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Israeli Scholar Lays Out ‘True Brutality’ of Ethnic Cleansing Now Underway in Gaza

“Such dehumanization cannot help but trigger our associations with scenes depicting the Nazis loading Jews into cattle cars.”

Jake Johnson, Nov 01, 2024,  https://www.commondreams.org/news/israeli-scholar-northern-gaza

Much alarm has been raised over the so-called “Generals’ Plan,” an ethnic cleansing proposal for northern Gaza that has reportedly garnered attention in the highest reaches of the Israeli government.

But Israeli scholar Idan Landau argued in a column published in English by +972 Magazine on Friday that what the Israeli military is actually doing in northern Gaza “is even more appalling” than the plan outlined by a group of retired generals. Landau argued that focus on the details of the Generals’ Plan has served to obscure the “true brutality” of Israel’s deadly operations in northern Gaza, which has been rendered a hellscape of death and destruction by the military assault and siege.

Landau, a professor of linguistics at Tel Aviv University, opened his column—first published in Hebrew on his blog—by pointing to two photos: one showing a celebratory event at a camp built by an Israeli settler organization just outside of the Gaza Strip, and the other showing displaced Palestinians lined up at gunpoint amid the ruins of northern Gaza.

“These photos tell a story that is unfolding so rapidly that its harrowing details are already on the brink of being forgotten,” wrote Landau. “Yet this story could start from any point during the past 76 years: the Nakba of 1948, the ‘Siyag Plan‘ that followed it, the Naksa of 1967. On one side, displaced Palestinians with all the belongings they can carry, hungry, wounded, and exhausted; on the other, joyful Jewish settlers, sanctifying the new land that the army has cleared for them.”

The Israeli military’s dehumanization of the people of Gaza, Landau wrote, “cannot help but trigger our associations with scenes depicting the Nazis loading Jews into cattle cars.”

Landau wrote that what the Israeli army has been implementing in northern Gaza in recent weeks is “not quite” the Generals’ Plan, which entails giving Palestinians still in the region a week to leave before declaring the area a closed military zone—and designating everyone who remains a militant who can be denied humanitarian assistance and killed.

The actual strategy Israeli soldiers have been deploying in northern Gaza is “an even more sinister and brutal version” of the Generals’ Plan “within a more concentrated area.”

“The first, most immediate distinction is the abandoning of provisions for reducing harm to civilians, i.e. giving residents of northern Gaza a week to evacuate southward,” Landau wrote. “The second departure concerns the real purpose of emptying the area: while portraying the military operation as a security necessity, it was, in fact, an embodiment of the spirit of ethnic cleansing and resettlement from day one.”

“As opposed to the picture painted by the army, implying that residents in the northern areas were free to move south and get out of the danger zone, local testimonies presented a frightening reality: Anyone who so much as stepped out of their home risked being shot by Israeli snipers or drones, including young children and those holding white flags,” Landau noted. “Rescue crews trying to help the wounded also came under attack, as well as journalists trying to document the events.”

The scholar cites one “particularly harrowing video” in which a Palestinian child is seen “on the ground pleading for help after being wounded by an airstrike; when a crowd gathers to help him, they are suddenly hit by another airstrike, killing one and wounding more than 20 others.”

“This is the reality amid which the people of northern Gaza were supposed to walk, starved and exhausted, into the ‘humanitarian zone,” Landau wrote. “Since the Israeli army began its operation in northern Gaza, it has killed over 1,000 Palestinians. The Israeli Air Force usually bombs at night while the victims are sleeping, slaughtering entire families in their homes and making it more difficult to evacuate the wounded. And on October 24, rescue services announced that the intensity of the bombardment left them with no choice but to cease all operations in the besieged areas.”

The deadly military assault, Landau stressed, has been accompanied by a “starvation policy” that has severely hindered the flow of humanitarian assistance to northern Gaza.

