ABC interview- Sarah Ferguson and Tom O’Brien – a case study in exposing Trumpian-style deceptive spin
Greg Phillips 13 Mar 24
We need a proper transcript of this – Ferguson made a great point (11m25s) that Bill Gates said we should take advantage of our bountiful wind and solar potential. (Plus there are so many things that O’Brien said that I want to add to my “wacky nuclear predictions” file.) – Ferguson: I asked Bill Gates on this program whether Australia should get involved with nuclear energy – this was his answer – “Australia doesn’t need to get engaged on this, Australia should aggressively take advantage of Australia’s natural endowment to do solar and wind, that’s clear cut and beneficial to Australia”
Greg Phillips In the interview, Ted O’Brien employs logical fallacies to support the Coalition’s position on nuclear energy:
O’Brien appeals to the authority of experts and government agencies, such as ANSTO [Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation], to support his argument for nuclear energy.
O’Brien presents a false dichotomy by framing the energy debate as a choice between nuclear energy and renewables, suggesting that nuclear is necessary due to the perceived failure of renewable energy targets.
O’Brien engages in ad hominem attacks by criticising the Labor Party’s energy policies and accusing them of lacking transparency and effectiveness, rather than directly addressing the interviewer’s concerns about nuclear energy.
O’Brien misrepresents the interviewer’s arguments by suggesting that they are arguing against the attractiveness of nuclear energy to investors, rather than questioning its feasibility and cost-effectiveness in the Australian context.
O’Brien selectively then cites examples of successful nuclear energy projects in other countries, such as Canada and the United States, while ignoring instances of cost overruns and delays in countries like the United Kingdom and France.
These logical fallacies detract from the soundness of O’Brien’s arguments and undermine the credibility of the Federal Coalition’s stance on nuclear energy.
AUKUS anniversary brings a sinking feeling.
The Age, By Matthew Knott, March 13, 2024 —
As anniversaries go, this one has turned out to be quite a downer.
A year since Anthony Albanese, Joe Biden and Rishi Sunak stood at a naval base in San Diego to unveil Australia’s plan to acquire a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines, critics of the AUKUS pact are cock-a-hoop and its backers are on the defensive.
It’s a turnaround from December, when AUKUS’s champions were celebrating the fact that the notoriously dysfunctional and divided United States Congress had passed legislation authorising the sale of three Virginia-class submarines to Australia.
“This is a very significant accomplishment for all the parties involved,” declared US Congressman Joe Courtney, co-chair of the Congressional Friends of Australia Caucus.
“A lot of people have been holding their breath to see whether Congress takes this seriously.”
Yet in the lead-up to the one-year milestone, prominent commentators have been promoting a sense of gloom around the submarine plan.
“Dead in the water: the AUKUS delusion,” screams the bright yellow cover of the current edition of the Australian Foreign Affairs journal.
In the lead essay, defence expert and longtime AUKUS sceptic Hugh White argues the submarine plan will “almost certainly fail”, effectively reading AUKUS’s last rites before the pact has even reached teething age.
After laying out multiple ways in which the submarine plan could fall apart, White predicts the crunch is “perhaps most likely to come in Washington, where a number of hurdles could prove fatal to America’s willingness to sell us Virginia-class subs”.
Esteemed Financial Times foreign affairs columnist Gideon Rachman ventilated these anxieties to an international audience in February in a piece titled, “The squawkus about AUKUS is getting louder”.
Then came the Tuesday release of the Biden administration’s 2025 defence budget request, revealing it was only seeking funding for one Virginia-class submarine to built in the coming year. That is down from the two previously expected and well below the production rate of 2.33 subs a year the US says is necessary to sell any submarines to Australia.
As it tries to compete with China for supremacy in the Indo-Pacific, the US Navy is currently 17 attack submarines below its target of 66 – raising obvious questions about whether it will agree to hand over three boats to Australia beginning in 2032.
The legislation passed by Congress last year requires the president of the day to certify that the transfer of the submarines “will not degrade the United States undersea capabilities” and would be contingent on the US “making sufficient submarine production and maintenance investments” to meet its own needs.
