Summary of the nuclear push at COP 28.
As the FT <https://www.ft.com/content/bc486d67-8f92-46b3-9072-f0357d7f0336>
puts it, one thing is clear about COP28, the spotlight is on nuclear power
with an unprecedented amount of attention at this year’s gathering. Over 20
countries, including the US, UK, and United Arab Emirates, have signed a
declaration to triple nuclear capacity
<https://www.france24.com/en/environment/20231202-more-than-110-countries-join-cop28-deal-to-triple-renewable-energy-by-2030>
by 2050. Whether the world can deliver on these nuclear promises is
questionable — the sector is notorious for high construction costs and
lengthy project timelines, not to mention hazardous waste. The goal of
tripling the world’s nuclear output would require deploying an average of
40 gigawatts of nuclear power
<https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/nuclear/20-plus-countries-pledge-to-triple-the-worlds-nuclear-energy-by-2050>
every year through 2050, according to the World Nuclear Association.
Despite the hype, global nuclear power generation declined 4 per cent in
2022 to its lowest level in four decades, according to the new World
Nuclear Industry report <https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/>
.
New Mexico’s delegation outraged at removal of expand nuclear radiation compensation from proposal
New Mexico’s congressional delegation has expressed outrage with the U.S. House leadership’s move to block compensation for people sickened by exposure to radiation during nuclear weapons testing and the mining of uranium during the Cold War
By The Associated Press, December 9, 2023 https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/new-mexicos-delegation-outraged-removal-expand-nuclear-radiation-105510381
SANTA FE, N.M. — All members of New Mexico’s congressional delegation expressed outrage with the U.S. House leadership’s move to block compensation for people sickened by exposure to radiation during nuclear weapons testing and the mining of uranium during the Cold War.
Originally, the bill expanded eligibility for compensation under the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, offering up tens of thousands of dollars in compensation to residents of New Mexico, Colorado, Montana, Guam and Missouri — as well as those in some parts of Arizona, Nevada and Utah — who suffered the effects of nuclear testing or uranium mines and who are not covered under the current program.
The Santa Fe New Mexican reported that the compensation was included in a massive defense spending bill that won Senate approval in July. But the GOP-controlled House removed those provisions from the act Wednesday, rendering New Mexicans — including those stricken with ailments from the radioactive fallout of the first atomic bomb — still ineligible for federal help unless it is reattached to the final bill.
“Generations of New Mexicans and their families have gotten sick and died from the radiation exposure and the lasting impacts of the Trinity Test,” said Sen. Ben Ray Luján, referring to the first-ever atomic bomb test in the New Mexico desert in 1945. “For New Mexico to have been ground zero for the first nuclear weapon — and left out of the original RECA program — is an injustice.”
Luján, a Democrat, has introduced radiation exposure compensation bills in every Congress since he was first elected to the U.S. House in 2008.
The hit summer film “Oppenheimer” about the top-secret Manhattan Project and the dawn of the nuclear age during World War II has brought new attention to decades-long efforts to extend compensation for families who were exposed to fallout and still grapple with related illness.
Advocates also have been trying for years to bring awareness to the lingering effects of radiation exposure on the Navajo Nation, where millions of tons of uranium ore were extracted over decades to support U.S. nuclear activities.
Boastful International Atomic Energy Agency – announces a “Nuclear Energy Summit” like a climate event, for 2024
COP28: Leaders Announce Nuclear Energy Summit for 2024 more https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/multimedia/videos/cop28-leaders-announce-nuclear-energy-summit-for-2024
A first-of-its-kind nuclear energy summit will be held next year, it was announced at COP28 today. Leaders from around the world will gather in Brussels in March 2024 to highlight the role of nuclear energy in addressing the global challenges to reduce the use of fossil fuels, enhance energy security and boost economic development.
The German Environment Agency shows that a global tripling of nuclear capacity by 2050 is neither realistic nor needed to achieve climate goals
This factsheet analyzes the role of nuclear energy in global climate
scenarios. It shows that a global tripling of nuclear capacity until 2050
is neither realistic nor is it needed to achieve climate targets according
to the Paris agreement.
