More fusion hot air, literally!
Megajoules and megaheadlines are all meganonsense
By Linda Pentz Gunter, https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2024/03/04/more-fusion-hot-air-literally/ 4 Mar 24
Another week, more fusion news, cue another overblown headline, as the mainstream media once again paid homage to industry hype, digesting nuclear propaganda soundbites without even a hiccup.
On February 8, we learned that the Joint European Torus fusion project, also known as JET, had broken its own record in energy output during a last gasp attempt to make fusion work. The 40-year old project is now closed down for good.
The moment — and just a fleeting moment it truly was, lasting a mere 5.2 seconds — was duIy celebrated as another breakthrough for fusion.
“Nuclear fusion: new record brings dream of clean energy closer,” trumpeted the BBC who were especially smug since Torus is based in the UK.
“Nuclear Fusion World Record Smashed in Major Achievement”, said Science Alert.
“Scientists have made a record-setting fusion energy breakthrough,” blared the headline on Vice.
Below – A jolly video about JET in which the narrator’s voice perhaps generates more energy than the reactor itself.
What actually happened? JET generated 69 megajoules of energy in those 5.2 seconds, breaking its previous record of 59 megajoules over 5 seconds in 2021.
For those of us who don’t go about measuring things in megajoules, I deferred to our colleague, physicist, M.V. Ramana, for an explanation.
What are they really talking about here and is it actually a breakthrough?
“One can start with the annual average consumption of one US household,” Ramana said. “That’s about 10,500 kilowatt hours which is equivalent to 37,800 megajoules. Essentially using one hour = 3,600 seconds, and one joule = one watt-second.”
Head already spinning, I hoped he would do the rest of the math. He did.
“The 69 megajoules generated by JET”, Ramana explained, “is equivalent to roughly 0.06 percent of the electricity consumed by an average US household.”
So a minuscule contribution. But here’s the catch. “The JET machine produced 69 megajoules, but this is all heat,” explained Ramana. “Only about a third of that can be converted into electricity under ideal circumstances.”
Mostly heat, and hardly any electricity. So what the JET fusion so-called breakthrough actually delivered was all hot air. Literally!
Then came some more hot air. “First ‘private’ nuclear reactor to power 2 million British homes” ran another headline. The private sector nuclear company in question is Westinghouse. Yes, that Westinghouse! The one whose executives are in jail over a failed new nuclear power plant project in South Carolina. The Westinghouse that went bankrupt, forcing its mega-giant parent company, Toshiba, to shed not only Westinghouse but all Toshiba’s nuclear assets to avoid going down with the Westinghouse ship.
The same Westinghouse that is now $20 billion over budget at its other new nuclear project at Vogtle in Georgia.
But the British press were all “oh joy, oh rapture unforeseen” over this announcement, a project that has about as much credibility as the whimsical plot of HMS Pinafore.
And finally, we learned that Michigan governor, Gretchen Whitmer, is seeking another $150 million to restart the old and decrepit Palisades nuclear plant.
Palisades has been closed for almost two years and the company that would re-open and run it, Holtec, which specializes in decommissioning and radioactive waste management, has zero experience running a nuclear power plant.
This latest ask comes on top of $150 million already approved last year for a Palisades restart and could be augmented by a $1.5 billion loan from the federal government as well.
All of this nuclear nonsense comes on the heels of other hyperbole surrounding previous so-called advances in fusion (see our earlier coverage here and here), misrepresented almost universally as an imminent answer to our worsening climate crisis.
But, as the song goes in Pinafore, “Things are seldom what they seem.”
Linda Pentz Gunter is the international specialist at Beyond Nuclear and writes for and edits Beyond Nuclear International
GLOBAL WARFARE “Summit” “16th Annual Nuclear Deterrence Summit”
The only real and proven tool we have, the hard work of diplomacy, is nowhere to be found.
Instead of creating alliances with China and Russia to solve our dire mutual challenges, this rapid warring footing is being touted here as the only real option for our security.
There’s been a shift at these conferences away from facts and towards ideology. “We’ve moved from Civil Service to profit”
02.03.24 – New York City – Anthony Donovan, https://www.pressenza.com/2024/03/global-warfare-summit-summons-national-priority/
Outraged about all the innocents being slaughtered in Russia/Ukraine, Israel/Palestine, and the build-up for war in China/Taiwan? Thank you. Most of these below represent the armaments, bombs, guidance systems, and “intelligence” skill sets being sent to these regions. It is one industry, clamoring for global dominance.
Ten feet tall, high above our heads, as the escalator descends deep below ground to the conference rooms for the 3-day “16th Annual Nuclear Deterrence Summit” in Washington DC is a brightly lit welcoming. It reads:
Securing Our World,
Ensuring Our Future
In reality, nothing could be further from the truth.
Deterrence need only fail once. Once.
It will. What gives anyone the right to threaten all our grandchildren’s existence? Nothing and no one. Our leaders have exceeded the banal mindset of the Cold War, without the public knowing it. The ominous and wrong presumption of leading a nuclear arms race to win a nuclear war has crept back in.
Hundreds of contractors, corporations, the Pentagon, Government agencies, and universities fill the rooms to solidify contracts, and encourage each other to continue building more facilities for more nuclear devices, and much faster. Why? The constant shout here: “Evil.” The enemies Russia and China are fast upon us. The “Summit” echoes their call for a national mobilization to move immediately and fully to deter these two “expansionist” fronts.
The only real and proven tool we have, the hard work of diplomacy, is nowhere to be found. Only a handful have heard of the Treaty on The Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, and those misperceive it as naive. The trillions $ funneled quietly for this “enterprise” are flowing, unaudited, and without any media discussion, oversight or democratic process.
Jim Carrier, a discerning journalist reporting on the Summit, “I’m coming at this from the viewpoint of a journalist, not as an activist. Although… it’s very eye-opening. When I was covering this industry in 1995 everything seemed to be shutting down…. I’m shocked really. Remarkably, it has all come back to life. The vibe last year was that we couldn’t find enough people… this year it is the opposite tone. [The industry] is underway and we’ve hired many thousands of new workers. The big news announced is they will have the first new plutonium pit and it will be “war ready”.
It is frightening to see the inside of the sausage, the enthusiasm these folks are bringing to it, and the power they wield. What we have is a huge lobbying machine of contractors, … We are in a new arms race, a new war going on. The American public is wholly ignorant of it.”
“Enemies” remain the reason for maintaining a secret world of nuclear weapons and warfare. The three days of drumming to build faster was eased by finding a knowledgeable, brave soul.
Greg Mello, Executive Director of Los Alamos Study Group, “This is a real mental health challenge….. There’s been a shift at these conferences away from facts and towards ideology. …I’m going to be very blunt here. This conference is very Sino and Russophobic, … completely ignorant of aspects of foreign policy and history. I spoke to someone on our U.S. Strategic Nuclear Posture Committee, and he did not know anything about US-Russia relations. I was very shocked. It is the acquired stupidity and incompetence in the highest parts of our government, which we did not have in the past, even under Reagan. We don’t understand our “adversaries”. There were hawks back then, but there were a lot of realists who had respect for their counterparties in the Soviet Union. Now that is gone. Now we have arrogance. It has all been politicized. … We’ve moved from Civil Service to profit.”
Mello wisely addressed the NNSA (National Nuclear Security Administration) and State Department during their presentation, “How can we bring in more of the dissident voices to make the discourse in your offices richer and more critical? Can we get back to a more rational approach to the world? And a little less righteous? We need to do more to create channels, find a way to move forward.”
Mello confides later, “Back in the Obama years, on the policy side, it was clear, they could not hate Russia enough! I felt this was going to go to a very dark place.” Indeed, it has.
