Another week in nuclear news
Some bits of good news. The Year in Cheer – 177 ways the world got better in 2023.
TOP STORIES. The Last Flurry: The US Congress and Australian Parliamentarians seek Assange’s Release.
UK’s nuclear obsessions kill off its net zero strategy . Military interests are pushing new nuclear power – and the UK government has finally admitted it.
LIES. United Against Nuclear Iran: The Shadowy, Intelligence-Linked Group Driving the US Towards War With Iran.
Nuclear goes backwards, again, as wind and solar enjoy another year of record growth.
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Climate. State of the Climate: 2023 smashes records for surface temperature and ocean heat. A new wave of climate denialism is on the rise. The Greenland ice cap is losing an average of 30m tonnes of ice an hour due to the climate crisis. Shock Horror! – They’re letting some WOMEN into the Cop29 climate summit committee!
Nuclear. Pro nuclear propaganda seems to be doubling, as nuclear’s obscene costs become more apparent, as well as “clean nuclear’s absolute connection with weaponry!
Noel’s Notes. UK govt has come clean about it! Nuclear power- no use, really – just essential for the nuclear weapons industry. Biden in a bind – powerless to stop the genocide, but keen to fund it and promote it. The human cost when IT goes wrong. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdQQib3rmkE
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AUSTRALIA. USA announces Australia’s participation in Yemen war, parliament in the dark. Cancelling the Journalist: The Australian ABC’s Coverage of the Israel-Gaza War. Western Australian groups reject the aims of Nuclear Safety Bills 2023 [Provisions] and call for public hearing. Perth nuclear waste storage facility planned for AUKUS submarines at HMAS Stirling on Garden Island.
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ECONOMICS. The Times asks “Are big nuclear reactors really the right thing for the UK? Nuclear power may twice as expensive as the Swedish government thought? $25 billion for refurbishment of Darlingon and Bruce reactors. US Offers Up To $500MM for Advanced Nuclear Fuel Production for SMRs. Big costs sink flagship nuclear project
EMPLOYMENT. Federal Employees to Stage Walk Out Over Biden’s Support for Gaza Slaughter
ENERGY. An Unprecedented Momentum for Renewables. IEA: Global renewable capacity grows over 50% YoY in 2023. Analysis: World will add enough renewables in five years to power US and Canada. Fuel problems for nuclear power, as the industry continues to languish in the doldrums.
INDIGENOUS ISSUES. Kebaowek Nation calls for cancellation of nuclear waste disposal site at Chalk River. Documentary ‘Downwind’ shows deadly consequences of nuclear testing on tribal lands. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkoVPZnLlUY&t=14s
LEGAL. South Africa has made its genocide case against Israel in court. Here’s what both sides said and what happens next. Fukushima Nuclear Waste Water Disputes Continued: International Law in Japanese Court?
MEDIA. How the Gaza War Can Be Big News and Invisible at the Same Time. The threat of catastrophe is assessed in Nuclear Armageddon: How Close Are We? — review https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j43-i6E2UJU&t=128s. 1 B Scary simulator shows what could happen in the event of a nuclear disaster.
OPPOSITION to NUCLEAR . Blocking the Doors of the Treaty Blockers & the Nuclear Ban Treaty’s 3d Anniversary.
PERSONAL STORIES. ‘The fight isn’t over’: Idaho downwinders persist after Congress cuts compensation for them.
POLITICS.
- It’s All About Me: Netanyahu Rejects Palestinian Statehood.
- Even Britain’s ruling Tory party fear that their “Nuclear Roadmap” plan will end up on the scrap heap. Roadmap to warfare: new policy exposes links with UK military nuclear projects. Construction to start on Sizewell C nuclear power station amid opposition. Petition: 100 per cent renewables rather than Small Modular (nuclear) Reactors. Sizewell C opponents warn Suffolk nuclear plant ‘could be the new HS2‘.
- Biden administration finalizes a $1.1 billion aid package for California’s last nuclear power plant. Why Joe Biden Is a Foreign Policy Failure.
- Belarus says it is to change policy on nuclear weapons.
- For Estonia the risks of going nuclear are high, and the plant not strictly necessary.
POLITICS INTERNATIONAL and DIPLOMACY. São Tomé and Príncipe 70th State to ratify Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. US urges discussions with China on practical nuclear risk reduction steps.
SAFETY. Limping along: EDF Energy looking to extend operational life of aging reactors AGAIN. Hinkley C site fire safety fears trigger enforcement notices.
SECRETS and LIES. Shining a light on the UK’s nuclear deterrent.
SPINBUSTER. Work officially ‘started’ at Sizewell C Nuclear on Monday – but it was really only political theatre. Why nuclear reactors are not the future of energy despite what UK Government would have you think.
TECHNOLOGY. Nuclear start-up Newcleo drops plans for British factory in favour of France. WASTES. Chalk River, or low-level nuclear governance. Finland’s Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority (STUK) wants to delay completion of its review on waste dump.
WAR and CONFLICT. A response to Kallenborn: Why realism requires that nuclear weapons be abolished. Incredible analysis of US warmongers plans for war with China ! Read this and weep!
WASTES. Chalk River, or low-level nuclear governance. Finland’s Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority (STUK) wants to delay completion of its review on waste dump.
WEAPONS and WEAPONS SALES.
- The Military-Industrial Complex Is the Winner (Not You). What sort of world do we want?: ICAN exec discusses ultimate goal of nuclear abolition. Nuclear Threats Are Looming, And Nobody Knows How Many Nukes Are Out There. Are Nuclear-Armed Nations Entering a New Arms Race in 2024? – Experts Weigh In.
- Germany plans to supply Israel with tanks shells as Gaza death toll nears 25,000.
- Zelensky Courts JPMorgan, Bank of America & Bridgewater CEOs At Davos, Urges More Money From West. German defense chief against going ‘all in’ on Ukraine.
- North Korea says it tested underwater nuclear attack drone in response to rivals’ naval drills. Nuclear tensions on the Korean Peninsula set to worsen in 2024. Are Nuclear-Armed Nations Entering a New Arms Race in 2024? – Experts Weigh In.
