Palestinians Speak Out

There is a video about the outlawing of protests, but it is not the one above. The relevant video now seems to be banned by Youtube.

#Israel #Palestine

October 16, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | civil liberties, MIDDLE EAST | Leave a comment

Question from Jamaica: are we being the world’s guinea pig for SMR nuclear power?

Oct 15, 2023 Dennis A Minott, PhD, is a physicist and energy specialist. https://www.jamaicaobserver.com/columns/are-we-being-the-worlds-guinea-pig-for-smr-nuclear-power/

Hard Question #1:

If a small modular nuclear reactor (SMR) in the Caribbean goes wrong, who can physically, or by financial means, stop it before it causes widespread harm in our relatively small archipelagic crescent of geographical space?

This question is hard because it forces us to confront the reality of nuclear incidents and accidents, which can be catastrophic and irreversible. Even if we or the owner can summarily replace the top managers of an SMR plant with more “experienced experts”, it may not be enough or in time to avert a disaster. SMRs are a new and unproven technology, and there is no guarantee that they will be safe or that the new hires know anything appropriate to do since the technology would be absolutely novel to them.

How do you fix something like a getaway hazardous process that you do not quite understand when, even at your quickest and brightest, you have no time to learn because “things” are so immediate?

In the event of a nuclear accident the consequences could be devastating for the Caribbean. The islands are densely populated and rely heavily on tourism, which would be severely disrupted by even a hint of a nuclear disaster. The region is also certainly vulnerable to earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters, which could make it difficult to contain a nuclear accident. Jamaican and all Caribbean people deserve a serious and honest assessment of the risks and benefits of SMRs. They need to know that if something goes wrong, there may be no way to stop it.

Hard Question #2: How can we ensure that SMRs are safely designed, built, and operated in the Caribbean?

Hard Question #3: What are the long-term risks of nuclear waste disposal in the region?

Hard Question #4: What are the economic and social costs of nuclear accidents?

Hard Question #5: Are there better proven and practically risk-free green alternatives to SMRs for meeting the Caribbean’s energy needs?

Hard Question #6: Can any Caribbean terrorist gang/insurgents or group of enemy combatants gain the capacity to hold citizens or any governing authority to ransom by occupying or targeting an SMR from 200 Ukraine-like kilometres?

These are just six of the hard questions that need to be answered before any decision is made about whether to deploy SMRs in the Caribbean.

As I recall, Jamaica is still within the Caribbean where even a little 5.0-magnitude shaker near Hope Bay vibrated The Turks & Caicos, Cuba, Florida, and Hispaniola. Within exactly three minutes of 7:31 pm that Thursday, one of my friends in America was calling to know if I was OK.

I hate to break it this way: My friend understands geophysics. My daughter is a Yale teaching fellow geophysics specialist, and my late wife was an ODPEM senior director who understood these matters very well as she taught the stuff at university level for many years, up to months before she died of cancer. As a physicist who communicates with my tribe I would be dishonest if I pretended ignorance of the true reason for my friend’s call. Here it is:

The Enriquillo-Plantain Garden fault zone is a major fault system that extends through Haiti and the Dominican Republic into Jamaica. It is a strike-slip fault where the motion is primarily horizontal, with the Caribbean plate moving eastward relative to the Gonâve microplate. This fault has been associated with significant earthquakes in the past, including the devastating 2010 Haiti earthquake which laid claim to 0.25 million human lives in minutes.

Both Jamaica and Haiti are located in seismically active regions, and understanding the fault lines and tectonic activity in these areas is crucial for assessing and mitigating seismic risks to even the best-designed SMR touted by our wealthiest citizens who know money movements but, respectfully, not the deadly movements of neighbourhood tectonic plates. My learned friend in America does, and called me immediately.

Flow’s cables remained unbroken — one more time. #nuclear #antinuclear #NuclearFree #NoNukes #NuclearPlants

October 16, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | OCEANIA, safety | Leave a comment

Fukui governor accepts utility’s nuclear fuel plan, comes under fire

THE ASAHI SHIMBUN, October 13, 2023 https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/15028320

FUKUI–Fukui Governor Tatsuji Sugimoto on Oct. 13 approved Kansai Electric Power Co.’s revised plan on storing spent nuclear fuel, drawing outrage from prefectural assembly members.

The governor’s approval means that three aging reactors operated by the utility in the prefecture can continue to run.

The continued operation of the old reactors was contingent on Kansai Electric finding a site outside Fukui Prefecture to store the spent fuel from its nuclear plants.

Sugimoto, who met with industry minister Yasutoshi Nishimura and Kansai Electric President Nozomu Mori on Oct. 13, approved the plan even though the utility has not picked a storage site.

“The plan is a pie in the sky as no candidate site for the interim storage facility has been presented,” a prefectural assembly member said.

Under the approved plan, operations will start at an interim storage facility outside the prefecture around 2030 for spent nuclear fuel accumulating at Kansai Electric’s nuclear power plants in Fukui Prefecture.