Hidden deeply on this Ground Hog Day of 2024, General Anthony Cotton, Commander of U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM, all nuclear weapons of land, sea, air, space, and related facilities), addresses the Summit talking of the new “business model” of partnership with civilian industry and academia to give our nuclear weapon industry greater agility and speed. “The tables have turned, the advancements of the civilian sector are being introduced to the DOD (Dept. of Defense), … incorporating these new technologies …. to make sure the Labs and the NNSA (National Nuclear Security Administration) have all they need” He talks of modernizing facilities and tech systems “to move fast”, “sustain that flow, the tempo of a constant production line.”
The military-industrial complex we were warned of in 1959 is extolled at the “Summit” to be a national priority, hiring the young, luring in, and incorporating the ingenuity and wisdom long developed by our civilian sector, from Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Tesla, AI developers, Boeing, Harvard, MIT, and hundreds of other entities.
Instead of creating alliances with China and Russia to solve our dire mutual challenges, this rapid warring footing is being touted here as the only real option for our security.
General Cotton shares the blinders of this “integrated battle space”. “…Platforms, weapons, they all have to be in alignment, in synch. … Analytically driven data, that informs the senior decision maker [the President] of what the picture truly is. The confidence in the decision that you make will be incredible. …A digitalized enterprise is what we are looking at, the tools and state of the art capabilities… the incredible efficiencies we are seeing in the cloud-based environments….”
Harvey Bennett, a Vietnam Veteran, and member of Veterans for Peace reporting for Pacifica Radio, stood up for the final comment facing squarely General Cotton’s presentation. “General, I think the military has been doing the job they’ve been tasked with. But those missing in action, are the diplomats. When I think about what an acceptable risk in strategic deterrence is, if it is not zero, then it is not acceptable because we are talking about annihilation, not just of our country, but worldwide.
Our successes in modernization and technology are laudable, but in the big picture, do they make us safer? Or do they increase our adversary’s sense of vulnerability, and reduce their decision time when there is a question about whether they are under attack with nuclear weapons?
I want to mention the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) which entered into force January 2021. None of the nuclear weapon states are signatories, but we are a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and Article 6 of that treaty mandates that nuclear states to pursue in good faith to negotiate with other states to reduce the nuclear arsenals with a view to disarmament.
We have a treaty now to globally eliminate nuclear weapons. I don’t want anyone to be out of a job, but I think the world wants peace, the world wants security. I don’t think that is a zero-sum game. We can’t be secure if the rest of the world isn’t secure. Relying on nuclear weapons is not going to make us safe.
I was alarmed reading a report by General John Hyten in 2018, who had your job (Cmdr. of STRATCOM), speaking to the Arms Control Association. He was describing the Global Thunder War Games of Strategic Deterrence. He was blunt and said
“I hate to tell you but (nuclear war games) ENDS THE SAME WAY EVERY TIME. IT ENDS BAD.”
Bennett said, “Even if it is not “every time”, that’s too many.”
The moderator quickly jumped in thanking the General, not allowing a response, and calling for a lunch break. Silence is not an option, and neither is “Russia, China, Iran”. Thank you, Mr. Bennett, perfectly put.
We know the solution: Shame our Representatives, and companies. Stop our unlimited funding to warfare, and re-direct it to the jobs we need for life and civilization to move forward.
The Dangers of the Nuclear Industrial Complex
The Summit on Nuclear Deterrence was just last week and “WE” were there to witness the insanity and the "evil." Harvey Bennett joined Greg Mello, Executive Director of the Los Alamos Study Group, and journalist Jim Carrier, who attended the three-day "summit" to hear members of the nuclear industrial complex and the Federal Government talk about nuclear war and deterrence. Can you imagine that they actually believe that we need to be ready to fight a nuclear war and win it? Hear that and a few voices of reason on what our country is doing in your name and with your tax dollars.
Nuclear industry cries poor , as top nuclear propagandist Rafael Grossi begs banks for more money!
UN nuclear watchdog head urges development banks to fund new projects.
Rafael Grossi says World Bank and Asian Development Bank ‘out of touch’
with modern attitudes to atomic energy.
The head of the UN’s nuclear
watchdog has called on global development banks and their government
shareholders to fund new projects, warning that a failure to do so could
delay the energy transition.
Rafael Grossi, director-general of the
International Atomic Energy Agency, told the Financial Times that a lack of
funding for [?] emissions-free nuclear energy by multilateral lenders such as
the World Bank and Asian Development Bank was “out of step” with the
wishes of most of their shareholders. He said there had been a
“sea-change” in attitudes to nuclear power due to the climate crisis
and the Russia-Ukraine war, which propelled energy security to the top of
policymakers’ priority lists.
FT 4th March 2024
https://www.ft.com/content/7cb8dda3-1739-47f0-b0a7-3d726f068808 u
Coalition MPs open to nuclear in their electorates
ABC News, 5 Mar 24
“…………………………………………………………………………………………. The electorates containing coal plants scheduled to close are held almost entirely by Liberal and National MPs, with the exception of Hunter MP Dan Repacholi.
Nationals MP Colin Boyce said the Callide Power Station could be a good option for a nuclear plant, if the community supported it.
“Absolutely on face value I would be supportive of looking at those options. The Callide Power Station at Biloela in central Queensland is number one on the list for closure according to the current Queensland government, so that site there, all the infrastructure that’s already there, the transmission lines, the water supplies, that would be somewhere to me that would be a reasonable outcome,” Mr Boyce said.
“I would suggest that site is a possible site for a possible nuclear small modular reactor, or something similar.
“Having said that we would have to take that to the community and gauge their thoughts on it before any decisions were made.”
He added that safety concerns held by some communities were valid, and that was why an honest conversation to address those concerns was necessary.
Nationals MP Darren Chester, who represents the seat of Gippsland where the Yallourn coal fired plant is scheduled to close, told the ABC last year he would consider a nuclear reactor in the Latrobe Valley if it made sense.
“If a potentially suitable site was identified for a nuclear power station in my electorate, it should be considered in a transparent manner with widespread consultation and an explanation of the potential costs and benefits,” Mr Chester said.
“If it was in the national interest and there were social, economic and environmental benefits, I’m sure that Gippslanders would be willing to have a constructive conversation about nuclear energy.”
Mr Chester told The Australian yesterday any government wanting to introduce nuclear would first have to reassure host communities safety concerns had been managed.
Nationals leader David Littleproud told Perth radio station 6PR yesterday he was ready to lead the way on the prospect of nuclear power in his electorate.
“I’ve got four coal fired power stations [in my electorate], I’ve made it very clear. I’m prepared to lead my community in that discussion,” he said.
“And we’ve got time, we don’t have to do all this by 2030.”
Liberal MP Rick Wilson said it would be premature to speculate on sites, but was open to the idea of a nuclear site in O’Connor.
Communities such as Collie in my electorate, which have experience hosting power stations, have high energy-IQ and their existing infrastructure and workforces could make them potential candidates to host a next-generation nuclear plant in the future,” Mr Wilson said.
He said like any major project, it would need the backing of the community.
Dan Repacholi, whose electorate contains plants scheduled for closure, has been contacted for comment. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03-05/coalition-nuclear-plan-identifies-retiring-coal-likely-sites/103545440
Western Australia’s Premier Cook goes nuclear on Dutton’s ‘simplistic, ridiculous’ power plan
SMH, Hamish Hastie, March 5, 2024 —
A Coalition proposal to build nuclear power stations at the sites of retired or retiring coal stations is ridiculous and a distraction from efforts to reach net zero using renewables, West Australian Premier Roger Cook has said.
