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Temperatures 1.5C above pre-industrial era average for 12 months, data show

 The world has baked for 12 consecutive months in temperatures 1.5C (2.7F)
greater than their average before the fossil fuel era, new data shows.
Temperatures between July 2023 and June 2024 were the highest on record,
scientists found, creating a year-long stretch in which the Earth was 1.64C
hotter than in preindustrial times.

The findings do not mean world leaders
have already failed to honour their promises to stop the planet heating
1.5C by the end of the century – a target that is measured in decadal
averages rather than single years – but that scorching heat will have
exposed more people to violent weather.

A sustained rise in temperatures
above this level also increases the risk of uncertain but catastrophic
tipping points. Carlo Buontempo, director of the Copernicus Climate Change
Service, which analysed the data, said the results were not a statistical
oddity but a “large and continuing shift” in the climate.

 Guardian 8th July 2024

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/jul/08/temperatures-1-point-5c-above-pre-industrial-era-average-for-12-months-data-shows

July 10, 2024 Posted by | climate change | Leave a comment

“Nuked” on Aukus ‘fiasco’ says decision to embrace pact will ‘haunt’ Australia’sLabor for years

“undermines any argument that the new submarines – whether nuclear or not – would be used primarily to defend Australia or to protect the nation’s shipping lanes”.

“at least one new cabinet minister wondered if it was possible to stop Aukus, but the suggestion went no further”.

Fowler said he did not believe there had been adequate public debate in Australia about the merits of Aukus,

Andrew Fowler’s book reveals one of Australia’s most important requirements for its submarines was the ability to work alongside the US in South China Sea

Daniel Hurst , 7 July 24,  https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jul/07/book-on-aukus-fiasco-says-decision-to-embrace-pact-will-haunt-labor-for-years

One of Australia’s most important requirements for its new submarines is the ability to work alongside the United States in the South China Sea, a new book discloses.

The book by Andrew Fowler, a former investigative journalist for the ABC’s Four Corners and Foreign Correspondent programs, also predicts that Labor’s rush to embrace the Aukus pact “will haunt them for years to come”.

Fowler examines the Morrison government’s cancellation of the French submarine contract and its pursuit of a nuclear-powered alternative in the book Nuked: The Submarine Fiasco that Sank Australia’s Sovereignty.

The book makes the case that Aukus is a “deeply flawed” scheme that, when combined with a parallel effort to deepen military integration with the US, effectively ties Australia’s future “to whoever is in the White House”.

It includes an interview with David Gould, a former UK undersecretary for defence, who was headhunted by the then Gillard Labor government in 2012 as a consultant on a replacement for Australia’s ageing Collins-class submarines.

“As we sat talking, Gould revealed for the first time what has long been suspected: one of the submarine’s most important requirements would be to work with the Americans in the South China Sea,” Fowler writes.

“He explained that the submarine would need ‘to get through the archipelago to the north of Australia and into the South China Sea and operate in the South China Sea for a reasonable period of time and then come back again, without docking, or refuelling or anything. That’s what it needs to do.’”

The book quotes Gould as saying that the submarine would work alongside the US and Japan in an “integrated system”, which had become “even more pertinent with China”.

Fowler writes that the statement “undermines any argument that the new submarines – whether nuclear or not – would be used primarily to defend Australia or to protect the nation’s shipping lanes”.

Fowler contends that the focus is “to contain China and threaten its trade routes and food and energy supplies in a crisis”.

The Australian government has repeatedly said that its strategic motivation for acquiring nuclear-powered submarines is to “contribute to the collective security of our region” and maintain the global rules-based order.

The Labor defence minister, Richard Marles, has argued that the defence of Australia “doesn’t mean that much unless we have the collective security of our region” and that the nuclear-powered submarines would put a “question mark in any adversary’s mind”.

Fowler contends that the focus is “to contain China and threaten its trade routes and food and energy supplies in a crisis”.

The Australian government has repeatedly said that its strategic motivation for acquiring nuclear-powered submarines is to “contribute to the collective security of our region” and maintain the global rules-based order.

The Labor defence minister, Richard Marles, has argued that the defence of Australia “doesn’t mean that much unless we have the collective security of our region” and that the nuclear-powered submarines would put a “question mark in any adversary’s mind”.

The book reveals that after Labor won the 2022 election, “at least one new cabinet minister wondered if it was possible to stop Aukus, but the suggestion went no further”.

In an interview with Guardian Australia, Fowler said he began researching the book after becoming fascinated with “the overuse of executive power of government in the Morrison government, particularly the exposure of his five secret ministries”.

“I thought that the arrival of a $368bn secret deal that was done and then sprung on the public and the opposition party at the last moment would require an investigation,” he said.

Fowler said he did not believe there had been adequate public debate in Australia about the merits of Aukus, the security partnership with the US and the UK that involves the nuclear-powered submarine project but also collaboration on other advanced defence technologies.

“I think we debate the dollar-and-dime arguments, as the Americans might say, but we don’t debate the really big issues,” Fowler said.

“I don’t give advice to government but I think the Australian people have a right to know what the submarines are being bought for. They’re being bought to run with the Americans and Japan to contain the rise of China.”

Fowler said the then Labor opposition was put “in a diabolical position” when forced by Scott Morrison to make a quick decision on whether to support Aukus in 2021.

“This was a calculated attempt to wedge Labor on this issue and Labor only had 24 hours to make a decision,” he said. “It was obscene and absurd, and yet they made the decision fearing that if they opposed it they would be accused of being anti-American and weak on national security.

“I do understand why they went with it, but I think they also had some time to do some backtracking.”

Fowler called for an inquiry focused on “a failure of due process” in the cancellation of the French contract and the decision to pursue the Aukus arrangement, which officials admitted during Senate estimates hearings had not gone through the normal two-gate process for defence acquisitions.

Instead, the Morrison government announced Australia, the US and the UK would carry out an 18-month joint study to work out how to deliver the project. That led to the Albanese government’s March 2023 announcement of more detailed plans.

The book argues the French submarines would have given Australia “greater independence”, noting the president, Emmanuel Macron, had described Australia, India and France as being at the heart of a “new Indo-Pacific alliance and axis”.

The book says this “more independent thinking” caused “consternation in Washington”.

July 10, 2024 Posted by | AUSTRALIA, media, politics international | Leave a comment

New nuclear is ‘too expensive’ for UK zero-carbon energy target.

Chairman of the Energy Transitions Commission says hydrogen or gas power
with carbon capture and storage could help to keep the lights on. New
nuclear power stations may not be needed for Britain to hit targets for net
zero because there are cheaper, low-carbon alternatives that could back up
intermittent renewable power, the head of a leading think tank has claimed.

Lord Turner of Ecchinswell, chairman of the Energy Transitions Commission,
said that while it was important to keep existing nuclear power stations
running for as long as possible, hydrogen fuel or gas power stations that
had been fitted with carbon capture and storage technology could fill the
gap when wind or solar generation was not enough to keep the lights on.

“I don’t think it is the case that you need new nuclear to balance the
system. The systems of the future don’t absolutely need a base load,”
he said. Turner, the former head of the Financial Services Authority and a
former director-general of the CBI, said future power sources “can work
on a combination of intermittent variable renewables, wind and solar plus
some hydro.

“I think the challenge for new nuclear is that it is just
expensive. Bluntly, new nuclear can play very little role in a 2030
target,” Turner said, referring to the new government’s target to
decarbonise the energy system by the end of the decade.

