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The rise and fall of Sweden’s nuclear disarmament advocacy

In the 2020s,…. it is Sweden and Finland that have arguably become the biggest advocates of US nuclear weapons.

By Naman Karl-Thomas Habtom | December 29, 2024,  https://thebulletin.org/2024/12/the-rise-and-fall-of-swedens-nuclear-disarmament-advocacy/

In the nine months since joining NATO, Sweden has not wasted any time integrating itself tightly into the transatlantic alliance. On September 16, Sweden doubled down on its commitment to a nuclear weapons-based military alliance when Sweden and Finland agreed that Sweden would lead a new NATO defense base to be established in northern Finland.

While Denmark and Norway currently do not want to host nuclear weapons on their own soil, NATO’s new entrants have both signaled an openness to doing so. In June, the Swedish parliament ratified a Defense Cooperation Agreement granting the United States access to 17 Swedish military bases, and Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson did not rule out hosting nuclear weapons during wartime. Meanwhile, Finland’s President Alexander Stubb has advocated for a legislative change to allow the transportation of nuclear weapons.

With the benefit of historical hindsight, it is clear that this was not an inevitable outcome. Sweden was once a nuclear aspirant with an advanced weapons program, but just a few decades ago, Stockholm and Helsinki sought to keep nuclear weapons out of northern Europe. In the depths of the Cold War, Stockholm proved willing and capable of advancing ambitious, albeit inconsistent, goals when it came to nuclear weapons in Europe. Sweden’s history suggests that disarmament ideas—such as a Nordic nuclear weapon-free zone—were never completely written off, even if they are difficult to imagine in Europe today.

Pursuing Nordic disarmament. Calls for the establishment of a Nordic nuclear weapon-free zone (NWFZ) did not originate in Sweden but rather in neighboring Finland. Though Swedish Foreign Minister Östen Undén had, in 1961, already proposed the idea in a general manner, Finnish President Urho Kekkonen formally proposed it in 1963.

Earlier that year, Yugoslavia’s leader Josip Broz Tito had expressed his support for a Balkan NWFZ, which Kekkonen saw as strengthening the case for a Nordic zone. In an address on May 28, 1963, Kekkonen argued that the Nordic countries already constituted a de facto NWFZ, with no country officially pursuing or possessing any nuclear weapons.

While the Swedish government was officially supportive of nuclear disarmament and the creation of a Nordic zone, it was suspicious of Kekkonen’s proposal. Though Finns were more eager to join NATO than Swedes in 2022, during the Cold War Finland was in a delicate position and more likely to consider Moscow’s views than its Scandinavian neighbors were, due to its proximity to the Soviet Union. Initially, Sweden saw Kekkonen’s effort as a Soviet initiative, much to the surprise of Finnish civil servants. Swedish suspicions were not wholly unfounded; a year earlier, the Soviet ambassador to Finland visited the Finnish president’s residence and recommended such an undertaking. Though Sweden was not actively pursuing nuclear weapons, its leadership wished to preserve the freedom to acquire them later.

By the late 1970s, Swedish disarmament efforts became more wide-ranging. In November 1978, Swedish Foreign Minister (and future UN weapons inspector as well as head of the International Atomic Energy Agency) Hans Blix aimed to widen the scope of the proposed NWFZ by including the Baltic Sea. In January 1983, the Swedish government even went so far as to propose that the zone also include the border between the Western and socialist states, extending 150 kilometers on each side of the border.

While the suggestion of incorporating the Baltic Sea was rejected at the time, the Soviets accepted the idea of a buffer zone and even suggested that it be wider, in the range of 250 to 300 kilometers on each side. In the United States, however, the idea went nowhere. Joseph Nye, who served as Deputy Under Secretary of State for Security Assistance, Science, and Technology from 1977 to 1979, later noted that there wasn’t much discussion of a Nordic nuclear weapon-free zone. Fast forward a few decades, and the proposal is now beyond dead.

While Sweden had been supportive of a NWFZ in general, its support was inconsistent, especially in the 1980s. . For example, in June 1983, Prime Minister Olof Palme told the North Atlantic Assembly that adjacent areas (such as the Baltic Sea) should be included, but by December of that year, in a speech in Finland, Palme failed to mention that as a requirement. Similarly, in November 1983, Swedish Foreign Minister Lennart Bodström said that a zone could be created through a joint declaration by four Nordic countries accompanied by a pledge from outside powers not to use nuclear weapons against the Nordic states, only to revise this in December by requiring the denuclearization of the Baltic region as well. Support for a NWFZ was partially informed by extra-Nordic conduct, such as the deployment of intermediate-range nuclear missiles in the United Kingdom and West Germany in 1983.

The Soviet perspective. Though Swedish military concerns during the Cold War, such as the initial call for nuclear weapons, were primarily shaped by the potential threat from the East, advocacy for nuclear disarmament contributed to what can be described as a generally friendly relationship between Stockholm and Moscow, especially when compared with contemporary East-West ties.

The prospect for nuclear disarmament in Sweden’s adjacent areas improved throughout the 1980s, with the United States and the Soviet Union negotiating and ultimately signing the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. Whereas Moscow had previously rejected the proposal for the creation of a Baltic Sea NWFZ, it reversed itself by 1990. Early that year, Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze sent a letter to his Swedish counterpart, Sten Andersson, calling for the establishment of a nuclear weapon-free Baltic Sea. In his letter Shevardnadze expressed his belief that “an agreement on this issue would be able to be worked out at a conference between diplomatic and military experts from the aforementioned states.”

The failure to establish such a NWFZ in the Baltic Sea region was likely outside Sweden’s control. According to Thomas Graham Jr., a senior diplomat who was part of the American delegation in every major nonproliferation and international arms control negotiation between 1970 and 1997, “America never thought it was very likely such a [Nordic Nuclear Weapon-Free] Zone would be negotiated,” which would have been a practical precondition before the establishment of a Baltic Sea NWFZ. Graham identified Norway as a hindrance, arguing that “[t]hough Norway is nuclear weapon-free it would not go against NATO on this.”

In the 2020s, however, it is Sweden and Finland that have arguably become the biggest advocates of US nuclear weapons.

Swedish marginalization. The middle of the Cold War was arguably the period during which Sweden had its most prominent role in advancing international nuclear arms control. However, by the 1980s the country was increasingly marginalized when it came to the reduction of global nuclear stockpiles. This was not a product of Sweden’s own doing but was due to the emergence of increasingly successful US-Soviet negotiations and treaties. The bilateral nature of the relationship between the two superpowers had the unintended effect of minimizing any potential influence that the Swedes could have.

According to Graham, “in the SALT/START negotiations on strategic arms between the United States and the Soviet Union, Sweden was simply not relevant.” The cause for this was the very factor that sparked Sweden’s interest in nuclear disarmament in the first place, namely its neutrality. “It was not a party to the negotiations nor an ally of one of the negotiating parties.”

This marginalization stands in contrast to international conferences within the framework of the United Nations, where American diplomats viewed Sweden as a disarmament activist state. Therefore, it is not surprising that Swedish officials made common cause with the Non-Aligned Movement of developing countries that existed outside the US-Soviet rivalry, despite not being a formal member of the organization. Swedish relevance depended on its ability to exert influence over other non-nuclear states, even after the Cold War ended.

The multilateral nature of the UN Conference of the Committee on Disarmament enhanced Swedish relevance. One way Sweden exerted its influence was by advocating for procedural reforms to improve the Conference’s effectiveness. Calls for the abolition of the co-chairmanship governing the Conference effectively aligned Sweden with countries such as Yugoslavia, Mexico, and Romania. Lennart Eckerberg, who led Sweden’s disarmament delegation in Geneva, remarked that “[t]he Swedish delegation, for one, favors several such [procedural] changes” and that this “is, of course, not primarily a procedural question but a political one.”

