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Biden administration finalizes a $1.1 billion aid package for California’s last nuclear power plant

LOS ANGELES (AP) — President Joe Biden’s administration on Wednesday finalized approval of $1.1 billion to help keep California’s last operating nuclear power plant running.

The funding is a financial pillar in the plan to keep the Diablo Canyon Power Plant producing electricity to at least 2030 — five years beyond its planned closing.

Terms of the aid package were not released by the Energy Department.

In 2016, plant operator Pacific Gas & Electric, environmental groups and plant worker unions reached an agreement to close the four-decade-old reactors by 2025. But the Legislature voided the deal in 2022 at the urging of Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, who said the power is needed to ward off blackouts as climate change stresses the energy system.

California is the birthplace of the modern environmental movement and for decades has had a fraught relationship with nuclear power. Environmentalists argued California has adequate power without the reactors and that their continued operation could hinder development of new sources of clean energy. They also warn that long-delayed testing on one of the reactors poses a safety risk that could result in an accident, a claim disputed by PG&E………………………  https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/biden-administration-finalizes-a-1-1-billion-aid-package-for-california-s-last-nuclear-power-plant-101705536723552.html

January 19, 2024 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Petition: 100 per cent renewables rather than Small Modular (nuclear) Reactors

The UK/Ireland Nuclear Free Local Authorities are supporting a petition and
webinar hosted by 100 percent Renewables UK to condemn and counter the
one-sided pre-Christmas hearing convened by Parliament’s Environment Audit
Committee in support of the deployment of Small Modular Nuclear Reactors,
and to instead host an enquiry into the practicalities of a 100% renewable
future for the UK.

The initiative was launched by Dr David Toke, Director
of 100 percent Renewables UK and Reader in Energy Politics at the
University of Aberdeen. Dr Toke is now seeking signatures on the petition
which reads: We condemn the one-sided hearing on small modular rectors held
by the Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) and call upon the EAC to
organise an enquiry into the practicalities of a 100 percent or near 100
per cent UK renewable energy system. The petition can be found at

Petition: 100 per cent renewables rather than Small Modular (nuclear) Reactors

NFLA 16th Jan 2024

NFLAs backing call for Parliamentary enquiry into 100% renewables future for UK

January 19, 2024 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

The Military-Industrial Complex Is the Winner (Not You)

The best route to preventing a future Chinese invasion of Taiwan would be to revive Washington’s “One China” policy that calls for China to commit itself to a peaceful resolution of Taiwan’s status and for the U.S. to forswear support for that island’s formal independence. In other words, diplomacy, rather than increasing the Pentagon budget to “win” such a war, would be the way to go.

SCHEERPOST, By William D. Hartung / TomDispatch, 17 Jan 24

2023 was a year marked by devastating conflicts from Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine to Hamas’s horrific terror attacks on Israel, from that country’s indiscriminate mass slaughter in Gaza to a devastating civil war in Sudan. And there’s a distinct risk of even worse to come this year. Still, there was one clear winner in this avalanche of violence, suffering, and war: the U.S. military-industrial complex.

In December, President Biden signed a record authorization of $886 billion in “national defense” spending for 2024, including funds for the Pentagon proper and work on nuclear weapons at the Department of Energy. Add to that tens of billions of dollars more in likely emergency military aid for Ukraine and Israel, and such spending could well top $900 billion for the first time this year.

Meanwhile, the administration’s $100-billion-plus emergency military aid package that failed to pass Congress last month is likely to slip by in some form this year, while the House and Senate are almost guaranteed to add tens of billions more for “national defense” projects in specific states and districts, as happened in two of the last three years.

Of course, before the money actually starts flowing, Congress needs to pass an appropriations bill for Fiscal Year 2024, clearing the way for that money to be spent. As of this writing, the House and Senate had indeed agreed to a tentative deal to sign onto the $886 billion that was authorized in December. A trillion-dollar version of such funding could be just around the corner.  (If past practice is any guide, more than half of that sum could go directly to corporations, large and small.)

A trillion dollars is a hard figure to process. In the 1960s, when the federal budget was a fraction of what it is now, Republican Senator Everett Dirksen allegedly said, “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.” Whether he did or not, that quote neatly captures how congressional attitudes toward federal spending have changed. After all, today, a billion dollars is less than a rounding error at the Pentagon. The department’s budget is now hundreds of billions of dollars more than at the height of the Vietnam War and over twice what it was when President Eisenhower warned of the “unwarranted influence” wielded by what he called “the military-industrial complex.”

To offer just a few comparisons: annual spending on the costly, dysfunctional F-35 combat aircraft alone is greater than the entire budget of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2020, Lockheed Martin’s contracts with the Pentagon were worth more than the budgets of the State Department and the Agency for International Development combined, and its arms-related revenues continue to rival the government’s entire investment in diplomacy. One $13 billion aircraft carrier costs more than the annual budget of the Environmental Protection Agency. Overall, more than half of the discretionary budget Congress approves every year — basically everything the federal government spends other than on mandatory programs like Medicare and Social Security — goes to the Pentagon.

It would, I suppose, be one thing if such huge expenditures were truly needed to protect the country or make the world a safer place. However, they have more to do with pork-barrel politics and a misguided “cover the globe” military strategy than a careful consideration of what might be needed for actual “defense.”