 Times 8th July 2024

https://www.thetimes.com/business-money/companies/article/new-nuclear-is-too-expensive-for-uk-zero-carbon-energy-target-37x7wnnm8

July 10, 2024 Posted by | business and costs | Leave a comment

German Parliamentarian in Washington Says No to NATO – Yes to Peace

Peace Instead of NATO

Speech by Sevim Dagdelen, Member of the German Bundestag at
„No to NATO – Yes to Peace“-rally in Washington DC on July 7th 2024.

As NATO marks its 75th anniversary on the eve of its Washington summit, three of its great myths are unravelling.

First myth: That NATO is a defensive alliance abiding by international law.

In reality, over the last quarter century, NATO has waged unprovoked, illegal wars of aggression against Yugoslavia and Libya; and the United States, the leader of the alliance, invaded and occupied Iraq, in a catastrophic adventure – to name three notorious examples.

Second myth: That NATO stands for democracy and the rule of law.

The reality is that NATO has never had a problem with counting military dictatorships or fascist regimes among its members. Portugal, one of NATO’s founding members, murdered thousands of Africans in its colonial wars and tortured hundreds to death in concentration camps. That was never a problem for this particular collective of shared values, just as Erdoğan’s Türkiye, with its support for jihadists terrorist groups in Syria, poses no particular ethical problem for it today.

Third myth: That NATO is a community of shared values and stands for human rights.

In reality the wars conducted by the United States and its Allies over the last 20 years alone have killed four and a half million people, as calculated by researchers at the esteemed Brown University. The torture and detention camp at Guantánamo Bay Naval Base is still in operation to this day. The journalist Julian Assange was tormented nearly to death for 14 years because he had published evidence of US war crimes. Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government continues to receive American and European support in the form of arms deliveries for its onslaught against Gaza, which cannot credibly be justified by recourse to the right of self-defense.

If you want to know what character NATO has, you only have to look at how NATO Stoltenberg torpedoes every initiative for peace in Brussels, and also do Washington and Berlin. The plan is escalation nor negotiations for peace! We say: We need to Stop the killings in Ukraine. Ceasefire now!

And we also say: we need to stop the killings in Gaza! Ceasefire now!

What is the role of Germany in this ongoing war in Gaza?

In fact, Germany is the second most important arms supplier for Israel after the USA. From 2019 to 2023, 30 percent of weapons came from Germany. In 2023, the figure was 47 percent while the USA supplied 53 percent. I think that is irresponsible and a shame to send weapons to an ongoing war.

The majority of the German population now no longer wishes to follow Berlin in its mindless escalation, and it likewise stands opposed to granting Ukraine NATO membership, and to funnelling endless sums of money to the corrupt, undemocratic regime in Kyiv.

It is completely irresponsible and insane to hold on to Ukraine’s NATO membership. A majority in Germany rejects this accession. 55 percent in the whole of Germany and 70 percent in eastern Germany reject it. Our governments are doing politics against the majority of the population.

It is an embarrassment and a travesty that the current German Government, like no other before it, carries out Washington’s commands at a moment’s notice, repeatedly, continuously – and shamefully, with its belligerence – puts at grave risk the well-being of the people who elected it.

We need peace instead of NATO.

We need, at long last, to stand up for democratic and popular sovereignty, and to reject the indignity of being a vassal to Washington, which is just about all we’ve gotten from the ruling coalition in Berlin.

Global NATO: Expansion and Escalation

Keynote speech by Sevim Dagdelen, Member of the German Bundestag at
„No to Nato – Yes to Peace“-Summit in Washington DC July 6th 2024

Just in time for its 75th anniversary, NATO has dropped its mask. And the NATO summit in Washington is one particularly illuminating moment in this revelation. The history of the Enlightenment teaches us never to accept a person’s or an organization’s self-image at face value. So do the early sources of Enlightenment ideas in ancient Greece. The Greeks already possessed that insight. Inscribed above the Temple of Apollo was the maxim: Know thyself.

……………………..For NATO, denial of its true nature is part of the essence of the organization. Or to put it another way, an almost meditative immersion in its own self-image is part of the essence of the military alliance. It is all the more astonishing, then, that Western media are so often content to reflect a thousand iterations of this self-image back to the public, without question and without pausing to consider whether the image adequately represents reality.

In fact, 75 years of NATO is equivalent to 75 years of denial, albeit with a dramatic expansion of scale and scope in recent years.

This is so in part because the three great myths of NATO are now fading……………………………………………………………………………

I am thrilled to be able to say finally that Julian Assange is now a free man. And Julian is undefeated.

The international campaign for Assange, all of the confidential talks and the like, were in the end successful. But we must also realize that the fight for Julian Assange’s freedom was also part of the struggle for freedom as such. And this struggle continues to rage here at the very heart of the NATO system.

Given the density of the propaganda, how tireless it operates in celebration of the NATO mythology, day in and day out, it is almost a miracle that not only is support for NATO crumbling worldwide, but that it is precisely those most exposed to its propaganda who are increasingly skeptical of the military pact………………………………………………………………

 NATO is itself causing this crisis, and people sense that.

While its defenders speak of the alliance as if it were eternal, the organization’s drive toward escalation in Ukraine and its expansion into Asia is exceeding the Alliance’s own capacities. Just as with most empires, NATO is falling into a self-made trap of overextension. In this regard, NATO is a political fossil, unprepared to learn from the defeat of the German Empire in the First World War and appears to be repeating the gross miscalculations of the Kaiser’s Germany, only on a global scale.

The German Empire believed it could wage a war on two fronts. Today, a similar conviction is gaining traction within NATO that it must not only confront Russia and China, but that it is also to involve itself in the Middle East. This is a claim to global hegemony now under formulation. What hubris!

NATO evidently sees itself waging a war on three fronts. But if it were to do this, its defeat would be certain right from the start…………………………………………….

The NATO-Ukraine Council is next on the agenda. It is to discuss how the lavish financial transfers and pledges from NATO to Ukraine can be augmented, with an increase in arms deliveries and eventual NATO membership for Ukraine. Third, there will be a session with the AP4, or Asia-Pacific partners – Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea – and a meeting with the leaders of the EU.

Seventy-five years after it was founded, NATO is to push for stepped-up belligerence in Ukraine and expansion into Asia. The intention is to advance the NATO-ization of Asia, and to put the strategy it believes it has already deployed successfully against Russia in place there.

For the moment, the primary focus in the Pacific is not on direct NATO accession for Asian countries, but rather on the expansion of NATO’s sphere of influence via bilateral security agreements – and not only with the AP4, but also with the Philippines, Taiwan and Singapore.

Just as Ukraine was erected as a frontline state against Russia, NATO is hoping to transform Asian countries like the Philippines into challenger states vis-à-vis China. The initial aim is to engage in a cold proxy war, but at the same time to prepare for a hot US and NATO proxy war in Asia……………………………………………………..

As already mentioned, public support for a NATO committed to escalation and expansion is crumbling in the West. In Germany, 55% of people reject Ukraine’s accession to NATO. The majority opposes supplying arms to Ukraine and desires an immediate ceasefire. In the United States, financial aid to Ukraine, USD 200 billion so far, has become extremely unpopular. Growing numbers of people want a stop on the flow of money to a system in Kyiv which is not only corrupt but honors a far-right state cult around the Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera.