The factsheet presents an analysis of nine global
climate scenarios that achieve climate targets according to the Paris
agreement as well as two non-target scenarios with an emphasis on the role
of nuclear energy.
In order to assess how realistic these top-down
scenarios are, it compares these figures with the plans and programs of
governments for the expansion (or phase out) of nuclear power.
A tripling of today’s nuclear capacity of 370 GW would require 1.110 GW net
electrical capacity to be operational in 2050. If we assume a very high
sixty year lifetime for all nuclear reactors in operation and under
construction today, roughly 210 GW of the current nuclear fleet would still
be online in 2050.
Thus, a total of nearly 900 GW would have to be
constructed additionally between 2024 and 2050. Assuming a linear increase
in the rate of new construction up to 2050, starting with the amount of new
nuclear connected to the grid in 2023, in 2050 more than 60 GW would need
to be connected to the grid to meet the tripling nuclear target, compare
Figure 10.
This would be approximately twice the maximum historic capacity
connected to the grid in a single year. On average, more new capacity would
have to be added every year over 25 years as was the case at the historical
maximum in 1985. From these numbers, it is evident, that a tripling of
nuclear capacity until 2050 is neither realistic nor is it needed to
achieve climate targets according to the Paris agreement.
German Environment 30th Nov 2023
4 east African countries are going for nuclear power – why this is a bad idea
The Conversation, Hartmut Winkler, Professor of Physics, University of Johannesburg, 8 Dec 23
The east Africa region has the fastest growing population in Africa. Between 2013 and 2017, its growth rate was twice the African average. The region is also experiencing strong economic growth. It’s sub-Saharan share of GDP has risen from 14% in 2000 to 21% in 2022.
Such growth translates to higher electricity demand. Among a variety of new energy proposals is building nuclear power plants. Earlier this year, Uganda announced plans to construct a 2,000MW nuclear plant 150km north of Kampala, with the first 1,000MW operational by 2031. Rwanda also recently signed up to a deal to build a nuclear reactor, while Kenya and Tanzania have made more or less similar announcements.
It is in many ways tempting for these countries to pursue a nuclear power plant build. Even a single large-scale nuclear reactor would typically double national electricity generation capacity. In addition, it is technology that is – in theory at least – able to provide a constant electricity output independent of weather, season or time of day.
Another factor that motivates many potential entrants to nuclear power is that it has historically been perceived in many quarters as confirmation of high technological status and proof of national respectability. This is despite many of the world’s technologically and economically strongest nations now having shut down their nuclear plants. Germany and Italy are examples.
But there are several risks of choosing the nuclear path. The biggest in my view is financial. The costs of constructing, maintaining and later decommissioning a nuclear plant make this one of the most expensive forms of electricity generation. The actual cost is invariably a lot higher than originally announced.
Along with that, the construction period is usually many years longer than declared at the start.
In addition, safety issues can never be discounted when dealing with nuclear energy, as the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan amply illustrated………………………………………………………………………………..
East Africa’s likely future energy mix
In view of the financial risk and high cost, and as global experience has shown that it typically requires ten or more years to set up a new nuclear plant from project approval to electricity production, east African countries should pursue alternatives for electricity production.
New medium-scale solar, wind and geothermal power-generating facilities would likely dominate the expansion of east African electricity generation capacity in the coming decade as they are cheap in comparison. Typical construction timescales are also much lower than nuclear or hydro megaprojects.
………………………………………………………………… Given all these factors, investing in a large and expensive nuclear build with uncertain completion timeframes that may end up being way more expensive than projected is ultimately simply not worth it.
https://theconversation.com/4-east-african-countries-are-going-for-nuclear-power-why-this-is-a-bad-idea-218046
COP28: Global nuclear pledge casts further doubt on UK’s capabilities
CITY AM, RHODRI MORGAN 8 Dec 23
The COP28 conference in Dubai has put the UK’s faltering nuclear sector into the limelight once more.
