AUKUS nuclear submarine deal triggers accusations over cost and construction
SMH, By Daniel Keane 30 Oct 23
South Australia’s premier remains insistent that the nation’s future nuclear-powered submarines should be constructed in Adelaide, despite a prominent call for the vessels to instead be built by, and purchased from, another AUKUS nation in order to save taxpayers “billions and billions of dollars”.
Key points:
- Alexander Downer has called for all of the nation’s future nuclear subs to be built overseas
- But SA premier Peter Malinauskas says Australia should build them “for national security reasons”
- Mr Downer also said the question of storage of AUKUS nuclear waste needs to be addressed
Former foreign affairs minister Alexander Downer has described the AUKUS project’s $368 billion price tag as “eye-watering”, and said he expects a future federal government to abandon the local construction element of the deal.
“We’re just going to wreck Australia if we keep promising to spend money on any manner of projects and have no idea where the money is going to come from,” Mr Downer told the ABC on Sunday.
“I don’t think the existing federal parliament or the next one is going to make a decision on this, but I think down the years, in the end, the federal government will decide that this is just too expensive, and they will buy the submarines from overseas.
“I’d be almost certain of that.”
Responding to similar comments Mr Downer made in The Weekend Australian, SA premier Peter Malinauskas said it is vital that Australia develops the ability to build the vessels “for national security reasons”, but also because “neither the US nor the UK in the long term have the capacity” to construct Australia’s entire fleet.
“They are struggling to meet their own demand,” Mr Malinauskas said.
Under the current terms of the AUKUS pact, Australia will get three US-made Virginia-class submarines while it builds up to eight nuclear-powered submarines of its own.
Mr Malinauskas accused Mr Downer of “misunderstanding” the intentions and expected outcomes of AUKUS…………………………………………………………..
But Mr Downer has rejected the premier’s comments, and in turn accused Mr Malinauskas of failing to understand the economics of AUKUS.
“I have a challenge to the premier — to explain where all this money is going to come from, and why does the premier think it’s better we spend eye-watering amounts of money on building nuclear submarines in Adelaide rather than investing … in other parts of our economy?” Mr Downer said……………………
“Peter Malinauskas and [SA opposition leader] David Speirs will be well and truly retired by the time this project comes about.
“It’s easy for them to make any manner of promises about times in the future, which will be way beyond their political life span — we can all make promises about the Second Coming.”
Mr Downer also said the question of storage of nuclear waste from the subs had not been satisfactorily addressed.
“There’s some elements of the Labor Party who have reservations, or are opposed to, nuclear-powered submarines and any association with nuclear power, and so I part company with them on that,” he said.
“But you’re going to have to store the waste somewhere. I’m not sure where that will be stored.” https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-29/sa-premier-defends-aukus-after-alexander-downer-questions-cost/103036822
Leaked: Israeli plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza
The plan advocates the forced transfer of the population of the Gaza Strip to Sinai permanently, and calls for the international community to be leveraged to assist the move
News Desk, OCT 29, 2023
Israeli culture magazine Mekovit published on 28 October a leaked document issued by Israel’s Ministry of Intelligence recommending the occupation of Gaza and total transfer of its 2.3 million inhabitants to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.
The document, issued on 13 October, identifies a plan to transfer all residents of the Gaza Strip to North Sinai as the preferred option among three alternatives regarding the future of the Palestinians in Gaza at the end of the current war between Israel and the Hamas-led Palestinian resistance.
The document recommends that Israel evacuate the Gazan population to Sinai during the war, establish tent cities and new cities in northern Sinai to accommodate the deported population, and then create a closed security zone stretching several kilometers inside Egypt. The deported Palestinians would not be allowed to return to any areas near the Israeli border.
The existence of the document does not necessarily indicate that its recommendations are being implemented by Israel’s security establishment.
The Ministry of Intelligence, headed by Gila Gamliel of the Likud party, does not control any of Israel’s intelligence agencies, but independently prepares studies and policy papers, which are distributed for consideration by the government and its security bodies.
However, recent statements by Israeli government officials and actions by the Israeli army in Gaza suggest the plan is indeed being implemented. Since 7 October, Israeli officials have repeatedly issued warnings to Palestinians to move to southern Gaza in advance of a looming ground invasion.
