US bans China crypto-miner from nuclear base area
Yahoo! News, João da Silva – Business reporter, Tue, 14 May 2024
US President Joe Biden has ordered a Chinese-owned cryptocurrency miner and its partners to sell land they own near a US nuclear missile base, citing spying concerns.
MineOne Partners, which the White House says is majority-owned by Chinese citizens, has been given 120 days to sell the property, where it runs a crypto-mining operation.
The land is less than a mile (1.6km) away from an air force base in Wyoming, where intercontinental ballistic missiles are stored.
BBC News has contacted MineOne Partners and China’s embassy in the US for comment.
“The proximity of the foreign-owned Real Estate to a strategic missile base… and the presence of specialised and foreign-sourced equipment potentially capable of facilitating surveillance and espionage activities, presents a national security risk”, the White House said in a statement.
Francis E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming is home to Minuteman III nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles.
MineOne bought the land close to the military base in 2022 and later installed cryptocurrency mining equipment.
The Committee on Foreign Investment in the US (CFIUS), a powerful body that scrutinises deals for national security security threats, was not notified about the purchase by the company, the White House said………………………………….. https://au.news.yahoo.com/us-bans-china-crypto-miner-011028473.html
Ontario’s nuclear option is the wrong path to meet green energy targets
The province should focus on cost-efficient wind, solar and hydro expansion, as well as increased interprovincial transmission.
by Quinn Goranson May 13, 2024, https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/may-2024/ontario-nuclear-option/
Ontario is failing in its strategy to reduce emissions to meet the province’s climate commitment of reducing emissions by 2030 to 30 per cent below 2005 levels (which is already 10 to 15 per cent below the current federal target).
The province’s auditor general released a report in 2021 stating the Ford government’s policies for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions were already falling short by 14.2 megatons.
Fast-forward three years and the situation is likely to get worse.
Plans to meet the province’s possible 1.7-per-cent annual increase in electricity demand include the addition of natural gas-powered turbines, refurbishing old nuclear reactors and developing small modular reactors (SMRs).
This presents a dual problem. First, burning natural gas produces CO2, so expanding capacity using new gas turbines will increase emissions. Second, nuclear power generation cannot successfully help meet 2030 targets
Ontario’s nuclear hopes out of step with reality
SMRs are a class of nuclear reactor, built in a factory and shipped to a site, designed to generate up to 300 megawatts (MW) of electrical power per unit. By comparison, larger conventional reactors in Ontario have a capacity of roughly 900 MW.
Ontario Power Generation (OPG) states it is “leading the way in the advancement of SMR technology in Canada” and that SMRs are “the future of nuclear power generation.”
This position collides head-on with technological realities.
SMRs are a futuristic technology at best. The only operational SMRs anywhere in the world are in Northeast Russia and in Shidao Bay, China.
Both reactors faced construction delays, primarily due to cost overruns and poor economics., The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission has yet to fully approve a single SMR licence.
SMRs cannot be built in time to help meet Ontario’s 2030 emission targets. Worse, by betting on them, OPG has committed to making Ontario’s electricity grid dirtier.
Nuclear power a costly option
In addition to being largely unproven, SMRs will not be cheap. While their absolute cost may be lower than conventional nuclear reactors, their lower electricity output means they become significantly more expensive per megawatt to operate.
Beyond the fact that every single new nuclear project in Ontario’s history has gone over budget, gas and nuclear energy now contribute the most to increasing energy bills for Ontario residents.
A 2018 report from the Canadian SMR roadmap steering committee, a group of provincial and territorial governments and power utilities, estimated the baseline cost of electricity from SMRs would be 16.3 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh). Comparatively, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency renewable alternatives are less expensive:
- Onshore wind electricity costs consumers an average of 4.5 cents per kWh;
- Offshore wind costs an average of 10 cents/kWh;
- Solar PV farms cost an average of 6.6 cents/kWh;
- Hydropower costs an average of 5 cents/kWh.
In North America, the only SMR design certified by the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission was cancelled due to “lack of interest” once rising costs deterred potential customers. Originally announced in 2015 at the equivalent of $4.1 billion Cdn, estimates rose to $5.6 billion (2018), then $8.4 billion (2020) and finally $12.7 billion (2023).
Time keeps on ticking
New nuclear projects are taking on average of 10 to 15 years to become operational. Ontario’s first SMR designated for the Darlington Nuclear Generating Station is planned for 2028.
Meanwhile, the Ontario government says additional SMRs could come online between 2034 and 2036. In reality, nuclear projects typically exceed time estimates by 64 per cent and given a strong trend of delays for such projects globally, new SMRs are unlikely to come online before 2042, if ever.
So, in addition to the speculative viability of SMRs, likely delays even under the best of circumstances mean this technology is unable to help meet Ontario’s emissions reduction targets.
Radioactive waste another key factor
The “green” label often applied to nuclear energy should be viewed with scepticism. While no fossil fuel is burned to generate nuclear power, the industry produces radioactive waste and is not “renewable.”
In fact, there is evidence to suggest SMRs will produce a greater volume of radioactive waste per unit of electricity generated than existing large reactors.
Radioactive waste remains hazardous for tens of thousands of years and there are no demonstrated solutions to managing this risk. According to the Nuclear Waste Management Organization, which is owned by Canada’s nuclear power companies, radioactive nuclear waste must be fully isolated from people and the environment for one million years or more.
