Assange Extradition Case Moves Forward While The CIA Covers Its Tracks
CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, APR 17, 2024 https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/assange-extradition-case-moves-forward?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=143660864&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
So they’re really doing it. The Biden administration is really ignoring Australia’s request to end the case against Julian Assange, and they’re proceeding with their campaign to extradite a journalist for telling the truth about US war crimes.
In order to move the extradition case forward, per a British high court ruling US prosecutors needed to provide “assurances” that the US would not seek the death penalty and would not deprive Assange of his human right to free speech because of his nationality. The US provided the assurance against the death penalty (which they’d previously opposed doing), and for the free speech assurance they said only that Assange will be able to “raise and seek to rely upon” US First Amendment rights, adding, “A decision as to the applicability of the First Amendment is exclusively within the purview of the U.S. Courts.”
Which is basically just saying “I mean, you’re welcome to TRY to have free speech protections?”
At the same time, CIA Director William Burns has filed a State Secrets Privilege demand to withhold information in a lawsuit against the agency by four American journalists and attorneys who were spied on during their visits to Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy in London. State secrets privilege is a US evidentiary rule designed to prevent courts from revealing state secrets during civil litigation; the CIA began invoking it with the Assange lawsuit earlier this year.
Burns argues:
“I am asserting the state secrets and statutory privileges in this case as I have determined that either admitting or denying that CIA has information implicated by the remaining allegations in the Amended Complaint reasonably could be expected to cause serious — and in some cases, exceptionally grave — damage to the national security of the United States. After deliberation and personal consideration, I have determined that the complete factual bases for my privilege assertions cannot be set forth on the public record without confirming or denying whether CIA has information relating to this matter and therefore risking the very harm to U.S. national security that I seek to protect.”
Which is obviously a load of horse shit. As Assange himself tweeted in 2017, “The overwhelming majority of information is classified to protect political security, not national security.” Burns isn’t worried about damaging “the national security of the United States,” he’s worried about the potential political fallout from information about the CIA spying on American lawyers and journalists while visiting a journalist who was being actively targeted by the legal arm of the US government.
Political security is also why the US is working to punish Julian Assange for publishing inconvenient facts about US war crimes. The Pentagon already acknowledged years ago that the Chelsea Manning leaks for which Assange is being prosecuted didn’t get anyone killed and had no strategic impact on US war efforts, so plainly this isn’t about national security. It’s just politically damaging for the criminality of the US government to be made public for all to see.
They’re just squeezing and squeezing this man as hard as they can for as long as they can get away with to keep him silent and make an example of him to show what happens when journalists reveal unauthorized information about the empire. Just like Gaza, the persecution of Julian Assange makes a lie of everything the US and its western allies claim to stand for, and reveals the cruel face of tyranny beneath the mask of liberal democracy.
The ‘Accepted Insanity’ of World War III
By Robert C. Koehler, 17 Apr 24 http://commonwonders.com/the-accepted-insanity-of-world-war-iii/
“Mr. Netanyahu faces a delicate calculation — how to respond to Iran in order not to look weak, while trying to avoid alienating the Biden administration and other allies already impatient with Israel’s prosecution of the war in Gaza.”
Yeah, this is virtually nothing: a random, utterly forgettable quote pulled from the New York Times — from the basic corporate coverage of our present-moment violence, as the world shimmies on the brink of . . . uh, World War III.
It’s the forgettable quotes, especially in regard to ongoing war, that may be the most dangerous, because all they do is solidify a collective sense of normal. My term for it is “accepted insanity.” We have the technological and psychological capacity to kill not simply thousands or even millions of people but the whole human race, but let’s talk about it in terms of strategy, tactics and public relations! Let’s talk about it as though we’re covering a bunch of 10-yer-old boys throwing stones. Which one’s going to win?
That’s the key issue here: winning.
When two cowboys face off in an armed confrontation, the one who draws and fires fastest, hitting the other guy in the stomach or wherever, wins. He gets to walk away with a self-satisfied smirk.
I’m not singling out the Times story quoted above as uniquely problematic in its coverage of the latest turn of events in the Middle East, but rather that it’s representative of the accepted insanity of endless war — the reduction of war to an abstraction, virtually always involving clearly defined good guys and bad guys, and describing murder (including mass murder) as retaliation, self-defense, “show of force,” etc., etc. “National interests” are the prize at stake. Human lives are just bargaining chips, except, of course, when the bad guys kill them.