Israel has imposed a total siege on Gaza, cutting off food, water, fuel, and electricity. The siege, combined with intense Israeli bombing that has killed over 8,000 Palestinians, the majority women and children, threatens to make Gaza uninhabitable.
An official at the Ministry of Intelligence confirmed that the ten-page document is authentic but “was not supposed to reach the media,” Mekovit noted.
According to a right-wing activist, the document from the Ministry of Intelligence was leaked by a member of Likud. Leaking the document was an attempt to find out whether “the public in Israel is ready to accept ideas of a transfer from Gaza.”
The document unequivocally and explicitly recommends carrying out a transfer of civilians from Gaza as the desired outcome of the war.
The transfer plan is divided into several phases: in the first phase, the population in Gaza must be forced to move to southern Gaza, while Israeli air strikes will focus on targets in northern Gaza.
In the second phase, the Israeli army’s ground entry into Gaza will begin, which will lead to the occupation of the entire strip, from north to south, and the “cleansing of the underground bunkers from Hamas fighters.”
At the same time as the Gaza Strip is occupied, the citizens of Gaza will move to Egyptian territory and will be prevented from returning permanently.
“It is important to leave the traffic lanes towards the south usable, to allow the evacuation of the civilian population towards Rafah,” the document states.
The document recommends beginning a dedicated campaign that will “motivate” Gazans “to agree to the plan,” and make them give up their land.
Gazan should be convinced that “Allah made sure that you lost this land because of the leadership of Hamas – there is no choice but to move to another place with the help of Your Muslim brothers,” the document reads.
Further, the plan states the government must launch a public relations campaign that will promote the transfer program to western states in a way that does not promote hostility to Israel or damage its reputation. The deportation of the population from Gaza must be presented as a necessary humanitarian measure to receive international support. Such a deportation could be justified if it will lead to “fewer casualties among the civilian population compared to the expected number of casualties if they remain,” the document says.
The document also states that the US should be leveraged to pressure Egypt to take in the residents of Gaza, and to encourage other European countries, and in particular Greece, Spain and Canada, to help take in and settle the refugees who will be evacuated from Gaza.
Finally, the document claims that if the population of Gaza remains, there will be “many Arab deaths” during the expected occupation of Gaza by the Israeli army, and this will damage Israel’s international image even more than the deportation of the population. For all these reasons, the recommendation of the Ministry of Intelligence is to promote the transfer of all Palestinians in Gaza to Sinai permanently. #Israel #Palestine
NewsReal: Israel and US Implementing ‘Final Solutions’ to End Palestine and Multipolar World
Sott.net, Sun, 29 Oct 2023 https://www.sott.net/article/485509-NewsReal-Israel-and-US-Implementing-Final-Solutions-to-End-Palestine-and-Multipolar-World#
Last week the American ‘president’, Joe Biden, gave a TV address in which he declared that he was sending half of America’s sea power to ‘protect Israel’, part of Washington’s plan to usher in a “new, new world order.” While it’s scarily obvious what Israel’s attempting to do – ethnically cleanse Gaza and the West Bank of Palestinians – it’s not so obvious what the USA is trying to do.
This week on NewsReal, Joe & Niall sketch how ‘Armageddon’ might play out in the coming months, with the US-led West apparently seeking to start a ‘controlled burn’ in the Middle East with a ‘limited war’ that would disrupt global energy supplies just enough to hinder its rivals and thus maintain American global hegemony. You know what they say about wishful thinking… #Israel #nuclear #antinuclear #NoNukes
Atoms for Peace was never the plan
And while all four groups considered dual-purpose reactors to be technically feasible, they all agreed that: “no reactor could be constructed in the very near future which would be economic on the basis of power generation alone.”
Uneconomic, then, and still today.
Early reactors were primarily intended as producers of plutonium
By Linda Pentz Gunter, https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2023/10/29/atoms-for-peace-was-never-the-plan/—
Atoms for Peace had a nice ring to it. But it was a fantasy at best, at worst, a lie. Atoms for Peace was never the intention. Atoms for war, as it turned out, was brewing in the background even before Dwight Eisenhower became president of the United States.
