New York Time’s Morning Newsletter Blames Everyone but Israel for Israeli Crimes
HARRY ZEHNER, FAIR, 13 Mar 24
With over 17 million subscribers, the Morning, the New York Times’ flagship newsletter, is by far the most popular newsletter in the English-speaking world. (It has almost three times as many subscribers as the next most popular newsletter.)
Since October 7, as Israel has waged an unprecedented war on Palestinian children, journalists, hospitals and schools, the New York Times’ highly influential newsletter has bent over backwards to blame everyone but Israel for the carnage.
Waging a legitimate war
According to the Morning—led by head writer David Leonhardt—Israel’s war on Gaza is a targeted operation designed to eliminate Hamas. The Morning propagates this narrative despite well-documented declarations of collective punishment and even genocidal intent by high-ranking Israeli officials—a tendency that South Africa has forcefully documented in their case before the ICJ (UN, 12/29/23). Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s comments on October 12, 2023, are typical: “It’s an entire nation out there that is responsible. It’s not true, this rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved.”
This sentiment has been echoed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, multiple cabinet-level ministers and senior military officials. Speaking from a devastated northern Gaza, one top Israeli army official said (UN, 12/29/23): “Whoever returns here, if they return here after, will find scorched earth. No houses, no agriculture, no nothing. They have no future.”
Despite these statements and the body of supporting evidence, the Morning has consistently portrayed the war on Gaza as a focused campaign targeting the military infrastructure of Hamas.
For instance, in one October edition (10/13/23), Leonhardt and co-writer Lauren Jackson explained, “Israel’s goals are to prevent Hamas from being able to conduct more attacks and to reestablish the country’s military credibility.”
Despite these statements and the body of supporting evidence, the Morning has consistently portrayed the war on Gaza as a focused campaign targeting the military infrastructure of Hamas.
For instance, in one October edition (10/13/23), Leonhardt and co-writer Lauren Jackson explained, “Israel’s goals are to prevent Hamas from being able to conduct more attacks and to reestablish the country’s military credibility.”
The Morning did, in the same edition (1/28/24), quote Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant’s comments in the immediate aftermath of October 7:
After the Hamas-led October 7 terrorist attacks, Israel ordered what its defense minister called a “complete siege” of Gaza. The goal was both to weaken Hamas fighters and to ensure that no military supplies could enter.
This is, however, a downright fictional interpretation of Gallant’s quote (Al Jazeera, 10/9/23), given that the Morning failed to quote the next words out of his mouth:
There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel, everything will be closed. We are fighting against human animals, and we are acting accordingly.
Blame the terrorists
The Morning consistently has argued that Hamas makes densely populated civilian areas legitimate targets for Israeli attacks by conducting military operations nearby. This deflects blame from Israel and frames civilian casualties as a necessary evil, as in the October 30 edition of the newsletter:
Hamas has hidden many weapons under hospitals, schools and mosques so that Israel risks killing civilians, and facing an international backlash, when it fights. Hamas fighters also slip above and below ground, blending with civilians.
These practices mean that Hamas is responsible for many of the civilian deaths, according to international law.
Similar rhetoric was deployed in this December edition (12/20/23):
Hamas has long hidden its fighters and weapons in and under populated civilian areas, such as hospitals and mosques. It does so partly to force Israel to make a gruesome calculation: To fight Hamas, Israel often must also harm civilians.
The Morning has not yet found it pertinent to report on, for instance, the Israeli soldiers who dressed as doctors to gain access to the Ibn Sina Hospital in the West Bank, and proceeded to assassinate three Palestinian militants in their hospital beds.
To the Morning (11/14/23), Israel’s mass slaughter of civilians is unavoidable:
The battle over Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza highlights a tension that often goes unmentioned in the debate over the war between Israel and Hamas: There may be no way for Israel both to minimize civilian casualties and to eliminate Hamas.
It repeats this line again in a late January edition (1/22/24), once again framing the mass murder of civilians as a “difficult decision”:
The Israeli military faces a difficult decision about how to proceed in southern Gaza…. Israel will not easily be able to eliminate the fighters without killing innocent civilians.
And again in the October 17 edition:
Longer term, there will be more difficult choices. Many steps that Israel could take to reduce civilian casualties in Gaza, such as advance warnings of attacks, would also weaken its attempts to destroy Hamas’s control.
These themes are repeated across all editions of the Morning, and echo throughout the New York Times’ reporting on Israel. Israel’s motivations in the war (beyond eliminating Hamas) go unquestioned, while the openly genocidal statements made by high-ranking politicians and military leaders go unacknowledged.
And when Israeli mass murder of Palestinian civilians is mentioned, it is constantly qualified by the line that Hamas is fully or partially to blame.
Let’s break down one emblematic newsletter (12/7/23) written by Leonhardt in December, in which he “puts the [civilian death] toll in context and explains the reason for it.”……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
It is notable that—unlike with Israel—Leonhardt did not attempt to contextualize Hamas’ actions by noting the horrifying conditions that Israel has imposed on Gaza for years, or the over 900 Palestinian children killed by Israel in the decade preceding October 7. To Leonhardt, history is only relevant when it justifies Israeli aggression.
While Leonhardt states unequivocally that Hamas is violating international law, he does not find it worthwhile to investigate Israel’s flagrant and abundantly documented violations of international law. He also does not mention the Palestinian right to resist occupation, a right enshrined under international law.
This unequal treatment leads straight to the jarringly contrasting conclusions, in which he essentially excuses Israel’s genocidal war as unavoidable, while he condemns Hamas for “simply not prioritizing Palestinian lives.”
Leonhardt’s December 7 piece is not an aberration: It is emblematic of the language, selective contextualization and framing that the Times‘ Morning newsletter wields to provide ideological cover for Israel’s crimes. https://fair.org/home/nyts-morning-newsletter-blames-everyone-but-israel-for-israeli-crimes/
South Dakota Governor Signs Bill Into Law That Conflates Criticism of Israel With Anti-Semitism
Under the law, drawing ‘comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis’ is considered anti-Semitic
by Dave DeCamp March 11, 2024 ,https://news.antiwar.com/2024/03/11/south-dakota-governor-signs-law-that-conflates-criticism-of-israel-with-anti-semitism/
South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem signed a bill into law last week that conflates some criticisms of the modern state of Israel with anti-Semitism.
By signing the bill into law, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism must be taken into consideration in investigations of unfair or discriminatory practices within the state of South Dakota.
The IHRA’s definition was first adopted in 2016 and lists “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis” as an example of anti-Semitism. Noem signed the bill into law as Israel’s brutal campaign in Gaza has killed over 31,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and after the International Court of Justice ruled it’s “plausible” that Israel is committing genocide.
The IHRA also defines anti-Semitism as applying “double standards” to Israel by “requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.” It lists “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination” by “claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor” as another example of anti-Semitism.
According to The Jerusalem Post, South Dakota has become the 12th US state to codify the IHRA’s definition of anti-Semitism into law. At least 23 other states have supported the definition through legislative action but have not officially made it into law. The US State Department has also adopted the definition, as the US is a member country of the IHRA.
Many US states have also passed laws to punish individuals or companies who boycott Israel. The legislation is designed to fight against the global Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement that advocates for global boycotts against Israel.
Over 30 states have adopted anti-BDS laws, and several states used them to punish Unilever, the parent company of Ben & Jerry’s, over the ice cream maker’s decision to stop selling its product in illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Colorado, New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Arizona, Florida, and Texas all took action against Unilever by moving to divest state pension funds from the British conglomerate.
When Ben & Jerry’s first announced it would stop selling ice cream in the occupied territory, Israel launched a “maximum pressure” campaign and urged states to take action against Ben & Jerry’s. Unilever eventually sold the ice cream company’s business interests in Israel to a local company that would keep selling the product in settlements.
