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TODAY. The rise of the  Übermensch  – the tech gods

 Douglas Rushkoff ,in his new book  Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires,  alerts us to this disturbing phenomenon of our decade – the influence of those super-wealthy individuals – Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg,  Sam Altman, Peter Thiel.

Rushkoff explains the extraordinary breadth and power of these men. – “Musk not only owns X and Tesla but also SpaceX, StarLink, the Boring Company, Solar City, NeuraLink, xAI, and someday, he hopes, another finance company like PayPal”  “Bezos doesn’t just control Amazon – but the Washington Post, IMDb, MGM, Twitch, Zoox, Kiva, Whole Foods, Ring, Ivona, One Medical, Blue Origin and, of course, Amazon Web Services”  “Gates 20bn dollars’ worth of Microsoft stock and assets are Microsoft Azure (his 23% of the cloud), LinkedIn, Skype and GitHub.” 

The really worrying thing is that these individuals think that they are experts on everything, and the world seems to be believing this.

Their individual expertise is in each case, in some form of advanced technology. Yet in fact, it is apparent that they are woefully ignorant of just about everything else that really matters. They have no interest in ecology – in the web of life that exists on this planet, and which is essential for human survival. Nor do they have any grasp of the significance of workplace conditions - consider the exploitation of Bezos’ Amazon workers. And they show no understanding of the environmental effects of the tech resource boom.

Yet their fantasies for the future seem to be accepted as realistic propositions: colonies on Mars and the moon,  “doomsday” escape settlements, uploading a person’s consciousness to “the cloud”. So media coverage and tax-payers money go to approving and encouraging their schemes.

The part of all this that I find particularly sinister and dangerous is the complete downgrading of studies and expertise that are not highly technical. Studies in ecology, public health, sociology, history, culture and the arts. 

We are marvelling at the “genius”, the “success” – of these lop-sided “experts” - all of whom seem to be significantly lacking in common sense. We follow them at our peril .

December 28, 2023 Posted by | Christina's notes | 1 Comment

Ralph Nader: ‘Nothing Will Stop Us’

There is only one institution that could stop Netanyahu’s mass military massacres of the Palestinian people. That is the U.S. Congress.

In 2015, over 400 Rabbis from Israel, the USA and Canada called on Prime Minister Netanyahu to stop the practice of demolishing hundreds of Palestinian homes as being contrary to international law and Jewish tradition. Their successors Rabbis for Human Rights are being ignored by the regime.

By Ralph Nader / Nader.org,  https://scheerpost.com/2023/12/27/ralph-nader-nothing-will-stop-us/

The unstoppable Israeli U.S. armed military juggernaut continues its genocidal destruction of Gaza’s Palestinians. The onslaught includes blocking the provision of “food, water, medicine, electricity and fuel,” openly genocidal orders decreed by Netanyahu and his extreme, blood-thirsty ministers.

The stunning atrocities going on day after day is being recorded by U.S. drones over Gaza and by brave Palestinian journalists directly targeted by the Israeli army. Over 66 journalists and larger numbers of their families have been slain. Israel has excluded foreign and Israeli journalists for years from Gaza.

This no-holds-barred ferocity came out of the Israeli government’s slumber on October 7th which allowed a few thousand Hamas and other fighters to take their smuggled hand-held weapons and attack soldiers and civilians before being destroyed or driven back to Gaza.

Seventy-five years of Israel military violence against defenseless Palestinians and fifty-six years of violently and illegally occupying their remaining slice of the original Palestine provides some background for Israel’s Founder, David Ben-Gurion’s candid statement: “We have taken their country.” (See, his full statement here).

The overwhelming military superiority of Israel – a nuclear armed nation – in the Middle East has produced a more aggressive Israeli government. Being more secure than ever before doesn’t seem to temper the expansionist missions of right-wing Israeli colonies in the West Bank.

Presently, the narrow Netanyahu majority in the Parliament believes that “nothing can stop us.” Presently, they are right.

Joe Biden and Congress are vigorously enabling the annihilations. The UN is frozen by the Joe Biden administration’s vetoes in the Security Council against ending the carnage in Gaza. The Arab nations either lay in ruins – Syria, Iraq – or are too weak to cause Israeli generals any worry. The rich Arab nations in the Gulf want to do business with prosperous Israel and, other than Qatar, care little about their Palestinian brethren.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) are no obstacle. Israel, along with Russia and the U.S. do not belong to the International Criminal Court. The Palestinian Authority is a party, but the practical difficulties of investigating Israeli war crimes in Gaza and apprehending the accused are insurmountable. The ICJ’s jurisdiction requires a country to bring Israel before the Court for war crimes or genocide. In any event, the Court’s lead-footed procedures trespass on eternity. So much for international law and the Geneva Conventions. Netanyahu rejects the moral authority of seventeen Israeli human rights groups, including Rabbis and reservist soldiers. Their open letter to President Biden in the December 13, 2023 issue of the New York Times on “The Humanitarian Catastrophe in the Gaza Strip” was ignored by the media despite the truth and courage it embodied.

In the U.S., protests and demonstrations are everywhere. Many are organized by Jewish human rights groups such as Jewish Voice for Peace, If Not Now, Standing Together, Veterans for Peace and various student organizations. Everywhere Biden travels there are people from all backgrounds protesting.

A few days ago, the first protests by labor union members occurred in Oakland, California. Union activists could turn their attention to why, for years, union leaders put billions of dollars into riskier lower-interest Israeli bonds rather than U.S. Treasuries or bond funds investing in America. Like U.S. weapon deliveries, purchases of Israeli bonds by states, cities and unions have surged since October 7th.