Congressional Follies

The road to an $886-billion military budget authorization began early last year with a debt-ceiling deal negotiated by President Biden and then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. That rolled back domestic spending levels, while preserving the administration’s proposal for the Pentagon intact. McCarthy, since ousted as speaker, had been pressed by members of the right-wing “Freedom Caucus” and their fellow travelers for just such spending cuts. (He had little choice but to agree, since that group proved to be his margin of victory in a speaker’s race that ran to 15 ballots.)……………………………………………………………………………………

Threat Inflation and the “Arsenal of Democracy”

Perhaps you won’t be surprised to learn that the strategic rationales put forward for the flood of new Pentagon outlays don’t faintly hold up to scrutiny. First and foremost in the Pentagon’s argument for virtually unlimited access to the Treasury is the alleged military threat posed by China. But as Dan Grazier of the Project on Government Oversight has pointed out, that country’s military strategy is “inherently defensive”:

“[T]he investments being made [by China] are not suited for foreign adventurism but are instead designed to use relatively low-cost weapons to defend against massively expensive American weapons. The nation’s primary military strategy is to keep foreign powers, and especially the United States, as far away from its shores as possible in a policy the Chinese government calls ‘active defense.’”

The greatest point of potential conflict between the U.S. and China is, of course, Taiwan. But a war over that island would come at a staggering cost for all concerned and might even escalate into a nuclear confrontation. A series of war games conducted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) found that, while the United States could indeed “win” a war defending Taiwan from a Chinese amphibious assault, it would be a Pyrrhic victory. “The United States and its allies lost dozens of ships, hundreds of aircraft, and tens of thousands of servicemembers,” it reported. “Taiwan saw its economy devastated. Further, the high losses damaged the U.S. global position for many years.” And a nuclear confrontation between China and the United States, which CSIS didn’t include in its assessment, would be a first-class catastrophe of almost unimaginable proportions.

The best route to preventing a future Chinese invasion of Taiwan would be to revive Washington’s “One China” policy that calls for China to commit itself to a peaceful resolution of Taiwan’s status and for the U.S. to forswear support for that island’s formal independence. In other words, diplomacy, rather than increasing the Pentagon budget to “win” such a war, would be the way to go.

The second major driver of higher Pentagon budgets is allegedly the strain on this country’s arms manufacturing base caused by supplying tens of billions of dollars of weaponry to Ukraine, including artillery shells and missiles that are running short in American stockpiles. The answer, according to the Pentagon and the arms industry, is to further supersize this country’s already humongous military-industrial complex to produce enough weaponry to supply Ukraine (and now Israel, too), while acquiring sufficient weapons systems for a future war with China.

There are two problems with such arguments. First, supplying Ukraine doesn’t justify a permanent expansion of the U.S. arms industry. In fact, such aid to Kyiv needs to be accompanied by a now-missing diplomatic strategy designed to head off an even longer, ever more grinding war.

Second, the kinds of weapons needed for a war with China would, for the most part, be different from those relevant to a land war in Ukraine, so weaponry sent to Ukraine would have little relevance to readiness for a potential war with China (which Washington should, in any case, be working to prevent, not preparing for). 

The Disastrous Costs of a Militarized Foreign Policy

Before investing ever more tax dollars in building an ever-expanding garrison state, the military strategy of the United States in the current global environment should be seriously debated. Just buying ever more bombs, missiles, drones, and next-generation artificial intelligence-driven weaponry is not, in fact, a strategy, though it is a boon to the military-industrial complex and an invitation to a destabilizing new arms race.

Unfortunately, neither Congress nor the Biden administration seems inclined to seriously consider an approach that would emphasize investing in diplomatic and economic tools over force or the threat of force. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

A serious national conversation is needed on what a genuine defense strategy would look like, rather than one based on fantasies of global military dominance. Otherwise, the overly militarized approach to foreign and economic policy that has become the essence of Washington budget-making could be extended endlessly and disastrously into the future, something this country literally can’t afford to let happen.
 https://scheerpost.com/2024/01/17/the-military-industrial-complex-is-the-winner-not-you/

January 19, 2024 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

When Yemen Does It It’s Terrorism, When The US Does It It’s “The Rules-Based Order”

That’s right kids: when Yemen sets up a blockade to try and stop an active genocide, that’s terrorism, but when the US empire imposes a blockade to secure its geostrategic interests in the middle east, why that’s just the rules-based international order in action.

What this shows us is that the “rules-based international order” the US and its allies claim to uphold is not based on rules at all; it’s based on power, which is the ability to control and impose your will on other people. The “rules” apply only to the enemies of the empire because they are not rules at all: they are narratives used to justify efforts to bend the global population to its will.

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, JAN 18, 2024

The Biden administration has officially re-designated Ansarallah — the dominant force in Yemen also known as the Houthis — as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist entity. 

The White House claims the designation is an appropriate response to the group’s attacks on US military vessels and commercial ships in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, saying those attacks “fit the textbook definition of terrorism.” Ansarallah claims its actions “adhere to the provisions of Article 1 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,” since it is only enforcing a blockade geared toward ceasing the ongoing Israeli destruction of Gaza.

One of the most heinous acts committed by the Trump administration was its designation of Ansarallah as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) and as Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGT), both of which imposed sanctions that critics warned would plunge Yemen’s aid-dependent population into even greater levels of starvation than they were already experiencing by restricting the aid that would be allowed in. One of the Biden administration’s only decent foreign policy decisions has been the reversal of that sadistic move, and now that reversal is being partially rolled back, though thankfully only with the SDGT listing and not the more deadly and consequential FTO designation.

