AN SNP MSP has made a statement to the United Nations on reducing the risk of nuclear weapons. Bill Kidd – in an address at a conference of the UN Preparatory Committee of the Non Proliferation Treaty on Tuesday – called on states to work together to reduce the risk of nuclear war.
The Glasgow Anniesland MSP also urged the USA, Russia, China, France and the UK to halt their programs to develop and deploy new nuclear weapons. Kidd is a staunch supporter of anti-nuclear power and weapons policies and is a co-president of Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament (PNND) – an international organisation comprising 70 parliaments and over 800 members from around the world.
Relying on nuclear power is the wrong strategy for Taiwan to achieve net zero emissions, a coalition of environmental groups said yesterday, amid rising calls from some lawmakers and government officials in support of it.
The National Nuclear Abolition Action Platform held a news conference in Taipei yesterday — two weeks before the National Climate Change Response Committee’s inauguration meeting, which is expected to discuss nuclear power.
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has indicated that it would seek to extend the operations of the nation’s nuclear reactors, including the ones at the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant in Pingtung County, a coalition spokesperson said.
The Ma-ashan plant’s first reactor, which has reached the end of its 40-year service life limit, is to be deactivated today, while its second reactor is scheduled for decommissioning in May next year, it said.
The KMT’s failure to acknowledge the public security risks posed by the nation’s aged reactors or the problem of nuclear waste disposal has exposed the recklessness of the party’s energy policy, it said.
Lawmakers should drop proposed amendments to the Nuclear Reactor Facilities Regulation Act (核子反應器設施管制法) and allow the Ma-anshan plant to be decommissioned as planned, the spokesperson said.
Green Citizens’ Action Alliance secretary-general Tsuei Su-hsin (崔愫欣) said that high operating costs and the lack of suitable sites for waste disposal make the bid to continue generating nuclear power impractical for Taiwan.
Taiwan Environmental Protection Union executive Lin Ren-pin (林仁斌) said that global energy production trends point to a decline in nuclear energy.
China — which has built more new nuclear reactors than any country in the world — reported that renewables experienced faster growth than nuclear energy, he added.
The Ma-anshan plant straddles a geological faultline in the Hengchun Peninsula and has a terrible safety record, Lin said.
The scarcity of land, high population density and propensity to build nuclear power plants on soft rock strata are a recipe for disaster on the scale of the partial meltdown at Japan’s Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, he said.
Moms Love Taiwan Association secretary-general Yang Shun-me (楊順美) said that the Jinshan Nuclear Power Plant is practically decommissioned, as the lion’s share of its equipment and transmission towers had already been removed.
The remaining facilities at the power plant has not been maintained for many years, she added.
The Guosheng Nuclear Power Plant has two inoperable reactors, while the Ma-anshan plant cannot resume operations without a full shutdown and replacing critical components, Yan said.
This means none of the nation’s three nuclear power plants stand a chance of contributing to emissions reduction, she said.
Citizen of the Earth Taiwan deputy director Huang Ching-ting (黃靖庭) said opposition lawmakers were making untruthful claims about a purported energy shortage.
Citing Taiwan Power Co’s electricity supply report this month, he said that Taiwan has enough energy to keep the nighttime reserve margin above 10 percent through 2030, which does not indicate a shortage.
Nuclear power plants must obtain safety certifications and replace key components before lengthening their service life, he said, adding that the process is estimated to take five to 10 years.
The Ma-anshan plant is rightly decommissioned since the facility’s reactors generate a marginal amount of electricity compared with the safety risks they represent, he said.
Altogether, there is virtually no chance that Taiwan could get any of its old nuclear power plants back online before 2030, Huang said.
Using nuclear energy to reduce emissions is impractical and impossible to implement in time, he said
The legal ruling by the world’s highest court obliges western states not just to end their persecution of the boycott movement but to take up that cause as their own
Don’t be fooled. The ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on 19 July that Israel’s occupation of Palestine is unlawful is earth-shattering. Israel is a rogue state, according to the world’s highest court.
For that reason, the judgment will be studiously ignored by the cabal of western states and their medias that for decades have so successfully run cover for Israel.
Doubters need only watch the reception Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu receives during his visit to the United States this week.
Even though he is currently being pursued for war crimes by the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, the US Congress will give him a hero’s welcome when he addresses its representatives on Wednesday.
The warm handshakes and standing ovations will be a reminder that Netanyahu has had the full backing of western powers throughout the nine-month slaughter of at least 16,000 Palestinian children in Gaza – with another 21,000 missing, most of them under rubble.
The welcome will be a reminder that western capitals are fully on board with Israel’s levelling of Gaza and the starvation of its population – in what the same court concluded way back in January amounted to a “plausible genocide”.
And it will serve as a heavy slap in the face to those like the World Court committed to international law – reminding them that the West and its most favoured client state believe they are untouchable.
Western politicians and columnists will keep emphasising that the World Court is offering nothing more than an “advisory opinion” and one that is “non-binding”.
What they won’t point out is that this opinion is the collective view of the world’s most eminent judges on international law, the people best positioned to rule on the occupation’s legality.
And it is non-binding only because the western powers who control our international bodies plan to do nothing to implement a decision that doesn’t suit them.
Nonetheless, the ruling will have dramatic consequences for Israel, and its western patrons, even if those consequences will take months, years or even decades to play out.
‘Top secret’ warning
Last week’s judgment is separate from the case accepted in January by the ICJ that put Israel on trial for genocide in Gaza. A decision on that matter may still be many months away.
