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Texas nuclear weapons facility pauses as fires spread

The Standard, By John Crouch, February 28, 2024

A series of wildfires has swept across the Texas Panhandle, prompting evacuations, cutting off power to thousands, and forcing the shutdown of a nuclear weapons facility as strong winds, dry grass and unseasonably warm temperatures fed the blazes.

An unknown number of homes and other structures in Hutchinson County were damaged or destroyed, local emergency officials said.

The main facility that assembles and disassembles America’s nuclear arsenal shut down its operations Tuesday night.

“We have evacuated our personnel, non-essential personnel from the site, just in an abundance of caution,” Laef Pendergraft, a spokesman for National Nuclear Security Administration’s Production Office at Pantex, said during a news conference………………………………………………….

Republican Governor Greg Abbott issued a disaster declaration for 60 counties as the largest blaze, the Smokehouse Creek Fire, burned more than 1000 square kilometres, according to the Texas A&M Forest Service.

That is more than twice its size since the fire sparked on Monday……………………………………more https://www.standard.net.au/story/8539003/texas-nuclear-weapons-facility-pauses-as-fires-spread/

March 1, 2024 Posted by | climate change, safety, USA | Leave a comment

IT’S TIME TO CANCEL SIZEWELL C

 https://action.stopsizewellc.org/its-time-cancel-sizewell-c 27 feb 24

In recent weeks, Hinkley Point C has been revealed to cost £46 billion, yet just hours before this was announced, the government DOUBLED the taxpayers’ money that had been paid into Sizewell C, to a staggering £2.5 billion. Stop Sizewell C described this as the epitome of insanity – to do the same thing over again and expect a different result.

Yet in fact Sizewell C is NOT an exact replica of Hinkley Point C. It is an 80% above ground copy, but the site and ground conditions are very different. And what’s worse is that while Hinkley C’s cost and schedule overruns are the responsibility of EDF, when Sizewell C overruns and overspends – as it inevitably will – it will fall on we consumers to pay.

Citizens Advice have told Ministers “the scope for material cost and time overruns [at Sizewell C] is very significant. Consumers need to be protected from those risks. They have no way to manage them and are reliant on [the government] to ensure they are not on the hook”.

It’s time to call a halt to this madness. Sizewell C is too slow, expensive and damaging to be the answer to our climate and energy security emergency. If you agree that Sizewell C is the wrong project in the wrong place, send a message to Rishi Sunak, Jeremy Hunt and Claire Coutinho, telling them why they should cancel Sizewell C.

March 1, 2024 Posted by | opposition to nuclear, UK | Leave a comment

France creates coalition to arm Ukraine with long-range weapons

  28 Feb 24 https://www.rt.com/news/593253-france-macron-coalition-long-range-weapons-ukraine/

The aim is to enable Kiev to “carry out deep strikes” amid flagging US support, President Emmanuel Macron has said

France is leading a new coalition that aims to provide Ukraine with “medium and long-range missiles and bombs,” President Emmanuel Macron has announced. He has also not ruled out deploying ground forces to support Kiev in future.

Macron made the remarks following a summit of Ukraine’s backers on Monday, intended to demonstrate unwavering support for Kiev amid the suspension of American aid.

According to the French leader, the newly established coalition seeks to enable Ukraine to “carry out deep strikes.” There is a “broad consensus to do even more and faster together” to support Kiev, Macron added.

The move comes as continued US aid to Ukraine remains in doubt. President Joe Biden’s latest package, which envisages an additional $60 billion for Kiev, has been in limbo for months due to opposition from Republicans in the House of Representatives. Lawmakers have made clear they will only relent if the White House agrees to tighten US border controls and stems the flow of illegal migrants from Mexico.

Speaking on Monday, Macron also claimed that the deployment of Western troops to Ukraine cannot be ruled out, insisting that Paris will “do everything necessary to ensure that Russia cannot win this war.” His remarks were echoed by French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal in comments to the RTL broadcaster on Tuesday.

In response, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov warned that “in this case, we have to talk not about the probability, but rather the inevitability” of a direct conflict between NATO and Russia, should Western military personnel be deployed to Ukraine.

Earlier this month, Paris and Kiev signed a bilateral security pact under which France pledged €3 billion ($3.26 billion) worth of defense aid by the end of the year.

