Committee to Protect Journalists calls on Ukrainian lawmakers to drop media bill
https://cpj.org/2022/09/cpj-calls-on-ukrainian-lawmakers-to-drop-media-bill/ Paris, September 13, 2022 – In response to media reports that Ukraine’s parliament passed in its first reading on August 30 a media bill that threatens to restrict press freedom, the Committee to Protect Journalists issued the following statement calling for the bill to be dropped:
“Ukraine’s media bill seriously imperils press freedom in the country by tightening government control over information at a time when citizens need it the most,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, in New York. “Ukrainian legislators should abandon the bill, or at least pause its progress in parliament until the European Union can weigh in with recommendations.”
Ukraine, a candidate to join the EU, is required to reform its media laws–many of which were implemented in the 1990s–in order to begin negotiations for membership. Matti Maasikas, the head of the EU Delegation to Ukraine, said in an interview published on August 23 that the bill was currently under evaluation by the EU and the Council of Europe, which could issue recommendations by the end of September.
The bill has the support of members of the ruling party, which has a majority in the Verkhovna Rada, the country’s parliament. To become law, it would need to pass two more readings in parliament and then be approved by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
As of September 13, the website of the Verkhovna Rada did not indicate the date of the second reading. “They have 21 days [after the first reading] to make amendments. But then it can take a month or up to the end of the year to be approved,” Sergiy Tomilenko, the head of the Ukrainian National Union of Journalists (NUJU), a local trade group, told CPJ via messaging app.
If passed, the legislation would expand the powers of the National Council of Television and Radio Broadcasting, the state broadcasting regulator, allowing it to regulate online and print outlets, invalidate the registration and license of any media outlet, block online media without a court order, and request that social media platforms and web browsers remove content forbidden under the law, according to multiple media reports.
According to an analysis posted on Telegram by NUJU, only 10% of the bill directly addressed commitments that Ukraine has undertaken as a candidate to join the EU. “The rest reflects the authorities’ desire to have more influence on the media: to issue injunctions, fines, and shut them down,” Tomilenko said in a statement NUJU posted to Telegram.
The new bill was amended only a few weeks before the vote, without a preliminary discussion with journalists and members of the media, Tomilenko said in the same statement.
CPJ emailed the Verkhovna Rada for comment, but did not receive any reply.
US EU LOOMING CRASH, BILLIONS OF US $$ POURING INTO UKRAINE, WAR BETWEEN THE US AND RUSSIA
Bruce Gagnon interview – 13 September 22, https://www.bitchute.com/video/4zlLVGLWEONw/ Youtube has removed Regis Tremblay’s videos – I suppose, for political reasons. This time he is interviewing Bruce Gagnon – long-time doughty warrior for preventing war in space. I wish I had time to transcribe it
Fast transition to renewables will save the world up to $12tn (£10.2tn) by 2050
Switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy could save the world as
much as $12tn (£10.2tn) by 2050, an Oxford University study says. The
report said it was wrong and pessimistic to claim that moving quickly
towards cleaner energy sources was expensive. Gas prices have soared on
mounting concerns over energy supplies. But the researchers say that going
green now makes economic sense because of the falling cost of renewables.
“Even if you’re a climate denier, you should be on board with what we’re
advocating,” Prof Doyne Farmer from the Institute for New Economic Thinking
at the Oxford Martin School told BBC News. “Our central conclusion is that
we should go full speed ahead with the green energy transition because it’s
going to save us money,” he said.
BBC 13th Sept 2022
Continued drop in France’s nuclear power energy production
Nuclear power generation at EDF’s (EDF.PA) French reactors in August fell
by 37.6% year on year to 18.1 terawatt hours (TWh), mainly due to the
impact of the discovery of stress corrosion, the utility said on Tuesday.
EDF said on its website that total nuclear generation in France since the
start of the year was 191 TWh, down 20.2% compared with January-August
2021.
Reuters 13th Sept 2022
Russia’s uranium exports can continue – exempt from sanctions imposed on other commodities
The German government said Monday that it can’t stop a shipment of Russian uranium destined for French nuclear plants from being processed at a site in Germany because atomic fuel isn’t covered by European Union sanctions on Russia.