Western Australian groups reject the aims of Nuclear Safety Bills 2023 [Provisions] and call for public hearing
Australian Naval Nuclear Power Safety Bill 2023 [Provisions] and Australian Naval Nuclear Power Safety (Transitional Provisions) Bill 2023 [Provisions] Submissions Close 1st February 2024 Please make a submission and call for a public hearing in WA*2
The proposed Bill would create the laws to regulate the nuclear safety aspects of the proposed nuclear-powered submarine enterprise. The Bill is about regulating certain activities relating to AUKUS submarines. It would establish a regulator, safety duties for people conducting the regulated activities and creates monitoring and compliance powers.
Stop AUKUS WA and NFWA are preparing a submission making the following points:
- We are opposed to AUKUS and reject the stated objectives of the Bill.
- The Bill includes wording “conventionally-armed nuclear powered submarines” in other arena’s the Government has indicated there is a “don’t ask don’t tell” or “neither confirm nor deny” policy on nuclear weapons. There must be an explicit prohibition of nuclear armed vessels and public scrutiny and reporting.
- The Bill is far reaching and broad,
- The Bill does not include regulatory requirements for visiting US and UK nuclear submarines which under AUKUS will be continuously present in Australia.
- There is no public accountability – there are no reporting requirements to the public, regulators are given immunity from public scrutiny and overrides the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA) – which does face public scrutiny.
- The Bill is not consistent with our obligations under the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty in that there is the potential for nuclear armed US and or UK vessels to be home ported in Australia
- Overrides local and state laws
- It does not apply to foreign military personnel
Perth nuclear waste storage facility planned for AUKUS submarines at HMAS Stirling on Garden Island
ABC, By Rebecca Trigger and Isabel Moussalli,18 Dec 2023
Low-level radioactive waste generated by nuclear-powered submarines stationed in Perth could be stored elsewhere, WA’s Premier says, despite new documents revealing plans for a local waste facility.
Key points:
- The ABC has revealed AUKUS nuclear waste will be stored at HMAS Stirling
- WA’s Premier believes it could still be sent elsewhere
- Experts say they aren’t overly concerned, but community perception may be negative
Federal government AUKUS briefing notes obtained by the ABC reveal details of a nuclear waste storage facility being planned as part of general infrastructure works at the HMAS Stirling defence base on Garden Island, south of Perth.
The notes, made public through a Freedom of Information application, say the radioactive material will at least be temporarily stored in WA from 2027.
But WA Premier Roger Cook said where the waste ultimately goes remained unclear.
“Around the issue of low-level radioactive waste, well obviously we have significant capability in that, particularly in South Australia, but that will be an issue that will be decided into the future,” he told reporters on Monday.
Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young said any plans for a nuclear waste management facility in Western Australia wouldn’t be popular among the community.
“Australians are vehemently opposed to nuclear waste being stored in Australia, in particular international nuclear waste,” she said.
“We know the South Australian community have been very opposed to this for a long time, our cousins in WA are not going to look on this fondly, either.”
A South Australian government spokesperson said it would listen to advice on the best place to store the waste……………………………………..
he question of what to do with the nuclear waste is an ongoing debate, with a dedicated national agency to manage the subs only created in July………………………………….
However when nuclear-powered subs are decommissioned it will create intermediate and high-level waste that will need to be closely managed as it is weapons-grade material.
Federal government plans for a dump near the South Australian town of Kimba were scrapped earlier this year after traditional owners, the Barngarla people, mounted a Federal Court challenge.
Is there any cause for concern?
Griffith University emeritus professor Ian Lowe said low-level radioactive waste was usually relatively benign but communities have historically rejected proposals to store it in their region.
“We still have no system for managing our low-level radioactive waste let alone the much more intractable waste from nuclear submarines,” he said.
“I wouldn’t be particularly concerned about low-level waste, because if that’s under a couple of metres of earth the radiation at the surface isn’t much more than the background radiation to which we’re all exposed.
“What I would be worried about is that this might be the forerunner to a proposal to store the used reactors from nuclear submarines there, and that’s very nasty waste that I certainly would not want either in my backyard or within 20 kilometres of where I live.”
Professor Lowe, also a past president of the Australian Conservation Foundation, said once the most recent proposal to store low-level radioactive waste at Kimba in South Australia, the federal government then said it would be used to store intermediate-level waste.
“If I were in the environs of this proposal in Western Australia I’d be worried that the same thing might happen,” professor Lowe said……………………………………. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-12-18/aukus-submarine-nuclear-waste-disposal-in-perth-hmas-stirling/103242730
Military interests are pushing new nuclear power – and the UK government has finally admitted it
……………… the latest announcement, Civil Nuclear: Roadmap to 2050, - in this supposedly “civil” strategy – are multiple statements about addressing “civil and military nuclear ambitions” together to “identify opportunities to align the two across government”.
French president Emmanuel Macron summarises: “without civil nuclear power, no military nuclear power, without military nuclear, no civil nuclear”.
Andy Stirling Professor of Science & Technology Policy in the Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex, Philip JohnstoneResearch Fellow, SPRU, University of Sussex, January 19, 2024 https://theconversation.com/military-interests-are-pushing-new-nuclear-power-and-the-uk-government-has-finally-admitted-it-216118
The UK government has announced the “biggest expansion of the [nuclear] sector in 70 years”. This follows years of extraordinarily expensive support.
Why is this? Official assessments acknowledge nuclear performs poorly compared to alternatives. With renewables and storage significantly cheaper, climate goals are achieved faster, more affordably and reliably by diverse other means. The only new power station under construction is still not finished, running ten years late and many times over budget.
So again: why does this ailing technology enjoy such intense and persistent generosity?
…………………………………………………………………………….. A document published with the latest announcement, Civil Nuclear: Roadmap to 2050, is also more about affirming official support than substantively justifying it. More significant – in this supposedly “civil” strategy – are multiple statements about addressing “civil and military nuclear ambitions” together to “identify opportunities to align the two across government”.
These pressures are acknowledged by other states with nuclear weapons, but were until now treated like a secret in the UK: civil nuclear energy maintains the skills and supply chains needed for military nuclear programmes.