Opposition leader Peter Dutton floated the idea of building nuclear power stations on sites of retired coal stations – which could include the South West town of Collie – as a zero-emissions solution to the nation’s energy woes.
Cook blasted the Coalition proposal that federal Nationals leader David Littleproud was spruiking in WA this week as a fantasy.
“The rollout of small nuclear reactors or modular reactors in other countries has been halted because it’s not commercial, it’s not viable,” he said.
“In addition to that, Australia has no experience in nuclear power generation so we don’t have the workforce, we don’t have the know-how to be able to bring them in.
“You simply cannot plonk these things into a landscape and plug it into the grid. These simplistic sort of ideas are ridiculous.
“What we need to do is accept that climate change is a reality and move to exploit the abundance of wind and solar that we have at our disposal.
“There’s no quick fix here, you’ve got actually do the hard work and this is simply a sound grab by the Nationals to distract people from the real hard work which is being done.”……………………………………………………… https://www.smh.com.au/politics/western-australia/cook-goes-nuclear-on-dutton-s-simplistic-ridiculous-power-plan-20240305-p5fa0r.html
Talk of nuclear power plant sites ‘conjecture’, says Liberal MP amid internal division on Dutton’s policy
Rowan Ramsey says overturning ban on nuclear first is the ‘most logical thing’ to do as opposition leader prepares to nominate up to six locations
Paul Karp Chief political correspondent, Guardian, 5 Mar 24
The Liberal MP Rowan Ramsey has said any talk of where nuclear power plants would be built or waste would go is “conjecture” that cannot sensibly be tackled until after the nuclear ban is lifted.
As the opposition leader, Peter Dutton, prepares to announce an energy policy nominating up to six possible sites for nuclear plants, he faces internal divisions about the level of government support required, proposed locations and questions about storage of nuclear waste.
On Tuesday Dutton all but confirmed the Coalition will propose locating nuclear power plants on the site of retiring coal power plants, claiming that this would save having to build new transmission infrastructure for renewables.
The plan would suggest that the Labor-held seat of Hunter, independent Andrew Gee’s seat of Calare and Coalition-held Flynn, Maranoa, O’Connor and Gippsland are on the shortlist for nuclear power stations.
The Gippsland MP, Darren Chester, has argued that his community would need to receive “direct economic benefits” if it were to host power plants.
The Liberal MP for Sturt, James Stevens, has argued that community concerns must be allayed by explaining where and how waste will be stored. This opens another can of worms for the Coalition, as Australia has failed for decades to build a dump for its slowly accumulating intermediate nuclear waste.
Ramsey told Guardian Australia that Kimba, a proposed site for a waste dump in his South Australian electorate of Grey, was “never envisaged, planned or promised to hold high-level waste”……..
It is unclear how the Coalition’s nuclear policy hopes to overcome the enormous cost, long lead-in time and lack of private investment to make new power plants a reality.
Stevens said on Monday that “embracing nuclear generation for civilian electricity purposes is not something to be done on a whim” and that Australians would rightly want to know “how we will deal with some challenges, such as the custody of waste, the location of these generation plants”.
But the Liberal candidate for Cook, Simon Kennedy, who is likely to take Scott Morrison’s seat in parliament, argued on Tuesday that voters in his electorate are “used to” the idea of nuclear waste, because the Lucas Heights reactor – for production of medical and industrial isotopes – is “right outside the electorate”.
Kennedy told Sky News that Australians want “clean, cheap and reliable” power, accusing the Albanese government of being “ideological” for not considering nuclear.
Chester told Guardian Australia he has an “open mind when it comes to the public debate regarding nuclear energy in Australia”.
“It is premature to rule regions in or out as potential locations for a nuclear power station because there’s no proposal on the table,” he said.
“But as a matter of principle, you would need to be able to demonstrate to a potential host community, including Gippsland, that any safety concerns could be ameliorated and there were direct social and economic benefits to our community.”……………………………………
Jason Falinski, the former member for Mackellar and the New South Wales Liberal party president, told Sky News on Monday that “nuclear energy is not something that we are necessarily advocating for”.
“What we’re saying is that it should be part of the mix, part of the option available for Australian policymakers.”
On Tuesday the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, questioned where financing will come from and whether “taxpayers will be expected to pay” for nuclear, because “we know that nuclear is not only the most expensive form of new energy, it is also more than a decade off”.
“I noticed in today’s reports, [Dutton] seems to have backed away a little bit from talking about a technology that does not exist in small, modular reactors that he’s been speaking about,” Albanese told reporters on the sidelines of the Asean conference in Melbourne.
“He’s now speaking about large nuclear reactors. They need to be near populations and need to be near water.”
Albanese said “investment never comes” into nuclear because “it simply doesn’t stack up commercially”.
Dutton told reporters in Brisbane that nuclear is “the only credible pathway we have to our international commitments to net zero by 2050”.
Dutton would not rule out support for large-scale reactors, saying only that the Coalition wanted the “latest technology”.
“We’ve said we’re only interested in sites where you have an end-of-life coal-fired generation asset, so that means you can use the existing distribution network.”
Asked if taxpayers will have to support nuclear, Dutton did not respond but cited the Canadian province of Ontario and the United States as examples where businesses and households pay less for power with nuclear in the mix https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/mar/05/peter-dutton-liberal-coalition-nuclear-power-plant-policy-locations-waste-rowan-ramsey
Coalition’s plan to go nuclear puts five regions on the table as favoured locations for nuclear reactors
ABC News, By political reporter Jake Evans, 5 Feb 24
There are just a handful of regions in Australia shaping up as the most likely candidates for the Coalition’s proposal to install nuclear reactors in Australia, as the party eyes retiring coal stations as a way to go nuclear.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton says he will be up front with voters about where the Coalition is looking to place potential nuclear reactors when the party announces its policy in coming weeks.
Speaking on Channel Seven this morning, Mr Dutton confirmed the party was “interested” in replacing retiring coal plants with nuclear, because the sites come ready with poles and wires to distribute power.
“If there’s a retiring coal asset, so there’s a coal fired generator that’s already got an existing distribution network, the wires and poles are already there to distribute the energy across the network into homes and businesses, that’s really what we’re interested in,” Mr Dutton said.
Doing so would leave just a narrow range of possible regions for a nuclear reactor.
The federal divisions of Gippsland in Victoria, Hunter in New South Wales, Maranoa and Flynn in Queensland and O’Connor in West Australia are the only electorates with coal plants scheduled to completely close in the next two decades.
There are also partial closures scheduled at Callide, Loy Yang and Vales Point in the NSW Central Coast, which would add Labor minister Pat Conroy’s electorate of Shortland to the list.
With its policy yet to be announced, it’s not clear what the Coalition considers as viable options.
Australia also still has a total ban on nuclear energy in place, which the Coalition would have to win the support of parliament to lift even if it won government at the next federal election.
And there are a number of safety and technical requirements for installing any nuclear reactor, such as geological stability and a readily available source of water.
The national science agency CSIRO has estimated nuclear energy from small modular reactors (SMRs), modern reactors built in a factory and then shipped to a site for installation, would also be more expensive than powering the grid through wind and solar.
The agency projected in its draft GenCost report that wind and solar would cost an average of $82 per megawatt hour by 2030, while SMR nuclear power would cost an average $282 by 2030.
Even if the nuclear ban was lifted tomorrow and a decision immediately taken to commission a nuclear reactor, CSIRO estimates the first SMR would not be in full operation before 2038, ruling it out of “any major role” in reaching net zero emissions by 2050.
Mr Dutton said nuclear reactors would provide a more reliable source of clean energy, and would avoid the need for thousands of kilometres of new transmission lines to be built.