This ruling was in response to a request from the United Nations General Assembly in December 2022 for advice on the legality of Israel’s 57-year occupation.
That may sound more mundane a deliberation than the one on genocide, but the implications ultimately are likely to be every bit as profound.
Those not familiar with international law may underestimate the importance of the World Court’s ruling if only because they had already assumed the occupation was illegal.
But that is not how international law works. A belligerent occupation is permitted so long as it satisfies two conditions.
First, it must be strictly military, designed to protect the security of the occupying state and safeguard the rights of the occupied people.
And second, it must be a temporary measure – while negotiations are conducted to restore civilian rule and allow the occupied people self-determination.
Astonishingly, it has taken 57 years for the world’s highest court to deliver a conclusion that should have been staring it – and everyone else – in the face all that time.
The military nature of the occupation was subverted almost from the moment Israel occupied the Palestinian territories in June 1967.
Within months, Israel had chosen to transfer Jewish civilians – mostly extreme religious nationalists – into the occupied Palestinian territories to help colonise them.
Israel knew that this was a gross violation of international law because its own legal adviser warned it of as much in a “top secret” memo unearthed by the Israeli journalist Gershom Gorenberg some two decades ago.
In a declaration enlarging on the ICJ’s reasoning, Court President Nawaf Salam specifically referenced the warnings of Theodor Meron, who was the Israeli foreign ministry’s legal expert at the time.
In September 1967, his memo cautioned that any decision to establish civilian settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories “contravenes explicit provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention”. Those provisions, he added, were “aimed at preventing colonization”.
Nine days later, the Israeli government rode roughshod over Meron’s memo and assisted a group of young Israelis in setting up the first settlement at Kfar Etzion.
Sham peace-making
Today, hundreds of illegal settlements – many of them home to what amount to armed militias – control more than half of the West Bank and much of East Jerusalem.
Rather than protecting the rights of Palestinians under occupation, as international law demands, the Israeli military assists Jewish settlers in terrorising the Palestinians. The aim is to drive them off their land.
In the words of the Israeli government, the settlements are there to “Judaise” Palestinian territory. In the words of everyone else, they are there to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian population.
Which brings us to Israel’s second violation of the laws of occupation. In transferring hundreds of thousands of settlers into the occupied territories, Israel intentionally blocked any chance of a Palestinian state emerging.
The settlements weren’t makeshift encampments. Some soon developed into small cities, such as Ariel and Maale Adumim, with shopping malls, parks, public pools, synagogues, factories, libraries, schools and colleges.
There was nothing “temporary” about them. They were there to incrementally annex Palestinian territory under cover of an occupation that Washington and its European allies conspired to pretend was temporary.
The whole Oslo process initiated in the early 1990s was a switch-and-bait exercise, or a “Palestinian Versailles”, as the Palestinian scholar Edward Said warned at the time.
Israel was never serious about allowing the Palestinians meaningful statehood – a fact the then-Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, admitted shortly before he was killed by a far-right settler in 1995………………………………………………………………………..
Apartheid rule……………………………………………………………………………………….
Acts of aggression……………………………………………………
Complicit in war crimes
But the implications don’t just apply to Israel………………………………………………………
The fog clears
Israel’s supporters will take comfort from the fact that an earlier judgment from the World Court on Israel was roundly ignored by both Israel and its western patrons.
Asked for an advisory opinion, the judges ruled in 2004 that, under cover of security claims, Israel was illegally annexing swaths of territory by building its 800km-long “separation wall” on Palestinian land………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Words have power. They are our route to understanding reality. And the World Court has just cleared away the fog. It has wiped clean the mist on the window.
Around 200 pro-Palestine protesters were detained on Capitol Hill on 23 June, ahead of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to the US Congress the day after.
The protest took place in the Canon House Office Building. The demonstrators, wearing shirts with the slogan “Not in our name,” were organized by the Jewish Voice for Peace group.
According to police, the protesters were warned that demonstrating in the Canon House Office Building was illegal.
Executive Director of Jewish Voice for Peace, Stefanie Fox, said the Israeli premier’s speech in Congress on Wednesday was the reason for the demonstration.
“For nine months, we’ve watched in horror as the Israeli government has carried out a genocide, armed and funded by the US. Congress and the Biden administration have the power to end this horror today. Instead, our president is preparing to meet with Netanyahu and Congressional leadership has honored him with an invitation to address Congress,” she said.
Republican representative Mike Lawler called the protest an “embarrassment” and accused the Jewish Voice for Peace activists of being “pro-Hamas.”
Netanyahu’s address to Congress was announced in late May by Mike Johnson, Republican Speaker of the US House of Representatives. At the time, the International Criminal Court (ICC) had announced its decision to seek arrest warrants against Netanyahu and his defense minister.
Johnson threatened during his announcement in May that the US “should punish” the ICC for its decision.
The Israeli prime minister arrived in Washington on Monday, ahead of his speech at Congress on 24 May and a meeting with US President Joe Biden, scheduled for the following day.
The ICC said on Tuesday that it has accepted 64 filings by states, individuals, and organizations to intervene regarding arrest requests against Netanyahu and others, including Hamas leaders.
It is highly expected that Netanyahu’s address will focus on the idea of continuing the war in Gaza until Hamas’ defeat – in line with his government’s stated goals and in stark contradiction to efforts to reach a ceasefire deal.
The premier’s much-anticipated address in Congress comes on the 292nd day of Israel’s genocidal war against the Gaza Strip, which has killed over 39,000 people – mainly women and children – and has injured over 90,000.
