The death of Karen Silkwood—and the plutonium economy
The vision first created during World War II—and fostered with tens of billions of dollars of public funds—to establish nuclear power plants fueled by plutonium started to take on a nightmarish quality.
Within the next 10 years following the Indian nuclear explosion and Karen Silkwood’s death, the US Congress pulled the plug on the Liquid Metal Fast Breeder Reactor project, ending the Atomic Energy Commission’s vision of a plutonium economy, and the Supreme Court provided a little bit of justice for Karen’s parents and children, upholding a jury decision that for the first time cast aside the legal shield of the federal government protecting the nuclear industry.
Bulletin, By Robert Alvarez | November 8, 2024
On the evening of November 13, 1974—that is, 50 years ago—Karen Silkwood was driving to a meeting with a New York Times reporter and an official of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers (OCAW) union. Her car flew off the road and hit a culvert on a lonely highway in western Oklahoma, killing her instantly. Karen was a union activist working as a technician at a plutonium fuel fabrication plant in Cimarron, Oklahoma owned by the Kerr-McGee Corp.
Several days before her death, Silkwood’s apartment was purposefully contaminated with highly toxic plutonium—which she had no access to—from the nuclear plant where she worked. Because of her activism, the company had put her and her roommates under constant surveillance. Documents about problems at the plant that two witnesses had seen before Silkwood’s fateful drive were missing. An independent investigation found evidence that her car was run off the road—contradicting official conclusions.
Karen became a whistleblower in large part because Kerr-McGee never bothered to tell workers that microscopic amounts of plutonium in the body can cause cancer. Karen became alarmed after dozens of workers, many fresh out of high school, had breathed in microscopic specks of plutonium and were required to undergo a risky procedure (chelation) to flush the radioactive contaminant from their bodies. It’s a procedure that can, even if successful in removing contaminants from the body, harm the kidneys.
Between 1970 and 1975, two metric tons of weapons-usable plutonium were shipped by truck from the Hanford nuclear production complex in Washington state to the Kerr-McGee plant in Oklahoma, where the plutonium was to be mixed with uranium and placed into 19,000 stainless steel fuel rods. At the time of Karen’s death, the Atomic Energy Commission found that about 40 pounds of plutonium had gone missing—enough to fuel several atomic bombs.
Since then, numerous books, articles, documentaries, and a critically acclaimed Hollywood motion picture have focused on the circumstances surrounding Silkwood’s death. My late wife and I were engaged in efforts for nearly a decade to achieve justice for her parents and children; those efforts were chronicled in some detail in Howard Kohn’s 1981 book, Who Killed Karen Silkwood? Was this an unfortunate accident, or was Karen Silkwood run off the road and killed to stop her from revealing dark secrets? After more than 40 years, the definitive answers to these questions remain unavailable.
The beginnings of the Silkwood saga. Karen Silkwood’s death heralded an end of America’s romance with the atom as a source of limitless cheap energy. There was no doubt on the part of the AEC, then the dominant force behind US energy policy, that commercial nuclear power would expand so rapidly and widely that by the end of the 20th century, the world would exhaust its supplies of uranium. If nuclear power was to thrive thereafter, according to AEC doctrine, a new generation of reactors fueled by plutonium extracted from spent nuclear fuel would have to be built. This new generation of so-called “breeder” reactors held the promise of producing vast amounts of cheap electricity while producing up to 30 percent more plutonium than they consumed. It turned out that the AEC’s nuclear power growth projection was off by an order of magnitude. Even today, world uranium supplies remain more than sufficient to fuel existing and reasonably contemplated commercial power plants.
Were it not for my wife, Kitty Tucker, and our friend, Sara Nelson, the death of Karen Silkwood would have been erased from public memory, like a sand painting blown away by the wind. I am proud to have played a supporting role, working with Karen’s parents and congressional staff, raising funds, reviewing technical documents, helping with the news media, cooking a lot of meals, and recruiting expert witnesses for the trial of a lawsuit over Silkwood’s death that would unfold in the spring of 1979.
Working with little and often no financial resources but a lot of grit, Kitty and Sara organized a national campaign that led to a congressional investigation revealing that Karen’s concerns over nuclear safety at the Kerr-McGee plant were more than justified. The congressional investigation exposed an FBI informant with a long history of spying on US citizens and revealed that enough plutonium to create several nuclear weapons was missing from the plant. These findings set the stage for a lawsuit organized on behalf of Karen’s parents and children.
The nine-week trial before a federal court jury in Oklahoma City resulted in a landmark jury decision that held Kerr-McGee liable for contaminating Silkwood and her home and awarded her estate a multimillion-dollar verdict. But the path to that verdict was long and uncertain and often disorganized and contentious, a David-and-Goliath story that ran from a near-commune of a house in a leafy portion of the District of Columbia through a variety of congressional offices and investigators and into the pages of Rolling Stone magazine. Along the way, a lot of young and idealistic lawyers and activists—led by Kitty and Sara—worked, mostly for free, to make sure Karen Silkwood’s death was not brushed under a bureaucratic rug and forgotten. I feel lucky to have been one of them.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… Kitty’s dogged research found that Silkwood was justified in being outspoken in her struggle to stop constant plutonium leaks and worker exposures at the Cimarron, Okla. Kerr-McGee plant. She and several other co-workers suffered from repeated plutonium exposures while on the job. Between 1971 and 1975, in fact, contamination reports show that at least 76 workers were exposed to plutonium at the Cimarron plant,[1] some more than once.[2] About a third of the exposed workers inhaled enough plutonium to require emergency treatment with experimental chelating drugs to help flush the radioactive metal out of the body. By comparison, during that same period, less than one percent of 3,324 employees at the Energy Department’s Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant in Colorado[3]—which processed tens of tons of plutonium per year and became notorious for its poor plutonium-handling practices—required this extreme emergency measure.[4]
Kerr-McGee’s role in the plutonium economy. Long a leader of domestic uranium mining for US nuclear weapons, Kerr-McGee was among the first corporations to get in on the ground floor of the US government’s push to establish a plutonium fuel economy. The Atomic Energy Commission’s vision for such an energy economy was outlined in 1970 by its chairman, Glenn Seaborg, who discovered plutonium 30 years earlier. By the end of the 20th century, Seaborg estimated, an enormous expansion of nuclear power plants would have all but exhausted world uranium reserves, and new US reactors would require 1,750 tons of plutonium. This would be more than 66 times the amount of this deadly nuclear explosive in today’s worldwide nuclear weapon stockpiles.[5]
Kerr-McGee came in with a low bid to design and operate one of two of the first privately owned plutonium fuel plants that would handle tons of this fissile material. The Kerr-McGee facility was engineered to extract plutonium nitrate liquid from spent nuclear fuel generated at Hanford’s material production reactor and sent by guarded trucks to the Cimarron, Oklahoma plant. Once there it underwent 14 complex processing steps. The first blended liquid plutonium with uranium. The blended material was then sent to a furnace where it was dried into a powdered oxide. The powder was then heated, compressed, and ground into pellets. The pellets were then placed into stainless-steel rods, after which the ends of the rods were welded shut. All told, some 19,000 of these fuel rods were shipped back to Hanford, where they were used in experiments at the Fast Flux Test Facility (FFTF) and another research reactor. These reactor experiments were aimed at the development of the first large-scale liquid metal fast breeder reactor (LMFBR), to be built along the Clinch River near the government’s Oak Ridge nuclear site in eastern Tennessee.
It turned out that Kerr-McGee cut corners at the expense of the health and safety of its workers from the outset of its operation. The company squeezed in as much equipment as possible into its facility, a space about half the size of a typical high-school gymnasium, leading to spills that were often difficult to clean up. Miles of pipes in the cramped workplace were so close together and poorly routed that they would not fully drain, creating excessive radiation levels[6] in the plant.
Cramped piping also made it difficult to account for the plutonium carried through them, which was classified by the government as a Category I strategic special nuclear material—that is, material that “in specified forms and quantities, can be used to construct an improvised nuclear device capable of producing a nuclear explosion.”[7]
Gloveboxes—the laboratory workstations with gloves in their transparent walls, so workers could manipulate plutonium without coming into direct contact with it—became a major source of contamination because the type installed by Kerr-McGee used plastic seals that US weapons plants had long known could degrade and leak. Also, there were few contained connections between gloveboxes, so workers had to transfer radioactive materials in the open, creating greater risks of contamination. The ventilation systems did not permit rooms in the facility to be isolated from one another to minimize the spread of contamination when it occurred. Even the plant’s radiation air filters were configured in a way that made them difficult to replace.[8]
As substandard facilities led to contamination, Kerr-McGee failed to inform workers that plutonium can cause cancer. Managers often claimed that it was harmless. “There has been no lung cancer caused by plutonium exposure,” William Utnage, the plant designer, told employees. “From human experience to date, we have nothing to worry about.” Based on numerous animal studies, the Atomic Energy Commission considered plutonium to be a potent carcinogen.
