Antinuclear

Australian news, and some related international items

Leaks Reveal Reality Behind U.S. Propaganda in Ukraine

The inability of either side to decisively defeat the other in the ruins of Bakhmut and other front-line towns in Donbas is why one of the most important documents predicted that the war was locked in a “grinding campaign of attrition” and was “likely heading toward a stalemate.”

What U.S. intelligence officials know, but the White House is doggedly ignoring, is that, as in Afghanistan and Iraq, top Ukrainian officials running this endemically corrupt country are making fortunes skimming money from the over $100 billion in aid and weapons that America has sent them.

By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies, World BEYOND War, April 19, 2023

The U.S. corporate media’s first response to the leaking of secret documents about the war in Ukraine was to throw some mud in the water, declare “nothing to see here,” and cover it as a depoliticized crime story about a 21-year-old Air National Guardsman who published secret documents to impress his friends. President Biden dismissed the leaks as revealing nothing of “great consequence.”

What these documents reveal, however, is that the war is going worse for Ukraine than our political leaders have admitted to us, while going badly for Russia too, so that neither side is likely to break the stalemate this year, and this will lead to “a protracted war beyond 2023,” as one of the documents says.

The publication of these assessments should lead to renewed calls for our government to level with the public about what it realistically hopes to achieve by prolonging the bloodshed, and why it continues to reject the resumption of the promising peace negotiations it blocked in April 2022.

We believe that blocking those talks was a dreadful mistake, in which the Biden administration capitulated to the warmongering, since-disgraced U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and that current U.S. policy is compounding that mistake at the cost of tens of thousands more Ukrainian lives and the destruction of even more of their country.

In most wars, while the warring parties strenuously suppress the reporting of civilian casualties for which they are responsible, professional militaries generally treat accurate reporting of their own military casualties as a basic responsibility. But in the virulent propaganda surrounding the war in Ukraine, all sides have treated military casualty figures as fair game, systematically exaggerating enemy casualties and understating their own.

Publicly available U.S. estimates have supported the idea that many more Russians are being killed than Ukrainians, deliberately skewing public perceptions to support the notion that Ukraine can somehow win the war, as long as we just keep sending more weapons.

The leaked documents provide internal U.S. military intelligence assessments of casualties on both sides. But different documents, and different copies of the documents circulating online, show conflicting numbers, so the propaganda war rages on despite the leak.

The most detailed assessment of attrition rates of troops says explicitly that U.S. military intelligence has “low confidence” in the attrition rates it cites. It attributes that partly to “potential bias” in Ukraine’s information sharing, and notes that casualty assessments “fluctuate according to the source.”

So, despite denials by the Pentagon, a document that shows a higher death toll on the Ukrainian side may be correct, since it has been widely reported that Russia has been firing several times the number of artillery shells as Ukraine, in a bloody war of attrition in which artillery appears to be the main instrument of death. Altogether, some of the documents estimate a total death toll on both sides approaching 100,000 and total casualties, killed and wounded, of up to 350,000.

Another document reveals that, after using up the stocks sent by NATO countries, Ukraine is running out of missiles for the S-300 and BUK systems that make up 89% of its air defenses. By May or June, Ukraine will therefore be vulnerable, for the first time, to the full strength of the Russian air force, which has until now been limited mainly to long-range missile strikes and drone attacks.

Recent Western arms shipments have been justified to the public by predictions that Ukraine will soon be able to launch new counter-offensives to take back territory from Russia. Twelve brigades, or up to 60,000 troops, were assembled to train on newly delivered Western tanks for this “spring offensive,” with three brigades in Ukraine and nine more in Poland, Romania and Slovenia.

But a leaked document from the end of February reveals that the nine brigades being equipped and trained abroad had less than half their equipment and, on average, were only 15% trained. Meanwhile, Ukraine faced a stark choice to either send reinforcements to Bakhmut or withdraw from the town entirely, and it chose to sacrifice some of its “spring offensive” forces to prevent the imminent fall of Bakhmut…………………………………….

The inability of either side to decisively defeat the other in the ruins of Bakhmut and other front-line towns in Donbas is why one of the most important documents predicted that the war was locked in a “grinding campaign of attrition” and was “likely heading toward a stalemate.”

Adding to the concerns about where this conflict is headed is the revelation in the leaked documents about the presence of 97 special forces from NATO countries, including from the U.K. and the U.S. This is in addition to previous reports about the presence of CIA personnel, trainers and Pentagon contractors, and the unexplained deployment of 20,000 troops from the 82nd and 101st Airborne Brigades near the border between Poland and Ukraine.

Worried about the ever-increasing direct U.S. military involvement, Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz has introduced a Privileged Resolution of Inquiry to force President Biden to notify the House of the exact number of U.S. military personnel inside Ukraine and precise U.S. plans to assist Ukraine militarily.

We can’t help wondering what President Biden’s plan could be, or if he even has one. But it turns out that we’re not alone. In what amounts to a second leak that the corporate media have studiously ignored, U.S. intelligence sources have told veteran investigative reporter Seymour Hersh that they are asking the same questions, and they describe a “total breakdown” between the White House and the U.S. intelligence

community.

Hersh’s sources describe a pattern that echoes the use of fabricated and unvetted intelligence to justify U.S. aggression against Iraq in 2003, in which Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Advisor Sullivan are by-passing regular intelligence analysis and procedures and running the Ukraine War as their own private fiefdom. They reportedly smear all criticism of President Zelenskyy as “pro-Putin,” and leave U.S. intelligence agencies out in the cold trying to understand a policy that makes no sense to them.

What U.S. intelligence officials know, but the White House is doggedly ignoring, is that, as in Afghanistan and Iraq, top Ukrainian officials running this endemically corrupt country are making fortunes skimming money from the over $100 billion in aid and weapons that America has sent them.