The military has consistently called for civil nuclear
Official UK energy policy documents fail substantively to justify nuclear power, but on the military side the picture is clear.
For instance, in 2006 then prime minister Tony Blair performed a U-turn to ignore his own white paper and pledge nuclear power would be “back with a vengeance”. Widely criticised for resting on a “secret” process, this followed a major three volume study by the military-linked RAND Corporation for the Ministry of Defence (MoD) effectively warning that the UK “industrial base” for design, manufacture and maintenance of nuclear submarines would become unaffordable if the country phased out civil nuclear power.
A 2007 report by an executive from submarine-makers BAE Systems called for these military costs to be “masked” behind civil programmes. A secret MoD report in 2014 (later released by freedom of information) showed starkly how declining nuclear power erodes military nuclear skills.
In repeated parliamentary hearings, academics, engineering organisations, research centres, industry bodies and trade unions urged continuing civil nuclear as a means to support military capabilities.
In 2017, submarine reactor manufacturer Rolls Royce even issued a dedicated report, marshalling the case for expensive “small modular reactors” to “relieve the Ministry of Defence of the burden of developing and retaining skills and capability”.
The government itself has remained coy about acknowledging this pressure to “mask” military costs behind civilian programmes. Yet the logic is clear in repeated emphasis on the supposedly self-evident imperative to “keep the nuclear option open” – as if this were an end in itself, no matter what the cost. Energy ministers are occasionally more candid, with one calling civil-military distinctions “artifical” and quietly saying: “I want to include the MoD more in everything we do”……………………………………………………………………………………..
This is even more evident in actions than words. For instance hundreds of millions of pounds have been prioritised for a nuclear innovation programme and a nuclear sector deal which is “committed to increasing the opportunities for transferability between civil and defense industries”.
An open secret
Despite all this, military pressures for nuclear power are not widely recognised in the UK. On the few occasions when it receives media attention, the link has been officially denied.
Other nuclear-armed states are also striving to maintain expensive military infrastructures (especially around submarine reactors) just when the civilian industry is obsolescing. This is true in the US, France, Russia and China.
Other countries tend to be more open about it, with the interdependence acknowledged at presidential level in the US for instance. French president Emmanuel Macron summarises: “without civil nuclear power, no military nuclear power, without military nuclear, no civil nuclear”.
This is largely why nuclear-armed France is pressing the European Union to support nuclear power. This is why non-nuclear-armed Germany has phased out the nuclear technologies it once lead the world in. This is why other nuclear-armed states are so disproportionately fixated by nuclear power.
These military pressures help explain why the UK is in denial about poor nuclear performance, yet so supportive of general nuclear skills. Powerful military interests – with characteristic secrecy and active PR – are driving this persistence.
Neglect of this picture makes it all the more disturbing. Outside defence budgets, off the public books and away from due scrutiny, expensive support is being lavished on a joint civil-military nuclear industrial base largely to help fund military needs. These concealed subsidies make nuclear submarines look affordable, but electricity and climate action more costly.
The conclusions are not self-evident. Some might argue military rationales justify excessive nuclear costs. But history teaches that policies are more likely to go awry if reasons are concealed. In the UK – where nuclear realities have been strongly officially denied – the issues are not just about energy, or climate, but democracy.
The Conversation asked the UK Department for Energy Security and Net Zero to comment but did not receive a reply before the publication deadline. https://theconversation.com/military-interests-are-pushing-new-nuclear-power-and-the-uk-government-has-finally-admitted-it-216118
Weatherwatch: UK push for civil atomic power highlights link with nuclear weapons
Government previously denied evidence countries with nuclear weapons favour atomic power over renewables
Paul Brown, Fri 19 Jan 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/news/2024/jan/19/weatherwatch-uk-push-civil-atomic-power-highlights-link-nuclear-weapons
There is long running debate about whether nuclear power has a role in combatting the climate crisis. The UK government decided last week it was vital and is planning a vast expansion. Most environmental groups remain sceptical, preferring quicker and cheaper renewables.
Whatever the merits of the case there was, buried deep in the government’s nuclear roadmap, a complete somersault on the relationship between civil and military nuclear power. Back in the 1980s and 1990s when the Guardian carried reports from Sussex University’s Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU), among others, showing there was a link between the two, the government continuously denied it.
SPRU persevered with its work and noted that despite the UK’s denials, across the world it has become more obvious that states with nuclear weapons remain keen on atomic power while those without them put renewables centre stage.
Last week the government’s arguments in favour of new civil nuclear power swept aside any lingering doubt its predecessors had been covering up the link. The roadmap policy document mentioned 14 times in different sections the need to continue to strengthen the existing cooperation and tie-ups between the civil and military industries to the benefit of both. The logic is to keep to a minimum the training and development costs for both the weapons and power sectors.
The Greenland ice cap is losing an average of 30m tonnes of ice an hour due to the climate crisis.
The Greenland ice cap is losing an average of 30m tonnes of ice an hour
due to the climate crisis, a study has revealed, which is 20% more than was
previously thought. Some scientists are concerned that this additional
source of freshwater pouring into the north Atlantic might mean a collapse
of the ocean currents called the Atlantic meridional overturning
circulation (Amoc) is closer to being triggered, with severe consequences
for humanity. Major ice loss from Greenland as a result of global heating
has been recorded for decades. The techniques employed to date, such as
measuring the height of the ice sheet or its weight via gravity data, are
good at determining the losses that end up in the ocean and drive up sea
level. However, they cannot account for the retreat of glaciers that
already lie mostly below sea level in the narrow fjords around the island.
In the study, satellite photos were analysed by scientists to determine the
end position of Greenland’s many glaciers every month from 1985 to 2022.
This showed large and widespread shortening and in total amounted to a
trillion tonnes of lost ice.
Guardian 17th Jan 2024
How the Gaza War Can Be Big News and Invisible at the Same Time
coverage of the Gaza war by the New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times “showed a consistent bias against Palestinians.” Those highly influential papers “disproportionately emphasized Israeli deaths in the conflict” and “used emotive language to describe the killings of Israelis, but not Palestinians.”
what actually happens to people being terrorized, massacred, maimed and traumatized — has remained close to invisible for the U.S. public. Extensive surface coverage seems repetitious and increasingly normal, as death numbers keep rising and Gaza becomes a routine topic in news media.
