United Nations General Assembly backs Palestinian bid for membership
Aljazeera, 10 May 24
Resolution does not give Palestine full UN membership, but recognises them as qualified to join and extends rights.
The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) has backed a Palestinian bid to become a full UN member by recognising it as qualified to join and recommending the UN Security Council “reconsider the matter favourably”.
The vote by the 193-member UNGA on Friday was a global survey of support for the Palestinian bid to become a full UN member – a move that would effectively recognise a Palestinian state – after the United States vetoed it in the UN Security Council last month.
The assembly adopted a resolution on Friday with 143 votes in favour and nine against – including the US and Israel – while 25 countries abstained. It does not give the Palestinians full UN membership, but simply recognises them as qualified to join.
The UNGA resolution “determines that the State of Palestine … should therefore be admitted to membership” and it “recommends that the Security Council reconsider the matter favourably”.
While the UNGA alone cannot grant full UN membership, the draft resolution on Friday will give the Palestinians some additional rights and privileges from September 2024 – like a seat among the UN members in the assembly hall – but it will not be granted a vote in the body.
Reporting from the UN headquarters in New York, Al Jazeera’s Gabriel Elizondo said it was significant that such a high number of countries voted in favour of the resolution.
“What we were hearing before the vote was anywhere perhaps between 120, 130 – at top end, 140. The fact that they got 143 meets and exceeds all expectations. It’s been overwhelmingly passed,” he said.
“But they still only have observer status.”…………………………… more https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/5/10/un-general-assembly-backs-palestinian-bid-for-membership
NuScale, maker of small nuclear reactors, reported revenue of $1.4 million and net loss of $48.1 million for the three-month period ended March 31, 2024
NuScale reported revenue of $1.4 million and net loss of $48.1 million for
the three-month period ended March 31, 2024, compared to revenue of $5.5
million and a net loss of $35.6 million for the same period in 2023. Higher
net loss reported in the period was driven by a one-time $3.2 million
charge associated with continuing our transition from an R&D-based company
to commercial operations, and a $9.0 million non-cash adjustment to the
fair value of our warrants due to an increase in the Company’s share price.
Business Wire 9th May 2024
Venezuela may be first nation to lose all its glaciers
10 May 24, Aleks Phillips, BBC News
Venezuela may be the first nation in modern history to lose all its glaciers after climate scientists downgraded its last one to an ice field.
The International Cryosphere Climate Initiative (ICCI), a scientific advocacy organisation, said on X that the South American nation’s only remaining glacier – the Humboldt, or La Corona, in the Andes – had become “too small to be classed as a glacier”.
Venezuela has lost at least six other glaciers in the last century.
With global average temperatures rising due to climate change, ice loss is increasing, helping to raise sea levels around the world…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx8qv1nvdppo
NuScale Power Corporation (SMR) Reports Q1 Loss, Misses Revenue Estimates
Zacks Equity Research, Fri, 10 May 2024
NuScale Power Corporation (SMR) came out with a quarterly loss of $0.21 per share in line with the Zacks Consensus Estimate. This compares to loss of $0.16 per share a year ago. These figures are adjusted for non-recurring items.
A quarter ago, it was expected that this company would post a loss of $0.22 per share when it actually produced a loss of $0.25, delivering a surprise of -13.64%.
Over the last four quarters, the company has not been able to surpass consensus EPS estimates.
NuScale Power , which belongs to the Zacks Electronics – Power Generation industry, posted revenues of $1.38 million for the quarter ended March 2024, missing the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 56.22%. This compares to year-ago revenues of $5.51 million. The company has topped consensus revenue estimates just once over the last four quarters.
The sustainability of the stock’s immediate price movement based on the recently-released numbers and future earnings expectations will mostly depend on management’s commentary on the earnings cal
……………………………………………………. the shares are expected to underperform the market in the near future. ………………………….. https://au.finance.yahoo.com/news/nuscale-power-corporation-smr-reports-213506291.html
Empire Managers Explain Why This New Protest Movement Scares Them
CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, MAY 09, 2024
The US secretary of state and a Bilderberg surveillance tech oligarch have both made some very interesting admissions about the burgeoning protest movement against the US-backed slaughter in Gaza and the problems it poses for the empire they help run.
During a vitriolic rant about university demonstrators at the Ash Carter Exchange on Innovation and National Security on Tuesday, Palantir CEO Alex Karp came right out and said that if those on the side of the protesters win the debate on this issue, the west will lose the ability to wage wars.