Microsoft founder and billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates today used the conference as a platform to announce that his nuclear reactor company TerraPower will examine the UAE’s potential for new reactors.
Yesterday, 22 countries including the United States, the United Kingdom, South Korea, Canada, Hungary, and the Netherlands signed a pledge to triple nuclear deployment by 2050.
TerraPower and the UK have stalled on discussions around UK projects, but nuclear on the whole is another energy front on which the UK is currently losing ground.
The target of 24 GW by 2050 was first conceived in the Energy Security Strategy of 2021 but precious little progress has been made since.
Even with the reactor plans it has been able to conceive, the sector remains repeatedly hamstrung by bureaucratic process and the absence of a long-awaited nuclear road map that is likely delayed once more to 2024.
A significant factor halting development is that nuclear investment is still not labelled green, despite being promised by the Chancellor back in March.
Examining the UK’s current stock showcases the problem even further. British nuclear capacity stands at 5.9 GW, 4.7 GW of which retires in less than five years.
Through completing Hinkley Point C, Sizewell C and securing a life extension to Sizewell B, the UK could reach 7.7 GW; less than one third of the 24 GW target.
In the 12 years since the UK restarted nuclear development, only one project has proceeded to a Final Investment Decision (HPC in 2016).
To get to 24 GW of capacity by 2050, the UK nuclear needs to build and start operations on another six Hinkley Point C-size projects and move the stymied Sizewell C project into production.
………………………………….those within the sector believe the government is still avoiding making short-term capital investments to shore up the long-term energy security set out in 2021.
One official involved in the UK nuclear industry told City A.M: “They’re slow and hesitant, we know what happens when you have government money tied up in multi-billion pound projects and a sniff of a cost increase comes along, they opt to slow down and rethink”.
Others believe that despite union backing for large job creators like Hinkley Point, a Labour government isn’t in a position to speed up the nuclear timeline.
“If their policy is a carbon-free grid by 2030, there isn’t a single nuclear that can come on by then – even Hinkley Point C would just replace units that will go offline,” they told City A.M………………………………………………………………………. https://www.cityam.com/cop28-global-nuclear-pledge-casts-further-doubt-on-uks-capabilities/
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Talks at Cop28 set to intensify in bid to break impasse over fossil fuels
Negotiations on how the world can slash greenhouse gas emissions and stave
off the worst impacts of the climate crisis will reach a fresh intensity
over the next few days, with nations wrangling over whether to phase out or
phase down fossil fuels.
For the remaining five negotiating days of the
Cop28 UN climate summit in Dubai ministers will hold a series of meetings
to try to break the impasse and present a text that sets out a roadmap for
staying within a rise of 1.5C of global heating above preindustrial levels.
Simon Stiell, the UN climate chief, told countries: “Now all governments
must give their negotiators clear marching orders – we need highest
ambition, not point-scoring or lowest common denominator politics. Good
intentions won’t halve emissions this decade or save lives right now.”
Guardian 8th Dec 2023
‘Hopium and Defense’ All Ukraine Has to Sustain Itself as NATO Weapons Dry Up
04.12.2023 Sputnik International
With its supply of Western weapons dwindling and little sign of change from the NATO powers, Ukraine will be incapable of launching another counteroffensive like last summer, an analyst told Sputnik. However, barring a mutiny or political crisis, a collapse of the Ukrainian war effort isn’t necessarily imminent.
White House Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young told federal lawmakers on Monday that the US was “out of money to support Ukraine in this fight.”
According to Pentagon statistics, the US has sent Ukraine some $44 billion in military aid since February 2022, as well as $76 billion in other types of support, including budget financing and humanitarian aid. US President Joe Biden has asked for billions more to be approved, but the Republican majority in the House, now led by Ukraine skeptic House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), has remained cool to the idea without improvements in oversight.
The news also comes as the Pentagon failed its audit for the sixth year in a row.
Moscow-based international relations security analyst Mark Sleboda told Radio Sputnik’s The Final Countdown on Monday that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was correct in a way: Ukraine is indeed entering a new phase of the conflict – a defensive phase, as it waits and hopes that time will bring favorable changes to the situation.
