Labor’s decision to pull UNRWA funding is just wrong
By Hannah Thomas | 12 February 2024, https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/labors-decision-to-pull-unrwa-funding-is-just-wrong,18312—
The Albanese Government’s decision to pull UNRWA funding has rendered Australia complicit in the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza, writes Hannah Thomas.
ON 26 JANUARY, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) handed down its provisional ruling ordering Israel to, among other things, not commit acts of genocide and take immediate steps to ensure aid could reach civilians in Gaza.
The logical response, from a government that loves throwing around phrases like “international rules-based order” would have been to publicly back the ICJ’s ruling, demand an immediate and permanent ceasefire to allow aid to reach Palestinians in Gaza, increase aid to Palestine and stop military exports to Israel.
These responses were all logical – and not to mention morally necessary – many weeks ago, but the ICJ’s assessment that Israel’s military campaign is an existential threat to Palestinians in Gaza should have made these steps inevitable for the Albanese Government.
And yet less than 24 hours after the ICJ’s ruling, Minister Penny Wong announced the Albanese Government wouldn’t be stepping in to prevent a genocide. The Albanese Government wouldn’t punish the entity committing the genocide, it would punish its victims.
Based on allegations from the same entity freshly implicated by the ICJ, the Australian Government suspended funding to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), blindly and rashly following the United States and other “like-minded” countries.
Now, to the surprise of absolutely no one, the allegations have been exposed as baseless. As reported by the UK’s Channel 4, the dossier sent by Israel to UNRWA donors to justify its allegations didn’t contain a shred of evidence. And yet, the suspension of funding still stands.
Penny Wong and other Labor MPs dance around the issue, acknowledging the crucial, lifesaving work that UNRWA does, saying the Albanese Government is considering its next steps to increase funding for UNRWA in the future, while conveniently ignoring that they are currently crippling its operations at the most crucial of times. It is not clear what evidence they relied on to make the decision.
Every day that funds are suspended has grave consequences. The importance of UNRWA’s role is incontrovertible and utterly immense. In ordinary times, it is the only organisation with a mandate to provide relief and essential services to over 5 million Palestinian refugees in the region — a country’s worth of people.
In current times, more than 2 million Palestinians in Gaza depend on UNRWA for their immediate survival. More than a million people are sheltering in UNRWA schools and facilities as Israel indiscriminately rains hell on Gaza. These UNRWA facilities have been mercilessly targeted by Israel, who have slaughtered over 150 UNRWA staff since 7 October 2023. The Albanese Government has not imposed a single consequence on Israel.
It must be emphasised that even if the allegations were proven true, the decision would still be wrong. UNRWA already acted on the allegations before the Australian Government suspended funding: it sacked nine of those accused, while two are missing and one is dead. Even if UNRWA had not acted, punishing millions of Palestinians for the actions of 12 people would be unreasonable, but the point is that it has.
It is clear that the Albanese Government has already made us complicit in genocide, through military exports to Israel, the significant diplomatic cover it provides Israel and its refusal to call for a ceasefire. But continuing to starve UNRWA takes things to a new level.
Francis Boyle, a human rights lawyer who successfully argued a genocide case at the ICJ for Bosnia and Herzegovina, states that countries cutting off funding to UNRWA, have moved past aiding and abetting Israeli genocide.
He argues:
“These states are now also directly violating Genocide Convention Article 2(c) themselves: ‘Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part’.”
Michael Fakhri, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, said that by cutting UNRWA funding, countries like Australia had turned an imminent famine into an “inevitable” one.
The decision to suspend UNRWA funding was unforgivable and utterly incomprehensible. To maintain the suspension in the face of what have proven to be baseless allegations is even more unforgivable.
The Albanese Government must immediately reverse its decision and should also increase funding to the UNRWA to compensate for its wrongful suspension.