Swedish marginalization was not exclusively a result of the Soviet-American talks but also of the two Cold War camps. This was true of NATO more so than the Warsaw Pact, with the latter tending to be more supportive of Swedish disarmament efforts. Just a few months before the signing of SALT I, Eckerberg expressed his lack of hope that NATO members would push for a nuclear test ban ahead of a scheduled visit by the Swedish foreign minister to Moscow. In contrast to Western states, Eastern bloc states tended to sympathize with the Swedish position.


Fluctuating influence. Due to its small size, Sweden struggled to stay relevant. It did not have the diplomatic assets or clout that larger countries, especially the two superpowers, possessed. In a report to the foreign ministry, Swedish diplomat Gustaf Hamilton noted in a 1976 report while serving in Geneva as part of the delegation to the Conference on Disarmament: “A weakness in Sweden’s conduct is that we do not have sufficient personnel resources to produce working papers and proposals and don’t always have time in advance to ensure support for us among interested delegations. We lack, in other words, the capacity to plan long-term due to the personnel situation.”

This concern was ever-present throughout the Cold War, with Swedish officials forced to balance resources in a manner that optimized both Swedish contribution and overall effectiveness. This explains, in part, why there was a consistent preference for multilateral approaches, as opposed to lobbying individual countries in purely bilateral ways. It also explains Sweden’s focus on approaches such as the development of seismological counterproliferation technology.

As a frontier state between East and West, Sweden was able to use its geopolitical relevance to promote not only disarmament but also a broader program of tension reduction. But with Sweden now formally a member of NATO, the political will to play a role similar to the one Sweden played in the Cold War is largely absent and hard to muster in the absence of formal neutrality. Nevertheless, the country’s history suggests that ideas like nuclear weapon-free zones, which today are impossible to imagine in Europe, were once salient.

December 31, 2024 Posted by | politics international | Leave a comment

Big tech, bigger lies

    by beyondnuclearinternational,  https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2024/11/10/big-tech-bigger-lies/

Microsoft, Google and Amazon are bragging they will use nuclear energy to power their energy needs, but it’s mainly hype or worse, writes M.V. Ramana.

In the last couple of months, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon, in that order, made announcements about using nuclear power for their energy needs. Describing nuclear energy using questionable adjectives like “reliable,” “safe,” “clean,” and “affordable,” all of which are belied by the technology’s seventy-year history, these tech behemoths were clearly interested in hyping up their environmental credentials and nuclear power, which is being kept alive mostly using public subsidies.

Both these business conglomerations—the nuclear industry and its friends and these ultra-wealthy corporations and their friends—have their own interests in such hype. In the aftermath of catastrophic accidents like Chernobyl and Fukushima, and in the face of its inability to demonstrate a safe solution to the radioactive wastes produced in all reactors, the nuclear industry has been using its political and economic clout to mount public relations campaigns to persuade the public that nuclear energy is an environmentally friendly source of power.

Tech giants like Microsoft, Amazon, and Google, too, have attempted to convince the public they genuinely cared for the environment and really wanted to do their bit to mitigate climate change. In 2020, for example, Amazon pledged to reach net zero by 2040. Google went one better when its CEO declared that “Google is aiming to run our business on carbon-free energy everywhere, at all times” by 2030. Not that they are on any actual trajectory to meeting these targets.

Why are they making such announcements?

Greenwashing environmental impacts

The reasons underlying these companies investing in such PR campaigns is not hard to discern. There is growing awareness of the tremendous environmental impacts of the insatiable appetite for data from these companies, as well as the threat they pose to already inadequate efforts to mitigate climate change. 

Earlier this year, the Wall Street company Morgan Stanley estimated that data centers will “produce about 2.5 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions through the end of the decade”. Climate scientists have warned that unless global emissions decline sharply by 2030, we are unlikely to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius, a widely shared target. Even without the additional carbon dioxide emitted into the air as a result of data centers and their energy demand, the gap between current emissions and what is required is yawning.

But it is not just the climate. As calculated by a group of academic researchers, the exorbitant amounts of water required in the United States “to operate data centers, both directly for liquid cooling and indirectly to produce electricity” contribute to water scarcity in many parts of the country. This is the case elsewhere, too, and communities in countries ranging from Ireland to Spain to Chile are fighting plans to site data centers.

Then, there are the indirect impacts on the climate. Greenpeace documented, for example, that “Microsoft, Google, and Amazon all have connections to some of the world’s dirtiest oil companies for the explicit purpose of getting more oil and gas out of the ground and onto the market faster and cheaper.” In other words, the business models adopted by these tech behemoths depend on fossil fuels being used for longer and in greater quantities.

In addition to the increasing awareness about the impacts of data centers, one more possible reason for cloud companies to become interested in nuclear power might be what happened to cryptocurrency companies. Earlier this decade, these companies, too, found themselves getting a lot of bad publicity due to their energy demands and resulting emissions. Even Elon Musk, not exactly known as an environmentalist, talked about the “great cost to the environment” from cryptocurrency.

The environmental impacts of cryptocurrency played some part in efforts to regulate these. In September 2022, the White House put out a fact sheet on the climate and energy implications of Crypto-assets, highlighting President Biden’s executive order that called on these companies to reduce harmful climate impacts and environmental pollution. China even went as far as to banning cryptocurrency, and its aspirations to reducing its carbon emissions was one factor in this decision.

Crypto bros, for their part, did what cloud companies are doing now: make announcements about using nuclear power. Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are now following that strategy to pretend to be good citizens. However, the nuclear industry has its reasons for welcoming these announcements and playing them up.

The state of nuclear power

Strange as it might seem to folks basing their perception of the health of the nuclear industry on mainstream media, that technology is actually in decline. The share of global electricity produced by nuclear reactors has decreased from 17.5% in 1996 to 9.15% in 2023, largely due to the high costs of and delays in building and operating nuclear reactors.

A good illustration is the Vogtle nuclear power plant in the state of Georgia. When the utility company building the reactor sought permission from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2011, it projected a total cost of $14 billion, and “in-service dates of 2016 and 2017” for the two units. The plant became operational only this year, after the second unit came online in March 2024, at a total cost of at least $36.85 billion.

Given this record, it is not surprising that there are no orders for any more nuclear plants.

As it has been in the past, the nuclear industry’s answer to this predicament is to advance the argument that new nuclear reactor designs would address all these concerns. But that has, yet again, proved not to be the case. In November 2023, the flagship project of NuScale, the small modular reactor design promoted as the leading one of its kind, collapsed because of high costs.

Supporters of nuclear power are now using another time-tested tactic to promote the technology: projecting that energy demand will grow so much that no other source of power will be able to meet these needs. For example, UK energy secretary Ed Davey resorted to this gambit in 2013 when he said that the Hinkley Point C nuclear plant was essential to “keep the lights on” in the country.

Likewise, when South Carolina Electric & Gas Company made its case to the state’s Public Service Commission about the need to build two AP1000 reactors at its V.C. Summer site—this project was subsequently abandoned after over $9 billion was spent—it forecast in its “2006 Integrated Resource Plan” that the company’s energy sales would increase by 22 percent between 2006 and 2016, and by nearly 30 percent by 2019.

This is the argument that the growth in data centres, propped up in part by the hype about generative artificial intelligence, has allowed proponents of nuclear energy to put forward. It remains to be seen whether this hype about generative AI actually materializes into a long-term sustainable business: see, for example, Ed Zitron’s meticulously documented argument for why OpenAI and Microsoft are simply burning billions of dollars and why their business model might “simply not be viable”.