NATO’s myths are losing their luster. The Alliance’s strategies are succumbing to their own imperial overextension. What we need now is an immediate end to arms deliveries to Ukraine and, at long last, a ceasefire there. Those who seek peace and security for their own populations must halt the aggressive policy of expansion into Asia…… more https://worldbeyondwar.org/german-parliamentarian-in-washington-says-no-to-nato-yes-to-peace/

July 9, 2024 Posted by | politics international | Leave a comment

Medea Benjamin DISMANTLES Biden NATO Reelect Pitch

https://youtube.com/watch?v=sJDvmAWcuUI%3Fsi%3DTt-gZxM6PWLnc4EH

July 9, 2024 Posted by | politics international | Leave a comment

US bases in Europe on high alert for possible terrorist attack: DOD

Bradford Betz , Lucas Y. Tomlinson, Fox News, Sun, 30 Jun 2024  https://www.sott.net/article/492907-US-bases-in-Europe-on-high-alert-for-possible-terrorist-attack-DOD

U.S. military bases throughout Europe have been put on heightened alert status due to a potential terrorist attack, Fox News Digital has confirmed.

FILE – Sign in front of Ramstein Air Base, Germany.“There is credible intel pointing to an attack against U.S. bases over the next week or so,” a U.S. defense official told Fox News’ Lucas Tomlinson.

The official, who declined to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the media, did not elaborate on the nature of the threat, but confirmed it was not tied to the French elections.

ISIS remains global threat a decade after declaring caliphate, US military official says

The official said all U.S. military bases in Europe have been placed on high alert, not a lock-down.

The U.S. bases have raised the status of the alert level to, “Force Protection Charlie,” which means the Pentagon has received credible intelligence indicating some form of a terrorist attack is in the works.

The new alert applies to all U.S. military facilities and personnel in Europe, including facilities in Germany, Italy, Romanian and Bulgaria, per reporting from Stars and Stripes.

July 9, 2024 Posted by | EUROPE, safety | Leave a comment

The Lancet study estimates death toll in Gaza 186,000 or even more

Maktoob Staff, 8 July 24,  https://maktoobmedia.com/gaza-genocide/the-lancet-study-estimates-death-toll-in-gaza-186000-or-even-more/

Applying a conservative estimate of four indirect deaths per one direct death reported in Gaza, a new study published respected medical journal The Lancet said it is “not implausible” to estimate that up to 186,000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the genocidal war in  Gaza.

The paper titled ‘Counting the dead in  Gaza: difficult but essential’, published on 05 July, stated that using the 2022 Gaza Strip population estimate of 2,375,259, the estimated death toll would translate to 7·9% of the total population in the besieged enclave.

On Sunday, the Palestinian health ministry said that at least 38,153 Palestinians have been killed by Israel in Gaza since October 07 while more than 87,828 have been wounded in the besieged enclave. 15,983 of them are children.

The study by Rasha Khatib, Martin McKee and Salim Yusuf, used the data from June 19, with the official death toll of 37, 396. The official record maintained by the  Gaza Health Ministry doesn’t include over 10,000 people missing or buried under the rubbles.

“The Ministry has had to augment its usual reporting, based on people dying in its hospitals or brought in dead, with information from reliable media sources and first responders. This change has inevitably degraded the detailed data recorded previously. Consequently, the  Gaza Health Ministry now reports separately the number of unidentified bodies among the total death toll. As of May 10, 2024, 30% of the 35,091 deaths were unidentified,” observed the paper.

It also pointed out that armed conflicts have “indirect health implications beyond the direct harm from violence”.

“Even if the conflict ends immediately, there will continue to be many indirect deaths in the coming months and years from causes such as reproductive, communicable, and non-communicable diseases,” the paper read.

A report from Feb 7, 2024, at the time when the direct death toll was 28,000, estimated that without a ceasefire there would be between 58260 deaths (without an epidemic or escalation) and 85750 deaths (if both occurred) by Aug 6, 2024.

The interim measures set out by the International Court of Justice in January, require Israel to “take effective measures to prevent the destruction and ensure the preservation of evidence related to allegations of acts within the scope of … the Genocide Convention”.

“An immediate and urgent ceasefire in the  Gaza Strip is essential, accompanied by measures to enable the distribution of medical supplies, food, clean water, and other resources for basic human needs,” the paper read.

July 9, 2024 Posted by | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel | Leave a comment

Gaza deal must allow Israel to keep fighting – Netanyahu

 https://www.sott.net/article/492916-Gaza-deal-must-allow-Israel-to-keep-fighting-Netanyahu 8 July 24

The Israeli prime minister’s statement comes after Hamas accepted a key part of a ceasefire proposal

Any potential ceasefire deal in Gaza must allow Israel to resume fighting until all of its war objectives are met, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday. One of the main goals repeatedly voiced by the PM is the complete elimination of the Hamas militant group.

Netanyahu’s statement comes after Hamas approved a US proposal for a phased ceasefire deal, dropping a key demand for Israel to first commit to a permanent ceasefire before signing the deal, according to a Reuters source.

Hamas expects to end hostilities through talks during the first six-week phase of the deal aimed at settling the conflict in Gaza, the outlet said.

However, the Palestinian militant group wants written guarantees from international mediators that Israel will continue to negotiate a permanent ceasefire when the first phase of the deal comes into effect. The hostage issue will also be addressed after the first phase is implemented.

Hamas officials have said they are awaiting Israel’s response to the latest proposal. Netanyahu insisted on Sunday, however, that any deal must “allow Israel to go back to fighting until all the goals of the war are achieved.”

According to media reports, Netanyahu was scheduled to hold consultations on the next steps, but his latest statement has hindered the deal’s momentum.

“The plan that has been agreed-to by Israel and which has been welcomed by President Biden will allow Israel to return hostages without infringing on the other objectives of the war,” Netanyahu insisted.

Talks mediated by Qatar, Egypt and the US have so far failed to secure a truce in Gaza or the release of hostages since a weeklong ceasefire in November resulting in the freeing of 105 hostages from Gaza and 240 Palestinian prisoners.

Israel began its operation in Gaza in response to a cross-border incursion by Hamas last October in which at least 1,200 people were killed and 250 taken hostage. Some 116 captives are believed to be still held in Gaza.

Over 38,000 people have been killed so far and more than 87,000 others have been wounded in Israeli attacks on the Palestinian enclave, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

Comment: What kind of ceasefire is this if it must “allow Israel to go back to fighting until all the goals of the war are achieved.”?!
See also: Best of the Web: The Lancet study estimates death toll in Gaza 186,000 or even more and the reflections in SOTT Focus: The Burqa Ban Question

July 9, 2024 Posted by | Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

With global race to decarbonize electricity sector, demand for skilled nuclear workers heats up.

 COMMENT. Most (or all?) of the funds available to these companies to hire “skilled workers” is coming directly from the public (taxpayers) through direct subsidies, contracts or tax refunds. For example, the story mentions that AtkinsRéalis is one of the top hiring firms. A few weeks back was another story stating that the AtkinsRéalis nuclear division got a $750M contract for work on a CANDU reactor in Romania. A few months before that was another story that Canada had signed a $3 BILLION “export development deal” with Romania (i.e. a gift) to build its CANDU reactor, and that most of the funds would be spent on Canadian jobs. This all comes back to the nuclear industry’s current core problem: its products (new nuclear reactors) are hulking dinosaurs that suck up funds at an alarming rate and no private investor doing due diligence wants to be part of this costly scheme.

