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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.

November 29, 2024 Posted by | politics | Leave a comment

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.

November 28, 2024 Posted by | politics, USA, wastes | Leave a comment

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.  

November 26, 2024 Posted by | culture and arts, politics, USA | Leave a comment

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.

November 25, 2024 Posted by | Israel, politics, USA | Leave a comment

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/

November 24, 2024 Posted by | politics, Russia | Leave a comment

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/

November 24, 2024 Posted by | politics, UK | Leave a comment

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/

November 23, 2024 Posted by | politics | Leave a comment

Biden’s Missile Crisis

The American people voted for Trump to end the wars. Biden apparently wants to end the world.

Dennis Kucinich, Nov 20, 2024, https://denniskucinich.substack.com/p/bidens-missile-crisis

When President Biden approved the use of supersonic Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) to strike Russia, he placed in jeopardy the national security of the United States, the safety of our troops abroad and violated the U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 8, which provides that only Congress can declare war.

Biden has made a decision to insert the U.S. into an unambiguous, escalatory phase, using the territory of Ukraine to attack Russia directly with missiles which can reach 190 miles deep.  This is an illegal act by the President which puts our nation on a path to war with Russia.  

The American people voted for Trump to end the wars. Biden apparently wants to end the world. Trump is listening to the American people. Biden is listening to NATO’s malignant agenda. 

Trump has put America’s interests for peace and prosperity first. 

No President has the right to use unilateral executive authority to permit a U.S. missile strike against another nation. It invites a retaliatory attack.  It is an impeachable offense.

Congress, as a co-equal branch of government, must act now: 

Any Member of Congress can, under privileges of the House, ask for immediate consideration of a joint resolution which invokes Article I, Section 8, and then cuts off all funding for personnel, coordination, technical advisers, materiel, equipment and deployment of ATACMS and emplacement of any other offensive missile systems in Ukraine.

The specter of WWIII has  loomed before,  in October of 1962, when the Soviet Union used the territory of Cuba to place offensive missiles just 90 miles away from the American mainland.

Absent the wisdom of President Kennedy and the forbearance of Nikita Krushchev, the world was on a path to nuclear annihilation. 

If Krushchev had “permitted” Russian missiles to be launched at the U.S.  from Cuba, you would not be reading this.

It is magical thinking that U.S. missiles can be used to attack Russia without consequences.  Now it is Putin who must exercise forbearance.

North Korea has reportedly sent a detachment to assist Russia.  Once the North Koreans learn the Russian language and vice versa, military cooperation will be instructive.  That some in the Biden Administration use this occurrence as a bogus excuse to aim U.S. missiles at Russia, shows the neocon/neolieral addiction to war has become a tragicomic death wish. 

Western vainglorious cynicism, together with hundreds of billions of dollars for weapons, shoved Ukraine into an unwinnable conflict. Russia is not NATO’s footstool, but its undoing.

The Putin-as-Hitler narrative projected in the media accelerated fear, induced acquiescence and rallied Western support for what was essentially a long-standing war scam by the military-industrial-intelligence complex. The alchemy which turned man into monster turned blood into cash.  

Kiev has already paid a horrible price for being a US/NATO proxy: the loss of the flower of its youth, the destruction of its beautiful cities, the spoilation of its fertile farmland, and the sacrifice of its sovereignty.  

Now, as U.S. missiles rain down on Russia, a counterstrike will occur, spreading ever wider the misery which has enveloped Ukraine.  

The Biden Administration, in the face of the Afghanistan withdrawal debacle, rejected a Ukrainian-Russian diplomatic settlement more than two years ago, and continued financing the war for domestic political reasons, giving Americans a false hope for victory over Russia. 

Two weeks ago, the people of the United States voted to stop the endless wars and elected Donald Trump.   

Two months to go before the January 20, 2025 Inauguration and Joe Biden has handed Donald Trump a poisoned presidential chalice.  Trump knows better than to drink from it.

November 22, 2024 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Great British Nuclear to put £1.8bn worth of mini-nuke contracts up for grabs

 Successful bidders will work with winners of delayed SMR design
competition. Nearly £2bn worth of construction contracts for Britain’s
first mini-nuclear power plants will be up for grabs next year as officials
prepare sites for the pioneering energy projects.

Great British Nuclear(GBN), the government body tasked with spearheading the development of small modular reactors (SMRs), expects to put the work out for tender
between February and July 2025, according to official documents.

The biggest jobs available will be at least two £800m “delivery partner”
contracts to manage the construction of the SMRs over a period of 10 years.
Smaller contracts for an “owner’s engineer”, “foundation project
management” and “foundation engineering” will also be open to
bidding.

