Report: Justice Department Considering Plea Deal for Assange
While such a deal could potentially secure Assange’s freedom, it could still set a dangerous precedent since it would criminalize the relationship between a journalist and his source.
the US could have leaked the talk of a plea deal to the press to portray Assange as unreasonable if he didn’t take it.
A plea deal could free Assange from prison
by Dave DeCamp March 20, 2024 https://news.antiwar.com/2024/03/20/report-justice-department-considering-plea-deal-for-assange/
The Justice Department is considering whether to offer WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange the opportunity to plead guilty to a reduced charge of mishandling classified information, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter.
The report said DOJ officials and Assange’s legal team have already had preliminary talks on what a plea deal might look like. However, Barry Pollack, a lawyer for Assange, said he has been given no indication that the department will take a deal.
“It is inappropriate for Mr. Assange’s lawyers to comment while his case is before the UK High Court other than to say we have been given no indication that the Department of Justice intends to resolve the case and the United States is continuing with as much determination as ever to seek his extradition on all 18 charges, exposing him to 175 years in prison,” Pollack said in a statement.
Consortium News reported later in the day that it had previously learned of the talks between the US and Assange’s legal team on a potential deal, but the information was given off the record, so the outlet did not publicize it.
Under the DOJ’s indictment against Assange, he could face up to 175 years in prison under the Espionage Act for exposing US war crimes by publishing classified documents leaked to WikiLeaks by former Army Private Chelsea Manning in 2010.
If Assange is convicted, it would set a dangerous precedent for press freedom since publishing information obtained by a source is a standard journalistic practice, whether classified or not.
The Journal report said that if the DOJ offers a deal for Assange to plead guilty to a lesser charge of mishandling classified information, it would be a misdemeanor, and he could potentially enter the plea remotely without going to the US. His time in London’s Belmarsh Prison, where he’s been held since April 2019, would count toward his sentence, and Assange could be free shortly after reaching the deal.
While such a deal could potentially secure Assange’s freedom, it could still set a dangerous precedent since it would criminalize the relationship between a journalist and his source.
Kevin Gostzola, author of the book “Guilty of Journalism: The Political Case Against Julian Assange,” suggested the US could have leaked the talk of a plea deal to the press to portray Assange as unreasonable if he didn’t take it.
“Basically, US officials chat to the press about some possible plea deal for Assange when he isn’t guilty of any crime. If Assange’s team signals it would never be acceptable, then it is Assange’s fault that he remains in prison. Officials can say he wants to martyr himself,” Gostzola wrote on X.
Last month, Assange’s legal team presented its case for an appeal to the UK home secretary’s decision to extradite Assange to the US, and a decision on whether or not he can appeal is expected to happen soon.
The Australian government has been calling on President Biden to drop the charges against Assange, who is an Australian citizen. Some members of Congress have also been calling for an end to the persecution of the WikiLeaks founder, including Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), who brought Assange’s brother, Gabriel Shipton, to President Biden’s State of the Union.
WikiLeaks and Assange supporters are asking Americans to add to the pressure by contacting Congress. Americans can call their House representatives to support H.Res.934, a bill introduced by Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) that calls for the US to drop the charges against Assange.
Click here to find your representative, or call the House switchboard operator at (202) 224-3121. Tell them to support the resolution to protect the First Amendment and press freedom.
Not in my backyard: Liberals, Nationals go cold on nuclear
James Massola, Mike Foley and Olivia Ireland, March 25, 2024
It has not yet announced potential locations for nuclear sites but has signalled its intention to place them near existing retired coal power stations so they could be more easily plugged into the grid.
Nationals leader David Littleproud has already said he would welcome a nuclear power plant in his south-west Queensland seat of Maranoa. His predecessor, Barnaby Joyce, said he would do the same in his northern NSW electorate of New England. But another dozen Coalition MPs approached by this masthead on Sunday were unwilling to publicly welcome a nuclear power plant in their own electorate, though all said they supported their party’s position.
Opposition climate change and energy spokesman Ted O’Brien, who has played a key role in designing the forthcoming policy and who backs nuclear power to ensure Australia meets its emissions-reduction targets, has repeatedly stopped short of endorsing a power station in his Sunshine Coast seat of Fairfax.
He said last week that three criteria had to be satisfied before a nuclear site was selected: technical feasibility, financial feasibility and acceptance from the community.
“That criteria should apply everywhere,” he said, including his electorate.
The opposition’s energy affordability spokeswoman, Melissa McIntosh, said her suburban Sydney seat of Lindsay would not host a reactor.
“There are no coal-fired power stations, certainly in my electorate and not at all in western Sydney,” she said.
This masthead spoke to 10 more Coalition MPs – Queenslanders Warren Entsch, Llew O’Brien, Colin Boyce, Michelle Landry and Keith Pitt, West Australian Ian Goodenough, Victorians Sam Birrell and Keith Wolahan, NSW MP Jenny Ware and Senator Dave Sharma about whether they supported the nuclear power policy and whether they would be comfortable hosting a power station in their seat or local area.
The nuclear policy of the Peter Dutton-led opposition has met with cool responses from Liberal and National leaders in state parliaments. Victorian Liberal leader John Pesutto last week told ABC radio he did not support building a nuclear power station in the La Trobe Valley where coal-fired power stations are located, Queensland LNP leader David Crisafulli has said “no one will invest in it unless both sides agree to it”, while NSW opposition leader Mark Speakman has said he is awaiting the details of the federal proposal and that “at the end of the day we have to have energy sources that are clean, cheap and reliable”.
Energy experts have questioned whether nuclear power is feasible for Australia, with the CSIRO’s recent GenCost report showing that renewables such as solar and wind are cheaper than coal or nuclear power.
Dutton claims nuclear is a more reliable source of clean energy and that adopting nuclear power would bring Australia in line with other G20 nations. He has committed to soon revealing the proposed locations for six nuclear power plants.
Every federal Coalition MP approached by this masthead supported the policy of lifting the moratorium on nuclear power and potentially introducing the technology to Australia but, like Ted O’Brien and McIntosh, all of them also were cautious or non-committal about it being in their seat and emphasised the need for their constituents to be on board first…………………………………………………………………………
Littleproud said last week that “if the Australian people vote for us that’s a fair indication to premiers that they should get out of the way and let the adults in the room get on with the job”.
Those comments placed him at odds with a trio of state party leaders and underscored divisions within the party. https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/not-in-my-backyard-liberals-nationals-go-cold-on-nuclear-20240322-p5feko.html
Murder, corruption, bombings – the company at centre of Australia’s submarine deal
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Murder, corruption, bombings – the company at centre of Australia’s submarine deal Michael West Media by Michelle Fahy | Oct 24, 2020 The arms company at the centre of a deadly criminal saga and numerous global corruption scandals, Naval Group, was selected by the Australian government to build our new fleet of submarines – a deal heralded as ‘one of the world’s most lucrative defence contracts‘. How did this happen? In this special investigation Michelle Fahy discovers significant gaps in anti-bribery and corruption measures on this massive procurement project. The message communicated far and wide is that our standards are lax; grey areas are tolerated; and we’ll bend the rules and look the other way.…………In June this year, 18 years later, a Paris court secured the first convictions in the case. Six men were found guilty of charges involving kickbacks on deals signed in 1994 for the sale of submarines to Pakistan and frigates to Saudi Arabia. They include three former French government officials and the former head of the International Division of Naval Group.
