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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

TODAY. Oh it’s a great time to be an American – with shares in “Defense” companies!

The USA Congress knows this. These worthy persons understand that their job is to enrich weapons companies and the people “wise” enough to have shares in them. After all, “defense” is the USA’s fastest growing and most successful industry. And of course, that’s the job of a patriotic American government – to promote American business.

Some think that the proper role of government is not solely protection of people from attack, but also to provide for the general well-being of the people. But that second purpose is not a goal of American government. And I would argue that even the first purpose is not a real goal – as the practices of diplomacy, negotiation, discussion and respect for other countries would be the best methods – rather than bullying and sabre-waving.

Anyway, the U.S. Senate just passed a $95Billion Bill for weapons for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. Law-makers of both stripes are keen to promote weapons. Probably the Congress will approve this.

The U.S. Congress has the power to pull back, to prevent wars. But once they’ve given the White House the money for weapons – then the President (advised by warmongers like Jake Sullivan and Antony Blinken) can go ahead and wage war – Congress will then have no say.

 Once the Congress approves an appropriation the President as commander-in chief can use the money any way he likes. If the aim of warmongers is eventual war against Iran, providing money for weapons will be Congress’s role in following this aim. Think tanks and media enthusiastically go along with this.

There seems to be no awareness that USA’s endless strikes on distant countries – Iraq , Syria, backing Israel against Palestine, Iran – are arousing fierce anger among millions of people. In Ukraine whole generations of men are being wiped out.

Weapons get used. Then you make and sell more weapons. That means continuing, endless wars. That’s the business. It’s great when there’s no, or relatively few, American soldiers killed. Terrific – only “the others” are dying.

It’s great for business. Lockheed Martin’s shares are up. Investing advice enthuses “Where there’s war, there’s money to be made, and rising geopolitical tension in the Middle East, and the two-year-long war in Ukraine are leaving investors to shield their portfolios with defense stocks………….no better time than being in the business of defense contracting than right now“

But one day – the shit will hit the fan! Shock horror – it might even happen in the lifetime of those making $millions from weapons sales.

April 24, 2024 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Israeli Strikes in Rafah Kill 22, Including 18 Children

The bombardment came after the House approved $26 billion in spending to support the Israeli slaughter of Palestinians

by Dave DeCamp April 21, 2024  https://news.antiwar.com/2024/04/21/israeli-strikes-kill-22-in-rafah-including-18-children/

Israeli strikes hit the southern Gaza city of Rafah Saturday night into Sunday morning, killing 22 people, including 18 children, The Associated Press reported.

The bombardment came just hours after the US House of Representatives passed a $26 billion bill that includes about $17 billion in military aid for Israel to support the slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza.

According to AP, one of the overnight strikes killed a man, his wife, and their three-year-old child. The woman was 30 weeks pregnant, and medical staff at the nearby Kuwaiti hospital were able to save the baby. The second strike killed two women and 17 children.

Gaza’s Health Ministry said on Sunday that the number of Palestinians killed in the Strip has reached 34,097, and 76,980 more have been wounded. The death toll is considered a low estimate since it doesn’t take into account people who are dead under the rubble.


Rafah is packed with over 1 million Palestinian civilians and has been getting hit with near-daily Israeli strikes. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been threatening to launch a full-scale invasion of the city.

The US has claimed that it’s concerned about Netanyahu’s plans to invade Rafah but is not putting any real pressure on Israel since it continues to provide military aid and political support. US and Israeli officials discussed the potential assault last week, and the White House said the two sides had a “shared objective to see Hamas defeated in Rafah.”

On Sunday, Netanyahu thanked the US for the new aid being passed through Congress and vowed to escalate in Gaza. “In the coming days, we will increase the military and diplomatic pressure on Hamas because this is the only way to free our hostages and achieve our victory,” he said.

April 24, 2024 Posted by | Gaza, Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Where are France’s nuclear reactors and what is planned for more?

the six new sites will by no means triple French production, particularly since the older plants will increasingly be closed for repair and maintenance. 