The spent fuel will remain there until it can be transferred to a reprocessing plant.

But that brings up another problem.

The central government has long been promoting a nuclear fuel recycling program that reprocesses spent nuclear fuel.

However, the reprocessing plant in the village of Rokkasho in Aomori Prefecture, the key facility in the recycling program, has suffered a series of problems, and its completion has been delayed for more than 25 years.

Spent nuclear fuel is currently placed in storage pools at the nuclear plants in Fukui Prefecture.

The prefectural government has been urging Kansai Electric to build an interim storage facility outside the prefecture because space is running out for the fuel.

The utility had promised to find a candidate site for the storage facility by the end of this year.

It said if it could not find a site, it would halt the No. 1 and No. 2 reactors at the Takahama nuclear plant and the No. 3 reactor at the Mihama nuclear plant. These three reactors have each been in operation for more than 40 years.

In June, Kansai Electric presented a plan to ship about 200 tons of spent nuclear fuel from the Takahama nuclear power plant to France, claiming “we fulfilled our promise.”

But the prefectural government opposed this plan, saying that volume was only a fraction of the total amount.

On Oct. 10, the utility proposed a revised plan, including increasing the amount to be shipped to France and setting up dry storage facilities within the compounds of nuclear plants in Fukui Prefecture that are separate from the existing storage pools.

Kansai Electric also said the storage capacity within the nuclear plants would not increase, in principle.

Another prefectural assembly member criticized this plan.

“Since no duration was specified for the dry storage facilities, they might end up effectively serving as the final disposal site,” the assembly member said.

(This article was written by Kenji Oda and Tsunetaka Sato.) #nuclear #antinuclear #NuclearFree #NoNukes #NuclearPlants

October 16, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Japan, wastes | Leave a comment

It’s Not The ‘Israel-Hamas War’, It’s The Israel-Gaza Massacre

I used to think all genocidal massacres are bad but then some really smart Israel apologists explained to me that this genocidal massacre is completely different because this genocidal massacre’s perpetrators believe they are doing the right thing for a good reason.

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, OCT 15, 2023

Stop calling it the “Israel-Hamas war”. It’s the Israel-Gaza massacre. Calling it the Israel-Hamas war creates the false impression that this is a war that is directed exclusively at Hamas when it’s really an ethnic purge that’s directed at all Palestinians in Gaza.

The child body count alone makes it clear that this isn’t a war against Hamas; I saw an anonymous account point out on Twitter that the number of children killed in this onslaught after one week already exceeds the total number of children killed after a year and a half of fighting in Ukraine, per the United Nations.

Laying complete siege to a civilian population and bombing anything that stands would be an extraordinary abomination in any war. And this is not a war, it’s an enclosed shooting range with military explosives and human targets.

Americans should probably worry about the rapid legitimization of this idea that civilians who have a government that kills people are all legitimate targets………………………………………………

Israel has been struggling with a rapidly worsening PR crisis ever since Palestinians started getting internet access and smartphones with video cameras and exposing Israeli apartheid abuses. So if you’re wondering why they cut off Gaza’s internet and electricity, that’s why.

Israel was 100% aware that cutting off power and internet to Gaza would prevent Palestinians from recording and publishing footage of its coming war crimes. They struck a fatal blow to citizen journalism in Gaza, thereby blinding the whole world to what’s happening there.

The mass media asked you to believe the Hamas attack was “unprovoked”. Then they asked you to believe blatant babies-on-bayonets atrocity propaganda. Now they’re asking you to believe Jewish kids were in school before dawn on a Saturday morning in Israel. Western journalism, folks.

The only reason so many Israel apologists scrambled to circulate unverified stories about beheaded babies and mass rapes instead of waiting for evidence was to make the real atrocities Israel is perpetrating and will continue to perpetrate in Gaza look reasonable and appropriate.

❖

After this current crisis is over I’m probably going to think a lot about the fact that MSNBC suspended three Muslim reporters during Israel’s Gaza assault because it didn’t want Muslims reporting on it.

I used to think all genocidal massacres are bad but then some really smart Israel apologists explained to me that this genocidal massacre is completely different because this genocidal massacre’s perpetrators believe they are doing the right thing for a good reason…………………………………………………………………………………..

The greatest trick white anti-semites ever pulled was getting Jews to leave western society in droves and move to a far away country to spend their lives beating up Muslims. https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/its-not-the-israel-hamas-war-its?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=137970619&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&utm_medium=email #Israel #Palestine

October 16, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Deadly radioactive dust

October 15, 2023 by beyondnuclearinternational https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2023/10/15/deadly-dust/

A look at the studies of professor Masaharu Hoshi. From Impact

The risks of radiation exposure are better understood today thanks to researchers dedicated to working with the victims of exposure, understanding their symptoms, identifying treatments and developing safety protocols. This article looks at the work of one such researcher, Dr. Masaharu Hoshi.