The heads of prominent United Nations agencies and human rights organizations warned Friday that conditions on the ground in the region are “apocalyptic” and that “the entire Palestinian population in North Gaza is at imminent risk of dying from disease, famine, and violence.”

Landau noted that on October 16, following pressure from the Biden administration, the Israeli government reportedly allowed 100 aid trucks to enter northern Gaza.

“But journalists in the north were quick to correct the record: Nothing at all had entered the besieged areas,” Landau wrote. “On October 20, Israel denied a further request by U.N. agencies to bring in food, fuel, blood, [and] medicines. Three days later, in response to a request for an interim order by the Israeli human rights group Gisha, the state admitted to the High Court that no humanitarian aid had been allowed into northern Gaza up to that point. By this time, we are already talking about a three-week-long food siege.”

Addressing the question of “what is left for us to do” in the face of such a catastrophe, Landau wrote that “the consensus concerning the war of extermination poisons Israeli society and blackens its future so profoundly that even small pockets of resistance can proliferate stamina and hope to those who have not yet been carried away by the currents of madness.”

“We can also look for partners in this fight abroad, where the critical lever of pressure is the pipeline of American weapons,” he added. “The struggle to end this intensifying war of extermination and transfer in Gaza, particularly in the north, is first and foremost a human fight. It is a fight for life, both in Gaza and Israel: for the very chance that life can continue to exist in this blood-soaked land. Nothing could be more patriotic.”

+972 Magazine published Landau’s column a day after Francesca Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, warned in a statement that “time is running out” to stop the far-right Israeli government’s attempt to “erase the Palestinians from their own land and allow Israel to fully annex Palestinian territory.”

“Genocide and a man-made humanitarian catastrophe are unfolding in front of us and in Gaza,” said Albanese. “I regret to see so many member states are avoiding acknowledging the suffering of the Palestinian people and instead look away.”

November 6, 2024 Posted by | Atrocities, Israel, Reference | Leave a comment

After election, will progressives acknowledge and oppose US genocide in Gaza?

Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL 4 Nov 24

During the current US election cycle, many progressives have recoiled from addressing the 13 month long US enabled Israeli genocide in Gaza.

They are singularly focused on pushing Kamala Harris to victory, saving democracy from the unhinged authoritarian Trump. As a result they’ve banished the word much less the reality of the genocide which the US enables.

That is deplorable. Every day dozens, hundreds, possibly a thousand Palestinian civilians die in the worst genocide this century. All financed, publicly supported and weaponized by their beloved Biden/Harris administration.

When the genocide in Gaza is brought up for discussion, too many progressives are ‘hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil.’

When asked to push back against US weaponizing, publicly supporting, financing the genocide, progressives come up with the darnedest excuses

‘There is no genocide in Gaza, just a defensive war against Hamas.’

‘Don’t dare say anything that will jeopardize Harris’ chances.’

‘The destruction in Gaza will be much worse under Trump.’

‘The United States has no influence on the government of Israel.’

‘President Biden and Vice President Harris are working night and day to achieve ceasefire in Gaza.’

‘People have been fighting each other there for thousands of years and nothing will change that.’

Maybe these otherwise fine progressives will open their eyes and souls to ongoing destruction of Gaza once the election ends and decide to resist it passionately.

Alas, with both candidates locked in ironclad support for sending endless billions for Israel to ‘finish the job’, they just might shrug and continue ignoring the most greatest moral dilemma of their lifetime.

November 6, 2024 Posted by | Gaza, Israel, politics, USA | Leave a comment

Constellation Energy, nuclear stocks plummet after regulators block Amazon power deal


Laura Bratton, Tue, November 5, 2024 ,  https://finance.yahoo.com/news/constellation-energy-nuclear-stocks-plummet-after-regulators-block-amazon-power-deal-151109123.html

Constellation Energy stock (CEG) fell 12.5% Monday amid a broader decline in nuclear power stocks following the US government’s rejection of another Big Tech nuclear power agreement late Friday.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) rejected a proposal from a grid operator, PJM, to ramp up the amount of power supplied through the grid from Talen Energy (TLN) to an Amazon (AMZN) artificial intelligence data center. Talen said in a statement on Sunday it believes the FERC “erred” in its ruling, adding the company is “evaluating our options, with a focus on commercial solutions.”

