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TODAY. Saint Rafael Grossi on the road to Damascus.

On the road to Damascus is where you get an epiphany. Well, Saint Paul did, anyway. He was on his way to Damascus to do punishing stuff to Christians, when he had a divine revelation and was transformed into an apostle, all aglow with Christian love.

Well, I don’t know that Rafael Grossi had any such revelation, in going to Damascus. But it seems clear that he decided that the proliferation of nuclear weapons is really nothing to worry about, certainly not when compared with the mission of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is to promote the nuclear industry.

We always knew that countries that get nuclear weapons first get a “civil” nuclear industry. Except for the USA, which started the whole thing off the other way around, with the atrocity of the bombs for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They then launched enthusiastically into the hypocrisy of the “peaceful nuke.

Britain’s leader Rishi Sunak, and France’s Emmanuel Macron have both publicly made it clear that “commercial” nuclear power is essential for their nuclear weapons industry. (So it doesn’t matter if commercial nuclear is a financial catastrophe.) The USA and Russia don’t seem to care, as long as they can sell all kinds of nuclear technology to anybody, really.

The new “advanced” small nuclear reactors make the problem worse, as they use enriched uranium, and reprocessing technologies that provide a great cover for making weapons grade fuel .

Rafael Grossi is well known for his earnest and pious statements about nuclear safety. Indeed, didn’t we all think that this is his job, to ensure the safety and non-weapons-proliferation of the world’s reactors?

But when did Rafael’s epiphany happen? When did he realise that safety and non-weapons proliferation did not matter now?

Rafael doesn’t seem to understand that all nuclear facilities become a target for terrorism, and a target in war-time. He has said a few cautionary words about the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station in Ukraine, but he’s quite OK with Ukraine setting up new nuclear power stations.

Rafael has expressed worthy worries about Saudi Arabia and nuclear weapons, but nevertheless “expressed his delight and admiration for Saudi Arabia’s nuclear capabilities” – and promoted them .

Syria is a place, and with a leader, prone to military disruptions, and , like Saudi Arabia, to human rights abuses, but that doesn’t seem to worry Grossi, over there to arrange for a Syrian nuclear industry.

An epiphany? Or did Rafael know all the time that his job is to be a nuclear salesman ?

Blatant hypocrisy

April 25, 2024 Posted by | Christina's notes | Leave a comment

New civil nuclear programmes crossing over into military nuclear programmes

New Nuclear Dual-Use Risk: Beating Swords into Ploughshares? By Dr. Paul Dorfman, https://nct-cbnw.com/new-nuclear-dual-use-risk-beating-swords-into-ploughshares/ 24 Apr 24.

Dr. Paul Dorfman discusses whether new civil nuclear programs could cross over into military nuclear programs, and what this means for global non-proliferation efforts.

According to key global finance advisory and asset management firm Lazard, new nuclear power systems perform poorly compared to renewables’ storage, energy efficiency, cost, roll-out speed, and management. So why invest in new nuclear? 

Prof. Andy Stirling and Dr. Phil Johnstone, from the University of Sussex Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU), argue that the answer lies in the clear and present link between civil and military nuclear infrastructure. This is because civil nuclear energy maintains the skills and supply chains also needed for military nuclear programs, without which the costs of nuclear military capabilities could become politically unsupportable.

As they point out, the U.K. Government’s ‘Civil Nuclear: Roadmap to 2050’ report includes sets of statements on civil and military nuclear ambitions in order to “identify opportunities to align the two across government”, strengthening existing interconnections between civil and military industries’ research and development, and thereby minimizing costs for both the weapons and power sectors. 

More recently, in March 2024, U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak explicitly linked military nuclear weapons production capability with civil nuclear power generation development. French President Emmanuel Macron has gone further, saying that “without civil nuclear power, no military nuclear power, without military nuclear, no civil nuclear”. And the fact is that 90% of all new nuclear construction projects worldwide involve corporations controlled by states with nuclear weapons

New Nuclear, New Proliferation Risk

The increasingly tense geopolitical environment makes nuclear a controversial issue, with nation states concerned that neighbors might use notionally civilian nuclear programs for military ends. In this sense, there are unique challenges and perceived opportunities when it comes to new civil nuclear ambitions.

Choice of offensive or defensive doctrine affects the way other states evaluate their respective security and, in turn, influences the probability of cross-over between civil and military nuclear capacity. Indeed, current movements in military doctrines share the common denominator of adopting more offensive postures.

Meanwhile, according to the U.K. Royal Society, all forms of nuclear production pose weapons development risks, as “there is no proliferation proof nuclear fuel cycle – the dual use risk of nuclear materials and technology and in civil and military applications cannot be eliminated.”