Harnessing atomic particles and radiation led to powerful and world changing technologies. The field of medical imaging has saved countless lives and continues to push the boundaries of medical interventions and research, which would have been impossible without the first x-ray machines. Unfortunately, not all inventions have been so altruistic.

The advent of nuclear weapons showed the world the destructive potential possible via scientific inquiry. While the dangerous effects of radiation exposure were documented from the inception of this technology, catastrophic events like the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and nuclear disasters at Chernobyl, Semipalatinsk or Fukushima provide a real-time glimpse into the long-term effects of exposure.

Investigating the causes of this exposure in order to prevent future accidents is essential, but so too is cataloguing the rates and types of exposure among the victims. With this information, correlations between exposure and health effects, both short- and long-term, can be assessed. This data is crucial for understanding the mechanisms behind radiation effects on living creatures and in assessing risks, safety protocols and treatment. Since the 1980s, Dr Masaharu Hoshi, Professor Emeritus at Hiroshima University, has been traveling around the world, visiting the sites of nuclear disasters in an effort to fully comprehend the risks. In doing so he is also revealing that there is still much we need to learn regarding the effects of radiation exposure.

Quantifying the risks

“I started my research with the people exposed to radiation in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the year 1980,” says Hoshi. “Before that I completed my dissertation on nuclear physics with a specialty in radiation measurement.” This graduate training positioned him to become an expert on the effects of radiation.

The work that commenced in Hiroshima and Nagasaki right after the blast showed that with higher doses of radiation, the greater the effect on the human body, in the form of symptoms like carcinogenesis. The ratio between exposure and effects is termed risk. This measure of risk is useful in treating people exposed to radiation and it can quantify how much risk individuals face depending on the dose of exposure.

Quantifying the risks

“This work can inform us whether a medical check-up is required every two years depending on the degree of exposure, or if hospitalization is necessary if there has been too much exposure,” explains Hoshi.

He says that the work done in Japan has informed laws regarding radiation exposure safety and protocols in countries around the world, but this is only one scenario in which a person can come into contact with the deadly rays.

“The people exposed to radiation in Hiroshima and Nagasaki from the atomic bomb were exposed to gamma rays, including a few neutrons, in a short instant,” outlines Hoshi. “From 1 microsecond to about 1 minute which is quite different from the gradual exposure of actual workers in the radiation industry.”

In the case of Semipalatinsk, the former Soviet Union’s nuclear testing grounds, the exposure was due to the passage of radioactive clouds. The area and the people were exposed gradually not only during the passage of the cloud but also from the subsequent contamination of the area. “Therefore, the risk is considered to be different from that of the atomic bomb survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” confirms Hoshi.

“Because of that, we started our study on the radiation dose and the health effects occurring in Semipalatinsk, which has been going on since 1994.”

Over the course of these studies over decades he has worked with colleagues to amass databases of over 300,000 cases of exposure and long-term follow-up. It was among these cases, spread out in different locations, that a pattern emerged, revealing yet another variable to consider during an exposure event, being radioactive microparticles.

Radiation detectives

Initially in Japan, research started on people who came to the area right after the explosion to help their families and were not the direct victims of the bombing. For these individuals the calculated radiation exposure dose was less than 10 mSv which, according to Hoshi, is usually not a problem.

“Using the Hiroshima University database of people who were exposed to the bombing incident, we found that the mortality rate was higher for those who came to the vicinity directly after the explosion and the cause for this was unknown,” he states.

Furthermore, Hoshi began to see a similar pattern of exposure and symptoms in other places. In Semipalatinsk it was called Kainal Syndrome and again there was no explanation. Many of the survivors of Chernobyl, Gulf War and Hiroshima Nagasaki who entered after the bombing also suffered from hair loss, severe malaise, which can lead to an inability to work, bleeding, diarrhea and more.

“It was then that I understood I would have to use epidemiological ideas to uncover what all of these victims had in common,” he says. Eventually, he realised that commonality was radioactive dust.

Hoshi and his team began investigating the potential for radioactive microparticles to cause internal exposure in all organs of the rats, especially in the lung. They found the effects are 20 times more dangerous than usual external exposure according to the animal experiments.

“With regards to the effects of radioactive particles, some experts have previously pointed it out,” says Hoshi. “However, since there was no supporting research, it has been ignored by public institutions.”

The effects of radiation exposure are the same for every person on the planet, no one country or group of people are immune. Furthermore, when disaster strikes it is usually not contained to one spot. Contamination of air and water can spread over vast distances, bringing with them their deadly side effects. Hoshi and his collaborators are acutely aware of this and are working hard to share their data as far and as wide as possible.

Furthermore, Hoshi stresses that due to the need for a variety of expertise, collaboration is absolutely essential.