Investigations into arms trade corruption take years, often more than a decade, due to multiple countries being involved, layers of offshore shell companies hiding the money trail, and the senior people implicated. Court cases and convictions are rare. The Karachi Affair resonates in Australia today because despite this high-profile and deadly criminal saga – and two other corruption scandals, in Taiwan and Malaysia, which also involved murder – the company at the centre of all three, Naval Group, was still selected by the Australian government in 2016 to build our new fleet of submarines. A deal heralded as “one of the world’s most lucrative defence contracts”. Naval Group is 62.25% owned by the French government and 35% by French multinational Thales (a global top 10 weapons-maker). The French case continues. In January, the former French prime minister Edouard Balladur and his defence minister will stand trial. It is alleged the kickbacks helped fund the PM’s failed 1995 presidential bid. Both men deny any wrongdoing. Meanwhile, in Australia, the submarine deal continues. In February last year, after two years of negotiations, the government signed a ‘strategic partnership agreement’ with Naval Group. The signing took place despite the emergence of two more investigations into Naval, including alleged corruption on a 2009 submarine deal with Brazil and a significant security breach where complete plans of the new Scorpène submarines Naval had provided to India were apparently leaked from within Naval. ………………….Strong anti-corruption measures essentialVast amounts of Australian taxpayers’ money are being handed to military industrial companies, including Naval Group, in contracts. Yet the perennial lack of transparency in defence procurement, blanket secrecy surrounding Australian weapons exports, and a pervasive “culture of cosiness” between government and industry all continue. “Big money attracts greedy people and firms,” wrote a 31-year veteran of financial crime investigation for the Australian Federal Police, Christopher Douglas, in 2018. “New defence programs… also attract foreign intelligence interest.” This is already occurring in Australia, and Douglas says there will be more than one country spying. He says there is a “symbiotic relationship” between successful intelligence gathering operations and corruption. The corruption risk has only compounded since 2018. In June, the federal government further increased its projected military spend, from $195 billion to $270 billion. Tufts University in America researches arms trade corruption. It says there is an assumption by governments, barely questioned in defence and security circles, “that maintaining an advanced domestic arms industry is an unquestioned good, and essential to national security and influence. In all too many cases, this goal has therefore been placed above anti-corruption objectives.” (Emphasis added.) In Australia, developing a domestic arms industry is being accorded a high priority, but this should be accompanied by an increase in anti-corruption protections. The facts show nothing could be further from the truth. ‘Perfect bribe vehicles’Many of the world’s corrupt arms deals involve submarines. “They are perfect bribe vehicles,” says Tufts University, because “submarines are hugely expensive, and not many countries actually need them.” Australia is in a minority of countries that can argue it needs submarines. But do we need to spend quite so much money? Of the options available, the government selected the most risky one: the largest, most expensive, never-before-built, and thus completely untested, option. Chris Douglas, now director of Malkara Consulting, has written a report questioning Australia’s anti-corruption due diligence on the Future Submarine program. He has since used Freedom of Information requests to try to find out more about Defence’s anti-corruption framework in the program and has uncovered what appear to be significant gaps, discussed below. The international standard for anti-bribery measures is ISO 37001. It was introduced in 2016. Anyone serious about managing bribery and corruption requires a system that meets this international standard. ‘Come-from-behind victory’It was called “a remarkable come-from-behind victory” for DCNS, as Naval Group was then known, as it beat the respected German bid and former prime minister Tony Abbott’s favoured Japanese bid, to win Australia’s huge submarine contract in April 2016. How did DCNS do it? A history of the procurement is here, but we’ll probably never know the telling background details……………
Quite the opposite. Costello told the ABC’s Lateline, “The probity of me working for DCNS was checked and agreed with the government and all stakeholders in the program.” Costello didn’t elaborate on – or the ABC didn’t air – who in “government” signed off on it, nor who “all” the stakeholders were…………… Well-connected intermediaryIt was revealed in February 2019 that Naval Group had “recently” hired David Gazard to help “improve a rocky relationship with the Defence Department and to secure a crucial Strategic Partnering Agreement (SPA)”. A Liberal Party insider, David Gazard is well connected with the highest levels of the party. He was an adviser to John Howard, Peter Costello and Tony Abbott, in the lobbying business with Peter Costello for a time, and is also reportedly a member of prime minister Scott Morrison’s inner circle. In the 2010 federal election, Gazard stood for the Liberals in Eden-Monaro. After two years of negotiations marked by tension and sometimes bad-tempered wrangling, in December 2018 the government announced that negotiations had concluded. In February 2019, the ‘contract of the century’ was signed. Gazard and Naval Group declined to provide details on his role or the amount his lobbying firm, ECG Advisory Solutions, was paid. Sole FoI document suppressedEarly this year, Chris Douglas lodged an FoI request with Defence about anti-corruption measures on the submarine program. He asked for: …….[documents about anti-corruption measures]……. Douglas submitted another more general request to find out what, if any, ABC planning Defence had done. One document was identified, which Defence said was prepared by EY as part of its comprehensive advisory role (discussed above) and which included opinions and recommendations regarding the business affairs of Naval Group. As the document mentioned ‘third parties’, Defence said it needed to consult with them before it could be released. Douglas outlined his concern that entities involved in corruption often hid their activities and identities by claiming information was commercially sensitive. Nevertheless, Defence consulted the third parties. On 8 May, Defence told Douglas it was declining his request to release the document. Among other things, it said it had consulted EY, which had advised that the document was a very specific aspect of its comprehensive advisory role which, if read out of context, would not be in the public interest and could reasonably be expected to harm the professional reputation of EY. Defence also said it was “aware of allegations in connection with then-DCNS. In relation to these allegations, there have been no formal adverse findings against Naval Group.” (Emphasis added.) A month after this correspondence, the Paris court recorded the conviction against a former senior executive of then-DCN, now Naval Group, on charges relating to the kickback scandal. As noted earlier, given the paucity of cases to ever reach court in this industry, it is alarming that the Defence Department seems to require a “formal adverse finding” before it will give weight to corruption concerns. When it comes to managing corruption risk, is the Defence Department saying it is content to set the lowest possible bar for its contractors to clear? Government collusionThere is no better example of the collusion between governments and industry to ensure arms trade corruption cases rarely make it to court than the UK’s protection of BAE Systems, as described by Tufts University:…… If the multinational, majority French-government-owned Naval Group’s business and professional affairs are such that they would or could be adversely affected by the release of a risk assessment document evaluating its suitability to undertake the largest defence procurement program in Australian history, we might wonder, why was it selected? https://www.michaelwest.com.au/murder-corruption-bombings-the-company-at-centre-of-australias-submarine-deal/ |
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ERA applies to extend lease on Jabiluka uranium mine against traditional owners’ wishes
ABC Rural / By Daniel Fitzgerald, Thu 21 Mar 2024
- In short: Mining company ERA has applied to extend its lease on the Jabiluka uranium deposit for another 10 years.
- Mirarr traditional owners are fiercely opposed to the lease extension and any mining at Jabiluka.
- What’s next? ERA’s lease application will be assessed by the NT government and the company needs to spend at least $2.4 billion to rehabilitate the former Ranger uranium mine.
A mining company has lodged an application to renew its lease on a uranium deposit surrounded by Kakadu National Park, against the wishes of Indigenous traditional owners.
Energy Resources Australia (ERA) operated the Ranger uranium mine, 250 kilometres east of Darwin, from 1981 to 2021, and is now rehabilitating the mine, at a cost of over $2.4 billion.
Since 1991, the company has also had a the lease on the nearby Jabiluka site — which is one of the world’s largest and richest uranium deposits.
ERA had approval to mine Jabiluka but faced significant opposition from Mirarr traditional owners, which led to a blockade of the mine site by 5,000 people in 1998 and the company’s eventual decision to stop the mine’s development. …………………………………………….
Traditional owners oppose plans
Mirarr traditional owners rejected ERA’s claims that it was in their best interests for the Jabiluka lease to be extended.