Unhelpfully, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors (SMRs), which are the best new hope for fissile fuel, could make the weapons proliferation problem even worse as any potential SMR roll-out to either developed or developing countries is likely to increase nuclear proliferation and security risks. This is especially so if any of those states prove politically unstable or have relatively limited resources to support a robust nuclear security and regulatory infrastructure.

Nuclear Cross-over in an Increasingly Unstable World

Unless uranium enrichment and reprocessing technologies are effectively regulated against the diversion of civil materials for military purposes, the reality is that new nuclear plants can provide the cover to develop and make nuclear weapons. Whether that capability is turned into actual weapons depends largely on political inclination. 

Saudi officials have made it clear on more than one occasion that there’s another reason for their interest in civil nuclear energy technology which was not captured by the royal decree on the Saudi nuclear program – the relationship of the civil program to nuclear weapons. More recently, Saudi Arabia is pushing for the right to produce nuclear fuel, a move that poses further significant proliferation risk. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has voiced concerns about Saudi intentions and safeguards.

Unfortunately, the IAEA’s support for Saudi’s civil nuclear clashes with their position on the Kingdom’s military ambition. This is not the first time that the UN nuclear regulator has been caught in this uncomfortably dualist situation.

More worryingly, the Director General of the IAEA, Rafael Grossi, has just met with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus to “agree on a new engagement between Syria and IAEA with a view to providing confidence in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy for the benefit of its people”. Given the deeply problematic military and human rights history of al-Assad’s regime, the IAEA’s actions seem profoundly concerning, and bring the IAEA’s role in the global nuclear arena into sharp focus. 

Thinking this through, an important question springs to mind. Due to the apparent potential for civil-military nuclear cross-over, could the IAEA’s mission – to work for “the safe, secure and peaceful application of nuclear science and technology” – inevitably result in weapons proliferation by default?

Irrational Paradoxes

Back in Eastern Europe, although Ukraine runs a substantive civil nuclear power program, it’s no longer a nuclear weapons state. Ukraine, once briefly the third-largest nuclear power in the world, made the decision to give up nuclear weapons on the basis that the U.S., U.K., and Russia would guarantee Ukraine’s security via the Budapest Memorandum.

In this sense, both Putin’s invasion of an independent state and subsequent nuclear weapons threats highlight the very real practical distinction between unilateral and multilateral nuclear weapons disarmament in an increasingly unstable world.

And then there’s Zaporizhzhia, where a civil nuclear power plant has become a target of war at the very same time that Russia’s role as a major player in the global civil nuclear power sector continues to expand via Moscow-backed international nuclear new-build projects and technology, uranium supply and enrichment, and spent nuclear fuel management.

Direction of Travel

While it appears reasonably clear that civil and military nuclear can enmesh, one must ask whether one inevitably leads to the other. While the usual concern is that civil nuclear infrastructure leads to military development, according to former Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Australia is bucking the trend: “Let me be clear: Australia is not seeking to establish […] a civil nuclear capability […] a civil nuclear energy industry is not a requirement for us to go through the submarine program.”

In other words, despite the new nuclear submarine AUKUS deal, the current Australian government has no plans to develop new civil nuclear infrastructure.

So, does that start to negate the civil-military nexus hypothesis? Well, it’s not that nuclear military interests are the sole drivers of support for civil nuclear power, but for some states dual-use technology may comprise a significant complementary factor. 

In the end, it’s the direction of travel that counts. While all key energy institutes and research organizations agree that renewables will do the heavy-lifting for the net-zero energy transition, it’s worth considering the implications of U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm’s speech to Australia’s Energy Forum: “No country has ever been held hostage for access to the sun. No country has ever been held hostage for access to the wind. They have not ever been weaponized, nor will they be.”

Dr. Paul Dorfman is the Chair of the Nuclear Consulting Group, a Visiting Fellow at the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU) of the University of Sussex, U.K., a Member of the Irish Government’s Radiation Protection Advisory Committee, and a Former Advisor to the U.K. Ministry of Defence Nuclear Submarine Dismantling Project.

April 25, 2024 Posted by | weapons and war | Leave a comment

U.S. Senate Passes $95 Billion Foreign Military Aid Bill

The bill passed in a vote of 79-18

by Dave DeCamp April 23, 2024, AntiWar.com

On Tuesday night, the Senate passed a $95 billion spending bill that includes military aid for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan in a vote of 79-18. The bill has already passed through the House and now heads to President Biden’s desk for his signature.

Earlier in the day, the Senate rejected an effort by some senators to add amendments to the legislation in a vote of 48-50. The legislation, which also includes a provision that could ban TikTok, was passed through the House as four separate bills but was combined into one in the Senate.

