Nuclear concerns as a magnitude-7.6 earthquake hits north central Japan, prompting tsunami warnings
ABC News 1 Dec 24
A powerful earthquake struck central Japan on Monday, killing at least one person, destroying buildings, knocking out power to tens of thousands of homes, and prompting residents in some coastal areas to flee to higher ground.
Key points:
- It was the strongest quake in the region in more than four decades, according to the US Geological Survey
- The quake with a preliminary magnitude of 7.6 triggered waves of about 1 metre along Japan’s west coast
- Russia and North Korea also issued tsunami warnings for some areas
The quake with a preliminary magnitude of 7.6 triggered waves of about 1 metre along Japan’s west coast and neighbouring South Korea, with authorities saying larger waves could follow……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Nuclear concerns
The quake comes at a sensitive time for Japan’s nuclear industry, which has faced fierce opposition from some locals since a 2011 earthquake and tsunami triggered nuclear meltdowns in Fukushima. Nearly 20,000 people were killed and whole towns devastated in the disaster.
Japan last week lifted an operational ban imposed on the world’s biggest nuclear plant, Kashiwazaki-Kariwa, which has been offline since the 2011 tsunami.
Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority said no irregularities have been confirmed at nuclear power plants along the Sea of Japan, including five active reactors at Kansai Electric Power’s Ohi and Takahama plants in Fukui Prefecture.
Hokuriku’s Shika plant in Ishikawa, the closest nuclear power station to the epicentre, had already halted its two reactors before the quake for regular inspections and saw no impact from the quake, the agency said……………………… more https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-01-01/tsunami-warnings-issued-in-japan-after-earthquake/103277706
Nuclear News 1st January 2024
Good news? Yes, it’s hard to find. But it’s out there. So many millions of people working towards a clean and peaceful planet, working with compassion for the victims of war, of injustice, and of extreme weather. Impossible to name the many agencies – from the numerous United Nations ones, (UNICEF, UNHCR, UNESCO ……..), and ICAN, Red Cross , Red Crescent, MSF, Greenpeace, FOE …. … many more… Millions give their time voluntarily.
It’s a pity that the nature of news is to tell us the bad things, to glorify the global phalanx that promotes war and the nuclear industry, and to focus on the sociopaths who dominate politics and corporations. But the good movements and the good workers are there, carrying our hopes for 2024
********************
My resolution for 2024 – to make this newsletter shorter – (from next time), more to the point – and leave out Israel, Gaza, Ukraine as much as possible.
****************************
TOP STORIES
Nuclear expert Mycle Schneider on the COP 28 pledge to triple nuclear energy production:‘Trumpism enters energy policy’.
Shuttering the Nuclear Weapons Sites: There’s Gold in Those Warheads but the Scrap Metal is Radioactive.
Why AI is a disaster for the climate.
The failed Nuscale project lets Utah down — again.
*****************************************
From the archives. The spread of radiation- internal contamination through fresh produce in Japan
Climate. Amazon drought: ‘We’ve never seen anything like this’. The faith leaders fighting for the climate: ‘we have a moral obligation’. Sea level rise: ‘We can’t afford to wait’: a Cornish town faces climate threat head on.
Noel’s notes. The rise of the Übermensch – the tech gods. Are we ignoring GAZA – the new Auschwitz, as the world ignored Nazi camps from 1933-39? . Nuclear Industry’s New Year Resolution – “Let’s get sloppier about safety”.
*****************************************
AUSTRALIA.
- Price Waterhouse Cooper’s (PWC’s) $8m nuclear submarine payday revealed. More serious governance failures in Defence contracting.
- Nuclear dreams rudely awoken by blast of CSIRO reality. Let’s Talk About Why Nuclear Won’t Work in Australia. Ted O’Brien’s fact-free nuclear cheerleading is cover for the same old climate vandalism. Renewables cheaper than nuclear, coal now and into the future: CSIRO. Cost update blasts nuclear out of energy mix. Opposition need to explain whether they’ll will stick with their ‘nuclear fantasy’.
- Atlas Network strategies: how fossil fuel is using “think” tanks to delay action.
- A Merry AUKUS Surprise, Western Australia! Busting the government spin about “radioactive waste management” at Garden Island, Western Australia.
***************************************************
CIVIL LIBERTIES. With the Persecution of Julian Assange Biden Is Overseeing the Silent Death of the First Amendment
CLIMATE. COP28’s Unrealistic Tripling of Nuclear Power.
ECONOMICS.
- European nuclear Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) may be unworkable – analysts.
- UK guarantees for minimum price for nuclear-produced electricity – an expensive disaster.
- CSIRO says wind and solar much cheaper than nuclear, even with added integration costs.
- Regulators approve deal for ratepayers to pay for Georgia Power’s new nuclear reactors.
- Meet the Companies Profiting From Israel’s War on Gaza.
- China’s Low-Cost Nuclear Offer Faces Scrutiny in Kazakhstan.
ENERGY. Talen Energy Is Building Data Centers That Run on Nuclear Power. Now, It Needs to Find Buyers.
ENVIRONMENT.
- Oceans. US Promotion of Banned Fukushima Seafood Contradicts Biden’s Cancer Initiatives.
- How green is the UK Government’s nuclear energy strategy?
- Inside the Pentagon’s Painfully Slow Effort to Clean Up Decades of PFAS Contamination.
- Effect of U.S. nuclear weapons tests on the otters of Alaska.
- Water: State papers: Plans for nuclear power plant on shores of Lough Neagh shelved over drinking water concerns.
ETHICS and RELIGION. Catholic activists arrested for anti-nuclear protest outside UN. ‘We will coup whoever we want!’: the unbearable hubris of Musk and the billionaire tech bros.
HEALTH. Buried secrets, plutonium poisoned bodies. Radiation heroes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QP0NU65SKAo&t=1s Documents show toxins in Air Force nuclear missile capsules.
HISTORY. The Long History Of Zionist Proposals To Ethnically Cleanse The Gaza Strip.
LEGAL. Day X Marks the Calendar: Julian Assange’s ‘Final’ Appeal. Assange Appeal Hearing Set for February. Constitutional Violations: Julian Assange, Privacy and the CIA. Judge Rules Assange Visitors May Sue CIA For Allegedly Violating Privacy.
Former chair of Ohio utility regulator surrenders in $60 million bribery scheme linked to energy bill.
Tokyo High Court holds Japan government not liable for Fukushima nuclear disaster. Tokyo court holds only the utility responsible to compensate Fukushima evacuees, and reduces damages.
MEDIA. What? Ukraine Is Not Winning the War? The Narrative Turns. Now What? Meta’s Broken Promises -Systemic Censorship of Palestine Content on Instagram and Facebook. New Book: Energy Revolutions -Profiteering versus Democracy .
POLITICS. The Biden Administration Is Quietly Shifting Its Strategy in Ukraine. Biden has the power to rein in the nuclear presidency. He should use it. U.S. Nuclear Sector Set for Major Transformation.
Sunak to scale back nuclear target in latest UK net zero climbdown Time to shelve Hinkley Point C? UK’s Nuclear Minister has so far failed to meet East Suffolk communities who have concerns about Sizewell C nuclear project . NFLA Policy Briefing 283: Nuclear Free Local Authorities submission to the Parliamentary Environmental Audit Committee inquiry into the ‘The Potential Role of Proposed Small Modular Reactors’
France’s Council of State opinion on a Bill relating to governance of nuclear safety in relaunching the nuclear sector . Spain Confirms 2035 Nuclear Phase Out Deadline.
POLITICS INTERNATIONAL and DIPLOMACY. Geopolitics has already doomed the second nuclear renaissance. Sweden, France strengthen cooperation on nuclear. Why Egypt’s new nuclear plant is a long-term win for Russia. US eyes reports Iran has accelerated uranium enrichment.
SAFETY.
- DRUGS IN THE NUCLEAR SPHERE: UNVEILING A TROUBLING NEXUS.
