Syria – Winners And Losers Or Both
Bruce K. Gagnon, https://www.moonofalabama.org/ 9 Dec 24
Syria has fallen.
It is now highly likely that the country will fall apart. Outside and inside actors will try to capture and/or control as many parts of the cadaver as each of them can.
Years of chaos and strife will follow from that.
Israel is grabbing another large amount of Syrian land. It has taken control of the Syrian city of Quneitra, along with the towns of Al-Qahtaniyah and Al-Hamidiyah in the Quneitra region. It has also advanced into the Syrian Mount Hermon and is now positioned just 30 kilometers from (and above) the Syrian capital.
It is also further demilitarizing Syria by bombing every Syria military storage site in its reach. Air defense positions and heave equipment are its primary targets. For years to come Syria, or whatever may evolve from it, will be completely defenseless against outside attacks.
Israel is for now the big winner in Syria. But with restless Jihadists now right on its border it remains to be seen for how long that will hold.
The U.S. is bombing the central desert of Syria. It claims to strike ISIS but the real target is any local (Arab) resistance which could prevent a connection between the U.S. controlled east of Syria with the Israel controlled south-west. There may well be plans to further build this connection into an Eretz Israel, a Zionist controlled state “from the river to the sea”.
Turkey has had and has a big role in the attack on Syria. It is financing and controlling the ‘Syrian National Army’ (previously the Free Syrian Army), which it is mainly using to fight Kurdish separatists in Syria.
There are some 3 to 5 million Syrian refugees in Turkey which the wannabe-Sultan Erdogan wants, for domestic political reasons, to return to Syria. The evolving chaos will not permit that.
Turkey had nurtured and pushed the al-Qaeda derived Hayat Tahrir al-Sham to take Aleppo. It did not expect it to go any further. The fall of Syria is now becoming a problem for Turkey as the U.S. is taking control of it. Washington will try to use HTS for its own interests which are, said mildly, not necessary compatible with whatever Turkey may want to do.
A primary target for Turkey are the Kurdish insurgents within Turkey and their support from the Kurds in Syria. Organized as the Syrian Democratic Forces the Kurds are sponsored and controlled by the United States. The SDF are already fighting Erdogan’s SNA and any further Turkish intrusion into Syria will be confronted by them.
The SDF, supported by the U.S. occupation of east-Syria, is in control of the major oil, gas and wheat fields in the east of the country. Anyone who wants to rule in Damascus will need access to those resources to be able to finance the state.
Despite having a $10 million award on its head HTS leader Abu Mohammad al-Golani is currently played up by western media as the unifying and tolerant new leader of Syria. But his HTS is itself a coalition of hardline Jihadists from various countries. There is little left to loot in Syria and as soon as those resources run out the fighting within HTS will begin. Will al-Golani be able to control the sectarian urges of the comrades when these start to plunder the Shia and Christian shrines of Damascus?
During the last years Russia was less invested in the Assad government than it seemed. It knew that Assad had become a mostly useless partner. The Russia Mediterranean base in Khmeimim in Latakia province is its springboard into Africa. There will be U.S. pressure on any new leadership in Syria to kick the Russians out. However any new leadership in Syria, if it is smart, will want to keep the Russians in. It is never bad to have an alternative choice should one eventually need one. Russia may well stay in Latakia for years to come.
With the fall of Syria Iran has lost the major link in its axis of resistance against Israel. Its forward defenses, provided by Hizbullah in Lebanon, are now in ruins.
As the former General Wesley Clark reported about a talk he once had in the Pentagon:
“This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.”
Six of the seven countries mentioned in that famous memo have by now been thrown into chaos. Iran is -so far- the sole survivor of those plans. It will urgently have to further raise its local defenses. It is high time now for it to finally acquire real nuclear weapons.
The incoming Trump administration sees China as its major enemy. By throwing Syria (and Ukraine) into chaos the outgoing Biden administration has guaranteed that Trump will have to stay involved in the Middle East (and eastern Europe).
The massive U.S. ‘Pivot to Asia’ will again have to wait. This gives China more time to build its sphere of influence. It may well be the only power that has been a winner in this.
Taliban In Afghanistan Bad, Al-Qaeda In Syria Good
Caitlin Johnstone, Dec 10, 2024, Caitlin’s Newsletter
It’s pretty wild how the west went directly from “We need to occupy Afghanistan for two decades to prevent it from being taken over by the Taliban” to “Yay! Syria’s been taken over by al-Qaeda!”
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The IDF has moved to occupy new stretches of Syrian land in the name of protecting its safety and security in the wake of Assad’s removal, to approximately zero condemnation from the western power alliance.
One of the dumbest things we are asked to believe about Israel is that the only thing it can ever do to ensure its safety and security when a danger presents itself is to grab more land. Land grabs are always the answer.
So to recap:
Russia invading a country in the name of protecting its security interests from perceived threats on its border = wrong, evil, worst thing ever.
Israel invading a country in the name of protecting its security interests from perceived threats on its border = fine, normal, nothing to worry about.
The US is considering removing Hayʼat Tahrir al-Sham from its list of designated terrorist organizations following the al-Qaeda affiliate’s victory in Syria. I have said it before and I’ll say it again: “terrorist organization” is a completely arbitrary designation which is used as a tool of western narrative control to justify war and militarism. In effect it just means “disobedient population who need bombs dropped on them”.
I find it hilarious how empire simps are still shrieking “ASSADIST!” at me for criticizing western regime change interventionism in Syria like that means something. Assad’s gone. They can’t claim I’m helping him stay in power anymore. This shows they were never mad at me for “supporting Assad” or any of that nonsense; they were always just mad at me for criticizing the western empire, which was all I was ever doing
Assad’s not a thing anymore. Your guys are in power now, and your beloved empire got the regime change it’s been chasing for years. You don’t get to pretend you’re sticking up for the little guy any longer. If you’re going to keep simping for the empire you’ve got to do it right out in the open now; you can no longer mask your bootlicking by hurling bizarre false accusations of treasonous loyalty toward some random middle eastern leader at anyone who criticizes the empire’s actions in Syria. You need to find different tactics for your empire apologia.
personally do not believe western interventionism in the middle east leads to positive results and peace, because I am not a newborn baby with a soft squishy head who joined the earth’s population yesterday evening.
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Empire apologists rely heavily on the appeal to emotion fallacy when discussing Syria, because they have no real arguments. They can’t counter criticisms of the years of western interventionism which destroyed Syria, so they babble about Assad’s victims instead. But no matter how many sad stories you tell and no matter how much sympathy you elicit, it will not amount to a counter-argument against the extensively documented fact that the US and its allies worked to destroy Syria with the goal of toppling Damascus from the very beginning in 2011. You can rend your garments about barrel bombs and prisoners all you want, but it still won’t be an argument.
I personally don’t blame people for misunderstanding what’s been happening in Syria all these years. Some of my favorite analysts got Syria wrong in the early years of the war. It’s a complicated issue. It’s hard to sort out the true from the false, and it’s hard to sort through the moral complexities and contradictions of it all as a human being. What matters is that you stay curious and open and sincerely dedicated to learning what’s true instead of bedding down and making an identity out of your current understanding.
For years Syria was awash with some of the most complex psychological operations and hybrid warfare the world has ever seen. It’s okay if you didn’t understand it at first. The world is a confusing place, and is rapidly becoming more so. Just do your best, stay curious, and keep learning………………………………. https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/taliban-in-afghanistan-bad-al-qaeda?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=152873905&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
A promissory note to sway the vote? Lincolnshire opts to seek nuclear waste Hosting Agreement.
It is said that money talks, and the nuclear industry and national government making an offer of owdles of cash to any financially-challenged local authority[1] which might be a partner in hosting a radioactive waste dump would be a guaranteed conversation starter.
Impatient to jump the gun, the Executive of Lincolnshire County Council met last week to initiate that conversation by placing their own monetary mark in the sand. Before them was a report recommending an approach be made to Nuclear Waste Services and Whitehall for an Hosting Agreement to provide for ‘Significant Additional Investment’ should Theddlethorpe be selected as the eventual location of the Geological Disposal Facility.
In giving their approval to such a proposal, Lincolnshire Councillors were following the lead shown by elected members of two small townships in Ontario, which agreed Host Agreements with Canada’s own NWS, the Nuclear Waste Management Organisation (NWMO) were they to accommodate a Deep Geological Repository. The NWMO was established by the Canadian nuclear industry to find a final destination for that nation’s legacy radioactive waste. Through Host Agreements with the NWMO, Ignace Town Council was promised $170 million over 81 years, whilst South Bruce stood to receive a more significant $418 million over 138 years.
Big money indeed for small municipalities, and certainly the promise of accessing this largesse is likely to have provided a significant inducement to some residents to vote ‘yes’ when casting their vote in recent online ballots, which determined whether their respective communities would continue to be engaged in the siting process. These ballots both led to ‘yes’ results.
So on Tuesday 3 December, citing South Bruce as being ‘of the most relevance’, the Lincolnshire County Council Executive decided to follow their example in seeking their own Hosting Agreement, guaranteeing big bucks to meet six key infrastructure asks in coastal defences, road and rail networks and public transport, education and skills training, energy, the environment and in the economy.
The irony is that the Council bigwigs were meeting after the South Bruce cash cow had bolted; for on 28 November NWMO had announced with great fanfare that they had selected Ignace instead. The NFLAs can speculate that this selection was made on the basis that the latter was so much cheaper and came with greater public backing. For in Ignace 77.3% of those participating in the poll said ‘yes’, but in South Bruce this fell to only 51.2%. Whilst this might seem incongrous, given the whopping disparity in the promised payout, the site in South Bruce was quite close to the township, whilst in Ignace the proposed site is at Revell Lake, some 34 Kms away. Trying not to be a sore loser, South Bruce Council issued a statement congratulating NWMO on its selection and Ignace on its success, whilst seeking to highlight its concilation prize for participating in the process – a disappointing exit payment of $4 million.