The legislation includes $61 billion for the proxy war in Ukraine, much of which will go to US weapons makers to replenish US stockpiles. It includes over $9 billion in economic aid in the form of repayable loans, but Ukraine is not actually expected to pay it back. Another provision will authorize the US to sell off frozen Russian assets, which could be used to pay the loans. CNN previously reported that the Biden administration will also be able to cancel the debt.

The bill also includes $26 billion to support Israel. About $9 billion will go toward humanitarian aid in Gaza and other places, while the remaining $17 billion will go toward military aid to support the slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza and replenish Israeli air defenses. The aid is on top of the $3.8 billion in military assistance that Israel receives from the US each year.

Another $8 billion will go toward military aid for Taiwan and other spending in the Indo-Pacific region to prepare for a future war with China. It includes $1.9 billion to replenish weapons sent to Taiwan and regional countries and $2 billion in Foreign Military Financing, a State Department program that gives foreign governments money to purchase US weapons. Over $3.3 billion will go toward submarine infrastructure in the region.

The massive spending on foreign military aid was put forward by House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), who previously killed a deal that would have included similar foreign aid spending and billions for border security and changes to migrant policies………….. more https://news.antiwar.com/2024/04/23/senate-passes-95-billion-foreign-military-aid-bill/

April 25, 2024 Posted by | politics, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Russia, US clash at UN over nuclear weapons in space

By Michelle Nichols, April 25, 2024

UNITED NATIONS, April 24 (Reuters) – Russia on Wednesday vetoed a U.S.-drafted United Nations Security Council resolution that called on countries to prevent an arms race in outer space, a move that prompted the United States to question if Moscow was hiding something.

The vote came after Washington accused Moscow of developing a anti-satellite nuclear weapon to put in space, an allegation that Russia has denied. Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that Moscow was against putting nuclear weapons in space.

“Today’s veto begs the question: Why? Why if you are following the rules would you not support a resolution that reaffirms them? What could you possibly be hiding?” U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield told the council after the vote. “It’s baffling and it’s a shame.”

Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia accused Washington of trying to tarnish Moscow and said Russia would shortly begin negotiations with council members on its own draft resolution aimed at keeping space peaceful.

“We want a ban on the placement of weapons of any kind in outer space, not just (weapons of mass destruction). But you don’t want that … Let me ask you that very same question: Why?” Nebenzia asked Thomas-Greenfield in the council.

The draft resolution was put to a vote by the U.S. and Japan after nearly six weeks of negotiations. It received 13 votes in favor, while China abstained and Russia cast a veto.

The U.N. text would have affirmed an obligation to comply with the Outer Space Treaty and called on states “to contribute actively to the objective of the peaceful use of outer space and of the prevention of an arms race in outer space.”

The 1967 Outer Space Treaty bars signatories – including Russia and the United States – from placing “in orbit around the Earth any objects carrying nuclear weapons or any other kinds of weapons of mass destruction.

Before the council voted on the U.S. draft text, Russia and China had proposed it be amended to include a call on all states “to prevent for all time the placement of weapons in outer space and the threat or use of force in outer space, from space against Earth and from Earth against objects in outer space.”

The council voted on the proposed amendment, but it failed to pass. It received seven votes in favor, seven against and one abstention…………………………………….  https://www.miragenews.com/indian-nuclear-sites-impact-south-tibetan-1222069/

April 25, 2024 Posted by | space travel | Leave a comment

Price tag for Poland’s first nuclear plant may reach $37bn

Global Construction Review, David Rogers, 22.04.24

Poland first nuclear power plant could cost as much as $37bn, according to Jan Chadam, the acting head of Polskie Elektrownie Jadrowe (PEJ), the agency set up by the government to oversee its nuclear plans.

According to finance news agency PAP, Chadam told the 39th Europower conference in Warsaw: “We don’t have the final value of this project, but one can imagine that it will probably be around PLN150bn [$37bn].”

The plant is due to be built by US engineers Westinghouse and Bechtel. It will be sited in Pomerania on the Baltic Coast, with work beginning in 2026 and completing in 2033. Two additional units are expected to follow within the next three years.

However, Chadam said schedule was unlikely to be met, which he said added to the uncertainty over the cost.

In 2020, when the plan to build a fleet of nuclear power stations was first outlined, the price for the multiple units was tentatively put at $40bn.

The details of the finance are still being worked out. PEJ is seeking assistance from financial advisers on ways to attract investors.