For those who don’t know, Palantir is a CIA-backed surveillance and data mining tech company with intimate ties to both the US intelligence cartel and to Israel, playing a crucial role in both the US empire’s sprawling surveillance network and Israeli atrocities against Palestinians. Karp is a billionaire who sits on the Steering Committee of the Bilderberg Group and regularly features at the World Economic Forum and other platforms of plutocratic empire management.
“We kind of just think these things that are happening, across college campuses especially, are like a sideshow — no, they are the show,” Karp said during his rant. “Because if we lose the intellectual debate, you will not be able to deploy any army in the west, ever.”
Everyone should listen very carefully to Karp’s words here, because he’s giving the whole game away. He’s making it very clear how crucial it is for the empire to stomp out this protest movement and the zeitgeist upon which it rides, because the very existence of the imperial war machine depends on it. At a time when most imperial spinmeisters are trying to dismiss the importance of this movement and what young people are doing on college campuses around the world, this is a really extraordinary admission from someone who lives deep in the guts of the imperial hydra.
Such conferences are great for obtaining useful information from swamp monsters that you don’t normally hear, because when they’re surrounded by like-minded empire goons they tend to get a lot more loose-tongued than they are when they’re more aware that they have an audience of normal people.
We saw this illustrated again in a conversation between Senator Mitt Romney and Secretary of State Antony Blinken at the McCain Institute last week, during which both acknowledged some facts that generally go unstated by such creatures.
After bemoaning Israel’s lack of success at “PR” regarding its Gaza assault, Romney just came right out and said that this was “why there was such overwhelming support for us to shut down potentially TikTok or other entities of that nature” — with “us” meaning himself and his fellow lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
“How this narrative has evolved, yeah, it’s a great question,” Blinken responded, saying that at the beginning of his career in Washington everyone was getting their information from television and physical newspapers like The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post.
“Now, of course, we are on an intravenous feed of information with new impulses, inputs every millisecond,” Blinken continued. “And of course, the way this has played out on social media has dominated the narrative. And you have a social media ecosystem environment in which context, history, facts get lost, and the emotion, the impact of images dominates. And we can’t — we can’t discount that, but I think it also has a very, very, very challenging effect on the narrative.”
to each other, because that’s how they think about everything.
This is because empire managers are always acutely aware of something that normal human beings are not: that real power comes from manipulating the stories — narratives — that people tell themselves about their reality.
They understand that humans are storytelling animals whose inner lives are typically dominated by mental narratives about what’s happening, so if you can control those narratives, you can control the humans.
They understand that power is controlling what happens, but true power is controlling what people think about what happens.
They understand that whoever controls the narrative controls the world……………………………………………………. more https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/empire-managers-explain-why-this?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=144457706&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
TODAY. “The empire” – an exaggerated, emotive, term?
Well, I always thought that “Empire” was a dramatic, over-stated, term. And it annoyed me that writers kept using it, in relation to the USA. I thought that criticism of America was warranted – but don’t weaken your case by using such an emotive word.
“Empire” brings up thoughts of the murderous regimes of history – the murderous Mongol Empire, the quite punishing Roman Empire, the cruel Empire of Japan, the rapacious British Empire
Oh no – America’s not like that!
Yes, it is.
And in today’s world, the USA government has access to weapons undreamt of in earlier regimes. Not just its smorgasbord of every possible kind of killing tool, but also its economic weaponry, and its media weaponry.
Not that I think that Americans are bad people. They are good, kind people, who value their families highly. So highly that hanging on to their income – their lucrative weapons-company shares, or their jobs, in deceptive and even killer industries is their top priority. And if they have any doubts – well – the magic term “our national security” justifies all government action.
Americans have bought the idea of American exceptionalism. America is good and always right, and can justly interfere in any country, because they know best. So – they’ve got military bases worldwide:
If you didn’t notice America’s interference – South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia – in Chile, Nicaragua, – Libya, wars in Afghanstan, Iraq, – you’d have to be noticing what’s going on now in Ukraine, and in Israel’s massacres in Gaza.
The military bases in increase, the belligerent propaganda increases, and the ‘Western world steels itself to faithfully be the patsies for USA’s next big intervention – Taiwan.
Ukraine, Taiwan , Gaza – all wonderful laboratories for testing the bestest American weapons, enriching American corporations, and no risks to American lives.
When you see articles by Caitlin Johnstone , Chris Hedges, Ralph Nader, Robert Kennedy Jr, Patterson Deppen, and more – talking about “The Empire” – don’t be too hasty to brush them off as way-out radicals.
USA politicians threaten to invade International Criminal Court if Israel faces war crimes charges
By Ben Norton https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2024/05/07/us-threat-icc-israel/
US Senators sent a letter to the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor, threatening to impose sanctions and even invade the Hague if it issues arrest warrants for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The Biden administration is also pressuring the ICC not to charge Israeli officials over their war crimes in Gaza.