The US navy is struggling to cope with supply chain blockages and worker shortages, so much so that the defence sector bought prime-time advertisements during the Oscars telecast to convince welders, forklift drivers, plumbers and marine biologists to help make AUKUS a reality.
Far from elated, AUKUS’s biggest champion in the US Congress is now furious. Describing the budget request as a “hard rudder turn”, Courtney said the decision to produce just one Virginia-class boat in a year “makes little or no sense” and would have a profound impact on both the US and Australian navies.
Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, who has long argued Australia would be better off under the deal he struck with France to acquire conventional diesel submarines, leapt onto ABC radio to say he told us so.
“This is really a case of us being mugged by reality,” Turnbull said.
“We are bobbing along as a cork in the maelstrom of American politics…Unless the Americans are able to dramatically change the pace at which they’re producing submarines, and there’s no reason to believe they will be able to do so, we will not ever get the submarines that were promised.”
The Australian and US governments have tried to push back on the doubters, with Defence Minister Richard Marles insisting the three nations “remain steadfast in our commitment to the pathway announced last March”.
The US Navy argues it is pouring $11 billion into the US industrial base over five years, with a plan to produce two Virginia-class submarines by 2028 and the 2.33 required to meet its AUKUS commitments soon after that.
……………………………………………………….. depends on how optimistic you feel about the American political system and the strength of the US-Australia alliance. Meanwhile, we have to contend with the possibility of Donald Trump’s return to the White House and no one knows what he would do about AUKUS…………………………….
From the moment it was announced a year ago, it has been clear the submarine plan was courageous in the Yes, Minister sense of the word: a hugely ambitious and risky endeavour that could come unstuck in several ways. While it is vastly premature to declare AUKUS dead, immense challenges remain.
Ultimately, only the delivery of the promised submarines will silence the doubters – not soothing words from Washington and Canberra. https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/aukus-anniversary-brings-a-sinking-feeling-20240313-p5fc0y.html
Pentagon sparks fresh AUKUS doubts on anniversary of Australia’s nuclear-powered submarine plans
ABC, By defence correspondent Andrew Greene, 13 Mar24
- In short: Defence Minister Richard Marles says AUKUS partners are working to help Australia acquire nuclear-powered submarines despite changes to procurement plans in the US.
- The US Navy says it will order just one fast-attack nuclear submarine in 2025, rather than two.
- What’s next? As part of the AUKUS deal, Australia will provide more than $4.5 billion to bolster America’s submarine industrial base
………………………………………Already the US is struggling to ramp up its submarine production rate to an annual target of 2.33 so it can replace retiring boats in its own fleet and begin transfers of second-hand stock to Australia in the early 2030s.
At present, the US is only achieving around 1.2 to 1.3 boats each year due to labour shortages and supply chain delays following the COVID-19 pandemic, with the Navy not expected to consistently hit a two-per-year target until 2029.
Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull told the ABC Australia’s future defence had become completely dependent on the United States.
…………………………………….. This week marks one year since Prime Minister Anthony Albanese joined British counterpart Rishi Sunak and US president Joe Biden at a San Diego Naval Base to outline the AUKUS “optimal pathway” for Australia to acquire nuclear-powered submarines.
Greens senator David Shoebridge described the latest US defence budget request as a failure for the AUKUS partnership that was “almost too big to wrap your head around” and predicted Australia would end up with “nothing”.
“When the US passed the law to set up AUKUS they put in kill switches, one of which allowed the US to not transfer the submarines if doing so would ‘degrade the US undersea capabilities’. Budgeting for one submarine all but guarantees this,” he warned
………………………….Budget changes under new proposal
As part of the AUKUS deal, Australia will provide more than $4.5 billion to bolster America’s submarine industrial base, while the US aims to contribute a similar amount contingent on congressional negotiations over defence spending that are complicated by the Ukrainian war.