Chadam added that Poland was also counting on the participation of the US’ Export-Import Bank, which supports US export projects………………….  https://www.globalconstructionreview.com/price-tag-for-polands-first-nuclear-plant-may-reach-37bn/

April 25, 2024 Posted by | business and costs, EUROPE | Leave a comment

The McCarthyist Attack on Gaza Protests Threatens Free Thought for All

ARI PAUL, 19 April 24, https://fair.org/home/the-mccarthyist-attack-on-gaza-protests-threatens-free-thought-for-all/

With the encouragement of the state, universities from coast to coast are taking draconian steps to silence debate about US-backed violence in the Middle East.

The Columbia University community looked on in shock as cops in riot gear arrested at least 100 pro-Palestine protesters who had set up an encampment in the center of campus (New York Post, 4/18/24). The university’s president, Nemat Shafik, had just the day before testified before a Republican-dominated congressional committee ostensibly concerned with campus “antisemitism”—a label that has come to be misapplied to any criticism of Israel, though the critics so smeared are often themselves Jewish.

A sense of delight has filled the city’s opinion pages. The New York Post editorial board (4/18/24)  hailed both the clampdown on protests and Congress’s push to ensure that such drastic action against free speech was taken: “We’re glad to see Shafik stand up…. Congress deserves some credit for putting educrats’ feet to the fire on this issue.” The paper added, “Academia has been handling anti-Israel demonstrations with kid gloves.” In other words, universities have been allowing too many people to think and speak critically about an important issue of the day.

In “At Columbia, the Grown-Ups in the Room Take a Stand,” New York Times columnist Pamela Paul (4/18/24) hailed the eviction, saying of the encampment that for the “passer-by, the fury and self-righteous sentiment on display was chilling,” and that for supporters of Israel, “it must be unimaginably painful.” In other words, conservative pundits have decided that campus safe spaces where speech is banned to protect the feelings of listeners are good, depending on the issue. Would Paul (no relation!) favor bans on pro-Taiwan or pro-Armenia demonstrations because they could offend Chinese and Turkish students?

And for Michael Oren, a prominent Israeli politico, Columbia students hadn’t suffered enough. He said of Columbia in a Wall Street Journal op-ed (4/19/24):

Missing was an admission of the university’s failure to enforce the measures it had enacted to protect its Jewish community. [Shafik] didn’t address how, under the banner of free speech, Columbia became inhospitable to Jews. She didn’t acknowledge how incendiary demonstrations such as the encampment were the product of the university’s inaction.

Shafik had assured her congressional interrogators that Columbia had already suspended 15 students for speaking out for Palestinian human rights, suspended two student groups—Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine (Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 11/10/23)—and had even terminated an instructor (New York Times, 4/17/24).

The hearing was bizarre, to say the least; a Georgia Republican asked the president if she wanted her campus to be “cursed by God” (New York Times, 4/18/24). (“Definitely not,” was her response.)

The former World Bank economist had clearly been shaken after seeing how congressional McCarthyism ousted two other female Ivy League presidents (FAIR.org, 12/12/23; Al Jazeera, 1/2/24).

‘Protected from having to hear’

“What happened at those hearings yesterday should be of grave concern to everybody, regardless of their feelings on Palestine, regardless of their politics,” Barnard College women’s studies professor Rebecca Jordan-Young told Democracy Now! (4/18/24). “What happened yesterday was a demonstration of the growing and intensifying attack on liberal education writ large.”

Her colleague, historian Nara Milanich, said in the same interview

This is not about antisemitism so much as attacking areas of inquiry and teaching, whether it’s about voting rights or vaccine safety or climate change — right?—arenas of inquiry that are uncomfortable or inconvenient or controversial for certain groups. And so, this is essentially what we’re seeing, antisemitism being weaponized in a broad attack on the university.

Jewish faculty at Columbia spoke out against the callous misuse of antisemitism to silence students, but those in power aren’t listening (Columbia Spectator, 4/10/24).

Shafik justified authorizing the mass arrests, which many said hadn’t been seen on campus since the anti-Vietnam War protests of 1968. “The individuals who established the encampment violated a long list of rules and policies,” she said (BBC, 4/18/24).  “Through direct conversations and in writing, the university provided multiple notices of these violations.”

One policy suggested by the university’s “antisemitism task force,” according to a university trustee who also testified (New York Times, 4/18/24): “If you are going to chant, it should only be in a certain place, so that people who don’t want to hear it are protected from having to hear it.”

Cross-country rollback

Meanwhile, the University of Southern California canceled the planned graduation speech by valedictorian Asna Tabassum—a Muslim woman who had spoken out for Palestine (Reuters, 4/18/24). The university cited unnamed “security risks”;  The Hill (4/16/24) noted that “she had links to pro-Palestinian sites on her social media.”  Andrew T. Guzman, the provost and senior vice president for academic affairs, said in a statement that cancelation was “consistent with the fundamental legal obligation—including the expectations of federal regulators—that universities act to protect students and keep our campus community safe” (USC Annenberg Media, 4/15/24).