US government officials have threatened the International Criminal Court (ICC) at the Hague, telling its Prosecutor Karim Khan that if he issues arrest warrants against Israeli officials over their war crimes in Gaza, the US government could impose sanctions on him, other ICC personnel, and their family members.
US senators even threatened to invade the Hague if it tries to prosecute Israeli officials.
UN experts: Israel is committing genocide in Gaza
This April, Israel’s extreme-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a prominent member of the state security cabinet, called for “total annihilation” of Gaza.
Smotrich cited the Biblical nation of Amalek – a genocidal reference also made by far-right Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
These invocations of Amalek are clear calls for genocide. In the Book of Samuel, God orders King Saul, “Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys”.
The UN’s top legal body, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled this January that Israel could be investigated on “plausible” charges of violating the Genocide Convention. (The ICJ and ICC are separate institutions, although both are located at the Hague.)
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have stated that Israel is violating this ICJ ruling that demands that it abide by the Genocide Convention.
Top UN experts have publicly warned that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
In addition to bombing civilian areas and killing tens of thousands of innocent men, women, and children, Israel has used hunger as a weapon, starving Palestinian civilians.
The US director of the UN World Food Program warned that Gaza is now suffering from a “full-blown famine”, after seven months of a suffocating Israeli blockade.
The US government has provided the vast majority of the weapons that Israel is using to bomb civilian areas in Gaza. If Israeli officials face charges over their war crimes, Washington would be complicit.
US senators threaten to sanction and invade the ICC
On April 24, a dozen Republican senators sent a threatening letter to the ICC prosecutor. The media outlet Zeteo obtained the document.
The missive was signed by major GOP leaders, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Tom Cotton.
In the aggressively worded letter, the senators pledged to “sanction your employees and associates, and bar you and your families from the United States” if Israeli officials face charges over their war crimes in Gaza.
“Target Israel and we will target you”, they threatened.
Issuing an arrest warrant for Netanyahu or other top officials would be seen “not only as a threat to Israel’s sovereignty but to the sovereignty of the United States”, the US politicians wrote, making it clear that they see Israel as a key part of the US empire.
“Our country demonstrated in the American Service-Members’ Protection Act the lengths to which we will go to protect that sovereignty”, they added.
The American Service-Members’ Protection Act is popularly known as the “Hague Invasion Act”. The legislation was signed into law in 2002 by President George W. Bush.
Human Rights Watch explained that this law “authorizes the use of military force to liberate any American or citizen of a U.S.-allied country being held by the court”.
By invoking the Hague Invasion Act in their 2024 letter to the ICC prosecutor, the Republican senators made it clear that the two-decade-old legislation is still valid: hawks in Washington are willing to invade the Hague to save Israeli officials if they are prosecuted.
Biden administration double standards on the ICC
It is not just Republicans who are threatening the ICC. This is bipartisan in Washington.
The Israeli press reported that, behind the scenes, the Joe Biden administration is also aggressively pressuring the ICC not to issue arrest warrants for Israeli officials.
In 2020, when Donald Trump was in the White House, the ICC opened an investigation into war crimes committed in the war in Afghanistan. The US and NATO forces were included in this inquiry.
In anger, the US government imposed sanctions on the Hague. Trump administration officials even threatened family members of ICC staff.
When Biden came into power in 2021, he sought to differentiate himself from his Republican predecessor. Secretary of State Antony Blinken publicly announced the end of the Trump-era sanctions and visa restrictions against ICC personnel.
However, despite the Democratic administration’s claims to support the so-called “rules-based international order”, the Biden White House is now also intimidating ICC staff – if only a bit more quietly and less extravagantly than Trump and the Republicans have done.
The Biden administration furiously opposes any efforts to hold Israeli officials responsible for the war crimes they have committed in Gaza, with US weapons and political support.
This demonstrates Washington’s glaring double standards, as Biden himself had praised the ICC for issuing an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2023.
Secretary of State Blinken urged ICC member states to arrest Putin if he entered their territory. But a year later, he is aggressively pressuring the ICC to stop it from charging Israeli officials.
US and Israel supported Karim Khan as ICC prosecutor
Ironically, it was the US and Israel who had lobbied for the election of Karim Khan as ICC prosecutor.
This is despite the fact that the US and Israel are not state parties to the Rome Statute, and therefore are not members of the ICC.
US and Israeli lobbying paid off. In 2021, Khan entered office as ICC prosecutor, and immediately dropped the investigation into war crimes committed by US and NATO forces in Afghanistan.
But today, seven months into Israel’s brutal war on Gaza, the ICC is facing global condemnation for its inaction in the face of what UN experts say is clearly a genocide.