The Times story, for instance, steps beyond its abstraction of the Israel-Iran confrontation at one point. Israel bombed Iran’s consulate in Damascus, Syria, killing several Iranian officers, the story informed us. Iran retaliated two weeks later, firing 300 drones and missiles at Israel, almost all of which were shot down and very little damage was caused. The Times noted: “The only serious casualty was a 7-year-old girl, Amina al-Hasoni, who was badly wounded.”
War affects children! Yes, yes, yes it does. My heart goes out to Amina al-Hasoni. But my God — some 13,000 children have been killed in the Israeli assault on Gaza, and thousands more injured, not to mention orphaned. And some are simply missing, lying under the rubble. What are their names?
What if war were covered the way street crime is covered — not as an abstraction, but with awareness that it’s a profound social problem? What if war were covered with external awareness, i.e., with wisdom that transcends political platitudes — rather than in obeisance to those platitudes?
Here, for instance, is CNBC reporting on the Israel-Iran confrontation. Noting that Israel has pledged to “exact a price” from Iran in response to the missile attack, CNBC then quotes President Biden condemning the attack and adding that the United States “will remain vigilant to all threats and will not hesitate to take all necessary action to protect our people.”
Can you believe? His words didn’t make me feel safer. I’d been pondering not just the possibility but the likely reality of World War III, and to read these words — “take all necessary action to protect our people” — made the wolves starting to howl in my own soul.
Platitudes plus nukes? Biden wasn’t talking about transcending war and shunning the country’s trillion-dollar military budget. Presumably, he was talking about using it, putting it to work to “protect” us — you know, to “defeat” our declared enemy (Iran, apparently), no matter the price exacted on Planet Earth, including on you and me. How about some media coverage that doesn’t blow this off with a shrug?
Coverage of war requires awareness of the lies that prop it up politically. For instance, as World Beyond War has put it:
“According to myth, war is ‘natural.’ Yet a great deal of conditioning is needed to prepare most people to take part in war, and a great deal of mental suffering is common among those who have taken part.”
In other words, war is not a product of human evolution — humanity finally becoming mature enough to fight itself in an organized, collective fashion — but essentially the opposite of that: an unevolved aspect of who we are . . . an embedded failure to evolve, you might say.
So many veterans, as the World Beyond War quote implies, often bear the burden of this truth well beyond their time of service. They are forced to face, on their own, the psychological and spiritual implications of what they did — of following orders, of participating in the dehumanization and murder of alleged enemies. In the wake of wars, vet suicide rates can be horrific. While such psycho-spiritual trauma is officially defined as a mental illness — post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) — others with deeper understanding, including many vets, call it moral injury. Following orders forced them to act beyond their own humanity: When you dehumanize others, you dehumanize yourself.
This is the accepted insanity the corporate media cover with such win-lose abstraction, even when we’re on the brink of World War III. Multiply moral injury by several billion human beings and what you could wind up with is human extinction.
What do we know about Israel’s nuclear weapons?
The New Arab Staff, 23 November, 2023
Israel is believed to possess between 80 and 400 nuclear weapons but has never faced serious international scrutiny over this.
Despite widespread speculation, Israel has neither confirmed nor denied having nuclear weapons, adhering to a policy of deliberate ambiguity.
Israel is believed to have between 80 to 400 nuclear warheads, with the first completed around late 1966 or early 1967.
This estimate would position Israel as the sixth nation globally to develop nuclear weapons. Delivery methods for these weapons are believed to include aircraft, submarine-launched cruise missiles, and the Jericho series ballistic missiles.
Israel consistently reiterates the cryptic refrain that it will “not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons to the Middle East”. The nation has not signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) despite international calls to join.
Recently, the issue gained renewed attention when Israel’s Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu, of the extremist Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party, suggested that using nuclear weapons against Gaza would be an option. He was suspended soon afterwards.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan also recently said that the issue of Israel’s nuclear arsenal should remain a focus on the global agenda.
He accused Western nations of aiding and overlooking alleged crimes against humanity by Israel in Gaza, where over 14,000 people have been killed in indiscriminate bombardment.
History and implications
Israel’s first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, was committed to acquiring nuclear weapons, justifying this by saying it was to prevent a recurrence of the Nazi Holocaust. …………………………..