After summarily tossing aside the Paley Commission report delivered to his predecessor, President Truman, and which advocated the US choose the solar pathway for energy expansion, Eisenhower embraced a very different report. In 1953, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) delivered a series of studies on Nuclear Power Reactor Technology from four groups of private industry companies
On the cover of the report is a familiar rogues’ gallery of corporations, including Dow, Monsanto, and Bechtel.
These reports, an initiative of the companies themselves, were designed to find a way to bring private industry into the nuclear power sector. Hitherto, the nuclear sector — almost entirely focused on weapons of course — was firmly under the control of government and the military.
Whose idea was it? Says the AEC:
“Accordingly, when Dr. Charles A. Thomas, of Monsanto Chemical Co., in the summer of 1950 proposed that industry might with its own capital design, construct and operate nuclear reactors for production of plutonium and power, the AEC gave the suggestion interested consideration.”
Plutonium and power. Note which came first.
Before long there were four groups all vying to come up with the best proposal for a dual-purpose reactor — and that’s what they called them — that would make plutonium for the nuclear weapons sector, and oh yes, as a by-product, also generate electricity.
This was a stated pre-requisite, directly from the AEC. Even if Dow and Monsanto and others had wanted just to explore using nuclear power for electricity generation, the AEC required that the designs it would consider were: “not necessarily those which would have been selected had the studies been directed toward power-only reactors with the plutonium produced having but fuel value.”
They had to be dual-purpose.
And while all four groups considered dual-purpose reactors to be technically feasible, they all agreed that: “no reactor could be constructed in the very near future which would be economic on the basis of power generation alone.”
Uneconomic, then, and still today.
The four groups of companies had completed their reports in the summer of 1952. So even as the Truman government commissioned and submitted the Paley Commission to Congress — which had flagged nuclear power as having limited utility — behind the scenes, the AEC and this private industry cabal was already trying to cement in place a scheme that would legitimize nuclear power by giving it a dual-purpose, the more important one being its role in further building up the US nuclear weapons arsenal.
This determination, to tie civil and military nuclear reactor technology together; to say that reactor technology should serve primarily to produce plutonium; effectively gave nuclear power an immovable seat at the energy table.
And all of this eclipsed and supplanted renewable energy development, despite what the Paley Commission had recommended, because of course renewable energy had no utility to the military sector.
None of the reactors presented by the four groups in the AEC report was ever built. In fact, no commercial, civilian-owned reactors were ever built in the United States that adopted the dual power production and plutonium production concept.
Instead, the US was already opening the way for private industry to develop, own and operate commercial nuclear power plants for the purpose of generating electricity. This effectively obviated the need to pursue the dual-purpose reactor path.
If the Paley Commission path had been taken, and the US had decided to lead the world in solar energy, we might not have had climate change at all.
Instead, we got Atoms for Peace and nuclear power retained its seat at the nuclear weapons table. Not because it was the most economical, most abundant and most sustainable choice for energy production. It was none of these. But because of that special caché —it’s connection to nuclear weapons.
Despite the national pride at the time about Atoms for Peace, it was a fatal step in the wrong direction, miring the country in vast costs and an enormous inventory of radioactive waste.
The connection between nuclear power and nuclear weapons remains unbroken, cemented in place by the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), specifically, by Article IV which reads:
“Nothing in this Treaty shall be interpreted as affecting the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.”
Unfortunately, these words were lifted verbatim and inserted into the otherwise excellent Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
Article IV of the NPT even encourages the development of nuclear power in “non-nuclear-weapon States Party to the Treaty, with due consideration for the needs of the developing areas of the world.”
So, when a non-nuclear weapons country signs the Treaty, thereby declaring it will not develop nuclear weapons, its reward is not only permission, but encouragement to develop nuclear power, regardless of that country’s energy needs, climate, demographics, topography or political volatility.
Thus, you have a country like Saudi Arabia — along with others in the now ever more volatile Middle Eastern region — eager to develop nuclear power. Saudi Arabia’s argument is that this will allow it to export more oil rather than burn it, thus reducing its carbon emissions. All good for climate change, it says.
But if Saudi Arabia really needs a home-grown energy source, why would it embark on a long, slow and expensive program of building nuclear power plants? Surely a sunny and windy place like Saudi Arabia would be developing solar and wind power if this was really about electricity needs?