November 6, 2024 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Israel’s attacks on Iran were an apocalyptic error by Netanyahu. Here’s why

Martin Jay, Strategic Culture Foundation, Thu, 31 Oct 2024,
 https://www.sott.net/article/495896-Israels-attacks-on-Iran-were-an-apocalyptic-error-by-Netanyahu-Heres-why

We see that Israel has no longer term military strategy, only short term excursions which will drain both its resources and the morale of its frontline soldiers.

While the whole world now waits with bated breath as to the result of the U.S. elections in only a matter of days, many are also waiting to see what are the implications for Israel’s recent strike on Iran. Despite being told by Joe Biden that it could not strike military installations it went against the advice of its chief sponsor and did precisely that. Perhaps there has never been a better example of western diplomacy failing than this incident, given that while Israel lies to its own people and the western world via news outlets more than happy to spin a yarn about the reality of the attacks, Iran now has to look at a number of options in how it will respond. But respond it surely will.


Yet this singular act is probably the most reckless to date from Netanyahu. Never before has the Israeli PM gone so far out on a limb and taken such a gambit which not only pushes the U.S. to the brink of a war with Iran but also throws a spotlight on the existential question of Israel itself. The next strike on Israel’s military infrastructure might be the final blow for Israel to function as a military entity forcing the U.S., or the next president, to intervene with Trump’s critics already pointing out that he owes a number of favours to the Zionists which they will certainly call in.

Netanyahu is desperate to keep wars on all fronts alive simply so he can remain relevant. But what is hardly talked about is the state of Israel itself, with an economy in pieces. Just how far will the next U.S. president go in supporting Israel’s new war with Iran, both in terms of military spending and breathing new life into the economy which has seen 40,000 businesses go under since October 7th 2023 and almost a million Israelis leave the country.

Netanyahu now is like a poker player who has used up all his IOUs at the table and is holding two pairs. How can he even believe he can take on Iran when even in Gaza and in Lebanon he is losing soldiers at a rate which should worry him and his generals. Yes, he has struck Hezbollah and reduced its capabilities but by no stretch of the imagination has he taken out the Iranian proxy which is still sending missiles and drones into Israel making the Israelis run to their air raid shelters even to this day.

The decision to strike Iran was surely out of an act of a gross political dilemma. However, the act itself has backfired on a level that neither he nor his entourage could imagine. Most of the targets were not even significantly damaged with a very low percentage of Israel’s missiles getting through Iran’s air defence which is so efficient that even Israel’s air force were too afraid actually fly into Iran’s airspace. Many in the west will be taken in by the spin from Israel’s lobby and impressive PR machine that it was a great victory and many sites were taken out, regardless of the fact that the IDF can’t provide one single shred of video evidence to back up such ludicrous claims, as it did previously in Gaza and Lebanon.

But the real defeat for Israel under Netanyahu is yet to come. Iran now has all the hard evidence it needs to strategize and hit Israel even harder than before. The erroneous strike on Iran by Netanyahu is not so much measured by the minor harm it did to a couple of weapons sites. It is by how now the myth of Israel’s military strength has been debunked once and for all. For decades Israel claimed superiority to everyone else, including Iran, and this was taken for granted by partisan western journalists who kept the dream alive. Remarkably, the strike on Israel by Iran on October 1st showed even Israelis that their air defence systems were hopelessly inadequate against Iran’s hypersonic missiles. That should have been enough to cool down the hot heads which straddle Netanyahu. At this point, the message he delivered at the UN, that there is “no place in Iran which Israel’s missiles cannot reach” should have been taken at face value and interpreted literally. Reaching Iranians sites is one thing. Actually taking them out is another.