- Documents Reveal Hidden Problems at Russia’s Nuclear Powerhouse.
- GMB union says urgent action needed to tackle safety concerns at Sellafield. EDF to extend nuclear outages in 2024, 2025 on corrosion issue.
- Incidents: A nuclear-powered ship in Murmansk started to burn: only few locals got to know about the serious incident. Mystery fire breaks out on Russia’s only nuclear-powered icebreaker vessel as it was docked at Arctic port.
- Japan allows world’s biggest nuclear plant to restart. Japan Lifts Operational Ban on Fukushima Nuclear Plant Owners.
- South Carolina nuclear plant’s cracked pipes get downgraded warning from officials. Low-Flying Helicopters Will Monitor Any Nuclear Threat In Las Vegas This Weekend.
- Cyber-hackers target UK nuclear waste company Radioactive Waste Management. Nuclear attack on Northern Ireland viewed as ‘possibility’ after 9/11.
SECRETS and LIES. ‘Cover-up’ hearing Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission for late January 2024.
TECHNOLOGY. SMR – Spending Money Recklessly – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AL7kwLMANK0 Microsoft is training an AI to help get nuclear reactors approved.
URANIUM. Iran undoes slowdown in enrichment of uranium to near weapons-grade -IAEA
WASTES. Cold War nuclear waste is prioritized at Carlsbad-area repository. How much is there? Site for Canada’s underground nuclear waste repository to be selected next year.
WAR and CONFLICT. US Trying to Water Down New Cease-Fire Resolution at UN Security Council. Surrender or die – Netanyahu.
WEAPONS and WEAPONS SALES.
- Israel receives 230 planes, 20 ships loaded with US arms amid Gaza war. US….Arsenal of Genocide in Gaza .
- Year of the drone — how the hi-tech weapon has transformed warfare.
- Spiralling nuclear costs make UK’s Ministry Of Defence’s equipment plan unsustainable.
- Russia has completed delivery of nuclear weapons to Belarus, Lukashenko says. Russia To Retire World’s Only Nuclear-Powered, Largest Battle-Cruiser Pyotr Veliky.
- Kim Jong Un announces his nuclear resolutions for 2024.
DRUGS IN THE NUCLEAR SPHERE: UNVEILING A TROUBLING NEXUS
Alastair philip wiper captures the unexpected connection between nuclear missiles and drugs
DesignBoom 31 Dec 23
“…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………As Alastair Philip Wiper explains in Drugs and Missiles, there is a compelling argument for the main danger posed by nuclear weapons: the unintended risk of self-destruction. History is full of declassified cases, from planes accidentally crashing with nuclear payloads to governments mistaking computer simulations of war for actual events. The accidental release of weapons through human error, such as pulling the wrong handle, and the explosion of missile silos underscore this vulnerability. ‘Once, a bear climbing the fence of an Air Force base was mistaken for Russian special forces beginning an invasion,’ shares the photographer. ‘And then there are the drugs.’
In Eric Schlosser’s book Command and Control, it’s revealed that of the individuals authorized to handle nuclear weapons in 1980, 1.5% lost their clearance due to drug abuse, totaling at least 1,728 individuals who were caught using drugs in proximity to nuclear weapons. Fast forward to 2016, a disconcerting reality unfolded as over a dozen Air Force members responsible for safeguarding nuclear missiles were convicted of both using and distributing substances such as LSD, ecstasy, cocaine, and marijuana. This juxtaposition underscores the persistent and concerning intersection between drug use and the guardianship of powerful weaponry……………………………….. more https://www.designboom.com/art/alastair-philip-wiper-unexpected-connection-nuclear-missiles-drugs-12-25-2023/
Over 1,000 Children in Gaza Have Had One or Both Legs Amputated Since Oct 7
it is “beyond belief that the world is allowing this to continue.”
| ScheerPost, By Kyle Anzalone / Antiwar.com, 31 Dec 23 |
International aid workers describe a growing humanitarian nightmare in the Strip.
International aid workers visiting the Gaza Strip are relaying the horrific situation Israel is inflicting on the Palestinians. UNICEF reports over 1,000 children have lost legs. Israel is forcing the 2.3 million residents of Gaza into increasingly small areas that lack the ability to accommodate basic needs for survival.
UNICEF spokesperson James Elder said, “Around 1,000 children in Gaza have lost one or both their legs.” He told journalists in Geneva that “every single child is enduring these ten weeks of hell and not one of them can escape.”
Due to the conditions in Gaza, as well as the lack of aid, doctors are often forced to conduct surgeries in unsanitary facilities and without painkillers. “Not only were they amputated without anesthesia, but many of them were amputated in a very quick fashion,” he said.
Dr. Ghassan Abu Sitta, a London-based surgeon who traveled to Gaza to treat patients, told Middle East Eye that having to perform these operations without anesthetic was “one of the most difficult things I’ve had to do in my career.” At a November press conference, he said, “One night, at Al-Ahli Hospital, I performed amputations on six children.”
The UNICEF official said that even if children recover from the amputation, they do not escape the hell of the threat of death. “As a parent of a critically sick child told me, ‘Our situation is pure misery…I don’t know if we will make it through this.’”
Spokesperson Dr. Margaret Harris added that WHO staff in Gaza spoke of not being able to walk in the emergency wards “for fear of stepping on people” lying on the floor “in severe pain” and asking for food and water. She called the situation “unconscionable” and said that it is “beyond belief that the world is allowing this to continue.”
The Israeli military has destroyed most hospitals in Gaza. The medical facilities continuing to operate face frequent attacks and a lack of supplies. A Washington Post investigation recently found that the Israeli Air Force is using 2,000-pound bombs near hospitals…………………………………. more https://scheerpost.com/2023/12/31/over-1000-children-in-gaza-have-had-one-or-both-legs-amputated-since-oct-7/
TODAY. Nuclear Industry’s New Year Resolution – “Let’s get sloppier about safety
yeah, well - it’s a new day, it’s a beautiful new year - let’s look on the bright side. The global nuclear lobby is certainly doing that with its glowing plans for tripling of nuclear energy by 2050
Safety is now a downgraded priority. A couple of today’s examples – Japanese nuclear safety regulators lifted an operational ban on a nuclear plant owned by Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, deciding that it’s now safe after all. In the USA, the NRC (federal nuclear safety agency) decides that cracks in a backup emergency fuel line at a South Carolina nuclear plant are not so serious any more.
Let’s forget the nuclear industry’s history of major (and continuing) disasters, “minor” mishaps and near-misses. And let’s forget the dangers of crumbling old reactors, untested new gee-whiz ones, cracking and corroding copper pipes and waste containers, terrorism risks, drone dangers, cyber-security hazards, transport risks, extreme weather events, weapons proliferation, mishaps in space, and crookedness and corruption in the industry.
Yey! let’s waltz away into 2024 with the jolly prospect of nuclear power solving the climate crisis, energy crisis and so on. We can brush up the old big reactors (saves us the cost of scrapping them – leave that job to our grandchildren ), build myriad little tiny reactors in every country, (sell them especially developing places that have no expertise in nuclear technology) , and bring happiness and wealth to that small but highly organised phalanx of global nuclear ‘Influencers” – while the rest of us party on, and our bought politicians smile benignly.
After all, there are the various nationall safety and radiation protection agencies to save us . Right?
Trouble is – safety reporting procedures are designed to protect the nuclear industry, not the public.
Agencies like USA’s Nuclear Regulatory Commission rely on the International Atomic Energy Agency – whose brief is to promote the nuclear industry - a brief beautifully expressed by its slimy Director General, Rafael Grossi.
Let’s consider- the “safety” of ionising radiation:
- The established health ministeries rely on the Commission on Radiological Protection, which relies on The Radiation Protection Commission which relies on the international Commission on Radiological Protection, which relies on the IAEA / RERF (Reference Materials)
- The IAEA / RERF relies on the military industrial nuclear complex of five veto-wielding Security Council members
They pass the nuclear safety handball back and forth between each other - as the nuclear-industrial-military complex rolls on towards armageddon.