According to Hersh’s report, the CIA assesses that Ukrainian officials, including President Zelenskyy, have embezzled $400 million from money the United States sent Ukraine to buy diesel fuel for its war effort, in a scheme that involves buying cheap, discounted fuel from Russia. Meanwhile, Hersh says, Ukrainian government ministries literally compete with each other to sell weapons paid for by U.S. taxpayers to private arms dealers in Poland, the Czech Republic and around the world…………………….

First-hand reporting from inside Ukraine by New Cold War has described the same systematic pyramid of corruption as Hersh. A member of parliament, formerly in Zelenskyy’s party, told New Cold War that Zelenskyy and other officials skimmed 170 million euros from money that was supposed to pay for Bulgarian artillery shells.

The corruption reportedly extends to bribes to avoid conscription. The Open Ukraine Telegram channel was told by a military recruitment office that it could get the son of one of its writers released from the front line in Bakhmut and sent out of the country for $32,000.

As has happened in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and all the wars the United States has been involved in for many decades, the longer the war goes on, the more the web of corruption, lies and distortions unravels…………………………….

These leaks and investigative reports are not the first, nor will they be the last, to shine a light through the veil of propaganda that permits these wars to destroy young people’s lives in faraway places, so that oligarchs in Russia, Ukraine and the United States can amass wealth and power.

The only way this will stop is if more and more people get active in opposing those companies and individuals that profit from war–who Pope Francis calls the Merchants of Death–and boot out the politicians who do their bidding, before they make an even more fatal misstep and start a nuclear war.

Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies are the authors of War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict, published by OR Books in November 2022.

Medea Benjamin is the cofounder of CODEPINK for Peace, and the author of several books, including Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Nicolas J. S. Davies is an independent journalist, a researcher with CODEPINK and the author of Blood on Our Hands: The American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.  https://worldbeyondwar.org/leaks-reveal-reality-behind-u-s-propaganda-in-ukraine/

April 20, 2023 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

NUCLEAR AFTER-LIFE: FROM TRAGEDY TO FARCE, THE CLAIMS OF A NUCLEAR RENAISSANCE

the nuclear industry. It is the option you choose when you have trouble moving on and you embrace absurd self-destruction and the visiting of farce and misery on others.

[ED. I’m not attempting here to reproduce this entire scholarly and well-referenced article, or even to summarise it. I recommend the whole article – but here are extracts, including ones that particularly refer to Australia]

ARENA QUARTERLY NO.13, DARRIN DURANT, MAR 2023

……………….YESTERDAY’S HERO

The World Nuclear Industry Status Report (WNISR) is an annual update charting what is in effect the demise of the nuclear industry. The WNISR (2022) shows that nuclear power’s global share of commercial gross electricity generation peaked at 17.5% in 1996, but by the end of 2021 had dropped to 9.8%. Reactor construction starts peaked in 1979 at 234, but forty-eight of those were later abandoned. Thus 1979 was also a year of peak-abandonment. The number of operating reactors peaked in 2005 at 440. Net operating capacity peaked in 1990 at 312GW and has held roughly steady at 312-381GW until the present; it is what can be called a stagnant industry.

………………………….The false claim of mastery of technological destiny is a key part of the tragedy of nuclear power. A tragedy is not just an unhappy ending, but a story of an imperfect and flawed hero occasioning his or her own downfall. In many Greek tragedies, that flaw was hubris, and hubris characterized the development of the nuclear industry.

While Dwight D. Eisenhower’s ‘Atoms for Peace‘ speech in December 1953 promised to solve the atomic dilemma by turning that power from death to life, that hope was immediately translated into hubristic over-promising. 

…………….The over-confidence of the nuclear industry is illustrated by its failed projections. …………..

The nuclear industry has always tried to distance itself from its parent, the atomic bomb, but in the 1950’s and 60’s the legacy of weapons testing was a litany of environmental, political, and social injustices. British weapons testing in Australia is a case in point. ……………

Nuclear power is also an extractive industry, and uranium mining is a story of environmental degradation, contamination, and health inequalities visited upon vulnerable communities…………………………

The closing of the nuclear fuel cycle is similarly problematic, with waste disposal programs encountering persistent technical and social obstacles. My own volume, Nuclear Waste Management in Canada: Critical Issues, Critical Perspectives, co-edited with Genevieve Fuji-Johnson, shows how public participation initiatives nevertheless retain a scientistic framing of the issue. Only the public’s knowledge was problematized, as either emotively irrational or too diverse to constitute a coherent political demand. …………………….

IS NUCLEAR POWER NECESSARY FOR DECARBONIZATION?

………………… the GenCost 2022 report by Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), in conjunction with the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO), found renewables vastly cheaper than nuclear even after factoring in integration costs such as storage and transmission.

Dumbfounded by such cost comparisons, those new to the nuclear vs renewables debate wonder how nuclear survives as a financial idea at all. Martin Cohen and Andrew McKillop, in The Doomsday Machine: The High Price of Nuclear Energy, provide some clues, revealing an array of nuclear industry accounting tricks and a strategy that amounts to a nuclear asset bubble…………………….Independent energy analysts concluded power from Vogtle 3 & 4 will be five times as expensive as Georgia Power having acquired the same amounts of energy and capacity from renewables plus storage.

A POOR FIT FOR AUSTRALIA

………………………….  The trend is clear: nuclear is being replaced as a source of electricity. The first replacement was by natural gas and the second by non-hydro renewables. Renewables advocates point to such trends as indicators that nuclear power is not necessary for decarbonization.

Australia, which operates an Open-pool lightwater 20MW research reactor at Lucas Heights in New South Wales, has no commercial nuclear power reactors, and is thus an interesting test-case for the ‘nuclear is necessary’ claim.