Global South leaders have long denounced the ICC as a colonial institution. Until 2016, only Africans had been tried for the worst crimes at the Court.
Khan is being forced to act, if he hopes to save face and salvage the legitimacy of the ICC. But his former sponsors in the US and Israel have turned against him.
It is not just justice for the Palestinian people, but the reputation of the International Criminal Court itself that is at stake.
Don’t Believe the Washington War Machine: Putin Is Not Going to Invade Another NATO Ally
May 06, 2024, By Rebekah Koffler, president of Doctrine & Strategy Consulting, former DIA intelligence officer. https://www.newsweek.com/dont-believe-washington-war-machine-putin-not-going-invade-another-nato-ally-opinion-1897533?utm_source=AM+Nukes+Roundup&utm_campaign=71082f760d-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_07_25_12_19_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_547ee518ec-71082f760d-391880373
The primary reason for continuing to flow billions of dollars in cash and weaponry to Ukraine for what is clearly becoming another Afghanistan, is that if we don’t, Putin will march through Europe, invading a NATO country such as Poland or the Balkans. In this case, the U.S. would have to deploy armed forces to fight off the Russians to defend the Europeans. These are the talking points that the Washington Establishment politicians and their fellow commentariat members in the media have been using to convince the American people to continue parting with their hard-earned money. In fact, even Speaker Mike Johnson, who as a rank-and-file Right-wing Congressman opposed the funding of Ukraine’s war effort, recently signed off on another massive foreign aid package, $95 billion worth, the bulk of which is designated for Kyiv.
“I think that Vladimir Putin would continue to march through Europe if he were allowed,” said Johnson, justifying the spending of another $61 billion on a what serious analysts assess as a unwinnable war. “I think he might go to the Balkans next. I think he might have a showdown with Poland or one of our NATO allies,” asserted Johnson.
But is it true?
Evidence indicates that this justification for depleting U.S. treasury and weapons arsenal represents a lack of understanding of Putin’s thinking and Russia’s security strategy—and the incompetence of our national security apparatus. At worst, it is a lie fed to the American people for some other reason.
Here’s why Putin is highly unlikely to invade a NATO nation:
Many in the West view Putin as a reckless dictator with imperial ambitions. As someone who spent her intelligence career studying and analyzing Putin’s thinking and Russia’s war-fighting doctrine and security strategy, I’m here to tell that while Putin is a typical Russian dictator, he is entirely rational.
Putin invaded Ukraine to enforce his version of the Monroe Doctrine, to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO, and to restore the strategic buffer zone on which Russia relied for its security for centuries. No sane military commander would allow an adversarial alliance to situate itself along more than 1,000 miles of its border.
Putin never made it a secret what his goals were for Ukraine as well as other former Soviet states, such as Belarus, Moldova, and Georgia. In every public speech or official writing, the Russian strongman clearly declared that post-Soviet nations, including Ukraine, were off limits for Western influence; accepting them into NATO would be crossing Russia’s red line.
Moreover, every strategic planning document of the Russian Federation, such as its Foreign Policy Concept, National Security Strategy, Military Doctrine and the like, in every iteration since 2000 and in some cases since 1993, codify Moscow’s strategic goals of re-integrating the post-Soviet neighbors into a supranational alliance that Moscow calls The Eurasian Union.
By contrast, no plans to “integrate” or take by force a NATO member nation have been declared in any Russia’s official doctrinal documents or official speeches made by Putin or the Kremlin.
As a former Defense Intelligence Agency officer and one of top three analysts on Russian Doctrine & Strategy who worked with the CIA‘s National Clandestine Service, I had access to the most sensitive intelligence—including Top Secret intelligence, with code word sub-compartments and red stripes indicating for President’s Eyes Only. There was no intelligence revealing or suggesting that Putin had designs on Europe beyond the post-Soviet states. We’ve conducted multiple wargames simulating a Russia-US/NATO war and in all of the scenarios, a local conflict between Russia and its post-Soviet neighbor escalated into a war with the U.S. and NATO. No scenario included Russia attacking a NATO country that it did not consider as part of its strategic buffer zone.
In fact, none of the Intelligence Community’s annual threat assessments that are published at the unclassified level by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, including the one for 2024, include analysis suggesting that Putin would invade a NATO member.
If such intelligence existed, you can be sure that it would be declassified immediately. Wouldn’t the powers that be want the American people to be on board with continuing to fund another forever war? The intelligence agencies, in the past several years, have routinely declassified even highly sensitive intelligence if it serves the purpose of the political class. They also routinely leak intelligence to left-leaning media, such as The Washington Post and the New York Times.