Corben Mudjandi said his people were opposed to ERA renewing its lease and had no confidence in the company.
“ERA has a very big problem at Ranger, and this application isn’t helping with that,” Mr Mudjandi said.
“ERA says it wants to protect our cultural heritage at Jabiluka. The best way of doing that is to include it in the World Heritage listed Kakadu National Park where it belongs.”
In 2022, the Mirarr said they were “appalled” an independent report commissioned by ERA suggested traditional owners might reverse their opposition to mining Jabiluka.
ERA to raise funds for Ranger clean-up
Last week, ERA reported a net loss after tax of $1.38 billion in 2023, which included an increase to its rehabilitation provision for Ranger.
ERA had total cash resources of $726 million at the end of 2023 and flagged an equity raise later this year to fund further rehabilitation at Ranger.
“What guarantee is there that this company will be operating in 12 months’ time?” Mr Mudjandi said.
“[Applying to extend Jabiluka] is big talk from a company that is $2 billion short of rehabilitation at Ranger.”
Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation, which represents the Mirarr, said it would seek formal protection of Jabiluka’s cultural heritage through the NT Sacred Sites Act and the Commonwealth Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act.
“We’ve heard very encouraging words from this company when they assured us Ranger would be cleaned up by January 2026 and look how wrong that turned out to be,” Gundjeihmi chief executive Thalia van den Boogaard said. …………. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03-21/era-lodges-application-to-extend-jabiluka-uranium-lease-nt/103613966
Peter Dutton in standoff with state Liberal leaders over federal Coalition’s nuclear plan
The federal opposition leader’s calls to include nuclear power in Australia’s energy mix has so far failed to win support from his state colleagues
Guardian, Tamsin Rose, Catie McLeod and Tory Shepherd, Sun 24 Mar 2024
The federal Coalition faces a battle with the states on its proposal for nuclear power stations at the sites of decommissioned coal power plants, with state premiers and opposition leaders alike largely against Peter Dutton’s proposal.
Labor governments and Coalition oppositions in Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia are either outright opposed to the plan or have failed to endorse it.
Most of those states have their own bans on nuclear that would need to be lifted in addition to the federal ban if Dutton’s plan were to progress.
Despite this, the federal opposition leader has repeatedly called for nuclear to be considered as part of the future energy mix for Australia.
Here’s how the debate is playing out around Australia.
Queensland
It is illegal to run any forms of nuclear facilities in Queensland, including power stations and radioactive waste dumps. Any change to this would need to be passed by parliament.
David Crisafulli, the Liberal National party leader, is the bluntest in his opposition to Dutton’s plan.
When asked if he supported the federal Liberal leader and fellow Queenslander’s energy campaign earlier in the week, the opposition leader said: “No, we don’t.”
“Until both sides of Canberra agree, that will never happen because there won’t be investment,” Crisafulli said.
The state’s deputy opposition leader, Jarrod Bleijie, said debate was “many years” away and the party was focused on the cost of living in the immediate future.
“People are hurting, they need to see their electricity bills reduced now and that has to be our priority,” he told Sky News.
New South Wales
Similarly, in NSW there is a ban on uranium mining and nuclear power for electricity generation.
The state’s shadow energy minister, James Griffin, said he supported a “rational discussion about nuclear energy” but stopped short of endorsing the federal Coalition’s proposal……………………………….
The premier, Chris Minns, has dismissed any nuclear energy strategy that uses modular reactors for NSW………………………………………
Victoria
A number of nuclear-related activities, including exploration for uranium and construction or operation of a nuclear reactor, are banned in Victoria.
Like its northern counterparts, the Victorian opposition has failed to endorse the federal Coalition’s nuclear plans.
The shadow energy minister, David Davis, said “the Victorian Liberals and Nationals support a commonsense transition to renewables that ensures affordability and security of supply”.
South Australia
There are no state-level bans on nuclear power in place in South Australia and the premier, Peter Malinauskas, has repeatedly said he is open to or neutral towards the idea of nuclear power, but that the economics do not stack up.
SA is something of a nuclear state thanks to uranium mining and the prospect of building nuclear submarines, but Malinauskas does not think nuclear should be part of the power mix, not least because he has pledged that SA’s power will be fully sourced from renewables by 2027.
The energy minister, Tom Koutsantonis, said: “While we have nothing in principle against nuclear power, this current debate is nothing but a distraction because it is not economically feasible or viable for Australia.”
The opposition leader, David Speirs, said “all options should be on the table in the pursuit of an affordable, reliable and clean energy future”.
“That includes looking at new generation nuclear energy as a possible addition to our energy mix,” he said.
Coalition yet to produce costed nuclear energy policy
Last week, Dutton claimed the annual report from science agency CSIRO that had included estimates of costs for small modular reactors – which are not yet available commercially – was “discredited” because it “doesn’t take into account some of the transmission costs, the costs around subsidies for the renewables”.
CSIRO rejected Dutton’s claim that its estimates were unreliable, with its chief executive, Douglas Hilton, warning that maintaining trust “requires our political leaders to resist the temptation to disparage science”.
The most recent GenCost report estimates a theoretical small modular reactor built in 2030 would cost $382 to $636 per MWh. It says this is much more expensive than solar and wind, which it puts at between $91 and $130 per MWh even once integration costs are included.
The federal Coalition is yet to produce a costed energy policy, despite arguing for a lift to Australia’s ban on nuclear energy and suggesting it will nominate six potential sites for nuclear reactors around Australia – likely to be close to current or retiring coal-fired power stations.
With additional reporting by Benita Kolovos, Paul Karp, Graham Readfearn and Andrew Messenger https://amp.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/mar/24/peter-dutton-liberal-leaders-nuclear-power-ban
Financiers shun nuclear, upbeat on climate investment
By Marion Rae, March 25 2024 https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/8566564/financiers-shun-nuclear-upbeat-on-climate-investment/
Nuclear energy is last on the list of technologies that investors want exposure to, according to a survey of big institutions.
The vast majority of investors do not see nuclear power as a good investment, with less than one in 10 exploring this technology, the survey released on Monday found.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton is spruiking nuclear reactors as an option for Australia’s future low-carbon economy although the energy source is illegal under existing laws and Labor has ruled it out.
Renewable energy is tipped to deliver the best long-term financial returns, with half the investors surveyed exploring opportunities to invest.
Investors have also become more confident about Australian climate policy under the Albanese government, according to the survey by the Investor Group on Climate Change.
“Investors have given the government a pretty good report card,” the group’s policy chief Erwin Jackson said.
But Australia will need globally competitive, targeted incentives to suit the nation’s economic strengths and values to stop “ongoing capital flight” to the United States and Europe where there are more generous tax breaks.
Clear timelines for the phase-out of fossil fuels by 2050 would also help investors manage transition risks and remain invested in the Australian economy, according to the group.
This year’s data includes 63 superannuation funds as well as other asset owners and managers, with more than $37 trillion in assets under management globally. Their beneficiaries include more than 15 million Australians.
Emerging priorities include clear timelines for phasing out coal, oil and gas and clear policies to build resilience and adapt to physical damage from climate change.
Opinions citing policy and regulatory uncertainty as a barrier to clean economy investment in Australia have changed dramatically, supported by four out of 10 investors compared with 7 out of 10 in 2021.
Renewable energy (47 per cent) was picked as the best option for long-term climate solutions, followed by nature-based schemes including biodiversity projects (34 per cent).
But investors are still in the dark on the federal government’s sector-by-sector decarbonisation plans for heavy polluters such as the energy, transport, agriculture and resources industries – and on the scope of the 2035 emissions reduction target.