Globe and Mail, MATTHEW MCCLEARN, 8 July 24

Last month, U.S.-based nuclear reactor vendor Westinghouse opened a 13,000-square-foot engineering office in Kitchener, Ont. The company wants to sell its products, including its flagship AP1000 reactor, in Canada while also serving international customers.

Having hired most of its 250 Canadian staff in the last three years, it now seeks to hire 100 more engineers. It’s recruiting at a moment when, after a decades-long lull, skilled nuclear workers find themselves in high demand.

China and Russia have long dominated construction activity, while Western countries stagnated; Canada’s newest power reactor was completed in the early 1990s. But efforts to decarbonize the electricity sector have coalesced into support for designing and building new reactors, even as aging facilities are overhauled – leading to a proliferation of announced nuclear projects.

Whether there’s enough engineering talent to execute them all, however, is a question vigorously debated within the nuclear industry, here and abroad.

According to a survey the Canadian Nuclear Association conducted five years ago, the industry directly employs 33,000 people – up from 30,000 in 2012. Large employers include Ontario Power Generation and Bruce Power, which operate large nuclear plants, as well as uranium mining giant Cameco Corp. and Canadian Nuclear Laboratories, which operates the Chalk River research facility.

That survey is now being updated, and while results have not been finalized, employment appears to have grown another 10 to 15 per cent during the past five years. But the sheer volume of announced projects implies more rapid growth.

OPG recently began early work to refurbish four reactors at its Pickering station. The eight-reactor Bruce station, already one of the world’s largest, is in the early stages of a planned expansion that could add four new large reactors.

AtkinsRéalis, steward of Canada’s homegrown Candu technology, is racing to develop a modernized 1,000-megawatt reactor it calls the Monark. It’s among the most active hirers on Nuclear Jobs Canada, an industry job board.

Canadian Nuclear Laboratories is hiring at its Chalk River facilities, a Second World War-era facility that has been extensively modernized in recent years. It’s looking to populate its new laboratories and replace retiring workers.

“Nuclear was a little bit quiet for a while, and now it’s coming back,” said Janet Tosh, CNL’s vice-president of human resources.

“So we are having to build up that talent pipeline. But it’s not just science and technology people we’re looking for. We’re looking for technicians, machinists, certified trade workers.”

And then there’s relative newcomers to Canada, such as Westinghouse. Another U.S.-based reactor vendor, GE-Hitachi Nuclear Energy, has partnered with OPG to build up to four small modular reactors at Darlington station.

The picture is similar in other Western countries, including the U.S. and Britain, both of which have seen limited reactor construction for decades. Reports abound that nuclear employers, desperate for talent, have lured long-retired professionals back into the work force.

Last year, the U.S. National Academy of Engineering published a 250-page report examining the potential barriers to a major build-out of new “advanced” reactors. It identifies labour availability as a key constraint.

“Utilities have generally not retained the talent on their staff to execute these large projects given the limited deployment of nuclear technology in the past 30 years in the United States,” the report says.

“This shortfall in talent could become equally limiting across the supply chain, operations, and regulatory organizations that must support any large-scale growth in nuclear deployment.”

Akira Tokuhiro, a professor at Ontario Tech University, which has one of the largest nuclear engineering programs in North America, has noticed major nuclear employers pledging to hire hundreds of workers apiece on LinkedIn.

“And I thought, how can that be?” he recalled during an interview. “Because we’re producing 50 graduates a year.”

Prof. Tokuhiro added up the output from other programs across the continent, and determined that fewer than 1,000 people graduate with a degree in radiation science or nuclear engineering in North America. (He figures that for every such graduate, nuclear employers hire 10 times as many mechanical, chemical and other engineers who’ve not studied nuclear directly.)

He compares that against likely retirement rates for workers at major nuclear employers, as well as the many announced nuclear projects.

“We don’t have enough new graduates,” Prof. Tokuhiro concluded. “There’s a disconnect between what the industry needs, and what the universities are producing.”

Luca Oriani, Westinghouse’s global chief engineering services officer, disagrees. The reactor vendor almost exclusively hires graduates with little or no industry experience, he said, and then trains and retains them as long as possible, typically decades. The company has found the supply of engineering talent abundant, in Canada and elsewhere.

That’s not to say competition isn’t fierce. Westinghouse used to visit campuses a week ahead of job fairs for coming graduates to recruit before they met with competitors; now it’s offering them jobs as early as a year before graduation.

“I have over 2,000 engineers working for me,” Mr. Oriani said. “I still spend at least a week month just going to different universities and discussing with students, and trying to see how do we get them to come to us before they go somewhere else.”

In an interview earlier this year, OPG chief executive officer Ken Hartwick divided the industry’s labour into two groups: engineering and project management on one side; and trades, such as boilermakers and electricians, on the other. Availability of the first group, he said, has not been a problem, an aging work force notwithstanding.

“I’m less worried about the older person losing some of the experience, because the younger people coming through our universities are brilliant,” Mr. Hartwick said.

Tradespeople were another matter. OPG competes for them not just with other nuclear utilities such as Bruce Power, but with many other construction projects, including hospitals and roads.

“Can we ramp up our trades programs fast enough? That’s the biggest challenge.”

Some in Canada’s nuclear industry say talent isn’t as scarce here as it is in the U.S. and Britain, thanks to major multi-reactor reactor refurbishments at Ontario’s Darlington and Bruce stations over the past decade. They’re major capital projects in their own right, requiring significant manpower to execute.

That’s kept a lot of building trades very engaged, and it’s kept the regular work force [of utilities] engaged,” said Bob Walker, national director of the Canadian Nuclear Workers’ Council, an umbrella organization of nuclear sector unions.

He confirmed that retirees are re-entering the work force, but added that most nuclear employers offer generous pension plans, allowing workers to retire relatively early.

“That’s been a running joke for as long as I can remember: No one ever retires, they just change positions,” Mr. Walker said. “The industry plans on people coming back, and people plan on retiring and coming back.”……………….. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-after-decades-of-dormancy-competition-for-nuclear-engineering-talent/

July 9, 2024 Posted by | Canada, employment | Leave a comment

Masoud Pezeshkian: Iranian reformer who wants to end Tehran’s nuclear stand-off

Heart surgeon turned president pledges reform of system millions of his compatriots believe cannot be changed

Ft.com Najmeh Bozorgmehr in Tehran, 7 July 24

Only four months ago it was unclear whether reformist Masoud Pezeshkian would even be allowed to run for Iran’s parliament: hardliners controlled all the centres of power, with other factions consigned to the political wilderness.

But now Pezeshkian is set to become the Islamic republic’s first reformist president in two decades, after pulling off an unexpected victory in Friday’s election run-off. The 69-year-old defeated his hardliner rival, Saeed Jalili, with promises of change to Tehran’s domestic and foreign policies.

Pezeshkian’s electoral success has rejuvenated the marginalised reformist camp, which was initially amazed that the leadership approved his candidacy following a string of elections in which other reformers were barred………………………………………………….

During the campaign, Pezeshkian vowed to re-engage with the US and European states to negotiate an end to Iran’s nuclear stand-off with the west, and to secure sanctions relief to help the economy……………………………………………..

As president, his ability to push through change will depend heavily on his relations with Khamenei, analysts said, as Pezeshkian is expected to encounter stiff resistance from hardliners elsewhere…………………………………… more https://www.ft.com/content/5e7e80b3-4b46-4cce-a762-c95705201753

July 9, 2024 Posted by | Iran, politics | Leave a comment

Biden: ‘I’m Running the World’.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=k8LoAsHz-Mc%3Fsi%3Dd_67yPu5ZYbmCpVm

July 6, 2024

The comment by the sitting U.S. president in Friday’s interview has been ignored by the mainstream, but its megalomania is at the heart of why Joe Biden is defying his party and remaining in the race, writes Joe Lauria.