Spain’s nuclear operators are warning that last month’s move by Madrid to significantly raise a tax on these utilities may undermine the commercial viability of Spain’s seven operating reactors, even as they approach a government-mandated nuclear phaseout by 2035.
\The 30% tax rise is meant partly to cover the costs of seven separate interim nuclear waste storage facilities for spent fuel and high-level waste, a strategy mandated after the government discarded plans for a controversial single centralized facility. Owners argue they had no say in the storage decision, and should not be required to pay the significant added costs it will entail…………… (Subscribers only) https://www.energyintel.com/00000190-bb7f-db32-ad93-bb7ff87a0000
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday delivered an address to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday and spent a good portion of his speech attacking Americans who have been protesting Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza.
Netanyahu accused the pro-Palestine protesters, which include many Jewish Americans, of being pro-Hamas and “standing with evil” and said they should be “ashamed of themselves.” The majority of the lawmakers in the chamber responded with a standing ovation.
He also repeated unsubstantiated claims that Iran was funding the protests in the US. “They want to disrupt America,” Netanyahu said, referring to Iran. “For all we know, Iran is funding the anti-Israel protests that are going on right now outside this building … well, I have a message for these protesters. When the tyrants of Tehran, who hang gays from cranes and murder women for not covering their hair, are praising, promoting, and funding you, you have officially become Iran’s useful idiots.”…………………………
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) didn’t attend and slammed Netanyahu after the address, calling his speech “the worst presentation of any foreign dignitary invited and honored with the privilege of addressing the Congress of the United States.”………………….
Overall, however, Netanyahu received strong support, and Congress gave him a big public relations victory by frequently standing up and applauding him. The address and its reception also demonstrated the strong US support for Israel’s slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza.
In the address, Netanyahu asked for the US to provide even more military aid than it has and called for a new anti-Iran alliance in the Middle East. “I have a name for this new alliance. I think we should call it the Abraham Alliance,” he said.
The Israeli prime minister has proposed an alliance aimed against Iran
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has proposed the creation of a new military bloc modeled after NATO and called the “Abraham Alliance,” aimed against Iran.
Netanyahu spoke before the joint session of the US Congress on Wednesday. It was his fourth address to American lawmakers, beating Winston Churchill’s record, although about 70 House and Senate members declined to attend for one reason or another.
“America forged a security alliance in Europe to counter the growing Soviet threat,” Netanyahu said at one point. “Likewise, America and Israel today can forge a security alliance in the Middle East to counter the growing Iranian threat.”
He said a “glimpse” of that alliance could be seen on April 14, when Iran launched a missile and drone attack against Israel and the US and the UK helped shoot some of them down.
Netanyahu thanked US President Joe Biden “for bringing that alliance together,” as well as his predecessor Donald Trump for brokering the ‘Abraham Accords’ between Israel and several Arab countries during his term.
“I think we should call it the Abraham Alliance,” he said of the proposed NATO-like bloc.
According to the Israeli prime minister, countries at peace with West Jerusalem or that intend to do so ought to join the bloc, as Iran is a threat to them all.
“When we fight Iran, we are fighting the most radical and murderous enemy of the United States,” Netanyahu said. When Israel fights and works to prevent a nuclear Iran, “we are not only protecting ourselves, we are protecting you,” he argued.
“Our enemies are your enemies, our fight is your fight, our victories will be your victories,” Netanyahu told US lawmakers. “I know that America has our back.”
The US has given military aid to Israel throughout the nine-month war with Hamas that Netanyahu declared following the Palestinian armed group’s raid out of Gaza. Pressed by Palestinian and Arab Americans in Biden’s party, his government has proposed a three-stage ceasefire plan for the enclave, but West Jerusalem has been reluctant to accept it.
Israel will not stop until it has destroyed the military capabilities of Hamas, ended its rule in Gaza, and recovered all the captives taken in the October 7 attack, Netanyahu said, adding, “That’s what total victory means. And we will settle for nothing less.”
U.S. support for Israel’s genocide against Palestine is rooted not only in campaign financing but other factors, including a rigid ideology stuck in the shadow of World War II, writes Joe Lauria.
America as ‘Savior,’ Israel as ‘Victim’
Updated to include quote from Jared Kushner and mention of U.S. defense contractors.
The world-historical crisis in Gaza might in the long-term bring about radical change in both the U.S. and Israel, but in the interim the greatest crimes the two nations have jointly taken part in has stiffened their defenses against unprecedented criticism.
The fear of blasting Israel has been breached. The taboo broken. Tel Aviv and Washington have never faced this before. As both are settler nations, having wiped out natives across the land, they are circling their wagons on a new frontier. They can only respond with the most profound denial and viciousness.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who addressed a joint-session of Congress on Wednesday as the subject of a requested arrest warrant at the International Criminal Court, has demanded the United States shield Israel from criticism while continuing to arm and support its genocide — and the U.S. has answered his call.
When the Biden administration withheld a symbolic shipment of weapons to Israel, Netanyahu counted on Congress to draft a law that would withhold funding for the State Dept. and the Pentagon if President Joe Biden did not give Netanyahu the weapons he needs to “finish the job” in Gaza.
Biden’s withholding of the shipment was designed to fool U.S. voters critical of his Gaza policy. But the assault on Rafah — despite Biden’s supposed red line — continues, and so will unconditional U.S. support for Israel. The question is why.