Pope Francis, informed of the Israeli attack on the only Catholic Church and Convent in Gaza, which housed people with disabilities, killing and injuring Christians sheltering there, sorrowfully said: “Some would say, ‘It is war. It is terrorism.’ Yes, it is war. It is terrorism.”

In 2015, over 400 Rabbis from Israel, the USA and Canada called on Prime Minister Netanyahu to stop the practice of demolishing hundreds of Palestinian homes as being contrary to international law and Jewish tradition. Their successors Rabbis for Human Rights are being ignored by the regime.

The Head of the U.S. Bishops Conference and the National Council of Churches, representing millions of parishioners, condemned the bombings but received little coverage.

There is only one institution that could stop Netanyahu’s mass military massacres of the Palestinian people. That is the U.S. Congress. As long as over 90% of the politicians there automatically support AIPAC, the Israeli Government Can Do No Wrong Lobby, even a peace-loving Joe Biden cannot deter Netanyahu. Bibi (his nickname) could simply say to a hypothetically transformed Biden “Joe, take it up with OUR Congress.”

How has AIPAC achieved such domination on Capitol Hill? By years of relentless lobbying and the smear of “anti-semitism” to anyone defying them. AIPAC and its chapters don’t bother with marches or demonstrations. They personally focus on the legislator – one by one. Carrots or sticks. Praise, PAC money and junkets are the Carrots. The Sticks are smears and money for selected primary challengers in their Districts or States. Rep. Betty McCollum (D-MN) called AIPAC “a Hate Group.”

There are about 300,000 citizens spending significant time back in the states working Congress in AIPAC’s favor. They know the doctors, lawyers, accountants, clergy, local politicians, donors, golf champions and other friends of the Senators and Representatives, and forcefully promote Israeli expansionism backed to the hilt by the U.S. government.

AIPAC is proficient in part for lack of any organized opposition. It is also practicing state-of-the-art non-stop grassroots lobbying.

Congress is poised to send $14.3 billion to Israeli militarism – a “genocide tax” on U.S. taxpayers – without public hearings. While growing public opinion in the U.S. is against unconditional backing of the Israeli regime, it has not changed a single vote in Congress. Someday, more organized support for America’s national interest will.

(For calls to your legislators, the Congressional switchboard is 202-224-3121.)

December 28, 2023 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

‘We will coup whoever we want!’: the unbearable hubris of Musk and the billionaire tech bros

Unlike their forebears, contemporary billionaires do not hope to build the biggest house in town, but the biggest colony on the moon,

Today’s billionaire philanthropists, frequently espousing the philosophy of “effective altruism”, donate to their own organisations, often in the form of their own stock, and make their own decisions about how the money is spent because they are, after all, experts in everything.

 Guardian,  Douglas Rushkoff. 25 Dec 23,

Challenging each other to cage fights, building apocalypse bunkers – the behaviour of today’s mega-moguls is becoming increasingly outlandish and imperial.

ven their downfalls are spectacular. Like a latter-day Icarus flying too close to the sun, disgraced crypto-god Sam Bankman-Fried crashed and burned this month, recasting Michael Lewis’s exuberant biography of the convicted fraudster – Going Infinite – into the story of a supervillain. Even his potential sentence of up to 115 years in prison seems more suitable for a larger-than-life comic book character – the Joker being carted off to Arkham Asylum – than a nerdy, crooked currency trader.

But that’s the way this generation of tech billionaires rolls. The Elon Musk we meet in Walter Isaacson’s biography posts selfies of himself as Marvel comic character Doctor Strange – the “Sorcerer Supreme” who protects the Earth against magical threats. Musk is so fascinated with figures such as Iron Man that he gave a tour of the SpaceX factory to the actor who plays him, Robert Downey Jr, and the film’s director, Jon Favreau. As if believing he really has acquired these characters’ martial arts prowess, in June Musk challenged fellow übermensch Mark Zuckerberg to “a cage match” after Zuck launched an app to compete with the floundering Twitter. Musk and Zuck exchanged taunts in the style of superheroes or perhaps professional wrestlers. “I’m up for a cage match if he is,” tweeted Musk. “Send Me Location,” responded Zuck from Instagram’s Threads.

Billionaires, or their equivalents, have been around a long time, but there’s something different about today’s tech titans, as evidenced by a rash of recent books. Reading about their apocalypse bunkers, vampiric longevity strategies, outlandish social media pronouncements, private space programmes and virtual world-building ambitions, it’s hard to remember they’re not actors in a reality series or characters from a new Avengers movie.

Unlike their forebears, contemporary billionaires do not hope to build the biggest house in town, but the biggest colony on the moon, underground lair in New Zealand, or virtual reality server in the cloud. In contrast, however avaricious, the titans of past gilded eras still saw themselves as human members of civil society. Contemporary billionaires appear to understand civics and civilians as impediments to their progress, necessary victims of the externalities of their companies’ growth, sad artefacts of the civilisation they will leave behind in their inexorable colonisation of the next dimension.

While plans for Peter Thiel’s 193-hectare (477-acre) “doomsday” escape, complete with spa, theatre, meditation lounge and library, were ultimately rejected on environmental grounds, he still wants to build a startup community that floats on the ocean, where so-called seasteaders can live beyond government regulation as well as whatever disasters may befall us back on the continents.

To escape “near-term” problems such as poverty and pollution, Jeff Bezos imagines building millions of space colonies housing trillions of people on the moon, asteroids and in other parts of the solar system, where inhabitants will harvest the resources of space for themselves and those left back on Earth. Elon Musk is convinced he will build a city of a million people on Mars by 2050 at a cost of up to $10bn a person. The ChatGPT impresario Sam Altman, whose board of directors sacked him as CEO before he made a dramatic comeback this week, wants to upload his consciousness to the cloud (if the AIs he helped build and now fears will permit him).