South Australia is the model for an all-renewables grid, having already had extended runs (10+ days) in which wind and solar accounted for 100% of local demand. Moreover, AEMO’s Quarterly Energy Dynamics report (for 2022) depicts a north/south divide. Northern States (Queensland and New South Wales) are reliant on unreliable coal plants and suffer price spikes, while the southern States (Victoria and South Australia) saw a surge in renewables penetration into the grid, driving prices down. Renewables directly replace coal and lower prices.

Nuclear power is not deemed necessary for decarbonization in the Australian context. AEMO’s Integrated System Plan of 2022 modelled a step-change scenario, regarding it both most likely and compatible with net-zero emissions, in which renewables generate 98% of national electricity market energy by 2050 (including 10GW gas and 26GW dispatchable storage). Successive GenCost reports by AEMO, up to the latest in 2022, have deemed nuclear power in general too costly compared to renewables.

AEMO also skewers Small Modular Reactors (SMR), which are the modern nuclear industry fantasy. AEMO argues that SMR cost estimates are hopelessly biased and unreliable and that evidence of a positive learning rate (capacity to lower costs and build time when scaling up) is absent……..

THE MEANINGS OF NUCLEAR POWER

The Australian example suggests nuclear power is not a solution to climate concerns, but a potentially costly and burdensome engineering redundancy. ……………………………

The World Nuclear Association (WNA_ presents the nuclear industry as the victim of a renewables-biased investment and electricity market and an over-zealous regulatory environment. Calling for a more level playing field, nuclear power here is ‘victimized nuclear power’.

TECHNOLOGICAL DRAMAS

………………………… The far-right are straight climate deniers, yet fans of nuclear power. In Australia, see Pauline Hanson and Craig Kelly. In Europe, see the AfD (Germany), SvP (Sweden), Nye Borgerlige (Denmark), Fdl (Italy), Vlaams Belang (Belgium) and RN (France).  Lukewarmer ecomodernists agree on anthropogenic warming but minimize the climate problem, criticize environmentalism for being alarmist, and support nuclear power on scientistic grounds Some craft their messages in a way that climate deniers and/or advocates for fossil fuels always (just so happen to) find them acceptable. ……………….

GO BIG OR GO HOME

The nuclear renaissance has been offered as a magical and flexible antidote to concerns that we cannot power our way through to decarbonization……..

Chief among the conjuring tricks is a conflation of abundant and minimum power. The World Nuclear Association depicts the future as a big energy world, where electricity demand will rise substantially, engorged by urbanisation and the electrification of end-uses, and outpace total final energy demand. Simultaneously we are told that renewables are intermittent and only nuclear power can supply baseload power (minimum power required to supply average electricity demand). We are told that only baseload (nuclear) gives us reliable power. ‘Reliable’ is made to stand for both abundant and minimum. Unpacking each of those elements is part of demystifying the potential role of nuclear power.

Forecasts of electricity demand vary greatly. Amory Lovins predicts soft energy paths can protect both climate and economy at the same time as curtailing rampant consumption………….


‘Baseload is required for reliable power’ is a myth. Baseload power is more an economic than a technical concept, because baseload power supplies average electricity demand: it is the minimum power a power plant can produce without being switched off. When your car is idling at a traffic light, it is at baseload power. Practical experience and modelling confirm that variable renewables can be balanced by dispatchable (supply on demand) energy sources…………………………………..

THE NUCLEAR RENAISSANCE

………….. Is nuclear power there when you need it, as renaissance rhetoric suggests? France has a fleet of fifty-six reactors supplying 70 per cent of its electricity, but as gas shortages hit Europe in 2022 in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Électricité de France fleet suffered an annus horribilis. Over half of the fleet was shut down for repair, maintenance, and cracking and corrosion issues, resulting in record unplanned outages and nuclear output at a thirty-year low.

 Consider the Japanese nuclear fleet post- Fukushima. Gross electricity generation dropped from 275 TWh in 2011 to about 50 TWh as of July 2022…………..Neither reliable nor resilient, nuclear is often not there when you need it.

Can nuclear be there if we want it? …………………………… In 2019–2021 the mean construction time for reactors connected to the grid was 8.2 years, exceeding ‘expected’ estimates, which are usually quoted in the range of 4–5 years. Moreover, a host of Generation III+ reactor projects, touted as resolving engineering and project management issues that contributed to cost and construction blowouts, have all experienced cost and construction blowouts.

Prime examples are Olkiluoto-3 in Finland (expected 2009 become 2023, costs quadrupled), Flamanville-3 in France (expected 2012, still building, and costs increased fivefold), and Vogtle 3 & 4 in the USA (expected 2016-17, still building, and costs increased fivefold). The nuclear power industry has a negative, almost forgetting by doing, learning curve, rather than a positive learning curve.  Even the IAEA admitted investors were being scared off nuclear power by repeated failure to live up to promises…………….

Can nuclear power change? Advocates often pin their hopes on Small Modular Reactors (SMR), defined as sub-300MWe, designed for either serial construction or as sub-15MWe reactors for remote uses. Yet SMR’s are framed by the same kinds of utopian rhetorical visions we saw in the industry development stage, such as SMR’s as risk-free (extreme reliability and perfect safety), vehicles for indigenous autonomy (remote, portable or infrastructure-lite), and environmental saviours (waste and carbon free). 

Meanwhile material reality reveals the would-be emperor already has excessively expensive clothes. As documented by independent energy analysts at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, the NuScale SMR-plant proposal offered to Utah in the USA has already seen a reduction in units and a 53% jump in costs that render it even less cost-competitive with renewables than its originally uncompetitive offer.