By Norman Solomon, World BEYOND War, January 18, 2024, https://worldbeyondwar.org/how-the-gaza-war-can-be-big-news-and-invisible-at-the-same-time/—
Zen wisdom tells us that the finger pointing at the moon is not the moon. Yet it’s easy to fall into the illusion that when we see news about the Gaza war, we’re really seeing the war.
We are not.
What we do routinely see is reporting that’s as different from the actual war as a pointed finger is from the moon.
The media words and images reach us light years away from what it’s actually like to be in a war zone. The experience of consuming news from afar could hardly be more different. And beliefs or unconscious notions that media outlets convey war’s realities end up obscuring those realities all the more.
Inherent limitations on what journalism can convey are compounded by media biases. In-depth content analysis by The Intercept found that coverage of the Gaza war by the New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times “showed a consistent bias against Palestinians.” Those highly influential papers “disproportionately emphasized Israeli deaths in the conflict” and “used emotive language to describe the killings of Israelis, but not Palestinians.”
What is most profoundly important about war in Gaza — what actually happens to people being terrorized, massacred, maimed and traumatized — has remained close to invisible for the U.S. public. Extensive surface coverage seems repetitious and increasingly normal, as death numbers keep rising and Gaza becomes a routine topic in news media. And yet, what’s going on now in Gaza is “the most transparent genocide in human history.”
With enormous help from U.S. media and political power structures, the ongoing mass murder — by any other name — has become normalized, mainly reduced to standard buzz phrases, weaselly diplomat-speak and euphemistic rhetoric about the Gaza war. Which is exactly what the top leadership of Israel’s government wants.
Extraordinary determination to keep killing civilians and destroying what little is left of Palestinian infrastructure in Gaza has caused extremes of hunger, displacement, destruction of medical facilities, and expanding outbreaks of lethal diseases, all obviously calculated and sought by Israeli leaders. Thinly reported by U.S. media outlets while cravenly dodged by President Biden and the overwhelming majority of Congress, the calamity for 2.2 million Palestinian people worsens by the day.
“Gazans now make up 80 per cent of all people facing famine or catastrophic hunger worldwide, marking an unparalleled humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip amid Israel’s continued bombardment and siege,” the United Nations declared this week. The UN statement quoted experts who said: “Currently every single person in Gaza is hungry, a quarter of the population are starving and struggling to find food and drinkable water, and famine is imminent.”
Israel is waging a war toward extermination. But for the vast majority of Americans, no matter how much mainstream media they consume, the war that actually exists — in contrast to the war reporting by news outlets — remains virtually invisible.
Of course, Hamas’s Oct. 7 murderous attack on civilians and its taking of hostages should be unequivocally condemned as crimes against humanity. Such condemnation is fully appropriate, and easy in the United States.
“Deploring the crimes of others often gives us a nice warm feeling: we are good people, so different from those bad people,” Noam Chomsky has observed. “That is particularly true when there is nothing much we can do about the crimes of others, so that we can strike impressive poses without cost to ourselves. Looking at our own crimes is much harder, and for those willing to do it, often carries costs.”
With the U.S.-backed war on Gaza now in its fourth month, “looking at our own crimes” can lead to clearly depicting and challenging the role of the U.S. government in the ongoing huge crimes against humanity in Gaza. But such depicting and challenging is distinctly unpopular if not taboo in the halls of government power — even though, and especially because, the U.S. role of massively arming and supporting Israel is pivotal for the war.
“For the narcissist, everything that happens to them is a huge deal, while nothing that happens to you matters,” scholar Sophia McClennen wrote last week. “When that logic translates to geopolitics, the disproportionate damage only magnifies. This is why Israel is not held to any standards, while those who question that logic are told to shut up. And if they don’t shut up, they are punished or threatened.”
Further normalizing the slaughter are the actions and inaction of Congress. On Tuesday evening, only 11 senators voted to support a resolution that would have required the Biden administration to report on Israel’s human-rights record in the Gaza war. The sinking of that measure reflects just how depraved the executive and legislative branches are as enablers of Israel.
The horrors in Gaza are being propelled by the U.S. war machine. But you wouldn’t know it from the standard U.S. media, pointing to the moon and scarcely hinting at the utter coldness of its dark side.
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Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. He is the author of many books including War Made Easy. His latest book, War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine, was published in 2023 by The New Press.
TODAY. UK govt has come clean about it! Nuclear power- no use, really – just essential for the nuclear weapons industry.
” Civil Nuclear: Roadmap to 2050, – in this supposedly “civil” strategy – are multiple statements about addressing “civil and military nuclear ambitions” together to “identify opportunities to align the two across government”.
Some pesky British scientists have gone badly off script – the naughty troublemakers. Andy Stirling and Philip Johnstone should be talking about the wonderful ability of the nuclear industry to fix climate problems and energy needs.
But dammit, these guys don’t seem to understand which side their bread is buttered on. They have blatantly explained what the UK government has quietly acknowledged – THE REAL REASON FOR THE NUCLEAR INDUSTRY.
The industry is not economic, not clean, not healthy, not safe, not effective against global heating, - BUT – it provides a good, respectable cover for continuing to use tax-payer to prop up the killing industry - nuclear weapons.
We probably all knew this, underneath. But it is obscured by some comfortable fantasy that we are safer “protected” by mass-killing weapons, than by friendship, understanding, negotiating, with other nations. By the fantasy that “strong” (though stupid) governments care about our survival. The reality is that those in power in government just want to hang on to their prestigious jobs and hope that the bad stuff doesn’t happen until after they retire. In the meantime they’ve got the support of the killing industries and macho military.
Stirling, Johnstone, and also Jonathon Porritt have publicised what the government rather quietly admitted:
” Civil Nuclear: Roadmap to 2050, – in this supposedly “civil” strategy – are multiple statements about addressing “civil and military nuclear ambitions” together to “identify opportunities to align the two across government”.
Jonathon Porritt is probably already persona non grata with the authorities. As for Stirling and Johnstone – telling the truth is probably not a good career move.
