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The Moral Bankruptcy of the West

 https://mearsheimer.substack.com/p/the-moral-bankruptcy-of-the-west, 24 Dec 24

On 19 December 2024, Human Rights Watch issued a 179-page report detailing Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

On 5 December 2024, Amnesty International issued a 296-page report detailing Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

On 21 November 2024, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for crimes against humanity and war crimes.

On 26 January 2024, the International Court of Justice found that a plausible case can be made that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

Given the West’s presumed commitment to human rights and especially to preventing genocide, one would have expected countries like the United States, Britain, and Germany, to have stopped the Israeli genocide in its tracks.

Instead, the governments in those three countries, especially the United States, have supported Israel’s unimaginable behavior in Gaza at every turn. Indeed, those three countries are complicit in this genocide.

Moreover, almost all of the many human rights advocates in those countries, and in the West more generally, have stayed silent while Israel executed its genocide. The mainstream media has made hardly any effort to expose and challenge what Israel is doing to the Palestinians. Indeed some key outlets have staunchly supported Israel’s actions.

One wonders what people in the West who have either supported Israel’s genocide or remained silent tell themselves to justify their behavior and sleep at night.

History will not treat them kindly.

December 31, 2024 Posted by | Religion and ethics | Leave a comment

New Mexico’s Nuclear-Weapons Boom

Donald Trump’s stance on nuclear weapons has been one of obsessive and reckless bombast. During his first term, Trump reportedly said, “If nuclear war happens, we won’t be second in line pressing the button.” He used social media to brag about the size of the U.S. arsenal.

Los Alamos is growing at a pace not seen since J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project. 

New Yorker, By Abe Streep, December 27, 2024

“…….  Los Alamos National Laboratory, the birthplace of the atomic bomb, which is once again rapidly expanding to supply the nation with nuclear weapons.

Los Alamos was built in secret during the Second World War—J. Robert Oppenheimer directed the lab there as part of the Manhattan Project. The town hovers high above the Española valley, on a handsome mesa called the Pajarito Plateau. Originally, the only way to access the enclave was through two gates. Today, it accepts visitors but remains a company town, housing many of the lab’s scientists and high-level staffers. The community has a population of about thirteen thousand, and boasts one of the nation’s densest concentrations of millionaires. In New Mexico, such wealth is rare. Española, which sits on the Rio Grande and is a twenty-five-minute drive away, has a median household income of fifty thousand dollars, a poverty rate approaching twenty per cent, and an entrenched fentanyl crisis.

…………………………………………………………………………………… In recent years, Los Alamos has been essential to a sweeping 1.7-trillion-dollar update of the country’s nuclear arsenal,……. The U.S. government has nearly five thousand nuclear warheads, close to two thousand of which are deployed inside submarines, bombs, and intercontinental ballistic missiles. It also has thousands of plutonium pits—the fissionable cores of those warheads—in storage. But the plutonium in the stockpile is aging. Despite statements from groups such as the Union of Concerned Scientists, which argue that the arsenal remains sufficiently deadly to serve as deterrence, the government insists that it needs new warheads.

The nuclear-weapons overhaul involves facilities spread out across the United States. Its projects include fabricating new missiles, installing thousands of miles of fibre-optic transmission lines, building new computer centers at Air Force bases, and refurbishing the underground chambers where missileers control weapons. But Los Alamos is the only lab that is capable of actually producing the plutonium pits.

…………………………….. workers move radioactive materials into secure containers. Salaries range from sixty-six thousand dollars to nearly twice that amount………

New Mexico’s state budget is just above ten billion dollars. The federal government spends about as much money on just two laboratories: Sandia, in Albuquerque, which designs weapon components such as detonators, and Los Alamos. Kirtland Air Force Base, which stores nuclear weapons, has a budget of nearly two billion dollars. An underground nuclear-waste repository in New Mexico’s southern desert also receives federal funding; after a fire and an unrelated radiological release at the facility, ten years ago, the Department of Energy spent nearly five hundred million dollars on an update to its safety infrastructure. “It’s gone from being a company town to being a company state,” Zia Mian, the co-director of a program on science and global security at Princeton, said.

…………………….in many states, weapons production meant jobs. When Obama was working to secure congressional support for a nuclear-coöperation agreement with Moscow, Republican senators asked, in return, that he sign off on modernizing the country’s arsenal. He agreed.

……………………………………………………………………The lab is supposed to be building the capacity to produce thirty war-ready plutonium pits per year. So far, it has created just one, even as the budget has tripled. …………………….The treaty that Obama signed with Russia in 2010 expires next year, and it is not expected to be renewed. Last June, in an address recorded for the annual meeting of the Arms Control Association, António Guterres, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, warned of the creeping threat of nuclear war. “Humanity is on a knife’s edge,” he said. In 2023, Russia de-ratified a landmark nuclear-testing-ban treaty, and in November, following Ukraine’s use of long-range American missiles, Vladimir Putin lowered his country’s threshold for the use of nuclear weapons.

Donald Trump’s stance on nuclear weapons has been one of obsessive and reckless bombast. During his first term, Trump reportedly said, “If nuclear war happens, we won’t be second in line pressing the button.” He used social media to brag about the size of the U.S. arsenal and taunted Kim Jong Un, the leader of North Korea. His Administration also signalled interest in reviving America’s defunct underground weapons-testing program.  In preparation for his second term, he has adopted Ronald Reagan’s old motto—“Peace through strength.” But his military aims have been difficult to pin down, and the views of his presumptive cabinet are scattershot. Sharon Weiner, a professor of foreign policy and global security at American University, said that Trump’s nominees appear “willing to violate norms and rules that have been in place for a long time.”

