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Does the Deep State really exist, and if so, is it being dismantled?

March 9, 2025, https://theaimn.net/does-the-deep-state-really-exist-and-if-so-is-it-being-dismantled/ .

What is the Deep State? Does it really exist?

These questions are hard to answer. I had heard the term Deep State over many years, and I connected it with all sorts of conspiracies – not just about U.S. politics and intelligence systems, but with wild ideas about satanism, reptilian shapeshifters, the antichrist, child-trafficking, blood harvesting – and all connected with extreme right-wing and pro- Trump propaganda. So I just dismissed and ignored them – there was no such thing as the Deep State !

It is not that simple.

Indeed, it is very complex.

If you start delving, the term Deep State takes you back to Turkey, over 100 years ago, where the concept of a “shadow government” a “secret state within the state” was a real thing. In more modern times the Deep State is defined as:

“The deep state conspiracy theory in the United States is an American political conspiracy theory that posits the existence of the deep state, a clandestine network of members of the federal government (especially within the FBI and CIA). The theory argues that there exist networks of collaborators within the leadership of the high-level financial and industrial entities, which exercise power alongside or within the elected United States government” – Wikipedia

So, OK it’s still just a theory – a conspiracy theory pushed by Donald Trump’s supporters in order to discredit USA’s Biden Democrat administration? And various extreme religious and other wacky groups tacked the more sinister stuff onto it.

The trouble is, as with many problems, there is some truth in it. Over the decades since World War 2, successive U.S. Presidents have turned to secret discussions with unelected officials from the CIA in particular, but also from other agencies and business circles, relying on their advice to make decisions. The decisions were then pretty much rubber-stamped by a complacent and oblivious Congress.

The following (annoying advertisement-afflicted) video from early 2024, is unmistakably a propaganda piece for the Trump campaign. But it does contain some telling information. Even from its first example, we see that J.F. Kennedy, in the Cuban missile crisis, went not to his advisors, but to a social group of very secret members of the CIA to decide what to do. The development of the very powerful, very secretive CIA, in partnership with military leaders, rocket scientists from Germany, media and business leaders, produced an information network on which Presidents relied for decision-making. The CIA’s spying powers that were appropriate in war against the enemy are now directed also against the American public, even in peacetime. Huge well-funded resources went to secret activities that included misinformation and disinformation against civil rights and peace activists. Congress accepts these secret programmes in the name of security.

That video – however pro-Trump it might be, does not mention satanism, etc. If you separate that wacky stuff from the Deep State story – it is all remarkably convincing. To an American public, fed up with the secrecy, the endless expensive pointless wars – Vietnam, Iraq Afghanistan …, Donald Trump’s promise of change, and of dismantling the Deep State sounded attractive.

And hey – presto ! Trump is doing it! He’s sacking those unelected officials, thousands and thousands of them. He’s purging law enforcement and intelligence agencies, and plans to cut 70 percent of staff from various government agencies — freezing of billions of dollars in funding,

Ain’t that great!

Actually, no.

We might welcome the disruption of a Deep State system based on militarism, with the USA forever fomenting trouble overseas, and spending unknown $squillions on military gimmickry. A phrase springs to mind – “Throwing the baby out with the bath-water” . That’s a very corny metaphor. But what is really happening is this:

Trump’s aim is nothing to do with the “Deep State” . Trump’s goal and methodology was set out, detailed in Project 2025, the Center for Renewing America and the America First Policy Institute. The goal is the destruction of democracy – removing or rendering useless the laws, regulations, protocols and rules that prevent autocratic power. No more compromise, limited power, checks and balances and accountability. He made a good start in getting control over the Supreme Court

And I don’t know if everybody noticed two salient points in Trump’s “defeat of the Deep State”

  1. the power and unaccountable funding of the Pentagon will continue.
  2. Trump’s getting rid of “unelected officials” – but apparently taking orders from unelected Elon Musk.

The end goal is the dictatorship of Donald Trump. It would be funny if it were not so deadly serious. The first step – the “Trump’s Birthday and Flag Day Holiday Establishment Act” gives a clue as to what will follow.

The President Trump phenomenon will end eventually, for sure in chaos. Western World leadership is in the hands of a powerful, but unhinged , dictator, who is taking the advice of another powerful unelected unhinged billionaire, Elon Musk.

The whole process is far too much to pay for the destruction of the Deep State. Yes, it is welcome that the secretive decision-making by unelected officials and business leaders – taking the USA into endless wars – has been stopped. But its replacement is a terrifying fascism.

And at the end of it all, after the chaos, what will emerge? If we’re lucky enough to avoid catastrophes of global heating, and war, will we again get a government of men that are happy to have decisions made by macho men in bureaucracy and industry, who are itching for war – another Deep State in the name of “security”?

March 9, 2025 Posted by | Christina's notes, politics, USA | Leave a comment

We’ve failed to stop climate change — this is what we need to do next.

While we can still limit warming by cutting emissions, we now face having to adapt to more extreme weather.

Ben Spencer, Science Editor, |Anna Dowell, Data Journalism Trainee, Thursday March 06 2025, https://www.thetimes.com/uk/environment/article/climate-change-adaptation-decarbonisation-times-earth-93jln78vd

here is a story that used to be told about the fight against climate change. It was a narrative of hope, of a battle to be fought and won.

“This is the moment when we must come together to save this planet,” Barack Obama told a crowd of 200,000 people in Berlin in 2008, the summer before he was elected president.

That moment, of course, came and went. But there were more speeches, more moments of urgency. Al Gore tried, so did Leonardo DiCaprio. Sir David Attenborough and Greta Thunberg attempted to mobilise the masses; even the King has had a go.

Boris Johnson tried again in 2021 at the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow, urging world leaders to “keep alive” the hope of limiting global warming to 1.5C, enshrined in the Paris Agreement of 2015. He said: “Let’s keep moving forward and make this the moment we irrefutably turn the tide against climate change.”

There are only so many times, however, that the same stories can be told.

Laurie Laybourn, director of the Strategic Climate Risks Initiative, said: “It’s only really now that the penny is dropping that we didn’t prevent a global-scale climate crisis. We’re now in a global-scale climate crisis.”

The wildfires in Los Angeles, flooding in Valencia, and the storms that have battered the British Isles this winter — Bert, Darragh and Éowyn — have confirmed what the scientists have long forecast. Climate change is no longer something that can be averted: it has arrived.

In January the Met Office announced that global average temperatures for 2024 had risen 1.5C above pre-industrial levels for the first time. One year’s weather records do not in themselves mean the 2015 Paris Agreement, which set out to limit global warming long-term, has failed. But the Met Office also warned that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is still rising, and is now “incompatible” with the modelled pathways that would keep warming below the totemic 1.5C.

“There is an adjustment that’s needed now to understand that that preventative project has not worked,” Laybourn said. “Emissions reductions were not tried at the scale that were needed — being confronted with that failure is actually quite difficult for people.”

After years of focusing on averting climate change, what climate scientists refer to as “mitigation”, experts are warning that we now need far greater focus on adaptation to cope with the new weather that comes with a warming world.

There is no doubt that in the UK we are not ready for climate change. Chris Stark, former chief executive of the climate change committee (CCC) and now a senior energy official, in 2022 described the government’s planning for global warming as “genuinely poor”, blaming a “wilful reluctance” to factor adaptation into policy.

This reluctance goes back years. In a speech at Chatham House in September, the former Labour politician David Miliband admitted that preparing for global warming had been something of a taboo. “When I was environment secretary in 2006-7, it felt as though talking about adapting to climate change meant admitting defeat on mitigating climate change.”

Climate change for the UK means hotter, drier summers and wetter winters with more frequent, more severe storms…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

It is not just the UK failing to prepare. The United Nations Environment Programme (Unep) in November published its “adaptation gap” report, setting out how far the issue has been neglected. It found that annual global spending on climate adaptation is between $187 billion and $359 billion short of what it should be, “with adaptation planning slowing and implementation falling behind”.

Inger Andersen, Unep executive director, said in the foreword: “People and the natural systems upon which our livelihoods depend are increasingly in danger from the hell and high water that climate change is bringing. The world must get serious about adaptation, now.”

MARK PASSMORE/ALAMY

Laybourn stressed that while much more must be done to adapt to climate change, it does not mean that politicians should abandon decarbonisation. “You have to do both,” he said. “If you’re busy mopping the floor you mustn’t forget to turn off the tap.”

Part of the reluctance to push forwards with climate adaptation is finding ways to pay for it. Decarbonisation is a relatively easy sell: it is not difficult to persuade a developer to build a wind farm or install solar panels if they can then profit from the cheap power they generate.

Flood defences, on the other hand, do not generate a return, so central investment is needed.

But experts say a long view is required. Existing flood defences in Britain prevent £1.15 billion in damage each year. Laybourn thinks this approach is required for other sectors. “If the UK had a more nature-abundant, more balanced, sustainable farming system, for example, it would mean that the farming system was better able to handle shocks.”

A UK government spokesman insisted adaptation was being taken seriously………………………… https://www.thetimes.com/uk/environment/article/climate-change-adaptation-decarbonisation-times-earth-93jln78vd

March 9, 2025 Posted by | climate change | Leave a comment

Jeffrey Sachs: Negotiating a Lasting Peace in Ukraine

 

The time has arrived for diplomacy that brings collective security to Europe, Ukraine, and Russia.

Jeffrey D. Sachs, Mar 06, 2025Common Dreams

There should be little doubt about how a lasting peace can be established in Ukraine. In April 2022, Russia and Ukraine were on the verge of signing a peace agreement in Istanbul, with the Turkish Government acting as mediator. The U.S. and U.K. talked Ukraine out of signing the agreement, and hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have since died or been seriously injured. Yet the framework of the Istanbul Process still provides the basis of peace today.


The draft peace agreement (dated April 15, 2022) and the Istanbul Communique (dated March 29, 2022) on which it was based, offered a sensible and straightforward way to end the conflict. It’s true that three years after Ukraine broke off the negotiations, during which time Ukraine has incurred major losses, Ukraine will eventually cede more territory than it would have in April 2022 — yet it will gain the essentials: sovereignty, international security arrangements, and peace.

In the 2022 negotiations, the agreed issues were Ukraine’s permanent neutrality and international security guarantees for Ukraine. The final disposition of the contested territories was to be decided over time, based on negotiations between the parties, during which both sides committed to refrain from using force to change boundaries. Given the current realities, Ukraine will cede Crimea and parts of southern and eastern Ukraine, reflecting the battlefield outcomes of the past three years.

Such an agreement can be signed almost immediately and in fact is likely to be signed in the coming months. As the U.S. is no longer going to underwrite the war, in which Ukraine would suffer yet more casualties, destruction, and loss of territory, Zelensky is recognizing that it’s time to negotiate. In his address to Congress, President Donald Trump quoted Zelensky as saying “Ukraine is ready to come to the negotiating table as soon as possible to bring lasting peace closer.”

The pending issues in April 2022 involved the specifics of security guarantees for Ukraine and the revised boundaries of Ukraine and Russia. The main issue regarding the guarantees involved the role of Russia as a co-guarantor of the agreement. Ukraine insisted that the Western co-guarantors should be able to act with or without Russia’s assent, so as not to give Russia a veto over the Ukraine’s security. Russia sought to avoid a situation where Ukraine and its Western co-guarantors would manipulate the agreement to justify renewed force against Russia. Both sides have a point.

The best resolution, in my view, is to put the security guarantees under the authority of the UN Security Council. This means that the U.S., China, Russia, U.K., and France would all be co-guarantors, together with the rest of the UN Security Council. This would subject the security guarantees to global scrutiny. Yes, Russia could veto a subsequent UN Security Council resolution regarding Ukraine, but it would then face China’s opprobrium and the world’s if Russia were to act arbitrarily in defiance of the will of the rest of the UN.

Regarding the final disposition of borders, some background is very important. Before the violent overthrow of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014, Russia did not make any territorial demands vis-à-vis Ukraine. Yanukovych favored neutrality for Ukraine, opposed NATO membership, and peacefully negotiated with Russia a 20-year lease for Russia’s naval base in Sevastopol, Crimea, home of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet since 1783. After Yanukovych was toppled and replaced by a U.S.-backed, pro-NATO government, Russia moved quickly to retake Crimea, to prevent the naval base from falling into NATO hands. During 2014 to 2021, Russia did not push for annexing any other Ukrainian territory. Russia called for the political autonomy of the ethnic Russian regions of eastern Ukraine (Donetsk and Luhansk) that broke away from Kyiv immediately after Yanukovych was toppled.

The Minsk II agreement was to implement autonomy. The Minsk framework was inspired in part by the autonomy of the ethnic Germany region of South Tyrol in Italy. German Chancellor Angela Merkel knew the South Tyrol experience and viewed it as a precedent for similar autonomy in the Donbas. Unfortunately, Ukraine strongly resisted autonomy for the Donbas, and the U.S. backed Ukraine in rejecting autonomy. Germany and France, which ostensibly were guarantors of Minsk II, stood by silently as the agreement was thrown aside by Ukraine and the United States.

Following six years in which Minsk II was not implemented, during which the U.S.-armed Ukrainian military continued to shell the Donbas in an attempt to subdue and recover the breakaway provinces, Russia recognized Donetsk and Luhansk as independent states on February 21, 2022. The status of Donetsk and Luhansk in the Istanbul process was still to be finalized. Perhaps a return to Minsk II and its actual implementation by Ukraine (recognizing the autonomy of the two regions in the Ukrainian constitution) could have been ultimately agreed. When Ukraine walked away from the negotiating table, alas, the issue was moot. A few months later, on September 30, 2022, Russia annexed the two oblasts as well as two others, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.

The sad lesson is this. Ukraine’s loss of territory would have been averted entirely but for the violent coup that toppled Yanukovych and brought in a U.S.-backed regime intent on NATO membership. The loss of territory in eastern Ukraine could have been averted had the U.S. pushed Ukraine to implement the UN Security Council-backed Minsk II agreement. The loss of territory in eastern Ukraine could probably have been averted as late as April 2022 in the Istanbul Process, but the U.S. blocked the peace agreement. Now, after 11 years of war since the overthrow of Yanukovych, and as a result of Ukraine’s losses on the battlefield, Ukraine will cede Crimea and other territories of eastern and southern Ukraine in the coming negotiations.

Europe has other interests that it should be negotiating with Russia, notably security for the Baltic States and for European-Russian security arrangements more generally. The Baltic States feel very vulnerable to Russia, understandably so given their history, but they are also gravely and unnecessarily adding to their vulnerability by a stream of repressive measures taken against their ethnic Russian citizenry, including measures to repress the use of the Russian language and measures to cut their citizens’ ties with the Russian Orthodox Church. Baltic state leaders are also provocatively engaging in remarkable Russophobic rhetoric. Ethnic Russians are about 25% of the population of both Estonia and Latvia, and around 5% in Lithuania. Security for the Baltic States should be achieved through security-enhancing measures taken on both sides, including the respect for minority rights of the ethnic Russian populations, and by refraining from vitriolic rhetoric.

The time has arrived for diplomacy that brings collective security to Europe, Ukraine, and Russia. Europe should open direct talks with Russia and should urge Russia and Ukraine to sign a peace agreement based on the March 29 Istanbul Communique and the April 15, 2022 draft peace agreement. Peace in Ukraine should by followed by the creation of a new system of collective security for all of Europe, stretching from Britain to the Urals, and indeed beyond.

March 9, 2025 Posted by | politics international, Ukraine | Leave a comment

Europe’s Face-Saving Theater on Ukraine

That Ukraine would lose was obvious two years ago to Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz when they both gently broke that news to Zelensky privately in Paris in February 2023.

It seems that U.S. and European leaders kept an unwinnable war going until now to save their own careers. They could never admit defeat. But it did not save Biden or Harris or Blinken or Scholz or Trudeau, and Macron is in trouble too as voters saw through them all.

Britain’s prime minister called an “emergency” summit in London following the Oval Office Fiasco to try to convince the world it will not be Europe’s fault, but America’s (Read: Donald Trump’s) when Ukraine collapses, writes Joe Lauria.

By Joe Lauria, Consortium News,  https://consortiumnews.com/2025/03/05/europes-facing-saving-theater-on-ukraine/

In his speech following the emergency European summit he called in London on Sunday, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Britain was prepared to send “boots on the ground” and “planes in the air” to defend Ukraine against the evil madman, Vladimir Putin.  

Then Starmer added: but only if the United States joins us. 

He said: 

“We will go further to develop a ‘coalition of the willing’ to defend a deal in Ukraine…

And to guarantee the peace.

Not every nation will feel able to contribute. 

But that can’t mean we sit back. 

Instead, those willing will intensify planning now – with real urgency.

The UK is prepared to back this…

With boots on the ground, and planes in the air…

Together with others. 

Europe must do the heavy lifting…

But to support peace on our continent.

And to succeed, this effort must have strong US backing

Donald Trump has made it clear he is not going to commit U.S. troops to Ukraine, however. And Russia has said it would never accept Western troops there. 

What Starmer is really saying is:  Europe stands ready to fight and die as peacekeepers to save Ukraine if necessary, but only with the Americans. So when they refuse to come and the disastrous Project Ukraine at last comes crashing on our heads, don’t blame us, blame the U.S.A. 

The theater piece directed by Starmer at Lancaster House with an assembly of 15 European heads of government (and Justin Trudeau of Canada) was not really choreographed to try to convince Trump to reverse course, which appears unlikely, but as an elaborate presentation to save the hides of politicians who invested so much of their own political capital and wasted so much of their citizens’ money in the inevitable and humiliating defeat of Ukraine.

The summit was called by Starmer within two days of what he and the other Europeans saw transpire in the Oval Office on Friday. [See: Trump, Vance School Zelinsky on Reality of His War]. That occured at the end of a week in which both Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron had paid a visit to the same Oval Office where they learned first hand Trump’s determination to end the war even if it means Ukraine’s defeat. 

That Ukraine would lose was obvious two years ago to Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz when they both gently broke that news to Zelensky privately in Paris in February 2023.

Trump will become even easier to blame now that he has cut off military aid and intelligence to Ukraine.

[The theater continued on Thursday at another European summit in Brussels, dubbed a “War Summit” by Politico, in which French President Emmanuel Macron, and still German Foreign Minister Alena Baerbock said Europe needed to get ready for war with Russia.]

The private remarks clashed with public statements from European leaders who had routinely said then, and still say today, that they will continue to support Ukraine for as long as it takes to achieve victory on the battlefield. That was Joe Biden’s line too.

The Wall Street Journal, which reported on the private remarks to Zelenksy two years ago, wrote:

“The public rhetoric masks deepening private doubts among politicians in the U.K., France and Germany that Ukraine will be able to expel the Russians from eastern Ukraine and Crimea, which Russia has controlled since 2014, and a belief that the West can only help sustain the war effort for so long, especially if the conflict settles into a stalemate, officials from the three countries say.

‘We keep repeating that Russia mustn’t win, but what does that mean? If the war goes on for long enough with this intensity, Ukraine’s losses will become unbearable,’ a senior French official said. ‘And no one believes they will be able to retrieve Crimea.’”

Indeed Ukraine’s losses have become unbearable. Macron and Scholz tried to tell Zelensky at that Élysée Palace dinner in February 2023 that he must consider peace talks with Moscow, the Journal reported.

According to its source, the newspaper quoted Macron as telling Zelensky that “even mortal enemies like France and Germany had to make peace after World War II.”

Macron told Zelensky “he had been a great war leader, but that he would eventually have to shift into political statesmanship and make difficult decisions,” the newspaper reported. 

One wonders then why Scholz and Macron and the rest of Europe have persisted in fueling a lost cause that has since chewed up tens of thousands of additional Ukrainian lives. Could they be so corrupt that the survival of their political careers was worth the carnage of another nation’s men?

Could they have been as corrupted as Antony Blinken, who insisted to the end of his time as U.S. secretary of state that Ukraine lower the conscription age to 18, even though he knew these youth would be sent to certain death?  Have Western leaders not understood that the only chance Ukraine had to win the war was with NATO’S direct participation, risking a nuclear holocaust ? 

It seems that U.S. and European leaders kept an unwinnable war going until now to save their own careers. They could never admit defeat. But it did not save Biden or Harris or Blinken or Scholz or Trudeau, and Macron is in trouble too as voters saw through them all.

They’d all staked too much on the outcome of the war. They allowed their economies to fall. They pushed government censorship of social and alternative media to hide criticism that they were allowing men to die so that they would not be accused of “losing Ukraine.”      

It’s been a cornerstone of history from ancient emperors to Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon in Vietnam, and now Biden and Starmer in Ukraine: Let them die so that we may stay in office. 

With defeat staring them in the face, who better to blame it on than the ogre, Donald Trump, who has dared to inject realism into the twisted dream of using Ukraine to weaken and defeat Russia. 

It’s a failed policy that the European and Ukrainian leaders desperately need to keep going. One way to attempt this, as Chicago University professor John Mearsheimer said, is for the British, French and Ukrainians to “trap” the United States into giving a “security guarantee” to Ukraine.

Language in the mineral deal Zelensky had gone to the U.S. on Friday to sign calls for “common protection of critical resources.” Mearsheimer told a TV network in India that that is “the way they are trying to trap Trump and Co., and Trump won’t be trapped.”

This became evident in the Oval Office dust up last Friday when Trump angrily rejected Zelensky’s insistence on a U.S. “security guarantee” before he’d agree to a ceasefire and sign the mineral agreement.  [See: Trump, Vance School Zelensky on Reality of His War]

The only way to keep their war going is to cajole Trump into getting the U.S. deeper into the morass, rather than wisely pulling out and pushing for a deal to end it. 

As much as they might despise Trump, Starmer’s Sunday performance was designed to suck up to him. And an ungrateful Zelensky, reconsidering his public feud with Trump, is trying to make up with a man that seems susceptible to flattery.

In his address to the U.S. Congress Tuesday night, Trump said:

“Earlier today I received an important letter from President Zelensky of Ukraine. The letter reads: ‘Ukraine is ready to come to the negotiating table as soon as possible to bring lasting peace closer.’

‘Nobody wants peace more than the Ukrainians,’ he said. ‘My team and I stand ready to work under President Trump strong leadership to get a peace that lasts. … We do really value how much America has done to help Ukraine, maintain its sovereignty and independence. … Regarding the agreement on minerals and security, Ukraine is ready to sign it at any time.’

That is convenient for you. I appreciate that he sent this letter. I just got it a little while ago. Simultaneously we’ve had serious discussions with Russia. Then I’ve received strong signals that they are ready for peace. Wouldn’t that be beautiful? Wouldn’t that be beautiful?

Wouldn’t that be beautiful?

It’s time to stop this madness. It’s time to halt the killing. It’s time to end the senseless war. If you want to end wars, you have to talk to both sides.”

Desperate Europeans and Ukrainians need Trump to keep their war and thus their careers going, perhaps none more so than Zelensky.

Will Trump stand firm, or will he succumb to a trap?

March 9, 2025 Posted by | EUROPE, politics international | Leave a comment

Non-Proliferation Treaty ‘struggling’ in new nuclear age, expert warns

By Xander Elliards

A CRUCIAL international treaty seen as the cornerstone of nuclear relations is “really struggling” in the modern age as nuclear-armed states fail to meet their obligations under it, an expert has warned.

Speaking to The National from a UN summit on the Treaty on the Prohibition
of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), the University of Glasgow’s Dr Rhys Crilley
said there was “a lot of frustration internationally” with
nuclear-armed states like the UK failing to live up to their commitments
under the older Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

 The National 6th March 2025, https://www.thenational.scot/news/24988503.non-proliferation-treaty-struggling-new-nuclear-age-expert-warns/

March 9, 2025 Posted by | politics international | Leave a comment

Supreme Court wrestles with nation’s frustrating search for nuclear waste storage

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, looking ahead to the United States’ 250th anniversary next year, said, “I hope that we make it another 250, but if it takes 40 or 80 years for a solution to come, it would still be temporary, correct?”

By ASSOCIATED PRESS, 6 March 2025 ,
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/ap/article-14464455/The-Supreme-Court-confronts-national-headache-What-growing-pile-nuclear-waste.html

WASHINGTON (AP) – The Supreme Court on Wednesday wrestled with whether to restart plans to temporarily store nuclear waste at sites in rural Texas and New Mexico even as some justices worried about safety issues and the lack of progress toward a permanent solution.

The justices heard arguments in a case that reflects the complicated politics of the nation´s so far futile quest for a permanent underground storage facility. A plan to build a national storage facility northwest of Las Vegas at Yucca Mountain has been mothballed because of staunch opposition from most Nevada residents and officials.

The court took up a challenge by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and a private company with a license for the Texas facility to an appellate ruling that found the commission had no authority to grant the license. The outcome of the case will affect plans for a similar facility in New Mexico roughly 40 miles (65 kilometers) away.

The licenses would allow the companies to operate the facilities for 40 years, with the possibility of a 40-year renewal.

“That doesn’t sound very interim to me,” Justice Neil Gorsuch said, while also questioning the advisability of storing spent nuclear fuel “on a concrete platform in the Permian Basis, where we get all our oil and gas from.”

Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas joined Gorsuch in asking questions suggesting they were the most likely to uphold the ruling from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Roughly 100,000 tons (90,000 metric tons) of spent fuel, some of it dating from the 1980s, is piling up at current and former nuclear plant sites nationwide and growing by more than 2,000 tons (1,800 metric tons) a year. The waste was meant to be kept there temporarily before being deposited deep underground.

The NRC has said that the temporary storage sites are needed because existing nuclear plants are running out of room. The presence of the spent fuel also complicates plans to decommission some plants, the Justice Department said in court papers.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, looking ahead to the United States’ 250th anniversary next year, said, “I hope that we make it another 250, but if it takes 40 or 80 years for a solution to come, it would still be temporary, correct?”

Justice Department lawyer Malcolm Stewart agreed, noting that the spent fuel has to be kept somewhere, whether at operating and decommissioned plants or elsewhere.

Security also is cheaper with the waste in one or two locations, Stewart said, relying on arguments made by Interim Storage Partners LLC, the company with the Texas license.

Sotomayor, along with Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan and Brett Kavanaugh, seemed most inclined to reverse the 5th circuit. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett said little or nothing to reveal where they stand.

The NRC’s appeal was filed by the Biden administration and maintained by the new Trump administration. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott,. a Republican, and New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, are leading bipartisan opposition to the facilities in their states.

The justices will consider whether, as the NRC and Interim Storage Partners argues, the states and a private energy company forfeited their right to object to the licensing decisions because they declined to join in the commission´s proceedings.

Two other federal appeals courts, in Denver and Washington, that weighed the same issue ruled for the agency. Only the 5th Circuit allowed the cases to proceed.

The second issue is whether federal law allows the commission to license temporary storage sites. Opponents are relying on a 2022 Supreme Court decision that held that Congress must act with specificity when it wants to give an agency the authority to regulate on an issue of major national significance. In ruling for Texas, the 5th Circuit agreed that what to do with the nation´s nuclear waste is the sort of “major question” that Congress must speak to directly.

But the Justice Department has argued that the commission has long-standing authority to deal with nuclear waste reaching back to the 1954 Atomic Energy Act.

The NRC granted the Texas license to Interim Storage for a facility that could take up to 5,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel rods from power plants and 231 million tons of other radioactive waste. The facility would be built next to an existing dump site in Andrews County for low-level waste such as protective clothing and other material that has been exposed to radioactivity. The Andrews County site is about 350 miles (560 kilometers) west of Dallas, near the Texas-New Mexico state line.

The New Mexico facility would be in Lea County, in the southeastern part of the state near Carlsbad. The NRC gave a license for the site to Holtec International.

Alito, who said the interim sites could remove the incentive to find a permanent solution, asked Brad Fagg, a lawyer for Interim Storage Partners, for a prediction of when a permanent site would open.

“I’ve been in this stew for a lot of years,” Fagg said. “I would be kidding myself and this court if I said I had a date.”

A decision is expected by late June.

March 9, 2025 Posted by | Legal, USA, wastes | Leave a comment

  UK urged to prepare for Donald Trump halting Trident partnership.

After tensions over a failed nuclear missile test last year, experts say the
White House withdrawing assistance would cost billions.

When a Trident II D5 missile misfired and crashed into the sea off the coast of Florida
during a rare test launch by the Royal Navy in January last year, American
sailors were on board the submarine to witness it. US ships monitored the
event nearby. In the days that followed, US and UK officials wrangled over
how much information the Ministry of Defence in London could share with the
public about what went wrong.

The British government wanted to be as open
as possible in the hope that it would restore some faith in the nuclear
deterrent — which costs about £3 billion a year to run — eight years
after another misfire in 2016. The Americans won the argument and officials
were limited to saying that an “anomaly occurred”.

What actually happened was a failure caused by test equipment strapped to the missile;
had it been fired in anger without such a device, it would have worked.
“There was deep frustration at the US for blocking a full explanation,”
said a defence source privy to the discussions with the Americans. The UK
has total operational control over its Trident missiles once they are
loaded on to its four Vanguard-class submarines.

However, such revelations
expose how intertwined the US and UK are when it comes to the nuclear
deterrent, Britain’s ultimate insurance policy. Should the UK want to
untangle the relationship — or a pro-Russian White House end its
co-operation — it would cost taxpayers tens of billions, experts warn.

 Times 5th March 2025, https://www.thetimes.com/uk/defence/article/uk-urged-to-prepare-for-donald-trump-halting-trident-partnership-cj8rdjw0w

March 9, 2025 Posted by | politics international, UK | Leave a comment

It’s time to ditch Virginia subs for AUKUS and go to Plan B

In this op-ed, Henry Sokolski argues Australia should switch its focus from buying Virginia-class submarines and instead put that money towards Pillar 2 technologies.

 Breaking Defense   Henry Sokolski March 06, 2025 

Earlier this month, the Australian government made its first payment of $500 million toward eventually obtaining US nuclear-powered submarines under the 2021 AUKUS agreement. Because the submarine deal is unlikely to overcome budgetary, organizational, and personnel hurdles, that payment should be Australia’s last.

Rather than sacrificing much of its defense program to buy nuclear submarines, Canberra should instead adopt an AUKUS Plan B that would field new defense technologies such as uncrewed systems and hypersonic weapons that would enhance Australia’s security faster, and for far less.

Most experts believe funding AUKUS’s nuclear submarine plans will be challenging. Australia’s defense budget this year is almost $35 billion USD, and is planned to rise to almost $63 billion annually by the end of this decade when Australia would begin buying US nuclear submarines. At more than $3 billion per boat, each Virginia sub will eat up five to ten percent of the Australia defense budget that year, assuming Australia can double its defense spending in five years. Already, a former top officer has warned that the submarine pact will “cannibalize” other priorities and require deferring future surface warships or eliminating some ground units.

Another potential stumbling block is what’s needed to manage a nuclear propulsion program. More than 8,000 people work for the US Naval Nuclear Propulsion program. Today only about 680 people work at the Australian Submarine Agency. If Australia wants a sovereign submarine force that isn’t dependent on Washington’s oversight, it will need thousands of additional skilled civilian workers.

Military personnel is also a challenge. The Royal Australian Navy (RAN) includes about 16,000 sailors today. Each Virginia-class submarine has a crew of about 130 people, and about 400 sailors per ship to account for training, shore duty, and maintenance. With retention already difficult for the Australian Defence Force, the RAN may be hard-pressed to find and keep the thousand-plus highly-qualified personnel it needs to crew the nuclear sub fleet……………………………..
https://breakingdefense.com/2025/03/its-time-to-ditch-virginia-subs-for-aukus-and-go-to-plan-b/

March 9, 2025 Posted by | AUSTRALIA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

East Lindsey overwhelmingly backs GDF withdrawal call to Lincolnshire County Council

At their March meeting, East Lindsey District Councillors backed a motion calling on their colleagues at County Hall to join them in withdrawing from the nuke dump plan.

Leader Councillor Craig Leyland confirmed that he shall recommend to his Executive that East Lindsey District Council withdraws from the process when it next meets on 23 April.

Were Lincolnshire to follow suit that would draw a line upon the issue; Nuclear Waste Services would no longer be able to investigate potential sites for the Geological Disposal Facility within the Theddlethorpe Search Area, or indeed any area within the East Lindsey District, as there would no longer be any Relevant Principal Local Authority backing the plan…………………….


 NFLA 6th March 2025,
https://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/east-lindsey-overwhelmingly-backs-gdf-withdrawal-call-to-lincolnshire-county-council/

March 9, 2025 Posted by | UK, wastes | Leave a comment

Doug Ford: Rip up the GE-Hitachi US nuclear contract

Ontario Clean Air Alliance 6 Mar 25

Premier Ford says he will tear up Ontario’s expensive contract for Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite service in the wake of Donald Trump’s unhinged attacks on our economy. And thanks to Doug Ford, American wine and bourbon is gone from our liquor stores.

He has also ordered the Ontario Public Service to go through the province’s contracts “with a fine tooth comb” to find other U.S. contracts that can be axed. According to Premier Ford: “We won’t award contracts to people who enable and encourage economic attacks on our province and our country.”

That’s why it’s time for the Ford Government to tell Ontario Power Generation to rip up its contract with GE-Hitachi for 4 new nuclear reactors at Darlington, east of Oshawa. These expensive and first-of-their-kind proposed new U.S. reactors would come with a lot of energy security and financial risks, including the need to import enriched uranium from the U.S. 

As Bob Walker, National Director of the Canadian Nuclear Workers’ Council told the Globe and Mail: “Developing a dependence on another country for our nuclear fuel has always been a concern and recent events have proven those concerns are justified.”

A much lower cost and more secure way to keep our lights on is to invest in Made-in-Canada wind and solar energy plus storage.

It is time for Doug Ford to lift his political moratorium on Great Lakes offshore wind power and work with Premier Legault to expand our east-west electricity grid. As a first step the Ontario-Quebec electricity interconnection capability at Ottawa should be increased by 2,000 megawatts.  

Please tell Premier Ford that to Protect Ontario we need to invest in Made-in-Canada wind and solar energy and storage, and work with Quebec to expand our east-west electricity grid.

March 9, 2025 Posted by | Canada, politics | Leave a comment

9-year lawsuit fails to stop Ikata nuclear plant operations

By KAI NEMOTO/ Staff Writer, March 5, 2025, https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/15655918

HIROSHIMA—The district court here rejected a request on March 5 by plaintiffs to stop operations at the Ikata nuclear power plant in Ehime Prefecture on the main island of Shikoku.

The Hiroshima District Court ended a nine-year lawsuit brought by 337 plaintiffs, including some who survived the Aug. 6, 1945, atomic bombing of Hiroshima, by rejecting the injunction request.

Although Hiroshima is located about 100 kilometers north of the Ikata plant, operated by Shikoku Electric Power Co., the plaintiffs argued that a serious accident would send radioactive materials spewing into the air and waters of the Seto Inland Sea that lies between Hiroshima and Ehime prefectures.

The main points of contention in the lawsuit filed in March 2016 were the safety of the Ikata plant against earthquakes and volcanic eruptions in Kyushu.

During the course of the trial, atomic bomb survivors testified about what they went through after Hiroshima was leveled 80 years ago.

The Ikata nuclear plant began operations in 1977, but only the No. 3 reactor is currently operating. The other two reactors are in the process of being decommissioned.

Similar lawsuits to stop operations have been filed in other district courts in the region, but in March 2024 the Oita District Court rejected the request by plaintiffs, who appealed to the Fukuoka High Court.

March 9, 2025 Posted by | Japan, Legal | Leave a comment

UK’s richest can boost climate action but need to cut outsized emissions – study

 Better-off Britons are well placed to accelerate the transition towards
low-carbon technologies, but only if they are prepared to curb their
excessive consumption to lower their outsized carbon footprints, a study
has found.

Researchers found people from the richest 10% in the UK were
more likely to invest in electric vehicles, heat pumps and other clean
energy alternatives, and were more likely to support green policies. But
they also found wealthier people used far more energy at home, were more
likely to fly for leisure, were more reluctant to sacrifice luxuries, and
were likely to underestimate the carbon impact of their own behaviour.

As a result, many wealthy people were caught in a contradiction: vocally
supporting climate action and, in many cases, making climate-conscious
consumer choices, while at the same time materially exacerbating climate
breakdown.

 Guardian 5th March 2025, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/mar/05/uks-richest-can-boost-climate-action-but-need-to-cut-outsized-emissions-study

March 9, 2025 Posted by | climate change, UK | Leave a comment

UK Government ignoring international law on nuclear weapons – experts.


By Xander Elliards

 THE UK Government is flouting the international laws it has subscribed to
by refusing to discuss banning nuclear weaponry, leading experts have said.
It comes after the Labour Government dismissed a UN summit on the Treaty on
the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) out of hand, saying they would
not attend even as an observer.

However, the majority of the world’s
countries are present at the TPNW meeting in New York, where a total ban on
nuclear weapon testing, development, or use is being discussed. The UK
Government is not a signatory to the TPNW – but like the US, France,
Russia, and China it is signed up to the earlier Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty (NPT). This obliges states to prevent new countries from acquiring
nuclear weapons – but also obliges signatories to work towards complete
disarmament.

 The National 5th March 2025, https://www.thenational.scot/news/24985203.uk-government-ignoring-international-law-nuclear-weapons—experts/

March 9, 2025 Posted by | politics international, UK | Leave a comment

Uranium’s Poison Power in Leafy Cheshire 

 Remembering the 14th anniversary of Fukushima, campaigners will be
gathering and invite people to join them, outside the URENCO plant at
Capenhurst in Cheshire on March 11th at 2pm. The continuing nuclear
disaster at Fukushima caused by the 2011 tsunami underlines the constant
danger that nuclear presents due to events totally beyond the control of
power station operators.

 Radiation Free Lakeland 5th March 2025 https://mariannewildart.wordpress.com/2025/03/05/uraniums-poison-power-in-leafy-cheshire/

March 9, 2025 Posted by | Events, UK | Leave a comment

‘Fish disco’ plan revived to protect salmon from Hinkley Point C.

Energy company EDF has proposed an acoustic fish deterrent to stop fish in
the Severn Estuary being sucked into the nuclear power station. EDF
previously ditched plans for an acoustic fish deterrent, a device designed
to keep Atlantic salmon, eel and other species away from a cooling water
intake pipe for Hinkley Point C in Somerset, due to fears that maintaining
it for 60 years would put divers at risk.

The former minister Michael Gove
mockingly called the measure, a condition of the plant’s planning
permission, a “fish disco”. Now it’s returning, but as a mobile
disco. Instead of the originally proposed 280 loudspeakers permanently
attached to concrete structures, ceramic transducers will be installed that
can be lifted up and down in lobster pot-style containers, negating the
need for divers.

The devices will produce a sound which can be tuned to
precise frequencies to deter specific species. Engineers will be able to
maintain them by raising them to the water’s surface. However, it also
means the axe for EDF’s interim plan to build salt marshes along the
River Severn as a compensatory measure. Mark Lloyd, the CEO of The Rivers
Trust charity, welcomed the firm’s about-turn to honour its commitment on
fish protections. But he said the company should still create salt marsh
habitat or passages to help salmon, as some will still be sucked to their
death despite the deterrent.

 Times 5th March 2025
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/environment/article/fish-disco-plan-edf-hinkley-point-c-j303w9rdk

March 9, 2025 Posted by | environment, UK | Leave a comment