“We need to make sure that we can firm up the renewables that are in the system. We know that of the G20 nations, Australia is the only nation that doesn’t have or hasn’t agreed to adopt nuclear power domestically,” he said.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he looked forward to the Coalition announcing its nuclear policy.
“I look forward as well to [Mr Dutton] arguing where the financing will come for such reactors, whether taxpayers will be expected to pay for this, because we know the cheapest form of energy in Australia is renewables,” he said.
“Every ten years there are these proposals … what never comes is any investment, because it simply doesn’t stack up commercially…………………………………. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03-05/coalition-nuclear-plan-identifies-retiring-coal-likely-sites/103545440
Microsoft’s Kate Crawford: ‘AI is neither artificial nor intelligent’
who benefits and who is harmed by this AI system? And does it put power in the hands of the already powerful? What we see time and again, from facial recognition to tracking and surveillance in workplaces, is these systems are empowering already powerful institutions – corporations, militaries and police
The AI researcher on how natural resources and human labour drive machine learning and the regressive stereotypes that are baked into its algorithmsSun 6 Jun 2021 18.00 AESTShare
Kate Crawford studies the social and political implications of artificial intelligence. She is a research professor of communication and science and technology studies at the University of Southern California and a senior principal researcher at Microsoft Research. Her new book, Atlas of AI, looks at what it takes to make AI and what’s at stake as it reshapes our world.
……………………………………… What’s the aim of the book?
We are commonly presented with this vision of AI that is abstract and immaterial. I wanted to show how AI is made in a wider sense – its natural resource costs, its labour processes, and its classificatory logics. To observe that in action I went to locations including mines to see the extraction necessary from the Earth’s crust and an Amazon fulfilment centre to see the physical and psychological toll on workers of being under an algorithmic management system. My hope is that, by showing how AI systems work – by laying bare the structures of production and the material realities – we will have a more accurate account of the impacts, and it will invite more people into the conversation. These systems are being rolled out across a multitude of sectors without strong regulation, consent or democratic debate.
………………………..systems might seem automated but when we pull away the curtain we see large amounts of low paid labour, everything from crowd work categorising data to the never-ending toil of shuffling Amazon boxes. AI is neither artificial nor intelligent. It is made from natural resources and it is people who are performing the tasks to make the systems appear autonomous.
Problems of bias have been well documented in AI technology. Can more data solve that?
Bias is too narrow a term for the sorts of problems we’re talking about. Time and again, we see these systems producing errors – women offered less credit by credit-worthiness algorithms, black faces mislabelled – and the response has been: “We just need more data.” But I’ve tried to look at these deeper logics of classification and you start to see forms of discrimination, not just when systems are applied, but in how they are built and trained to see the world. Training datasets used for machine learning software that casually categorise people into just one of two genders; that label people according to their skin colour into one of five racial categories, and which attempt, based on how people look, to assign moral or ethical character. The idea that you can make these determinations based on appearance has a dark past and unfortunately the politics of classification has become baked into the substrates of AI.
……………………………Beginning in 2017, I did a project with artist Trevor Paglen to look at how people were being labelled. We found horrifying classificatory terms that were misogynist, racist, ableist, and judgmental in the extreme. Pictures of people were being matched to words like kleptomaniac, alcoholic, bad person, closet queen, call girl, slut, drug addict and far more I cannot say here. ImageNet has now removed many of the obviously problematic people categories – certainly an improvement – however, the problem persists because these training sets still circulate on torrent sites [where files are shared between peers].
And we could only study ImageNet because it is public. There are huge training datasets held by tech companies that are completely secret. They have pillaged images we have uploaded to photo-sharing services and social media platforms and turned them into private systems.
……………………………………………. What do you mean when you say we need to focus less on the ethics of AI and more on power?
Ethics are necessary, but not sufficient. More helpful are questions such as, who benefits and who is harmed by this AI system? And does it put power in the hands of the already powerful? What we see time and again, from facial recognition to tracking and surveillance in workplaces, is these systems are empowering already powerful institutions – corporations, militaries and police……………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Atlas of AI by Kate Crawford is published by Yale University Press (£20). To support the Guardian order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/jun/06/microsofts-kate-crawford-ai-is-neither-artificial-nor-intelligent
The nuclear narrative
What is a narrative? ……… In other words, it is about occupying public space to disseminate enchanting stories that give pride of place to industry, multinationals, investors, billionaires, each greener than the last.
Jean-François Nadeau, March 4, 2024, https://www.ledevoir.com/opinion/chroniques/808350/chronique-narratif
The future of the world, at least according to the head of the AtkinsRéalis firm, lies in nuclear power. This company, formerly known as SNC-Lavalin, has changed its name. The scandals that have affected her, she asserts, belong to the past.
For its campaign to promote atomic energy, AtkinsRéalis secured the services of two former prime ministers: Jean Chrétien and Mike Harris. In 2019, as revealed by Radio-Canada, Jean Chrétien had already gone so far as to propose, with astonishing lightness, storing foreign nuclear waste in Labrador. In a letter, the former prime minister wrote to a Japanese firm: “Canada has been the largest supplier of nuclear fuel for years, and I have always thought it would be appropriate for Canada to become, at the end of account, the steward and guarantor of the safe storage of nuclear waste after their first service cycle. »
No carbon neutrality without nuclear power , repeats the boss of AtkinsRéalis like an advertising slogan. We must replace fossil fuels, while doubling or tripling, thanks to nuclear power, the production of electricity, he pleads. There is no question, in this presentation, of rethinking a model of society based on an infinite expansion of consumption. Always more cars, as long as they are electric. Always more heating, regardless of the fact that our buildings are thermal sieves. In other words, what continues to matter is growth. And the increase in AtkinsRéalis’ turnover is largely due to nuclear power, as noted by Le Devoir .
Last week, Minister Pierre Fitzgibbon reiterated again that he was not closing the door to the return of nuclear power. Since the arrival of Michael Sabia at the head of Hydro-Québec , the signals pointing in the direction of this revival have multiplied. “I think that as a government, in the ministry, at home, we must stay on the lookout for what is happening in nuclear power,” the minister further affirmed in front of an audience of business people. To have such projects accepted, the minister specified that “you simply have to have a good narrative”. In Quebec, he laments, “we have not had any narrative on nuclear power” since the closure of Gentilly-2 .
What is a narrative? In 1928, Edward Bernays, the founding father of the public relations and advertising industry, called these language elements capable of manipulating public opinion propaganda . This word ended up, as we know, having unfavorable connotations. Others were therefore substituted. Here is the latest addition, used in all sauces: the narrative . In other words, it is about occupying public space to disseminate enchanting stories that give pride of place to industry, multinationals, investors, billionaires, each greener than the last.
Pierre Fitzgibbon shows interest in mini nuclear reactors. The boss AtkinsRéalis also praises this technology, which is far from wonderful. Nobody says too loudly that these types of plants produce more nuclear waste per megawatt. These mini power plants would produce up to thirty times more radioactive waste than conventional nuclear power plants.
In his “narrative”, the boss of AtkinsRéalis barely concedes that the management of radioactive materials constitutes a serious danger for humanity.
In Ontario, a large dump for radioactive waste was approved on January 9. Tons of heavy metals, dangerous radioactive elements, plutonium, uranium, etc. will pile up there for a century, not far from the Ottawa River. The whole thing promises to occupy, for eternity, an area equivalent to 70 National Hockey League ice rinks.
In France, 280 km of underground galleries are being built to store nuclear waste. To give an idea, the galleries of the Montreal metro total 71 km. This giant sarcophagus will be the largest construction site in Europe. In these galleries, the most dangerous waste will be able to spew radioactivity for 100,000 years.