However, this week’s Pentagon budget proposal requests Congress to appropriate a further $US4 billion for the US submarine industrial base in 2025, and $US11.1 billion over five years, for a “historic” investment to expand production.https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03-13/us-defence-announcement-raises-questions-on-aukus-anniversary/103578408
Victorian Premier blasts nuclear plan as renewable appeals curbed
Canberra Times, By Callum Godde and Rachael Ward, March 14 2024
Opponents of solar and wind farms will be stripped of the power to appeal approvals to a Victorian tribunal, as the premier blasts the federal opposition’s nuclear pitch as a cartoon-inspired distraction.
The Victorian government will remove the ability for third parties to appeal planning decisions for renewable energy projects through the Victorian Administrative Appeals Tribunal.
From April 1, shovel-ready renewable energy projects will be eligible for an accelerated pathway under an expansion of a development facilitation program.
The change will remove the planning panel process and third-party appeal rights at VCAT amid the rise of the not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) movement.
Premier Jacinta Allan said more than one in five planning applications had ended up in VCAT since 2015, with the overwhelming majority of the initial decisions being upheld.
“Eventually these projects are getting built but it’s taking far too long,” she told reporters at a wind farm in Mount Wallace on Thursday.
“We want to spend more time on projects being build and less time on it being caught up in red tape.”……………………………
Ms Allan also took the opportunity to hit out at the federal opposition’s pre-election policy to establish nuclear reactors at retiring coal-fired power plants……………………
Ms Allan accused the federal coalition of deliberately “whipping up anxiety” over renewable projects in their backyards and pushing the nuclear debate to “distract” from Australia’s transition to net zero by 2050…………
Victoria has an estimated $90 billion worth of renewable projects in the pipeline and is targeting 95 per cent renewable energy generation by 2035 and net zero emissions by 2045………………… https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/8555578/premier-blasts-nuclear-plan-as-renewable-appeals-curbed/
Opposition eyeing off six sites for nuclear reactors
New Daily, Poppy Johnston, Mar 12, 2024
Households and businesses close to the six nuclear power reactors the opposition hopes to see built could have their energy bills subsidised.
Teasing the coalition’s yet-to-be-unveiled energy policy at the Australian Financial Review Business Summit in Sydney on Tuesday, opposition leader Peter Dutton said the plan would likely include six nuclear plant sites.
Tasmania has been ruled out as a potential host state.
Dutton said the coalition would seek a social licence by incentivising close-by communities with subsided energy, a model he said was used in the United States.
“It provides incentive for industry to establish jobs,” he told the audience.
The opposition is expected to release its energy policy ahead of the federal budget in May, with the plan likely to include overturning the moratorium on nuclear technology and possible sites for reactors on old coal station locations to take advantage of existing transmission infrastructure…………….
The Albanese government has dismissed nuclear as an unsuitable technology for Australia that has a high price tag and will take too long to roll out.
Energy experts also say it’s difficult to estimate the cost of transitioning to nuclear given the technology is not currently commercially available.
Dutton addressed a number of what he described as “straw man arguments” against nuclear, including cost.
He used other regions with nuclear in the energy mix – South Korea and the Ontario region of Canada – to make his case for the system-wide cost of the energy source and its influence on power bills.
Reactors also produce a “small amount of waste” and Dutton said the government had already signed up to deal with nuclear waste via the AUKUS agreement……………………………. https://www.thenewdaily.com.au/news/politics/australian-politics/2024/03/12/dutton-six-sites-nuclear-reactors
Aid Wars over Gaza: Resuming Funding to UNRWA
March 12, 2024, by: Dr Binoy Kampmark https://theaimn.com/aid-wars-over-gaza-resuming-funding-to-unrwa/
The steady and ruthless campaign by Israel to internationally defund the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), is unravelling. The lynchpin in the effort was a thin, poison pen dossier making claims that 12 individuals were Hamas operatives who had been involved in the October 7 attacks. Within a matter of days, two internal investigations were commenced, various individuals sacked, and US$450 million worth of funding from donor states suspended.