Why will U.S. politicians risk losing elections to continue supporting the most unimaginable crimes? The answer lies beyond elections and individual politicians.
Continued support for Israel in the midst of genocide threatens the very legitimacy of U.S. post-war rule as the world turns increasingly against the U.S. and Israel.
Despite this, what makes U.S. leaders so enthralled to a foreign nation and leader who has angered several U.S. presidents?
For instance, why did U.S. leaders, essentially on the say-so of that foreign leader, turn against their own university students on U.S. soil peacefully protesting both Israel’s genocide and Washington’s complicity in it?
In a video address to America delivered April 24 in his American-accented English, Netanyahu ordered that anti-genocide protests on U.S. campuses be stopped. And they have been. It is worth quoting his entire remarks. He said:
“What’s happening on American college campuses is horrific. Anti-semitic mobs have taken over leading universities. They call for the annihilation of Israel. They attack Jewish students. They attack Jewish faculty.
This is reminiscent of what happened in German universities in the 1930s. It is unconscionable. It has to be stopped. It has to be condemned and condemned unequivocally.
But that’s not what happened. The response of several university presidents was shameful. Now fortunately, state, local, federal officials, many of them have responded differently but there has to be more. More has to be done.
It has to be done not only because they attack Israel, that’s bad enough. Not only because they want to kill Jews wherever they are. That’s bad enough. It’s also, when you listen to them, it’s also because they say, not only death to Israel, death to the Jews, but death to America.
And this tells us that there is an anti-semitic surge here that has terrible consequences. We see this exponential rise of anti-semitism throughout America and throughout Western societies as Israel tries to defend itself against genocidal terrorists who hide behind civilians.
Yet it is Israel that is falsely accused of genocide. Israel that is falsely accused of starvation and all sundry war crimes. It’s all one big libel. But that’s not new.
We have seen in history that anti-Semitic attacks were always preceded by vilification and slander. Lies that were cast against the Jewish people that are unbelievable, yet people believe them.
And what is important now, is for all of us, all of us who are interested and cherish our values and our civilization to stand up together and to say: enough is enough.
We have to stop anti-Semitism because anti-Semitism is the canary in the coal mine. It always precedes larger conflagrations that engulf the entire world.
So I ask all of you, Jews and non-Jews alike, who concerned with our common future and our common values, to do one thing: Stand up, speak up, be counted. Stop anti-Semitism now.”
Brazen
Netanyahu uttered a dozen lies in that 339-word message, which got 18.4 million views on X. There are five lies in the first five sentences alone:
1). the students are not “anti-semitic mobs” but protestors, many Jews, against genocide; 2.) they are calling for a free and independent Palestine, not the “annihilation” of Israel; 3.) they are not attacking Jewish students, but Israel’s war; 4). they are not attacking Jewish faculty, unless calling out Israel’s crimes is considered an attack on Jews; and 5). Jews were banned from German universities in the 1930s, making such a comparison to the U.S. today a ludicrous lie.
And what exactly does Netanyahu mean by the “annihilation” of Israel, a phrase he repeatedly utters?
If Israel granted full citizenship rights to Palestinians in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank, would that mean the “annihilation” of Israel, or the annihilation of apartheid in Israel? The real annihilation going on is that of Gaza by Israel.
More outrageous was Netanyahu’s lie that American student protestors “want to kill Jews wherever they are” and want “death” to Israel and America. He lies about a “surge” of anti-Semitism. In a clinical case of projection, Netanyahu said Israel is “falsely accused of genocide” of “starvation” and of “all sundry war crimes.”
In Lock-Step
Instead of outrage at this litany of obvious falsehoods, U.S. officials and media echoed Netanyahu’s words. The White House, Congress, newspapers, universities and police responded in lock-step, criminalizing students in their own their country for opposing an active genocide.
At the Capitol for Holocaust Remembrance Day on May 7, Biden framed the Oct. 7 attack as purely motivated by hatred of Jews, whitewashing the entire 80-year history of ethnic cleansing and occupation of Palestinians by Israel. ………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………….Obedient Media
The U.S. media has long told the story almost exclusively from Israel’s point of view. That has conditioned the U.S. public, and its political leaders, to give unconditional support for Israel and expect ostracization for criticizing it.
CNN’s chief political correspondent, Dana Bash, for instance, editorialized on a news show a week after Netanyahu spoke about U.S. campus protests that the students had “lost the plot.” …………………………………………………..
as Chicago University professor John Mearsheimer asks, was there an anti-Semitism problem on American campuses before Israel’s attack on Gaza?
Could Have Stopped It
Biden could have stopped the genocide immediately by withholding all weapons, military aid and diplomatic cover — which any decent man with such power would have done. Instead Biden engaged in public relations while the Gazan public was decimated, pretending to oppose Netanyahu and caring for Palestinian civilians.
Likewise Biden’s State Department tried to play it both ways: feinting to the American public that it was ready to criticize Israel for its mistreatment of civilians, while taking no action. The State Department even said it had evidence Israel may have broken international humanitarian law, but not enough to cut off arms shipments.
“The Biden administration believes that Israel has most likely violated international standards in failing to protect civilians in Gaza but has not found specific instances that would justify the withholding of military aid, the State Department told Congress … the report — which seemed at odds with itself in places — said the U.S. had no hard proof of Israeli violations.”
For Netanyahu’s and members of his cabinet who have expressed genocidal intent, this is the chance they have been waiting for, to fulfill Israeli Founding Father David Ben Gurion’s promise of a Greater Israel. The war to wipe out Hamas is a cover for wiping out the Palestinians from Gaza.