So that the hydrogen and the fumes released from this collection of waste do not explode, it is necessary to continually ventilate. Which requires electricity. A power outage, if it lasts more than a week, could be catastrophic. Obviously, electrical problems, cataclysms, wars, terrorists, this will never happen in a hundred years. Not again in a thousand years, probably. Moreover, at the entrance to these sites, in what language should we warn future generations not to dig?
The speech of the boss of AtkinsRéalis is very similar to that which is also being given these days by the cereal manufacturer Kellogg’s. Gary Pilnick, its CEO, is sad to see the cost of food soaring. However, he does not recommend reviewing the profit margins on which the food giants are fattening, nor the exploitation system which governs this surge in prices. He simply suggests eating cereal at dinner, so that consumers can lower their bills and cereal manufacturers can make more money. At the bottom of the scale, this makes no difference to the misfortunes of the majority. Agricultural producers in Quebec, for example, find themselves this year with the lowest net incomes since 1938, they say.
Nuclear industries operate according to the same elastic logic which consists of making money at all costs. Our dependence on automobiles and energy-intensive lifestyles suits them. And it is enough, to hear them, to continue to rush forward, head down, to escape from a reality that is ruining the future. Their technologies promise to fix everything. As long as you are willing to swallow their narrative first, like soft cereal .
TODAY. Normalising the unthinkable – the 16th Annual Nuclear (so-called) Deterrence Summit
The 16th Annual Nuclear Deterrence Summit in Washington DC finished in early February
The propaganda guff should alert us to the deliberately misty thinking of the war-mongers, as they contort the facts, and kid themselves, and us, that they work for a peaceful world. The lovely phrases trip off their tongues so easily:
“Analytically driven data” “state of the art capabilities” “incredible efficiencies ” ” the cloud-based environments” “A digitalized enterprise”. Blah blah . My favourite is always “the cloud”, when what they really mean is acres and acres of dirty great machines guzzling electricity and water.
What this whole conference (now more gloriously termed “summit”) is really about, is profit, money for the American corporations – weapons ones, digital ones, space companies, contractors, and also the Pentagon, government agencies, corporate media and universities. Check out the sponsors –
There are words and phrases that you won’t hear at these conferences – “diplomacy” “negotiation” “understanding”. There’s no money in that stuff.
But you will hear “adversaries” “enemies” “evil” – there’s money in being “war ready” even better “global war ready”. Some participants actually believe that the USA could wage a nuclear war and win it – (whatever “winning a nuclear war” might mean)
I’m not religious, but I can’t help thinking what might have happened if Jesus somehow got into this crooked conference. He wouldn’t have been polite – tables overturned, lap-tops and projectors busted, corporate salesmen driven. Of course, he would be arrested as a terrorist, and given the Julian Assange treatment.
Silencing the Voice: the fossil-fuelled Atlas Network’s Campaign against Constitutional Recognition of Indigenous Australia
Jeremy Walker, University of Technology Sydney,Sep 30, 2023
Abstract
Australians will soon vote in a referendum to recognise Indigenous Australia in its 1901 Constitution and establish a First Nations Voice to Parliament. A year ago, polling suggested the referendum proposal of the 2017 National Constitutional Convention and its Uluru Statement from the Heart enjoyed 60% support. Since lead anti-Voice campaign organisation Advance Australia began its media offensive, the Yes vote has declined to 40%. This article argues the No campaign is being conducted on behalf of fossil-fuel corporations and their allies, whose efforts to mislead the public on life-and-death matters reach back over half a century. Coordinated across the Australian branches of the little-known Atlas Network, a global infrastructure of 500+ ‘think-tanks’ including the Centre for Independent Studies, the Institute of Public Affairs and LibertyWorks, I demonstrate that the No campaign shares the aims and methods of the longstanding Atlas disinformation campaign against climate policy. Opposition to long-overdue constitutional recognition for Indigenous Australians can be traced to fears the Voice might strengthen the capacity of Indigenous communities and Australia’s parliamentary democracy to rein in the polluting industries driving us toward climate and ecological collapse.
Article Details
Issue Vol 15 No 2 (2023)
So They’re Experimenting With Military Robots In Gaza Now
CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, MAR 4, 2024, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/so-theyre-experimenting-with-military?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=142282788&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
One of the most horrifying facts about this dystopia we live in is that large-scale military operations are routinely used as testing grounds for new war machinery, using human bodies as guinea pigs for experimentation in what amount to giant blood-soaked field laboratories — all to benefit the strategic objectives of empire managers and the profit margins of the military-industrial complex.
Haaretz has a new article out titled “Gaza Becomes Israel’s Testing Ground for Military Robots”, which reports that “In an effort to avoid harming soldiers and dogs, the IDF has been experimenting with the use of robots and remote-controlled dogs in the Gaza War.”
(Yeah because my gosh, can you imagine how terrible it would be if Israeli soldiers and dogs got harmed while carrying out a genocide?)
The article’s author Sagi Cohen reports that drone-mounted robot dogs and remotely controlled bulldozers are two of the new apocalyptic horrors currently being battle-tested in Gaza, saying “defense establishment officials confirm that there has been a leap in the use and sophistication of robots on the battlefield.” Which is a pretty disconcerting sentence to read.
This news comes out at the same time as a new Public Citizen report warning of the likely imminent arrival of autonomous weapons systems which will kill people with minimal instruction from human pilots, saying “The most serious worry involving autonomous weapons is that they inherently dehumanize the people targeted and make it easier to tolerate widespread killing, including in violation of international human rights law.”
The more normalized robots become within the world’s militaries the closer we come to this point, and steps are already being taken in that direction. As Common Dreams’ Thor Benson notes in an article about the Public Citizen report, “Israel has purchased and at times deployed self-piloting, lethal drones.”
Back in January I wrote that “Gaza is a live laboratory for the military industrial complex,” saying “Data is with absolute certainty being collected on all the newer weapons being field-tested on human bodies in Gaza (just like has been happening in Ukraine) to be used to benefit the war machine and arms industry.”
What sparked this comment at the time was reports and first-hand witness accounts we’d seen coming out about the prolific use of IDF “sniper drones” in Gaza since October, with Israeli forces frequently shooting Palestinians with quad drones armed with rifles. Copious records are most assuredly being compiled on the effectiveness of these newer weapons and tactics in ending human lives, which will then be used to help market those weapons to other states and to improve their efficiency in killing.
When I say this is most assuredly happening, I am not being hyperbolic for effect. Author and journalist Antony Loewenstein gave a lengthy interview on The Chris Hedges Report back in December about Israel’s long and extensively documented history of using Gaza as a testing ground for new weapons, spyware, surveillance and security systems, AI, drones, and tactics, which has profited scores of corporations and enabled Israel to become a player of outsized success in the global weapons industry.
“Israel’s drones, surveillance technology including spyware, facial recognition software, and biometric gathering infrastructure, along with smart fences, experimental bombs, and AI-controlled machine guns are all tried out on the captive population in Gaza, often with lethal results,” says Hedges in introduction. “These weapons and technologies are then certified as ‘battle-tested’ and sold around the world.”
This doesn’t only happen in Gaza. This past September The Wall Street Journal published an article titled “The War in Ukraine Is Also a Giant Arms Fair,” subtitled “Arms makers are getting orders for weapons being put to the test on the battlefield.” In January of last year CNN published a report titled “How Ukraine became a testbed for Western weapons and battlefield innovation,” with one source saying that Ukraine is “absolutely a weapons lab in every sense because none of this equipment has ever actually been used in a war between two industrially developed nations.”