As the head of the agency, Philippe Lazzarini, explained at a press conference on March 4, he has “never been informed” or received evidence of Israel’s claims substantiating their assertions, though he did receive the prompt about the profane twelve directly from Israeli officials. Every year, both Israel and the Palestinian authorities were furnished with staff lists, “and I never received the slightest concern about the staff that we have been employing.”
Had Israeli authorities signed off on these alleged participants in bungling or conspiratorial understanding? Certainly, there was more than a pongy whiff of distraction about it all, given that Israel had come off poorly in The Hague proceedings launched by South Africa, during which the judges issued an interim order demanding an observance of the UN Genocide Convention, an increase of humanitarian aid, and the retention of evidence that might be used for future criminal prosecutions for genocide.
An abrupt wave of initial success in starving the agency followed, with a number of countries announcing plans to freeze funding. In the United States, irate members of Congress accused the agency of having “longstanding connections to terrorism and promotion of antisemitism.” A hearing was duly held titled “UNRWA Exposed: Examining the Agency’s Mission and Failures” with Richard Goldberg, a senior advisor of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies frothing at an agency that supposedly incited “violence against Israel, subsidizes US-designated terrorist organizations, denies Palestinians their basic human rights, and blocks the pathways to a sustainable peace between Israel and the Palestinians.”
The attempt to cast UNRWA into gleefully welcomed oblivion has not worked. Questions were asked about the initial figure of twelve alleged militants. News outlets began questioning the numbers.
The funding channels are resuming. Canada, for instance, approving “the robust investigative process underway”, also acknowledged that “more can be done to respond to the urgent needs of Palestinian civilians.” The initial cancellation of funding to the agency, charged Thomas Woodley, president of Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East, had been “a reckless political decision that never should have been made.”
The Swedish government was also encouraged by undertakings made by UNRWA “to allow independent auditing, strengthen internal supervision and enable additional staff controls”, promising an initial outlay of 200 million kroner (US$19 million).
The Minister for International Development Cooperation and Foreign Trade, Johan Forssell, promised that it would “monitor closely to ensure UNRWA follows through on what it has promised.” Aid policy spokesperson for the Christian Democrats, Gudrun Brunegård, also conceded that, given the “huge” needs on the part of the civilian population, that UNRWA was “the organisation that is best positioned to help vulnerable Palestinians.”
Much the same sentiment was expressed by the European Union, with the Commission agreeing to pay 50 million euros to UNRWA from a promised total of 82 million euros on the proviso that EU-appointed experts audit the screening of staff. “This audit,” a European Commission statement explains, “will review the control systems to prevent the possible involvement of its staff and assets in terrorist activities.” Having been found wanting in her screeching about-turn, the European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen insisted that the EU stood “by the Palestinian people in Gaza and elsewhere in the region. Innocent Palestinians should not have to pay the price for the crimes of [the] terrorist group Hamas.”
Commissioner Olivér Várhelyi was stiffly bureaucratic in expressing satisfaction at “the commitment of UNRWA to introduce robust measures to prevent possible misconduct and minimise the risk of allegations.” At no point was Israel’s own contribution to the calamity, and its insatiable vendetta against the agency, mentioned.
The bombast and blunder of the whole effort by Israel was further discoloured by claims that UNRWA staff had been victims of torture at the hands of the IDF in drafting the dossier. In a statement released by the agency, a grave accusation was levelled: “These forced confessions as a result of torture are being used by the Israeli Authorities to further spread misinformation about the agency as part of attempts to dismantle UNRWA.” In doing so, Israel was “putting our staff at risk and has serious implications on our operations in Gaza and around the region.”
For its part, the IDF, through a statement, claimed that this was all exaggerated piffle: “The mistreatment of detainees during their time in detention or whilst under interrogation violates IDF values and contravenes IDF [sic] and is therefore absolutely prohibited.”
Increasingly on the losing side of that battle, Israeli authorities decided to cook the figures further, declaring with crass confidence that 450 URWA employees in Gaza were members of militant groups including Hamas. Sticking to routine, those making that allegation decided that evidence of such claims was not needed. Those employees, claimed Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, “are military operatives in terror groups in Gaza”. “This was no coincidence. This is systematic. There is no claiming, ‘we did not know’.”