“For example, these results are not possible without the input from reactor physicists, radiation and medical physicists, epidemiologists, thyroid specialists, pathologists, medical doctors, as well as statistics and computer database experts,” he highlights.

Hoshi is grateful for all of the hard work this diverse group has done and will continue to do for the benefit of victims and potential victims. Along with further research on progressive treatment and protection, Hoshi plans to continually develop this field. Their work will carry on studying the effects of radioactive dust and ways to protect against it as well as tackling the big problem of evaluating dose exposure from radioactive dust.

This article first appeared on impact.pub whose content is available under a creative commons license.

Dr Masaharu Hoshi is Professor Emeritus at Hiroshima University’s Peace Center. You can read his studies here and here. #nuclear #antinuclear #NuclearFree #NoNukes #NuclearPlants #radiation

October 16, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | environment, radiation | Leave a comment

UK’s old nuclear submarines, dead for over 40 years, and a new plan for turning them into “tin cans and razor blades”.

BABCOCK International want to build a new industrial building at Rosyth
Dockyard for the dismantling of old nuclear submarines. If approved, and a
planning application has gone into Fife Council, the metal waste disposal
facility will go up at the corner of Wood Road and Caledonia Road.

Seven old nuclear subs have been laid up at the yard for decades, Dreadnought has
been there since 1980, longer than it was in service, and last year
councillors were told of a UK Government pledge to “de-nuclearise Rosyth”
by 2035. They were also informed of a world first in removing the most
radioactive waste and the overall aim of cutting up the vessels and turning
them into “tin cans and razor blades”.

Blyth and Blyth, of Edinburgh, have
been appointed by Babcock as civil and structural engineering consultants
for the Rosyth Submarine Dismantling Project and are agents for the
application. The plans say the building would be around 200 square metres
in size and the council are expected to make a decision next month.

Dunfermline Press 16th Oct 2023

https://www.dunfermlinepress.com/news/23853192.rosyth-babcock-plans-new-metal-waste-disposal-building/ #nuclear #antinuclear #NuclearFree #NoNukes #NuclearPlants

October 16, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | decommission reactor, UK, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Israel’s nuclear weapons and their history

Does Israel Possess Nuclear Weapons?

Greek Reporter By Philip Chrysopoulos, October 14, 2023

Israel is generally understood to possess nuclear weapons, yet the country has never officially denied or admitted it has a nuclear arsenal.

Instead, Israel has maintained a policy of deliberate ambiguity on the issue throughout decades. Nevertheless, experts estimate that the country’s stockpile ranges between 90 and 400 warheads………….

Furthermore, the middle-eastern country is able to deliver nuclear missiles by aircraft, as submarine-launched cruise missiles, and via the Jericho series of intermediate to intercontinental range ballistic missiles.

According to the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation Israel has 90 plutonium-based nuclear warheads and has produced enough plutonium for 100-200 weapons…………….

The History of Israel’s Nuclear Weapons

Israel’s interest in nuclear weapons has started in the end of the 1940s. The country’s first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion spoke of the urgent need for obtaining nuclear weapons to prevent the Holocaust from reoccurring.

In 1948, even before the Israeli-Arab War, Israel began recruiting Jewish nuclear scientists and forming scientific institutes in order to create a nuclear arsenal.

Ben-Gurion had stated, “What Einstein, Oppenheimer, and Teller, the three of them are Jews, made for the United States, could also be done by scientists in Israel, for their own people”.

………………………………………….. Nuclear Weapons Production

It is believed that Israel began full-scale production of nuclear weapons following the 1967 Six-Day War, although it had built its first operational nuclear weapon by December 1966.

In 1969, U.S. President Richard Nixon in a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir pressed Israel to “make no visible introduction of nuclear weapons or undertake a nuclear test program”, so maintaining a policy of nuclear ambiguity.

……………………………….. In the 1980s the CIA estimated that Israel had 100-200 nuclear weapons. In 1991, after the Soviet Union dissolved, nearly 20 top Jewish Soviet scientists reportedly emigrated to Israel.

By the mid 2000s estimates of Israel’s arsenal ranged from 75 to 400 nuclear warheads. https://greekreporter.com/2023/10/14/israel-nuclear-weapons/ #nuclear #antinuclear #NuclearFree #NoNukes #NuclearPlants

October 16, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | weapons and war | Leave a comment

What the media forgets to tell you about Israel and Gaza

Ignore the fake news. Israel isn’t defending itself. It’s enforcing its right to continue ethnically cleansing Palestinians

JONATHAN COOK, OCT 16, 2023 https://jonathancook.substack.com/p/what-the-media-forgets-to-tell-you?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=476450&post_id=137987299&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=ln98x&utm_medium=email

The missing context for what’s happening in Gaza is that Israel has been working night and day to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian people from their homeland since even before Israel become a state – when it was known as the Zionist movement.