“Credible and clear sector by sector decarbonisation plans to achieve a 2035 target with the highest possible level of ambition are critical for investment and it is critical to build on the steps already taken,” Mr Jackson said.
Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen has said the 2035 target will be “ambitious and achievable”, with advice to come from Australia’s recently beefed-up Climate Change Authority.
The sectoral review by the authority has an August 1 deadline, and will be released shortly afterwards.
Australian Associated Press
Sinking billions: undergunned and overpriced
Missing records, billions in over-runs, conflicts of interest, and flawed ships. How the Defence Department’s new frigates project is a boondoggle for a British weapons-maker.
MICHELLE FAHY, JUL 3, 2023, https://undueinfluence.substack.com/p/sinking-billions-undergunned-and?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=297295&post_id=132705738&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email
Part one of a two-part series.
In this two-part investigation, Declassified Australia examines the flawed contracting process that led to a $46 billion naval ship-building deal that has been found to be suffering what an investigative audit described as ‘corruption vulnerabilities’.
The company at the centre of the scandal, UK arms giant BAE Systems, is revealed to have lied to Australia’s Defence Department about the planned ship’s design.
Crucial departmental records of key decision-making meetings have gone missing, while no overall assessment of whether the selected BAE design was value for money was ever made.
The Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) reported in May its findings on the multi-billion dollar contract Australia signed in December 2018 with BAE Systems to build nine Hunter-class frigates.
The ANAO found that BAE had overstated – bureaucratic language for lied – the level of development of the frigate’s design, which meant cost inflation and schedule slippage were severely under-estimated.
BAE exaggerated the maturity of its design to get around a key government objective requiring the ship to be based on an existing military-off-the-shelf design with a minimum level of change.
Defence selected the BAE Systems frigate even though the two other ships on its shortlist were considered the two most viable designs.
Business as usual
Conflicts of interest, secret consulting deals, and revolving door appointments all undermine democracy, yet this is business-as-usual at the Defence Department, the nation’s biggest procurement agency.
Former senior BAE executives have been placed at the heart of Australia’s naval procurement. They have helped write government shipbuilding policy, overseen the navy’s largest tenders, and have even been hired by the government to negotiate on its behalf with their former employer on a deal now found to be riddled with probity concerns.
Granting preferential access to certain arms industry insiders escalated under previous Liberal-National coalition governments and since 2022 has continued under the Albanese Labor government, making this a story about state capture as well, when a corporation has the power to bend governments to its will.
When combined with departmental corruption or incompetence, or both, the result is defence procurement projects that are billions of dollars over budget and running years late. As a result, the navy is facing massive capability gaps.
Continue reading this story at Declassified Australia…
“Man-Made Hell On Earth”: A Canadian Doctor on His Medical Mission to Gaza
“I saw scenes that were horrific and I never want to see again,” said Yasser Khan, a surgeon from Toronto.
Jeremy Scahill, Intercepted, March 23 2024,
THROUGHOUT THE PAST five and a half months, Israel has waged a full-spectrum war against the civilian population of the Gaza Strip. The United States and other Western nations have supplied not only the weapons for this war of annihilation against the Palestinians, but also key political and diplomatic support.
The results of the actions of this coalition of the killing have been devastating. Conservative estimates hold that more than 31,000 Palestinians have been killed, including 13,000 children. More than 8,000 people remain missing, many of them believed to have died in the rubble of buildings destroyed in Israeli attacks. Famine conditions are now present in large swaths of the Gaza Strip. The fact that the International Court of Justice has found grounds to investigate Israel for plausible acts of genocide in Gaza has not deterred the U.S. and its allies from continuing to facilitate Israel’s war.
The massive scale of human destruction caused by the attacks would pose grave challenges to well-equipped hospitals. In Gaza, however, many health care facilities have been decimated by Israeli attacks or evacuated, while a few remain open but severely limited in the care and services they offer. Israeli forces have repeatedly laid siege to hospital facilities, killing hundreds of medical workers and taking captive scores of others, despite thousands of internally displaced Palestinians sheltering in the health care complexes. This week, Israel again launched raids on Al-Shifa Hospital, reportedly killing more than 140 people.
For months, doctors across Gaza have performed amputations and other high-risk procedures without anesthetics or proper operating rooms. Antibiotics are in short supply and often unavailable. Communicable diseases are spreading, as hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are forced to live in makeshift shelters with little access to toilets or basic sanitary supplies. Many new mothers are unable to breastfeed and infant formula shortages are common. Israel has repeatedly blocked or delayed aid shipments of vital medical supplies to Gaza. Basic preventative medical care is nearly nonexistent, and medical experts predict that malnutrition will condemn a new generation of young Palestinians to a life of developmental struggles.
The result of the onslaught against medical facilities is that there is only one fully functional hospital remaining in the territory, the European Hospital in Khan Younis. Dr. Yasser Khan, a Canadian ophthalmologist and plastic surgeon, just left Gaza where he spent 10 days at the hospital performing eye surgeries on victims of Israeli attacks. It was his second medical mission to Gaza since the war began last October.
What follows is a transcript of a lightly edited interview with Khan.
………………………Yasser Khan: Well, I’m from the greater Toronto area here in Canada, and I’ve been in practice for about 20 years. I’m an ophthalmologist, but I specialize in eyelid and facial plastic and reconstructive surgery.
So that’s my sub-specialty and that’s what I’ve been doing for about 20 years. And I’m a professor. I’ve been to over 45 different countries on a humanitarian basis where I’ve taught surgery, I’ve done surgery, I’ve established programs. And so I’ve been to many types of areas and zones in Africa, Asia, and South America…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
So that’s the kind of mass chaos that I encountered initially, and then I was told that every time there’s a bomb, give it about 15 minutes and the mass casualties come. That was the other thing that at the time shocked me: What we’d been seeing livestreamed on Instagram, on social media or whatever, I actually saw myself and it was worse than I can imagine. I saw scenes that were horrific that I’d never witnessed before and I never want to see again…………………………………………………….
It was quite demoralizing. You’ve gotta be on the ground to see how bad it is. In two months, things were not only the same in a bad way, but they’re much, much worse because now, two months later, Khan Younis has literally been destroyed as a city. It was an active, hustling, bustling city. The Nasser Hospital, as you know, it’s destroyed now. It’s basically a death zone. And there’s decomposing bodies in the hospital now. It’s been evacuated. And I will add one thing: As a health care worker, I know fully well that to build a major, fully functioning hospital takes years to perfect and build and process, right? So it’s a sheer tragedy that it’s destroyed in mere hours, so it’s really unfortunate…………………………………
So now [at European Gaza Hospital] instead of 20,000 people, there’s about 35,000 people seeking shelter in a hospital that’s already beyond capacity. And so now, both outside and inside, there’s a mass of people. There’s no place to move now in the hallways. The sterility of the hospital has significantly decreased. The European Gaza Hospital, all you have to do is go online and look at their pictures before. It was a beautiful, gorgeous hospital. Well-built, well-run, good quality control — and now it’s reduced to a place that is a mess. It’s a mess. There’s people cooking inside the hospital hallways, there’s the bathrooms, there’s people mixed in with the people who are sick, with major orthopedic injuries, post op. There’s no beds. So sometimes people go and just sleep in their little makeshift shelters. And so infection is, if you can imagine, infection is rampant. So if you don’t die the first time or if your leg or arm is not amputated the first time, it is for sure with infection. So then they have to amputate it to save your life. So it’s much, much worse.