To the contrary, several U.S. intelligence assessments contradict the Washington Establishment’s narrative that Putin would invade a NATO member. An invasion of a NATO country would undoubtedly trigger Article 5 Collective Defense, which would require the deployment of NATO forces to defend the invaded NATO member. Claims that Putin would want a war with NATO on his hands is unequivocally disputed by the following statement from the 2024 Annual Threat assessment by the intelligence community, that “Russia almost certainly does not want a direct military conflict with U.S. and NATO forces and will continue asymmetric activity below what it calculates to be the threshold of military conflict globally.”
The following excerpts from the 2024 assessment entirely refute the idea that Russia has the military and economic capacity to invade a NATO country, triggering a war with NATO:
“Russia has suffered more military losses than at any time since World War II—roughly 300,000 casualties and thousands of tanks and armored combat vehicles.”
“Moscow’s military forces will face a multi-year recovery after suffering extensive equipment and personnel losses during the Ukraine conflict.”
“The Russian military has and will continue to face issues of attrition, personnel shortages, and morale challenges.”
“Russia’s GDP is on a trajectory for modest growth in 2024 but its longer-term competitiveness has diminished in comparison to its pre-war outlook.”
Finally, U.S. and NATO leaders knew as early as in 2013 and possibly earlier about Putin’s plans to restore Russia’s strategic security perimeter. As a former senior official in the U.S. intelligence community, I personally briefed President Obama’s White House national security staff on Putin’s plans and Russia’s war-fighting strategy multiple times. I also briefed countless top U.S. military commanders and Pentagon officials, as well as NATO ministers and military leaders, including just months prior to Putin’s invasion of Crimea in 2014.
As vice president at the time, the go-to person on Ukraine policy, and the architect of the failed Russia “reset” strategy, Joe Biden had to be made aware of those briefings. If anyone in the U.S. and NATO senior leadership thought that Putin would invade a NATO country, why didn’t they beef up there defense spending prior to Russia’s attack on Ukraine in 2022? To this day, the majority of NATO nations fail to spend the two percent of GDP guideline on defense.
Putin is clearly a typical Russian dictator and a bad dude. But he is not suicidal. Invading a NATO country is not part of his agenda.
If Washington elites are hell bent on continuing to fund another forever war, impoverishing ordinary Americans, as inflation is raging in our homeland, they should pick a more clever excuse.
‘The stakes could not be higher’: world is on edge of climate abyss, UN warns.
Top climate figures respond to Guardian survey of scientists who expect temperatures to soar, saying leaders must act radically
Damian Carrington Environment editorFri 10 May 2024 00.00 AESTShare
The world is on the verge of a climate abyss, the UN has warned, in response to a Guardian survey that found that hundreds of the world’s foremost climate experts expect global heating to soar past the international target of 1.5C.
A series of leading climate figures have reacted to the findings, saying the deep despair voiced by the scientists must be a renewed wake-up call for urgent and radical action to stop burning fossil fuels and save millions of lives and livelihoods. Some said the 1.5C target was hanging by a thread, but it was not yet inevitable that it would be passed, if an extraordinary change in the pace of climate action could be achieved.
The Guardian got the views of almost 400 senior authors of reports by the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Almost 80% expected a rise of at least 2.5C above preindustrial levels, a catastrophic level of heating, while only 6% thought it would stay within the 1.5C limit. Many expressed their personal anguish at the lack of climate action.
“The goal of limiting global warming to 1.5C is hanging by a thread,” said the official spokesperson for António Guterres, the UN secretary general. “The battle to keep 1.5C alive will be won or lost in the 2020s – under the watch of political and industry leaders today. They need to realise we are on the verge of the abyss. The science is clear and so are the world’s scientists: the stakes for all humanity could not be higher.”…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. more https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/09/world-is-on-verge-of-climate-abyss-un-warns
Polish industry minister announces massive delay in nuclear power plant project
The anticipated opening of Poland’s first nuclear power plant may be postponed by up to seven years, with the new operation date set for 2039-2040, significantly later than previously planned.
BYGRZEGORZ ADAMCZYK 9 May 24 https://rmx.news/article/polish-industry-minister-announces-massive-delay-in-nuclear-power-plant-project/
Polish Industry Minister Marzena Czarnecka stated that the country’s first nuclear power facility is now expected to become operational in 2040, a seven-year delay from initial estimates.
The adjustment comes as a shock following Deputy Minister of Climate and Environment Miłosz Motyka’s earlier suggestion that only a one-year delay was likely in the nuclear plant’s preparation process. However, it has now become evident that the setbacks will be much more severe.