Constitutional Violations: Julian Assange, Privacy and the CIA
December 28, 2023, Dr Binoy Kampmark, https://theaimn.com/constitutional-violations-julian-assange-privacy-and-the-cia/
As a private citizen, the options for suing an intelligence agency are few and far between. The US Central Intelligence Agency, as with other members of the secret club, pour scorn on such efforts. To a degree, such a dismissive sentiment is understandable: Why sue an agency for its bread-and-butter task, which is surveillance?
This matter has cropped up in the US courts in what has become an international affair, namely, the case of WikiLeaks founder and publisher, Julian Assange. While the US Department of Justice battles to sink its fangs into the Australian national for absurd espionage charges, various offshoots of his case have begun to grow. The issue of CIA sponsored surveillance during his stint in the Ecuadorian embassy in London has been of particular interest, since it violated both general principles of privacy and more specific ones regarding attorney-client privilege. Of particular interest to US Constitution watchers was whether such actions violated the reasonable expectation of privacy protected by the Fourth Amendment.
Four US citizens took issue with such surveillance, which was executed by the Spanish security firm Undercover (UC) Global and its starry-eyed, impressionable director David Morales under instruction from the CIA. Civil rights attorney Margaret Ratner Kunstler and media lawyer Deborah Hrbek, and journalists John Goetz and Charles Glass, took the matter to the US District Court of the Southern District of New York in August last year. They had four targets of litigation: the CIA itself, its former director, Michael R. Pompeo, Morales and his company, UC Global SL.
All four alleged that the US Government had conducted surveillance on them and copied their information during visits to Assange in the embassy, thereby violating the Fourth Amendment. In doing so, the plaintiffs argued they were entitled to money damages and injunctive relief. The government moved to dismiss the complaint as amended.
On December 19, District Judge John G. Koeltl delivered a judgment of much interest, granting, in part, the US government’s motion to dismiss but denying other parts of it. Before turning to the relevant features of Koeltl’s reasons, various observations made in the case bear repeating. The judge notes, for instance, Pompeo’s April 2017 speech, in which he “‘pledged that his office would embark upon a ‘long term’ campaign against WikiLeaks.’” He is cognisant of the plaintiffs’ claims “Morales was recruited to conduct surveillance on Assange and his visitors on behalf of the CIA and that this recruitment occurred at a January 2017 private security industry convention at the Las Vegas Sands Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada.”
From that meeting, it is claimed that “Morales created an operations unit, improved UC Global’s systems, and set up live streaming from the United States so that surveillance could be accessed instantly by the CIA.” The data gathered from UC Global “was either personally delivered to Las Vegas; Washington, D.C.; and New York City by Morales (who travelled to these locations more than sixty times in the three years following the Las Vegas convention) or placed on a server that provided external access to the CIA.”
Koeltl preferred to avoid deciding on the claims that Morales and UC Global were, in fact, “acting as agents of Pompeo and the CIA.” Such matters were questions of fact “that cannot be decided on a motion to dismiss.”
A vital issue in the case was whether the plaintiffs had standing to sue the CIA in the first place. Citing the case of ACLU v Clapper, which involved a challenge to the National Security Agency’s bulk telephone metadata collection program, Koeltl accepted that they did. In doing so, he rejected a similar argument made by the government in Clapper – that the injuries alleged were simply “too speculative and generalized” and that the information gathered via surveillance would necessarily even be used against them. “In this case, the plaintiffs need not allege, as the Government argues, that the Government will imminently use their information collected at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London.” If the search of the conversations and electronic devices along with the seizure of the contents of the electronic devices “were unlawful, the plaintiffs have suffered a concrete and particularized injury fairly traceable to the challenged program and redressable by favorable ruling.”
Less satisfactory for the plaintiffs was the finding they had no reasonable expectation of privacy regarding their conversations with the publisher given that “they knew Assange was surveilled even before the CIA’s alleged involvement.” The judge thought it significant that they did “not allege that they would not have met Assange had they known their conversations would be surveilled.” Additionally, it “would not be recognized as reasonable by society” to have expected conversations held with Assange at the embassy in London to be protected, given such societal acceptance of, for instance video surveillance in government buildings.
This reasoning is faulty, given that the visits by the four plaintiffs to the embassy did not take place with their knowledge of the operation being conducted by UC Global with CIA blessing. In a general sense, anyone visiting the embassy could not help but suspect that Assange might be the object of surveillance, but to suggest something akin to a waiver of privacy rights on the part of attorneys and journalists aiding a persecuted publisher is an odd turn.
The US Government also succeeded on the point that the plaintiffs had no reasonable expectation to privacy regarding their passports or their devices they voluntarily left at the Embassy reception desk. In doing so, they “assumed the risk that the information may be conveyed to the Government.” Those visiting embassies must, it would seem, be perennially on guard.
That said, the plaintiffs convinced the judge that they had “sufficient allegations that the CIA and Pompeo, through Morales and UC Global, violated their reasonable expectation to privacy in the contents of their electronic devices.” The government even went so far as to concede that point.
Unfortunately for the plaintiffs, the biggest fish was let off the hook. The plaintiffs had attempted to use the 1971 US Supreme Court case of Bivens to argue that the former CIA director be held accountable and liable for violating constitutional rights. Koeltl thought the effort to extend the application of Bivens inappropriate in terms of the high standing nature of the defendant and the context. “As a presidential appointee confirmed by Congress […] Defendant Pompeo is in a different category of defendant from a law enforcement agent of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics.” More’s the pity.
Leaving aside some of the more questionable turns of reasoning in Koeltl’s judgment, public interest litigants and activists can take heart from the prospect that civil trials against the CIA for violations of the US Constitution are no longer unrealistic. “We are thrilled,” declared Richard Roth, the plaintiffs’ attorney, “that the court rejected the CIA’s efforts to silence the plaintiffs, who merely seek to expose the CIA’s attempt to carry out Pompeo’s vendetta against WikiLeaks.” The appeals process, however, is bound to be tested.
The failed Nuscale project lets Utah down — again
Every time we gamble on a nuclear project like Nuscale to deliver carbon-free power, we are hampering our ability to meet critical climate goals by 2030.
By Lexi Tuddenham | For The Salt Lake Tribune, Dec. 29, 2023 https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/commentary/2023/12/29/opinion-failed-nuscale-project/
Early last month, Nuscale made headlines by canceling its 462 MW proposal for a small modular nuclear reactor (SMNR) at the Idaho National Laboratory. Here in Utah, the news was met with little surprise.
For the past six years, we’ve been raising crucial questions about the viability of the so-called “Carbon Free Power Project” (CFPP). Was it a project that could deliver power on time and at a reasonable cost to ratepayers? How much would taxpayers and ratepayers ultimately pay, and who would bear the environmental, public health and financial risks? Could it meet our energy needs at a time when electrification is more critical than ever?
In 2015, the Nuscale project was eight years out. In 2022, it was still eight years out. As we watched other nuclear power projects be abandoned or blunder online years late and billions of dollars over cost, there was a sense of inevitability about who would suffer when this project failed: the communities who had placed their faith in its fantastical promises of affordable, reliable and “clean” power.
We were told that these SMNRs would be revolutionary — smaller, more cost-effective and with cutting-edge technology, but as we watched the costs swell from $55/MWh to $89/MWh and well beyond, even with huge federal subsidies, it was clear the financial risks were only mounting. With the collapse of the hypothetical project, Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (UAMPS) member communities in rapidly growing areas like Hurricane and Washington City are now left with the reality of scrambling for alternatives to meet their future energy needs.