Worst places in Australia to be if World War Three hits
For Australia, the question isn’t where to hide in the event of a nuclear war. It’s where not to be — and this is the top of the list.
news.com.au Jamie Seidel Jamie Seidel is a freelance writer | @JamieSeidel 12 Feb 24
For Australia, the question isn’t where to hide in the event of a nuclear war. It’s where not to be. And how to cope afterwards.
………………………………………the bomb is back.
And international analysts fear there’s a growing will to use them…………………………………………………………………………….
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists chose to keep their “Doomsday Clock” at 90 seconds to midnight late last month – the closest it has ever been to an apocalypse.
They cited the danger of the Russia-Ukraine war, the slaughter in Gaza, and the worldwide diplomatic, economic and environmental toll associated with 2023 being the hottest year in recorded history.
All it takes is one “incident”. Then the domino effect of “Mutually Assured Destruction” kicks into play.
Those with the largest arsenals – China, Russia and the United States – are still likely to hit strategic targets. At least in the first wave of a nuclear exchange.
Australia in the firing line
……………………………………………………“Once we enter the slippery slope of even limited nuclear exchanges, the end result will be escalation to mutual annihilation — something about which both Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping may need reminding,” says ANU emeritus strategic studies professor Paul Dibb.
PINE GAP has long been known to top the list. This highly secret US military installation exists to detect and track nuclear missiles. Removing it early in any war would degrade the ability of the US to defend its own soil.
“In the late 1970s, it was made quite clear to me during talks in Moscow that Pine Gap was a priority Soviet nuclear target,” Professor Dibb said in a recent ASPI critique.
“And in 2016, I was warned: ‘In the event of nuclear war between Russia and America, you Australians will find that nuclear missiles fly in every direction.
HAROLD E HOLT Naval Communications Station at Northwest Cape, near Exmouth, Western Australia, is in a similar category. This enormous communications facility has been built to communicate with submarines at depths of up to 30 metres. Eliminating it would sow confusion among US attack and ballistic missile submarine commanders.
From here, the list gets more controversial.
RAAF TINDAL near Katherine in the Northern Territory has recently been adapted to host nuclear-capable US B-52 bombers. Any nuclear-capable delivery system is a likely nuclear target…………………….
HMAS STIRLING, the naval base in Perth’s southern suburbs, is slated to become a regular pitstop call for US and UK nuclear-powered submarines. Eventually, it is hoped to also house Australia’s own. But such submarines are incredibly high-value targets because they combine immense firepower, globe-circling range and virtual invisibility.
OSBORNE NAVAL SHIPYARD in Port Adelaide could potentially join its US and UK cousins on a nuclear warhead list. The nuclear-powered submarines it is expected to begin assembling are among the most lethal ships in the sea. But also the hardest to build, maintain and repair.
“Armed with nuclear submarines, Australia itself will be a target for possible nuclear attacks in the future,” Communist Party mouthpiece Victor Gao threatened shortly after then Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull dropped the AUKUS nuclear submarine pact bombshell in 2021.
“Do you really want to be a target in a possible nuclear war, or do you want to be free from nuclear menace,” he menaced. [ Ed note – “menaced” – I thought it was a fair question]
MARINE ROTATIONAL FORCE – DARWIN is a rotating force of 2500 US Marine troops, aircrew and sailors based in and around Darwin and at RAAF Base Darwin. While small, it does represent the core upon which a much larger force can be built. And it’s a high-profile US presence far from home shores.
RAAF BASE WILLIAMTOWN, 40km north of Newcastle, NSW, is home base to Australia’s small fleet of F-35 Lightning II stealth fighters. But the one thing these aircraft were explicitly designed to do – be invisible to radar – makes attacking their undefended airfields an obvious shortcut.