In the case of the V.C. Summer project, South Carolina Electric & Gas found that its energy sales actually declined by 3 percent compared to 2006 by the time 2016 rolled around. Of course, that did not matter, because shareholders had already received over $2.5 billion in dividends and company executives had received millions of dollars in compensation, according to Nuclear Intelligence Weekly, a trade publication.

One wonders which executives and shareholders are going to receive a bounty from this round of nuclear hype.

What about emissions?

Will the investments in nuclear power by companies like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon help reduce emissions anytime soon?

The project expected to have the shortest timeline is the restart of the Three Mile Island Unit 1 reactor, which Constellation Energy projects will be ready in 2028. But if the history of reactor commissioning is anything to go by, that deadline will come and go without any power flowing from it.

Restarting a nuclear plant that has been shutdown has never been done before. In the case of the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant in California, which hasn’t been shut down but was slated for decommissioning in 2024-25 till Governor Gavin Newsom did a volte-face, the Chair of the Diablo Canyon Independent Safety Committee explained why doing so was very difficult: “so many different programs and projects and so on have been put in place over the last half a dozen years predicated on that closure in 2024-25 and each one of those would have to be evaluated and some of them are okay, and some of them won’t be and some are going to be a real stretch and some are going to cost money and some of them aren’t going to be able to be done maybe”.

The cost of keeping Diablo Canyon open has been estimated by the plant’s owner at $8.3 billion and by independent environmental groups at nearly $12 billion. There are no reliable cost estimates for reopening Three Mile Island, but Constellation Energy, the plant’s owner, is already seeking a taxpayer-subsidized loan that would likely save the company $122 million in borrowing costs.

One must also remember that Microsoft already announced an agreement with Helion Energy, a company backed by billionaire Peter Thiele, to get nuclear fusion power by 2028. The chances of that happening are slim at best. In 2021, Helion announced that it had raised $500 million to build its fusion generation facility that would demonstrate “net electricity production” in three years, i.e., “in 2024”. That hasn’t happened so far. But going back further, one can see a similar and unfulfilled claim from 2014: then, the company’s chief executive had told the Wall Street Journal that the company hoped that its product would generate more energy than it would use “in the next three years” (i.e., in 2017). It is quite likely that Microsoft’s decision-makers knew of how unlikely it is that Helion will be able to supply nuclear fusion power by 2028. The publicity value is the most likely reason for announcing an agreement with Helion.

What about the small modular nuclear reactor designs—X-energy and Kairos—that Amazon and Google are betting on? Don’t hold your breath.

X-energy is an example of a high-temperature gas-cooled reactor design that dates back to the 1940s. There have been four reactors based on similar concepts that were operated commercially, two in Germany and two in the United States, respectively, and test reactors in the United Kingdom, Japan, and China. Each of these reactors proved problematic, suffering a variety of failures and unplanned shutdowns. The latest reactor with a similar design was built in China. Its performance leaves much to be desired: within about a year of being connected to the grid, its power output was reduced by 25 percent of the design power capacity, and even at this lowered capacity, it operated in 2023 with a load factor of just 8.5 percent.

Kairos, on the other hand, will be challenged by its choice of molten salts as coolant. These are chemically corrosive, and decades of search have identified no materials that can survive for long periods in such an environment without losing their integrity. The one empirical example of a reactor that used molten salts dates back to the 1960s, and this experience proved very problematic, both when the reactor operated and in the half-century thereafter, because managing the radioactive wastes produced before 1970 continued to be challenging.

Simply throwing money will not overcome these problems that have to do with fundamental physics and chemistry.

Just a dangerous distraction

Although Amazon, Google, and Microsoft claim to be investing in nuclear energy to meet the needs of AI, the evidence suggests that their real motive is to greenwash themselves.

Their investments are small and completely inadequate with relation to how much is needed to build a reactor. But their investments are also very small compared to the bloated revenues of these corporations. So, from the viewpoint of top executives, investing in nuclear power must seem a cheap way to reduce bad publicity about their environmental footprints. Unfortunately, “cheap” for them does not translate to cheap for the rest of us, not to mention the burden to future generations of human beings from worsening climate change and, possibly, increased production of radioactive waste that will stay hazardous for hundreds of thousands of years.

Because nuclear power has been portrayed as clean and a solution to climate change, announcements about it serve as a flashy distraction to focus public attention on. Meanwhile, these companies continue to expand their use of water and draw on coal and especially natural gas plants for their electricity. This is the magician’s strategy: misdirecting the audience’s attention while the real trick happens elsewhere. Their talk about investing in nuclear power also distracts from the conversations we should be having about whether these data centers and generative AI are socially desirable in the first place.

There are many reasons to oppose and organize against the wealth and power exercised by these massive corporations, such as their appropriation of user data to engage in what has been described as surveillance capitalism, their contracts with the Pentagon, and their support for Israel’s genocide and apartheid. Their investment into nuclear technology, and more importantly, hyping it up, offers one more reason. It is also a chance to establish coalitions between groups involved in very different fights.

M. V. Ramana is the Simons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, University of British Columbia. His latest book is Nuclear Is Not The Solution. The Folly of Atomic Power In The Age Of Climate Change, available from Verso Books.

December 30, 2024 Posted by | technology | Leave a comment

Why tech giants such as Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Meta are betting big on nuclear power

Sat, Dec 28, Bradley Hoppenstein, CNBC

Data centers powering artificial intelligence and cloud computing are pushing energy demand and production to new limits. Global electricity use could rise as much as 75% by 2050, according to the U.S. Department of Energy, with the tech industry’s AI ambitions driving much of the surge.

Data centers powering AI and cloud computing could soon grow so large that they could use more electricity than entire cities.

As leaders in the AI race push for further technological advancements and deployment, many are finding their energy needs increasingly at odds with their sustainability goals.

“A new data center that needs the same amount of electricity as say, Chicago, cannot just build its way out of the problem unless they understand their power needs,” said Mark Nelson, managing director of Radiant Energy Group. “Those power needs. Steady, straight through, 100% power, 24 hours a day, 365,” he added.

After years of focusing on renewables, major tech companies are now turning to nuclear power for its ability to provide massive energy in a more efficient and sustainable fashion.

Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta are among the most recognizable names exploring or investing in nuclear power projects. Driven by the energy demands of their data centers and AI models, their announcements mark the beginning of an industrywide trend…………………. https://www.cnbc.com/2024/12/28/why-microsoft-amazon-google-and-meta-are-betting-on-nuclear-power.html

December 30, 2024 Posted by | ENERGY | Leave a comment

Gaza babies ‘freezing to death’ amid Israel’s inhumane blockade: UNRWA

Saturday, 28 December,  https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2024/12/28/739876/Gaza-babies-freezing-death-Gaza-Israel-blocakde

UNRWA is warning that more babies are losing their lives due to a severe temperature drop and lack of shelter in Gaza.

In the past week, at least four infants have died of hypothermia from low temperatures and a lack of warmth while living in tents in the besieged Strip.

On Friday, the head of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, Philippe Lazzarini, said in a message on X that Gaza babies “are freezing to death due to cold weather and a lack of shelter.”

“Blankets, mattresses, and other winter supplies have been stuck in the region for months waiting for approval to get into Gaza.”

Lazzarini once again called for an immediate ceasefire, urging “an immediate flow of much-needed basic supplies, including for winter.”

Such calls are apparently of no use within the international community given Israel’s relentless campaign of genocide in Gaza since October 2023.

Gaza health officials said on December 26 that a newborn baby died from the cold in a tent encampment in the refugee camp of al-Mawasi in southern Gaza.