They will work with technology companies designing the reactors
which will be selected in GBN’s ongoing SMR design competition, which has
been delayed multiple times.

 Telegraph 18th Nov 2024 https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/11/18/great-british-nuclear-to-put-18bn-worth-mini-nuke-contracts/

November 22, 2024 Posted by | business and costs, politics, UK | Leave a comment

Trump’s Election Is Also a Win for Tech’s Right-Wing “Warrior Class”

Donald Trump pitched himself to voters as a supposed anti-interventionist candidate of peace. But when he reenters the White House in January, at his side will be a phalanx of pro-military Silicon Valley investors, inventors, and executives eager to build the most sophisticated weapons the world has ever known.

During his last term, the U.S. tech sector tiptoed skittishly around Trump; longtime right-winger Peter Thiel stood as an outlier in his full-throated support of MAGA politics as other investors and executives largely winced and smiled politely. Back then, Silicon Valley still offered the public peaceful mission statements of improving the human condition, connecting people, and organizing information. Technology was supposed to help, never harm. No more: People like Thiel, Palmer Luckey, Trae Stephens, and Marc Andreessen make up a new vanguard of powerful tech figures who have unapologetically merged right-wing politics with a determination to furnish a MAGA-dominated United States with a constant flow of newer, better arms and surveillance tools.

These men (as they tend to be) hold much in common beyond their support of Republican candidates: They share the belief that China represents an existential threat to the United States (an increasingly bipartisan belief, to be sure) and must be dominated technologically and militarily at all costs. They are united in their aversion, if not open hostility, to arguments that the pace of invention must be balanced against any moral consideration beyond winning. And they all stand to profit greatly from this new tech-driven arms race.

Trump’s election marks an epochal victory not just for the right, but also for a growing conservative counterrevolution in American tech that has successfullyrebranded military contracting as the proud national duty of the American engineer, not a taboo to be dodged and hidden. Meta’s recent announcement that its Llama large language model can now be used by defense customers means that Apple is the last of the “Big Five” American tech firms — Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Meta — not engaged in military or intelligence contracting.

Trump’s election marks an epochal victory not just for the right, but also for a growing conservative counterrevolution in American tech.

Elon Musk has drawn the lion’s share of media scrutiny (and Trump world credit) for throwing his fortune and digital influence behind the campaign. Over the years, the world’s richest man has become an enormously successful defense contractor via SpaceX, which has selling access to rockets that the Pentagon hopes will someday rapidly ferry troops into battle. SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet has also become an indispensable American military tool, and the company is working on a constellation of bespoke spy satellites for U.S. intelligence agency use.

But Musk is just one part of a broader wave of militarists who will have Trump’s ear on policy matters……………………………………………………………………………  https://theintercept.com/2024/11/17/tech-industry-trump-military-contracts/

November 20, 2024 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Restart of Three Mile Island tests US appetite for nuclear revival

Legal threats, skills shortages and regulatory challenges complicate reopening of plant at site of nuclear accident

Ft.com Jamie Smyth in Middletown, Pennsylvania, 17 Nov 24

A group of veteran community activists is planning legal action to block the reopening of Three Mile Island nuclear plant in a test of whether the American public will back an atomic energy boom financed by Big Tech and US taxpayers. Three Mile Island Alert, a group founded almost half a century ago to lobby for the closure of the plant in Middletown, Pennsylvania — site of the worst nuclear accident in US history — said it would challenge government licences required by operator Constellation Energy, which is targeting a restart in 2028.

 The legal threat is one of several obstacles facing the utility as it races to meet the terms of a 20-year power supply deal struck with Microsoft. The $1.6bn project could become a potent symbol of the revival of nuclear energy in the US.

Constellation must obtain numerous regulatory approvals, train hundreds of staff and upgrade equipment at a time when nuclear supply chains are stretched. It must also persuade the local community — and the incoming administration of Donald Trump — that the benefits of restarting the plant outweigh the risks.

“The restart is not going to happen by 2028: that is pure fantasy,” Eric Epstein, a 64-year old former history professor and chair of TMI Alert, told the Financial Times. “We haven’t even cleaned up Three Mile Island unit two, the site of the accident is still highly radioactive . . . and now we’re going to generate more nuclear waste. It’s disappointing and it’s manifestly unfair.”

TMI’s second reactor was closed in 1979 after a partial meltdown caused a radiation leak, prompting a chaotic response from then operator Metropolitan Edison Company and public authorities that dented public trust. The plant’s first reactor was shuttered in 2019 for economic reasons when the US shale revolution produced so much cheap gas that nuclear energy could not compete. 