SMRs do more than inherit farcical versions of the nuclear industry’s past over-promising. SMR proponents also push the technology in a way that would be a hindrance to decarbonisation……………..

………………… We should be suspicious about breezy nuclear industry claims that nuclear power and renewables can co-exist. In fact, research on resource allocation between nuclear and renewables finds evidence for the ‘crowding-out hypothesis’: that countries with greater attachment to nuclear will tend to have lesser attachment to renewables and vice versa). Any talk of SMRs should be interrogated for signs of material commitments, such as opposing grid upgrades, that would in fact mitigate against renewables, thus casting doubt on claims of ‘all of the above’ and on lip service paid to renewables as parts of decarbonisation pathways.

NUCLEAR AFTERLIFE

Some will respond to this analysis by suggesting my anti-nuclear stance is anti-technology or anti-science………..

An apt metaphor for nuclear power might thus be that of the afterlife: not the religious one – rather the Netflix series After Life, a dark comedy written and produced by Ricky Gervais. The central character Tony, played by Gervais, has lost his wife and, in his grief, decides he is just going to punish himself and the world by being a complete jerk. That is the nuclear industry. It is the option you choose when you have trouble moving on and you embrace absurd self-destruction and the visiting of farce and misery on others.

April 20, 2023 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Assange imprisonment has gone on for too long: Foreign Minister Penny Wong

Bendigo Advertiser, By Andrew Brown, April 17 2023

Foreign Minister Penny Wong has called for the extradition case against Julian Assange to come to an end.

Senator Wong said the legal case and imprisonment of the WikiLeaks co-founder has been going on for too long.

Mr Assange has been imprisoned in the UK for more than four years and faces extradition to the US on espionage charges.

Appeals to stop his extradition are currently before the UK courts.

Speaking at the National Press Club, Senator Wong said the government would continue to press for Mr Assange’s release…………………………………

Last week, almost 50 Australian MPs and senators signed a letter to US Attorney-General Merrick Garland urging him to end the pursuit of the WikiLeaks co-founder.

Advocates have urged for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to raise the issue of Mr Assange during upcoming meetings with US President Joe Biden and UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.  https://www.bendigoadvertiser.com.au/story/8161607/assange-imprisonment-has-gone-on-for-too-long-wong/?src=rss

April 18, 2023 Posted by | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, politics | Leave a comment

Germany’s last nukes shut down — Beyond Nuclear

As planned, Germany closed the last of its three operational reactors on April 15. These were kept running beyond their original December 2022 shutdown dates, largely as a political concession to conservative minority partners within the German government, as their electricity was not actually needed. The German winter energy crunch was related to a cutoff of gas imports from Russia, needed for heating. Since German heating is not electric, nuclear power had no role to play in easing that situation.

Amidst all the false propaganda in circulation that the German nuclear shutdown has caused a rise in coal use in Germany, it’s important to note an important historical fact that is the genesis for the German green energy revolution — known in Germany as the Energiewende.

Germany’s last nukes shut down — Beyond Nuclear

The Renewable Energy Act of 2000 stipulated as a pre-condition, that if nuclear power plants were to be shut down, these would be replaced by renewable energy and not by fossil fuels. And by creating a favorable and reliable investment environment for renewables, this is exactly what happened. Given its starting point in 2000, the growth of renewables has been stratospheric and Germany is well on target for its 2045 carbon-neutral goal. It also plans to phase out all coal use by 2038 at the latest and possibly by 2030. Moreover, while the nuclear share of Germany’s electricity market in 2000 was around 30%, today it is less than 6%.

Recent slight increases in brown coal (lignite) production in Germany were not for domestic consumption but market driven and, ironically, to meet winter electricity needs in nuclear France, which saw more than half of its not-so-reliable nuclear power fleet go down. More information about why Germany’s Energiewende is working, can be found in the 5th edition of our Talking Points. (Headline photo: Jakob Huber/Wikimedia Commons)

April 18, 2023 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Australia’s tallest wind turbines send first power to the grid — RenewEconomy

The 180MW Dulacca wind farm, featuring some of the tallest wind turbines ever installed in Australia, has officially sent its first power to the grid. The post Australia’s tallest wind turbines send first power to the grid appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Australia’s tallest wind turbines send first power to the grid — RenewEconomy

April 18, 2023 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

AGL juggles closure times as NSW waves goodbye to Australia’s oldest coal plant — RenewEconomy

NSW says it is focused on more renewables and storage as it waves goodbye to Liddell, and AGL juggles the closure dates of the next units. The post AGL juggles closure times as NSW waves goodbye to Australia’s oldest coal plant appeared first on RenewEconomy.

AGL juggles closure times as NSW waves goodbye to Australia’s oldest coal plant — RenewEconomy

April 18, 2023 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Australian and other nuclear news – week to 17 April

Some bits of good news :    What went right this week: malaria progress, animal comebacks, and more.

Webinar Is New Nuclear a Smart Climate Solution? Thur. Apr. 27, 7 – 8:30 p.m. ET  https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/is-new-nuclear-a-smart-climate-solution-tickets-605041444247    Watch online OR attend at the Ottawa Quaker Meetinghouse, 91-A Fourth Ave. Ottawa.

Coronavirus. While the latest versions are highly infectious, the number of recently reported deaths world-wide has decreased by 30%. However  increases in reported cases and deaths were seen in the South-East Asia and Eastern Mediterranean regions, and others, including Australia. Australian results show that 80-5% of deaths were in people with pre-existing chronic conditions. Pre-existing bad health may be the major problem, as with influenza and even “the common cold”.  I am thinking now that at present, Covid-19 is not at the same level of seriousness as climate and nuclear

Climate.  The poles are the ‘canaries in the coalmine’ of the climate crisis.  Seas have drastically risen along southern U.S. coast in past decade .