Now, as the dust settles and Israel now waits for Iran’s response, the second myth that Israel’s strike capability was highly effective against Iran’s air defences is also blown. It seems like now Netanyahu’s folded as he has no more bluffs to play at the poker table. Unless of course he is deliberately coaxing his own country into a suicide strategy where Iran will completely desecrate Israel’s military leaving the U.S. little choice but to install itself on a grand scale. This so-called suicide strategy can’t be ruled out but seems hard to believe. The truth is that until Israel struck Iran, it didn’t know whether its own missiles and aircraft had the capability to penetrate Iran’s air defence system, supported heavily by Russia which sent it S-400 systems in August.

For the moment the Israeli press, as an act of desperate patriotism one can only assume, has indulged itself in a flurry of fake news stories about Iran’s air defence systems being destroyed as well as missile factories. But the jubilation will not last long. Oddly, the same media are becoming more pragmatic about Israel’s operations in Lebanon which has gone on for well over a month and in just two days managed to send over 80 body bags back to Israel, spurning a narrative which already is beginning to question the decision to cross the Lebanese border. The Jerusalem Post, in an oped, actually is admitting that the campaign is losing its credibility due to the number of lost lives of IDF soldiers. “The number of soldiers being killed in southern Lebanon also appears to be rising instead of falling over time” it opines. “The strikes against Hezbollah, such as the killing of Radwan commanders in September and the elimination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, should have weakened the group’s command and control”.

The article is a remarkable admission of Israel’s strategy being misconceived and poorly planned, just like the 2006 invasion. But getting IDF soldiers out of southern Lebanon will be much harder than sending them there as Netanyahu has pushed his arm into a hornet’s nest. Israel cannot consider a war of attrition against Hezbollah as even Netanyahu knows he cannot win. His only means to scoring points are assassinations and bombing civilians in southern Beirut, a strategy which many would call terrorism. His team of military goons have not learnt the lesson that aerial bombardment is not a deal breaker in a war against a disciplined guerrilla outfit. It failed in Iraq. It even failed in Vietnam. Again, we see that Israel has no longer term military strategy, only short term excursions which will drain both its resources and the morale of its frontline soldiers.

November 6, 2024 Posted by | Iran, Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Iran says it can produce nuclear weapon if faced with existential threat

Nov 2, 2024,  https://www.iranintl.com/en/202411011480

ran is capable of producing nuclear weapons and an existential threat could cause a rethink of the Supreme Leader’s injunction against them, one of his top foreign policy advisors told Lebanese news outlet Al Mayadeen.

“If the Islamic Republic of Iran faces an existential threat, we would have no choice but to adjust our military doctrine,” Former foreign minister Kamal Kharrazi said in an interview with the pro-Tehran channel.

“We already have the technical capabilities to produce weapons; only a religious decree forbidding nuclear weapons prevents us from doing so,” he added, referring to a religious decree by the country’s ultimate decision maker Ali Khamenei.

Kharrazi heads the Strategic Council on Foreign Relations and has hinted before that Iran could ditch its stated opposition to acquiring nuclear weapons but was offering his first public remarks since Israeli air strikes on Iran on Oct. 26.

Members of the body he leads are by handpicked by Khamenei and its reports and advisories have often presaged major policy shifts by the ruling system.

Iran has maintained that it will not pursue nuclear arms because the 2010 fatwa banned all weapons of mass destruction including nuclear bombs. The decree could potentially be interpreted by Iranian decision-makers as an advisory opinion lacking legal status, however.

Israel launched air strikes on military targets in Iran over the weekend in response to a missile barrage Tehran fired on the Jewish state on Oct. 1.

The attack hit missile facilities and air defense capabilities, killing four Iranian soldiers and a civilian.