Environmentalists have called on Germany and the Netherlands to block a shipment of uranium aboard the Russian ship Mikhail Dudin — currently docked in the French port of Dunkirk — from being transported to a processing plant in Lingen, close to the German-Dutch border.
“We have no legal grounds to prevent the transport of uranium from Russia, because the sanctions imposed by the EU due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine exempt the import of nuclear fuel … to the EU from import bans,” said a spokesman for Germany’s Environment Ministry, Andreas Kuebler. Safety requirements for the shipment had been examined and foundto meet requirements, meaning German authorities had to approve it, he added.
Washington Post 12th Sept 2022
Plunging costs of renewable energy – as nuclear power costs increase
The tumbling cost of renewable energy means transitioning away from fossil
fuels over the next 30 years will save the world “at least $12 trillion”,
according to researchers at the University of Oxford.
The decarbonisation
of the energy system will not only see a major reduction in the cost of
producing and distributing energy, but will also allow for greater levels
of energy to be produced and therefore help expand energy access around the
planet.
The faster the transition to renewables occurs, the greater the
potential for savings, the team found, and urged governments to recognise
the enormous boost to the global economy, that abandoning fossil fuels will
bring about.
“There is a pervasive misconception that switching to clean,
green energy will be painful, costly and mean sacrifices for us all – but
that’s just wrong,” said Professor Doyne Farmer, who leads the team that
conducted the study at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the
Oxford Martin School. The research team analysed thousands of transition
cost scenarios produced by major energy models and examined data on: 45
years of solar energy costs, 37 years of wind energy costs and 25 years for
battery storage.
They said the research reveals that the real cost of solar
energy dropped twice as fast as the most ambitious projections in these
models, revealing that, over the past 20 years, previous models “badly
overestimated the future costs” of renewable energy technology compared to
the reality of cheap renewables we are already seeing today.
The research also suggests nuclear power will play a diminishing role in the future
global energy mix due to the rising costs of building reactors. “The costs
of nuclear have consistently increased over the last five decades, making
it highly unlikely to be cost competitive with plunging renewable and
storage costs,” the researchers said. Meanwhile, the study showed the costs
for storage technologies, such as batteries and hydrogen electrolysis, are
also likely to fall dramatically.
Independent 13th Sept 2022
Permit problems for Sizewell C nuclear project? Cooling system could kill millions of fish.
Permit problems for Sizewell C predicted after report confirms cooling
mechanisms can kill millions of fish. The Sizewell C nuclear reactor may
face obstacles in receiving an environmental permit after a report revealed
that the cooling mechanism at a similar development could kill millions of
fish.
ENDS 12th Sept 2022
Ukraine’s threatened nuclear power plant has been shut down. Has a crisis been averted?
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-09-12/russia-ukraine-war-zaporizhzhia-nuclear-power-plant-explainer/101430510 By Andrew Thorpe, with wires
The sixth and final operating reactor at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant was shut down on Sunday to lower the risk of a radiation disaster amid the continuing fighting between Russia and Ukraine.
Key points:
- All six of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant’s reactors have now stopped, in a “cold shutdown”
- The move diminishes the risk of meltdown as an active fission reaction is no longer taking place, but the nuclear material at the site still requires constant cooling
- Constant shelling around the plant risks further disrupting the plant’s electricity supply and causing its cooling systems to fail
The move became possible after the plant was partially reconnected to Ukraine’s power grid, following weeks of
disconnections and reconnections caused by heavy shelling in the area damaging power lines.
The facility had been isolated from the power grid and operating in “island mode” since September 5, meaning only one reactor remained operational, generating power to run the cooling systems and other crucial processes for the rest of the plant.
Fighting near the plant, one of the 10 biggest atomic power stations in the world, fuelled fears of a disaster like the one that took place at Chernobyl in northern Ukraine in 1986, when a reactor exploded and contaminated a vast area that remains unsafe to live in.
So, are we out of the woods yet?