By Joe Lauria
Special to Consortium News

About midway through what was billed as the most consequential interview of Joe Biden’s political career, he uttered the most consequential words in the interview: “I am running the world.”

Those five words explain why he refuses to withdraw from the race and confirm what most Americans deny, but which most of the world knows: U.S. presidents act as if they were world emperors. 

The interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos was supposed to be Biden’s chance to show the country he is mentally fit to remain in the presidency and run for a second term  ………………………………………………………………….

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: Look. I have a cognitive test every single day. Every day I have that test. Everything I do. You know, not only am I campaigning, but I’m running the world. Not– and that’s not hi– sounds like hyperbole, but we are the essential nation of the world..

July 9, 2024 Posted by | politics, USA | 1 Comment

The overblown hype of the nuclear “bros”

The overblown hype of the nuclear “bros”

July 9, 2024 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Nuclear and associated news -week to 8th July

Some bits of good news.  Conservation and economic development go hand in hand, more often than expected.  Peru has protected 6,449 hectares of an endemic fog oasis that hosts hundreds of rare and threatened species.

TOP STORIES 

Trump has a strategic plan for the country: Gearing up for nuclear war. 

How do you convince someone to live next to a nuclear waste site? 

Nuclear power would put our energy security into Russian hands– ALSO AT https://nuclear-news.net/2024/07/05/1-a-nuclear-power-would-put-our-energy-security-into-russian-hands/ 

Climate. Climate hazards impact more than four-fifths of cities worldwide, study finds. How record-breaking Hurricane Beryl is a sign of a warming world.

Noel’s notes. Australia further in the grip of the USA, with the Amazon data spy hub – paid for by Aussie tax-payers. The world must stop creating nuclear garbage.

AUSTRALIA. Australians being kept in the dark about Pine Gap expansion. Australia to build ‘top-secret’ cloud for intelligence agencies in $2bn deal with Amazon.    Political Mastermind: a toxic waste of everyone’s time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4HGJ42c2Kg    With its nuclear energy policy, Peter Dutton seems to have forgotten the Liberal Party’s core beliefs. See more Australian news at Australian nuclear news headlines this week.  

NUCLEAR ISSUES

ATROCITIES. Israel Has Forcibly Displaced 1.9 Million Palestinians in Gaza.CLIMATE. Can the climate survive the insatiable energy demands of the AI arms race?ECONOMICS. French nuclear giant scraps SMR plans due to soaring costs, will start over. EDF’s Nuward U-turn shows risk of betting on Small Nuclear Reactors – analysts.
Labour must act fast to fire up Rolls-Royce nuclear reactor deals.Too uncertain, too slow: funds rule out financing Australia’s Dutton nuclear plan.
EMPLOYMENT. Talent Shortage Threatens Europe’s Nuclear Renaissance.EVENTS. 10 July Rally to oppose nuclear mega-dump and support Kebaowek First Nation – at noon in Ottawa  https://www.stopnuclearwaste.com/LEGAL. Why Julian Assange couldn’t outrun the Espionage Act.MEDIA. Book. Nuclear is Not the Solution. The Folly of Atomic Power in the Age of Climate Change.

POLITICS.

POLITICS INTERNATIONAL and DIPLOMACY.Europe is Quietly Debating a Nuclear Future Without the US.Trusting the ‘Five Eyes’ OnlyUkraine to be warned it’s ‘too corrupt’ for NATO .What does Iran’s Nuclear Policy look like with the new president?SAFETY. Russia might restart the Zaporizhzhia Ukrainian nuclear plant it seized.SECRETS and LIES. Former New Brunswick energy minister joins nuclear industry after resigning in June.
Australian Opposition leader Dutton’s claim about G20 nuclear energy use doesn’t add up.
SPINBUSTER. The nuclear and renewable myths that mainstream media can’t be bothered challenging.
The overblown hype of the nuclear “bros”.		TECHNOLOGY.The commissioning of the Flamanville EPR, nuclear reactor is proving difficult.Unable to effectively operate its lone existing nuclear reactor, New Brunswick is betting on advanced options ALSO AT https://nuclear-news.net/2024/07/04/1-b1-unable-to-effectively-operate-its-lone-existing-nuclear-reactor-new-brunswick-is-betting-on-advanced-options/World’s Largest Nuclear Fusion Reactor Delayed . ITER nuclear fusion reactor hit by massive decade-long delay and €5bn price hike. Fusion power could transform how we get our energy — and worsen problems it’s intended to solve.Constellation Energy plans restart of Three Mile Island nuclear plant.
WAR and CONFLICT. Ukrainian drones injure Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant workers, say Russian-backed officials.Tensions with Iran spotlight Israel’s hidden nuclear arsenal.The obsolescence of war.WEAPONS and WEAPONS SALES.You Don’t Want to Live in America’s ‘Nuclear Sponge’ .NATO Members Agree To Give Ukraine $43 Billion in Military Aid for 2025. US announces more than $2 billion package for Ukraine.US nuclear missile program costs soar to around $160 billion, sources say. Trump allies are peddling a catastrophic idea for U.S. nuclear weapon policy.Philippines Says US Will Pull Out Controversial Mid-Range Missile System.

July 8, 2024 Posted by | Christina's notes | Leave a comment

The Atlas Network and the Council for National Policy: America’s global revolution

Atlas has tended to function to create neoliberal conditions in America and across the globe: the purpose of this was to erase every obstacle to American corporations’ profit and growth.

The Atlas project, like that of its Mont Pelerin Society inner sanctum, has never been invested in democracy, which leading members saw as a threat to business interests. Democracy was a risk to be controlled or eliminated, not an aspirational form of government.

the movement that drives Atlas emerges out of the Cold War battle by business that asserts any social wage is a slippery slope to totalitarianism.

July 8, 2024,  Lucy Hamilton,  https://theaimn.com/the-atlas-network-and-the-council-for-national-policy-americas-global-revolution/

Twice in a fortnight, the president of the Heritage Foundation has declared that America is experiencing its second revolution. The revolution would remain bloodless (because their side is “winning”) “if the left allows it to be.” The two bodies whose acts provoked the announcements are leading Atlas Network partners; they are, furthermore, listed on the Council for National Policy (CNP) rolls. The two junktanks – and their partner organisations – are also spending millions of dollars in Europe to roll back rights for women and LGBTQIA people. The revolution is transnational. It is working to destroy rights and democratic projects around the world. The relentless pursuit of profit and the determination to impose virtue on an unruly world are united in authoritarian intent.

The Revolution

Both Heritage’s president Kevin Roberts’ announcements were made on Steve Bannon’s War Room broadcast, central to the Trumpist movement and its efforts to remake America from every school board and electoral precinct upwards.

The first announcement of revolution was made on the 22nd June. It functioned as an advertisement for the MAGA audience to take part. Becoming a revolutionary involves undertaking Project 2025’s recruitment and training of loyalists to staff the incoming Trump administration, but also at state and local government levels. Roberts declared they were building not just for 2025, but for the next century in the United States.