Kharrazi told Al Mayadaeen that Iran would seek to expand the reach of weapons. “There’s a possibility that Iran may increase its missile range,” he said.

Upping Iran’s official rhetoric, all three top leaders of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on Thursday said a damaging counterstrike to Israel by Tehran was assured.

November 6, 2024 Posted by | Iran, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Amazon’s nuclear datacenter dreams stall as watchdog rejects power deal

Federal Energy Regulatory Commission cites grid stability concerns

The Register, Dan Robinson, Mon 4 Nov 2024 

Amazon has hit a roadblock in its plans for nuclear-powered US datacenters. Federal regulators rejected a deal that would let it draw more power from a Susquehanna plant to supply new bit barns next to the site, on the grounds this would set a precedent which may affect grid reliability and increase energy costs.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued an order on November 1 rejecting an amended Interconnection Service Agreement (ISA) that would have increased the amount of co-located load from 300 to 480 MW, and to “make revisions related to the treatment of this co-located load.”

Co-located load means the Cumulus datacenter complex that Talen Energy built next to the 2.5 GW Susquehanna nuclear plant in Pennsylvania which it operates, and which Amazon acquired in March via a deal worth $650 million.

The online megamart announced plans in May to expand the site with more than a dozen new datacenters for its Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud subsidiary over the next decade.

Soon after that, official objections were filed by two utility companies, American Electric Power (AEP) and Exelon. They argued that the revised agreement between Talen and PJM Interconnection, the regional power grid operator, would give the Cumulus site preferential treatment and may result in less energy going to the grid in some circumstances.

Exelon and AEP also argued that the amended ISA should be subject to an official hearing because “it raises many factual questions,” and, in the absence of any such hearing, that FERC should reject the amended ISA. It seems a majority of the commissioners agreed.

Specifically, Exelon and AEP said the amended ISA had not been adequately supported, meaning no good reason was given as to why the amendments were necessary………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..


The move highlights the difficulties datacenter operators face in expanding their facilities to keep pace with the booming demand for training and operating the latest AI models, and the challenges that power companies face in delivering the energy required.

As The Register has covered recently, access to enough power has become a major issue in building or expanding those bit barns, with one major commercial property developer in the UK citing this as the single biggest constraint it faces.

Yet according to Bloomberg, the hyperscalers – Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, and Microsoft – are set to collectively splash out well over $200 billion this year chasing the AI dragon, despite increasing warnings the AI market is a bubble set to burst and many investors and enterprises are not seeing much return for all the cash they are throwing at it.

Amazon itself said in its recent earnings report it expects to spend $75 billion on capex this year and even more in 2025, largely due to rising demand for AWS services related to generative AI.

We asked the company to comment on the rejected Susquehanna power proposal.

The company has also recently pursued small modular reactors (SMRs) via a $500 million investment into three projects to develop these miniature nuclear plants.  https://www.theregister.com/2024/11/04/aws_nuclear_datacenter_ferc/


November 6, 2024 Posted by | ENERGY, USA | Leave a comment

Regulators deliver successive blows to Amazon and Meta’s nuclear power ambitions

 https://techcrunch.com/2024/11/04/regulators-deliver-successive-blows-to-amazon-and-metas-nuclear-power-ambitions/

Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft have placed big bets on nuclear power to secure electricity for their data centers as AI and cloud computing have sent power use surging. 

But as Amazon and Meta discovered last week, those bets are far from a sure thing. A series of recent rulings from regulators dashed their hopes of finding a quick fix for their electricity needs. For now, Microsoft’s plans to revive a reactor at Three Mile Island are moving ahead.

Perhaps unexpectedly, the roadblocks have nothing to do with nuclear power itself, illustrating the challenges of building massive data centers without first locking up new sources of electricity.