As we see nuclear projects around the country experience delay after delay, the Nuscale experience is one reason why we continue to watch the developments of the Terrapower Natrium reactor in Kemmerer, Wyoming, with a mix of skepticism and concern. The other reason is that the Terrapower project has promised not just electricity to Pacificorp customers, but also jobs in a community that desperately needs them. This is irresponsible at best.
The projected timeline for the Terrapower reactor to come online has already been pushed to 2030, which Terrapower external affairs director Jeff Navin admits is “cutting it close.” In addition, the community faces an economic abyss between the projected closure of the coal plant and the startup of the nuclear facility, and federal officials recently noted that with no permanent waste repository existent in the U.S., spent nuclear fuel will be stored “temporarily” on-site. Similar concerns can and should be raised about the proposed nuclear plants at Hunter and Huntington in Utah. At the end of the day, it is workers who are being let down, and it is communities who have to deal with the long term consequences.
We know that the next few years are of critical importance in our ability to combat the worst effects of climate change before we kick off even more warming feedback loops. Every time we gamble on a nuclear project like Nuscale to deliver carbon-free power, we are hampering our ability to meet critical climate goals by 2030. As timelines for such projects are inevitably dragged out, in the interim we continue to burn fossil fuels that choke the air that people breathe and force the climate ever closer to its tipping point.
The hard truth is that there is no silver bullet for climate change. Relying on nuclear power maintains dependence on a flawed energy system that primarily benefits industries that have historically profited from past harms. Now they promise to seamlessly plug in nuclear power and conduct business as usual.
According to the latest estimates, about a billion dollars was sunk into the now-abandoned Nuscale CFPP. This is a drop in the bucket compared to some other nuclear projects this country has seen over the last 30 years. But imagine that $1 billion spent elsewhere on legacy cleanups of the nuclear and uranium mining industry, aiding Downwinders or boosting renewable energy capacity that we know can work. There is an opportunity cost for investing in nuclear when we have faster, lower-risk options that we can prioritize now. Instead, we can take on climate change with what has been called “rational hope,” by investing in wind, solar, geothermal power, storage, grid improvements and efficiency technologies that offer cost-effective climate solutions. And Utah’s potential in these areas is immense.
But this energy future requires a reimagining. It requires permitting and energy-sourcing processes that put the health and vitality of communities front and center. It means changing course to avoid mistakes of the past.
Here at HEAL Utah, we collaborate with communities to shape an energy future crafted by the people it serves. This future prioritizes clean air, a healthy environment and family-sustaining jobs, all powered by accessible, sustainable and affordable renewable energy sources. In short, this is rational hope in practice. Together, we can make it a reality.
Lexi Tuddenham is the executive director of the Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah (HEAL Utah).
Christmas Eve Massacre in Gaza Refugee Camp
The Grayzone goes to the scene of one of the most heinous crimes Israel committed in the besieged Gaza Strip: the Christmas Eve massacre in Maghazi Refugee Camp, which left over 70 dead in a single airstrike. We speak to survivors of the attack and expose the scale of damage with exclusive drone footage.
The Long History Of Zionist Proposals To Ethnically Cleanse The Gaza Strip
Ethnic cleansing or “transfer” is an intrinsic part of Zionism’s early history, and has remained an essential feature of Israeli political life. More recently, “transfer” has been mainstreamed by billing it as encouraging “voluntary emigration.”
SCHEERPOST, By Mouin Rabbani / Mondoweiss, December 29, 2023
Senior Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, are again publicly advocating the ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip. Their proposals are being presented as voluntary emigration schemes, in which Israel is merely playing the role of Good Samaritan, selflessly mediating with foreign governments to find new homes for destitute and desperate Palestinians. But it is ethnic cleansing all the same.
Alarm bells should have started ringing in early November when U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other Western politicians began insisting there could be “no forcible displacement of Palestinians from Gaza.” Rather than rejecting any mass removal of Palestinians, Blinken and colleagues objected only to optically challenging expulsions at gunpoint. The option of “voluntary” displacement by leaving residents of the Gaza Strip with no choice but departure was pointedly left open.
Ethnic cleansing, or “transfer” as it is known in Israeli parlance, has a long pedigree that goes back to the late-nineteenth-century beginnings of the Zionist movement. While the early Zionists adopted the slogan, “A Land Without a People for a People Without a Land,” the evidence demonstrates that, from the very outset, their leaders knew better. More to the point, they clearly understood that the Palestinians formed the main obstacle to the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. This is for the simple reason that, to them, a “Jewish state” denotes one in which its Jewish population acquires and maintains unchallenged demographic, territorial, and political supremacy.
Enter “transfer.” As early as 1895, Theodor Herzl, the founder of the contemporary Zionist movement, identified the necessity of removing the inhabitants of Palestine in the following terms: “We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country … expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly.” David Ben-Gurion (née Grün), Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, and later Israel’s first prime minister, was more blunt. In a 1937 letter to his son, he wrote: “We must expel the Arabs and take their place.”
Writing in his diary in 1940, Yosef Weitz, a senior Jewish National Fund official who chaired the influential Transfer Committee before and during the Nakba (“Catastrophe”), and became known as the Architect of Transfer, put it thus: “The only solution is a Land of Israel devoid of Arabs. There is no room here for compromise. They must all be moved. Not one village, not one tribe, can remain. Only through this transfer of the Arabs living in the Land of Israel will redemption come.” His diaries are littered with similar sentiments.
The point of the above is not to demonstrate that individual Zionist leaders held such views, but that the senior leadership of the Zionist movement consistently considered the ethnic cleansing of Palestine an objective and priority. Initiatives such as the Transfer Committee, and Plan Dalet, initially formulated in 1944 and described by the pre-eminent Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi as the “Master Plan for the Conquest of Palestine,” additionally demonstrate that the Zionist movement actively planned for it.
The 1948 Nakba, during which more than four-fifths of Palestinians residing in territory that came under Israeli rule were ethnically cleansed, should, therefore, be seen as the fulfillment of a longstanding ambition and implementation of a key policy. A product of design, not of war (historical Christmas footnote: the Palestinian town of Nazareth was spared a similar fate only because the commander of Israeli forces that seized the city, a Canadian Jew named Ben Dunkelman, disobeyed orders to expel the population, and was relieved of his command the following day).
That the Nakba was a product of design is further substantiated by the Transfer Committee’s terms of reference. These comprised not only proposals for the expulsion of the Palestinians but, just as importantly, active measures to prevent their return, destroy their homes and villages, expropriate their property, and resettle those territories with Jewish immigrants. Weitz, together with fellow Committee members Eliahu Sassoon and Ezra Danin, on June 5, 1948, presented a three-page blueprint, entitled “Scheme for the Solution of the Arab Problem in the State of Israel,” to Prime Minister Ben-Gurion to achieve these goals. According to leading Israeli historian Benny Morris, “there is no doubt Ben-Gurion agreed to Weitz’s scheme,” which included “what amounted to an enormous project of destruction” that saw more than 450 Palestinian villages razed to the ground.
The understandable focus on the expulsions of 1948 often overlooks the fact that ethnic cleansing remains incomplete unless its victims are barred from returning to their homes by a combination of armed force and legislation, and thereafter replaced by others. It is Israel’s determination to make Palestinian dispossession permanent that distinguishes Palestinian refugees from many other war refugees.
After 1948, Israel put out a whole series of fabrications to shift responsibility for the transformation of the Palestinians into dispossessed and stateless refugees onto the Arab states and the refugees themselves. These included claims that the refugees voluntarily left (they were either expelled or fled in justified terror); that Arab radio broadcasts ordered the Palestinians to flee (in fact, they were encouraged to stay put); that Israel conducted a population exchange with Arab states (there was nothing of the sort); and the bizarre argument that because they’re Arabs, Palestinians had numerous other states while Jews have only Israel (by the same logic, Sikhs would be entitled to seize British Columbia and deport its population to either the rest of Canada or the United States). More importantly, even if uniformly substantiated, none of these pretexts entitles Israel to prohibit the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes at the conclusion of hostilities. It is, furthermore, a right that was consecrated in United Nations General Assembly resolution 194 of December 11, 1948, which has been reaffirmed repeatedly since.