Project 2025 is the most recent iteration of Heritage’s Mandate for Leadership. The first was written for Ronald Reagan, spelling out his massive reforms. He implemented two thirds in his first term. The last iteration for Donald Trump’s first term was similarly “business Republican” in tone, and Trump too implemented two thirds in his first year. The newest iteration is, as Roberts describes, revolutionary. It dictates the process for the dismantling most of the federal government as well as setting America on track to eliminate reproductive and Queer rights. 

It also sets out the intention to dismantle the vital energy transition work underway as a result of the Inflation Reduction Act, with plans to boost fossil fuel production instead. This is fitting as much of Heritage’s funding comes from fossil fuel sources. This is true for the Atlas Network generally, although it has tobacco and other unpopular corporate sectors as donors.

Project 2025 is a joint Atlas Network and CNP project.

The second announcement of revolution was made after the Supreme Court’s dramatic week of judgements. In particular, the one that granted the President of the United States immunity for the vaguely worded field of “official acts.” Naturally the partisan court will make the determination which acts are “official.”

The week also compounded the Trumpist Supreme Court’s norm-violating series of decisions that have rolled back reproductive healthcare access for women across Republican states, further damaged voters’ representation, and frozen programs that aim to address entrenched disadvantage.

As a footnote, the same week revealed a decision that said regions could make it illegal to be homeless. This can provide numbers for private prison operator profits. There prisoners are hired out to businesses for near slave-labour wages.

No matter who wins the election in November, the radical right majority on the court can now prevent action their faction rejects: they have created an imperial juristocracy.

All these decisions have resulted from the years of work by the Federalist Society which handed Trump his literal list from which to choose judges. Republicans had stalled appointments to federal benches over the Obama era, granting Trump the gift of over one hundred appointments; some appointees were considered scandalous. 

The years of surreptitious work by the Federalist Society and its Machiavellian leader, Leonard Leo, have been documented by Pro Publica. The body made headlines when it was gifted $1.6 billion by a single donor. The corruption that pervades the Supreme Court features several Atlas and CNP junktanks. Heritage paid Justice Thomas’s insurrectionist wife a secret salary amounting to almost $700,000 between 2003 and 2007. The Federalist’s Leo paid Ginni Thomas through her “consulting” firm. An Atlas Partner, the Islamophobic Center for Security Policy, paid her. Another Project 2025 Advisory Council and CNP member, Hillsdale College, also “employed” her. The coup being perpetrated by the court is funded by plutocrat donors to remove any constraints on their action. It is also used, by the filing of amicus briefs, to achieve goals such as restricting voting rights.

Why are fossil fuel magnates working with Christian extremists?

Both Heritage and the Federalist Society are Atlas Network partners.

They are also Council for National Policy (CNP) members. The CNP is the Atlas-interlinked network that has been driving the Christian Nationalist takeover of America. In 2019, Columbia School of Journalism lecturer Ann Nelson documented that organisation, founded in 1981, in Shadow Network: Media, Money and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right. As with Atlas, Charles Koch is a major donor. The CNP has steered the evangelical television and radio media organisations that have helped turn (Heritage co-founder) Paul Weyrich’s Moral Majority from a marginal array of individual churches and groups into a more unified force with coherent policy platforms. The latest leaked CNP membership list from Documented includes several Atlas junktanks as integrated into that network as well as key players in American politics and media ranging from Mike Pence to Steve Bannon. Pence represents the Evangelical alliance that made Trump’s first term possible. Bannon represents both Rad Trad Catholicism and the esoteric “philosophy” of Traditionalism. This apocalyptic belief was explored in 2021’s The War for Eternity: The Return of Traditionalism and the Rise of the Populist Right by University of Colorado ethnography professor Benjamin Teitelbaum. Bannon was a leading figure in the Rad Trad Catholicism that has been fighting as sedevacantists to say that the Catholic Church has no Pope but has been infiltrated by a socialist. They place Putin as a hero of Christians, with Moscow as the Third Rome. Another of its leaders, Archbishop Viganò, has just been excommunicated. 

Charles Koch by contrast has been one of the drivers of the most extreme libertarianism in America. His brother, David, was placed at the forefront of their goals as their Libertarian Party vice-presidential candidate in 1980. It was a disastrous experiment, with its brutal policies attracting a tiny percentage of the vote. The libertarian project needed a veil to win enough votes to enact it. Project 2025 is, likely, ultimately that veil. The Libertarian Party platform is expanded there, but so is the devastating statist authoritarianism of the Christian Nationalist movement. It appears that Charles Koch, unsurprisingly for anyone who has followed his career, will do anything to ensure his own freedom from constraint. Disdain for “woke” talking points might bolster that readiness.

Other key figures amongst the oligarch donors and their operatives appear much more committed to a statist agenda, whereby the government will enforce “Christian” virtue upon an immoral population. Their definition of virtue is distinctive. While the project to ensure women’s inability to engage in sexual activity outside inescapable marriage might not shock mainstream Christians, the concurrent oligarch campaign to prevent employers being compelled to ensure child labourers have a meal break should disturb them. The neofeudal truths at the core of the neoliberal branding are becoming clearer: to believe that employers will act responsibly without enforcement is to be their gull.

Both Heritage and the Federalist Society are run by Rad Trad Catholic extremists. Kevin Roberts has taken the Heritage Foundation from being the leading “business Republican” junktank in America to being at the tip of the spear of the Christian Nationalist attempt to turn the USA into a theocratic autocracy. Leonard Leo, who has orchestrated five radical Catholic appointments to the Supreme Court, is an extremist. The exact nature of the interactions between the two secretive networks is unclear.

The Atlas Network

Atlas has tended to function to create neoliberal conditions in America and across the globe: the purpose of this was to erase every obstacle to American corporations’ profit and growth. Local aspiring oligarchs are enlisted to fund the project within their own terrain for those same goals. While the intent was ostensibly free market, the impact has always been to promote the interests of monopolists and oligopolists at the expense of competitors and the society around them. Some of the junktanks in Atlas have promoted reactionary social messaging as their bailiwick. The Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty has been the highest profile example. It exists to educate business leaders and academics in “the connection that can exist between virtue and economic thinking.” Leonard Leo joked to the Institute in 2017 about not yet managing to “launch a hostile takeover” of the Supreme Court.

There appear to be two main intents for this aspect of the Atlas information campaign. One is to conceal the immorality of the “free market” project stripped of any constraints on the actions of business no matter the harm done. To appeal to a sufficient electoral percentage to gain power, they deployed a social message that endorsed individual “virtue.” The strategy was called paleoconservativism.

Evangelicals had worked in cooperation with the interests of fossil fuel (at the expense of First Peoples) for decades beforehand, but the movement that drives Atlas emerges out of the Cold War battle by business that asserts any social wage is a slippery slope to totalitarianism. During the Cold War, communism was depicted as deadly to business but also atheist and immoral: the Manichaean battle between good and evil made a Christian Libertarianism (or religious neoliberalism) the answer. It promoted both ultimate freedom for business and the enforcing of religion and virtue on the population.

This cynical project had the additional important role of ensuring that the damage done to society and family by the Fordist economic model was mitigated by pressure on individuals (mainly women) to fill the cracks in family and community created by ruthless market societies.

The Atlas project, like that of its Mont Pelerin Society inner sanctum, has never been invested in democracy, which leading members saw as a threat to business interests. Democracy was a risk to be controlled or eliminated, not an aspirational form of government.