The other thing I noticed was now, more so than even before, the health care workers and nurses and the doctors, they’re just burnt out. I mean, they’re just spent. They’ve witnessed so much in almost six months now. They’ve seen so much on a regular, hourly, daily basis. When I operate [at a hospital in Canada], typically speaking, I’ve got a few mostly elective lists, elective kind of not urgent problems that you gotta fix. And then there’s some trauma, or something that comes in that’s a bit more urgent once in a while, right? That’s my usual list. But [Palestinian medical workers], they are working on a daily basis on the most horrific, explosive trauma that you’ve ever seen. They’re doing sometimes 14, 15 amputations, mostly on children, per day, and they’ve been doing it for six months now.
The thing I try to emphasize to people is that it’s not only the actual medical trauma, it’s the other trauma associated with it in that these patients come in, if you’ve been involved in an explosive injury, and you come in injured, guaranteed you’ve lost loved ones. Guaranteed. So you’ve either lost a father, a mother, a child, all your children, all your family, your uncle, aunt, grandparents, your house, whatever. You’ve lost something. So every patient that comes in, not only is severely injured, is dealing with this trauma.
I had one girl who basically lost all her siblings, 8-year-old beautiful girl, lost her siblings. She came in for a leg fracture, was under the rubble for 12 hours. And her mother died, all her siblings gone. And all her family [were] gone, her aunts and uncles. As you know, it’s a generational killing, like slaughter. Generations. There’s about 2,000 families that have been erased now completely, are gone. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………
This has been a systematic, intentional attack on the health care system. The bizarre thing of all of this is that the Israeli politicians have not hidden it. They have said open statements about creating epidemics. There’s been tons of open statements about what they intend to do. So you can’t even make this stuff up. It’s bizarre how they have openly said this, right? But having said that, I think over 450 health care workers have been killed — doctors, nurses, paramedics, over 450 — when they’re not supposed to be a target, right? They’re protected by international law. Doctors have been kidnapped, specific doctors who are of unique specialties have been targeted and killed.
Doctors have been kidnapped, and, yes, they have been tortured. They dehumanize the doctors and health care workers when they capture them. We’ve seen pictures of them, so we know this happens, and it does indeed happen. A few of the doctors went through torture, and one doctor that came back, he’s a general surgeon, he came back, I was speaking to his wife, and he’s not the same anymore. He was tortured and he still has torture marks over his body, and he’s a general surgeon. That’s it, just a medical professional. The assistant director of the hospital was basically declothed and beat up in front of all the other hospital workers just to kind of insult and degrade him because he’s their boss. And they’re beating him up and kicking him and swearing at him, and everybody witnessed this, and they did it purposely in front of his workers. So, it’s a further dehumanization of a human being. These doctors when they come back, the few that are released, there’s still a lot that are under custody with the Israeli forces, they’re not the same anymore. For me, as a surgeon, it’s really heartbreaking for me to see that. As a surgeon, we have people’s lives in our hands and we heal. And then to see them mentally reduced to nothing is hard to take. Yeah. It’s hard to stomach……………………………………………………………………………………………
What I saw — I’m an eye surgeon, an eye plastic surgeon, and so I saw the classic, what I penned “the Gaza shrapnel face,” because in an explosive scenario, you don’t know what’s coming. When there’s an explosion, you don’t go like this [cover your face], you kind of actually, in fact, open your eyes. And so shrapnel’s everywhere. It’s a well-known fact that the Israeli forces are experimenting [with] weapons in Gaza to boost their weapon manufacturing industry. Because if a weapon is battle-tested, it’s more valuable, isn’t it? It’s got a higher value. So basically they’re using these weapons, these missiles that purposely, intently create these large shrapnel fragments that go everywhere. And they cause amputations that are unusual…………………………………………………………………………………….
And so I saw these facial injuries, I saw limbs of children just kind of hanging off, barely connected. I saw abdominal wounds where you had, of course, the intestines exposed. And the thing is that the emergency does not have room, so they’re all over the floor. So you have these massive trauma, and [the patients] are on the floor. And sometimes they get forgotten in the mass chaos………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. more https://theintercept.com/2024/03/23/intercepted-doctor-gaza-interview/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=The%20Intercept%20Newsletter
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Authorized Atrocities
the true rupture lies with those in the West who are sucked into Israel’s utter immorality
Israel’s lawlessness has a history that those in the West share with the apartheid state.
By Patrick Lawrence, Consortium News , 20 Mar 24
It is remarked often enough, including in this space, that Israel’s savagery in its determination to exterminate the Palestinians of Gaza — and we had better brace for what is next on the West Bank of the Jordan — marks a turn for all of humanity.
In its descent into depravity the Zionist state drags the West altogether down with it.
This is true, certainly, but we must put Israel’s criminal conduct, which warrants another Nuremberg trial at this point, in its proper context.
When we do, we find that Israel’s lawlessness has a history, an etymology, and if there is a road to Western salvation it must start with a recognition of a past that those in the West share with the apartheid state.
We can say Israel’s crimes against Gaza’s 2.3 million children, women, and men are unspeakable, in other words, but this would not be right. They are altogether speakable, and it behooves us now to speak of them if we are to grasp where responsibility for this stain upon the human story truly lies.
Pankaj Mishra has just published a thorough and thoroughly remarkable piece on these matters in the London Review of Books.
The Indian author, essayist, and columnist takes up many things in “The Shoah After Gaza,” chiefly the extent to which Zionists have exhausted “the culture of conspicuous Holocaust consumption” — excellent phrase — in defense of a nation that, to quote Primo Levi, “was a mistake in historical terms.”
Here is a passage in Mishra’s piece that is to our present point:
“Israel today is dynamiting the edifice of global norms built after 1945, which has been tottering since the catastrophic and still unpunished war on terror and Vladimir Putin’s revanchist war in Ukraine. The profound rupture we feel today between the past and the present is a rupture in the moral history of the world since the ground zero of 1945 — the history in which the Shoah has been for many years the central event and universal reference.”……………………………………………………………………………….
I confine myself to the postwar decades to allow us to take a good, clear look at that “edifice of global norms” of which Mishra writes.
When we do, we find the West has licensed the Israelis. They bear a pre-authorization by way of many precedents. There is one for more or less every shameful act the Israelis perpetrate against the Palestinian population — this in the West Bank as well as Gaza.
And so we discover — or remind ourselves, depending on how attentive we have been to events — that the post–1945 edifice has looked from the start roughly as it looks now. Israel is at bottom an outcome, not the prime cause of anything.
Insidious Mythology
Certainly the grotesque spectacle of mass murder and wholesale destruction we witness daily has marked a rupture, to stay with Mishra’s term. But to assert that this rupture lies in Israel’s conduct is to sustain an insidious mythology of innocence for the West.
No, the true rupture lies with those in the West who are sucked into Israel’s utter immorality and now come face-to-face with their amoral indifference or, for the best of them, discover the extent of their powerlessness despite their authentic efforts.
As to Israel, I am with Primo Levi as Mishra quotes him. “The Jewish state” had already proven a mistake when he made his much-disputed remark in 1985.
The truth of it has since been demonstrated a hundred times over. Israel has proven a failed experiment, incapable of conducting itself as a legitimate nation-state.
But whose mistake is Israel? It was the West, Britain in the lead, that created Israel by caving to the Zionists at the expense of indigenous Palestinians. This is the reality of power that should weigh most heavily on our shoulders. Israel ‘R’ us.
Britain’s abandonment of the 1920 Mandate brings us to one of the deeper characteristics of our time, our postwar edifice. This is the ever more complete disregard of those in power for the principles, standards and broadly accepted ethics that give form and coherence to a stable civilization and keep its public space clean and well lit.