GARDEN ISLAND NAVAL BASE, Sydney, is already home to a disproportionately large number of Australia’s otherwise limited number of major surface (and subsurface) combat vessels. And while there are no plans for US or UK nuclear attack submarines to visit, Australia’s own will likely operate from this centralised hub. https://www.news.com.au/national/worst-places-in-australia-to-be-if-world-war-three-hits/news-story/1c0180b0a5f8652b024bfc1fe9444313
Rich men with the wrong answers – nuclear power has no future and yet they persist
None of these realities deter the pro-nuclear lobby, now led most shamefully by the International Atomic Energy Agency itself. Even as its chief, Rafael Grossi, wrings his hands over the immense dangers posed by Ukraine’s 15 reactors embroiled in a war, he and his agency are planning what it boasts is the “first-ever” Nuclear Energy Summit, to be held in late March in Brussels in partnership with the Belgian government.
By Linda Pentz Gunter https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2024/02/11/rich-men-with-the-wrong-answers/
Pro-nukers warned coal use would rise as reactors closed in Germany. The opposite happened.
Remember all those doomsayers from the pro-nuclear mythology unit who cast Germany’s Energiewende — or green energy revolution — as a catastrophic failure? They claimed, totally erroneously or deliberately misleadingly, that the country’s choice to close all its nuclear power plants guaranteed an increase in fossil fuel use and especially coal.
Germany vehemently denied those false predictions since they clearly knew that the country’s renewables were more than able to replace nuclear and fossil fuels. And so it has come to pass.
Germany’s use of lignite, or brown coal, dropped to its lowest level in 60 years in 2023. Even more dramatically, its hard coal use is at the lowest level since 1955. All of this happened at the same time as Germany was closing its last three reactors.
Meanwhile, according to reporting by Clean Energy Wire (CLEW), and citing an analysis (in German) from the research institute, Fraunhofer ISE, renewables “contributed a record share of more than half of the country’s power consumption” in 2023.
“The country sourced nearly 60 percent (59.7%) of its net power production from renewables, which generated a total of 260 terawatt hours (TWh), an increase of 7.2 percent compared to 2022,” the report said.
The 2022 uptick of coal production in Germany was entirely driven by high gas prices and a shortfall of French nuclear power production. The French nuclear sector was so unreliable that 50% of its reactors were out of action in April 2022, and again in November 2022, just as winter electricity usage began to rise.
Consequently, France had to import electricity to keep the lights on and the heat running.
Far from eating crow, the pro-nuclear boosters like Ted Nordhaus, who co-founded the Breakthrough Institute (BTI), are still crowing about the benefits of nuclear power. Nordhaus couldn’t wait to take ownership of his latest scheme, apparently long in the plotting, to dismantle the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in order to eliminate the industry’s most burdensome (i.e. costly) hassle of having to worry about inconvenient things like reactor safety. Efforts to do just that are now underway in Congress.
“Through years of rigorous research and engagement with the NRC, BTI has pinpointed crucial opportunities to modernize the regulatory framework that will lay the foundation for streamlined and efficient nuclear reactor licensing,” boasts the company’s website.
Meanwhile, we learn that the struggling Vogtle 3 and 4 new reactor project in Georgia, already 20 billion dollars over budget and years late, is set once again to further gouge ratepayers for the mistakes and failures of Georgia Power. And across the pond that the UK twin EPR project will likely top $59 billion with a completion date originally set for 2017 now pushed back to “after 2029”.
None of these realities deter the pro-nuclear lobby, now led most shamefully by the International Atomic Energy Agency itself. Even as its chief, Rafael Grossi, wrings his hands over the immense dangers posed by Ukraine’s 15 reactors embroiled in a war, he and his agency are planning what it boasts is the “first-ever” Nuclear Energy Summit, to be held in late March in Brussels in partnership with the Belgian government.
The IAEA has now become possibly the world’s most aggressive marketer of nuclear power and is still crowing about what it sees as a triumph at COP28, a veritable nuclear coup d’etat. In reality, this encompassed a miserable 24 countries signing onto an absurd fantasy propaganda statement that the world can and must triple global nuclear capacity by 2025.
Is there any point to the COP anymore? (Was there ever?) It has become one big carbon footprint junket, taken over by the oil companies, and hijacked by the nuclear industry and the IAEA, while making pledges rarely kept. The next one, in Azerbaijan, is chaired by yet another oil executive and has precisely zero women on its 28-member organizing committee.