The experience of South Bruce demonstrates that hitching your wagon to any competitive sitiing process in the hope of major infrastructure investment is a risky strategy as there is no guarantee your horse will arrive first at its desired destination. And in the UK there are two other competing runners and riders – both in West Cumbria – rather than the two horse race in Canada.
Given the siting process is a long and uncertain race, electors would surely expect the elected members and officers of Lincolnshire County Council to be already repeatedly and vigorously lobbying central government for the money needed to satisfy its wishlist, rather than relying on this game of chance. Can Lincolnshire really wait up to 15 years for site selection before its promissory note is made real? It is difficult to believe that the county has over 15 years of grace before improving its sea defences when climate change will mean steadily encroaching sea levels on England’s East coast.
The County Council can also be challenged on its impartiality over any decision in hosting a GDF. For in seeking a Hosting Agreement so early in the process, the impression is conveyed that the Council would welcome the GDF development were the cash to be forthcoming.
There is also a certain degree of hypocrisy in the ‘asks’ made by the County Council.
For instance, in seeking investment in tourism no account is taken of the massively deleterious impact on the tourist economy that must result from the construction and operation of a GDF on the holiday coast.
A report completed by Global Tourism Solutions and published by East Lindsey District Council in early September revealed that in 2023 4.57 million people visited the district, an 8.2% increase from 2022, whilst in 2023 the local economy benefitted from £857.9 million of tourist income, a new record building on the £824.2 million received in 2022. This sustained an estimated 8,033 tourist jobs (equivalent to 6,143 full time posts).[2]
The results of a survey of over 1,100 tourists were recently published by the Guardians of the East Coast. 83% of respondees said they would question whether to return to any Lincolnshire seaside resort should this massive engineering project come to Theddlethorpe. If this negative sentiment translates into reduced visitor numbers, the economic downturn would be disastrous. In its accompanying report, GOTEC estimated a 40.5% decline in tourism would result, amounting to over 3,000 jobs lost and almost £250 million in lost annual income.
And in seeking investment to grow energy generating capacity which is not ‘visually damaging’ to the environment, the Council seems to have no qualms about trading this for hosting the UK’s largest engineering project, with the construction of the GDF being compared to building the Channel Tunnel.
Finally, there is a further clue as to another probable motivation for seeking a Hosting Agreement at this time and it rather reveals a focus on an event in three years time rather than fifteen.
In the report it states that ‘It is, however, important that LCC ensures that all opportunities that the facility could provide are identified. This will help inform the local community’s response to the Test of Public Support (ToPS) which the council has sought to be held no later than 2027’.
This could be interpreted as the Council adopting a policy of ‘dangling’ the investment carrot before the public in the hope that this will convince them to vote ‘yes’ to the development in three years time; in effect making the Host Agreement a promissory note to sway the vote.
Ends://..For more information please contact the NFLA Secretary Richard Outram by email to richard.outram@manchester.gov.uk
Gabbard has more intelligence than entire Intelligence Service she’s slated to head.
Gabbard had the audacity to speak truth against America’s unhinged proxy war against Russia in 2022 that has failed spectacularly while destroying Ukraine as a viable country. She was spot on in declaring US weaponizing its Ukraine proxies against Russia jeopardizes global security. “This war and suffering could have easily been avoided if the Biden Administration and NATO had simply acknowledged Russia’s legitimate security concerns over NATO membership for Ukraine on Russia’s border.”
Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL, 8 Dec 24
The US national security state, more appropriately referred to as the US war party, is aghast Trump picked Tulsi Gabbard to be Director of National Intelligence.
John Bolton, correctly nicknamed ‘Bonkers’ over his love of endless, failed US military interventions charged, “Gabbard, like Trump’s failed Attorney General pick Matt Gaetz, is like a hand grenade ready to explode. Republicans who throw themselves on those grenades for Donald Trump are risking their own personal reputations and places in history. Bolton appears oblivious his reputation and place in history rests in the warmonger wing of the American Story.
My Illinois Senator Tammy Duckworth warned “I think she’s compromised. The U.S. intelligence community has identified her as having troubling relationships with America’s foes.” Ironically, it’s Duckworth, who exploited her service in America’s criminal Iraq war to gain political power supporting more senseless US wars, who is compromised.
Even progressive hero Elizabeth Warren foolishly bellowed “Do you really want her to have all of the secrets of the United States and our defense intelligence agencies when she has so clearly been in Putin’s pocket.” Warren clearly is in the pocket of US weapons merchants, super hawk congresspersons and their media enablers.
What infuriates these unbridled proponents of US unipolar dominance about Gabbard, a former congressperson, Iraq war vet and current Lt. Col. in the US Army reserve?
Gabbard had the audacity to speak truth against America’s unhinged proxy war against Russia in 2022 that has failed spectacularly while destroying Ukraine as a viable country. She was spot on in declaring US weaponizing its Ukraine proxies against Russia jeopardizes global security. “This war and suffering could have easily been avoided if the Biden Administration and NATO had simply acknowledged Russia’s legitimate security concerns over NATO membership for Ukraine on Russia’s border.”
Gabbard compounds this inconvenient truth by speaking with rulers of America’s imaginary enemies like Syrian President Bashar Assad. America’s refusal to speak with its long list of enemies is a reckless policy that can easily stumble America into further warfare, even nuclear.
Bravo to Gabbard for pushing back against senseless US foreign misadventures that threaten American security, indeed, all peoplekind.
American intelligence has been exploited by our clueless leaders since the end of WWII to destabilize, overthrow dozens of countries worldwide. It seeks new enemies to expand its power and influence promoting US unipolar dominance. Gabbard threatens that terrible sinecure.
The Senate should confirm Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence to make sensible intelligence Job One in the intelligence community.
Trump’s Pro-Israel Dream Team: Patel Nomination Caps Hawkish Cabinet
December 8, 2024, By Kit Klarenberg / MintPressNews
On November 30, Donald Trump nominated Kash Patel to serve as FBI director. A staunch MAGA activist and loyalist with significant standing in Trump’s orbit, Patel aligns closely with the president-elect on both domestic and foreign policy matters. Indeed, he appears to struggle to pinpoint areas of disagreement with Trump’s agenda.
Patel has consistently advocated for a hardline approach to China and is an unabashed supporter of Israeli interests, often prioritizing them over U.S. considerations. On October 7, marking the first anniversary of the Hamas attack, Patel delivered a fiery interview on Fox News. During the segment, he vowed that the incoming Trump administration would intensify its crackdown on anti-Israeli elements.
We should be side by side [with Israel]…When we are back in power with President Trump…we will shut off the machinery that feeds money into Iran…We need America to wake up and prioritize Israel, and that is not what Kamala Harris is about, we need to bring home Americans and end this war, bring home Israelis, and stand by our number one ally in Israel, and people need to wake up on November 5.”
A relative political outsider who has never occupied high office, the media has been awash with profiles of Patel and fevered speculation about what his management of the Bureau could mean in practice ever since. In the process, he has been subject to a level of mainstream scrutiny and criticism that was entirely lacking over recent weeks, as Trump filled his cabinet with a rogue’s gallery of dedicated hawks, hardcore pro-Israeli elements, and characters both unknown and notorious with potential extremist ties and views.
For some, the composition of Trump’s cabinet is a crushing disappointment. On November 9, Trump caused shockwaves when he announced neither Nikki Haley nor Mike Pompeo would be invited to join his administration in any capacity. The news, coupled with comments he made in a late October appearance on Joe Rogan’s popular podcast, perked optimism in some quarters that the President-elect’s longstanding anti-war posturing could produce real-world results in Ukraine, if not elsewhere.
In his discussion with Rogan, Trump professed that “the biggest mistake” of his first term was he “picked a few people that I shouldn’t have picked” – “neocons or bad people or disloyal people,” among them John Bolton. Haley was the U.S. ambassador to the UN under Trump and perhaps the most ardent, outspoken Zionist ever to fill the role. She, Bolton and Pompeo – who personally orchestrated Iranian General Qasem Soleimani’s assassination, among other hostile deeds – were widely regarded as the administration’s leading hawks.
Yet, any slight hope that the pair’s absence from Trump’s new White House might herald an influx of some doves and, in turn, a more peaceful shift from the U.S. government was comprehensively dashed when the President’s transition team nominations began rolling in. Now the cabinet is fully stocked, countless millions around the world have urgent and grave concerns about what the future could hold for them, their families, countries, regions, and more.
In particular, Trump’s prospective government can already claim the mantle of the most fervently pro-Israel in U.S. history. This is despite replacing an administration that has done more than any before to accelerate, encourage, and facilitate Israel’s war on Gaza. The prospect that Tel Aviv’s deadly assaults on Gaza and Lebanon will escalate somehow further is now not only very real but seemingly inevitable. However, as we shall see, there are minor rays of hope among the mass doom and gloom.
‘Promised Land’
New Secretary of State Marco Rubio hardly needs any introduction as one of the most pro-war members of the modern U.S. political class. Since his career kicked off in 2000, he has been consistently among the loudest voices on how America’s officially designated enemy states should be dealt with, be that China, Iran, Venezuela, or otherwise. Threats of sanctions, coups, and military intervention are almost a daily staple of his political oratory.
A close friend of Benjamin Netanyahu, in 2019, Rubio cosponsored a Senate resolution condemning UN Security Council resolutions designating Jewish settlement expansion in occupied Palestine as a violation of international law. He has referred to Israel’s mass murder in Gaza since October 7, 2023, as legitimate self-defense, claimed Hamas is “100% to blame” for any civilian casualties inflicted by the horrific onslaught, and ominously declared Palestinian resistance must be “eradicated,” as Tel Aviv cannot coexist “with these savages.”……………………………………………………………………………………….