Read more …………  https://www.ft.com/content/b90f6e21-bb8d-4606-9e5e-c4acb56b86ce

: Restart of Three Mile Island tests US appetite for nuclear revival

November 19, 2024 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Trump picks Liberty Energy CEO and Oklo nuclear company board member Chris Wright as Energy secretary

CNBC, Nov 16 2024, Spencer Kimball,

  • President-elect Donald Trump picked Liberty Energy CEO Chris Wright to lead the Department of Energy.
  • Liberty Energy is an oilfield services company headquartered in Denver, Colorado. Wright also serves on the board of nuclear power startup Oklo.
  • Wright has denied that climate change represents a global crisis.

………………………………………………………. https://www.cnbc.com/2024/11/16/trump-picks-liberty-energy-ceo-and-oklo-board-member-chris-wright-as-energy-secretary.html

November 19, 2024 Posted by | politics | Leave a comment

Saudi Crown Prince condemns Israel attacks on Palestinians as ‘genocide’

November 11, 2024 , https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20241111-saudi-crown-prince-condemns-israel-attacks-on-palestinians-as-genocide/

Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince and de facto ruler condemned what he called the “genocide” committed by Israel against Palestinians during a speech at a summit of leaders of Muslim and Arab countries in Riyadh on Monday, Reuters reports.

“The Kingdom renews its condemnation and categorical rejection of the genocide committed by Israel against the brotherly Palestinian people,” Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman said at an Arab Islamic summit, echoing comments by Saudi Foreign Minister, Faisal Bin Farhan Al Saud, late last month.

He urged the international community to stop Israel from attacking Iran and to respect Iran’s sovereignty.

The Crown Prince said in September the Kingdom would not recognise Israel unless a Palestinian State was created.

US President Joe Biden’s administration had sought to broker a normalisation accord between Saudi Arabia and Israel that would have included US security guarantees for the Kingdom, among other bilateral deals between Washington and Riyadh.

Those normalisation efforts were put on ice after the 7 October, 2023, attack on Israel by Hamas fighters from Gaza and Israel’s subsequent retaliation.

Israel’s military assault on Gaza in the last 13 months has killed tens of thousands, displaced nearly its entire population, caused a hunger crisis and led to allegations of genocide at the World Court, which Israel denies.

November 18, 2024 Posted by | politics, Saudi Arabia | Leave a comment

Ultra-Conservative War Hawks Dominate Trump Cabinet

Trump quickly fills cabinet positions with Zionists, warhawks, and personal friends all unified under an ultra-conservative agenda and total loyalty to Trump

November 14, 2024 by Peoples Dispatch, https://peoplesdispatch.org/2024/11/14/ultra-conservative-war-hawks-dominate-trump-cabinet/

Peoples Dispatch has compiled a list of notable appointments below: 

Thomas Homan: “Border Czar”

Homan was the head of ICE during Trump’s first term, and has been selected to lead up Trump’s campaign promise to conduct mass deportations of 15 to 20 million people. Homan pledged at the Republican National Convention that he would “run the biggest deportation operation this country’s ever seen” and promised to “flood sanctuary cities” with agents to conduct mass arrests, and carry out massive raids targeting workplaces. He was given the “Presidential Rank Award” by Barack Obama in 2015 for his work in “enforcement and removal operations.” Obama himself was dubbed the “Deporter in Chief” by immigration activists for deporting more people than any president who came before him.

Stephen Miller: Deputy chief of staff for policy

Miller is another pick that signals that Trump is serious regarding his campaign promise to carry out the largest mass deportations in US history. Miller is the architect of the cruelest anti-immigrant policies of the first Trump administration, such as family separation, and a key bridge between the Trump administration and the “alt-right” fascist movement. Miller supports deploying military units of the National Guard to hunt down undocumented people, and advocates for the construction of massive camps to detain immigrants rounded up in raids.

Marco Rubio: Secretary of State


Trump’s choice of Florida Senator Marco Rubio for Secretary of State has surprised some who wanted to believe Trump’s campaign promise of “preventing World War III”. Rubio is a notorious warhawk, known for promoting an aggressive foreign policy approach towards countries that do not tip-toe around the US, including Iran, China, Russia, and Venezuela. Rubio’s appointment could be a test of whether the Trump administration will lean more neoconservative than promised or whether Rubio will be forced to toe a more isolationist foreign policy line.