In a new article for Antiwar about this latest development, Dave Decamp explains that as much as the Biden White House goes to great lengths insisting that it’s going to issue exemptions to ensure that its sanctions don’t harm the already struggling Yemeni people, “history has shown that sanctions scare away international companies and banks from doing business with the targeted nations or entities and cause shortages of medicine, food, and other basic goods.” DeCamp also notes that US and British airstrikes on Yemen have already forced some aid groups to suspend services to the country.

So the US empire is going to be imposing sanctions on a nation that’s still trying to recover from the devastation caused by the US-backed Saudi blockade that contributed to hundreds of thousands of deaths between 2015 and 2022. All in response to the de facto government of that very same country imposing its own blockade with the goal of preventing a genocide.

That’s right kids: when Yemen sets up a blockade to try and stop an active genocide, that’s terrorism, but when the US empire imposes a blockade to secure its geostrategic interests in the middle east, why that’s just the rules-based international order in action…………………………………..

What this shows us is that the “rules-based international order” the US and its allies claim to uphold is not based on rules at all; it’s based on power, which is the ability to control and impose your will on other people. The “rules” apply only to the enemies of the empire because they are not rules at all: they are narratives used to justify efforts to bend the global population to its will………  https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/when-yemen-does-it-its-terrorism?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=140790707&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&utm_medium=email

January 19, 2024 Posted by | politics international, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Sizewell C opponents warn Suffolk nuclear plant ‘could be the new HS2’.

Sizewell C opponents warn Suffolk nuclear plant ‘could be the new HS2’.
Campaigners fighting a new nuclear power station on the Suffolk coast say
they fear a shortfall in finance for the project could mean it becomes
another HS2. Their comments came amid a landmark moment for the building of
Sizewell C as a Development Consent Order was triggered, meaning
construction can begin. Andrew Bowie, the minister for nuclear and
renewables, was at the construction site to herald what he claimed was a
significant point in the development. The new power plant, which could
create 10,000 jobs, was given the go-ahead in November – but campaigners
opposed to it say they will not give up.

ITV 15th Jan 2024

https://www.itv.com/news/anglia/2024-01-15/coastal-nuclear-plant-could-be-new-hs2-warn-campaigners

lear plant ‘could be the new HS2’.

January 19, 2024 Posted by | politics, UK | Leave a comment

What sort of world do we want?: ICAN exec discusses ultimate goal of nuclear abolition

January 18, 2024 (Mainichi Japan)

International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) Executive Director Melissa Parke is set to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki from Jan. 19 to 21, ahead of the three-year anniversary since the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) entered into force.

The risk of a nuclear conflict is at an all-time high since the end of the Cold War, and the TPNW has taken on an increasingly significant role to abolish all nuclear weapons to ensure safety for humanity, Parke said. The executive director sat down for an online interview with the Mainichi Shimbun prior to her first visit to the World War II atomic bombing sites, to share her views on the elimination of nuclear weapons……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20240117/p2a/00m/0op/028000c

January 19, 2024 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

TODAY. The human cost when IT goes wrong.

It’s not that I am against technology. I’m using it now. It does wonderful stuff (some of the time)

But our daily lives are now so involved with digital technology. IT is in control of so many systems. We are in danger of being constantly supervised, and indeed controlled, by digital technology. China already gives an example of how that can work.

I have grave misgivings about personal privacy, and the loss of human skills to computer wizardry. And that’s when information technology is working OK.

Britain’s Post Office scandal gives a timely illustration of what can happen when IT is not working OK. Hundreds of decent, honest people were wrongly convicted: they had to pay thousands of pounds, homes were lost, reputations ruined, lives were lost.

Of course, Post Office and Fujitsu authorities and others covered up and lied about the faulty Horizon IT system. It continues to amaze me, how these gutless individuals are happy to hang on to their big salaries, and lie their heads off, in loyalty to their employing body. It’s been going on since the notorious tobacco industry executives lied about smoking and cancer.

Unfortunately, it seems to be embedded in the corporate climbing-the-ladder system - mindless loyalty to the industry.

It is not just the fault of these dishonest individuals. It is also the fault of our general mindless acceptance of IT “progress”, and our reverence for the megawealthy tech boys developing it.

We need to maintain a healthy scepticism about digital systems - how necessary are they , and what if they go wrong?

January 18, 2024 Posted by | Christina's notes | Leave a comment

Nuclear power twice as expensive as the Swedish government thought?

Nuclear power may be almost twice as expensive as the government thought.
Nuclear power must stand on its own two feet, the government has said. But
Vattenfall’s latest assessment shows that new nuclear power can be almost
twice as expensive – which may require multibillion-dollar government
support.

Sweden’s forecasts from the Energy Agency are based on the fact
that electricity from new nuclear power is expected to cost 55-60 öre per
kilowatt hour. To be compared with 35 öre for wind power on land. SVT can
now reveal that Vattenfall has received price information from several
suppliers of both large and smaller so-called SMR reactors. The overall
conclusion is costs of 90-112 öre per kilowatt hour. Almost twice as much
as previous assessment, then. Vattenfall believes that this level mainly
applies to a first large-scale reactor, where you cannot lower the price
with economies of scale.

 SVT Nyheter 16th Jan 2024

https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/karnkraften-kan-bli-nara-dubbelt-sa-dyr-som-regeringen-trott

January 18, 2024 Posted by | business and costs, politics, Sweden | Leave a comment

‘The fight isn’t over’: Idaho downwinders persist after Congress cuts compensation for them

Residents work to understand the ongoing impacts of nuclear test fallout and radiated clouds over Idaho decades ago

BY: MIA MALDONADO – JANUARY 15, 2024,  https://washingtonstatestandard.com/2024/01/15/the-fight-isnt-over-idaho-downwinders-persist-after-congress-cuts-compensation-for-them/

For nearly two decades, Tona Henderson collected newspaper articles, letters and photographs documenting who in the small town of Emmett, Idaho, was diagnosed with cancer, including her own family. The result is a wall in her home covered in pictures and pages displaying the names of community members who may have been exposed to lethal radiation during the country’s Cold War-era nuclear weapons testing program.

