Sen. Blumenthal: US Getting Its ‘Money’s Worth’ in Ukraine Because Americans Aren’t Dying.
“We’re losing no lives in Ukraine, and the Ukrainians are fighting heroically against Russia,” Romney said. “We’re diminishing and devastating the Russian military for a very small amount of money … a weakened Russia is a good thing.”
By Dave DeCamp / Antiwar.com https://scheerpost.com/2023/08/31/sen-blumenthal-us-getting-its-moneys-worth-in-ukraine-because-americans-arent-dying/
Sen. Romney recently called the proxy war the ‘the best national defense spending’ the US has ever done.
Fresh from a trip to Kyiv, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) is arguing that the US is getting its “money’s worth” in Ukraine because Russia is taking losses and no Americans are dying, showing a lack of concern for Ukrainian lives.
“Even Americans who have no particular interest in freedom and independence in democracies worldwide, should be satisfied that we’re getting our money’s worth on our Ukraine investment,” Blumenthal wrote in the Connecticut Post.
“For less than 3 percent of our nation’s military budget, we’ve enabled Ukraine to degrade Russia’s military strength by half … All without a single American service woman or man injured or lost,” he added.
The argument has become a common talking point among hawks in Washington who want the US to keep fueling the proxy war against Russia. Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) recently called the conflict “the best national defense spending I think we’ve ever done.”
“We’re losing no lives in Ukraine, and the Ukrainians are fighting heroically against Russia,” Romney said. “We’re diminishing and devastating the Russian military for a very small amount of money … a weakened Russia is a good thing.”
The hawkish senators’ comments came amid Ukraine’s faltering counteroffensive. Despite the lack of success on the battlefield, the Biden administration and most members of Congress want to keep funding the war, which they acknowledge would not continue without US support.
“As Zelensky is frank and forthcoming to say, Ukraine could not have survived without America and our allies,” Blumenthal said. “But his counteroffensive is far from an assured success. In the end, the only way he loses is if America pulls the plug.”
The Washington Post recently reported that US intelligence has determined Ukraine’s counteroffensive will fail to meet its main objective of severing Russia’s land bridge to Crimea. Despite the conclusion, the US is pushing Ukrainian commanders to go harder on the battlefield and complaining that Ukraine has become too “casualty averse.”
Leading up to the counteroffensive, the Discord leaks and other media reports showed that the US did not believe Ukraine could regain significant territory. But the Biden administration still pushed for the assault and rejected the idea of a ceasefire.
Ukrainian drone attacks Russian town near major nuclear plant
- Summary
- Drone attacks nuclear town
- No damage to nuclear power station
- Kursk power station is one of biggest
- Ukrainian drone shot down near Moscow
MOSCOW, Sept 1 (Reuters) https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukrainian-drones-attack-russian-town-home-nuclear-plant-2023-09-01/–
A Ukrainian drone attacked a town in western Russia which is home to one of the country’s biggest nuclear power stations, though there was no damage reported to the plant, Russian officials said.
Governor Roman Starovoit said a Ukrainian drone had damaged the facade of a building in the town of Kurchatov, just a few kilometres from the Kursk nuclear power station, early on Friday. He had earlier said there were two drones but clarified his remarks.
“There are no casualties,” Starovoit said. Starovoit did not mention any potential damage to the Kursk nuclear power plant.
The Soviet-era Kursk nuclear power station has the same graphite-moderated reactors as the Chernobyl nuclear plant.
An explosion and fire at the Chernobyl plant in 1986, in then Soviet Ukraine, was the world’s worst nuclear accident, spreading radiation across Europe.
Currently three RBMK-1000 reactors in Kursk are operational with one shut down, according to Russia’s state nuclear corporation.
Russia and Ukraine have in the past accused each other of plotting to attack the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station in Ukraine. Russian troops seized the station, Europe’s largest nuclear facility with six reactors, in the days after the Kremlin ordered the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Another drone was shot down approaching Moscow on Friday morning, said Mayor Sergei Sobyanin. That briefly disrupted flights to Moscow’s Vnukovo airport.
In the western Russian region of Belgorod another drone was shot down, according to Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov.
Writing by Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Michael Perry
New Brunswick Power has its head stuck in uranium
Tom McLean and Susan O’Donnell,, September 1, 2023 https://nbmediacoop.org/2023/09/01/commentary-nb-power-has-its-head-stuck-in-uranium/
NB Power seems to want to be a nuclear utility no matter how much it costs or whether or not the nuclear technology works because… well, just because. The utility’s 2023 Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) released in July states that small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) are critical to developing a clean and cost-effective power grid in New Brunswick, although NB Power does not know when, or if, SMRs will become available or the cost.
Oh, and if the experimental SMRs are not available, the plan instead is to use wind and solar power, complemented by storage and biomass.
Why are renewables not the first choice for NB Power, given that wind and solar power costs are well known and very inexpensive, and storage cost is in free fall? The answer is not in the IRP.
In fact, the IRP suggests that SMRs are not critical since alternative pathways to a clean grid already exist without them. But NB Power wants to ignore that. The IRP states that integrating wind and solar instead, as an alternative to SMRs “… has not been studied in New Brunswick before.” Why has NB Power not undertaken this study?
Maybe because they won’t like the answer many researchers have already uncovered.
Wind, solar and storage are proven technologies with shrinking costs, and they outperform nuclear power on cost and reliability. Wind and solar are even predictable – meteorologists predict them every day with ample accuracy for power production.
With distributed generation, storage and inter-jurisdiction connections, New Brunswick can produce all its own power less expensively with renewables and without nuclear risk. The IRP’s poor assumptions about installed capacity, curtailment, storage, and use of interconnections are astounding. Properly deployed storage and interconnections significantly limit the amount of curtailment and required capacity. The IRP failed to note that interconnections provide both a source of capacity and a market for excess wind and solar production and, according to the previous 2020 IRP, the cheapest option for capacity is using interconnections.
Three years ago, the 2020 IRP showed the cost of the existing (non-experimental) NB Power nuclear plant at Point Lepreau as $117/MWh or 11.7¢ per kWh. NB Power currently sells power to residents at 12.27¢ per kWh. The cost of nuclear power has likely risen since 2020, meaning NB Power has either negligible returns or more likely, loses money on every nuclear kWh sold to New Brunswick households, and that cost does not even include the cost of transmission, distribution and administration. Is increasing the NB Power debt with every nuclear transaction the reasonable power cost Minister Holland has in mind when he talks about the expected costs of SMNR power?
Why is NB Power’s head stuck in uranium? Many jurisdictions have moved or are moving to a clean electrical grid with renewable power. For example, these countries are already managing higher penetrations of wind power than NB Power: Demark 55%; Ireland 33%; UK 25%; Germany 22%. The same for some US states: Maine 27%, South Dakota, 55%, Idaho 17%. The South Australia power grid broke records when it recently ran for over 10 days on 100% wind and solar power.
The 2023 IRP describes SMRs, a non-existing technology, as a critical piece of the future grid but ignores both existing storage technologies such as thermal storage for district heating and closed loop pumped storage hydro. If novel technology is desired, consider those coming to market in the next two years, such as 100-hour iron-air batteries at less than half the cost of lithium-ion batteries, and Canadian closed-loop geothermal technology currently in pilot.
The Point Lepreau nuclear generating station has matured into a big white elephant. Unplanned and intermittent shutdowns are a main reason NB Power loses money every year, and the original reactor build and refurbishment are responsible for three-quarters of the utility’s massive debt. Last year, NB Power applied for a 25-year licence renewal for the Lepreau reactor; the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission instead gave it 10 years, citing the huge public interest (mostly negative), and mandated another licence review in 2027.
By then, the exorbitant costs of the speculative nuclear SMRs will be clear but New Brunswick needs to start now on a prudent pathway to a clean grid using renewable power. Will we continue to support blind faith in a speculative uranium-fuelled future, or will we go with renewable wind and sunshine? Minister Holland and NB Power would do well to start a re-think now about which way the wind is blowing.
Tom McLean is a retired software developer living in New Maryland. Dr. Susan O’Donnell is the lead researcher of the CEDAR project at St. Thomas University.
Ratepayers on the hook for costs of Georgia nuclear reactor project
Investor-owned Georgia Power will recover capital costs associated with the over-budgeted construction of two new nuclear reactors from ratepayers, according to a preliminary agreement announced Thursday.
Georgia Power and the Georgia Public Services Commission’s public interest advocacy staff agreed to a $7.56 billion cap on the amount of capital construction costs placed in the rate base to fund completion of a pair of nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle in Waynesboro, Georgia.
The PSC said it was “a significant reduction” from the $10.19 billion the utility said it needs to …………………………………..(Subscribers only)
How a Louisiana appeals ruling could impact nuclear waste storage in New Mexico
That license allows for a facility to store more than 8,680 metric tons of spent fuel, even as New Mexico passed a law banning the storage of high-level nuclear waste in the state just before the license was issued. The ban will not be lifted, according to the state law, until a national repository is built, and New Mexico officials give approval for a waste facility.
Appeals court vacates Texas spent-fuel storage license that may have ripple effects, nuclear watchdogs say
SOURCE New Mexico BY: DANIELLE PROKOP – SEPTEMBER 1, 2023
Last week, a federal appellate court in New Orleans ordered a review and reversed a federal license to operate a proposed spent-fuel facility in Andrews County, Texas, just miles across the border from Eunice, New Mexico.
In the Aug. 25 order, Fifth Circuit Judge James Ho wrote that federal law does not grant the Nuclear Regulatory Commission the authority to license private storage facilities for spent nuclear fuel away from reactors.
“The Commission has no statutory authority to issue the license,” Ho wrote. “The Atomic Energy Act doesn’t authorize the Commission to license a private, away-from-reactor storage facility for spent nuclear fuel. And issuing such a license contradicts Congressional policy expressed in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act.”
This is just the latest in a decades-long debate on what to do with the growing amount of radioactive waste from former and current power plants across the country.
Recently, Texas and New Mexico legislatures passed laws banning storage of nuclear waste – despite previous administrations welcoming the industry – and setting up for a showdown with the federal government, who has authority over the nuclear industry.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued a license to Florida-based company Holtec International for a proposed storage site in southeast New Mexico between Hobbs and Carlsbad.
That license allows for a facility to store more than 8,680 metric tons of spent fuel, even as New Mexico passed a law banning the storage of high-level nuclear waste in the state just before the license was issued. The ban will not be lifted, according to the state law, until a national repository is built, and New Mexico officials give approval for a waste facility………………………………………………………………………………………………………. more https://sourcenm.com/2023/09/01/waste-storage-in-new-mexico/
Russia puts advanced Sarmat nuclear missile system on ‘combat duty’
Russian space agency chief Yuri Borisov says new intercontinental ballistic missile system is now in service, Russia’s news agencies report.
Moscow has put into service an advanced intercontinental ballistic missile that Russian President Vladimir Putin has said would make Russia’s enemies “think twice” about their threats, according to reported comments by the head of the country’s space agency.
Yuri Borisov, the head of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, said Sarmat missiles have “assumed combat duty”, according to Russian news agency reports on Friday……………………………………………………………………………………. more https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/9/2/russia-puts-advanced-sarmat-nuclear-missile-system-on-combat-duty
Critics Picked Up on “Oppenheimer’s” All-Too-Timely Warning on Nuclear War
KARL GROSSMAN , https://fair.org/home/critics-picked-up-on-oppenheimers-all-too-timely-warning-on-nuclear-war/ 1 Sept 23
The reviews in media of the film Oppenheimer have been largely positive—and perceptive and thoughtful. With a few exceptions, most reviewers “got” the message of the film.
Oppenheimer is not a film in the mold of Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, the 1964 movie by Stanley Kubrick, an in-your-face cinematic presentation of the madness of nuclear war. It is not as direct as On the Beach, the 1959 Stanley Kramer film based on the Nevil Shute novel about World War III’s nuclear Armageddon, in which a US submarine crew and residents of Melbourne, Australia, await creeping death from radioactive fallout. Nor is it as straightforward as The Day After, the 1983 ABC-TV film that showed an estimated 100 million people the very personal results of nuclear war.
‘To embrace the bomb’
The film is about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the US physicist who helped develop the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As Manohla Dargis writes in her New York Times review (7/19/23), Christopher Nolan, who both directed and wrote Oppenheimer, “doesn’t restage the attacks; there are no documentary images of the dead or panoramas of cities in ashes.” Rather, the horrific consequences of nuclear conflict are transmitted through the story of Oppenheimer himself, who was “transformed by his role in the creation of weapons of mass destruction and soon after raised the alarm about the dangers of nuclear war.”
Citing French director François Truffaut, who once wrote that “war films, even pacifist, even the best, willingly or not, glorify war and render it in some way attractive,” Dargis contends that this
“gets at why Nolan refuses to show the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, world-defining events that eventually killed an estimated 100,000 to upward of 200,000 souls.
You do, though, see Oppenheimer watch the first test bomb and, critically, you also hear the famous words that he said crossed his mind as the mushroom cloud rose: “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.”
“As Nolan reminds you, the world quickly moved on from the horrors of the war to embrace the bomb,” Dargis writes. “Now we, too, have become death, the destroyers of worlds.”
‘Uncomfortably timely’
The film’s focus not just on a bloody decision made the better part of a century ago, but on the threat of annihilation facing humanity today, is made clear at its outset. A caption spread across the screen with an observation from Greek mythology: “Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to man. For this he was chained to a rock and tortured for eternity.”
Ann Hornaday in her Washington Post review (7/19/23) relates:
As a filmmaker at the height of his powers, Nolan has used those prodigious skills not simply to amaze or spectacularize, but to plunge the audience into a chapter of history that might feel ancient, as he reminds us, but happened just yesterday. By making that story so beautiful, so elegantly crafted and compulsively watchable, he has brought to life not just J. Robert Oppenheimer, but the still-crucial arguments he both started and tried to end.
Oppenheimer boldly posits that those arguments are still worth having, in a film of magnitude, profundity and dazzling artistry.
“Oppenheimer Is an Uncomfortably Timely Tale of Destruction,” was the headline of the review by David Klion in the New Republic (7/21/23). He declares:
Oppenheimer turns out to be uncomfortably timely. At no point since the end of the Cold War has nuclear war felt more plausible, as the daily clashes between a nuclear-armed Russia and a NATO-backed Ukraine remind us. Beyond literal nuclear warfare, we are faced with a range of existential dangers—pandemics, climate change and perhaps artificial intelligence—that will be managed, or mismanaged, by small teams of scientific experts working in secret with little democratic accountability. The ideologies, affiliations and personalities of those experts are likely to leave their stamp on history, and not in ways they themselves would necessarily wish. Oppenheimer’s dark prophecy may yet be fulfilled.
A plug for nuclear power?
Now, there were several inexplicable reviews of Oppenheimer.
In his review in New Scientist (8/9/23), a London-based publication with an international circulation of 125,000, Simon Ings writes that Oppenheimer “will help us embrace” nuclear power, which, he claims, “by any objective measure…is safe and getting safer.” Ing somehow believes the film “isn’t so much about J. Robert Oppenheimer’s development of the atomic bomb…as it is about the paranoid turn history took [about nuclear power] in the wake of his triumph.”
How he deduced this from Oppenheimer is indecipherable.
Leaving the theater after seeing Oppenheimer, I was tempted to call it a movie-length Wikipedia article. But after a look online, I realized I was giving Wikipedia too little credit—or Christopher Nolan, the movie’s writer and director, too much.
The New Yorker gave his piece the headline “Oppenheimer Is Ultimately a History Channel Movie with Fancy Editing.” Considering the many highly emotional, engrossing scenes—including many personal ones involving Oppenheimer—this makes no sense. It is far from a movie version of a Wikipedia posting or a History Channel docudrama.
Then there was the review by Richard Brody in the New Yorker (7/26/23) that begins:
Brody almost seems to scold Nolan for hoping to provoke discussion:
Rather than illuminating him or his times, the scenes seem pitched to spark post-screening debate, to seek an importance beyond the experiences and ideas of the characters.
‘The bomb’s lingering residue’
Justin Chang’s review in the Los Angeles Times (7/19/23) would no doubt have irritated Brody by engaging in “post-screening debate.” Nolan, Chang writes, is
less interested in reenacting scenes of mass death and devastation, none of which are depicted here, than in sifting through the bomb’s lingering geopolitical and psychic residue.
Chang observes:
The real Oppenheimer may have never expressed remorse over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but the movie never lets its Oppenheimer forget them, especially in one shuddering, blood-chilling sequence that transforms a public moment of triumph into an indictment.
Nor can Oppenheimer forget the still greater destruction that may yet be unleashed, a prospect that his typically naive and high-minded insistence on “international cooperation” will do nothing to dispel. Nolan conveys that warning with somber gravity, if not, finally, the cathartic force that our current headlines, full of war and nuclear portent, would seem to demand. Not for the first time, the demonstrative cleverness of his storytelling can seem too precise, too hermetically sealed and engineered, for a sense of raw collective devastation to fully take hold.
Even Rupert Murdoch’s arch-conservative New York Post (7/19/23) had a rave review. Critic Johnny Oleksinski declares:
What keeps all three hours of the film so breathlessly tense is the title physicist’s internal tug of war: Can the valiant quest for scientific advancement—his great passion—lead to the total destruction of the planet?
A highly perilous time
To what extent did media either take advantage of or drop the ball on the opportunity the movie gave them to examine the pressing issue of nuclear war? My review of the reviews would conclude that most media didn’t drop the ball, only a few did—and that to me is quite a surprise.
We are at a highly perilous time in regard to nuclear war. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (1/24/23) moved its “Doomsday Clock,” which it says represents the risk of “nuclear annihilation,” forward to 90 seconds to midnight—the closest it’s been since it was set up in 1947.
Dr. Strangelove, On the Beach and The Day After all came out decades ago.
Oppenheimer can provide—especially with the (astonishing for me, long a media critic) widely positive media reaction—the opening of a window that can help new generations of people learn about nuclear weapons, and move for an abolition that can prevent a nuclear apocalypse.
Over 100 security incidents at UK’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) nuclear weapons body
An arm of the Ministry of Defence (MoD) which oversees the UK’s nuclear
weapons programme has refused to release details of over 100 security
incidents it logged over the last five years, prompting accusations of a
“cover up”.
According to new figures – released to The Ferret after a
freedom of information (FoI) request – the Defence Nuclear Organisation
(DNO) has recorded 113 ‘security concerns’ since 2017-18. The DNO said
these incidents may have ranged from minor breaches of security policies to
the outright loss of information.
But despite claiming that many of the
reported incidents would not have “significant ramifications”, the
organisation refused to provide descriptions of any. It cited national
security concerns and fears about damaging the UK’s reputation
internationally.
The Ferret 30th Aug 2023 https://theferret.scot/over-100-incidents-body-oversees-nuclear-weapons/
‘Unrealistic and irrational’: Government announces Sizewell C nuclear station £341m speed-up despite local backlash in Suffolk
Tom Daly, the cabinet member for energy and climate change at East Suffolk
Council, believes the project is “unrealistic and irrational”, and the
announcement nothing but a publicity stunt. He said: “I think it is part
of the government’s efforts to keep the subject in the news and make sure
it is in the public’s minds.
“The money that is being highlighted has
already been allocated — this is a way to create a sense of confidence
and try to dispel doubts.” In early 2020, the Together Against Sizewell C
(TASC) local action group sought a judicial review of the previous
administration at East Suffolk Council’s 2019 decision to grant planning
permission for preparations to begin on the site. However, in October 2020,
the High Court ruled the impacts would be “minor” and “not
significant”.
Pete Wilkinson, the deputy chair at TASC, said: “There
seems to be a bottomless pit of public money when it comes to funding
Sizewell C, so besotted is the government with this already redundant
nuclear vanity project.” Several concerns have been raised by the new
council including nuclear waste, water supply, sea defence, impacts on the
coastal economy, species diversity, habitat destruction, and size. Cllr
Daly added: “The government’s newfound enthusiasm for nuclear is not
based on reality. It’s far too expensive and far too damaging.
Suffolk News 30th Aug 2023
Why is The New York Times Burning Peace Activist Jodie Evans at the Stake?
The New York Times have targeted Code Pink’s Jodie Evans in a smear piece claiming she and her husband are agents of China.
SCHEERPOST 31 Aug 23
The New York Times has revealed what the future could potentially look like in an impending war with China. Through conjecture and innuendo-filled reporting, America’s “paper of record” went out of its way to attack one of the country’s most fierce peace movement fighters — Code Pink co-founder Jodie Evans.
Evans joins host Robert Scheer on this episode of Scheer Intelligence to discuss what Scheer called “one of the most vicious articles I’ve ever read in a mainstream publication.” While The Times attempted to tie Evans and her husband to the Chinese government, Evans points out the bigger picture in what the piece represents: the vilification of anything or anyone having to do with China.
She points out how her familiarity with the country allowed her to bring it up in conversation but in the last few years, any sort of discussion, debate or otherwise normal discourse has turned sour. This is all part of an effort, Evans said, to manufacture consent for a war with China. This has not only affected her but thousands of Chinese American people as well.
“Americans are being dumbed down by this propaganda. And it has an intention. It is a part of this war. [A]nybody that gets in our way, we’re going to destroy them and we are going to continue this drive to go to war on China, to demonize China,” Evans said.
Transcript……………………………………………………………………………….https://scheerpost.com/2023/08/31/why-is-the-new-york-times-burning-peace-activist-jodie-evans-at-the-stake/
NATO’s ‘proxy war’ blues: How the US-led campaign to use Ukraine to ‘cripple’ Russia has failed
Moscow has overcome Western economic sanctions and honed a bigger and more effective military through 18 months of combat
The US-led drive to isolate Russia and the attempt to debilitate its economy and military using Ukraine – acknowledged as a “proxy war” even by some Western leaders – appears to be having the opposite effect by various measures.
Washington and other NATO members have repeatedly proclaimed that Russian President Vladimir Putin has already suffered a strategic defeat in Ukraine and has “no possibility” of winning the conflict. “Putin’s already lost the war,” US President Joe Biden claimed last month after attending a NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania.
Pentagon officials, who have openly admitted that their goal is to weaken Russia’s military, have spoken in recent weeks of heavy losses for Moscow’s forces and “steady progress” in Ukraine’s long-touted counteroffensive. America’s top-ranking general, US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, went so far earlier this year as to say, “Russia has lost. They’ve lost strategically, operationally and tactically.”
Russian leaders are seeing a far different picture on the ground. For instance, Putin has claimed that Russian forces achieved a ten-to-one kill ratio in a key battle last month. Ukraine has lost 43,0000 troops, as well as dozens of Western-supplied tanks, infantry vehicles and artillery pieces since Kiev’s counteroffensive began in early June, according to an August 4 estimate by the Russian Defense Ministry. “It is obvious that the Western-supplied weapons are failing to bring success on the battlefield and only prolong the military conflict,” Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu has said.
Grading the military impact
While assessments of the battlefield situation diverge wildly, NATO has clearly failed so far in its effort to weaken the Russian military. Moscow’s forces are inarguably stronger, better-armed and larger today than when the conflict started in February 2022. They’ve also gained 18 months of experience in fighting NATO-trained troops and countering NATO-supplied weaponry. In fact, Russian troops have become so formidable in this regard that even Western media outlets have quoted defense analysts on the increasingly effective tactics employed by Moscow’s battle-hardened forces…………………………………….
The Center for European Policy Assessment (CEPA), which is funded by a variety of US weapons makers, offered a similar view on the strengthening of Russia’s military. “The Russians have gone to school on the Ukrainians and have been learning quickly,” Chels Michta, a US military intelligence officer, wrote in May. “The 2023 Russian Army is a different beast from the 2022 Russian Army from the early stages of the war.”……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… https://www.rt.com/news/581704-ukraine-proxy-war-backfires-for-west/
The UK Government’s seventh Energy Secretary in the space of four years has “a huge amount of catching up to do” to kickstart a renewables revolution.
The UK Government’s seventh Energy Secretary in the space of four years
has been warned she has “a huge amount of catching up to do” to
kickstart a renewables revolution.
Herald 31st Aug 2023
US Victim of Own Propaganda in Ukraine War
The aggression of Kiev’s coup regime against ethnic Russians in Ukraine, which led to Russia’s intervention, has been airbrushed from history.
The brutality of these neo-Nazis surfaced again on May 2 when right-wing toughs in Odessa attacked an encampment of ethnic Russian protesters driving them into a trade union building which was then set on fire with Molotov cocktails. As the building was engulfed in flames, some people who tried to flee were chased and beaten, while those trapped inside heard the Ukrainian nationalists liken them to black-and-red-striped potato beetles called Colorados, because those colors are used in pro-Russian ribbons.
‘Burn, Colorado, burn’ went the chant.
As the fire worsened, those dying inside were serenaded with the taunting singing of the Ukrainian national anthem. The building also was spray-painted with Swastika-like symbols and graffiti reading ‘Galician SS,’ a reference to the Ukrainian nationalist army that fought alongside the German Nazi SS in World War II, killing Russians on the eastern front.”
Photos and a video can be seen on the original of this article
The U.S. embassy in Prague furthered the suppression of the historical context of the Ukraine conflict, which has dangerously trapped Americans in ignorance about the war.
SCHEERPOST, By Joe Lauria / Consortium News, August 30, 2023
The whitewashing of the historical context for the war in Ukraine has resulted in a profoundly embarrassing episode for the United States embassy in Prague.
An Aug. 21 Tweet from the embassy with a message roughly translated from Czech to mean “Aggression always comes from the Kremlin,” showed two photographs: the first displayed Soviet tanks in the streets of Prague in 1968. The second showed fire burning in front of a building and was marked “Odesa 2023.”
Twitter users were quick to point out the embassy’s error. “The bottom photo is from 2014 Odessa Clashes where pro federalism (mostly pro Russian) got burned alive in clash with Ukrainian nationalist(s) while police and fireman stood watching. To this day no one was jailed,” wrote one commenter.
Someone else wrote: “You vile people, twisting the history to whitewash the crimes of the Ukrainian far-right against peaceful Ukrainians, and in fact using their crimes with the diametrically opposite meaning!”
The embassy got the message. “Thanks for the heads up and apologies for the incorrect use of the graphic. We wanted to illustrate the ongoing Russian aggression against Ukraine and we chose the wrong photo,” it wrote.
That prompted another Twitter user to sarcastically respond: “You wanted to illustrate the Ukrainian aggression against the Russian people and you chose the right photo.”
The embassy then deleted the Tweet. It never acknowledged the event depicted in the bottom photo. That signifies either ignorance of the event or intentional suppression of it. The massacre in Odessa is a key point in understanding the cause of the war and has been buried by the West, creating a propagandized narrative about Russia’s intervention.
May 2, 2014
Demonstrators in Odessa on May 2, 2014 were protesting the violent overthrow two and a half months earlier on Feb. 21, 2014 of the democratically-elected President Viktor Yanukovych. U.S. involvement in the coup is revealed in a leaked telephone conversation between Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland and Geoffrey Pyatt, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine at the time.
On May 2, football hooligans and far-right groups deliberately set fire to a labor union building in Odessa where protestors against the coup had taken refuge. As many as 48 people were killed. Police did not intervene. Video footage shows at least one police officer and others firing their guns into the building. The crowd is cheering as many of the people trapped inside jumped to their deaths.
Pleas at the time from the United Nations and the European Union for Ukraine to investigate were ignored. Three Ukrainian local government probes were stymied by the withholding of secret documents.
A report on the incident from the European Council (EC) at the time makes clear it did not conduct its own investigation but relied on local probes, especially by the Verkhovna Rada’s Temporary Investigation Commission. The EC complains in its reports that it too was barred from viewing classified information. The EC said the Ukrainian government probes “failed to comply with the requirements of the European Human Rights Convention.”
Relying only on the flawed local inquiries, the EC reports that pro-Russian, or pro-federalist, protestors attacked a pro-unity march in the afternoon, prompting street battles. Then:…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
The local investigation thus blamed the anti-Maidan protestors for starting the fire throughout the building. But this video, which shows events on that day leading to the fire, depicts the main blaze in the lobby. It shows Right Sector extremists lobbing Molotov cocktails into the building and a policeman firing his gun at it.
It does not show any cocktails thrown from the building. It doesn’t show clashes earlier in the day, though one pro-unity protestor says they were attacked at Cathedral Square and they’ve come to burn the anti-Maidan protestors in the building for revenge.
The Fallout
Eight days after the Odessa massacre, coup resisters in the far eastern provinces of Donetsk and Lugansk, bordering on Russia, voted in a referendum to become independent from Ukraine.
The U.S.-backed coup government had launched a military attack two weeks earlier, on April 15, 2014 against ethnic Russians in Donbass protesting against the coup, including seizing government buildings, in defense of a democratic election. This phase of the war continued for nearly eight years, killing thousands of people before prompting Russian intervention in the civil war on Feb. 24, 2022.
Russia says it had proof that the Ukrainian military, which had amassed 60,000 of its troops at the line of contact, was on the verge of an offensive to retake the Donbass provinces. OSCE maps showed a dramatic increase of shelling from the government side into the rebel areas in February last year.
Russia invaded Ukraine with the stated purpose of “de-Nazifying” and “de-militarizing” Ukraine to protect Russian-speakers and the people of Donbass. The events in Odessa on May 2, 2014 played a role.
Western Media Coverage
The New York Times buried the first news of the massacre in a May 2, 2014 story, saying “dozens of people died in a fire related to clashes that broke out between protesters holding a march for Ukrainian unity and pro-Russian activists.”
……………… The late Robert Parry, who founded Consortium News, reported on Aug. 10, 2014:
“The brutality of these neo-Nazis surfaced again on May 2 when right-wing toughs in Odessa attacked an encampment of ethnic Russian protesters driving them into a trade union building which was then set on fire with Molotov cocktails. As the building was engulfed in flames, some people who tried to flee were chased and beaten, while those trapped inside heard the Ukrainian nationalists liken them to black-and-red-striped potato beetles called Colorados, because those colors are used in pro-Russian ribbons.
‘Burn, Colorado, burn’ went the chant.
As the fire worsened, those dying inside were serenaded with the taunting singing of the Ukrainian national anthem. The building also was spray-painted with Swastika-like symbols and graffiti reading ‘Galician SS,’ a reference to the Ukrainian nationalist army that fought alongside the German Nazi SS in World War II, killing Russians on the eastern front.”
Consequences of Suppressing Information
Though they were reported at the time, the events of May 2, 2014 have virtually vanished from Western media. It was one of the seminal events that led to Russia’s eventual intervention in the Ukrainian civil war.
Similarly the role Ukrainian neo-Nazis played in the 2014 coup and the 8-year war on Donbass — which had been widely reported on at the time in Western mainstream media — disappeared, erasing the context of Russia’s invasion. The December 2021 Russian offer of treaties with the U.S. and NATO to avoid war was forgotten too. A campaign was then launched by so-called disinformation monitors to try to suppress alternative media from reporting on these facts.
The consequences of these efforts is clear. The aggression of Kiev’s coup regime against ethnic Russians in Ukraine, which led to Russia’s intervention, has been airbrushed from history.
What’s left is a cartoon version that says the conflict began, not in 2014, but in February 2022 when Putin woke up one morning and decided to invade Ukraine. There was no other cause, according to this version, other than unprovoked, Russian aggression against an innocent country.
Thus the U.S. Embassy in Prague either deceptively used that photo, or more likely, had no idea what happened in Odessa in 2014, as it has hardly been reported on since, thinking that a prime example of Ukrainian aggression against ethnic Russians was instead a photo showing Russian aggression against Ukrainians.
This is what happens when you believe your own propaganda. https://scheerpost.com/2023/08/30/us-victim-of-own-propaganda-in-ukraine-war/
Nuclear weapons testing cause of radioactivity in wild boars, study says
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-66665646— 31 Aug 23
A new study has found that nuclear weapons tests during the Cold War are a major cause of high levels of radioactivity in central Europe’s wild boar population.
The radioactivity found in wild boars has previously been blamed on the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.
But the new research concludes that earlier nuclear weapons testing in the 1960s is a significant cause.
Other wild animals’ radioactivity levels have dropped over the years.
So many wondered why the wild pigs’ contamination levels remained so high.
After testing meat from 48 boars in Germany’s state of Bavaria, scientists from Vienna’s University of Technology and Leibniz University of Hannover found that their radioactivity is to a significant degree caused by older, Cold War nuclear bomb blasts which are still affecting the soil in the area.
Writing in the Environmental Science and Technology journal, the scientists say that radioactive caesium from the tests have sunk into the earth, contaminating deer truffles – the food favoured by wild boars, who dig into the soil to find them.
But the truffles – and the subsequent contamination of wild boars – is unlikely to abate any time soon, the study says.
This is because more radioactive caesium from Chernobyl will seep further into the soil, further contaminating the truffles.
The boars’ continued contamination threatens the Bavarian forests themselves, the study says: as the animals are not shot for their meat, their populations are growing unsustainably.
Atomic Blackmail: Ukraine war realises predictions of nuclear power plant threat, says Leicester civil safety expert.
Governments need to be aware of the risk of their country’s nuclear
power plants being weaponised as they turn to nuclear to tackle the ongoing
energy crisis, a University of Leicester civil safety expert has argued. In
his new book Atomic Blackmail?
The weaponisation of nuclear facilities
during the Russia-Ukraine War, Dr Simon Bennett lays out how the ongoing
conflict is confirming long-running concerns about the security of nuclear
power plants and their potential to be weaponised to gain political
traction over an opponent. The events of the Russia-Ukraine War have
demonstrated the capacity that nuclear power plants have to amplify
protagonists’ hitting power, Dr Bennett argues. This is believed to be
the first time in the history of nuclear electricity that nuclear power
plants have been occupied by an invading force.
Leicester University 29th Aug 2023
https://le.ac.uk/news/2023/august/nuclear-power-plant-ukraine
1 This Month
19 November – Webinar – The Reality of Reprocessing
Time: 11:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada) / 2:00 PM Eastern / 7:00 PM UK / 8:00 PM CET
Register for the Zoom Event Here
Shut down the radiation-damaged Heysham nuclear reactors now
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
-
Archives
- November 2026 (74)
- October 2026 (302)
- September 2026 (339)
- August 2026 (330)
- July 2026 (355)
- June 2026 (287)
- May 2026 (306)
- April 2026 (356)
- March 2026 (251)
- February 2026 (267)
- January 2026 (308)
- December 2025 (358)
-
Categories
- 1
- 1 NUCLEAR ISSUES
- business and costs
- climate change
- culture and arts
- ENERGY
- environment
- health
- history
- indigenous issues
- Legal
- marketing of nuclear
- media
- opposition to nuclear
- PERSONAL STORIES
- politics
- politics international
- Religion and ethics
- safety
- secrets,lies and civil liberties
- spinbuster
- technology
- Uranium
- wastes
- weapons and war
- Women
- 2 WORLD
- ACTION
- AFRICA
- Atrocities
- AUSTRALIA
- Christina's notes
- Christina's themes
- culture and arts
- Events
- Fuk 2022
- Fuk 2023
- Fukushima 2017
- Fukushima 2018
- fukushima 2019
- Fukushima 2020
- Fukushima 2021
- general
- global warming
- Humour (God we need it)
- Nuclear
- RARE EARTHS
- Reference
- resources – print
- Resources -audiovicual
- Weekly Newsletter
- World
- World Nuclear
- YouTube
-
RSS
Entries RSS
Comments RSS