In the fog of war, mendacity thrives with virile vigour; but the current suggestion on the part of various donor states is that the humanitarian incentive to ameliorate the suffering of the Gaza populace has taken precedence over Israel’s persistently lethal efforts. That, at least, is the case with certain countries, leaving the doubters starkly exposed.
Radioactive waste, baby bottles and Spam: the deep ocean has become a dumping ground
The ocean’s depths are not some remote alien realm, but are in fact intimately entangled with every other part of the planet. We should treat them that way
by James Bradley. Guardian 12 Mar…….
“…………………………………………………………………………………………..The ocean’s depths have also been used as the final resting place for large amounts of nuclear material.
A 2019 study found at least 18,000 radioactive objects scattered across the bottom of the Arctic Ocean, many of them dumped there by the Soviet Union. These objects include vessels such as the K-27, the 110-metre nuclear submarine powered by an experimental liquid-metal-cooled reactor, which was scuttled in 1982 with its reactor still on board (when the explosive charges that were supposed to sink the K-27 failed to fully detonate, it had to be rammed with a tug); the wreck of the K-141 Kursk, which sank in the Barents Sea in 2000 during a naval exercise, killing all 118 on board and bearing its reactor and fuel to the bottom; and the K-159 attack submarine, which sank while being towed near Murmansk in 2003 with 800kg of spent uranium fuel on board. The head of Norway’s Nuclear Safety Authority says it is only a matter of time before these objects begin to release their toxic legacy into the water; others have called the situation a “Chornobyl in slow motion on the sea floor”.
While the Soviet Union dumped more nuclear waste on the sea floor than any other country, it was certainly not alone. Between 1948 and 1982, the British government consigned almost 70,000 tonnes of nuclear waste to the ocean’s depths, and the US, Switzerland, Japan and the Netherlands are just a few of the nations that have used the ocean to dispose of radioactive material, albeit in much smaller quantities. And while international treaties now prohibit the dumping of radioactive material at sea, the British government is exploring plans to dispose of up to 750,000 cubic metres of nuclear waste, including more than 100 tonnes of plutonium, beneath the sea floor off Cumbria. British officials argue this sort of geological disposal offers a way of keeping waste stable and secure over hundreds of thousands of years, although incidents such as the 2014 leak of radioactive material at a waste disposal facility half a kilometre beneath salt beds in New Mexico suggests that like many of the assurances offered by the nuclear industry, this claim should be approached with great caution.
The dumping of nuclear waste in the ocean is only one part of a far larger story of carelessness and greed. Human waste in the form of plastics and other objects is everywhere in the deep ocean, a fact that is made brutally apparent by the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology’s Deep-sea Debris Database, which documents the presence of tyres, fishing nets, sports bags, mannequins, beach balls and baby’s bottles spread across the sea floor at depths of many thousands of metres. In some regions, the number of such objects exceeds 300/sq km.
This tide of garbage has even reached the deepest and most remote parts of the ocean: …………………………………………………………………………………….
Possibly more disturbing, though, is the growing accumulation of microplastics in the ocean depths………………………………………………..
Nor is plastic the only thing that drifts downwards. In 2019 Chinese scientists discovered radioactive carbon-14 from the detonation of nuclear bombs in the 1940s and 50s in the bodies of amphipods living at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, borne into the deep not by ocean circulation, but in the rain of organic matter from above. More recent studies have found radioactive caesium from the Fukushima nuclear disaster in sediment more than 7,000 metres down in the Japan Trench……………………………………………………….. more https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/mar/12/radioactive-waste-baby-bottles-and-spam-the-deep-ocean-has-become-a-dumping-ground
Hollywood stars put their name to a good message, but it’s the messengers who are problematic.