Henderson is the director of the Idaho Downwinders, a nonprofit representing people who lived in Idaho between 1951 to 1962 when the United States tested nuclear weapons aboveground in Nevada. She has been a leading advocate for the federal government to provide financial compensation to Idahoans impacted by that nuclear testing, which sent radiated clouds beyond Nevada’s boundaries to other neighboring states, including Idaho.

This December was the closest Congress has gotten to passing legislation that would have provided compensation to Idahoans who developed cancer after radioactive contamination and exposure, she said. But Congress ultimately removed a provision that would have expanded and extended the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act to include Idahoans who were “downwind” from radioactive fallout. Currently, only two dozen downwinder counties in Arizona, Nevada and Utah are included in the program.

Despite that setback, Henderson said she won’t abandon the cause, and remains committed because she hopes to fulfill a promise she made to a friend.

Among her collection of photos of Emmett residents diagnosed with cancer sits a photo of Sheri Garmon, who died in 2005 at the age of 53 while advocating for an expansion of the federal radiation compensation program to help Idahoans .

“Sheri Garmon spent the last year of her life fighting this, and I told her I would not give up on it,” Henderson said. “This is the promise I made to her 20 years ago.”

Counties among the most impacted by nuclear testing

Born in 1960 and raised on a dairy farm in Emmett, Henderson told the Idaho Capital Sun that she believes the leading cause of cancer in her family is exposure to radioactive contamination from nuclear testing in Nevada.

Gem County, along with Idaho’s Custer, Blaine and Lemhi counties, are among the top five in the U.S. that were most affected by fallout from Nevada nuclear tests in the mid-20th century, according to research by the National Cancer Institute.

The Nevada Test Site is located 65 miles north of Las Vegas, and it was one of the most significant nuclear weapons test sites in the country. After concluding the Trinity Test Site in Alamogordo, New Mexico, presented too great of a risk to nearby civilian populations, the U.S. military and the Atomic Energy Commission centered on the Nevada desert due to its perceived lack of radiological hazards and “the public relations problem related hereto.” President Harry Truman authorized the establishment of the site in December 1950.

Between 1951 and 1992, the U.S. government conducted roughly 1,000 nuclear tests at the Nevada site, of which about 100 were atmospheric and more than 800 took place underground, according to the Atomic Heritage Foundation.

Even though just a few thousand people are said to have lived within a 125-mile radius downwind of the Nevada Test Site, government planners miscalculated the extent and wide geographic range of the radioactive fallout.

Henderson’s parents were married a couple of weeks after the federal government detonated what was called the “How” bomb on June 5, 1952.


“Less than 20 days later, they had a church wedding, and their reception was outside in the grass at my uncle’s house, and all of these people were in radiation,” Henderson said in an interview while gesturing to a photo of her relatives at the wedding. “All of these people that are in here had some weird medical complications, or they had cancer.”

Both of her parents developed cancer. And her two older brothers, born in 1953 and 1955, did too. Henderson said she believes they developed cancer because they grew up drinking contaminated milk from the cattle they raised.

According to the National Cancer Institute, American children at the time faced a high risk of developing thyroid cancer if they consumed milk from pastures where cows and goats grazed that were contaminated with iodine-131 — a radioactive element that is released into the environment during nuclear weapons testing.

Children, with smaller and still-developing thyroids, consumed more milk than adults, placing them at greater risk for cancer because of the concentration of iodine-131 in the thyroid gland.

Emmett is a tight-knit community, Henderson said. The population stands at about 8,000 people today, according to the latest census numbers. She used to run a doughnut shop in town, and customers, knowing her role in tracing diagnoses, would tell her about locals facing cancer. From 2004 to 2019, she said she recorded hundreds of instances of cancer diagnoses among Emmett residents who were present during the testing period.

“That’s a lot of people for such a small town,” she said. “The fight isn’t over.”

Idaho downwinders still uncompensated

The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act was approved by Congress in 1990, and it provides financial compensation to people who developed specific cancers and other serious illnesses from exposure to radiation during nuclear testing.

RECA expanded in 2000, and aims to acknowledge the federal government’s role in causing disease in its citizens. If a person can prove that they contracted one of the compensable diseases after working or living in an area for a specific period of time, they qualify for one-time lump sum compensation to help pay their medical bills.

But Idaho downwinders aren’t yet covered.

RECA provides compensation to three populations:

Uranium miners, millers and ore transporters, who may be eligible for up to $100,000“Onsite participants” at atmospheric nuclear weapons tests, who may be eligible for up to $75,000People in certain states who lived downwind of the Nevada Test Site and may be eligible for up to $50,000

Under the original RECA program, only individuals who lived in parts of Utah, Nevada and Arizona between 1951 and 1958 and during the month of July 1962 were eligible.

The expansion would have broadened the geographic downwinder eligibility to include Idaho, Montana, Colorado, New Mexico and the territory of Guam, along with more regions in Utah, Nevada and Arizona.

Henderson said it was devastating to discover that Congress had stripped the RECA expansion from the national defense budget bill in December. By investigating cancer in her family and Idaho community, she said she has become an “encyclopedia” on nuclear issues — something she said she never wanted to become.