Nuclear.  The global nuclear lobby is having a little hissy fit about Germany. Despite all sorts of pressure from nuclear companies and their bought politicians and media, on 15 April, Germany stuck to its agenda – and finally shut down all nuclear power 

Christina notes. Shouldn’t we all get out of nuclear, before the next nuclear failure (whether it be financial, security, accident, pollution ………)?

AUSTRALIA.  The dangerous one is the U.S, not China.Weapons-makers set to gain more influence in defence operations. Universities and the AUKUS Military-Industrial Complex. 

Rex Patrick on AUKUS submarines: “an astonishingly bad deal”.  Former Pacific leaders blast Australia over nuclear powered submarine deal. Australia’s 9 news papers gave Navy chief a platform for a resounding attack the doubters on AUKUS nuclear submarine 

Submissions to Senate.  Friends of the Earth accuses the Australian Government Industry Department of blatant racism in its Kimba nuclear waste dump plan.   Professor George W Burns says – Keep the Nuclear Prohibitions, in the immediate and long-term interests of all Australians… and of the planet. Monica Leggett, powerfully calls on all Australian MPs to reject nuclear power. 

Western Australian company to build low-level radioactive waste facility – Kimba dump a decade away – now irrelevant?

CLIMATE. Nuclear disasters could leave a lasting legacy of contaminants in glaciers.

ECONOMICS. The Pros And Cons of Modular Nuclear Reactors. One German company persists with nuclear power -interests in reactors in Sweden..

ENERGY. 16% of France’s power supply blocked amid protest – as nuclear reactor maintenance disrupted.

LEGAL. Lawsuit seeks to uphold closing California´s last nuke plant. Ciaron says he was arrested for trying to give ‘the key to Julian Assange’s cell’ to Joe Biden.

MEDIA. Media falsely blames Russia, as Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) target Donbass towns with illegal “butterfly” cluster mines..

NUCLEAR TECHNOLOGY. ITER fusion: $16-million-a-second and no electricity. Massive undersea works to commence for HinkleyPoint C nuclear project.

OPPOSITION to NUCLEAR. Local Indigenous peoples protest possible licence renewal for world’s largest uranium mine.

POLITICS. 

POLITICS INTERNATIONAL and DIPLOMACY. 

PROTESTS. German protests against Framatome’s nuclear fuel production in Lingen.

SAFETY. UN’s nuclear chief warns ‘we are living on borrowed time‘ after two landmine explosions near Europe’s largest atomic power station in Ukraine. ‘It’s time to pump the brakes on reintroduction of nuclear energy to Trawsfynydd’.

SECRETS and LIES. Corruption in the Ukraine government, as Zelensky skims $millions from USA for diesel, while buying cheap diesel fromRussia. Leaked documents expose US-NATO Ukraine war plans. ‘No Business In The Public Domain’: National Security Council spokesman Kirby Warns Journalists Not To Report On Leaked Pentagon Documents. Ukraine-Russia war – live: Damning Pentagon leak has not affected relations, Kyiv says. Westminster keeps nuclear secrets to avoid upsetting Scottish Government. Zelensky losing control of intelligence agents – media.

SPACE. EXPLORATION, WEAPONS. An operational domain’: Fear UK nuclear power plan for moon may lead to militarisation of space.

WASTES. 

WAR and CONFLICT . Two American brigades close to the Ukrainian border, but no plan, no leadership towards ending the war!. US Special Forces in Ukraine at embassy, official confirms, as Pentagon document leak probe heats up.

US troops in Taiwan ‘on the table’ if China invades, Michael McCaul says. US troops to China? Not a good idea, really. The coming war on China: the real target is the American people. 

CONTAINING THE BOMB:  Finland participated in new NATO air combat exercise over Baltic Sea — . Top of the world: Pentagon’s Ultima Thule is rebranded. 

AN ASSESSMENT OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS FREE ZONES.

WEAPONS and WEAPONS SALES. 

April 17, 2023 Posted by | Christina reviews | Leave a comment

Progressive Democrats Urge Attorney General To Drop Charges Against Julian Assange

A group of U.S. Representatives, including Rashida Tlaib, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Greg Casar, and Jamaal Bowman, sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland urging him to drop criminal charges against Julian Assange and to withdraw the U.S.’s request to extradite him with the British Government. The Representatives argue that Assange is a journalist who was simply doing his job by publishing classified information that was in the public interest. They also argue that the charges against him are politically motivated and that he would not receive a fair trial in the United States. The letter comes as Assange is currently fighting extradition to the United States, where he faces 18 charges under the Espionage Act. If convicted, he could face up to 175 years in prison. The representative’s letter is a significant development in the case against Assange. It shows that there is growing opposition to the charges against him, and it puts pressure on Attorney General Garland to drop the case.

April 17, 2023 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Ciaron says he was arrested for trying to give ‘the key to Julian Assange’s cell’ to Joe Biden

Ciaron O’Reilly says he was attempting to deliver “the key to Julian Assange’s cell” to US President Joe Biden, who is facing calls to drop extradition proceedings against the Wikileaks co-founder.

15 April 2023 By David Aidone, SBS News

KEY POINTS
  • An Australian activist says he was arrested for protesting outside Dublin Castle during US President Joe Biden’s visit.
  • Ciaron O’Reilly held a key-shaped placard demanding freedom for Julian Assange.
  • Mr Assange, co-founder of WikiLeaks, is fighting extradition to the US.

An Australian anti-war activist and former bodyguard to Julian Assange claims he was arrested after staging a protest outside Dublin Castle in Ireland where United States President Joe Biden was attending an event this week.