Israel didn’t just cleanse Palestinians in 1948, when it was founded as a Western colonial project, and again under cover of a regional war in 1967. It also worked to ethnically cleanse Palestinians every day between those dates and afterwards. The aim was to move them off their historic lands, and either expel them beyond Israel’s new, expanded borders or concentrate them into small ghettoes inside those borders – as a holding measure until they could be expelled outside the borders.

The ‘settler’ project, as we call it, is a misnomer. It’s really Israel’s ethnic cleansing programme. Israel even has a special word for it in Hebrew: ‘Judaisation’, or making the land Jewish. It is official government policy.

Gaza was the largest of the Palestinian reservations created by Israel’s ethnic cleansing programme, and the most overcrowded. To stop the inhabitants spilling out, Israel built a fence-barrier in the early 1990s to pen them in. Then when policing became too hard from within the prison, Israel pulled back in 2005 to the outer perimeter barrier.

New technology allowed Israel to besiege Gaza remotely by land, sea and air in 2007, limiting the entry of food and vital items like medicine and cement for construction. Automated gun towers shot anyone who came near the fence. The navy patrolled the sea, stopping boats straying more than a kilometre or two off shore. And drones watched 24 hours a day from the sky.

The people of Gaza were sealed in and largely forgotten, except when they lobbed a few rockets over the fence – to international indignation. If they fired too many rockets, Israel bombed them mercilessly and occasionally launched a ground invasion. The rocket threat was increasingly neutralised by a rocket interception system, paid for by the US, called Iron Dome.

Palestinians tried to be more inventive in finding ways to break out of their prison. They built tunnels. But Israel found ways to identify those that ran close to the fence and destroyed them.

Palestinians tried to get attention by protesting en masse at the fence. Israeli snipers were ordered to shoot them in the legs, leading to thousands of amputees.

The ‘deterrence’ seemed to work. Israel could once again sit back and let the Palestinians rot in Gaza. ‘Quiet’ had been restored.

Until, that is, last weekend when Hamas broke out briefly and ran amok, killing civilians and soldiers alike.

So Israel now needs a new policy. It looks like the ethnic cleansing programme is being applied to Gaza anew. The half of the population in the enclave’s north is being herded south, where there are not the resources to cope with them. And even if there were, Israel has cut off food, water and power to everyone in Gaza.

The enclave is quickly becoming a pressure cooker. The pressure is meant to build on Egypt to allow the Palestinians entry into Sinai on ‘humanitarian’ grounds.

Whatever the media are telling you, the ‘conflict’ – that is, Israel’s ethnic cleansing programme – started long before Hamas appeared on the scene. In fact, Hamas emerged very late, as the predictable response to Israel’s violent colonisation project.

And no turning point was reached a week ago. This has all been playing out in slow motion for more than 100 years.

Ignore the fake news. Israel isn’t defending itself. It’s enforcing its right to continue ethnically cleansing Palestinians.

October 16, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | history, Israel | Leave a comment

Time to implement UN decisions on Palestine – Lavrov

Rt.com 16 Oct 23

When the current Israel-Palestine hostilities end, progress should be made towards a two-state solution, the Russian foreign minister as said.

The escalation of violence in the Middle East should provide an impetus for implementing a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said.

Speaking to journalists on Thursday, the top diplomat reiterated a call for a swift resolution of the crisis. After that, hopefully “everyone would take responsibility for implementing the decisions of the UN Security Council on the creation of a Palestinian state under the principles that the UN has approved.”

Lavrov spoke to the media in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, after meeting his counterparts from the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), a regional intergovernmental organization composed of former parts of the Soviet Union.

“All of us had the same opinion… that this confrontation must be stopped immediately, that parties should respect international humanitarian law, prevent any terrorist actions and indiscriminate use of force,” Lavrov said.

He stressed that civilians from both sides were suffering en masse and that the failure to create a viable Palestinian state was the root of continued tensions in the region……………………………………………… more https://www.rt.com/russia/584744-lavrov-state-palestine-un/ #Israel #Palestine

October 16, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international | Leave a comment

Drone Warfare in the Nuclear Age

Tom Dispatch, OCTOBER 15, 2023

When it comes to war, increasingly autonomous drones are now, it seems, the name of the game. Only the other day, in its stunning surprise attack on Israel, Hamas claimed to have launched 35 explosive-laden al-Zawari “kamikaze” drones that it had produced, destroying Israeli tanks and other equipment. Hamas videos also showed “multicopter drones dropping explosives on Israeli security towers, border posts, and communication towers.” And mind you, Israel was already using swarms of drones as early as 2021 to strike targets in the Gaza Strip.

Of course, in the present world of war, they are anything but alone. The conflict in Ukraine, for instance, has become remarkably drone-ified on both sides. In drone terms, however, if there was one ominous thing about the recent reactions of Israeli officials to the Hamas attacks that took their country by surprise, it was the comparison of them to al-Qaeda’s assaults on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. (“This,” an Israeli military spokesman typically said, “is our 9/11.”) The disastrous American response to those events, the Bush administration’s “Global War on Terror,” has never truly ended and, from Afghanistan to the Middle East to Africa, it introduced drone warfare to the world (in the process killing countless innocent civilians)……………………

Swarms vs. Swarms

How Intelligent — Artificial or Otherwise — Is Any of This?