The COP28 triple nuclear declaration was followed by an outrageously presumptuous assertion, by former U.S. energy secretary, Ernest Moniz (with Armond Cohen) in a Boston Globe oped, that, quote, “The world wants to triple nuclear energy.” (The Globe published our reply on January 17.)
Are we tired yet of absurdly rich, mostly White men pronouncing what they have decided the world wants from the comfort of their ivory towers? We are one such elitist down now with the retirement of 80-year old multi-millionaire John Kerry as US climate envoy. As of January 2024, Kerry’s net worth was $250 million, but that’s after divesting himself from his shares in fossil fuel, nuclear power and nuclear weapons companies.
Kerry has been replaced by, yes, drumroll, another old, rich, White man in the person of perennial White House advisor, John Podesta, founder of the Center for American Progress. Podesta, a stripling at 75, is a mere pauper compared to Kerry with a net worth of just $10 million-$13 million depending on sources, none of which are fully reliable.
Where Podesta might stand on nuclear power is a little murky, although one assumes he will tow the Biden/Kerry line and evangelize accordingly. He is on the record as considering nuclear power as a producer of hydrogen, telling Cipher in a September 2023 interview: “I think the questions around how to utilize existing nuclear and the production of hydrogen are definitely on the table.”
And then there’s Rishi Sunak, prime minister of the UK, who, together with his even richer wife, has a net worth of $670 million. Despite all the evidence of extreme costs, rising sea-levels and agonizingly slow timelines, on January 11, Sunak’s government announced its plan for the country’s “biggest expansion of nuclear power for 70 years to create jobs, reduce bills and strengthen Britain’s energy security.”
Nuclear power of course can achieve none of these. The electricity even of the current new nuclear reactors nearing completion at Hinkley Point will be almost triple the price Britons are currently paying. Promised new jobs will evaporate along with the new reactor plans, as we have already seen elsewhere — the V.C Summer and NuScale projects being prime examples.
To achieve so-called energy security and get off its reliance on imported Russian reactor fuel, Sunak’s government also announced it would invest $381 million to produce the fuel domestically.
This is all a colossal betrayal of working people and their needs, with money squandered on illusory, expensive and irrelevant nuclear projects whose only purpose is to sustain the UK’s nuclear arsenal, one that could destroy the world many times over.
What Moniz, Kerry, Grossi, Sunak and other nuclear-promoting leaders need to understand is what the world actually wants, alongside peace, is fast, affordable and safer renewable energy, not another Chornobyl.
“In The War Of Propaganda, It Is Very Difficult To Defeat The United States”
“Highly emotive terms for the killing of civilians like ‘slaughter,’ ‘massacre,’ and ‘horrific’ were reserved almost exclusively for Israelis who were killed by Palestinians, rather than the other way around,”
Got it? In Ukraine people die from bombs because Russia launched Russian airstrikes and killed them very Russianly, whereas in Gaza people get hurt by explosions because they got too close to some type of explosive material.
CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, FEB 11, 2024
“…………………… “In the war of propaganda it is very difficult to defeat the United States because the United States controls all the world’s media and many European media,” Putin replied, adding, “The ultimate beneficiary of the biggest European media are American financial institutions.”
… Putin is definitely correct about the strength of the American propaganda machine. Of all the fronts one could possibly choose to challenge the United States on, propaganda is surely the least favorable. The US empire has by far the most sophisticated and effective propaganda machine ever to have existed, operating with such complexity that most people don’t even know it exists.
…………………………………………………………………In reality the nature of the US-centralized empire allows it to run a massive, nonstop international propaganda campaign through mass media platforms which are mostly privately owned. A diverse network of factors feeds into this dynamic which I’ve detailed in my unusually lengthy article “15 Reasons Why Mass Media Employees Act Like Propagandists”, but the gist of it is that anyone who’s wealthy enough to control a mass media platform is going to have a vested interest in preserving the status quo upon which their wealth is premised, and they will cooperate with establishment power structures in various ways toward that end.