Meta, for example, is planning to build an AI data center next to an already operating nuclear power plant. But as the project progressed, regulatory hurdles began piling up. CEO Mark Zuckerberg told staff in an all-hands meeting that one hurdle was the sighting of a rare bee species on the land, according to a Financial Times report. (Many bee populations are currently fragile, at best, after decades of exposure to a new generation of pesticides, among other stressors.)

Amazon’s plans have also hit a snag. The company is planning to build a new hyperscale data center next to the nuclear power plant near Susquehanna, Pennsylvania, and use a significant portion of the plant’s electricity. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), which oversees the U.S. electricity and natural gas grids, voted 2-1 on November 1 to deny the expansion of an existing data center power agreement that would have allowed Amazon to connect directly to the power plant.

The concern in Amazon’s case was that other customers would potentially suffer lower reliability — brownouts or blackouts — and higher costs as the data center would divert a significant portion of the massive power plant away from the rest of the region’s electricity grid.

This likely won’t be the last time FERC wades into the power question for hyperscale data centers: The commission has at least another eight large co-location requests to review.

November 6, 2024 Posted by | business and costs, USA | Leave a comment

The Mainstream Western Worldview Pretends The Global South Does Not Exist

Caitlin Johnstone, Nov 04, 2024

Mainstream western politics and culture pretend the rest of the world does not exist. The mainstream western worldview shrinks the earth down to US-aligned countries and acts as though the billions of people who live in the global south do not share a planet with us.

You really see this illustrated in US presidential election season, when debates will feature five or six minutes on “foreign policy” with the remaining two hours dedicated to “domestic policy” and culture war wedge issues despite the the White House’s relationship with foreign countries having orders of magnitude more significant real-world consequences. Americans discuss election results as though the whole thing revolves around them and their feelings and how much more convenient or inconvenient the next president might make their lives, while Europeans discuss what the results might mean for NATO expenses and trade agreements. The fact that the next US president will be committing genocide, starving people with economic sanctions and increasing Washington’s stranglehold on earth’s population by any amount of violence and tyranny necessary barely ever enters into the conversation.

Whenever you hear western officials talking about how “the international community” views a particular issue, they’re almost always talking about the US, Canada, Europe, Australia, and maybe a few US-aligned Asian countries like Japan and South Korea — while pretending the rest of the world just isn’t there.

You see it in politics, but you see it throughout our culture too. In our movies, our shows, our conversations, our thoughts. We don’t really think about all the exploitative imperialist extraction of resources and labor that makes our lifestyles possible, even though it directly affects damn near every waking moment of our lives. You wouldn’t be reading this sentence right now had not this exact dynamic led to a highly complex electronic device making its way into your field of vision.

We just conduct ourselves from moment to moment like this relationship isn’t happening. It’s as though we’re all walking around with living people strapped to our feet like slippers, but we’re just laughing and talking about the weather and celebrities and how we’re feeling about this and that without ever acknowledging the existence of the human beings we’re standing on top of.

The global south is omitted from our thinking and our conversations in this way all the time, leaving us in this fractured, redacted mental universe where we pretend we’re the only people living in this rapidly shrinking world. Our lives are no less significant or valuable than those of people in Africa or Asia, but we live as though they don’t exist, even when their labor may affect our moment to moment reality far more than the white-skinned person we’re paying attention to in this instant.

This is going to have to change if we’re to become a conscious species and create a healthy world together. Our perception of the world is going to have to reflect the actual world, not just the small cloistered segment which exists within the confines of western civilization. We’re going to have to start thinking about humanity as a whole and stop living the lie that we are not intimately interconnected with the lives on every populated continent.

Until we open up our worldview and begin taking into account the needs and struggles of our fellow human beings around the world, it will be like we’re at a dinner party that’s being waited on by slaves. We’re all looking at each other and talking about our lives and our families as the slaves clear our plates and refill our drinks, never acknowledging them or discussing the fact that they’re being kept as material property and forced to do what they’re doing to avoid punishment and torture. Until we demand their freedom and invite them to come and dine with us, we’re going to be in a highly dysfunctional and abusive relationship with them, and nothing will ever feel quite right — because it won’t be

November 6, 2024 Posted by | culture and arts | Leave a comment

Endangered Bees Halt Meta’s Nuclear-Powered AI Data Center Plans

Mark Zuckerberg is trying to find more renewable energy sources for his AI ambitions.