Keep Your Money Out of Nukes! Anti-Nuclear Financial Fitness w/Domini’s Mary Beth Gallagher. PODCAST
NH #664 https://nuclearhotseat.com/podcast/nukes-money-anti-nuclear-financial-fitness/
Want to know how to stop nukes? Follow the money – and then take it away from the nuclear industry. Mary Beth Gallagher is Director of Engagements for Domini Impact Investments, a mutual fund firm that’s women-led and, among other ethical choices, does not invest in any company that manufactures any part of nuclear weapons. After hearing her speak at the United Nations Second Meeting of States Parties on the Treaty to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons last December, I knew the conscientious listeners of Nuclear Hotseat deserved to hear what she had to say.
European Powers Stab Each Other in the Back Over Ukraine Proxy War Defeat
Finian Cunningham, March 13, 2024, https://strategic-culture.su/news/2024/03/13/european-powers-stab-each-other-in-the-back-over-ukraine-proxy-war-defeat/—
The failure of being vassals for the American empire and the impending disaster of defeat for the NATO proxy war in Ukraine is weighing heavily.
Europe is rife with treachery in the age-old fashion of imperial rivalry. It’s pathetic to watch, but highly instructive about who the real villains of the piece are.
The failure of being abject vassals for the American empire and the impending disaster of defeat for the NATO proxy war in Ukraine is weighing heavily.
Each European power is pushing the other over the abyss to save its own political skin.
France’s Emmanuel Macron has emerged to be a little king rat. He has taken to talking up deploying NATO troops to Ukraine to salvage the proxy war against Russia. Macron struts around like a rat in jackboots too big for his feet calling on other European leaders not to be cowards.
The former Rothschild banker Macron then turns around and cancels yet another trip to the Ukrainian capital Kiev. Maybe the French leader got scared by the Russian air strike on Odessa last week when the Greek premier was touring the city along with Ukraine’s puppet president Zelensky.
Macron sent his Foreign Minister Stéphane Séjourné to Lithuania last Friday to discuss with the rabid Russophobic Baltic states the idea of sending NATO troops to Ukraine. Given the history of the Baltic states aiding and abetting the Third Reich’s invasion of the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa in 1941, we can safely posit the same states are an open door for such French-inspired madness.
However, with classic elite cowardice, Macron obviously doesn’t want to be anywhere near the front line when the action gets hot. Better to hunker down on a comfy armchair in Elysée Palace and bark out your angry poodle orders from there.
Meanwhile, that other bastion of European civility (meaning treacherous deception) the good old British are cajoling Germany to send long-range missiles to Ukraine to strike deep into Russia.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is balking at supplying the Taurus cruise missiles to the Ukrainian regime. The German-made weapon has a range of 500 kilometers. Given the unhinged NeoNazis in Kiev (headed up by a Jewish puppet Zelensky) it is a certainty that the Taurus missiles would be fired at Moscow to kill “Untermenschen Russians”.
That’s why Scholz is worried. His top Luftwaffe commanders have already been caught red-handed planning how the Taurus “super tools” would be used to hit deep Russian targets.
Enter the ever-so-polite British with a helping hand to the Germans. Britain’s Foreign Secretary “Lord” David Cameron visited Berlin last week urging the Germans to supply the Taurus missile to Ukraine.
Cameron said London was ready to help Germany “solve the problem” of its reluctance to provide the long-range weapon.
The British top diplomat offered a swap arrangement whereby London would buy Taurus missiles from Germany while supplying more of its Storm Shadow cruise missiles to Ukraine. In that way, Berlin would not be implicated in attacking Russia, according to Cameron.
Laughably, the German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said she considered the British offer to be viable.
Her nominal boss, Chancellor Scholz, has officially remained reluctant to the idea of sending Taurus missiles.
Germany would do well to treat any British proposal with deep suspicion. After all, it was the British that inveigled Germany into two world wars. The first one was with the objective of destroying an imperial rival, while the second one was engineered to unleash Hitler’s war machine on the Soviet Union.
The cold facts are that the United States and its European NATO vassals embarked on a proxy war against Russia using Ukraine as the battleground. That war was at least 10 years in the making from the CIA-sponsored coup in Kiev in 2014 which brought to power the present NeoNazi regime.
The two-year proxy war has turned out to be a colossal failure for the American empire and its European satellites. The Kyiv regime is collapsing from overwhelmingly superior Russian firepower. The wasting of the Ukrainian military – as many as 500,000 men – as well as up to $200 billion in financial and military aid paid for ultimately by Western taxpayers will rebound with massive political repercussions for the warmongering Western elites.
Each one of these imperialist criminal powers wants to save their own necks as the noose of public anger inevitably tightens.
The French cock-turned-rat Macron would no doubt like to muddy the battlefield with NATO troops – while avoiding any muck splashing on his dainty little boots of course.
The Americans are beginning to realize they can’t win and are finally cutting off the money, leaving the Europeans high and dry to deal with a continental-sized mess. Joe Biden can’t even remember if it was Ukraine or Iraq that he made a fatal mistake in.
Britain, ever the arch Machiavellian maggot, would like to throw Germany into the frontline against Russia. No doubt the City of London could pick up some much-needed capitalist business from war reconstruction contracts.
The proxy war in Ukraine is over and the Western rats are scurrying off the ship.
The Western public needs to hold each one of them to account and not let them blow up a bigger war with Russia as a way to distract from their culpability.
What Does Amazon Want With Nuclear?
Microsoft signed a deal with Constellation to supply power to data centers in Virginiaand hired an official from the Tennessee Valley Authority to be its director of nuclear and energy innovations, while Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Sam Altman, the head of Microsoft-backed OpenAI have both invested in nuclear startups, as has Google.
The tech giant’s $650 million deal with Talen Energy has a lot to unpack.
Heat Map MATTHEW ZEITLIN•, MARCH 13, 2024
When Talen Energy, which owns a 90% interest in the Susquehanna nuclear power plant in Northeastern Pennsylvania, announced it was selling a data center site adjacent to its power plant to Amazon Web Services, it raised some eyebrows in the energy world. The surprise was not because a large tech company made a big deal with a carbon-free power provider, or even that a tech company made a deal to buy power generated by a nuclear power plant. It was because Amazon was making this deal.
Amazon is a massive buyer of renewable power — it claims to be the world’s largest and says it’s responsible for 28 gigawatts of clean energy capacity — signing contracts with new wind and solar projects all over the world.
But a divide has opened up among tech giants when it comes to energy, with Amazon on one side and Alphabet and Microsoft on the other. The difference hinges on how much it matters where and when the new carbon-free power a company buys in order to match its electricity use.
What’s odd about the Talen deal is that it fits awkwardly into either approach, especially Amazon’s. Amazon does not count nuclear towards its renewable power goals, and in any case, it’s not a “new” source of carbon-free power. Instead, it allows Amazon to siphon somewhere between 480 and 960 megawatts of capacity from the 2,500 megawatt plant.
“Amazon needs power, they’re getting it at cheap rates. They don’t even want to talk about it like a climate thing,” Mark Nelson, the founder of Radiant Energy Group, told me.
In the past decade or so, technology companies have gone on a clean-power buying spree, funding new wind and solar projects all over the world. But there has been a divergence in what is thought to be the best way to go about it.
In 2019, Amazon announced a goal to add enough renewable power to the grid to match its own emissions by 2030 (since moved up to 2025) and to reach net zero by 2040.
Google has been 100% renewable in terms of buying clean power in the same amounts that it consumes since 2017. So in 2020, it set a new goal: to “run on 24/7 carbon-free energy on every grid where we operate by 2030.” This would mean not just matching total renewable purchases with total emissions, as Amazon is seeking to do, but also trying to get every hour ofdata center operation “matched” with an hour of renewable generation on the same grid.
Microsoft has a similar goal, and as a result, both companies have shown much more interest in nuclear power of late than is typical in the technology world……
Microsoft signed a deal with Constellation to supply power to data centers in Virginiaand hired an official from the Tennessee Valley Authority to be its director of nuclear and energy innovations, while Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Sam Altman, the head of Microsoft-backed OpenAI have both invested in nuclear startups, as has Google.
Amazon’s approach — which it shares with several other large companies, including Meta — is not to match 24 hours of its operations with clean power bought locally, but rather to develop and purchase new wind and solar at the same scale of the power it consumes, especially in areas with dirty grids, thus matching the emissions from its consumption with the emissions reductions of new renewables projects. While a 24/7 matching approach may be naturally complementary with nuclear power, Amazon’s strategy doesn’t require it.