Read more: The death of Karen Silkwood—and the plutonium economyTurnover was high at the Kerr-McGee Cimarron plutonium plant, with an average of 90 people out of the plant’s total workforce of 150 quitting each year.[9] AEC inspections found that the company could not keep accurate track of radiation doses, making it difficult if not impossible to know the frequency and severity of exposures. Given the need to constantly replace three out of five workers every year, many people were hired fresh out of high school, provided minimal training, and sent on the line to operate a high-hazard nuclear facility.
After being repeatedly exposed to plutonium at the plant that required often painful scrubbing of her skin, Karen Silkwood began documenting dangerous practices at the plant, including the doctoring of X-rays of fuel rod welds by a technician who used a felt-tip pen to hide defects shown in the X-rays.
Days before she died in the car crash, plutonium contamination was found in the home that Silkwood shared with her boyfriend, Drew Stephens, and roommate, Sheri Ellis. The highest concentrations were in lunch meat in her refrigerator and on the toilet seat. Karen, Drew, and Sheri were soon flown to Los Alamos Laboratory, where it was determined that Karen had sustained a significant dose of plutonium in her lungs. Subsequent laboratory analyses concluded that the plutonium in her home came from a batch at the plant to which she did not have access. These revelations all happened within the few days before her fatal drive that night of November 13, 1974.
Congress takes interest. In a way. Just five months before Karen Silkwood’s death, India conducted its first nuclear weapon test; it involved a bomb fueled with plutonium extracted from spent fuel produced by Canadian nuclear reactors. Growing concern in the US Congress about the thought of plutonium circulating in world commerce focused attention on the missing plutonium from the Kerr-McGee plant where Silkwood had worked. Although the amount of the unaccounted-for material was less than a tenth of a percent of the 2.2 tons handled at the plant, it was enough to fuel as many as four nuclear weapons. The Silkwood case also led to greater congressional scrutiny of how the government accounted for and safeguarded its stocks of nuclear materials.
…………………..In the spring of 1975, with our infant daughter Amber in a stroller, my wife Kitty and Sara Nelson met with Tony Mazzochi, legislative director of the Oil Chemical and Atomic Workers (OCAW), and his union colleague Steve Wodka. Both had worked closely with Karen Silkwood in support of efforts to prevent Kerr-McGee from decertifying the union and to strengthen worker safety. The night Silkwood died, Wodka was in a hotel room waiting with New York Times reporter David Burnham for Karen to show up. Shortly after that meeting, Kitty and Sara were recruiting a legal team, led by Daniel Sheehan, to take this case into federal court, on behalf of Karen’s parents.
……….. As I began my work at EPC, one of my first tasks was to serve as a representative on Capitol Hill for Bill and Meryl Silkwood, Karen’s parents. Deeply upset by the suspicious death of their daughter, they approached us in the late fall of 1975 seeking help………………………….. Among the initial appointments I set up for them on Capitol Hill was one in the high-security offices of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy on a top floor of the US Capitol, accessed by a special elevator. After we went over numerous safety concerns about the Kerr-McGee plant, we were given a polite but frosty response by the committee’s staff director, who curtly advised Bill to go back home and write a letter to his congressman.
The response came as no surprise. Kerr-McGee founder Robert S. Kerr held sway over atomic energy matters as a US senator from the late 1940s until he died in 1963. In 1948, the year Robert Kerr was elected to the U.S. Senate, Kerr-McGee became the first oil company to take advantage of the uranium boom, opening mines on the Navajo reservation to take advantage of the US government’s lucrative price guarantees. By 1954, the company dominated the US uranium market.
By the summer of 1975, Kitty and Sara had collected 8,500 signatures from NOW members and others petitioning Sen. Abraham Ribikoff, chair of the US Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, to launch an investigation into the circumstances surrounding Karen Silkwood’s death.
On the anniversary of Silkwood’s death—November 13, 1975—during a congressional recess, several NOW members pressed Ribikoff in his home state of Connecticut. Six days later, Ribikoff and his Senate colleague Lee Metcalf of Montana met with a large delegation including Karen’s parents, Kitty, Sara, newly elected NOW President Eli Smeal, religious advocates, and me. Also joining the meeting were Peter Stockton, on loan from Michigan Congressman John Dingell’s staff, and Win Turner. Ribicoff quickly agreed to an investigation and passed the baton to Senator Metcalf……………………………………
In addition to raising serious questions about the investigation of the accident that killed Silkwood, Newman and Stockton revealed that 40 pounds of plutonium was missing and unaccounted for at the Kerr McGee plant. The AEC failed to successfully black out this discrepancy from the document Newman obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. Twenty years later, after the Cimarron plant was dismantled, only 20.2 pounds were recovered from its pipes, leaving enough missing plutonium to fuel two Nagasaki-type atomic bombs.
Turner and Stockton now had a congressional green light to press the Energy Research and Development Administration, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and especially the FBI for their investigative documents covering the Silkwood case…………………………
………………………….. By this time, pressures were mounting for Turner and Stockton to back off investigating Silkwood’s death. Republican staff on the Governmental Affairs Committee blocked travel funds needed to interview key officials. Turner had to prevail on a less-than-enthusiastic Senator Metcalf to intervene. Eventually, Stockton prevailed on Dingell to pay for his trip to Nashville to try to gain greater cooperation from Srouji.
Shortly thereafter, Metcalf dropped the investigation into Silkwood’s death,[10] but Dingell picked up the ball, thanks in large part to his trust in Stockton, and held two public hearings that showed the disturbing lack of safety working at the plant.
………………………………………..Under the threat of being held in contempt of Congress, Srouji turned over documents she claimed to have obtained from the FBI. The documents indicated that the FBI’s investigation of events surrounding Silkwood’s death was superficial. Most conspicuous by its absence was any documented effort by Olson and the FBI to address the AEC’s concern that Kerr McGee could not account for about 40 pounds of plutonium.[12]
The Silkwood lawsuit begins. By the fall of 1976, congressional investigations had run their course, leaving Karen’s parents only with the option of going to court. ………………………………………..
The complaint had three basic components: Kerr McGee was liable under state law for the contamination of Karen Silkwood in her home; Kerr McGee violated Silkwood’s civil rights to travel on the highway; and finally Kerr McGee conspired to violate Silkwood’s civil rights. It turned out that the contamination of Karen’s home with plutonium from the plant became the anchor for the lawsuit………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Bill Paul, Kerr McGee’s lead attorney and former president of the Oklahoma Bar Association, seemed determined to stop the case from going to trial by proving we were “outside agitators” in a conspiracy, supposedly run by Ralph Nader and the Communist Party, to stop nuclear power in the United States……………………………………………………… Through the efforts of investigative reporter Howard Kohn and his wife and assistant Diana, Rolling Stone made the Silkwood case a major investigative focus and played an important role in raising funds for the lawsuit.[15]
………………………………………………………………………….As trial approached, Danny and his investigators tried to shine a light on efforts by Kerr-McGee to spy and intimidate Silkwood, possibly to the point of running her off the road, and the FBI’s efforts to conceal Kerr McGee’s wrongdoings. Even though Danny and his colleagues found a considerable amount of evidence to back these claims, the federal judge on the case, Frank Thies, ruled that conspiracies to violate Karen Silkwood’s civil rights were not covered by the law. This left the legal liability against Kerr McGee for contaminating Silkwood in her home as the only issue to be argued in court.
………………………………………………………………………..Kitty and I moved out to Oklahoma City and watched the 47-day trial unfold as Gerry Spence masterfully took apart Kerr-McGee’s defense. Bill Paul, Kerr’s McGee’s lead attorney, had not faced a seasoned court roombrawler like Gerry Spence before. From the outset, Spence, with his large-brimmed cowboy hat sitting on the table and cattle rancher demeanor, and his co-counsel, the much shorter, frizzy-haired Arthur Angel, created a “David vs Goliath” atmosphere. Ranged against them were a half dozen defense attorneys in three-piece suits who immediately became known as the “men in grey.”
After 43 witnesses gave testimony, the case went to the jury, and on May 18, 1979, the jury rendered its verdict. Bill and Merle Silkwood sat beside Kitty and our 4-year-old daughter, Amber. Dean McGee, the president and co-founder of the Kerr-McGee Corp., and leaders of the Oklahoma State Legislature were also present to hear the jury find Kerr McGee liable for $505,000 in actual damages and $10 million in punitive damages. On January 11, 1984, the US Supreme Court upheld the jury’s verdict, but allowed Kerr-McGee to contest the punitive damages in another trial. Not wanting to go through another lengthy trial Karn’s family agreed to a $1.38 million setlement.
Even so, the lawsuit set an important precedent that federal regulation of nuclear safety did not shield nuclear facilities from being held accountable under state tort laws.