This is happening as academic freedom is being rolled back across the country. Republicans in Indiana recently passed a law to allow a politically appointed board to deny or even revoke university professors’ tenure if the board feels their classes lack “intellectual diversity”—at the same time that it threatens them if they seem “likely” to “subject students to political or ideological views and opinions” deemed unrelated to their courses (Inside Higher Ed, 2/21/24).

Benjamin Balthaser, associate professor of English at Indiana University South Bend, told FAIR in regard to the congressional hearing:

There is no other definition of bigotry or racism that equates criticism of a state, even withering, hostile criticism, with an entire ethnic or religious group, especially a state engaging in ongoing, documented war crimes and crimes against humanity. Added to this absurdity is the fact that many of the accused are not only Jewish, but have strong ties to their Jewish communities. To make such an equation assumes a collective or group homogeneity which is itself a form of essentialism, even racism itself: People are not reducible to the crimes of their state, let alone a state thousands of miles away to which most Jews are not citizens.

Of course, witch hunts against leftists in US society are often motivated by antisemitism. Balthaser again:

The far right has long deployed antisemitism as a weapon of censorship and repression, associating Jewishness with Communism and subversion during the First and Second Red Scares.  Not only did earlier forms of McCarthyism overwhelmingly target Jews (Jews were two-thirds of the “defendants” called before HUAC in 1952, despite being less than 2% of the US population), it did so while cynically pretending to protect Jews from Communism.  Something very similar is occurring now: Mobilizing a racist trope of Jewish adherence to Israel, far-right politicians are using accusations of antisemitism to both silence criticism of Israel and, in doing so, promote their antisemitic ideas of Jewishness in the world.

Silencing for ‘free speech’

These universities are not simply clamping down on free speech because the administrators dislike this particular speech, or out of fear that pro-Palestine demonstrations or vocal faculty members could scare donors from writing big checks. This is a result of state actors—congressional Republicans, in particular—who are using their committee power and sycophants in the media to demand more firings, more suspensions, more censorship.

I have written for years (FAIR.org, 10/23/20, 11/17/21, 3/25/22), as have many others, that Republican complaints about “cancel culture” on campus suppressing free speech are exaggerated. One of the biggest hypocrisies is that so-called free-speech conservatives claim that campus activists are silencing conservatives, but have little to say about blatant censorship and political firings when it comes to Palestine.

This isn’t a mere moral inconsistency. This is the anti-woke agenda at work: When criticism of the right is deemed to be the major threat to free speech, it’s a short step to enlisting the state to “protect” free speech by silencing the critics—in this case, dissenters against US support for Israeli militarism.

But this isn’t just about Palestine; crackdowns against pro-Palestine protests are part of a broader war against discourse and thought. The right has already paved the way for assaults on educational freedom with bans aimed at Critical Race Theory adopted in 29 states.

If the state can now stifle and punish speech against the murder of civilians in Gaza, what’s next? With another congressional committee investigating so-called infiltration by China’s Communist Party, will Chinese political scholars be targeted next (Reuters, 2/28/24)? With state laws against environmental protests proliferating (Sierra, 9/17/23), will there be a new McCarthyism against climate scientists? (Author Will Potter raised the alarm about a “green scare” more than a decade ago—People’s World, 9/26/11; CounterSpin, 2/1/13.)

Universities and the press are supposed to be places where we can freely discuss the issues of the day, even if that means having to hear opinions that might be hard for some to digest. Without those arenas for free thought, our First Amendment rights mean very little. If anyone who claims to be a free speech absolutist isn’t citing a government-led war against free speech and assembly on campuses as their No. 1 concern in the United States right now, they’re a fraud.

April 25, 2024 Posted by | civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

Indian Nuclear Sites Impact South Tibetan Plateau Radioactivity

Chinese Academy of Sciences, 24 Apr 24 https://www.miragenews.com/indian-nuclear-sites-impact-south-tibetan-1222069/

A recent study published in Environmental Science & Technology Letter has shed light on the long-range transboundary transport of radioactive iodine-129 (129I) from the Indian nuclear fuel reprocessing plants (NFRPs) to the Southern Tibetan Plateau (STP).

This study, conducted by researchers from the Institute of Earth Environment of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), provides a new understanding of the transport of airborne radioactive pollutants from low to high altitudes, and may have implications for environmental protection on the Tibetan Plateau.