In January, Macron revealed plans to provide Ukraine with 40 more SCALP-EG long-range cruise missiles and “hundreds of bombs.”

Paris agreed to ship the rockets, which have a range of over 250km (155 miles), last July, months after the UK agreed a similar move.

Russia has consistently condemned Western deliveries of long-range weaponry, saying it will only serve to prolong the hostilities unnecessarily without changing the final outcome.

March 1, 2024 Posted by | France, Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Victoria Nuland accidentally reveals the true aim of the West in Ukraine

“And by the way, we have to remember that the bulk of this money is going right back into the US to make those weapons,” Nuland said, pleading in favor of the latest Ukraine aid package “

 Ukrainians are a convenient pretext to keep the tax cash flowing in the direction of the US military industrial complex


SOTT, Rachel Marsden, Tue, 27 Feb 2024

US State Department fixture and Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Victoria Nuland, aka “Regime Change Karen,” apparently woke up one day recently, took the safety off her nuclear-grade mouth, and inadvertently blew up the West’s Ukraine narrative.


Until now, Americans have been told that all the US taxpayer cash being earmarked for Ukrainian aid is to help actual Ukrainians. Anyone notice that the $75 billion American contribution isn’t getting the job done on the battlefield? Victory in military conflict isn’t supposed to look like defeat. Winning also isn’t defined as, “Well, on a long enough time axis, like infinity, our chance of defeat will eventually approach zero.” And the $178 billion in total from all allies combined doesn’t seem to be doing the trick, either. Short of starting a global war with weapons capable of extending the conflict beyond a regional one, it’s not like they’ve been holding back. The West is breaking the bank. All for some vague, future Ukrainian “victory” that they don’t seem to want to clearly define. We keep hearing that the support will last “as long as it takes.” For what exactly? By not clearly defining it, they can keep moving the goal posts.

But now here comes Regime Change Karen, dropping some truth bombs on CNN about Ukrainian aid. She started off with the usual talking point of doing “what we have always done, which is defend democracy and freedom around the world.” Conveniently, in places where they have controlling interests and want to keep them – or knock them out of a global competitor’s roster and into their own. “And by the way, we have to remember that the bulk of this money is going right back into the US to make those weapons,” Nuland said, pleading in favor of the latest Ukraine aid package that’s been getting the side eye from Republicans in Congress.


So there you have it, folks. Ukrainians are a convenient pretext to keep the tax cash flowing in the direction of the US military industrial complex. This gives a whole new perspective on “as long as it takes.” It’s just the usual endless war and profits repackaged as benevolence. But we’ve seen this before. It explains why war in Afghanistan was little more than a gateway to Iraq. And why the Global War on Terrorism never seems to end, and only ever mutates. Arguably the best one they’ve come up with so far is the need for military-grade panopticon-style surveillance, so the state can shadow-box permanently with ghosts while bamboozling the general public with murky cyber concepts that it can’t understand or conceptualize. When one conflict or threat dials down, another ramps up, boosted by fearmongering rhetoric couched in white-knighting. There’s never any endgame or exit ramp to any of these conflicts. And there clearly isn’t one for Ukraine, either.

Still, there’s a sense that the realities on the ground in Ukraine, which favor Russia, now likely mean that the conflict is closer to its end than to its beginning. Acknowledgements abound in the Western press. And that means there isn’t much time left for Europe to get aboard the tax cash laundering bandwagon and stuff its own military industrial complexes’ coffers like Washington has been doing from the get-go. 

Which would explain why a bunch of countries now seem to be rushing to give Ukraine years-long bilateral security “guarantees,” requiring more weapons for everyone. France, Germany, Canada, and Italy have all made the pledge. Plus Denmark, which also flat-out said that it would send all its artillery to Ukraine………………………………………………

Thanks to Nuland’s nuking of any plausible deniability on Ukrainian “aid” not going to Washington, it’s now clear that Ukrainians continue to die so poor weapons makers don’t end up shaking tin cans on street corners.………………………………………………………………………….. more https://www.sott.net/article/489314-Nuland-accidentally-reveals-the-true-aim-of-the-West-in-Ukraine

March 1, 2024 Posted by | business and costs, politics, Ukraine, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

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