonger.”
The White House has rejected calls for a ceasefire or negotiated settlement to the conflict that does not include full capitulation by Russia. Encouraged by Russia’s failure to respond to each escalation, the Biden administration has concluded that there is no “red line” that it cannot cross.
In an article published under the headline “Biden Administration Shrugs Off Ukraine’s Attacks in Russia,” the New York Times wrote on Monday that the White House has discarded the pretense of discouraging direct attacks in Russia by Ukraine, using US-supplied weaponry. “Behind closed doors,” the Times wrote, “senior administration officials have seemed even less fazed. ‘Look, it’s a war,’ one senior Pentagon official said last Thursday. ‘This is what happens in a war.’”………………… https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/06/06/pers-j06.htm
Content of radioactive element in fish at Fukushima’s Nuclear Power Plant 180 times of safe limit
CGTN 6 June 23
The radioactive elements in the marine fish caught in the harbor of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Japan far exceed safety levels for human consumption, according to a report issued by the plant’s operator Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) on Monday. In particular, the data released show that the content of Cs-137, a radioactive element that is a common byproduct in nuclear reactors, is 180 times that of the standard maximum stipulated in Japan’s food safety law.
CGTN downloaded the English version of the report available on TEPCO’s official website. According to the data, the sampled black rockfish contains the radioactive element Cs-137 with a content of 18,000 becquerels per kilogram. Data available on the website of Fukushima Revitalization Station run by Japan’s Fukushima prefectural government shows that Japan’s current limit of radioactive cesium in general food which contains fish is set at 100 becquerels per kilogram.
According to the report, the location where the sampled fish was caught is at the port area of Units 1 to 4 of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, where a breakwater is built and nuclear wastewater with a high concentration of radioactive substances flows in. TEPCO said it will set up multiple protective nets to prevent fish from swimming out of the harbor.
A Chinese news website sina.com.cn quoted experts noting that the radioactive elements in the nuclear wastewater could penetrate into fish, shrimp and other seafood, and later accumulate in the human body after consumption. ……………………
TEPCO on Monday started sending seawater into an underwater tunnel to be diluted before releasing the nuclear wastewater into the ocean. The company said that all facilities for the water release system are expected to be completed by the end of this month.
Local fishing communities say their businesses and livelihoods will suffer still more damage. Neighboring countries such as China and South Korea and Pacific Island nations have raised safety concerns. Environmental groups including Friends of the Earth oppose the release. https://news.cgtn.com/news/2023-06-06/Radioactive-element-in-fish-at-Fukushima-plant-180-times-safe-limit-1kpOlJEH9xm/index.html
Journalists Are Asking Ukrainian Soldiers To Hide Their Nazi Patches, New York Times Admits
AZOV soldier, UKraine
BY TYLER DURDEN
The New York Times has been forced to very, very belatedly deal with something which had long been obvious and known to many independent analysts and media outlets, but which has been carefully shielded from the mainstream masses in the West for obvious reasons.
The surprising Monday Times headline said that “Nazi Symbols on Ukraine’s Front Lines Highlight Thorny Issues of History.” This acknowledgement comes after literally years of primarily indy journalists and geopolitical commentators pointing out that yes indeed… Ukraine’s military and paramilitary groups, especially those operating in the east since at least 2014, have a serious Nazi ideology problem. This has been exhaustively documented, again, going back years.
But the report, which merely tries to downplay it as a “thorny issue” of Ukraine’s “unique” “History” – suggests that the real problem for Western PR is fundamentally that it’s being displayed so openly. Ukrainian troops are being asked to cover those Nazi symbols please!–as Matt Taibbi sarcastically quipped in commenting on the report.
The authors of the NYT report begin by expressing frustration over the optics of Nazi symbols being displayed so proudly on many Ukrainian soldiers’ uniforms. Suggesting that many journalistic photographs which have in some cases been featured in newspapers and media outlets worldwide (typically coupled with generally positive articles on Ukraine’s military) are merely ‘unfortunate’ or misleading, the NYT report says, “In each photograph, Ukrainians in uniform wore patches featuring symbols that were made notorious by Nazi Germany and have since become part of the iconography of far-right hate groups.”
NATO itself has in the recent past been forced to delete images on its official social media accounts due to Nazi imagery being present among Ukrainian troops during photo shoots.
The following line from the report says everything you need to know about the so-called “paper of record” and its one-sided and ultra-simplistic coverage of what many are finally waking up to realize is a war with a deeply complex reality (to say the least), and far from the MSM’s goodies vs. baddies Hollywoodesque narrative of Putler vs. the free world which is typical of networks from CNN to Fox to NBC…
From the NY Times:
“In November, during a meeting with Times reporters near the front line, a Ukrainian press officer wore a Totenkopf variation made by a company called R3ICH (pronounced “Reich”). He said he did not believe the patch was affiliated with the Nazis. A second press officer present said other journalists had asked soldiers to remove the patch before taking photographs.”
Oops!
…………..The iconography of these groups, including a skull-and-crossbones patch worn by concentration camp guards and a symbol known as the Black Sun, now appears with some regularity on the uniforms of soldiers fighting on the front line, including soldiers who say the imagery symbolizes Ukrainian sovereignty and pride, not Nazism.
Some are writing more appropriate and apt headlines for the NYT story…
Only very recently Ukraine’s Defense Ministry and even President Zelensky’s office was caught in the act:
In April, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry posted a photograph on its Twitter account of a soldier wearing a patch featuring a skull and crossbones known as the Totenkopf, or Death’s Head. The specific symbol in the picture was made notorious by a Nazi unit that committed war crimes and guarded concentration camps during World War II.
The patch in the photograph sets the Totenkopf atop a Ukrainian flag with a small No. 6 below. That patch is the official merchandise of Death in June, a British neo-folk band that the Southern Poverty Law Center has said produces “hate speech” that “exploits themes and images of fascism and Nazism.”
To be expected, the Times still tries to run cover while desperately seeking to ‘reassure’ its audience by writing that “In the short term, that threatens to reinforce Putin’s propaganda and giving fuel to his false claims that Ukraine must be ‘de-Nazified’ — a position that ignores the fact that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is Jewish.”
New levels of cope indeed…
But then still, the NYT concedes awkwardly, “More broadly, Ukraine’s ambivalence about these symbols, and sometimes even its acceptance of them, risks giving new, mainstream life to icons that the West has spent more than a half-century trying to eliminate.” https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/journalists-are-asking-ukrainian-soldiers-hide-their-nazi-patches-nyt-admits
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 