“We believe a focus on emissions is the fastest, most cost-effective and scalable way to leverage corporate clean energy procurement to help decarbonize global power grids at the fastest pace,” an Amazon spokesperson told me. “This includes procuring renewable energy in locations and countries that still rely heavily on fossil fuels to power their grids, and where energy projects can have the biggest impact on carbon reduction.”
Contracting out new renewable energy projects can have more bang for your buck in dirty grids, according to proponents of the Amazon philosophy, known as carbon matching. The hypothesis is that a renewable project in a fossil fuel-heavy grid will displace more dirty power than one that’s located near a datacenter in an already relatively clean grid like California or Washington State……………… https://heatmap.news/technology/amazon-nuclear-talen-energy—
TODAY. AUKUS nuclear pact – a lame duck?
What is AUKUS? It’s a weird nuclear pact – loftily described as a trilateral security pact for the Indo-Pacific region.
In reality it’s an agreement made without the knowledge of the Australian people, without discussion in Parliament , to make Australia pay close to $400 billion for second-hand nuclear attack submarines, including their radioactive trash.
How did this agreement come about?
In 2021, Australia’s then Prime Minister, Scott Morrison was a Trump-like figure, basically incompetent, but willing to do anything to get his face on the international media. He organised this extraordinary agreement, much to the joy of the nuclear lobby and Western war-hawks in general.
Morrison caused an international incident, in breaking Australia’s contract with France for non-nuclear submarines, (which would be much better suited for Australia’s coastal security monitoring”)
Is there opposition in Australia to this costly boondoggle?
Yes, but not enough. With the media about 70% owned by Murdoch outlets, the Australian public was fed a steady diet of what a threat China is to us, and how the AUKUS nuclear submarine will save us and blah blah.
And then, we got a new Prime Minister – Labor’s Anthony Albanese, (who has a history of opposition to nuclear). It was a national sigh of relief to get rid of the narcissistic and unpredictable Morrison. But ’twas too much to hope that Albanese would have the guts to stand up to the USA, or indeed to appear “weak” to the Australian public.
What is the present situation with AUKUS?
Well, apart from the misgivings of Australia’s near neighbours, like Indonesia, and the Nuclear-Free Zone, now there’s even trouble in the USA camp. On 12 March came the Tuesday release of the Biden administration’s 2025 defence budget request, – with reduced funding, well below the production rate of 2.33 subs a year the US says is necessary to sell any submarines to Australia. They got cold feet about the deal, as the USA is struggling to build the nuclear submarines that it needs for itself.
Meanwhile the American opposition, whatever you think of Donald Trump, is at the moment less keen on the idea of waging war against China. I mean – they probably do want to, – but they don’t like spending the money on making military stuff for another country.
There are, of course, other problems with the AUKUS nuclear submarine plan. Like the fact these subs will almost certainly be obsolete before they ever get under the water. China, with its shallow coastal waters, is making lots of small drones , that could detect and destroy these nuclear submarines. The AUKUS sub and its peers are intended for surveillance only. but they could be fitted with nuclear warheads. Perhaps that’s the plan. Who knows?
Meanwhile – is there a chance that Australia could avoid this costly boondoggle? And actually have the money to meet some real needs?
Why the US is trying to imprison Assange: Report from inside the Court
But even if what the United States is saying were true, these documents were not published first by Assange. John Young, the owner of a website called cryptome.org testified to the court that he was the one who published the documents first, and the United States never prosecuted him or asked him to take them down.
Extraditions for political offenses are forbidden under Article 4 of the US-UK Extradition Treaty 2003
The Extradition Act, which is the implementation of the US-UK treaty inside British law, is missing this section. This is likely due to the fact it was passed at the height of the “War on Terror” in 2003, giving the Americans carte blanche to snatch people, drag them to the US and throw them in dungeons
Richard Medhurst Al Mayadeen English, 7 Mar 2024, https://english.almayadeen.net/articles/analysis/why-the-us-is-trying-to-imprison-assange–report-from-inside
Richard Medhurst is a British journalist who has covered Julian Assange’s extradition case from inside the court since 2020. In this article, he explains what took place in the latest hearings, why the United States is trying to extradite the WikiLeaks founder, and why everyone should care.
Julian Assange is an Australian journalist in the United Kingdom, and the founder of WikiLeaks. He published documents that were given to him by a US soldier called Chelsea Manning, which showed US war crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan, and much more.
The United States want to extradite Assange from the UK to America, and put him on trial for publishing these classified documents. They are threatening him with 175 years in prison.
The reason this case is so serious is because it essentially makes journalism illegal.
The United States claims Assange asked Manning for classified documents and that this is a crime. It’s not.
The US alleges that Assange having classified documents in his possession and publishing them is a crime. It’s not.
Asking for classified documents; protecting sources, these are things journalists do every single day around the world.
But because these files were so embarrassing to the United States and exposed the brutality of their war crimes, they are threatening Assange with almost two centuries in prison; and to do it, they are accusing him of being a “spy” and a “hacker”, charging him with 17 counts under the “Espionage Act”, and with one count of “Conspiracy to Commit Computer Intrusion”.
The goal of this indictment is to make an example out of Assange, and make other journalists afraid to publish things that the public has a right to know.
If extradited, Assange would be placed in the worst prison conditions imaginable, “Special Administrative Measures” (or SAMs): A strict regime of solitary confinement, no contact with other prisoners allowed, and barely any contact with your family. SAMs are internationally recognized as torture. Julian would be sent to the worst prison in America, ADX Florence, a super-maximum security facility in Colorado.
On January 4, 2021, British judge Vanessa Baraitser blocked Assange’s extradition because US prison conditions would be so oppressive in his current state as to drive him to suicide.
Nevertheless, despite blocking the extradition on health grounds, she agreed with all the political and trumped-up charges.
I have attended all of Assange’s court hearings and saw the smears against him debunked by dozens of expert witnesses. But the judge still chose to side with the United States. She chose to essentially criminalize journalism, even drawing dangerous equivalences between the US Espionage Act and Britain’s Official Secrets Act (OSA).
After this, the United States went to the English High Court to appeal her ruling and won by providing empty promises that they would supposedly treat Assange well– even though the United States has a history of violating extradition assurances. I exposed this when I published classified documents from David Mendoza’s extradition from Spain to the US, a case previously cited in court by Julian’s lawyers.
After the US succeeded in overturning the lower court’s ruling in Dec 2021, there was only one thing left: A signature from the Home Secretary, who allowed the extradition to go ahead.
The above is everything that took place between 2020 and 2024, which brings us to the latest hearings at the Royal Courts of Justice in February 2024.
Point 1: To appeal the ruling of the lower court from Jan 4, 2021.
Assange’s lawyers argued that the judge was correct to block Assange’s extradition on health grounds, but she was wrong to agree with all the political charges (equating him with a “hacker” and a “spy”).
They’re saying very plainly: This case is undemocratic, it criminalizes journalism, and doesn’t take into account the fact that the documents Assange published expose enormous US war crimes that the public had the right to know about.
(See for example the “Collateral Murder” video published by Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks: Footage from a US gunship crew laughing as they slaughter Iraqi civilians, among them children and reporters).
Another claim made by the United States is that Assange “harmed informants” by publishing unredacted cables. Ironically, this was proven false by the United States’ own military when they court-martialed Chelsea Manning (the soldier that gave the files to Assange). The US military couldn’t find a single example of anyone having been harmed by the disclosures.
The assertion by the United States that Julian Assange simply published all these documents without censoring or redacting names simply isn’t true: I listened to many journalists tell the court how they spent countless hours meticulously redacting names with Assange.
Assange’s lawyers are also arguing that the judge in the lower court failed to undertake a balancing act. She blindly accepted the United States’ premise that the lives of informants– who weren’t even harmed– are more important than the people killed and tortured by the United States. This is tantamount to saying: The United States should be allowed to continue committing these war crimes in secret; that it’s somehow okay for them to butcher people in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the public have no right to know.