The Last Flurry: The US Congress and Australian Parliamentarians seek Assange’s Release
January 19, 2024 : Dr Binoy Kampmark, https://theaimn.com/the-last-flurry-the-us-congress-and-australian-parliamentarians-seek-assanges-release/
On February 20, Julian Assange, the daredevil publisher of WikiLeaks, will be going into battle, yet again, with the British justice system – or what counts for it. The UK High Court will hear arguments from his team that his extradition to the United States from Britain to face 18 charges under the Espionage Act of 1917 would violate various precepts of justice. The proceedings hope to reverse the curt, impoverished decision by the remarkably misnamed Justice Jonathan Swift of the same court on June 6, 2023.
At this point, the number of claims the defence team can make are potentially many. Economy, however, has been called for: the two judges hearing the case have asked for a substantially shortened argument, showing, yet again, that the quality of British mercy tends to be sourly short. The grounds Assange can resort to are troublingly vast: CIA-sponsored surveillance, his contemplated assassination, his contemplated abduction, violation of attorney-client privilege, his poor health, the violation of free-speech, a naked, politicised attempt by an imperium to capture one of its greatest and most trenchant critics, and bad faith by the US government.
Campaigners for the cause have been frenzied. But as the solution to Assange’s plight is likely to be political, the burden falls on politicians to stomp and drum from within their various chambers to convince their executive counterparts. In the US Congress, House Resolution 934, introduced on December 13 by Rep. Paul A. Gosar, an Arizona Republican, expresses “the sense of the House of Representatives that regular journalistic activities are protected under the First Amendment, and that the United States ought to drop all charges against and attempts to extradite Julian Assange.”
The resolution sees a dramatic shift from the punishing, haute view taken by such figures as the late Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein, who was one of the first political figures to suggest that Assange be crucified on the unsteady timber of the Espionage Act for disclosing US cables and classified information in 2010. The resolution acknowledges, for instance, that the disclosures by WikiLeaks “promoted public transparency through the exposure of the hiring of child prostitutes by Defense Department contractors, friendly fire incidents, human rights abuses, civilian killings, and United States use of psychological warfare.” The list could be sordidly longer but let’s not quibble.
Impressively, drafters of the resolution finally acknowledge that charging Assange under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) for alleged conspiracy to help US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea (then Bradley) Manning access Defense Department computers was a fabled nonsense. For one, it was “impossible” – Manning “already had access to the mentioned computer.” Furthermore, “there was no proof Mr Assange had any contact with said intelligence analyst.”
Ire is also directed at the espionage counts, with the resolution noting that “no other publisher has ever been prosecuted under the Espionage Act prior to these 17 charges.” A successful prosecution of the publisher “would set a precedent allowing the United States to prosecute and imprison journalists for First Amendment protected activities, including the obtainment and publication of information, something that occurs on a regular basis.”
Acknowledgment is duly made of the importance of press freedoms to promote transparency and protect the Republic, the support for Assange, “sincere and steadfast”, no less, shown by “numerous human rights, press freedom, and privacy rights advocates and organizations”, and the desire by “at least 70 Senators and Members of Parliament from Australia, a critical United States ally and Mr Assange’s native country” for his return.
Members of Australia’s parliament, adding to the efforts last September to convince members of Congress that the prosecution be dropped, have also written to the UK Home Secretary, James Cleverly, requesting that he “undertake an urgent, thorough and independent assessment of the risks to Mr Assange’s health and welfare in the event that he is extradited to the United States.”
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The members of the Bring Julian Assange Home Parliamentary Group draw Cleverly’s attention to the recent UK Supreme Court case of AAA v Secretary of State for the Home Department which found “that courts in the United Kingdom cannot just rely on third party assurances by foreign governments but rather are required to make independent assessments of the risk of persecution to individuals before any order is made removing them from the UK.
It follows that the approach taken by Lord Justices Burnett and Holroyde in USA v Assange [2021] EWHC 3133 was, to put it politely, a touch too confident in accepting assurances given by the US government regarding Assange’s treatment, were he to be extradited. “These assurances were not tested, nor was there any evidence of independent assessment as to the basis on which they could be given and relied upon.”
The conveners of the group point to Assange’s detention in Belmarsh prison since April 2019, his “significant health issues, exacerbated to a dangerous degree by his prolonged incarceration, that are of very real concern to us as his elected representatives.” They also point out the rather unusual consensus between the current Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, and his opposition number, Peter Dutton, that the “case has gone on for too long.” Continued legal proceedings, both in the UK, and then in the US were extradition to take place “would add yet more years to Mr Assange’s detention and further imperil his health.”
In terms of posterity’s calling, there are surely fewer better things at this point for a US president nearing mental oblivion to do, or a Tory government peering at electoral termination to facilitate, than the release of Assange. At the very least, it would show a grudging acknowledgment that the fourth estate, watchful of government’s egregious abuses, is no corpse, but a vital, thriving necessity.
Perth could be an ‘especially important target’ due to AUKUS
January 12, 2024
Curtin University Dean of Global Futures Professor Joe Siracusa says while Australia has always been a nuclear target, Perth has particularly become a target for China and Russia due to AUKUS.“They see the AUKUS development here, not only nuclear-propelled submarines, but they’re going to have nuclear cruise missile type things here,” he told Sky News Australia.
UK’s nuclear obsessions kill off its net zero strategy
The new Roadmap reads like an outing to a massive nuclear sweet shop. On top of Hinkley Point C and Sizewell C, we’ll have one more big one. And then we’ll have lots of Small Modular Reactors, all over the country. And we’ll have a new fuel processing plant. And a new Geological Disposal Facility – at some much more distance point. And so on and on. 24 fantastical Gigawatts to be designed and delivered by 2050.
Jonathon Porritt, 18 Jan 24
After 14 years of Tory mismanagement, the UK finds itself bereft of an energy strategy.
This was finally confirmed in the release last week of the Government’s new Nuclear Roadmap. At one level, it’s just the same old, same old, the latest in a very long line of PR-driven, more or less fantastical wishlists for new nuclear in the UK. But at another, it’s a total revelation.