Rubio, who is of Cuban descent, has a particular hostility towards the socialist state and is a key promoter of harsh sanctions against the island. Rubio has also attacked left-wing social movements within the United States, attempting to use the power of the state to harshly sanction the BDS movement and pro-Palestine and leftist organizations. 

Michael Waltz: National Security Adviser

US Army colonel and Florida Representative Michael Waltz is also a notorious warhawk, particularly on China and Iran. During Trump’s first administration, after he almost provoked war with Iran with his assassination of General Qassim Suleimani in 2020, Waltz was one of a small group invited to the White House to receive a briefing on the strike. 

Matt Gaetz: Attorney General

Trump loyalist and Florida Representative Matt Gaetz is a prominent figure in the ultra-conservative wing of the Republican Party, leading the charge to overthrow the more established Republican Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House—who was replaced with Mike Johnson in 2023. Gaetz, like Trump, is no stranger to scandal, being embroiled in a three-year long federal sex trafficking investigation that ended in 2023. 


Pete Hegseth: Secretary of Defense

Hegseth is a controversial Fox News host and military veteran, who is known for his advocacy on behalf of former members of the military who have been convicted of war crimes. This includes lobbying in defense of Navy SEAL Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher, who was accused of stabbing a teenaged prisoner of war to death and shooting a teenage girl and elderly man while deployed in Iraq. Since Trump picked Hegseth, his collection of right-wing tattoos has gotten some media attention, which includes a tattoo across his arm of the medieval crusader slogan “Deus Vult,” which translates to “I have not come to bring peace, but a sword,” and signals his political leanings towards the Christian far right.

Kristi Noem: Secretary of Homeland Security

Noem is the current Governor of South Dakota who’s known for her total loyalty to Trump. Noem’s deeply anti-migrant agenda has led her to claim that the “United States of America is in a time of invasion” as a consequence of immigrants “waging war against our nation.” Noem supported the Muslim ban during Trump’s first term because it would restrict refugees from “terrorist hotbed areas.”

John Ratcliffe: CIA Director

Ratcliffe was Trump’s director of national intelligence during his first term. This pick was praised by Republican Representative Mike Turner, who has accused fellow Republican colleagues of repeating Russian propaganda, for helping “counter the serious threats posed by China, Russia, Iran and North Korea.”

Tulsi Gabbard: Director of national intelligence

Trump’s pick of veteran and former Democrat Tulsi Gabbard as the pick to oversee 18 spy agencies has been welcome news to those more critical of the foreign policy establishment. Gabbard endorsed Trump last month, claiming that Trump would transform the Republican Party “back to the party of the people, and the party of peace.”

Steven Witkoff: Special envoy to the Middle East

Witkoff is a Zionist multi-millionaire real estate investor and close personal friend of Trump’s, with zero prior experience in politics in the Middle East/West Asia region. 

Mike Huckabee: Ambassador to Israel

Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee and ardent Evangelical Christian is likely to continue his long career of defending Israel in his new post. Huckabee once argued that there was “no such thing as a Palestinian” and recently claimed that the US would back an Israeli attempt to annex the West Bank. 

Elise Stefanik: United Nations ambassador

The conservative New York representative went viral for her role in orchestrating the downfall of several prominent university presidents, including former Harvard President Claudine Gay, over the accusation that these presidents were not repressing pro-Palestine students enough. Stefanik is viewed as one of the most prominent enemies of the student movement in the US. 

Lee Zeldin: Environmental Protection Agency Administrator

Trump’s pick of Zeldin as EPA Administrator signals that Trump is ready to make good on his campaign promise to attack key environmental protections that are one of the few ways the US government attempts to mitigate the effects of climate change. 

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy: Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)

The world’s richest person, who in many ways directly bought votes for Trump in key swing states such as Pennsylvania, has been promised a formal role in Trump’s administration alongside entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, through the new commission dubbed the Department of Government Efficiency (the acronym referencing an internet meme). DOGE is in many ways designed to help the ultra-rich including Musk slash through government regulations that may place a limit on power and profit.

November 17, 2024 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Trump’s Appointments Reflect a More Openly Hawkish Face of US Empire

In appointing Marco Rubio, Mike Waltz and Pete Hegseth to his administration, Trump emboldens volatile warmongers.

By Sam Rosenthal , Truthout, November 14, 2024

After mounting his comeback win against Kamala Harris, Donald Trump has already announced a slew of administration appointments. Compared to other presidents-elect, and to his own first term, Trump is ahead of the typical timeline in announcing these appointments, giving observers an earlier-than-usual view into how the second Trump administration could function, both in the domestic and foreign policy arenas.