Ethnic cleansing after 1967
In 1967, Israel seized the remaining 22 percent of Mandatory Palestine — the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip. Depopulation in these territories operated differently than in 1948. Most importantly, Israel, in addition to prohibiting the return of Palestinians who fled hostilities during the 1967 June War, and encouraging others to leave (by, for example, providing a daily bus service from Gaza City to the Allenby Bridge connecting the West Bank to Jordan), conducted a census during the summer of 1967 . Any resident who was not present during the census was ineligible for an Israeli identity document and automatically lost their right of residency.
As a result, the population of these territories declined by more than twenty percent overnight. Many of those thus displaced were already refugees from 1948. Aqbat Jabr Refugee Camp near Jericho, for example — until 1967, the West Bank’s largest — became a virtual ghost town after almost all its inhabitants became refugees once again in Jordan. So many Palestinians from the Gaza Strip ended up in Jordan that a new refugee camp, Gaza Camp, was established on the outskirts of Jerash. The occupied Palestinian territories would not recover their 1967 population levels until the early 1980s.
Within the West Bank, there were also cases of mass expulsion………………………………………………….
Depopulation through administrative rule
In subsequent years, Israel employed all kinds of administrative shenanigans to further reduce the Palestinian population of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Until the 1993 Oslo Accords, for example, an exit permit from Israel’s military government was required to leave the occupied territory. It was valid for only three years and thereafter renewable annually for a maximum of three additional years (for a fee) at an Israeli consulate. If a Palestinian lost an exit permit or failed to renew an exit permit prior to its expiration for any reason (including bureaucratic foot-dragging), or couldn’t pay the renewal fee, or failed to return to Palestine prior to its expiration, that Palestinian automatically lost residency rights………………………………………………..
………………………………………. the mass expulsion was, as always in such matters, approved by Israel’s High Court of Justice after minor modifications. It ruled, among other things, that this was not a collective deportation but rather a collection of individual deportations……………………………………………….
Israel’s strategies to ‘thin’ Gaza’s population
With the focus in recent years on the intensified campaigns of ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, it is often forgotten that, for decades, the primary target for depopulation was the Gaza Strip, particularly its refugee population, which accounts for approximately three-quarters of the territory’s residents. Even before it occupied Gaza in 1967, Israel regularly promoted initiatives to achieve the “thinning” of its refugee population, with destinations as far afield as Libya and Iraq………………………………………………………………………………….
‘Transfer’ and Gaza today
In the decades since, “transfer,” often presented as the encouragement of voluntary emigration either by providing material incentives or making the conditions of life impossible, has become increasingly mainstreamed in Israeli political life. In 2019, for example, a “senior government official,” quoted in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, expressed a willingness to help Palestinians emigrate from the Gaza Strip.
Mass expulsion has been gaining its share of adherents as well, and it is a position that is today represented within Israel’s coalition government. As has the idea that “transfer” should include Palestinian citizens of Israel — Avigdor Lieberman, for example, who was Israel’s Minister of Defense several years ago, is an advocate of not only emptying the West Bank and Gaza Strip of Palestinians but of getting rid of Palestinian citizens of Israel as well. As one might expect from a minister who was in charge of the Israeli military, he is also an advocate of “beheading” disloyal Palestinian citizens of Israel with “an axe.”
Against this background, Israel saw the attacks of October 7 as not only a threat but also as an opportunity. Fortified with unconditional U.S. and European support, Israeli political and military leaders immediately began promoting the transfer of Gaza’s Palestinian population to the Sinai desert.
The proposal was enthusiastically embraced by the United States and by Secretary of State Antony Blinken in particular. As ever hopelessly out of his depth when it comes to the Middle East, he appears to have genuinely believed he could recruit or pressure Washington’s Arab client regimes to make Israel’s wish a reality. Given Egyptian strongman Abdel-Fatah al-Sisi’s economic troubles, the fallout of the Menendez scandal, and the looming Egyptian presidential elections, it was suggested to him by the Washington echo chamber that it would take only an IMF loan, debt relief, and a promise to file away Menendez to bring Cairo on board. As so often when it comes to the Middle East, Blinken, armed only with Israel’s latest wish list, didn’t have a clue his indecent proposal would be categorically rejected, first and foremost by Egypt.
‘Transfer’ as ‘voluntary immigration’
The fallback position is opposition to “forcible displacement” at the point of a gun, while anything else is fair game. This includes reducing the Gaza Strip to rubble in what may well be the most intensive bombing campaign in history; a genocidal assault on an entire society that has killed civilians at an unprecedentedly rapid pace; the deliberate destruction of an entire civilian infrastructure, including the targeted obliteration of its health and education sectors; the highest proportion of households in hunger crisis ever recorded globally and the real prospect of pre-meditated famine; severance of the water and electricity supply leading to acute thirst, widespread consumption of non-potable water, and termination of sewage treatment; and promotion of a sharp rise in infectious disease. …………………………………………………..
In other words, if desperate Palestinians seek to flee this seventh circle of hell to save their skins, that’s considered voluntary emigration — their choice……………………………………………………………….
As an editorial in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz put it on December 27: “Israeli lawmakers keep pushing for transfer under the guise of humanitarian aid.”………………………………………………
Not individual Gazans, but “the people of Gaza.” Notably, such proposals consistently take it as a given that those departing will never return. ………………………………………….
While ethnic cleansing has been intrinsic to Zionist/Israeli ideology and practice from the very outset, it also has a flip side: the 1948 expulsion of the Palestinians expanded what had been a conflict between the Zionist movement and the Palestinians into a regional, Arab-Israeli one. The second Nakba Israel is currently inflicting on the Gaza Strip similarly appears well on its way to instigating the renewal of hostilities across the Middle East.
As importantly, the 1948 Nakba did not defeat the Palestinians, who initiated their struggle from the camps of exile, those in the Gaza Strip most prominently among them. It would take a Blinken level of foolishness to assume the expulsion of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip would produce a different outcome. https://scheerpost.com/2023/12/29/the-long-history-of-zionist-proposals-to-ethnically-cleanse-the-gaza-strip/
Nuclear dreams rudely awoken by blast of CSIRO reality
National Party Leader David Littleproud has publicly stated that the National’s goal is to stop renewables and wait for nuclear, and it’s a similar story with the Liberals
by Rosco Jones | Dec 27, 2023 , https://michaelwest.com.au/nuclear-energy-too-expensive-csiro-gencost/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=2023-12-28&utm_campaign=Michael+West+Media+Weekly+Update
CSIRO, Australia’s top science agency, has relegated nuclear reactors and hydrogen to the energy bench. They simply cost too much to be viable sources for our energy future.
on the latest GenCost report.
It was revealed in the shadows of Christmas, and its impact has so far been muted as there were more pressing matters to attend to, such as last-minute shopping and holidays. Yet the importance of the latest big-ticket analysis of energy costs cannot be understated. Indeed it will shape decision-making in politics and the energy markets this year and Australia’s energy future.
The CSIRO’s annual GenCost report has confirmed the view of new energy experts that small nuclear reactors and hydrogen – lauded as ‘wonder-technologies’ by pro-fossil-fuel political figures in their ideological campaign against renewable energy are fast losing allure as price projections skyrocket.
The 2023-24 GenCost report by CSIRO and AEMO is Australia’s most comprehensive electricity generation cost projection report. It uses the best available information each cycle to provide a benchmark on cost projections and updates forecasts to guide decision-making, as electricity costs change significantly each year.
This year’s analysis has cast ever more doubt on the Coalition’s nuclear fantasy, with a raft of issues plaguing nascent Small Modular Reactor (SMR) technology, accompanied by investor disinterest in large-scale nuclear power plants. Additionally, renewables are still by far the cheapest option for Australia’s grid despite this year’s inclusion of infrastructure costs. Unsurprisingly these results have left a wave of frustration rippling across the political right. They also come as a slap to Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s campaigning against the Albanese government.