The end of the plutonium economy. A highly eventful year followed Karen’s death; those events would impact the future of nuclear energy around the world.
In May 1974, India shocked the world by detonating a nuclear weapon underground in the remote desert region of Rajasthan. Called the “Smiling Buddha,” the weapon was fueled by plutonium produced in a reactor provided by Canada that used heavy water supplied by the United States from the Savannah River Plant, a nuclear weapons material production facility in South Carolina. India extracted the plutonium from spent reactor fuel at a reprocessing plant built with the assistance of the United States and France. The Indian weapons experts who designed Smiling Buddha were trained by the Soviet Union.
India declared its weapon test a “peaceful nuclear explosion.” Between 1961 and 1975, the United States and the Soviet Union set off 35 and 124 “peaceful” nuclear detonations, respectively, in a quest to dig channels, recover minerals, excavate tunnels for highways, store oil and gas, and build dams. Undeterred by the radiological problems peaceful nuclear explosions would cause, the United States actively promoted their use, which made sure that other countries would follow, as an integral part of the “peaceful” uses of nuclear power allowed under the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
In 1976, then-President Gerald Ford responded, suspending reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel to recover plutonium in the United States. The next year, President Jimmy Carter converted the suspension into a ban, issuing a strong international policy statement against establishing plutonium as fuel in global commerce. As the US government continued to refuse to support reprocessing of nuclear fuel, US utilities with nuclear power plants opted to support underground disposal of spent fuel.
The vision first created during World War II—and fostered with tens of billions of dollars of public funds—to establish nuclear power plants fueled by plutonium started to take on a nightmarish quality. Within the next 10 years following the Indian nuclear explosion and Karen Silkwood’s death, the US Congress pulled the plug on the Liquid Metal Fast Breeder Reactor project, ending the Atomic Energy Commission’s vision of a plutonium economy, and the Supreme Court provided a little bit of justice for Karen’s parents and children, upholding a jury decision that for the first time cast aside the legal shield of the federal government protecting the nuclear industry.
Eventually, Kerr-McGee’s destructive practices caught up with it. In April 2014, after fraudulently trying to avoid paying for the cleanup of the massive environmental damage it had wrought throughout the United States, Kerr-McGee entered into a $5.5 billion settlement with the US Justice Department. Kerr-McGee is now a bankrupt legacy of the atomic age, a relic of a plutonium economy that never came to be in the United States.
Notes…………………………………………………………………………………. more https://thebulletin.org/2024/11/the-death-of-karen-silkwood-and-the-plutonium-economy/
South Africa Files 750 Pages of ‘Overwhelming’ Evidence in ICJ Genocide Case Against Israel
“The glaring genocide in Gaza is there for all who are not blinded by prejudice to see.”
By Brett Wilkins / Common Dreams, 30 Oct 24
South Africa filed 750 pages of “overwhelming” proof that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza to the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands on Monday, the deadline for submitting final evidence in the ongoing trial.
South African Ambassador to the Netherlands Vusi Madonsela delivered the legal document—known as a memorial—to the ICJ headquarters in the Dutch city. Under the court’s rules, the contents of the memorial cannot be made public at this time.
According to a statement from the office of South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, the memorial is a “comprehensive presentation of the overwhelming evidence of genocide in Gaza.”
The office said the document “contains evidence which shows how the government of Israel has violated the Genocide Convention by promoting the destruction of Palestinians living in Gaza, physically killing them with an assortment of destructive weapons, depriving them access to humanitarian assistance, causing conditions of life which are aimed at their physical destruction, and ignoring and defying several provisional measures of the International Court of Justice, and using starvation as a weapon of war and to further Israel’s aims to depopulate Gaza through mass death and forced displacement of Palestinians.”
South Africa filed 750 pages of “overwhelming” proof that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza to the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands on Monday, the deadline for submitting final evidence in the ongoing trial.
South African Ambassador to the Netherlands Vusi Madonsela delivered the legal document—known as a memorial—to the ICJ headquarters in the Dutch city. Under the court’s rules, the contents of the memorial cannot be made public at this time.
According to a statement from the office of South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, the memorial is a “comprehensive presentation of the overwhelming evidence of genocide in Gaza.”
The office said the document “contains evidence which shows how the government of Israel has violated the Genocide Convention by promoting the destruction of Palestinians living in Gaza, physically killing them with an assortment of destructive weapons, depriving them access to humanitarian assistance, causing conditions of life which are aimed at their physical destruction, and ignoring and defying several provisional measures of the International Court of Justice, and using starvation as a weapon of war and to further Israel’s aims to depopulate Gaza through mass death and forced displacement of Palestinians.”
“The evidence will show that undergirding Israel’s genocidal acts is the special intent to commit genocide, a failure by Israel to prevent incitement to genocide, to prevent genocide itself, and its failure to punish those inciting and committing acts of genocide,” Ramaphosa’s office added.
South Africa’s filing comes amid Israel’s ongoing 387-day assault on Gaza, which according to Palestinian and international agencies has killed at least 43,020 people—most of them women and children. At least 101,110 others have been wounded and over 10,000 Gazans are missing and believed dead and buried beneath the rubble of hundreds of thousands of bombed homes and other structures. Millions more Palestinians have been forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened by Israel’s invasion and “complete siege” of Gaza.
The filing also comes one week after senior members of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right Cabinet and national lawmakers spoke at a conference advocating the ethnic cleansing and recolonization of Gaza.
Ramaphosa’s office lamented that “Israel has been granted unprecedented impunity to breach international law and norms for as long as the United Nations Charter has been in existence.”………………………………………………………………https://www.commondreams.org/news/south-africa-icj-genocide-israel
UK Snubs Council of Europe Over Assange Inquiry
Politicians across Europe want Britain to investigate why the WikiLeaks founder spent five years in jail.
MARK CURTIS, 25 October 2024, https://www.declassifieduk.org/uk-snubs-council-of-europe-over-assange-inquiry/
Britain’s Home Office is making a “grave mistake” by ignoring a call from the Council of Europe to review its treatment of Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder’s wife has warned.
The Council’s parliamentary assembly, of which the UK is a member, passed a resolution earlier this month designating Assange as a “political prisoner”.
Assange endured five years in Belmarsh maximum security prison in London before being released in June, and flying to his native Australia. The UK government had incarcerated him while the US pursued extradition proceedings in the British courts.
His treatment has outraged the Council of Europe, which was created in the aftermath of World War Two with strong backing from Winston Churchill.
Its resolution urged the UK authorities to conduct a review “with a view to establishing whether he [Assange] has been exposed to torture or inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, pursuant to their international obligations”.
It found the UK authorities “failed to effectively protect Mr Assange’s freedom of expression and right to liberty, exposing him to lengthy detention in a high-security prison despite the political nature of the most severe charges against him.”
Declassified asked Britain’s Home Office what its response was to the Council of Europe’s call.
The government department deflected the question, replying: “The longstanding extradition request for Julian Assange has been resolved. As is standard practice, all extradition requests are considered on an individual basis by our independent courts and in accordance with UK law.”
The demands of the parliamentary assembly are not binding on European governments but they are “obliged to respond”.
‘Cover-up’
Stella Assange, Julian’s wife, told Declassified the Home Office is making a “grave mistake” in refusing to heed the Council of Europe’s call.
She said: “We know that the Crown Prosecution Service has disappeared key documents relating to Julian’s imprisonment and refused to provide information, first to a journalist, and now to the court, that might shed a light on the political side of Julian’s persecution in the UK.
“It is one thing for rogue elements in the CPS to collude with foreign governments to persecute a publisher and attempt to cover their tracks. It is quite another for the UK government to stonewall in this manner in the wake of an independent report by the Council of Europe and a vote by the overwhelming majority of the chamber calling on the UK to carry out an investigation.”
She added: “The UK government is effectively partaking in the cover-up, in a way that only a guilty party would.”
‘Psychological torture’
Assange’s detention in maximum security Belmarsh was “out of proportion in relation to his alleged offence”, the Council of Europe’s resolution found.
It recalled the findings of the then United Nations special rapporteur on torture, Nils Melzer, that Assange had been exposed to “progressively severe forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, the cumulative effects of which can only be described as psychological torture”.
Melzer’s report, produced in 2019 while Assange had secured asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, called on UK officials to be investigated for possible “criminal conduct” in their treatment of Assange. It was never reported in the UK national media.
The Council of Europe found that the UK authorities “appear to have ignored” Melzer’s findings.
Its resolution was passed with 88 in favour, 13 against and 20 abstentions. All four UK members of the parliamentary assembly voted against, including Lord Richard Keen, a Conservative peer, who expressed a dissenting opinion.
Keen argued that it was “legally incorrect” to find that Assange had been detained unlawfully, as he had violated bail conditions before and was considered a flight risk.
Keen also rejected the accusation of torture against the UK, saying that Assange’s “regrettable psychological state” identified by Melzer was due to Assange’s “self-imposed lengthy isolation in the Ecuadorian embassy in London and cannot be blamed on the UK authorities.”