…………………….. as chronicled by Peter Turchin in End Times, his book on elite excess and what it portends, today there are far more centimillionaires and billionaires than there were in the gilded age, and they have collectively accumulated a much larger proportion of the world’s wealth. ………………………………………..

What evidence we do see of their operations in the real world mostly take the form of externalised harm. Digital businesses depend on mineral slavery in Africa, dump toxic waste in China, facilitate the undermining of democracy across the globe and spread destabilising disinformation for profit – all from the sociopathic remove afforded by remote administration.

Indeed, there is an imperiousness to the way the new billionaire class disregard people and places for which it is hard to find historical precedent………………………………………………………………….

At least Zuckerberg’s anti-democratic measures are expressed as the decrees of a benevolent dictator. Musk exercises no such restraint. In response to the accusation that the US government organised a coup against Evo Morales in Bolivia in order for Tesla to secure lithium there, Musk tweeted: “We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.”

Musk now has the ability to tweet this way as much as he likes: Twitter/X is his own platform. He bought it………………………………………………..

Musk not only owns X and Tesla but also SpaceX, StarLink, the Boring Company, Solar City, NeuraLink, xAI, and someday, he hopes, another finance company like PayPal (which he co-founded with Thiel but then sold to eBay). Similarly, Bezos doesn’t just control Amazon – the world’s biggest ever retailer, if that even does justice to the monolith – but the Washington Post, IMDb, MGM, Twitch, Zoox, Kiva, Whole Foods, Ring, Ivona, One Medical, Blue Origin and, of course, Amazon Web Services, which owns at least one-third of the cloud computing market. Included in Gates’s 20bn dollars’ worth of Microsoft stock and assets are Microsoft Azure (his 23% of the cloud), LinkedIn, Skype and GitHub. He also, incidentally, owns 109,000 hectares (270,000 acres) of US farmland.

This is unprecedentedly broad, or what could be called “horizontal” power. It is success across such a wide spectrum that has given today’s tech billionaires false confidence in the extent of their own expertise. Gates, who regularly dispensed advice on vaccines and public health in television interviews, eventually issued a report in which he graded each country’s pandemic response as if he were a school teacher who knew better than every nation’s department of health (no one got an A).

……………………. Today’s billionaire philanthropists, frequently espousing the philosophy of “effective altruism”, donate to their own organisations, often in the form of their own stock, and make their own decisions about how the money is spent because they are, after all, experts in everything.

Rather than donating to a university, Thiel’s Fellowship pays $100,000 “to young people who want to build new things instead of sitting in a classroom”. Meanwhile, contests such as Musk’s X Prize and Singularity University focus on “exponential technologies” that solve “global grand challenges”. Such moonshots reward the bold thinking that “aims to make something 10 times better”.

Their words and actions suggest an approach to life, technology and business that I have come to call “The Mindset” – a belief that with enough money, one can escape the harms created by earning money in that way. It’s a belief that with enough genius and technology, they can rise above the plane of mere mortals and exist on an entirely different level, or planet, altogether.

……………………………… This distorted image of the übermensch as a godlike creator, pushing confidently towards his clear vision of how things should be, persists as an essential component of The Mindset………………..

Any new business idea, Thiel says, should be an order of magnitude better than what’s already out there. Don’t compare yourself to everyone else; instead operate one level above the competing masses. For Thiel, this requires being what he calls a “definite optimist”. Most entrepreneurs are too process-oriented, making incremental decisions based on how the market responds. They should instead be like Steve Jobs or Elon Musk, pressing on with their singular vision no matter what. The definite optimist doesn’t take feedback into account, but ploughs forward with his new design for a better world. It happens ex nihilo – literally “from zero to one”. So like a supervillain constructing an all-seeing eye, Thiel builds a giant data analytics system, Palantir, through which he can observe and predict threats before they even manifest – all while preparing for Armageddon, just in case.

…………………………………………………… This is not capitalism, as Yanis Varoufakis explains in his new book Technofeudalism. Capitalists sought to extract value from workers by disconnecting them from the value they created, but they still made stuff. Feudalists seek an entirely passive income by “going meta” on business itself. They are rent-seekers, whose aim is to own the very platform on which other people do the work.

……………………………………………………………………. that’s what is really going on here. The antics of the tech feudalists make for better science fiction stories than they chart legitimate paths to sustainable futures. Musk and Zuckerberg challenge each other to duels as a way of advertising their platforms. Musk is less X’s CEO than its troll in chief. They are not gods; they are entertainers.

Instead of emulating them, we should first laugh at them, and then dismiss them. They’re like the contestants in an episode of Survivor, trying to be the last one on the island. It’s perversely amusing, and sometimes hard to look away. It’s the same impulse that leads many Americans to vote for Trump – less because they want him for president than because he will make for better television.

But it’s time to turn off this show, this car accident of a tech future, and get on with reclaiming the world from this new generation of robber barons rather than continuing to fund their fantasies. These are not the demigods we’re looking for.

 Douglas Rushkoff is the author of Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires (Scribe).  https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/nov/25/we-will-coup-whoever-we-want-the-unbearable-hubris-of-musk-and-the-billionaire-tech-bros

December 28, 2023 Posted by | politics international, Religion and ethics | Leave a comment

With the Persecution of Julian Assange Biden Is Overseeing the Silent Death of the First Amendment

By continuing the persecution of Julian Assange, the US government is signaling how little it cares about press freedom.