By Kate Irwin, Nov 05, 2024,  https://au.pcmag.com/ai/108105/endangered-bees-halt-metas-nuclear-powered-ai-data-center-plans

Meta’s plans to set up a nuclear-powered AI data center in the US have been halted in part because a rare bee species was found on the land, the Financial Times reports.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told staff about the issue in an all-hands meeting, according to sources familiar with the situation. The project has also faced other environmental and regulatory hurdles, and Meta is now looking for other ways to access carbon-free energy for its AI data centers.

Zuckerberg previously said Meta would build bigger AI computing clusters if the company could get the electricity to do so, admitting that limited energy resources are the main bottleneck for AI expansion.

Because AI uses a lot of electricity (and water), energy is one of its biggest challenges. Because of existing rules, adding new sources to US grids can take years, and utility firms may not want to add large, new power plants to their systems because of the challenges associated with the additions, MIT researcher and energy council member Robert Stoner previously told PCMag.

A 2017 report from the Center for Biological Diversity found that there are 347 endangered bee species in North America and Hawaii. It noted that 90% of wild plants require pollinator activity in order to survive, meaning that disrupting bee habitats could result in not only extinct species but also a loss of plant life, which could further accelerate climate change.

The 1973 Endangered Species Act currently only protects one species of endangered bee in the continental US: the Rusty Patched Bumblebee. While it’s unclear which bee species has posed a challenge to Meta’s nuclear plans, according to a map from the US Fish and Wildlife Service, there are only about 471 Rusty Patched Bumblebees left, and most of them are in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, and around the Virginia-West Virginia border.

Meta’s website currently lists nearly two dozen data centers worldwide, with the majority concentrated in the US. A map shows 26 data centers either completed or being built in addition to 75 different solar power locations, 21 wind power locations, and 25 “Water Restoration” projects.

Meta isn’t the only big tech firm eyeing nuclear power, though. Google has ordered six or seven small modular nuclear reactors from Kairos Power, and Microsoft has made plans to reopen Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania to power its AI plans.

November 6, 2024 Posted by | ENERGY, environment, USA | Leave a comment

Israel Killed Over 50 Children in Jabalia in 48 Hours: UN

Four children were wounded by an Israeli strike on a vaccination center in northern Gaza

by Dave DeCamp November 3, 2024,  https://news.antiwar.com/2024/11/03/israel-kills-over-50-children-in-jabalia-within-48-hours-un/

Israeli strikes in Jabalia, northern Gaza, killed over 50 children in just 48 hours, the UN’s child relief agency, UNICEF, said in a statement on Saturday.

“This has already been a deadly weekend of attacks in North Gaza. In the past 48 hours alone, over 50 children have reportedly been killed in Jabalia, where strikes leveled two residential buildings sheltering hundreds of people,” said UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell.

Jabalia has been the focus of an Israeli ethnic cleansing campaign in northern Gaza that began in early October. The campaign has involved a starvation blockade and massive strikes on civilians, and Israeli troops are preventing the approximately 50,000 Palestinians who have been forced out of Jabalia from returning.

Russell said Israeli strikes included an attack on UNICEF staff working on a polio vaccination campaign for children and an attack on a vaccination center. The World Health Organization said at least six people, including four children, were wounded in the Israeli strike on the vaccination center.

“The attacks on Jabalia, the vaccination clinic, and the UNICEF staff member are yet further examples of the grave consequences of the indiscriminate strikes on civilians in the Gaza strip,” Russell said. “Taken alongside the horrific level of child deaths in North Gaza from other attacks, these most recent events combine to write yet another dark chapter in one of the darkest periods of this terrible war.”