Committing to new nuclear projects in Ontario as a climate solution is essentially trading one intergenerational threat for another.
The green path toward Ontario’s emissions targets
A report from the David Suzuki Foundation in 2022 found that “reliable, affordable, 100 per cent emissions-free electricity in Canada by 2035 is entirely possible.”
In 2020, the International Energy Agency declared wind and solar the “cheapest sources of new electricity in history.”
In 2018, Ontario cancelled 758 signed contracts for smaller renewable energy projects, many of them in Indigenous communities Only recently, the province’s Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) has announced it seeks to procure 5,000 MW of new non-emitting (wind, solar, hydropower or bioenergy) energy.
Utility-scale solar costs plummeted by 90 per cent between 2009-21. Wind energy costs declined 72 per cent. This presents an important opportunity given Ontario’s more than 1,500 kilometres of Great Lakes shoreline and abundant sunshine.
The already low cost of hydropower in Ontario through existing infrastructure, combined with the potential for integration with Hydro-Québec, can help Ontario convert its “intermittent wind and solar energy into a firm 24/7 source of baseload electricity,” according to the Ontario Clean Air Alliance.
Likewise, offshore wind-generating potential in Atlantic Canada far exceeds energy needs in the region and could be exported to Ontario via existing mainstream high-voltage direct-current transmission lines.
By cancelling SMR development and focusing on cost-efficient wind, solar and hydro expansion, as well as increased interprovincial transmission, Ontario can reclaim leadership when it comes to green energy development now and for future generations.
Sen. Lindsey Graham suggests nuking Gaza, says nuking Hiroshima was ‘the right decision’
Amanda YenSun, The Daily Beast, Sun, 12 May 2024, https://www.sott.net/article/491372-Sen-Lindsey-Graham-suggests-nuking-Gaza-says-nuking-Hiroshima-was-the-right-decision
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) offered a baffling comparison of Israel’s war on Gaza to the U.S. decision to drop atomic bombs on Japan during World War II, telling Israel to “do whatever you have to do” to finish the military campaign.
Speaking to NBC’s Kristin Welker on Meet the Press Sunday morning, Graham made the argument that Israel would be justified in slaughtering civilians in Gaza by likening the situation to the U.S.’s war with Japan eight decades ago. He suggested Israel would be right to flatten the Gaza strip — home to 2.2 million Palestinians, half of whom are children — simply because the U.S. did it to Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the 1940s.
“So when we were faced with destruction as a nation after Pearl Harbor, fighting the Germans and the Japanese, we decided to end the war by bombing Hiroshima, Nagasaki, with nuclear weapons,” Graham began.
The senator continued to call the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki “the right decision” by the U.S. That decision ended the war with Japan, but killed hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians between the initial blasts and the deadly radiation that followed.
“Give Israel the bombs they need to end the war they can’t afford to lose, and work with them to minimize casualties,” Graham insisted.
It was unclear how he believed the U.S. and Israel could work to “minimize casualties,” since bombs tend not to discriminate between civilians and militants upon detonation.
Graham’s comments were so extreme that even Welker was taken aback, unsuccessfully attempting to interject as the senator talked over her.
“Can I say this?” Graham continued. “Why is it okay for America to drop two nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end their existential threat war? Why is it okay for us to do that? I thought it was okay.”
Of course, the presumption that the U.S. was justified in nuking Japan to end World War II has been contested by historians and other critics for decades. Those bombs also decimated nearly all of Hiroshima’s and Nagasaki’s medical infrastructures, making it nearly impossible to deliver aid to the injured and dying, according to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.
Graham’s comments came as Israel appears poised to launch a full-scale invasion of Rafah, which the U.N. and the Biden administration have warned would be catastrophic for the 1.4 million people sheltering there. On Sunday, as Graham went on national television to suggest incinerating Gaza, the U.N. secretary general pleaded once more to prevent the area from spiraling into all-out devastation.
Comment: Is it any wonder that Russia is running nuclear drills when Western governments are riddled with liabilities like Graham?
China and the U.S. Are Numb to the Real Risk of War.
Like China, the United States is mired in jingoism and confusion. Like China, it has no idea what it would do if things go wrong.
With the 2024 U.S. presidential election heating up, the one thing every candidate, Democrat or Republican, has done is to show how tough they could get on China.
Like China, the United States is mired in jingoism and confusion. Like China, it has no idea what it would do if things go wrong. With the 2024 U.S. presidential election heating up, the one thing every candidate, Democrat or Republican, has done is to show how tough they could get on China.
The pair are dangerously close to the edge of nuclear war over Taiwan—again.
May 12, 2024, By Sulmaan Wasif Khan, the Denison chair of international history and diplomacy at Tufts University’s Fletcher School. https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/05/12/china-us-taiwan-strait-war-nuclear-weapons-military-biden-xi-history/
On the morning of April 5, 2023, Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, met with then-U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in Simi Valley, California. This was a meeting Beijing had warned against in the strictest of terms. It was therefore a meeting that both sides found necessary to have. China had to be shown that it could not dictate whom either Taiwan or the United States met with. On this, both Taipei and Washington were agreed.