The pro-Israel credentials of Senator Marco Rubio and Representative Michael Waltz are unquestionable. Yet their fervor for supporting Israel’s controversial policies pales in comparison to some of President-elect Donald Trump’s other nominees. Take Mike Huckabee, the ultraconservative former Arkansas governor and twice-failed presidential candidate, now tapped to serve as U.S. ambassador to Israel. Huckabee, an ordained Southern Baptist pastor, wasted no time declaring his intentions. He vowed to publicly refer to Israel in biblical terms, calling it the “Promised Land,” and proclaimed that Jews hold a “rightful deed” to Palestinian territory………………………
Hegseth, a contender for Defense Secretary, has made his allegiances to Israel unmistakably clear. He has described Israel’s settler population as “God’s chosen people.” He has openly advocated for transforming Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa Mosque into a Jewish-only recreation of the historic Temple Mount, framing such an act as a “miracle.” At a 2018 National Council of Young Israel gala in New York City, Hegseth left no room for ambiguity:
Zionism and Americanism are the front lines of Western civilization and freedom in our world today.”………………………………………………………………………………………. more https://www.mintpressnews.com/trumps-pro-israel-dream-team-patel-nomination-caps-hawkish-cabinet/288783/
The First Seven Billionaires Trump Has Tapped for Top Jobs
Out of America’s 800 billionaires, president-elect Trump has so far plucked seven for top spots in his administration.
by Sarah Anderson, December 03, 2024, https://inequality.org/great-divide/billionaires-trump-has-tapped-for-top-jobs/
President-elect Donald Trump has selected an unprecedented total of seven reported billionaires for senior positions in his administration. Including himself, that makes eight.
This figure could continue to grow as Trump fully staffs up. After all, he has nearly 800 additional U.S. billionaires to choose from.
Here’s a quick rundown of the “original seven” members of the nine-figure club on Trump’s employee wish list:
Elon Musk
Position: Co-leader of a new Department of Government Efficiency, a presidential advisory commission tasked with slashing spending and regulations
Estimated net worth: $330 billion
Source of wealth: SpaceX, Tesla, and other businesses
2024 campaign donations: $200 million
Warren Stephens
Position: Ambassador to the UK
Estimated net worth: $3.4 billion
Source of wealth: CEO of private Arkansas-based investment bank Stephens Inc.
2024 campaign donations: $22.7 million (includes $2 million-plus for Nikki Haley’s failed bid for the Republican presidential nomination)
Linda McMahon
tion: Education Secretary
Estimated net worth: $2.5 billion (with her husband, Vince McMahon)
Source of wealth: World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE)
2024 campaign donations: $24 million
Howard Lutnick
Position: Commerce Secretary
Estimated net worth: $2 billion
Source of wealth: majority ownership of investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald
2024 campaign donations: $13.1 million in PAC donations and also hosted a $15 million fundraising event at his home in the Hamptons
Vivek Ramaswamy
Position: Co-leader of the planned Department of Government Efficiency
Estimated net worth: $1.1 billion
Source of wealth: founder of pharmaceutical firm Roivant Sciences
2024 campaign donations: $25,000 (He’d just blown $30.7 million of his own funds on his failed presidential bid.
Doug Burgum
Position: Secretary of the Interior
Estimated net worth: undisclosed. Several media have identified him as a billionaire, while Forbes analysts say he’s worth “at least” $100 million and likely much more if you consider trusts for his adult children
Source of wealth: sold Great Plains Software, which creates accounting packages for small and medium-size businesses, for $1.1 billion in Microsoft stock in 2001
2024 campaign donations: $8,000 (He’d spent $13.9 million of his own funds on his failed presidential bid. This includes the cost of giving $20 gift cards to more than 40,000 donors who gave his campaign at least $1. That expensive but crafty maneuver succeeded in drumming up enough donors to qualify for participation in the presidential debate)
Scott Bessent
Position: Treasury Secretary
Estimated net worth: undisclosed
Source of wealth: Wall Street investments, including as founder of hedge fund Key Square Group
2024 campaign donations: $3.2 million
Donald Trump’s quick trip to absolute dictatorship
November 27, 2024: The AIM Network. Noel Wauchope, https://theaimn.com/donald-trumps-quick-trip-to-absolute-dictatorship/
Comparisons are odious, particularly between Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler. I must be plain from the start, that these individuals have had completely different aims and ideology.
The comparisons I’m making here are just about methods of gaining absolute power. And here, I think, there are parallels. And we can learn, from Hitler, how Trump could well go about attaining dictatorship status – way faster than people realise.
Trump and Hitler do have this in common – a reckless ruthlessness about destroying institutions and crossing boundaries. And both had earlier associations with street violence – Hitler with his Brown Shirts, and the Beer Hall Putsch, and Trump, less obviously, with the Proud Boys and the Capitol attack on January 6th 2021.
Hitler became dictator by very quickly using legitimate political mechanisms, and Trump will be able to do the same.
Hitler, moving towards purging his movement of the Brown Shirts, gained much public support, and business interests saw him as a force to stop street violence, and a protector and support of property and business. Meanwhile, largely thanks to the genius of Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda machine flourished, exploiting the latest technology, – radio, and aircraft – “Hitler over Germany”. By 1933 the German economy was recovering, and Hitler’s success in elections did in fact drop, but his National Socialist Party still held a third of the seats in the Reichstag.
Here’s where it got interesting, and it all took just 7 and a half weeks.
30 January 1933 – Hitler was appointed Chancellor. The role of the Chancellor, while being symbolically like the role of the British Prime Minister, was in fact, quite limited. The real power was in the President. President von Hindenburg, bowing to pressure, was persuaded that Hitler could indeed be controlled, by giving him the status of Chancellor.
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27 February 1933 – the German parliament (Reichstag) building burned down. Without going into the discussion on who caused the fire – it was the trigger for Hitler to persuade von Hindenburg to issue the Reichstag Fire Decree – Emergency Decree for the Protection of the German People, on 28 February, declaring a state of emergency, and abolishing most civil liberties, including the rights to speak, assemble, protest, and due process.
23 March 1933, Hitler proposed the Enabling Law to the Reichstag. This new law, passed on 24 March, gave Chancellor Hitler the power to rule by decree rather than passing laws through the Reichstag and the President. He was now effectively the dictator.
We could go on from there – listing Hitler’s dictatorial actions – National Socialists the only party permitted, trade unions disbanded. Any autonomous states lost those powers – officials appointed as state governors – and much, much more.
July 1934 – Hitler becomes “Fuehrer” – the finishing touch. With the death of President von Hindenburg, Hitler abolishes the now powerless position of “President”.
What has all this got to do with Trump?
Admittedly, the burning down of the Reichstag was a key factor, and we’re not expecting Capitol Hill to burn down. But the thing is that Hitler was at least a super-opportunist, even if the Nazis did not purposely cause this event. If it hadn’t been this event, probably something else could be triggered for a “state of emergency”. So, it would also be very beneficial to Trump- and save a lot of time, if some suitable “event” were to justify Trump, (also a super-opportunist) to declare emergency powers.
In the meantime, Trump is already working on removing the powers of the Department of Justice, and has various avenues open for him to take quick executive action. The President can issue executive orders. There are checks and balances, but these rely on the Supreme Court, and the Congress. So, Trump, with a majority in Congress has freedom – ‘I have an Article 2 where I have the right to do whatever I want as president’.
Trump’s plan for a radical reorganization of the executive branch starts with ending “the post-Watergate norm of Justice Department independence from White House political control.”
Trump will be very careful about which officials he appoints – due to constitutional “checks and balances”. He’d need to pick a compliant Acting Attorney General. The obstacles to be eliminated include an independent Justice Department, independent leadership in administrative agencies and an independent civil service. Trump’s plan would substitute loyalty to him for loyalty to the Constitution.” In 2020 Trump called for the “termination of … the Constitution.”
In the USA, theoretically, there are constraints on the President’s power. But, as in Germany in the 1930s, the leader has already arranged for the administration and every government department to be run by his sycophants.
Also, as in Hitler’s Germany, Trump has extraordinary influence over media, especially social media. Hitler had the brilliance of Goebbels to swamp the public with his lies and spin. Trump is almost one better – he does it all himself.
So – there are similarities between Hitler and Trump in the way to gain absolute power. There’s the opportunism, the clique of dedicated sycophants, the inspired exploitation of new technology, of new media, the reckless crossing of normal boundaries, and the background of violence, (with the potential for violence again).
The differences between them are striking. Hitler had a coherent almost mystical theory – involving war – to gain world domination for the master “Aryan” race, and to eliminate the Jews and other “Untermenschen”. To a large extent, Hitler’s close associates shared that dream, even if jostling for power between each other– Goebbels, Hess, Himmler, Goering, Speer, von Ribbentrop, Heydrich, Bormann. They more or less held to Hitler’s philosophy, and feared Hitler if they stepped out of line. Quite a few, though not all, stayed with Hitler until the very bitter end.
I can’t see Trump’s associates having that kind of dedication. From his previous presidency, there is a long list of former allies who turned against him.
Donald Trump seems to have no coherent theory or aim – other than to be super-powerful and rich, and take revenge on his opponents. He admires dictators, hates China, doesn’t like war, and fears nuclear bombs. If Trump has any philosophy at all, apart from him being at the top, it would be for a world economy dominated by American business. War is not Trump’s chosen method to win, but building up weaponry, and the threat of war – a sort of global bullying is his favoured method.
Trump’s top associates are currently dedicated to him – but are closely connected to billionaires, and not necessarily sharing philosophies. There’s Elon Musk, obsessed with the control of space, and the colonisation of Mars, John Bauer who devised the case for presidential absolute immunity from prosecution, Stephen Miller determinedly anti-immigrant, Fox News employee Pete Hegseth, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sceptic of public health, Dave Weldon, anti-abortion doctor. What they do seem to have in common is big egos, and rather questionable qualifications for the jobs that they’ll be getting.
So, unlike Hitler, Trump doesn’t seem to have a team dedicated to a single-minded cause. In the short run, things might look good for the new Republican administration, and even for the American public. Dictatorships can do that, for a bit – as the workers found, in the early years of the Hitler administration, and of the Mussolini one in Italy. But it’s anybody’s guess how the new Trump dictatorship will finally work out.