Whatever Biden or the State Department says, Israel will continue with its genocidal urban renewal plan in Gaza by bombing buildings with people still living in them with a view to replacing them with Israeli and Western-owned beachfront property (with an Israeli gas pipeline through it). It is evidently a plan Biden and Blinken, and presumably Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, agree with. (Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, whose family are close Netanyahu friends, said, ““Gaza’s waterfront property could be very valuable … It’s a little bit of an unfortunate situation there, but from Israel’s perspective I would do my best to move the people out and then clean it up.”)
According to the Jewish News Syndicate:
“Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir declared at the event [on May 14] that the government should encourage voluntary emigration of Palestinians from the Strip.
‘Two things must be done: One, return to Gaza now, return home, return to our holy land. And two: encouraging emigration. To encourage the voluntary departure of the residents of Gaza. It’s moral, it’s rational, it’s right, it’s the truth. This is the Torah and this is the only way—yes, it is also humanitarian,’ the minister told attendees.”
In response to Biden’s “pause” in shipments, Netanyahu said Israel would fight with its “fingernails” if it needed to in Rafah.
Angered US Presidents
Several American presidents have in rare instances stood up to Israel. President Dwight D. Eisenhower threatened sanctions against Israel over the 1956 Suez Crisis to get Tel Aviv, Paris and London to end its military operation against Egypt and for Israel to withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula.
Ronald Reagan in 1983 withheld F16s to Israel until it withdrew from Lebanon. “While these forces are in the position of occupying another country that now has asked them to leave, we are forbidden by law to release those planes,’ he said.
And in 1992, George H.W. Bush threatened to withhold a $10 billion loan guarantee if Israel continued building settlements in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, according to The Washington Post. And yet Israel always seems to get its way.
In his review of Netanyahu’s memoir Bibi: My Story, As’ad AbuKhalil wrote last year in Consortium News:
“Netanyahu’s analysis of U.S.-Israeli relations is simple: no matter what Israel does, and no matter how many wars and invasions it launches, the ‘alliance with the U.S. will take care of itself.’ He correctly believes that U.S. presidents will stand by Israel no matter what … ” (p. 84).
Despite this, we learn from the book that a succession of U.S. presidents disliked Netanyahu but would not stand up to him as previous presidents had to earlier prime ministers………………………………………………………….
‘America Can Be Easily Moved’
Ultimate obedience to Netanyahu in the U.S. brings to mind a video of him speaking to an Israeli settler family in Hebrew in 2001 about how easy it is to manipulate the Americans.
He says, “With the U.S., I know how they are. America is a thing you can easily maneuver and move in the right direction. Even if they say something, so what? Eighty percent of Americans support us.”
About the Palestinians, Netanyahu says: “The main thing is, first of all, to strike them, not once but several times, so painfully, that the price they pay will be unbearable. So far the price-tag is not unbearable.”……………………………..
Why?
Why then do American politicians, universities and media slavishly follow whatever Israel demands? There is more than one answer:
1. Money: AIPAC’s campaign financing and defense contracts;
2. Lingering guilt over the holocaust and fear of being labeled an anti-semite;
3. A natural, historical connection between settler, colonial nations founded on ethnic cleansing and genocide;
4. Power-sharing in the Middle East with overlapping regional and international empires;
5. Israeli intelligence possessing kompromat on U.S. politicians.
6. Keeping a World War II ideology alive to justify global and local supremacy.
Money
The answer most often given to the question is campaign contributions for politicians, who want to avoid being “primaried” by Israel Lobby money. The American–Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) raises more than $100 million a year, which it spends on lobbying and campaign contributions to U.S. political candidates.
Universities are also dependent on wealthy donors, many who demand total loyalty to Israel, which goes a long way to explaining why U.S. universities asked police to break up peaceful, anti-genocide protests on their campus.
And of course American defense contractors stand to gain mightily by continued Israeli bombardment of Gaza.
But it isn’t only about money.
Holocaust
Western governments retain inherited guilt for their deplorable behavior during the Second World War regarding the Holocaust. Germany, naturally, is at the top of the list of the still guilty parties, and is the second largest arms supplier to Israel after the United States.
This residual guilt has created a condition in which the descendants of the victims are still immune to criticism 80 years later in an almost inexhaustible supply of sympathy that Israeli leaders clearly exploit. ……………………………………………………………………..
There is deep ignorance in America about the foundation of Israel, exploded by some Israeli historians, especially by Ilan Pappé, whose book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, documented the intent of Israel’s founders to drive more than 700,000 of the indigenous population off their land into neighboring countries, and killing hundreds of thousands more in an unbroken process now playing out in Gaza. ………………………………………..
“As early as 1937, Ben-Gurion wrote that the ‘boundaries of the Zionist aspirations are the concern of the Jewish people and no external factor will be able to limit them.’
Ben-Gurion also hoped for the expansion of ‘Zionist aspirations’ to Israel’s ‘biblical borders’ (which stretch all the way to Iraq). There is no mention of or reference to the Indigenous population in this vision.”………………………………………….
The launch of Israel and the Greater Israel project coincided with the beginning of the post-war U.S. global empire, which overlapped in the Middle East with Israel’s burgeoning regional empire. Israel and its regional ambitions became a natural footprint for U.S. dominance in the region: namely the subjugation of Arab peoples and rulers.