The Tibetan Plateau, known as the “Third Pole of the Earth” and the “Roof of the World,” is a remote, isolated, and presumably pristine region. Previous studies of radioactive contamination have focused primarily on the northern TP, leaving little knowledge of the STP. Primarily originating from human nuclear activities, iodine-129, with its properties of high volatility and radiation risk of short-lived radioiodine, serves as a key radionuclide for nuclear environmental safety monitoring.

In this study, the researchers have meticulously investigated the spatial variation of 129I in the bioindicators, moss and lichen, from the STP.

They found that 129I in the STP was significantly higher than the pre-nuclear levels and those in Chinese inland cities, but two-four orders of magnitude lower than those in the vicinity of the Indian and European NFRPs.

Analysis of the 129I discharge history in conjunction with the wind field indicates that the Indian NFRPs are the primary sources of 129I in the STP. The prevailing ISM plays a crucial role in the transport of 129I from the lowland to the high-altitude STP. The transport process is further enhanced by the summertime overlying heat pump, but is weakened by topographic blocking, forest adsorption, and cold trapping.

The spatial distribution of 129I and 127I in lichens distributed on Mt. Galongla shows that the Yarlung Zangbo Grand Canyon serves as a key transport channel.

“It is much beyond our expectation that Indian NFRPs have such a significant impact on the Tibetan Plateau. Since there are many nuclear facilities in operation and under construction in India, the radiation risk is just there. So we still need more data to find out the extent and scope of such impacts,” said Dr. ZHANG Luyuan, corresponding author of this study.

This work was supported by the second comprehensive scientific expedition to the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, CAS and the National Natural Science Foundation of China.

April 25, 2024 Posted by | environment, India | Leave a comment

Cruelty of Language — The New York Times’ Leaked Gaza Memo

The Intercept reporting on this issue matters greatly. Aside from the leaked memos, the dishonesty of language used by the New York Times – compassionate towards Israel and indifferent to Palestinian suffering – leaves no doubts that the NYT, like other US mainstream media, continues to stand firmly on Tel Aviv’s side.

By Ramzy Baroud, April 18, 2024,  https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/cruelty-of-language-leaked-ny-times-memo-reveals-moral-depravity-of-us-media/—

The New York Times coverage of the Israeli carnage in Gaza, like that of other mainstream US media, is a disgrace to journalism. 

This assertion should not surprise anyone. US media is driven neither by facts nor morality, but by agendas, calculating and power-hungry. The humanity of 120 thousand dead and wounded Palestinians because of the Israeli genocide in Gaza is simply not part of that agenda. 

In a report – based on a leaked memo from the New York Times – the Intercept found out that the so-called US newspaper of record has been feeding its journalists with frequently updated ‘guidelines’ on what words to use, or not use, when describing the horrific Israeli mass slaughter in the Gaza Strip, starting on October 7. 

In fact, most of the words used in the paragraph above would not be fit to print in the NYT, according to its ‘guidelines’.  

Shockingly, internationally recognized terms and phrases such as ‘genocide’, ‘occupied territory’, ‘ethnic cleansing’ and even ‘refugee camps’, were on the newspaper’s rejection list. 

It gets even more cruel. “Words like ‘slaughter’, ‘massacre’ and ‘carnage’ often convey more emotion than information. Think hard before using them in our own voice,” according to the memo, leaked and verified by the Intercept and other independent media. 

Though such language control is, according to the NYT, aimed at fairness for ‘all sides’, their application was almost entirely one-sided. For example, a previous Intercept report showed that the American newspaper had, between October 7 and November 14, mentioned the word ‘massacre’ 53 times when it referred to Israelis being killed by Palestinians and only once in reference to Palestinians being killed by Israel. 

By that date, thousands of Palestinians had perished, the vast majority of whom were women and children, and most of them were killed inside their own homes, in hospitals, schools or United Nations shelters. Though the Palestinian death toll was often questioned by US government and media, it was later generally accepted as accurate, but with a caveat: attributing the source of the Palestinian number to the “Hamas-run Ministry of Health in Gaza”. That phrasing is, of course, enough to undermine the accuracy of the statistics compiled by healthcare professionals, who had the misfortune of producing such tallies many times in the past. 

The Israeli numbers were rarely questioned, if ever, although Israel’s own media later revealed that many Israelis who were supposedly killed by Hamas died in ‘friendly fire’, as in at the hands of the Israeli army. 

And even though a large percentage of Israelis killed during the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation on October 7 were active, off-duty or military reserve, terms such as ‘massacre’ and ‘slaughter’ were still used in abundance. Little mention was made of the fact that those ‘slaughtered’ by Hamas were, in fact, directly involved in the Israeli siege and previous massacres in Gaza. 