In our crumbling edifice, everything is done according to its value as an expedient to a desired outcome. This, too, is a kind of depravity. And it is this depravity that produces the depravity we watch as we watch Israel’s effort to destroy an entire people. https://consortiumnews.com/2024/03/20/patrick-lawrence-authorized-atrocities/
Nuclear news this week – 25 March
Some bits of good news –
- Amid all the climate gloom, let’s not ignore the good news. also at https://nuclear-news.net/2024/03/23/1-b1-amid-all-the-climate-gloom-lets-not-ignore-the-good-news/
- Full Recovery for Coral Reef Within 4 Years – The Speed of Restoration They Saw was ‘Incredible.
- A leading university halted donations from big oil.
- Finland has retained its status as the ‘world’s happiest nation’ in the latest World Happiness Report.
TOP STORIES. Julian Assange and the Plea Nibble. Report: Justice Department Considering Plea Deal for Assange.
House Democrats Tell Biden To Enforce US Law and Suspend Military Aid to Israel.
Dozens of countries pledge support for nuclear power, despite lingering concerns.
Filling Nuclear Power’s $5 Trillion Hole Is Beyond the Banks.Glorious new financial jargon from the nuclear lobby – the “International Bank for Nuclear Infrastructure (IBNI)”.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Cannot Both Police Proliferation and Promote Nuclear Power.
BASE study: Alternative reactor concepts do not solve the repository problem.
Climate .
Mainstream climate scientists run the risk of becoming the new climate deniers. Hundreds of groups for climate action reject nuclear power at Brussels Summit.
State of the Global Climate 2023.
Environment. Where have all the insects gone?
Noel’s notes. Antony Blinken would get into bed with the devil, if it meant lucrative sales of USA weapons and nukes to Hell. Desperation of the nuclear lobby! Its new financial fantasy scheme, couched in impenetrable jargon!” In talking about nuclear matters, why is money the only game in town?
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AUSTRALIA. AUKUS: Red flag for arms industry corruption. UK and Australia set to elevate defence relationship to NATO level with new ‘status of forces’ agreement. Australia moves to prop up Aukus with $4.6bn pledge to help clear Rolls-Royce nuclear reactor bottlenecks in UK.
Financiers shun nuclear, upbeat on climate investment . Chief scientist backs renewables, calls nuclear power ‘expensive’ – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxP-6vsditI&t=389s Forget nuclear: would Peter Dutton oppose a plan to cut bills and address the climate crisis? Australia’s big electricity generators say nuclear not viable for at least a decade. “Prohibitive:” Australia’s biggest energy consumers and producers say no to nuclear, but is Coalition listening?
Peter Dutton in standoff with state Liberal leaders over federal Coalition’s nuclear plan. Dutton’s bid for nuclear power: hoax or reckless endangerment? On nuclear, Coalition prefers the optimism of misleading, decade-old, unverified claims.
ERA applies to extend lease on Jabiluka uranium mine against traditional owners’ wishes.
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NUCLEAR ISSUES
ARTS and CULTURE. A One-State Solution Could Transform the World.
ECONOMICS.
- Deadlines, costs, production: France’s nuclear company EDF in a moment of truth.
- Bulgarian nuclear experts question economic viability of new nuclear project.
- Money is “The Achilles Heal” of the nuclear state.
- New Brunswick’s Point Lepreau nuclear plant ranked as poor performer among international peers. IAEA’s Rafael Grossi in Iraq to market nuclear reactors.
- The West’s Nuclear Power Revival Could Be Slower Than Hoped.
- This is why Sizewell C construction poses ‘possible risk’ to new hospital build.
- The extraordinary financial costs of ‘small’ nuclear power stations.
| ENERGY. For France’s EPR at Flamanville, the objective of loading fuel before the end of March is no longer tenable. | ENVIRONMENT. Oceans. Fourth discharge of treated Fukushima water completed. Canadian officials found radiation levels in these northern Ontario homes ‘well above’ the safe limit. Their response: ‘¯\_(ツ)_/¯’ also at https://nuclear-news.net/2024/03/23/1-a-canadian-officials-found-radiation-levels-in-these-northern-ontario-homes-well-above-the-safe-limit-their-response-%c2%af_%e3%83%84_-%c2%af/ Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility – Re: Radiation in Elliot Lake homes . | ETHICS and RELIGION. Just Seeing Through The Propaganda Isn’t Enough – We’ve Got To Open Our Hearts As Well. |
| HEALTH. Nuclear test veterans demand compensation and medical records access. | INDIGENOUS ISSUES. Heavy resistance to Canada’s 1st nuclear waste repository, while Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) says it is safe.. | MEDIA. Normalizing starvation and massacres: Flour Massacre Called ‘Aid-Related Deaths’—Rather Than Part of Israel’s Engineered Famine. |
| PUBLIC OPINION. In Japan, Opposition to restarting nuclear power plants has grown, especially among women | SECRETS and LIES. “Anonymous” claims it has infiltrated Israel’s nuclear plant in Dimona. | SPACE. EXPLORATION, WEAPONS. US and Japan seek UN resolution calling on all nations to ban nuclear weapons in outer space. Space tourists and crew suffer high radiation risks – regulation is needed to protect them. To Mars and Back: Will NASA’s Ambitious Endeavor Be Worth It? |
| SPINBUSTER. The Lying Piper of Nukeland: the IAEA’s nuclear fairy tales are leading nations — and all of us — into climate catastrophe. Zion Lights and her lying, climate-denying mentor Michael Shellenberger | TECHNOLOGY. The questionable promises behind new nuclear power. |
| WASTES. 100,000 years and counting: how do we tell future generations about highly radioactive nuclear waste repositories? Japan finishes first-year ocean discharge of nuclear-tainted wastewater amid backlash. Inside Fukushima: Eerie drone footage reveals first ever look at melted nuclear reactor with 880 tonnes of radioactive fuel still inside – 13 years after disaster. The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) Opened 25 Years Ago; It Was Supposed to Close Next Week. | WAR and CONFLICT. Ukraine’s losses ‘in the millions’ – retired Polish general. Atrocities. ‘We are the masters of the house’: Israeli channels air snuff videos featuring systematic torture of Palestinians | WEAPONS and WEAPONS SALES.How Biden’s budget plunged the Aukus submarines pact into doubt. Can the U.S. Develop A Nuclear Bomb Without Ever Testing It? We’re About to Find Out.US Air Force tests very expensive third-stage rocket motor for next nuclear missile NATO Builds Largest Europe Base Near Black Sea. Nuclear weapons: France to restart tritium production with EDF.Nuclear Deterrence At Sea – France Begins Work On ‘Cutting Edge’ Nuke-Powered Ballistic Missile Submarine.Canada to stop arms sales to Israel – Foreign Minister. UK launches ‘national endeavour’ to reinforce nuclear deterrent. Iranian Cleric Calls For Nuclear Arms. |
TODAY. A SUMMIT of nuclear fantasy, folly and ignorance
Yes they all gathered in Brussels, all those very well-paid stuffed-shirt blokes, and that one even-better paid token woman.
First there was propaganda to “more than 70 young science communicators” – with top salesman Rafael Grossi in full flight, (necessary because the marketing body IAEA has decided that we must make nuclear power look lively and YOUTHFUL)
Then the top bananas – Prime Minister of Belgium Alexander De Croo and the Director General of the IAEA Rafael Mariano Grossi kicked off the spin buildup, leading to the adoption of a key declaration about nuclear energy.
Then the trail of international followers-on had their bit of a say.
Then heaps of big-wigs from nuclear energy agencies – panel talks on how to get nuclear power resuscitated world-wide
Finally – the Big One – how on earth to con taxpayers worldwide, and investors, to suddenly come up with the $billions needed to resuscitate this dirty and failing industry, with its only raison d’etre being nuclear weapons-making.