BY MICHAEL KLARE

A war with China may not be inevitable, Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks observed recently, but it’s a genuine possibility and so this country must be prepared to fight and win. But victory in such a conflict will not, she suggested, come easily. China enjoys an advantage in certain measures of military power, including the number of ships, guns, and missiles it can deploy. While America’s equivalents may be more advanced and capable, they also cost far more to produce and so can only be procured in smaller numbers. To overcome such a dilemma in any future conflict, Hicks suggested, our costly crewed weapons systems must be accompanied by hordes of uncrewed autonomous ships, planes, and tanks.

To ensure that America will possess sufficient numbers of “all-domain attritable [that is, expendable] autonomous” weapons when a war with China breaks out, Hicks announced a major new Pentagon program dubbed the Replicator Initiative. “Replicator is meant to help us overcome [China’s] biggest advantage, which is mass. More ships. More missiles. More people,” she told the National Defense Industrial Association as August ended.

Because we can’t match our adversaries “ship-for-ship and shot-for-shot,” given the prohibitive costs of traditional weapons systems (which must include space for their human crews), we’ll overpower them instead with swarms of autonomous weapons — unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs and UASs), unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs), unmanned surface vessels (USVs), and unmanned subsea vessels (UUVs, or drone submarines), all governed by artificial intelligence (AI) and capable of independent action……………………………………………………………

After all, the Department of Defense has already awarded many millions of dollars to assorted AI start-ups and traditional contractors over the past half-dozen years to develop advanced UAVs, UGVs, USVs, and UUVs, and yet not a single one is in full-scale production. …………………….

questions about this country’s ability to deliver such systems on the tight timetable Hicks announced should be the least of our concerns. Far more worrisome is the likelihood that such a drive will ignite a major new global arms race with China and Russia, ensuring that future battlefields will be populated with untold thousands (tens of thousands?) of drone weapons, overwhelming human commanders and increasing the risk of nuclear war.

The Illusion of U.S. Drone Dominance

…………………………………….. China and Russia have no lack of smart, creative scientists and engineers and, far from trailing the United States in the development of autonomous weaponry, have actually taken the lead in certain areas…………………………………..

…………………the Pentagon’s own report also indicated that China is making rapid advances in the development of AI software for use by autonomous weapons systems in complex combat operations of exactly the sort envisioned by Deputy Secretary Hicks…………………..

many Western analysts do believe that China leads in certain areas of AI and autonomy. Its military has, in fact, regularly flown advanced UAVs in large-scale combat maneuvers around the island of Taiwan, demonstrating a capacity to employ such systems in complex operations.

Russia is thought to lag behind China and the U.S. in developing and fielding advanced autonomous weapons but has nevertheless demonstrated a significant capacity to use UAVs in its war on Ukraine. It has deployed large swarms of semi-autonomous Iranian-made Shahed-136 suicide drones in attacks on its cities and electrical systems, causing widespread death and destruction………………………………..On June 28th, the Russian government approved a “Development Strategy for Unmanned Aviation Until 2030.” It called for exponential growth in UAV output, which, according to reports, is expected to increase from approximately 13,000 per year between 2023 and 2026 to 26,000 annually from 2027 to 2030 and 35,500 after that.

……………………………………………… On the Future Great-Power Battlefield

Given all of this, it should be evident that going to war with China or Russia in the not-so-distant future on the assumption that the U.S. will enjoy a significant advantage in autonomous weaponry would be delusional — and very dangerous.

Yes, both of those potential adversaries currently trail the U.S. in certain categories of autonomous weapons like uncrewed surface and sub-surface combat systems, but they will still be capable of filling the skies with multitudes of drones and seeding any battlefield with hordes of autonomous combat vehicles, including uncrewed tanks and artillery systems.

It would, in fact, be reasonable to assume that any future great-power conflict — a U.S.-China war over Taiwan, for example — will be characterized by the concentration of approximately equal formations of traditional military mass (composed largely of crewed weapons systems) and uncrewed autonomous versions of the same, incorporating multitudes of AI-governed drones.

How would such a conflict play out? It seems unlikely that either side would achieve a swift, one-sided victory. Instead, both would be far more likely to experience massive losses of weapons systems and warriors, with vast swarms of drones only intensifying the destruction by attacking anything left unscathed by traditional weaponry. ……………………..

The toll of such a conflict would surely be colossal. …………………………………………………………………………………

“how quickly a conflict could escalate, with both China and the United States crossing red lines.” The CNAS report further suggested that, in an actual war, “China may be willing to brandish nuclear weapons or conduct a limited demonstration of its nuclear capability in an effort to prevent or end U.S. involvement in a conflict with Taiwan.” (Nothing was said about the possibility that the Americans could do anything similar.)