“It was pretty hard to realize that it’s been 20 years of doing this work,” Henderson said. “It doesn’t seem like we’ve gotten anywhere. I didn’t sign up for it, but I definitely can’t walk away and leave it.”

RECA program short on time

RECA legislation cleared the U.S. Senate in July on a 61-37 vote, and it would have extended the program for 19 years. As things stand, it’s set to expire in June.

U.S. Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, has been a longtime Senate lead on RECA, and efforts have received broad bipartisan support. Last year, he worked alongside U.S. Sens. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, and Ben Ray Luján, D-New Mexico.

Henderson said she invited Crapo to a rally at Emmett City Park in 2004 to hear the stories of people who had been diagnosed with cancer after living downwind from the Nevada Testing Site.

“Far too many innocent victims have been lost to cancer-related deaths from Cold War era above-ground weapons testing,” Crapo said in a statement.  “The Senate’s passage of this amendment is an important step toward future enactment of this legislation, which will mean Idahoans and Americans who have suffered the health consequences of exposure to fallout from nuclear weapons testing will finally start to receive the compensation they rightfully deserve.”

When RECA was cut from the defense bill, Crapo said in a speech before the U.S. Senate that the federal government’s tests of nuclear weapons poisoned thousands of Idahoans.

“When America developed the atom bomb through the Manhattan Project, and tested those weapons through the Trinity Test, our country unknowingly poisoned those who mined, transported and milled uranium, those who participated in nuclear testing, and those who lived downwind of the tests,” he said.

Crapo vowed to keep working to expand and extend the program before it expires this spring.

January 18, 2024 Posted by | health, PERSONAL STORIES, USA | Leave a comment

A response to Kallenborn: Why realism requires that nuclear weapons be abolished

By Ward Hayes Wilson | January 17, 2024,  https://thebulletin.org/2024/01/a-response-to-kallenborn-why-realism-requires-that-nuclear-weapons-be-abolished/

In a recent piece in the Bulletin (“Why a nuclear weapons ban would threaten, not save, humanity”), Zachary Kallenborn argued that a ban on nuclear weapons would create serious risks, including unrestrained great power war and a hindering of global cooperation. He asserted that continuing to maintain small nuclear weapons arsenals for the foreseeable future is sensible.

What is troubling about this assertion is not so much that Mr. Kallenborn is wrong, but that he seems to have strayed from reality. Mistakes in a discussion about nuclear weapons policy matter because roughly 4.2 billion people depend on those policies for their safety and survival. With so much at stake, the discussion about nuclear weapons demands the highest levels of seriousness and an unflinching insistence on realism. Mr. Kallenborn has missed that mark in at least one important regard.

Nuclear weapons prevent all-out war? Kallenborn writes, “Nuclear weapons place a cap on how bad great power conflict can become and may deter the emergence and escalation of great power war.” In the world of nuclear weapons advocates, this is a common claim, viz. that nuclear weapons prevent large-scale existential wars similar to World War II. For example, John Lewis Gaddis a highly regarded historian of the Cold War, puts it this way: “As the means of fighting great wars became exponentially more devastating, the likelihood of such wars diminished, and ultimately disappeared altogether.”[1] In other words, “great” wars have disappeared altogether, and nuclear weapons are the reason.

This claim is essential for those who wish to keep nuclear weapons. After all, if nuclear weapons can stop World War II-type wars, then it is safe—even necessary—to keep them. If, on the other hand, they can’t, then all-out wars are more likely (because people wrongly think that nothing can go wrong as long as nuclear weapons are present). And when one occurs, the use of nuclear weapons is almost inevitable.

Unfortunately, the faith in the peace-inducing powers of nuclear weapons is wishful thinking. Wars are decided by human beings, and as the history of our civilization demonstrates—Winston Churchill once called it “the dark lamentable catalog of human crime”—human beings have deep-rooted urges to make war. It is not pleasant to insist on this portrayal of human nature, but the stakes require that we be brutally honest with ourselves. We have been fighting wars with dogged persistence for at least 6,000 years. As President John F. Kennedy put it, “[T]he human race’s history, unfortunately, has been a good deal more war than peace.”[2] Every era of history and region of the world has experienced war with disheartening regularity. There are sometimes pauses and respites—sometimes for even a hundred years—but the lust for war always reemerges.

American philosopher William James explained the persistence of war this way, “Our ancestors have bred pugnacity into our bone and marrow, and thousands of years of peace won’t breed it out of us.”[3] War is a tenacious part of our behavior. If humans were to suddenly give up fighting wars, it would be a monumental change—a revolution in human behavior. Losing our taste for war would be to surrender something central to our natures—like renouncing our predisposition for religion, our love of beauty, or our tendency to overeat.

There’s no doubt that the risk of using nuclear weapons can restrain thoughts of war … sometimes. But can the “magic” of nuclear weapons dissuade us forever? Nothing else has. The hopeful (and somewhat naive) belief that nuclear weapons will always prevent all-out wars ignores one important fact: The evidence that supports this claim—the last 78 years—amounts to only 1.3 percent of the evidence. The other 5,928 years tell a different story.

Let’s get real. The claim that nuclear weapons have somehow permanently suppressed the heretofore unquenchable desire for war is not a realist position. Typically, it is idealists who optimistically say that we can change the world by simply changing our hearts. Idealists believe that changing human nature overnight is possible. For example, in the 1960s, gentle, pot-smoking hippies believed that a new society could be created, a utopian world where people would live in communes and value love above all other things. And with this new emphasis on love, there would naturally come a world filled with peace. And we could all hold hands and sing.