The fact that these mass media outlets look independent but function as propaganda organs for the US empire allows its propaganda to fly into people’s minds without triggering any gag reflex of critical thinking or skepticism, which wouldn’t be the case if people knew those outlets were feeding them propaganda. Propaganda only really has persuasive power if you don’t know it’s happening to you.
The invisibility of US propaganda is further aided by the subtle methods by which it is administered, which we’ve seen exemplified beautifully in the coverage of Israel’s ongoing US-backed mass atrocity in Gaza.
In an article titled “Coverage of Gaza War in the New York Times and Other Major Newspapers Heavily Favored Israel, Analysis Shows,” The Intercept reports that a review of 1,000 articles from the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times about Israel’s war on Gaza found that the outlets consistently used word choices which served Israeli information interests.
“Highly emotive terms for the killing of civilians like ‘slaughter,’ ‘massacre,’ and ‘horrific’ were reserved almost exclusively for Israelis who were killed by Palestinians, rather than the other way around,” The Intercept’s Adam Johnson and Othman Ali report. “The term ‘slaughter’ was used by editors and reporters to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians 60 to 1, and ‘massacre’ was used to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians 125 to 2. ‘Horrific’ was used to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians 36 to 4.”
This is the sort of manipulation that a casual news consumer wouldn’t notice. Unless you’re on alert for bias and are keeping track of what words are and aren’t being used where, you’re probably not going to notice the absence of emotionally-charged words when reporting on Palestinians who are killed by Israelis.
This type of slant shows up in all sorts of ways, like today’s headlines about the IDF killing a six year-old Palestinian girl named Hind Rajab along with her family. Reliable propaganda organs of the empire like CNN, The New York Times and the BBC have respectively gone with the headlines “Five-year-old Palestinian girl found dead after being trapped in car under Israeli fire”, “Missing 6-Year-Old and Rescue Team Found Dead in Gaza, Aid Group Says,” and “Hind Rajab, 6, found dead in Gaza days after phone calls for help”. In contrast, Al Jazeera reports on the same story with the headline “Body of 6-year-old killed in ‘deliberate’ Israeli fire found after 12 days,” and Middle East Eye goes with “Hind Rajab: Palestinian girl found dead after being trapped under Israeli fire for days”.
It’s easy to spot the difference when they’re placed next to each other like I just did, but unless you’re really watching out for it and have a good background on what’s going on here you’re likely to miss what’s happening. If you’re like most people and don’t read past the headline, you’d never know from the imperial media headlines that the child was killed by Israel, and you’d certainly never know about her terrified phone call for help while trapped by IDF fire and surrounded by the bodies of her dead relatives. If you look to the legacy media and its algorithmically-boosted online iterations for information about the world, you went one more day with a distorted perspective of what’s happening in Gaza.
The western press constantly write headlines like this when trying to minimize the impact of someone’s death at the hands of a party they sympathize with, particularly with regard to Palestinians. Last month the BBC published an article titled “Record number of civilians hurt by explosives in 2023”, as though they were mishandling fireworks or something instead of being actively killed by Israeli bombs. The BBC later revised their atrocious headline, but revised it in the opposite direction, replacing “Record number” with “High number” to further minimize the impact.
Contrast this with the BBC’s headlines when it’s reporting on Ukrainians killed by Russian airstrikes . Here’s a recent one titled “Ukraine war: Russian air strikes claim five lives in Kyiv and Mykolaiv”, and another titled “Ukraine war: Baby killed in Russian strike on Kharkiv hotel”.
Got it? In Ukraine people die from bombs because Russia launched Russian airstrikes and killed them very Russianly, whereas in Gaza people get hurt by explosions because they got too close to some type of explosive material.