Minister Czarnecka, in an interview with Polish Radio on Tuesday, announced that the first nuclear unit in Poland would commence operations in 2039-2040, criticizing the previous government’s 2033 target as unrealistic. She highlighted what she said was her pragmatic approach, acknowledging that “all investments are subject to certain delays” and marked 2039 as a “breakthrough year” for the Choczewo nuclear plant.
The postponement in the completion of the next major investment after the Central Communication Port (CPK) transport hub has left energy specialists frozen in place. Immediately, voices began to arise that if Poland does not manage to complete the power plant by 2035, an energy disaster awaits the country.
As news of delays in implementing nuclear power in Poland began to heat up in the media and on the web, the minister decided to speak again and clarify what she had said the day before. In response to a publication on Energetyka24.pl, she noted that by mentioning 2039, she was referring to the complete end of construction of the first nuclear power plant. Minister Czarnecka also provided a planned work schedule, which assumes that physical construction will begin in 2028, and the first energy block will be put into operation by 2035. By 2039, the next two blocks are to be connected to the grid.
Recent weeks have also seen rumors of a potential change in location for Poland’s inaugural nuclear facility, which, according to Łukasz Młynarkiewicz, vice-president of Polish Nuclear Power Plants, would not invalidate previous decisions or halt preparatory work at the current site.
However, a relocation could mean additional years of delay. Experts already consider the Polish nuclear energy project to be about two years behind schedule, with every month of delay further widening the gap.
Media reports have also surfaced about requests for re-evaluation of the environmental decision concerning Poland’s first nuclear plant. These requests, submitted to the General Directorate for Environmental Protection (GDOŚ), have come from several environmental organizations and individuals, whose identities remain protected for privacy reasons.
Sam Altman’s nuclear energy company Oklo plunges 54% in New York Stock Exchange debut
Hayden Field, MacKenzie Sigalos, 10 May 24, https://www.cnbc.com/2024/05/10/sam-altman-takes-nuclear-startup-oklo-public-to-power-ai-ambitions.html
KEY POINTS
- Sam Altman, best known as the CEO of OpenAI, is also chairman of a nuclear power company called Oklo, which has just gone public through a special purpose acquisition company.
- Oklo merged with AltC Acquisition Corp., Altman’s SPAC, and is now trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker “OKLO.”
- The company received about $306 million in gross proceeds upon closing the transaction, according to a release.
Sam Altman is now chairman of a public company. But it’s not OpenAI.
On Friday, advanced nuclear fission company Oklo started trading on the New York Stock Exchange. The company, which has yet to generate any revenue, went public through a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) called AltC Acquisition Corp., founded and led by Altman.
Under the ticker symbol “OKLO,” shares plummeted 54% on Friday to $8.45, valuing the company at about $364 million. Oklo received roughly $306 million in gross proceeds in the transaction, according to a release.
Oklo’s business model is based on commercializing nuclear fission, the reaction that fuels all nuclear power plants. Instead of conventional reactors, the company aims to use mini nuclear reactors housed in A-frame structures. Its goal is to sell the energy to end users such as the U.S. Air Force and big tech companies.
Oklo is currently working to build its first small-scale reactor in Idaho, which could eventually power the types of data centers that OpenAI and other artificial intelligence companies need to run their AI models and services.
Altman is co-founder and CEO of OpenAI, which has been valued at over $80 billion by private investors. He’s said that he sees nuclear energy as one of the best ways to solve the problem of growing demand for AI, and the energy that powers the technology, without relying on fossil fuels. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos have also invested in nuclear plants in recent years.
“I don’t see a way for us to get there without nuclear,” Altman told CNBC in 2023. “I mean, maybe we could get there just with solar and storage. But from my vantage point, I feel like this is the most likely and the best way to get there.”
In an interview with CNBC Thursday, Oklo CEO Jacob DeWitte confirmed that the company has yet to generate revenue and has no nuclear plants deployed at the moment. He said the company is targeting 2027 for its first plant to come online.
Going the SPAC route is risky. So-called reverse mergers became popular in the low-interest rate days of 2020 and 2021 when tech valuations were soaring and investors were looking for growth over profit. But the SPAC market collapsed in 2022 alongside rising rates and hasn’t recovered.
AI-related companies, on the other hand, are the new darlings of Wall Street.
“SPACs haven’t exactly had the best performances in the past couple of years, so for us to have sort of the outcome that we’ve had here is obviously a function of the work we put in, but also what we’re building and also the fact that the market sees the opportunity sets here,” said DeWitte, who co-founded the company in 2013. “I think it’s very promising on multiple fronts for [the] nuclear, AI, data center push, as well as the energy transition piece.”