Nuclear Threat Initiative’s CEO is, yes, Ernest Moniz, the former US Energy Secretary, who is at the forefront of promoting nuclear power to anyone and everyone who wants it
Moniz is one of the chief architects behind the pro-nuclear infiltration of the COP28 climate summit
Make (some) nukes history, Hollywood stars put their name to a good message, but it’s the messengers who are problematic
By Linda Pentz Gunter, https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2024/03/11/make-some-nukes-history/
A handful of Hollywood celebs, some highly recognizable including Jane Fonda, Barbra Streisand, Lily Tomlin, Emma Thompson and Michael Douglas, as well as musicians such as Jackson Brown and Graham Nash, just signed their names to a letter published in the LA Times urging that we “Make Nukes History”.
Hooray, right? Well, only half hooray.
The Hollywood letter was part of a quickly launched campaign to coincide with the Oscar buzz around the successful feature film, Oppenheimer, in order to leverage attention for the need to abolish nuclear weapons. The Make Nukes History campaign aims to raise public awareness about the civilization-ending risks posed by today’s nuclear arsenals. It reminds us that while Oppenheimer is a history lesson, nuclear weapons are very much still with us, but that we can put an end to what J. Robert Oppenheimer started.
So far, all so good. Far too few of us are thinking about nuclear weapons and the threat they pose, let alone doing something about getting rid of them. It’s an important message that needs reiterating.
Meanwhile, Oppenheimer duly swept seven Academy Awards on Sunday. We waited hopefully for one of the winners to say something about the effect of Oppenheimer’s bomb down the ages. It came only from Cillian Murphy at the end of his Best Actor acceptance speech. “We made a film about the man who created the atomic bomb and for better or for worse we are all living in Oppenheimer’s world so I would really like to dedicate this to the peacemakers, everywhere,” Murphy said.
The Make Nukes History message did not make it to the Oscar stage and the LA Times letter was surprisingly skimpy, failing to get at the heart of the two key takeaways missed in the Oppenheimer film: the unwilling, unrecognized and still uncompensated victims of Oppenheimer’s original Trinity bomb; and the on-going harm down generations to all peoples whose lands were seized and used for atomic tests.
The letter includes a quote from President John F. Kennedy, then states:
“At a time of great uncertainty, even one nuclear weapon—on land, in the sea, in the air, or in space—is too many. To protect our families, our communities, and our world, we must demand that global leaders work to make nuclear weapons history—and build a brighter future.”
Demand indeed. Some of us have been doing this for decades. And we have a treaty for that. But thank you for waking up.
But what does “build a brighter future” actually mean? That, it turns out, is the slogan of the organization behind the orchestration of the Hollywood letter and Oscar campaign — the Nuclear Threat Initiative.
Let’s first take a look at who actually signed the letter. With two exceptions, all the signatories are white. There are no Native Americans on there. No US Marshall Islanders. Almost none of the Oppenheimer film cast and crew signed it. The last four signatures belong to the board of NTI.
NTI was the brainchild of Fonda’s ex, Ted Turner. NTI’s CEO is, yes, Ernest Moniz, the former US Energy Secretary, who is at the forefront of promoting nuclear power to anyone and everyone who wants it. Turner is also a firm supporter of nuclear power (I know because I tried to challenge him on it in person and was quickly deflected by a very large gentleman in possession of an impressive set of muscles.)
Moniz is one of the chief architects behind the pro-nuclear infiltration of the COP28 climate summit and its ridiculous “let’s triple global nuclear power capacity by 2050” proclamation. He will be in Brussels later this month, headlining the International Atomic Energy Agency’s propaganda-fest, billed as the First Ever Nuclear Energy Summit. So will Charles Oppenheimer, Robert Oppenheimer’s grandson and another signatory to the LA Times letter.
So here we have a slightly star-studded short-lived campaign to proclaim an end to one kind of nuke, while behind the scenes the same organization is working hard to promote the other kind of nuke, thus ensuring that the door to nuclear weapons development stays firmly open.
So sorry, no two thumbs up for this bit of Hollywood theatre.
Linda Pentz Gunter is the international specialist at Beyond Nuclear and writes for and edits Beyond Nuclear International. All opinions are her own.
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 