China delivered on its promised forceful response by engaging in military drills and sending warships and planes scudding around Taiwan. The median line and Taiwan’s air defense identification zone were breached. One aircraft carrier, the Shandong, entered the waters just south of Japan. Violations of the “One China” principle, Beijing had to make clear, were not going to be taken quietly. And in seeking to make that clear, it deepened the risk of war.
This article is adapted from The Struggle for Taiwan: A History of America, China, and the Island Caught Between by Sulmaan Wasif Khan,
Commentators dismissed Beijing’s response to the Tsai-McCarthy meeting as less intense than the one that had attended then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in 2022. But the dismissal itself highlighted the gravity of the problem. A certain level of military activity had become normalized. It was as though the world now took for granted the presence of missiles and aircraft carriers, the shows of force that demanded a response in kind. The week after the meeting in California, the United States and the Philippines launched their largest joint military exercise to date. It was a way of showing China that there were other militaries that could operate in the region. The new normal meant more ships and planes operating in close proximity to one another, mutual recrimination, and mutual suspicion.
Beijing and Washington have become desensitized to the risk these circumstances pose. But in the militarization of foreign policy and the failure to grasp the full significance of that militarization, the pair are one accident and a bad decision removed from a catastrophic war. Mathematicians speak of the “edge of chaos”: the final point separating order from doom. A system operating at this edge has no room for error. This is where the accumulated weight of the past has brought the United States, China, and Taiwan. They walked right up to the edge of a war that could go nuclear several times in the past: in 1954-55, 1958, and 1996. Now, they seem to be living on that edge permanently.
In recent years, China’s policy has alienated Taiwan completely. As China has bullied, threatened, and displayed force at home and abroad, it has made unification unacceptable to much of the Taiwanese electorate. And it has enjoyed only mixed success in trying to isolate Taiwan diplomatically. It has managed to buy off many of Taiwan’s erstwhile allies, but its conduct over COVID-19 and support for Russia despite the invasion of Ukraine have cost it friends, too—and those former friends have turned to the island across the strait.
Since at least 2021, Taiwan has had a seemingly endless parade of visitors, from Germany’s education minister to Liz Truss, the former U.K. prime minister. In November 2021, the European Parliament sent its first official delegation to the island; the head of the delegation, Raphaël Glucksmann, told Tsai, “We in Europe are also confronted with interference from authoritarian regimes and we came here to learn from you.” In October 2022, Tsai received lawmakers from Lithuania and Ukraine; the former had recently established a representative office in Taiwan despite Beijing’s anger, while the latter was making a gesture of solidarity with a country that, unlike China, had been sharp in its criticism of Moscow. A Japanese parliamentary delegation that arrived in December 2022spoke glowingly of Tsai’s defense plans and emphasized Japan’s own determination to keep the status quo in the region from being “changed by force or unilaterally.” China has warned against or condemned many of these visits.
Beijing has only itself to blame for Taiwan’s strengthened diplomatic position. Its wolf warrior nationalism and reluctance to break with Moscow have cost it European support. If visits from foreign politicians were to translate into condemnation of China at the United Nations, Beijing could veto a Security Council resolution. In this case, like Russia, China would find itself a pariah state—and unlike Russia, China cares about how it is seen by the world. China’s own corrosive nationalism has eaten into its body politic, too It has not torn itself apart in a bout of political bloodletting, but it has certainly let loose the kind of jingoism that would allow that to happen. What it will decide to do in a crisis is uncertain. Beijing itself does not know.
The United States, meanwhile, seems intent on reviving a defense treaty with Taipei that it once spent more than a decade trying to break. Taiwan has become a means of showing China just how tough the United States can get. Washington is not clear on how getting tough will alter Beijing’s conduct, but “deterrence” is the concept invoked most often. A show of force, the thinking goes, will deter China from aggression. But what if deterrence fails? What if the show of force backs China into a corner from which it feels it has no option but to lash out? To this, Washington has few answers beyond preparing for war.
Some U.S. pundits have waxed lyrical about how they would fight a war with China. Taiwan, they opined, will be turned into a “porcupine” with hardened defenses. One former defense official suggested the use of “low-yield tactical nuclear weapons” in the event of a conflict with China. (The bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki qualify as low yield.) The possibility of Russian President Vladimir Putin using such weapons sent shock waves of horror through the world, but the idea of employing them in a war with China became normal in some circles. There was no guarantee that, once the nuclear taboo was breached, the weapons would stay “low yield.” But the question of what would happen if the two powers escalated to higher-yield arms and plunged the world into nuclear holocaust has been left unresolved.
It is as though the United States is being haunted by all the ghosts of its long past with China and Taiwan, forcing it to relive questions it had once thought resolved. U.S. military leader Douglas MacArthur wanted to wage war against China in 1950. President Dwight D. Eisenhower considered using nuclear weapons against China in 1955 and 1958. Today, Washington abides by the “One China” principle, but it wants Taiwan to enjoy “self-determination.” It vows that it does not dispute the formulation that Taiwan is a part of China, but it will help Taiwan resist Chinese coercion. It wishes to promote Taiwan’s presence in international organizations, but it remains unwilling to recognize Taiwan itself. The United States has shifted from pure ambiguity to ambiguity with a tilt in favor of Taiwan—and it has done so because it decided China is an enemy.