‘Chilling effect’
The Council of Europe concluded that the treatment of Assange “creates a dangerous chilling effect and a climate of self-censorship affecting all journalists, publishers and others reporting matters essential for the functioning of a democratic society”.
It added: “It severely undermines the role of the press and the protection of journalists and whistle-blowers around the world.”
The resolution also noted that the Council was “alarmed” by reports that the US Central Intelligence Agency had covertly surveyed Assange while he was in the Ecuadorian embassy in London and was allegedly developing plans to poison or even assassinate him on UK soil.
Rebecca Vincent, campaigns director at Reporters Without Borders, told us that Julian Assange’s sentencing by UK courts to 50 weeks in prison for breaking bail was “disproportionate”.
She added: “His subsequent prolonged detention in a high-security prison with no charges against him in the UK, held purely on remand, constituted a gross violation of his rights.”
Vincent said: “We faced unusual restrictions from UK authorities in trying to do our jobs advocating in this case, including extreme difficulties securing consistent access to monitor extradition proceedings against Assange in UK courts, and access to visit him in Belmarsh prison. These aspects all merit a serious independent review.”
Fighting for More Evidence of Assange’s Political Prosecution
Italian journalist Stefania Maurizi has been in court trying to get some missing emails — or data about them — that could further expose the political motivation behind the prosecution of the WikiLeaks publisher.
Joe Lauria and Mohamed Elmaazi / Consortium News, October 23, 2024
A tribunal in Britain is set to decide whether to order the government’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to prove it deleted emails that may have covered up more evidence of a politically motivated prosecution of Julian Assange.
The three judges heard arguments on Sept. 24 in the nearly decade-long freedom of information saga regarding the emails that top British prosecutors say were deleted.
They involved an exchange with Sweden during a Swedish prosecutor’s attempt, beginning in 2010, to extradite the WikiLeaks publisher from Britain. ……………………………………………………….
It was only when the U.S. realized it would lose on appeal after a four-year extradition battle that the Department of Justice cut a plea deal with Assange who was released on June 24 and returned to his native Australia.
Assange had been charged in the United States under the Espionage Act for possessing and publishing defense information, which revealed evidence of U.S. war crimes.
Britain took an active role in Assange’s prosecution. Its Crown Prosecution Service sought to stop Sweden from going to the embassy to question him.
Seeking to learn more about Britain’s role against Assange, Italian investigative journalist Stefania Maurizi first made a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in 2015 for all emails between the British and Swedish governments concerning Assange.
Some of the emails she obtained showed political motivation on the part of the lead British prosecutor, Paul Close. One email Maurizi obtained from the Swedish Prosecution Authority (SPA) revealed that Close appeared to be pressuring Swedish prosecutors to continue seeking Assange’s extradition instead of dropping the case or questioning him at the Ecuadorian embassy, where Assange had been granted asylum………………………….
After Maurizi noticed a sizeable gap in the emails released to her she filed another FIOA seeking to obtain the missing emails.
The CPS first claimed that it had destroyed the emails. It said that when Close retired, his account along with his emails, were automatically destroyed.
But Maurizi did not buy it. She asked the court at the hearing last month to order the CPS to turn over “metadata” — data about data, such as file creation and modification dates, email sender and recipient addresses, timestamps, email routing information, keywords, and subject lines — proving the emails really were deleted and when.
“We have NO certainty whatsoever” that the emails were destroyed, Maurizi wrote in a message to Consortium News. Maurizi is in court because she believes the allegedly deleted emails could provide additional evidence of a politically motivated prosecution of Assange.
……………………………………………‘When, How & Why’ Were the Emails Deleted?
Maurizi, who travelled to London from Rome to attend the Sept. 24 hearing at the First-Tier Tribunal (General Regulatory Chamber), is challenging the ongoing failure of the CPS to respond adequately to her December 2019 FOIA about the missing emails.
………………………………………………………………….Maurizi is betting the tribunal will agree with her that metadata is clearly information that can be requested under the Act and which can clearly be provided with little difficulty. If she succeeds, future FOIA requests will also be able to demand metadata if and when an individual thinks it may be useful.
Hillary, who was called to testify for the CPS, freely admitted to the tribunal that she could easily provide the metadata Maurizi requested and that she would be happy to do so, as long as any information which identified individuals is redacted.
The tribunal will also consider whether to “order the CPS to carry out a proper, full search for information held” as to “when, how and why?” the thousands of emails were allegedly deleted while Assange’s Swedish extradition case was still very much active.
No date has yet been set for the announcement of the tribunal’s decision. https://consortiumnews.com/2024/10/23/fighting-for-more-evidence-of-assanges-political-prosecution/
Plutonium just had a bad day in court
In a major decision whose consequences are still being assessed, a federal judge declared that plutonium pit production — one ingredient in the U.S. government’s $1.5 trillion nuclear weapons expansion — has to be performed in accordance with the nation’s strongest environmental law
SEARCHLIGHT NEW MEXICO, by Alicia Inez Guzmán, October 17, 2024
Most Americans don’t seem aware of it, but the United States is plunging into a new nuclear arms race. At the same time that China is ramping up its arsenal of nuclear weapons, Russia has become increasingly bellicose. After a long period of relative dormancy, the U.S. has embarked on its own monumental project to modernize everything in its arsenal — from bomb triggers to warheads to missile systems — at a cost, altogether, of at least $1.5 trillion.
Los Alamos National Laboratory plays a vital role as one of two sites set to manufacture plutonium “pits,” the main explosive element in every thermonuclear warhead. But as a recent court ruling makes clear, the rush to revive weapons production has pushed environmental considerations — from nuclear waste and increases in vehicular traffic to contamination of local waterways, air and vegetation — to the wayside.
That just changed dramatically. On Sept. 30, United States District Judge Mary Geiger Lewis of South Carolina ruled that the federal government violated the National Environmental Policy Act — the “Magna Carta” of federal environmental law — when it formulated and began to proceed with plans to produce plutonium pits at LANL and the Savannah River Site, in Aiken, South Carolina.
“[T]he Court is unconvinced Defendants took a hard look at the combined effects of environmental impacts of their two-site strategy,” Lewis wrote of the Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which together oversee America’s nuclear weapons stockpile.
The ruling was momentous for the anti-nuclear community. But it was also mystifying, because Judge Lewis didn’t provide a roadmap for how to move forward with this extraordinarily complicated policy dispute. Rather than bringing pit production to a halt — which plaintiffs argued for in their original complaint, filed in 2021 — the judge instead ordered the parties to reach some sort of “middle ground” among themselves and submit a joint proposal by Oct. 25. What that will consist of is anybody’s guess. The judge was clear on one point, though — she’ll be keeping a close eye on the matter by maintaining jurisdiction over the case. Injunctive relief, she added, could still be in the cards.
NEPA’s rules require that agencies take a “hard look” at potential environmental impacts. NEPA does not, however, dictate what decision should be made once those impacts are identified.
Previous impact statements have spelled out a vast array of potential hazards for nuclear facilities. These have included an “inadvertent criticality event,” which happens when nuclear material produces a chain reaction and a pulse of potentially fatal radioactivity. Another risk is fire igniting inside a glovebox — the sealed enclosure where radioactive materials like plutonium are handled — and then resisting suppression, leading to widespread contamination. Other possibilities: a natural gas explosion at vulnerable nuclear sites or a wildfire on LANL’s sprawling campus, which is bounded on all sides by the towns of Los Alamos and White Rock, the Pueblo of San Ildefonso, the Santa Fe National Forest and Bandelier National Monument.
“Perhaps more significantly,” Judge Lewis stated, those impact statements “provide a springboard for public comment,” a kind of mechanism for citizens to express criticism and concern and, in some cases, identify a project’s blindspots — risks to people and places that have not been properly taken into account.
An announcement from the DOE the following day was telling, if not defiant: The first plutonium pit manufactured as part of this modernization program was ready to be deployed into the stockpile. That pit — made at LANL but the product of multiple facilities across the nation’s nuclear weapons complex — is intended for a new warhead, which will be strapped into a new intercontinental ballistic missile called the Sentinel. The Sentinel program, at $140 billion, is one of the costliest in the history of the U.S. Air Force……………………………………………………………………….
Now, almost 40 years later, the court found that the agencies charged with reviving the nuclear weapons complex have not properly evaluated the perils that could come with turning out plutonium pits at two different sites, thousands of miles apart. For the plaintiffs in this case — which include Nuclear Watch New Mexico, Savannah River Site Watch, Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment and the Gullah/Geechee Sea Island Coalition — Lewis’s decision to intervene is a milestone.
“We’ve had a pretty significant victory here on the environmental front,” said Tom Clements, the director of Savannah River Site Watch. “Nonprofit public interest groups are able to hold the U.S. Department of Energy accountable.”