“But it is definitely having an effect on the battlefield in Ukraine. There was already a trend because of the US and collectively NATO’s inability to ramp up their own industrial production to provide their Kiev Regime proxy with enough of the war basics like artillery shells, air defense missiles, and many other things that it needed. And now, that is coupled with the fact that Kiev is competing with Israel for many of the same things, which have been on the demand list … for Israel for what it needs for its conflict. And Zelensky is finding himself second-fiddle, vying not only for attention and supplies and funding” from the US and European Union, which he said had hit a “speed bump” in attempting to support both Kiev and Jerusalem at once…………………..
Over the weekend, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said the alliance “should also be prepared for bad news” from Ukraine, noting that wars “develop in phases” and that the West should continue to support Kiev “in both good and bad times.”
“For Zelensky, this is really a case of ‘the emperor has no clothes,’” Sleboda said, noting that other figures had turned against him, too, including anti-Russian journalist Simon Shuster, who quoted Ukrainian officials calling Zelensky “delusional” and claiming he won’t hear talk of Ukraine losing the conflict, and Kiev Major Vitaly Klitschko had called Zelensky “authoritarian.”
“I guess the Western propaganda is failing, and when the mainstream media is already out in front of him, even Jens Stoltenberg has to turn it around and admit certain things, although it must be said that these admissions are not coming in front of the media, they’re coming behind it, he simply no longer has any propaganda spin for maneuver.”
Sleboda said he agreed with Zelensky that Ukraine had entered a new phase of the conflict.
“Their offensive days are over, there is no large new offensive package from the West anywhere within sight, there’s not even enough maintenance aid to continue basic supplies of anything at this point. So the next year is solidly about desperate defense, building defensive lines, and a much-talked-about new total mobilization, meaning mass, forced conscription, that could possibly include 17- to 70-year-olds now and possibly women being conscripted for combat roles. And, evidently, it is going to be privatized, the last months of conscription having failed miserably, they are now evidently going to turn to private companies, which literally means Westerners coming in and help press-gang Ukrainians off the streets and putting them in the trenches.”
However, he cautioned that modern battlefield technology makes defense much less costly than offense, so “it does not necessarily mean a collapse of the Kiev Regime military,” adding that the bigger danger to the government was a mutiny or a political crisis. https://sputnikglobe.com/20231204/hopium-and-defense-all-ukraine-has-to-sustain-itself-as-nato-weapons-dry-up-1115381340.html
High risk’ of defeat – Zelensky’s top aide
https://www.rt.com/russia/588597-ukraine-at-risk-of-losing/ 6 Dec 23
Andrey Yermak has called for more funds for Kiev as Congress remains at loggerheads
President Vladimir Zelensky’s chief of staff has admitted that there is a “big risk” that Ukraine will lose its conflict with Russia unless the US Congress approves more funding to support Kiev. Andrey Yermak was among a number of Ukrainian officials who “swarmed Washington” ahead of a Senate vote on a White House request for over $100 billion in aid for Kiev, Israel and Taiwan, according to the New York Times.
Republican lawmakers are adamant that they will not approve the spending, unless the Democrats compromise on the issue of southern border security. President Joe Biden called their resistance “crazy” and “totally wrong.”
Yermak made the case for more funding during an appearance at the US Institute of Peace, a Washington-based government-funded think tank. He claimed that his country had inflicted casualties on Russian forces at a ratio of 1:10, and was capable of defeating it on the battlefield in the long run. However, he admitted that even a delay in the provision of American aid could pose a challenge for Kiev. Such an outcome would “give the big risk that we can be in [the] same position [where] we are located now,” he said, speaking in English, presumably meaning a lack of progress in retaking land from Russia. “Of course, it make with very high possibility impossible to continue liberate and give the big risk to lose this war,” Yermak added.