But even if what the United States is saying were true, these documents were not published first by Assange. John Young, the owner of a website called cryptome.org testified to the court that he was the one who published the documents first, and the United States never prosecuted him or asked him to take them down.
This demonstrates that the whole case against Assange is selective, political, and has nothing to do with the law.
Assange’s lawyers are also arguing that the judge in the lower court failed to undertake a balancing act. She blindly accepted the United States’ premise that the lives of informants– who weren’t even harmed– are more important than the people killed and tortured by the United States. This is tantamount to saying: The United States should be allowed to continue committing these war crimes in secret; that it’s somehow okay for them to butcher people in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the public have no right to know.
But even if what the United States is saying were true, these documents were not published first by Assange. John Young, the owner of a website called cryptome.org testified to the court that he was the one who published the documents first, and the United States never prosecuted him or asked him to take them down.
This demonstrates that the whole case against Assange is selective, political, and has nothing to do with the law.
The Espionage Act that Assange is being charged under was created during World War I, in 1917. It has always been used as a political tool against dissidents such as Eugene Debs, or whistleblowers like Daniel Ellsberg and Edward Snowden, who exposed the true extent of the US war in Vietnam, and NSA mass surveillance.
If you’re charged under the Espionage Act, you’re also forbidden from arguing a public interest defense. This means that even if you expose colossal government crimes, you still go to prison.
Point 2: The Home Secretary was wrong to allow the extradition
This constitutes the second part of Assange’s appeal: It is illegal in Britain to extradite someone to another country, knowing they could face the death penalty.
If the Home Secretary, who has the final say on extraditions, is aware of such a risk, they are compelled to bar the extradition.
It is inconceivable that Priti Patel was unaware of who Julian Assange is, and the likelihood he would be killed in the United States. Once in US jurisdiction, the US could pile on additional charges, or simply execute him, as espionage is a capital offense.
Even without a specific death sentence, at 52 years old, even a 30-year bid is akin to a death sentence.
The hollow assurances given by the United States do not preclude the death penalty. And on top of that, the Home Secretary didn’t even bother asking for assurances that would.
So how could the Home Secretary agree to send Assange to a foreign country that so clearly wants to see him dead?
Mike Pompeo, who back then was head of the CIA, and then-president Donald Trump, launched this legal case against Julian Assange. In the past, Donald Trump had called for Assange to be given the death penalty, while Mike Pompeo proclaimed Assange “has no First Amendment rights”. After WikiLeaks published a trove of CIA documents, dubbed the Vault 7 files, Mike Pompeo declared war on WikiLeaks by publicly labeling it a “non-state hostile intelligence service”
All these political denunciations of WikiLeaks and Assange were then followed up with threats against him and his family. As we heard in court in 2020 from protected witnesses, the CIA had drawn up plans to potentially kidnap or assassinate Julian.
The United States is accusing Julian Assange of “espionage”. Normally, this is where the case should be thrown out, because espionage is considered a textbook political offense. And it is forbidden to extradite someone for a political offense under the US-UK Extradition Treaty, Art 4.
Customary extradition treaties have always forbidden extradition for political offenses such as “espionage” and “treason”. And this line of defense has been used before in court to successfully block extraditions.
- Extraditions for political offenses are forbidden under Article 4 of the US-UK Extradition Treaty 2003
Here is where the problem arises:
The Extradition Act, which is the implementation of the US-UK treaty inside British law, is missing this section. This is likely due to the fact it was passed at the height of the “War on Terror” in 2003, giving the Americans carte blanche to snatch people, drag them to the US and throw them in dungeons.
At the time of its passage, many criticized the Extradition Treaty as being extremely one-sided in favor of the United States.
No matter how you look at Assange’s case, it is unfair and illegal.
The United States wants to prosecute Julian Assange under US law, but at the same time deny him any protections under US law, such as free speech. If Assange has no First Amendment rights as a foreign national, then how can he be punished as a foreign national – who is not even in the US? This is such a flagrant double standard, and selective application of the law.
The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) is incorporated into British law through the Human Rights Act. Upon examination, it is clear that Julian’s rights are being flagrantly violated
Article 5 protects one from arbitrary detention.
Because this is a political case, it would be a violation of the Extradition Treaty to send Julian to America. Therefore, he has no reason to be in prison right now, and is therefore being arbitrarily detained in violation of his Article 5 rights.
Article 6 guarantees the right to a fair trial.
We know the United States spied on Assange’s conversations with his lawyers when he was inside the Ecuadorian embassy; stole his electronic devices; and collected medical and legal records.
In 2020, I sat in court with Fidel Narvaez, the former Consul to the Ecuadorian embassy in London. We listened to the submissions of two protected witnesses who confirmed they had spied on Assange because the security company they worked for, UC Global, had been contracted by the CIA to do so. They also discussed plans to potentially kidnap and poison Julian Assange and harvest DNA from his baby.
To spy on someone’s privileged conversations with their lawyers, and to use tainted evidence in court is scandalous beyond words, and violates the fundamentals of due process in any jurisdiction. Any judge would have thrown this case out from day one.
We also know Assange will not get a fair trial in America because the jury will be selected from a pool of people who work for the CIA, NSA, or have friends and family working in the intelligence community. These are the very same people whose crimes Julian Assange exposed.
The court in Virginia that issued the charges and would hold this trial is used specifically for this reason; because the jury is biased and the government knows it can’t lose. It is already 100% guaranteed that he will get convicted and go to prison.
Additionally, the United States could use secret evidence against Julian Assange, that he wouldn’t even be allowed to view due to it being “classified”.
Article 7 protects one from being punished retroactively. The case against Julian Assange is unprecedented: No publisher in America has ever been prosecuted, let alone convicted for publishing classified documents.
This case criminalizes journalism, and therefore violates Article 10, which guarantees freedom of expression.
Assange’s lawyers went over the ECHR repeatedly because it is incorporated into British law, meaning the court is obliged to follow it. Not only that, but this was their way of hinting to the judges: If you don’t give us permission to appeal, we will go to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in Strasbourg, and that court will look upon your decision unfavorably.
(The United Kingdom is a founding and current member of the European Council, which is separate from the European Union).
Assange’s lawyer, Mark Summers, argued very clearly: The Strasbourg court will see that a) these US war crimes were real; b) they were happening on the ground at the time, and; c) by publishing these documents Assange altered the United States’ behavior: The helicopter massacres like in the “Collateral Murder” video stopped, and the Iraq war came to an end.
Assange’s team put together a very compelling defense during this week’s hearing.
Continue readingMOLTEX nuclear reactors: The whole thing is a scam, wasting tax payer money again.
14 Mar 24
Why this pyro-reprocessing? Vitrification is the proven and researched method for reprocessed nuclear fuel waste. The U.S. NUCLEAR WASTE TECHNICAL REVIEW BOARD states, ” HLW is vitrified by mixing it with a combination of silica sand and other glass-forming chemicals, heating the mixture to very high temperatures [approximately 1,150°C (2,100°F)] until it melts, and pouring the molten material into stainless steel canisters where it cools to form a glass. Vitrification is used in several countries to immobilize HLW because it has advantages over other modes of treatment. It is a well-demonstrated technology resulting from more than 40 years of industrial experience, it can be used for a wide range of HLW compositions, it is a continuous process that can be applied to large volumes of HLW, and the resulting glass product is chemically durable in many geologic disposal environments.” https://www.nwtrb.gov/docs/default-source/facts-sheets/vitrified_hlw.pdf?sfvrsn=18
A soluble corrosive salt from pyro-reprocessing is not an acceptable wasteform.
It is important to realize even with glass vitrification there will still be an off gas waste stream containing the volatiles such as Tc99, I131 and C14, the major contributors to dose in the Seaborn EIS. There needs to be extensive research done on immobilization on the volatile off gas reprocessed waste stream.
Why is it that for reprocessed waste disposal the volatile, mobile, major contributors to dose consequence are ignored?
In fact the cost and feasibility of waste disposal and decommissioning in general is never properly accounted for in the development of nuclear reactors. New reactors are not designed to make decommissioning feasible without huge cost and extensive worker radiation exposure. This is short sighted madness that the nuclear industry is allowed to get away with.