Ciaron O’Reilly posted pictures of himself on social media holding a novelty-sized key-shaped placard emblazoned with the words “President Biden, Free Julian Assange“.

Mr O’Reilly said he was attempting to deliver the key to Mr Biden, who was  on a four-day trip to Northern Ireland and Ireland honouring the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement.

He said he was arrested by officers of Garda Siochana, the national police service of Ireland, after protesting outside Dublin Castle while a banquet was being held for Mr Biden.

“Joe seemed to have dropped his key to #JulianAssange’s cell, I was merely returning it!,” Mr O’Reilly wrote on Twitter.

“We need to #FreeAssangeNOW! O’Reilly was wrestled to the ground by members of the GardaiSiochana outside #Dublin Castle where a banquet was underway during the #Biden visit,” the post read…………………………………… more https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/ciaron-says-he-was-arrested-for-trying-to-give-the-key-to-julian-assanges-cell-to-joe-biden/d4rc1q76w

April 17, 2023 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Assange: The Truth They’ve Been Hiding from You

April 17, 2023 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

The dangerous one is the U.S. -not China

As for Taiwan, let’s remember that the international community recognises Taiwan as part of China and Taiwan has no seat by itself in the United Nations.

By Colin Mackerras, Apr 16, 2023 https://johnmenadue.com/the-dangerous-one-is-the-u-s/

The implication of AUKUS is that China constitutes a danger to Australian security. It borders on official Australian policy that China is an aggressive power bent on domination. But the history of the People’s Republic suggests its military is for defence, not aggression and that the cases where it has used external military force are very few. Under Xi Jinping it may be assertive and keen to extend influence, especially economic, but it shows no signs of political/military aggression. On the contrary, it is the U.S. that constantly uses external military force and is bent on maintaining domination at all costs.

It was less than a year after the birth of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) on 1 October 1949 that the Korean War broke out. Korean history of the first years after World War II is too complex to pursue here. But essentially no sooner was Korea independent of a defeated Japan in 1945 than a divided country emerged, with the U.S. setting up the Republic of Korea (South Korea) on 15 August 1948 and the Democratic People’s Republic (North Korea) following on 9 September. Under U.S. dominance, it was the south that moved first formally to divide the country.

When the north attacked the south in June 1950, the U.S. got the United Nations to intervene under its own American leadership. China became involved only in October 1950, after the U.S. actively threatened to move north to invade the fledgling PRC. Yet, at U.S. behest, China was condemned for aggression.

Let’s be very clear: the U.S. was the first foreign power to be involved in this war, not China. After a truce reached in 1953, Chinese troops withdrew fully from the north by 1958, while American troops remain in the south to this day. The dangerous one is the U.S., which assumes its God-given right to control the world, not China. There is no peace treaty covering Korea to this day.

Following the Korean War, China has only rarely been involved in wars outside its own borders. In 1962, it fought a brief border war with India, but it is important to note that the rights and wrongs of this are extremely controversial. Although the Western media reported almost entirely India’s version of events, scholars such as the late Neville Maxwell (1926-2019) and Gregory Clark have shown convincingly that China had a perfectly respectable case.

The most recent time China sent troops to attack another country was in Vietnam in February and March 1979 in response to Vietnam’s invasion of Cambodia. During this very brief war, China made no attempt to take the capital or to change the Vietnamese government. It withdrew unilaterally.

In short, the longest war since 1949 to see Chinese troops fight outside their borders is still the Korean war. It was unfairly condemned of aggression by the first foreign power to participate in the war, with the U.S. version of events sticking for decades because of its world power.

Since the Korean War, the U.S. continues to be involved in numerous wars, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, among others, with Australia simply taking part to follow the boss. What’s striking is that the U.S. has lost these wars and ended up withdrawing humiliated. The U.S. has attempted to invent an ideological justification but frequently been attacked by protests from within its own borders. It has also been involved in proxy wars, some such as the present Ukraine war large in scale.

In contrast to China, the U.S. has hundreds of military bases outside its own borders and has installed numerous governments in foreign countries replacing those that don’t conform to its ideology it calls “democracy”.

Many in the West assume that under Xi Jinping China has become an aggressive nation, even if it was not before. It is true China is much more assertive in world affairs. But I see no sign that China has become aggressive. It shows no sign of wanting to use its armed forces outside its own territory.

As for Taiwan, let’s remember that the international community recognises Taiwan as part of China and Taiwan has no seat by itself in the United Nations. The U.S. may be goading China to retake Taiwan with violence, but has not succeeded up to now. China’s policy is now, and has always been, that it wants to reunify the country by retaking Taiwan, but it wants peaceful reunification, using force only as a last resort.

China extends its influence through trade and investment. We know that its Belt and Road Initiative has expanded China’s economic and to some extent political influence throughout Central Asia, Africa and Latin America, and even the South Pacific. We even hear increasing reports of China’s replacing the U.S. dollar as the reserve currency by trading in the Chinese yuan and other currencies.

Western countries, especially the U.S., express alarm at the increase of Chinese influence and have taken increasingly severe measures to thwart it. However, what the Chinese have not done is establish military bases, overthrow local regimes or even try to spread their ideology to those countries with which they trade. In this sense they are far less dangerous than the U.S.

Xi Jinping talks of a common shared future of humanity, not of dominance. Western commentators tend to assume that’s just words, and really he hides deception and conquest in his heart. I don’t see the evidence for that.

What China wants, and what seems to me in China’s interests, are two things. One is to protect China against external attack. The other is a multipolar world, in which China is one of the important poles. It does not want or aim for a Chinese-dominated unipolar world. True, it is becoming involved in the Middle East and in peace processes to an unprecedented extent, at the same time as the U.S. is in decline relative to China (and other countries). Personally, I can’t see why it should not. As a great civilisation, it has a right to extensive influence. Influence is quite different from dominance.