Meanwhile, in Washington, D.C., as fears about China reach a fever pitch, a sense of alarm is seeping into discussions about nuclear policy. During a recent panel, Robert Peters, a fellow at the Heritage Foundation who once worked as a lead strategist for the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, discussed the slow progress at Los Alamos with frustration. “Let’s waive the environmental regulations, blow up the mountain, pave it over, build a highway that you need to get there, fire everyone who’s not building warheads,” Peters said. Increasingly, politicians have advocated boosting the number of nuclear weapons—not just updating the existing ones. “The U.S. is embarking on a pair of arms races,” Jeffrey Lewis, a non-proliferation expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, said. “You hear from both Democrats and Republicans that expansion is inevitable.”

In Los Alamos, it is widely acknowledged that, during the Manhattan Project, environmental concerns were not a priority. Nuclear waste was simply dumped in the ground.

This past August, a retired chemistry professor from Northern Arizona University named Michael Ketterer, who has studied nuclear sites around the West, announced that he had found what he called “the most extreme plutonium-contamination scenario” he has seen in an area close to Los Alamos. (The Department of Energy and the laboratory maintain that the radiation levels at the site are safe.) Worker-safety issues have also been a problem. 

the recent pressure to produce appears to align with a culture of haste. One of the oversight agencies that inspects the lab has published reports that reveal a concerning number of safety breaches………………………………………………………………………………… more https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-lede/new-mexicos-nuclear-weapons-boom

December 31, 2024 Posted by | weapons and war | Leave a comment

Philosophy Against Nuclear Power

It is now clear that the residents of Fukushima are far from some voluntarist subjects but rather a people who live under constant subjection. The installation of nuclear power plants was not democratically decided, neither did it bring any halt to the historical subjection. Rather, nuclear power plants worsened the subjection by reproducing subjection. It should be clear that the one who bears the responsibility is the “village” (TEPCO, the government, etc.) rather than the victims.

How many times we should suffer from this “blindness to nuclear apocalypse” in order to realize that nuclear power is just a technology against humanity?


New Bloom, Shen Yun-Yen, 12/29/2024

Yoshiyuki SATO and Takumi TAGUCHI, Datsugenpatsu no tetsugaku (Philosophy for Abandoning Nuclear Power), Jimbun Shoin, 2016.

THE NUCLEAR BOMB certainly posed a serious problem for contemporary philosophy. From Heidegger to Arendt to Marcuse, philosophy in the mid-20th century struggled to deal with this all-annihilating artificial production. Unfortunately, most of these philosophers did not analyze the complex relationships between nuclear technology, capital, state, etc.

………………………………………………………….. ……………….Fortunately, two philosophers, Yoshiyuki Sato and Takumi Taguchi, accept the difficult challenge of philosophizing nuclear power. In their joint work Datsugenpatsu no tetsugaku, they argue at the outset that neither “pure philosophy” nor “philosophy as usual” will ever constitute an effective critique of nuclear power (13-4). What we need, according to Sato and Taguchi, is a Datsugenpatsu no tetsugaku, which can be translated as either a philosophy of abandoning nuclear power, or simply philosophy for abandoning nuclear power…………………………………………………..

The book is divided into four parts, each with three chapters, and a conclusion. The first part deals with the identity of kaku (nuclear weapons) and genpatsu (nuclear power plants); the second an ideology critique; the third a historico-politico-economic critique of the development of nuclear power; the fourth part attempts to consider nuclear power a public hazard; lastly, the conclusion provides a vision for a society without nuclear power.

1.

Even after the Fukushima catastrophe, many philosophers continued to philosophize the phenomenon as usual, or, to borrow a phrase from Adorno, touting the “jargon of authenticity.” It’s just weak. Ontology alone will never constitute a critique of nuclear power. Rather than providing a sound critique, these sorts of philosophy books seemed to reaffirm the ontological inability of philosophy when faced with nuclear catastrophe.

Fortunately, two philosophers, Yoshiyuki Sato and Takumi Taguchi, accept the difficult challenge of philosophizing nuclear power. In their joint work Datsugenpatsu no tetsugaku, they argue at the outset that neither “pure philosophy” nor “philosophy as usual” will ever constitute an effective critique of nuclear power (13-4). What we need, according to Sato and Taguchi, is a Datsugenpatsu no tetsugaku, which can be translated as either a philosophy of abandoning nuclear power, or simply philosophy for abandoning nuclear power. Each translation carries different connotations. “A philosophy of abandoning nuclear power” seems to make philosophy a means for abandoning nuclear power, while the other seems to be a sublation of “philosophy as usual.” The logic is actually clear: nuclear power serves as a medium for philosophy to sublate itself.

Like Marx, who philosophically criticized philosophy by incorporating political economy and history into philosophy, Sato and Taguchi incorporate different fields of thought in order to critique nuclear technology and renew philosophy. They not only bring Günther Ander, Foucault, Judith Butler, Montesquieu, etc. together and interpret their th

2.

THE BOOK OPENS with a warning: our stubborn “blindness” to the repetition of nuclear catastrophes. In 1945, nuclear bombs were dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which made philosopher Günther Anders argue that “Hiroshima is everywhere,” that is, regardless of location, we were already living in an age where indiscriminate annihilation became possible, and irreversible. In 1954, the US conducted nuclear testing (H-Bomb) at Bikini Atoll, and the “ashes of death” fell all over the place, which led to the death of several Japanese fishermen fishing nearby. In the same year, Günther Anders lamented that, after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we still suffered from the “apocalypse-blindness” to nuclear weapons. In 1979, the year of the Three Mile Island accident, Anders reasserted his arguments, and noted that nuclear plants served but a masquerade of nuclear weapons. And then there was Chernobyl (1986), which made Anders change his argument from “Hiroshima is everywhere” to “Chernobyl is everywhere.”