Julian Assange and the Plea Nibble
Barry Pollack, one of Assange’s legal representatives, has not been given any indication that the department would, as such, accept the deal, a point he reiterated to Consortium News: “[W]e have been given no indication that the Department of Justice intends to resolve the case.”
March 23, 2024 by: Dr Binoy Kampmark https://theaimn.com/julian-assange-and-the-plea-nibble/
Be wary of what Washington offers in negotiations at the best of times. The empire gives and takes when it can; the hegemon proffers and in equal measure and withdraws offers it deems fit. This is all well known to the legal team of WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange, who, the Wall Street Journal “exclusively” reveals, is in ongoing negotiations with US Justice Department officials on a possible plea deal.
As things stand, the US Department of Justice is determined to get its mitts on Assange on the dubious strength of 18 charges, 17 confected from the brutal Espionage Act of 1917. Any conviction from these charges risks a 175-year jail term, effectively constituting a death sentence for the Australian publisher.
The war time statute, which was intended to curb free speech and muzzle the press for the duration of the First World War, was assailed by Wisconsin Republican Senator Robert La Follette as a rotten device that impaired “the right of the people to discuss the war in all its phases.” It was exactly in time of war that the citizen “be more alert to the preservation of his right to control his government. He must be most watchful of the encroachment of the military upon the civil power.” And that encroachment is all the more pressing, given the Act’s repurposing as a weapon against leakers and publishers of national security material. In its most obscene incarnation, it has become the US government’s political spear against a non-US national who published US classified documents outside the United States.
The plea deal idea is not new. In August last year, the Sydney Morning Herald pounced upon comments from US Ambassador to Australia Caroline Kennedy that a “resolution” to the Assange imbroglio might be on the table. “There is a way to resolve it,” the ambassador suggested at the time. Any such resolution could involve a reduction of any charges in favour of a guilty plea, subject to finalisation by the Department of Justice. Her remarks were heavily caveated: this was more a matter for the DOJ than the State Department or any other agency. “So it’s not really a diplomatic issue, but I think there absolutely could be a resolution.”
The WSJ now reports that officials from the DOJ and Assange’s legal team “have had preliminary discussions in recent months about what a plea deal could look like to end the lengthy legal drama.” These talks “remain in flux” and “could fizzle.” Redundantly, the Journal reports that any such agreement “would require approval at the highest levels of the Justice Department.”
Barry Pollack, one of Assange’s legal representatives, has not been given any indication that the department would, as such, accept the deal, a point he reiterated to Consortium News: “[W]e have been given no indication that the Department of Justice intends to resolve the case.”
One floated possibility would be a guilty plea on a charge of mishandling classified documents, which would be classed as a misdemeanour. Doing so would take some of the sting out of the indictment, which is currently thick with felonies and one conspiracy charge of computer intrusion. “Under the deal, Assange could potentially enter that plea remotely, without setting foot in the US.” Speculation from the paper follows. “The time he has spent behind bars in London would count toward any US sentence, and he would be likely to be free to leave prison shortly after any deal has concluded.”
With little basis for the claim, the report lightly declares that the failure of plea talks would not necessarily be a bad thing for Assange. He could still “be sent to the US for trial”, where “he may not stay for long, given the Australia pledge.” The pledge in question is part of a series of highly questionable assurances given to the UK government that Assange’s carceral conditions would not include detention in the supermax ADX Florence facility, the imposition of notorious Special Administrative Measures, and the provision of appropriate healthcare. Were he to receive a sentence, it would be open to him to apply and serve its balance in Australia. But all such undertakings have been given on condition that they can be broken, and transfer deals between the US and other countries have been plagued by delays, inconsistencies, and bad faith.
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The dangers and opportunities to Assange have been bundled together, a sniff of an idea rather than a formulation of a concrete deal. And deals can be broken. It is hard to imagine that Assange would not be expected to board a flight bound for the United States, even if he could make his plea remotely. Constitutional attorney Bruce Afran, in an interview with CN Live! last August, suggested that a plea, taken internationally, was “not barred by any laws. If all parties consent to it, then the court has jurisdiction.” Yes, but what then?
In any event, once on US soil, there is nothing stopping a grand volte face, that nasty legal practice of tagging on new charges that would carry even more onerous penalties. It should be never forgotten that Assange would be delivered up to a country whose authorities had contemplated, at points, abduction, illegal rendition, and assassination.
Either way, the current process is one of gradual judicial and penal assassination, conducted through prolonged proceedings that continue to assail the publisher’s health even as he stays confined to Belmarsh Prison. (Assange awaits the UK High Court’s decision on whether he will be granted leave to appeal the extradition order from the Home Office.) The concerns will be how to spare WikiLeaks founder further punishment while still forcing Washington to concede defeat in its quest to jail a publisher. That quest, unfortunately, remains an ongoing one.
Here’s why there is no nuclear option for Australia to reach net zero
Dr Alan Finkel, Guardian, 22 Mar 24
Any call to go directly from coal to nuclear is effectively a call to delay decarbonisation of our electricity system by 20 years.
The battle lines have been drawn over Australia’s energy future.
With the nation signed up to net zero emissions by 2050, the Albanese Labor government is committed to renewables. The Coalition wants nuclear.
The opposition leader, Peter Dutton, has a vision for meeting Australia’s energy needs that would include large-scale nuclear power plants and small modular reactors, a technology that is not yet proven, but which the shadow minister for energy, Ted O’Brien, says could be “up and running within a 10-year period.”
While nuclear power might experience a resurgence globally and eventually have a role in Australia, right now, no matter how much intent there might be to activate a nuclear power industry, it is difficult to envision before 2040.
The reality is there is no substitute for solar and wind power this decade and next, supported by batteries, transmission lines and peaking gas generation.
Any call to go directly from coal to nuclear is effectively a call to delay decarbonisation of our electricity system by 20 years……………………………………………………………………….
The cons
There are challenges for nuclear power in Australia, most notably timetable and cost.
Legislation. Commonwealth legislation passed by the Howard government in 1998 prohibits nuclear power. Australia is the only country in the G20 to have a legislated ban on nuclear power. This would need to be lifted before anything else could happen.
Public support. An August 2023 poll by the Resolve Political Monitor found 40% of people backed nuclear power, 33% were undecided and 27% were opposed. It is likely that no matter how small the opposition, it will be vocal.
Ramp rate. Large nuclear power generators cannot ramp up and down rapidly like batteries or peaking gas generators. This reduces their compatibility with a predominantly solar and wind powered electricity grid. It is expected, though, that small modular reactors (SMRs) will be better in this respect than large, conventional reactors.
Falling investment. The various operational, political and cost challenges faced by the nuclear industry have led to nuclear’s share of global electricity generation falling from more than 17% in 1996 to 9% in 2022.
Starting from scratch. It is unlikely that Australia would switch from being a laggard to a leader. That is, we would not proceed before we saw a licensed SMR (not a prototype) operating in the US, Canada, UK or another OECD country.
After that, we would need to beef up the regulatory system, find the first site, find and license the first operator, approve and issue construction contracts, establish a waste-management system, establish the decommissioning rules and decommissioning fund, run the environmental and safety regulatory gamut, train a workforce, respond to the inevitable protests and respond to the inevitable legal opposition all the way to the high court.
Only then could construction begin. It is difficult to imagine all this could be accomplished and provide an operational nuclear reactor in Australia before the mid 2040s.
The cost of wind versus nuclear
Coal-fired generators and nuclear power generators can dispatch electricity at full power more than 90% of the year. In practice, because demand fluctuates, the typical dispatch level from the Australian coal-fired fleet is about 60%.