Last week The Washington Post ran an opinion piece titled “Is America complicit in Israel’s bloody war in Gaza?”, which is already a ridiculously skewed headline because the answer is self-evidently yes — implying that there’s any question of this skews things in America’s favor. But even this was too much for the Post’s editors, who re-titled the piece “Has the Israel-Gaza war changed your feelings about being American?” to keep Americans from thinking too hard about Israel’s bloody war in Gaza and their country’s complicity in it.
In a Wednesday article titled “Biden Tries Again With Arab Americans in Michigan”, New York Times editorial board member Farah Stockman wrote the absolutely insane line “The Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel seems to be affecting Biden’s election prospects.” And then The New York Times actually printed it.
Read that line again. She’s saying Arab Americans are rejecting Biden because of the October 7 Hamas attack, which is of course absurd; they’re rejecting Biden because he’s backing a genocide in Gaza. She wrote this nonsensical line because in the New York Times you can’t say things like “Israel’s genocide in Gaza” or “the president’s facilitation of crimes against humanity”, and you won’t be hired if you’re the sort of person who’d be inclined to. Instead we’re pretending that for some inexplicable reason Arab Americans are just hopping mad at Biden because October 7 happened.
But again, these little manipulations fly under the radar if you’re not on the lookout for them. Such is the brilliance of the US empire’s invisible propaganda machine. That’s why it’s very difficult to win a propaganda war against the United States, that’s why westerners have been so successfully manipulated into accepting a status quo of endless war, ecocide, injustice and exploitation, and that’s why the world looks the way it looks right now.
Absence of Evidence: Israel’s Case Against UNRWA
We got hold of Israel’s dossier against UNRWA – why did the donors including the UK withdraw funding on such flimsy unproven allegations before an investigation?”
the summary did “not provide evidence to support its claims.”
February 11, 2024 by: Dr Binoy Kampmark,
https://theaimn.com/absence-of-evidence-israels-case-against-unrwa/
Statistics are often given lanky legs that take their user far. But how they are used, and how they are received, is striking. The current figure of 27,500 dead is a blighting, grotesque fact. But as they are Palestinians, the issue is less significant to certain parties than, say, 140 Israeli hostages being held in Gaza.
As with much in the noisy clatter of Middle Eastern violence, the value attributed to numbers alters in the shade of ideology and self-interest. Massacres become acts of self-defence; acts of self-defence become unconscionable inflictions of murder. It also follows that an organisation of 30,000 employees, working in the field of humanitarianism, aid and salvation, can be plastered as terrorist sponsors for having 12 individuals in their service allegedly involved in a murderous assault on Israel on October 7, 2023. Despite the relative smallness of this figure, the entire organisation itself becomes a target.
Israel was initially adamant that 12 such individuals in UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) had participated in the October 7 attacks by Hamas, sharing the details on January 29 with several media outlets. The accusations were made via a thin dossier amounting to no more than six pages. Little by way of evidence was supplied, though Israel was content to make further claims that almost 10% of the agency’s staff had ties to Hamas. As UN Crisis Group expert Daniel Forti writes, “Thus far, Israel has not provided evidence in writing to the UN to substantiate its allegations.”
For a gaggle of Western states and donors, that hardly mattered. The mere mention of the Satanic Twelve had made their way into public and political consciousness, and something had to be done about it. Funding to the aid body was swiftly suspended by the United States, Germany, the European Union, Sweden, Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom. The organisation was smeared and threatened with functional incapacity and prospective oblivion, an outcome that would also, inevitably, doom Palestinians. Unchallenged accusations that the agency had long been a Hamas front – an article of faith among Israeli nationalists – were bandied about with abandon.
The United Nations, for its part, was unusually fleet footed in responding to the dossier. Contracts were terminated. Inquiries were announced, along with promises of stern self-examination, purging and cleansing. On February 5, the UN Secretary General António Guterres announced that an independent panel had been created with the specific purpose of assessing “whether the agency is doing everything within its power to ensure neutrality and to respond to allegations of serious breaches when they are made.” The panel will be chaired by former French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna, who will work alongside a Scandinavian complement of the Raoul Wallenberg Institute in Sweden, the Chr. Michelsen Institute in Norway and the Danish Institute for Human Rights.