Zelensky’s chief-of-staff was ostensibly promoting the so-called “peace formula” that was first floated by the Ukrainian president last year. It would involve full control over pre-2014 territories for Kiev, while Russia would pay war reparations and face a tribunal. Moscow has dismissed these demands as detached from reality.
Yermak claimed that helping Ukraine to beat Russia was of strategic importance to the US and its allies. Zelensky himself was scheduled to make a virtual appearance at a closed Senate hearing, during which senior White House officials gave lawmakers a briefing on the importance of appropriations. He canceled at the last moment.
The Republican-controlled House has previously declined to include Ukraine aid in stopgap spending bills on two previous occasions, which kept the US government from shutting down this year.
Speaker Mike Johnson has demanded a “full accounting of how prior US military and humanitarian aid” to Ukraine was spent and a plan for “an accelerated path to victory” from the White House. Lawmakers opposed to bankrolling Ukraine have cited concerns over corruption in Kiev and the cost to American taxpayers as key objections.
U.S. government continues to pour $billions into the failing Small Nuclear Reactors business, in the hopes of exporting SMRs
The US Department of State and US Export-Import Bank (EXIM) have announced
a suite of financial tools to support the deployment of advanced nuclear
energy systems to help reach net-zero goals. They also announced plans to
mobilise more than USD4.2 billion of investment in enrichment and
conversion capacity through the five-nation Sapporo 5 collaboration.
World Nuclear News 7th Dec 2023
https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/US-takes-steps-to-jump-start-overseas-SMR-deployme
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) at COP 28. – let’s call it what it really is – a nuclear marketing company
IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi was at a COP28 event on 1 December 2023 in Dubai. He kicked off the nuke lobby push the IAEA Statement on Nuclear Power as a climate solution .
This slimy, silver-tongued propagandist is adept at couching the nuclear push in mealy-mouthed weasel words that are blandly acceptable to the public. The mantra will be “making use of all low-carbon energy sources”. The theme will be nuclear-not as the major star of climate action, but “part of the energy mix”, – and of course – requiring tax-payer funding.
You’ve got to hand it to Grossi – a master at deceptive language . He will cover himself, mouthing some concerns about proliferation, about the safety of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station, but his essential message is that nuclear is safe, clean, and deserves government funding. He minimises nuclear power’s history of accidents.
This UN agency wields huge influence internationally. It was set up – post the Hiroshima bombing, to make the nuclear industry look good.
At the climate summit The UK and USA governments eagerly jumped on the bandwagon, pushing for a tripling of nuclear power by 2050. Another 20 governments joined the push, but 179 other governments did not.
The sad reality is – that Mr Grossi and all these currently powerful politicians do not know how to cope with the obscene costs and horror of scrapping the world’s old toxic crumbling nuclear facilities . So forf thdem, their best option is to push on with the nuclear madness.
After all, they’ll soon retire on their fat superannuations, and leave the next generation with this horrible problem in a heated world.
Nuclear lobby gets EU approval as ‘strategic net-zero’ technology: its next battle is to get EU funding
EU countries reinstate nuclear among ‘strategic’ net-zero technologies
By Paul Messad | EURACTIV.fr | translated by Daniel Eck 8 Dec 23
Following in the footsteps of the European Parliament last month, EU member states in the Council have also included nuclear energy alongside renewables among the technologies promoted by the EU’s Net-Zero Industry Act (NZIA).
…………………….As a result, nuclear power will benefit from streamlined licensing procedures: a one-stop-shop in each EU country and full digitisation of procedures to ensure that authorisations can be obtained within nine to 12 months………………..
France and eight other EU countries – Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia – submitted a joint declaration before the meeting reiterating the importance of supporting nuclear power and its financing at the EU level.
On the German side, the pill is harder to swallow…………………
As for other nuclear technologies that are not on the list of “strategic” technologies, these have been retained as “net zero” technologies and, as such, enjoy certain advantages.
Next battle: Financing
The key remaining battle now for pro-nuclear countries is to secure financing at EU level.
“Technological neutrality must also apply to financing,” French Industry Minister Roland Lescure told the Council, even though the NZIA “is not a financing text but a regulatory text,” as his office pointed out.