By 1952, Israel Atomic Energy Commission chief Ernst David Bergmann sought nuclear collaboration with France, and laid the foundation for future French-Israeli cooperation. This partnership included Israeli scientists’ involvement in France’s nuclear facilities and knowledge sharing, particularly with those with experience on the Manhattan Project.
The relationship culminated in 1957, with France agreeing to build a nuclear reactor and reprocessing plant in Israel, a decision influenced by geopolitical factors and mutual scientific benefits.
This partnership was solidified through secret agreements, ostensibly concentrating on peaceful use of atomic technology but with implications for weapons development………………………………….
The Dimona reactor achieved criticality in 1962, and by 1966 Israel had reportedly developed its first operational nuclear weapon, marking the beginning of its full-scale nuclear weapons production.
The exact costs of Israel’s nuclear program are unknown, but substantial foreign aid and Mossad’s covert operations played crucial roles.
Israeli defector Mordechai Vanunu dramatically revealed the extent of the nuclear programme in 1986, and he was kidnapped by Mossad agents and brought back to Israel, serving long years in prison.
By the mid-2000s, estimates of Israel’s nuclear arsenal varied widely, with speculation about uranium enrichment capabilities adding to these uncertainties.
Despite occasional statements by other countries expressing concern about Israel’s nuclear capabilities, there has been little pressure on Israel to declare its nuclear activities or open up its facilities for inspection, let alone to destroy its weapons.
Double standards
The international community’s approach to nuclear proliferation exhibits notable disparities, especially when comparing the cases of Israel, Iran, and Pakistan.
Israel, despite widespread belief in its possession of nuclear weapons, has never publicly confirmed this and enjoys a unique position of strategic ambiguity. It does not face the same level of scrutiny or sanctions imposed on other nations.
In contrast, Iran, whose nuclear program has raised global concerns about potential weaponisation, has been subject to rigorous inspections, strict sanctions, and intense diplomatic negotiations under frameworks like the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
Pakistan, having openly conducted nuclear tests in 1998, is often viewed through the lens of regional security dynamics, particularly its rivalry with India, and faces a distinct set of international concerns and regulatory measures. https://www.newarab.com/news/what-do-we-know-about-israels-nuclear-weapons
Iran Closes Nuclear Sites Fearing Israeli Attack: IAEA Chief
Tuesday, 04/16/2024 Iran International Newsroom, https://www.iranintl.com/en/202404162504
Iran shut down its nuclear facilities last Sunday over “security considerations,” UN nuclear chief Rafael Grossi has said, expressing concern over the “possibility” of an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear sites.
Speaking to reporters in New York on Monday, IAEA Director General confirmed that the facilities had reopened within 24 hours, but with no IAEA supervision, as the agency has decided to keep its inspectors away until the situation is “completely calm.”
Grossi was referring to rising tensions between Israel and Iran, which many fear may lead to an all-out war between the two countries and potentially engulf the whole Middle East.
Israel bombed Iran’s consulate in Damascus on 1 April, killing seven members of the Islamic Revolution’s Guards Corpse (IRGC), including a high-ranking commander and his deputy. Iran retaliated on 13 April, launching more than 300 missiles and drones towards Israel –all but a few of which were intercepted by Israel and its allies.
On Monday, Israeli officials vowed to respond to the attack. When asked about the possibility of Israel hitting Iran’s nuclear sites, Grossi said, “We are always concerned about this possibility.” He urged both sides to show “extreme restraint”.
Grossi also reiterated the IAEA’s concerns about Iran’s nuclear program.
“A bit more than a year ago, I went to Tehran and signed a joint declaration with the Iranian government indicating a number of actions that we will be taking together with Iran,” Grossi said. “We started that process and that process was interrupted. And I have been insisting that we need to go back to that understanding that we had in March 2023.”
In September 2023, Iran withdrew the designation of several inspectors assigned to conduct verification activities in Iran under the Non-Proliferation Treaty Safeguards Agreement. Iran’s nuclear chief Mohammad Eslami later claimed that those expelled had had a history of “extremist political behavior”.
“We are always urging, asking and requiring Iran to cooperate with us in full,” Grossi told Iran International’s Maryam Rahmati. “It’s not that we are not there, but we are not there at the level that we consider we should be.”
The IAEA reported in February that Iran is enriching and stockpiling near-weapons-grade uranium, warning that such elevated purity cannot be explained by civilian applications.