President Macron wants to triple atomic energy production by 2050

Richard Henshell, Saturday 20 April 2024 

France is the third biggest producer of nuclear energy in the world and hopes to triple production by 2050. We look at where the country’s nuclear sites are and at President Macron’s plans for more.

Nuclear power represents up to 70% of the electricity produced in France at 282 Terawatt-hours (TWh), behind only China (395TWh) and the US (772TWh) and far ahead of the UK (42TWh). 

However, many of its plants are approaching the end of their life-cycle. The majority of France’s 56 reactors date from the 1980s, and only two have been built since the year 2000.

In order to meet the requirements of the 2015 Paris Climate Accords, President Macron announced his plans to reinvest in France’s ageing nuclear plants during last year’s COP28 climate meeting in Dubai.

“Nuclear energy is back,” said Mr Macron (in English), adding that it was time to recognise the “essential role that nuclear energy can play in efforts to reach zero carbon dioxide emissions on a global level”.

“We will triple our capacity to produce nuclear energy between 2020 and 2050,” he said.

France’s 56 reactors are shared between 19 sites. Another reactor is scheduled to power up at Flamanville this summer, bringing the total to 57 reactors.

There are also plans to construct six new reactors at three existing plants:

  • Two at Penly (Seine-Maritime) for 2035
  • Two at Gravelines (Nord) for 2038
  • Two at Le Bugey (Ain) for 2042

Construction is scheduled to start in summer 2024 on first of these new reactors in Penly, which like the others, will use the powerful new EPR-2 design. The estimated total cost for the six reactors is around €67.4 billion.

However, the six new sites will by no means triple French production, particularly since the older plants will increasingly be closed for repair and maintenance. 

Indeed, in December 2021, the discovery of cracks in the emergency cooling systems of France’s four newest reactors led to them being shut down for over a year

Regardless, Mr Macron announced in February 2022 that France’s older plants could conceivably operate far into the future – beyond their 60th year or until they are no longer capable of producing electricity, or no longer safe.

April 24, 2024 Posted by | France, politics, technology | Leave a comment

Iran says nuclear weapons have no place in its nuclear doctrine

By Reuters, April 22, 2024,
Reporting by Dubai Newsroom; Editing by Alex Richardson, William Maclean, https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/iran-says-nuclear-weapons-have-no-place-its-nuclear-doctrine-2024-04-22/

DUBAI, April 22 (Reuters) – Nuclear weapons have no place in Iran’s nuclear doctrine, the country’s foreign ministry said on Monday, days after a Revolutionary Guards commander warned that Tehran might change its nuclear policy if pressured by Israeli threats.

“Iran has repeatedly said its nuclear programme only serves peaceful purposes. Nuclear weapons have no place in our nuclear doctrine,” ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani said during a press conference in Tehran.

Following a spike in tensions with Israel, the Guards commander in charge of nuclear security Ahmad Haghtalab said last week that Israeli threats could push Tehran to “review its nuclear doctrine and deviate from its previous considerations.”

Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the last say on Tehran’s nuclear programme, banned the development of nuclear weapons in a fatwa, or religious decree, in the early 2000s.

April 24, 2024 Posted by | Iran, politics | Leave a comment

Russia: West military support for Ukraine could lead to confrontation between world’s nuclear powers

Monday, 22 April 2024, https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2024/04/22/724164/Russia-Lavrov-Warns-Direct-War-With-West-Over-Ukraine

Moscow has warned of a direct confrontation between Russian troops and Western forces over the conflict in Ukraine that could end in catastrophe.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Monday the United States and NATO countries were obsessed with the idea of inflicting a “strategic defeat” on Russia, adding that their military support for Ukraine has pushed the world to the brink of a direct clash between the world’s biggest nuclear powers that could end in catastrophe.

“The Westerners are teetering dangerously on the brink of a direct military clash between nuclear powers, which is fraught with catastrophic consequences,” Lavrov said at a conference on non-proliferation in Moscow.

“Of particular concern is the fact that it is the ‘troika’ of Western nuclear states [US, Britain and France] that are among the key sponsors of the criminal Kiev regime, the main initiators of various provocative steps. We see serious strategic risks in this, leading to an increase in the level of nuclear danger,” Lavrov warned.