Although sidetracked by fossil industry distractions such as carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology, the government has pressed ahead with wind, solar and hydro as its focus for Australia’s energy future. The Coalition, in the absence of constructive policy ideas, has been pushing nuclear power through its usual media channels. However, the GenCost report estimates that SMR cost of production has risen 70% and also suggests demand for hydrogen is massively overinflated given the cost outlook.
…………. Utah venture dashes hopes
The much-hyped UAMPS project in Utah has proven commercially unviable and was cancelled with inflationary pressures on construction costs contributing to its demise.
This failure of the argument for nuclear in the face of cheaper, proven renewable technologies has inflamed Australia’s conservative pro-nuclear lobby, which has resorted to attacking the CSIRO’s credibility and analysis.
Critics have taken issue with the usage of a single project’s failure as a broad indicator of SMR’s capital costings. However, as noted in GenCost, UAMPS is an industry leader in the SMR field and represents one of the only sources of data available to derive non-theoretical cost estimates.
“GenCost requires first-of-a-kind cost estimates given the first commercial project is yet to be completed”.
UAMPS was set to be the first completed commercial SMR. With the added context of Chinese ventures into SMRs having similarly rising costs even prior to 2023. It seems likely that theoretical estimates, most of which have been performed by organisations heavily influenced by the nuclear industry, were likely of poor quality rather than UAMPS being an improper proxy.
This explanation, included within the report, did not prevent scathing commentary by the likes of lobbyist turned LNP minister Ted O’Brien:
“They’re not looking at companies like Westinghouse, GE or Hitachi, and they’ve chosen that one design from a start-up for one customer that has run into problems and based the entire analysis of nuclear on that.”
UAMPS is the only SMR that has actually received design approval.
In addition to the cost hikes, the delivery timeframe for the implementation of SMRs was larger than expected. A common criticism of Nuclear Power is, of course, its lengthy set up times, which range from 6-8 years for conventional power stations. SMRs were intended to address this, with construction as short as 3-5 years, however this seems to no longer be an advantage in an Australian context:
“If a decision to pursue a nuclear SMR project in Australia were taken today, with political support for the required legislative changes, then the first full operation would be in 2038.”
Waiting until 2038 to begin using nuclear power guarantees another 15 years of dependence upon fossil fuels for energy production. Party Leader David Littleproud has publicly stated that the National’s goal is to stop renewables and wait for nuclear, continuing their tradition of unwavering support for petrochemical extraction and use, and it’s a similar story with the Liberals, who have publicly stated that no nuclear means no net zero.
TODAY. The rise of the Übermensch – the tech gods
Douglas Rushkoff ,in his new book Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires, alerts us to this disturbing phenomenon of our decade – the influence of those super-wealthy individuals – Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, Peter Thiel.
Rushkoff explains the extraordinary breadth and power of these men. – “Musk not only owns X and Tesla but also SpaceX, StarLink, the Boring Company, Solar City, NeuraLink, xAI, and someday, he hopes, another finance company like PayPal” “Bezos doesn’t just control Amazon – but the Washington Post, IMDb, MGM, Twitch, Zoox, Kiva, Whole Foods, Ring, Ivona, One Medical, Blue Origin and, of course, Amazon Web Services” “Gates 20bn dollars’ worth of Microsoft stock and assets are Microsoft Azure (his 23% of the cloud), LinkedIn, Skype and GitHub.”
The really worrying thing is that these individuals think that they are experts on everything, and the world seems to be believing this.
Their individual expertise is in each case, in some form of advanced technology. Yet in fact, it is apparent that they are woefully ignorant of just about everything else that really matters. They have no interest in ecology – in the web of life that exists on this planet, and which is essential for human survival. Nor do they have any grasp of the significance of workplace conditions - consider the exploitation of Bezos’ Amazon workers. And they show no understanding of the environmental effects of the tech resource boom.
Yet their fantasies for the future seem to be accepted as realistic propositions: colonies on Mars and the moon, “doomsday” escape settlements, uploading a person’s consciousness to “the cloud”. So media coverage and tax-payers money go to approving and encouraging their schemes.
The part of all this that I find particularly sinister and dangerous is the complete downgrading of studies and expertise that are not highly technical. Studies in ecology, public health, sociology, history, culture and the arts.
We are marvelling at the “genius”, the “success” – of these lop-sided “experts” - all of whom seem to be significantly lacking in common sense. We follow them at our peril .
With the Persecution of Julian Assange Biden Is Overseeing the Silent Death of the First Amendment
By continuing the persecution of Julian Assange, the US government is signaling how little it cares about press freedom.
YANIS VAROUFAKIS, LINA ATTALAH, and JOHN KIRIAKOU, December 25, 2023/January 1, 2024, Issue, https://www.thenation.com/donate-display/?utm_medium=display&utm_source=Display&utm_campaign=2023-eoy&sourceid=1082390&ms=300-600&utm_content=300-600
In early 2024, a new, grim chapter may be written in the annals of journalistic history. Julian Assange, the publisher of Wikileaks, could board a plane for extradition to the United States, where he faces up to 175 years in prison on espionage charges for the crime of publishing newsworthy information
The persecution of Assange is clear evidence that the Biden administration is overseeing the silent death of the First Amendment—with global consequences.
Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s exposé during the Watergate scandal is seen as a triumph of truth over power. Their investigative reporting led to the downfall of President Nixon, cementing their status as champions of press freedom. However, what if this tale had taken a dark turn, with the journalists prosecuted for espionage and silenced under the guise of national security? While this is mere fiction, Assange’s plight is all too real.
Assange, the standard-bearer of our era’s investigative journalism, awaits extradition in a British cell in Belmarsh Prison, a fate that could stifle the beacon of transparency he represents. At a time when the world grapples with the erosion of press freedom, with journalists imprisoned and killed, Assange’s case raises profound questions about the consequences of challenging power and unveiling uncomfortable realities.
The legacy of WikiLeaks goes beyond exposing government misconduct; it pierces the veil of secrecy shrouding global affairs. The release of Collateral Murder, the haunting camera footage from a 2007 Apache helicopter attack in Baghdad showing the murder of several civilians, including two Reuters journalists, shocked the world. As we’ve seen in the past two months, the killing of civilians and journalists in war continues. In the last two months, Israel’s bombardment of Gaza has killed dozens of journalists, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. On Thursday, human rights groups determined that Israel had deliberately fired on a Reuters journalist in southern Lebanon—a blatant war crime.
The aim of targeting journalists is to keep information where governments want it—under lock and key. That is why Wikileaks is such a threat—because, since its founding, it has fearlessly worked to wrest that information out of the hands of the powerful and put it in the hands of the people.
Wikileaks exposed not only civilian casualties, torture, and other human rights abuses through projects such as the Iraq War Logs, but also published documents that offer invaluable insight into conflicts still raging today. For example, cables released by Wikileaks in the 2010 Cablegate leaks show Israel’s policy towards Gaza in the years following Hamas’s election victory in 2006 and the group’s 2007 takeover of the strip. According to the cable, Israel determined that Hamas’s rise in Gaza would benefit them as it would allow the Israeli military to “deal with Gaza as a hostile state” and so turned down a Palestinian Authority request for assistance in defeating Hamas. Israeli policy to blockaded Gaza was to “keep the Gazan economy functioning at the lowest possible level consistent with avoiding humanitarian crisis.”
This information is essential, and we need more of it. That’s why the three of us, as members of the Belmarsh Tribunal—a group of experts that gathers together at regular intervals to present evidence about Assange’s persecution—are raising our voices together to free the truth and free Assange.