Guess what? There is no nuclear waste, no nuclear proliferation and no possible nuclear meltdown from the much cheaper solar wind and deep geothermal power options. Is this not obvious? Yet government money (our money) is poured into nuclear energy. Did the public have a say in this? No expenditure without representation? Can we dump the reactors into Boston harbour?
Conditions inside Fukushima’s melted nuclear reactors still unclear 13 years after disaster struck
The contents of the three reactors is still largely a mystery. Little is known, for instance, about the melted fuel’s condition or exactly where it’s located in the reactors. Not even a spoonful of the fuel has been removed
About 880 tons of melted nuclear fuel remain inside the three damaged reactors, and Japanese officials say removing it would take 30-40 years. Experts call that timeline overly optimistic. The amount of melted fuel is 10 times that removed from Three Mile Island following its 1979 partial core melt.
MARI YAMAGUCHI, TOKYO, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, March 11, 2024, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-conditions-inside-fukushimas-melted-nuclear-reactors-still-unclear-13/—
Japan on Monday marked 13 years since a massive earthquake and tsunami hit the country’s northern coasts. Nearly 20,000 people died, whole towns were wiped out and the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant was destroyed, creating deep fears of radiation that linger today. As the nation observes the anniversary, the AP explains what is happening now at the plant and in neighboring areas.
What happened 13 years ago?
A magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck on March 11, 2011, causing a tsunami that battered northern coastal towns in Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures. The tsunami, which topped 15 meters (50 feet) in some areas, slammed into the nuclear plant, destroying its power supply and fuel cooling systems, and causing meltdowns at reactors No. 1, 2 and 3.
Hydrogen explosions caused massive radiation leaks and contamination in the area.
The operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, says that the tsunami couldn’t have been anticipated. Government and independent investigations and some court decisions have said the accident was the result of human error, safety negligence, lax oversight by regulators and collusion.
Japan has since introduced stricter safety standards and at one point shifted to a nuclear energy phaseout. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s government reversed that policy and has accelerated restarts of workable reactors to maintain nuclear power as a main source of Japan’s power supply.
A deadly Jan. 1 earthquake in Japan’s northcentral region destroyed many homes and roads but didn’t damage an idled nuclear power plant. Even so, it caused worry that current evacuation plans that solely focus on radiation leaks could be unworkable.
The nation marked a moment of silence at 2:46 p.m. Monday, with Kishida attending a memorial in Fukushima.
What happened to people in the area?
About 20,000 of more than 160,000 evacuated residents across Fukushima still haven’t returned home.
Decontamination work before the Tokyo Olympics meant to showcase Fukushima’s recovery led to the elimination of some no-go zones, but they remain in seven of 12 towns that had been fully or partially off-limits.
In Futaba, the hardest-hit town and a co-host of the Fukushima Daiichi plant, a small area was opened in 2022. About 100 people, or 1.5% percent of the pre-disaster population, have returned to live. The other host town, Okuma, which along with Futaba sacrificed part of its land to build an interim storage site for nuclear waste gathered from the decontamination, has seen 6% of its former residents return.
Annual surveys show the majority of evacuees have no intention of returning home, citing lack of jobs, schools and lost communities, as well as radiation concerns.
Residents who have raised radiation worries or linked it to their health problems have come under attack for hurting Fukushima’s reputation.
The disaster-hit towns, including those in Iwate and Miyagi prefectures, have seen sharp population drops.
Fukushima Gov. Masao Uchibori said on NHK TV that a growing number of young people want to move to Fukushima to open businesses or help in the reconstruction, and he expressed hope that more residents will return.
What about treated radioactive water discharges?
Last August, Fukushima Daiichi began discharging treated water into the sea, and is currently releasing a fourth 7,800-ton batch of treated water. So far, daily seawater sampling results have met safety standards. The plan has faced protests from local fishers and neighboring countries, especially China, which has banned Japanese seafood imports.
Fukushima Daiichi has struggled to handle the contaminated water since the 2011 meltdowns. TEPCO says the start of the process is a milestone and removing the tanks is crucial to make space for facilities needed as decommissioning progresses.
The contaminated cooling water is pumped up, treated and stored in about 1,000 tanks. The government and TEPCO say the water is diluted with massive seawater before release, making it safer than international standards.
What about local fishing?
Despite earlier fears that the water discharge would further hurt Fukushima’s hard-hit fishing industry, they have not damaged its reputation domestically. China’s ban on Japanese seafood, which mostly hit scallop exporters in Hokkaido, apparently prompted Japanese consumers to eat more Fukushima seafood.
Sampling and monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency have also boosted confidence in local fish.
Fukushima fishing returned to normal operations in 2021, and the local catch is now about one-fifth of its pre-disaster level because of a decline in the fishing population and smaller catch sizes.
The government has earmarked 10 billion yen ($680 million) to support Fukushima fisheries.
Any progress removing melted fuel?
The contents of the three reactors is still largely a mystery. Little is known, for instance, about the melted fuel’s condition or exactly where it’s located in the reactors. Not even a spoonful of the fuel has been removed.
About 880 tons of melted nuclear fuel remain inside the three damaged reactors, and Japanese officials say removing it would take 30-40 years. Experts call that timeline overly optimistic. The amount of melted fuel is 10 times that removed from Three Mile Island following its 1979 partial core melt.
Robotic probes have glimpsed inside the three reactors, but their investigation has been hampered by technical glitches, high radiation and other complications.
It’s crucial for officials to understand the data from melted debris so they can make a plan to remove it safely. TEPCO aims to get the first sample out later this year from the least-damaged No. 2 reactor.
TEPCO has been trying to get the sample by using a robotic arm. Officials have struggled to get the robot past the wreckage, and hope that by October they can use a simpler device that looks like a fishing rod.
The fuel in the worst-damaged No. 1 reactor mostly fell from the core to the bottom of its primary containment vessel. Some of it penetrated and mixed with the concrete foundation, making removal extremely difficult.
In February, the plant made its first drone flight into the primary containment vessel to investigate the melted debris and examine how the fuel initially fell from the core. But a second day of exploration was canceled because a data transmission robot failed.
Is a 2051 completion possible?
The government has stuck to its initial target for a completed decommissioning by 2051, but it hasn’t defined what that means.
The lack of data, technology and plans on what to do with the radioactive melted fuel and other nuclear waste makes it difficult to understand what’s in store for the plant and surrounding areas when the cleanup ends, according to TEPCO’s decommissioning company chief, Akira Ono.
An overly ambitious schedule could result in unnecessary radiation exposure for plant workers and excess environmental damage, experts say.
Observing the 45th Anniversary of the Worst U.S. Commercial Nuclear Power Plant Accident.
March 13th, 2024, https://nuclearactive.org/
Thursday, March 28th marks the 45th anniversary of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant accident in Pennsylvania. A new documentary, “RADIOACTIVE: The Women of Three Mile Island,” tells the harrowing story of the 1979 accident involving the release of radioactive and toxic materials into the air, soils, water and into bodies young and old. As official evacuation orders were delayed, people received much larger radioactive doses than if the evacuation orders were issued immediately.
Forty-five years later four women continue to challenge what the company and government say about the accident.
One review explained how the documentary “uncovers the never-before-told stories of four intrepid homemakers who take their local community’s case against the plant operator all the way to the [U.S.] Supreme Court –- and a young female journalist who’s caught in the radioactive crossfire.”
It also breaks the story of a “radical new health study that may finally expose the truth of the meltdown. For over forty years, the nuclear industry has done everything in their power to cover up their criminal actions, claiming, as they always do, ‘No one was harmed and nothing significant happened.’”
The director of the outstanding documentary is Heidi Hutner. She is a professor of Literature, Sustainability, Women’s and Gender Studies at Stony Brook University New York, and a scholar of nuclear and environmental history, literature, film, and ecofeminism. Hutner chaired the Sustainability Studies Program for six years.
Beginning on March 12th, the documentary is being streamed on Apple + and Amazon Prime for $3.99. Search for The Women of Three Mile Island.