………….. The result would likely be ever-spiraling losses and increasingly dangerous escalatory measures. As growing numbers of autonomous weapons become available, they, too, will be thrown into the fight, further magnifying those very escalatory pressures. With swarms of such devices battling other swarms — at sea, in the air, and on the ground — the risk of catastrophic defeat will loom ever larger and the temptation to employ nuclear weapons that much harder to resist. Whatever fantasies of American dominance Deputy Secretary Hicks might be harboring in promoting the Replicator Initiative, a safer, more stable world is not among the likely outcomes. https://tomdispatch.com/swarms-vs-swarms/?utm_source=TomDispatch&utm_campaign=4cc10fe538-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2021_07_13_02_04_COPY_02&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1e41682ade-4cc10fe538-308765045 #nuclear #antinuclear #NuclearFree #NoNukes #NuclearPlants

October 16, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

THE PLAN TO WIPE OUT HAMAS

As refugees crowd the border with Egypt, Israel prepares to hit Gaza City with US-supplied bunker busters

SEYMOUR HERSH, OCT 15, 2023

It’s been one week since the horrific Hamas attacks on Israel took place, and the shape of what is to come from the Israeli armed forces is clear, and uncompromising.

Over the past week Israeli jets have conducted around-the-clock bombing of non-military targets in Gaza City. Apartment buildings, hospitals, and mosques were torn apart, with no prior warning and no effort to minimize civilian casualties.

By the end of the week Israeli jets were also dropping leaflets telling the citizens of Gaza City and its surrounding areas in the north that those who wished to survive had better start going south—walking if necessary—25 miles or more—to the Rafah border crossing leading to Egypt. As of this writing, it was not clear whether financially stricken Egypt will allow a million immigrants, many of them committed to the Hamas cause, to cross. In the short term, I have been told by an Israeli insider that Israel has been trying to convince Qatar, which at the urging of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was a long-time financial supporter of Hamas, to join with Egypt in funding a tent city for the million or more refugees awaiting across the border. “It’s not a done deal,” the Israeli insider told me. Israeli officials have warned Egypt and Qatar that without a landing site, the refugees will have to “go back to Gaza.”

One possible site, the insider said, is a long abandoned chunk of land in northern part of the Sinai Peninsula, near the border crossing from Gaza, that was the site of an Israeli settlement known as Yamit when the peninsula was seized by Israel after its victory the Six-Day War of 1967. The settlement was evacuated and bulldozed by Israel before Sinai was returned to Egypt in 1982. The Israeli hope is that Qatar and Egypt will take the refugee crisis off its hands.

Israel’s obvious contempt for the well-being of the citizenry of Gaza amid the forced migration of more than one million starving human beings has captured the world’s attention and led to increasing international condemnation, much of it aimed at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

And so the next stage must come soon. Here is what I have been told, in my conversations in recent days with officials from Israel and elsewhere, including officials I have dealt with in Europe and the Middle East since the Vietnam war, about the Israeli plan for the elimination of Hamas…………………………………………………….

With the starved-out civilian population forced to leave, the Israeli operational plan calls for the Air Force to destroy the remaining structures in Gaza City and elsewhere in the north. Gaza City will be no more. Israel will then begin dropping American-made 5,000-pound bombs known as “bunker busters,” or JDAMs, in the flattened areas……………………………………………………………………….

The systematic destruction of the remaining buildings in Gaza City will start within days, the Israeli insider said. The bunker-buster JDAMs could come next. Then, in the planners’ scenario, I was told, the Israeli infantry will be assigned to mop-up operations: searching out and killing those Hamas fighters and workers who managed to survive the JDAM attacks……………………………………………………………………………………….. more https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/the-plan-to-wipe-out-hamas?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1377040&post_id=137958833&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=false&r=98yko&utm_medium=email #Israel #Palestine

October 16, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Entrenched Belief in Nuclear Deterrence as Defence Keeps Fear of Annihilation Alive, First Committee Hears in Thematic Debate

United Nations, MEETINGS COVERAGE, GENERAL ASSEMBLY, FIRST COMMITTEE, SEVENTY-EIGHTH SESSION, 13 OCTOBER 2023

Mistrust Looms Large in Disarmament, Non-Proliferation, Speakers Say

Today’s world is one of “nuclear giants and ethical infants” that know more about war than peace and killing than living, the First Committee (Disarmament and International Security) heard today as it began its thematic debate on nuclear weapons.

In the face of “a bad propensity to flirt with suicidal tendencies”, the world is experiencing the worst aggression seen in recent times, Sri Lanka’s representative said. An entrenched belief in nuclear deterrence as a defence strategy, alongside a lack of progress on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), is preventing humanity from reaching a world free from the fear of nuclear annihilation.