The extradition case against Assange is now entering its final phase, with his final UK court hearing expected in early 2024. He could then be brought to the US to face charges under the Espionage Act. The potential ramifications for power-challenging, truth-seeking journalism cannot be overstated.
The application of the Espionage Act in the US sets a chilling precedent that reverberates far beyond Assange’s individual fate. The silencing of a truth-seeker sends a dangerous message, signaling a decline in the resilience of a free press against the forces of authoritarianism.
The latest meeting of the tribunal is taking place in Washington, D.C., on Saturday. (The Nation is a cosponsor of the event.) One of us, Lina Attalah, the chief editor of the Egyptian publication Mada Masr, is unable to attend in person. Her publication’s reporting of the ongoing assault on Gaza has raised the ire of the US-allied Egyptian state. If the US can imprison those who reveal torture and persecute journalists who reveal truths, what’s to stop the US government’s authoritarian allies?
In defending Assange, we defend the right to know, to question, and to challenge power. The echoes of history remind us that the struggle for press freedom is ongoing, and the fate of Julian Assange is a litmus test for the resilience of truth in the face of oppression. The world needs more journalism that fearlessly confronts power, not less.
The pressure is mounting on the Biden administration to free Julian Assange. It’s not only one man’s life that is at stake, but the First Amendment and freedom of the press itself. As long as the Espionage Act is deployed to imprison those who exposed war crimes, no publisher and no journalist will be safe.
Ralph Nader: ‘Nothing Will Stop Us’
There is only one institution that could stop Netanyahu’s mass military massacres of the Palestinian people. That is the U.S. Congress.
In 2015, over 400 Rabbis from Israel, the USA and Canada called on Prime Minister Netanyahu to stop the practice of demolishing hundreds of Palestinian homes as being contrary to international law and Jewish tradition. Their successors Rabbis for Human Rights are being ignored by the regime.
By Ralph Nader / Nader.org, https://scheerpost.com/2023/12/27/ralph-nader-nothing-will-stop-us/
The unstoppable Israeli U.S. armed military juggernaut continues its genocidal destruction of Gaza’s Palestinians. The onslaught includes blocking the provision of “food, water, medicine, electricity and fuel,” openly genocidal orders decreed by Netanyahu and his extreme, blood-thirsty ministers.
The stunning atrocities going on day after day is being recorded by U.S. drones over Gaza and by brave Palestinian journalists directly targeted by the Israeli army. Over 66 journalists and larger numbers of their families have been slain. Israel has excluded foreign and Israeli journalists for years from Gaza.
This no-holds-barred ferocity came out of the Israeli government’s slumber on October 7th which allowed a few thousand Hamas and other fighters to take their smuggled hand-held weapons and attack soldiers and civilians before being destroyed or driven back to Gaza.
Seventy-five years of Israel military violence against defenseless Palestinians and fifty-six years of violently and illegally occupying their remaining slice of the original Palestine provides some background for Israel’s Founder, David Ben-Gurion’s candid statement: “We have taken their country.” (See, his full statement here).
The overwhelming military superiority of Israel – a nuclear armed nation – in the Middle East has produced a more aggressive Israeli government. Being more secure than ever before doesn’t seem to temper the expansionist missions of right-wing Israeli colonies in the West Bank.
Presently, the narrow Netanyahu majority in the Parliament believes that “nothing can stop us.” Presently, they are right.
Joe Biden and Congress are vigorously enabling the annihilations. The UN is frozen by the Joe Biden administration’s vetoes in the Security Council against ending the carnage in Gaza. The Arab nations either lay in ruins – Syria, Iraq – or are too weak to cause Israeli generals any worry. The rich Arab nations in the Gulf want to do business with prosperous Israel and, other than Qatar, care little about their Palestinian brethren.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) are no obstacle. Israel, along with Russia and the U.S. do not belong to the International Criminal Court. The Palestinian Authority is a party, but the practical difficulties of investigating Israeli war crimes in Gaza and apprehending the accused are insurmountable. The ICJ’s jurisdiction requires a country to bring Israel before the Court for war crimes or genocide. In any event, the Court’s lead-footed procedures trespass on eternity. So much for international law and the Geneva Conventions. Netanyahu rejects the moral authority of seventeen Israeli human rights groups, including Rabbis and reservist soldiers. Their open letter to President Biden in the December 13, 2023 issue of the New York Times on “The Humanitarian Catastrophe in the Gaza Strip” was ignored by the media despite the truth and courage it embodied.
In the U.S., protests and demonstrations are everywhere. Many are organized by Jewish human rights groups such as Jewish Voice for Peace, If Not Now, Standing Together, Veterans for Peace and various student organizations. Everywhere Biden travels there are people from all backgrounds protesting.
A few days ago, the first protests by labor union members occurred in Oakland, California. Union activists could turn their attention to why, for years, union leaders put billions of dollars into riskier lower-interest Israeli bonds rather than U.S. Treasuries or bond funds investing in America. Like U.S. weapon deliveries, purchases of Israeli bonds by states, cities and unions have surged since October 7th.
Pope Francis, informed of the Israeli attack on the only Catholic Church and Convent in Gaza, which housed people with disabilities, killing and injuring Christians sheltering there, sorrowfully said: “Some would say, ‘It is war. It is terrorism.’ Yes, it is war. It is terrorism.”
In 2015, over 400 Rabbis from Israel, the USA and Canada called on Prime Minister Netanyahu to stop the practice of demolishing hundreds of Palestinian homes as being contrary to international law and Jewish tradition. Their successors Rabbis for Human Rights are being ignored by the regime.
The Head of the U.S. Bishops Conference and the National Council of Churches, representing millions of parishioners, condemned the bombings but received little coverage.
There is only one institution that could stop Netanyahu’s mass military massacres of the Palestinian people. That is the U.S. Congress. As long as over 90% of the politicians there automatically support AIPAC, the Israeli Government Can Do No Wrong Lobby, even a peace-loving Joe Biden cannot deter Netanyahu. Bibi (his nickname) could simply say to a hypothetically transformed Biden “Joe, take it up with OUR Congress.”
How has AIPAC achieved such domination on Capitol Hill? By years of relentless lobbying and the smear of “anti-semitism” to anyone defying them. AIPAC and its chapters don’t bother with marches or demonstrations. They personally focus on the legislator – one by one. Carrots or sticks. Praise, PAC money and junkets are the Carrots. The Sticks are smears and money for selected primary challengers in their Districts or States. Rep. Betty McCollum (D-MN) called AIPAC “a Hate Group.”
There are about 300,000 citizens spending significant time back in the states working Congress in AIPAC’s favor. They know the doctors, lawyers, accountants, clergy, local politicians, donors, golf champions and other friends of the Senators and Representatives, and forcefully promote Israeli expansionism backed to the hilt by the U.S. government.
AIPAC is proficient in part for lack of any organized opposition. It is also practicing state-of-the-art non-stop grassroots lobbying.
Congress is poised to send $14.3 billion to Israeli militarism – a “genocide tax” on U.S. taxpayers – without public hearings. While growing public opinion in the U.S. is against unconditional backing of the Israeli regime, it has not changed a single vote in Congress. Someday, more organized support for America’s national interest will.
(For calls to your legislators, the Congressional switchboard is 202-224-3121.)
‘We will coup whoever we want!’: the unbearable hubris of Musk and the billionaire tech bros
Unlike their forebears, contemporary billionaires do not hope to build the biggest house in town, but the biggest colony on the moon,
Today’s billionaire philanthropists, frequently espousing the philosophy of “effective altruism”, donate to their own organisations, often in the form of their own stock, and make their own decisions about how the money is spent because they are, after all, experts in everything.
Guardian, Douglas Rushkoff. 25 Dec 23,
Challenging each other to cage fights, building apocalypse bunkers – the behaviour of today’s mega-moguls is becoming increasingly outlandish and imperial.
ven their downfalls are spectacular. Like a latter-day Icarus flying too close to the sun, disgraced crypto-god Sam Bankman-Fried crashed and burned this month, recasting Michael Lewis’s exuberant biography of the convicted fraudster – Going Infinite – into the story of a supervillain. Even his potential sentence of up to 115 years in prison seems more suitable for a larger-than-life comic book character – the Joker being carted off to Arkham Asylum – than a nerdy, crooked currency trader.