As Japanese philosophers, that is, philosophers from a country where nuclear tragedies happen most frequently (Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Bikini, Tokaimura, Fukushima), Sato and Taguchi clearly understand that Fukushima is not something “accidental” (sōteigai), as many commentators and government officials claim to be, but a repetition of the above-listed catastrophes (29). They also critique the fake distinction of the “civil use” and “military use” of nuclear power by drawing on the works of critical scientists such as Takagi Jinzaburo.

For Sato and Taguchi, the identity between nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants is established historically, that is, nuclear power plants share every feature of the Manhattan Project, from the principle of secrecy, the concentration of capital, the state-centrism, to its technical principles and, perhaps most importantly, the subordination of scientific development to the ends of the state.

Indeed, scientific knowledge is never innocent, which is why Sato and Taguchi employ a Foucauldian analysis of power-knowledge in order to critique the interrelationship between the two. The state decides who is allowed to participate the project, what to research, how much money an experiment needs, etc., without public scrutiny. This is why nuclear technology is a product of the “state-industrial-knowledge complex” (56).

3

IF IN THE context of the U.S., the symbol of the “state-industrial-knowledge complex” is the Manhattan Project, in Japan it’s the “nuclear village” (genshiryoku-mura). The “village” is not a physical location but a principle of exclusion (murahachibu), that is, whoever holds opinions different from them will be excluded. As an entity of highly concentrated power, its impact should not be underrated.

…………………………………………..This top-down, exploitative, discriminatory system exists throughout the history of modern Japan, that is, from Meiji to the present. It is true that in the post-war occupied period, the main condition of getting back Japan’s sovereignty is to democratize the state. However, it is also true that, under the shadow of the Cold War, both the US and the Japanese government did not care much about democratization. The result is that former Class A war criminal suspect Nobusuke Kishi not only became the Prime Minister of Japan (1957-60) and President of the LDP (1957-60), but also played an important role in supporting the “village.” It is no wonder that Sato and Taguchi repetitively argue that nuclear development in Japan serves both economic and military ends, and that as long as this system exists, claims about the “democracy” or democratization of Japan will never make sense.

4

THE VILLAGE DECIDES everything, including what’s to be done after the Fukushima catastrophe. First of all, given the identity of the “military use” and “civil use” of nuclear power, the authors argue quite convincingly that the impact of a nuclear catastrophe can only be compared to that of a war (34-7). That is, nuclear power plants’ disasters often produce effects analogous to those of war. From Chernobyl to Fukushima, whenever a nuclear disaster happens, there are always numerous refugees, lands that are no longer inhabitable, and almost unbearable economic costs.

After the catastrophe of Fukushima, there are many issues that remain unresolved even to today. However, the village’s attitude remains the same. The basic tone is denial and ideological. ………… In the case of the Fukushima catastrophe, the village (including scientists and doctors) decides to abandon certain populations in order to reduce economic costs (102). That is, because “electricity provision is necessary,” the village decides to make hundreds of thousands of residents (or refugees) continue to live under constant radioactive exposure (142).

The village has always been trying to promote an unscientific view of an “acceptable amount of radioactive exposure,” intentionally ignoring many scientists’ strong objections against this hypothesis. Hence, when there are lands still heavily polluted, the government policy asks many refugees to go back to their hometowns out of a deliberate calculation of cost-effectiveness. Without the intertwining of “scientific knowledge” and state power, this operation would not have been possible.

Sato and Taguchi go further to claim that, this sort of calculation is one of the reasons of the catastrophe. As a country where earthquakes happen extremely frequent, Japan’s earthquake studies have always been famous in the field. Long before the Fukushima tragedy took place, many specialists had already warned of a possible earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster due to earthquake and tsunami. However, the village did not take action to prevent such a scenario from happening because the economic costs are just too high (138). It’s just not worth it.

After the Fukushima catastrophe, the village did not repent of its inaction. As for them, these warnings are not voiced from “specialists,” and this is the main reason why they will never take them seriously (134). As the authors point out, the so-called specialist is nothing but those who support the principle of the village (136).

5

……………………………………………………………………………..For the authors, the process of subjection begins with the above-mentioned policy, or the “long-distance electricity provision system.” The state chose certain regions to develop nuclear power plants because the regions were economically poor (as a result of systematic discrimination). The nuclear power plants, however, are more like drug addiction rather than hope. After conducting a rigorous economic analysis, Sato and Taguchi show that the more the regions attach to the nuclear economy, the more they become poorer, since this is nothing but a core-peripheral exploitative system (201-2)………………………………


It is now clear that the residents of Fukushima are far from some voluntarist subjects but rather a people who live under constant subjection. The installation of nuclear power plants was not democratically decided, neither did it bring any halt to the historical subjection. Rather, nuclear power plants worsened the subjection by reproducing subjection. It should be clear that the one who bears the responsibility is the “village” (TEPCO, the government, etc.) rather than the victims.

The Fukushima catastrophe makes the subjection clear, while also provides an opportunity to halt the subjection, according to the authors. That is, as an “event,” it changes the mindset of many of the residents and citizens. Many people chose to live without nuclear power (216), and one court decision even made clear that the lives of residents are above economic prosperity (87).