YANIS VAROUFAKIS, LINA ATTALAH, and JOHN KIRIAKOU, December 25, 2023/January 1, 2024, Issue,  https://www.thenation.com/donate-display/?utm_medium=display&utm_source=Display&utm_campaign=2023-eoy&sourceid=1082390&ms=300-600&utm_content=300-600

In early 2024, a new, grim chapter may be written in the annals of journalistic history. Julian Assange, the publisher of Wikileaks, could board a plane for extradition to the United States, where he faces up to 175 years in prison on espionage charges for the crime of publishing newsworthy information

The persecution of Assange is clear evidence that the Biden administration is overseeing the silent death of the First Amendment—with global consequences.

Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s exposé during the Watergate scandal is seen as a triumph of truth over power. Their investigative reporting led to the downfall of President Nixon, cementing their status as champions of press freedom. However, what if this tale had taken a dark turn, with the journalists prosecuted for espionage and silenced under the guise of national security? While this is mere fiction, Assange’s plight is all too real.

Assange, the standard-bearer of our era’s investigative journalism, awaits extradition in a British cell in Belmarsh Prison, a fate that could stifle the beacon of transparency he represents. At a time when the world grapples with the erosion of press freedom, with journalists imprisoned and killed, Assange’s case raises profound questions about the consequences of challenging power and unveiling uncomfortable realities.

The legacy of WikiLeaks goes beyond exposing government misconduct; it pierces the veil of secrecy shrouding global affairs. The release of Collateral Murder, the haunting camera footage from a 2007 Apache helicopter attack in Baghdad showing the murder of several civilians, including two Reuters journalists, shocked the world. As we’ve seen in the past two months, the killing of civilians and journalists in war continues. In the last two months, Israel’s bombardment of Gaza has killed dozens of journalists, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. On Thursday, human rights groups determined that Israel had deliberately fired on a Reuters journalist in southern Lebanon—a blatant war crime.

The aim of targeting journalists is to keep information where governments want it—under lock and key. That is why Wikileaks is such a threat—because, since its founding, it has fearlessly worked to wrest that information out of the hands of the powerful and put it in the hands of the people.

Wikileaks exposed not only civilian casualties, torture, and other human rights abuses through projects such as the Iraq War Logs, but also published documents that offer invaluable insight into conflicts still raging today. For example, cables released by Wikileaks in the 2010 Cablegate leaks show Israel’s policy towards Gaza in the years following Hamas’s election victory in 2006 and the group’s 2007 takeover of the strip. According to the cable, Israel determined that Hamas’s rise in Gaza would benefit them as it would allow the Israeli military to “deal with Gaza as a hostile state” and so turned down a Palestinian Authority request for assistance in defeating Hamas. Israeli policy to blockaded Gaza was to “keep the Gazan economy functioning at the lowest possible level consistent with avoiding humanitarian crisis.”

This information is essential, and we need more of it. That’s why the three of us, as members of the Belmarsh Tribunal—a group of experts that gathers together at regular intervals to present evidence about Assange’s persecution—are raising our voices together to free the truth and free Assange.

The extradition case against Assange is now entering its final phase, with his final UK court hearing expected in early 2024. He could then be brought to the US to face charges under the Espionage Act. The potential ramifications for power-challenging, truth-seeking journalism cannot be overstated.

The application of the Espionage Act in the US sets a chilling precedent that reverberates far beyond Assange’s individual fate. The silencing of a truth-seeker sends a dangerous message, signaling a decline in the resilience of a free press against the forces of authoritarianism.

The latest meeting of the tribunal is taking place in Washington, D.C., on Saturday. (The Nation is a cosponsor of the event.) One of us, Lina Attalah, the chief editor of the Egyptian publication Mada Masr, is unable to attend in person. Her publication’s reporting of the ongoing assault on Gaza has raised the ire of the US-allied Egyptian state. If the US can imprison those who reveal torture and persecute journalists who reveal truths, what’s to stop the US government’s authoritarian allies?

In defending Assange, we defend the right to know, to question, and to challenge power. The echoes of history remind us that the struggle for press freedom is ongoing, and the fate of Julian Assange is a litmus test for the resilience of truth in the face of oppression. The world needs more journalism that fearlessly confronts power, not less.

The pressure is mounting on the Biden administration to free Julian Assange. It’s not only one man’s life that is at stake, but the First Amendment and freedom of the press itself. As long as the Espionage Act is deployed to imprison those who exposed war crimes, no publisher and no journalist will be safe.

December 28, 2023 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

COP28’s Unrealistic Tripling of Nuclear Power

according to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the declaration by 22 countries calling for a tripling of nuclear energy by 2050 is more fantasy than reality: “Even at best, a shift to invest more heavily in nuclear energy over the next two decades could actually worsen the climate crisis, as cheaper, quicker alternatives are ignored for more expensive, slow-to-deploy nuclear reactors.” (Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Dec. 13th, 2023)

BY ROBERT HUNZIKER, 22 Dec 23,  https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/12/22/cop28s-unrealistic-tripling-of-nuclear-power/

UN climate conferences since 1992 have failed to follow thru with results, as CO2 emissions continue higher and higher with every passing year. In fact, post climate conference impact of adopted proposals has become something 0f an inside joke. The most recent conference, COP28, embraced nuclear power as a godsend challenging climate change.

“Triple Nuclear Power” still echoes throughout the halls of COP28. If one stands at the podium in the convention center now empty and listens intently, echoes reverberate “triple nuclear power” spewing out of red-faced maniacs from over 20 countries that committed to tripling nuclear power to bail our global asses out of a crazed climate system of epic proportions.

The US, UK, UAE, and others signed a declaration. Since they couldn’t budge oil and gas, it was decided to favor nuclear power as a surrogate for fixing the rip snorting global heating imbroglio found from pole to pole, from ocean to ocean. It’s real, it’s palpable; it’s now, much earlier than forecasts, as 1.5C prematurely comes to surface during irregular episodes.