When asked about Iran’s enrichment levels by Iran International, Grossi siad, “the fact that there is an accumulation of uranium enriched at very, very high levels does not automatically mean you’re having a weapon…but it raises questions in the international community.”
Iran has always denied seeking nuclear weapons, but no other state has enriched to that level without producing them.
A report published last month by the Institute for Science and International Security claimed that Iran is moving ahead with building a nuclear site deep underground near Natanz.
“This Iranian nuclear weapons-making facility could be impervious to Israeli and perhaps even American bombs,” Foundation for Defense of Democracies CEO Mark Dubowitz said at the time. “Time is quickly running out, as Iran moves into a zone of nuclear immunity, to deny the regime permanent use of this deadly site.”
Faulty Assurances: The Judicial Torture of Assange Continues
April 17, 2024, Dr Binoy Kampmark, https://theaimn.com/faulty-assurances-the-judicial-torture-of-assange-continues/
Only this month, the near comatose US President, Joe Biden, made a casual, castaway remark that his administration was “considering” the request by Australia that the case against Julian Assange be concluded. The WikiLeaks founder has already spent five gruelling years in London’s Belmarsh prison, where he continues a remarkable, if draining campaign against the US extradition request on 18 charges, 17 incongruously and outrageously based on the US Espionage Act of 1917.
Like readings of coffee grinds, his defenders took the remark as a sign of progress. Jennifer Robinson, a longtime member of Assange’s legal team, told Sky News Australia that Biden’s “response, this is what we have been asking for over five years. Since 2010 we’ve been saying this is a dangerous precedent that’s being set. So, we certainly hope it was a serious remark and the US will act on it.” WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson found the mumbled comment from the president “extraordinary”, hoping “to see in the coming days” whether “clarification of what this means” would be offered by the powerful.
On April 14, the Wall Street Journal reported that Canberra had asked their US counterparts whether a felony plea deal could be reached, enabling the publisher to return to Australia. “Prosecutors and a lawyer for Assange have discussed a range of potential deals, including those that include pleading guilty to a felony under the espionage law under which he was indicted, and those of conspiring to mishandle classified information, which would be a misdemeanor, people familiar with the matter have said.”
Last month, the UK High Court gave what can only be regarded as an absurd prescription to the prosecution should they wish to succeed. Extradition would be unlikely to be refused if Assange was availed of protections offered by the First Amendment (though rejecting claims that he was a legitimate journalist), was guaranteed not to be prejudiced, both during the trial and in sentence on account of his nationality, and not be subject to the death penalty. That such directions were even countenanced shows the somewhat delusionary nature of British justices towards their US counterparts.
On April 16, Assange’s supporters received confirmation that the extradition battle, far from ending, would continue in its tormenting grind. Not wishing to see the prospect of a full hearing of Assange’s already hobbled arguments, the US State Department, almost to the hour, filed the assurances in a diplomatic note to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). “Assange,” the US Embassy in London claimed with aping fidelity to the formula proposed by the High Court, “will not be prejudiced by reason of nationality with respect to which defenses he may seek to raise at trial and at sentencing.”
Were he to be extradited, “Assange will have the ability to raise and seek to rely upon at trial (which includes any sentencing hearing) the rights and protections given under the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States.” An obvious caveat, and one that should be observed with wary consideration by the High Court judges, followed. “A decision as to the applicability of the First Amendment is exclusively within the purview of the US Courts.”
The US embassy also promised that, “A sentence of death will neither be sought nor imposed on Assange. The United States is able to provide such assurance as Assange is not charged with a death-penalty eligible offense, and the United States assures that he will not be tried for a death-eligible offense.” This undertaking does not dispel the threat of Assange being charged with additional offences such as traditional espionage, let alone aiding or abetting treason, which would carry the death penalty.
In 2020, Gordon Kromberg, the chief Department of Justice prosecutor behind the case, told the Central Criminal Court of England and Wales that the US “could argue that foreign nationals are not entitled to protections under the First Amendment, at least as it concerns national defense information.” There was also the likelihood that Assange, in allegedly revealing the names of US intelligence sources thereby putting them at risk of harm, would also preclude the possibility of him relying on such protections.
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That the zealous Kromberg will be fronting matters should Assange reach US shores is more than troubling. Lawyers and civil rights activists have accused him of using the Eastern District Court of Virginia for selective and malicious prosecutions. As Murtaza Hussain of The Intercept observed with bleak accuracy in July 2021, “[r]ather than being pushed into obscurity by these efforts, today he is serving as a key figure in one of the most important civil liberties cases in the world.”