Thus for the continuance of U.S. empire and all the benefits it accrues to U.S. rulers in the face of growing worldwide opposition, it is natural for Washington to continue supporting Israeli expansionism — no matter the horrendous human cost.
Blackmail
One cannot easily dismiss talk of Israeli intelligence gathering blackmail dirt on American politicians to keep them in line beyond campaign bribes. According to Ari Ben-Menashe, a former Israeli military intelligence official, such blackmail is a part of Israeli tactics. For instance, he told Consortium News‘ CN Live! in 2020 that the child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein was collecting such kompromat on powerful Americans.
Mired in WWII
Part of the ideology driving the America-Israel dominance regionally and globally is mired in the shadow of the Second World War: the delusion that the U.S. is still the world’s savior and that Jews are still active victims of history. It’s as if 80 years have not passed.
Jews were certainly among the war’s greatest victims, but America was not the sole or even the chief savior, given the outsized role of the Soviet Union in destroying the Nazis.
After the war, the United States was left with troops around the globe, in areas of great natural resources in a devastated world, whose devastation didn’t touch the American mainland.
A worldwide empire was the result. U.S. leaders have been dedicated to expanding and maintaining it ever since by installing and propping up governments that serve U.S. economic and strategic interests and removing those that don’t. This is done through electoral interference, coups and invasions that have killed millions of innocent lives in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and elsewhere.
To maintain a kind of moral veneer to justify America’s global marauding as “spreading democracy” a connection to the moral war against fascism needs to be maintained. So World War II is invoked constantly by American leaders when embarking on new overseas adventures. ……………………………………………
How cynical is it for descendants of survivors of the Second World War genocide to invoke the Holocaust to perpetrate a genocide of their own?
This confusion still clearly pervades Germany today. In their guilt over their genocide of the Jews and their determination never to let it happen again they are stuck in the World War II past and cannot accept that Israel can possibly be the perpetrators of genocide 80 years later.
So protests against Israeli actions in Germany are seen as protests against Jews and have to be stopped, as the police did in May at Humboldt University in Berlin in the very plaza where Josef Goebbels led the Nazi burning of books.
German police shut down an academic conference about Gaza that month in Berlin. In their misguided fervor to stop another genocide the Germans are supporting one, sending more arms to perpetrate the massacres in Gaza than any nation but the United States. …………………………………….. more https://consortiumnews.com/2024/07/24/netanyahu-commands-us-obeys/
Nuclear weapons were invented here in my Archdiocese. Therefore, I feel a special responsibility to address humanity’s most urgent threat.
“Nuclear disarmament is a right to life issue. No other issue can cause the immediate collapse of civilization. In January 2022 I wrote a pastoral letter in which I traced the Vatican’s evolution from its uneasy conditional acceptance of so-called deterrence to Pope Francis’ declaration that the very possession of nuclear weapons is immoral.
“Therefore, what does this say about expanded plutonium pit production at the Los Alamos Lab? And what does it say about the obscene amounts of money that are being thrown at pit production, often excused as job creation?
“What does this say about the fact that the [NNSA] is pursuing expanded pit production without providing the public the opportunity to review and comment as required by the National Environmental Policy Act? I specifically call upon NNSA to complete a new LANL Site-Wide Environmental Impact Statement.
“In two weeks, I travel to Japan for the 79th atomic bombing anniversaries. The bishops of Santa Fe, Seattle, Hiroshima and Nagasaki have a simple message for world leaders. You utterly failed to begin serious negotiations as required by the 1970 NonProliferation Treaty. In this era, you must demonstrate concrete steps toward multilateral, verifiable nuclear disarmament by the 80th bombing anniversaries a year from now. http://nuclearactive.org/four-archbishops-urge-g7-leaders-to-undertake-concrete-steps-toward-nuclear-disarmament/
“I have a simple message for NNSA and the nuclear weapons labs. You’re very good at creating them. Now show us how smart you are by demonstrating how to get rid of nuclear weapons. Stop this new arms race that threatens all of civilization. Let’s preserve humanity’s potential to manifest God’s divine love toward all beings.
Former Israeli intelligence and security official Yuval Malka told Hebrew media on 25 July that Washington has greenlit a wider war on Lebanon.
“According to the information I received from the delegation and what I know, Netanyahu has received full legitimacy in the United States to wage a war in Lebanon,” Malka told Israel’s Channel 14.
“When he arrives in the country, he is expected to head to the ‘Al-Bur’ in Al-Kiryah, and from there he will start the war in Lebanon,” he added, referring to a military complex that houses the headquarters of the Israeli army’s different corps.
Netanyahu visited Washington this week for a speech in Congress and talks with officials.
The Israeli army has reportedly signaled to the government that the time is ripe for an expanded war against Lebanon, according to a defense analyst for Hebrew media. …………………………………………….. more https://thecradle.co/articles-id/26109
Bangor University is continuing its relationship with Rolls-Royce in the field of space nuclear power technology. Rolls-Royce has secured funding from the UK Space Agency under the National Space Innovation Programme (NSIP), which adds more support for the development of its space nuclear power technology. The new £4.8m award from NSIP Major Projects will help to significantly advance the development and demonstration of key technologies in the space nuclear Micro-Reactor. The Rolls-Royce National Space Innovation Programme will have a total project cost of £9.1m and aims to progress the Micro-Reactor’s overall technology readiness level, which will bring the reactor closer to a full system space flight demonstration.
We know it will be based in Scotland, we know it’s going to invest in green energy projects, and aim to leverage private investment into the same. But Thursday’s announcement has thrown up more questions about the specifics which the Government are yet to answer – especially on what the project means for Scotland.