After you watch the film, be sure to register for the historic webinar coming up on Thursday, March 28th at 6 pm Mountain Time with the director Heidi Hutner and her team: Anna Rondon, who is Diné and founder of the New Mexico Social Justice and Equity Institute; Krystal Curley, who is Diné and director of Indigenous Life Ways; Mary Olson, founder of the Gender and Radiation Impact Project; and Professor Mark Jacobson, Stanford University. Cindy Folkers, of Beyond Nuclear, will moderate. The Sierra Club and Beyond Nuclear host the webinar.
In March and April, seven in-person screenings will be held in the U.S. and Canada. CCNS saw the film last weekend at the International Uranium Film Festival in Window Rock, Arizona. It received the Best Investigation Documentary award. We highly recommend watching this story about how the nuclear industry operates and covers up the truth.
EVENTS:……………………………………………….
Nuclear industry wants Canada to lift ban on reprocessing plutonium, despite proliferation risks
The CANDU Owners Group is far from neutral or independent…………… First, Canadian Nuclear Laboratories is a private company owned by a consortium of multi-national companies: AtkinsRéalis (formerly SNC Lavalin), Fluor, and Jacobs. ……...has overseas members, including utilities from China, Pakistan, India, South Korea, Argentina, and Romania. The first three countries are nuclear weapons states that either possess reprocessing plants for military purposes (India and Pakistan) or reportedly divert plutonium extracted from commercial spent fuel for military purposes (China), while South Korea and Argentina have for decades flirted with the idea of reprocessing.
Bulletin, By Gordon Edwards, Susan O’Donnell | March 11, 2024
Plutonium is “the stuff out of which atomic bombs are made.” Plutonium can also be used as a nuclear fuel. Reprocessing is any technology that extracts plutonium from used nuclear fuel. In Canada, the nuclear industry seems determined to close the nuclear fuel cycle by pushing for a policy to permit reprocessing—thereby seeking to lift a 45-year-old ban.
In 1977, Canada tacitly banned commercial reprocessing of used nuclear fuel, following the lead of the Carter administration, which explicitly opposed reprocessing because of the possibility it could lead to increased proliferation of nuclear weapons around the world.[1] That unwritten policy in Canada has held sway ever since.[2] New documents obtained through Canada’s Access to Information Act reveal that, behind closed doors, the nuclear industry has been crafting a policy framework that, if adopted, would overturn the ban and legitimize the extraction of plutonium from Canada’s used commercial nuclear fuel.
For over two years, documents show that the Canadian government has held a series of private meetings with industry representatives on this subject, keeping such activities secret from the public and from parliament. This raises questions about the extent to which nuclear promoters may be unduly influencing public policymaking on such sensitive nuclear issues as reprocessing in Canada.[3] But, given the stakes for the whole society and even the entire planet, the public must have a say about nuclear policy decisions…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Before the ban. Dreams of a plutonium-fueled economy were spawned in 1943-44 by British, French, and Canadian scientists working at a secret wartime laboratory in Montreal, which was part of the Anglo-American Project to build the first atomic bombs. Canada’s first heavy-water reactors were designed by the Montreal team, in part, to produce plutonium for weapons. The team also had hopes that after the war, plutonium might become a dream fuel for the future. They envisioned a “breeder reactor” that could produce more plutonium than it uses, thereby extending nuclear fuel supplies.
For 20 years after the war, Canada sold uranium and plutonium for US bombs. Two reprocessing plants were operated at Chalk River Nuclear Laboratories in Ontario. In addition, all the pilot work on plutonium separation needed to design Britain’s Windscale reprocessing plant was carried out at Chalk River.
After the ban. Although the 1977 ban scuppered AECL’s hopes for commercial reprocessing, plutonium remained the holy grail. In the decades that followed, AECL researchers studying the geologic disposal of high-level radioactive waste clandestinely carried out reprocessing experiments at the Whiteshell Nuclear Research Establishment in Manitoba. Instead of burying used nuclear fuel bundles, the scientists anticipated burying solidified post-reprocessing waste. Meanwhile, AECL scientists at Chalk River fabricated three tonnes of mixed-oxide fuel (MOX) in glove boxes, using plutonium obtained from CANDU fuel reprocessed overseas. In 1996, Prime Minister Jean Chrétien volunteered to import weapons-grade plutonium from dismantled US and Soviet warheads to fuel CANDU reactors. Facing fierce public opposition in Canada, the project never came to pass.
But the dream of a plutonium economy remained. In 2011, a sprawling mural on three walls of the Saskatoon Airport depicted the nuclear fuel chain, from mining uranium to the reprocessing of used fuel to recover “potential energy” before disposing of the leftovers. Although the word plutonium appeared nowhere, reprocessing was presented as the inevitable final step in this vision of a virtuous nuclear fuel cycle. The mural was commissioned by Cameco, the giant Canadian multi-national corporation that helped make the central Canadian province of Saskatchewan into the “Saudi Arabia of uranium.” At the time, Cameco co-owned the largest operating nuclear power station in the world, the eight-reactor Bruce complex beside Lake Huron bordering the United States.
Despite such hopes, it became fashionable to publicly downplay reprocessing as expensive and therefore economically unlikely.[5] But the technology stayed on the books as a possibility, especially in case future generations would want to extract plutonium from used nuclear fuel for re-use before disposing of the remaining radioactive waste.
Back to the future? New Brunswick has one 660-megawatt-electric CANDU reactor at Point Lepreau on the Bay of Fundy in eastern Canada. The plant has been operating for over 40 years. In March 2018, two start-up companies—UK-based Moltex Energy and US-based ARC Clean Technology—offered to build “advanced” (fast) reactors on the same site.
The Moltex design is a 300-megawatt-electric molten salt reactor called “Stable Salt Wasteburner.” It is to be fueled with plutonium and other transuranic elements extracted from CANDU used fuel already stored on that site. Accordingly, the Moltex proposal requires a reprocessing plant in tandem with the reactor. The ARC design is a 100-megawatt-electric liquid sodium-cooled reactor, inspired by the second Experimental Breeder Reactor (EBR-2) operated by the Argonne National Laboratory in Idaho between 1964 and 1994. Although the ARC-100 does not require reprocessing at the outset, its optimal performance requires that the used fuel be recycled, likely through reprocessing.
From the beginning, Moltex claimed its proposed molten salt reactor would “recycle” CANDU used fuel and “burn” it in its molten salt reactor. Moltex claims that this would virtually eliminate the need for a deep geologic repository by turning a million-year disposal problem into a roughly 300-year storage problem. This claim has been flatly rebuffed.[6] Only later did the public learn that the Moltex technology requires reprocessing CANDU used fuel to extract plutonium using an innovative process called “pyroprocessing.” (In pyroprocessing, used fuel is converted to a metal and immersed in molten salt, then the plutonium and other transuranic elements are recovered by passing a current through the salt and collecting the desired products on electrodes.)
ARC Clean Technology maintains that its reactor design is proven by the 30-year operating experience of the EBR-2 reactor, despite differences in size and fuel enrichment.[7] The company, however, says nothing about the intimate connection between breeder reactors and plutonium, nor does it mention the chequered history of liquid sodium-cooled reactors globally—including the Fermi Unit 1 reactor’s partial meltdown near Detroit, the commercial failure of France’s Superphénix, the conversion of a German breeder reactor into an amusement park, or the dismal performance of Japan’s Monju reactor.
For either of the proposed New Brunswick reactors to operate as intended, Canada would need to lift its 45-year-old ban on commercial reprocessing of used nuclear fuel.
Testing the limits. The first sign that Canada’s reprocessing ban might be lifted came in 2019, when the federal government’s Impact Assessment Act exempted specified projects from environmental assessment. The exemption included any reprocessing plant with a production capacity of up to 100 metric tons (of used nuclear fuel) annually—just above the reprocessing capacity required for the Moltex project.[8]
Public calls to explicitly ban reprocessing started shortly after March 2021, when the federal government gave 50.5 million Canadian dollars in funding for Moltex’s project. This project clearly requires reprocessing: Without the plutonium produced by CANDU reactors to fuel its proposed molten salt reactor, the Moltex project can go nowhere.