For comparison, what would be the capital cost of a wind farm to dispatch 60% of the year? A simplified approach would be to ignore market economics and the variability of solar electricity in the system, and assume a 30% capacity factor for the wind energy. With these assumptions, for a windfarm to dispatch 60% of the year, we would need to install 2GW of wind turbines. The first 1GW of turbines would dispatch when the wind is blowing. The second 1GW of turbines would be used to charge a 7GW-hour (GWh) battery, to be discharged into the grid on demand.
Using figures from the CSIRO’s GenCost draft 2023-2024 report, the cost in this simplified model would be around $7bn per GW. Other, less costly, integration configurations are available. In comparison, based on the latest cost estimates for the Hinkley Point C plant under construction in the UK, the cost for nuclear power would be $27bn per GW.
The big opportunity in thinking small
In Australia, we would be looking to use SMRs because of the enormous cost and construction delays of large-scale nuclear plants. But we will want the reassurance of first seeing SMRs work safely and well in the UK, Europe, Canada, the US or another OECD country.
The trouble is, there are no SMRs operating in the UK, Europe, Canada, the US or any other OECD country. Nor are any SMRs under construction or approved in an OECD country.
There is no data to support any claims about how much SMRs will cost when deployed as operating power stations………………………………………https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/22/heres-why-there-is-no-nuclear-option-for-australia-to-reach-net-zero
Australia moves to prop up Aukus with $4.6bn pledge to help clear Rolls-Royce nuclear reactor bottlenecks in UK
Funding revealed on eve of government talks is in addition to billions of dollars to be sent to US
Guardian, Daniel Hurst in Canberra, 21 Mar 24
The Australian government will seek to prop up the Aukus pact by sending A$4.6bn (£2.4bn) to the UK to clear bottlenecks at the Rolls-Royce nuclear reactor production line.
The funding – revealed on the eve of high-level talks between the Australian and UK governments on Friday – is in addition to billions of dollars that will be sent to the US to smooth over production delays there.
The Australian government will also announce on Friday that the government-owned shipbuilder ASC and the British defence firm BAE Systems will jointly build the nuclear-powered submarines for the Royal Australian Navy.
The nuclear reactors for the boats are to be manufactured at Rolls-Royce in the English city of Derby, but doubts have already been raised about whether reactor cores will be made in time for the UK’s first Dreadnought nuclear submarine.
Australia has now allocated £2.4bn over 10 years to expand the production capacity at Derby to deliver reactors for Australia’s submarines, to be known as SSN-Aukus……………………………………..
Cameron and the UK defence secretary, Grant Shapps, arrived in Canberra on Thursday for talks with their Australian counterparts, Penny Wong and Richard Marles.
They will hold an annual 2+2 meeting in Adelaide on Friday, with Aukus expected to be a major focus along with the war in Ukraine, the conflict in the Middle East and China’s position in the Indo-Pacific…………………..
Marles, the deputy prime minister and defence minister, said at the same media conference that the Australian government was “really aware of the stretched industrial base in the UK and in the US”.
Australia’s commitment to help clear backlogs in the US and the UK “was not without controversy” but was necessary for Aukus to succeed, Marles said.
Under the staged plans announced last March, Australia will buy at least three Virginia-class submarines from the US in the 2030s, prior to the domestically built SSN-Aukus entering into service from the 2040s.
But revelations that the US Navy plans to build only one Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarine next year have prompted renewed concerns about lagging performance on US production lines.
Marles, Shapps and the US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, issued a joint statement on Thursday declaring the three countries remained “fully committed to this shared endeavour” and were “investing significantly” to ensure its success.
Australia plans to set up a joint venture between ASC and BAE Systems to build the SSN-Aukus submarines. This structure will allow the Australian government to be heavily involved in delivering the strategically important project.
But the finer details have yet to be locked in, and ASC and BAE will work cooperatively in the meantime to develop the new submarine construction yard at South Australia’s Osborne shipbuilding precinct.
ASC built Australia’s conventionally powered Collins-class submarines, but has not previously worked with nuclear-powered boats.
In 2014 the then defence minister, David Johnston, was censured by the Senate for saying he “wouldn’t trust them [ASC] to build a canoe”…………………………
Australia and the UK on Thursday also signed a new defence and security cooperation agreement that formalises a commitment to consult each other on threats to sovereignty and regional security.
It includes a status of forces agreement, clearing regulatory hurdles for their forces to operate in each other’s countries.https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/21/australia-moves-to-prop-up-aukus-with-46bn-pledge-to-help-clear-rolls-royce-nuclear-reactor-bottlenecks-in-uk
Filling Nuclear Power’s $5 Trillion Hole Is Beyond the Banks
“We need to find a way to make it predictable, stable, bankable and affordable.”
“The project risks, as we have seen in reality, seem to be very high,” said European Investment Bank Vice President Thomas Ostros. – the world’s biggest multilateral lender recommends that countries needing power quickly focus on renewables and energy efficiency,
Nuclear-energy officials arrived in Brussels this week amid a growing wave of public support for atomic power. They left humbled by the tepid reaction of bankers assessing the price tag of their ambitions.
Bloomberg News, Jonathan Tirone, https://financialpost.com/pmn/business-pmn/filling-nuclear-powers-5-trillion-hole-is-beyond-the-banks/wcm/0d2062d5-7120-4480-b53a-a52e70ef2b45/amp/ 22 Mar 24,
The International Atomic Energy Agency convened a summit to build momentum for a low-emissions technology that many expect will be critical for hitting climate targets. A group of mostly Western countries pledged to triple nuclear generation by 2050. But lenders balked at the eyewatering cost of doing so.
“If the bankers are uniformly pessimistic, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy,” former US Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said Thursday after listening to a panel of international lenders explain why they’re unwilling to provide the $5 trillion the industry needs by mid-century.
“The bankers are calling for a proven business case,” said Jozef Sikela, the Czech Republic’s industry and trade minister. “We need to find a way to make it predictable, stable, bankable and affordable.”
Projects in Western economies have been plagued by construction delays and ballooning costs in recent decades. The newest reactor in the European Union — Olkiluoto 3 in Finland — started generating power last year, more than a decade late and three times over budget. Similarly in the US, Southern Co.’s Vogtle facility came in seven years behind schedule and $16 billion over estimates.
“The project risks, as we have seen in reality, seem to be very high,” said European Investment Bank Vice President Thomas Ostros. While the world’s biggest multilateral lender won’t close the door on nuclear, it recommends that countries needing power quickly focus on renewables and energy efficiency, he said.
China and Russia are building the most reactors. But their state-owned model of development is at odds with the European and US emphasis on private capital. That will likely need to change if Western economies want to maintain nuclear’s market share.
“We need state involvement, I don’t see any other model,” Ostros said. “Probably we need quite heavy state involvement to make projects bankable.”
Ines Rocha, a director at the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development, and Fernando Cubillos, a banker at the Development Bank of Latin America, also said their lending priorities lean toward renewables and transmission grids. “Nuclear comes last,” Cubillos said.
Potential new investors could include sovereign wealth funds or philanthropists, according to Charles Oppenheimer, who advocates for nuclear energy at The Oppenheimer Project.
“If it’s a safe and secure investment with a predictable return, there’s a huge amount of capital,” said the grandson of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the US physicist who ran the Manhattan Project. “What is lacking generally is capital for that risky build.”
Europe and the US have been trying to engineer nuclear out of its malaise, proposing a new generation of smaller reactors that can be factory-made and assembled on-site. Theoretically, that approach could cut costs, but has yet to be proven.
In the meantime, with global temperatures soaring and international climate targets in peril, some nuclear advocates say the focus on such innovations may be misguided.
“We’ve heard a lot about a leapfrogging to the next generation of nuclear technologies,” Moniz said. “I would submit it might just be better to focus on getting some technologies deployed right now.”
—With assistance from John Ainger.
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