Like China, the United States is mired in jingoism and confusion. Like China, it has no idea what it would do if things go wrong. With the 2024 U.S. presidential election heating up, the one thing every candidate, Democrat or Republican, has done is to show how tough they could get on China. Republicans vying for the nomination got in on the act early; former President Donald Trump has denounced French President Emmanuel Macron for “kissing Xi’s ass,” referring to Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Joe Biden, with the power of the incumbent, has not stopped at rhetoric. Whether supporting a TikTok ban unless the app is sold or calling for increased tariffs on Chinese goods, his policies are calibrated to demonstrate toughness on China.
Taiwan’s own presidential elections, held on Jan. 13, showed just how deeply the island’s electorate had turned against unification. At first, William Lai, the candidate from Tsai’s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), vowed not to alter the status quo, though he accused Beijing of doing so. Taiwan, he argued, was already sovereign. There was no need to change what worked. But his caution soon vanished. While campaigning, Lai defined success for Taiwan as its leaders being able to visit the White House. This was a gauntlet thrown down—Taiwanese officials are blocked from visiting Washington. The Biden administration immediately demanded an explanation. This was not, U.S. officials made clear, how the relationship worked. Where Tsai had been prudent, Lai was willing to push his luck.
The Kuomintang (KMT), the main opposition party, was not leaning toward Beijing, either. Its nominee, Hou You-yi, the mayor of New Taipei City, said that he would reject both “one country, two systems” and a formal move for independence, but that if Taiwan were attacked, he would face the challenge. Taiwan, according to Hou, needed to be ready to defend itself. On the crucial question of how to deal with China, there was little difference between the policies Lai and Hou espoused.
A third candidate, Ko Wen-je of the Taiwan People’s Party, was calculatedly vague on China policy. His campaign made clear that he was depending on votes from traditional KMT supporters: those who would have favored a closer relationship with China. He claimed that he would find the middle ground between the KMT’s appeasement of China and the DPP’s provocation of it; he would make Taiwan a bridge for Sino-American communication rather than a front in a Sino-American war. How he proposed to do all this was left undefined.
Lai eventually won the presidency, but it was not the ringing triumph Tsai had won four years earlier. Lai scraped through with a mere 40 percent of the vote, his victory made easier by the fact that Hou and Ko had failed to join forces. As he prepares to take office on May 20, Lai faces a deeply divided, volatile populace and a legislature in which the DPP is bereft of a majority.
This is a point China has been quick to underline. The DPP, it huffed after the election, is not representative of “majority public opinion.” What is lost on Beijing is that the other candidates made clear that unification was not something they were willing to countenance either. Hou had made a point of not inviting Ma Ying-jeou, the last KMT member to serve as Taiwan’s president, to his rallies; he knew that to associate himself with Ma’s embrace of China would have doomed his candidacy. Beijing still does not understand Taiwan. Meanwhile, the United States continues to disavow support for Taiwanese independence while making plans for further delegations to the island. With the U.S. presidential election going into fifth gear, the risk of miscalculation will only rise.
At the edge of chaos, a single choice can make the difference between order and catastrophe. More than 80 years on from the Cairo Declaration, which held that Taiwan would be “restored to the Republic of China” at the end of World War II, we can see that there were myriad moments that could have yielded different outcomes, for better or for worse. If President Franklin D. Roosevelt had insisted on self-determination for Taiwan after World War II, if the Korean War had not happened, if Beijing had made “one country, two systems” work, if Taiwan had developed a nuclear weapon, if Pelosi’s plane had indeed been shot at—if someone had made a different decision at any of those moments, the world would be a radically different place.
When deterrence, toughness, and pride drive policy, the room for error diminishes to virtually nil. China, Taiwan, and the United States are at a point where the choices they make could spell the difference between peace and nuclear holocaust. Those choices are best made with the historical record—and all its unrealized possibilities—firmly in mind.
Fixation on UK nuclear power may not help to solve climate crisis
Waste and cost among drawbacks, as researchers say renewables could power UK entirely
Paul Brown 10 May 24, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/10/fixation-on-nuclear-power-in-uk-may-not-help-to-solve-climate-crisis
In the battle to prevent the climate overheating, wind and solar are making impressive inroads into the once dominant market share of coal. Even investors in gas plants are increasingly seen as taking a gamble.
With researchers at Oxford and elsewhere agreeing that the UK could easily become entirely powered by wind and solar – with no fossil fuels required – it seems an anomaly that nuclear power is still getting the lion’s share of taxpayer subsidies to keep the ailing industry alive.
Politicians on both sides of the Atlantic are backing as yet unproven small modular reactors (SMRs) as an indispensable part of the answer to the climate crisis and are running competitions to get this industry started. These reactors, from tiny ones of the type that power nuclear submarines, to scaled-up versions that can, in theory, be factory produced and built in relays to provide steady power, are all still in the design stage.
As the Union of Concerned Scientists in the United States points out, whichever model is chosen they have all the drawbacks of existing nuclear power stations; expensive, even without cost overruns, and the still unsolved waste problem. The biggest disadvantage, the group says, is that even if the technology worked it would be too little, too late, to keep the climate safe.
US Congress passes major, bipartisan nuclear energy legislation
The House approved a bill Wednesday that includes major, bipartisan nuclear
energy legislation, keeping alive what may be the best hope for passing a
compromise nuclear bill before the end of the year. The chamber voted
393-13 to send S. 870, the “Fire Grants and Safety Act,” to the Senate
after lawmakers attached the “Accelerating Deployment of Versatile,
Advanced Nuclear for Clean Energy (ADVANCE) Act of 2024.” The fire grants
bill, sponsored by Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), easily passed the Senate
last year, offering what lawmakers and nuclear energy backers believe could
be a nearly bulletproof vehicle for the bipartisan “ADVANCE Act.”
EE News 9th May 2024
United Nations General Assembly backs Palestinian bid for membership
Aljazeera, 10 May 24
Resolution does not give Palestine full UN membership, but recognises them as qualified to join and extends rights.
The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) has backed a Palestinian bid to become a full UN member by recognising it as qualified to join and recommending the UN Security Council “reconsider the matter favourably”.
The vote by the 193-member UNGA on Friday was a global survey of support for the Palestinian bid to become a full UN member – a move that would effectively recognise a Palestinian state – after the United States vetoed it in the UN Security Council last month.
The assembly adopted a resolution on Friday with 143 votes in favour and nine against – including the US and Israel – while 25 countries abstained. It does not give the Palestinians full UN membership, but simply recognises them as qualified to join.
The UNGA resolution “determines that the State of Palestine … should therefore be admitted to membership” and it “recommends that the Security Council reconsider the matter favourably”.
While the UNGA alone cannot grant full UN membership, the draft resolution on Friday will give the Palestinians some additional rights and privileges from September 2024 – like a seat among the UN members in the assembly hall – but it will not be granted a vote in the body.
Reporting from the UN headquarters in New York, Al Jazeera’s Gabriel Elizondo said it was significant that such a high number of countries voted in favour of the resolution.
“What we were hearing before the vote was anywhere perhaps between 120, 130 – at top end, 140. The fact that they got 143 meets and exceeds all expectations. It’s been overwhelmingly passed,” he said.
“But they still only have observer status.”…………………………… more https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/5/10/un-general-assembly-backs-palestinian-bid-for-membership
Empire Managers Explain Why This New Protest Movement Scares Them
CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, MAY 09, 2024
The US secretary of state and a Bilderberg surveillance tech oligarch have both made some very interesting admissions about the burgeoning protest movement against the US-backed slaughter in Gaza and the problems it poses for the empire they help run.
During a vitriolic rant about university demonstrators at the Ash Carter Exchange on Innovation and National Security on Tuesday, Palantir CEO Alex Karp came right out and said that if those on the side of the protesters win the debate on this issue, the west will lose the ability to wage wars.
For those who don’t know, Palantir is a CIA-backed surveillance and data mining tech company with intimate ties to both the US intelligence cartel and to Israel, playing a crucial role in both the US empire’s sprawling surveillance network and Israeli atrocities against Palestinians. Karp is a billionaire who sits on the Steering Committee of the Bilderberg Group and regularly features at the World Economic Forum and other platforms of plutocratic empire management.
“We kind of just think these things that are happening, across college campuses especially, are like a sideshow — no, they are the show,” Karp said during his rant. “Because if we lose the intellectual debate, you will not be able to deploy any army in the west, ever.”
Everyone should listen very carefully to Karp’s words here, because he’s giving the whole game away. He’s making it very clear how crucial it is for the empire to stomp out this protest movement and the zeitgeist upon which it rides, because the very existence of the imperial war machine depends on it. At a time when most imperial spinmeisters are trying to dismiss the importance of this movement and what young people are doing on college campuses around the world, this is a really extraordinary admission from someone who lives deep in the guts of the imperial hydra.
Such conferences are great for obtaining useful information from swamp monsters that you don’t normally hear, because when they’re surrounded by like-minded empire goons they tend to get a lot more loose-tongued than they are when they’re more aware that they have an audience of normal people.
We saw this illustrated again in a conversation between Senator Mitt Romney and Secretary of State Antony Blinken at the McCain Institute last week, during which both acknowledged some facts that generally go unstated by such creatures.
After bemoaning Israel’s lack of success at “PR” regarding its Gaza assault, Romney just came right out and said that this was “why there was such overwhelming support for us to shut down potentially TikTok or other entities of that nature” — with “us” meaning himself and his fellow lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
“How this narrative has evolved, yeah, it’s a great question,” Blinken responded, saying that at the beginning of his career in Washington everyone was getting their information from television and physical newspapers like The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post.
“Now, of course, we are on an intravenous feed of information with new impulses, inputs every millisecond,” Blinken continued. “And of course, the way this has played out on social media has dominated the narrative. And you have a social media ecosystem environment in which context, history, facts get lost, and the emotion, the impact of images dominates. And we can’t — we can’t discount that, but I think it also has a very, very, very challenging effect on the narrative.”
to each other, because that’s how they think about everything.
This is because empire managers are always acutely aware of something that normal human beings are not: that real power comes from manipulating the stories — narratives — that people tell themselves about their reality.
They understand that humans are storytelling animals whose inner lives are typically dominated by mental narratives about what’s happening, so if you can control those narratives, you can control the humans.
They understand that power is controlling what happens, but true power is controlling what people think about what happens.