In addition, Moltex hopes to eventually export the technology or the fuel, or both. Many Canadians are alarmed at the prospect of normalizing the use of recycled plutonium as a nuclear fuel in Canada and abroad.
In 2021, in response to a recommendation by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Canadian government conducted public consultations to develop a modernized policy on commercial radioactive waste management and decommissioning. Over 100 citizens groups participated, and many called for an explicit ban on reprocessing.
Public attention to the issue of reprocessing grew after nine US nonproliferation experts sent an open letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in May 2021. The letter expressed concern that by funding a spent fuel reprocessing and plutonium extraction project, Canada would “undermine the global nuclear weapons nonproliferation regime that Canada has done so much to strengthen.” …………………..
A second letter sent to Trudeau in July 2021 refuted “misleading claims” that Moltex posted on-line in rebuttal to the first letter. Moltex’s rebuttal claims were quickly taken down. And a third letter authored by one of the US nonproliferation experts was sent in November 2021. None of the government responses to these three letters addressed the core issue, which is the request for an independent review of the proliferation implications of Canada’s funding of reprocessing.
The federal government released its draft policy for radioactive waste management and decommissioning in March 2022, hinting that reprocessing might be permitted in the future. Public interest groups made their opposition to that suggestion very clear. A national steering group coordinated by Nuclear Waste Watch, a Canada-based network of public interest organizations, released an alternative policy proposal that explicitly banned reprocessing. The Council of Canadians, a national advocacy group, sent out an action alert that generated 7,400 letters calling for the explicit prohibition of reprocessing.
The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, tasked with the job of licensing Moltex’s proposed reactor, declared that a policy framework for reprocessing is necessary and that such a policy must come from the federal government.[9] Moltex’s Chief Executive Officer, Rory O’Sullivan, observed that Canada was chosen by Moltex because the country had no explicit policy on reprocessing: “Moltex would likely not have come to Canada if a reprocessing policy had been mandated at the time.”
In November 2021, Canada’s Ministry of Natural Resources—the lead federal department on nuclear issues—issued an internal memo entitled “Policy Development on Reprocessing” that refers to a series of planned meetings on reprocessing with industry representatives starting December 1, 2021.[10] The CANDU Owners Group—a nonprofit corporation assembling utilities operating CANDU reactors, Canadian Nuclear Laboratories, and nuclear suppliers—was singled out by the ministry to prepare a policy paper on reprocessing.[11]
The CANDU Owners Group is far from neutral or independent.
First, Canadian Nuclear Laboratories is a private company owned by a consortium of multi-national companies: AtkinsRéalis (formerly SNC Lavalin), Fluor, and Jacobs. The company is currently constructing a government-funded facility with hot cells at Chalk River to conduct research, including on reprocessing and plutonium extraction. Canadian Nuclear Laboratories operates under a “government-owned contractor operated” agreement with Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, the same publicly owned corporation that pushed for commercial reprocessing in the late 1970s.
The CANDU Owners Group also has overseas members, including utilities from China, Pakistan, India, South Korea, Argentina, and Romania. The first three countries are nuclear weapons states that either possess reprocessing plants for military purposes (India and Pakistan) or reportedly divert plutonium extracted from commercial spent fuel for military purposes (China), while South Korea and Argentina have for decades flirted with the idea of reprocessing.
By all evidence, the government of Canada is currently enlisting private entities that favor reprocessing to assist in the development of an industry-friendly policy on reprocessing. And the government does this without involving the public, parliament, or outside experts—all of whom have expressed a keen interest—and repeatedly asked to participate—in plutonium policy discussions. In the process, misleading information about reprocessing is being forwarded to government officials with no other voices to correct the record.[12]
In the most recent move, a dozen US nonproliferation experts wrote again to Prime Minister Trudeau on September 22, 2023, after the release of documents obtained through an access to information request. In their letter, the experts reiterated their concerns that the Canadian government is funding a project that would lead to increase the availability—and therefore potential proliferation—of weapons-usable plutonium for civilian purposes in Canada and beyond.
Democratic deficit. Despite all these developments, there has been no public discussion or parliamentary deliberation about the implications of introducing civilian reprocessing into Canada’s nuclear fuel cycle. Absence of transparency and public debate means the democratic process is being ignored. Yet, the issue is of great public importance because of the taxpayer money invested, proliferation risks involved, and the long-term societal implications of the security measures needed to safeguard nuclear weapons usable materials.
This makes one wonder why it took a group of concerned citizens and an access to information request to find out that, behind closed doors, the nuclear industry has been drafting its own policy to permit commercial reprocessing, expecting its adoption by the government of Canada against all objective criteria of democracy.
n 1976, British nuclear physicist Brian Flowers authored a Royal Commission report to the UK parliament. He wrote: “We regard the future implications of a plutonium economy as so serious that we should not wish to become committed to this course unless it is clear that the issues have been fully appreciated and weighed; in view of their nature we believe this can be assured only in the light of wide public understanding.”
The same precept should apply to nuclear policy in today’s Canada.
Notes…………………………………………………………………. https://thebulletin.org/2024/03/nuclear-industry-wants-canada-to-lift-ban-on-reprocessing-plutonium-despite-proliferation-risks/
Japan’s Nuclear Energy Policy Disaster
The yawning gap between vision and policy reality jeopardizes Japan’s important energy security goals and efforts to decarbonize the energy supply.
By Florentine Koppenborg, March 08, 2024, https://thediplomat.com/2024/03/japans-nuclear-energy-policy-disaster/
The Japanese government is chasing a nuclear mirage 13 years after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in March 2011. Government statements in support of nuclear power, such as the recent declaration at COP28 that Japan will triple nuclear energy by 2050, receive much attention. Away from the public spotlight, however, Japan is facing a nuclear energy policy disaster as it struggles to actually return to nuclear energy after the Fukushima nuclear accident.
As the Japanese government pursues a nuclear revival to no avail, the yawning gap between vision and policy reality jeopardizes important energy policy goals such as energy security and decarbonizing energy supply.
The share of nuclear power in Japan’s electricity mix has stagnated between 5 and 8 percent since 2018, and the goal to generate 20–22 percent of electricity from nuclear by 2030 has become elusive. Japan’s fleet of commercial nuclear reactors, once the third largest in the world at 54 units, has diminished to 33 plus two units currently under construction. Restarting these 35 reactors would barely be enough to meet the government’s 2030 targets. However, only 27 reactors are undergoing the safety reviews required for a restart permit. If successful, they can provide about 14 percent of Japan’s electricity mix by 2030, far from the government’s goals.
Actual restart progress is even more bleak, with only 12 reactors back on the grid by early 2024. Plans to start using the Onagawa plant’s reactor number two for electricity generation in May 2024 had to be postponed to September due to delays in additional safety construction work. For the Tokai reactor number two, work on safety measures is scheduled to conclude in September 2024, but it remains to be seen whether construction will finish on time. With the restart process riddled with setbacks and uncertainties, the total number of reactors actually generating electricity looks to increase only marginally over the next few years.
One potential solution to this problem, constructing new reactors, takes at least a decade and risks public backlash as safety concerns linger. The recent Noto earthquake was a reminder of safety risks as the earthquake partly exceeded assumptions made in safety checks and led to questions about the adequacy of emergency evacuation plans. Removing the official 40-year lifespan limit on nuclear reactors – introduced as a major safety lesson after the 2011 nuclear disaster – as part of Japan’s so-called GX (green transformation) strategy that will guide the country’s decarbonization appears as a rather desperate and potentially risky measure. The next generation of modular reactors stressed in the COP28 declaration on nuclear and the GX strategy are not even market-ready technology at the moment.
Japan’s nuclear energy revival is supposed to increase energy security and drive decarbonization. Chasing unattainable goals, however, has the exact opposite effect as the yawning implementation gap is continuously filled with fossil fuel imports.
It is time to embrace the solution at hand: expanding renewable energy capacity.