If you stop and think about it, the belief that nuclear weapons have changed human nature—what Kallenborn asserts—is essentially the same claim those hippies made. Nuclear believers say that the urge to make savage war has at last been overcome. They say we can now live in peace forever. Our darker, primitive natures will never again overwhelm our sensible, rational brains. There will be no more all-out wars. And they say this utopia of peace has already arrived (just without the singing). But rather than the power of love, it is a tool—a piece of technology—that has wrought this magical transformation.


Sadly, nuclear weapons have not transformed our warlike natures into calm and peaceful ones. Unbridled war, fought with savage abandon, is still likely, perhaps even inevitable. If you doubt that anger and violence are stalking the world, read some headlines. Around the world are sudden fires of passion that leap up first here, then there. War is raging in Europe and the Middle East. With so much hatred around as fuel, is there much doubt that a war that engulfs many nations and many peoples is far off? If you don’t think so, at least some of your neighbors do. An International Red Cross survey asked millennials in 2019 if they thought a worldwide war similar to World War II would happen in their lifetimes. More than 58 percent of respondents in the United States said yes.[4]

The belief that large-scale war has been banished forever by nuclear weapons is nothing more than a dangerous fantasy. All the evidence of history and everything we know about ourselves tells us that our warlike natures cannot change overnight. (That is the sound of genuine realism talking.)

Claims that we can change human nature are unsurprising in the mouths of gentle, pot-smoking hippies. On the lips of nuclear weapons proponents, they are realist heresy. The fact that nuclear weapons advocates can call themselves realists and at the same time claim that nuclear weapons make all-out wars impossible shows that they do not understand the assumptions that underlie their own position. Their “realism” is nothing of the kind.

The problem with relying on nuclear deterrence is that if it can’t be perfect—and perfect for all time—then it is too dangerous to rely on. Who’s to say that nuclear deterrence isn’t like a pressure cooker—able to hold off savage wars for a time, but when the top blows off at last, the destruction will be all the more far-reaching because it was held in for so long? Because of our primitive, warlike natures, nuclear weapons have to go. There are no safe hands for nuclear weapons. That is a reality that we all ignore at our own peril.

Editor’s note: Ward Hayes Wilson is the author, most recently, of It Is Possible: A Future Without Nuclear Weapons. The arguments here are based in part on chapter one of that book.

References: ……………………….

January 18, 2024 Posted by | weapons and war | Leave a comment

Belarus says it is to change policy on nuclear weapons

AP, TALLINN, Estonia,  https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2024/01/18/2003812262

Belarus on Tuesday said that the country would put forth a new military doctrine that for the first time provides for the use of nuclear weapons.

Russia last year sent tactical nuclear weapons to be stationed in Belarus, although there are no details about how many.

Russia has said it would maintain control over those weapons, which are intended for battlefield use and have short ranges and comparatively low yields.

It was not immediately clear how the new doctrine might be applied to the Russian weapons.

“We clearly communicate Belarus’ views on the use of tactical nuclear weapons stationed on our territory,” Belarusian Minister of Defense Viktor Khrenin said at a meeting of the Belarusian Security Council.

“A new chapter has appeared, where we clearly define our allied obligations to our allies,” Khrenin added.

The doctrine is to be presented for approval to the All-Belarusian People’s Assembly, a representative body that operates in parallel with the nation’s parliament.

Belarus had tactical and long-range nuclear weapons when it was part of the Soviet Union, but transferred them to Russia after the collapse of the bloc.


Russia used Belarus territory as a springboard to send its troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, and has maintained its military bases and weapons there, although Belarusian soldiers are not known to have taken part in the war.

Belarusian Security Council Secretary Alexander Volfovich said that the deployment of Russian nuclear weapons in the nation was intended to deter aggression from Poland, a NATO member.

“Unfortunately, statements by our neighbors, in particular Poland … forced us to strengthen” the military doctrine, Volfovich said.

January 18, 2024 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

An Unprecedented Momentum for Renewables

 https://www.irena.org/Digital-content/Digital-Story/2024/Jan/An-Unprecedented-Momentum-for-Renewables/detail

The success of renewables is not only a story of records and data on energy progress.

It is a story of a pivotal shift in the global energy priorities, culminating in the monumental acknowledgement by the governments around the world at COP28 that tripling renewables and doubling energy efficiency by 2030 is the most effective way to stay on the 1.5°C pathway.

This review of the latest achievements in renewable energy expansion shows that renewables remain resilient through multiple crises. The renewable-based energy transition offers a solution to the climate crisis and energy security concerns whilst delivering positive socio-economic impacts for communities and societies.

Still, are the current records enough to achieve the climate goals and a sustainable future for all?

January 18, 2024 Posted by | renewable | Leave a comment

Senate Kills Sanders Resolution Requiring Biden to Report on Israeli Human Rights Conduct in Gaza

Lawmakers from both parties overwhelmingly thwarted an effort by the progressive Vermont senator to bring some accountability to how U.S.-supplied weapons are being used by Israeli forces.

BRETT WILKINS, Jan 16, 2024, ore https://www.commondreams.org/news/sanders-resolution-gaza

The United States Senate on Tuesday evening voted overwhelmingly to table a resolution by progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders that would have required the Biden administration to promptly report on Israel’s human rights practices during its war on Gaza, which is currently the subject of an International Criminal Court genocide case.