They understand that whoever controls the narrative controls the world……………………………………………………. more https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/empire-managers-explain-why-this?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=144457706&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
USA politicians threaten to invade International Criminal Court if Israel faces war crimes charges
By Ben Norton https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2024/05/07/us-threat-icc-israel/
US Senators sent a letter to the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor, threatening to impose sanctions and even invade the Hague if it issues arrest warrants for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The Biden administration is also pressuring the ICC not to charge Israeli officials over their war crimes in Gaza.
US government officials have threatened the International Criminal Court (ICC) at the Hague, telling its Prosecutor Karim Khan that if he issues arrest warrants against Israeli officials over their war crimes in Gaza, the US government could impose sanctions on him, other ICC personnel, and their family members.
US senators even threatened to invade the Hague if it tries to prosecute Israeli officials.
UN experts: Israel is committing genocide in Gaza
This April, Israel’s extreme-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a prominent member of the state security cabinet, called for “total annihilation” of Gaza.
Smotrich cited the Biblical nation of Amalek – a genocidal reference also made by far-right Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
These invocations of Amalek are clear calls for genocide. In the Book of Samuel, God orders King Saul, “Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys”.
The UN’s top legal body, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled this January that Israel could be investigated on “plausible” charges of violating the Genocide Convention. (The ICJ and ICC are separate institutions, although both are located at the Hague.)
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have stated that Israel is violating this ICJ ruling that demands that it abide by the Genocide Convention.
Top UN experts have publicly warned that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
In addition to bombing civilian areas and killing tens of thousands of innocent men, women, and children, Israel has used hunger as a weapon, starving Palestinian civilians.
The US director of the UN World Food Program warned that Gaza is now suffering from a “full-blown famine”, after seven months of a suffocating Israeli blockade.
The US government has provided the vast majority of the weapons that Israel is using to bomb civilian areas in Gaza. If Israeli officials face charges over their war crimes, Washington would be complicit.
US senators threaten to sanction and invade the ICC
On April 24, a dozen Republican senators sent a threatening letter to the ICC prosecutor. The media outlet Zeteo obtained the document.
The missive was signed by major GOP leaders, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Tom Cotton.
In the aggressively worded letter, the senators pledged to “sanction your employees and associates, and bar you and your families from the United States” if Israeli officials face charges over their war crimes in Gaza.
“Target Israel and we will target you”, they threatened.
Issuing an arrest warrant for Netanyahu or other top officials would be seen “not only as a threat to Israel’s sovereignty but to the sovereignty of the United States”, the US politicians wrote, making it clear that they see Israel as a key part of the US empire.
“Our country demonstrated in the American Service-Members’ Protection Act the lengths to which we will go to protect that sovereignty”, they added.
The American Service-Members’ Protection Act is popularly known as the “Hague Invasion Act”. The legislation was signed into law in 2002 by President George W. Bush.
Human Rights Watch explained that this law “authorizes the use of military force to liberate any American or citizen of a U.S.-allied country being held by the court”.
By invoking the Hague Invasion Act in their 2024 letter to the ICC prosecutor, the Republican senators made it clear that the two-decade-old legislation is still valid: hawks in Washington are willing to invade the Hague to save Israeli officials if they are prosecuted.
Biden administration double standards on the ICC
It is not just Republicans who are threatening the ICC. This is bipartisan in Washington.
The Israeli press reported that, behind the scenes, the Joe Biden administration is also aggressively pressuring the ICC not to issue arrest warrants for Israeli officials.
In 2020, when Donald Trump was in the White House, the ICC opened an investigation into war crimes committed in the war in Afghanistan. The US and NATO forces were included in this inquiry.
In anger, the US government imposed sanctions on the Hague. Trump administration officials even threatened family members of ICC staff.
When Biden came into power in 2021, he sought to differentiate himself from his Republican predecessor. Secretary of State Antony Blinken publicly announced the end of the Trump-era sanctions and visa restrictions against ICC personnel.
However, despite the Democratic administration’s claims to support the so-called “rules-based international order”, the Biden White House is now also intimidating ICC staff – if only a bit more quietly and less extravagantly than Trump and the Republicans have done.
The Biden administration furiously opposes any efforts to hold Israeli officials responsible for the war crimes they have committed in Gaza, with US weapons and political support.
This demonstrates Washington’s glaring double standards, as Biden himself had praised the ICC for issuing an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2023.
Secretary of State Blinken urged ICC member states to arrest Putin if he entered their territory. But a year later, he is aggressively pressuring the ICC to stop it from charging Israeli officials.
US and Israel supported Karim Khan as ICC prosecutor
Ironically, it was the US and Israel who had lobbied for the election of Karim Khan as ICC prosecutor.
This is despite the fact that the US and Israel are not state parties to the Rome Statute, and therefore are not members of the ICC.
US and Israeli lobbying paid off. In 2021, Khan entered office as ICC prosecutor, and immediately dropped the investigation into war crimes committed by US and NATO forces in Afghanistan.
But today, seven months into Israel’s brutal war on Gaza, the ICC is facing global condemnation for its inaction in the face of what UN experts say is clearly a genocide.
Global South leaders have long denounced the ICC as a colonial institution. Until 2016, only Africans had been tried for the worst crimes at the Court.
Khan is being forced to act, if he hopes to save face and salvage the legitimacy of the ICC. But his former sponsors in the US and Israel have turned against him.
It is not just justice for the Palestinian people, but the reputation of the International Criminal Court itself that is at stake.
Polish industry minister announces massive delay in nuclear power plant project
The anticipated opening of Poland’s first nuclear power plant may be postponed by up to seven years, with the new operation date set for 2039-2040, significantly later than previously planned.
BYGRZEGORZ ADAMCZYK 9 May 24 https://rmx.news/article/polish-industry-minister-announces-massive-delay-in-nuclear-power-plant-project/
Polish Industry Minister Marzena Czarnecka stated that the country’s first nuclear power facility is now expected to become operational in 2040, a seven-year delay from initial estimates.
The adjustment comes as a shock following Deputy Minister of Climate and Environment Miłosz Motyka’s earlier suggestion that only a one-year delay was likely in the nuclear plant’s preparation process. However, it has now become evident that the setbacks will be much more severe.
Minister Czarnecka, in an interview with Polish Radio on Tuesday, announced that the first nuclear unit in Poland would commence operations in 2039-2040, criticizing the previous government’s 2033 target as unrealistic. She highlighted what she said was her pragmatic approach, acknowledging that “all investments are subject to certain delays” and marked 2039 as a “breakthrough year” for the Choczewo nuclear plant.
The postponement in the completion of the next major investment after the Central Communication Port (CPK) transport hub has left energy specialists frozen in place. Immediately, voices began to arise that if Poland does not manage to complete the power plant by 2035, an energy disaster awaits the country.
As news of delays in implementing nuclear power in Poland began to heat up in the media and on the web, the minister decided to speak again and clarify what she had said the day before. In response to a publication on Energetyka24.pl, she noted that by mentioning 2039, she was referring to the complete end of construction of the first nuclear power plant. Minister Czarnecka also provided a planned work schedule, which assumes that physical construction will begin in 2028, and the first energy block will be put into operation by 2035. By 2039, the next two blocks are to be connected to the grid.
Recent weeks have also seen rumors of a potential change in location for Poland’s inaugural nuclear facility, which, according to Łukasz Młynarkiewicz, vice-president of Polish Nuclear Power Plants, would not invalidate previous decisions or halt preparatory work at the current site.
However, a relocation could mean additional years of delay. Experts already consider the Polish nuclear energy project to be about two years behind schedule, with every month of delay further widening the gap.
Media reports have also surfaced about requests for re-evaluation of the environmental decision concerning Poland’s first nuclear plant. These requests, submitted to the General Directorate for Environmental Protection (GDOŚ), have come from several environmental organizations and individuals, whose identities remain protected for privacy reasons.
Canada: Nuclear Waste Petition Tabled in Parliament
| Ottawa – A petition calling on the Government to provide oversight of a controversial nuclear waste burial project has been tabled in the federal House of Commons, with a response required within 45 calendar days. Created by Northwatch project coordinator Brennain Lloyd and sponsored by Nipissing-Timiskaming MP Anthony Rota, the petition gained the signatures of 3,327 Canadians who joined the call on the federal government to require the Nuclear Waste Management Organization to demonstrate that it has the consent of residents and communities, including First Nations and Treaty Organizations, along the transportation route and in the region of and downstream of the candidate repository site(s) before selecting a site. “Canadians expect a fair and accountable process when it comes to projects of this size, risk and long-term consequence”, said petition organizer Brennain Lloyd, coordinator with Northwatch and an organizer with the Northern Ontario alliance We the Nuclear Free North. |
The NWMO has said repeatedly that they will only proceed with an “informed and willing host”, but the communities along the transportation route are “hosts” to the same risks as the NWMO’s so-called “host communities” of Ignace and South Bruce. By NWMO design, those living downstream and along the transportation route are shut out of the NWMO’s site selection process. The federal government needs to course-correct the NWMO”.
The NWMO has been engaged in a site search since 2010 and since 2020 has been focused on two municipalities as potential “host communities”: the municipality of South Bruce in Southwestern Ontario, and the Township of Ignace in Northwestern Ontario. The Township of Ignace is 43 km east of the NWMO’s candidate site between Ignace and Dryden, and in a different watershed – factors which critics say disqualify it from acting as a “host” community.
The Township of Ignace is using an online poll and interviews by a consultant to gauge the “willingness” of the Ignace residents. The Municipality of South Bruce has released a draft hosting agreement and has committed to a referendum on October 28th but says that if voter turnout is less than 50 % then Council will make the decision.
“We are grateful to the over 3,300 Canadian citizens who signed the Federal petition requesting that the Government of Canada take action and provide much needed direction to the NWMO regarding their site selection process,” commented Bill Noll, Vice-President of Protect Our Waterways – No Nuclear Waste, a citizens group in South Bruce which opposes the NWMO project.
The online petition was posted on a site operated by the Government of Canada and was open for signatures from citizens and residents of Canada until May 3rd. Signatures were then reviewed and certified by a Clerk of the House of Commons on May 6th, and today the petition is being tabled by M.P. Rota. The federal government has 45 days to respond.
| Contact: Brennain Lloyd, Northwatch and We the Nuclear Free Northbrennain@northwatch.org, 705 497 0373 office, 705 493 9650 cell Bill Noll, Protect Our Waterways – No Nuclear Wastewjnoll@yahoo.com, 519 507 9905 cell |
UK Taxpayers to fund fast-tracked nuclear fusion reactors
Planning exemptions and financial support proposed in bid to boost UK energy industry
Jonathan Leake, 8 May 2024
Pioneering nuclear fusion power plants are to be fast tracked through the planning process and supported with taxpayer money as Britain attempts to become a world leader in the technology……………. (Subscribers only) https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/05/08/nuclear-fusion-reactors-britain-fast-tracked-taxpayer/
France’s mini nuclear reactor plan – Nuward, gets another financial handout from the European Commission
The European Commission (EC) has approved, under European Union (EU) state
aid rules, a €300m ($320m) French measure to support Electricité de
France’s (EDF) subsidiary Nuward in researching and developing small
modular nuclear reactors (SMRs). The EC said the measure will contribute to
the achievement of the strategic objectives of the European industrial
strategy and the European Green Deal.
France notified to the Commission its
plan to grant €300m to Nuward to support its research and development
(R&D) project on SMR technology. The project aims to develop processes for
the design and construction of SMRs based on a simple and modular design
and with a power output equivalent to or less than 300 MWe. The front-end
design is the third phase of the overall Nuward project, which contains
five distinct phases.
In December 2022, the Commission already approved a
€50m French measure to support the second phase of the project, aimed at
acquiring new knowledge for the design and construction of SMRs. The aid
will take the form of a direct grant of up to €300m that will cover the
R&D project until early 2027. The measure will support Nuward in sizing the
modules and components of the SMRs and validating their integration in the
SMRs by means of numerical simulators and laboratory tests. Nuward will
also carry out industrialisation studies relating to the modular design and
mass production of SMRs. Finally, the measure will also support Nuward in
the preparation of the required safety demonstrations for the approval of
the project by the national nuclear safety authorities.
Nuclear Engineering International 1st May 2024
https://www.neimagazine.com/news/newseuropean-commission-approves-state-aid-for-nuward-smr-11725920
Nuclear waste at center of testy Nevada Senate race
The Hill , BY NICK ROBERTSON AND ZACK BUDRYK – 05/05/24
Nevada Republican Senate candidate Sam Brown is under fire from Democrats for 2022 remarks in which he expressed support for plans to store federal nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain.
Nevada lawmakers from both parties have strongly resisted a federal plan to turn the isolated southwest Nevada mountain — about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas — into a nuclear waste storage facility since the idea was first proposed in the 1980s.
But Brown has expressed support for the idea in the past, and he can be heard in a new recording from his 2022 campaign saying the state risked losing out on an opportunity if it blocked the plans.
“If we don’t act soon, other states … are assessing whether or not they can essentially steal that opportunity from us,” he said in the recording, first obtained by The Los Angeles Times.
Brown, who is seen as a favorite in Nevada’s GOP Senate primary this June, said in a statement to The Hill he was not actively calling for the reopening of Yucca Mountain, but that future proposals should be considered.
“I am not strictly committed to opening Yucca Mountain at this time,” Brown said. “However, I will consider all thoroughly vetted future proposals, with the safety of Nevadans being my top priority, while ensuring the proposals are substantially economically beneficial.”
Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.), who is running for reelection, quickly seized on the comments. Rosen is seen as vulnerable this fall in a state where former President Trump is up in polls. The Cook Political Report lists her seat as a toss-up.
“For decades, Nevadans across party lines have been clear that we will not allow our state to become the dumping ground for the rest of the nation’s nuclear waste,” Rosen said in a statement. “I’ve been fighting against Washington politicians trying to force nuclear waste storage at Yucca Mountain since Sam Brown was still living in Texas, and his extreme support for this dangerous and unpopular project underscores how little he understands the needs of our state.”…………………………………………………. more https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/4642131-nuclear-waste-at-center-of-testy-nevada-senate-race/
1 This Month
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes – A good documentary on Chernobyl on SBS available On Demand for the next 3 weeks– https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-program/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes/2352741955560
of the week–London Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
Tell the Ukrainian Government to Drop Prosecution of Peace Activist Yurii Sheliazhenko
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
-
Archives
- April 2026 (172)
- March 2026 (251)
- February 2026 (268)
- January 2026 (308)
- December 2025 (358)
- November 2025 (359)
- October 2025 (376)
- September 2025 (257)
- August 2025 (319)
- July 2025 (230)
- June 2025 (348)
- May 2025 (261)
-
Categories
- 1
- 1 NUCLEAR ISSUES
- business and costs
- climate change
- culture and arts
- ENERGY
- environment
- health
- history
- indigenous issues
- Legal
- marketing of nuclear
- media
- opposition to nuclear
- PERSONAL STORIES
- politics
- politics international
- Religion and ethics
- safety
- secrets,lies and civil liberties
- spinbuster
- technology
- Uranium
- wastes
- weapons and war
- Women
- 2 WORLD
- ACTION
- AFRICA
- Atrocities
- AUSTRALIA
- Christina's notes
- Christina's themes
- culture and arts
- Events
- Fuk 2022
- Fuk 2023
- Fukushima 2017
- Fukushima 2018
- fukushima 2019
- Fukushima 2020
- Fukushima 2021
- general
- global warming
- Humour (God we need it)
- Nuclear
- RARE EARTHS
- Reference
- resources – print
- Resources -audiovicual
- Weekly Newsletter
- World
- World Nuclear
- YouTube
-
RSS
Entries RSS
Comments RSS
nuclear-news 