The company has seen its fair share of regulatory setbacks. In 2022, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission denied Oklo’s application for an Idaho reactor. The company has been working on a new application, which it isn’t aiming to submit to the NRC until early next year, DeWitte said, adding that it’s currently in the “pre-application engagement” stage with the commission.
Altman got involved with Oklo while president of the startup incubator Y Combinator. Oklo went into the program in 2014 after an earlier meeting between Altman and DeWitte. In 2015, Altman invested in the company and became chairman.
It’s not Altman’s only foray into nuclear energy or other infrastructure that could power large-scale AI growth.
In 2021, Altman led a $500 million funding round in clean energy firm Helion, which is working to develop and commercialize nuclear fusion. Helion said in a blog post at the time that the capital would go toward its electricity demonstration generator, Polaris, “which we expect to demonstrate net electricity from fusion in 2024.”
Altman didn’t respond to a request for comment.
In recent years, Altman has also poured money into chip endeavors and investments that could help power the AI tools OpenAI builds.
Just before his brief ouster as OpenAI CEO in November, he was reportedly seeking billions of dollars for a chip venture codenamed “Tigris” to eventually compete with Nvidia.
Altman in 2018 invested in AI chip startup Rain Neuromorphics, based near OpenAI’s San Francisco headquarters. The next year, OpenAI signed a letter of intent to spend $51 million on Rain’s chips. In December, the U.S. compelled a Saudi Aramco-backed venture capital firm to sell its shares in Rain.
DeWitte told CNBC that the data center represents “a pretty exciting opportunity.”
“What we’ve seen is there’s a lot of interest with AI, specifically,” he said. “AI compute needs are significant. It opens the door for a lot of different approaches in terms of how people think about designing and developing AI infrastructure.”
Protest And Dissent Can Absolutely Push The Empire To Retreat On Gaza
CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, MAY 10, 2024, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/protest-and-dissent-can-absolutely?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=144490253&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
It is entirely possible for the surging anti-genocide protest movement and its accompanying zeitgeist in the general public to push the empire to retreat on Gaza. The imperial murder machine has many strengths, but it also has weaknesses.
The globe-spanning power structure that is loosely centralized around Washington has invested in perception management more heavily than any other empire in history — that’s what you’re seeing with all the mass media propaganda, Silicon Valley algorithm manipulation, oligarch-funded think tanks, and mainstream culture manufacturing in New York and Hollywood. By using mass-scale psychological manipulation via the most sophisticated perception management system that has ever existed, the US-centralized empire is able to manufacture support for its agendas at home and abroad while dissuading the public from protest and revolution.
If too many people realize that their government is psychopathic and their news media and other indoctrination systems have been lying to them about it all their lives, the empire will lose the ability to propagandize them, because propaganda only works if you don’t know it’s happening to you. If too many people wake up from the propaganda matrix it won’t have any effect any longer, and without their propaganda our rulers cannot rule, because that’s the entire control system upon which their rule is premised
The empire therefore needs to tread very carefully when public opinion starts to turn against it, and retreat whenever public trust in imperial institutions would be compromised too severely for the empire to continue on a given path. It simply cannot afford to wake the public up from the propaganda-induced coma it has spent generations lulling them into.
What this means is that the empire can be pressured into retreat simply by spreading enough awareness and sowing enough opposition to its depraved actions. If enough eyes open to the truth of what’s happening in Gaza, there’s no amount of geostrategic middle east agendas or Israel lobby funding that can outweigh the empire’s existential need to prevent a mass-scale awakening from the mainstream imperial worldview and a transition into widespread revolutionary consciousness. The empire would necessarily need to step back before things reached that point, because its very existence depends on it.
The empire has been walking that line this entire time. Whenever you see it doing things like stepping back from regime change invasions of Cuba or Syria or refraining from going as authoritarian as it could go on a given issue, it isn’t because the empire suddenly evolved a conscience. It’s because it hasn’t yet succeeded in manufacturing public consent for such agendas, and imposing them before the public has been manipulated into accepting them would snap them out of the matrix of psychological control. They work so hard to manufacture public consent because they absolutely need it.
So the empire can be pressured on Gaza and on every other issue if enough people put enough energy into spreading awareness of the truth. That’s why the empire managers are freaking out about this new protest movement right now; they understand the absolutely fundamental role that narrative control plays in the existence of imperial power structures, and how much they stand to lose if it is taken away.
Medvedev says aim of nuclear exercises is to work out response to attacks on Russian soil
MOSCOW, May 11 (Reuters) https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/medvedev-says-aim-nuclear-exercises-is-work-out-response-attacks-russian-soil-2024-05-10/
The aim of nuclear exercises planned by Russia is to work out the response to any attacks on Russian soil which the West has allowed Ukraine to carry out with the weapons it supplies, senior Russian security official Dmitry Medvedev said on Friday.