For years, a small group of dedicated academics and campaigners have suggested that the UK Government’s Nuclear Energy Strategy is being driven more by the UK’s continuing commitment to an “independent” nuclear weapons capability than by any authoritative energy analysis. For an equal number of years, this was aggressively rebutted by one Energy Minister after another, both Tory and Labour.
The new Nuclear Roadmap dramatically changes all that. It sets to one side any pretence that the links between our civil nuclear programme and our military defence needs were anything other than small-scale – and of no material strategic significance. With quite startling transparency and clarity, the Roadmap not only reveals the full extent of those links, but positively celebrates that co-dependency as a massive plus in our ambition to achieve a Net Zero economy by 2050.
“Startling” is actually an understatement. Such a comprehensive volte-face is rare in policy-making circles. Every effort is usually made by Ministers to obscure the scale (let along the significance) of any such screeching handbrake turns. That is so not the case with the new Roadmap.
Courtesy of the latest forensic work done by Professors Andy Stirling and Phil Johnstone at Sussex University (who have been absolutely at the forefront of seeking to bring these links into the public domain over many years – often with mighty little support from mainstream environmental organisations, let alone “independent” commentators), chapter and verse of this volte-face can be laid bare. Just three o examples from the Roadmap:
- “Not only does this Roadmap set a clear path for the growth of nuclear fission…it acknowledges the crucial importance of the nuclear industry to our national security, both in terms of energy supply and the defence nuclear enterprise.”
- “Government will proactively look for opportunities to align delivery of the civil and nuclear defence enterprises, whilst maintaining the highest standards of non-proliferation.”
- “To address the commonalities across the civil and defence supply chains, and the potential risk to our respective nuclear programmes due to competing demand for the supply chain, the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) is working closely with the Ministry of Defence and the Defence Nuclear Sector.”
And there’s a whole lot more than that! As Andy Stirling has said: “Without any reflection on what this says about previous efforts to suppress discussion of this issue, the Government is now openly emphasising its significance.”
Indeed!
As usual, the UK’s ill-informed and unbelievably gullible mainstream media would appear to have missed the significance of this gobsmacking inflection point. So one can hardly expect them to have grasped its even more significant implications for UK energy strategy as a whole. In every single particular.
Let me briefly unpack some of those particulars:
- Nuclear
The new Roadmap reads like an outing to a massive nuclear sweet shop. On top of Hinkley Point C and Sizewell C, we’ll have one more big one. And then we’ll have lots of Small Modular Reactors, all over the country. And we’ll have a new fuel processing plant. And a new Geological Disposal Facility – at some much more distance point. And so on and on. 24 fantastical Gigawatts to be designed and delivered by 2050.
The reality couldn’t be more different:
- We will indeed end up with Hinkley Point C – at a staggering of cost of somewhere between £26 billion and £30 billion, with consumers paying twice as much for its electricity as they will for offshore wind. And it will almost certainly not come online until the end of the decade, 15 years on from the time it was meant to be up and running.
- We may possibly get Sizewell C, though the Government cannot currently guarantee the required level of investment. So a Final Investment Decision is unlikely before the next Election. At which point, Starmer may come to his senses and kill off this absurd white elephant.
- We will never get a third big reactor. The economics are literally impossible to justify.
- We are unlikely to get more than a couple of hugely expensive Small Modular Reactors, at some indeterminate point in the future, even with a new “flexible approach” to planning and financial inducements. Even that may prove to be an illusion. As Professor Steve Thomas has written: “Advocates of Small Nuclear Reactors claim they are cheaper and easier to build, safer, generate less waste, and will create many jobs compared to existing large reactor designs. These claims are unproven, misleading, or just plain wrong. Worldwide, no commercial design of SMR has even received a firm order yet.”
- And we may or may not get life extensions for the last five power stations in the “legacy fleet” – subject to regulatory approval, which may not be all that easy given extensive cracking in their reactor cores.
In short, the Roadmap is just a massive diversion from reality. Entailing incalculable opportunity costs. And putting at risk our entire Net Zero by 2050 strategy.
Ministers know all that. But they don’t really care. Our nuclear weapons programme (including upgrading Trident) will be protected as a consequence of this, via an unceasing flow of public money into the civil nuclear cul-de-sac, at a time when our defence budget is already massively overstretched. So who cares about the missing 24GW?
- Renewables
We’ll continue to see new investment into renewables here in the UK, despite (not because of) government policy, which has seriously messed up our offshore wind industry, maintained a de facto ban on onshore wind, couldn’t care less about solar, witters on vapidly about tidal without doing anything etc etc.
Meanwhile, on a global basis, renewables continue to boom. Here are a few facts – in contrast to over-excited sightings of nuclear unicorns:…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Why don’t people see this?
Why don’t our mainstream media offer any serious critique of what’s going on here?
Why don’t our opposition parties rip to shreds this tissue of preposterous illusions?
The reasons for this almost complete silence can be traced back to successive governments’ grim intent to hang onto our so-called “independent nuclear deterrent”. At literally any costs…………………………………………………………………….more https://www.jonathonporritt.com/uks-nuclear-obsessions-kill-off-its-net-zero-strategy/
Zelensky Courts JPMorgan, Bank of America & Bridgewater CEOs At Davos, Urges More Money From West
Zero Hedge, BY TYLER DURDEN, WEDNESDAY, JAN 17, 2024
As expected, anything related to Ukraine presented at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos has been focused on more weaponry and seeking more vows of integration among Western allies.
“Ukrainians need predictable financing throughout 2024 and beyond,” European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen told World Economic Forum participants. “They need a sufficient and sustained supply of weapons to defend Ukraine and regain its rightful territory.”
As for President Zelensky, in addressing world leaders at the forum he emphasized that the West needs to help Ukraine achieve air superiority if his forces are to have a chance to emerge victorious against Russia……………………………………
At the summit, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken promised that Washington will keep up its support for Ukraine, however while keeping things vague – following Biden’s proposed foreign defense budget request being reject by GOP members in Congress; and NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg suggested Ukraine is moving closer to entry into the alliance.
Stoltenberg acknowledged a “serious battlefield situation” but also said there is “cause for optimism” after nearly two years of fighting, and NATO’s constant support.