Investigative journalist at the New Yorker Jane Mayer revealed Atlas’s American operations in Dark Money: How a Secretive Group of Billionaires is trying to buy Political Control in the US in 2016. She used the label “Kochtopus” after the networks’ biggest funders and strategists. In 2018, Duke University history Professor Nancy MacLean documented its longer history in Democracy in Chains: the deep history of the radical right’s stealth plan for America. It was only after the book’s completion that MacLean became aware of the network’s secretive global ramifications as Atlas.

Also founded in 1981, the Network systematises propaganda for the Chicago School’s bunk economics, so ably disseminated by Milton Friedman. It now has around 600 partner organisations in over 100 countries, but its global operations remain less obvious because the system is intentionally covert. Local transparency failures suppress information about its funding and impact.


The central “think” tanks foster the replication of more such bodies, providing seed funding if necessary and training in fundraising and public relations strategies to help the local offshoots become independent. They network. The primary function is to sell the donors’ messages by advertising them constantly: in 1985, Heritage Foundation co-founder Ed Feulner told Australian operatives to treat campaigns as if they were for a toothpaste brand that needed constant reinforcing. The messages: low tax, deregulation, small government, dismantling of social safety nets. Together the junktanks, as journalist George Monbiot has labelled them, create a chorus of voices from university centres and civil society bodies reinforcing the wishlist.

Dr Jeremy Walker explained the process by which the Atlas Network architecture of influence operates in the lead-up to the Voice referendum in 2023. His “Freedom to Burn” essay details the intimate connections in Australia between mining goals and the the Atlas Network’s architecture of influence. The sideline in culture war battles promoted by the low-rent Atlas junktanks like the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) and LibertyWorks, aided by ally Atlas-connected Rupert Murdoch, both divides voters from their economic interests and fosters the demonisation of rights culture. Without rights, women, LGBTQIA people, non-White and non-Christian people can be returned to their traditional subservience.

Quinn Slobodian is tracking the interaction of (Atlas) junktanks and the European far-right. A French investigation has detailed the way that corporate goals are being pursued by Atlas affiliates in Europe. An Italian investigation explored corporate money and Atlas connections supporting far right politics there. Hungary’s Viktor Orbán is a leading figure in the transnational movement. Heritage has connections with these far-right parties.

The Washington Post last week featured the damage done in New Zealand/Aotearoa by Atlas operatives in government. Byline Times and investigative reporters such as Peter Geoghegan have tracked the deep corruption and devastation of Atlas’s influence on the UK through its Tufton Street operations and their American fundraising arms.

Hindsight reveals the way revolutionising political economy and the law to grant monopolist corporations their every goal has failed to produce the economic paradise promised by the Chicago School’s plutocrat economics. This year, UC law professor Mehrsa Baradaran has detailed in The Quiet Coup: Neoliberalism and the Looting of America the role that Atlas and Chicago School economics played in rewriting the law to oblige plutocrats. Columbia Law School professor Katharina Pistor has documented how contract law is used to concentrate power in the hands of the wealthy in The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality.

In Australia, the presence of these Atlas junktanks has been primarily deployed to reinforce “business propaganda,” but the social messages of disgust for modern, inclusive society are readily apparent too. The interlinked Ramsay Centre seems to be the strongest voice for outright Christian goals. That may relate to the close involvement of Atlas-connected Tony Abbott who is a key figure in the global campaign to place Christianity both as a religion and as a cultural signifier for White Western “civilisation” to the forefront of politics. This is visible in his work with Viktor Orbán and also on the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship Advisory Board./

Atlas’s extremist connections

The more toxic and bigoted “family values” groups tend to appear interconnected with Atlas rather than Atlas partners themselves. Trump appointee Betsy DeVos, for example, links the two. She has been chair and on the board of two Atlas partners: the American Federation for Children that aims to replace the public school system with privatised charter schools and the Acton Institute Both her Prince and DeVos families are substantial donors to the anti-LGBTQIA group Focus on Family. Focus is part of the CNP, whose donors include Charles Koch and the Prince and DeVos families.

Both the extremist Christians and the libertarians are close to achieving their goals in America. Apart from the impact the implosion of the United States government and civil rights framework will have on the rest of the world, this is relevant because the very global nature of Atlas means that its outposts are trying to replicate its work outside the American homeland. These campaigns are reinforced by the fact that America’s homegrown Pentecostal form of Christianity has been an aggressively international missionary project from its earliest days.

The European Parliament conducted a study affirming reporting that $280 million dollars have been funnelled into the EU over the last decade by Atlas and CNP partners as well as by Evangelical mission programs. Heritage and Federalist stand alongside the Cato Institute, the Leadership Institute and Acton as having donated roughly $20 million towards European groups fighting to repeal reproductive healthcare rights and LGBTQIA rights. Another American body, the CNP-connected American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property (TFP) has also been training European groups in strategy in cooperation with Bruce Eberle a “visiting professor” at the Leadership Institute. The Koch, DeVos and Prince families are named as major sources of the money. (These donations are overshadowed in scale by those from European and Russian sources.)

Atlas and CNP seem to be convening around the National Conservative (NatCon) project. This is a transnational exercise that manifests in various conferences. Some are NatCon, or PopCon or CPAC or Faith and Freedom. The Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (in large part funded by the Atlas-partner, the Legatum Institute) would fall within the parameters. NatCon is a network of religio-ethnonationalist operators. The Christian Nationalists are supported by, and supportive of, extremist nationalist projects focused on religion as an ethnic identifier. A Jewish nationalist is one of the founders of the movement, and Modi’s Hindutva nationalism is also befriended. The projects all denote Muslims as a chief enemy, with ethnic cleansing implied and even stated. Each dictates a “traditional” identity and social roles as key to their mission. Natalist policies supporting higher birth rates in the approved identity group accompany such goals, often linked to attacks on feminism and LGBTQIA rights. Race suicide is the result of these “evils.”

The message of “freedom” is endorsed for business and the individual. The individual must be free from public health measures of protective regulations by demonised bodies such as the UN or EU or WHO. The freedom of “woke” people, by contrast, is a threat rather than a consideration.

Rod Dreher’s account of last October’s inaugural Alliance for Responsible Citizenship event focused on the extreme Christianity that underpinned it, not surprising since Dreher has converted twice in pursuit of a more rigorous faith. The (Atlas) Australian Institute for Progress reports emphasised that feature too. The populist NatCon events such as CPAC unite conspiracists with libertarians and preachers. Australia saw such a conference in Albury in March.

A key purpose of these events is shaping a communal identity in the face of a manufactured existential threat. The identity being forged stands in opposition to modern, inclusive and knowledge-based societies. The diagonalist ideology visible there too – where left and right attributes are muddied – is drawing Christianity in as a key component for that identity. Russell Brand is not the only influencer to have ostentatiously converted to Christianity recently.

For many of the participants, the identity they are building together is connected to being White. The Atlas Network, like the Kochs, emerges out of the John Birch Society era of American conspiracist racism. Christianity is the code.

Christianity has the added advantage for an extreme libertarian project of demanding obedience and promising rewards for it in the Afterlife.

The NatCon project is often intertwined with fossil fuel money. It is, unsurprisingly, also deeply antagonistic to climate action.

Conclusion

Evangelical groups in Australia are often transnational and importing ultraconservative goals here.

A separate presence of CNP groups is not yet obvious, but it is worth noting that Feulner, speaking to Atlas junktanks in Australia in 1985, would have been as much connected to the CNP as Atlas.