The High Court also acknowledged Kromberg’s views at trial regarding the possibility that the First Amendment did not cover foreign nationals. “It can fairly be assumed that [Kromberg] would not have said that the prosecution ‘could argue that foreign nationals are not entitled to protections under the First Amendment’ unless that was a tenable argument that the prosecution was entitled to deploy with real prospect of success.” These latest assurances do nothing to change that fact.
A post from Assange’s wife, Stella, provided a neat and damning summary of the embassy note. “The United States has issued a non-assurance in relation to the First Amendment, and a standard assurance in relation to the death penalty. It makes no undertaking to withdraw the prosecution’s previous assertion that Julian has no First Amendment rights because he is not a US citizen. Instead, the US has limited itself to blatant weasel words claiming that Julian can ‘seek to raise’ the First Amendment if extradited.”
Iran President Warns of ‘Massive’ Response if Israel Launches ‘Tiniest Invasion’
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi warned on Wednesday that the “tiniest invasion” by Israel would bring a “massive and harsh” response, as the region braces for potential Israeli retaliation after Iran’s attack over the weekend.
Raisi spoke at an annual army parade that was relocated to a barracks north of the capital, Tehran, from its usual venue on a highway in the city’s southern outskirts. Iranian authorities gave no explanation for its relocation, and state TV did not broadcast it live, as it has in previous years.
Iran launched hundreds of missiles and drones at Israel over the weekend in response to an Israeli strike on Iran’s embassy compound in Syria on April 1 that killed 12 people, including two Iranian generals.
Israel successfully intercepted nearly all the missiles and drones.
It has vowed to respond, without saying when or how, while its allies have urged all sides to avoid further escalation.
Raisi said Saturday’s attack was a limited one, and that if Iran had wanted to carry out a bigger attack, “nothing would remain from the Zionist regime.” His remarks were carried by the official IRNA news agency.
Attacks on Ukraine’s nuclear plant put world at risk, IAEA warns
By Euronews with AP, 16/04/2024
https://www.euronews.com/2024/04/16/attacks-on-ukraines-nuclear-plant-put-world-at-risk-iaea-warns
“We’re getting dangerously close to a nuclear accident,” IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said following multiple attacks against the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine.
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said attacks against Europe’s largest nuclear power plant have put the world “dangerously close to a nuclear accident”.
Without attributing blame, IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said his agency has been able to confirm three attacks against the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant since 7 April.
“These reckless attacks must cease immediately,” he told the Security Council on Monday. “Though, fortunately, they have not led to a radiological incident this time, they significantly increase the risk … where nuclear safety is already compromised.”
The remote-controlled nature of the drones that have attacked the plant means that it is not possible to determine who launched them, Grossi told reporters after the meeting.
“In order to say something like that, we must have proof,” he said. “These attacks have been performed with a multitude of drones”.
Zaporizhzhia sits in Russian-controlled territory in southeastern Ukraine and has six nuclear reactors.
Fears of a nuclear catastrophe have been at the forefront since Russian troops occupied the plant shortly after invading in February 2022. Continued fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces – as well as the tense supply situation at the plant – have raised the risk of a disaster.
Ukraine and its allies on Monday blamed Russia for dangers at the site. Russia, for its part, said Ukraine was to blame for the attacks.
“The IAEA’s report does not pinpoint which side is behind the attacks,” Russia’s UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said. “We know full well who it is.”
AI-assisted genocide’: Israel reportedly used database for Gaza kill lists
“Israel is currently trying to sell these tools to foreign entities, to governments that are looking to what Israel’s doing in Gaza, not with disgust, but actually with admiration,” said Antony Loewenstein, an Australian journalist and author of The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World.
Aljazeera, 4 April 24
Two Israeli media outlets report the Israeli military’s use of an AI-assisted system called Lavender to identify Gaza targets.
The Israeli military’s reported use of an untested and undisclosed artificial intelligence-powered database to identify targets for its bombing campaign in Gaza has alarmed human rights and technology experts who said it could amount to “war crimes”.
The Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine and Hebrew-language media outlet Local Call reported recently that the Israeli army was isolating and identifying thousands of Palestinians as potential bombing targets using an AI-assisted targeting system called Lavender.