Sanders (I-Vt.)—who has drawn progressive ire by opposing a Gaza cease-fire—had attempted to force a floor vote on his privileged resolution, which is based on Section 502B(c) of the Foreign Assistance Act. However, upper chamber lawmakers voted 72-11 to preemptively torpedo the measure.

The senators who voted against tabling the measure were: Laphonza Butler (D-Calif.), Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Peter Welch (D-Vt.), and Sanders.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “has to understand that he does not get a blank check from the United States Congress,” said Warren. “We have a responsibility to stand up now and say that given how Netanyahu and his right-wing war Cabinet have prosecuted this war, we have serious questions that we are obligated to ask before we go further in our support.”

Heinrich said on social media following the vote that “as we continue to stand by Israel’s right to defend itself, we must remain steadfast in our commitment to protecting innocent civilians.”

“That means ensuring our weapons are used only in accordance with U.S. law, international humanitarian law, and the law of armed conflict,” he added.

The Foreign Assistance Act, passed during the Kennedy administration, empowers Congress to “request information on a particular country’s human rights practices and to alter or terminate U.S. security assistance to that country in light of the information received.”

Sanders’ resolution would have forced the Biden administration to provide a report on Israeli rights violations within 30 days, after which time congressional lawmakers could consider suspending aid.

The U.S. has provided Israel with more than $150 billion in military aid since its founding in 1948—largely through the ethnic cleansing of Palestine’s Arabs—and currently gives Israel $3.8 billion in annual armed assistance. President Joe Biden responded to the Hamas-led attacks of October 7 by requesting an additional $14.3 billion from Congress while also bypassing lawmakers to fast-track “emergency” armed aid to the key Middle East ally.

“Whether we like it or not, the United States is complicit in the nightmare that millions of Palestinians are now experiencing,” Sanders said on the Senate floor prior to the vote.

“It should not be controversial to ask how U.S. weapons are used,” he said earlier Tuesday. “We should all want this information. If you believe the war has been indiscriminate, as I do, then we must ask this question. If you believe Israel has done nothing wrong, then this information should support that belief.”

Tuesday’s vote came amid Israel’s relentless bombing and ground invasion of Gaza, which has killed at least 24,285 Palestinians—most of them women, children, and elders—while wounding more than 61,100 others and leaving over 7,000 more missing since October 7. More than 85% of Gaza’s population has been forcibly displaced, and doctors and United Nations officials said Tuesday that children are now starving to death in the besieged enclave.

January 18, 2024 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Cancelling the Journalist: The Australian ABC’s Coverage of the Israel-Gaza War

What a cowardly act it was. A national broadcaster, dedicated to what should be fearless reporting, cowed by the intemperate bellyaching of a lobby concerned about coverage of the Israel-Gaza war. The investigation by The Age newspaper was revealing in showing that the dismissal of broadcaster Antoinette Lattouf last December 20 was the nasty fruit of a campaign waged against the corporation’s management. This included its chair, Ita Buttrose, and managing director David Anderson.

The official reason for that dismissal was disturbingly ordinary. Lattouf had not, for instance, decided to become a flag-swathed bomb thrower for the Palestinian cause. She had engaged in no hostage taking campaign, nor intimidated any Israeli figure. The sacking had purportedly been made over sharing a post by Human Rights Watch about Israel that mentioned “using starvation of civilians as a weapon of war in Gaza”, calling it “a war crime”. It also noted the express intention by Israeli officials to pursue this strategy. Actions are also documented: the deliberate blocking of the delivery of food, water and fuel “while wilfully obstructing the entry of aid.” The sharing by Lattouf took place following a direction not to post on “matters of controversy”.

Human Rights Watch might be accused of many things: the dolled up corporate face of human rights activism; the activist transformed into fundraising agent and boardroom gaming strategist. But to share material from the organisation on alleged abuses is hardly a daredevil act of dangerous hair-raising radicalism.

Prior to the revelations in The Age, much had been made of Lattouf’s fill-in role as a radio presenter, a stint that was to last for five shows. The Australian, true to form, had its own issue with Lattouf’s statements made on various online platforms. In December, the paper found it strange that she was appointed “despite her very public anti-Israel stance” (paywalled). She was also accused of denying the lurid interpretations put upon footage from protests outside Sydney Opera House, some of which called for gassing Jews. And she dared accused the Israeli forces of committing rape.

It was also considered odd that she discuss such matters as food and water shortages in Gaza and “an advertising campaign showing corpses reminiscent of being wrapped in Muslim burial cloths.” That “left ‘a lot of people really upset’.” If war is hell, then Lattouf was evidently not allowed to go into quite so much detail about it – at least when concerning the fate of Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli war machine.

What also transpires is that the ABC managers were not merely targeting Lattouf on their own, sadistic initiative. Pressure of some measure had been exercised from outside the organisation. According to The Age, WhatsApp messages had been sent to the ABC as part of a coordinated campaign by a group called Lawyers for Israel.

The day Lattouf was sacked, Sydney property lawyer Nicky Stein buzzingly began proceedings by telling members of the group to contact the federal minister for communication asking “how Antoinette is hosting the morning ABC Sydney show.” Employing Lattouff apparently breached Clause 4 of the ABC code of practice on impartiality.

Stein cockily went on to insist that, “It’s important ABC hears from not just individuals in the community but specifically from lawyers so they feel there is an actual legal threat.” She goes on to read that a “proper” rather than “generic” response was expected “by COB [close of business] today or I would look to engage senior counsel.”