According to Ahmed al-Farra, the head of pediatrics and obstetrics at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, staff in the neonatal ICU see at least five cases of hypothermia per day.

45,300 and counting. That is the number of Palestinians Israel has massacred in Gaza since October 7, 2023. The regime remains emboldened by the rock-solid support it receives from Washington.

Of that figure, more than 17,600 are children, according to Gaza health officials. As many as 17,000 children have been left unaccompanied or separated from their parents and caregivers.

UNICEF has said that babies are being “delivered into hell” in Gaza. 

December 30, 2024 Posted by | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel | Leave a comment

What didn’t happen in 2024 – Success on the ground and in court for the nuclear-free movement.

from Beyond Nuclear 30 Dec 24
For the anti-nuclear movement, success is often measured by what didn’t happen; what got delayed or stopped. These wins don’t necessarily make for an exciting story, but they are no less important.

When we delay, derail or prevent yet another dangerous, expensive and unnecessary nuclear project, it’s a result not only of our own persistence but also your steadfast support. A few of those “wins” in 2024 include:

Still no sign of SMRs! The much hyped and subsidized small modular reactors remain idle boasts on paper, with none built and no hope of any answering the climate crisis effectively or in time. We continue to promote the safer, faster, cheaper renewable energy alternatives.

Still no dumps in W. Texas and New Mexico! Our court battles continue as we support besieged communities in the Southwest who don’t want the country’s high-level radioactive reactor waste dumped where they live, supposedly as an “interim” measure but more likely permanently.

NRC busted on climate! License extension proceedings for currently operating reactors — out to 60 and even 80 years — have stalled as even a US Nuclear Regulatory Commission judge sided with our view that the agency is failing to consider the impact of the worsening climate crisis on a technology unsafe at any age.

There is much more to do in 2025 when we will continue to support community resistance and to face battles in court

December 30, 2024 Posted by | opposition to nuclear | Leave a comment

China sanctions US defense firms

 https://www.rt.com/news/610080-china-sanctions-us-defense-firms/ 27 Dec 24

Beijing has placed restrictions on Washington’s military assistance to Taiwan, the foreign ministry has said.

Beijing has imposed sanctions on seven US defense companies and their executives in response to Washington’s sale of arms to Taiwan in violation of the One-China principle, the Chinese Foreign Ministry announced on Friday.

The move comes after outgoing US President Joe Biden last week authorized a $571.3 million military aid package to Taiwan.

Washington’s actions “interfere in China’s internal affairs, and undermine China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry said as it announced the restrictions.

The companies targeted by the sanctions include Insitu Inc., Hudson Technologies Co., Saronic Technologies, Inc., Raytheon Canada, Raytheon Australia, Aerkomm Inc., and Oceaneering International Inc.

The ministry said “relevant senior executives” of the companies had also been blacklisted, without providing any names.

The sanctions will freeze “movable and immovable” assets belonging to US firms and their executives within China, and ban organizations and individuals in the country from trading or collaborating with them, the ministry stated.

The restrictions, which will contribute to already strained relations between Beijing and Washington, were announced after Biden approved a record $895 billion defense budget, which surpassed last year’s allocation by $9 billion.

The bill does not refer to Ukraine aid, however, it contains measures aimed at strengthening the US presence and defense capabilities in the Indo-Pacific region, primarily to “counter China.” Beijing has already condemned the bill, citing its “negative content on China” and attempts to play up the ‘China threat’ narrative. 

Beijing has repeatedly stressed that it considers the self-governing island of Taiwan to be an inalienable part of the country under the One-China principle. It has denounced Washington’s arms sales to Taipei, accusing the US of fomenting tensions over Taiwan.

December 30, 2024 Posted by | China, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Iranian lawmaker warns Israeli strike could push Tehran toward nuclear weapons

  https://www.iranintl.com/en/202412297185 29 De 24

An Iranian lawmaker backed Tehran’s plans to target Israel and warned that any Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities would legitimize Tehran advancing toward nuclear weapons development.

“If Israel conducts a military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities, it effectively grants us the permission to move toward developing nuclear weapons,” Ahmad Bakhshayesh Ardestani, a member of the National Security and Foreign Policy Committee of Iran’s parliament, told Didban news website in Tehran.

December 30, 2024 Posted by | Iran, Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

High tide for Holtec

The study — Model-Based Study of Near-Surface Transport in and around Cape Cod Bay, Its Seasonal Variability, and Response to Wind — found that contrary to Holtec’s claims, the wastewater would not immediately disperse into the ocean, but would linger potentially for months, and wash up on the shores of area communities.

  by beyondnuclearinternational, Linda Pentz Gunter

Tritium dumped into Cape Cod Bay will wash back onto community shores, says a new report

Holtec, the company that has purchased a number of permanently closed nuclear reactors in order to decommission them, has encountered yet another obstacle to its “dilution is the solution to pollution” plans.

One of the reactor sites Holtec has taken over is Pilgrim in Plymouth, Massachusetts, on the Cape Cod Bay, which closed permanently in 2019. Holtec’s not-so-little problem there is what do with what started out as at least 1.1 million gallons of radioactively contaminated wastewater stored at the site. 

The company first suggested it would simply release the wastewater into Cape Cod Bay, assuring residents and the immediately alarmed fishing community not to worry because (a) the wastewater isn’t dangerous anyway (b) everyone does this all the time at reactor sites and no one has gotten sick so far and (c) it would quickly disperse into the wider ocean. Holtec chose this disposal method for one reason alone: it is the cheapest.

The proposal was vigorously fought by citizens, the state, and powerful Massachusetts Democrat, Senator Ed Markey. The state of Massachusetts effectively banned the discharge option, a decision Holtec is contesting. 

That Final Determination to Deny Application to Modify a Massachusetts Permit to Discharge Pollutants to Surface Waters was issued by the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection Division of Watershed Management on July 18, 2024. A month later, Holtec launched its appeal to reverse the decision, something that could take months or longer to find its way to court.

In the meantime, help has come from a new quarter in the form of an in-depth study by the prestigious Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, also, as it happens, based on the Massachusetts shoreline, near Falmouth.

The study — Model-Based Study of Near-Surface Transport in and around Cape Cod Bay, Its Seasonal Variability, and Response to Wind — found that contrary to Holtec’s claims, the wastewater would not immediately disperse into the ocean, but would linger potentially for months, and wash up on the shores of area communities.

“We found virtually no out-of-the-Bay transport in winter and fall and slightly larger, but still low, probability of some of the plume exiting the Bay in spring and summer,” said Woods Hole study leader and physical oceanographer, Irina Rypina.

The radioactively contaminated wastewater stored at Pilgrim is contaminated with what Holtec and the Massachusetts Department of Public Health have described as “four gamma emitters —Manganese-54, Cobalt-60, Zinc-65 and Cesium-137 along with Tritium, a beta radiation emitter”. 

While the Woods Hole Study did not look at the health outcomes of releasing the radioactive water into Cape Cod Bay — only at the plume pathway — there are plenty of data that demonstrate the harmful effects of these radioisotopes on human health, especially women and children…………………………………………………….. https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2024/12/29/high-tide-for-holtec/

December 30, 2024 Posted by | environment, radiation, USA | Leave a comment

How Ukraine is Helping the HTS Militants Who Overthrew Assad

Scheerpost, December 29, 2024 , By Stavroula Pabst / Responsible Statecraft

As Islamist, al-Qaida-linked group Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS) overruns Syria amid President Assad’s sudden ouster, evidence suggesting Ukraine has assisted the group’s triumph continues to mount.

Namely, the Washington Post reported Tuesday that Ukraine sent 150 first-person-view drones and 20 drone operators to Idlib about a month ago.