From Genocide Joe to Omnicide Joe
Instead of fulfilling his 2020 campaign promise to adopt a U.S. policy of no-first-use of nuclear weapons, two years ago Biden signed off on the Nuclear Posture Review policy document that explicitly declares the opposite. Last year, under the euphemism of “modernization,” the U.S. government spent $51 billion — more than every other nuclear-armed country combined — updating and sustaining its nuclear arsenal, gaining profligate momentum in a process that’s set to continue for decades to come.
the Biden administration has said it did not want to cross its own red lines—and then has repeatedly proceeded to do so.
Biden’s recent green light for Ukraine to launch longer-range missiles into Russia is another jump toward nuclear warfare.
Norman Solomon 25 Nov 24, https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/genocide-joe
Whether heralded or reviled, Biden’s supposed restraint during the Ukraine war has steadily faded, with more and more dangerous escalation in its place.
President Biden has never wavered from approving huge arms shipments to Israel during more than 13 months of mass murder and deliberate starvation of Palestinian civilians in Gaza. Biden’s crucial role earned him the name “Genocide Joe.”
That nickname might seem shrill, but it’s valid. Although Biden will not be brought to justice for serving as a key accomplice to the horrific crimes against humanity that continue in Gaza, the label sticks—and candid historians will condemn him as a direct enabler of genocide.
Biden could also qualify for another nickname, which according to Google was never published before this article: “Omnicide Joe.”
In contrast to the Genocide Joe sobriquet, which events have already proven apt, Omnicide Joe is a bit anticipatory. That’s inevitable, because if the cascading effects of his foreign policy end up as key factors in nuclear annihilation, historians will not be around to assess his culpability for omnicide—defined as “the destruction of all life or all human life.”
That definition scarcely overstates what scientists tell us would result from an exchange of nuclear weapons. Researchers have discovered that “nuclear winter” would quickly set in across the globe, blotting out sunlight and wiping out agriculture, with a human survival rate of perhaps 1 or 2 percent.
With everything—literally everything—at stake, you might think that averting thermonuclear war between the world’s two nuclear superpowers, Russia and the United States, would be high on a president’s to-do list. But that hardly has been the case with Joe Biden since he first pulled up a chair at the Oval Office desk.
In fact, Biden has done a lot during the first years of this decade to inflame the realistic fears of nuclear war. His immediate predecessor Donald Trump pulled the U.S. out of two vital treaties — Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces and Open Skies — and Biden did nothing to reinstate them. Likewise, Trump killed the Iran nuclear deal negotiated during the Obama administration, and Biden let it stay dead.
Instead of fulfilling his 2020 campaign promise to adopt a U.S. policy of no-first-use of nuclear weapons, two years ago Biden signed off on the Nuclear Posture Review policy document that explicitly declares the opposite. Last year, under the euphemism of “modernization,” the U.S. government spent $51 billion — more than every other nuclear-armed country combined — updating and sustaining its nuclear arsenal, gaining profligate momentum in a process that’s set to continue for decades to come.
Before and after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in late February 2022, Biden showed a distinct lack of interest in actual diplomacy to prevent the war or to end it. Three days before the invasion, writing in the Financial Times, Jeffrey Sachs pointed out: “Biden has said repeatedly that the U.S. is open to diplomacy with Russia, but on the issue that Moscow has most emphasized—NATO enlargement—there has been no American diplomacy at all. [Russian President Vladimir] Putin has repeatedly demanded that the U.S. forswear NATO’s enlargement into Ukraine, while Biden has repeatedly asserted that membership of the alliance is Ukraine’s choice.”
While Russia’s invasion and horrible war in Ukraine should be condemned, Biden has compounded Putin’s crimes by giving much higher priority to Washington’s cold-war mania than to negotiation for peace—or to mitigation of escalating risks of nuclear war.
From the outset, Biden scarcely acknowledged that the survival of humanity was put at higher risk by the Ukraine war. In his first State of the Union speech, a week after the invasion, Biden devoted much of his oratory to the Ukraine conflict without saying a word about the heightened danger that it might trigger the use of nuclear weapons.
During the next three months, the White House posted more than 60 presidential statements, documents and communiques about the war in Ukraine. They all shared with his State of the Union address a stunning characteristic — the complete absence of any mention of nuclear weapons or nuclear war dangers—even though many experts gauged those dangers as being the worst they’d been since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
With occasional muted references to not wanting a U.S. military clash with nuclear-armed Russia, during the last 33 months the Biden administration has said it did not want to cross its own red lines—and then has repeatedly proceeded to do so.
A week ago superhawk John Bolton, a former national security advisor to President Trump, summarized the process on CNN while bemoaning that Biden’s reckless escalation hasn’t been even more reckless: “It’s been one long public debate after another, going back to ‘Shall we supply ATACMS [ballistic missiles] to the Ukrainians at all?’ First it’s no, then there’s a debate, then there’s yes. ‘Should we supply the Ukrainians Abrams tanks?’ First it’s no, then there’s a long debate, then it’s yes. ‘Should we supply the Ukrainians with F-16s?’ First it’s no, then there’s a long debate, and it’s yes. Now, ‘Can we allow the Ukrainians to use ATACMS inside Russia?’ After a long debate, now it’s yes.”
Whether heralded or reviled, Biden’s supposed restraint during the Ukraine war has steadily faded, with more and more dangerous escalation in its place.
Biden’s recent green light for Ukraine to launch longer-range missiles into Russia is another jump toward nuclear warfare. As a Quincy Institute analyst wrote, “the stakes, and escalatory risks, have steadily crept up.” In an ominous direction, “this needlessly escalatory step has put Russia and NATO one step closer to a direct confrontation—the window to avert catastrophic miscalculation is now that much narrower.”
Like Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken as well as the Democratic and Republican phalanx of Ukraine war cheerleaders on Capitol Hill, Bolton doesn’t mention that recent polling shows strong support among Ukrainian people for negotiations to put a stop to the war. “An average of 52 percent of Ukrainians would like to see their country negotiate an end to the war as soon as possible,” Gallup reported last week, compared to only 38 percent who say “their country should keep fighting until victory.”
Biden and other war boosters have continued to scorn, as capitulation and accommodation to aggression, what so much of the Ukrainian population now says it wants—a negotiated settlement. Instead, top administration officials and laptop-warrior pundits in the press corps are eager to tout their own mettle by insisting that Ukrainians and Russians must keep killing and dying.
Elites in Washington continue to posture as courageous defenders of freedom with military escalation in Ukraine, where hundreds of thousands have already died. Meanwhile, dangers of nuclear war increase.
Last week, Putin “lowered the threshold for a nuclear strike in response to a broader range of conventional attacks,” Reuters reported, “and Moscow said Ukraine had struck deep inside Russia with U.S.-made ATACMS missiles…. Russia had been warning the West for months that if Washington allowed Ukraine to fire U.S., British and French missiles deep into Russia, Moscow would consider those NATO members to be directly involved in the war in Ukraine.”
For President Biden, the verdict of Genocide Joe is already in. But if, despite pleas for sanity, he turns out to fully deserve the name Omnicide Joe, none of us will be around to read about it.
As America barrels toward war with Russia….Where’s Biden?
Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL 27 Nov 24.
Ukraine is now firing US ATACMS long range missiles into Russia. They’re also firing long range UK Storm Shadow missiles into Russia. Ukrainians push the bottoms but US and UK military do the programming and technical support, without which no buttons can be pushed.
That puts Russia at de facto war with the US and UK, NATO as well for that matter.
Russia made that point by unleashing a new hypersonic nuclear capable long range missile, Oreshnik, which obliterated a strategic Ukrainian military target. The point was that the Oreshnik, which can destroy any target with unstoppable speed, can pulverize high value NATO targets thruout Europe. Compared to Oreshnik, US ATACMAS and UK Strom Shadows are like bottle rockets. Their sole military use appears to be provoking all out war.
In spite of the Russian warning, France’s Foreign Minister Jean –Noel Barrot just announced France will allow its SCALPS version to the UK Strom Shadows bottle rocket to be fired by Ukraine into Russia.
This is beginning to resemble the colossal, senseless escalations of European powers that stumbled the world into WWI. That war ignited due to incredible denial and lack of serious thought by leaders of all initial belligerents. There was virtually no diplomacy to turn back the rush to senseless world war that killed over 16 million.
The same senseless escalations with no prospect to prevent all out war are being conducted by a mentally diminished President Biden in his last 60 days. He’s virtually disappeared from public view. Biden never once engaged his Russian counterpart since he provoked the Russian invasion of Ukraine 34 months ago. Nor are any in his war cabinet.
The absence of communication and diplomacy, alongside attacking Russian targets using Ukraine proxies, poses a perilous descent into nuclear war.
Sixty-two years ago Cold Warrior John Kennedy learned a tough lesson from the Cuban Missile Crisis. Lack of communication and understanding of the Soviet Union’s security needs was a prescription for nuclear war. JFK understood that Russian missiles in Cuba were response in part to US missiles near Russia in Turkey. He wisely removed them in the negotiated settlement to withdraw from the brink. He established a Hotline to prevent future misunderstandings that could blow up peoplekind.
Joe Biden ether never learned that lesson in his youth, or worse, has forgotten it from diminished capacity.
In 55 days, Biden, if he hasn’t blown up the world, will turn over the war to his successor nearly as old and quite likely mentally diminished as well. At the rate a befuddled Biden desperately seeking to avoid a well-earned defeat in Ukraine is escalating, we’re going to need more luck than a wise, clearheaded JFK had in 62’ to survive this 21st century version of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Project 2025 calls for massive changes to Hanford nuclear cleanup
Project 2025 calls on the EPA to be an ally of DOE against the state, instead of being an independent regulator.
the bulk of Project 2025 was written by former Trump officials and allies.
Project 2025 sees reclassifying high-level wastes into low-activity wastes
The Heritage Foundation’s blueprint proposes reclassifying radioactive waste as something less dangerous so it can be disposed of more cheaply.
John Stang, November 20, 2024,
https://www.cascadepbs.org/politics/2024/11/project-2025-calls-massive-changes-hanford-nuclear-cleanup
ill the next presidential administration tinker with the Hanford nuclear reservation’s complicated cleanup of radioactive wastes?
Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s conservative blueprint for the future, offers some strong hints that cleanup plans for the nation’s most polluted nuclear site might change with or without the approval of the Washington Department of Ecology.
One Project 2025 idea recommends reclassifying highly radioactive wastes into something less dangerous so cheaper methods can be used to dispose of them. Another proposal is to speed up the cleanup by rerouting money to Hanford from a couple of huge Biden-era appropriations for jobs and infrastructure programs elsewhere. The third Hanford-related idea in Project 2025 posits that the state of Washington and the legally negotiated cleanup deadlines and standards are obstacles to completing the cleanup faster.
Gov. Jay Inslee’s office, the Washington Attorney General’s Office and the state Ecology Department all declined to comment on Project 2025’s plans for Hanford. However, Attorney General and Gov.-elect Bob Ferguson and Attorney General-elect Nick Brown recently held a press conference to announce the AG’s office and have spent months reviewing Project 2025 in preparation for possible litigation with the Trump administration. Ferguson and Brown said the ball is in the Trump administration’s court on whether it will provoke legal battles with Washington.
As attorney general, Ferguson — frequently with other attorneys general — filed several dozen lawsuits against the first Trump administration, losing only two or three. “No one has a record like that except Perry Mason,” Inslee said at a Nov. 6 press conference.
Arguably the most radioactively and chemically contaminated spot in the Western Hemisphere, the Hanford nuclear reservation’s cleanup is governed by a 35-year-old legal agreement called the Tri-Party Agreement. The state of Washington and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have repeatedly used this contract to force a sometimes foot-dragging U.S. Department of Energy to meet its legal standards and schedule to clean up the highly radioactive site.
But Project 2025 says the Washington government poses significant legal and political obstacles to cleaning up Hanford.
“Some states (and contractors) see [nuclear cleanup] as a jobs program and have little interest in accelerating the cleanup. [DOE’s nuclear cleanup program] needs to move to an expeditious program with targets for cleanup of sites. The Hanford site in Washington state is a particular challenge. The Tri-Party Agreement among DOE, the Environmental Protection Agency, and Washington State’s Department of Ecology has hampered attempts to accelerate and innovate the cleanup,” the 900-page Project 2025 document says. Nuclear cleanup is addressed on pages 394-396.
Project 2025 continues: “Hanford poses significant political and legal challenges with the State of Washington, and DOE will have to work with Congress to make progress in accelerating cleanup at that site. DOE and EPA need to work more closely to coordinate their responses to claims made under the TPA and work more aggressively for changes, including congressional action if necessary, to achieve workable cleanup goals.”
In other words, Project 2025 calls on the EPA to be an ally of DOE against the state, instead of being an independent regulator.
In reality, Washington has been the greatest force to push the federal government to stick to its legal schedules and meet agreed-upon cleanup standards. Hanford has had problems over the past three decades with keeping to the schedules and getting its engineering up to snuff to prevent future breakdowns.
The Project 2025 document does not elaborate on why it believes Washington’s Ecology Department is a hindrance. Washington’s congressional delegation has strongly supported the state and the Tri-Party Agreement on Hanford cleanup issues.
Project 2025 is a detailed master plan put together by the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation on how the Trump administration should govern. Much of it is highly controversial, focused on issues like immigration and crime. Presidential campaigner Donald Trump claimed he was unfamiliar with it. However, the bulk of Project 2025 was written by former Trump officials and allies.
Vice President-elect JD Vance wrote the foreword for another book authored by Project 2025’s leader Kevin Roberts, titled “Dawn’s Early Light.” The New York Times wrote that Vance’s foreword said the Heritage Foundation has been “the most influential engine of ideas for Republicans from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump.” Roberts wrote the foreword to the Project 2025 document. The New York Times recently wrote that Roberts plans to meet soon with Trump.
On Saturday, Trump named Chris Wright, CEO of Denver-based fracking company Liberty Energy, as his Secretary of Energy nominee. Wright is a major opponent of fighting climate change. For his first term, Trump’s selection for Energy was Rick Perry, who had called for abolishing the DOE when he ran for president, and was unaware that he would be in charge of cleaning up radioactive nuclear sites when he became energy secretary. Trump recently selected former New York congressman Lee Zeldin as the EPA’s head administrator. As a congressman, Zeldin boosted cleanup of Long Island Sound and wanted the United States to leave the Paris climate accords. But his environmental resume is thin beyond that.
The U.S. government set up Hanford in 1943 to create plutonium for the nation’s atomic bombs, including those exploded in New Mexico and over Nagasaki in 1945. That development work created many billions of gallons of chemical and radioactive wastes, the worst 56 million gallons of which were pumped into 177 underground tanks. About a third of those tanks leak. At least a million gallons of radioactive liquid has leaked into the ground, seeping into the aquifer 200 feet below and into the Columbia River, roughly seven miles away.
In 1989, the Washington Department of Ecology, DOE and the EPA signed the Tri-Party Agreement to govern Hanford’s cleanup with the state and EPA as the regulators enforcing that contract. The agreement has been modified many times. It originally called for Hanford to begin converting the underground tank wastes into glass in 2009 and finish by 2019. After several delays due to budget and technical problems, glassification is scheduled to begin in August 2025. The glassification project’s budget has grown from $4 billion to $17 billion, and is expected to expand to more than $30 billion. Legally, glassification is supposed to be finished by 2052, although future negotiations may push that back.
While the tank wastes are Hanford’s biggest program, the site has numerous other contamination problems. The entire 584-square-mile site is supposed to be cleaned up by 2091.
In 2020, DOE, the EPA and the state began four years of secret negotiations to revise the Tri-Party Agreement. Last April, the three parties unveiled tentative revisions. The three now are reviewing public comments on those proposed revisions before taking the changes to a federal judge for approval.
Those changes would not set a new completion date for glassifying the tank wastes, which is likely to be part of another negotiation. Right now, DOE expects glassification to be done by 2069, which is 17 years beyond the current legal deadline, according to a 2021 report by the Government Accountability Office.
Project 2025 calls for finishing all of Hanford’s cleanup by 2060. It recommends a massive study and remapping of the cleanup of Hanford and other nuclear sites across the nation. DOE has done this type of review a few times over the past 30 years, usually when a new presidential administration comes on board.
Hanford’s 56 million gallons of tank wastes consist of highly radioactive wastes and lesser radioactive wastes (dubbed “low-activity wastes”) mixed together in many of the same tanks. Hanford’s high-level wastes amount to 5 million to 6 million gallons. The Tri-Party Agreement calls for two plants to be built for dealing with low-activity wastes and a third to be built for handling high-level wastes. So far, one low-activity waste plant has been built.
That low-activity waste plant is scheduled to begin glassification in August 2025. A plant to separate high-level wastes from low-activity wastes along with the facility to glassify the high-level wastes are expected to be ready in the 2030s. These plans are all part of the current Tri-Party Agreement, with the revisions also calling for a newer approach for handling the radioactive waste: turning it into a cement-like substance called grout.
Grouting is easier and cheaper than glassification, but has not been extensively tested with Hanford’s chemically complex tank wastes. The grout must be shipped off-site, likely to disposal sites in either Utah or Texas. DOE and the state are still figuring out what type of grouting technology to use. Part of this agreed-upon new approach would reclassify any high-level wastes in 22 tanks aimed toward grouting into low-activity wastes.
Project 2025 sees reclassifying high-level wastes into low-activity wastes as a major step toward speeding up cleanup, although it does not address whether DOE should be able to reclassify wastes beyond the 22 tanks.
“A central challenge at Hanford is the classification of radioactive waste. High-Level Waste (HLW) and Low-Level Waste (LLW) classifications drive the remediation and disposal process. Under President Trump, significant changes in waste classification from HLW to LLW enabled significant progress on remediation. Implementation needs to continue across the complex, particularly at Hanford,” the Project 2025 document said.
Still unknown is whether the state — which has been skeptical about widespread use of grout — would go along with grouting high-level wastes beyond those 22 tanks. One indication of the Ecology Department’s reluctance is that the high-level waste glassification plant and the waste separation facility have been kept in the proposed Tri-Party Agreement revisions.
Meanwhile, Project 2025 calls for appropriating more money toward Hanford’s cleanup. However, that money would be taken from projects nationwide covered by 2022’s Inflation Reduction Act and 2021’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
The Infrastructure Investment Act provides money for federal highways, transit, research, hazardous materials work, broadband access, clean water projects and improving electric grids.
The Inflation Reduction Act covers greatly reduced insulin costs, a huge number of climate change-related projects including reducing greenhouse emissions, drought-related measures for the western states, boosting subsidies for the Affordable Care Act, supporting vaccine coverage, increasing tax enforcement by the Internal Revenue Service, and paying for new energy projects.
Inside Project Esther, the right wing action plan to take down the Palestine movement
The Heritage Foundation’s “Project Esther” claims to combat antisemitism but in fact, aims to destroy the Palestine solidarity movement as a first step in a crusade against all domestic dissent in the U.S. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPar-qf5FwY
By Mitchell Plitnick November 22, 2024 , https://mondoweiss.net/2024/11/inside-project-esther-the-right-wing-action-plan-to-take-down-the-palestine-movement/?ml_recipient=138796694236038510&ml_link=138796674607744710&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=2024-11-23&utm_campaign=Daily+Headlines+RSS+Automation
Mitchell Plitnick is the president of ReThinking Foreign Policy. He is the co-author, with Marc Lamont Hill, of Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics. Mitchell’s previous positions include vice president at the Foundation for Middle East Peace, Director of the US Office of B’Tselem, and Co-Director of Jewish Voice for Peace. You can find him on Twitter @MJPlitnick.
The Heritage Foundation got a lot of publicity during this election cycle for its infamous Project 2025. But that’s not the only project they intend to carry out now that Donald Trump is returning to the White House.
Project Esther is a new proposal from Heritage that claims to lay out a plan to combat antisemitism in the United States. In fact, it aims to destroy the Palestine solidarity movement as a first step in a crusade to, ultimately, restrict activism against American policy of all sorts, foreign and domestic. .
It’s not a new enterprise, of course. Disingenuous accusations of antisemitism have been weaponized by the Zionist movement and the State of Israel for a century or more but Project Esther means to unify and coordinate the cynical use of the fight against real antisemitism in order to completely destroy the movement for Palestinian rights.
But that is only its initial ambition. As the full plan makes clear, the people who produced this scheme see it as the key to devastating movements against both American imperialism abroad and white supremacy domestically.
What is Project Esther?
The Project Esther document describes its purpose this way: “Named after the historic Jewish heroine who saved the Jews from genocide in ancient Persia, Project Esther provides a blueprint to counter antisemitism in the United States and ensure the security and prosperity of all Americans.”
It should raise concerns right away that the document treats the story of Esther as historical. Most biblical scholars agree that the story is apocryphal, or at best allegorical. Only the most puritanically fundamentalist approach to the Book of Esther would treat it as history.
The key strategy Project Esther proposes is to identify the Palestine solidarity movement as the “Hamas Support Network,” and organizations in the movement as “Hamas Support Organizations.”
This strategy carries two key effects. One is to discredit the Palestine solidarity movement and all the organizations within it by associating it with Hamas, an organization most of the American public identifies as nothing but a terrorist organization, based on decades of misrepresentations of the group and its goals.
The second aim is to attack the ability of organizations to function by casting them as supporters of terrorism, and specifically of an organization that has been designated by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization. This would make it impossible for those organizations to legally raise money or complete legal business transactions.
Unsurprisingly, the “Hamas Support network” purportedly revolves around American Muslims for Palestine and prominently includes Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace. Completing the picture are funding organizations such as the Open Society Institute, Tides Foundation, and Rockefeller Brothers Fund.
This demonization of the movement combines with the conspiratorial thinking that permeates the entire world in 2025 to take aim at many common tactics of activism.
After laying out allegedly “sinister” exploitation of the “open society” the United States ostensibly has, Project Esther makes the mere use of press releases, social media posts, letters to and meetings with elected officials, and other common tools of activism sound illegitimate simply because Palestine solidarity activists are using them. Again, they do this simply by talking about these activities being conducted by “Hamas Supporting Organizations.”
After establishing this, they state, without evidence, “It should be obvious at this point even to the casual observer that there is an active cabal of Jew-haters, Israel-haters, and America-haters in Washington—all apparently aligned with the far left, progressive movement.”
A political witchhunt
Throughout the document, in addition to erasing the distinction between anti-Zionism and antisemitism, the writers attempt to paint the movement as a threat not only to Israeli apartheid—which, of course, it is—but also to democracy in the United States.
The conspiracy that Project Esther tries to paint also reaches into the United States government. The document names Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Cori Bush, Jamaal Bowman, Summer Lee, Ayana Pressley, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Greg Casar, Andre Carson, Hank Johnson, Jan Schakowsky, Mark Pocan, Pramila Jayapal, Bernie Sanders, Chris Van Hollen, and Elizabeth Warren as being part of or supporting the “Hamas Caucus.”
There is a lot to be read into who is on that list and who is not.
Anyone who follows Congress would immediately see that the range of Democrats listed is very wide. It includes some like Rashida Tlaib, Cori Bush, and Jamaal Bowman whose stances on Palestine have featured very prominently in their political images and stances.
But others on the list have been cautious about Palestine, sometimes standing for Palestinian rights, sometimes not, but even when they do, it has been with relatively little fanfare. That would include some like Jayapal and Casar, and even some like AOC and Pressley who have tried, on one hand to appease their left-wing base on Palestine but have generally been more cautious than Tlaib, Bowman, and Bush.
More telling though is the absence of any Republicans. Before Bernie Sanders’ current effort at passing a Joint Resolution of Disapproval on sales of certain arms to Israel, no senator has been more active in slowing, delaying, and questioning aid to Israel than Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky.
In the House, Rep. Thomas Massie routinely breaks with his party to vote against military aid and other bills related to Israel. Yet neither his name nor Paul’s appear in the Project Esther document.
If, as the authors claim, votes against Israel in Congress are forms of antisemitism, and Project Esther is all about going after antisemitism in the guise of anti-Israel resolutions, where are Massie and Paul in this document?
Their absence clearly reveals the game. The document also attacks outgoing Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, whom Project Esther says “called for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s ouster for no apparent reason other than Netanyahu’s being on Israel’s political right.”
Schumer did make such a call and did so because he believed that Netanyahu was leading Israel down a disastrous path with his attempt at a judicial coup that threatened to strip away Israel’s thin veneer of democracy even within its 1948 borders. It wasn’t ideological, or even political; it was Schumer trying to save the apartheid state from itself, as he demonstrated shortly thereafter by attending Netanyahu’s despicable address to Congress.
Project Esther’s selective criticism shows its fundamental aim is certainly not to protect Jewish safety, and is politically broader than just the Palestine solidarity movement it targets.
Return to McCarthyism
Project Esther wants to pull out all the stops in its attempt to destroy the Palestine solidarity movement.
Its initial focus is very squarely on the academy, where the document makes clear it hopes to establish a new standard in universities and lower-level schools that treat critical examination of both Israel and the United States as unacceptable. So most of its first tactics revolve around many of the efforts we’ve already seen in universities, twisting existing anti-discrimination laws to defend Israel, using “naming and shaming” and doxing tactics, lawfare, and, of course, congressional activism.
But Project Esther seeks to expand on this, and it goes to great lengths to try to equate the growing movement in support of Palestinian rights with the rise of pro-Nazi elements in the United States prior to World War II.
They note how, in response to the rise of the pro-Nazi Bund in the U.S., various elements came together to fight them. These included organized crime figures from the so-called “Jewish gangland,” as they note, “Jewish gangsters like Meyer Lansky, Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, Abner “Longy” Zwillman, and Meyer “Mickey” Cohen—sometimes at the behest of their rabbis—happily coordinated “less than kosher” activities, pro bono, to disrupt and thwart the Bund.” That partnership with organized crime echoes Donald Trump’s own association with vigilante racist groups like the Proud Boys.
They further cite the creation of the House Un-American Activities Committees (HUAC) as a key element in the fight against both support for Nazism and Communism. “New York Democratic Congressman Samuel Dickstein, a Lithuanian-born Jew, worked with Texas Congressman Martin Dies to establish the House of Representatives’ Special Committee on Un-American Activities, also known as the Dies Committee, charged with uncovering Nazi and Communist activities inside the United States.”
The Dies Committee became HUAC in 1945 when it became a standing House committee, and it went on to commit some of the worst violations against civil rights in the United States of the 20th century.
This is what Project Esther would re-create if given the opportunity. And they are well aware that they have the opportunity right now. Written with Joe Biden still in office, and with too many Democrats doing their part to help create fertile ground for this plot, Project Esther states, “Our hope is that this effort will represent an opportunity for public–private partnership when a willing Administration occupies the White House.” That willing administration will arrive on January 20.
It only starts with Palestine solidarity
Speaking with Zeteo, Professor Joseph Howley of Columbia University, an anti-Zionist Jew, said, “[F]ar-right Zionist hegemonists have wanted for years to make being an anti-Zionist or non-Zionist or Israel-critical Jew illegal. This year they’ve succeeded in getting universities to make it policy …. Now they want to make it federal law.”
Once that is accomplished though, the aim is clearly against all possible dissent.
Jewish Voice for Peace’s executive director Stefanie Fox told Zeteo, ““It has never been clearer that defending Palestinian solidarity organizing is one of the most critical frontlines of democracy defense today… this McCarthyite initiative is led by Christian Nationalists, who directly threaten the safety and freedom of all marginalized people, including BIPOC peoples, religious minorities, queer people and women.”
Fox is right, and it goes even further. Project Esther intends to destroy the Palestine solidarity movement as a first step toward crushing dissent of all kinds against white supremacy within the United States and American military and imperial hegemony internationally. There is a very narrow band of people who will be safe from this effort if it’s not stopped.
Immoral Senate votes down resolutions to end US weapons fueling Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL, 24 Nov 24
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) tried but failed to pass his 3 Joint Resolutions of Disapproval (JRD) aimed ending billions in US weapons used by Israel to obliterate habitable life for 2,300,000 Palestinians in Gaza.
Sanders and fellow Independent Angus King of Maine were joined by 17 Democrats hoping to persuade President Biden to stop violating the Leahy Law which forbids sending US weapons to states or groups committing war crimes, human rights violations and ghoulishly, genocide. The vote was engineered by a small contingent of moral Democrats to send a message to Biden they’re growing weary of shoveling over $20 billion in weaponry to assist Israel committing the worst genocide this century. They also heeded the 77% of pre-election Democratic voters who want an end to all US weapons to Israel.
Republican senators wanted no part of following the Leahy Law to extinguish the flames of genocide devouring Gaza. They all voted the resolutions down.
Kudos to my Illinois Senator Dick Durbin who voted for all 3 resolutions. Raspberries to my Illinois Senator Tammy Duckworth who voted to keep the weapons train rolling into Israel in spite of opposition from virtually the entire civilized world save for Israel and America.
Biden worked feverishly to defeat the resolutions. He’s determined to end his presidency an unabashed, morally degraded enabler of genocide. Trump may be even more ravenous in supplying weaponry to Israel come January 20. But at the rate Biden is going, all the Palestinians in Gaza may be dead and gone by then.
Russia’s Revised Nuclear Doctrine and the NATO-Russia Ukrainian War
RUSSIAN and EURASIAN POLITICS, by Gordonhahn, November 21, 2024
In response to the escalating NATO-Ukrainian threat to Russia’s national security, embodied most recently and intensively by the U.S., British, and French use of their own missiles on pre-2022 Russian territory (outside Crimea, annexed in 2014), Moscow adopted and activated into law a revised Nuclear Doctrine (ND) on November 19th.
The original decision to revise Russia’s ND and, indeed, lower the threshold for use came in September when NATO countries first began discussing the use of ATACMs, Storm Shadows, Scalp, etc., which can only be fired with the participation of U.S., British, and/or French officers, making them and their countries direct combatants in a war against Russia, as Russian President Vladimir Putin stated at the time and quite logically so.
This and the timing in which the September discussion was revived in November at the same time completion of the ND revisions was expected gives evidence to the fact that this Western course and escalations in the NATO-Russia Ukrainian War is the driver of the ND revisions.
Similarly, NATO-Ukraine’s use on November 18-19 of ATACMs and Storm Shadows by NATO against targets on Russian territory proper (Bryansk and Kursk) internationally recognized demonstrate how several stipulations in the new doctrine are intended by the Kremlin to address the escalation by NATO to direct involvement by its officers’ control over the launch and attack process of such missiles. Moreover, there are indications that conditions are now such that, according to the new doctrine, Russia’s use of nuclear weapons against Ukrainian, American, British, and French targets is justifiable and thus, regretfully, feasible.
Much of the discussion around the ND revisions centers around Articles 9-12. They address the security problem posed to Russia by the NATO-Ukraine alliance and the war it sparked with Russia. Articles 9-10 note: “9. Nuclear deterrence is also carried out against States that provide their controlled territory, air and/or sea space and resources for the preparation and implementation of aggression against the Russian Federation. 10. Aggression of any state from the military coalition (bloc, union) against the Russian Federation and (or) its allies is considered as aggression of this coalition (bloc, union) as a whole” (http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/75598, pp. 2-3).
These new articles are a result of, and a response to NATO countries various forms of support for Ukraine, particularly its invasion into Kursk as well as drome and missile attacks on numerous Russian regions, aside from Crimea and the four Ukrainian regions annexed by Russia.
Several subsequent Articles in Russia’s revised ND reduce the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons and demonstrate just how close we are approaching said threshold, as far as the Kremlin is concerned. In many ways, these specific Articles constitute the core of the warning that Putin’s decision to revise the ND is; the revision of the ND is an exercise of nuclear deterrence in and of itself.
Much attention has been focused on Article 11 and properly so. It stipulates: “Aggression against the Russian Federation and (or) its allies by any non-nuclear State with the participation or support of a nuclear State is considered as their joint attack” (http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/75598, p. 3). This is indeed crucial because it attributes joint responsibility to NATO’s non-nuclear states and Ukraine along with NATO’s nuclear powers – the U.S., UK, and France.
Thus, Ukraine is tied to the potential nuclear threat to Russia or Belarus posed by the three leading NATO states. Kiev is placed on the nuclear escalatory ladder and targeted for nuclear deterrence, given the implied nuclear threat it poses by putting Russia into conflict and ever greater conflict with NATO and its nuclear powers.
The November 21st Russian attack on Dnipro, Kiev using a new intermediate range ballistic conventional not nuclear missile among others, was an exercise in deterrence if implied, if you will. This attack was in accordance with Article 11’s attribution of joint responsibility for Ukraine and NATO and its nuclear powers. Article 12 states: “Nuclear deterrence is aimed at ensuring that a potential adversary understands the inevitability of retaliation in the event of aggression against the Russian Federation and (or) its allies” (http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/75598, p. 3). The invocation of inevitable retaliation is particularly chilling in light of the Russian ND’s Article 11 and the November 21st Russian attack on Dnipro—already a nuclear deterrence attack sans the nuclear warhead.
In response to the use of six ATACMs, the Russians deployed a new hypersonic, intermediate-range missile with a conventional but still unclear explosive charge, as noted above. In seeming proportion to the six ATACMs, the new Russian missile attacked in 6 waves each with 6 missiles, suggesting a multiple conventional warhead. There is speculation that there was no explosive, the attack having been a test, or detonation occurred deep underground (www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVrLEcxI7Wc&t=933s, at the 1:30 mark). Putin addressed the nation and the world after the Dnipro attack to explain Russia’s deterrence goal while again offering negotiations to end the war. He noted: ……………………………………………………………………………………………..
The upshot of all this, again, is that we are moving closer to scenarios in which Putin or a less cautious successor might choose to use a tactical nuclear weapon in order to end such threats as enumerated above or deter their further posing.
I do not think that Putin, who is an extremely rational and cautious actor, will opt to use even a single tactical nuclear weapon, unless a situation, say, like the one in Kursk should drastically deteriorate from the Russian point of view: for example, if by some miracle Ukraine’s forces in Kursk were somehow to regroup and be approaching the Kursk nuclear power plant and/or nuclear weapons storage facility.
But the actual situation on the ground is quite the reverse. Ukrainian forces are being or have been surrounded, depending on which one is talking about, and are likely to be fully destroyed or mostly destroyed during a hasty retreat. Thus, the ATACMs may be a way to ensure an open extraction corridor, and little more when it comes to Kursk.
But the attack on Bryansk suggests a more expansive NATO-Ukraine agenda for the missiles. Since NATO has consistently escalated its involvement in terms of weapons deployments to Kiev, we can expect a similar escalation regarding the use of the ATACMs and other missiles. Putin will match them every step up the way. He may be forced to rise up the escalatory ladder more rapidly, given mounting public and elite pressure to get tough and fight a war instead of his ‘special military operation.’ https://gordonhahn.com/2024/11/21/russias-revised-nuclear-doctrine-and-the-nato-russia-ukrainian-war/
Norfolk MP criticised for ‘anti-nuclear’ stance for Bacton
Steff Aquarone, North Norfolk MP, has been criticised for his “negative”
stance on plans to create a nuclear reactor in Bacton. Norfolk MP
criticised for ‘anti-nuclear’ stance for Bacton. An MP has been attacked
for not being “more open-minded” over his staunch anti-nuclear stance after
plans emerged that could see a reactor built in a coastal village.
Eastern Daily Press 22nd Nov 2024, https://www.edp24.co.uk/news/24741752.norfolk-mp-criticised-anti-nuclear-stance-bacton/
Nuclear ‘Renaissance’ Recalls Past Boondoggles, Legacy of Failures
These federal subsidies were authorized by President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA). An analysis by NIRS has estimated the IRA includes more than a third of a trillion dollars in potential nuclear power subsidies. Although touted as a climate mitigation bill, the Nuclear Information and Resource Service analysis reported about the 2022 law: “The total amount of nuclear funding in these IRA measures alone ($383 billion) is potentially greater than the total reported amount of climate spending in the entire bill ($369 billion).
POWER, Nov 19, 2024, by Kevin Kamps
Yet another nuclear power “renaissance”? Again? The industry and its friends in high places would like us all to believe so. But, besides the fact that “relapse” would be a better word choice, we’ve also seen this bad horror flick before.
Anyone recall the George W. Bush administration’s attempted nuclear power relapse? Of some three-dozen gigantic new reactors proposed, only two—Vogtle 3 & 4—ever made it into operation. Albeit seven years behind schedule, and more than double the price tag Southern and Georgia Power predicted in 2012, more than $35 billion instead of “just” $15 billion. Of course, the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) had predicted, as cited in Dick Cheney’s Energy Task Force Report of May 2001, that such new reactors would “only” cost $2.5 billion each, not more than $17.5 billion each! Hence, $12 billion in federal loan guarantees, and “nuclear tax” surcharges on ratepayers’ bills, were required—private capital wouldn’t touch it.
The rest of those proposed reactors have simply been canceled at various stages of development. Many never broke ground, including Fermi 3 in Michigan, despite license approval from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to construct and operate. Others ended half-built or less, as at Summer 2 and 3, contributing to the bankruptcy of century-old Westinghouse, and near-bankruptcy of century-old Toshiba. Summer 2 and 3’s cancellation represented a $9 billion or more loss to the ratepayers of South Carolina, many of whom are low income and/or African American. They will be paying for this fiasco on their electric bills for decades—long after a small handful of corporate execs finish their short time behind bars for fraud—with no electricity in return.
Of course, that nuclear “renaissance” going belly up just echoed earlier booms gone bust. Recall the Forbes editorial of February 11, 1985, entitled “Nuclear Follies,” which stated: “The failure of the U.S. nuclear power program ranks as the largest managerial disaster in business history, a disaster on a monumental scale. The utility industry has already invested $125 billion in nuclear power … only the blind, or the biased, can now think that most of the money has been well spent.”
Scores, even hundreds, of reactors were abandoned at various stages of development in the past 50+ years. This included Midland Units 1 and 2, abandoned after being 85% and 50% built, due to safety-significant buildings sinking into the ground, a nuclear Leaning Tower of Pisa. By 1983, Consumers Energy had spent nearly $4.5 billion—$13.75 billion adjusted for inflation, expressed in 2023 dollar figures. It is the largest infrastructure fiasco in Michigan history. Whereas Richard Nixon had touted “Project Energy Independence,” envisioning a thousand reactors across the U.S. by the year 2000, “only” 135 were built. Of these, some never made it to full power operations, such as Shoreham. Most of the burden of the $6 billion wasted (in 1989 dollars, which would be $15 billion in 2023)—fell on Long Island ratepayers: a 3% surcharge was added onto electric bills for 30 years, to pay off the monumental price tag.
Along the same lines, the five-reactor Washington Public Power Supply System (WPPSS) defaulted on $2.25 billion in municipal bonds in 1983 ($7 billion in 2023 dollars), one of the largest such defaults in American history. Hence, WPPSS became known as “Whoops”!
But, despite the lessons that should have been learned, here we go again, with a propaganda-, lobbying-, and campaign contribution-driven nuclear industry joy ride, perhaps at a scale unlike any before. So-called “Small Modular Reactor” (SMR) schemes have proliferated, despite the sinking of the flagship “UAMPS” project, NuScale’s in Idaho, with the cancellation of eight SMRs, the first certified design. This happened despite massive subsidization. Most recently, NextEra has wisely dismissed SMRs as not “too cheap to meter,” but rather too expensive to matter.