Increasing energy security has been a major goal of Japan’s energy policy ever since the oil shock in the 1970s. Dependence on fossil fuel imports, already high at 81 percent in 2010, shot up once all of the nuclear power plants were shut down following the Fukushima accident. What brought it down again to about 83 percent in 2021 was not nuclear restarts, but rather an increasing share of renewable energy. Nuclear power and renewable energy have essentially switched places in Japan’s energy mix as renewables increased from 4 percent in 2010 to 11 percent in 2021 and nuclear decreased from 10 percent in 2010 to 3 percent in 2021.
Additional coal and gas imports to fill the nuclear power gap not only keep Japan’s import dependence high, but also have a substantial impact on its greenhouse gas emissions. Aside from a small share of nuclear energy, low-carbon electricity mainly comes from renewables, which have seen an impressive annual growth at about 16 percent since 2012. The remaining 72 percent come from fossil fuels. Once a climate leader in the 1990s, the current nuclear energy disaster solidifies Japan as a fossil fuel champion rather than a decarbonization leader.
In 2024, the Japanese government has an opportunity to turn things around. Japan’s Strategic Energy Plan, revised every three years, is due again. This presents an opportunity for the government to increase its renewable energy target, ideally in line with the international commitment made at COP28 to triple renewable energy capacity by 2050, and to reduce its nuclear power target accordingly. This would be the best way to alleviate Japan’s current nuclear energy policy disaster and to put the country back on track in its pursuit of energy security and decarbonization.
Film poses moral questions about 2011 Fukushima disaster displacement
Japan Times, BY MIE SAKAMOTO, KYODO 12 Mar 24
A new documentary that questions whether it is right to sacrifice a community’s way of life for the betterment of the wider public has revealed the turmoil and hardships faced by those who were displaced in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster.
“Tsushima: Fukushima Speaks Part 2,” directed by freelance journalist Toshikuni Doi, features the testimonies of people seeking the return of their hometown, which was deemed uninhabitable for a century after the world’s worst nuclear accident since the 1986 Chernobyl meltdown.
The documentary explores the story of a minority group that must endure suffering for the happiness and convenience of others, a theme of global resonance, with Doi, 71, explaining that the film focuses on the impact the accident had on the daily lives of people forced to leave their homes.
Their hometown — Tsushima district in Namie, Fukushima Prefecture — is some 30 kilometers from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, which was crippled by the massive earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011. Most of its 1,400 former residents remain unable to return due to the contamination left behind by radioactive materials.
The 187-minute film, whose version with English subtitles will be available online for one week from March 11 for audiences outside Japan, delves into people’s memories of their hometown, with many expressing deep affection for their tight-knit rural community, where residents were close to each other.
“Many people don’t care much about nuclear issues,” Doi said in an interview. “But if the film can show the impact the accident had on people’s lives and what they thought about being driven away and losing their hometown, the audience will be drawn to it, even if they are not deeply interested in such issues.”
Many of the film’s 18 interviewees — who took part in Doi’s project of preserving disaster victims’ testimonies for future generations — have special feelings for their hometown. Some shed tears as they spoke about their personal histories and how their lives were changed irrevocably following the disaster.
The film begins with Yoshito Konno, who was among those told by officials of the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. (Tepco), and the central government in the fall of 2011 that people from Tsushima would likely be unable to return “for the next 100 years.”
“People were speechless,” Konno, 79, says in the film, continuing to say that it made him think there would be “no one left after 100 years,”
which prompted him to start compiling records on the histories of families who had lived in the area.
Kano Sudo, 72, lived in poverty with three children after she divorced her estranged husband. She worked hard at local factories to support her children, but even buying daily rice was a struggle.
“I had even thought about (suicide) with my three children,” she admits in the film, adding that she was only able to get through those times “because of the help of those around us.”
Her neighbors, she says, would routinely feed her kids and watch over them, to prevent them from being led astray as they grew up………………………………………………………………………………………..
“From an economic utility standpoint, the best policy would be to transfer us to another place and set up a compensation system so that we can make a living,” rather than spending massive amounts of the state’s budget so that some hundreds of Tsushima residents can return home, Konno says.
But he goes on to argue that it is wrong to sever the local residents’ ties to their former community while denying their basic rights to joy and fulfillment as human beings — in effect, turning a blind eye to the damage done to each individual whose life was upended.
“It is not only about Tsushima,” Konno says. “This issue should be common to all of Japan and the whole world.”
The film was released in Tokyo on March 2, which will be followed by screenings in other major cities, including in the prefectures of Osaka and Aichi. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2024/03/12/japan/society/japan-fukushima-displacement/
Bridgwater activists shine light on nuclear power in UK
Elizabeth Birt 13th March24, more https://www.bridgwatermercury.co.uk/news/24179056.bridgwater-activists-shine-light-nuclear-power-uk/
There was a lively meeting in Bridgwater discussing the future of US nuclear weapons on British soil.
The Bridgwater Peace Group met at the Bridgwater Railway Club on Tuesday, March 5.
Dr Rowland Dye, a Bristol-based nuclear physicist, provided a comprehensive overview of nuclear power and weaponry in the UK.
He highlighted how the country’s atom bomb production from 1952-63 was more about weapon production than producing ‘clean’ electricity via the Magnox program.
Dr Dye also shone a light on how serious nuclear power accidents, such as Windscale’s 1957 incident and Chernobyl disaster of 1986, have far-reaching and long-term effects unlike conventional electricity generation.
Dr Dye, who formerly worked in a hospital, said he was alarmed when he realised government press reports described the radioactive waste dumped in our oceans as medical waste.
Consequently, he left medicine and pursued activism.
Williton resident Lyn Barlow also delivered a speech that illustrated her personal journey of activism, leading to numerous encounters with the police and prison.
Ms Barlow now utilises art as her form of protest.
Following the speeches, attendees were able to ask questions and network.
Interested parties concerned about conflict and nuclear weaponry in the UK may join future meetings or contact Glen at 07423 786599 for more information.
Shelling continues near Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station
12 March 2024. Modern Power Systems
Director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Mariano Grossi, in his 8 March statement Update 215 concerning the situation in Ukraine, reported his meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin as part of the IAEA’s continuing efforts to help prevent a nuclear or radiological accident during the present conflict.
Mr Grossi said the meeting, on 6 March, was “professional and frank”, with the discussions focused on the paramount importance of reducing the still significant nuclear safety and security risks at the Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant in southern Ukraine, under Russian control for the past two years.
It was their second meeting, following one in Saint Petersburg in October 2022, and it took place a month after Mr Grossi on 7 February crossed the frontline to travel to the ZNPP for the fourth time during the war. On the way to the plant, he met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv……………………………
Military activity
IAEA experts stationed at the ZNPP site have continued to hear explosions and other indications of military activity not far away from the facility. Three times during the week of 4 March they reported hearing several successive explosions within a few minutes, as well as one explosion on 7 march and multiple explosions on 8 March, possibly indicating the use of heavy weapons from an area close by.
On 1 March, the IAEA experts heard an explosion some distance away from the ZNPP. The following morning, the team was informed by the plant that there had been shelling in parkland a few hundred metres away from the city hall administrative building of the town of Enerhodar, where many plant staff live.
Further underlining the fragile nuclear safety and security situation at the ZNPP, the plant remains without back-up external power after the only remaining 330 kV line was disconnected on 20 February. As a result, the ZNPP remains dependent on its only functioning 750 kV power line, out of four such lines available before the war. The IAEA team has informed that the 330 kV line is not expected to be reconnected before 15 March. https://www.modernpowersystems.com/news/newsshelling-continues-near-znpp-11594597
1 This Month
petition to oppose the rapid increase of space-military industry threatening Jeju Island and the region.
[Petition by April 19th (KST)] Stop the joint military-Hanwha Systems-Jeju Provincial Government Sea Launch!
World Nuclear Power. Reactors 1951-2026, 75 Years of Nuclear Power.
Interactive Map– https://dv.worldnuclearreport.org/
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes – A good documentary on Chernobyl on SBS available On Demand for the next 3 weeks– https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-program/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes/2352741955560
of the week–London Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
Tell the Ukrainian Government to Drop Prosecution of Peace Activist Yurii Sheliazhenko
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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