Below is a portion of the NATO press readout based on his panel speech:
………… Ukrainians are now firmly oriented to the West, aspiring for membership in NATO and the European Union. The Secretary General also stressed that “support for Ukraine is not charity; it’s an investment in our own security”.………
But realistically, the prospect of Ukraine gaining full NATO membership would be a process of years, and would likely trigger WW3 with Russia–so to some degree this is all empty posturing.
But here’s what’s happening at Davos which is arguably more important to Kiev at the moment:
Ukraine is seeking new ways to finance its rebuilding plans as vital aid from the West slows down. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reportedly has plans to meet JP Morgan’s CEO at the World Economic Forum.
Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy is reportedly planning to meet JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon at the World Economic Forum in Davos to seek new ways of financing its rebuilding plans.
JP Morgan, the biggest US bank with almost half a trillion dollars of market capitalization, has already been advising Ukraine on financing reconstruction.
It’s as yet unclear if any firm promises were made or agreements struck at the Davos meeting which also included Bank of America’s Brian Moynihan, as well as Bridgewater’s Ray Dalio.
According to further details of who was in attendance via Fox Business: “Other meeting attendees included David Rubinstein of the private equity firm Carlyle Group; billionaire entrepreneur Michael Dell, the founder of Dell Technologies; Ray Dalio of Bridgewater Associates, the world’s largest hedge fund; Steve Schwarzman, the CEO of Blackstone, the world’s largest private equity fund; and Philipp Hildebrand, representing BlackRock, the world’s largest money manager.”
Additionally, “Dimon was accompanied by Mary Erdoes, who runs JPMorgan’s asset-management unit. The White House was represented by Penny Pritzker, of the super-wealthy Pritzker family and a major Democratic Party donor.” Pritzker has been appointed Biden administration’s special representative for Ukraine’s economic recovery. https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/zelensky-courts-jpmorgan-bank-america-bridgewater-ceos-davos-urges-more-west
It’s All About Me: Netanyahu Rejects Palestinian Statehood
January 20, 2024Written by: Dr Binoy Kampmark, https://theaimn.com/its-all-about-me-netanyahu-rejects-palestinian-statehood/
Israel has been given enormous license to control the security narrative in the Middle East for decades. This is not to say it is always in control of it – the attacks of October 7 by Hamas show that such control is rickety and bound, at stages, to come undone. What matters for Israeli security is that certain neighbours always understand that they are never to do certain things, lest they risk existential oblivion.
For instance, no Middle Eastern state will be permitted to acquire nuclear weapons on the Jewish State’s watch. Nuclear reactors and facilities will be struck, infected, or pulverised altogether (Osirak at Tuwaitha, Iraq; the Natanz site in Iran), with, or without knowledge, approval or participation of the United States.
This is a signature mark of Israeli foreign and defence policy: the nuclear option remains the greatest, single affirmation of sovereignty in international relations. To possess it, precisely because of its destructive and shielding potential, is to proclaim to the community of nation states that you have lethal insurance against invasion and regime change. Best, then, to make sure others do not possess it.
Israel, on the other hand, will be permitted to develop its own cataclysmic inventory of weapons, platforms, and doomsday options, all the while claiming strategic ambiguity about the whole matter. In that strangulating way, Israeli policy resembles the thornily disingenuous former US President Bill Clinton’s approach to taking drugs and oral sex: he did not inhale, and oral pleasuring by one by another is simply not sex.
The latest remarks from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on January 18 suggest that the license also extends to ensuring that Palestinians will never be permitted a sovereign homeland, that they will be, in a perverse biblical echo, kept in a form of bondage, downtrodden, oppressed and, given what happened on October 7 last year, suppressed. This is to ensure that, whatever the grievance, that they never err, never threaten, and never cause grief to the Israeli State. To that end, it is axiomatic that their political authorities are kept incipient, inchoate, corrupt and permanently on life support, the tolerated beggars and charity seekers of the Middle East.
At the press conference in question, held at the Kirya military base in Tel Aviv, Netanyahu claimed that, “Whoever is talking about the ‘day after Netanyahu’ is essentially talking about the establishment of the Palestinian state with the Palestinian Authority.” (How very like the Israeli PM to make it all about him.) The Israel-Palestinian conflict, he wanted to clarify, was “not about the absence of a state, a Palestinian state, but rather about the existence of a state, a Jewish state.”
With monumental gall, he complained that “All territory we evacuate, we get terror, terrible terror against us.” His examples, enumerated much like sins at a confessional, were instances where Israel, as an occupying force, had left or reduced their presence: Gaza, southern Lebanon, parts of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank). It followed that “any future arrangement, or in the absence of any future arrangement,” Israel would continue to maintain “security control” of all lands west of the Jordan River. “That is a vital condition.”
As such lands comprise Israeli territory, Gaza and the West Bank, Palestinian sovereignty can be assuredly ignored as a tenable outcome in Netanyahu’s policed paradise. He even went so far as to acknowledge that this “contradicts the idea of sovereignty” as far as the Palestinians are concerned. “What can you do? I tell this truth to our American friends.”
As to sceptical mutterings in the Israeli press about the country’s prospects of defeating Hamas decisively, Netanyahu was all foamy with indignation. “We will continue to fight at full strength until we achieve our goals: the return of all our hostages – and I say again, only military pressure will lead to their release; the elimination of Hamas; the certainty that Gaza will never again represent a threat to Israel. There won’t be any party that educates for terror, funds terror, sends terrorists against us.”
This hairbrained policy of ethno-religious lunacy masquerading as sane military strategy ensures that permanent war nourished by the poison of blood-rich hatred and revenge will continue unabated. In keeping such a powder keg stocked, there is always the risk that other powers and antagonists willing to have a say through bombs, rockets and drones will light it. Should this or that state be permitted to exist or come into being? The answer is bound to be convulsively violent.
It is of minor interest that officials in the United States found Netanyahu’s comments a touch off-putting. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken had, it is reported, dangled a proposal before the Israeli PM that would see Saudi Arabia normalise relations with Israel in exchange for an agreement to facilitate the pathway to Palestinian statehood. Netanyahu did not bite, insisting that he would not be a party to any agreement that would see the creation of a Palestinian state.