There remains no clarity on when people might expect to see energy bill pressures easing up on their household finances. The Government has only gone as far as to say that bill reductions can be expected within the next five years, as a result of their actions. Crown Estate Scotland is a devolved body and the revenue raised through rents north of the Border is sent back to the Scottish Government. Its reserved counterpart can invest directly in Scotland, however, and the two bodies already work closely together on some projects.
Whether the Crown Estate Scotland will get the same new borrowing powers as its rest-of-UK counterpart remains to be seen. GB Energy will seek to work alongside GB Nuclear, a vehicle which came about under the previous government.
This could raise red flags for the Scottish Government, which remains opposed to nuclear power. It is understood the UK Government views nuclear policy as a matter for the Scottish Government. And while the Scottish Government said on Thursday that it believed the “UK Government’s intended investment in nuclear should instead be used to bolster further renewables” a spokesperson added there was otherwise a “great deal of agreement between the two Governments on many of the priorities that have been identified”.
Caroline Robinson, 25 July 24, BBCNews, Ben Chapple, BBC News, Guernsey
Channel Island authorities will advise people to seek shelter in the unlikely event of a nuclear incident affecting the islands.
The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) looked at nuclear risks to the islands as part of “routine risk and business continuity planning”.
It said the risk of a nuclear incident occurring was extremely low and its review considered the worst-case scenarios.
The UKHSA recommended shelter-in-place and stockpiling iodine be considered, but the pan-island Radiation Advisory Group decided shelter was the most appropriate choice for the islands.
‘Shelter-in-place’
Nearby nuclear sites in France, radioactive waste dumped in the Hurd Deep trench off Alderney in the 1950s and 1960s and the transport of nuclear materials by ship in the seas around the Channel Islands were the risks considered.
The sites in France looked at were the Orano La Hague nuclear fuel reprocessing site, the Flamanville nuclear power station and Cherbourg’s naval dockyard, where nuclear submarines are dismantled.
The UKHSA said if an incident happened at one of these sites wind direction and weather were important – wind could blow the radioactive material towards the islands and rain would cause more of it to land on the islands.
Based on five years of weather data it said with the prevailing wind being from the west and south west it was unlikely a plume would be blown towards the islands.
The UKSHA said if any material was due to arrive in the island the “best option” for people was to “shelter-in-place”.
When considering the potentially catastrophic impacts of military applications of Artificial Intelligence (AI), a few deadly scenarios come to mind: autonomous killer robots, AI-assisted chemical or biological weapons development, and the 1983 movie WarGames.
The the 1983 movie WarGames, features a self-aware AI-enabled supercomputer that simulates a Soviet nuclear launch and convinces US nuclear forces to prepare for a retaliatory strike. The crisis is only partly averted because the main (human) characters persuade US forces to wait for the Soviet strike to hit before retaliating. It turns out that the strike was intentionally falsified by the fully autonomous AI program. The computer then attempts to launch a nuclear strike on the Soviets without human approval until it is hastily taught about the concept of mutually assured destruction, after which the program ultimately determines that nuclear war is a no-win scenario: “Winner: none.”
US officials have stated that an AI system would never be given US nuclear launch codes or the ability to take control over US nuclear forces. However, AI-enabled technology will likely become increasingly integrated into nuclear targeting and command and control systems to support decision-making in the United States and other nuclear-armed countries. Because US policymakers and nuclear planners may use AI models in conducting analyses and anticipating scenarios that may ultimately influence the president’s decision to use nuclear weapons, the assumptions under which these AI-enabled systems operate require closer scrutiny.
Pathways for AI integration. The US Defense Department and Energy Department already employ machine learning and AI models to make calculation processes more efficient, including for analyzing and sorting satellite imagery from reconnaissance satellites and improving nuclear warhead design and maintenance processes. The military is increasingly forward-leaning on AI-enabled systems. For instance, it initiated a program in 2023 called Stormbreaker that strives to create an AI-enabled system called “Joint Operational Planning Toolkit” that will incorporate “advanced data optimization capabilities, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to support planning, war gaming, mission analysis, and execution of all-domain, operational level course of action development.” While AI-enabled technology presents many benefits for security, it also brings significant risks and vulnerabilities.
One concern is that the systemic use of AI-enabled technology and an acceptance of AI-supported analysis could become a crutch for nuclear planners, eroding human skills and critical thinking over time. This is particularly relevant when considering applications for artificial intelligence in systems and processes such as wargames that influence analysis and decision-making. For example, NATO is already testing and preparing to launch an AI system designed to assist with operational military command and control and decision-making by combining an AI wargaming tool and machine learning algorithms. Even though it is still unclear how this system will impact decision-making led by the United States, the United Kingdom, and NATO’s Nuclear Planning Group concerning US nuclear weapons stationed in Europe, this type of AI-powered analytical tool would need to consider escalation factors inherent to nuclear weapons and could be used to inform targeting and force structure analysis or to justify politically motivated strategies.
The role given to AI technology in nuclear strategy, threat prediction, and force planning can reveal more about how nuclear-armed countries view nuclear weapons and nuclear use. Any AI model is programmed under certain assumptions and trained on selected data sets. This is also true of AI-enabled wargames and decision-support systems tasked with recommending courses of action for nuclear employment in any given scenario. Based on these assumptions and data sets alone, the AI system would have to assist human decision-makers and nuclear targeters in estimating whether the benefits of nuclear employment outweigh the cost and whether a nuclear war is winnable.
Do the benefits of nuclear use outweigh the costs? Baked into the law of armed conflict is a fundamental tension between any particular military action’s gains and costs. Though fiercely debated by historians, the common understanding of the US decision to drop two atomic bombs on Japan in 1945 demonstrates this tension: an expedited victory in East Asia in exchange for hundreds of thousands of Japanese casualties.
Understanding how an AI algorithm might weigh the benefits and costs of escalation depends on how it integrates the country’s nuclear policy and strategy. Several factors contribute to one’s nuclear doctrine and targeting strategy—ranging from fear of consequences of breaking the tradition of non-use of nuclear weapons to concern of radioactive contamination of a coveted territory and to sheer deterrence because of possible nuclear retaliation by an adversary. While strategy itself is derived from political priorities, military capabilities, and perceived adversarial threats, nuclear targeting incorporates these factors as well as many others, including the physical vulnerability of targets, overfly routes, and accuracy of delivery vehicles—all aspects to further consider when making decisions about force posture and nuclear use.
In the case of the United States, much remains classified about its nuclear decision-making and cost analysis. It is understood that, under guidance from the president, US nuclear war plans target the offensive nuclear capabilities of certain adversaries (both nuclear and non-nuclear armed) as well as the infrastructure, military resources, and political leadership critical to post-attack recovery. But while longstanding US policy has maintained to “not purposely threaten civilian populations or objects” and “not intentionally target civilian populations or targets in violation of [the law of armed conflict],” the United States has previously acknowledged that “substantial damage to residential structures and populations may nevertheless result from targeting that meets the above objectives.” This is in addition to the fact that the United States is the only country to have used its nuclear weapons against civilians in war.
There is limited public information with which to infer how an AI-enabled system would be trained to consider the costs of nuclear detonation. Certainly, any plans for nuclear employment are determined by a combination of mathematical targeting calculations and subjective analysis of social, economic, and military costs and benefits. An AI-enabled system could improve some of these analyses in weighing certain military costs and benefits, but it could also be used to justify existing structures and policies or further ingrain biases and risk acceptance into the system. These factors, along with the speed of operation and innate challenges in distinguishing between data sets and origins, could also increase the risks of escalation—either deliberate or inadvertent.
Is a nuclear war “winnable”? Whether a nuclear war is winnable depends on what “winning” means. Policymakers and planners may define winning as merely the benefits of nuclear use outweighing the cost when all is said and done. When balancing costs and benefits, the benefits need only be one “point” higher for an AI-enabled system to deem the scenario a “win.”
In this case, “winning” may be defined in terms of national interest without consideration of other threats. A pyrrhic victory could jeopardize national survival immediately following nuclear use and still be considered a win by the AI algorithm. Once a nuclear weapon has been used, it could either incentivize an AI system to not recommend nuclear use or, on the contrary, recommend the use of nuclear weapons on a broader scale to eliminate remaining threats or to preempt further nuclear strikes.
“Winning” a nuclear war could also be defined in much broader terms. The effects of nuclear weapons go beyond the immediate destruction within their blast radius; there would be significant societal implications from such a traumatic experience, including potential mass migration and economic catastrophe, in addition to dramatic climatic damage that could result in mass global starvation. Depending on how damage is calculated and how much weight is placed on long-term effects, an AI system may determine that a nuclear war itself is “unwinnable” or even “unbearable.
Uncovering biases and assumptions. The question of costs and benefits is relatively uncontroversial in that all decision-making involves weighing the pros and cons of any military option. However, it is still unknown how an AI system will weigh these costs and benefits, especially given the difficulty of comprehensively modeling all the effects of nuclear weapon detonations. At the same time, the question of winning a nuclear war has long been a thorn in the side of nuclear strategists and scholars. All five nuclear-weapon states confirmed in 2022 that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” For them, planning to win a nuclear war would be considered inane and, therefore, would not require any AI assistance. However, deterrence messaging and discussion of AI applications for nuclear planning and decision-making illuminate the belief that the United States must be prepared to fight—and win—a nuclear war.
The Finance Ministry is considering introducing a system that would allow construction costs of new nuclear power plants to be added to electricity rates, which could be passed onto consumers.
By doing so, the ministry aims to promote the construction of new nuclear plants.
Electric power companies are reluctant to invest in nuclear plants because the cost of safety measures is ballooning due to the 2011 disaster in Fukushima, and they no longer have the means to ensure recouping construction costs.
The central government has said that it will increase decarbonized power sources to prepare for future increases in demand, but that could lead to a major increase in the burden on the public.
According to sources, the “RAB model,” a nuclear plant support measure devised in Britain, will be used as a reference.
When construction of a nuclear plant is approved by the government, the construction and maintenance costs are borne by the retail electricity company once construction has begun. The cost will be recovered through a hike in electricity rates.
Under the model, any increase in construction costs can be included in the fee if the cost is deemed necessary. If the project is suspended, the government will compensate by providing funds.
If the system is introduced directly to Japan, it will be up to retail companies, including new power companies, to decide whether to pass the charge directly to customers.
However, even those who opt for a 100 percent renewable electricity supply may pay for the construction of a nuclear power plant.
In the past, there was a mechanism to ensure that the construction costs of power plants and transmission and distribution networks could be recovered by factoring them into electricity prices.
But with the deregulation of the electric power industry that began in 2000, this system was gradually eliminated, and power plants that were not cost-effective were closed and investment in new power plants was suppressed.
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