With the setting up of such heavy machinery, the picture started getting foggier. Then a smiting report from the British news outlet Channel 4 took issue with the scanty material supplied in the document. As the network’s Lindsey Hilsum stated, “We got hold of Israel’s dossier against UNRWA – why did the donors including the UK withdraw funding on such flimsy unproven allegations before an investigation?”
Channel 4 goes on to reveal that the dossier “contains no evidence to support Israel’s explosive new claim other than stating, ‘From intelligence information, documents, and identity cards seized during the course of the fighting, it is now possible to flag around 190 Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihadi terrorist operatives who serve as UNRWA employees. More than 10 UNRWA staffers took part in the events of October 7.”
Even the usually less than critical CNN network reported that it had “not seen the intelligence that underlies the summary of allegations”, going on to mention that the summary did “not provide evidence to support its claims.”
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When Ophir Falk, an advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was asked by CNN anchor Anna Coren to provide evidence of the claims, he refused to do so. When asked why the alleged culprits had not been arrested, he merely replied that “the first step is for them to be fired.”
Outlets such as The New York Times and Wall Street Journal were less than concerned by the gaping lacunae and skimpiness of Israel’s case. Instead, the latter could even go so far as to claim that the dossier provided “the most detailed look yet at the widespread links between the UNRWA employees and militants.” The ABC World News Tonight was clumsy enough to suggest that the UN had “not denied the claims”, implying a veneer of veracity.
Now, other countries are finding absence of evidence from the Israeli side more than awkward. Australia’s Foreign Minister, Penny Wong, had to also admit that she had not been furnished with much in the way of evidence. “We have spoken to the Israelis and we have asked for further evidence,” she told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s 7.30. When asked why she did not ask UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini about the subject, she simply reiterated the point that she had asked the Israelis directly and was not aware if Lazzarini had evidence. “He may, I don’t know what he has.”
With trademark oiliness, Wong countered that the allegations were what mattered. “I think it is clear from UNRWA’s own actions that they regard these allegations as serious.” They had done so by “terminating the employment of a number of employees and putting in place an inquiry – in fact, there are two inquiries.” Effectively, the agency was to be punished for its own enterprising efforts to investigate the claims, leaving the accusers free to level whatever charges they saw fit.
In the meantime, Lazzarini has been scrambling to fill the funding void, making visits to the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Kuwait. The dying and starvation in Gaza continue with the prospect of even more horror as Israel’s armed forces prepare their offensive on Rafah. A fine thing, then, to see donor countries for UNRWA, some of whom continue funding Israel’s military efforts, to moralise about terrorists and the agency.
This week in nuclear news
A bit of good news. Illegal to marry below 18 – Zambia passes the landmark Marriage (Amendment) Act, 2023
TOP STORIES.
Mary Kostakidis: Assange’s Very Life Is at Stake.
‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 127: Growing international alarm over Israeli plans to invade Rafah.
Full Speed Ahead on the Global Titanic -Going Along with the Utter Madness of Nuclear Weapons.
Small Modular Reactors do not solve the many problems of nuclear, NGOs say.
Rich men with the wrong answers – nuclear power has no future and yet they persist.
From the archives. Nuclear expert Mycle Schneider on the COP28 pledge to triple nuclear energy production: ‘Trumpism enters energy policy”
Climate. Atlantic Ocean circulation nearing ‘devastating’ tipping point, study finds. Hottest January on record sees the world reach 1.7°C warming mark.
Nuclear. Very hard to exclude all the Israel-Gaza news – which could bring on nuclear war anyway!
Noel’s notes. Why we get distorted, unreliable, news about Ukraine and Israel. Against all the evidence – nuclear industry propaganda blunders on – and the media regurgitates its nonsense!