Seizing the opportunity to formulate a possible future against nuclear power, Sato and Taguchi argue that, firstly, nuclear power is entirely irresponsible for future generations, an idea they take from Hans Jonas (406). The reason is actually quite scientific: nuclear power cannot function without producing radioactive waste, which is inconceivable to be really “disposed.” The profit-seeking mindset of this generation will definitely do harm to next generations, if the world still exists.

Secondly, they argue that the government should formulate a system of referendum, as a way of practicing democracy (442-3). Given that the nuclear village almost always monopolizes any decisions regarding nuclear power, a referendum constitutes a way of abolishing the undemocratic structures of the state-industrial-knowledge complex.

Thirdly, the government, and every citizen, should take renewable energy seriously, and implement concrete policies to facilitate the transition from nuclear energy and highly polluting energies to renewable clean energy. They also go further to propose that energy provision should be taken as a common, rather than some private property monopolized by the “village” (448-50).

It is clear that, as for Sato and Taguchi, nuclear power is not just a feature of the Japanese state. Nuclear power, through its interconnections with capital, knowledge, science, etc., defines the state. A state defined by nuclear power, governed by the nuclear village, is necessarily unscientific, undemocratic, and irresponsible. Abandoning nuclear power, therefore, amounts to restructuring the state. If the Japanese government has always been touting its formal democracy, what the authors call for is a movement of democratizing democracy.

6

……………………………………………………………What I feel most bizarre is the fact that the Japanese government still tries to reopen the nuclear power plants, with little objection from the majority of the Japanese citizens. How many times we should suffer from this “blindness to nuclear apocalypse” in order to realize that nuclear power is just a technology against humanity?

Fukushima triggered a new round of anti-nuclear movements in Taiwan, with the final result of a zero-nuclear policy that will soon be implemented in 2025. When I discuss the recent development of the nuclear village with my Taiwanese friends who have all witnessed, through television, the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe, their reaction is always the same: What the fuck? Did the Japanese suffer from collective amnesia?

I would say yes.

But Sato and Taguchi demonstrate how this collective amnesia is produced rather than natural. Without the official ideology (the so-called “safety myth”) and the support from pseudo-scientific communities, this amnesia would not have been possible. Speaking of “collective amnesia,” one couldn’t help but think of issues regarding war responsibility and post-war responsibility. But, again, only a radical democratization can help the country to really face its past wrongs.  https://newbloommag.net/2024/12/29/philosophy-nuclear-power/

December 31, 2024 Posted by | culture and arts, Japan | Leave a comment

One Week in the Carter Presidency: Brokering Peace and a Nuclear Crisis.

[In 1979 Carter] woke up to news of the worst commercial nuclear accident
in U.S. history. A partial meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant
in Pennsylvania resulted in the release of above-normal radiation into the
countryside and sent tremors through a nation nervous about the safety of
nuclear energy.

As it happened, unlike peace treaties, this was a challenge
that Mr. Carter had some preparation for before his presidency. He was a
nuclear engineer, having taken courses in nuclear physics at Union College
in New York and worked for the renowned Adm. Hyman G. Rickover, the father
of the Navy’s nuclear program.

While in the Navy, Mr. Carter served on a
military team that helped dismantle parts of a nuclear reactor at the Chalk
River Laboratories in Ontario, Canada, after a partial meltdown in 1952.
Mr. Carter and other personnel donned protective gear and worked in
90-second intervals to limit their exposure to radiation.

Twenty-seven years later, the nuclear engineer-turned-president decided to visit the
Three Mile Island site in Middletown, Pa., to calm public fears, even
though the danger had not passed. Just as he prepared to enter the plant,
he was told that a bubble of gases in the core vessel could expand so much
that it would push away coolant water, resulting in an explosion that would
spew more radiation into the air. Officials were contemplating evacuating
thousands of people.

New York Times 29th Dec 2024
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/29/us/politics/carter-peace-egypt-israel-nuclear-three-mile.html

December 31, 2024 Posted by | PERSONAL STORIES, USA | Leave a comment

Japan’s fishing town of Suttsu faces nuclear waste dilemma amid population decline

Residents of Suttsu worry that, despite potential economic benefits, a nuclear waste facility will harm the community and leave a legacy of radioactive waste

Jonathan Vit 29 Dec 24, https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3292482/japans-fishing-town-suttsu-faces-nuclear-waste-dilemma-amid-population-decline

It was a place Kyoko Tsuchiya could finally call home. As a child, her father was frequently transferred across Japan for his job at the national phone company. Later, as an adult, Kyoko fell in love with a man who worked for the post office. After they married, she continued to move around, rarely staying long enough in one place to truly feel at home.

Suttsu, with its unique charm, was different. This small town, nestled among scenic landscapes, is where Kyoko’s husband, Kazuyuki, grew up. Now in retirement, the couple decided to return to provide care and support for his elderly father.

Located on Hokkaido, Japan’s ruggedly beautiful northern island, the seaside fishing town hugs the windswept western coast. There, they opened a small inn called “Pension Mellow” which sits perched on a quiet hilltop overlooking the sea.

Kazuyuki could watch the fishing boats through binoculars from the kitchen window. When he spotted a friend’s boat, he would buy fresh seafood for his guests. One evening, he proudly served octopus sashimi made from a large octopus pulled from the frigid sea earlier that day.

“I was finally able to put down roots here,” Kyoko said. “I wanted a place where I could settle down and live a relaxed life. That’s how it was until 2020. Now, I don’t know …”

On Thursday, August 13, 2020, residents of this small town found themselves at the centre of a national controversy that attracted news helicopters and television crews to their usually sleepy streets.

Japan’s Nuclear Waste Management Organisation (Numo) was searching for a town willing to host a large underground facility to store the country’s nuclear waste.

