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Umm….. Are we the baddies?

Umm… Are We The Baddies?  https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2022/03/11/umm-are-we-the-baddies/

Reuters reports that Facebook and Instagram are now allowing calls for the death of Russians and Russian leaders in exemption from the platforms’ hate speech terms of service due to the war in Ukraine:

“Meta Platforms will allow Facebook and Instagram users in some countries to call for violence against Russians and Russian soldiers in the context of the Ukraine invasion, according to internal emails seen by Reuters on Thursday, in a temporary change to its hate speech policy.”

Twitter has also altered its rules against incitement and death threats in the case of Russian leaders and military personnel, as Ben Norton explains here for Multipolarista.

Last month we also learned that Facebook is now allowing users to praise the Ukrainian neo-Nazi Azov Battalion because of the war, a move that is arguably the most liberal thing that has ever happened.

Western institutions everywhere are rejecting all things Russia with such a savage degree of xenophobia it really ought to shock anyone who was born after the 1800s. Everything from Russian athletes to Russian musicians to Russian-made films to Russian composers to Russian Netflix shows to lectures about Russian authors to Russian restaurants to Russian vodka to Russian-bred cats to Russian trees to dishes that sound a little too much like “Putin” have been cancelled to varying degrees around the western world.

Normally when the US and its allies are involved in a war they’ll at least pay lip service to the notion that they have nothing but good will for the people of the enemy nation, claiming they only oppose their oppressive rulers. With Russia it’s just a complete rejection of the entire culture, the entire ethnicity. It’s a widespread promotion of hatred for the actual people because of who they are.

These are the people who are being smashed with crushing economic sanctions while western pundits proclaim that “There are no more ‘innocent’ ‘neutral’ Russians anymore” and ask “At what point do you hold a people responsible for putting an evil despot in power?” This even as the Russian people are being arrested by the thousands in anti-war protests, putting to shame our own western society that has generally slept through war after war in the years since 9/11 while our militaries have been killing of millions of people.

And this is all over a war that the western empire knowingly provoked, almost certainly planned in advance, and appears to be doing everything possible to ensure that it continues. Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp reports that Washington is still to this day not engaging in any serious diplomacy with Moscow over this conflict, preferring to strangle Russia economically and pour weapons into Ukraine to make the war as painful and costly as possible. Both of these preferences just so happen to nicely complement the US empire’s goal of unipolar planetary hegemony.

Meanwhile the entire western political/media class seems to be doing everything it can to turn this from a regional proxy war into a very fast and radioactive World War 3. Calls for a no-fly zone over Ukraine, which would require directly attacking the Russian military and risking a nuclear exchange in the resulting escalations, are now ubiquitous. Claims that more directly confrontational military aggressions against Russia won’t start a nuclear war (or that it’s worth the risk anyway) are becoming more and more common in western punditry. Democrats are braying for Russian blood while Republicans like Tom Cotton and Mitt Romney are attacking Democrats for being insufficiently hawkish and escalatory in this conflict, creating a horrifying dynamic where both parties are trying to out-hawk each other to score political points and nobody is calling for de-escalation and detente.

As luck would have it, US officials have also selected this precarious nuclear tightrope walk as the perfect time to begin hurling accusations that Russia is preparing a biological attack, potentially as a false flag blamed on Ukraine or the United States. This coincides with Victoria Nuland’s admission before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Ukraine has “biological research facilities” that the US is “quite concerned” might end up “falling into the hands of Russian forces”.

All of this on top of the unprecedented wave of authoritarian censorship that has been tearing through the US-centralized empire as our rulers work to quash dissident voices around the world. It certainly is interesting that the fight for freedom and democracy requires so much censorship, warmongering, xenophobia, propaganda and bloodlust.

It’s almost enough to make you wonder: are we the baddies?

I am of course only trying to make a point here. Geopolitical power struggles are not contested by opposing sides of heroes and baddies like a Marvel superhero movie, though you’d never know it from all the hero worship of Volodymyr Zelensky and the self-righteous posturing of mainstream westerners over this war. Vladimir Putin is no Peter Parker, but neither is Zelensky or Biden or any of the other empire managers overseeing this campaign to overwhelm all challengers to US global domination.

The power structure loosely centralized around the United States is without question the single most depraved and destructive on earth. No one else has spent the 21st century waging wars that have killed millions and displaced tens of millions. No one else is circling the planet with military bases and working to destroy any nation on earth which disobeys it. Not Russia. Not China. Nobody.

The hypocrisy, dishonesty and phoniness of this whole song and dance about Ukraine is one of the most distasteful things that I have ever witnessed. Rather than engaging in click-friendly Instagram activism with blue and yellow profile pics making risk-free criticisms of a foreign leader in a far off country who has nothing to do with us, perhaps we would be better served by a bit more introspection, and by a somewhat more difficult stance: intense scrutiny of the corruption and abuses running rampant in our own society.

March 12, 2022 Posted by | 2 WORLD, media, secrets,lies and civil liberties, spinbuster | Leave a comment

Russia’s disinformation machine, (and Trump’s, in USA)

Russia’s Disinformation Machine Runs So Deep, Some Don’t Know War Is Happening,   William Rivers Pitt, Truthout , March 7, 2022  

Imagine that you, as a refugee from extreme violence in Ukraine, called your family across the border for help — and were flatly told they did not believe you, that there was no war. You’ve witnessed the indiscriminate shelling of your city, including your own apartment building. You have been hiding in a train station with a thousand others as the crash and smash of an artillery bombardment shakes the rubble from the cracked ceiling. You’ve seen dead people, soldiers and civilians, left in the street. If this is not real, “real” does not exist. How can your relatives in Russia not know this is happening?

The Washington Post explains:

As Ukrainians deal with the devastation of the Russian attacks in their homeland, many are also encountering a confounding and almost surreal backlash from family members in Russia, who refuse to believe that Russian soldiers could bomb innocent people, or even that a war is taking place at all.

These relatives have essentially bought into the official Kremlin position: that President Vladimir V. Putin’s army is conducting a limited “special military operation” with the honorable mission of “de-Nazifying” Ukraine. Mr. Putin has referred to the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, a native Russian speaker with a Jewish background, as a “drug-addled Nazi” in his attempts to justify the invasion.

Those narratives are emerging amid a wave of disinformation emanating from the Russian state as the Kremlin moves to clamp down on independent news reporting while shaping the messages most Russians are receiving.

It is estimated that there are approximately 11 million people in Russia with relatives in Ukraine. It would be an act of stupendous hubris for Russian President Vladimir Putin to believe he could keep so many in the dark about the reality of Ukraine, but this is exactly what he has endeavored to do. Most of what passed for an independent press in Russia has been swept away, and overwhelmingly, the information being provided comes from Russian state media. There is no war, they preach, no mass civilian displacement. This is a limited act of liberation to free Ukraine from Nazi control by way of precision strikes on military targets only, they say, with Russian soldiers bringing food and warm clothes to all affected civilians.

It is an absolute wonder, however thoroughly horrifying, that Putin is attempting to pull off a gaslighting of such magnitude. ………….

However, Russia’s disinformation campaign should not look entirely unfamiliar to us in the United States. Let us not forget that, not so long ago, we were led into a long and bloody war under the false pretenses of “weapons of mass destruction,” which reverberated across mainstream media. In certain media sectors, those official lies echo strongly to this day.

And then, there is the lie-based future Donald Trump and his allies have been striving to construct for the U.S. for the last seven years. Any story not in praise of Trumpism is immediately labeled false, backed by an anti-logic that mangles civic discourse beyond recognition. Even trying to deconstruct a Trumpist’s “fake news” charge is a victory for the one leveling it, because it means you have accepted the premise that it could be fake news, thus giving partisans just enough of a peg to hang their hat on.

With a tight enough media bubble, reinforced by the long-espoused idea that other viewpoints stem from evil sources and must be shunned as a moral imperative, a segment of any population can be manipulated and even controlled in ways that leave those outside looking in astonished and stunned. While Trump likely would not have been able to hide a whole war with a neighbor, he has painted a masterwork of disinformation about COVID-19, masks, vaccines and basic safety measures. Tens of millions have bought what he is peddling, to the ongoing detriment of the COVID fight, leaving the country badly fractured and unable to escape the gravity well of the pandemic.

Yet, we in the U.S. independent media know well that state attempts to manipulate public opinion cannot easily quell grassroots movements. Where there is war and repression, there is resistance, and the same is true in Russia in this moment. More than 13,000 antiwar protesters have been arrested in Russia, and still they come.

And resistance to the tyranny of the outside invaders is a touchstone of the Ukrainian ethos. They will not surrender it lightly.

Meanwhile, those of us in the United States, confronting Putin’s disinformation machine, must not assume that it can be torn down by sanctions, our own military and state mechanisms of information warfare. Rather, we must take note of the fact that if many thousands of Russians are protesting in the face of massive state repression, grassroots channels of information are being used and new ones created. We must work our hardest to amplify our own channels for truth, particularly those that lift up grassroots resistance movements. As Khury Petersen-Smith writes in Truthout, “Our challenge is to build protest across borders that stands in solidarity with those facing the violence of war, and is independent — and defiant of — the governments where we reside.”  https://truthout.org/articles/russias-disinformation-machine-runs-so-deep-some-dont-know-war-is-happening/?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=fcdefd4d-3561-4da4-9d86-8e4a6ec8a93a

March 10, 2022 Posted by | media, Russia, secrets,lies and civil liberties, spinbuster | Leave a comment

Caitlin Johnstone: Freedom & Democracy Via Censorship.

You’d think a free society would have no objection to people trying to learn about the other side of  a war in which NATO powers very plainly had a hand in starting. By Caitlin Johnstone 4 Mar 22,  Consortium News

CaitlinJohnstone.com              Kremlin-backed media outlets have been banned throughout the European Union, both on television and on apps and online platforms. RT has lost its Sky TV slot in the U.K., where the outlet is also blocked on YouTube.

Australian TV providers SBS and Foxtel have dropped RT, and the federal government is putting pressure on social media platforms to block Russian media in Australia.

In the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Latvia, speaking in support of the Russian invasion of Ukraine will get you years in prison.

Twitter, historically the last of the major online platforms to jump on any new internet censorship escalation, is now actively minimizing the number of people who see Russian media content, saying that it is “reducing the content’s visibility” and “taking steps to significantly reduce the circulation of this content on Twitter.” This is exactly what I speculated might emerge after former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey resigned in November, due to previous comments supporting the tactic of censorship-by-algorithm by his successor Parag Agrawal.

Twitter is also placing warnings labels on all Russia-backed media and delivering a pop-up message informing you that you are committing wrongthink if you try to share or even “like” a post linking to such outlets on the platform. It has also placed the label “Russia state-affiliated media” on every tweet made by the personal accounts of employees of those platforms, baselessly giving the impression that the dissident opinions tweeted by those accounts are paid Kremlin content and not simply their own legitimate perspectives. Some are complaining that this new label has led to online harassment amid the post-9/11-like anti-Russia hysteria that’s currently turning western brains into clam chowder

(Many Tweets quoted here)

This is all on top of all the other drastic escalations in censorship which came roaring in at the beginning of the Ukraine war, and I personally find it a bit scary how fast it’s all happening, how fine people are with it, and how much worse it seems likely to get.

Others agree.

“The purge of RT and other Russian media outlets in the US and Europe is 100% censorship,” tweets journalist Michael Tracey. “Go ahead and argue it’s justified, but at least don’t be a coward and admit you are advocating censorship.”

“The western world believes that it has a monopoly on what constitutes ‘political truth’ and that their ideological worldview is the only correct, valid and authoritative one,” writer and analyst Tom Fowdy observed. “They preach freedom of speech and the press to other countries, but exempt themselves from it.”

And I can’t help but find it odd that the fight for freedom and democracy should require such copious amounts of censorship. You’d think a free society would have no objection to people trying to learn the other side of the debate about a war which NATO powers very plainly had a hand in starting, rather than being forced to consume only Western mass media narratives which tell us this is happening exclusively because Russian President Vladimir Putin is evil and Hitlery and hates freedom…………..

It makes you wonder if we have foolishly consented to a reality where the most powerful people in the world get to control the information people consume in order to shut down dissent against a murderous and oppressive globe-spanning oligarchic empire.

And it kind of makes you wonder, as we watch the same empire that just destroyed Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen being entrusted to carefully navigate extremely delicate nuclear brinkmanship escalations without ending the world, if we might perhaps be better off with a lot more dissent, rather than a lot less. https://consortiumnews.com/2022/03/03/caitlin-johnstone-freedom-democracy-via-censorship/

March 5, 2022 Posted by | 2 WORLD, media, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

The US and NATO have never been sanctioned for start ing wars. Why? — RT World News

That’s right – you can’t read this, now that the Western powers have censored it.

March 5, 2022 Posted by | 2 WORLD, civil liberties, media | Leave a comment

Blanket anti-Russian propaganda leaves no tolerance for nuanced reporting – media censorship is expanding

……….Whoever controls the narrative controls the world. Humans are storytelling creatures, so whoever can control the stories the humans are telling themselves about what’s going on in the world has a great deal of control over the humans.

The powerful understand this, while the general public mostly does not.

[Western govts and] media are pushing for more. Articles and news segments warning of the sinister threat posed by Russian propaganda to misinform and divide western populations.

………….  They’re not worried about Russian propaganda operations, they’re worried about someone else running interference on their own propaganda operations.

Russian Propaganda’ Is The Latest Excuse To Expand Censorship Substack, Caitlin Johnstone, 28 Feb 22,

“I’m concerned about Russian disinformation spreading online, so today I wrote to the CEOs of major tech companies to ask them to restrict the spread of Russian propaganda,” US Senator Mark Warner tweeted on Friday.

Since then YouTube has announced that it has suppressed videos by Russian state media channels so that they’ll be seen by fewer people in accordance with its openly acknowledged policy of algorithmically censoring unauthorized content, as well as de-monetizing all such videos on the platform. Google and Facebook/Instagram parent company Meta both banned Russian state media from running ads and monetizing on their platforms in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Twitter announced a pause on ads in both Russia and Ukraine.

“Glad to see action from tech companies to reign in Russian propaganda and disinformation after my letter to their CEOs yesterday,” Warner tweeted on Saturday. “These are important first steps, but I’ll keep pushing for more.”

For years US lawmakers have been using threats of profit-destroying consequences to pressure Silicon Valley companies into limiting online speech in a way that aligns with the interests of Washington, effectively creating a system of government censorship by proxy. It would appear that we’re seeing a new expansion of this phenomenon today.

And the imperial media are pushing for more. Articles and news segments warning of the sinister threat posed by Russian propaganda to misinform and divide western populations using the internet are being churned out at a rate that’s only likely to increase as this latest narrative management campaign gets into full gear. The Associated Press has a new article out for example titled “War via TikTok: Russia’s new tool for propaganda machine“.

…………………………..  As tends to happen whenever a consensus begins to form that a certain category of speech must be purged from the internet, imperial spinmeisters are already working to expand the definition of “Russian propaganda” which must be purged from the internet to include independent anti-imperialist commentators like myself…………………..

The Center for Countering Digital Hate, an empire-loyal NGO ostensibly focused primarily on fighting racism and prejudice, has published a report accusing Facebook of failing to label Russian propaganda as such 91 percent of the times it occurs. The CCDH decried Mark Zuckerberg’s “failure to stop Facebook being weaponized by the Russian state”.

………….  They’re not worried about Russian propaganda operations, they’re worried about someone else running interference on their own propaganda operations.

……….Whoever controls the narrative controls the world. Humans are storytelling creatures, so whoever can control the stories the humans are telling themselves about what’s going on in the world has a great deal of control over the humans. Our mental chatter tends to dominate such a large percentage of our existence that if it can be controlled the controller can exert a tremendous amount of influence over the way we think, act, and vote. 

The powerful understand this, while the general public mostly does not.

That’s all we’ve been seeing in these attempts to regulate ideas and information as human communication becomes more and more rapid and networked. An entire oligarchic empire is built on the ability to prevent us from realizing at mass scale that that empire does not serve us and inflicts great evil upon our world. The question of whether our species can awaken to its highest potential or not boils down to whether our dominators will succeed in locking down our minds, or if we will find some way to break free.  https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/russian-propaganda-is-the-latest?utm_source=url

February 28, 2022 Posted by | 2 WORLD, media, spinbuster | Leave a comment

Glenn Greenwald: war propaganda about Ukraine becoming more militaristic, authoritarian, and reckless

War Propaganda About Ukraine Becoming More Militaristic, Authoritarian, and Reckless

To believe that this is a conflict of pure Good versus pure Evil, that Putin bears all blame for the conflict and the U.S., the West, and Ukraine bear none, and that the only way to understand this conflict is through the prism of war criminality and aggression only takes one so far.

there is still a wide range of vital geopolitical and factual questions that must be considered and freely debated, including:

The severe dangers of unintended escalation with greater U.S. involvement and confrontation toward Russia;
The mammoth instability and risks that would be created by collapsing the Russian economy and/or forcing Putin from power, leaving the world’s largest or second-largest nuclear stockpile to a very uncertain fate;
The ongoing validity of Obama’s long-standing view of Ukraine (echoed by Trump), which persisted even after Moscow annexed Crimea in 2014 following a referendum, that Ukraine is of vital interest only to Russia and not the U.S., and the U.S. should never risk war with Russia over it;

The bizarre way in which it has become completely taboo and laughable to suggest that NATO expansion to the Russian border and threats to offer Ukraine membership is deeply and genuinely threatening not just to Putin but all Russian

The clearly valid questions regarding the actual U.S intentions concerning Ukraine: i.e., that a noble, selfless and benevolent American desire to protect a fledgling democracy against a despotic aggressor may not be the predominant goal.

Every useful or pleasing claim about the war, no matter how unverified or subsequently debunked, rapidly spreads, while dissenters are vilified as traitors or Kremlin agents.

Glenn Greenwald, 27 Feb 22, In the weeks leading up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, those warning of the possible dangers of U.S. involvement were assured that such concerns were baseless. The prevailing line insisted that nobody in Washington is even considering let alone advocating that the U.S. become militarily involved in a conflict with Russia. That the concern was based not on the belief that the U.S. would actively seek such a war, but rather on the oft-unintended consequences of being swamped with war propaganda and the high levels of tribalism, jingoism and emotionalism that accompany it, was ignored. It did not matter how many wars one could point to in history that began unintentionally, with unchecked, dangerous tensions spiraling out of control. Anyone warning of this obviously dangerous possibility was met with the “straw man” cliché: you are arguing against a position that literally nobody in D.C. is defending.

Less than a week into this war, that can no longer be said.

Continue reading →

February 28, 2022 Posted by | media, spinbuster | Leave a comment

The U.K. Wanted to Extradite Assange to the U.S. From the Start

The attempt to extradite Assange to the United States is a clear breakdown of the rule of law, which is continuing in the post-Trump era. The yearn to punish and send a warning to others has been given precedence over human rights, rule of law, and freedom of expression. The persecution must end now.


The U.K. Wanted to Extradite Assange to the U.S. From the Start https://theintercept.com/2022/02/24/julian-assange-extradition-uk-alan-duncan/?fbclid=IwAR0amsrpPJTxuZn_xL12PcO73aDgmjXquIKJvMujvG_m0nDkXY37f5j_7eg

In a 2016 meeting, Britain’s deputy minister of foreign affairs removed the diplomatic mask. Guillaume LongFebruary 25 2022, THE U.K. HIGH COURT ruling that Julian Assange should be extradited to face trial in the United States — a decision that Amnesty International has called a “travesty of justice” — came as no surprise to me. It’s what the U.K. government always wanted. I know because the British deputy minister of foreign affairs told me.

Many pundits and politicians talk of the extradition proceedings against Assange as if they were an unforeseen legal outcome that came about as Assange’s situation unfolded. This is not true. My experience as the foreign minister of Ecuador — the South American country that granted Assange asylum — left me in no doubt that the U.K. wanted Assange’s extradition to the United States from the very beginning.

One encounter I had with Alan Duncan, the former British minister of state for Europe and the Americas, in October 2016 really let the cat out of the bag. At our meeting in the Dominican Republic, Duncan went on extensively about how loathsome Assange was. While I didn’t anticipate Duncan to profess his love for our asylee, I had expected a more professional diplomatic exchange. But the most important moment of the meeting was when I reiterated that Ecuador’s primary fear was the transfer of Assange to the United States, at which point Duncan turned to his staff and exclaimed something very close to, “Yes, well, good idea. How would we go about extraditing him to the Americans?”

His advisers squirmed in embarrassment. They had spent the last four years trying to reassure Ecuador that this was not what the U.K. was after. I responded that this was news indeed. I then wondered whether Duncan left the meeting feeling he had made a mess of it.

I was particularly surprised by Duncan’s candor because my June 2016 meeting with his predecessor, Hugo Swire, in Whitehall, had been quite different. It’s not that Swire wasn’t equally contemptuous of the irritating South American country that had granted Assange asylum; it is more that Swire actually knew the case well.

Swire stuck to the U.K.’s position: Nobody wanted to extradite Assange to the United States. The Ecuadorian government was “deluded” and “paranoid.” This had nothing to do with the issue of freedom of expression or even WikiLeaks. The case was all about accusations in Sweden against Assange. Ecuador should stop protecting a potential sex offender.

Events since have demonstrated that the British argument that Assange was “holed up” in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London to avoid facing sexual assault allegations in Sweden was deceitful. The case was always about Assange’s publishing activities as the head of WikiLeaks. In fact, my government had made it clear to both its British and Swedish counterparts that if Ecuador received guarantees of nonextradition from Sweden to the United States, Ecuador would have no problem with Assange traveling to Sweden to face questioning. Assange himself agreed to this. But Sweden refused to offer such guarantees, which obviously further heightened Ecuador’s suspicions that Assange was being persecuted.

Had Swire been telling the truth, the Swedish prosecutor’s decision not to press charges against Assange in May 2017 would have enabled Assange to walk free from the embassy. The remaining claim that he breached his bail by successfully applying for political asylum should have been easily resolved after the European arrest warrant was dropped. But the U.K. refused to let Assange slip away, and he remained in the Ecuadorian Embassy for two more years before a new Ecuadorian government, heavily leaned on by the Trump administration, consented to having him brutally removed in April 2019.

Maybe it was simply that Duncan’s hatred for Assange, whom he referred to as a “miserable little worm” in Parliament in March 2018, was too pure to be tempered in our meeting. Duncan’s published diaries certainly attest to the fact that Assange’s arrest became an overriding obsession and eventually a personal trophy. When the time came, Duncan watched Assange’s extraction from the embassy — which he refers to as Operation Pelican — on a live feed and later held “drinks in my office for all the Operation Pelican team.”

Duncan’s deeply felt disdain for what he called “the supposed human rights of Julian Assange” are probably part and parcel of his fervent allegiance to the Anglo-American security partnership. Duncan served on the U.K.’s Intelligence and Security Committee in 2015–2016. He is also a member of the secretive, transatlantic organization “Le Cercle,” an ultra conservative think tank with strong links to the intelligence community in Europe and the United States.

We can only speculate whether Duncan’s close relationship with whom he calls his “good friend and Oxford contemporary Ian Burnett,” the Lord Chief Justice who gave the green light to Assange’s extradition, interfered with the judicial process. But the extradition proceedings have been problematic from the beginning. A coalition of major human rights and press freedom organizations — including Human Rights Watch, Reporters Without Borders, and First Look Institute’s Press Freedom Defense Fund — have urged the U.S. Justice Department “to dismiss the indictment of Mr. Assange” on the grounds that it “threatens press freedom” and marks a precedent that “could effectively criminalize … common journalistic practices.” The top editors of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Washington Post, and others have agreed with these experts.

The attempt to extradite Assange to the United States is a clear breakdown of the rule of law, which is continuing in the post-Trump era. The yearn to punish and send a warning to others has been given precedence over human rights, rule of law, and freedom of expression. The persecution must end now.

February 26, 2022 Posted by | media, politics, UK | 1 Comment

Media forecasting on Russian invasion is just like religious cult leaders predicting the apocalypse

Caitlin Johnstone: Russian Invasion Seers are Like Cult Leaders Predicting the Apocalypse https://consortiumnews.com/2022/02/17/caitlin-johnstone-russian-invasion-seers-are-like-cult-leaders-predicting-the-apocalypse/  The Ukraine invasion that never arrives is showing us once again that when it comes to Russia you really can just completely ignore all the so-called experts in the mainstream media.

By Caitlin Johnstone, CaitlinJohnstone.com   Back in November The Military Times published a Ukrainian intelligence claim, which was picked up and repeated by numerous other mainstream publications, alleging that Russia was going to invade Ukraine by the end of January.

Then in late January when the calendar debunked The Military Times incendiary headline “Russia preparing to attack Ukraine by late January,” that same outlet ran a much less viral story with the headline “Russia not yet ready for full-scale attack says Ukraine.“

This past Friday the deputy director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, Melinda Haring, tweeted the following:

“Putin has big weekend plans in Ukraine: 1) he’s going to cut power and heat, knock out Ukrainian navy and air force, kill general staff and hit them with cyber attack; 2) then install pro-Russian president and 3) resort to full-scale military invasion if Ukraine doesn’t give in.”

And, of course, none of these things happened. The weekend came and went, Haring issued a sheepish admission that she got it wrong, then immediately turned around and proclaimed that “Putin may strike on Weds,” then later pivoted to “We’ve been so focused on Russian troops and tanks that we missed Moscow’s strategy: strangle Ukraine’s economy and sap the resolve of its people.”
On Jan. 14th we were told by NBC that we could expect a Russian invasion of Ukraine “within a month’s time.” On Feb. 14th the prediction was as unfulfilled as the wishes of a Jordan Peterson fan on Valentine’s Day.

Then British outlets The Daily Mirror and The Sun told us that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was to come at precisely 1am GMT on Wednesday, citing “American intelligence agencies.” This prediction, whose frightening “DAWN RAID” presentation likely gave sales a bit of a boost, was again debunked by the hands of the clock.

“The 3am time (1am GMT) when US intelligence sources suspected a Russian attack came and went without incident last night as Putin continued to keep The West guessing,” The Sun’s updated online article now reads.

”Dawn raid. Russia set to invade Ukraine at 1am tomorrow with massive missile blitz and 200,000 troops, US intelligence claims.”

Last week the U.S. president told U.S. allies that Russian President Vladimir Putin may invade on Feb.16, a prediction Ukraine’s President Zelensky made fun of in a widely misinterpreted joke. This claim also has been discredited by the clock.

And now we’re being told that nobody seriously believed Russia was going to invade on the 16th, and that Feb. 20 is the real invasion date.

“The prospect of a Russian invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 16 was always overhyped,” Politico tells us. “The time frame to really keep an eye on is what happens shortly after Feb. 20.”

Radio evangelist Harold Camping famously predicted that the Apocalypse would occur on Sept. 6, 1994, then again on Sept. 29 of the same year, and then again on Oct.2. In 2005 he revised his claim and said the real Rapture was coming on May 21, 2011, and then when that failed to pan out he said it was happening on Oct. 21 of that year. Whenever he got a prediction wrong he’d just do some more magic Bible math and move the date into the future.

Camping was one of many exploitative Christian cult leaders who’ve falsely predicted the Second Coming over the years amassing thousands of followers with an early form of tabloid clickbait. The difference between the Harold Campings of history and the Ukraine invasion prognosticators of today is that Harold Camping died disgraced and disdained instead of being elevated to lucrative positions in the most influential news media outlets on the planet.

Today’s Harold Campings will invent all kinds of justifications for their shameless participation in a transparent government psyop designed to advanced the unipolarist geostrategic agendas of the U.S. hegemon once their war forecasts fail to bear fruit.

The most common justification will be to claim that the Biden administration’s hawkish posturing and strategic information warfare is what deterred the forcible annexation of Ukraine into the Russian Federation. As we discussed previously, this claim is logically fallacious, explained here by Lisa Simpson:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSVqLHghLpw

“If Vladimir Putin opts to back away from invading Ukraine, even temporarily, it’s because Joe Biden — that guy whose right-wing critics suggest is so deep in dementia he wouldn’t know Kyiv from Kansas or AARP from NATO — has matched every Putin chess move with an effective counter of his own,” writes Friedman.

Putin could just as easily have launched a virulent propaganda campaign claiming the U.S. is about to invade Mexico any minute now and threatening severe repercussions if it does, and then taking credit when the invasion fails to occur for his bold stance against the Biden regime. It would have been the easiest thing in the world; just copy the Western script replacing each instance of “Ukraine” with “Mexico” and each instance of “Crimea” with “Texas.”

We’re also seeing a new narrative in the oven with claims of a Russian cyberattack against Ukraine, which as an invisible attack whose evidence is classified would serve the imperial face-saving effort, with the added bonus of justifying further economic warfare on Moscow.

“This is such a transparent scam,” journalist Aaron Maté recently tweeted of the hacking claims. “The warmongers crafting new US sanctions on Russia have repeatedly said that Russian cyberattacks could trigger them. With no invasion happening, this is Plan B.”

The Ukraine invasion that never arrives is showing us once again that when it comes to Russia you really can just completely ignore all the so-called experts in the mainstream media. Just dismiss 100 percent of everything they say, because any random schmoe’s best guess would be better than theirs.

Looking to the mainstream media for truth is like looking to a prostitute for love. That’s not what they’re there for. That’s not their job. If you believed these predictions, the correct thing to do as they fail to come true is not to engage in a bunch of mental gymnastics justifying it, but to drastically revise your worldview and your media consumption habits which caused you to believe this crap in the first place.

February 19, 2022 Posted by | media, spinbuster | Leave a comment

Headlines that cause wars

And are designed to do just that. Rick Rozoff, 19 Feb 22,   https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/113283937/posts/3838427830

Recent stories picked up and circulated by Yahoo News. The first is only missing the adjectives Young and Innocent before the word Kids.

Daily Beast
Pro-Russian Forces Shell Ukrainian Kindergarten Full of Kids

The Hill
Russia likely to launch ‘limited’ attack against Ukraine, Estonia foreign intelligence agents say

Axios
U.S. warns of Russia-sponsored hackers targeting defense contractors

February 19, 2022 Posted by | 2 WORLD, media | Leave a comment

UK SPENDS OVER £80M ON MEDIA IN 20 COUNTRIES AROUND RUSSIA

The project is likely part of the ongoing information war between Russia and Nato.

The British government is spending tens of millions on media projects in Eastern Europe which are often presented as fighting “Russian disinformation”, but which may involve the UK’s own information operations. DECLASSIFIED UK , MATT KENNARD, 8 FEBRUARY 2022   The British government ploughed at least £82.7m of public money into media projects in countries bordering or near Russia in the four years to 2021.

The projects, which take place across 20 countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, are run through the Conflict, Stability and Security Fund (CSSF), a cross-government pot of money with the stated aim of preventing “instability and conflicts that threaten UK interests”. 

The National Security Council, which is chaired by the prime minister, sets the fund’s strategic direction. But a parliamentary committee found the CSSF was “being used as a ‘slush fund’ for projects” which “do not meet the needs of UK national security.” 

The findings come as tensions between Britain and Russia are high over Ukraine. The UK has accused Russia of planning to invade or launch a coup in Ukraine to install a pro-Moscow government. 

Last month Britain began supplying the eastern European country with new anti-tank weapons. Some of the UK-funded media projects appear focused on Ukraine.

‘Counter-disinformation’ 

The project most clearly directed at Russia is the Counter Disinformation and Media Development programme. It is run around Russia’s western border, from the Baltic States to Central and Eastern Europe, although project documents do not disclose specific countries. 

It cost £60.4m in the four years to 2021. …….

The project is likely part of the ongoing information war between Russia and Nato. The funds, UK documents note, aim to “understand and expose disinformation across the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) space.”

The project was launched in 2016 and initially called the Russian Language programme. ………

,,,,,,,,,  the programme may be a cover for the UK’s own information operations in the region. The UK Ministry of Defence is one of the implementing departments in the counter-disinformation programme. It is not obvious what role the UK armed forces would have in a media support project.

……….In the four years to 2021, the programme cost the UK public £140.5m, although a breakdown of the media component is not provided by the government. 

The UK is also “working closely with the US on media reform” through the programme……………

UK spends over £80m on media in 20 countries around Russia

February 14, 2022 Posted by | media, spinbuster, UK, weapons and war | Leave a comment

BBC Cons the Public with Reports of “Sadness as Somerset nuclear power station nears closure” Tell us the Truth.

BBC Cons the Public with Reports of “Sadness as Somerset nuclear power station nears closure” Tell us the Truth,       https://mariannewildart.wordpress.com/2022/02/11/bbc-cons-the-public-with-reports-of-sadness-as-somerset-nuclear-power-station-nears-closure-tell-us-the-truth/   The following is a Guest Blog by Jim Duffy former co-ordinator of Stop Hinkley republished with permission from a social media post. This lifts the veil on Hinkley Point B in a way that the BBC are wilfully neglecting to do.

No sadness on my part. It all started badly with bodged welds in the cooling circuit which luckily a welder owned up to some years later when the Chernobyl accident made him worry about the defects he and others made. A regulator told me that the whole cooling system had to be rebuilt while the welder was threatened with prosecution for his honesty and not allowed on site to show the faulty areas.

In 1995 a new low level waste incinerator was refused permission from the Environment Agency after Somerset Green Party campaigned against it with Dr Chris Busby ‘s help. It already had planning permission from the local council but Somerset County Council was worried it would pave the way for a regional incineration centre for radioactive waste. We argued it would harm people’s health.

Chris Busby researched local cancer rates from 2000 onwards which Stop Hinkley commissioned and publicised. He found a doubling of breast cancer mortality in downwind Burnham on Sea together with raised leukaemia and other cancers. BNFL announced the closure of Hinkley ‘A’ when Dr John Large also lambasted the plant for dangerous corrosion. Hinkley ‘B’ carried on running despite evidently contributing to the radioactive discharges.

In the 2000’s Dr John Large supported Stop Hinkley’s campaign to shut it down after worrying cracks and weight depletion were discovered in the graphite reactor core. The regulators forced it to operate at lower temperature and radiation levels to try to maintain safety thus generating less electricity.

At the same time we discovered that one of the three vital safety systems was never fitted to the twin reactors. The boron beads system is designed to slow down the nuclear reactions if the reactors overheat. For some unexplained reason the system was not fitted nor added later despite our protests at the increased risks from the cracks in the reactor cores.

In the mid 2000’s a 20 by 20 metre patch of radiation was found on nearby Kilve beach by a retired submarine engineer with his Geiger counter. His two dogs had died unexpectedly after digging and playing in the sand. The Environment Agency refused to visit the site for five weeks by which time they couldn’t detect the patch. It wasn’t clear if the leak came from Hinkley ‘A’ or ‘B’.

So I can’t cheer at the closure of the plant as it has caused so much worry and concern over the years. Relief is more my feeling although the story isn’t over by a long chalk with all the spent fuel and radioactive waste to take care of for hundreds of thousands of years…”

February 12, 2022 Posted by | media, secrets,lies and civil liberties, UK | Leave a comment

What You Should REALLY Know About Ukraine

“the United States is standing with missiles on our doorstep.” Putin asked, “How would the Americans react if missiles were placed at the border with Canada or Mexico?”

The US Wants to Expand NATO  In addition to integrating Ukraine into the US-dominated economic sphere, Western planners also want to integrate Ukraine militarily. For years, the US has sought the expansion of NATO, an explicitly anti-Russian military alliance. NATO was originally billed as a counterforce to the Warsaw Pact during the Cold War, but after the demise of the Soviet Union, the US promised the new Russia that it would not expand NATO east of Germany. Despite this agreement, the US continued building out its military alliance,growing closer and closer to Russia’s borders and ignoring Russia’s objections.

The West Wants Investor-Friendly Policies in Ukraine   The backdrop to the 2014 coup and annexation cannot be understood without looking at the US strategy to open Ukrainian markets to foreign investors and give control of its economy to giant multinational corporations

The US Helped Overthrow Ukraine’s Elected President……. US Officials Were Caught Picking the New Government    …

Washington Used Nazis to Help Overthrow the Government   The Washington-backed opposition that toppled the government was fueled by far-right and openly Nazi elements like the Right Sector. One far-right group that grew out of the protests was the Azov Battalion, a paramilitary militia of neo-Nazi extremists.

What You Should Really Know About Ukraine   https://fair.org/home/what-you-should-really-know-about-ukraine/, BRYCE GREENE  28 Jan 22, As tensions began to rise over Ukraine, US media produced a stream of articles attempting to explain the situation with headlines like “Ukraine Explained” (New York Times, 12/8/21) and “What You Need to Know About Tensions Between Ukraine and Russia” (Washington Post, 11/26/21). Sidebars would have notes that tried to provide context for the current headlines. But to truly understand this crisis, you would need to know much more than what these articles offered.These “explainer” pieces are emblematic of Ukraine coverage in the rest of corporate media, which almost universally gave a pro-Western view of US/Russia relations and the history behind them. Media echoed the point of view of those who believe the US should have an active role in Ukrainian politics and enforce its perspective through military threats.

The official line goes something like this: Russia is challenging NATO and the “international rules-based order” by threatening to invade Ukraine, and the Biden administration needed to deter Russia by providing more security guarantees to the Zelensky government. The official account seizes on Russia’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula as a starting point for US/Russian relations, and as evidence of Putin’s goals of rebuilding Russia’s long-lost empire.

Russia’s demand that NATO cease its expansion to Russia’s borders is viewed as such an obviously impossible demand that it can only be understood as a pretext to invade Ukraine. Therefore, the US should send weapons and troops to Ukraine, and guarantee its security with military threats to Russia (FAIR.org, 1/15/22).

Continue reading →

February 10, 2022 Posted by | history, media, politics international, Reference, Ukraine, USA | Leave a comment

Comfortably numb — Beyond Nuclear International

When we will wake up to the real threat we face?

Comfortably numb — Beyond Nuclear International “Hello? (Hello? Hello? Hello?)
“Is there anybody in there?
Just nod if you can hear me
Is there anyone home?”

Those echoing opening lines of the Pink Floyd song, “Comfortably Numb” keep wafting through my psyche as I watch the US, Russia, and China, amass ever more sophisticated, deadly and downright evil nuclear weapons capabilities. What are they thinking?

Meanwhile, tensions continue to mount at the Ukraine-Russia border, as Putin moves more armaments and fleets around and the US flies its elite 82nd Airborne Division into standby mode in Poland, part of 3,000 US troops now deployed to the region. 

All of this has sent US nuclear hawks, sounding more and more like General ‘Buck’ Turgidson from Dr. Strangelove, chafing at the bit to justify the further escalation and acceleration of the so-called modernization of the entire US nuclear weapons complex.

Meanwhile, there is even speculation that maybe Ukraine should not have given up its nuclear weapons at the end of the Cold War as the Soviet Union collapsed. The Russian seizure of Crimea and the seemingly endless conflict on Ukraine’s eastern border has led some to urge a Ukraine nuclear rearmament. 

A nuclear-armed Ukraine, goes the logic, would allow it to “deter” a Russian invasion or, at least, any possible use of nuclear weapons by Russia in a grab for Ukraine.

But this thinking further exposes the hollow argument for deterrence. Nuclear weapons in Ukraine would have only one outcome — they would make the prospect of nuclear weapons being used in any current conflict more likely. (Then, of course, there is the ever-present danger of Ukraine’s 15 operating nuclear reactors — addressed in a January 30, 2022 article on these pages.)

The prospect that even a conventional conflict could break out in Ukraine is already horrific enough. But even the remotest possibility that this could progress to the use of nuclear weapons by any party, is positively nightmarish. 

If you don’t value sleep, then Ira Helfand’s article in The Nation lays all of this out in chilling detail. It’s like reading the script to an apocalyptical dystopian horror movie (the kind that sadly seems to be all too popular these days).

Helfand’s article, however, is the exception to most of the coverage, which discusses the prospect of accidental or deliberate nuclear war over the Ukraine situation in a mind-bogglingly impassive way, “comfortably numb” to the very real, horrific, humanitarian consequences were this actually to happen.

It’s as if, as IPPNW’s Chuck Johnson said to me during a recent phone call, “it’s all perfectly normal”. 

But to most of us regular folk, calmly anticipating the possibility of a nuclear war isn’t normal. It’s the definition of insanity. And it’s exasperating. Hello? Can you hear us? We have a climate crisis bearing down on us. A global emergency of, yes, apocalyptic proportions. 

It goes without saying that, as a species, we need to stop directing all our energies towards our collective extinction, both through our failure to act adequately and on time on climate, and by unnecessarily rattling nuclear sabres.

It goes without saying, but it needs saying. Again and again and really loudly. By all of us. Just nod if you can hear me.

Linda Pentz Gunter is the international specialist at Beyond Nuclear and writes for and curates Beyond Nuclear International.

February 10, 2022 Posted by | media, Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Nuclear baloney in today’s media

Majority support for nuclear energy — which does not appear to be the case publicly, even if it is so politically — is a clear testament to the power of well-funded propaganda campaigns and the deep pockets of lobbyists. None of us engaged on this subject have missed the saturation media campaign, on-going now for months if not years, that sows the erroneous notion in the heads of politicians that nuclear power is an answer — even the answer — to climate change.

Repeat a lie often enough and people will believe it. Today’s media has become especially guilty of this. I recently had to correct a Financial Times reporter who, in an otherwise perfectly good article, described nuclear power as having “no carbon footprint.” There is no stop-and-think going on here. After all, even renewable energy does not have “no” carbon footprint.

Nuclear waste risks can be “minimized” and other myths

Nuclear baloney — Beyond Nuclear International AP story on states’ nuclear choice fails to point out key realities
By Linda Pentz Gunter, 6 Feb 2,
There are geniuses amongst us. We just didn’t know it. They are the supporters of nuclear power, who, according to the Associated Press, “say the risks can be minimized” when it comes to the perpetual and unsolved problem of long-lived, high-level radioactive waste — the main by-product of generating electricity using nuclear power. 

This observation comes within an AP story headlined: “Majority of US states pursue nuclear power for emission cuts”, and which has garnered significant pickup in numerous media outlets. (However, we never do learn the secret to precisely how nuclear waste risks can be “minimized”.)

The agency surveyed “the energy policies in all 50 states and the District of Columbia,” finding that “about two-thirds” plan to use nuclear power to replace fossil fuels.

The mantra about solving the nuclear waste problem has been repeated since the dawn of the Nuclear Age, coming up on 80 years this December. That was when, on December 2, 1942, the first cupful of radioactive waste was generated, a result of the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction achieved at the Chicago Pile-1 by Enrico Fermi and his team.

At that time, scientists knew that radioactive waste was a problem, but assumed it would be solved later. Well, here we are at “later” and it’s still unsolved. Now, “minimizing” rather than solving the problem is apparently justification enough to keep using this dangerous technology.

The AP reporters chose Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) President and CEO, Jeff Lash (no vested interest there), as the spokesperson for the continued use of nuclear power and says he,“puts it simply” when stating: “You can’t significantly reduce carbon emissions without nuclear power.” 

But, of course, it’s not that simple. It’s also arguably dead wrong. As Stanford University’s Amory Lovins and others have demonstrated repeatedly:

“To protect the climate, we must save the most carbon at the least cost and in the least time, counting all three variables – carbon and cost and time. 

“Costly options save less carbon per dollar than cheaper options. Slow options save less carbon per year than faster options. Thus even a low- or no-carbon option that is too costly or too slow will reduce and retard achievable climate protection. Being carbon-free does not establish climate-effectiveness.

“To compare nuclear power with other potential climate solutions we should start with two criteria – cost and speed – because if nuclear power has no business case or takes too long, we need not address its other merits or drawbacks.”

The three TVA plants are at Browns Ferry in Alabama, and Sequoyah and Watts Bar, both in Tennessee. The two Watts Bar reactors produce tritium for the nuclear weapons sector — a clear crossing of the supposedly inviolable line between the civilian and military nuclear sectors.

Sequoyah 1 and 2 have also been licensed to produce tritium but, so far, TVA has chosen not to use them for that purpose.

TVA is also, right now, pushing federal regulators to allow it to increase its output of tritium, an essential radioisotope used in thermonuclear warheads to boost the explosive power of an atomic bomb. 

As Tom Clements, executive director of the Savannah River Site Watch, told the Chattanooga Times Free Press:

“Using commercial nuclear reactors to produce nuclear weapons materials is a violation of the international nonproliferation agreements.”

Watts Bar 1 has been involved in tritium production for close to 20 years. Meanwhile, Watts Bar 2 holds the unenviable record of taking the longest time ever — a staggering 42 years — between the start of construction and actual operation. It is the poster child for the argument against trying to deliver new nuclear plants as some sort of answer to an urgent climate crisis already upon us that must be addressed today.

Nevertheless, when Watts Bar 2 came on line in October 2016, TVA actually heralded it as “the first new nuclear generation in 20 years.” If a 42-year old reactor is the definition of “new”, then maybe we should all go back to driving Chevrolet Monte Carlos.

The unnamed survey respondents from the state of Georgia apparently told AP that their “nuclear reactor expansion will provide ‘ample clean energy’ for 60 to 80 years”.

But again, there is no context to this bold prediction. In reality, that “expansion” consists

of the only two survivors of another nuclear myth, the U.S. “Nuclear Renaissance”, always an aspiration and never a reality. 

The Georgia reactors, Vogtle 3 and 4, have now been under construction since 2013. Their completion dates have been repeatedly pushed into the future — 2024 is the current, optimistic prediction, but it’s equally possible that both reactors will never achieve operational status.

Meanwhile, the costs for Vogtle 3 and 4 are predicted to balloon to $30 billion, while ratepayers, already paying more to cover these excesses, will see their monthly bills double if and when the reactors come on line. Imagine the “ample clean energy” that might have already been producing electricity in Georgia, if a renewable energy program had been initiated in 2013 instead of the nuclear boondoggle.

Majority support for nuclear energy — which does not appear to be the case publicly, even if it is so politically — is a clear testament to the power of well-funded propaganda campaigns and the deep pockets of lobbyists. None of us engaged on this subject have missed the saturation media campaign, on-going now for months if not years, that sows the erroneous notion in the heads of politicians that nuclear power is an answer — even the answer — to climate change.

Repeat a lie often enough and people will believe it. Today’s media has become especially guilty of this. I recently had to correct a Financial Times reporter who, in an otherwise perfectly good article, described nuclear power as having “no carbon footprint.” There is no stop-and-think going on here. After all, even renewable energy does not have “no” carbon footprint.

As John Le Carré wrote in his 1996 book, The Tailor of Panama, paraphrased from the mouth of one of his more cynical characters: 

Nothing is more predictable than the media’s parroting of its own fictions and the terror of each competitor that it will be scooped by the others, whether or not the story is true, because quite frankly dears, in the news game these days, we don’t have the staff, time, interest, energy, literacy or minimal sense of responsibility to check our facts by any means except calling up whatever has been written by other hacks on the same subject and repeating it as gospel”.

Fortunately, there remain some good investigative reporters amongst the lapdogs. But our task is made all the harder by that constant parroting of nuclear propaganda as if it is gospel. We have an uphill climb to change it, but we must keep climbing.

This article first appeared on Counterpunch.

February 7, 2022 Posted by | media, USA | Leave a comment

BBC Inside Science Nuclear Waste Podcast Kicks Off With a Big Fat Lie – Fact Check!?


BBC Inside Science Nuclear Waste Podcast Kicks Off With a Big Fat Lie – Fact Check!? https://www.lakesagainstnucleardump.com/post/bbc-inside-science-nuclear-waste-podcast-kicks-off-with-a-big-fat-lie-fact-check

Listen to BBC Inside Science Here Reporting from the BBC which holds the newly “green” nuclear industry to account has been in short supply and this was no exception despite the promising headline.

Listen to BBC Inside Science Here Reporting from the BBC which holds the newly “green” nuclear industry to account has been in short supply and this was no exception despite the promising headline. The podcast kicked off with some big fat lies about nuclear being low carbon (radioactive carbon it produces in spades) and stating that “Sizewell C will produce 7% of the UKs energy needs.” “Inside Science” is the arbiter of truth for many people including Cumbrian politicians who have repeated these lies. Sizewell C would only produce 2% of the UKs energy needs – an amount that could easily be saved by insulating houses. What the podcast presenter should have said was that Sizewell C may produce up to 7% of the UK’s ELECTRICITY – rather different from ENERGY and a big fat lie that the nuclear industry likes to promote.

Professor Claire Corkhill did reveal some home- truths about nuclear such as reprocessing produces a net result of more hazardous waste and that low level waste does not equate to low hazard “it is still hazardous.” When the interviewer asked Professor Corkhill if digging a big hole for nuclear waste was expensive the reply was that ‘its the right thing to do and it means that future generations won’t have the expense.’ This is the mantra that the Committee on Radioactive Waste Management like to promote as a truism. It is the wrong thing to do and denies future generations the ability to protect themselves from nuclear waste. Professor Corkhill was appointed to the Committee on Radioactive Waste Management ( CoRWM) in January 2020. Mark Kirkbride the CEO of West Cumbria Mining was appointed to CoRWM in November 2019 and has been putting together costings for the digging of a big hole or two. The total cost of decommissioning is around £132 Billion and counting. The eyewatering amounts of money are the very least of the bottomless Bill that this and future generations will be picking up from the nuclear experiment in any event.

February 7, 2022 Posted by | media, UK | Leave a comment

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