Indeed, “there are no financial provisions in the text, except that it does not contain any financial provisions, which Germany was keen to point out,” Lescure’s office added.
Germany, meanwhile, is leading the opposition.
“EU funds cannot be used for technologies that are not supported by all member states,” Giegold said. “It was, therefore, crucial for us to exclude funding issues from the NZIA and to leave existing European rules untouched,” he added.
The NZIA will, therefore, have no impact on whether or not EU funds can finance nuclear power or not.
But according to Lescure’s office, the status quo on this point is not a problem for now. Indeed, the door is still open for nuclear technologies to be financed by the European Investment Bank (EIB) and other upcoming EU funds, possibly the Strategic Technologies for Europe (STEP) platform for example, which is currently under discusssion.
“EU funds that do not finance nuclear power should do so in the future,” said a declaration adopted in July by the French-led Nuclear Alliance of 14 EU countries, which called for “impartiality” between nuclear power and renewables when it comes to EU funding.
In addition, the European Parliament’s position proposes that 25% of the revenues from the EU carbon market should be earmarked for financing the technologies listed in the NZIA.
The Council did not take up this possibility, which will be discussed at the forthcoming trilogue talks scheduled on 13 December.
“We can now begin negotiations and complete them before the European elections,” said Christian Ehler, Parliament’s rapporteur on the NZIA, on X.
[Edited by Frédéric Simon/Alice Taylor]
‘Israel-Hamas War’ Label Obscures Israel’s War on Palestinians
FAIR, GREGORY SHUPAK 8 Dec 23
Since October 7, the day the escalation in Israel/Palestine began (FAIR.org, 10/13/23), American media outlets have persistently described the fighting as an “Israel-Hamas war.” From October 7 through midday on December 1, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post have combined to run 565 pieces that use the phrase “Israel-Hamas war.”
This paradigm has been a dominant way of covering the violence, even though Israel has been clear from the start that its assault has not been narrowly aimed at Hamas. At the outset of the Israeli onslaught, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant (Times of Israel, 10/9/23) said: “I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed.” Oxfam later said that such restrictions on Palestinians’ ability to eat—which left 2.2 million people “in urgent need of food”—mean that Israel is deploying a policy wherein “starvation is being used as a weapon of war against Gaza civilians.”
A day later, Israeli military spokesperson Adm. Daniel Hagari (Guardian, 10/10/23) said that “hundreds of tons of bombs” had already been dropped on the Gaza Strip, and admitted that “the emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy.”
The indiscriminate nature of Israel’s assault is clear. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported on November 24 that “over 1.7 million people in Gaza, or nearly 80% of the population, are estimated to be internally displaced.” On November 25, the Swiss-based Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor reported that Israel had killed 20,031 Palestinians in Gaza, 18,460 of whom (or 92%) were civilians, since October 7.
Thus, while Israel has openly acknowledged that it is carrying out indiscriminate violence against Palestinians, US media outlets do Israel the favor of presenting its campaign as if it were only aimed at combatants. “Israel-Gaza war” comes closer to capturing the reality that Israel’s offensive is effectively against everyone living in Gaza. Yet “Israel-Gaza war” appears in 265 pieces in the three papers, exactly 300 fewer than the obfuscatory “Israel-Hamas war.”
Consider also the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor finding that Israel has slaughtered 8,176 children. If 41% of all the Palestinians Israel has killed in the first seven weeks of its rampage have been children, and 8% have been combatants, then it is less an “Israel-Hamas war” than an Israeli war on Palestinian children.
Characterizing what has happened since October 7 as an “Israel-Hamas war” fails to adequately capture the scope and the character of Israel’s violence. Describing the bloodbath in Palestine this way obscures that grave violence is being visited upon virtually all Palestinians, whatever their political allegiances and whatever their relation to the fighting.