Blinken, if one is to rely on the veracity of the account, suggested that the removal of Hamas could never be achieved in purely military terms; a failure on the part of Israel’s leadership to recognise that fact would lead to a continuation of violence and history repeating itself.
In Washington, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller stated in the daily press briefing that “Israel faces some very difficult choices in the months ahead.” The conflict in Gaza would eventually end; reconstruction would follow; agreement from various countries in the region to aid in that effort had been secured – all on the proviso that a “tangible path to the establishment of a Palestinian state” could be agreed upon.
For decades, administrations in Washington have fantasised about castles in the skies, the outlandish notion that Palestinians and Israelis might exist in cosy accord upon lands stolen and manured by brutal death. Washington, playing the Hegemonic Father, could then perch above the fray, gaze paternally upon the scrapping disputants, and suggest what was best for both. But the two-state solution was always encumbered and heavily conditioned to take place on Israeli terms, leaving all mediation and interventions by outsiders flitting gestures lacking substance.
Now, no one can claim otherwise that Palestinian statehood is anything other than spectral, fantastic, and doomed – at least under the current warring regime. Netanyahu’s own political survival, profanely linked to Israel’s own existence, depends on not just stifling pregnancies in Gaza but preventing the birth of a nationally recognised Palestinian state.
Work officially ‘started’ at Sizewell C Nuclear on Monday – but it was really only political theatre.
Ipswich Star, By Paul Geater 18 Jan 24
This week we had big fanfares and a major ceremony to “mark the start” of construction at Sizewell C.
But what did it all mean?
In one sense construction has already started. Land has been dug up, mature trees have been cut down, and one of the new entrances to the site is being cleared.
However, the Final Investment Decision (FID), the point at which the various parties are committed to building the station is still, apparently, several months away – so Monday’s ceremony really does look like nothing but a piece of political theatre.
What is clear, though, is that there is clear political will for this project to go ahead. The Government and the official opposition are both committed to it whatever the cost they may be exposed to.
I can understand that. I still don’t think it makes a great deal of economic sense – but given the uncertainties across the globe and the need to move to carbon zero energy I can see why they want to proceed with nuclear whatever the cost.
Personally I don’t have any concerns about the potential safety of the plant – while there are potential dangers with nuclear generation the experience over the last 60 years in this country suggests it can be operated safely.
And given that there are already two nuclear plants at Sizewell that need to be protected from the sea, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to put the new plant next to them so the protection can be shared.
I still have serious concerns with EDF and the government – who must be seen as equal partners in the project – over the way it is going to be built and the devastating impact it will have on local communities.
By adopting a “bull in a china shop” attitude towards its construction, EDF and the government are planning to cause substantial environmental damage to some of the most precious parts of the Heritage Coast that are closely linked in with Minsmere and Dunwich Heath……………………………………
Creating a new nature reserve two miles inland is great – but it can’t replace a massive area that’s directly linked to the coast.
But I fear that battle is lost now. With both the current government and the likely future government keen on the project, the best we can hope for is that some new habitats will make up for the lost treasures………………….
There’s also been a failure to really engage with local people. There have now been local community forums set up but they are being treated with suspicion by many. https://www.ipswichstar.co.uk/news/24054795.opinion-sizewell-c-still-doesnt-engage-residents/
USA announces Australia’s participation in Yemen war, parliament in the dark
National Times, By Ann Pavet, 16 Jan 24
Is this a constitutional crisis? On Friday 12 Jan 2024, a USA official spokesman announced that Australia was to provide a support role for the UK and USA troops who were about to attack Yemen. No announcement had been made to this effect by the Australian Government. The Australian people had to wait for the next day to know definitely if in fact such a decision has been made. How is it possible for the USA spokesperson to announce an Australian policy decision – on going to war against another sovereign state, no less – before it had been declared by the Australian Government?
Maybe Parliament should be recalled to discuss how such a situation could have arisen? Has the secret signing of more and more AUKUS documents handed our foreign policy over to the USA? It certainly looks like it. And the AUKUS texts seem to support this claim.
The whole world, with the exception of the USA and Canada, has just demonstrated at the United Nations our disgust at the Isreali attack on the entire population of Gaza, an open prison camp from which Gazans cannot escape to safety (and it has been so for 17 years). With 23,000 Gazan already dead and 70% of buildings destroyed, with refugee areas being deliberately bombed, this abuse and genocide can be compared to that of the Warsaw ghetto when the Nazis did exactly the same to the European Jews. And now the descendents of those European victims …….
In such a dire situation the Yemenis decided to attempt to stop those ships plying the Red Sea intending to deliver supplies to Israel. Now, weeks ago Israel stopped ALL supplies into Gaza, including water and fuel – a crime against humanity – which raised just a whimper from the USA and Australia. But US warships are immediately sent in to protect supplies going to Israel, and they have demanded that the Australian military supply them as they attack Yemen, a country already devastated by an 8-year long war led by Saudi Arabia with US support.
South Africa is currently pursuing a case at the International Court of Justice of intentional genocide by Israel against the people of Gaza. Should this court make an interim decision to call for a cessation of Israel’s attack on the Gazans, the Australian government will be caught well and true with its pants down as it actively supports US action in the Red Sea that is for the benefit of Israel.
That the US government can announce Australian military support on behalf of the Australian government is unacceptable at any time, but in the face of the horrors being carried out by Israel and the possible legal determination of genocide by Israel, the Australian government should not be the play thing of the USA, but should be actively supporting the world-wide calls for a ceasefire. Not only is this a constitutional crisis it is also an aberration of Australia’s duty as a world citizen to protect world citizens against abuse of all types.
Parliamentarians should now be demanding a recall of parliament to discuss not only the constitutional crisis but also Australia’s inaction in the face of hard evidence of the most appalling crimes by Israel, not only now but over the decades of settler colonialisation of Palestine, rubbishing the requirements of international law.
1 This month
Help Aunty Sue Protect Her Land and Sacred Sites From Destructive Rocket Testing.
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Australians deserve the truth
about
AUKUS – https://aukuspublicinquiry.com/
PETITION – To: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the Australian Labor Government
of the week – Australians for War Powers Reform (AWPR)
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