The U.S. currently assumes it is number 1. Its main aim is to retain that position. Its policies are geared to that end, to keep China down. What alarms the U.S. is China’s success. How can a country so recently impoverished and backward actually be prosperous enough to enjoy a life expectancy at birth longer than the U.S.? (World Bank data for 2020 have China at 78, and the U.S. at 77).

The way Australia has submitted itself to this dangerous and untrustworthy country, the U.S., is shameful. Our track-record of blindly following allies into wars that don’t concern us is unworthy of the independent country we should be and aspire to be.

April 17, 2023 Posted by | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Australia’s 9 news papers gave Navy chief a platform for a resounding attack the doubters on AUKUS nuclear submarine

‘Hand-wringers’ under attack as Navy chief and Nine round on AUKUS doubters

Australia’s chief of Navy believes AUKUS is one of the country’s greatest nation-building projects. And Nine papers were happy to give him a rooftop to shout from.

Crikey, DAVID HARDAKER, APR 17, 2023

The Nine mastheads have continued their full-throated backing of all things AUKUS, allotting prime weekend front-page space to Australia’s chief of Navy Mark Hammond, who — blow me down — laid out why the nation must get behind the Navy’s submarine project.

In a tour de force of military reasoning, the 37-year Australian Defence Force veteran also picked up some of the talking points advanced by the political class to defend the $368 billion decision sprung on the nation just a few weeks ago.

Hammond lamented that AUKUS was not being hailed as one of the great nation-building projects, such as the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric scheme.  ……………. (registered readers only)

April 17, 2023 Posted by | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, media | Leave a comment

German nuclear phaseout – a victory of reason over the lust for profit

Millions of people worked towards this day for years. People who protested
against reprocessing plants, nuclear waste transport, unsafe nuclear waste
storage facilities and the construction of new nuclear power plants.

Those decades of resistance were worth it. The German nuclear phase-out is a
victory of reason over the lust for profit; over powerful corporations and
their client politicians.

It is a people-powered success against all the
odds. I thank all the brave people who took risks for their beliefs;
everyone who took part in demonstrations; all the people who signed
petitions and sent letters of protest. And I’m proud of the role Greenpeace
has played in opposing high-risk nuclear technology.

Greenpeace 15th April 2023 https://www.greenpeace.org/international/story/59219/tschuss-atomkraft-end-nuclear-power-germany/

Tschüss, Atomkraft: the end of nuclear power in Germany

April 17, 2023 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Media falsely blames Russia, as Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) target Donbass towns with illegal “butterfly” cluster mines.

Protest rally against Kiev’s cluster mines, Donetsk August 2022

Undermining Ukraine.  April 16, 2023, By Dimaq  https://1489.is/undermining-ukraine/

the BBC's James Waterhouse reports from Balakliya:
 "It’s hard to describe this as anything other than.. random. This is a patch of land, in the middle of Balakliya, it’s not a place - unlike other areas - that was once contested, where there was heavy fighting."
  "- but what these minesweepers are looking for, are so-called Butterfly mines. They’re banned by international law, they don’t look much, but the damage they can cause, is severe.
 They’re scattered from a flying rocket. They’re illegal because of the indiscriminate way they kill and injure civilians. In the area around Izyum, Russia and Ukraine have both been accused of using Butterfly mines; the latter denies it."

 To my knowledge, no Western media has ever reported on the AFU's shelling of Donetsk and Gorlovka and other towns under Russia's control, with Butterfly cluster mines. If there were any such reports, the question of who fired the rockets would have been fogged, such as by saying that "both sides possess these anti-personnel mines".  Attempts to enlighten media or government ministers on the existence and use of these nasty and insidious little devices, such as I recorded here last July - have fallen on deaf ears. 
 
This is despite the fact that their use is now forbidden under all circumstances, and Ukraine is the only country that still has stocks of the Soviet-era weapon, following the destruction of the last of those remaining in Belarus several years ago. It is also despite the proven fact that the AFU has been using the cluster munitions, and using them against purely civilian targets with no possible military objective. (as noted by James Waterhouse above, unwittingly accusing the AFU of this war crime)

Against this background, it is astonishing that the BBC should now act as a vehicle for Kiev's criminal actions by spreading a misleading story about de-mining operations in Izyum. The story, broadcast on the 6 O'Clock BBC news on April 11th, was also presented more or less word for word in an illustrated article, which I copy below [on original]   . I also copy the video, which demonstrates the depth of deceit in the whole report - the deceit being that Russia never used Lepestok Petal mines near Izyum or anywhere else in Ukraine, and the BBC and Human Rights Watch know this perfectly well.  What we see here is actually Ukrainian army sappers searching out the petal mines that they themselves fired at Izyum while it was under Russian "occupation", in the same way that they fired them into other areas of Lugansk and Donetsk further East at around the same time.


 Russian sappers have spent thousands of hours de-mining around Donetsk, finding and destroying the thousands of "little rippers" before they blow the legs off more innocent civilians. This is quite unlike most de-mining operations, where forces taking control of new territory must remove all the mines left by their opponents as barriers to slow enemy progress. The use of Lepestok cluster munitions by the AFU has more in common with Israel's use of cluster bombs in Southern Lebanon at the end of the 2006 war - an act of pure vindictive vandalism given the ceasefire agreement had already been made.


 Before presenting the BBC's article and video about this incredible exercise, where Ukrainian soldiers are doing the job that they should be performing as part of a punishment for the crime they committed six months earlier, it is important to add some more context to the situation. At the time the AFU made a move in the North East, Russian forces were pre-occupied with protecting the Zaporyzhe Nuclear power plant from Ukrainian incursions and shelling, as well as trying to prevent the forced evacuation of Kherson. 