And of course we are also seeing this same phenomenon in Africa. In 2021 Mintpress News published a report by Scott Timcke titled “West Africa is the Latest Testing Ground for US Military Artificial Intelligence” about this very same trend. In 2020 Libya saw what is believed to have been the first time a human being has ever been killed by a fully automated drone attack — that is, killed without the machine having been told to do so by a human.
The other day we discussed how the empire’s great weakness is that it depends on normal human beings to carry out its orders and turn the gears of the machine. If you look at the facts and think about them for a moment, it’s not hard to see how the empire managers are hoping to overcome this weakness in the future.
Could climate change release 35 swimming pools’ worth of nuclear waste? Or worse… unleash a world-ending pandemic? These are the terrifying unexpected consequences of melting ice
By ROB WAUGH FOR DAILYMAIL.COM, 2 March 2024 https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-13135571/Could-climate-change-release-35-swimming-pools-worth-nuclear-waste-worse-unleash-world-ending-pandemic-terrifying-unexpected-consequences-melting-ice.html
- Buried ‘nuclear city’ and swimming pools’ worth of nuclear waste
- Frozen viruses have already begun to infect human beings
- READ MORE As melting ice exposes new oil reserves, oil giants move in
Around the world, glaciers and permafrost are melting, and in some places the retreating ice is releasing buried secrets people hoped would remain forgotten.
Rising waters have exposed a secret Greenland nuclear base that engineers thought would never resurface as well as a radioactive ‘Tomb’ at the site of American nuclear tests.
And while it sounds far-fetched, very credible experts have warned that the next pandemic may well come from ancient pathogens buried in the ice, or even from diseases harbored by frozen dead Neanderthals.
The ‘secret nuclear city’ under Greenland’s ice
Camp Century in Greenland is a secret nuclear-powered ‘city under the ice’, where U.S. Army engineers carried out weapons research
The base has been abandoned for almost half a century, but now poses a serious concern over nuclear waste.
Powered by a portable nuclear generator, Camp Century was built in 1959, and was built to host 200 soldiers, with a plan to expand the base to hold 600 ballistic missiles.
‘Camp Century’ was abandoned in 1967, but the nuclear reactor at the base – which also had a hospital and a church in its tunnels – has long since been removed, but radioactive waste remains.
When the Army Corps of Engineers (ACE) left the base, they assumed that frigid temperatures and falling snow would keep the nuclear waste there forever.
In total, the waste is equivalent to the mass of 30 Airbus A320 airplanes – and researchers now fear that it could be released into the sea.
A 2016 study suggested that the nuclear waste could be released into the sea this century, but newer measurements at the base suggest that this will not happen until 2100.
‘Tomb’ of poison at nuclear test site
In the Marshall Islands, a huge ‘lid’ which locals know as ‘The Tomb’ covers 31 million cubic feet of nuclear waste – equivalent to the volume of 35 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
The islands were the site of American nuclear tests, but the U.S. military also shipped in waste from the mainland.
From 1946 to 1958, America conducted 67 nuclear tests in the South Pacific.
The concrete ‘lid’ officially known as the Runit Dome was built on Enewetak Atoll in the Marshall Islands to contain radioactive material from American nuclear tests in the 1950s.
Some studies have suggested that radiation levels near the site are similar to those near Chernobyl and the waters around the dome are rising every year.
Changing temperatures are causing the lid to crack, while rising waters are lapping at the atoll.
Plutonium – and a lost hydrogen bomb?
A 1968 plane crash scattered plutonium from American nuclear weapons over the ice in Greenland, which could be released by global warming.
The U.S. military assumed that the Thule air base in Greenland would be rapidly attacked in a nuclear war, so kept nuclear-armed bombers in the air to fly towards Russia in the event of an attack.
The Thule incident saw large amounts of radioactive plutonium dispersed onto the ice sheet, as a cabin fire in a B-52 bomber forced the crew to bail out.
Conventional explosives inside the four B28FI thermonuclear bombs detonated, spreading radioactive waste.
But the uranium-235 fissile core of one of the bombs was never found, despite a search with submarines.
Reports in the decades since have suggested that the lost bomb is lying under the seabed.
Frozen viruses and the next pandemic
Researchers have warned that the next pandemic could come from melting ice.
Genetic analysis of soil and lake sediment near the highest Arctic freshwater lake, Lake Hazen, suggests that the risk of ‘viral spillover’ may be high close to melting glaciers.
‘Spillover’ is where a virus infects a new host for the first time – and analysis of viruses and potential hosts in the lakebed suggests this risk may be higher near to melting glaciers.
Researchers at Ohio State University found genetic material from 33 viruses, 28 of which were unknown, in the Tibetan plateau in China, putting their age at 15,000 years old.
Viruses from Neanderthals
Other researchers have warned of viruses unleashed by melting permafrost: one-quarter of the northern hemisphere sits on top of permanently frozen ground – known as permafrost, but large areas are now melting as the world warms.
There are already examples of this – with a 2016 anthrax outbreak in Siberia attributed to melting permafrost exposing an infected reindeer carcass.
Previously researchers have warned that global warming and thawing ice might unearth diseases such as smallpox frozen into the corpses of victims, with a few infectious particles enough to revive the pathogen.
As permafrost thaws due to climate change, virologist Jean-Michel Claverie has warned that ancient viruses harbored in the long-frozen ground could be released.
Claverie explains that if an ancient pathogen eradicated Neanderthals, for instance, their frozen remains might still contain infectious viruses that could be unleashed as ice melts.
Claverie told Bloomberg News, “With climate change, we are used to thinking of dangers coming from the south.
“Now, we realize there might be some danger coming from the north as the permafrost thaws and frees microbes, bacteria and viruses.”
Claverie’s team previously revived giant viruses from up to 48,000 years ago – and the veteran scientist has warned that there could be even more ancient viruses in the ice, some of which could potentially infect humans.
Frozen poison in the ice
Polar regions have acted as a ‘chemical sink’ for the planet, locking away poisons in the ice – but melting ice could release this.
A study in Geophysical Research Letters found huge reserves of the toxic heavy metal mercury frozen in Arctic permafrost.
The amount may be 10 times higher than all the mercury pumped into the atmosphere from industry in three decades.
Paul Schuster, a U.S. Geological Survey hydrologist, “This is a complete game-changer for mercury. It’s a natural source, but some of it will be released through what we’re doing with climate change.”
Mercury is released by industry, volcanic eruptions and rock weathering – but what’s less clear is what will happen if the ‘pool’ in the Arctic is released.
Nuclear news – week to 4 March 2024
Some bits of good news – Passion for compassion: the group working to make the Commons kinder. Major research suggests humans can break free from tribalism **************************************
TOP STORIES. US Refuses to Assure UK Judges That Assange Won’t Be Executed If He’s Extradited. Atlantic Council report lays out options and possible first use of nuclear weapons against China over Taiwan.
Texas wildfires continue to pose threat to Pantex nuclear weapons plant, and climate change will bring further threats to nuclear facilities. USA is littered with nuclear sites that could face danger from natural disasters.
Nuclear space-based ASAT weapons – A brief international legal perspective.Get These Rich People Off the Moon.
AI’s craving for data is matched only by a runaway thirst for water and energy.
Climate. New Research from Antarctica Affirms the Threat of the ‘Doomsday Glacier,’ but Funding to Keep Studying It Is Running Out.
Noel’s notes. My dilemma in writing about nuclear issues. Nuclear power stopping climate change? IT’S THE OTHER WAY AROUND!