While Zaporizhzhia’s reactors are protected by a reinforced containment shelter that should withstand being hit by a shell or rocket, a disruption in the electrical supply to the plant risks knocking out its cooling systems, which are essential for the reactors’ safety — even after they have been shut down.
Nuclear reactor cores continue to emit radioactivity and generate heat long after they have finished operating, meaning systems that circulate water through the cores to cool them are required to stay operational for extended periods of time.
The risk of a full-scale meltdown diminishes over time once reactors cease operating, meaning Zaporizhzhia’s “cold shutdown” is a significant risk-reduction strategy — but the danger is far from over yet.
Further damage to the plant’s electricity supply, a high likelihood given the continued fighting, would require the plant to begin running its safety systems using emergency diesel generators.
TODAY. The Ukrainian propaganda war becomes ever more sinister – with “filtration”
“Filtration” – yes – that’s the key word. It means the torture, expulsion, killing, of people that you call ‘collaborators” ETC. in Western propaganda now, there are dozens of media reports on how the Russians are abusing Ukrainians.
Then there’s just this one headline from the Wall Street Journal – “Ukraine hit squads are killing Russian occupiers and collaborators” (behind a paywall). What could they be thinking of? – When the standard Western dogma is that all the bad things are done by Russia, and Ukrainians are squeaky clean.
One report , from a pro-Russian media source, says “Ukraine cracks downs on civilians – official“
I can’t imagine why on earth the Wall Street Journal lapsed from its religious Western duty to blacken Russians, but I bet they won’t let it happen again.
A heretical thought from a Westerner – but is it possible that, not just Russia, but both sides are guilty of atrocities, in this hate-filled Ukraine situation?
The Weapons Industry as a Taxpayer Scam
In all, the top five weapons contractors—Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing, General Dynamics, and Northrop Grumman—split more than $200 billion in “defense” revenue in the last fiscal year, mostly from the Pentagon but also from lucrative foreign arms sales. The new budget proposals will only boost those already astounding figures.
Military contractors and arms manufacturers cash in as Congress adds billions to the Pentagon budget each year.
The jobs card is the strongest tool of influence available to the arms industry in its efforts to keep Congress eternally boosting Pentagon spending, but far from the only one
So far, in the 2022 election cycle, weapons firms have already donated $3.4 million to members of the House Armed Services Committee
There are scant, if any, restrictions against members of Congress owning or trading defense company stocks, even those who sit on influential national-security-related committees. In other words, it’s completely legal for them to marry their personal financial interests to those of defense contractors.
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2022/09/12/weapons-industry-taxpayer-scam JULIA GLEDHILL, WILLIAM HARTUNG, September 12, 2022 Congress has spoken when it comes to next year’s Pentagon budget and the results, if they weren’t so in line with past practices, should astonish us all. The House of Representatives voted to add $37 billion and the Senate $45 billion to the administration’s already humongous request for “national defense,” a staggering figure that includes both the Pentagon budget and work on nuclear weapons at the Department of Energy. If enacted, the Senate’s sum would push spending on the military to at least $850 billion annually, far more—adjusted for inflation—than at the height of the Korean or Vietnam wars or the peak years of the Cold War.
U.S. military spending is, of course, astronomically high—more than that of the next nine countries combined. Here’s the kicker, though: the Pentagon (an institution that has never passed a comprehensive financial audit) doesn’t even ask for all those yearly spending increases in its budget requests to Congress. Instead, the House and Senate continue to give it extra tens of billions of dollars annually. No matter that Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has publicly stated the Pentagon has all it needs to “get the capabilities… to support our operational concepts” without such sums.
It would be one thing if such added funding were at least crafted in line with a carefully considered defense strategy. More often than not, though, much of it goes to multibillion dollar weapons projects being built in the districts or states of key lawmakers or for items on Pentagon wish lists (formally known as “unfunded priorities lists”). It’s unclear how such items can be “priorities” when they haven’t even made it into the Pentagon’s already enormous official budget request.
In addition, throwing yet more money at a department incapable of managing its current budget only further strains its ability to meet program goals and delivery dates. In other words, it actually impairs military readiness. Whatever limited fiscal discipline the Pentagon has dissipates further when lawmakers arbitrarily increase its budget, despite rampant mismanagement leading to persistent cost overruns and delivery delays on the military’s most expensive (and sometimes least well-conceived) weapons programs.