Some have gone so far as to propose restarting closed reactors. Holtec’s zombie scheme at Palisades in Michigan is unprecedented, but others—as at the infamous Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, and Duane Arnold in Iowa, which nearly had a derecho disaster in 2019—are seriously considering joining the zombie reactor parade. Holtec has also proposed SMRs at Palisades, as well as at the long closed and decommissioned Big Rock Point site in northern Michigan, making the eastern shoreline of Lake Michigan a leading-edge microcosm of the current attempted nuclear relapse across the country.
Holtec’s Magical Thinking in the Great Lakes State
In spring 2022, those of us who had watchdogged Palisades for decades—a proud tradition of resistance there, that even pre-dated its groundbreaking in 1967—breathed a huge sigh of relief, when then-owner Entergy pulled the plug, shutting the reactor for good. We had dodged so many radioactive bullets over the years. Although not everyone has—elevated rates of cancer, including childhood cancer, are reported in the area, for one thing.
Entergy had planned to close Palisades since 2016, although it took till 2022—the up to 57% above market rates power purchase agreement (PPA) it got then-governor (now Energy Secretary) Jennifer Granholm’s Michigan Public Service Commission (MPSC) to bless was just too lucrative to end early, safety risks be damned.
On May 20, 2022, Entergy finally called it a day, 11 days earlier than scheduled. Palisades’ latest in 50 years of ongoing Control Rod Drive Mechanism seal leaks took place, the worst such operating experience in industry. But by then, we already had plenty of evidence for trouble brewing……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Germany’s hard won shutdown of its last atomic reactors in early 2023 was a tremendous environmental victory, supported by not only the Greens and Social Democrats, but also the Conservatives. It embodies a political consensus, in response to nuclear power’s hazardous radioactive pollution, nuclear waste dilemma, and exorbitant expense, as well as to its severe dangers, as exemplified by the Chornobyl and Fukushima nuclear catastrophes.
But the nearly thousand-page FOIA response we obtained contained other revelations in addition to Holtec’s bailout application and re-nuclearization strategy for Palisades. MPSC staffer Kevin Krause, referring to “Beyond Nuclear et al,” in an email to MPSC Commissioner Peretick (who has enthusiastically supported Palisades’ restart from the very beginning), brushed off environmental watchdogs’ safety concerns, saying: “The unsafe claims are claims these organizations have been claiming for a long time and the NRC has looked at them before.”
The Upton Sinclair quote from 1935 comes to mind: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” His or her.
…our coalition has warned repeatedly about Palisades’ grave risks for many decades now. But NRC is an infamously captured regulator, long the industry’s lapdog, not its watchdog. NRC oversight can more often be defined as “an unintentional failure to notice or do something,” rather than “the action of overseeing something.” “Unintentional” oversight gives NRC too much benefit of the doubt, assuming mere incompetence, rather than complicity with industry. The Japanese Parliament concluded in 2012 that collusion between the supposed, so-called safety regulatory agency, the industry, and government officials, was in fact the root cause of the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe. There has long been such collusion in spades at Palisades.
For one thing, NRC has repeatedly weakened pressurized thermal shock (PTS) regulations, over decades, in order to accommodate ever more risky continued operations at the worst neutron-embrittled reactor pressure vessel in the country, namely Palisades. For State of Michigan officials to incuriously accept NRC’s flippant assurances of safety is inviting disaster.
Investigative reporter Jeff Donn’s post-Fukushima nuclear catastrophe, four-part Associated Press series, “Aging Nukes,” cited PTS as a top example of NRC’s dangerous, ongoing, decades-long regulatory retreat.
Whitmer, the Michigan state legislature, MPSC, our Michigan U.S. congressional delegation, and even DOE, should not fall for the lie that NRC is somehow on top of safety at Palisades. NRC is the enabler of ever more alarming risk-taking, as by Holtec at Palisades.
But even MPSC’s Krause expressed skepticism that Palisades could actually be restarted, a sentiment shared by other MPSC staffers, as revealed a number of times in the FOIA response documents. Krause, in a Sept. 9, 2022 email he gave the subject line “Palisades – you won”t believe this…..,” wrote several other MPSC staffers that “I talked to a few people this afternoon, and we are in uncharted territory. It is not even clear that keeping the plant open is possible from a licensing perspective.” Krause’s email came in response to the “buzz,” news coverage about Holtec’s surprise announcement that day that it had abandoned its decommissioning plans at Palisades, instead was pursuing an unprecedented restart scheme, and had already secretively applied, more than two months earlier, for $2 billion in DOE CNC funding alone, all with Whitmer’s enthusiastic support.
Krause’s word choice is apt. But the uncharted territory is not limited to bureaucratic regulatory approvals. Holtec’s unprecedented Palisades restart scheme represents uncharted territory in terms of the unacceptable risks to health, safety, security, environment, and vast amounts of public funding.
Other watchdogs share this concern…………………………………………………
It’s astonishing that Holtec and NRC are betting the farm on the dangerously old Palisades reactor. It was a notorious, poorly performing nuclear lemon for most of the past half-century, with ever increasing age-related degradation risks, now made even worse by the apparent lack of active safety maintenace by Holtec for the past two and a half years, and counting.
And it’s dumbfounding that DOE, Whitmer, Michigan state legislators, and the PPA customers, the Wolverine/Hoosier rural electric co-ops, have fallen for NRC and Holtec’s assurances of reliability and safety, given their incompetence, complicity, collusion, and corruption………………………………
Money Grabs Galore
Thus far, Holtec has gotten $300 million in grants for the Palisades restart scheme approved by the State of Michigan, despite repeated protests by a broad Great Lakes State environmental coalition.
Holtec has also recently gotten final approval for $1.52 billion in loan guarantees approved by DOE, 52% more than Holtec had asked for two years earlier. Another $1.3 billion has been approved by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)—again, $330 million more than was reportedly initially applied for—to reimburse rural electric co-ops (Wolverine in Michigan, Hoosier in Indiana and Illinois) for 25% of a PPA for Palisades’ future antipcipated electricity supply, from 2025 to 2051, if not beyond that. Holtec hopes to gouge ratepayers even worse than the up to 57% above market rates PPA Entergy had previously enjoyed at Palisades for 15 years. Will the co-ops re-apply for yet additional USDA bailouts in the future?
These federal subsidies were authorized by President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA). An analysis by NIRS has estimated the IRA includes more than a third of a trillion dollars in potential nuclear power subsidies. Although touted as a climate mitigation bill, the Nuclear Information and Resource Service analysis reported about the 2022 law: “The total amount of nuclear funding in these IRA measures alone ($383 billion) is potentially greater than the total reported amount of climate spending in the entire bill ($369 billion).
…………………………………………………………….. It is unbelievable, in a shocking and horrifying way. But even this $3.12 billion in public bailouts approved thus far for the Palisades restart is but the tip of the iceberg. Holtec has requested more than $5 billion in additional taxpayer and ratepayer bailouts towards the zombie reactor restart scheme alone.
…………………………………………………… Opportunity Costs
Dr. Mark Z. Jacobson of Stanford University, citing his 2019 analysis he still stands by, serves as an expert witness for the environmental coalition opposing Palisades’ restart. Jacobson has testified that “a fixed amount of money spent on a new nuclear plant means much less power generation, a much longer wait for power, and a much greater emission rate than the same money spent on WWS [wind, water, and sunlight] technologies.” This dynamic also applies at zombie reactors like Palisades. Closed on May 20, 2022, the earliest date by which Holtec claims it can restart Palisades is August 2025. However, that optimistic goal seems to be slipping to October or even December 2025, even according to Holtec at various points in time recently………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Restarted Reactor Risks to Health, Safety, Security, and the Environment
In spring 2006, Palisades’ intial owner/operator (from 1967-2007), Consumers Energy, admitted to the MPSC that the atomic reactor had a long list of severely degraded, safety-significant systems, structures, and components. Watchdogs had already known for a long time before that about its worst neutron-embrittled reactor pressure vessel in the country, something that NRC was finally dragged, kicking and screaming, to adknowledge more than a decade ago now. But the inclusion of the need for “[r]eactor vessel [closure] head replacement,” after the Davis-Besse, Ohio near-miss of 2002, and of the need for “[s]team generator replacement” for the second time at Palisades, added to our causes for concern.
…………………………………………………………………………………….. The problem is, Entergy did not fix any of those problems, despite owning and operating Palisades from 2007 to 2022. And despite the killing it made that entire time, charging up to 57% above market rates on its PPA. Why not? Because, as is typical, NRC did not require it………………………………………………………………
………………………………………All of those pathways to reactor core meltdown are still relevant at Palisades, and will grow worse, if and when Palisades is allowed to restart, and sail ever deeper into the uncharted waters of age-related degradation risk.
……………………………….This is a real world risk. On Christmas Day 1993, Fermi 2’s turbo-generator shaft mechanically exploded. This resulted in two million gallons of radioactively contaminated water being dumped into Lake Erie.
……………………………………………….Regarding the degraded steam generators, Gundersen pointed out in his October 7 declaration filed as part of the environmental coalition’s intervention petition/request for hearing that “at least 700 additional tubes…must be plugged due to metal corrosion. These were as many tubes as had been plugged during the previous 20 years of operating the aged Palisades reactor designed in 1965.”………………………………………..
Radioactive Waste Risks
In addition to averting meltdown, more good news about Palisades’ “permanent closure” by Entergy on May 20, 2022 was that no more highly radioactive waste would be generated there. Since 1971, nearly 900 metric tons of highly radioactive irradiated nuclear fuel has piled up at Palisades. Currently, about a third is in outdoor dry casks; two-thirds is still stored in Palisades’ indoor wet storage pool.
Palisades’ dry cask storage has been extremely controversial since 1993. ……………………………………………………………….. more https://www.powermag.com/blog/nuclear-renaissance-recalls-past-boondoggles-legacy-of-failures/
1 This Month
18 March Webinar @ 1 PM EST: An Assessment of SMR Projects: The Case of Canada
register for the zoom:
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_o8BIIOUvQ2ONJR1nta65DQ#/registration
of the week – STOP SMALL MODULAR REACTORS IN CANADA
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