The New York Times reported earlier this month, moreover, that Ukraine and HTS were coordinating efforts including “countering Russian misinformation and providing medical assistance.” The reporting also highlighted Ukrainian intelligence head Kyrylo Budanov’s repeated suggestions that Ukraine would target its enemy Russia internationally.

Washington Post columnist David Ignatius mused that Ukraine’s intentions for assisting HTS were obvious, writing that the war-torn nation was looking for other ways to “bloody Russia’s nose and undermine its clients.” In turn, a source told the New York Times that the HTS offensive in Syria was likewise timed in part to strike a blow against mutual enemy Russia.

………………………………………. “Ukraine’s alleged assistance to HTS forces is of limited military significance insofar as the SAA was inherently unprepared to resist the rebel offensive,” said Dr. Mark Episkopos, Quincy Institute Research Fellow and Adjunct Professor of History at Marymount University.

“But it is part of Kyiv’s broader effort to court Western support for its NATO accession bid by demonstrating to the US and other stakeholders its effectiveness in countering Russian interests around the world.” https://scheerpost.com/2024/12/29/how-ukraine-is-helping-the-hts-militants-who-overthrew-assad/

December 30, 2024 Posted by | politics international, Ukraine | Leave a comment

US-Funded Group Removes Report Warning of Famine in North Gaza After Complaint From US Ambassador

 https://news.antiwar.com/2024/12/26/us-funded-group-removes-report-warning-of-famine-in-north-gaza-after-complaint-from-us-ambassador/

In a statement denouncing the report, the US ambassador to Israel acknowledged Israel’s ethnic cleansing campaign in northern Gazaby Dave DeCamp December 26, 2024

The Famine Early Warning Systems Network, a project funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), has removed a report from its website that warned it was “highly likely” famine is occurring in northern Gaza after a complaint by the US ambassador to Israel.

The report noted that Israel has imposed a “near-total blockade of humanitarian and commercial food supplies” on the North Gaza Governorate, which includes the cities of Beit Lahia, Beit Hanoun, and Jabalia. The report said 65,000 to 75,000 civilians remained in the area, “including civilians who have been unable to or prevented from evacuating.”

US Ambassador Jack Lew issued a statement slamming the report, saying there are far fewer civilians in those areas, an acknowledgment of the ethnic cleansing campaign that Israel has been conducting in northern Gaza since early October.

“The report issued today on Gaza by FEWS NET relies on data that is outdated and inaccurate,” Lew said. He claimed that there are somewhere between 7,000 and 15,000 civilians in the North Gaza Governorate.

“At a time when inaccurate information is causing confusion and accusations, it is irresponsible to issue a report like this,” the US ambassador said.

FEWS Net said it used UN numbers from mid-November and that it would update its report with the latest figures. But the group did not withdraw its assessment that famine was likely occurring in north Gaza.

Last month, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) said there was a strong likelihood famine was occurring in north Gaza.

Lew also claimed that the US has worked to ensure more humanitarian access in north Gaza, but the area has been under a total siege, and only 12 aid trucks have been able to make deliveries since October 6. Israel has forcibly displaced civilians from the area under the threat of death, either by shooting, bombing, or starvation, following an outline known as the “general’s plan.”

December 30, 2024 Posted by | Gaza, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

Complex plan for dismantling UK’s 27 dead, rusting, radioactive nuclear submarines.

Fife Council approve Babcock plans for Rosyth Dockyard

28th December, By Ally McRoberts

A NEW secure compound for the Submarine Dismantling Project at Rosyth Dockyard has been given the green light by Fife Council.

Babcock International had sought a certificate of lawfulness to change the use of a car park on Keith Road – with the loss of 86 spaces – and build a storage facility on it.

The much-delayed project aims to dismantle seven old nuclear subs at Rosyth, remove the radioactive waste and recycle as much of the metal as they can into “tin cans and razors”.

The new facility is needed for phases three and four and will be enclosed by three metres high walls, with new gates and drainage infrastructure.

 In the application it was described as a laydown area and contractors’ compound that will be roughly 45 metres by 35 metres in size, and take up around half an acre of
land close to dry dock number three.

Swiftsure is the first vessel being disposed of at Rosyth and it’s scheduled to be recycled by 2026. In total, the project will dispose of 27 nuclear subs. Seven have been laid up at
Rosyth for decades – Dreadnought has been there so long, since 1980, that
most of the low-level radiation has “disappeared naturally” – and there are
15 at Devonport in Plymouth. Five are still in service with the Royal Navy.
The UK Government said earlier this year that the project has already
invested more than £200 million into the dockyard and the wider UK supply
chain and sustains more than 500 jobs.

 Dunfermline Press 27th Dec 2024
https://www.dunfermlinepress.com/news/24820505.fife-council-approve-babcock-plans-rosyth-dockyard/

December 30, 2024 Posted by | decommission reactor, UK, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Fault puts nuclear power station offline over Christmas

 A reactor at a nuclear power station went offline over Christmas, an
energy provider has confirmed. EDF Energy said the outage at Heysham 2
power station, near Morecambe, on Monday was caused by an issue with the
high voltage transmission system run by National Grid. National Grid
confirmed there was a fault at one of its remote substations that was at
about the time Heysham 2 tripped. EDF said it worked with National Grid
over the Christmas period to fix the issue and safely return the reactor to
service.

 BBC 28th Dec 2024
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckgx9p1qll4o

December 30, 2024 Posted by | business and costs, UK | Leave a comment

Scientists should break the ice

once the ice sheet slides into the ocean, there is no putting it back, even if all carbon emissions ended that day. The ice-sheet holds enough water to raise sea levels by 58 metres. Even if only half of it breaks off, it will be just a waiting game over just a few years for the ice to melt and for us to watch every coastal city on earth to be inundated. In our lifetime.

once the ice sheet slides into the ocean, there is no putting it back, even if all carbon emissions ended that day. The ice-sheet holds enough water to raise sea levels by 58 metres. Even if only half of it breaks off, it will be just a waiting game over just a few years for the ice to melt and for us to watch every coastal city on earth to be inundated. In our lifetime.

Crispin Hull, December 29, 2024

The 2024 award for the biggest disjoin between the importance of a story and the coverage it got must surely go to the science briefing on Antarctica and Sea-Level Rise published by the Australian Antarctic Program Partnership and the ARC Australian Centre for Excellence in Antarctic Science.

It came out in September. The ABC had some coverage, but it seemed to miss some essential points.

Here is what the new science tells us and how it is different from the older science.

The older science tells us that the amount of sea ice in Antarctica is shrinking, but not as badly as in the Arctic. Sea ice expands and contracts quite quickly according to air and sea temperature. So, a gradual reduction in sea ice will mean a gradual and comparatively small rise in sea levels.

This science should be moderately alarming, but the misinformationists in the fossil fuel industry can bat away public fears by saying not much is happening here and it will not happen in your lifetime, so carry on as usual.

This is standard stuff from fossil misinformationists: climate change is not happening, but if it is happening it is part of natural geologic forces and has nothing to do with human-generated carbon, and even if it is caused by human-generated carbon we can develop technologies to capture the carbon and safely store it away.

In short, they base their facts on their desired conclusion that they can continue to make profits from the emission of carbon until ecosystems and economies collapse. When it is too late.

Coming back to Antarctica, earlier science suggested that sea-ice contraction could be reversed if temperatures came down a bit. As it happens sea-ice is an important reflector of solar rays (and heat). Without the sea-ice you have dark ocean which absorbs the rays and increases the heat of the ocean. Nonetheless, it is still a probably reversible process.

Enter the new research. This is about the eastern Antarctic icesheet. Hitherto, this has given climate scientists much less cause for concern. This is because the eastern ice sheet has built up over land. It is anchored.