*************************************************************
AUSTRALIA. Andrew Forrest attacks Coalition’s nuclear “bulldust” and betraying the bush. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09OeHD-h9Ak Andrew Forrest and Peter Dutton are on a collision course over Nuclear Power. This is what happens when an uncosted Coalition thought-bubble on nuclear power is presented as a concrete proposal. Dutton wants a ‘mature debate’ about nuclear power. By the time we’ve had one, new plants will be too late to replace coal. Nuclear boondoggle | The West Report https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdALb8Vr3t8
No nuclear option for $275m green-manufacturing and innovation grants. Silencing the Voice: the fossil-fuelled Atlas Network’s Campaign against Constitutional Recognition of Indigenous Australia.
NUCLEAR ISSUES
CLIMATE. Texas: Disaster declaration issued and nuclear weapons plant shut down as wildfires spread. Texas nuclear weapons facility pauses as fires spread. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ba_oPoqeF2Y
Buried Nuclear Waste From the Cold War Could Resurface as Ice Sheets Melt. USA is littered with nuclear sites that could face danger from natural disasters. Could climate change release 35 swimming pools’ worth of nuclear waste? Or worse… unleash a world-ending pandemic? These are the terrifying unexpected consequences of melting ice.
| ECONOMICS. Tax-payer to take bigger financial risks under new payment plan for nuclear command satellites. The Cost of Nuclear War in Space. Inside Europe’s only nuclear unicorn — and its €1bn fundraising hopes. | ENERGY. Blackout risks due to Hinkley nuclear delays – a reminder of the value of energy efficienc | ENVIRONMENT. Oceans. Release of fourth batch of Fukushima treated radioactive water begins. China is ‘unlikely’ to lift import ban on Japanese seafood as dumping continues. Conservationists say Hinkley C nuclear water intakes could wipe out Atlantic salmon stocks |
| LEGAL. Fish v. electricity: Could Salem nuclear plant be shut down?More indictments for Ohio nuclear crimes. | MEDIA. When The Imperial Media Report On An Israeli Massacre.Einstein’s Postwar Campaign To Save The World From Nuclear Destruction.Chilling Pictures of Hiroshima Weeks After Atomic Bomb Dropped Emerge. | OPPOSITION to NUCLEAR . IT’S TIME TO CANCEL SIZEWELL C |
| POLITICS. Has the nuclear lobby hijacked Welsh democracy? “Big nuclear reactor” lobby fights back against “Small nuclear reactor” lobby. | POLITICS INTERNATIONAL and DIPLOMACY. Biden administration restores Trump-rescinded policy on illegitimacy of Israeli settlements. France accused of ‘unacceptable’ behaviour after demanding UK taxpayer cash for Hinkley nuclear. Chris Huhne Letter: UK Taxpayers shouldn’t be footing bill for EDF failings. Macron stands by remarks on NATO troops in Ukraine. | SAFETY. New nuclear reactors shielded from liability if federal law passes Congress: Price-Anderson Act renewal hidden from public. Mistakes, Misfiring and Trident: Britain’s Flawed Nuclear Deterrence |
| SPACE. EXPLORATION, WEAPONS. Satellites burning up in our atmosphere may not be as harmless as first thought. | TECHNOLOGY.So They’re Experimenting With Military Robots In Gaza Now.SMRs are useless says the UK’s leading SMR analyst! – 100 per cent renewable energy is much more feasible!UK spurns European invitation to join ITER nuclear fusion project.Microsoft’s Kate Crawford: ‘AI is neither artificial nor intelligent’.Finland’s Olkiluoto nuclear power station to be disconnected for 37 days. | WASTES.“Tritium Removal” A Report on the Proposed MCECE nuclear Facility at Chalk River also at https://nuclear-news.net/2024/03/03/2-b1-tritium-removal-a-report-on-the-proposed-mcece-facility-at-chalk-river/Burying nuclear waste the best of a bad bunch of options.Locals oppose nuclear waste plant – parish council. Holderness: Government guarantees plans for nuclear waste dump will be dropped for good.New plans to dismantle Rosyth dead nuclear submarines left for decades.Nuclear Restoration Services has been served with an “improvement notice” after the ONR found failures in its storage methods |
| WAR and CONFLICT.Wargame simulated a conflict between Israel and Iran: It quickly went nuclear. Israeli Calls to ‘Nuke Gaza’ Are Undermining the Nuclear Ambiguity Doctrine.After Macron touted troops to Ukraine, Putin warns West of nuclear war risk.Leaked Russian military files reveal its nuclear strike rules.Full Transcript of German Top Military Officials’ Leaked Plot to Attack Crimean Bridge.China urges largest nuclear states to negotiate a ‘no-first-use’ treaty.NewsReal: How Serious Are Western Leaders About Full-on War With Russia? | WEAPONS and WEAPONS SALES. France creates coalition to arm Ukraine with long-range weapons. Victoria Nuland accidentally reveals the true aim of the West in Ukraine. Setting the record straight on Canada’s arms exports to Israel. The reawakening of America’s nuclear dinosaurs. Iran Reduces Near-Weapons-Grade Stockpile, Defying Expectations. |
US Refuses to Assure UK Judges That Assange Won’t Be Executed If He’s Extradited
UK law prohibits extradition to a country that may impose capital punishment.
By Marjorie Cohn , TRUTHOUT, February 27, 2024
n February 20 and 21, as nearly 1,000 supporters of Julian Assange gathered outside the London courthouse, a two-judge panel of the High Court of Justice presided over a “permission hearing.” Assange’s lawyers asked the judges to allow them to appeal the home secretary’s extradition order and raise issues that the district court judge had rejected without full consideration.
The High Court panel, Dame Victoria Sharp and Justice Jeremy Johnson, were concerned that the U.S. government could execute Assange if he is extradited to the United States, a penalty outlawed in the U.K. Although Assange faces 175 years in prison for the charges alleged in the indictment, there is nothing to prevent the U.S. from adding additional offenses which would carry the death penalty.
The Trump Administration Indicted Assange for Exposing U.S. War Crimes
Assange is charged with 17 counts of alleged violations of the Espionage Act, based on obtaining, receiving, possessing and publishing national defense information. He is accused of “recruit[ing] sources” and “soliciting” confidential documents just by maintaining the WikiLeaks website that stated it accepted such materials. Assange is also charged with one count of “conspiracy to commit computer intrusion” with intent to “facilitate [whistleblower Chelsea] Manning’s acquisition and transmission of classified information related to the national defence of the United States.”
The basis for the indictment, Assange’s lawyers told the panel, is WikiLeaks’s “exposure of criminality on the part of the U.S. government on an unprecedented scale.” Assange is charged for revealing war crimes committed by the United States in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay. The indictment has nothing to do with Hillary Clinton and the 2016 election or Swedish allegations of sexual misconduct, which have been dropped.
WikiLeaks revealed the “Iraq War Logs” — 400,000 field reports including 15,000 unreported deaths of Iraqi civilians, as well the as systematic rape, torture and murder after U.S. forces handed over detainees to a notorious Iraqi torture squad. The revelations also included the “Afghan War Diary” — 90,000 reports of more civilian casualties by coalition forces than the U.S. military had reported.
In addition, WikiLeaks revealed the “Guantánamo Files,” 779 secret reports with evidence that 150 innocent people had been held at Guantánamo Bay for years, and 800 men and boys had been tortured and abused, in violation of the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.
WikiLeaks also revealed the notorious 2007 “Collateral Murder Video,” in which a U.S. Army Apache attack helicopter targeted and killed 11 unarmed civilians in Baghdad, including two Reuters journalists and a man who came to rescue the wounded. Two children were injured. The video contains evidence of war crimes prohibited by the Geneva Conventions.
And WikiLeaks exposed “Cablegate” — 251,000 confidential U.S. State Department cables that “disclosed corruption, diplomatic scandals and spy affairs on an international scale.” According to The New York Times, they told “the unvarnished story of how the government makes its biggest decisions, the decisions that cost the country most heavily in lives and money.”