It’s quite obvious why Saudi Arabia wants nuclear power. It at least opens the option for a pathway to nuclear weapons, and it sends a message to its enemies in that region — most notably Iran — about that capacity to do so.
Allowing for the “inalienable right” to nuclear energy leaves the drawbridge to the peace castle perpetually down, an open invitation to marauders to charge in bearing the means to develop nuclear weapons. What began as a bad idea in 1953 should not be enshrined in laws meant to make the world nuclear-free.
This essay was derived from a January 31, 2021 talk given by the author at the Beyond Nuclear conference hosted by Helensburgh, Scotland Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Linda Pentz Gunter is the international specialist at Beyond Nuclear and writes for and curates Beyond Nuclear International. #nuclear #antinuclear #NoNukes
There’s Only So Much Propaganda Spin You Can Put On The Murder Of Thousands Of Children
They can talk about the killings on October 7 till they’re blue in the face, but people are going to object that nothing Hamas did makes it moral or acceptable to murder children by the thousands.
CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, OCT 29, 2023,
https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/theres-only-so-much-propaganda-spin?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=138382123&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&utm_medium=email
The thing is there’s only so much propaganda spin you can put on the murder of thousands of children.
With other imperial military actions the propagandists had an easier time spinning things. Oh no those evil communists are taking over South Vietnam, we need to stop them! Oh no Saddam’s got WMDs, we need to get him! Oh no Gaddafi’s gonna rape and kill all those Libyans, we have a responsibility to protect them!
In Gaza, Israel and its western backers are massacring children by the thousands with a shockingly vicious bombing campaign that is turning entire neighborhoods into gravel. They’re raining down military explosives on a giant concentration camp that is densely populated by children.
There’s only so much a propagandist can do with that.
They can talk about the killings on October 7 til they’re blue in the face, but people are going to object that nothing Hamas did makes it moral or acceptable to murder children by the thousands.
They can say “Israel has a right to defend itself” as much as they want, but people are going to object that murdering children by the thousands is not actually defending anything from anyone.
They can bleat the phrase “human shields” over and over again, but eventually people are going to start saying “Okay but even if they are human shields, could we please stop murdering children by the thousands? I know I wouldn’t want my children to be murdered just because they were being used as human shields.”
They can say every death is the fault of Hamas, but more and more people are going to start saying “Okay blame whoever you want, but can we please stop murdering children by the thousands right this very instant?”
They can say “Well what do you expect Israel to do?”, and people will respond “Stop murdering children by the thousands for starters, please and thank you.
Imagine you’re a mass media propagandist trying to frame all this in a positive light. How would you do it? Would you be able to make it believable?
Propagandists are used to having a lot more wiggle room to work with than this. They’re used to interfacing with a complex matrix of narrative and manipulating it to distort the public’s understanding of what’s going on. But raw video footage of a mother clutching the tattered remains of a child is not narrative. Satellite images of powdered city blocks are not narrative. It’s just reality. Right there in your face.
Western civilization is dominated by propaganda. The “freedom” and “democracy” we think we have is an illusion that has been carefully cultivated by those who manipulate the way we think, speak, act and vote by mass-scale psychological manipulation — as Chomsky says, propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state. A mind-controlled dystopia is not some dark future that awaits humanity if things go terribly wrong for us; it is already presently the case.
Propagandists are able to control civilization so effectively because they understand that humans are storytelling creatures whose lives are dominated by mental narrative, so if you can control the narratives the humans are telling each other, you can control the humans. A globe-spanning empire centralized around the United States depends heavily on its ability to indoctrinate us with subtle mass media messaging from a very early age.
The Gaza massacre throws a big fat monkey wrench in all that, because the raw data coming out of it is so transparently horrifying that no amount of narrative spin can make it look acceptable. The fact that the US and its allies are helping Israel murder children by the thousands is a giant glitch in the narrative matrix.
The longer this continues, the more people are going to wake up out of the propaganda-induced coma the empire has had them in all their lives. The more people are going to realize that their government is not what it has been pretending to be and the media have not been telling them the truth about the world. As the western empire backs the slaughter of thousands of children, the discrepancies between what the propaganda tells us about our society and what our society actually is are being brightly illuminated.
By murdering thousands of children in Gaza, the empire has exposed its true face in front of everyone. And the people aren’t liking what they see. #Israel #Palestine
Antinuclear 