Unlike sea-ice it is not vulnerable to warmer water melting it.

Picture the land mass and a big thick ice sheet over it. The sea nibbles at the edge and even if the sea is a bit warmer it does not melt much ice. This is not like sea-ice where the warmer water is all around it melting it quickly. So, hitherto scientists have taken some climate solace in the fact that so much ice is safely tied up in the eastern Antarctic ice-sheet (more than 60 per cent of the world’s fresh water) and so will give us more time to slow and reverse the warming of the planet.

Enter the new research. Remove the image of a lump of land mass. Rather picture that the land mass has been forced down by the weight of the ice – heavier at the middle of the land mass and lighter at the edge. 

The new science tells us that much of the eastern Antarctic ice-sheet is grounded below sea level. So, one the warmer sea waters get under it, the whole sheet becomes unstable and can slide into the ocean. And even if temperatures are made to fall, the tipping point would have been reached – the warmer sea would have run under the massive ice-sheet, undermining it and making its slide into the ocean inevitable.

And once the ice sheet slides into the ocean, there is no putting it back, even if all carbon emissions ended that day. The ice-sheet holds enough water to raise sea levels by 58 metres. Even if only half of it breaks off, it will be just a waiting game over just a few years for the ice to melt and for us to watch every coastal city on earth to be inundated. In our lifetime.

Once the ice sheet hits the ocean, it is the end of civilisation as we know it.

The ice cannot be put back.

The greater the potential damage the more you should do about it, even if you think the risk is small. This is why people go to a lot of effort to make their houses less exposed to bushfires and cyclones.

It may be that some billionaires might imagine they could set up doomsday retreats to avoid death, injury, and discomfort. They are dreaming. In those circumstances money means nothing and the profit-driven selfishness that drives unnecessarily extending the use of fossil fuel will be brushed aside by the maniac selfishness of those on a desperate if doomed survival mission.

Scientists must change stop their subdued, cautious approach to reporting climate change. It is understandable because scientists do not want to cause panic or unnecessary alarm. But the approach has just given the fossil industry endless free kicks. It is time for alarm and measured panic.

Scientists should stop being scared of publishing scary material in a scary way. It is time to tell people the reality of the biggest security, economic, and existential threat to humans on earth………………………. more http://www.crispinhull.com.au/2024/12/29/scientists-should-break-the-ice/?utm_source=mailpoet&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=crispin-hull-column

December 30, 2024 Posted by | ANTARCTICA, climate change | Leave a comment

Israel Is Killing Civilians In Gaza On Purpose, And It’s Not Even Debatable.

Caitlin Johnstone, Dec 27, 2024

Just so we’re all clear, it is a fully established fact that the IDF is directly, deliberately killing civilians in Gaza. There was a time in the early days of the genocide when this could be disputed, but that is no longer true. The facts are in and the case is closed. It’s happening.

Israeli soldiers are telling the press that they’ve been knowingly killing civilians and then falsely categorizing them as terrorists afterward. Countless doctors have testified to routinely encountering dead and wounded children who’ve been shot in the head by Israeli snipers. Israeli media reports have revealed that the IDF is intentionally targeting civilian infrastructure and using AI systems to specifically target suspected Hamas members when they are at home with their families instead of out on the battlefield.

The debate is over. The “human shields” argument has been completely, thoroughly debunked. If you still deny that this is happening, its because your worldview is so false that it requires you to deny facts and reality.

❖

We were fed lies about what happened on October 7. We were fed lies about the Israeli abuses which led to October 7. We’ve been fed lies about what’s been done for the last 15 months under the justification of October 7. And yet Israel’s defenders still expect to be taken seriously when they babble about October 7 in response to criticisms of Israel’s actions.

It doesn’t have to be this way. We’re fed mountains of stories by the rich and powerful explaining why things must remain as they are — but they are only stories.

Every sociopolitical status quo throughout history has had power-serving narratives explaining why things are as they are and justifying why the people in charge live so much more comfortably than the ordinary folks doing the real work in this world. People used to be told that kings received their authority directly from God, and were therefore better and more worthy than the unwashed masses. Today we have different rulers with different narratives justifying their rule and explaining why vast inequality is fine and good, but those narratives are exactly as fictional as the old stories about the divine right of kings.

Today we are trained to believe that the plutocrats who rule our society attained their vast fortunes through hard work and clever innovation, and are entitled to every penny because they are the most productive members of our society. Just as the peasants of old were taught about the divine right of kings, we are taught that capitalism is the most fair and equitable of all possible systems and that the US-led world order ensures that freedom and democracy will be protected and promoted for the benefit of all.

These are all made-up stories, no truer than the story that monarchs were imbued with magical king powers by an invisible deity because their blood was special. But they are treated as serious facts by those who are responsible for training us how to think, and by those who swallow this indoctrination.

In reality we can change how things are whenever we want, and there’s no good reason not to. There are a whole lot more of us than there are of our rulers, and the oligarchs and empire managers who currently hold the steering wheel are destroying our biosphere while increasing inequality and exploitation and pushing us toward nuclear war on multiple fronts.

We have the ability to wrest that steering wheel away from them any time enough of us work up the will to do so. All the stories to the contrary we might believe are just fictional thought-fluff that our rulers put in our minds for their own benefit.

❖

There’s nothing wrong with being politically homeless at this point in history. Humanity as a whole is still wildly confused and dysfunctional in this particular slice of spacetime, and even the very best political factions are dominated by highly neurotic people who take no responsibility for their psychological state and internal clarity. If you’ve found a political party or faction you trust then that’s great, but if you haven’t then it is perfectly fine to stand as an individual while throwing your support behind worthy causes and movements on a case-by-case basis as they emerge without permanently hitching yourself to anyone else’s wagon.

We’ve still got a long way to go in maturing as a species, and it might be a while before a unified political faction arises that you can trust to consistently move in the highest interest.

December 29, 2024 Posted by | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel | Leave a comment

Another expert report finds Israel is committing genocide. The West yawns 

“Like in every other case of genocide in history, right now we have mass denial. Both here in Israel and around the world.”

a genocidal view widely shared in Israel, that “there are no innocents in Gaza”. Even Israel’s supposedly liberal President Isaac Herzog has said as much.

But like everything about this genocide, those accounts made no impact on the western political and media consensus. Nothing has stuck, even when it is the soldiers themselves documenting their atrocities, and even when it is Israeli Holocaust experts concluding that these crimes amount to genocide.

How is this permanent condition of mass denial possible? There is nothing normal or natural about it. The denial is being actively and furiously manufactured.

Nearly 15 months on, the Gaza genocide has become entirely normal, it has become just another minor, routine news item to be buried on the inside pages.

Jonathan Cook, 24 December 2024 ,  https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/gaza-israel-another-expert-report-committing-genocide-west-yawns

Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, and Medecins Sans Frontieres are all agreed. But the Gaza genocide is now just another routine news item, buried on the inside pages.

hree separate reports published this month by leading international human rights and medical groups have detailed the same horrifying story: that Israel is well advanced in its genocide of the Palestinian population in Gaza.

Or, to be more accurate, they have confirmed what was already patently clear: that, for the past 14 months, Israel has been slaughtering tens of thousands of Palestinians with indiscriminate munitions, while at the same time gradually starving the survivors to death and denying them access to medical care.

Genocides can happen with gas chambers. Or with machetes. Or they can be carried out with 2,000lb bombs and aid blockades. Genocides rarely look the same. But they are all designed to arrive at the same endpoint: the elimination of a people.

Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) agree that Israel is striving for extermination. It has not hidden its intent, and that intent is confirmed by its actions on the ground. 