Cognitive dissonance
Corporate media have often stuck to the “Israel-Hamas war” approach even when the information the outlets are reporting shows how inadequate it is to conceive of Israel’s attacks in that way. For instance, the New York Times (10/20/23) ran a story about Israel ordering 1.2 million Gaza residents to evacuate their homes, and still classified the evacuation as part of the “Israel-Hamas war.” The Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ armed wing, is estimated to have 30,000–40,000 fighters (Axios, 10/21/23).
The Wall Street Journal published a short piece (11/6/23) that noted:
The United Nations said that the Israel-Hamas war has killed the highest number of UN workers in any single conflict. The UN said that over 88 workers in its Relief and Works Agency [UNRWA], the largest humanitarian organization in the Gaza Strip, have been killed since October 7.
But UNRWA did not itself use the “Israel-Hamas war” narrative in the report to which the Journal referred, instead opting for “escalation in the Gaza Strip.” Indeed, Israel killing UN workers at a rate of almost three each day would seem to fall outside the bounds of an “Israel-Hamas war,” but that’s how the paper categorizes the violence. (“Israel’s war on the UN” falls well outside the bounds of the ideologically permissible in the corporate media.)……………………………… more https://fair.org/home/israel-hamas-war-label-obscures-israels-war-on-palestinians/
UK preparing to push Ukraine toward peace talks – media
https://www.rt.com/news/588565-uk-ukraine-peace-talks/ 6 Dec 23
The West is reportedly disappointed with Kiev’s failed counteroffensive and doubts its ability to score a victory against Russia
British diplomats may soon start to put pressure on Ukraine to hold peace negotiations with Russia, Politico’s UK editor has suggested, citing “chatter” in diplomatic circles. Wider media reports suggest that the West has grown concerned at Kiev’s ability to score a battlefield victory.
Speaking on Monday on the latest episode of the ‘Politics at Jack and Sam’s’ podcast, Jack Blanchard noted that “Ukraine’s big counteroffensive was not anything like the success people hoped, and that is raising big questions about Ukraine’s ability to win this war in any meaningful military way.”
In light of this, Blanchard claimed that there are rumors in British “diplomatic circles” about “putting pressure on Kiev to sit down and negotiate.”
His comments come on the heels of a Washington Post article claiming that Ukraine ignored a counteroffensive strategy devised by American and British officers that recommended a focused attack on a single sector of frontline in April, and that it chose to delay the operation until June, and to spread its forces along multiple axes.
“Nothing went as planned,” the Post stated, adding that Ukraine’s insistence on following its own tactics and timeline generated “friction and second-guessing between Washington and Kiev.”
According to the latest figures from the Russian Defense Ministry, Ukraine has lost 125,000 service personnel and 16,000 pieces of heavy equipment in the six months since its counteroffensive began.
Blanchard is not the first journalist to claim that Kiev’s patrons are ready to push for peace. Last month, German tabloid Bild alleged that the US and Germany are rationing their weapons deliveries to Ukraine in a bid to nudge Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky into talks with Russia, without explicitly asking him.
The US State Department dismissed Bild’s report, with spokesman James O’Brien stating that the decision of when to sue for peace “is a matter for Ukraine to decide.”
Speaking at the Halifax Security Forum in Canada several days before that report was published, Aleksey Danilov, the secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, said that “Ukraine is concerned by the fact that discussions among certain partners have intensified regarding the need for negotiations…with the Russians.”
Danilov insisted, like Zelensky repeatedly has since the start of the conflict, that “Ukraine and the Ukrainian people will fight to the end. We are sure of our victory.”
Not a Penny Nor a Bullet Off the Table
Hundreds more civilians have been slaughtered since Blinken’s remarks. In other words, Israel ignored him. As long as it’s only talk, Israel can afford to.
So far not one bullet, nor one penny has been withheld from Netanyahu’s vicious regime
The U.S. vice president, secretary of state and defense secretary are using unusually blunt language against Israel’s massacres of Palestinians. But the money and weapons keep flowing, says Joe Lauria.
