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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?

May 14, 2024 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

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.

May 12, 2024 Posted by | China, politics, USA | Leave a comment

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.

May 12, 2024 Posted by | climate change, politics, UK | Leave a comment

Opposing The War Machine Is Cool Again, And The Empire’s Getting Nervous

May 12, 2024 Posted by | politics, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

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

‘Close to the goal line’: House OKs nuclear package

May 12, 2024 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

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

May 12, 2024 Posted by | Gaza, politics | Leave a comment

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

May 12, 2024 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

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.

May 11, 2024 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

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.

May 11, 2024 Posted by | ENERGY, EUROPE, politics | Leave a comment

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

May 11, 2024 Posted by | Canada, politics | Leave a comment

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/

May 10, 2024 Posted by | politics, UK | Leave a comment

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

May 10, 2024 Posted by | EUROPE, politics, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors | Leave a comment

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/

May 8, 2024 Posted by | politics, USA, wastes | Leave a comment

UK’s Nuclear roadmap is a massive detour

UK plan reveals true ‘energy’ agenda is pathway to nuclear weapons sector

By Jonathon Porritt, Beyond Nuclear 6 May 24

After 14 years of Tory mismanagement, the UK finds itself bereft of an energy strategy.

This was finally confirmed in the release of the Government’s new Nuclear Roadmap. At one level, it’s just the same old, same old, the latest in a very long line of PR-driven, more or less fantastical wishlists for new nuclear in the UK. But at another, it’s a total revelation.

For years, a small group of dedicated academics and campaigners have suggested that the UK Government’s Nuclear Energy Strategy is being driven more by the UK’s continuing commitment to an “independent” nuclear weapons capability than by any authoritative energy analysis. For an equal number of years, this was aggressively rebutted by one Energy Minister after another, both Tory and Labour.

The new Nuclear Roadmap dramatically changes all that. It sets to one side any pretence that the links between our civil nuclear programme and our military defence needs were anything other than small-scale – and of no material strategic significance. With quite startling transparency and clarity, the Roadmap not only reveals the full extent of those links, but positively celebrates that co-dependency as a massive plus in our ambition to achieve a Net Zero economy by 2050.

“Startling” is actually an understatement. Such a comprehensive volte-face is rare in policy-making circles. Every effort is usually made by Ministers to obscure the scale (let along the significance) of any such screeching handbrake turns. That is so not the case with the new Roadmap.

Courtesy of the latest forensic work done by Professors Andy Stirling and Phil Johnstone at Sussex University (who have been absolutely at the forefront of seeking to bring these links into the public domain over many years – often with mighty little support from mainstream environmental organisations, let alone “independent” commentators), chapter and verse of this volte-face can be laid bare. Just a couple of examples from the Roadmap:

  • “Not only does this Roadmap set a clear path for the growth of nuclear fission…it acknowledges the crucial importance of the nuclear industry to our national security, both in terms of energy supply and the defence nuclear enterprise.”
  • “Government will proactively look for opportunities to align delivery of the civil and nuclear defence enterprises, whilst maintaining the highest standards of non-proliferation.”
  • “To address the commonalities across the civil and defence supply chains, and the potential risk to our respective nuclear programmes due to competing demand for the supply chain, the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) is working closely with the Ministry of Defence and the Defence Nuclear Sector.”

And there’s a whole lot more than that! As Andy Stirling has said: “Without any reflection on what this says about previous efforts to suppress discussion of this issue, the Government is now openly emphasising its significance.”

Indeed!

As usual, the UK’s ill-informed and unbelievably gullible mainstream media would appear to have missed the significance of this gobsmacking inflection point. So one can hardly expect them to have grasped its even more significant implications for UK energy strategy as a whole. In every single particular.

Let me briefly unpack some of those particulars:

  1. Nuclear

The new Roadmap reads like an outing to a massive nuclear sweet shop. On top of Hinkley Point C and Sizewell C, we’ll have one more big one. And then we’ll have lots of Small Modular Reactors, all over the country. And we’ll have a new fuel processing plant. And a new Geological Disposal Facility – at some much more distant point. And so on and on. 24 fantastical Gigawatts to be designed and delivered by 2050.

The reality couldn’t be more different:

  • We will indeed end up with Hinkley Point C – at a staggering of cost of somewhere between £26 billion and £30 billion, with consumers paying twice as much for its electricity as they will for offshore wind. And it will almost certainly not come online until the end of the decade, 15 years on from the time it was meant to be up and running.
  • We may possibly get Sizewell C, though the Government cannot currently guarantee the required level of investment. So a Final Investment Decision is unlikely before the next Election. At which point, Starmer may come to his senses and kill off this absurd white elephant.
  • We will never get a third big reactor. The economics are literally impossible to justify.
  • We are unlikely to get more than a couple of hugely expensive Small Modular Reactors, at some indeterminate point in the future, even with a new “flexible approach” to planning and financial inducements. Even that may prove to be an illusion. As Professor Steve Thomas has written: “Advocates of Small Nuclear Reactors claim they are cheaper and easier to build, safer, generate less waste, and will create many jobs compared to existing large reactor designs. These claims are unproven, misleading, or just plain wrong. Worldwide, no commercial design of SMR has even received a firm order yet.”
  • And we may or may not get life extensions for the last five power stations in the “legacy fleet” – subject to regulatory approval, which may not be all that easy given extensive cracking in their reactor cores.