From the archives. Nuclear expert Mycle Schneider on the COP28 pledge to triple nuclear energy production: ‘Trumpism enters energy policy”
NUCLEAR ISSUES
| CLIMATE. European Union now promoting the lie that nuclear power is “green”. REVIEW CONFERENCE: CLIMATE CRISIS – WHY NUCLEAR IS NOT HELPING - also at | CIVIL LIBERTIES. UK steps up war on whistleblower journalism with new National Security Act. | ECONOMICS. The clock is ticking on the nuclear renaissance. – also at Rolls-Royce snubbed for UK’s first private small nuclear reactor plant. EDF’s nuclear struggles dampen EU nuclear prospects – the industry “on a slow descent to hell”. |
| EMPLOYMENT France: EDF Faces Unprecedented Nuclear Workload in France, | ETHICS and RELIGION. All is fair in A.I. warfare. But what do Christian ethics have to say? The West: guilty of genocide. | EVENTS. 19 February - Webinar with Dr Helen Caldicott and Martin Sheen |
| INDIGENOUS ISSUES. Tribes condemn start of uranium mining at Pinyon Plain Mine south of Grand Canyon | LEGAL. 100 Jewish Cease-Fire Supporters Arrested Blocking Biden’s NYC Motorcade Route. Canada citizens challenge environmental safety of Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission waste facility near Ottawa River. | MEDIA. CNN’s CEO Is Making Staff Churn Out Israel Propaganda. CNN staff say network’s pro-Israel slant amounts to ‘journalistic malpractice’. “In The War Of Propaganda, It Is Very Difficult To Defeat The United States”. Study Finds Media Giants NY Times, CNN and Fox News Pushing for US War in Yemen. Chicago Tribune needs reality check on Russo Ukraine war. |
| OPPOSITION to NUCLEAR . History repeats — and radiation radiates. Campaigners deeply concerned at Dr Thérèse Coffey’s support for Bradwell new nuclear power . | POLITICS. Nuclearization is underway. Or not.. (also at The future of nuclear: France’s nuclear dreams or nightmares? The folly of Ontario’s nuclear power play. Iran Plans More Nuclear Reactors Despite Serious Hurdles. Do the Right Thing: Put the South African Government’s Nuclear Plans to a Popular Referendum. Call to withdrawal from Holderness nuclear waste site talks amid tourism and farming ‘fears’. | POLITICS INTERNATIONAL and DIPLOMACY. Report: Egypt warns Israel Rafah offensive may lead to suspension of peace treaty. Western officials in protest over Israel Gaza policy Israel Aid Bill Fails in House as Progressives Slam ‘Blank Check for Netanyahu’. Walt Zlotow: Biden seeks $14 more billion to complete destruction of Palestinians in Gaza. EU Policy. Commission invites industry to join support platform for mini nuclear. Menaced by five Omnicides – Ralph Nader. Putin ‘tried everything possible’ to make peace – Ukrainian diplomat. |
SAFETY. Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant is falling apart, and the world is ignoring the danger . The dangerous craze for SMRs – also at IAEA watchdog to visit nuclear plant in occupied Ukraine to assess safety of ageing fuel and low staffing.
France’s Flamanville EPR has numerous technical problems which mean that its safety issues are not “now closed”.
| SECRETS and LIES. Absence of Evidence: Israel’s Case Against UNRWA. | SPACE. EXPLORATION, WEAPONS. Nuclear secret: India’s space program uses plutonium pellets to power missions |
| WAR and CONFLICT. Escalating to de-escalate with nuclear weapons: Research shows it’s a particularly bad idea. The pragmatist’s guide to nuclear disarmament. NATO-Russia confrontation ‘could last decades’ – Stoltenberg. Israeli PM orders evacuation of last Gaza ‘safe zone’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9l59LjI4XoA | WEAPONS and WEAPONS SALES. Noetic Continental | Part I: How CIA Foists Military Equipment Through Private War Companies. Over $1 Billion in Weapons Missing In Ukraine. Why Biden’s $61 billion in weapons for Ukraine won’t prevent inevitable defeat. Citing World Court, Japan Firm Cuts Ties With Israel Arms Maker. |
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 