Yet, according to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the declaration by 22 countries calling for a tripling of nuclear energy by 2050 is more fantasy than reality: “Even at best, a shift to invest more heavily in nuclear energy over the next two decades could actually worsen the climate crisis, as cheaper, quicker alternatives are ignored for more expensive, slow-to-deploy nuclear reactors.” (Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Dec. 13th, 2023)

Building nuclear power facilities has a long history that unfortunately casts a doubtful shadow over the idea of tripling by 2050. A now-famous plan by Princeton University in 2004 called for a “stabilization wedge” to avoid one billion tons of carbon emissions per year by 2055 by building 700 large nuclear reactors over 50 years.

In 2022, there were 416 operating reactors in the world. Starting in 2005 when the Princeton plan was announced, it would have meant building 14 reactors per year, assuming all existing reactors continued to function. However, over the 50-year cycle aging reactors and those going into retirement would ultimately require 40 new reactors per year. But throughout the entire history of nuclear power, on average 10 nuclear power plants connected to the electricity grid per year, and the number of new units was only 5 per year from 2011-2021.

Once again, like the sticky issue of direct carbon capture, achieving the scale of proposed solutions to climate change’s biggest weapon, or global warming, is beyond reality. Talk is cheap.

Meanwhile less expensive safer wind and solar easily trounce nuclear power’s newly installed output, by a country mile, to wit:

New nuclear energy capacity 2000-2020 42 GWe

New wind capacity from 2000-2020 605 GWe

New solar capacity from 2000-2020 578 GWe

Nuclear costs are prohibitively high: It’ll cost $15 trillion to triple nuclear capacity, assuming existing reactors continue to function, which will not be the case, raising this big bet well over $15T. Who’s putting up $15T?

And is there enough time to triple by 2050? From design to projected operation of the NuScale VOYGR plant takes 13 years. According to the International Energy Agency, the design and build phase for a country’s first nuclear reactor is 15 years. Several countries that signed on to the declaration to triple nuclear power are newbies.

According to a Foreign Policy article, Dec. 13th 2023 entitled: COP28’s Dramatic But Empty Nuclear Pledge: several reasons for skepticism about the nuclear energy triple buildout were enumerated, concluding: “The combination of macroeconomic pressures and regulatory restrictions means that neither pledges such as those made at COP28 nor memorandums of understanding with various industries, utilities, and governments should give anyone much confidence that a major expansion of nuclear energy is forthcoming.”

Nuclear expert Mycle Schneider, the lead author of the prestigious World Nuclear Industry Status Report (500 pgs.) now in in its 18th edition known for its fact-based approach on details of operation, construction, and decommissioning of the world’s reactors was recently interviewed by the Bulletin: Schneider’s publication is considered the landmark study of the industry.

Regarding NuScale, the US-based company that develops America’s flagship SMR (Small Nuclear Reactors), the company initially promised in 2008 to start generating power by 2015. As of 2023, they haven’t started construction of a single reactor. They do not have a certification license for the model they promoted for a Utah municipality. NuScale’s six module facility would cost $20,000 per kilowatt installed, twice as expensive as the most expensive large-scale reactors in Europe. And SMRs will generate disproportionate amounts of nuclear waste. No bargain here, assuming it even works efficiently enough, which is doubtful.

Schneider: “The entire logic that has been built up for small modular reactors is with the background of climate change emergency. That’s the big problem we have.” A sense of urgency cannot be met: “Considering the status of development, we’re not going to see any SMR generating power before the 2030s. It’s very clear: none. And if we are talking about SMRs picking up any kind of substantial amounts of generating capacity in the current market, if ever, we’re talking about the 2040s at the very earliest.”

Schneider on COP’s pledge to triple nuclear power: “From an industrial point of view, to put this pledge into reality. To me, this pledge is very close to absurd, compared to what the industry has shown.”

Looked at another way: “It took 70 years to bring global nuclear capacity to the current level of 370 gigawatts (GW), and the industry must now select technologies, raise finance and develop the rules to build another 740 GW in half that time… Why would anyone spend a single dollar on a technology that, if planned today, won’t even be available to help until 2035-2045?’ said Mark Jacobson, an energy specialist at Stanford University.” (Source: Nuclear Sector Must Overcome Decades of Stagnation to Meet COP28 Tripling, Reuters, Dec. 7, 2023) How about $15 trillion?

COP28 did not deliver on phase down of fossil fuels, and it’ll likely miss on tripling nuclear power. But once the results are finally known, it’s too late. The heat’s already on.

December 28, 2023 Posted by | climate change | Leave a comment

SMR – Spending Money Recklessly

 Spending Money Recklessly: This video explains why the nuclear industry
has been stagnating for the last 25 years, and why nuclear promoters are
desperate to obtain government fundings for SMRs (Small Modular Reactors)
despite the fact that nuclear power is the slowest, costliest, and most
speculative approach to fighting climate change.

Energy efficiency and renewables with storage are far preferable, not least because they are
do-able. Gordon Edwards gives the Keynote address on Small Modular Reactors
(SMRs) at the AGM of the Alliance to Halt Fermi-3 (Detroit Michigan), on
December 3, 2023. Edwards is prudent of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear
Responsibility: www.ccnr.org .

 Gordon Edwards 23rd Dec 2023

December 28, 2023 Posted by | Small Modular Nuclear Reactors | Leave a comment

Site for Canada’s underground nuclear waste repository to be selected next year

They don’t know if this vastly expensive nuclear waste disposal system will work – to protect future generations from toxic ionising radiation.

Yet they still keep making the poisonous stuff any way !!!

Allison Jones, The Canadian Press, December 27, 2023 

A critical milestone is on the horizon for Canada’s 175-year-long plan to bury its nuclear waste underground, with two pairs of Ontario communities set to decide if they would be willing hosts.