By Joe Lauria / Consortium News, December 8, 2023,,
more https://scheerpost.com/2023/12/08/not-a-penny-nor-a-bullet-off-the-table/
In the midst of an Old Testament-style genocide against the Palestinian people, there is a paraphrased line from the Book of Daniel that has come into full view for the Biden administration: “The writing is on the wall.”
Everywhere in the U.S. that prominent administration officials go, they are hearing it from a public increasingly alarmed about their complicity in genocide. It is not criticism they can easily ignore.
For one thing, if they have a shred of conscience left they cannot avoid seeing that Israel’s military campaign is “deliberately inflicting on the group [Gazans] conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part,” as the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines the supreme crime.
But even if their hearts are stones, political warnings are scratched on the wall in a fast-approaching presidential election in which increasing numbers of Democrats are affixing “genocide” to Biden’s first name.
Thus Biden, though not Biden himself, was spurred in the past few days to dispatch his top deputies to deliver the sternest message to Israel.
At the climate summit in Dubai on Saturday, Vice President Kamala Harris told a press conference: “The United States is unequivocal: International humanitarian law must be respected. Too many innocent Palestinians have been killed.”
On the same day Harris spoke, in what appears to have been coordinated by the White House, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a speech at the Reagan National Defense Forum in Simi Valley, CA, that, “I have repeatedly made clear to Israel’s leaders that protecting Palestinian civilians in Gaza is both a moral responsibility and strategic imperative.”
“In this kind of a fight, the center of gravity is the civilian population,” Austin said. “And if you drive them into the arms of the enemy, you replace a tactical victory with a strategic defeat.” Even then, Austin couched his remarks in military and not moral terms. Still the message was clear to Israel: Stop killing so many civilians.
Harris’s and Austin’s remarks followed by two days comments by Secretary of State Antony Blinken during his third jaunt to Jerusalem since Oct. 7.
After meeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Blinken told the press:
“We discussed the details of Israel’s ongoing planning and I underscored the imperative for the United States that the massive loss of civilian life and displacement of the scale that we saw in northern Gaza not be repeated in the South. …
As I told the prime minister, intent matters, but so does the result. … Israel has one of the most sophisticated militaries in the world. It is capable of neutralising the threat posed by Hamas, while minimising harm to innocent men, women and children. …
That means taking more effective steps to protect the lives of civilians, including by clearly and precisely designating areas and places in southern and central Gaza, where they can be safe and out of the line of fire.”
Israel responded with some maps supposedly outlining safe areas for civilians to go to. But the bombing in the south of Gaza, where 1.8 million Gazans are displaced from the north, has been among the most intense in two months of Israeli attacks.
Hundreds more civilians have been slaughtered since Blinken’s remarks. In other words, Israel ignored him. As long as it’s only talk, Israel can afford to.
An unconfirmed report from Israel’s Channel 12 following Blinken’s meeting with Netanyahu said the secretary of state supposedly “linked American military support to certain conditions, including proof that the I.D.F. plans to take into consideration the civilian population in Gaza, reduce civilian evacuations from their homes to a minimum, and provide more safe areas for non-combatants.”
Leverage
On Monday, Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Biden ally, said according to the AP: “’The truth is that if asking nicely worked, we wouldn’t be in the position we are today,’ Sanders said in a floor speech. It was time for the United States to use its ‘substantial leverage’ with its ally, the Vermont senator said. ‘And we all know what that leverage is,’ he said, adding, ‘the blank-check approach must end.’”
Until such leverage is used — and Washington has let two months go by with more than 16,000 dead, 7,000 missing and 40,000 injured — these are mere words.
Such talk from these Biden officials and allies will not fool many people, except for fools, and will not scare Netanyahu.
So far not one bullet, nor one penny has been withheld from Netanyahu’s vicious regime.
This is Biden’s quandry: continue to support Israel’s genocide and see his poll numbers continue to plummet. The dilemma he must answer is: what would damage him more, sticking with Israel through its murderous campaign or risk the Israel Lobby’s consummate skill at destroying American politicians?
On Nov. 5, 2024, American voters will weigh Biden in the balance and, as Daniel told King Belshazzar, he may be found wanting.
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