………………………………………………………………………………………………….. For LANL, which sits on the kind of forested land typical of the Pajarito Plateau, wildfire is a major risk. …………………………………………………..
A “parade of horribles”
The array of sites that play some role in this latest phase of pit production goes well beyond LANL and SRS, and includes existing facilities in Amarillo, Texas; Kansas City, Missouri; and Livermore, California. Hypothetically, if the feds ever produce the kind of environmental impact statement plaintiffs demand, it could potentially cover this entire constellation, requiring public hearings at each location and in Washington, D.C………………………………………… more https://searchlightnm.org/federal-judge-ruling-plutonium-pits-environmental-impact/?utm_source=Searchlight+New+Mexico&utm_campaign=ae33d0dc0a-10%2F15%2F2024+%E2%80%93+Plutonium&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_8e05fb0467-ae33d0dc0a-395610620&mc_cid=ae33d0dc0a&mc_eid=a70296a261
Environmental groups challenge the nuclear industry’s portrayal of its energy as “clean” and “non-emitting,” citing health risks and long-term radioactive waste
By James Murray, October 16, 2024,
https://www.netnewsledger.com/2024/10/16/environmental-groups-challenge-the-nuclear-industrys-portrayal-of-its-energy-as-clean-and-non-emitting-citing-health-risks-and-long-term-radioactive-waste/
Competition Bureau Asked to Investigate Misleading Nuclear Energy Claims in Canada
Ottawa, 16 October 2024 – Seven Canadian environmental advocates have filed a formal complaint with the Competition Bureau, urging it to investigate the Canadian Nuclear Association (CNA) and its members for promoting nuclear energy as “clean” and “non-emitting.”
This latest action, under Section 9 of the Competition Act, calls for the Bureau to address what the complainants argue are false and misleading claims about nuclear energy.
“Legislation against greenwashing should spur the Bureau to act on the misuse of terms like ‘clean’ and ‘non-emitting.’ These claims are misleading and repeated by uninformed officials,” said Dr. Ole Hendrickson.
“Nuclear reactors emit carcinogenic substances and produce dangerous radioactive waste—hardly ‘clean’ by any reasonable definition,” added J.P. Unger, a science writer and policy analyst. “The industry’s survival depends on misleading the public and securing subsidies.”
The complaint highlights the continuous emission of carcinogenic gases and the production of long-lived radioactive waste by nuclear reactors, which pose significant health risks to current and future generations. According to the applicants, the CNA’s portrayal of nuclear energy as clean misleads the public, especially given the severe environmental impact of its waste.
The group points out that these claims have unfairly bolstered nuclear energy’s image, positioning it to secure public funding intended for genuinely clean energy projects. They also criticize nuclear industry campaigns, such as educational initiatives targeted at schools, for perpetuating these misconceptions.
This action follows an earlier complaint filed in February, which was dismissed by the Competition Bureau. At the time, the Bureau deemed CNA’s statements to be political rather than promotional. However, the new complaint emphasizes that the CNA’s messaging aims to sway public opinion and secure financial benefits by falsely categorizing nuclear energy as environmentally friendly.
“Israel must be expelled from the United Nations”
International legal expert Fabio Marcelli makes the case that, following the attack on UN peacekeepers, the conditions are ripe for a UN General Assembly vote on Israel’s expulsion from the latter
Thomas Fazi, Oct 13, 2024, https://www.thomasfazi.com/p/israel-must-be-expelled-from-the—
Israel must be expelled from the United Nations: the conditions are ripe
by Fabio Marcelli, international legal expert, research director of the Institute for International Legal Studies of the Italian National Research Council and member of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers
Originally published in Italian on the website of Il Fatto Quotidiano.
The deliberate and criminal attack on the Italian Sassari Brigade and other UNIFIL (United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon) international contingents marks a new and unprecedented stage in Netanyahu’s efforts to devastate the neighbouring peoples of Israel, threaten global peace, and lead his own country to self-destruction, which now seems closer than ever.
[Italian Defense] Minister Crosetto’s condemnation of the attack as a war crime is commendable, as is his commitment that UNIFIL will not yield to blackmail or threats and will continue to carry out its mission. His assertion that Italy does not take orders from Israel is also notable.
However, it is crucial to closely monitor the fulfilment of this commitment, especially given the contradictory stance of the Meloni government, which has consistently supported Israel’s crimes. This contradiction becomes even more apparent when Western-supplied weapons, including a significant contribution from Italy’s military-industrial complex, are used against Italian forces. Unfortunately, Crosetto’s position seems unlikely to bring about meaningful consequences, especially given the silence from other Italian leaders, such as prime minister Giorgia Meloni and president Sergio Mattarella — a silence that must be harshly criticised considering the severity of the affront to Italy and the dangers to global peace.
UNIFIL must remain on the ground and, indeed, should be strengthened and equipped with appropriate equipment and weapons to effectively respond to any potential Israeli aggression. Similarly, steps should be taken to establish a comparable military protection force in Gaza and the West Bank to ensure the safety of the Palestinian people, who have paid a huge price in blood and continue to pay it every day in terms of civilians killed, mutilated and subjected to starvation, thirst and lack of medical supplies, denied by the genocidal occupation.
At the core of the expanding conflict, which now poses a serious threat to global peace, lies the persistent violation of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination. This ongoing crisis stems from over fifty years of impunity granted to Israeli governments that have continually defied international law and the UN — and are now brutally attacking the organisation, declaring Secretary-General Guterres persona non grata and bombing his peacekeeping forces, including the cream of the Italian Armed Forces.
Given such sustained and repeated criminal behaviour, there are grounds for Israel’s expulsion from the United Nations. According to Article 6 of the UN Charter, “a Member of the United Nations which has persistently violated the Principles contained in the present Charter may be expelled from the Organization by the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council”.
However, it is clear that Western states in the Security Council, particularly the United States — complicit in Netanyahu’s criminal actions — will use their veto power to block such a proposal, once again obstructing the proper functioning of the international organisation and the enforcement of international law. Nonetheless, it would be equally important for the UN General Assembly to vote on such a resolution, giving free expression to the condemnation of Israel that now comes from the vast majority of the world’s countries as well as from international public opinion.
Such a declaration of principle should be followed by the imposition of sanctions under Article 41 and, if these measures prove insufficient, it could lead to multilateral military action under Article 42. This would complete the procedural steps outlined in Chapter VII of the Charter to end threats to international peace and security.
The adoption of these measures by the General Assembly and by a large number of states represents a necessary response to the grave threat to world peace posed by the criminal policies of the Netanyahu government, determined to provoke a nuclear conflict to avoid legal accountability, as well as by the equally criminal complicity of Western nations, led by the United States, today headed by a president who is a shadow of himself and therefore the shadow of a shadow.
Moreover, there are significant precedents in international law since World War II, such as the “Uniting for Peace” resolution adopted by the General Assembly when the Security Council failed to act. Such measures must now be considered in the face of the current danger to international peace.
Are DOE and NNSA Complying with the National Environmental Policy Act?
The Court found the DOE’s plan had fundamentally changed from the one site plan to its two site plan. DOE did not consider alternatives while moving forward and spending tens of billions of taxpayers’ dollars. The Court found that the plaintiffs had standing to challenge DOE’s two-site plan.
October 10th, 2024, https://nuclearactive.org/
On Monday, September 30th, United States District Court Judge Mary Geiger Lewis ruled that the Department of Energy (DOE) and its National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) because the federal agencies failed to take a “hard look” at the alternatives to fabricate plutonium pits, or the triggers, for nuclear weapons at two of its sites. Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) was created to design and fabricate the atomic bombs used during World War II. The Savannah River Site in South Carolina has never fabricated pits for nuclear weapons.
In the late 2000s, DOE released for public review and comment its Complex Transformation Supplemental Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement stating that pit production would take place exclusively at LANL. https://www.energy.gov/nepa/doeeis-0236-s4-complex-transformation-supplemental-programmatic-environmental-impact-statement
Yet in 2019 DOE expanded its proposal to improve the resiliency, flexibility and redundance of the nuclear security enterprise to also fabricate plutonium pits at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. DOE failed to prepare a new NEPA document for public review and comment detailing how the two sites would interact to fabricate up to 80 plutonium pits per year.
A coalition of non-governmental organizations challenged DOE’s action in the United States District Court of South Carolina. The plaintiffs are the Gullah/Geechee Sea Island Coalition https://gullahgeecheenation.com/gullahgeechee-sea-island-coalition/ , Nuclear Watch New Mexico https://nukewatch.org/home/ , Savannah River Site Watch https://srswatch.org/ , and Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment, or Tri-Valley CARES https://trivalleycares.org/ , and individual Tom Clements. They are represented by Ben Cunningham of the South Carolina Environmental Law Project https://www.scelp.org/ .
The Court found the DOE’s plan had fundamentally changed from the one site plan to its two site plan. DOE did not consider alternatives while moving forward and spending tens of billions of taxpayers’ dollars. The Court found that the plaintiffs had standing to challenge DOE’s two-site plan.
Cunningham said, “This is a significant victory that will ensure NEPA’s goal of public participation is satisfied. Public scrutiny is especially important because the activities at issue here, by their very nature, result in the production of dangerous weapons and extensive amounts of toxic and radioactive waste. I hope the public will seize the upcoming opportunity to review and comment on the federal agencies’ assessment.”
The Court ordered the parties to confer and present the Court with a joint proposal about appropriate remedies to resolve the case, including “Plaintiffs’ request for injunctive relief.” The proposal is due to the Court on Friday, October 25th.
To access the Court documents, go to: https://nukewatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Court-Rules-U.S.-Nuclear-Weapons-Production-Plan-Violates-Federal-Law.pdf
Finally Free, Assange Receives a Measure of Justice From the Council of Europe
In the U.S., “the concept of state secrets is used to shield executive officials from criminal prosecution for crimes such as kidnapping and torture, or to prevent victims from claiming damages,” the resolution notes. But “the responsibility of State agents for war crimes or serious human rights violations, such as assassinations, enforced disappearances, torture or abductions, does not constitute a secret that must be protected.”
In his first public statement since his release, Assange said, “I’m free today … because I pled guilty to journalism.”
By Marjorie Cohn , Truthout, October 4, 2024
he Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), Europe’s foremost human rights body, overwhelmingly adopted a resolution on October 2 formally declaring WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange a political prisoner. The Council of Europe, which represents 64 nations, expressed deep concern at the harsh treatment suffered by Assange, which has had a “chilling effect” on journalists and whistleblowers around the world.
In the resolution, PACE notes that many of the leaked files WikiLeaks published “provide credible evidence of war crimes, human rights abuses, and government misconduct.” The revelations also “confirmed the existence of secret prisons, kidnappings and illegal transfers of prisoners by the United States on European soil.”
According to the terms of a plea deal with the U.S. Department of Justice, Assange pled guilty on June 25 to one count of conspiracy to obtain documents, writings and notes connected with the national defense under the U.S. Espionage Act. Without the deal, he was facing 175 years in prison for 18 charges in an indictment filed by the Trump administration and pursued by the Biden administration, stemming from WikiLeaks’ publication of evidence of war crimes committed by the U.S. in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay. After his plea, Assange was released from custody with credit for the five years he had spent in London’s maximum-security Belmarsh Prison.
The day before PACE passed its resolution, Assange delivered a powerful testimony to the Council of Europe’s Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights. This was his first public statement since his release from custody four months ago, after 14 years in confinement – nine in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and five in Belmarsh. “Freedom of expression and all that flows from it is at a dark crossroads,” Assange told the parliamentarians.
A “Chilling Effect and a Climate of Self-Censorship”
The resolution says that “the disproportionately harsh charges” the U.S. filed against Assange under the Espionage Act, “which expose him to a risk of de facto life imprisonment,” together with his conviction “for — what was essentially — the gathering and publication of information,” justify classifying him as a political prisoner, under the definition set forth in a PACE resolution from 2012 defining the term. Assange’s five-year incarceration in Belmarsh Prison was “disproportionate to the alleged offence.”
Noting that Assange is “the first publisher to be prosecuted under [the Espionage Act] for leaking classified information obtained from a whistleblower,” the resolution expresses concern about the “chilling effect and a climate of self-censorship for all journalists, editors and others who raise the alarm on issues that are essential to the functioning of democratic societies.” The resolution also notes that “information gathering is an essential preparatory step in journalism” which is protected by the right to freedom of expression guaranteed by the European Court of Human Rights.
The resolution cites the conclusion of Nils Melzer, UN Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, that Assange had been exposed to “increasingly severe forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, the cumulative effects of which can only be described as psychological torture.”
Condemning “transnational repression,” PACE was “alarmed by reports that the CIA was discreetly monitoring Mr. Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy in London and that it was allegedly planning to poison or even assassinate him on British soil.” The CIA has raised the “state secrets” privilege in a civil lawsuit filed by two attorneys and two journalists over that illegal surveillance.
In the U.S., “the concept of state secrets is used to shield executive officials from criminal prosecution for crimes such as kidnapping and torture, or to prevent victims from claiming damages,” the resolution notes. But “the responsibility of State agents for war crimes or serious human rights violations, such as assassinations, enforced disappearances, torture or abductions, does not constitute a secret that must be protected.”
Moreover, the resolution expresses deep concern that, according to publicly available evidence, no one has been held to account for the war crimes and human rights violations committed by U.S. state agents and decries the “culture of impunity.”
The resolution says there is no evidence anyone has been harmed by WikiLeaks’ publications and “regrets that despite Mr Assange’s disclosure of thousands of confirmed — previously unreported — deaths by U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, he has been the one accused of endangering lives.”
Assange’s Testimony
The testimony Assange provided to the committee was poignant. “I eventually chose freedom over realizable justice … Justice for me is now precluded,” Assange testified. “I am not free today because the system worked. I am free today after years of incarceration because I pled guilty to journalism.” He added, “I pled guilty to seeking information from a source. I pled guilty to obtaining information from a source. And I pled guilty to informing the public what that information was.” His source was whistleblower Chelsea Manning, who provided the documents and reports to WikiLeaks. “Journalism is not a crime,” Assange said. “It is a pillar of a free and informed society.”………………………………………………………………………………
PACE Urges US to Investigate War Crimes
The resolution calls on the U.S., the U.K., the member and observer States of the Council of Europe, and media outlets to take actions to address its concerns.
It calls on the U.S., an observer State, to reform the Espionage Act of 1917 to exclude from its operation journalists, editors and whistleblowers who disclose classified information with the aim of informing the public of serious crimes, such as torture or murder. In order to obtain a conviction for violation of the Act, the government should be required to prove a malicious intent to harm national security. It also calls on the U.S. to investigate the allegations of war crimes and other human rights violations exposed by Assange and Wikileaks.
PACE called on the U.K. to review its extradition laws to exclude extradition for political offenses, as well as conduct an independent review of the conditions of Assange’s treatment while at Belmarsh, to see if it constituted torture, or inhuman or degrading treatment.
In addition, the resolution urges the States of the Council of Europe to further improve their protections for whistleblowers, and to adopt strict guidelines to prevent governments from classifying documents as defense secrets when not warranted.
Finally, the resolution urges media outlets to establish rigorous protocols for handling and verifying classified information, to ensure responsible reporting and avoid any risk to national security and the safety of informants and sources.
Although PACE doesn’t have the authority to make laws, it can urge the States of the Council of Europe to take action. Since Assange never had the opportunity to litigate the denial of his right to freedom of expression, the resolution of the Council of Europe is particularly significant as he seeks a pardon from U.S. President Joe Biden. https://truthout.org/articles/finally-free-assange-receives-a-measure-of-justice-from-the-council-of-europe/
Nuclear Waste Storage Site in Texas Draws Supreme Court Review
by Bloomberg, Greg Stohr, Saturday, October 05, 2024 https://www.rigzone.com/news/wire/nuclear_waste_storage_site_in_texas_draws_supreme_court_review-05-oct-2024-178321-article/
The US Supreme Court will consider reviving a plan to store as much as 40,000 tons of highly radioactive waste at a temporary west Texas site, accepting a case that could be a turning point after decades of wrangling over spent fuel from the nation’s commercial reactors.
Agreeing to hear appeals from the Biden administration and the joint venture that would build and run the facility, the justices said they will review a federal appeals court ruling that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission lacked authority to issue a crucial license.
The above-ground site outside the town of Andrews in the Permian Basin oil field would be the first of its kind, designed to take waste from commercial reactors around the country until a long-running fight over a permanent storage location is resolved.
The plan has the backing of the nuclear power industry. It’s opposed by Texas Governor Greg Abbott and a coalition of landowners and oil and gas operators who call the planned facility a public-health hazard.
In its appeal, the Biden administration said the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals upended more than 40 years of NRC practice by concluding the Atomic Energy Act didn’t authorize the license. The decision put the 5th Circuit, perhaps the country’s most conservative federal appeals court, in conflict with other appellate panels.
The ruling “disrupts the nuclear-power industry by categorically prohibiting the commission from approving offsite storage of spent fuel, despite the agency’s longstanding issuance of such licenses,” Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar argued. She also contends that Texas and other opponents lack the legal right to challenge the decision in court.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton urged the justices not to hear the case. He said federal law expressly requires the nation’s nuclear waste to be stored at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, where efforts to build a facility have been scuttled by local opposition.
“Congress specified that the nation would dispose of its nuclear waste at a government-owned facility at Yucca Mountain,” Paxton argued. “By no means can the commission solve its Yucca Mountain problem by disregarding clear statutory language.”
Fasken Land and Minerals Ltd., which owns hundreds of thousands of acres in the Permian Basin, told the justices that the NCR has never authorized a comparable facility, saying that existing temporary storage sites are either owned by the government, located on the sites of decommissioned reactors or in one case set up a half-mile from a working reactor.
The company that would run the site, Interim Storage Partners LLC, joined the federal government in urging Supreme Court review. Interim is a joint venture owned by a unit of Orano SA and J.F. Lehman & Co.’s Waste Control Specialists LLC. The joint venture envisions having nuclear waste shipped by rail from around the country and sealed in concrete casks.
The business-backed Nuclear Energy Institute said the 5th Circuit ruling “will have far-reaching and destabilizing consequences for the nuclear industry if allowed to remain standing.” The group told the justices in court papers that the Texas facility would save the industry more than $600 million as compared to continued onsite storage.
The fight is likely to determine the fate of Holtec International Corp.’s separate planned facility in New Mexico. The 5th Circuit blocked that project in March, pointed to its earlier decision in the Texas case.
The Supreme Court will hear arguments, likely early next year, and rule by early July.
The cases are Nuclear Regulatory Commission v. Texas, 23-1300, and Interim Storage Partners v. Texas, 23-1312.
Sellafield Fined for Cybersecurity Failures at Nuclear Site
Sellafield Ltd has been fined £332,500 ($437,440) for cybersecurity
failings running the Sellafield nuclear facility in Cumbria, North-West
England. The fine was issued by Westminster Magistrates Court following a
prosecution brought by the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR), the UK’s
independent nuclear regulator.
Sellafield Ltd has also been ordered to pay
prosecution costs of £53,253.20 ($70,060). The offences relate to
Sellafield’s management of the security around its information technology
systems between 2019 to 2023 and breaches of the Nuclear Industries
Security Regulations 2003.
Infosecurity 4th Oct 2024 https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/sellafield-fined-cybersecurity/
Sellafield ordered to pay nearly £400,000 over cybersecurity failings
Nuclear waste dump in Cumbria pleaded guilty to leaving data that could threaten national security exposed for four years, says regulator
Guardian, Anna Isaac and Alex Lawson, Thu 3 Oct 2024
Sellafield will have to pay almost £400,000 after it pleaded guilty to criminal charges over years of cybersecurity failings at Britain’s most hazardous nuclear site.
The vast nuclear waste dump in Cumbria left information that could threaten national security exposed for four years, according to the industry regulator, which brought the charges. It was also found that 75% of its computer servers were vulnerable to cyber-attack.
Sellafield had failed to protect vital nuclear information, Westminster magistrates court in London heard on Wednesday. Chief magistrate, Paul Goldspring, said that after taking into account Sellafield’s guilty plea and its public funding model, he would fine it £332,500 for cybersecurity breaches and £53,200 for prosecution costs.
The state-owned company has already apologised for the cybersecurity failings. It pleaded guilty to the charges – which relate to IT security offences spanning a four-year period from 2019 to 2023 – when they were brought by the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) in June.
Goldspring said the case fell into a category “bordering on negligence” and a “dereliction of responsibilities”.
Sellafield might also “foreseeably have caused harm” and a loss of data could “have had huge risk adverse consequences for workers, the public and the environment”, he said.
Sellafield, which has a workforce of about 11,000 people, is a sprawling rubbish dump on the Cumbrian coast that stores and treats decades of nuclear waste from atomic power generation and weapons programmes. It is the world’s largest store of plutonium and is part of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, a taxpayer-owned and -funded quango.
Late last year, the Guardian’s Nuclear Leaks investigation revealed a string of IT failings at the state-owned company, dating back several years, as well as radioactive contamination and a toxic workplace culture. The Guardian reported that the site’s systems had been hacked by groups linked to Russia and China, embedding sleeper malware that could lurk and be used to spy or attack systems.
The Guardian investigation revealed that Sellafield’s computer servers were deemed so insecure that the problem was nicknamed “Voldemort”, after the Harry Potter villain, because it was sensitive and dangerous. It also revealed concerns about external contractors being able to plug memory sticks into its system while unsupervised.
In sentencing, Goldspring added that the prosecution did not offer any evidence of a successful cyber-attack, even if it asserted that it was impossible for Sellafield to prove that the nuclear site had not been “effectively attacked”.
As a result, the court could only sentence Sellafield on the basis that there was no evidence of “actual” harm arising from any attacks.
The fine was reduced by one-third as the nuclear site pleaded guilty at the first opportunity. The judge also noted that Sellafield has sought to improve its cybersecurity in recent months. The fine was further reduced as it is ultimately dependent on public funding to operate as a not-for-profit business.
At an earlier hearing in August, Goldspring had said that, while all parties said the failings were very serious, he would need to balance the cost to the taxpayer with the need to deter others in the sector from committing similar offences in deciding the size of the fine.
At that hearing, the court heard that a test had found that it was possible to download and execute malicious files on to Sellafield’s IT networks via a phishing attack “without raising any alarms”, according to Nigel Lawrence KC, representing the ONR.
An external IT company, Commissum, found that any “reasonably skilled hacker or malicious insider” could access sensitive data and insert malware that could then be used to steal information at Sellafield.
Euan Hutton, chief executive of Sellafield, has apologised for the failing and said he “genuinely” believes that “the issues which led to this prosecution are in the past”.
Paul Fyfe, senior director of regulation at the ONR, said: “We welcome Sellafield Ltd’s guilty pleas.
“It has been accepted the company’s ability to comply with certain obligations under the Nuclear Industries Security Regulations 2003 during a period of four years was poor.
“Failings were known about for a considerable length of time but despite our interventions and guidance, Sellafield failed to respond effectively, which left it vulnerable to security breaches and its systems being compromised.”
There have, however, been “positive improvements” at Sellafield during the last year under new leadership, the ONR added…………………………………….. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/oct/02/sellafield-ordered-to-pay-nearly-400000-over-cybersecurity-failings
US Supreme Court to hear nuclear waste storage dispute
By Nate Raymond, October 5, 2024, https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-supreme-court-hear-nuclear-waste-storage-dispute-2024-10-04/
- Summary
- Biden administration appeals lower court ruling
- Nuclear waste storage facility planned for Texas
- U.S. agency sued by Texas, New Mexico, oil interests
Oct 4 (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court agreed on Friday to decide whether the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has the authority to license nuclear waste storage facilities following a judicial ruling that upended decades of practice by declaring it does not.
The justices took up appeals by President Joe Biden’s administration and a company that was awarded a license by the NRC to build a waste storage facility in western Texas of the lower court’s ruling. The license was challenged by the states of Texas and New Mexico, as well as oil industry interests.
The Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case in its new term, which begins on Monday, and a decision is expected by the end of June.
The Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, has shown skepticism toward the authority of federal regulatory agencies in several major rulings in recent years.
The NRC, the federal agency tasked with regulating nuclear energy in the United States, issued the license in 2021 to Interim Storage Partners, a joint venture of France-based Orano and Dallas-based Waste Control Specialists.
While two other federal appeals courts rejected legal challenges to the license, the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the plaintiffs and decided that the NRC lacked authority under a federal law called the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 to issue the license at all.
The administration has said the ruling would disrupt the nuclear energy sector.
The NRC has issued licenses like the one at issue in this case for the temporary storage of spent fuel produced by nuclear reactors since 1980 in recognition that the nuclear-power industry would need more space for the off-site storage of the radioactive waste.
It did so pursuant to its authority under the Atomic Energy Act to issue licenses to possess nuclear material. Such sites have continued to be licensed, with a proposal to permanently store the nation’s radioactive waste at Yucca Mountain north of Las Vegas stalled following decades of opposition in Nevada.
In the 5th Circuit ruling against the license, Judge James Ho, an appointee of Republican former President Donald Trump, cited a different law, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, that was amended in 1987 to designate Yucca as the sole permanent storage site for such radioactive waste.
Interim Storage Partners planned to operate its nuclear storage facility in Andrews County, Texas. The plan drew opposition from oil- and gas-related organizations because the facility would be operated within the Permian Basin, the highest-producing oil field in the country.
Texas and New Mexico were joined in the litigation challenging the license by Fasken Land and Minerals, a Texas-based oil and gas extraction organization, and a nonprofit group called the Permian Basin Coalition Of Land And Royalty Owners And Operators.
The plaintiffs argued that allowing the proposed facility to be built posed environmental risks to watersheds covering nearly all of New Mexico and Texas, and that a radiation leak could be economically disastrous for oil and gas operations.
“For years, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and two private corporations have attempted to force Texas and New Mexico into accepting stockpiled radioactive waste,” Monica Perales, an attorney for Fasken Oil & Ranch, said on Friday.
The commission “lacks the authority to issue licenses for consolidated interim storage of spent nuclear fuel in a region hundreds and even thousands of miles away from the reactors that generated the waste,” Perales added.