“That database is responsible for drawing up kill lists of as many as 37,000 targets,” Al Jazeera’s Rory Challands, reporting from occupied East Jerusalem, said on Thursday.
The unnamed Israeli intelligence officials who spoke to the media outlets said Lavender had an error rate of about 10 percent. “But that didn’t stop the Israelis from using it to fast-track the identification of often low-level Hamas operatives in Gaza and bombing them,” Challands said.
It is becoming clear the Israeli army is “deploying untested AI systems … to help make decisions about the life and death of civilians”, Marc Owen Jones, an assistant professor in Middle East Studies and digital humanities at Hamid Bin Khalifa University, told Al Jazeera.
“Let’s be clear: This is an AI-assisted genocide, and going forward, there needs to be a call for a moratorium on the use of AI in the war,” he added.
The Israeli publications reported that this method led to many of the thousands of civilian deaths in Gaza.
On Thursday, Gaza’s Ministry of Health said at least 33,037 Palestinians have been killed and 75,668 wounded in Israeli attacks since October 7.
AI use ‘violates’ humanitarian law
“The humans that were interacting with the AI database were often just a rubber stamp. They would scrutinise this kill list for perhaps 20 seconds before deciding whether or not to give the go-ahead for an air strike,” Challands reported……………….
……………the fact that there were “five to 10 acceptable civilian deaths” for every single Palestinian fighter who was an intended target shows why there are so many civilian deaths in Gaza, according to Challands.
Professor Toby Walsh, an AI expert at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, said legal scholars will likely argue that the use of AI targeting violates international humanitarian law.
“From a technical perspective, this latest news shows how hard it is to keep a human in the loop, providing meaningful oversight to AI systems that scale warfare terribly and tragically,” he told Al Jazeera.
‘War crimes’
The media outlets cited sources who said the Israeli army made decisions during the first weeks of the current conflict that “for every junior Hamas operative that Lavender marked, it was permissible to kill up to 15 or 20 civilians”.
“Israel is currently trying to sell these tools to foreign entities, to governments that are looking to what Israel’s doing in Gaza, not with disgust, but actually with admiration,” said Antony Loewenstein, an Australian journalist and author of The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World.
“We’ll find out in the coming months and years who they may be … my sense is it’s gonna be countries that are currently saying they’re opposed to what Israel is doing.” https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/4/4/ai-assisted-genocide-israel-reportedly-used-database-for-gaza-kill-lists?fbclid=IwAR2e7Fms0mKy-8_MLuH_jj6aY6fWgr9FO4dFU2Hf3a0m4GtBFAbJofKhGV0
Israel attacking Iran ‘could prompt it to develop nuclear bomb in months’
‘Any Israeli strike inside Iran will take this risk,’ said one regional security analyst
. ‘Any Israeli strike inside Iran will take this risk,’ said one
regional security analyst. ‘If Iran’s general deterrence goes down, we
are at risk of the weaponisation of Iran’s nuclear programme’.
iNews 17th April 2024
https://inews.co.uk/news/world/israel-attack-iran-nuclear-bomb-months-3009662
‘Pakistan advanced nuclear weapons programme despite economic challenges’
Pakistan is reported to have 170 nuclear warheads as of January 2023
By: Pramod Thomas, 17 Apr 24, https://www.easterneye.biz/pakistan-nuclear-programme-india-us/
DESPITE economic challenges, Pakistan continued upgrading its nuclear capabilities, driven by its ongoing tensions with India, top US intelligence official told Congress.
The remarks by Lt Gen Jeffrey Kruse, director of the Defence Intelligence Agency came during a Congressional hearing on China on Monday (15).
Kruse told lawmakers that Pakistan has sought international support, including from the UN security council, to resolve its dispute with India about Kashmir.
Separately, Islamabad and New Delhi have maintained an uneasy ceasefire along the shared Line of Control since February 2021, he said.
“Pakistan has sustained its nuclear modernisation efforts despite its economic turmoil. Terrorist violence against Pakistani security forces and civilians also rose last year,” he said.
According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Pakistan is reported to have 170 nuclear warheads as of January 2023.
Cash-strapped Pakistan is banking on close allies like China and Saudi Arabia for loans to tide over its economic woes. Moreover, Pakistan’s finance minister Muhammad Aurangzeb is now in Washington to discuss a new loan package with the International Monetary Fund.
Pakistan’s contentious relationship with India continues to drive its defence policy, Kruse told US lawmakers.