Only the wilfully blind, which includes western politicians and their media, are still in denial. But worse than denial, they continue to actively collude in this, the ultimate crime against humanity, by supplying Israel with the weapons, intelligence and diplomatic cover it needs for the extermination.

Last week, MSF issued its report, titled Life in the Death Trap That is Gaza, concluding that Israel was intentionally “unravelling the fabric of society”.

The medical charity observed: “The violence unleashed by Israeli forces has caused physical and mental damage on a scale that would overwhelm any functioning health system, let alone one already decimated by a crushing offensive and a 17-year-long blockade [by Israel].” 

MSF added: “Even if the offensive ended today, its long-term impact would be unprecedented, given the scale of the destruction.”

Rebuilding the society and dealing with the health consequences will “span generations”. 

Intention proven

MSF’s findings followed hot on the heels of an 185-page report by Human Rights Watch, which concluded that Israel was committing “acts of genocide”.

The organisation limited its focus to one Israeli policy: its systematic effort to deprive the population of access to water – a clear measure of intentionality, the critical yardstick for judging whether mass killing has crossed into genocide.

At a news conference, Lama Fakih, HRW’s Middle East director, said their research had proved Israel was “intentionally killing Palestinians in Gaza by denying them the water that they need to survive”.

Israel had done so in four coordinated moves. It had blocked pipelines supplying water from outside Gaza. It had then cut off power to run the pumps that Gaza’s own supplies from wells and desalination plants depended on.

Next, it had destroyed the solar panels that were the backup to deal with such power cuts. And finally, it had killed crews trying to repair the supply system and aid agency staff trying to bring in water supplies.

“This is a comprehensive policy preventing people from getting any water,” HRW’s acting Israel and Palestine director, Bill Van Esveld, concluded. He added that the group had made “a very clear finding of extermination”.

‘Pattern of conduct’

HRW echoed a much wider-ranging report by Amnesty International, the world’s best-known international human rights organisation. 

In a 296-page report published in early December, Amnesty concluded that Israel had been “brazenly, continuously” committing genocide in Gaza – or “unleashing hell” as the organisation phrased it more graphically.

The period of Amnesty’s research ended in July, five months ago. Since then, Israel has further intensified its destruction of northern Gaza to drive out the population. 

Nonetheless, Amnesty described a “pattern of conduct” in which Israel had deliberately obstructed aid and power supplies, and detonated so much explosive power on the tiny enclave – equivalent to more than two nuclear bombs – that water, sanitation, food and healthcare systems had collapsed.

The scale of the attack, it noted, had caused death and destruction at a speed and level unmatched in any other 21st-century conflict.

Budour Hassan, Amnesty’s researcher for Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, said Israel’s actions went beyond the individual war crimes associated with conflicts: “This is something deeper.”

Agreeing with major Holocaust and genocide scholars, Amnesty concluded that the high bar needed to prove genocidal intent in law was crossed last May when Israel began destroying Rafah, the area in southern Gaza that it had herded Palestinian civilians into as a supposedly “safe zone”.

Israel had been warned not to attack Rafah by the world’s highest court, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), but went ahead anyway. 

‘Mass denial’

For some time, leading Holocaust and genocide scholars – among them Israelis – have been speaking up to warn not only that a genocide is unfolding, but that it is nearing completion.

Last week, Omer Bartov even managed to get his message out on CNN. He told Christiane Amanpour that Israel was carrying out “a war of annihilation” on the Gaza Strip. “What the IDF [Israeli military] is doing there is destroying Gaza,” he said.

Amos Goldberg, another Israeli Holocaust expert, noted that Raphael Lemkin, a Jewish-Polish scholar who coined the term “genocide”, described its two phases.

“The first is the destruction of the annihilated group and the second is what he called ‘imposition of the national pattern’ of the perpetrator. We are now witnessing the second phase as Israel prepares ethnically cleansed areas for Israeli settlements.”

Goldberg added: “Like in every other case of genocide in history, right now we have mass denial. Both here in Israel and around the world.”

Bartov’s invitation by CNN appeared to have been provoked by an article in Haaretz, Israel’s most liberal newspaper. It published last week testimonies from Israeli combat soldiers, in which they described committing and witnessing war crimes in Gaza. They paint a picture of systematic erasure that, even from their limited perspective, looks ominously like genocide.  

The soldiers describe shooting dead anyone who moves inside undeclared so-called “kill zones”, even children, and then claiming them to be “terrorists”. The dead are left to be eaten by packs of dogs.

The only words one Israeli reservist found to describe Israel’s repeated and intentional killing of children in Gaza was “pure evil”. 

According to a senior reserve commander recently returned from the enclave, the Israeli army has created “a lawless space where human life holds no value”.

Another says units compete to see who can kill the greater number of Palestinians, indifferent to whether they are Hamas fighters or civilians.

Others describe these units as operating like “independent militias”, unrestrained by military protocols.

‘Everyone is a terrorist’

How the Israeli army implemented the Gaza genocide is alluded to in the Haaretz article. After the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023, the military leadership devolved normally centralised decision-making to local field commanders.

Many of those commanders live in the most religiously extreme of the illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Not only are they Jewish supremacists, but they follow rabbis who believe all Palestinians, even babies, pose a threat to the Jewish people and must be exterminated.

Notoriously, a group of influential settler rabbis formalised their genocidal teachings into a book called The King’s Torah. 

One senior commander identified by Haaretz is Brigadier General Yehuda Vach, a settler from Kiryat Arba, possibly the most extreme of all Israel’s West Bank settlements.

For many years, Vach headed the military’s officers training school, passing on his extreme views to a new generation of officers, presumably some of whom are now making decisions in Gaza.

Today, he heads Division 252, in which many of the soldiers who spoke to Haaretz have served.

One of his officers recounted how, after Hamas’ military leader Yahya Sinwar was killed in October, Vach held an official meeting to determine what to do with his body. He wanted to strip Sinwar’s corpse naked, put it in a public square, dismember it and pour sewage over the remains.

In an address to soldiers, he is reported to have echoed a genocidal view widely shared in Israel, that “there are no innocents in Gaza”. Even Israel’s supposedly liberal President Isaac Herzog has said as much.

But according to one officer, Vach has made this view an “operational doctrine”.

Vach’s view of Palestinians is that “everyone’s a terrorist”. And that means, given Israel’s current, explicit aims in Gaza, everyone must be killed.

Nothing sticks

None of this should surprise us. Israeli leaders from the very start announced their genocidal intent. And more than a year ago, Israeli soldiers serving in Gaza began telling us of the systematic nature of Israel’s war crimes.

But like everything about this genocide, those accounts made no impact on the western political and media consensus. Nothing has stuck, even when it is the soldiers themselves documenting their atrocities, and even when it is Israeli Holocaust experts concluding that these crimes amount to genocide.

It has been nearly a year since the ICJ, comprising more than a dozen internationally respected judges, decided that a “plausible” case had been made that Israel was carrying out a genocide in Gaza.

The judiciary is amongst the most conservative of professions.

The situation in Gaza is incalculably worse than it was last January when the court issued its ruling.

But the wheels of justice are required to turn slowly, even though Gaza does not have time on its side.

How is this permanent condition of mass denial possible? There is nothing normal or natural about it. The denial is being actively and furiously manufactured.

Only because we live in a world where billionaires own our politicians and media do we need courts and human rights groups to confirm what we can already see quite clearly being live-streamed to our devices.

Only because we live in a world owned by billionaires do those same courts and rights organisations spend long months weighing the evidence to protect themselves from the inevitable backlash of smears aimed at discrediting their work.

And only because we live in a world owned by billionaires is it possible, even after all those delays, for our politicians and media to ignore the findings and carry on as before.