Speaking of ‘slaughter’, the term, according to the Intercept, was used to describe those allegedly killed by Palestinian fighters vs those killed by Israel at a ratio of 22 to 1. 

I write ‘allegedly’, as the Israeli military and government, unlike the Palestinian Ministry of Health, are yet to allow for independent verification of the numbers they produced, altered and reproduced, once again. 

The Palestinian figures are now accepted even by the US government. When asked, on February 29, about how many women and children had been killed in Gaza, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said: “It’s over 25,000”, going even beyond the number provided by the Palestinian Health Ministry at the time. 

However, even if the Israeli numbers are to be examined and fully substantiated by truly independent sources, the coverage of the New York Times of the Gaza war continues to point to the non-existing credibility of mainstream American media, regardless of its agendas and ideologies. This generalization can be justified on the basis that NYT is, oddly enough, still relatively fairer than others. 

According to this double standard, occupied, oppressed and routinely slaughtered Palestinians are depicted with the language fit for Israel; while a racist, apartheid and murderous entity like Israel is treated as a victim and, despite the Gaza genocide, is, somehow, still in a state of ‘self-defense’. 

The New York Times shamelessly and constantly blows its own horn of being an oasis of credibility, balance, accuracy, objectivity and professionalism. Yet, for them, occupied Palestinians are still the villain: the party doing the vast majority of the slaughtering and the massacring. 

The same slanted logic applies to the US government, whose daily political discourse on democracy, human rights, fairness and peace continues to intersect with its brazen support of the murder of Palestinians, through dumb bombs, bunker busters and billions of dollars’ worth of other weapons and munitions.  

The Intercept reporting on this issue matters greatly. Aside from the leaked memos, the dishonesty of language used by the New York Times – compassionate towards Israel and indifferent to Palestinian suffering – leaves no doubts that the NYT, like other US mainstream media, continues to stand firmly on Tel Aviv’s side. 

As Gaza continues to resist the injustice of the Israeli military occupation and war, the rest of us, concerned about truth, accuracy in reporting and justice for all, should also challenge this model of poor, biased journalism. 

We do so when we create our own professional, alternative sources of information, where we use proper language, which expresses the painful reality in war-torn Gaza.  

Indeed, what is taking place in Gaza is genocide, a horrific slaughter and daily massacres against innocent peoples, whose only crime is that they are resisting a violent military occupation and a vile apartheid regime. 

And, if it happens that these indisputable facts generate an ’emotional’ response, then it is a good thing; maybe real action to end the Israeli carnage of Palestinians would follow. The question remains: why would the New York Times editors find this objectionable?  

April 25, 2024 Posted by | media, spinbuster, USA | Leave a comment

United States Hypocrisy – Again

BY ROBERT FANTINA, 24 Apr 24,  https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/04/24/united-states-hypocrisy-again/—

The hypocrisy of the United States government knows no limits. On April 18, a proposal was submitted to the United Nations Security Council to admit Palestine as a full member, thus effectively recognizing the state of Palestine. Of the fifteen members of the Security Council, twelve voted in favor, two abstained, and the United States, using its veto power, opposed it. This, after frantic lobbying by the U.S. of the other nations on the Security Council to convince at least one of them to vote with the U.S., so the U.S. would not have to stand alone, again, in its support for the apartheid regime of Israel.

“’It remains the US view that the most expeditious path toward statehood for the Palestinian people is through direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority with the support of the United States and other partners,’ Vedant Patel, the State Department spokesman, told reporters earlier in the day.”

This writer is almost tired of pointing out the obvious: negotiations can only be effective when each party wants something the other has, that it can only obtain by surrendering something it has, that the other party wants. Israel takes what it wants from Palestine with complete impunity. And how can the establishment of an independent Palestine occur through negotiations when the current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said there will never be an independent Palestine? The U.S. had the opportunity to make it happen on April 18, but chose not to.

Richard Gowan, the United Nations’ International Crisis Group said the following, prior to the vote: “The U.S. position is that the Palestinian state should be based on bilateral agreements between the Israelis and Palestinians. It does not believe that the UN can create the state by fiat.” This raises two interesting points:

1) First, Israel isn’t going to agree to the establishment of a Palestinian state. Netanyahu has made that clear.

2) If the U.S. does, in fact, not believe that the U.N. can create a state by fiat, how then does the U.S. explain the establishment of Israel? Did the U.N. not, in 1947 – 1948, created Israel by fiat?

The U.S. is the world’s best example of the double standard: it criticizes Russia’s crimes in Ukraine while supporting and even financing the same kinds of crimes, except on steroids, that Israel is committing in Gaza.