With reported help from MI6 and other NATO special forces, Ukraine launched a surprise offensive towards Lugansk oblast, forcing a strategic retreat by Russia from Izyum. Many of the locals accompanied them, to avoid retribution and torture as "Russian collaborators" from the invading Nationalist army. As soon as the town was "liberated" by Kiev, work began to frame Russia for supposed war crimes, including a grotesque exhumation of hundreds of bodies from a wood near the town. 

Those buried were mostly civilians killed by either side when Russian forces took over the town, as well as those killed by Ukrainian shelling since. While they may have lacked coffins, all the graves were identified, at least by a number, with the inventory of burials available at the local mortuary. 

In some cases where local people had fled East or North to Russia, they had no say in the exhumation and examination of their dead relatives.  Human Rights Watch and other International bodies were closely involved in this fraud, and the claims that Russia was responsible for burying soldiers in "mass graves" in Izyum rapidly assumed a prominent status in Western media, aided by a visit from Mr Zelensky. Fittingly, as indicated in this photo [0n original], one of his guards wore a Totenkopf skull symbol on his backpack. 

Below [on original] is James Waterhouse’s article, with this leading illustration, and quote falsely attributing the mines to Russia. The Russian army may have laid some mines on roads West of Izyum, but scattering APM clusters would have served no purpose whatsoever. If Russia subsequently manages to retake this territory, they will surely thank the AFU for removing their butterfly mines. The AFU in its turn may think better of showering territory it intends to capture with its “little rippers”.

April 17, 2023 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Nuclear waste abandonment risks the dangers of amnesia

Broad-stroke reassurances from supporters of a proposed deep geological repository for Canada’s nuclear waste have failed to allay important environmental and security concerns.

 The Hill Times, BY ERIKA SIMPSON | April 13, 2023

A plan to store Canada’s nuclear waste deep underground in northern Ontario raises serious safety concerns for current and future generations.

In light of this, the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO)—which is responsible for developing and implementing the plan—should reconsider other options, such as a rolling stewardship model, which actively plans for retrieval and periodic repackaging of nuclear waste.

From April 4-5, the South Bruce Nuclear Exploration Forum considered the NWMO plan to store all of Canada’s high-level nuclear waste in one deep geological repository (DGR). An earlier plan had proposed burying intermediate- and low-level nuclear waste in limestone caverns constructed under the Bruce reactor, but was met with a “no” vote from members of the Saugeen-Ojibway Nation. That led to Bruce Power withdrawing its own proposal in June 2020.

The current proposal for a $23-billion DGR project at Teeswater, Ont., may be constructed 50 km away from the Bruce Nuclear Generating Station, the world’s largest operating nuclear site that supplies 30 per cent of Ontario’s power. Whether the proposal goes ahead in partnership with a willing host community will be decided by the Governor in Council. Once one of the two remaining possible host communities—either Teeswater or Ignace, Ont.—is selected, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) and the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada will continue to lead decades-long consultation processes…………………………..

the broad-stroke reassurances of the DGR proponents have failed to allay concerns.

There are questions about how 700 engineers and construction workers could possibly be housed. I have written about SNC-Lavalin—an engineering company that was prosecuted internationally for corruption—yet remains the leading contractor and possible steward of Canada’s nuclear wastes. Heavily subsidized by Canadian tax dollars, the company is driven by the quest for money, not the quest for nuclear security. Although no questions were publicly asked about SNC-Lavalin, a project officer from the Wastes and Decommissioning Division at CNSC explained each engineering and closure stage could be halted, if deemed necessary.

There are also questions about impacts on future generations. Would the underground nuclear waste containers be monitored, in perpetuity, and what might be safety concerns about situating any such site in the Great Lakes’ water basin, the world’s largest body of fresh water and the drinking water for up to 40 million people? The hydrogeologists and geologists were confident that the DGR concept—possibly the first or fourth underground nuclear waste site in the world—would not be beyond Canada’s engineering and scientific capabilities.

I asked DGR proponents about four U.S. Senators who asked President Joe Biden to raise the issue with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last month. I was told this would be a local decision—made by area residents in next year’s referendum—combined somehow with a municipal town council majority decision, and a possible veto by First Nations—and therefore the United States would have nothing to do with it, even though Canada’s federal cabinet would have the final say.

I asked Tiina Jalonen, the senior vice president of development at Posiva Oy about Finland’s proposed used-fuel disposal facility and her government’s plans for “signage.” It could be important to warn our great-great-great-grandchildren to refrain from curiously digging out whatever leaks into rock formations below.

What about the legacy of strikes on nuclear sites, like the Russian assault on Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, that has made evident that nuclear power plants and waste disposal sites could become targets in conflict zones? Nobody publicly asked about terrorist threats, and whether the site could become hostage to nefarious bargaining.

What else might go wrong? I asked two fire chiefs, but they had not heard about the fire at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico that shut down the site in 2014 due to a major radiation release that contaminated workers at the surface. I asked a geologist about Germany’s Asse Salt Mine that still leaks water into radioactive containers.

Perhaps continual monitoring and the ‘rolling stewardship’ concept—that actively plans for retrieval and periodic repackaging—would be most effective, because wholesale abandonment could lead to amnesia.

Erika Simpson is an associate professor of international politics at Western University, the author of Nuclear Waste Burial in Canada? The Political Controversy over the Proposal to Construct a Deep Geologic Repository and Nuclear waste: Solution or problem? and the president of the Canadian Peace Research Association.
https://www.hilltimes.com/story/2023/04/13/nuclear-waste-abandonment-risks-the-dangers-of-amnesia/384800/

April 17, 2023 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

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