Lavrov said that the Western countries were building a global missile system capable of eliminating rivals. He added that the US-led Western countries were placing nuclear weapons in military bases all across Europe, while medium- and shorter-range missiles were being planted in other regions across the globe and preparations were made to deploy nuclear weapons into space.

According to both Russian and US diplomats, the present clash between the West and Russia over Ukraine is the worst breakdown of diplomatic relations by the two sides in decades, ever since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis cut bilateral ties.

Despite the risky tension, Western leaders have vowed to continue to work with and to provide support to Kiev to cause “strategic defeat” of Russian forces in Ukraine, while ruling out any deployment of American or European troops in the former Soviet republic.

Lavrov’s remarks come just two days after US lawmakers approved billions of dollars in additional military aid to Ukraine.

Since Russia launched its special military operation in Ukraine in February 2022 to prevent NATO’s eastward expansion, it has repeatedly warned the US-led Western counties against arming Kiev and the rising nuclear risks – warnings which the US leadership says it has to take seriously, though the officials say they have seen no change in Russian nuclear posture.

April 24, 2024 Posted by | weapons and war | Leave a comment

Zionism Is In Its Flop Era

The hysterical reaction to the Columbia protests is proof.

JACK MIRKINSON, APR 22, 2024  https://www.discourseblog.com/p/zionism-is-in-its-flop-era?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=38606&post_id=143849689&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=ln98x&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

As a New York City resident, I take an interest in where my tax dollars are spent. Yesterday, at least some of those dollars were being spent to pay NYPD cops to hang around—in riot helmets—outside the locked gates of Columbia University. (Presumably, Columbia paid for the festive balloons on the gates.)

The vibes at Columbia were exactly as strange and slightly ridiculous as that picture when I swung by on Sunday. I’m on record as saying that I don’t think we should spend much time as a society stressing about what happens on fancy college campuses, but the Columbia leadership’s wildly over-the-top reaction to the decision by some students to sit in tents on the quad as part of a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” had turned the school into a national news story, and the students are being very courageous in the face of the full repressive force of both Columbia and New York City. Besides (looks down shamefacedly) I am technically a Columbia alum, so I was intrigued.

Even two blocks away, you wouldn’t have known anything was going on. Morningside Heights was its usual placid self. At 116th and Broadway, a small clutch of protesters was penned in by barricades and chanting, watched over by yet more cops. It’s no slight on the protesters to say that this hardly seemed like a national security crisis.

But I suppose that’s in the eye of the beholder. As I strolled past the protesters, I passed a guy screaming into his phone, “I don’t fucking care! There’s a riot on campus! People are in danger!” Reader, there was no riot on campus. There wasn’t even much noise.

I didn’t stay long; you couldn’t get into the campus without a student ID and there wasn’t actually that much to see. But within hours, both New York Mayor Eric Adams and the White House (lol) had issued statements portraying the protests as dangerous bastions of antisemitic hate. (As far as I can tell, a couple of people who showed up to support the students said some stupid shit. The students themselves, many of whom are Jewish, have pointed out that this has nothing to do with them.)

Why is the president of the United States involving himself in this situation? Why are the cops parked in riot gear in front of a locked gate where basically nothing is happening? Why, for that matter, did Columbia President Minouche Shafik treat a peaceful encampment on the lawn as a declaration of war? Why did Columbia’s own security force try to shut down the student radio station that was reporting on the protests? Why, in other words, are these people freaking out so much?

Obviously, they want to nip all of this protest stuff in the bud. They want to show students, and Columbia’s donors, and the fanatical politicians hounding them, that they will make it dangerous to step out of line. And to do that, they are willing to go way, way overboard.

But there is something else you can sense in all of this—another current running through the crackdown. That current is desperation. This is the kind of wild swing you take when you sense your grip on things slipping away—when you are trying to contain something that is becoming stronger than you ever imagined possible.

We’ve all been there. We all know what it feels like when you’re in your flop era—when you’re throwing everything at the wall and nothing is sticking. And Zionism is going through a flop era in America.