However, there were stipulations: it could not be near a seismically active fault line or a volcano, could not contain valuable natural resources like coal or aquifers, and had to be within 20km (12.5 miles) of the coast for safe waste transport.

Any town meeting these requirements could volunteer to undergo studies to evaluate its suitability for the nuclear waste facility.

“In Japan, we have been using nuclear power for over half a century,” said Kenji Yamashita, a press officer with Numo. “As long as we have nuclear power plants, waste will always be produced. So, in every country, it is necessary to find a place to dispose of it.”

Japan currently sends its nuclear waste to a facility in Aomori, the prefecture just south of Hokkaido. The construction of that reprocessing and temporary storage centre has faced delays due to protests from local residents and anti-nuclear activists.

Finding a long-term storage site has been equally challenging. Some towns withdrew their interest due to local opposition before studies could start.

The study is non-binding, meaning a town can start the process without completing it. Additionally, the study is accompanied by substantial subsidies – up to 9 billion yen (US$57.6 million) paid out over the course of the investigation.

This offer was too attractive for Suttsu’s mayor, Haruo Kataoka, to ignore. Like many other towns across Japan, Suttsu has seen a dramatic population decline over the past half-century, having lost more than half of its residents since the 1970s. Nearly half of Suttsu’s population is 65 or older. The local junior school is so small that entire grades fit into a single classroom. A mere seven students make up the school’s first-grade class.

“There’s no doubt this is an ageing town,” Kazuyuki said.

Mayor Kataoka declined to speak with This Week in Asia for this story, but local residents said the six-term mayor has repeatedly tried to find new ways to revitalise the town’s shrinking economy.

Suttsu is home to a large wind energy farm – white windmills dot the landscape and are now featured on signs greeting visitors as they drive into town. It also built a modern town centre, a museum showcasing local history and an elderly care home on a bluff overlooking the town. Few projects delivered the promised financial returns for Suttsu, explained Takashi Saito, a former town council member and relative of the mayor.

“There are a lot of public buildings around town,” Saito said. “It costs a lot of money to maintain and manage them. When you pull back the lid on it, the town has a lot of debt.”

Saito explained that, although he opposes the construction of a nuclear waste facility in town, he understood the mayor’s reasons for pursuing the studies. Suttsu had changed greatly since his childhood, with empty streets and many businesses in the shopping district permanently closed.

“There’s no one walking around the town today,” Saito said. “The town feels lonely now.”

December 31, 2024 Posted by | Japan, opposition to nuclear, PERSONAL STORIES | Leave a comment

Labour donor Dale Vince urges ‘rigorous financial scrutiny’ of Sizewell C costs

Green energy entrepreneur voices concerns over project’s funding and ‘spiralling costs’ of UK’s other nuclear plants.

Michael Savage ,  Observer 28th Dec 2024

The government’s new value for money tsar has been challenged to examine the costs of a nuclear power station to be given final approval next year, as ministers attempt to shore up private investment for the project.

New nuclear plants are a key part of the government’s plan to have clean power by 2030. The Sizewell C reactor, billed as generating enough energy to power 6m homes, is expected to be given the final go ahead in June’s review of public spending. Its projected costs are in excess of £20bn.

However, Labour donor and green energy entrepreneur Dale Vince has written to the chair of the governments’ new Office for Value for Money (OVfM), David Goldstone, arguing that a nuclear plant already being built has seen spiralling costs. He also warns the construction of Sizewell C “will saddle consumers with higher bills long before it delivers a single unit of electricity”.

The government and the French state-owned company EDF will fund about 40% of the Sizewell C project, with ministers currently rounding up private investors to meet the rest of the costs. In his letter, Vince claims that billions have already been spent on the project, even “before a final investment decision has been made”. He also raises concerns about the ballooning costs and delays of Sizewell C’s sister project, Hinkley Point C, in Somerset.

“If Hinkley Point C is anything to go by, Sizewell C really should have rigorous financial scrutiny,” he writes. “Originally priced at £18bn, the cost of Hinkley has ballooned to £46bn and then there’s the delays. Back in 2007, the then EDF chief executive Vincent de Rivaz said that by Christmas 2017 we would be using electricity generated from atomic power at Hinkley. We’re now in Christmas 2024 and Hinkley isn’t due to be completed until 2031.

“Due to a novel funding method, a lengthy construction timeline for Sizewell will saddle consumers with higher bills long before it delivers a single unit of electricity at a time when there is clear evidence that we can secure a cleaner, cheaper energy future without nuclear.”

It comes after a similar warning by Citizens Advice earlier this year. The charity warned that the Suffolk project may offer “poor value for money” and called for greater clarity on its funding, in a letter to the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero. It has warned that the project’s funding model could expose households to cost overruns……………………………………… https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/dec/28/labour-donor-dale-vince-urges-rigorous-financial-scrutiny-of-sizewell-c-costs

December 31, 2024 Posted by | business and costs, UK | Leave a comment

Skiing in France is slowly dying.

Skiing in France is slowly dying and many resorts are expected to close
down in a little over 20 years, industry experts have warned. Climate
change, ageing ski lifts and rising costs are driving smaller, mid-altitude
resorts out of business. Five shut down this year and 186 have gone out of
business since the 1950s, mostly in inexpensive ski areas with relatively
few runs that were popular with French families but never attracted large
numbers of foreign holidaymakers.

Times 29th Dec 2024 https://www.thetimes.com/world/europe/article/france-affordable-ski-slopes-shut-why-nqkb3qrk7

December 31, 2024 Posted by | climate change, France | Leave a comment

With successful Syrian regime change, will US set sights on Iran regime change 2.0?

Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL 30 Dec 24.

Seventy-one years ago the US and UK launched Operation AJAX, a jointly planned coup that deposed Iran’s legitimate ruler Dr. Mohammed Mosaddeq in August, 1953.

The Brits conceived the coup in 1952 and presented it to ‘Give ‘Em Hell’ Harry Truman, who told the Brits to go to Hell. A year later newbie Prez Ike greenlighted AJAX to allow Britain to grab back its Iranian oil monopoly nationalized by Mosaddeq, seeking to break free from US, UK dominance. For Ike, it was a chance to make his bones as a bonafide anti-communist, due to Mosaddeq’s unwillingness to crush Iranian leftist influence. In McCarthyite America and forever more, leftist governments posed a danger to US exceptionalism.

Leading this first official CIA coup against a foreign leader who wouldn’t do our bidding was Teddy Roosevelt’s grandson Kermit Roosevelt Jr. Our hand-picked successor was Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, son of the first Pahlavi monarch Reza Shah Pahlavi. His reluctance and indecision about being summoned as the US/UK puppet almost wrecked Uncle Sam’s best laid plans. But CIA coup leader Roosevelt disobeyed orders to shut down Ajax. He had his Iranian operatives masquerading as commies shed enough blood to turn the tide against Mosaddeq. Up in Warlovers Heaven, Grandpa Teddy beamed with pride. 

The Shah ruled Iran for another 26 years, with his CIA trained secret police killing thousands who dared speak out against his tyrannical rule.

The CIA, emboldened by their success, toppled the Guatemalan government a year later and were on a roll till their delusional 1961 Bay of Pigs regime change operation failed spectacularly. This led to the Cuban Missile a year later that nearly got us all vaporized in nuclear war with Russia.

Seventy-one years later the US appears bent on Iran regime change 2.0. Goaded by Israel seeking to topple its only remaining rival for Middle East dominance, the incoming Trump administration is signaling a return to a belligerent anti Iran policy.

By withdrawing from the Iran nuclear agreement in 2018, Trump freed up Iran to start up a nuclear weapons program if it felt US/Israeli pressure posed an existential threat. Current warfare in Gaza, Lebanon and the Syrian regime change makes that more likely today. Trump’s return to power, staffing his foreign policy team with anti-Iran hardliners, s increases that likelihood. That could trigger implementation of a 21st century Operation Ajax with Israel replacing the UK as Uncle Sam’s co coup plotter against Iran. More ominous than the 1953 version, this one could lead to all out war posing extreme danger to 40,000 US troops in the region.

Iran is not now and never has been America’s enemy. But senselessly imagining a nuclear program that does not exist and plotting with Israel to topple its Middle East rival is a sure way to make Iran one.

December 31, 2024 Posted by | Iran, politics international, USA | Leave a comment

All Of Western Civilization Owns This Genocide


Caitlin Johnstone, Dec 30, 2024,  https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/all-of-western-civilization-owns?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=153782822&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

It’s wrong to blame the Gaza genocide on Jews. It isn’t wrong because antisemitism is a major danger in our society (it’s not), nor because there’s a risk that people will start loading Jews onto trains again (there isn’t), nor because Jewish Israelis and their supporters are blameless (they obviously are not).

It’s wrong to blame this whole thing on Jews because it lets the rest of us off the hook.

This is our genocide. This is our crime. To blame it all on the Jews is to say that our society is perfectly fine and healthy and that none of this would be happening if not for the Machiavellian manipulations of a small Abrahamic religion. It’s to deny the reality that the middle east is on fire right now because of everything this perverse civilization is and always has been.

It is not a coincidence that the tendency to blame all society’s ills on the Jews is much more prevalent on the far right than anywhere else. Rightists are ideologically inhibited from seeing western civilization as a uniquely pernicious blight on this world, and from seeing capitalism and imperialism as the driving force behind the injustices and abuses it inflicts. If you have an ideological need to view all those things as fine and good, then you need to come up with some other explanation for why everything is shitty and evil. So they buy into this infantile narrative that western civilization would be just peachy if it weren’t for those darn Jews.

But western civilization is not peachy. It is a profoundly sick dystopia built by genocide and slavery and fueled by human blood. This would be true with or without Israel, and with or without Judaism.

The genocide in Gaza is happening because the western empire wants it to happen. Biden could have ended this with a phone call at any time. Our leaders are not being reluctantly pushed into this. They’re slaughtering innocent human beings as casually as they slaughtered them in past western military interventions which had nothing to do with Israel, and for the same reasons.

The western empire is constantly working to bludgeon the world into obedience and submission, aggressively targeting any population which insists on its own sovereignty. We’ve seen it in Latin America, we’ve seen it throughout Europe and Asia, we’ve seen it in Africa, and we’ve seen it in the middle east in the same way. Israel is a member state of the western empire and plays a pivotal role in helping to beat down disobedient populations like Iran, Ansar Allah, Hezbollah and Hamas who don’t submit to the will of the empire. I used to list Syria among those who stand against the empire, but the west and Israel have succeeded in smashing it down and absorbing it into the imperial blob.

The empire uses Zionism as one of many tools for enacting its will in the middle east, but if it wasn’t Zionism it would be something else. The violence would play out in different ways under different narratives, but there would still be a continuous violent bludgeoning of disobedient populations in this crucial strategic region which is rich in resources and critical trade routes.

This is just what we are as a civilization. A murderous, thieving, tyrannical empire constantly bullying and abusing the earth’s population into obedience and submission. Some people try to make Jews into the problem because they don’t want to face reality. And the reality is that the problem is us.

Look at Gaza. Really look at it. Watch the videos. Listen to the screams. Read the harrowing stories. This is who we are. This is what we have become. Not because of the Jews. Because of us. The sooner we own this, the sooner we can move toward healing all the entirely home-grown illnesses within us which gave rise to it. And the sooner we can start becoming something better.

December 31, 2024 Posted by | Atrocities, Israel | Leave a comment

The rise and fall of Sweden’s nuclear disarmament advocacy

In the 2020s,…. it is Sweden and Finland that have arguably become the biggest advocates of US nuclear weapons.

By Naman Karl-Thomas Habtom | December 29, 2024,  https://thebulletin.org/2024/12/the-rise-and-fall-of-swedens-nuclear-disarmament-advocacy/

In the nine months since joining NATO, Sweden has not wasted any time integrating itself tightly into the transatlantic alliance. On September 16, Sweden doubled down on its commitment to a nuclear weapons-based military alliance when Sweden and Finland agreed that Sweden would lead a new NATO defense base to be established in northern Finland.

While Denmark and Norway currently do not want to host nuclear weapons on their own soil, NATO’s new entrants have both signaled an openness to doing so. In June, the Swedish parliament ratified a Defense Cooperation Agreement granting the United States access to 17 Swedish military bases, and Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson did not rule out hosting nuclear weapons during wartime. Meanwhile, Finland’s President Alexander Stubb has advocated for a legislative change to allow the transportation of nuclear weapons.

With the benefit of historical hindsight, it is clear that this was not an inevitable outcome. Sweden was once a nuclear aspirant with an advanced weapons program, but just a few decades ago, Stockholm and Helsinki sought to keep nuclear weapons out of northern Europe. In the depths of the Cold War, Stockholm proved willing and capable of advancing ambitious, albeit inconsistent, goals when it came to nuclear weapons in Europe. Sweden’s history suggests that disarmament ideas—such as a Nordic nuclear weapon-free zone—were never completely written off, even if they are difficult to imagine in Europe today.

Pursuing Nordic disarmament. Calls for the establishment of a Nordic nuclear weapon-free zone (NWFZ) did not originate in Sweden but rather in neighboring Finland. Though Swedish Foreign Minister Östen Undén had, in 1961, already proposed the idea in a general manner, Finnish President Urho Kekkonen formally proposed it in 1963.

Earlier that year, Yugoslavia’s leader Josip Broz Tito had expressed his support for a Balkan NWFZ, which Kekkonen saw as strengthening the case for a Nordic zone. In an address on May 28, 1963, Kekkonen argued that the Nordic countries already constituted a de facto NWFZ, with no country officially pursuing or possessing any nuclear weapons.

While the Swedish government was officially supportive of nuclear disarmament and the creation of a Nordic zone, it was suspicious of Kekkonen’s proposal. Though Finns were more eager to join NATO than Swedes in 2022, during the Cold War Finland was in a delicate position and more likely to consider Moscow’s views than its Scandinavian neighbors were, due to its proximity to the Soviet Union. Initially, Sweden saw Kekkonen’s effort as a Soviet initiative, much to the surprise of Finnish civil servants. Swedish suspicions were not wholly unfounded; a year earlier, the Soviet ambassador to Finland visited the Finnish president’s residence and recommended such an undertaking. Though Sweden was not actively pursuing nuclear weapons, its leadership wished to preserve the freedom to acquire them later.

By the late 1970s, Swedish disarmament efforts became more wide-ranging. In November 1978, Swedish Foreign Minister (and future UN weapons inspector as well as head of the International Atomic Energy Agency) Hans Blix aimed to widen the scope of the proposed NWFZ by including the Baltic Sea. In January 1983, the Swedish government even went so far as to propose that the zone also include the border between the Western and socialist states, extending 150 kilometers on each side of the border.

While the suggestion of incorporating the Baltic Sea was rejected at the time, the Soviets accepted the idea of a buffer zone and even suggested that it be wider, in the range of 250 to 300 kilometers on each side. In the United States, however, the idea went nowhere. Joseph Nye, who served as Deputy Under Secretary of State for Security Assistance, Science, and Technology from 1977 to 1979, later noted that there wasn’t much discussion of a Nordic nuclear weapon-free zone. Fast forward a few decades, and the proposal is now beyond dead.

While Sweden had been supportive of a NWFZ in general, its support was inconsistent, especially in the 1980s. . For example, in June 1983, Prime Minister Olof Palme told the North Atlantic Assembly that adjacent areas (such as the Baltic Sea) should be included, but by December of that year, in a speech in Finland, Palme failed to mention that as a requirement. Similarly, in November 1983, Swedish Foreign Minister Lennart Bodström said that a zone could be created through a joint declaration by four Nordic countries accompanied by a pledge from outside powers not to use nuclear weapons against the Nordic states, only to revise this in December by requiring the denuclearization of the Baltic region as well. Support for a NWFZ was partially informed by extra-Nordic conduct, such as the deployment of intermediate-range nuclear missiles in the United Kingdom and West Germany in 1983.

The Soviet perspective. Though Swedish military concerns during the Cold War, such as the initial call for nuclear weapons, were primarily shaped by the potential threat from the East, advocacy for nuclear disarmament contributed to what can be described as a generally friendly relationship between Stockholm and Moscow, especially when compared with contemporary East-West ties.

The prospect for nuclear disarmament in Sweden’s adjacent areas improved throughout the 1980s, with the United States and the Soviet Union negotiating and ultimately signing the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. Whereas Moscow had previously rejected the proposal for the creation of a Baltic Sea NWFZ, it reversed itself by 1990. Early that year, Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze sent a letter to his Swedish counterpart, Sten Andersson, calling for the establishment of a nuclear weapon-free Baltic Sea. In his letter Shevardnadze expressed his belief that “an agreement on this issue would be able to be worked out at a conference between diplomatic and military experts from the aforementioned states.”

The failure to establish such a NWFZ in the Baltic Sea region was likely outside Sweden’s control. According to Thomas Graham Jr., a senior diplomat who was part of the American delegation in every major nonproliferation and international arms control negotiation between 1970 and 1997, “America never thought it was very likely such a [Nordic Nuclear Weapon-Free] Zone would be negotiated,” which would have been a practical precondition before the establishment of a Baltic Sea NWFZ. Graham identified Norway as a hindrance, arguing that “[t]hough Norway is nuclear weapon-free it would not go against NATO on this.”

In the 2020s, however, it is Sweden and Finland that have arguably become the biggest advocates of US nuclear weapons.

Swedish marginalization. The middle of the Cold War was arguably the period during which Sweden had its most prominent role in advancing international nuclear arms control. However, by the 1980s the country was increasingly marginalized when it came to the reduction of global nuclear stockpiles. This was not a product of Sweden’s own doing but was due to the emergence of increasingly successful US-Soviet negotiations and treaties. The bilateral nature of the relationship between the two superpowers had the unintended effect of minimizing any potential influence that the Swedes could have.

According to Graham, “in the SALT/START negotiations on strategic arms between the United States and the Soviet Union, Sweden was simply not relevant.” The cause for this was the very factor that sparked Sweden’s interest in nuclear disarmament in the first place, namely its neutrality. “It was not a party to the negotiations nor an ally of one of the negotiating parties.”

This marginalization stands in contrast to international conferences within the framework of the United Nations, where American diplomats viewed Sweden as a disarmament activist state. Therefore, it is not surprising that Swedish officials made common cause with the Non-Aligned Movement of developing countries that existed outside the US-Soviet rivalry, despite not being a formal member of the organization. Swedish relevance depended on its ability to exert influence over other non-nuclear states, even after the Cold War ended.

The multilateral nature of the UN Conference of the Committee on Disarmament enhanced Swedish relevance. One way Sweden exerted its influence was by advocating for procedural reforms to improve the Conference’s effectiveness. Calls for the abolition of the co-chairmanship governing the Conference effectively aligned Sweden with countries such as Yugoslavia, Mexico, and Romania. Lennart Eckerberg, who led Sweden’s disarmament delegation in Geneva, remarked that “[t]he Swedish delegation, for one, favors several such [procedural] changes” and that this “is, of course, not primarily a procedural question but a political one.”

Swedish marginalization was not exclusively a result of the Soviet-American talks but also of the two Cold War camps. This was true of NATO more so than the Warsaw Pact, with the latter tending to be more supportive of Swedish disarmament efforts. Just a few months before the signing of SALT I, Eckerberg expressed his lack of hope that NATO members would push for a nuclear test ban ahead of a scheduled visit by the Swedish foreign minister to Moscow. In contrast to Western states, Eastern bloc states tended to sympathize with the Swedish position.


Fluctuating influence. Due to its small size, Sweden struggled to stay relevant. It did not have the diplomatic assets or clout that larger countries, especially the two superpowers, possessed. In a report to the foreign ministry, Swedish diplomat Gustaf Hamilton noted in a 1976 report while serving in Geneva as part of the delegation to the Conference on Disarmament: “A weakness in Sweden’s conduct is that we do not have sufficient personnel resources to produce working papers and proposals and don’t always have time in advance to ensure support for us among interested delegations. We lack, in other words, the capacity to plan long-term due to the personnel situation.”

This concern was ever-present throughout the Cold War, with Swedish officials forced to balance resources in a manner that optimized both Swedish contribution and overall effectiveness. This explains, in part, why there was a consistent preference for multilateral approaches, as opposed to lobbying individual countries in purely bilateral ways. It also explains Sweden’s focus on approaches such as the development of seismological counterproliferation technology.

As a frontier state between East and West, Sweden was able to use its geopolitical relevance to promote not only disarmament but also a broader program of tension reduction. But with Sweden now formally a member of NATO, the political will to play a role similar to the one Sweden played in the Cold War is largely absent and hard to muster in the absence of formal neutrality. Nevertheless, the country’s history suggests that ideas like nuclear weapon-free zones, which today are impossible to imagine in Europe, were once salient.

December 31, 2024 Posted by | politics international | Leave a comment

Who’d want to survive a nuclear war?

Chas Newkey-Burden, Spectator UK, 29 December 2024,

he conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East keep raging, Vladimir Putin has lowered the threshold required for Moscow to nuke Europe and Donald Trump is shadowboxing ahead of his return to the ring. You’d need almost divine reserves of Zen to not worry about where all this is heading.

Some people are really worried: they’re paying ‘eye-watering’ and ‘extortionate’ prices of up to £48,000 for nuclear bunkers in case the bomb drops, according to Metro. But surviving a nuclear war ‘doesn’t have to set you back thousands of pounds’, said the Daily Mail. You can build a shelter with ‘objects commonly found around the home’ like internal doors and shower curtains, according to the paper. So your ‘only expenditure’ should be ‘around £72’, on plastic sheeting and ‘a few broom handles’. Best of luck with all that. 

I tried to build a homemade nuclear bunker myself once but in my defence I was only 11 years old at the time………………………………….(Subscribers only) more https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/whod-want-to-survive-a-nuclear-war/

December 31, 2024 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment