The Federal Court rejected an appeal by SECO which had refused to transfer detailed information to a journalist from the WOZ newspaper on companies that had filed arms exports requests in 2014.
In a decision published on Wednesdayexternal link, the court backed an earlier ruling by the Federal Administrative Court on behalf of the WOZ journalist, who had filed a freedom of information request.
Last March, the Federal Administrative Court had ruled in favour of the journalist, stating that it was public interest to ensure greater transparency and information on arms exports and that the media played an important role in holding the authorities to account in this regard.
SECO had argued that, in accordance with the law on war materiel, only the parliamentary oversight committee should be sent the details on Swiss arms exports. It said that publishing details on arms exports could also displease importing countries.
However, the Federal Court said publishing such information was not a threat for Switzerland’s interests. If there is no business secret involved, SECO must publish the firms’ names.
Hot topic
Rules governing arms exports and calls for greater transparency remain a hot topic in Switzerland. In 2008 the government tightened rules on arms exports; in 2014 it relaxed them on behalf of parliament.
In October 2018 the government abandoned plans to ease Swiss weapons exports following a public outcry.
In December 2018 campaigners started collecting signatures for a people’s initiative to prevent the Swiss government from relaxing rules for exporting arms to conflict-ridden states.
What if we covered the climate crisis like we did the start of the second world war?Bill Moyers Guardian, 22 May 19 In the war, the purpose of journalism was to awaken the world to the catastrophe looming ahead of it. We must approach our climate crisis the same way
I have been asked to bring this gathering to a close by summing up how we can do better at covering the possible “collapse of our civilizations and the extinction of much of the natural world,” to quote the noted environmentalist David Attenborough, speaking at the recent United Nations climate summit in Poland.
I don’t come with a silver bullet ……
Many of us have recognized that our coverage of global warming has fallen short. There’s been some excellent reporting by independent journalists and by enterprising reporters and photographers from legacy newspapers and other news outlets. But the Goliaths of the US news media, those with the biggest amplifiers—the corporate broadcast networks—have been shamelessly AWOL, despite their extraordinary profits. The combined coverage of climate change by the three major networks and Fox fell from just 260 minutes in 2017 to a mere 142 minutes in 2018—a drop of 45%, reported the watchdog group Media Matters.
Meanwhile, about 1,300 communities across the United States have totally lost news coverage, many from newspaper mergers and closures, according to the University of North Carolina School of Media and Journalism. Hundreds of others are still standing only as “ghost newspapers.” They no longer have resources for even local reporting, much less for climate change. ……
he networks put their reporters out in raincoats or standing behind police barriers as flames consume far hills. Yet we rarely hear the words “global warming” or “climate disruption” in their reports. The big backstory of rising CO2 levels, escalating drought, collateral damage, cause and effect, and politicians on the take from fossil-fuel companies? Forget all that. Not good for ratings, say network executives.
But last October, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a scientifically conservative body, gave us 12 years to make massive changes to reduce global greenhouse-gas emissions 45 percent below 2010 levels and to net zero by 2050. On his indispensable site, TomDispatch.com, Tom Engelhardt writes that humanity is now on a suicide watch.
Soon, some of you will be traveling to the ends of the earth to report on this Great Disruption. To Indonesia, where oil-palm growers and commodities companies are stripping away forests vital to carbon storage. To the Amazon, where President Bolsonaro’s government plans to open indigenous reserves to industrial exploitation, threatening the lungs of the Earth. To India, where President Modi pretends to be an environmentalist even as he embraces destructive development. To China, where President Xi’s Belt and Road initiative, the biggest transportation-infrastructure program in the history of the world, threatens disaster for earth systems. You will go to the Arctic and the Antarctic to report on melting ice, and to the shores of African cities, Pacific atolls, and poor Miami neighborhoods being swallowed by rising oceans. And to Nebraska, and Iowa, and Kansas, and Missouri, where this spring’s crop is despair as farmers and their families grieve their losses.
And some of you will go to Washington, to report on the madness—yes, I said madness—of a US government that scorns reality as fake news, denies the truths of nature, and embraces a theocratic theology that welcomes catastrophe as a sign of the returning Messiah.
Madness! Superstition! Destruction and death.
Can we get this story right? Can we tell it whole? Can we connect the dots and inspire people with the possibility of change?
What’s journalism for? Really, in the war, what was journalism for, except to awaken the world to the catastrophe looming ahead of it?
Here’s the good news: While describing David Wallace-Wells’s stunning new book The Uninhabitable Earth as a remorseless, near-unbearable account of what we are doing to our planet, The New York Times reports it also offers hope. Wallace-Wells says that “We have all the tools we need…to aggressively phase out dirty energy…”; [cut] global emissions…[and] scrub carbon from the atmosphere…. [There are] ‘obvious’ and ‘available,’ [if costly,] solutions.”
Nuclear weapons are archaic weapons that promote an outdated global order rooted in inequality and oppressive patriarchy. Which is another way of saying: our world isn’t that dissimilar to the world of Game of Thrones. The destruction that happened in King’s Landing could happen here, too. My hope is that the fictional blaze witnessed by the Game of Thrones viewership (43 million people!) will serve as a warning, and will spark denuclearization action.
The destruction that happened in King’s Landing can happen in our world, too, writes Beatrice Fihn, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017.
Beatrice Fihn, 05.17.19“Atomic bombs are primarily a means for the ruthless annihilation of cities.”
Famed physicist Leo Szilard wrote those words in 1945, entreating President Harry Truman to give Japan a chance to surrender before using the nuclear weapons Szilard had been instrumental in developing. His words rang in my head as Tyrion tried and failed to convince Daenerys to spare the surrendering King’s Landing from her dragon’s fire in the latest Game of Thrones episode, “The Bells.”
There is a significant difference between weapons of war and nuclear weapons. The former target their opponent’s military force. The latter yield absolute and indiscriminate power to kill civilians. Harry Truman admitted that nuclear weapons were created for the destruction of cities when he said, “You have got to understand that this isn’t a military weapon. It is used to wipe out women and children and unarmed people, and not for military uses.”
In the first seven seasons of Game of Thrones, Daenerys’s dragons have been a veiled threat. They were a plot device; their purpose was to transform Daenerys from meek girl to strong queen. But that changed Sunday night. On Sunday night, viewers around the country saw the full power of a dragon’s destructive force as it breathed fire onto a city.
A modern nuclear weapon would also, essentially, breathe fire: it would cause a fireball burning 10,000 times stronger than the surface of the sun, incinerating everyone and everything within nearly a mile. That heat would cause third-degree burns in a radius of 50 square miles and the shock wave would flatten most buildings within 10 miles of ground zero. In Nagasaki, ground temperatures reached 7,000°F and radioactive rain poured down. 70 percent of all buildings were razed in Hiroshima including 42 out of the city’s 45 hospitals. These facts have led the UN and ICRC to state that in the event of a nuclear bombing, no help is coming.
It’s worth noting that although Trump has been criticized for spending large sums on new nuclear weapons, the Nuclear Modernization Program was actually started by the Obama administration, with support from both secretaries of state, John Kerry and Hillary Clinton and it’s unlikely a Hillary Clinton presidency would look much different on the issue of nuclear weapons than a Trump one.
Although she is a (fictional) woman, Daenerys could burn a city to the ground. Although she is a woman, Hillary Clinton could support the Nuclear Modernization Program. Women aren’t inherently pacifist; more women in power will not be enough. It is important to get rid of the corrupting power of nuclear weapons instead of relying on our leaders to use them responsibly.
And yet, ironically, abolishing nuclear weapons is a feminist issue, because nuclear fallout disproportionately affects women. Women in Hiroshima and Nagasaki had nearly double the risk of developing and dying from solid cancer due to ionizing radiation exposure. Girls are considerably more likely than boys to develop thyroid cancer from nuclear fallout. Pregnant women exposed to nuclear radiation face a greater likelihood of delivering children with physical malformations and stillbirths, leading to increased maternal mortality. And the list goes on.
Nuclear weapons are archaic weapons that promote an outdated global order rooted in inequality and oppressive patriarchy. Which is another way of saying: our world isn’t that dissimilar to the world of Game of Thrones. The destruction that happened in King’s Landing could happen here, too. My hope is that the fictional blaze witnessed by the Game of Thrones viewership (43 million people!) will serve as a warning, and will spark denuclearization action.
I am reminded of another TV event: the 1983 TV Movie The Day After. Over 100 million people in nearly 40 million households tuned in for the 2-hour film, and most stuck around for a 90-minute conversation about the film hosted by Ted Koppel. The movie’s unflinching account of the horrific aftermath of nuclear war was the topic of conversation around the water cooler for every American and even found its way into President Reagan’s diary.
TV has the power to move the world—for good or ill. Ronald Reagan sent a telegram to Nicholas Meyer, the director of The Day After, as he signed the 1987 INF Treaty with the Soviet Union. The telegram read: “Don’t think your movie didn’t have any part of this because it did.”
It can feel insensitive or even flippant to compare the real deaths and destruction of nuclear war with a fictional dragon razing a fictional city. However, like The Day After, Game of Thrones has transcended TV to become a cultural touchstone—a world we all gather in once a week and debate endlessly after. “The Bells” was a gift to those of us who work for disarmament and give all our energy to avoiding war. Millions saw a glimpse of the horror of war in a way they could understand and were primed to receive.
Let’s hope our leaders were watching. Let’s hope they saw Arya Stark walking through the crumbled buildings and charred bodies. Let’s hope they saw the look on her face. That look wasn’t feigned; the actress Maisie Williams described shooting the painfully long sequence as “sickening even to the strongest person.” The horror Williams felt would be familiar to anyone exposed to the reality of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or the suffering of those at nuclear test sites.
We cannot wait until nuclear weapons are used again to eliminate them; by then it will be too late. We need creative voices to remind us of the hidden humanitarian disaster of nuclear weapons so we can act now.
As Daenerys and Drogon transformed into the “destroyer of worlds,” I recalled something I often say to those who argue that there are good and bad nuclear-armed states: the weapons are the problem, not the leaders. Like dragons, they are destructive power that no one person should hold over humanity. If Daenerys wasn’t able to use her dragons responsibly, then nobody can. It was not the Targaryen bloodline that was cursed, it was the dragons that corroded their humanity. Luckily, unlike dragons, nuclear weapons are not magical, they are just weapons and we can dismantle them. We must.
We already have a plan to eliminate our dragons. 122 states voted in favor of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons at the UN in 2017. 23 states have already ratified the treaty and it will become international law once 50 do. When asked why they supported the treaty, the diplomats and leaders all said the same thing: they were compelled to sign after learning about the ruthless devastation that nuclear weapons cause. A real hero doesn’t unleash a dragon. A real hero picks up a pen. The truly radical action is just that: a signature.
In our world and in the world of Game of Thrones, there are characters in the shadows, negotiating behind the scenes for a peace that will save innocent lives. That’s what bravery looks like. Those are the heroes we need. Rest in Peace, Lord Varys.
Beatrice Fihn is the Executive Director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize 2017.
Journalist Glenn Greenwald defends Assange: The Hill, Julia Manchester 24 Apr 19, ‘Things that journalists do every single day’ Journalist Glenn Greenwald on Monday defended WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange after he was charged by the Justice Department earlier this month for allegedly conspiring to hack a government computer in connection with the organization’s release of sensitive government files in 2010.
“So much of what’s in the indictment, encouraging a source to get more documents, helping a source cover her tracks in order not to be detected, are things that journalists do every single day,” Greenwald, co-founding editor at The Intercept, told hosts Krystal Ball and Buck Sexton in an appearance on Hill.TV.
Why is the US news media so bad at covering climate change?Guardian, Kyle Pope and Mark Hertsgaard, 23 Apr 2019 The US news media devotes startlingly little time to climate change – how can newsrooms cover it in ways that will finally resonate with their audiences?
Last summer, during the deadliest wildfire season in California’s history, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes got into a revealing Twitter discussion about why US television doesn’t much cover climate change. Elon Green, an editor at Longform, had tweeted, “Sure would be nice if our news networks – the only outlets that can force change in this country – would cover it with commensurate urgency.” Hayes (who is an editor at large for the Nation) replied that his program had tried. Which was true: in 2016, All In With Chris Hayes spent an entire week highlighting the impact of climate change in the US as part of a look at the issues that Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were ignoring. The problem, Hayes tweeted, was that “every single time we’ve covered [climate change] it’s been a palpable ratings killer. So the incentives are not great.”
The Twittersphere pounced. “TV used to be obligated to put on programming for the public good even if it didn’t get good ratings. What happened to that?” asked @JThomasAlbert. @GalJaya said, “Your ‘ratings killer’ argument against covering #climatechange is the reverse of that used during the 2016 primary when corporate media justified gifting Trump $5 billion in free air time because ‘it was good for ratings,’ with disastrous results for the nation.”
When @mikebaird17 urged Hayes to invite Katharine Hayhoe of Texas Tech University, one of the best climate science communicators around, on to his show, she tweeted that All In had canceled on her twice – once when “I was literally in the studio w[ith] the earpiece in my ear” – and so she wouldn’t waste any more time on it.
“Wait, we did that?” Hayes tweeted back. “I’m very very sorry that happened.”
This spring Hayes redeemed himself, airing perhaps the best coverage on American television yet of the Green New Deal. All In devoted its entire 29 March broadcast to analyzing the congressional resolution, co-sponsored by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey, which outlines a plan to mobilize the United States to stave off climate disaster and, in the process, create millions of green jobs. In a shrewd answer to the ratings challenge, Hayes booked Ocasio-Cortez, the most charismatic US politician of the moment, for the entire hour.
Yet at a time when civilization is accelerating toward disaster, climate silence continues to reign across the bulk of the US news media. Especially on television, where most Americans still get their news, the brutal demands of ratings and money work against adequate coverage of the biggest story of our time. Many newspapers, too, are failing the climate test. Last October, the scientists of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a landmark report, warning that humanity had a mere 12 years to radically slash greenhouse gas emissions or face a calamitous future in which hundreds of millions of people worldwide would go hungry or homeless or worse. Only 22 of the 50 biggest newspapers in the United States covered that report.
Instead of sleepwalking us toward disaster, the US news media need to remember their Paul Revere responsibilities – to awaken, inform and rouse the people to action. To that end, the Nation and CJR are launching Covering Climate Change: A New Playbook for a 1.5-Degree World, a project aimed at dramatically improving US media coverage of the climate crisis. When the IPCC scientists issued their 12-year warning, they said that limiting temperature rise to 1.5C would require radically transforming energy, agriculture, transportation, construction and other core sectors of the global economy. Our project is grounded in the conviction that the news sector must be transformed just as radically.
The project will launch on 30 April with a conference at the Columbia Journalism School – a working forum where journalists will gather to start charting a new course. We envision this event as the beginning of a conversation that America’s journalists and news organizations must have with one another, as well as with the public we are supposed to be serving, about how to cover this rapidly uncoiling emergency. Judging by the climate coverage to date, most of the US news media still don’t grasp the seriousness of this issue. There is a runaway train racing toward us, and its name is climate change. That is not alarmism; it is scientific fact. We as a civilization urgently need to slow that train down and help as many people off the tracks as possible. It’s an enormous challenge, and if we don’t get it right, nothing else will matter. The US mainstream news media, unlike major news outlets in Europe and independent media in the US, have played a big part in getting it wrong for many years. It’s past time to make amends.
If 1.5C is the new limit for a habitable planet, how can newsrooms tell that story in ways that will finally resonate with their audiences? And given journalism’s deeply troubled business model, how can such coverage be paid for? Some preliminary suggestions. (You can read this story in its entirety at Columbia Journalism Review or The Nation.)
Don’t blame the audience, and listen to the kids. The onus is on news organizations to craft the story in ways that will demand the attention of readers and viewers. The specifics of how to do this will vary depending on whether a given outlet works in text, radio, TV or some other medium and whether it is commercially or publicly funded, but the core challenge is the same.
A majority of Americans are interested in climate change and want to hear what can be done about it. This is especially true of the younger people that news organizations covet as an audience. Even most young Republicans want climate action. And no one is speaking with more clarity now than Greta Thunberg, Alexandria Villaseñor and the other teenagers who have rallied hundreds of thousands of people into the streets worldwide for the School Strike 4 Climate demonstrations.
Establish a diverse climate desk, but don’t silo climate coverage. ……
Learn the science…….
Don’t internalize the spin. ……
Lose the Beltway mindset. …..
Help the heartland…….
Cover the solutions. ,,,,
Don’t be afraid to point fingers. ….
If American journalism doesn’t get the climate story right – and soon – no other story will matter. The news media’s past climate failures can be redeemed only by an immediate shift to more high-profile, inclusive and fearless coverage. Our #CoveringClimateNow project calls on all journalists and news outlets to join the conversation about how to make that happen. As the nation’s founders envisioned long ago, the role of a free press is to inform the people and hold the powerful accountable. These days, our collective survival demands nothing less. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/22/why-is-the-us-news-media-so-bad-at-covering-climate-change
I’ve been told that Julian Assange is in favour of nuclear power – with the suggestion that we should not support him. Also that his revelations about Hilary Clinton helped to get the abominable Trump elected.
But does this matter? Assange revealed the truth. And what will happen to the next whistlebower, perhaps one that reveals the corruption in the nuclear industry?
Whatever you think of Julian Assange, his extradition to the US must be opposed,Owen Jones, Guardian, 12 Apr 19, States that commit crimes in foreign lands depend on at least passive acquiescence. This is achieved in a number of ways. One is the “othering” of the victims: the stripping away of their humanity, because if you imagined them to be people like your own children or your neighbours, their suffering and deaths would be intolerable. Another approach is to portray opponents of foreign aggression as traitors, or in league with hostile powers. And another strategy is to cover up the consequences of foreign wars, to ensure that the populace is kept intentionally unaware of the acts committed in their name.
It is Manning who is the true hero of this story: last month, she was arrested for refusing to testify to a grand jury investigating WikiLeaks, placed in solitary confinement for four weeks, and now remains imprisoned. We must demand her freedom.
These leaks revealed some of the horrors of the post-9/11 wars. One showed a US aircrew laughing after slaughtering a dozen innocent people, including two Iraqi employees of Reuters, after dishonestly alleging to have encountered a firefight. Other files revealed how US-led forces killedhundreds of civilians in Afghanistan, their deaths otherwise airbrushed out of existence. Another cable, which exposed corruption and scandals in the court of Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, the western-backed then-dictator of Tunisia, helped fuel protests, which toppled him……..
Assange must answer the allegations of sexual assault in Sweden without the threat of extradition to the US………. That Swedish case must be entirely disentangled from the US extradition attempt. And while opposing Assange’s rightwing libertarian politics is perfectly reasonable, it is utterly irrelevant to the basic issue here of justice……….
Assange’s extradition to the US must be passionately opposed. It is notable that Obama’s administration itself concluded that to prosecute Assange for publishing documents would gravely imperil press freedom. Yes, this is a defence of journalism and media freedom. But it is also about the attempt to intimidate those who expose crimes committed by the world’s last remaining superpower. The US wishes to hide its crimes so it can continue to commit them with impunity: that’s why, last month, Trump signed an executive order to cover up civilian deaths from drones, the use of which has hugely escalated in Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen and Pakistan.
Hervé Courtoi13 Apr 19 Via Karl Wunder Snowden points out that the WikiLeaks team has won many awards for its reporting. These include:
The Economist New Media Award (2008)
The Amnesty New Media Award (2009)
The Sam Adams Award for Integrity (2010)
The National Union of Journalists Journalist of the Year (Hrafnsson) (2011)
The Sydney Peace Foundation Gold Medal (2011)
The Walkley Award for Most Outstanding Contribution to Journalism (2011)
The Voltaire Award for Free Speech (2011)
The International Piero Passetti Journalism Prize of the National Union of Italian Journalists (2011)
The Privacy International Hero of Privacy (2012)
The Global Exchange Human Rights People’s Choice Award (2013)
The Brazilian Press Association Human Rights Award (2013)
The Kazakhstan Union of Journalists Top Prize (2014) https://www.facebook.com/dunrenard?__tn__=%2CdC-R-R&eid=ARDsY6zh-XW-n6LQ3xBNitIkpLlrj2d_EY3QVMtZpkpIpUitBAOcbg-Jneyv9V0sBuUmUzP8kTPjKdaJ&hc_ref=ART42xFstjUK2mNP1sgOwKX9KXHTBaFbBxJ3FqA5K4sDWZN1J_D46gCLZpRG74XZMjc&fref=n
What Does Julian Assange’s Arrest Mean for Journalists? The Observer, By Davis Richardson • 04/12/19 “……..“Any prosecution by the United States of Mr. Assange for Wikileaks’ publishing operations would be unprecedented and unconstitutional, and would open the door to criminal investigations of other news organizations,” American Civil Liberties Union director Ben Wizner said in a statement. “Moreover, prosecuting a foreign publisher for violating U.S. secrecy laws would set an especially dangerous precedent for U.S. journalists, who routinely violate foreign secrecy laws to deliver information vital to the public’s interest.”
Historical Precedent
While whistleblowers in the past have been prosecuted by the U.S. government, publishers have been spared. In 1971, former U.S. military analyst Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers—a collection of classified studies regarding the Vietnam War—to The New York Times and other outlets. The government charged Ellsberg under the Espionage Act of 1917, but did not pursue a separate case against the Times or other publishers of the information. (The case was ultimately dropped, due to the government’s mishandling of the evidence gathering process.)
The government likewise pursued a case in 2010 against former National Security Agency (NSA) senior executive Thomas Drake for leaking information about the NSA to The Baltimore Sun. Like Ellsberg, Drake was prosecuted under the Espionage Act—but again, the case was dropped and neither The Baltimore Sun nor the author of the piece were included in the case.
Here, we’ve had a situation where Chelsea Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison for leaking classified information to Julian Assange,” Dr. Sandy Davidson, a media law professor at the Missouri School of Journalism, told Observer. “But now it looks like an end run is going to be made around the First Amendment. If prosecutors are going to go after Assange, not because he published, but because he conspired with Chelsea Manning, now we’ve got a whole new ballgame.”
What Does This Mean for Journalists?
Wikileaks is undoubtedly a controversial group, which has been accused of abiding foreign nationals and participating in disinformation campaigns. But the organization is still a publisher, and Assange in 2010 was working to publish information.
“If we start having publishers fearing an end-run around the first amendment, they will be attacked through conspiracy laws. We could be in what the Supreme Court has called, in other contexts, a ‘chilling effect,’” explained Davidson. “A chilling effect will hit everybody who wants access to information.”…….. https://observer.com/2019/04/julian-assange-arrest-journalist-publisher-prosecution/
Inside a Nonprofit That Supports Environmental Journalists Around the World,Julia Travers , Inside Philanthropy, April 2019, Many countries, especially in the Global South, struggle to respond to environmental challenges like over-development, deforestation, poaching, pollution and climate change. When these threats are coupled with weak or corrupt government oversight, the news media—and robust, reliable local reporting—can be the only way to draw attention to what’s happening.Among the organizations and funders who support nonprofit journalism, the Earth Journalism Network (EJN) plays a unique role by empowering journalists from developing countries to cover local environmental beats effectively. Along with climate change, the writers it supports work on many intersecting issues like fossil fuel extraction and its effects, biodiversity, wildlife trafficking and more.
Philanthropy upped its journalism game as print news declined and continues to invest in this area as both verbal and violent attacks on the media increase. The Omidyar Network, Democracy Fund and the Knight, MacArthur, International Women’s Media and Ford foundations and others have all contributed substantially to causes like bolstering investigative reporting and local news, combating disinformation, and ensuring safety for reporters. Environmental journalism is one area that’s drawn rising support in recent years, and we’ve written before about the growth of outlets like Grist and InsideClimate News. EJN is different from these publications—operating as a network that provides grants, training and more—but it’s also expanded its reach as funders have grown more concerned about environmental threats.
Ianfairlie 8th March 2019 On March 8, the BBC published a news item about cracks in the Hunterston B nuclear reactors. Whilst it is good that the story highlighted reporting of the safety issues surrounding the plant and, in particular, included photographs of the cracked graphite core, we wish to correct several inaccuracies.
The BBC article claims that early decommissioning could cause serious energy supply problems. This is simply not the case and is alarmist nonsense: the reality is that Scotland has, if anything, an oversupply of electricity. Both Hunterston and Torness could be closed without problem to Scotland’s electricity supplies.
The BBC article then states that “Concerns have also been raised about the consequences for local jobs if Hunterston closed early.”As pointed out in our article, few if any jobs would be lost if the reactors Hunterston B were closed permanently: dealing with the immense heat rates from radioactive decay even from closed reactors will guarantee jobs there for the first 2 to 3 years.
After that decommissioning will provide more jobs then when the reactors operated, just as is occurring at the closed reactors at Dounreay. The BBC cites Councillor Tom Marshall as stating: “Most of the large employers round about here have disappeared – and this is one of the last major employers.
So, if it is safe to run most people locally would be happy to see it running.” We obviously share the concerns of local people about deindustrialisation and the appalling effects of the UK Government’s uncivilised austerity programmes in Scotland. But local councillors should\ not be misled by incorrect statements by the nuclear industry. Closing
Hunterston B for good will not lead to large numbers of job losses: the contrary in fact.
Can YouTube Solve Its Serious Climate Science Denial Problem? DESMOG, By Graham Readfearn • Sunday, February 24, 2019“What are we in for next?” asks the narrator on the YouTube video.“Will the temperature resume an upward trend? Will it remain flat for a lengthy period? Or will it begin to drop? No one knows, not even the biggest, fastest computers.”
The video — with the clickbait title “What They Haven’t Told You about Climate Change” — has been watched more than 2.5 million times on the Google-owned video platform.
Produced by the conservative group PragerU, the video sees Canadian lobbyist and fossil fuels advocate Patrick Moore run through a long-debunked argument that because the world’s climate has changed before, there’s no problem with burning record amounts of fossil fuels.
Despite the clear errors, the video has gathered more views than any other climate science denial clip on YouTube. All up, PragerU claims the video has been watched 4.4 million times across all platforms.
A search on YouTube for the most viewed “climate change” videos has Moore’s effort ranked 13th — searching for “global warming” has it ranked 19th.
But where the problems really start, are when YouTube’s “up next” algorithm takes a guess at what you might want to watch next after seeing Moore’s video.
Recommending Denial
When I viewed YouTube without signing in, almost all the videos suggested by the algorithm would sit firmly in the climate science denial folder. There’s so much of this material on YouTube that it’s not hard to find once the algorithm opens the door.
There’s a Nobel Laureate who apparently “Smashes the Global Warming Hoax” — just don’t mention the 76 other laureatesasking for “rapid progress towards lowering current and future greenhouse gas emissions.”
Then there are two other videos, both titled “The Truth About Global Warming,” and both delivering the opposite to what its title claims.
Before you know it, you’re in a world of “climate cults,” “global warming hysteria,” and claims of failed predictions and Al Gore getting “slammed.”
For an unsuspecting viewer, watching just one video can lead you quickly into an alternate universe where facts, physics, and real-world experiences are replaced by conspiracies, cherry-picking, and fossil fuel–backed propaganda.
Google will respond positively to requests from private individuals to blur their homes in its Street View mode, and it routinely blurs the faces of people in the streets and car number plates.
But when the Federal Agency for Nuclear Control, together with the federal home affairs ministry, approached Google with a request to blur the satellite pictures of nuclear plants Google refused.
“There have been contacts regarding this issue,” said Google Belgium spokesperson Michiel Sallaets. “But there is no legal basis in Belgium for a request for Google to remove these images.”
For the FANC, the risk is real, particularly the risk of terrorist attacks. The photo shown is a magnification intended to fill the frame with the Doel nuclear power plant; much closer magnification at a high degree of definition is possible with an ordinary laptop. The latest satellite images available for the location date from 2019, so are the best currently available. The image can also be viewed in 3D and dragged to give a full tour of the site. The same applies to the plant at Tihange.
The FANC is not prepared to leave it there, said spokesperson Ines Venneman. “We maintain our point of view. These images must be blurred, and we will investigate any means to have that done. In the first instance we will follow the example of the defence ministry. They succeeded in having satellite images of military sites blurred.”
Veteran NBC Reporter Rips Pro-War Posture of Corporate Media in Scathing Resignation Letter
“That a network insider has blown the whistle on how all this works, and how MSNBC and NBC have become Ground Zero for these political pathologies of militarism and servitude to security state agencies, while not surprising, is nonetheless momentous, Portside, January 5, 2019 Jessica Corbett COMMON DREAMS
In a biting resignation letter published in full by CNN on Wednesday, longtime NBC News reporter, commentator, and military analyst William “Bill” Arkin blasted the corporate media network for embracing U.S. “national security leaders and generals” while “ignoring the empirical truth of what they have wrought: There is not one country in the Middle East that is safer today than it was 18 years ago. Indeed the world becomes ever more polarized and dangerous.”
Reflecting on his past couple of decades working with the network—in addition to writing books and columns for major newspapers and serving as as military adviser to human rights and environmental groups—Arkin laments: “My expertise, though seeming to be all the more central to the challenges and dangers we face, also seems to be less valued at the moment. And I find myself completely out of [sync] with the network, being neither a day-to-day reporter nor interested in the Trump circus.”
Noting in his 2,228-word memo that “the world and the state of journalism [are] in tandem crisis,” Arkin delivers a scathing critique of how NBC has responded to the foreign policy of President Donald Trump—whom he calls “an ignorant and incompetent impostor”—asserting that “in many ways NBC just began emulating the national security state itself—busy and profitable. No wars won but the ball is kept in play.”
However, Arkin also delivers a broader condemnation of the network’s coverage of the so-called War on Terror in the nearly 18 years since 9/11, and how it has helped produce a scenario in which “perpetual war has become accepted as a given in our lives.” He writes:
Seeking refuge in its political horse race roots, NBC (and others) meanwhile report the story of war as one of Rumsfeld vs. the Generals, as Wolfowitz vs. Shinseki, as the CIA vs. Cheney, as the bad torturers vs. the more refined, about numbers of troops and number of deaths, and even then Obama vs. the Congress, poor Obama who couldn’t close Guantanamo or reduce nuclear weapons or stand up to Putin because it was just so difficult. We have contributed to turning the world national security into this sort of political story. I find it disheartening that we do not report the failures of the generals and national security leaders. I find it shocking that we essentially condone continued American bumbling in the Middle East and now Africa through our ho-hum reporting………..
The letter was welcomed by many critics of corporate media and American militarism—including The Intercept‘s Glenn Greenwald, who praised Arkin’s “scathing and unflinching” passages describing NBC and MSNBC “as pro-war propaganda outlets who exist to do little more than amplify and serve the security state agencies that are most devoted to opposing Trump, including their mindless opposition to Trump’s attempts (with whatever motives) to roll back some of the excesses of imperialism, aggression, and U.S. involvement in Endless War, as well as to sacrifice all journalistic standards and skepticism about generals and the U.S. war machine if doing so interferes in their monomaniacal mission of denouncing Trump.”
While pointing out that the pro-war posture of American corporate media network “has long been obvious, and deeply disturbing,” Greenwald notes, “Still, that a network insider has blown the whistle on how all this works, and how MSNBC and NBC have become Ground Zero for these political pathologies of militarism and servitude to security state agencies, while not surprising, is nonetheless momentous given how detailed and emphatic he is in his condemnations.”
Journalists reporting on the environment faced increased dangers in 2018, Monga Bay, by Kaamil Ahmed on 4 January 2019
Journalists describe some of the threats and dangers they faced in 2018.
These range from intimidation to legal threats to outright violence.
At least 10 journalists covering the environment were killed between 2010 and 2016, according to Reporters without Borders — all but two of them in Asia.
A pair of “French spies” had infiltrated India by sea to commit a “treasonous conspiracy,” an Indian minister claimed in late November. In reality, they were two visiting journalists, and their mission was an investigation into allegations of illegal sand mining in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. They had merely tried and failed to visit the site of a major mining company through legal means.
Their presence set off alarm bells among some connected to the industry, and the fallout has been significant. It’s included a police investigation, a politically fueled propaganda campaign, and the arrests of two local translators who had been working for them.
This heavy-handed response is familiar to Indian journalist Sandhya Ravishankar, who has reported on sand mining since 2013 and found that her probing into allegations of major business interests damaging the local environment has resulted in stalking and various types of harassment – some of it reportedly directed by the head of one of the mining companies.
“I got rape threats, my bike was vandalized, the miner has openly admitted that there are five detective agencies trailing me wherever I go, CCTV visuals of me having coffee with a source at a cafe have been made public,” Ravishankar said, adding that she also discovered government documents showing “officials have colluded to slander me.”
Ravishankar’s case is just one example of the growing dangers for journalists reporting environmental stories. Even as environmental journalism becomes increasingly important in the face of destructive business and political interests and practices, the inherent safety risks remain.
There are also the more routine challenges of accessing crucial information and convincing editors and readers of their importance.
“Journalists I’ve interviewed have been arrested, sued, fired, threatened, harassed, interrogated by police, interrogated by the military, physically assaulted and a number of them have been killed while covering logging, mining, development,” said journalism professor Eric Freedman in an interview. Freedman is the Knight Chair in Environmental Journalism and director of the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism at Michigan State University.
Freedman said environmental journalism came with its own set of challenges, many of which evolve with the story.
“Environmental controversies frequently involve power, political and economic power,” he said. “They involve money, whether mines or fracking or hydropower.
The made-for-TV movie The Day After had an enormous impact on America’s national conversation about nuclear weapons in 1983. Resuming that conversation today is essential, and the movie holds some lessons about what that would take. The Nation, By Dawn Stover– 14 Dec 18 This article originally appeared as part of a special section on The Day After at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists “…….The television movie The Day After depicted a full-scale nuclear war and its impacts on people living in and around Kansas City.
It became something of a community project in picturesque Lawrence, 40 miles west of Kansas City, where much of the movie was filmed. Thousands of local residents—including students and faculty from the University of Kansas—were recruited as extras for the movie; about 65 of the 80 speaking parts were cast locally. The use of locals was intentional, because the moviemakers wanted to show the grim consequences of a nuclear war for real Middle Americans, living in the real middle of the country. By the time the movie ends, almost all of the main characters are dead or dying.
ABC broadcast The Day After on November 20, 1983, with no commercial breaks during the final hour. More than 100 million people saw it—nearly two-thirds of the total viewing audience. It remains one of the most-watched television programs of all time. Brandon Stoddard, then-president of ABC’s motion picture division, called it “the most important movie we’ve ever done.” The Washington Post later described it as “a profound TV moment.” It was arguably the most effective public-service announcement in history.
It was also a turning point for foreign policy. Thirty-five years ago, the United States and the Soviet Union were in a nuclear arms race that had taken them to the brink of war. The Day After was a piercing wake-up shriek, not just for the general public but also for then-President Ronald Reagan. Shortly after he saw the film, Reagan gave a speech saying that he, too, had a dream: that nuclear weapons would be “banished from the face of the Earth.” A few years later, Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, the first agreement that provided for the elimination of an entire category of nuclear weapons. By the late 1990s, American and Russian leaders had created a stable, treaty-based arms-control infrastructure and expected it to continue improving over time.
Now, however, a long era of nuclear restraint appears to be nearing an end. Tensions between the United States and Russia have risen to levels not seen in decades. . Alleging treaty violations by Russia, the White House has announced plans to withdraw from the INF Treaty. Both countries are moving forward with the enormously expensive refurbishment of old and development of new nuclear weapons—a process euphemized as “nuclear modernization.” Leaders on both sides have made inflammatory statements, and no serious negotiations have taken place in recent years.
There are striking parallels between the security situations today and 35 years ago, with one major discordance: Today, nuclear weapons are seldom a front-burner concern, largely being forgotten, underestimated, or ignored by the American public. The United States desperately needs a fresh national conversation about the born-again nuclear-arms race—a conversation loud enough to catch the attention of the White House and the Kremlin and lead to resumed dialogue. A look back at The Day After and the role played by ordinary citizens in a small Midwestern city shows how the risk of nuclear war took center stage in 1983, and what it would take for that to happen again in 2018.
[Article goes on to detail the story]……
It is no coincidence that nuclear war begins in The Day After with a gradually escalating conflict in Europe. In one scene, viewers hear a Soviet official mention the “coordinated movement of the Pershing II launchers.”
The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty that Reagan and Gorbachev signed in 1987 resolved that conflict, banning all ground-launched and air-launched nuclear and conventional missiles (and their launchers) with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers, or 310 to 3,420 miles. However, Trump said in October that he plans to withdraw from the treaty, and on December 4 Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the United States would withdraw in 60 days if Russia continues its alleged non-compliance. Gorbachev and Shultz, in a Washington Post op-ed published that day, warned that “[a]bandoning the INF Treaty would be a step toward a new arms race, undermining strategic stability and increasing the threat of miscalculation or technical failure leading to an immensely destructive war.”………
A BRIGHT TOMORROW?
In one scene in The Day After, a pregnant woman who has taken shelter in the Lawrence hospital along with fallout victims tells her doctor that her overdue baby doesn’t want to be born. You’re holding back hope, he says.
“Hope for what?” she asks. “We knew the score. We knew all about bombs. We knew all about fallout. We knew this could happen for 40 years. Nobody was interested.”
It won’t be long before another 40 years have passed. Americans have not yet perished in a nuclear war or its aftermath, but a new arms race is beginning and the potential for an intentional or accidental nuclear war seems to be rising…….. https://www.thenation.com/article/nuclear-weapons-bulletin-atomic-scientists/
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