But that’s the way this generation of tech billionaires rolls. The Elon Musk we meet in Walter Isaacson’s biography posts selfies of himself as Marvel comic character Doctor Strange – the “Sorcerer Supreme” who protects the Earth against magical threats. Musk is so fascinated with figures such as Iron Man that he gave a tour of the SpaceX factory to the actor who plays him, Robert Downey Jr, and the film’s director, Jon Favreau. As if believing he really has acquired these characters’ martial arts prowess, in June Musk challenged fellow übermensch Mark Zuckerberg to “a cage match” after Zuck launched an app to compete with the floundering Twitter. Musk and Zuck exchanged taunts in the style of superheroes or perhaps professional wrestlers. “I’m up for a cage match if he is,” tweeted Musk. “Send Me Location,” responded Zuck from Instagram’s Threads.
Billionaires, or their equivalents, have been around a long time, but there’s something different about today’s tech titans, as evidenced by a rash of recent books. Reading about their apocalypse bunkers, vampiric longevity strategies, outlandish social media pronouncements, private space programmes and virtual world-building ambitions, it’s hard to remember they’re not actors in a reality series or characters from a new Avengers movie.
Unlike their forebears, contemporary billionaires do not hope to build the biggest house in town, but the biggest colony on the moon, underground lair in New Zealand, or virtual reality server in the cloud. In contrast, however avaricious, the titans of past gilded eras still saw themselves as human members of civil society. Contemporary billionaires appear to understand civics and civilians as impediments to their progress, necessary victims of the externalities of their companies’ growth, sad artefacts of the civilisation they will leave behind in their inexorable colonisation of the next dimension.
While plans for Peter Thiel’s 193-hectare (477-acre) “doomsday” escape, complete with spa, theatre, meditation lounge and library, were ultimately rejected on environmental grounds, he still wants to build a startup community that floats on the ocean, where so-called seasteaders can live beyond government regulation as well as whatever disasters may befall us back on the continents.
To escape “near-term” problems such as poverty and pollution, Jeff Bezos imagines building millions of space colonies housing trillions of people on the moon, asteroids and in other parts of the solar system, where inhabitants will harvest the resources of space for themselves and those left back on Earth. Elon Musk is convinced he will build a city of a million people on Mars by 2050 at a cost of up to $10bn a person. The ChatGPT impresario Sam Altman, whose board of directors sacked him as CEO before he made a dramatic comeback this week, wants to upload his consciousness to the cloud (if the AIs he helped build and now fears will permit him).
…………………….. as chronicled by Peter Turchin in End Times, his book on elite excess and what it portends, today there are far more centimillionaires and billionaires than there were in the gilded age, and they have collectively accumulated a much larger proportion of the world’s wealth. ………………………………………..
What evidence we do see of their operations in the real world mostly take the form of externalised harm. Digital businesses depend on mineral slavery in Africa, dump toxic waste in China, facilitate the undermining of democracy across the globe and spread destabilising disinformation for profit – all from the sociopathic remove afforded by remote administration.
Indeed, there is an imperiousness to the way the new billionaire class disregard people and places for which it is hard to find historical precedent………………………………………………………………….
At least Zuckerberg’s anti-democratic measures are expressed as the decrees of a benevolent dictator. Musk exercises no such restraint. In response to the accusation that the US government organised a coup against Evo Morales in Bolivia in order for Tesla to secure lithium there, Musk tweeted: “We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.”
Musk now has the ability to tweet this way as much as he likes: Twitter/X is his own platform. He bought it………………………………………………..
Musk not only owns X and Tesla but also SpaceX, StarLink, the Boring Company, Solar City, NeuraLink, xAI, and someday, he hopes, another finance company like PayPal (which he co-founded with Thiel but then sold to eBay). Similarly, Bezos doesn’t just control Amazon – the world’s biggest ever retailer, if that even does justice to the monolith – but the Washington Post, IMDb, MGM, Twitch, Zoox, Kiva, Whole Foods, Ring, Ivona, One Medical, Blue Origin and, of course, Amazon Web Services, which owns at least one-third of the cloud computing market. Included in Gates’s 20bn dollars’ worth of Microsoft stock and assets are Microsoft Azure (his 23% of the cloud), LinkedIn, Skype and GitHub. He also, incidentally, owns 109,000 hectares (270,000 acres) of US farmland.
This is unprecedentedly broad, or what could be called “horizontal” power. It is success across such a wide spectrum that has given today’s tech billionaires false confidence in the extent of their own expertise. Gates, who regularly dispensed advice on vaccines and public health in television interviews, eventually issued a report in which he graded each country’s pandemic response as if he were a school teacher who knew better than every nation’s department of health (no one got an A).
……………………. Today’s billionaire philanthropists, frequently espousing the philosophy of “effective altruism”, donate to their own organisations, often in the form of their own stock, and make their own decisions about how the money is spent because they are, after all, experts in everything.
Rather than donating to a university, Thiel’s Fellowship pays $100,000 “to young people who want to build new things instead of sitting in a classroom”. Meanwhile, contests such as Musk’s X Prize and Singularity University focus on “exponential technologies” that solve “global grand challenges”. Such moonshots reward the bold thinking that “aims to make something 10 times better”.
Their words and actions suggest an approach to life, technology and business that I have come to call “The Mindset” – a belief that with enough money, one can escape the harms created by earning money in that way. It’s a belief that with enough genius and technology, they can rise above the plane of mere mortals and exist on an entirely different level, or planet, altogether.
……………………………… This distorted image of the übermensch as a godlike creator, pushing confidently towards his clear vision of how things should be, persists as an essential component of The Mindset………………..
Any new business idea, Thiel says, should be an order of magnitude better than what’s already out there. Don’t compare yourself to everyone else; instead operate one level above the competing masses. For Thiel, this requires being what he calls a “definite optimist”. Most entrepreneurs are too process-oriented, making incremental decisions based on how the market responds. They should instead be like Steve Jobs or Elon Musk, pressing on with their singular vision no matter what. The definite optimist doesn’t take feedback into account, but ploughs forward with his new design for a better world. It happens ex nihilo – literally “from zero to one”. So like a supervillain constructing an all-seeing eye, Thiel builds a giant data analytics system, Palantir, through which he can observe and predict threats before they even manifest – all while preparing for Armageddon, just in case.
…………………………………………………… This is not capitalism, as Yanis Varoufakis explains in his new book Technofeudalism. Capitalists sought to extract value from workers by disconnecting them from the value they created, but they still made stuff. Feudalists seek an entirely passive income by “going meta” on business itself. They are rent-seekers, whose aim is to own the very platform on which other people do the work.
……………………………………………………………………. that’s what is really going on here. The antics of the tech feudalists make for better science fiction stories than they chart legitimate paths to sustainable futures. Musk and Zuckerberg challenge each other to duels as a way of advertising their platforms. Musk is less X’s CEO than its troll in chief. They are not gods; they are entertainers.
Instead of emulating them, we should first laugh at them, and then dismiss them. They’re like the contestants in an episode of Survivor, trying to be the last one on the island. It’s perversely amusing, and sometimes hard to look away. It’s the same impulse that leads many Americans to vote for Trump – less because they want him for president than because he will make for better television.
But it’s time to turn off this show, this car accident of a tech future, and get on with reclaiming the world from this new generation of robber barons rather than continuing to fund their fantasies. These are not the demigods we’re looking for.
Douglas Rushkoff is the author of Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires (Scribe). https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/nov/25/we-will-coup-whoever-we-want-the-unbearable-hubris-of-musk-and-the-billionaire-tech-bros
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 