However, cross-border violence between the countries has decreased since their February 2021 recommitment to a ceasefire, he said.
“Islamabad is modernising its nuclear arsenal and improving the security of its nuclear materials and nuclear C2 (command and control). In October, Pakistan successfully tested its Ababeel medium-range ballistic missile,” he said.
In 2023, militants killed around 400 security forces, a nine-year high, and Pakistani security forces have conducted almost daily counterterrorism operations during the past year.
Islamabad and New Delhi have a long history of strained relations, primarily due to the Kashmir issue as well as the cross-border terrorism emanating from Pakistan.
In 2019, Pakistan downgraded its diplomatic ties with New Delhi after the Indian government abrogated Article 370 of the constitution, revoking the special status of Jammu and Kashmir and bifurcating the state into two union territories.
India has been maintaining that it desires normal neighbourly relations with Pakistan while insisting that the onus is on Islamabad to create an environment that is free of terror and hostility for such an engagement.
New Delhi has also asserted that the constitutional measures taken by the Indian government to ensure socio-economic development and good governance in the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir are matters internal to India.
New Hinkley nuclear power plant expected to kill 46 tonnes of fish a year.
EDF building £50m nature reserve near Hinkley Point to compensate for loss of life
Jonathan Leake, 16 April 2024
A nature reserve is to be flooded by the developer of the Hinkley Point C nuclear plant at a cost of £50m to compensate for the death of fish in its cooling pipes…
An 840 acre swathe of land along the Parrett
estuary in Somerset will be transformed into salt marsh as a habitat for
marine life to replace fish sucked in by the new power station’s cooling
ducts. The area affected – part of the Somerset levels, where Saxon king
Alfred the Great is said to have hidden from the Vikings – includes
farmers’ fields used for grazing, as well as a nature reserve.
EDF, the French company building Hinkley Point, will create a new nature reserve
nearby to replace the land being lost. The overall changes are expected to
cost it £50m. The massive water intakes used to suck water from the
Bristol Channel to cool Hinkley Point C’s reactors are expected to kill
up to 46 tonnes of fish a year when the plant opens in 2031.
EDF also explored installing an acoustic fish deterrent, effectively a loud noise to
ward away animals, but concluded this would cause more harm than it
prevented. Chris Fayers, the company’s head of environment at Hinkley,
said: “An acoustic fish deterrent would use 280 speakers to make noise
louder than a jumbo jet 24-hours a day for 60 years with unknown impacts on
other species like porpoises, seals, whales. “It offers a very
small potential benefit to protected fish species and would also risk the
safety of divers in the fast-flowing tides of the Bristol Channel. New
natural habitat is a better solution.”
EDF said it was working with
Natural England, the Environment Agency, and other conservation
bodies to develop the new natural habitats. It plans to take out
compulsory purchase orders to acquire the land and then destroy its
protective dykes so that saltwater can flood in, according to planning
documents.
Dozens of farmers around Pawlett Hams, north of Bridgwater in
Somerset, have been told their grazing land is likely to become salt marsh.
One said: “It’s an existential threat to farmers’ livelihoods.” EDF
has told local people: “We are proposing to create 340 hectares of salt
marsh habitat. Will Barnard, chair of the Pawlett Parish Council, who also
works as an environmental land manager on some of the affected land, said
no-one was happy with the scheme.
Telegraph 16th April 2024
Wabigoon Lake planning nuclear willingness vote
Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation will hold their vote on whether the Treaty 3 community is willing to host a repository for spent nuclear fuel in the fall.
Mike Stimpson, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, April 17, 2024 https://www.nwonewswatch.com/local-news/wabigoon-lake-planning-nuclear-willingness-vote-8609650
WABIGOON LAKE – Ignace residents’ vote on a proposed underground storage site for nuclear waste is set for April 26-30, but its partner community to the northwest won’t be voting until autumn.
Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation will hold their vote on whether the Treaty 3 community is willing to host a repository for spent nuclear fuel in the fall, Chief Clayton Wetelainen said this week.
A referendum is “targeted for the fall” but neither the precise date nor the question have been determined, he said.
The Nuclear Waste Management Organization had requested a decision from potential host communities by the end of July, but Wetelainen said Wabigoon Lake members need more time to consider the issues.
NWMO regional spokesperson Vince Ponka said Tuesday the organization still intends to choose a site for the repository by the end of 2024.