Israeli strikes continued to pound northern, central, and southern Gaza on Sunday. Medical sources told Al Jazeera that at least 35 Palestinians were killed, including 16 in the north. An Israeli attack on a residential building in the southern city of Khan Younis killed seven members of the same family, including four children.

Gaza’s Health Ministry said in its death toll update on Sunday that at least 27 Palestinians were killed and 86 were injured in the previous 24-hour period. The latest violence brought the ministry’s death toll since October 2023 to 43,341 and the number of wounded to 102,105.

The Health Ministry’s numbers are considered an undercount since they don’t account for Palestinians missing and presumed dead under the rubble or indirect deaths caused by the Israeli siege. A group of American healthcare workers who volunteered in Gaza have estimated the US-backed Israeli bombing campaign and siege has killed at least 118,908 Palestinians, including over 60,000 who have starved to death.

The genocidal slaughter would not be possible without US military aid, as Israeli officials have acknowledged they couldn’t sustain operations in Gaza for more than a few months without US support. The Israeli news site Calcalist has estimated the US has funded about 70% of Israel’s military operations over the past year.

November 6, 2024 Posted by | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel | Leave a comment

Can quake-prone Japan ever embrace nuclear energy again?

Japan Times, By River Akira Davis and Hisako Ueno. The New York Times 4 Nov 24

A decade after one of the most devastating atomic energy disasters in history, Japan was finally getting closer to reviving nuclear power.

Around 2022, a majority of the public began to express support for restarting the nation’s nuclear plants, most of which have remained offline since an earthquake and tsunami caused a nuclear meltdown in Fukushima Prefecture in 2011. The governing Liberal Democratic Party pushed forward with plans to not only restart idled plants, but also build new ones.

The LDP made an urgent call to advance nuclear energy, which it said would help the heavily fossil-fuel-dependent country meet growing energy demands and fulfill its pledge to cut carbon emissions.

Then, this year, a series of disasters reminded many in Japan of their deep fears about nuclear energy, and the LDP lost their majority in the influential lower chamber of parliament. The fate of nuclear power in the country is again uncertain.

In January, the country’s deadliest earthquake in over a decade struck the Noto Peninsula. More than 400 people died, and many buildings were damaged, including an idled nuclear power plant.

In August, a tremor in southern Japan prompted experts to warn that the long-anticipated Nankai Trough megaquake, predicted to kill hundreds of thousands, could be imminent.

“With earthquakes erupting across the country, it is so clear that nuclear power is a harm to our safety,” said Hajime Matsukubo, secretary-general of the Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center in Tokyo. “This was made evident in 2011 and again during the Noto earthquake.”

A poll conducted by the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper a few months after the Noto earthquake revealed that 45% of respondents opposed restarting Japan’s nuclear plants, surpassing the 36% who supported it.

After the LDP’s losses in parliamentary elections Sunday, the party has less than a month to form a minority government or recruit other allies to regain a majority. The Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, which won the second-most seats behind the LDP in the recent election, strongly opposes plans for Japan to build new nuclear reactors.

Within the next five months, Japan will release a revised energy plan that will define the nation’s target energy mix heading toward 2040. That means that the nascent government — in whatever shape it ultimately assumes — will be forced to confront two long-standing questions that have proved largely impossible to reconcile.

Is nuclear energy, widely considered [?] clean and [?] affordable, the best option for Japan — a nation heavily dependent on fossil fuels yet prone to frequent earthquakes and tsunamis? And if so, how can government leaders sell this to a populace still haunted by the memories of nuclear disaster?…………………………………………………………………………….  https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2024/11/02/japan/society/nuclear-fears-quake-prone-japan/

November 6, 2024 Posted by | Japan, safety | Leave a comment

Israel will eventually pay price for Gaza genocide going on for a year: Turkish President Erdogan

November 6, 2024 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment