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Fixation on UK nuclear power may not help to solve climate crisis

Waste and cost among drawbacks, as researchers say renewables could power UK entirely

Paul Brown 10 May 24,  https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/10/fixation-on-nuclear-power-in-uk-may-not-help-to-solve-climate-crisis

In the battle to prevent the climate overheating, wind and solar are making impressive inroads into the once dominant market share of coal. Even investors in gas plants are increasingly seen as taking a gamble.

With researchers at Oxford and elsewhere agreeing that the UK could easily become entirely powered by wind and solar – with no fossil fuels required – it seems an anomaly that nuclear power is still getting the lion’s share of taxpayer subsidies to keep the ailing industry alive.

Politicians on both sides of the Atlantic are backing as yet unproven small modular reactors (SMRs) as an indispensable part of the answer to the climate crisis and are running competitions to get this industry started. These reactors, from tiny ones of the type that power nuclear submarines, to scaled-up versions that can, in theory, be factory produced and built in relays to provide steady power, are all still in the design stage.

As the Union of Concerned Scientists in the United States points out, whichever model is chosen they have all the drawbacks of existing nuclear power stations; expensive, even without cost overruns, and the still unsolved waste problem. The biggest disadvantage, the group says, is that even if the technology worked it would be too little, too late, to keep the climate safe.

May 12, 2024 Posted by | climate change, politics, UK | Leave a comment

Nano Nuclear wants to reinvent the nuclear power business—but it could take a while.

The company is trying to not only reinvent reactors but also reinvent fuel production and transportation. It’ll take several years yet before we know if it works.

Fast Company, BY TIERNAN RAY 10 May 24

“…….. This week, a two-year-old company, Nano Nuclear Energy, is expected to go public on Nasdaq with a plan to solve what ails the nuclear power business.

The company, officially based on the 30th floor of an office building in New York’s Times Square, is a “distributed” company, meaning, its 27 staff members live and work here and there. The company is run by CEO James Walker, a physicist who was previously a nuclear engineer at Rolls-Royce.

Walker has gathered a mish-mash of engineering talent and former bankers to build what’s called a “microreactor,” also known as a “small modular nuclear reactor,” which can be hitched to a tractor trailer and driven around the country to wherever it is needed—be it a remote mining site that needs power, or an AI data center.

Walker has also assembled a star-studded advisory board that includes former U.S. presidential candidate and NATO commander Wesley Clark, and former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, who hold stock options in the company.

The premise of Nano Nuclear is the same that propels competitors such as privately held Terrapower and X-Energy: conventional nuclear energy is too costly…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Nano Nuclear and competitors have jumped on the DOE’s effort to make “advanced” reactors, things so compact they can ride around on a semitruck and be parked where needed. They produce far less energy, on the scale of tens of megawatts, but also can cost far less, claims the DOE, and they can be run with minimal safety oversight because of their advanced design.

Just about every company in nuclear power is working on such innovation, including Westinghouse, Terrapower, X-Energy, and publicly traded NuScale of Portland, Oregon. Walker and team contend, however, that those companies are going about it all wrong. They haven’t done enough to solve the main limiting factor of small reactors, adequate fuel supply, the enriched uranium that creates the nuclear chain reaction.

“Large SMR companies have raised billions of dollars for development but have been stalled by the lag in developing or acquiring the fuel necessary to advance their reactors,” states Nano Nuclear’s IPO prospectus. The fuel is critical because small reactors need uranium with more of the uranium isotope U235 in order to be so compact. It’s the density of power per unit of volume of fuel that lets microreactors be made very small.

The DOE has been fostering collaboration among many parties on what’s called “High-Assay Low-Enriched Uranium,” or, HALEU, which is uranium enriched more than the 5% standard in the industry, as high as 20%. Without enough HALEU, many of the advanced reactors being developed “do not have the fuel supply infrastructure necessary to succeed,” claims Nano Nuclear.


To secure HALEU, Nano Nuclear has started two subsidiaries, one to produce HALEU uranium, HALEU Energy Fuel Inc., and another to transport it in large quantities, Advanced Fuel Transportation, Inc. The company even has a subsidiary to mine for uranium.

You could say Nano Nuclear has formed a vertically integrated nuclear firm, going from uranium mining through fuel production and trucking to supplying the finished reactor.

Will it work? We won’t know for some time. The company’s two proposals for microreactors, “Zeus” and “Odin,” are not even built. The company has no revenue at present. Nano Nuclear hopes to have one of the reactors in production by 2030. The company apparently hasn’t begun the licensing process with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Agency, which can take several years. The fuel manufacturing, moreover, is not expected to be operational until 2027……………………….

Nano Nuclear nabbed almost ten million dollars with the IPO, but it expects to need “a significant infusion of additional capital for successful deployment, even following this offering.” Just the Zeus and Odin reactors alone are expected to cost four million dollars to develop. That means potential dilution of investors by lots of follow-on stock offerings.

The tiny staff of 27 is not entirely full-time. All the senior executives, including Walker and CFO Jaisun Garcha, are working as independent contractors, and they all have jobs running other companies.

You can’t scrutinize Nano Nuclear’s technology plans to know if they make sense because Nano Nuclear has filed no patent applications, instead preferring to keep its intellectual property secret.

The rest of this year, Nano Nuclear expects to use its IPO money to buy another company in order to get into the nuclear consulting business. The idea is to get some paying work in order to subsidize Zeus and Odin.

For a long time, then, Nano Nuclear is destined to be a far-less-interesting kind of company that simply has a great idea for the revival of the nuclear industry.  https://www.fastcompany.com/91122128/nano-nuclear-reinventing-nuclear-power-business

May 12, 2024 Posted by | technology, USA | Leave a comment

Biden’s war on Gaza is now a war on truth and the right to protest

media has carefully refocused attention, dealing exclusively with the nature of the protests – and a supposed threat they pose to “order” – not addressing what the protests are actually about.  

As ever, establishment journalists have been essential to distracting from these horrendous realities. 

The student protest movement has been remarkably peaceful

The media’s role is to draw attention away from what the students are protesting – complicity in genocide – and engineer a moral panic to leave the genocide undisturbed

JONATHAN COOK, MAY 10, 2024, First published by Middle East Eye

As mass student protests quickly spread to campuses across the United States last week, and others took hold in Britain and elsewhere in Europe, the western media gave centre stage to one man to arbitrate on whether the demonstrations should be allowed to continue: US President Joe Biden. 

The establishment media reverentially relayed the president’s message that the protests were violent and dangerous, treating his assessment as if it had been handed down on a tablet of stone. 

Biden declared the protesters had no “right to cause chaos”, giving the green light for police to go in with even greater force to clear the encampments.  

This week, Biden raised the stakes further by suggesting the protests were evidence of a “ferocious surge” of antisemitism in the US. 

According to reports, more than 2,000 protesters have been arrested after some university administrators – under growing pressure from the White House and their own wealthy donors – called in local police. 

In approving the crushing of dissent, Biden contradicted himself: “We are not an authoritarian nation where we silence people or squash dissent. But order must prevail.”

One small problem went unmentioned: Biden was not a disinterested party. In fact, his conflict of interest was so gigantic it could, like the damage to Gaza, be seen from outer space. 

The students were calling on their universities to pull all investments from companies that are assisting Israel in carrying out what the World Court has called a “plausible” genocide in Gaza. Those weapons are being supplied in huge quantities largely thanks to the decisions of one man. 

Yes, Joe Biden. 

Law-breaking Biden

The “order” the US president wants to prevail is one in which his decisions to block any ceasefire and arm the slaughter, maiming and orphaning of many tens of thousands of Palestinian children go unchallenged. 

Biden has been so indulgent of Israel’s destruction of Gaza that Benjamin Netanyahu’s government crossed the president’s supposed “red line” this week. Israel launched the initial stages of its long-threatened final assault on Rafah in southern Gaza. Some 1.3 million Palestinians have been huddling in makeshift tents there. 

Biden could easily have forced Israel to change course at any point over the past seven months, but chose not to, even as he feigned concern about the ever-rising death toll among Palestinian civilians. Only under growing popular pressure, fuelled by the protests, has he finally appeared to pause arms shipments as the attack on Rafah intensifies.    

The White House has authorised vast shipments of arms to Israel, including 2,000lb bombs that have levelled whole neighbourhoods, killing men, women and children outright or leaving them trapped under rubble to slowly suffocate or starve to death.

Late last month Biden signed a further $26bn of US taxpayers’ money to Israel, the majority military aid – just as mass graves of Palestinians killed by Israel were coming to light. He has been able to do so only by flagrantly ignoring the requirement in US law that any weapons supplied not be used in ways likely to constitute war crimes. 

Human rights groups have warned his administration repeatedly that Israel is routinely breaking international law. 

At least 20 of Biden administration’s own lawyers are reported to have signed off on a letter that Israel’s actions violate a host of US statutes, including the Arms Export Control Act and Leahy Laws, as well as the Geneva Conventions.  

Meanwhile, the State Department’s investigations show that, even before Israel’s destruction of Gaza began seven months ago, five Israeli military units were committing gross violations of the human rights of Palestinians in the separate enclave of the Occupied West Bank. 

There, Israel doesn’t even have the one-size-fits-all excuse that the abuse and killing of Palestinian civilians are unfortunate “collateral damage” in an operation to “eradicate Hamas”. The West Bank is under the control of the Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas, not Hamas.

Nonetheless, no action has been taken to stop the arms transfers. US laws, it seems, don’t apply to the Biden administration, any more than international law does to Israel.

Protest quicksand

In denying students the right to protest at the US arming of Israel’s plausible genocide, Biden is also denying them the right to protest the most consequential policy of his four-year term – and of at least the last two decades of US foreign policy, since the US invasion of Iraq. 

And it is all happening in a presidential election year.

The students’ immediate aim is to stop their universities’ complicity in the slaughter of tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza. But there are two obvious wider goals.

The first is to bring attention back to the endless suffering of Palestinians in the tiny, besieged enclave. Until this week’s attack on Rafah, the plight of Gaza had increasingly dropped off front pages, even as Israeli-induced famine and disease tightened their grip over the past month. 

When Gaza has made the news, it is invariably through a lens unrelated to the slaughter and starvation. It is details of the interminable negotiations, or political tensions over Israel’s Rafah “invasion”, or plans for the “day after” in Gaza, or the plight of the Israeli hostages, or their families’ agonies, or where to draw the line on free speech in criticising Israel.

The students’ second goal is to make it politically uncomfortable for Biden to continue providing the weapons and diplomatic cover that have permitted Israel’s actions – from slaughter to starvation, and now the imminent destruction of Rafah. 

The students have been trying to change the national conversation in ways that will pressure Biden to stop his all-too-visible law-breaking. 

But they have run up against the usual problem: the national conversation is largely dictated by the political and media class in their own interests. And they are all for the genocide continuing, it seems, whatever the law says.

Which means the media has carefully refocused attention, dealing exclusively with the nature of the protests – and a supposed threat they pose to “order” – not addressing what the protests are actually about.  

Last Sunday, the head of the UN Food Aid Programme, Cindy McCain, warned that northern Gaza was in the grip of “full-blown famine” and that the south was not far behind. Dozens of children were reported to have died of dehydration and malnutrition. “It’s horror,” she said.  

The head of Unicef pointed out last week, a few days before Israel ordered the evacuation of eastern Rafah: “Nearly all of the some 600,000 children now crammed into Rafah are either injured, sick, malnourished, traumatized, or living with disabilities.” 

A separate UN report recently revealed it will take 80 years to rebuild Gaza, based on the historic levels of materials allowed in by Israel. On a highly unlikey, best-case scenario, it will take 16 years. 

As ever, establishment journalists have been essential to distracting from these horrendous realities. 

The students are caught in a protest equivalent of quicksand: the more they struggle to draw attention to the Gaza genocide, the more the Gaza genocide sinks from view. The media have seized on their struggle as a pretext to ignore Gaza and turn the spotlight on to their protests instead.

Feeling ‘unsafe’

The student protest movement has been remarkably peaceful – a fact that is all the more obvious when compared to the Black Lives Matter protests that swept the US in 2020, with Biden’s approval. 

Four years ago there were many episodes of property damage, but that has been all but unheard of in the student protests, which are mostly confined to encampments on university campus lawns………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… more https://jonathancook.substack.com/p/bidens-war-on-gaza-is-now-a-war-on?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=476450&post_id=144499809&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=ln98x&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

May 12, 2024 Posted by | media, USA | Leave a comment

Opposing The War Machine Is Cool Again, And The Empire’s Getting Nervous

May 12, 2024 Posted by | politics, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

France wants to extend its nuclear umbrella to Europe. But is Macron ready to trade Paris for Helsinki?

Bulletin By Carine Guerout, Jason Moyer | May 10, 2024

Europe’s reliance on US nuclear weapons has been at the heart of the transatlantic security relationship, and so has been the protection that the old continent gets from being part of the NATO alliance and its powerful Article 5. Now, the debate about nuclear deterrence for the European Union is back at the forefront, in part due to the prospects of a reticent United States under a possible second Trump presidency and a resurgent Russia increasingly threatening to use nuclear weapons.

NATO, as a nuclear alliance, relies heavily on US nuclear warheads stationed in Europe for its deterrence. The United Kingdom and France are Europe’s only nuclear powers: Although part of NATO, they maintain independent control over their own nuclear arsenals. In the past, the European Union has been reluctant—or incapable—of providing nuclear deterrence. But the uncertain security environment in Europe has recently led the Union to strengthen its previously neglected security pillar—and, with it, caused some political leaders to become more vocal about nuclear weapons.

In recent weeks, France’s President Emmanuel Macron, in his classic disrupting style, has openly called for debate in Europe over using his country’s nuclear capabilities to defend the continent. In Macron’s view the uncertainty over future US engagement in Europe is forcing the European Union to decide whether it needs a nuclear deterrent of its own—and suggests France may help with this. But it is not clear whether France would be willing—and capable—of extending its nuclear umbrella to the rest of the Union. For this to happen, France would need to address multiple issues, starting with explaining whether it would retain full decision-making over its arsenal, exploring the limitations of its current stockpile of nuclear weapons, and weighing the impact such a decision would have on NATO and its relations with the United States and its fellow EU member states.

Macron’s insistence. Since the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union in 2020‚—popularly known as “Brexit”—France has become the Union’s only country with nuclear weapons. France possesses approximately 290 nuclear weapons (the world’s fourth arsenal in terms of stockpiles warheads behind Russia, the United States, and China). Ever since French President Charles de Gaulle’s famous questioning of US nuclear assurances in 1961— which led France to develop its own nuclear deterrence force—France has historically seen itself as an independent force counterbalancing that of the United States in Europe. This spirit persists today: France still does not participate in NATO’s Nuclear Planning Group and remains one of the Western allies most in favor of nuclear deterrence. France’s independent deterrence strengthens NATO overall because it complicates the calculus of adversaries. Although nuclear deterrence has been a cornerstone of NATO’s deterrence posture, the same cannot be said of the European Union: Many member states remain uncertain about the role of nuclear weapons in defense planning.

The debate over the nuclear readiness of the EU is not new. Traditionally, the holdout to developing a so-called “Eurobomb” has been Germany. In recent years, a growing number of German policy makers have asked the previously unthinkable question of whether it should possess its own nuclear weapons. The German public remains unconvinced, however: Even after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, 90 percent of Germans still reject the idea of their country developing a nuclear weapons program and it seems unlikely the German public will dramatically pivot toward a Eurobomb. Traditionally neutral EU countries such as Ireland, Malta, and Austria are not likely to be willing to support the bomb either: All three are signatories to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), also known as the ban treaty, and would likely block any attempt to extend France’s nuclear arsenal to Europe…………………………………………………………………………………………..

Easier said than done. To move forward with his proposal, President Macron will need to answer at least three critical questions about the politics and logistics of a European-level nuclear weapon sharing arrangement. First, France will need to clarify whether it wants to retain full decision-making power over its nuclear arsenal. ……………………………………..

Second, it is not clear how France could realistically provide nuclear deterrence to the entire Union. French nuclear forces have limited capabilities, with a much smaller and less diversified arsenal than that of other major nuclear powers, and its nuclear deterrence has been developed for a strictly defensive purpose. France partially disarmed its nuclear arsenal in the 1990s after the Cold War, reducing its nuclear stockpiles from 600 warheads to just under 300……………………………………………………………

In practice, the idea of a French nuclear umbrella for Europe also raises a third question for Macron: How to embed the French nuclear armament into existing European structures and how this shift would complement NATO’s capabilities in Europe…………………………………………………………………….  https://thebulletin.org/2024/05/france-wants-to-extend-its-nuclear-umbrella-to-europe-but-is-macron-ready-to-trade-paris-for-helsinki/

May 12, 2024 Posted by | France, politics international, weapons and war | Leave a comment

US Defenseless Against Russian Hypersonic Missiles and Iranian Drones – Explosive DoD Testimony

 https://sputnikglobe.com/20240509/us-defenseless-against-russian-hypersonic-missiles-and-iranian-drones—explosive-dod-testimony-1118360351.html

The crisis in Ukraine and escalating tensions in the Middle East have demonstrated that the US’ $886 billion defense budget has not translated into real-world capabilities on the ground. Now, an explosive verbal exchange on Capitol Hill has revealed that North America’s skies are defenseless against not only Russian, but even Iranian missiles.

An otherwise boring and formulaic briefing by senior Pentagon officials to lawmakers from the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces went off the rails on Wednesday after subcommittee Chairman Angus King took the floor and forced Department of Defense officials to reveal that North America is helpless against adversaries it has spent years agitating around the world.


“The truth is we have no defense for hypersonic missiles – yes or no? Mr. Hill, any defense on the hypersonic missile? You’re the commander of an aircraft carrier in the Greenland Gap. If we have a hypersonic missile launched from Murmansk [traveling at] 6,000 miles an hour, what do you do?” King asked, querying Deputy Secretary of Defense for Space and Missile Defense John Hill.

“We have some systems to defend in the terminal stage but we need more, you’re correct, Senator King… that our hypersonic defenses are inadequate and we do need [more]. SM-6 is in the Navy’s terminal range [capability], the Patriot – I’ll let General Gainey speak to the specifics on that. Those are examples but no argument, we need to focus on hypersonic defenses,” Hill responded.

“So why are we talking about 2029 and even stretching that out? This is next year kind of stuff. I don’t get your budget,” King countered, referencing the lack of focus on anti-hypersonic capabilities in current US defense spending plans.

“What we faced in the budget this year – it was a difficult year, particularly with the Fiscal Responsibility Act caps that we had to work with. There were must-pay bills that we had to work with for the personnel, the salaries, the health care, inflation costs. When you get down to the point of where you get down to the discretionary types of things where you can really control your choices,” Hill said.

“But that’s your mission – your mission is missile defense,” King retorted.

“The budget decisions are made at a higher level and so you’re trading off between readiness or your future investments,” Hill said.

“Well let me put the question another way: let’s say what happened on April 14 [Iran’s retaliatory missile and drone attack on Israel, ed.] happened over the Arctic Ocean – 300 missiles, drones, UAVs came across the Arctic Ocean toward Canada and North America. Could we do what Israel and we and other countries did – could we knock down 99 percent of those missiles coming in?” King asked.

“No chairman,” Air Force General Gregory Guillot, commander of US Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), responded.

“That’s of concern,” King said. “What’s the gap – is the gap interceptors, is the gap sensors? How come they could do it over there and we can’t do it here?” he asked.

“Part of the reason, Mr. Chairman, is because they have the deployed forces. So at the current time we have the capability in the services but they’re not assigned to Northcom’s area of responsibility,” Guillot said. “Also, just the numbers of the assets that we have in the region right now would not be sufficient to meet the attack of that size that the Iranians [used].”

“And in fact our capability in the region is really aimed toward North Korea, isn’t that correct? […] It’s not designed to take on Russia or China. But that’s where the threat is. What’s the cost of one GBI?” King asked, referring to the US’ Ground-Based Interceptor anti-ballistic missile system.

“Sir, the GBI is approximately $80-$85 million,” Hill replied.

“One missile to intercept an incoming missile is $80 million,” an astonished King said. “Well in the Red Sea, the Houthis are sending $20,000 drones and we’re shooting them down with missiles that cost $4.3 million. The math doesn’t work on that, gentlemen. It just doesn’t work. What are we thinking?”

The senator went on to grill Pentagon officials for spending just one 1,000th of the defense budget on directed energy defenses, asking “what in the hell are you guys thinking?”

“Directed energy is the answer. It costs 25 cents a shot, and the budget’s gone down from $140 to $15 million a year. That’s a scandal. We can’t possibly defend ourselves with $80 million missiles. There’s not enough money in the whole world for that,” King emphasized.

“So I’ll look forward to some further response because right now, we don’t have much missile defense. Whether it’s to hypersonics, to drones, I’d like you guys to go back and really rethink what is your mission. If your mission is missile defense, we need to reorient what it is you do,” the senator summed up.

May 12, 2024 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Iran warns it will change nuclear doctrine if ‘existence threatened’

Adviser to Khamenei says Iran will have ‘no choice’ if nuclear facilities targeted by Israel.

 https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/5/9/iran-warns-it-will-change-nuclear-doctrine-if-existence-threatened

Iran could be pushed into building a nuclear weapon if Israel threatens its existence, an adviser to the country’s supreme leader has warned.

“We have no decision to build a nuclear bomb but should Iran’s existence be threatened, there will be no choice but to change our military doctrine,” said Kamal Kharrazi, an adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on Thursday.

“In the case of an attack on our nuclear facilities by the Zionist regime, our deterrence will change,” he was reported as saying by Iran’s Student News Network.

The comments have raised questions about what Iran has long claimed is a peaceful nuclear programme.

Khamenei, who has the final say on the matter, banned the development of nuclear weapons in a fatwa, or religious edict, in the early 2000s, saying it is “haram”, or forbidden in Islam.

But in 2021, Iran’s then-intelligence minister said Western pressure could push the Islamic republic to seek nuclear weapons.

Iran is enriching uranium to up to 60 percent purity, whereas weapons-grade uranium is enriched to about 90 percent. If the current nuclear material on hand were enriched further, it would suffice for two nuclear weapons, according to an official yardstick by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Escalating threat

The shadow war between Iran and Israel erupted into open confrontation in April, after a suspected Israeli strike on Iran’s embassy compound in the Syrian capital, Damascus, which killed seven members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), including two generals who led the elite Quds Force in Syria and Lebanon.

Iran retaliated by launching about 300 missiles and drones against Israel.

Israel has regularly launched attacks on targets linked to Iran and the Lebanese group Hezbollah in Syria since 2017, increasing the frequency and intensity of strikes on the so-called “axis of resistance” since the start of its war on Gaza last October.

On Thursday, Syrian air defences shot down what the defence ministry said were Israeli missiles fired from the Golan Heights in northern Israel towards the outskirts of Damascus, targeting a building in the countryside, according to Syrian state news agency SANA.

The attack, at about 3:20am (00:20 GMT), caused “some material losses”, the report said.

May 12, 2024 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

US Congress passes major, bipartisan nuclear energy legislation

The House approved a bill Wednesday that includes major, bipartisan nuclear
energy legislation, keeping alive what may be the best hope for passing a
compromise nuclear bill before the end of the year. The chamber voted
393-13 to send S. 870, the “Fire Grants and Safety Act,” to the Senate
after lawmakers attached the “Accelerating Deployment of Versatile,
Advanced Nuclear for Clean Energy (ADVANCE) Act of 2024.” The fire grants
bill, sponsored by Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), easily passed the Senate
last year, offering what lawmakers and nuclear energy backers believe could
be a nearly bulletproof vehicle for the bipartisan “ADVANCE Act.”

EE News 9th May 2024

‘Close to the goal line’: House OKs nuclear package

May 12, 2024 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

United Nations General Assembly backs Palestinian bid for membership

Aljazeera, 10 May 24

Resolution does not give Palestine full UN membership, but recognises them as qualified to join and extends rights.

The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) has backed a Palestinian bid to become a full UN member by recognising it as qualified to join and recommending the UN Security Council “reconsider the matter favourably”.

The vote by the 193-member UNGA on Friday was a global survey of support for the Palestinian bid to become a full UN member – a move that would effectively recognise a Palestinian state – after the United States vetoed it in the UN Security Council last month.

The assembly adopted a resolution on Friday with 143 votes in favour and nine against – including the US and Israel – while 25 countries abstained. It does not give the Palestinians full UN membership, but simply recognises them as qualified to join.

The UNGA resolution “determines that the State of Palestine … should therefore be admitted to membership” and it “recommends that the Security Council reconsider the matter favourably”.

While the UNGA alone cannot grant full UN membership, the draft resolution on Friday will give the Palestinians some additional rights and privileges from September 2024 – like a seat among the UN members in the assembly hall – but it will not be granted a vote in the body.

Reporting from the UN headquarters in New York, Al Jazeera’s Gabriel Elizondo said it was significant that such a high number of countries voted in favour of the resolution.

“What we were hearing before the vote was anywhere perhaps between 120, 130 – at top end, 140. The fact that they got 143 meets and exceeds all expectations. It’s been overwhelmingly passed,” he said.

“But they still only have observer status.”…………………………… more https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/5/10/un-general-assembly-backs-palestinian-bid-for-membership

May 12, 2024 Posted by | Gaza, politics | Leave a comment

NuScale, maker of small nuclear reactors, reported revenue of $1.4 million and net loss of $48.1 million for the three-month period ended March 31, 2024

NuScale reported revenue of $1.4 million and net loss of $48.1 million for
the three-month period ended March 31, 2024, compared to revenue of $5.5
million and a net loss of $35.6 million for the same period in 2023. Higher
net loss reported in the period was driven by a one-time $3.2 million
charge associated with continuing our transition from an R&D-based company
to commercial operations, and a $9.0 million non-cash adjustment to the
fair value of our warrants due to an increase in the Company’s share price.

Business Wire 9th May 2024

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240509403598/en

May 12, 2024 Posted by | business and costs, USA | Leave a comment

Venezuela may be first nation to lose all its glaciers

10 May 24, Aleks Phillips, BBC News

Venezuela may be the first nation in modern history to lose all its glaciers after climate scientists downgraded its last one to an ice field.

The International Cryosphere Climate Initiative (ICCI), a scientific advocacy organisation, said on X that the South American nation’s only remaining glacier – the Humboldt, or La Corona, in the Andes – had become “too small to be classed as a glacier”.

Venezuela has lost at least six other glaciers in the last century.

With global average temperatures rising due to climate change, ice loss is increasing, helping to raise sea levels around the world…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx8qv1nvdppo

May 12, 2024 Posted by | climate change, SOUTH AMERICA | Leave a comment

NuScale Power Corporation (SMR) Reports Q1 Loss, Misses Revenue Estimates

Zacks Equity Research, Fri, 10 May 2024

NuScale Power Corporation (SMR) came out with a quarterly loss of $0.21 per share in line with the Zacks Consensus Estimate. This compares to loss of $0.16 per share a year ago. These figures are adjusted for non-recurring items.

A quarter ago, it was expected that this company would post a loss of $0.22 per share when it actually produced a loss of $0.25, delivering a surprise of -13.64%.

Over the last four quarters, the company has not been able to surpass consensus EPS estimates.

NuScale Power , which belongs to the Zacks Electronics – Power Generation industry, posted revenues of $1.38 million for the quarter ended March 2024, missing the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 56.22%. This compares to year-ago revenues of $5.51 million. The company has topped consensus revenue estimates just once over the last four quarters.

The sustainability of the stock’s immediate price movement based on the recently-released numbers and future earnings expectations will mostly depend on management’s commentary on the earnings cal

……………………………………………………. the shares are expected to underperform the market in the near future. …………………………..  https://au.finance.yahoo.com/news/nuscale-power-corporation-smr-reports-213506291.html

May 12, 2024 Posted by | business and costs | Leave a comment

Empire Managers Explain Why This New Protest Movement Scares Them


CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, MAY 09, 2024

The US secretary of state and a Bilderberg surveillance tech oligarch have both made some very interesting admissions about the burgeoning protest movement against the US-backed slaughter in Gaza and the problems it poses for the empire they help run.

During a vitriolic rant about university demonstrators at the Ash Carter Exchange on Innovation and National Security on Tuesday, Palantir CEO Alex Karp came right out and said that if those on the side of the protesters win the debate on this issue, the west will lose the ability to wage wars.

For those who don’t know, Palantir is a CIA-backed surveillance and data mining tech company with intimate ties to both the US intelligence cartel and to Israel, playing a crucial role in both the US empire’s sprawling surveillance network and Israeli atrocities against Palestinians. Karp is a billionaire who sits on the Steering Committee of the Bilderberg Group and regularly features at the World Economic Forum and other platforms of plutocratic empire management.

“We kind of just think these things that are happening, across college campuses especially, are like a sideshow — no, they are the show,” Karp said during his rant. “Because if we lose the intellectual debate, you will not be able to deploy any army in the west, ever.”

Everyone should listen very carefully to Karp’s words here, because he’s giving the whole game away. He’s making it very clear how crucial it is for the empire to stomp out this protest movement and the zeitgeist upon which it rides, because the very existence of the imperial war machine depends on it. At a time when most imperial spinmeisters are trying to dismiss the importance of this movement and what young people are doing on college campuses around the world, this is a really extraordinary admission from someone who lives deep in the guts of the imperial hydra.

Such conferences are great for obtaining useful information from swamp monsters that you don’t normally hear, because when they’re surrounded by like-minded empire goons they tend to get a lot more loose-tongued than they are when they’re more aware that they have an audience of normal people. 

We saw this illustrated again in a conversation between Senator Mitt Romney and Secretary of State Antony Blinken at the McCain Institute last week, during which both acknowledged some facts that generally go unstated by such creatures.

After bemoaning Israel’s lack of success at “PR” regarding its Gaza assault, Romney just came right out and said that this was “why there was such overwhelming support for us to shut down potentially TikTok or other entities of that nature” —  with “us” meaning himself and his fellow lawmakers on Capitol Hill. 

“How this narrative has evolved, yeah, it’s a great question,” Blinken responded, saying that at the beginning of his career in Washington everyone was getting their information from television and physical newspapers like The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. 

“Now, of course, we are on an intravenous feed of information with new impulses, inputs every millisecond,” Blinken continued. “And of course, the way this has played out on social media has dominated the narrative. And you have a social media ecosystem environment in which context, history, facts get lost, and the emotion, the impact of images dominates. And we can’t — we can’t discount that, but I think it also has a very, very, very challenging effect on the narrative.”

to each other, because that’s how they think about everything.

This is because empire managers are always acutely aware of something that normal human beings are not: that real power comes from manipulating the stories — narratives — that people tell themselves about their reality. 

They understand that humans are storytelling animals whose inner lives are typically dominated by mental narratives about what’s happening, so if you can control those narratives, you can control the humans.

They understand that power is controlling what happens, but true power is controlling what people think about what happens. 

They understand that whoever controls the narrative controls the world……………………………………………………. more https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/empire-managers-explain-why-this?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=144457706&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

May 12, 2024 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

TODAY. “The empire” – an exaggerated, emotive, term?

Well, I always thought that “Empire” was a dramatic, over-stated, term. And it annoyed me that writers kept using it, in relation to the USA. I thought that criticism of America was warranted – but don’t weaken your case by using such an emotive word.

“Empire” brings up thoughts of the murderous regimes of history – the murderous Mongol Empire, the quite punishing Roman Empire, the cruel Empire of Japan, the rapacious British Empire

Oh no – America’s not like that!

Yes, it is.

And in today’s world, the USA government has access to weapons undreamt of in earlier regimes. Not just its smorgasbord of every possible kind of killing tool, but also its economic weaponry, and its media weaponry.

Not that I think that Americans are bad people. They are good, kind people, who value their families highly. So highly that hanging on to their income – their lucrative weapons-company shares, or their jobs, in deceptive and even killer industries is their top priority. And if they have any doubts – well – the magic term “our national security” justifies all government action.

Americans have bought the idea of American exceptionalism. America is good and always right, and can justly interfere in any country, because they know best. So – they’ve got military bases worldwide:

If you didn’t notice America’s interference –  South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia – in Chile, Nicaragua, – Libya, wars in Afghanstan, Iraq, – you’d have to be noticing what’s going on now in Ukraine, and in Israel’s massacres in Gaza.

The military bases in increase, the belligerent propaganda increases, and the ‘Western world steels itself to faithfully be the patsies for USA’s next big intervention – Taiwan.

Ukraine, Taiwan , Gaza – all wonderful laboratories for testing the bestest American weapons, enriching American corporations, and no risks to American lives.

When you see articles by Caitlin Johnstone , Chris Hedges, Ralph Nader, Robert Kennedy Jr, Patterson Deppen, and more – talking about “The Empire” – don’t be too hasty to brush them off as way-out radicals.

May 11, 2024 Posted by | Christina's notes | Leave a comment

USA politicians threaten to invade International Criminal Court if Israel faces war crimes charges

By Ben Norton https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2024/05/07/us-threat-icc-israel/

US Senators sent a letter to the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor, threatening to impose sanctions and even invade the Hague if it issues arrest warrants for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The Biden administration is also pressuring the ICC not to charge Israeli officials over their war crimes in Gaza.

US government officials have threatened the International Criminal Court (ICC) at the Hague, telling its Prosecutor Karim Khan that if he issues arrest warrants against Israeli officials over their war crimes in Gaza, the US government could impose sanctions on him, other ICC personnel, and their family members.

US senators even threatened to invade the Hague if it tries to prosecute Israeli officials.

UN experts: Israel is committing genocide in Gaza

This April, Israel’s extreme-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a prominent member of the state security cabinet, called for “total annihilation” of Gaza.

Smotrich cited the Biblical nation of Amalek – a genocidal reference also made by far-right Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

These invocations of Amalek are clear calls for genocide. In the Book of Samuel, God orders King Saul, “Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys”.

The UN’s top legal body, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled this January that Israel could be investigated on “plausible” charges of violating the Genocide Convention. (The ICJ and ICC are separate institutions, although both are located at the Hague.)

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have stated that Israel is violating this ICJ ruling that demands that it abide by the Genocide Convention.

Top UN experts have publicly warned that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

In addition to bombing civilian areas and killing tens of thousands of innocent men, women, and children, Israel has used hunger as a weapon, starving Palestinian civilians.

The US director of the UN World Food Program warned that Gaza is now suffering from a “full-blown famine”, after seven months of a suffocating Israeli blockade.

The US government has provided the vast majority of the weapons that Israel is using to bomb civilian areas in Gaza. If Israeli officials face charges over their war crimes, Washington would be complicit.

US senators threaten to sanction and invade the ICC

On April 24, a dozen Republican senators sent a threatening letter to the ICC prosecutor. The media outlet Zeteo obtained the document.

The missive was signed by major GOP leaders, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Tom Cotton.

In the aggressively worded letter, the senators pledged to “sanction your employees and associates, and bar you and your families from the United States” if Israeli officials face charges over their war crimes in Gaza.

“Target Israel and we will target you”, they threatened.

Issuing an arrest warrant for Netanyahu or other top officials would be seen “not only as a threat to Israel’s sovereignty but to the sovereignty of the United States”, the US politicians wrote, making it clear that they see Israel as a key part of the US empire.

“Our country demonstrated in the American Service-Members’ Protection Act the lengths to which we will go to protect that sovereignty”, they added.


The American Service-Members’ Protection Act is popularly known as the “Hague Invasion Act”. The legislation was signed into law in 2002 by President George W. Bush.

Human Rights Watch explained that this law “authorizes the use of military force to liberate any American or citizen of a U.S.-allied country being held by the court”.

By invoking the Hague Invasion Act in their 2024 letter to the ICC prosecutor, the Republican senators made it clear that the two-decade-old legislation is still valid: hawks in Washington are willing to invade the Hague to save Israeli officials if they are prosecuted.

Biden administration double standards on the ICC

It is not just Republicans who are threatening the ICC. This is bipartisan in Washington.

The Israeli press reported that, behind the scenes, the Joe Biden administration is also aggressively pressuring the ICC not to issue arrest warrants for Israeli officials.

In 2020, when Donald Trump was in the White House, the ICC opened an investigation into war crimes committed in the war in Afghanistan. The US and NATO forces were included in this inquiry.

In anger, the US government imposed sanctions on the Hague. Trump administration officials even threatened family members of ICC staff.

When Biden came into power in 2021, he sought to differentiate himself from his Republican predecessor. Secretary of State Antony Blinken publicly announced the end of the Trump-era sanctions and visa restrictions against ICC personnel.

However, despite the Democratic administration’s claims to support the so-called “rules-based international order”, the Biden White House is now also intimidating ICC staff – if only a bit more quietly and less extravagantly than Trump and the Republicans have done.

The Biden administration furiously opposes any efforts to hold Israeli officials responsible for the war crimes they have committed in Gaza, with US weapons and political support.

This demonstrates Washington’s glaring double standards, as Biden himself had praised the ICC for issuing an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2023.

Secretary of State Blinken urged ICC member states to arrest Putin if he entered their territory. But a year later, he is aggressively pressuring the ICC to stop it from charging Israeli officials.

US and Israel supported Karim Khan as ICC prosecutor

Ironically, it was the US and Israel who had lobbied for the election of Karim Khan as ICC prosecutor.

This is despite the fact that the US and Israel are not state parties to the Rome Statute, and therefore are not members of the ICC.

US and Israeli lobbying paid off. In 2021, Khan entered office as ICC prosecutor, and immediately dropped the investigation into war crimes committed by US and NATO forces in Afghanistan.

But today, seven months into Israel’s brutal war on Gaza, the ICC is facing global condemnation for its inaction in the face of what UN experts say is clearly a genocide.

Global South leaders have long denounced the ICC as a colonial institution. Until 2016, only Africans had been tried for the worst crimes at the Court.

Khan is being forced to act, if he hopes to save face and salvage the legitimacy of the ICC. But his former sponsors in the US and Israel have turned against him.

It is not just justice for the Palestinian people, but the reputation of the International Criminal Court itself that is at stake.

May 11, 2024 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

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