Late next year, the Nuclear Waste Management Organization plans to select the site for Canada’s deep geological repository, where millions of bundles of used nuclear fuel will be placed in a network of rooms connected by cavernous tunnels, as deep below the Earth’s surface as the CN Tower is tall — if the process goes according to plan.

The sites are down to the Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation-Ignace area in northwestern Ontario and the Saugeen Ojibway Nation-South Bruce area in southern Ontario. The municipalities and First Nations are planning votes for next year, the culmination of a years-long information gathering process that some say has left deep divisions within their communities.

The process to move ahead with a deep geological repository is already more than 20 years along. The NWMO was established under legislation in 2002 and is funded by the corporations that generate nuclear power and waste, such as Ontario Power Generation and Hydro-Quebec.

While officials say they are confident at least one area will say yes, two rejections would be a major setback for the $26-billion project.

Ultimately, if both areas say no, then we have to start over — and by we I mean Canada,” said Lise Morton, the vice-president of site selection.

“We as a country would then be really pushing the resolution of this issue to the next generation.”

Both the municipality and First Nation in the area of either proposed site must confirm willingness to host the repository before the NWMO will proceed.

…………………………..there are a good number of people in the community who are not convinced — about 20 per cent are with Protect Our Waterways, the main opposition group, Goetz estimates — and it has caused “quite a friction.”

South Bruce is also in the shadow of Walkerton, Ont., where seven people died and thousands fell ill after drinking contaminated water in 2000. Fears about drinking water have lingered there long after the tragedy, said Bill Noll, vice chair of Protect Our Waterways.

Water also weighs heavily on the minds of members of the Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation, who have seen members of another northwestern Ontario First Nation on the English-Wabigoon river system grapple with generations of mercury poisoning after a mill in Dryden dumped 9,000 kilograms of the substance in the 1960s.

“That’s the evidence right now of how an industry went astray or how government oversight wasn’t there,” said Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation Chief Clayton Wetelain…………………………………………………….

all the tests and planning and modelling are not easing the fears of the project’s critics, either with the southern Ontario-based Protect Our Waterways or We the Nuclear Free North.

“The whole thing is a grand experiment,” said Brennain Lloyd, with the northern group.

“There’s not a deep geological repository … operating anywhere in the world. The NWMO likes to say, ‘Well, this is best international practice,’ but practice implies that it’s been done before. And there is no practice. Nobody has done this before.”…………………………………………………………………………….more https://www.cp24.com/news/site-for-canada-s-underground-nuclear-waste-repository-to-be-selected-next-year-1.6701756

“There is a big concern relative to water,” Noll said. “Once you pollute the water, there’s not much you can do about it.”

December 28, 2023 Posted by | Canada, wastes | Leave a comment

Meta’s Broken Promises -Systemic Censorship of Palestine Content on Instagram and Facebook

SCHEERPOST, By Deborah Brown and Rasha Younes / Human Rights Watch, December 23, 2023

Summary

Meta’s policies and practices have been silencing voices in support of Palestine and Palestinian human rights on Instagram and Facebook in a wave of heightened censorship of social media amid the hostilities between Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups that began on October 7, 2023. This systemic online censorship has risen against the backdrop of unprecedented violence, including an estimated 1,200 people killed in Israel, largely in the Hamas-led attack on October 7, and over 18,000 Palestinians killed as of December 14, largely as a result of intense Israeli bombardment.

Between October and November 2023, Human Rights Watch documented over 1,050 takedowns and other suppression of content Instagram and Facebook that had been posted by Palestinians and their supporters, including about human rights abuses.  Human Rights Watch publicly solicited cases of any type of online censorship and of any type of viewpoints related to Israel and Palestine. Of the 1,050 cases reviewed for this report, 1,049 involved peaceful content in support of Palestine that was censored or otherwise unduly suppressed, while one case involved removal of content in support of Israel. The documented cases include content originating from over 60 countries around the world, primarily in English, all of peaceful support of Palestine, expressed in diverse ways. This distribution of cases does not necessarily reflect the overall distribution of censorship. Hundreds of people continued to report censorship after Human Rights Watch completed its analysis for this report, meaning that the total number of cases Human Rights Watch received greatly exceeded 1,050.

Human Rights Watch found that the censorship of content related to Palestine on Instagram and Facebook is systemic and global. Meta’s inconsistent enforcement of its own policies led to the erroneous removal of content about Palestine. While this appears to be the biggest wave of suppression of content about Palestine to date, Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has a well-documented record of overbroad crackdowns on content related to Palestine. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. more https://scheerpost.com/2023/12/23/metas-broken-promises/

December 28, 2023 Posted by | media | Leave a comment

Ukraine confirms retreat from key Donbass town

 https://www.rt.com/news/589722-ukraine-confirms-maryinka-retreat/ 27 Dec 23

Kiev’s top general has acknowledged Russia’s capture of Maryinka, saying his forces pulled back to the outskirts

Ukrainian commander-in-chief Valery Zaluzhny has confirmed the retreat of his troops to the outskirts of Maryinka, a key Donbass town, where Russian forces claimed victory on Monday after months of fierce fighting for the stronghold.

Speaking at a press briefing on Tuesday, Zaluzhny acknowledged the pullback of Ukrainian troops from Maryinka, located to the west of Donetsk. He likened the heavy fighting for the town in recent months to Ukraine’s loss earlier this year of Artyomovsk (known as Bakhmut in Ukrainian).

“This is exactly the same as it was in Bakhmut – street by street, block by block, and our soldiers were being targeted – and the result is what it is,” Zaluzhny said. “This is a war, so the fact that we have now retreated to the outskirts of Maryinka and set up positions behind Maryinka in some areas is nothing that can cause any public outcry. Sadly, this is what war is like.”

Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu announced on Monday that Moscow’s forces had fully liberated Maryinka. Ukrainian troops had dug in for nearly a decade, using the town as a key hub in their battles with Donbass separatists and later the Russian Army. President Vladimir Putin said the victory pushed Ukrainian units further away from Donetsk and would provide Russian troops wider operational freedom in future maneuvers.

Ukrainian officials have denied Russia’s claim of capturing Maryinka, saying that fighting for the town continued. However, Zaluzhny said Kiev’s troops remained only on the northern outskirts of the town. He added that although every inch of territory is important to Ukraine, “the lives of our soldiers are even more important to us.”

Kiev’s top general has clashed increasingly in recent months with President Vladimir Zelensky, whose office rebuked Zaluzhny in November for telling a Western media outlet that the conflict with Russia had reached a “stalemate.” Zelensky repeatedly hyped a long-awaited summer counteroffensive that cost Ukraine around 160,000 casualties and failed to make any significant battlefield gains.Russian forces achieved their main 2023 goal by thwarting the counteroffensive, Shoigu said on Tuesday. He added that the Russian military was steadily making strides toward overall victory in the conflict, “constantly taking more advantageous positions and expanding territories under its control in all directions.”

Russian forces achieved their main 2023 goal by thwarting the counteroffensive, Shoigu said on Tuesday. He added that the Russian military was steadily making strides toward overall victory in the conflict, “constantly taking more advantageous positions and expanding territories under its control in all directions.”

December 28, 2023 Posted by | Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Year of the drone — how the hi-tech weapon has transformed warfare

The Times, Michael Clarke, 23 Dec 23

“Sixth-generation airpower involves the integration of many systems of information, tactics, weapons and decisions. It’s about AI, robotics and the autonomy we will grant to the robots. The aircraft that flies in the midst of all this is no longer the key component. Instead the massive Tempest IT system will come first; the physical fighter plane will be designed around its needs.”

Sixth Generation Warfare…New ways to kill that militaries are salivating over…brought to all living beings by tech and AI. Drones, autonomous weapons, AI facilitated/controlled swarms.

Excerpts:

“Combat aircraft still vie for superiority as they operate and fight at 20,000, 30,000 or 40,000ft. But down at 5,000ft, the airspace now belongs to the drones. It has become the new spatial domain of modern warfare.”

“Drones can attack, they can look and listen, they can report back, they can stick around. Or they can just intimidate troops on the ground by creating the dreaded buzzing overhead.

And this is where the 5,000ft air domain is about to become really revolutionary. The thousands of drones now operating are mainly controlled individually. But they are on the cusp of becoming part of an artificial intelligence world where their diverse functions can be integrated, and their prodigious numbers, plus the immediacy of their operations, makes them prime candidates as autonomous weapons systems — making their own combat decisions as they see the battlefield developing rapidly below them.”


“In this way, drones are all part of the AI revolution that is happening at the top of the airpower domain — up at the 30,000 and 40,000ft levels. ‘Sixth-generation’ airpower, due to be with us by the 2030s, will use advanced robotics and AI to produce aircraft that can either be piloted or left to fly and fight for themselves.”

“A single piloted aircraft in this sixth-generation conception could become an organic air wing of its own. But it will only work with advanced AI to integrate the massive information flows it will all require. And it implies a lot of system autonomy for the robotic units. A pilot will still be legally and morally responsible for what all of his or her aircraft get up to, but robotic Tempests and their accompanying drone swarms will be making a lot of their own immediate battle decisions. And the same will be true in sixth-generation maritime warfare — lots of vessels, only some of them crewed and fought like normal warships.”

“Sixth-generation airpower involves the integration of many systems of information, tactics, weapons and decisions. It’s about AI, robotics and the autonomy we will grant to the robots. The aircraft that flies in the midst of all this is no longer the key component. Instead the massive Tempest IT system will come first; the physical fighter plane will be designed around its needs.”

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/06d32bdf-9328-47ff-bdd0-dec1f5142455?shareToken=58e0d9865395766b8ed3462d463fbe62″”

December 28, 2023 Posted by | weapons and war | Leave a comment

Tokyo court holds only the utility responsible to compensate Fukushima evacuees, and reduces damages

 A Tokyo court has ruled that only the operator of the tsunami-wrecked
Fukushima nuclear power plant had to pay damages to dozens of evacuees,
relieving the government of responsibility. Plaintiffs criticized the
ruling as belittling their suffering and the severity of the disaster. The
Tokyo High Court also slashed the amount to half of a lower court’s
decision, ordering the Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, known as
TEPCO, to pay a total of 23.5 million yen ($165,000) to 44 of the 47
plaintiffs.

 AP News 27th Dec 2023

https://apnews.com/article/japan-fukushima-nuclear-ruling-evacuees-compensation-tepco-a844a85ecdff3e2526e81e242d4c89ed

December 28, 2023 Posted by | Japan, Legal | Leave a comment

UK guarantees for minimum price for nuclear-produced electricity – an expensive disaster

Holger Hadrich

 ‘A little background on nuclear energy in the UK. France, or more precisely EDF, is also an important player there. For decades, however, attempts have been made to secure financing and risks for such projects through partnerships. Typically, the larger nuclear nations are involved: the USA, Japan and later China. But guarantees are also usually demanded from the countries where construction is taking place.

In the UK, for example, the government has not only guaranteed the operators of Hinkley Point a minimum price for the purchase of electricity, but has also tied this price to inflation. The price therefore continues to rise. These CfDs are officially registered and the data can therefore be easily read: At the start of the contract, the equivalent of 10.3 cents per KWh was guaranteed. The current figure is 14.8 cents. After various delays, the state-of-the-art blocks currently under construction are now scheduled to deliver in June 2026 to 2027. If this works out and the average inflation of recent years remains the same, a price of just under 17 cents can be expected by then.

For comparison: the tender prices for new offshore wind farms around the UK are between 3-6 cents per KWh. This roughly corresponds to the range for minimum prices with which renewables are guaranteed in Europe. Exchange electricity prices are around 10 cents, but vary greatly from country to country, and are slightly higher in the UK. Because of the gas price, they are still at double that level.

This guarantee contract from previous governments in the UK is therefore an expensive disaster for electricity customers. Here, purchases are already up to 100% too expensive, and if the electricity and gas markets continue to normalise, they will be 300% or even more so. Theresa May, who was in office for a very short time, wanted to get out of the contract, but did not found a way.

Anyone who now thinks this is expensive should know that investors from Japan already pulled out of the UK market many years ago and recently the Chinese have also bailed out.

This will not be a good deal even at the prices for EDF, which now has to shoulder the burden largely on its own. The only question is who will bleed more, the electricity customers in the UK or the state budget in France. If the true cost of nuclear power is taken into account, it will probably even be EDF.

As Paris is now raising electricity prices in its own country by almost 70% – which is certainly not politically desirable – in order to relieve the state coffers of at least some of the deficits, it will be interesting to see whether Paris will continue to pursue such foreign adventures by EDF&Co. The last and most modern nuclear power plant, the one in Finland, was offered at a fixed price, at least three times more expensive and the deficit is now in a special purpose vehicle in France, one more “bad bank” of Framatome.

France will not continue to do this and most European countries’ plans to expand nuclear energy are presumably effectively over.

The talk of some parts of German politics about such ideas should be taken into account. As long as no real progress is made on nuclear energy, this is purely a populist political show to revive age-old emotionalisation, especially in Germany.

Both sides should bear this in mind, because there is no point in getting worked up about it. As things stand today, nobody needs to ban nuclear energy or fear that the industry has to be discouraged from using it. It is enough to agree that you don’t want to pay a ridiculous price for it – neither as a taxpayer nor as an electricity customer.

Perhaps we can agree on that quickly?’

Via Dirk Specht

December 28, 2023 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Talen Energy Is Building Data Centers That Run on Nuclear Power. Now, It Needs to Find Buyers

A potential partnership for data campus can boost independent power producer’s earnings

WSJ, By Soma Biswas, Dec. 27, 2023

Independent nuclear power company Talen Energy is betting its future on supplying power to technology companies that are looking for carbon-free energy sources to develop their artificial-intelligence capabilities. 

Talen, which exited bankruptcy this year, is developing a 1,200-acre data-center campus with dedicated power supply from the Susquehanna nuclear plant in Berwick, Pa., according to the company’s public presentations. Talen could lease, sell or form a joint venture with technology companies such as Google,  Microsoft or  Amazon.com to operate the facility, according to Talen shareholders  and a report by investment bank  Oppenheimer. 

In December, Oppenheimer analysts initiated coverage of the company, and added that such a deal could boost the company’s cash flow by $50 million annually.  A power-supply contract to a tenant or buyer would yield higher rates than what Talen would earn in the wholesale power market since commercial customers, such as data centers, pay more for electricity, the company has said. ……………………………. (Subscribers only) more https://www.wsj.com/articles/talen-energy-is-building-data-centers-that-run-on-nuclear-power-now-it-needs-to-find-buyers-c9c8c4a9—

December 28, 2023 Posted by | ENERGY, technology | Leave a comment

Russia To Retire World’s Only Nuclear-Powered, Largest Battle-Cruiser Pyotr Veliky

The Russian Navy will not modernize the massive Pyotr Veliky battle-cruiser, the world’s only nuclear-powered surface vessel, and the largest non-aircraft carrier naval warship.

The one-of-kind warship that packs phenomenal firepower was supposed to be refitted and modernized after another ship in its class, Admiral Nakhimov, concluded her modernization. Pyotr Veliky will head for decommissioning following that.

According to reports, the anticipated refurbishment has been canceled owing to concerns over the massive costs and technical challenges involved in the vessels’ operations and maintenance.

Moreover, the ships are also not in harmony with newer concepts being considered in the Russian Navy, which favor mid-sized, heavily armed missile boats, corvettes, and frigates, which have a mix of land-attack, surface-ship strike, anti-air, and submarine hunting capabilities. ……………………………………………………………………………  https://www.eurasiantimes.com/russia-to-retire-worlds-only-nuclear-powered-largest-battle-cruiser-pyotr-veliky-sister-ship-to-serve-in-arctic/

December 28, 2023 Posted by | Russia, weapons and war | Leave a comment

China’s Low-Cost Nuclear Offer Faces Scrutiny in Kazakhstan

By Eurasianet – Dec 27, 2023,

  • The Chinese proposal offers a nuclear plant at half the price of French, Russian, and South Korean alternatives.
  • Concerns arise over the Chinese design using outdated technology, despite compatibility with Kazakh-produced fuel assemblies.
  • The projected cost for a two-unit nuclear power plant is over $12 billion, with an output of 2.4 GW of power.

A Kazakh media outlet, citing a watchdog group representative, is reporting that the Kazakh government is balking at a Chinese proposal to build the Central Asian nation’s first nuclear power plant. The Kazakh government has not officially commented on the report. …………..  https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Nuclear-Power/Chinas-Low-Cost-Nuclear-Offer-Faces-Scrutiny-in-Kazakhstan.html

December 28, 2023 Posted by | 1 NUCLEAR ISSUES, Kazakhstan | Leave a comment