Wetelainen said the First Nation is in talks with the nuclear organization on a hosting agreement similar to the one the Township of Ignace ratified and signed in March.
“We are just in the process of discussing different items in that agreement, and that’s what we have to do,” Wetelainen said.
A hosting agreement needs to be settled before Wabigoon Lake members vote on their support for the project, he said.
The chief said he and councillors have heard “concerns on both sides” within his nation’s membership.
“There is a strong pro side and there’s a strong negative or strong opposition. And there also is a strong ‘not decided, need more information.’”
Wetelainen would not say whether he is for or against Wabigoon Lake allowing nuclear waste to be kept within its traditional territory.
“My strong feeling is that this generation should be looking at a solution (for nuclear waste),” he said. “I don’t believe we should hold it off to future generations.”
About 800 members are eligible to vote in the referendum, whenever it happens. Most live off-reserve, as just 200 or so live on the reserve southeast of Dryden.
The dispersed membership is why Wabigoon Lake has held information meetings in Winnipeg to which all members aged 17 and up were invited.
One gathering held in the Manitoba capital last fall drew about 500 members, according to Danine Chief, Wabigoon Lake’s Adaptive Phased Management project manager.
Adaptive phased management is the NWMO’s term for a plan that includes the long-term storage of spent fuel in a deep geological repository.
The industry-funded NWMO has a spot between Ignace and Wabigoon Lake on its list of two finalists for where to build the underground facility.
The other finalist site is near Lake Huron in southern Ontario, with the Municipality of South Bruce and Saugeen Ojibway Nation as potential host communities.
A key criterion in the siting decision is host communities’ willingness to participate.
Ignace committed in its hosting agreement to give the NWMO a yes or no on community willingness by July 31.
Ponka said the timing of Wabigoon Lake’s vote won’t impact the NWMO’s plan to choose a site before year-end.
South Bruce also likely won’t be holding its referendum until autumn, he said.
That municipality’s council recently accepted a referendum question asking voters if they are “in favour of the Municipality of South Bruce declaring South Bruce to be a willing host” for a deep geological repository. No date has been set for the referendum.
New Fujitsu security research center in Israel to further develop digital identity tools
Biometric, Nov 30, 2022, Ayang Macdonald
Japanese tech giant Fujitsu has announced plans to set up a research center for data and security in Israel as part of efforts to strengthen its Research and Development (R&D) strategy as well as increase its presence in the country.
The center, which will go operational from April 2023 according to the announcement, highlights Fujitsu’s objectives of meeting the data security and trust requirements of companies and businesses at a time when many people are performing more transactions online.
Fujitsu says the center, to be based in Tel Aviv, will bring together about 10 research experts from Israel, Japan and Europe and their work will be focused on improving security technology for communications networks as part of its global strategy for data and security – a key area in its global R&D strategy.
Research at the center will focus on two main areas, namely developing technology that can ensure and enhance trust for network security, and technologies which can be used for a wide range of real-life situations like autonomous driving, self-checkout, as well as public safety, including anti-attack technologies for object detection AI…………
The company is also planning to develop its IDYX (or “IDentitY eXchange”) technology, which is intended to enable secure distribution of digital identity and attribute information between companies and individuals………………………………. https://www.biometricupdate.com/202211/new-fujitsu-security-research-center-in-israel-to-further-develop-digital-identity-tools?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAAR0JsxUA-U2OxTaWJA0wn9bVwz6ZrES6Ud3yJbBiyJ7-0pgqbW6TaOodx50_aem_AUNuP6qXKQDr6xEGOrL9tLaha_3Jq5bni6IsXT-5B63IYytKZyPOG_gwYYdcMStOmz7Fcy3mf3NxTz4PKcttQPiC
Safety probe at Cheshire-based nuclear cargo firm
By Sophie Zeldin-O’Neill, Senior Journalist, BBC News, 17 Apr 24
A company that transports uranium overseas has been told it must improve the safety of its operations.
Urenco UK Ltd (UUK), based in Capenhurst, Cheshire, had not made proper safety checks or made sure its shipments were correctly approved, industry watchdog the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) said.
The problems were identified during inspections by the ONR.
UUK has until 31 May to comply with the improvement notice……………….
Nick Blackburn, principal inspector from ONR’s Transport Competent Authority, said all
companies involved in transporting radioactive materials needed to make
sure they were working within the law.
BBC 16th April 2024
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