Inn short, parochial concerns and special-interest politics regularly trump anything that might pass as in the national interest, while doing no favors to the safety and security of the United States. In the end, most of those extra funds simply pad the bottom lines of major weapons contractors like Lockheed Martin and Raytheon Technologies. They certainly don’t help our servicemembers, as congressional supporters of higher Pentagon budgets routinely claim.
A Captured Congress
The leading advocates of more Pentagon spending, Democrats and Republicans alike, generally act to support major contractors in their jurisdictions. Representative Jared Golden (D-ME), a co-sponsor of the House Armed Services Committee proposal to add $37 billion to the Pentagon budget, typically made sure it included funds for a $2 billion guided-missile destroyer to be built at General Dynamics’ shipyard in Bath, Maine.
Similarly, his co-sponsor, Representative Elaine Luria (D-VA), whose district abuts Huntington Ingalls Industries’ Newport News Shipyard, successfully advocated for the inclusion of ample funding to produce aircraft carriers and attack submarines at that complex. Or consider Representative Mike Rogers (R-AL), the ranking Republican on the House Armed Services Committee and a dogged advocate of annually increasing the Pentagon budget by at least 3% to 5% above inflation. He serves a district south of Huntsville, Alabama, dubbed “rocket city” because it’s the home to so many firms that work on missile defense and related projects.
There are even special congressional caucuses devoted solely to increasing Pentagon spending while fending off challenges to specific weapons systems. These range from the House shipbuilding and F-35 caucuses to the Senate ICBM Coalition. That coalition has been especially effective at keeping spending on a future land-based intercontinental ballistic missile dubbed the Sentinel on track, while defeating efforts to significantly reduce the number of ICBMs in the U.S. arsenal. Such “success” has come thanks to the stalwart support of senators from Montana, North Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming, all states with ICBM bases or involved in major ICBM development and maintenance.
The jobs card is the strongest tool of influence available to the arms industry in its efforts to keep Congress eternally boosting Pentagon spending, but far from the only one. After all, the industrial part of the military-industrial-congressional complex gave more than $35 million in campaign contributions to members of Congress in 2020, the bulk of it going to those on the armed services and defense appropriations committees who have the most sway over the Pentagon budget and what it will be spent on.
So far, in the 2022 election cycle, weapons firms have already donated $3.4 million to members of the House Armed Services Committee, according to an analysis by Open Secrets.org, an organization that tracks campaign spending and political influence. Weapons-making corporations also currently employ nearly 700 lobbyists, more than one for every member of Congress, while spending additional millions to support industry-friendly think tanks that regularly push higher Pentagon spending and a more hawkish foreign policy.
The arms industry has another lever to pull as well when it comes to the personal finances of lawmakers. There are scant, if any, restrictions against members of Congress owning or trading defense company stocks, even those who sit on influential national-security-related committees. In other words, it’s completely legal for them to marry their personal financial interests to those of defense contractors.
The Cost of Coddling Contractors
Continue readingVeteran Intelligence Professionals: Ukraine Decision Time for Biden
We hope you have been adequately briefed on the likely outcome of the recent Ukrainian “offensive”
by Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
MEMORANDUM FOR: The President
FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
SUBJECT: Ukraine Decision Time
REF: Nukes Cannot be Un-Invented, VIPS
Mr. President:
Before Defense Secretary Austin flies off to Ramstein for the meeting Thursday of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group we owe you a few words of caution occasioned by our many decades of experience with what happens to intelligence in wartime. If he tells you Kyiv is beating back the Russians, kick the tires – and consider widening your circle of advisers
Truth is the coin of the realm in intelligence analysis. It is equally axiomatic that truth is the first casualty of war, and that applies to the war in Ukraine as well as earlier wars we have been involved in. When at war, Defense Secretaries, Secretaries of State, and generals simply cannot be relied upon to tell the truth – to the media, or even to the President. We learned that early – the hard and bitter way. A lot of our comrades in arms did not come back from Vietnam.