The system is rigged to favour the imperial hub of the United States and its client states.

If you are an African dictator, or an official enemy of the so-called West, the most minimal evidence suffices to prove your guilt.

If you are under the protection of the US godfather, no amount of evidence will ever be enough to put you behind bars.

It is known as realpolitik.

Always another story

For many months, the western media’s role has been to gaslight us by pretending the genocide is something else.

First, the mass slaughter of Palestinians was presented simply as a natural desire by Israel to eliminate “terrorism” on its doorstep following the Hamas attack of 7 October 2023.

It was chiefly a story of Israeli “self-defence” that conveniently overlooked the preceding decades in which Israel had driven Palestinians off their land, either out of their homeland entirely or into ghettoes, then colonised the land illegally with apartheid-style Jewish settlements, and subjected the Palestinian ghettoes to brutal Israeli military rule.

In the coverage after 7 October, the Palestinians – long the victims of an illegal occupation – were viewed as squarely to blame for their own suffering. To suggest anything else – to worry that a genocide was unfolding – was a sure sign of antisemitism.

Then, as the slaughter intensified – as Gaza was levelled, hospitals wrecked, the population collectively punished with an aid blockade – the official story faltered.

So a new narrative was advanced: of international efforts to reach a ceasefire ending “the cycle of violence”, of the focus on securing the release of the hostages, of Hamas intransigence.

We were back to the familiar framework of an intractable conflict, in which both sides were to blame – though, of course, the Palestinians more so.

Now, as it becomes impossible to continue pretending that Israel wants peace, to ignore the fact that it is expanding the slaughter, not reining it in, the media strategy has shifted once again.

As the genocide reaches its “final stage” – as the Israeli Holocaust scholars Omer Bartov and Amos Goldberg warn – the media have largely lost interest. If there is no way to both-sides the genocide, then it must be disappeared.

And in media-land, there is always another story that can be promoted. There will always be another front-page lead rather than the most disturbing one of all, in which western leaders and the media are full participants in the live-streamed extermination of a people.

BBC buries the news

That is the context for understanding the media’s collective yawn as the three genocide reports dropped one after another this month.

Israel’s accusations that Amnesty’s report was antisemitic were entirely expected. What should not have been was the media’s largely indifferent response.

The BBC was a case study in how to bury bad news. Its flagship television news programmes – the dominant news source for Britons – ignored the story completely.

Meanwhile, its poor cousin, the 24-hour news channel, which draws a far smaller audience, did mention the Amnesty report, but captioned it: “Israel rejects ‘fabricated’ claims of genocide.”

In other words, when the BBC did offer very limited coverage, it skipped the news story of Amnesty’s findings and went straight to Israel’s predictable, outraged reaction.

In an investigation for Drop Site News last week, Guardian columnist Owen Jones spoke to 13 current and recently departed BBC staff. They said the corporation’s coverage of Gaza was heavily skewed to present Israel’s actions in a favourable light.

In a WhatsApp chat for senior BBC Middle East editors, correspondents and producers, one participant – incensed by the “fabricated claims” caption – wrote: “FFS! – It’s an open goal for those who say we’re frit [afraid] of upsetting the Israelis and keep on couching our stories in an ‘Israel says’ narrative’.”

The BBC’s website, by far the most influential English-language online news source, inexplicably ignored the Amnesty report for 12 hours after the embargo was lifted.

Even then, it appeared as the seventh item. For the following week, it was not included in the “Israel-Gaza” index on the website’s front page, making it unlikely it would be found.

This pattern has long been true in the BBC’s coverage of Israel and Palestine, but it has become far more glaring since the stakes were raised for Israel by its genocide. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vLrmM1KjxE

As Jones’s investigation discloses, BBC management has tightly restricted control over the Gaza coverage to a small number of journalists known to hew closely to Israel’s view of events – and despite their editorial role provoking what Jones calls a “civil war” in the BBC newsroom.

Notably, Jones did not publish his investigation in the Guardian, where there have been similar reports of staff indignant at the paper’s failure to give proper weight to the genocidal nature of Israel’s actions.

Rigged algorithms

What the BBC has been doing is not exceptional. As soon as a light is shone into the dark recesses of the state- and billionaire-owned media, the same picture always emerges.

Last week, an investigation revealed that Meta, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram, intentionally rigged its algorithms to suppress reports from the biggest Palestinian news sources after the Hamas attack of 7 October 2023.

Palestinian news outlets saw their views on Meta platforms fall significantly after the attack – on average by 77 percent – when they should have expected to see far greater interest. By contrast, views of Israeli news outlets rose sharply.

Paradoxically, the investigation was published by the BBC, though notably the research was initiated and carried out by the staff of its Arabic news service.

Also last week, more than a dozen whistleblowers from Deutsche Welle, Germany’s equivalent of state broadcaster the BBC, revealed to Al Jazeera that a culture of fear reigns in the newsroom when it comes to critical coverage of Israel.

Similar reports from whistleblowing staff have exposed the rigged nature of the coverage – always in Israel’s favour – in other major outlets, from CNN to the New York Times and the Associated Press news agency.

In reality, the same skewed news agenda can be found in every newsroom in every corporate media outlet. It just requires whistleblowers to come forward, and for there to be someone willing to listen and in a position to publish.

Why? Because a genocide unfolding in plain sight cannot be made to appear normal without an enormous expenditure of effort from institutional media to close the eyes of their audiences. To hypnotise us into indifference.

State of anxiety

Too many of us are susceptible to this process – and for a number of reasons.

In part, because we still trust these institutions, even though their chief function is to persuade us that they are there for our benefit – rather than the reality that they serve the interests of the larger corporate structures to which they belong.

Those western structures are invested in resource theft, asset-stripping and wealth concentration – all, of course, pursued at the expense of the global south – and the war industries needed to make this pillage possible.

But also, it is part of our psychological makeup that we cannot sustain attention on bad news indefinitely.

To watch a genocide unfold week after week, month after month, and be unable to do anything to stop it, takes a terrible toll on our mental health. It keeps us in a permanent state of anxiety.

The corporate structures that oversee our media understand this only too well. Which is why they cultivate a sense of powerlessness amongst their audiences.

The world is presented as a baffling place, where there are inexplicable forces of evil that act without any comprehensible causation to destroy all that is good and wholesome.

The media suggest international affairs are little different from a game of whack-a-mole. Whenever the good West tries to solve a problem, another evil mole pops up its head, whether it be Hamas terrorists, Hezbollah terrorists, Syria’s former dictator Bashar al-Assad, or the mad mullahs of Iran

With this as the framework for the Gaza genocide, audiences are left sensing either that what is happening to Palestinians, however horrifying, may be deserved or that investing too much concern is a waste of energy and time. Another crisis will be along in a moment equally demanding of our attention.

And so it will. Because that is precisely the way the corporate media works. It offers a conveyor belt of bad news, one bewildering event after another – whether it be another disgraced celebrity, or murdered schoolgirl, or an outbreak of war.

The media’s role – the reason states and corporations keep such a tight grip on it – is to stop us from gaining a wider picture of the world, one on which our hands look far more bloodied than the “terrorists” we sit in judgment on. One where a powerful western elite, its corporate empire headquartered in the US, runs the planet as nothing more than a wealth-extraction machine.

And so we, the publics of the West, shrug our shoulders once again: at “man’s inhumanity to man”, at “the cycle of violence”, at “the barbarians at the gate”, at “the white man’s burden”.

Nearly 15 months on, the Gaza genocide has become entirely normal, it has become just another minor, routine news item to be buried on the inside pages.

December 29, 2024 Posted by | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel, Reference | Leave a comment

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