Government officials in the U.S. explain that President ‘Genocide Joe’ Biden is working to convince Netanyahu to allow more aid into Gaza, where children and adults are starving to death. All he need do to enable a flood of aid is tell Netanyahu that Israel will not receive another penny of U.S. ‘aid’ until the suffering of the Palestinians ends. But instead of that, he is sending hundreds of millions of dollars worth of weaponry to kill them. Why should Israel do anything different? It gets whatever it wants from the U.S. even as it spits in the U.S.’s collective eye.

Prior to the start of the Iraq War, massive protests were held around the world. Then President George Bush, in response to these protests said this: “Size of protest — it’s like deciding, well, I’m going to decide policy based upon a focus group.” Todd S. Purdum of The New York Times, commenting on this statement, said the following: “A focus group is a handful of people, carefully culled to reflect diverse viewpoints, chosen to help politicians or companies figure out how to sell a policy or a product.

Led by a facilitator, they are poked and prodded in a private room, asked about their likes and dislikes and encouraged to speak while strategists eavesdrop behind a one-way mirror.

“And while Mr. Bush may not like to acknowledge it, his administration does use focus groups, most recently to help determine how best to couch its public messages about domestic security.”

Perhaps Genocide Joe feels the same way; he can dismiss millions of people around the world, including massive numbers in the United States, who recognize ongoing genocide when they see it. He believes that such blatant violations of international law as invading and bombing hospitals and arresting and killing medical personnel and killing patients; bombing refugee camps; killing journalists; indiscriminately slaughtering men, women and children; dropping bombs on humanitarian aid workers and schools, mosques, churches and residential centers are not evidence of genocide. They are, he says, simply part of Israel ‘defending’ itself from the existential threat of a ragtag band of dedicated people who are resisting a brutal, decades long occupation.

And what of the existential threat to Palestine? For decades, Israel has been stealing more and more Palestinian land, establishing settlements that are illegal under international law, and arbitrarily killing, arresting and torturing Palestinian men, women and children. Why does Palestine not, in the eyes of the United States government, have a right to defend itself?

Genocide Joe is an elderly Zionist, believing the myths about Jews who oppose apartheid as being ‘self-hating Jews’, and not willing to recognize that it was the United Nations, and not God, who criminally displaced 750,000 Palestinians to establish the Zionist regime.

The United Nations created the problems that have plagued the Middle East for 76 years; the United States is not, never has been and can never be an honest player in resolving them. The United Nations must work to end the very un-democratic veto power in the Security Council, give more authority to the General Assembly which, unlike the 15 member-nation Security Council has representatives from 193 nations, and bring freedom to the Palestinians. The current genocide, which will be a stain on the records of many nations for generations to come, must end. The U.S. must not be allowed to enable it to continue.

Robert Fantina’s latest book is Propaganda, Lies and False Flags: How the U.S. Justifies its Wars.

April 25, 2024 Posted by | politics international, USA | Leave a comment

Crackdown On Students And Information As Genocide Widens

Students are showing what normal human beings do when faced with evidence of unspeakable cruelty on a massive scal

LISA SAVAGE, APR 24, 2024,  https://went2thebridge.substack.com/p/crackdown-on-students-and-information?r=3alev&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true [includes extracts and video from social media]

Students at college campuses across the U.S. are rejecting Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and their encampments are spreading rapidly following violent repression by police at Columbia University. In addition to calling the NYPD on their own students, the geniuses in administration locked students out of their dorms and meal plans, and suspended them. Once they were suspended they could be arrested for trespassing — on a campus where their families have paid tens of thousands each year to house, feed, and educate them.

This repression has only caused the resistance at Columbia to grow.

Students don’t get their information about atrocities against the Palestinians from mainstream media that were long since captured by the military-industrial complex. Instead, they get their information from eye witness accounts shared on social media. 

Is it any wonder that Congress in its wisdom just enshrined domestic spying as law and ramped up liability for social media companies and everyone who works there for sharing what the government deems “misinformation”?

It is said that truth is the first casualty of war. Since the U.S. has been continuously at war for decades, the ever tightening screws of information control are absolutely key to the WW3 project. World wars start with genocide (WWI was Armenians, WWII was European Jews). Before the 21st century these were conducted secretly, keeping the details from ordinary people until after the fact. Nowadays we watch genocide unfolding in real time, with new mass graves at Gaza’s Nasser Hospital the latest in the atrocity parade.

Students are showing what normal human beings do when faced with evidence of unspeakable cruelty on a massive scale: grieve, and turn the anger of grief into action. 

April 25, 2024 Posted by | Education, USA | Leave a comment