In short, the Roadmap is just a massive diversion from reality. Entailing incalculable opportunity costs. And putting at risk our entire Net Zero by 2050 strategy.

Ministers know all that. But they don’t really care. Our nuclear weapons programme (including upgrading Trident) will be protected as a consequence of this, via an unceasing flow of public money into the civil nuclear cul-de-sac, at a time when our defence budget is already massively overstretched. So who cares about the missing 24GW?

  1. Renewables

We’ll continue to see new investment into renewables here in the UK, despite (not because of) government policy, which has seriously messed up our offshore wind industry, maintained a de facto ban on onshore wind, couldn’t care less about solar, witters on vapidly about tidal without doing anything etc etc.

Meanwhile, on a global basis, renewables continue to boom………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

The reasons for this almost complete silence can be traced back to successive governments’ grim intent to hang onto our so-called “independent nuclear deterrent”. At literally any costs……………………………… more https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2024/05/06/nuclear-roadmap-is-massive-detour/

May 7, 2024 Posted by | politics, UK | 1 Comment

Canada’s federal budget -calls nuclear energy “clean” – the height of absurdity!

Nuclear energy never will be ‘clean,’ write Jones and Edwards.

THE HILL TIMES | MONDAY, MAY 6, 2024

The 2024 federal budget contains many references to nuclear energy as
a “clean” source of electricity.  In our view, referring to
nuclear electricity as “clean” is the height of absurdity.

The nuclear fuel chain begins with the mining of uranium from rock
underground where, without human intervention, it would remain safely
locked away from the biosphere. Uranium has many natural radioactive
byproducts, including radium, radon, and polonium-210 that are
discarded in voluminous sandlike “tailings” at uranium mine sites.
These materials are responsible for countless thousands of deaths in
North America alone. Canada has accumulated 220 million tonnes of
these indestructible radioactive mining wastes, easily dispersed by
wind and rain over the next 100,000 years.

Inside a nuclear reactor, uranium atoms are split to produce energy.
The atomic fragments are hundreds of newly created radioactive
poisons, most of them never found in nature before 1940. They make
used fuel millions of times more radioactive than the original
uranium. One used fuel bundle, freshly discharged, will deliver a
lethal dose of radiation in seconds to any unshielded human nearby.
There are hundreds of thousands of tonnes of waste irradiated fuel
bundles worldwide and the quantity grows larger each year. There is no
operating repository anywhere in the world for such wastes, but there
are several failed repositories.

Radioactive waste has the “reverse midas touch” turning everything
it touches into more radioactive waste. This includes the nuclear
vessel in which the waste is created, and everything that comes in
contact with the cooling water needed to prevent the waste from
melting down. Containers for radioactive waste become radioactive
waste themselves. All radioactive waste must be kept out of our food,
air and drinking water for countless millennia.

Radioactive atoms are unstable. They disintegrate, throwing off a kind
of subatomic shrapnel called “atomic radiation.” Emissions from
disintegrating atoms damage living cells. Chronic radiation exposure
can cause miscarriages, birth defects, and a host of degenerative
diseases including cancers of all kinds. Genetic damage to eggs or
sperm can transmit defective genes to successive generations.

Plutonium is one of the hundreds of radioactive byproducts created in
used nuclear fuel. It is of special concern because it is the primary
nuclear explosive in nuclear arsenals worldwide. “Reprocessing” of
nuclear fuel waste to extract plutonium is sometimes called
“recycling” but this is disinformation; the resulting waste is
more difficult to manage than the original fuel waste. Many serious
accidents have occurred around the world at reprocessing plants.
Places where extensive reprocessing has occurred are among the most
radioactively contaminated sites on Earth. Plutonium can be used as a
nuclear fuel, but extracting it is a nuclear weapons proliferation
risk.

Managing radioactive waste is difficult and very expensive. The
projected multi-billion-dollar cleanup cost for the legacy waste at
Chalk River, Ont., is the federal government’s biggest environmental
liability by far, exceeding the sum total of all other federal
environmental liabilities across Canada.

The multinational consortium running Canada’s federal nuclear
laboratories is receiving close to $1.5-billion annually, much of it
for managing legacy radioactive wastes. The consortium’s plans
include piling up one million tonnes of waste in a giant mound beside
the Ottawa River and entombing old reactors in concrete and grout
beside major drinking water sources. Many are of the view that the
plans fail to meet the fundamental requirement to isolate waste from
the biosphere and have been met with widespread concern, opposition
and legal challenges. Nuclear energy is not now, never has been, and
never will be “clean.”

The sooner our elected officials come to terms with this fact, the
better for Canada and Canadians. Honesty is the best policy.

May 7, 2024 Posted by | Canada, politics, radiation, Reference | Leave a comment

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