Australia’s Centre for Independent Studies (CIS) mostly leaves the culture war battles on gender and religious virtues to the IPA and their media ally, News Corp. This October’s CIS Consilium event where the Atlas pipeliners intermingle with local and international talking heads is running adjacent to the inaugural conference of the Australian Chapter of the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship. The consecutive timing is convenient for international guests to attend both.

America’s second revolution is frightening. While Trump disavows Project 2025, his current spokesperson is part of the project. It will be difficult for him to step away from a strategy designed by people he has worked with, setting out the steps his people need to take and providing him with the partisan leaders and employees he will need to enact his dreams of vengeance. He is too lazy not to accept the process.

The rest of us must remain focused on the fact that these networks operate transnationally. They share talking points, strategies, people and money. The revolution that Kevin Roberts has declared they are winning in the US is to be reenacted, piecemeal, for all of us.

It’s past time we fought back.

July 8, 2024 Posted by | politics international, Reference | Leave a comment

Civil War in Donbass 10 Years On

Zelensky did initially try to resolve the Donbass conflict through diplomatic means. In October 2019, he moved to hold a referendum on “special status” for the breakaway republics in a federalized Ukraine, while personally meeting with representatives of Azov Battalion, begging them to lay down their arms and accept the compromise. Mockingly rebuffed and threatened by the Neo-Nazi group’s leaders, while rocked by nationalist protests against the proposed plebiscite in Kiev, the plans were dropped. So then the President picked the “worst option”.

KIT KLARENBERG, JUL 08, 2024  https://www.kitklarenberg.com/p/civil-war-in-donbass-10-years-on
July 1st marked the 10th anniversary of a brutal resumption of hostilities in the Donbass civil war. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it passed without comment in the Western media. 10 years earlier, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko called a ceasefire in Kiev’s “anti-terrorist operation”. Launched two months prior following vast protests, and violent clashes between Russian-speaking pro-federal activists and authorities throughout eastern Ukraine, the intended lightning strike routing of internal opposition to the Maidan government quickly became an unwinnable quagmire.

Ukrainian forces were consistently beaten back by well-organised and determined rebel forces, hailing from the breakaway “People’s Republics” in Donetsk and Lugansk. Resultantly, Poroshenko outlined a peace plan intended to compel the separatists to put down their arms. They refused to do so, prompting the President to order an even more savage crackdown. This too was a counterproductive failure, with the rebels inflicting a series of embarrassing defeats on Western-sponsored government forces. Kiev was ultimately forced to accept the terms of the first Minsk Accords.

This agreement, like its successor, did not provide for secession or independence for the breakaway republics, but their full autonomy within Ukraine. Russia was named as a mediator, not party, in the conflict. Kiev was to resolve its dispute with rebel leaders directly. Successive Ukrainian governments consistently refused to do so, however. Instead, officials endlessly stonewalled, while pressuring Moscow to formally designate itself a party to the civil war. 

No wonder – had Russia accepted, Kiev’s claims that its savage assault on the civilian population of Donbass was in fact a response to invasion by its giant neighbour would’ve been legitimised. In turn, all-out Western proxy war in eastern Ukraine, of the kind that erupted in February 2022, could’ve been precipitated. Which, it is increasingly clear, was the plan all along. 

‘Grassroots Movement’

In the days prior to the April 2014 launch of Kiev’s “anti-terrorist operation” in Donbass, notorious war hawk Samantha Power, now USAID chief, openly spoke on ABC of “tell-tale signs of Moscow’s involvement” in the unrest. “It’s professional, coordinated. Nothing grassroots about it,” she alleged. Such framing gave Ukrainian officials, their foreign backers, and the mainstream media licence to brand the brutal operation a legitimate response to a fully-fledged, if unacknowledged, “invasion” by Russia. It is referred to as such in many quarters today.

Yet, at every stage of the Donbass conflict, there were unambiguous indications that the Ukrainian government’s claims of widespread Russian involvement – endorsed by Western governments, militaries, intelligence agencies, pundits and journalists – were fraudulent. One need look no further than the findings of a 2019 report published by the George Soros-funded International Crisis Group (ICG), Rebels Without A Cause. Completely unremarked upon in the mainstream, its headline conclusions are stark:

“The conflict in eastern Ukraine started as a grassroots movement…Demonstrations were led by local citizens claiming to represent the region’s Russian-speaking majority.” 

ICG noted that Russian leaders were from the start publicly and privately sympathetic to Russian-speakers in Donbass. Nonetheless, they issued no “clear guidance” to businessmen, government advisers or the domestic population on whether – and how – they would be officially supported by Moscow in their dispute with the Maidan government. Hence, many Russian irregulars, encouraged by “what they regarded as the government’s tacit approval, made their way to Ukraine.” 

Per ICG, it was only after the conflict started that the Russian government formalised a relationship with the Donbass rebels, although the Kremlin quickly changed tack on what they should do. A Ukrainian fighter told the organisation that he “began hearing calls for restraint in rebel efforts to take control of eastern Ukrainian towns and cities” in late April 2014. However, “the separatist movement in Donbass was determined to move ahead.”

Due to this lack of control, and repeated calls for direct intervention in the conflict from the rebels, Russia replaced the Donetsk and Lugansk rebel leadership with hand-picked figures, who took an explicitly defensive posture. But the Kremlin was ultimately “beholden” to the breakaway republics, not vice versa. It could not even reliably order the rebels to stop fighting. A Lugansk paramilitary told ICG:

“What do you do with 40,000 people who believe that, once they put down their arms, they will all be shot or arrested? Of course, they are going to fight to the death.”

Elsewhere, the report cited data provided by “Ukrainian nationalist fighters”, which showed rebel casualties to date were “overwhelmingly” Ukrainian citizens. This was at odds with the pronouncements of government officials, who invariably referred to them as “Russian mercenaries” or “occupiers”. More widely, figures within far-right President Petro Poroshenko’s government had routinely claimed Donbass was wholly populated by Russians and Russia-sympathisers.

One Ukrainian minister was quoted in the report as saying he felt “absolutely no pity” about the extremely harsh conditions suffered by Donbass civilians, due to the “legal, political, economic and ideological barriers isolating Ukrainian citizens in rebel-held territories” constructed by Kiev. This included enforcing a crippling blockade on the region in 2017, which created a “humanitarian crisis”, and left the population unable to claim pensions and welfare payments, among other gruelling hardships.

Several Donbass inhabitants interviewed by ICG expressed nostalgia for the Soviet Union. Most felt “under attack” by Kiev. A pensioner in Lugansk, whose “non-combatant son” was killed by a Ukrainian sniper, asked how Poroshenko could claim the territory was “a crucial part” of Ukraine: “then why did they kill so many of us?”

‘Worst Option’

In conclusion, ICG declared the situation in Donbass “ought not to be narrowly defined as a matter of Russian occupation,” while criticising Kiev’s “tendency to conflate” the Kremlin with the rebels. The organisation expressed optimism newly-elected President Volodymyr Zelensky could “peacefully reunify with the rebel-held territories,” and “[engage] the alienated east.” Given present day events, its report’s conclusions were eerily prescient:

“For Zelensky, the worst option…would be to try to forcibly retake the territories, as an all-out offensive would likely provoke a military response from Moscow and a bloodbath in Donbass. It could even lead Moscow…to recognise the statelets’ independence. The large-scale military option is mainly advocated by nationalists, not members of Ukraine’s political establishment. But some prominent mainstream politicians refuse to rule it out.”

Zelensky did initially try to resolve the Donbass conflict through diplomatic means.

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July 8, 2024 Posted by | Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

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