Vietnam: President Lyndon Johnson preferred to believe Gen. William Westmoreland who told him and Defense Secretary McNamara in 1967 that South Vietnam could win – if only LBJ would supply an additional 206,000 troops. CIA analysts knew that to be untrue and that – worse still — Westmoreland was deliberately falsifying the number of forces he faced,……………………….
All being fair in love and war, the generals in Saigon were determined to offer a rosy picture……………………
The Demise of Imagery Analysis: Until 1996, CIA had an independent capability to do unencumbered military analysis enabling it to speak the truth – even during war. ……………the National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC,) a solid reputation for professionalism and objectivity.
………………………. In 1996, when NPIC and its 800 highly professional imagery analysts were given, kit and kaboodle, to the Pentagon, it was goodbye to impartial intelligence.
Iraq: Retired Air Force General James Clapper was eventually put in charge of NPIC’s successor, the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) and thus was well positioned to grease the skids for the “war of choice” on Iraq.
Indeed, Clapper is one of the few senior functionaries to admit that, under pressure from Vice President Cheney, he was “leaning forward” to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq; could find none; but went along anyway…………………………
Afghanistan: You will recall the extreme pressure on President Obama coming from Defense Secretary Gates, Secretary of State Clinton, and generals like Petraeus and McCrystal to double down in sending more troops to Afghanistan. They were able to push aside Intelligence Community analysts,……………………..
The President, as you well know, deferred to Gates and the generals. And, last summer, it was left to you to pick up the pieces, so to speak……………………..
Syria – Austin’s Reputation Not Without Blemish: Closer to home, Secretary Austin is no stranger to accusations of politicizing intelligence………………………….. The analysts claimed their reports were being changed by higher-ups to dovetail with the administration’s public line that the US was winning the battle against ISIS and the al-Nusra Front, al Qaeda’s branch in Syria……………………….
In Summary: We hope you take the time to review this history – and to take it into account before sending Secretary Austin off to Ramstein. …………………. (We hope you have been adequately briefed on the likely outcome of the recent Ukrainian “offensive”.)
You may also wish to seek counsel from CIA Director William Burns and others with experience in the history of Europe – and particularly of Germany. Media reports suggested earlier that in Ramstein Secretary Austin will commit to providing Ukraine with still more weaponry and will encourage his colleagues to do the same. If he follows that script, he may find few takers – particularly among those most vulnerable to winter cold.
FOR THE STEERING GROUP: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
signed by 19 highly qualified members of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPs) is made up of former intelligence officers, diplomats, military officers and congressional staffers. https://original.antiwar.com/veteran-intelligence-professionals-for-sanity2/2022/09/05/veteran-intelligence-professionals-ukraine-decision-time-for-biden/
Ukraine cracks downs on civilians – official
Amazingly, this is reported also in the Washington Post – article headed:
“Ukraine hit squads are killing Russian occupiers and collaborators“
(I can’t read this – as it’s behind a paywall.)
https://www.rt.com/russia/562619-ukraine-crackdown-kharkov-russia/ 12 Sept 22, Kiev’s forces “are shooting people” in the north of Kharkov region, pro-Russian local authorities claim.
The Ukrainian military has unleashed repressions on the civilian population in Kharkov region, with mercenaries executing people on the streets to frame Russia, a local official claimed on Monday.
“The Ukrainian Armed Forces have occupied settlements in the north of the Kharkov region. They have started repressive actions,” Vitaly Ganchev, the head of pro-Russian administration, said.
Speaking to Russian media, he said local residents who managed to escape from the areas retaken by Kiev’s forces, described Ukrainian “mercenaries that are driving around and shooting people while filming it on camera.”
“As I see it, they want to cleanse these towns, and to portray it as if the Russian troops are behind it, to allege that it was them who had committed these atrocities,” he said.
He added that in many cases residents could no longer cross the Russia-Ukraine border due to the Ukrainian military presence, with many civilians forced into hiding.
Nevertheless, according to Ganchev, more than 5,000 people have been evacuated to Russia in recent days, with local authorities doing their best to fast-track the process.