On the foreign policy front, Trump will inherit several major international crises and tensions that Joe Biden has been unable to resolve during his time in office, chief among them Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, Russia’s war in Ukraine and escalating U.S. rivalry with China over Taiwan. Trump has already named several high-profile cabinet members who will shape much of his foreign policy and could oversee the consequential conclusions of those conflicts.

Marco Rubio, the senator from Florida, has been tapped for the coveted secretary of state position. Rubio is a well-known China hawk who has recently led the charge against TikTok and other Chinese-based tech companies, a stance that dovetails well with Trump’s promise to impose a 60 percent tariff on all goods exported from China. Beyond economic warfare, Rubio has called China the “threat that will define this century” and pushed repeatedly on known pressure points in U.S.-China relations, including the status of Taiwan.

Rubio — the grandson of Cuban immigrants who moved to the U.S. before the Cuban revolution but hated Fidel Castro from afar — is an ardent anti-communist who has argued vociferously against the legitimacy of the sitting governments in Cuba and Venezuela and supported devastating sanctions on both……………………

Rubio’s aggressive stance toward China will no doubt be compounded by Trump’s newly announced pick for national security adviser, Mike Waltz, currently a House representative from Florida. Waltz has pushed his anti-China rhetoric even farther than Rubio, …………………………………….

Arguably Trump’s most surprising pick so far has been his choice for secretary of defense. …………………………….. For his second term, in an apparent attempt to institute more accommodating leadership at the Pentagon, Trump has nominated Pete Hegseth, a Fox News host who served in Afghanistan and at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, to lead the Department of Defense.

During his time at Fox News, Hegseth has become known for advocating for leniency for military personnel found to have committed war crimes abroad while serving. Hegseth has no governmental experience whatsoever, nor has he served in any command role within the U.S. military…………………………..

During Trump’s last term, he encouraged the then-president to bomb cultural sites in Iran. As head of the Department of Defense, he might focus on internal house cleaning, seeking to remake the military into a more homogenous, more overtly male-dominated entity, with even less care for international law and a firmer belief in U.S. supremacy.

…………………………………………….Tulsi Gabbard, chosen as director of national intelligence……….. has also frequently trafficked in anti-Muslim rhetoric, repeating right-wing talking points about “radical Islamic ideology” that are often used to justify the criminalization and surveillance of Muslim communities…

………………………….Trump has also begun to announce high-profile ambassadorships. Among these early picks, the most consequential is likely to be his selection of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee to serve as U.S. ambassador to Israel. Huckabee, whose daughter, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, served as Trump’s press secretary in his last term, is well-known for his Christian evangelicism. …..

Huckabee’s pick as ambassador to Israel likely portends an even more openly hostile stance toward Palestinian human rights and comes with possibly apocalyptic consequences for the West Bank. Huckabee, an avowed Zionist (like President Biden), has long supported Benjamin Netanyahu. ……………………………………..  He has said that Israeli settlements in the West Bank are not illegal, contradicting the overwhelming consensus of international law experts…………………………..

Beyond that, though, Huckabee ascribes to a particular brand of Christian evangelical thought, rooted in the belief that the existence of modern Israel is ordained by God. Huckabee has close ties to Christian Zionist organizations, including Christians United for Israel (CUFI), one of the largest of its type in the U.S., which is already celebrating his nomination.

But Huckabee’s connection with Hagee and CUFI isn’t just alarming because of its founder’s overt antisemitism; Hagee is part of an extreme segment of the Christian Zionist tradition that believes that a cataclysmic war in Israel and Palestine will be the precipitating event for the second coming of the Christian messiah. Hagee and others in this line of thinking, therefore, encourage the hastening of violent conflict between Israel and its neighbors as much as possible.   Whether Huckabee himself is aligned with this particular strain of Christian Zionism is not clear, but his close connection with the broader movement, and with Hagee in particular, should be enough to raise the highest level of alarm about what policies Huckabee intends to support toward an Israeli state that is already deeply enmeshed in the bloodiest campaign of its entire existence.

It is not a foregone conclusion that all of these nominees will make it through the Senate confirmation process. Although Republicans now control the chamber, more moderate caucus members, or those with more traditional views of how the federal government should be run, might be hesitant to confirm some of Trump’s most unorthodox picks. Hegseth and Gabbard, in particular, could face strong headwinds. However, that is dependent on whether Republicans are willing to risk antagonizing Trump, who is infamous for his ability to hold and prosecute personal vendettas, at the outset of his second term. If these nominees are confirmed, they will comprise among the most unusual, and unpredictable, stewards of U.S. foreign policy that the country has ever had.

November 16, 2024 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

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