The White House, and Eric Adams, and Columbia University are all looking around and noticing that the old rules about Israel and Palestine are no longer working like they used to. A majority of Americans oppose the genocide in Gaza, and have for months. Young people like the Columbia students strongly oppose it. They are not listening to the likes of Joe Biden anymore about this stuff.

How can I be sure about this? Well, since Columbia moved to shut down the Gaza Solidarity Encampment, similar protests have sprung up at universities across the country. Just this morning, Yale followed Columbia’s lead and forcibly cleared a student encampment. This student movement is growing, not fading. It turns out that a lot of people want to stand against genocide. It turns out that a lot of people think that Israel slaughtering children day after day is a bigger threat to a stable and just world than college students sitting in a tent. And because Columbia, and Eric Adams, and Joe Biden have no real answer to that reality, they are instead choosing to pretend that Kristallnacht II is upon us—to smear the Palestinian flag as the equivalent of a swastika, to turn young people protesting genocide into symbols of evil.

It’s not working.

April 24, 2024 Posted by | Religion and ethics, USA | Leave a comment

Polish president: Poland ready to deploy allied nuclear weapons on its territory

by Chris York andThe Kyiv Independent, April 22, 2024

Poland is ready and willing to allow NATO allies to deploy nuclear weapons on its territory, Polish President Andrzej Duda said in an interview published on April 22.

Speaking to Fakt, Duda highlighted how Russia has already taken similar steps with its own allies, having transferred tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus last year.

The president said the topic of placing U.S. nuclear weapons in Poland “has been a topic of Polish-American talks for some time.”

“If our allies decide to deploy nuclear weapons as part of nuclear sharing also on our territory to strengthen the security of NATO‘s eastern flank, we are ready for it,” he said.

“We are an ally in the North Atlantic Alliance, and we also have obligations in this respect, i.e., we simply implement a common policy.”…………………….  https://kyivindependent.com/poland-nuclear-weapons-duda/

April 24, 2024 Posted by | EUROPE, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Russia-Ukraine war: EU ministers fail to pledge Patriot systems to Ukraine at key meeting – as it happened

Yohannes Lowe and Sammy Gecsoyler, 23 Apr 24  https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/apr/22/russia-ukraine-war-live-zelenskiy-chasiv-yar?filterKeyEvents=false&page=with%3Ablock-66261a918f08839e09ac8c8b

Russia says new US aid to Ukraine will not change situation on battlefield

A new US package of military aid to Ukraine will not change the situation on the frontlines, where Russia has the upper hand, the Kremlin said.

“The Russian armed forces are improving their positions at the front … The money allocated and the weapons that will be supplied will not change this dynamic,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

“They will lead to new victims on the Ukrainian side. More Ukrainians will die, Ukraine will suffer greater losses.”

In the Ukraine bill, of the $60.7bn, a total of about $23bn would be used by the US to replenish its military stockpiles, opening the door to future US military transfers to Ukraine.

Another $14bn would go to the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, in which the Pentagon buys advanced new weapon systems for the Ukrainian military directly from US defence contractors.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Sunday urged Washington to quickly turn the bill into law and proceed with the actual transfer of weapons, saying long-range arms and air defence systems were top priorities.

“I think this support will really strengthen the armed forces of Ukraine and we will have a chance for victory,” Zelenskiy said.

Russia said the American defence industry will be the real beneficiary of the package.

“We also recognise that most of this money will remain in the United States. The United States will become richer and will receive additional dividends by providing assistance to Ukraine. For (President Vladimir) Putin, this was expected,” Peskov said.

April 24, 2024 Posted by | EUROPE, politics international, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Heatwave in India: TV host faints during live broadcast as swaths of country reel from sweltering temperatures

India’s federal weather agency
has issued “severe heatwave” alerts for parts of India with
temperatures soaring to 42-44C. India witnessed the early onset of an
intense heatwave in March and April, leading to a huge impact on
agriculture production. A heatwave alert has been issued for Odisha and
West Bengal till 22 April with temperature peaking above 40C.

 Independent 22nd April 2024

https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/india-heatwave-west-bengal-anchor-faints-b2532165.html

April 24, 2024 Posted by | climate change, India | Leave a comment

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