Ganchev’s comments echo remarks made by Leonid Pasechnik, the head of the Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR), who claimed on Sunday that Kiev’s forces were cracking down on the civilian population in areas from which Russian forces had retreated.
“The Ukrainian authorities have confirmed their neo-Nazi nature. In Kharkov region, in a number of cases Ukrainian intelligence services set up purges and repressions against the civilian population“, he claimed.
The comments came after Ukraine’s State Bureau of Investigations said last week it would conduct a “filtration” of civilians in Balakleya, a town in Kharkov region that’s been retaken by Kiev’s forces.
The purpose of these efforts is to “prevent the subversive activities of the Russians and their allies” and retaliate against those “who cooperated with aggressors,” the agency said at the time.
Russia sent troops into Ukraine on February 24, citing Kiev’s failure to implement the Minsk agreements, designed to give the regions of Donetsk and Lugansk special status within the Ukrainian state. The protocols, brokered by Germany and France, were first signed in 2014. Former Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko has since admitted that Kiev’s main goal was to use the ceasefire to buy time and “create powerful armed forces.”
In February 2022, the Kremlin recognized the Donbass republics as independent states and demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join any Western military bloc. Kiev insists the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked.
The madness of some environmentalists sucked in by Edward-Teller style nuclear propaganda
Roaming Charges: Nuclear Midnight’s Children
BY JEFFREY ST. CLAIR, 26 Aug 22, As one of the world’s largest, and most troubled, nuclear power facilities has become a radioactive pawn in an increasingly savage and internecine war, the atomic clock is about as close to ringing Midnight as it can get. Yet most of the world seems to be sleeping–or sleepwalking–soundly, either unaware or unruffled by the immediacy of the peril in Ukraine.
………………. How can a demonic technology that has left only death, destruction, environmental ruin, cancer, sterility and genetic mutation as its legacy be treated so cavalierly by so many? We’ve reached the point where even Oliver Stone is pushing the virtues of nuclear power, despite its inextricable ties with the military-industrial complex he’s assailed most of his career.
In large measure, this dismal state of affairs is the consequence of the deepening fractures in the global environmental movement, a large swath of which has desperately embraced nuclear power as an atomic shield–dubious though it will prove to be–against cataclysmic climate change.
The emerging compact between the nuclear industry and some high-profile environmentalists is surely one of the most surreal–and treacherous–alliances of our time. Freelance nuclear shills, such as the odious James Hansen and the clownish George Monbiot, have left carbon footprints that would humble Godzilla by jetting across the world promoting nuclear energy as a kind of technological deus ex machina for the apocalyptic threat of climate change. Hansen has gone so far as to charge that “opposition to nuclear power threatens the future of humanity.” Shamefully, many greens now promote nuclear power as a kind ecological lesser-evilism.
Of course, there’s nothing new about this kind of rationalization for the doomsday machines. The survival of nuclear power has always depended on the willing suspension of disbelief. In the terrifying post-Hiroshima age, most people intuitively detected the symbiotic linkage between nuclear weapons and nuclear power and those fears had to be doused. As a consequence, the nuclear industrial complex concocted the fairy tale of the peaceful atom, zealously promoted by one of the most devious conmen of our time: Edward “H-Bomb” Teller.
After ratting out Robert Oppenheimer as a peacenik and security risk, Teller set up shop in his lair at the Lawrence Livermore Labs and rapidly began designing uses for nuclear power and bombs as industrial engines to propel the post-World War II economy. One of the first mad schemes
to come off of Teller’s drafting board was Operation Chariot, a plan to excavate a deep-water harbor at Cape Thornton, near the Inuit village of Point Hope, Alaska, by using controlled (sic) detonations of hydrogen bombs.
In 1958, Teller, the real-life model for Terry Southern’s character Dr. Strangelove, devised a plan for atomic fracking. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Edward Teller’s deranged ideas of yesteryear have now been dusted off and remarketed by the Nuclear Greens, including James Lovelock, the originator of the Gaia Hypothesis, with no credit given to their heinous progenitor.