Trust has always been a scarce commodity in disarmament and non-proliferation, the Netherlands’ delegate noted, but it is now extremely low due to the current security environment. A mere call to rebuild trust would be too simple. The international community must make use of mechanisms already in place, from the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) to the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START). Nuclear-weapon States and non-nuclear-weapon States alike should be more transparent about their arsenals, doctrines and risk-reduction measures, in order to rebuild trust.

Similarly, Malaysia’s representative urged States to overcome the deep trust deficit. He went on to say the grand bargain underpinning the NPT cannot remain a distant dream and constantly deferred by considerations of strategic stability among nuclear-weapon States. It is imperative that all NPT obligations and commitments are fully implemented. He also urged the remaining Test-Ban Treaty’s Annex II States to sign and ratify the Treaty.

The representative of Belize, speaking on behalf of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) viewed the nuclear disarmament imperative through a humanitarian lens, highlighting the need for accountability to victims and expressing support for positive obligations included in the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW).

The Director and Deputy to the High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, Adedeji Ebo, said in remarks to the meeting ahead of an informal interactive dialogue with delegations that to reduce the human cost of weapons, States must recommit to the humanitarian imperative underpinning disarmament efforts. He encouraged them to universalize treaties banning inhumane and indiscriminate weapons, including the Conventions on Cluster Munitions and Certain Conventional Weapons, and the Mine-Ban Convention.

Joining the United Nations Director and Deputy to the High Representative for Disarmament Affairs was Flavio Damico, speaking for the Agency for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America and the Caribbean. He noted that more than five decades have passed since the international norm gave rise to the creation of nuclear-weapon-free zones, pioneered by the Latin America and the Caribbean region through the Treaty of Tlatelolco. That norm, he said, holds even great significance given the current global security condition.

The Committee will meet again at 10 a.m. on Monday, 16 October, to continue its thematic debate on nuclear weapons.

Statements……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….more https://press.un.org/en/2023/gadis3718.doc.htm

October 16, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | weapons and war | Leave a comment

Sweden: Vattenfall going too slow on developing nuclear reactors?

The Swedish government’s key coalition partner is ratcheting up pressure on
Vattenfall AB to expand nuclear power production and says a separate
company could be formed for that purpose if the state-run utility doesn’t
move fast enough.The strategy of the nationalist Sweden Democrats, whose
support is crucial to the country’s three-party government, stems from
their perception that Vattenfall is dragging its heels over expanding the
fleet of reactors. The utility has said it may take a decade or more to get
new units online.

Bloomberg 13th Oct 2023

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-10-13/swedish-nationalists-mull-new-nuclear-firm-to-rival-vattenfall #nuclear #antinuclear #NuclearFree #NoNukes #NuclearPlants

October 16, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, Sweden | Leave a comment

Propaganda Blitz: How Mainstream Media is Pushing Fake Palestine Stories.

SCHEERPOST, By Alan MaCleod / MintPress News

After Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel, IDF forces responded with airstrikes, leveling Gazan buildings. The violence so far has claimed the lives of more than 2,500 people. Western media, however, show far more interest and have much greater sympathy with Israeli dead than Palestinian ones and have played their usual role as unofficial spokespersons for the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).

EXTRAORDINARY CLAIMS, ZERO EVIDENCE

One case in point is the claim that, during their incursion into southern Israel, Hamas fighters stopped to round up, kill and mutilate 40 Israeli babies, beheading them and leaving their bodies behind.

The extraordinary assertion was originally reported by the Israeli channel i24 News, which based it on anonymous Israeli military sources. Despite offering no proof whatsoever, this highly inflammatory claim about an enemy made by an active participant in a conflict was picked up and repeated across the world by a host of media (e.g., in the United States by Fox News, CNN, MSN, Business Insider, and The New York Post).

Meanwhile, the front pages of the United Kingdom’s largest newspapers were festooned with the story, the press outraged at the atrocity and inviting their readers to feel the same way.

Extraordinary claims should require extraordinary evidence, and a story like this should have been met with serious skepticism, given who was making the claim. The first question any reporter should have asked was, “Where is the evidence?” Given multiple opportunities to stand by it, the IDF continually distanced itself from the claims. Nevertheless, the story was simply too useful not to publish.

The decapitated baby narrative was so popular that even President Biden referenced it, claiming to have seen “confirmed” images of Hamas killing children. This claim, however, was hastily retracted by his handlers at the White House, who noted that Biden was simply referencing the i24 News report.

The story looked even more like a piece of cheap propaganda after it was revealed that the key source for the claim was Israeli soldier David Ben Zion, an extremist settler who had incited race riots against Palestinians earlier this year, describing them as “animals” with no heart who needs to be “wiped out.”………………………………………………….. more https://scheerpost.com/2023/10/14/propaganda-blitz-how-mainstream-media-is-pushing-fake-palestine-stories/ #Israel #Palestine

October 16, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | media | Leave a comment