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Did such windy threats have any basis? No, according to Stein. “I know there is probably no actionable offence against the ABC but I didn’t say I would be taking one – just investigating one. I have said that they should be terminating her employment immediately.” Utterly charming, and sufficiently so to attract attention from the ABC chairperson herself, who asked for further venting of concerns.

Indeed, another member of the haranguing clique, Robert Goot, also deputy president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, could boast of information he had received that Lattouf would be “gone from morning radio from Friday” because of her anti-Israeli stance.

There has been something of a journalistic exodus from the ABC of late. Nour Haydar, an Australian journalist also of Lebanese descent, resigned expressing her concerns about the coverage of the Israel-Gaza conflict at the broadcaster. There had been, for instance, the creation of a “Gaza advisory panel” at the behest of ABC News director Justin Stevens, ostensibly to improve the coverage of the conflict. “Accuracy and impartiality are core to the service we offer audiences,” Stevens explained to staff. “We must stay independent and not ‘take sides’.”

This pointless assertion can only ever be a threat because it acts as an injunction on staff and a judgment against sources that do not favour the accepted line, however credible they might be. What proves acceptable, a condition that seems to have paralysed the ABC, is to never say that Israel massacres, commits war crimes, and brings about conditions approximating to genocide. Little wonder that coverage on South Africa’s genocide case against Israel in the International Court of Justice does not get top billing on in the ABC news headlines.

Palestinians and Palestinian militias, on the other hand, can always be written about as brute savages, rapists and baby slayers. Throw in fanaticism and Islam, and you have the complete package ready for transmission. Coverage in the mainstays of most Western liberal democracies of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as the late Robert Fisk pointed out with pungency, repeatedly asserts these divisions.

After her signation Haydar told the Sydney Morning Herald that, “Commitment to diversity in the media cannot be skin deep. Culturally diverse staff should be respected and supported even when they challenge the status quo.” But Haydar’s argument about cultural diversity should not obscure the broader problem facing the ABC: policing the way opinions and material on war and any other divisive topic is shared. The issue goes less to cultural diversity than permitted intellectual breadth, which is distinctly narrowing at the national broadcaster.

Lattouf, for her part, is pursuing remedies through the Fair Work Commission, and seeking funding through a GoFundMe page, steered by Lauren Dubois. “We stand with Antoinette and support the rights of workers to be able to share news that expresses an opinion or reinforces a fact, without fear of retribution.”

Kenneth Roth, former head of Human Rights Watch, expressed his displeasure at the treatment of Lattouf for sharing HRW material, suggesting the ABC had erred. ABC’s senior management, through a statement from managing director David Anderson, preferred the route of craven denial, rejecting “any claim that it has been influenced by any external pressure, whether it be an advocacy group or lobby group, a political party, or commercial entity.” They would, wouldn’t they?

January 18, 2024 Posted by | AUSTRALIA, civil liberties, media | Leave a comment

Zelensky rejected favorable peace deal with Russia – ex-aide

 https://www.rt.com/russia/590696-arestovich-ukraine-interview/

Ukraine now faces ten to 15 years of war, Aleksey Arestovich has said

Ukraine had the chance to make peace at the 2022 Istanbul talks but something or someone changed President Vladimir Zelensky’s mind, according to an interview with his former aide, Aleksey Arestovich, published on Monday.

Freddie Sayers, the editor in chief of the British outlet UnHerd, interviewed Arestovich almost a year after Ukraine’s top spin doctor left Zelensky’s service. He has since moved to the US, saying that Kiev wants him arrested on politically trumped-up charges.

“I was a member of the Istanbul process, and it was the most profitable agreement we could have done,” Arestovich told Sayers. The Ukrainian delegation “opened the champagne bottle” when they came back to Kiev, believing the agreement was a done deal, he added.

The protocols were “90% prepared” for a direct meeting between Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to Arestovich, when Ukrainian president called off the talks.

His rejection of a deal has been widely attributed to the ‘Bucha massacre’, which Ukraine accused Russia of, but Arestovich said he did not know that for a fact. Something “absolutely” changed Zelensky’s mind and “historians will have to find an answer to what happened,” Arestovich said.

“A lot of people say it was the Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who came to Kiev and put a stop to this negotiation with Russia. I don’t know exactly if that is true or false. He came to Kiev, but nobody knows what they spoke about except, I think, Zelensky and Boris Johnson himself,” he told UnHerd.

Johnson’s role in scuttling the Istanbul peace talks was reported as early as May 2022 by the outlet Ukrainska Pravda. According to the outlet, he came to Kiev with “two simple messages,” that Russian President Vladimir Putin was “a war criminal” who should not be negotiated with, and that even if Ukraine was ready to sign some kind of agreement with Russia, the West was not.

David Arakhamia, the leader of Zelensky’s party in the Ukrainian parliament, brought up the visit in a November 2023 interview, paraphrasing Johnson’s message as telling the Ukrainians “let’s just continue fighting.”

The former British PM finally commented on the matter last week, saying he merely told Zelensky the UK would support Ukraine “a thousand percent” and that any potential agreement with Russia would be “pretty sordid.” He insisted he did not “order” anyone to do anything, however.

According to Arestovich, the conflict has now evolved beyond Russia and Ukraine, pitting the collective West against the ‘Global South’.

“We have to negotiate for an all-new security system for Europe, taking into account all sides of this problem,” he told UnHerd, adding that NATO would need to discuss with Russia “what it would take to guarantee not to use military force in Europe to decide political questions.”

“I should perhaps add that I am absolutely pessimistic that this will happen. I think we face ten or 15 years of war in Europe,” Arestovich said.

January 18, 2024 Posted by | Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

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