There are currently 460 or so operating nukes, some chugging along far past their expiration dates, coughing up 10 percent of global energy demands. Teller’s green disciples want to see nuclear power’s total share swell to 50 percent, which would mean the construction of roughly 2100 new atomic water-boilers from Mogadishu to Kathmandu. What are the odds of all of those cranking up without a hitch? https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/08/26/roaming-charges-67/
If we want to cut energy bills we must stop wasting energy
Britain could save at least £100 billion if it stopped wasting so much
energy, an investor in the sector has said. Jonathan Maxwell, founder and
chief executive of Sustainable Development Capital, accused the government
of looking at the energy crisis “the wrong way round” and of failing to
recognise the savings that could flow from making the nation more energy
efficient.
He said the government’s plan to spend an estimated £150 billion
subsidising consumers’ bills should be seen as “a huge wake-up call”
that Britain has to restructure its energy markets. However, he was aghast
that Liz Truss had said “nothing” substantial on energy efficiency,
given the “high level of waste, inefficiency and outdated
infrastructure” in the system.
Maxwell said that 82 per cent of the
world’s energy comes from oil, gas and coal, with as much as 70 per cent of
it “lost” before it even reached the end user: 10 per cent in
extraction; 50 per cent in gas turbines, where the heat from generation
does not reach the customer; and 10 per cent in transmission and
distribution inefficiencies associated with a centralised grid. “Then, at
the point of energy use, you lose even more,” he said.
More than half the
energy used by buildings can be wasted via such things as inefficient air
conditioning or lighting systems, with some of the biggest culprits in the
public sector — “hospitals, schools, Ministry of Defence sites”.
He welcomed any initiatives to encourage households to cut energy consumption,
but “the bigger problem is outside the household. Public and commercial
buildings, heavy industry and transport are responsible for much more
energy waste than households.”
He said “the good news is you can cut
energy use quickly: you can rooftop solar or, instead of generating energy
in the middle of nowhere and losing it, you could bring the generation to
the point of use with a decentralised grid”. However, “the government’s
. . . focus is on adding more energy. I’m not saying we don’t need that,
but even if you build everything — more gas, nuclear, wind, solar, frack
everywhere — most of it will take ten to fifteen years. But we can stop
wasting energy now.”
Times 12th Sept 2022
France calls for more electricity to be imported from neighbouring countries
France sent an emergency power alert to neighbours including the UK and
Spain this week, asking them to be ready to send as much electricity as
possible after a huge trading error jeopardised French supplies. The
request was triggered by a trading error by one of France’s regional energy
providers, which accidentally oversold huge amounts of electricity over a
two-day period.
The unusual alert added to Europe-wide energy stresses as
the region faces its worst power crisis in decades owing to soaring costs
driven by Russia’s cutting of gas flows.
It also underlined severe strains
in France’s power network, which is struggling with an unprecedented number
of outages at its nuclear reactors — the linchpin of its generation
system. French grid operator RTE said it on Tuesday sent the call for
neighbouring countries to prepare to export more power overnight. The UK’s
National Grid and a person close to Spain’s power network confirmed that
their countries received the alert.
FT 11th Sept 2022
https://www.ft.com/content/4d38e508-6b0a-4074-8978-3feca795a90f
1 This month.
PETITION – To: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the Australian Labor Government
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes – A good documentary on Chernobyl on SBS available On Demand for the next 3 weeks– https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-program/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes/235274195556
19 May – Webinar- Webinar: No Nuclear Weapons in Australia
Start: 2026-05-19 18:00:00 UTC Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney (GMT+10:00)
End: 2026-05-19 19:30:00 UTC Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney (GMT+10:00)
20 May – Webinar – The dangerous world of AUKUS, US, military occupation and suppression of dissent
National Webinar, 20th May, 2026, 6.30pm AEST. Confronting laws restricting/suppressing protest speech and action
Speakers: Former Sen. Rex Patrick, Lawyer Nick Hanna ,Arthur Rorris ,Jorgen Doyle, Sen David Shoebbridge,
Facilitator Kelley Tranter.
of the week – Australians for War Powers Reform (AWPR)
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity
Antinuclear 