Trial in New Hampshire of protesters against Elbit Systems – supplier of weapons for Israel.
(the above video is actually from a few months ago when Bruce (alone) was arraigned.
Here’s a link to the video about this week’s trial of all the Elbit 8: https://www.wmur.com/article/protesters-guilty-elbit-systems-merrimack-100124/62474455)
Space for Peace – Organizing Notes, Thursday, 3 Oct 24 Bruce Gagnon – Bruce Gagnon is coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space.
On Monday eight of us stood trial before a judge in a New Hampshire District Court. The nature of our charges (Trespass and Resisting Arrest) under N.H. law do not allow a jury trial.
The first several hours of the trial were dominated by local, county and state police officers testifying about the nature of the March 22 action by our protest group that blocked the entrance of Elbit Systems. The early morning blockage, prior to workers arriving, lasted about five hours before cops (from various N.H. police departments) cleared the protest.
(Elbit makes weapons for Israel’s genocidal attacks on Palestine, Lebanon and others. Elbit has weapons facilities in dozens of nations around the world. This is likely done to create jobs in the host country in hopes of ‘buying international support’ for Israel’s colonial apartheid system.)
After lunch the defense team began our case. The judge would not allow the full testimony of one expert witness who tried to make the case about the rights and impacts of protest movements
Then came the testimony of an Iraqi immigrant young doctor who attended medical school in New Hampshire and now works in Portland, Maine. Yusuf was arrested with us at Elbit and spoke beautifully about the human toll of Israeli’s genocidal attacks on the Palestinian people – thus his reason for joining the action. Surprisingly the judge let him talk so Yusuf was able to make many strong moral statements.
I testified next and talked about my role that day as police liaison. I described how I had previously taken this role at large protests in Portland and at the BIW naval shipyard (the destroyers built there are attacking Yemen in support of Israel). I noted that the Portland Chief of Police thanked me for playing that role in a protest where arrests were made. Sadly the Merrimack police had no interest in communication with me once I introduced myself. I was quickly arrested, hours before the others were.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………. I closed by saying that I know that the Nuremberg Law Principles have been adopted as international law. This legal framework resulted from Hitler’s WW2 army having committed genocide against the Jewish people across Europe. Nuremberg proclaims that all citizens have the legal right and duty to intervene to prevent such crimes when they are happening before our eyes. Still on the witness stand, I turned to the judge and said ‘Even this court is required to honor Nuremberg Law’. The judge didn’t buy this offer to join the resistance against US-UK-Israel-NATO war crimes.
Another of our expert witnesses (Lisa Savage was to talk about what Elbit does at the Merrimack facility) was pulled when the judge made it clear that he didn’t wish to listen to another expert witness.
Once the closing statements were done, by the state prosecutor and our defense lawyer, the judge took a 15 minute break. When he returned to the courtroom the verdicts were announced. He held all of us guilty of trespass and declared that three of us were not guilty of Resisting Arrest (RA) but the other five were. I was one of the three that beat the RA rap.
We will have a sentencing meeting with the judge via zoom-type tech on October 7. We are facing considerable fines to cover costs of Merrimack police on the day of the protest event.
Since I was the first arrested (early in the protest) I sat in a cop car hands cuffed behind my back for two hours listening to the police radio and heard calls for the ‘bomb squad’, paddy-wagons to take protesters away and reports of more police arriving from other nearby cities. During my testimony I described how I counted at least 50 cops and our attorney asked what they did. I answered that they stood around enjoying the ‘show’ and often laughing. One local reporter in Merrimack once told me that he’d worked for his media outlet for 20 years, ‘but had never seen anything like this [protest] before’. ……………………………………
https://space4peace.blogspot.com/2024/10/elbit-systems-protest-trial-in-new.html
Unrealisable Justice: Julian Assange in Strasbourg
October 2, 2024, by: Dr Binoy Kampmark, https://theaimn.com/unrealisable-justice-julian-assange-in-strasbourg/
It was good to hear that voice again. A voice of provoking interest that pitter patters, feline across a parquet, followed by the usual devastating conclusion. Julian Assange’s last public address was made in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. There, he was a guest vulnerable to the capricious wishes of changing governments. At Belmarsh Prison in London, he was rendered silent, his views conveyed through visitors, legal emissaries and his family.
The hearing in Strasbourg on October 1, organised by the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), arose from concerns raised in a report by Iceland’s Thórhildur Sunna Ævarsdóttir, in which she expressed the view that Assange’s case was “a classic example of ‘shooting the messenger’.” She found it “appalling that Mr Assange’s prosecution was portrayed as if it was supposed to bring justice to some unnamed victims the existence of whom has never been proven, whereas perpetrators of torture or arbitrary detention enjoy absolute impunity.”
His prosecution, Ævarsdóttir went onto explain, had been designed to obscure and deflect the revelations found in WikiLeaks’ disclosures, among them abundant evidence of war crimes committed by US and coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, instances of torture and arbitrary detention in the infamous Guantánamo Bay camp facility, illegal rendition programs implicating member states of the Council of Europe and unlawful mass surveillance, among others.
A draft resolution was accordingly formulated, expressing, among other things, alarm at Assange’s treatment and disproportionate punishment “for engaging in activities that journalists perform on a daily basis” which made him, effectively, a political prisoner; the importance of holding state security and intelligence services accountable; the need to “urgently reform the 1917 Espionage Act” to include conditional maliciousness to cause harm to the security of the US or aid a foreign power and exclude its application to publishers, journalists and whistleblowers.
Assange’s full testimony began with reflection and foreboding: the stripping away of his self in incarceration, the search, as yet, for words to convey that experience, and the fate of various prisoners who died through hanging, murder and medical neglect. While filled with gratitude by the efforts made by PACE and the Legal Affairs and Human Rights Committee, not to mention innumerable parliamentarians, presidents, prime ministers, even the Pope, none of their interventions “should have been necessary.” But they proved invaluable, as “the legal protections that did exist, many existed only on paper or were not effective in any remotely reasonable time frame.”
The legal system facing Assange was described as encouraging an “unrealisable justice”. Choosing freedom instead of purgatorial process, he could not seek it, the plea deal with the US government effectively barring his filing of a case at the European Court of Human Rights or a freedom of information request. “I am not free today because the system worked,” he insisted. “I am free today because after years of incarceration because I plead guilty to journalism. I plead guilty to seeking information from a source. I plead guilty to informing the public what that information was. I did not plead guilty to anything else.”
When founded, WikiLeaks was intended to enlighten people about the workings of the world. “Having a map of where we are lets us understand where we might go.” Power can be held to account by those informed, justice sought where there is none. The organisation did not just expose assassinations, torture, rendition and mass surveillance, but “the policies, the agreements and the structures behind them.”
Since leaving Belmarsh prison, Assange rued the abstracting of truth. It seemed “less discernible”. Much ground had been “lost” in the interim; truth had been battered, “undermined, attacked, weakened and diminished. I see more impunity, more secrecy, more retaliation for telling the truth and more self–censorship
Much of the critique offered by Assange focused on the source of power behind any legal actions. Laws, in themselves, “are just pieces of paper and they can be reinterpreted for political expedience.” The ruling class dictates them and reinterprets or changes them depending on circumstances.
In his case, the security state “was powerful enough to push for a reinterpretation of the US constitution,” thereby denuding the expansive, “black and white” effect of the First Amendment. Mike Pompeo, when director of the Central Intelligence Agency, simply lent on Attorney General William Barr, himself a former CIA officer, to seek the publisher’s extradition and re-arrest of Chelsea Manning. Along the way, Pompeo directed the agency to draw up plans of abduction and assassination while targeting Assange’s European colleagues and his family.
The US Department of Justice, Assange could only reflect, cared little for moderating tonic of legalities – that was something to be postponed to a later date. “In the meantime, the deterrent effect that it seeks, the retributive actions that it seeks, have had their effect.” A “dangerous new global legal position” had been established as a result: “Only US citizens have free speech rights. Europeans and other nationalities do not have free speech rights.”
PACE had, before it, an opportunity to set norms, that “the freedom to speak and the freedom to publish the truth are not privileges enjoyed by a few but rights guaranteed to all”. “The criminalisation of newsgathering activities is a threat to investigative journalism everywhere. I was formally convicted, by a foreign power, for asking for, receiving, and publishing truthful information about that power while I was in Europe.”
A spectator, reader or listener might leave such an address deflated. But it is fitting that a man subjected to the labyrinthine, life-draining nature of several legal systems should be the one to exhort to a commitment: that all do their part to keep the light bright, “that the pursuit of truth will live on, and the voices of the many are not silenced by the interests of the few.”
1 This Month
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes – A good documentary on Chernobyl on SBS available On Demand for the next 3 weeks– https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-program/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes/2352741955560
of the week–London Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
Tell the Ukrainian Government to Drop Prosecution of Peace Activist Yurii Sheliazhenko
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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