Medvedev, a former president who is now deputy chairman of Russia’s security council, warned the West that Russia could attack not only Ukraine in response to such attacks.
“Under certain circumstances, the response (to such attacks) will be aimed not only at Kyiv,” Medvedev wrote on the Telegram messaging app. “And not just with conventional explosives, but also with a special kind of arms.”
Russia said on Monday it would practise the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons as part of a military exercise after what Moscow said were threats from France, Britain and the United States.
Medvedev referred in particular to British Foreign Secretary David Cameron’s recent comments about Ukraine being allowed to use British-supplied weapons against targets inside Russia. He used a profanity to describe Cameron. Reporting by Reuters; Editing by Hugh Lawson
Nuclear Energy: The New Geopolitical Battleground
Oil Price, By Haley Zaremba – May 10, 2024,
- Russia’s nuclear energy sector continues to generate significant revenue despite sanctions on its fossil fuels.
- Western nations are increasingly turning to China for nuclear energy supply chains, strengthening China’s economic and geopolitical power.
- This transition is part of a broader trend of China’s growing influence in the global energy landscape.
While the west has had a considerable amount of success imposing energy sanctions on Russia in response to the ongoing war in Ukraine, Russian nuclear sector exports have proven harder to kick. But now, as more western nations get serious about cutting Russia out of their nuclear energy supply chains, they are pushing more and more economic and geopolitical power into the hands of China. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
This is not the first time that nuclear energy has been a ‘geopolitical flashpoint’ between Russia and China. The two economic giants have also been facing off for nuclear dominance in emerging economies, and particularly in sub-Saharan Africa…………………………………………………………………
This potential transition of nuclear energy power and profit toward China is part of a much bigger trend in the global energy landscape…………… https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Nuclear-Power/Nuclear-Energy-The-New-Geopolitical-Battleground.html
Canada: Nuclear Waste Petition Tabled in Parliament
| Ottawa – A petition calling on the Government to provide oversight of a controversial nuclear waste burial project has been tabled in the federal House of Commons, with a response required within 45 calendar days. Created by Northwatch project coordinator Brennain Lloyd and sponsored by Nipissing-Timiskaming MP Anthony Rota, the petition gained the signatures of 3,327 Canadians who joined the call on the federal government to require the Nuclear Waste Management Organization to demonstrate that it has the consent of residents and communities, including First Nations and Treaty Organizations, along the transportation route and in the region of and downstream of the candidate repository site(s) before selecting a site. “Canadians expect a fair and accountable process when it comes to projects of this size, risk and long-term consequence”, said petition organizer Brennain Lloyd, coordinator with Northwatch and an organizer with the Northern Ontario alliance We the Nuclear Free North. |
The NWMO has said repeatedly that they will only proceed with an “informed and willing host”, but the communities along the transportation route are “hosts” to the same risks as the NWMO’s so-called “host communities” of Ignace and South Bruce. By NWMO design, those living downstream and along the transportation route are shut out of the NWMO’s site selection process. The federal government needs to course-correct the NWMO”.
The NWMO has been engaged in a site search since 2010 and since 2020 has been focused on two municipalities as potential “host communities”: the municipality of South Bruce in Southwestern Ontario, and the Township of Ignace in Northwestern Ontario. The Township of Ignace is 43 km east of the NWMO’s candidate site between Ignace and Dryden, and in a different watershed – factors which critics say disqualify it from acting as a “host” community.
The Township of Ignace is using an online poll and interviews by a consultant to gauge the “willingness” of the Ignace residents. The Municipality of South Bruce has released a draft hosting agreement and has committed to a referendum on October 28th but says that if voter turnout is less than 50 % then Council will make the decision.
“We are grateful to the over 3,300 Canadian citizens who signed the Federal petition requesting that the Government of Canada take action and provide much needed direction to the NWMO regarding their site selection process,” commented Bill Noll, Vice-President of Protect Our Waterways – No Nuclear Waste, a citizens group in South Bruce which opposes the NWMO project.
The online petition was posted on a site operated by the Government of Canada and was open for signatures from citizens and residents of Canada until May 3rd. Signatures were then reviewed and certified by a Clerk of the House of Commons on May 6th, and today the petition is being tabled by M.P. Rota. The federal government has 45 days to respond.
| Contact: Brennain Lloyd, Northwatch and We the Nuclear Free Northbrennain@northwatch.org, 705 497 0373 office, 705 493 9650 cell Bill Noll, Protect Our Waterways – No Nuclear Wastewjnoll@yahoo.com, 519 507 9905 cell |
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