“These were the most important revelations of criminal U.S. state behavior in history,” Assange attorney Mark Summers argued to the High Court panel.
Assange’s Appellate Issues
Assange is asking the U.K. High Court to review issues of treaty obligations, human rights violations and political persecution.
The U.S.-U.K. Extradition Treaty would allow the U.S. to amend or add charges which could expose Assange to the death penalty, a punishment prohibited in the U.K. In response to questioning by one of the judges, the prosecutor admitted that the U.S. had not provided assurances that Assange would not be subject to the death penalty if extradited.
Article 4(1) of the extradition treaty does not allow extradition for political offenses. Espionage is the “quintessential” political offense, Assange attorney Edward Fitzgerald told the panel. “The gravamen (and defining legal characteristic) of each of the charges is thus an alleged intention to obtain or disclose US state secrets in a manner that was damaging to the security of the US state,” which makes them political offenses, Assange’s lawyers wrote. The defense claimed it was an abuse of process for the United States to pursue extradition of Assange for a political offense……………………………………………………………………………….
“The Most Important Revelation Since Abu Ghraib”
The Collateral Murder video is “the most important revelation since Abu Ghraib,” Summers told the panel. “The cables Assange published disclosed extrajudicial assassinations, rendition, torture, dark prisons and drone killings.” Summers said the Guantánamo Files revealed a “colossal criminal act.” The defense pointed out that WikiLeaks’s revelations actually saved lives. After WikiLeaks published evidence of Iraqi torture centers established by the U.S., the Iraqi government refused President Barack Obama’s request to grant immunity to U.S. troops who committed criminal and civil offenses there. As a result, Obama had to withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq.
The Obama administration, which prosecuted more whistleblowers under the Espionage Act than all prior U.S. administrations combined, considered prosecuting Assange, but feared it would violate the First Amendment. The administration was unable to distinguish what WikiLeaks did from what The New York Times and The Guardian did since they also published documents that Chelsea Manning had leaked.
But the Trump administration did indict Julian Assange. The U.K. arrested Assange and has held him in Belmarsh Prison for nearly five years pending a decision on whether he should be extradited to the U.S. to stand trial.
In January 2021, following a three-week hearing, Baraitser denied extradition after finding that Assange’s mental health was so frail there was a “substantial risk” of suicide if he was extradited to the U.S. because of the harsh conditions of confinement in which he would be held. But she rejected all other legal objections to extradition that Assange had raised.
U.S. “Assurances” That Assange Will Be Treated Humanely
After Baraitser had already ruled, the U.S. came forward with diplomatic “assurances” that Assange would be treated humanely if extradited to the United States. The Biden administration assured the court that Assange: (1) would not be subject to onerous Special Administrative Measures (SAMs) that would keep him in extreme isolation and monitor his confidential communications with his attorneys; (2) would not be housed at the notorious ADX Florence maximum security prison in Colorado; (3) would receive psychological and clinical treatment in custody; and (4) could serve any custodial sentence in Australia.
But the U.S. said the assurances wouldn’t apply if Assange committed a “future act” that “met the test” for the SAMs. That unspecified contingency would be based on a subjective determination of prison authorities with no judicial review.
Although the United States has reneged on nearly identical assurances in the past, the High Court accepted them at face value, saying it was satisfied that the U.S. was acting in good faith, and in December 2021, the High Court reversed Baraitser’s denial of extradition.
However, in a 2023 decision, the U.K. Supreme Court unanimously held that the court has an independent duty to determine the validity of assurances,
writing, “The government’s assessment of whether there is such a risk is an important element of that evidence, but the court is bound to consider the question in the light of the evidence as a whole and to reach its own conclusion.”
In June 2023, a single High Court judge, Jonathan Swift, refused Assange permission to appeal in a cursory three-page ruling. The hearing on February 20 and 21 was an effort by Assange’s legal team to reverse that decision so that the High Court will entertain his appeal.
Assange Redacted Names of Informants to Protect Them
…………………… Several witnesses testified at the 2020 extradition hearing that Assange took great care to ensure that the names were redacted. Other outlets published the unredacted cables before WikiLeaks with no adverse consequences.
………………….Moreover, Brig. Gen. Robert Carr testified at Manning’s court martial that no one was harmed by the WikiLeaks releases. Summers told the panel that Baraitser never balanced the public interest in the disclosures against the fact that no harm came from them.
Conviction of Assange Would Chill Investigate Journalists From Exposing Government Secrets
In November 2022, The New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, DER SPIEGEL and El País signed a joint open letter calling on the Biden administration to drop the Espionage Act charges against Assange. They wrote, “Publishing is not a crime,” noting that Assange is the first publisher to be charged under the Espionage Act for revealing government secrets.
The indictment would punish conduct that national security journalists routinely engage in, including cultivating and communicating confidentially with sources and soliciting information from them, shielding their identities from disclosure, and publishing classified information. If Assange is prosecuted and convicted, it will discourage journalists both in the U.S. and abroad from publishing evidence of government wrongdoing.
No publisher has ever been prosecuted under the Espionage Act for disclosing government secrets. The U.S. government has never prosecuted a publisher for publishing classified information, which constitutes an essential tool of investigative journalism.
But rather than dropping Trump’s prosecution of Assange consistent with the position of the Obama-Biden administration, Joe Biden has zealously pursued extradition and prosecution.
Pending House Resolution Would Call for Dismissal of All Charges Against Assange.
On December 13, 2023, House Resolution 934 was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives by Rep. Paul A. Gosar (R-Arizona), with cosponsors from both political parties. It would express “the sense of the House of Representatives that regular journalistic activities are protected under the First Amendment, and that the United States ought to drop all charges against and attempts to extradite Julian Assange.” The resolution states that the WikiLeaks disclosures “promoted public transparency through the exposure of the hiring of child prostitutes by Defence Department contractors, friendly fire incidents, human rights abuses, civilian killings, and United States use of psychological warfare.”
…………… The conviction of Assange under the Espionage Act, the resolution continues, “would set a precedent allowing the United States to prosecute and imprison journalists for First Amendment protected activities, including the obtainment and publication of information, something that occurs on a regular basis.”
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At the conclusion of the two-day hearing, the High Court panel set a due date of March 4 for further written submissions from the parties. If the court agrees to review at least one of Assange’s appellate issues, there will be a full hearing. Meanwhile, Assange, who is in poor physical and emotional health, remains in prison.
If the High Court denies his right to appeal, Assange can ask the European Court of Human Rights to hear his case. If that court finds “exceptional circumstances” and an “imminent risk of irreparable harm,” it can order provisional measures, including a stay of execution while the case is pending in the European court. But there is a danger that the U.K. could immediately extradite Assange to the United States before the European Court of Human Rights has a chance to consider Assange’s petition.
1 This month
PETITION – To: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the Australian Labor Government
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes – A good documentary on Chernobyl on SBS available On Demand for the next 3 weeks– https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-program/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes/235274195556
19 May – Webinar- Webinar: No Nuclear Weapons in Australia
Start: 2026-05-19 18:00:00 UTC Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney (GMT+10:00)
End: 2026-05-19 19:30:00 UTC Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney (GMT+10:00)
20 May – Webinar – The dangerous world of AUKUS, US, military occupation and suppression of dissent
National Webinar, 20th May, 2026, 6.30pm AEST. Confronting laws restricting/suppressing protest speech and action
Speakers: Former Sen. Rex Patrick, Lawyer Nick Hanna ,Arthur Rorris ,Jorgen Doyle, Sen David Shoebbridge,
Facilitator Kelley Tranter.
of the week – Australians for War Powers Reform (AWPR)
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity
Antinuclear 